(date: 2023-11-08 10:59:11)
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Knecht was appointed by the city council on Tuesday, and will take the temporary role starting December 29.
The post Santa Barbara City Attorney Sarah Knecht Named as Interim City Administrator appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Signal
First team singles • Audrey Park, senior, West Ranch • Skylar Brathwaite, senior, Valencia. • Charly Saltz, senior, Golden Valley. First team doubles • Kelsie Lammens-Ross and Madison Vianzon, Saugus. • Cami Schoenwetter and Sivan Garteiz, Valencia. • Melissa Arakelyan and Nitya Kotha, Valencia. Second team singles • Baylee Renfro, senior, Valencia. • Janice Jin, […]
The post 2023 All-Foothill League girls tennis selections appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/2023-all-foothill-league-girls-tennis-selections/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Liliputing
There’s a new mini PC available that features a AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS, DDR5-5600 memory, and plenty of connectivity options including two Ethernet ports, support for up to three 4K displays, and a 40 Gbps USB4 port. It also has a somewhat gaudy chassis with a top cover that features RGB lighting effects and the […]
The post This mini PC combines Ryzen 7 7840HS with a “Cyberpunk” design for $410 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/this-mini-pc-combines-ryzen-7-7840hs-with-a-cyberpunk-design-for-559-and-up/
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
While state regulators craft new regulations and consult with the insurance industry, many Californians are paying extra-high premiums — or going without insurance entirely.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“We were in disbelief,” the husband told lottery officials. “We kept reading the instructions over and over.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281595258.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
California voters disapprove of how Biden is handling the war between Israel and Hamas, the economy, crime, inflation and more.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281592343.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Organized by Just Stop Oil, the incident was just the latest of many protests targeting famous artworks
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Truly awesome creatures of the sea.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281590823.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The BART director’s term expires Dec. 1, 2024.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/08/bart-director-rebecca-saltzman-wont-seek-re-election/
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Founded in 1935 on the site of an old winery that was forced to close due to Prohibition, the resort has survived economic collapse, a world war, creditors, recessions, wildfires and other adversity.
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Zepbound, a new version of the popular diabetes treatment Mounjaro, can now be sold as a weight-loss drug and helped patients lose 25% of their weight.
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The collision happened about 7:25 a.m. Wednesday at the intersection of Oak Street and Embarcadero West.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/08/driver-survives-after-vehicle-hit-by-train-in-oakland/
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Police did not identify the teen or specify any booking charges, citing laws protecting juvenile suspects.
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
Voters in the Minnesota city of St. Louis Park elected Nadia Mohamed, a 27-year-old Somali-American, as the city’s first Black, first Somali, and first Muslim mayor Tuesday night.
The election results show that Mohamed easily defeated Dale Anderson, a former banker and continuing education teacher, by a margin of 58% to 41%.
“I am very happy to win as Somali-American, Muslim, migrant and Black,” she told VOA’s Somali Service. “I would say thank you to all of those who supported me in this. It is our victory.”
Maine State Rep. Deqa Dhalac was the first Somali American to serve as mayor of an American city in 2021, when South Portland’s six-member council selected Dhalac for the role. Mohamed becomes the first Somali mayor in American history elected directly by voters.
“I have lived in this city for 18 years,” said Mohamed. “I grew up and finished my school here, so it was easy for me to get elected because people know me.”
An early start
As refugees, Mohamed’s family moved to St. Louis Park when she was 10 years old.
Mohamed says her aspirations for elected office started with routine recreational walks when she was young.
“I would walk around the city hall and could only see the portraits of city’s former mayors on the walls. All of them were white men. I only saw two women. None of them looked like me,” she said. “But now, I am very happy, and it is amazing to see my photo among these mayors, knowing that — let us say, 50 years from now — it will be still here.
“Muslim, black and migrant girls will have a better opportunity to see one of them among these mayors,” she said.
Mohamed in 2019 was elected to the St. Louis Park City Council at the age of 23, making her the youngest individual to hold the position in the 170-year history of the Minneapolis suburb.
Before public office, she also held a position at the Minnesota Department of Human Services as a diversity, equity and inclusion specialist.
Predominantly white St. Louis Park, a city of roughly 50,000, has seen the number of people of color more than double over the past two decades, reaching 20% of the population. Some 10% of residents are foreign-born, and the average household income is $87,639.
The city’s mayor is also its manager, responsible for executive-level operations. The mayor also chairs the City Council.
Mohamed will succeed Jake Spano, who announced in March that he would not seek reelection and endorsed Mohamed.
Other Somali-American successes
In nearby Minneapolis on Tuesday, another Somali-American, Ward 6 City Councilman Jamal Osman, defended his seat, receiving 44.6% of the vote, followed by Kayseh Magan with 30.1% and Tiger Worku with 21.8%.
Speaking to his supporters after the election results were in, Osman said he was happy and felt grateful to be trusted by Ward 6 residents for three consecutive years.
“I’m super excited,” Osman said. “We have a lot of work going on. We have a lot of work to do.”
In 2022, at least eight Somali-American women won races in U.S. midterm elections.
The success of Somali-American female candidates in the U.S. eclipses that of female aspirants for elected office in Somalia.
Female politicians in Somalia are so disenfranchised that in 2016, Somalia’s federal and regional leaders had to start allocating a specific quota of seats in parliament. But women still were never given the opportunity to get the 30% quota promised.
In 2016, Somali women occupied 24% of the 329 seats in the two houses of parliament. In 2022, female candidates secured 20%, well short of the 30% quota.
Mohamed Olad Hassan reported from Washington. This story originated in VOA’s Somali Service.
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The spacious property located in the 12600 block of Cheverly Court in Saratoga was sold on Oct. 25, 2023. The $3,650,000 purchase price works out to $1,497 per square foot. The house, built in 1967, has an interior space of 2,438 square feet.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/08/four-bedroom-home-in-saratoga-sells-for-3-7-million/
date: 2023-11-08, from: 404 Media Group
“Maine residents have won the right to control their destiny when it comes to car repairs.”
https://www.404media.co/voters-overwhelmingly-pass-car-right-to-repair-law-in-maine/
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 49ers’ defense is talented and has analytical Steve Wilks as coordinator. But the most important ingredient – intensity – is missing. Here’s a wild idea to fix that.
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Calen Addison, 23, had five assists in 12 games for the Minnesota Wild this season
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Gartner has raised the specter of departments outside of tech running their own IT functions under the guise of low-code and digital democratization.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/gartner_shadow_it_low_code/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Wisconsin man ordered “expensive items” on Amazon and then initiated returns, authorities said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281591053.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Despite signs of progress, a deal between the entertainment companies and SAG-AFTRA has proved elusive. So what exactly are the outstanding “essential items” preventing the parties from reaching a settlement?
date: 2023-11-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Just a few decades of intermixing affected the DNA of all sampled modern wildcats, researchers say, suggesting the species may be “genomically extinct”
date: 2023-11-08, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/keyboard-maestro-11-0-1/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Officers were investigating when exactly the crash occurred, CHP said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281592683.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: TidBITS blog
If you have experienced issues with Apple Pay after wirelessly charging your iPhone 15 in your car, Photoshop tools, update problems with M-series MacBook Pros or the M3 iMac, Apple Watch battery drain, or Siri not paying attention on your HomePod, these updates promise to help.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Signal
News release Santa Clarita Valley residents can learn about their risk for cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, diabetes and other chronic, serious conditions at a health screening event scheduled to be offered by Life Line Mobile Screening on Jan. 2. Screenings can check for: The event is to be held at the Embassy Suites, 28508 Westinghouse Place, Valencia. […]
The post Health screening event scheduled Jan. 2 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/health-screening-event-scheduled-jan-2/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The puppy was found in a pet carrier.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281592263.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
DNA taken from the man’s mom helped identify him, California officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281590833.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
Crooked Timber is hosting a series of essays over the next couple weeks on “The Political Ideologies of Silicon Valley.” The essays are derived from a workshop I attended last spring at Stanford’s Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS).
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/crooked-timber-series-on-the-political
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The girlfriend was found disoriented with hypothermia, deputies said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281590613.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 18-year-old student walking in a park was “very critically wounded” from the shooting, police said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281587898.html
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Oracle has won a temporary reprieve in its defense of a lawsuit alleging the company conducted a “widespread fraudulent scheme and unfair business practice” in sales of NetSuite software, with all claims dismissed against Big Red except for one.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/oracle_breach_of_contract/
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
The trio of giant pandas in the Smithsonian National Zoo are heading back to China on Wednesday, leaving only a handful of giant pandas in North America amid tense diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China.
Now age 25 and 26 respectively, the pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian came to the U.S. in 2000 and have been a mainstay in the Washington zoo ever since.
In 2020, they had a cub named Xiao Qi Ji, or “Little Miracle” in English. But now the parents and the cub are embarking on a 19 hour-long flight to Chengdu, China, aboard a cargo plane.
The Smithsonian National Zoo has spent millions over the years, particularly to help the pandas breed healthily, and has paid $500,000 annually to its Chinese conservation counterpart, according to the zoo’s most recent contract.
In the early morning, reporters saw the pandas in large, ventilated crates and boxes of apples and bamboo shoots being hauled out of the zoo.
The pandas’ one-way trip home came as expected: The agreement that brought them to the U.S. stipulated their return. But many see the trio’s departure as a sign of the times as the geopolitical rift between East and West widens.
When it comes to lending pandas to zoos abroad, the Chinese government prefers “nations with whom China’s relations are on the upswing, as a form of soft power projection,” Kurt Tong, a managing partner of the Asia Group consultancy, told Agence France-Presse.
Relations between Washington and Beijing have been strained by years of disagreements over trade, human rights abuses and the status of Taiwan.
According to Tong, “it is not surprising that Chinese authorities are allowing panda contracts with U.S. zoos to expire.”
The Washington zoo held a weeklong “Panda Palooza” in September to bid farewell to the bears. Over the last few months, thousands of panda lovers visited to say their goodbyes.
Zoo Atlanta in Georgia plans to return its pandas in 2024, meaning Mexico City’s Xin Xin will likely be the only panda left on the continent.
The first pandas came to American zoos in 1972, after then-President Richard Nixon’s famous visit to China.
Some information for this report was provided by Agence France-Presse.
https://www.voanews.com/a/china-takes-back-washington-s-pandas-amid-frosty-diplomacy-/7346840.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The California man was left “permanently scarred” and is suing the companies that make the nail gun, according to the suit.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281585958.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: NASA breaking news
Such high-tide flooding that inundates roads and buildings along the west coast of the Americas tends to be uncommon outside of El Niño years, but that could change by the 2030s. An analysis by NASA’s sea level change science team finds that if a strong El Niño develops this winter, cities along the western coasts […]
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The LAist
The Los Angeles City Council voted 11-2 Tuesday on the overnight parking ban.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Signal
Dear Savvy Senior, I’m currently enrolled in original Medicare but have been thinking about switching to a Medicare Advantage plan during the open enrollment period. Many of the Medicare Advantage ads I’ve seen offer lots of extra benefits beyond what traditional Medicare offers and no monthly premiums. What are your thoughts? — Considering […]
The post The Savvy Senior | Misleading Medicare Advantage Ads: What to Look Out For appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
It’s the oldest known example of the toothy teratoma on record, the study says.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281589063.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners: Get Mylio to revisit and preserve the special memories
https://www.fresnobee.com/shopping/article281588943.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The skeletal remains were found near Twentynine Palms, officials say.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281589993.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Saga of goat 2022 slaughter by Shasta fair officials takes a new turn in federal court.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281564528.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
Who knew?
https://steady.substack.com/p/votes-count
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
KubeCon Kubernetes is having its Linux moment, Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s Priyanka Sharma told KubeCon in Chicago yesterday. Her proclamation was rapidly followed by every IT presenter’s nightmare – a demo problem live on stage.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/cncf_ai/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The creatures play an important economic role for local communities in India, a study found.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281584443.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Liliputing
Ubuntu Touch is a mobile Linux distribution designed to run on smartphones and tablets. And this week a new version is starting to roll out for more than two dozen supported devices. Ubuntu Touch OTA-3 is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and includes the latest Ubuntu security updates, as well as a number of mobile-specific […]
The post Ubuntu Touch OTA-3 released with support for over two dozen devices (including the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro) appeared first on Liliputing.
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The LAist
A new report finds a majority of working Californians between the ages of 16 and 24 are earning low wages, and many can’t afford basic living expenses.
https://laist.com/news/education/teenagers-young-adult-labor-study-ucla
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
ChatGPT’s hundreds of millions of users were left without their digital discussion companion this morning, as owner OpenAI reported a major outage across the platform and its APIs.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/outage_chatgpt_openai_claude/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The treat is part of a global effort to encourage love and kindness.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281585433.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/lunar-6-3/
date: 2023-11-08, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/chronosync-11/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Michigan woman got a promotion while posing as a nurse, authorities said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281584908.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: TidBITS blog
Apple has released details about Contact Key Verification, an upcoming option in Messages that lets you manually verify an iMessage correspondent’s identity without relying on encryption data managed centrally by Apple. The feature also watches for anomalies, warning you when changes prevent it from guaranteeing a conversation is with the same person.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“It’s a blessing,” the tearful 69-year-old husband said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281583813.html
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
China is hurrying to buy as much chipmaking equipment as it can before further export restrictions shut off supply, boosting the country’s imports from the Netherlands, home to photolithography maker ASML.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/china_stockpiling_asml_kit/
date: 2023-11-08, from: NASA breaking news
Congratulations to the six Growing Beyond Earth high school teams who will present their original research at this year’s American Association for Gravitational and Space Research Conference in Washington D.C.! The teams represent Biotech@Richmond Heights (Miami FL), Herbert Henry Dow High School (Midland, MI), iMater Preparatory Academy High School (Hialeah, FL), and Institute for Collaborative Education (New York, […]
date: 2023-11-08, from: Kara Wynn blog
“Can we keep him?” “No.” “But it’s a TALKING DOG!”
https://karawynn.substack.com/p/if-we-could-talk-to-the-animals
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Según Grace Adler, estudiante de tercer año y presidenta del capítulo estudiantil de Occidental, End Overdose, una organización sin fines de lucro dedicada a la prevención y respuesta de sobredosis, está abordando el problema de las sobredosis relacionadas con las drogas en Occidental, con la esperanza de iniciar un diálogo en todo el campus sobre […]
The post End Overdose introduce la reducción de daños en Occidental appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
An untraveled nook between the Norris Hall of Chemistry and Arthur G. Coons Administrative Center will soon be transformed into a thriving, interactive micro forest by student volunteers enrolled in Plant Form and Function taught by biology professor Gretchen North. According to North, planting this micro forest involves novel and effective methods for fostering biodiversity, […]
The post Occidental’s first micro forest will have macro impact appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
At Oxy Live!‘s first installment of their speaker series last month, acclaimed interviewer Paul Holdengräber spoke with Alok Vaid-Menon on topics that ranged from the ways in which fiction differs from reality to stories of ordering hot chocolate at 3 a.m. This was the first event in the new series, but there are many more to come, according to Occidental’s […]
The post Enriching conversations thrive at Oxy Live! appeared first on The Occidental.
https://theoccidentalnews.com/culture/2023/11/08/enriching-conversations-thrive-at-oxy-live/2910475
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
The Northeast Neighborhood Outreach organization (NENO) is a 501(c) non-profit volunteer-run organization which focuses on serving the unhoused in the Eagle Rock and Highland Park communities. President Natalie Warner said NENO organization first began as a community group largely funded through local neighborhood councils. They later became a chapter of the Silver Lake, Echo Park, […]
The post NENO tackles LA housing crisis appeared first on The Occidental.
https://theoccidentalnews.com/community/2023/11/08/neno-tackles-la-housing-crisis/2910440
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
From what began as an effort to get rid of an excess of clothes, accessories and knickknacks, Pattye’s Closet II on N. Avenue 50 has grown into an oasis for vintage lovers. After falling in love with vintage as a child in Mexico, owner Renee Davila said she amassed quite a collection of things that […]
The post Pattye’s Closet II is a treasure trove in the vintage world appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Occidental men’s soccer won the 2023 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletics (SCIAC) Championship for the first time in school history with a score of 3-0 against University of Redlands Nov. 4. According to Christian Corcoran (junior), a defender on the team, the soccer team is absolutely buzzed. “We’ve been working for this for years now,” Corcoran said. According […]
The post Men’s soccer wins first SCIAC championship appeared first on The Occidental.
https://theoccidentalnews.com/sports/2023/11/08/mens-soccer-wins-first-sciac-championship/2910470
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
“The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” by Chappell Roan Kawena Jacobs (Arts and Culture editor) When you think of a pop song, most envision squeaky clean lyrics and an infectious, heavily produced beat underneath. But while Chappell Roan has a clear grasp on the pop sound, her biggest strength is saying things your […]
The post Editorial: From pop to psychadelic rock, our editors list their albums of the year appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Cross-country runner Ciara Gillen (senior) placed 14th at the 2023 SCIAC Cross Country Championships, running the 6k race in 23.12.3 minutes and earning All-SCIAC Second Team for her performance. According to Occidental Athletics, her performance was 30 seconds faster than her previous race at the NCAA DIII Pre-Nationals and set a new personal record. “I was really […]
The post Athletes of the Week Ciara Gillen and Aidan Lindhe-Johan make strides at 2023 SCIAC Championships appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
According to the Occidental Athletics website, Occidental’s women’s basketball beat Hope International 97-52 at an exhibition game Nov. 1 and won their first game of the season 66-57 against University of Saint Katherine Nov. 4. According to Coach Isaiah Gatewood-Flowers, this year’s team is quite experienced and has been preparing for the current season. “This year’s […]
The post Occidental’s women’s basketball team begins a new season with back-to-back victories appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Assistant Campus Safety Director Kim Bryant Lundy, whose survivor-centered work with the Occidental community left an indelible mark, died Oct. 22. She was 65 years old. Her daughter, Autumn Lundy, 25, said her death was caused by complications from cancer. Kim Lundy was born Jan. 4, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois and moved with her family […]
The post Kim Bryant Lundy, Assistant Campus Safety Director, dies at 65 appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report
As investors sense the Federal Reserve is done raising interest rates, stocks are seeing an extended rally. Of course, no one knows what the Fed will really do until they actually do it. Elsewhere, a possible light at the end of the tunnel for the shipping industry’s recession, and checking in on El Salvador’s big gamble on bitcoin.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The woman was hospitalized for eight days, officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281585023.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links Biden wants to ban ripoff “financial advisors”: Big gubmint wants to take away your freedom to starve to death in old age. Announcing The Lost Cause Tour: LA, Stratford, Concord, Simsbury, Toronto, New York and Chapel Hill! Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Biden wants to ban ripoff “financial advisors” (permalink) Once, American workers had “defined benefits pensions,” where their employers promised to pay them a certain amount every year from their retirement to their death. Jimmy Carter swapped that out for 401(k)s, “market” pensions where you have to guess which stocks will be valuable or starve in your old age: https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses The initial 401(k) rollout had all kinds of pot-sweeteners that made them seem like a good deal, like heavy employer matching that doubled or even tripled the value of every dollar you put into the market for your retirement. But over the years, as Reaganomics took hold and workers’ power ebbed away, all these goodies were clawed back. In the end, the market-based pension makes you the sucker at the poker table, flushing your savings into a rigged casino that is firmly tilted in favor of finance barons and other eminently guillotineable plutocrats. Neoliberalism is many things, but most of all it is a cult of individualism. The fact that three generations of workers are nows facing down retirement without pensions that will provide them with secure housing and food – let alone money to see the odd movie, buy birthday gifts for their grandkids, or enjoy a meal out now and then – is framed as millions of individual failures, not a systemic one. In other words, if you are facing food insecurity and homelessness after a lifetime of hard work, it’s because you saved wrong. Perhaps you didn’t save enough (through a 40-year run of wage stagnation and skyrocketing housing, health and education costs). Or perhaps you saved wrong, making the wrong bets on the stock market. If you can’t afford to run your air conditioner during a heat dome, that’s on you: you should have been better at stocks. Apologists for this system will say that you don’t have to be good at stocks – you just have to pay an Independent Financial Advisor to pick the stocks for you and you’ll be fine. But IFAs don’t work for free! What if you can’t afford one? Enter “predatory inclusion” – the practice of offering scammy, overpriced and substandard products to poor people and declaring it to be a good deed, because otherwise, those poor people would have to do without. The crypto bubble relied heavily on this: think of Spike Lee and others shilling for pump-and-dump scams as a way of “building Black wealth”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/business/media/cryptocurrency-seeks-the-spotlight-with-spike-lees-help.html More recently, Intuit and other scammy tax-prep services have argued against the IRS’s plan to offer free tax preparation as bad for Black and brown people, because it will deny them the chance to be deceived and ripped off with TurboTax: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers Back in 2018, Trump won the predatory inclusion Olympics, when his Department of Labor let the Fifth Circuit abolish the “Fiduciary Rule” for Independent Financial Advisors: https://www.investopedia.com/updates/dol-fiduciary-rule/ What was the Fiduciary Rule? It said that your IFN had to put your interests ahead of their own. Like, if there were two different funds you could bet on, and one would pay your IFN a big commission, while the other would be a better bet for you, the IFN couldn’t put your retirement savings into the fund that offered them a bribe. When Trump killed the Fiduciary Rule, he proclaimed it a victory for poor people, especially Black and brown people. After all, if IFNs weren’t allowed to accept bribes for giving you bad financial advice, then they would have to make up the difference by charging you for good advice. If you couldn’t afford that advice, well, you’d have to make bad retirement investments on your own, without the benefit of their sleazy self-dealing. The Biden Administration wants to change that. Biden’s Acting Labor Secretary is Julie Su, and she’s very good at her job. Last spring, she forced west coast dockworkers’ bosses to cough up the contract they’d stalled on for a year, with 8-10% raises for every worker, owed retroactively: https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos Su has proposed a way to reinstate the Fiduciary Rule, as part of the Biden Administration’s war on junk fees, estimating that this will increase retirees’ net savings by 20%: https://prospect.org/labor/2023-11-07-julie-su-labor-retirement-savers/ The new rule will force advisors who cheat their clients to pay restitution, and will require them to deliver all their advice in writing so that this cheating can be detected and punished. The industry is furious, of course. They claim that “The Market (TM)” will solve this: if you get bad retirement savings advice and end up homeless and starving, then you will choose a different advisor in your next life, after you are reincarnated (I guess?). And of course, they’re also claiming that forcing IFNs to stop cheating their clients will deny poor people access to expert (bad) advice. As the Financial Services Institute’s Dale Brown says, this will have a “negative impact on Main Street Americans’ access to financial advice”: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/legal-challenge-predicted-for-new-dol-fiduciary-proposal-75257.html Here’s that rule – read it for yourself, then submit a comment expressing your views on it. The government wants to hear from you, and administrative law requires them to act on the comments they receive: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/03/2023-23782/proposed-amendment-to-prohibited-transaction-exemptions-75-1-77-4-80-83-83-1-and-86-128 Su is part of a wave of progressive, technically skilled regulators in the Biden administration that resulted from a horse-trading exercise called the Unity Task Force, which divvied up access to top appointments among the progressive wing and the finance wing of the Democratic Party. The progressive appointments are nothing short of incredible – the most competent and principled agency leaders America has seen in half a century: https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis But then there’s the finance wing’s appointments, like Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who ruled against Lina Khan’s attempt to block the rotten Microsoft/Activision merger (don’t worry, Khan’s appealing): https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion Perhaps the worst, though, is Biden’s Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, a private equity ghoul who did a stint for the notorious wreckers Bain Capital before founding her own firm. Raimondo has stuffed her department full of Goldman Sachs alums, and has sidelined labor and civil society groups as she sets out to administer everything from the CHIPS Act to regulating ChatGPT. As Henry Burke writes for the Revolving Door Project and The American Prospect, Raimondo’s history as a corporate raider, her deference to the finance sector, and she and her husband’s conflicts of interest from their massive stakes in companies she’s regulating all serve to undermine Biden’s agenda: https://prospect.org/economy/2023-11-08-commerce-secretary-gina-raimondo-undercutting-bidenomics/ When the administration inevitably complains that its popular economic programs aren’t breaking through the media coverage, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves. The Unity Task Force gave us generationally important policymakers, but ultimately, it’s a classic “pizzaburger.” If half your family wants pizza, and the other half wants burgers, and you serve them something halfway in between that makes none of them happy, you haven’t made a wise compromise – you’ve just made an inedible mess: https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/ Announcing The Lost Cause Tour (permalink) There’s just one week until my next novel, The Lost Cause, goes on sale, and I’m hitting the road with it! I hope you can make it out – tell your friends! Los Angeles: I’ll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library on Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT; there’ll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down! https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/author-talk-cory-doctorow Stratford, Ontario: I’m onstage on November 16 at 19hET with Vass Bednar at the University of Waterloo Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business. I’ll also be doing a talk for middle-schoolers at the Stratford Public Library on November 16 from 1330hET-1430hET. https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-ideas-visionaries-in-conversation-tickets-729692809837 https://www.provocation.ca/upcoming-2023-events-stratford Concord, NH: I’ll be at Gibson’s Bookstore on Saturday, November 18th at 13hET. https://www.gibsonsbookstore.com/event/doctorow-lost-cause Simsbury, CT: I’m at the Simsbury Public Library on November 20 at 19h. https://simsbury.librarycalendar.com/event/author-visit-cory-doctorow-29257 Toronto, ON: I’m at the Metro Reference Library on November 22, at 19hET, hosted by Vass Bednar. https://web.archive.org/web/20230907160105/https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT495758&R=EVT495758 Toronto, ON: I’m hosting Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, on November 27 at 19hET, at the Metro Reference Library. https://web.archive.org/web/20230907160103/https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT496408&R=EVT496408 New York City: I’m at the Strand Bookstore on November 29 at 19hET. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause-tickets-734958008187 Chapel Hill, NC: I’m at Flyleaf Books on December 5, live with Sarah Taber, at 18hET. https://www.flyleafbooks.com/doctorow-2023 If you don’t see your city on this list, don’t panic! I’ve got another tour coming in a couple of months, when The Bezzle, sequel to Red Team Blues, comes out in February: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle Hey look at this (permalink) Labor Unions Are Industrial Policy https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/labor-unions-are-industrial-policy (h/t Naked Capitalism) The Epic v. Google trial may come down to simple v. complicated https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/7/23949849/epic-google-trial-day-one-recap-summary Seeing like a Bank https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/ This day in history (permalink) #10yrsago Feds subject drug suspect to vaginal/anal probe, X-ray, CT Scan, without a warrant — find nothing https://www.thedailybeast.com/dog-orders-cavity-search-lawsuits-ensue #10yrsago Business-logic of cooperating with the NSA has changed https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/a-fraying-of-the-public-private-surveillance-partnership/281289/ #10yrsago How much value did your account generate for Twitter? https://newsfeed.time.com/2013/11/07/interactive-this-is-how-much-money-twitter-owes-you/ #10yrsago Rob Ford’s exaggerated and imaginary savings to the taxpayers of Toronto https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/city-hall/deconstructing-mayor-rob-fords-fiscal-record/article_8c6e3bf3-bea5-54d8-8e2c-d28b5bfcf631.html #5yrsago Europe’s collision course with copyright censorship: where we stand today https://doctorow.medium.com/europes-copyright-rules-will-stifle-free-expression-8633e91f5284 #5yrsago Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can’t afford to rent a DC apartment https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-cant-afford-to-rent-an-apartment-in-dc.html #5yrsago Bruce Sterling on architecture, design, science fiction, futurism and involuntary parks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0__x5SG8WY #1yrago Delegating trust is really, really, really hard (infosec edition) https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/09/infosec-blackpill/#on-trusting-trust Colophon (permalink) Today’s top sources: Currently writing: A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025 The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024 Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review’s 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Latest podcast: The Canadian Miracle, Part 2 (https://craphound.com/news/2023/11/05/the-canadian-miracle-part-2/ Upcoming appearances: The New Luddites Seizing the Means of Computation, with Brian Merchant (Hallway Track), Nov 9 https://www.verylittlegravitas.com/hallwaytrack Studio City Branch Library, Nov 13, 1830hPT (LA) https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/author-talk-cory-doctorow CBC IDEAS, Nov 16 (Stratford, ON) https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-ideas-visionaries-in-conversation-tickets-729692809837 Inspiring the Next Generation, Nov 16 (Stratford, ON) https://www.provocation.ca/upcoming-2023-events-stratford Gibson’s Bookstore, Nov 18 (Concord, NH) https://www.gibsonsbookstore.com/event/doctorow-lost-cause Lost Cause at Simsbury Public Library, Nov 20 (Simsbury, CT) https://simsbury.librarycalendar.com/event/author-visit-cory-doctorow-29257 Generation of Lost Causes, Nov 22 (Toronto) https://web.archive.org/web/20230907160105/https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT495758&R=EVT495758 Who Is Watching Big Tech? Nov 27 (Toronto)` https://web.archive.org/web/20230907160103/https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT496408&R=EVT496408 The Lost Cause at The Strand (NYC), Nov 29 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause-tickets-734958008187 The Lost Cause at Flyleaf Books (Chapel Hill), Dec 7 https://www.flyleafbooks.com/doctorow-2023 Recent appearances: Plutopia https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-the-internet-con/ An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse (Hackaday Supercon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT1ud0rAT7w The Material Power That Rules Computation (This Machine Kills) https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod/294-the-material-power-that-rules-computation-ft-cory-doctorow Latest books: “The Internet Con”: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245). “Red Team Blues”: “A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before.” Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/. “Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin”, on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com “Attack Surface”: The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it “a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance.” Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism”: an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html) “Little Brother/Homeland”: A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A_Little_Brother%26_Homeland.html “Poesy the Monster Slayer” a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/. Upcoming books: The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023 The Bezzle: a sequel to “Red Team Blues,” about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024 Picks and Shovels: a sequel to “Red Team Blues,” about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025 Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025 This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic “When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
Immigration in the U.S. wasn’t always difficult or a crisis. Just 100 years ago, immigrants arriving in America simply had to give their name, occupation, and port of call when crossing into the U.S. Millions arrived through Ellis Island, an immigration and processing center that operated for more than 62 years. It stopped processing migrants 70 years ago this month. Evgeny Maslov reports on what it was like for immigrants on Ellis Island in this story narrated by Anna Rice.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ellis-island-gateway-to-america-in-early-20th-century-/7346633.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: NASA breaking news
A sounding rocket launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, Nov. 8, 2023, carrying NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s DISSIPATION mission.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-sounding-rocket-launches-into-alaskan-aurora/
date: 2023-11-08, from: NASA breaking news
Scientists using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope just made a breakthrough discovery in revealing how planets are made. By observing water vapor in protoplanetary disks, Webb confirmed a physical process involving the drifting of ice-coated solids from the outer regions of the disk into the rocky-planet zone. Theories have long proposed that icy pebbles forming […]
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Drivers keen on taking the world’s fastest car for a spin - or rather, for a straight-line dash - are being sought amid emerging plans to revive the UK’s Bloodhound Land Speed Record car.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/wanted_driver_for_bloodhound_land/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Still, inflation is up 3.7%, according to the October Consumer Price Index.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/business/personal-finance/article281209743.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: NASA breaking news
By Celine Smith “As the seedlings were placed in the water, I felt a moment of déjà vu,” said NASA scientist Tony Kim. “I was taken back to when I was a child playing in similar fields in South Korea. It felt like I was meant to be there bringing space to village with satellite […]
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The earthquake could be felt for hundreds of miles in all directions, USGS data show.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281583893.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
Farmers in the U.S. are closely connected to developments in Ukraine and are intently watching for clues about how the war is affecting not only farmers abroad, but also their own operations at home. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Decatur, Illinois.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-war-continues-to-roil-global-agriculture-industry/7346576.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Somebody took their life because they needed money more,” the woman’s brother said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281581153.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The calf likely starved to death, experts say.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281578623.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: 404 Media Group
Game wardens “put on full camouflage outfits” to sneak onto a Virginia hunter’s property and confiscated his camera. Now, he’s challenging a legal framework called the “Open Fields Doctrine” that let them do it.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Americans in 2023 are big fans of name references from books in modern pop culture and ancient mythology.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281552908.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: NASA breaking news
The third Power to Explore Student Challenge from NASA is underway. The writing challenge invites K-12th grade students in the United States to learn about radioisotope power systems, a type of nuclear battery integral to many of NASA’s far-reaching space missions, and then write an essay about a new powered mission for the agency. For […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-seeks-students-to-imagine-nuclear-powered-space-missions/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners
https://www.fresnobee.com/shopping/article281435438.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: 404 Media Group
In this week’s episode, we talk Fusus AI-powered surveillance cameras, how people lost their vision (literally) at an NFT conference, and how scammers are using malicious insiders at Walmart to conduct refund fraud.
https://www.404media.co/404-media-podcast-week-12-fusus-nft-amazon-refund-scams/
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Atlassian reassessed the severity rating of the recent improper authorization vulnerability in Confluence Data Center and Server, raising the CVSS score from 9.1 to a maximum of 10.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/atlassian_confluence_flaw_upgraded/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
Engineering students from the University of Guam can now pursue internships with the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Marianas, as the University of Guam signed a memorandum of understanding with the Navy on Nov. 1.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
A Guam Power Authority generator reported stolen about a month ago was recovered by police Wednesday.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Visitors Bureau made an appearance at the Tourism EXPO Japan 2023 at Osaka-Kansai, joining 70 countries that also partook in the event last month.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
The Consolidated Commission on Utilities unanimously approved pay raises for three of its employees Wednesday: the chief financial officers at the Guam Power Authority and the Guam Waterworks Authority and the attorney for GWA, who had also been acting as…
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
A man accused of murder has been appointed a new attorney to represent him.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
The prosecution will send an offer for a plea deal to a former Leon Guerrero-Tenorio administration Cabinet member accused of sexual assault after the prosecutor meets with the accuser.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
The debate over where and how to build a new public hospital rages on as the speaker and governor exchange tit-for-tat on the proposal to utilize Guam Ancestral Lands Commission properties for a medical complex, Bill 184-37.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
An elementary school teacher accused of sexually assaulting several students has received an offer from the prosecution.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
A man was accused of using another man’s identity to buy a car.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Commentary: A sufficiently funded wildfire package that embraces beneficial, natural fire will lead to a more resilient future with safer workers and communities.
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article281512563.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The projects are included in spending bills that are awaiting final congressional approval.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281539563.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“I’m deeply worried for my country,” said Shasta County’s Registrar of Voters, Cathy Darling Allen.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281562128.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners: Find the perfect gift in this guide that will make the coffee lover on your list smile
https://www.fresnobee.com/shopping/article281550593.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners
https://www.fresnobee.com/shopping/article281434073.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
As the U.S. and China prepare for the meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC Leaders Summit in San Francisco, some analysts say Beijing and Washington will try to dissolve the mutual distrust they have over Taiwan.
However, given their fundamental differences over the issue, China and the U.S. will likely try to limit the amount of time they spend on the issue.
“Both sides will have to say something about Taiwan, but this is not the kind of environment in which they can sit down and have a frank conversation about what each side’s approach is going to be,” Kharis Templeman, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, told VOA in a video interview.
He thinks Beijing and Washington will try to talk about Taiwan “as little as possible.”
“There is an election in Taiwan in January that could shake things up, so neither side has the incentive to try to be bold and reach out to the other side or deviate from the path that they have taken over the last couple of years in the trilateral relationship [between the U.S., China, and Taiwan,]” Templeman added.
China views Taiwan as part of its territory and vows to reunite with the self-ruled democracy one day, through force if necessary. In recent years, Beijing has increased its military intimidation campaign around Taiwan, repeatedly sending military aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and staging blockade-style military exercises around the island.
Despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, the U.S. has long upheld a policy of ensuring it can defend itself, and has done so through regular sales of military equipment. U.S. military sales to Taiwan have become more frequent in recent years.
Washington’s support for Taiwan
While Beijing and Washington have taken steps in recent months to resume high-level exchanges and stabilize bilateral relations, tensions around the issue of Taiwan remain high.
According to CGTN, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan during their meeting in Washington D.C. last month that “Taiwan independence,” as the Chinese state-run TV channel put it, is “the most severe threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, which must be resolutely opposed and reflected in concrete policies and actions.”
Apart from the stern warning from Wang, a top Chinese military official also reiterated Beijing’s determination to quash any attempt to separate Taiwan from China.
General Zhang Youxia,vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, said late last month during China’s biggest annual military diplomacy event — the 10th Xiangshan Forum in Beijing — that “no matter who wants to separate Taiwan from China in any form, the Chinese military will never agree and will show no mercy.”
In addition to warning against attempts to separate Taiwan from China, Zhang also issued a veiled criticism of the U.S. and its allies, accusing “some countries” of trying to undermine the Chinese government.
Some experts say the Chinese government’s main concern is Washington’s increased support and involvement in Taiwan.
“It raises questions about whether the U.S. remains committed to what has been their One China Policy, which is essentially that the process by which the two sides [of the Taiwan Strait] figure out their differences has to be peaceful,” Amanda Hsiao, a senior China analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), told VOA in a phone interview.
She said Washington’s continuous political and military support for Taiwan increases Beijing’s concern that the U.S. may try to “keep Taiwan permanently separated” from China.
While China has repeatedly cited Taiwan independence as its red line, the Hoover Institution’s Templeman said Beijing’s latest comments are in line with what it has stated in the past.
“I haven’t seen anything that suggests there is a new tone or rhetoric,” he told VOA, adding that this means there is no sign of significant escalation in Beijing’s level of concern.
“Nobody is talking about a deadline for unification or China is going to resolve the Taiwan question sooner rather than later. Those would be a significant escalation from what they have said in the past,” Templeman said.
Tilting the status quo
Compared to stern warnings from Beijing, the U.S. has repeated the importance of maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait during meetings between high-level officials from the two sides.
According to the White House’s readout of Sullivan’s meeting with Wang, Sullivan “discussed concerns over China’s dangerous and unlawful actions in the South China Sea” and “raised the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
Some analysts say the U.S. is trying to maintain the status quo across the Taiwan Strait while “implicitly signaling” that it is China, not Taiwan, that is shifting the status quo.
“Comments from the U.S. certainly repeat the type of rhetoric we have seen before,” Timothy Rich, a professor of political science at Western Kentucky University, told VOA in a written response.
Despite efforts to ease tensions, the U.S. and China remain critical of each other’s military activities near Taiwan. On November 1, the U.S. 7th Fleet announced that a U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the USS Rafael Peralta, and a Canadian frigate, HMCS Ottawa, “conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit.”
Beijing accused Washington of hyping the transit, and it deployed warships and aircraft to follow the American and Canadian vessels. Senior Colonel Shi Yi, the spokesperson for the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command, said the Chinese military’s actions were in accordance with laws and regulations.
Western Kentucky University’s Rich said he doesn’t expect the tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, or the two sides’ military actions, “to dissipate in the near future.”
“I would expect Chinese officials to continue to place the blame on the U.S. and to frame their own actions in the Taiwan Strait as a domestic issue,” he told VOA.
Since their fundamental differences over Taiwan currently seem unresolvable, and given that both sides have many issues they want to prioritize, Templeman thinks the U.S. and China may not give Taiwan a significant focus during the Biden-Xi meeting at APEC.
“Both sides will need to talk about Taiwan at some point during the meeting, but I would expect it to be pretty formulaic,” he told VOA.
In Templeman’s view, if Taiwan is only a small part of the Biden-Xi meeting, that could serve both Biden’s and Xi’s interests.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7346521.html
@Mike Hukka’s Mastodon feed (date: 2023-11-08, from: Mike Hukka’s Mastodon feed)
I find it depressing that 44% of computer science professors apparently think CEOs of AI companies are 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑦 asking for regulation.
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/08/tech-ceos-distrust-expert-survey
https://scholar.social/@mhucka/111375185205040556
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The victim, known as Fred Locz, won a local award for his music last year.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281549048.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Commentary on plan to review books for sexuality, gender themes.
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article281567543.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
These state jobs offer telework options and are taking applications in November.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281545723.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
They’re not the only items joining the menu.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281551673.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The police chase ended in a crash, resulting in standstill traffic and an ensuing collision on the Indiana interstate.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281579413.html
@Mike Hukka’s Mastodon feed (date: 2023-11-08, from: Mike Hukka’s Mastodon feed)
I read this in a random article about a product for photographers and I'm boggling at the level of egotism required to think this.
https://scholar.social/@mhucka/111375142255464772
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“The family has lost everything.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281537373.html
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Forrester reckons that up to 20 percent of VMware enterprise customers plan to escape its extensive virtualization stack in the coming year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/vmware_customer_forrester_prediction/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The failure of the county to ensure the maintenance of these nets is foolhardy.
The post Ring Net Removal a Mistake appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/08/ring-net-removal-a-mistake/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Sacramento Kings and Portland Trail Blazers are both dealing with injuries going into Wednesday’s game at Golden 1 Center.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/article281570043.html
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The LAist
The Cal State system offers 30 days of paid family leave. Faculty who have authorized a strike are demanding one semester.
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The LAist
The rate of infants dying in California before their first birthday ticked up slightly last year and is part of a troubling trend.
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The LAist
In the third episode of Imperfect Paradise: People vs. Karen, the criminal case against Katie Sorensen goes to trial. Reporter Emily Guerin was there.
https://laist.com/news/criminal-justice/imperfect-paradise-podcast-people-vs-karen-part-3
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Of the 34 facilities that were evaluated, 11 provided “inadequate” care to their patients, according to the report.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281554588.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Want to hit the slops as soon as this weekend? One high-elevation Lake Tahoe-area ski resort is opening for the first time this season.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/outdoors/article281548463.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Eight California airports made the list of top 10 for best and worst airports.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281543603.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“The Graveyard of the Atlantic claims another vessel.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281577308.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
BlueROV2 is an uncrewed underwater robot which surveys the depths with the help of a Raspberry Pi 4, at a fraction of the typical cost of an underwater ROV.
The post This Raspberry Pi-powered submarine ROV safely explores the depths appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/this-raspberry-pi-powered-submarine-rov-safely-explores-the-depths/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report
A former safety engineer at Facebook parent company Meta tesifies, “We cannot trust them with our children,” citing indequate options for addressing harmful material. Plus, a look ahead at this weekend’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco; stocks rally on hopes of no more interest rate hikes; and new legislation looks to boost Americans’ retirement security.
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking to SpaceX for its next set of Galileo satellites.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/esa_grits_teeth_readies_contracts/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Once a narrative takes hold — oh, which rhymes with OLD — it’s hard to change it. From Melinda Henneberger:
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article281539198.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Israel against reoccupying Gaza, even while acknowledging a “transition period” may be necessary following Israel’s war against Hamas militants in the Palestinian enclave.
At a press conference Wednesday on the sidelines of a Group of Seven summit in Tokyo, Blinken reasserted U.S. support for Israel’s efforts to oust Hamas, which killed 1,400 people and abducted over 200 others in an attack last month in Israel.
But Blinken also said “it is clear that Israel cannot occupy Gaza.”
“Now, the reality is that there may be a need for some transition period at the end of the conflict. But it is imperative that the Palestinian people be central to governance in Gaza and the West Bank, as well,” he added.
In an interview Tuesday with ABC News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested his country will play a security role in Gaza for an “indefinite period” once the conflict ends.
Over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 4,000 children, according to Palestinian officials, as Israel intensifies its ground operation and airstrikes in Gaza.
Netanyahu has insisted there will be no cease-fire until the hostages taken by Hamas are released. But he suggested Tuesday that “tactical little pauses – an hour there, an hour there” are possible.
In a joint statement issued Wednesday, G7 foreign ministers called for “humanitarian pauses and corridors” to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid and the release of hostages.
The G7 statement also vowed to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia “for as long as it takes,” condemned alleged Russian-North Korean weapons transactions, and criticized a wide range of Chinese actions.
Mideast focus
But the meeting was dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, amid growing international calls for a cease-fire.
Last week, a large majority of countries in the United Nations General Assembly voted for a resolution calling for an immediate and sustained “humanitarian truce” in Gaza.
The United States voted against the proposal, warning that a cease-fire would allow Hamas to regroup and conduct more attacks.
France, another G7 member, supported the resolution, underscoring differences on the Mideast conflict even among wealthy, developed countries.
G7 host Japan has also not been as outspokenly pro-Israel as other U.S. allies, said Jeffrey J. Hall, a professor at the Kanda University of International Studies.
“Japan is faced with either angering Washington, or angering the Arab states that supply it with oil,” Hall said.
“It’s not really possible for the G7 to come out with a very strong united position on this,” he added.
At his press conference, Blinken played down any suggestion of friction, saying “G7 unity is stronger and more important than ever.”
Pressing global concerns
In the joint statement that followed two days of meetings, G7 foreign ministers addressed a wide range of other global issues.
On Ukraine, the G7 leaders vowed that their governments’ “steadfast commitment” to Ukraine’s defense “will never waver.”
“We commit to standing by Ukraine for as long as it takes,” the statement said.
Some analysts have expressed concern that the Israel-Gaza conflict may shift international focus away from the Ukraine-Russia war.
Such concerns are valid, according to Sebastian Maslow, who teaches international relations at Sendai Shirayuri Women’s College in Japan.
“We are living in an attention economy now,” Maslow said. But, he said, G7 governments know that if they soften their support of Ukraine, “this will send a strong signal towards Russia – and China, for that matter – that the G7 has no ability to resolve a fundamental regional crisis.”
Focus on Asia
In Tokyo, Blinken also stressed it is important for the United States to continue to focus on Asia, even while it deals with urgent issues in Europe and the Mideast.
“We are determined, and we are, as we would say, running and chewing gum at the same time,” Blinken said. “The Indo-Pacific is the critical region for our future.”
His comments come ahead of an expected meeting next week in California between U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.
Blinken said he could not comment on specific topics that Biden and Xi will discuss, but that both sides “have acknowledged the importance of leader level channels in managing the relationship.”
Analysts do not expect any breakthroughs at the Xi-Biden meeting but say such meetings may help prevent U.S.-China tensions from spiraling out of control.
Wednesday’s G7 statement repeated many longstanding concerns that the United States and many of its allies have about China.
The statement expressed opposition to “unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion” in the East and South China seas.
The statement also linked the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait to the “security and prosperity” of the international community.
China has increased its military threats against self-ruled Taiwan and refuses to rule out taking the island by force. Beijing views the issue as a domestic, not international, concern, and routinely criticizes other countries’ comments on the matter.
In addition, the G7 statement expressed concern about the human rights situation in China, including in Xinjiang and Tibet.
But G7 leaders added: “We stand prepared to build constructive and stable relations with China, recognizing the importance of engaging candidly and expressing our concerns directly to China.”
Blinken to Seoul
Following the G7 meetings, Blinken departed for Seoul, where he will meet with senior South Korean leaders. Military cooperation between North Korea and Russia will be high on the agenda, according to U.S. officials.
Washington and Seoul have vowed to enhance joint deterrence against growing threats from Pyongyang as North Korea continues its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and prepares for what would be a third attempt to launch a spy satellite.
The G7 statement strongly condemned recent North Korean weapons tests, as well as alleged arms transfers from North Korea to Russia, which it said directly violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.
https://www.voanews.com/a/at-g7-blinken-warns-israel-against-occupying-gaza/7346437.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
She entered through the exit to avoid speed bumps, cops say.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281576848.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Wine production around the world is set to fall this year to its lowest level in more than 60 years, mainly down to changes in the weather. Plus, consumer and environmental groups have issued a legal complaint to the European Commission, saying that Danone, Nestle and Coca Cola are making misleading claims about plastic bottles being 100% recycled – or being completely recyclable. The big brands deny this. And, El Salvador made history in 2021 by becoming the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, but how has it worked out for ordinary Salvadoreans?
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: Bruce Schneier blog
This is an excerpt from a longer paper. You can read the whole thing (complete with sidebars and illustrations) here.
Our message is simple: it is possible to get the best of both worlds. We can and should get the benefits of the cloud while taking security back into our own hands. Here we outline a strategy for doing that.
In the last few years, a slew of ideas old and new have converged to reveal a path out of this morass, but they haven’t been widely recognized, combined, or used. These ideas, which we’ll refer to in the aggregate as “decoupling,” allow us to rethink both security and privacy…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/decoupling-for-security.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The three beloved bears will depart for China later today, traveling in style on a FedEx cargo plane
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners: Get an early start on Christmas with our review of the best 11 gadgets any man in your life will enjoy.
https://www.fresnobee.com/shopping/article281554058.html
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The Monero Project is admitting that one of its wallets was drained by an unknown source in September, losing the equivalent of around $437,000 at today’s exchange rate.…
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Sen. Rick Scott’s plea for ‘unity’ and an end to the GOP race should give rivals an opening in Wednesday’s debate. | Opinion
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article281556438.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Signal
Age is a hot topic right now. Especially, “older, old age.” President Joe Biden is getting hit with more than his fair share of rotten tomatoes on this one. He stumbles over words. He gets lost in thought every now and again. He relies on Teleprompters. Oh, how the critics howl about being TOO […]
The post Gary Horton | Biden, Trump, Old Age and Sensibility appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/gary-horton-biden-trump-old-age-and-sensibility/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Signal
I read the Nov. 3 article entitled, “Community members bemoan lack of progress in Hart District negotiation with teachers.” I agree that it is disappointing that our teachers and the William S. Hart Union High School District have not reached a contract agreement yet. I further agree that in order to attract and keep the […]
The post Karen Frost | One Tragic Day Doesn’t Define Us appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/karen-frost-one-tragic-day-doesnt-define-us/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Signal
Hooray for the Eagle Scouts. We should be proud of these young men. Ayush Doshi, working with Bridge to Home, as well as his brother Suraj, are Eagle Scouts and their parents must be so proud. Robbie Haring, thank you for repairing the Saugus “S,” it looks great. Your family must be proud of you. […]
The post Juanita Fitzgerald | Applause for the Eagle Scouts appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/juanita-fitzgerald-applause-for-the-eagle-scouts/
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ubuntu Summit 2023 Next April a new LTS Ubuntu arrives, and alongside it will be a whole new immutable desktop edition.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/ubuntu_core_desktop_details/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The GOP debate in Miami comes exactly one year after Ron DeSantis won reelection big in Florida.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/article281353118.html
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Venus is the most similar planet to the Earth in size and position, but its atmosphere is very different. To help shed light on why, a group of scientists have – for the first time – made direct observations of atomic oxygen on both the day and night sides of the second planet from the Sun.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/venus_oxygen_measures_to_help/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>When former Hawaii Police Department officer Nicholas C.K. McDaniel was laid to rest Saturday in Post Falls, Idaho, numerous Big Island officers attended his funeral.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PARADISE, Calif. — On the day Paradise burned, Gwen Nordgren stopped her car just long enough to rescue a young woman escaping by foot.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>On the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021, a former engineering director at the social media giant who had rejoined the company as a consultant sent an alarming email to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the same topic.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Hawaii County has been given 150 Narcan kits from the Hawaii Island Fentanyl Task Force.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/08/hawaii-news/hawaii-county-receives-150-narcan-kits/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Impassioned arguments were raised, but no conclusions were reached Tuesday during a hearing about whether the Thirty Meter Telescope has met minimum requirements to keep its land use permit for Maunakea.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The state has launched a new initiative to ensure that communities across Hawaii have reliable and affordable access to high-speed internet.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment on Tuesday that ensures access to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care, the latest victory for abortion rights supporters since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>This October was the hottest on record globally, 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the pre-industrial average for the month — and the fifth straight month with such a mark in what will now almost certainly be the warmest year ever recorded.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Israel said Tuesday that its ground forces were battling Hamas fighters deep inside Gaza’s largest city, signaling a major new stage in the month-old conflict, and its leaders foresee controlling the enclave’s security after the war.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>KAPALUA — A breakdown of the first insurance data for the Maui wildfires shows more than 6,079 residential property and personal motor vehicle claims totaling more than $1.35 billion have been filed for losses in West Maui and Upcountry Maui.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — The Air Force’s vast fields of underground nuclear missile silos are rarely disturbed by more than the occasional wandering cow or floating spy balloon. But the service is now asking Congress to help with another unexpected danger: towering wind turbines, which are growing in number and size and are edging closer to the sites each year.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — Alarmed by yet another jump in syphilis cases in newborns, U.S. health officials are calling for stepped-up prevention measures, including encouraging millions of women of childbearing age and their partners to get tested for the sexually transmitted disease.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — The House voted late Tuesday to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — the only Palestinian American in Congress — an extraordinary rebuke of her rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas war.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Carmelita Mary Bacio, 69, of Mountain View died Oct. 29 at home. Born in Hilo, she was a store clerk, caretaker, nurse and 1972 Hilo High School graduate. Visitation 7:30-8 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 18, at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Mountain View. Memorial Mass at 8 a.m. Luncheon at 11 a.m. at Keaau Community Center, 16-186 Mua St. in Keaau. Survived by children, Mark Banasihan of Atlanta, Genevieve (Peter Jr.) Siva of Waimea, Kauai, Regina Banasihan of Kekaha, Kauai, Lorna Pedro-Villanueva of Mountain View and Paul Banasihan Jr. of Keaau; sisters, Josefa Allen of Kapolei, Oahu, Lorita Domingo of Pauoa Valley, Oahu and Connie (Cirilo) Carnate of Pearl City, Oahu; 19 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren; nieces, nephews, and hanai children. Arrangements by Dodo Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/08/obituaries/obituaries-for-november-8-11/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Shoppers can help put food on the table for Hawaii residents facing hunger this holiday season with the annual statewide Check-Out Hunger campaign from the Hawaii Foodbank.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Nature Conservancy and the Ka‘upulehu Marine Life Advisory Committee on Oct. 30 launched Kanu Ko‘a (planting corals), the first community-led coral reef restoration project on Hawaii Island.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>You probably know what a “zombie lie” is, but, just in case, it’s an idea or proposition or theory that is demonstrably, logically and intuitively false but which, like a zombie, refuses to die. And it will eat your brain.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/08/opinion/3-very-dangerous-zombie-lies/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>One of the things that makes the United States Senate what some call “the world’s greatest deliberative body” is a rule structure that ensures even members of the minority party have a voice.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Hilo Woman’s Club will host a rummage sale from 7 a.m. to 12 noon on Saturday, Nov. 18, at their clubhouse on 7 Lele St. in Hilo.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Federal pigs are
way out of control</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/08/opinion/your-views-for-november-8-9/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Four Big Island Interscholastic Federation (BIIF) schools — Kamehameha Schools Hawai‘i, Waiakea, Kealakehe and Hilo — represented the island at this year’s Zippy Hawaii High School Athletic Association (HHSAA) Cheerleading Championships on Monday night in Honolulu.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>University of Hawaii</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LAWRENCE, Kan. — Kansas coach Bill Self signed a lifetime contract Tuesday that will pay him $53 million over the first five years, easily surpassing Kentucky coach John Calipari for the richest deal ever given to a college basketball coach at a public university. </p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DENVER — The Pac-12 comes down to two as the season enters the home stretch. </p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>If I waited for an invitation, I would never be able to attend any party.</p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Michigan is preparing to take possible legal action if the Big Ten Conference punishes the Wolverines’ football program before a full investigation into allegations of an impermissible scouting and sign-stealing scheme, a person with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press on Tuesday. </p>
date: 2023-11-08, from: Blog by Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti
Every once in a while, startup founders and managers decide that they need someone to create and manage their docs –perhaps after reading this letter. Some contact me to understand how they should go about hiring for a tech writer. Since I’ve already published tips for job hunting as a tech writer, I thought it would be a good idea to write down some advice for the other side, too. Here are my recommendations for software companies wanting to hire their first technical writer.
https://passo.uno/tips-hiring-tech-writers/
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
French pharma firm Servier says its hit rate for finding target small molecules is up by an order of magnitude after it shifted the supporting data science to a graph database from Neo4j.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/order_of_magnitude_benefit_using/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Robert Reich on Substack
If yes, he’s got to do it now. But should he?
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/office-hours-should-biden-withdraw
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.
The post Classifieds – November 8, 2023 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/classifieds-november-8-2023/
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Lawmakers in Europe are expected to adopt digital identity rules that civil society groups say will make the internet less secure and open up citizens to online surveillance.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/europe_eidas_browser/
date: 2023-11-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1977 – Castaic residents vote 168-54 to withdraw 7th-8th grades from Hart District, making CUSD K-8. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-nov-8/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Alyssa Marin tossed a cross-court pass to Alexis Whitfield, who calmy drained a corner three-pointer to punctuate an uneven, but
The post UCSB Women’s Basketball Outlasts University of San Francisco in Season Opener appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
USC will host crosstown rival and top-ranked UCLA in its regular season finale.
The post Men’s water polo wraps up regular season appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/mens-water-polo-wraps-up-regular-season/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Trojans hope to extend their winning streak away in the Pacific Northwest.
The post Women’s volleyball set for Washington appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/womens-volleyball-set-for-washington/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Here are the sports you should lean toward and stay away from when it comes to gambling.
The post Picking the sport may be more important than picking the team appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/picking-the-sport-may-be-more-important-than-picking-the-team/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The need to achieve as a FGLI student often leads to self-loathing and guilt.
The post Immigrant optimism wields a double-edged sword appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/immigrant-optimism-wields-a-double-edged-sword/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Despite his lack of infamy, our new speaker is more dangerous than the last one.
The post Amid chaos, GOP moves toward fascism appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/amid-chaos-gop-moves-toward-fascism/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The contest let students showcase their adventures overseas with photography.
The post Photo contest captures study abroad experience appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/photo-contest-captures-study-abroad-experience/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
USC’s Student Symphony Orchestra performed at Bovard Auditorium Sunday.
The post Student orchestra embraces nostalgia appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/student-orchestra-embraces-nostalgia/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
A Vogue contributor has vowed to stop shopping, but why am I scared to join her?
The post A two-step program staring back at me appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/a-two-step-program-staring-back-at-me/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
LAPD did not confirm an arrest, though the investigation is ongoing.
The post Lyft driver who allegedly raped a USC student banned from platform appeared first on Daily Trojan.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The campaign empowers students to help victims of sudden cardiac emergencies.
The post Student Health hosts final CPR trainings appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/stayin-alive-with-final-cpr-training/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Students wishing to speak must submit a form to describe their statement.
The post USG senate to meet virtually for rest of the semester appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/08/usg-mandates-virtual-meetings-in-response-to-hate/
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump testified on Wednesday that she did not recall details of real-estate deals she worked on at her father’s company, in a New York civil fraud trial that threatens the former U.S. president’s business empire.
Like her brothers Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who testified last week, Ivanka Trump sought to distance herself from the questionable valuation methods that have already been ruled fraudulent by the judge overseeing the trial.
Trump, by contrast, has acknowledged on the witness stand that some of the estimates of golf courses, office towers and other company assets were inaccurate.
The lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, accuses Trump and his family businesses of manipulating real estate asset values to dupe lenders and insurers and embellish Trump’s reputation as a successful businessman.
Unlike her siblings and father, Ivanka Trump is not a defendant in the case.
As a top executive at the Trump Organization between 2011 and 2017, Ivanka said she focused on redeveloping the Doral golf course in Florida and the Old Post Office property in Washington.
At the trial, she was shown a 2011 email in which she acknowledged that a requirement by lender Deutsche Bank that her father maintain a net worth of at least $3 billion was a problem but encouraged company officials to approve it anyway.
“We wanted to get a great rate and the only way to get proceeds/term and principal where we want them is to guarantee the deal,” she wrote to a Trump Organization lawyer.
On the witness stand, she said she favored the deal but did not recall specific terms. “I felt generally that the deal terms with Deutsche Bank for Doral were positive,” she said.
Trump, who leads his rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination despite a maelstrom of legal troubles, has denied wrongdoing and accused James and Justice Arthur Engoron of political bias and “election interference.” He repeated those claims on social media late on Tuesday, saying it was “Sad!” that Ivanka was being forced to testify.
During defiant and rambling testimony on Monday, Trump acknowledged that valuations for his properties were not always accurate but said the errors were not relevant to the financial institutions that used them to price deals.
Donald Jr. and Eric Trump testified last week that the financial documents at the heart of the case were not their responsibility, though emails and other documents showed they may have been more involved than their testimony indicated.
Ivanka joined her father during his 2017-2021 term in the White House, leaving her brothers in charge of the company during that time.
James said Ivanka nevertheless was involved in manipulating property values.
“She will attempt today to distance herself from the company, but unfortunately the facts will reveal that in fact she was very much involved,” James said on the courthouse steps.
In a ruling that found Trump, his adult sons and 10 of his companies liable for fraud, Engoron described in scathing terms how the defendants made up valuations. His ruling could strip Trump’s control of some of his best known properties, though that order is on hold during appeal.
James is seeking $250 million in fines, as well as restrictions that would prevent Trump and his adult sons from doing business in New York.
In addition to this case, Trump is a defendant in four separate criminal cases, including two stemming from his attempts to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.
Nevertheless, opinion polls show he holds a commanding lead over Republican rivals to face Biden next year.
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Indian outsourcing titan Wipro is mandating a return to the office for three days a week and there will be repercussions for staff that fail to comply.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/wipro_office_return/
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
A year away from the country’s next presidential election, Democrats and abortion rights advocates won a series of victories in elections in several U.S. states Tuesday.
Voters in the state of Ohio approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care.
The measure follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn the 1972 Roe v. Wade decision that had protected abortion rights.
Ohio was one of several states where an abortion ban went into effect as a result of the court’s decision.
Before Ohio, voters in several other states, including California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont, adopted initiatives to protect abortion access following the Supreme Court ruling last year.
In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear won re-election Tuesday after a campaign that included advocating for exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion ban.
Voters in Virginia denied Republican Governor Glen Youngkin’s hope of putting the state’s legislature in his party’s control. Democrats held onto a slim majority in the state Senate while taking back a majority in the House of Delegates.
Youngkin has proposed instituting a 15-week abortion ban in Virginia except in cases of rape, incest or if the life of the mother is at risk. A Democratic majority in the legislature will block that effort.
Republicans did score a win Tuesday in the state of Mississippi, where Governor Tate Reeves defeated Democrat Brandon Presley to earn a second term in office.
November 2024 will feature a much bigger slate of national and state elections, led by races for the U.S. president, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and new terms for 33 seats in the U.S. Senate.
There will also be special elections to finish the final years of Senate terms for two seats, one left vacant by the death of Democrat Dianne Feinstein and the other by Republican Ben Sasse’s resignation to become a university president.
Democrats currently hold a narrow majority in the Senate, while Republicans have a small majority in the House.
Eleven states will hold elections for governor in 2024, while voters in most of the 50 states will cast ballots in legislative races.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Australia’s second-largest telco, Singapore-owned Optus, experienced an outage beginning Wednesday around 4am Sydney and Melbourne time that left millions nationwide without phone or internet access – either mobile or terrestrial.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/internet_phone_train_and_payments/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Supervisor Laura Capps’s eight-point plan includes higher fencing, more lighting, and education on the dangerous bluffs.
The post No More Deaths: Santa Barbara County Supports Plan on Isla Vista Bluff Safety appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
The House voted late Tuesday to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — the only Palestinian American in Congress — an extraordinary rebuke of her rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas war.
The 234-188 tally came after enough Democrats joined with Republicans to censure Tlaib, a punishment one step below expulsion from the House. The three-term congresswoman has long been a target of criticism for her views on the decades-long conflict in the Middle East.
The debate on the censure resolution on Tuesday afternoon was emotional and intense. Republican Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia pushed the measure in response to what he called Tlaib’s promotion of antisemitic rhetoric. He said she has “levied unbelievable falsehoods about our greatest ally, Israel, and the attack on October 7.”
With other Democrats standing by her side, Tlaib defended her stance, saying she “will not be silenced and I will not let you distort my words.”
She added that her criticism of the Jewish state has always been directed toward its government and its leadership under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It is important to separate people and government,” she said. “The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent. And it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation.”
That criticism reached new heights after the Oct. 7 attack by the terrorist group Hamas left hundreds of Israelis dead and scores injured. Tlaib, who has family in the West Bank, came under heavy reproval after she failed to immediately condemn Hamas after the attack.
All Democrats initially stood by Tlaib and helped defeat the first censure resolution against her last week. But since then, many of her colleagues, including prominent Jewish members, have become more conflicted about her rhetoric about the war, especially because of a slogan she has used frequently that is widely seen as calling for the eradication of Israel.
Ultimately, more than 20 of them joined Republicans on Tuesday night to censure her after an effort to shelve the measure failed earlier in the day.
The latest censure push resulted in a dramatic vote on the House floor amid political tensions over the ongoing, deadly Israel-Hamas war.
While the majority of both parties have historically stood firmly on the side of Israel, divisions have emerged in the Democratic Party about the American response.
Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., the lone Democrat to vote with Republicans on Tuesday to advance the censure resolution, said he believed it was important to debate the slogan “from the river to the sea.”
“It is nothing else but the call for the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews,” the Jewish Democrat said. “I will always defend the right to free speech. Tlaib has the right to say whatever she wants.”
He added, “But it cannot go unanswered.”
While the censure of a lawmaker carries no practical effect, it amounts to severe reproach from colleagues, as lawmakers who are censured are usually asked to stand in the well of the House as the censure resolution against them is read aloud.
But the resolution against Tlaib did not call for the public admonishment.
With the vote, Tlaib will become the second Muslim-American woman in Congress to be formally admonished this year for her criticism of the Jewish state.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was removed in February from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for similar comments she made about Israel.
Some on the left have criticized President Joe Biden’s stance and urged him to put conditions on U.S. support for Israel as its aggressive military campaign drives the Palestinian death toll higher.
While the vote against Tlaib will take place against the extraordinary backdrop of the war, the push to censure her is part of a growing pattern in the House.
Censure had long been viewed as a punishment of last resort, just one step below expulsion and to be triggered only for the most egregious wrongdoing. But censure resolutions are quickly becoming routine in the chamber, often wielded in strikingly partisan ways.
Many Democrats and some Republicans who opposed censuring Tlaib cited free speech and warned of the precedent it would set.
“This resolution not only degrades our Constitution, but it cheapens the meaning of discipline in this body for people who actually commit wrongful actions like bribery, fraud, violent assault and so on,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who defended Tlaib against the resolution on the floor late Tuesday.
A second resolution by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to censure Tlaib had also been scheduled for a procedural vote late Tuesday night. But that measure was put on hold after the censure resolution from McCormick advanced to a final vote.
Tlaib is now the 26th person to ever be censured by the chamber, and the second just this year. In June, Republicans voted to censure Democrat Adam Schiff of California for comments he made several years ago about investigations into then-President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.
When the House was under Democratic control, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona was censured in 2021 for tweeting an animated video that depicted him striking Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York with a sword. And Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York was censured in 2010 over serious financial and campaign misconduct.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Heatmap News
An unprecedented “public power takeover” campaign in Maine failed on
Tuesday, according to a
projection
by The New York Times.
The Maine ballot had asked voters if they wanted to create the Pine Tree Power Company, a nonprofit electric utility governed by a publicly-elected board, which would purchase and acquire all of the investor-owned transmission and distribution utilities in Maine. When the Times made its call, voters had rejected the initiative 71% to 29%, with over a third of precincts reporting.
The ballot question was the culmination of a multi-year campaign by a group called Our Power, which initially brought the idea to a vote in the Maine legislature in 2021. Though it passed, the bill was vetoed by Governor Janet Mills, and supporters did not have the votes to override the decision. Instead, they gathered the 63,000 signatures required to put the question to Mainers on this year’s ballot.
A growing contingent of the progressive climate movement is turning to the idea of public power as a way to solve many aspects of the energy transition at once. They argue that the system of providing electricity through state-sanctioned private monopolies is incompatible with an era of climate change, when utilities should be rapidly transitioning to clean energy, while also growing and hardening the grid, and easing the cost burden for the most vulnerable customers. The theory is that a public utility, unencumbered by the need to turn a profit, will be able to prioritize other public goals.
Public power advocates in Maine offered voters a laundry list of other reasons why they thought the state’s two investor-owned utilities, CMP and Versant, should be replaced. Though it’s rare that anyone likes their utilities, CMP and Versant are consistently rated the worst for customer satisfaction in the Northeast. CMP has faced multiple investigations and fines over its billing system, customer service, and delays connecting new solar projects to the grid. Advocates also appealed to nationalist views by highlighting the fact that both companies have “foreign owners.” (CMP is owned by Iberdrola, a Spanish company. Versant is owned by Enmax, a Canadian company owned by the city of Calgary.)
But in the run-up to the vote, the two utilities spent millions of dollars running targeted ads on social media and streaming services calling the idea “too costly and too risky.” This “disaster for Maine” would “hurt workers and small businesses,” they argued.
A few key aspects of the takeover were uncertain, including the ultimate cost of the acquisition, how long it would take to complete, and whether the transition would result in lower rates for customers. Campaigners essentially asked Mainers to take a leap of faith. They managed to convince the city of Portland, but few other parts of the state appeared to get on board.
This was perhaps the most ambitious attempt at a public power takeover the nation has seen since the early 20th century. But other, similar efforts are underway in cities and towns all over the country, like Ann Arbor, Michigan, and San Diego, California.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/maines-historic-public-power-push-goes-down-in-flames
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
With Israeli tanks surrounding Gaza City, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will assume overall security responsibility after it ends control of the territory by Hamas militants. After another round of shuttle diplomacy, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has acknowledged that efforts to secure a pause in Israel’s bombing of Gaza and to plan for the future of the Palestinians are “a work in progress.” VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-says-it-does-not-support-the-reoccupation-of-gaza/7346219.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
CSUN head coach Andy Newman will have to wait another game to find his first win at Northridge as the Matadors dropped the season opener 88-79 at Stanford (1-0). After being up by four with less than three minutes left in the game, the Matadors (0-1) let a season opening win slip through their fingers….
date: 2023-11-08, from: Transiting Los Angeles
John shares his thoughts on last week’s Arroyofest and what it could mean for the Arroyo Seco.
https://transitinglosangeles.com/2023/11/07/podcast-7-arroyofest/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
My car had huge numbers of mice living in it. When I started the engine and drove it some of the mice who were living in the engine died. Later when I got in the car it smelled terrible. So I took a picture of the car with the mice in it, and I want DALL-E to draw that for me. Thanks.
http://scripting.com/2023/11/07/034228.html?title=miceLivingInMyCar
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Pics The European Space Agency has released the first images snapped by Euclid, its latest telescope which has been designed to help build the largest 3D map of galaxies yet.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/esa_euclid_telescope/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Review: Kenny Loggins shows off why he’s earned the right to stay forever in our hearts.
The post An Unforgettable Final Evening with Kenny Loggins at the Santa Barbara Bowl appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Took care of life details today, sold a car, voted, and realized I’ve been pushing it really hard programming for most of the year. Learned a lot, made new friends. Looking forward to working with users and developers this winter, and of course fixing bugs. A big new product release coming soon. 😄
http://scripting.com/2023/11/07.html#a023050
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Nice Prentice and Nicole Buist were named athletes of the week.
The post SBART Press Luncheon: David Ramirez Honored as Phil Womble Ethics in Sports Award Recipient appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Valley Corvette Club is hosting a food drive on Saturday, Nov. 18, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Sam’s Club, 26468 Carl Boyer Drive, Santa Clarita, CA 91350. The donations will be used to help the Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry.
https://scvnews.com/nov-18-scv-corvette-club-hosts-annual-food-drive/
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
China booked its largest single-day U.S. soybean purchases in at least three months on Tuesday, traders said, offering a glimmer of hope for the most valuable U.S. farm export after overseas sales of the 2023 harvest had fallen well behind the normal pace.
Chinese importers bought around 10 cargoes of soybeans, or about 600,000 metric tons, for shipment from Gulf Coast and Pacific Northwest export terminals between December and March, trade sources said.
The sales would be a relief to U.S. farmers, who have seen Brazil dominate the global export market for soy as well as corn for longer than normal this year.
If confirmed, Tuesday’s sales would be the largest single-day soybean purchases by the world’s top soy importer since late July, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) daily sales data.
They were the latest in a series of soy import deals since late last week by Sinograin, China’s state-owned importer, according to three export traders with knowledge of the deals. Total purchases over that time were estimated at as much as 20 to 25 cargoes, two traders said.
Cash premiums for U.S. soybeans at Gulf Coast terminals GRYM, GRZD jumped by as much as 10 cents a bushel on Tuesday as exporters scrambled to source supplies, traders said.
High U.S. prices due to barge shipping disruptions and stiff export market competition from Brazil, which harvested a record soy crop this year, have hampered U.S. sales in the season so far.
Confirmed sales to China as of late October were down 35% from a year ago, and sales to all destinations were down 28%. The USDA is currently projecting a 12% year-on-year export decline.
But U.S. prices have become more competitive for shipments from December through March, when Brazil’s next harvest will be available.
The USDA has confirmed private sales totaling 236,000 metric tons of U.S. soybeans over the past two days via the agency’s daily reporting system. Traders expect additional “flash sales” following the deals on Tuesday.
https://www.voanews.com/a/china-makes-largest-us-soy-purchases-in-months-traders/7346211.html
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The union representing actors in the US film, TV, and radio industries has turned down the latest contract offer from studios in its battle to regulate the entertainment sector’s use of AI. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/sagaftra_actors_union_ai/
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Signal
News release The nonprofit WeWil Collaborative is joining forces with Rachel Cosgrove, co-owner and operator of Results Fitness, a gym in Old Town Newhall, to present a virtual workshop with the proceeds benefitting the Child & Family Center. The workshop, titled, “7 Secrets for Success in Uncertain Times,” is scheduled to start at noon Friday, Dec. […]
The post WEWIL Collaborative to host virtual workshop appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/wewil-collaborative-to-host-virtual-workshop/
date: 2023-11-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Metrolink will suspend service on all lines from Dec. 26-29, to complete the final phase of a three-year modernization project. Trains will not run on any part of Metrolink’s six-county system, which includes the Antelope Valley Line that runs through the Santa Clarita Valley, during the service outage
https://scvnews.com/metrolink-suspends-service-dec-26-29-on-all-lines/
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The LAist
Josie Huang filed a claim with L.A. County after she was arrested and injured by deputies in 2020.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Guam Daily Post
A Guam Power Authority generator reported stolen about a month ago was recovered by police today.
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Signal
Several photos of Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer lined the walls inside a soundstage at Santa Clarita Studios on Saturday. Posing for his baseball photo in 2002. Just hanging out with his friends. And a photo with his fiancée Brittany Lindsey in the moment she said, “yes.” The photos that surrounded 14 poker tables and one blackjack […]
The post <strong>Cards dealt in honor: Foundation pays tribute to slain Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The White House is already trying to sink a bipartisan law bill introduced on Tuesday that would rein in the Feds’ powers to snoop on US persons without a warrant under the infamous FISA Section 702.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/section_702_reform_legislation/
date: 2023-11-08, from: VOA News USA
Washington and NATO allies said Tuesday they will echo Russia’s suspension of a Cold War treaty to limit conventional arms proliferation in Europe, with the White House saying it had “no option” but to leave.
Nonproliferation advocates said this won’t make a huge impact on the battlefield.
Suspending the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) “will strengthen the [NATO] Alliance’s deterrence and defense capacity by removing restrictions that impact planning, deployments, and exercises — restrictions that no longer bind Russia after Moscow’s withdrawal,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.
Treaty set limits
The 1990 treaty was designed to prevent either side of the post-Cold War power structure — at the time, NATO and the former Soviet Warsaw Pact — from being able to amass forces for a flash offensive.
It also set equal limits on the number of tanks, armored combat vehicles, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters it applied in the territory between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains.
John Kirby, director of strategic communications for the National Security Council, said the U.S. had no better option but to pull out.
“I don’t know how we could justify not pulling out of it, given that the Russians have decided unilaterally to just throw it in the trash heap,” he said. “They left the United States and our NATO allies with no choice but to cease our accommodations and compliance with the treaty, as well.”
VOA asked if this decision could lead to NATO allies increasing the footprint of conventional weapons in Ukraine.
“As for future force posture, I certainly won’t talk about that from this podium,” he said.
NATO, which had criticized Russia’s June announcement to pull out, defended its decision to do the same. In a statement, the 31-member security alliance said they all support suspending their participation “for as long as necessary.”
“Russia’s withdrawal is the latest in a series of actions that systematically undermines Euro-Atlantic security,” NATO said in a statement. “Russia continues to demonstrate disregard for arms control, including key principles of reciprocity, transparency, compliance, verification, and host nation consent, and undermines the rules-based international order. While recognizing the role of the CFE as a cornerstone of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture, a situation whereby Allied States Parties abide by the Treaty, while Russia does not, would be unsustainable.”
“The Treaty’s core objective, namely to ensure a balanced conventional forces potential in Europe, cannot be achieved without Russia,” Germany’s government said in a Tuesday statement explaining its decision.
Russia calls treaty ‘vestige of the past’
Russia gave its 150-day notice of withdrawal in June, arguing that the treaty, forged in the ashes of the Cold War, was obsolete. It also said the “last straw” for the decision was NATO’s decision to welcome Finland and Sweden — both nonsignatories to the treaty — into the pact. Finland borders Russia, and Moscow expressed concerns that it could be used by third countries to amass weapons along Russia’s northwestern border.
“It is clear that, in today’s conditions, the CFE has definitely become a vestige of the past,” the Russian government said in a statement. “Our opponents should not have any illusions about Russia returning to the CFE compliance.”
Both U.S. parties agree on suspension
The U.S. decision was applauded by both parties, said U.S. Senators Ben Cardin, a Democrat, and Jim Risch, a Republican. Both sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“This is an opportunity to reassess our force posture in Europe to ensure we are ready to deter any Russian threats against U.S. national security interests, including against our NATO allies and other regional partners,” they said in a joint statement.
But security and nonproliferation experts say this won’t make much difference.
“Russia stopped implementing the CFE treaty way back around 2007,” John Erath, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told VOA. “So, the implications are pretty much zero. … The treaty has been dead for many years, and this is just further acknowledgment that it is so.”
Pal Dunay, a professor of NATO and European security issues at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, agreed in an analysis he wrote when Russia issued its decision.
“Russia’s decision to formally withdraw from the CFE Treaty will not make much difference on the ground,” he wrote.
But, Erath noted, one important thing will now change: Under the treaty, signatories were required to send each other annual reports with detailed information on their conventional forces. Russia, he said, did not comply with that requirement, but was receiving the information from the other signatories.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-nato-follow-russia-in-dropping-out-of-europe-arms-treaty/7346174.html
date: 2023-11-08, from: The Signal
A San Bernardino woman who visited Six Flags Magic Mountain in February 2020 and claimed the amusement park’s X2 ride caused her “shock and injury to her nervous systems and person,” which left her permanently disabled, is suing the park. Attorneys for Six Flags filed a motion Nov. 1 seeking a summary judgment in Department […]
The post Six Flags attorneys request dismissal of lawsuit over X2 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/six-flags-attorneys-request-dismissal-of-lawsuit-over-x2/
date: 2023-11-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The merriest arrival of the year in the Santa Clarita Valley is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 10 at 11 a.m. when Santa Claus arrives at Valencia Town Center
https://scvnews.com/nov-10-santa-to-arrive-at-valencia-town-center/
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Google contractors upset that some of their teammates were allegedly unlawfully terminated in retaliation for trying to unionize at the web giant have now joined the Alphabet Workers Union – after a 26-2 vote overseen by the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/google_union_nlrb/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office says the victim was 16-year-old Shylah Alexander, a student at San Marcos High School.
The post Authorities Identify Teenage Girl Struck and Killed by Train Near Goleta appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-08, from: OS News
Fedora Workstation now features GNOME 45, which brings better performance and many usability enhancements, including a new workspace switcher and a much-improved image viewer. If you’re looking for a different desktop experience, our Budgie Special Interest Group has created Fedora Onyx, a Budgie-based “Atomic” desktop in the spirit of Fedora Silverblue. Of course, that’s not all — we also have updated desktop flavors featuring KDE Plasma Desktop, Xfce, Cinnamon, and more. As with every Fedora release, it comes with the latest and greatest every one of the Linux desktops has to offer, as well as all the newest versions of the various frameworks and underlying layers, down to the kernel. Fedora KDE is my desktop of choice, so I’m definitely a bit biased, but I can’t wait to load up the upgrade and install it.
https://www.osnews.com/story/137767/fedora-linux-39-released/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A contemporary example of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
The post Anti-Semitism Defined appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/anti-semitism-defined/
date: 2023-11-08, from: OS News
In addition to Canonical continuing to invest in developing Mir as a platform now built atop Wayland, over the past year Canonical developers have been quietly working on Miriway as a Mir-based Wayland compositor and it’s becoming iteratively more useful. I’m not entirely sure what its purpose is.
date: 2023-11-08, from: Matt Haughey blog
A few years ago, I finished a major project at work and they gave our entire wing of the company a day in October of our own choosing to take off as a reward for the extra hours and long nights. I picked a random Thursday in the middle of October and spent the day …Continue reading “How to visit the Portland Japanese Gardens at peak Fall color”
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Honoring the lives of all who served.
The post Annual Veterans Day Gathering at Santa Barbara Cemetery appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/annual-veterans-day-gathering-at-santa-barbara-cemetery/
date: 2023-11-08, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Mary Poppins & friends drop in Seen in Arles one day in 2017. Quote of the Day Judge: What do you suppose I am on the Bench for? F.E. Smith: It is not for me, Your Honour, to attempt to … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-8-november-2023/38795/
date: 2023-11-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Now thorugh Dec. 1 the Michael Hoefflin Foundation for Children’s Cancer will host a See’s Candies Yum-Raiser. Up to 50% of each item ordered is donated back to the MHF to support families struggling with pediatric cancer
https://scvnews.com/sees-candy-fundraiser-to-benefit-michael-hoefflin-foundation/
date: 2023-11-08, from: FreeDOS News
Very exciting news! Dave Dunfield has decided to release the source code of over 40 years’ work “in the hopes that others may find it useful or maybe learn a few things.” This includes the Micro-C compiler, a very nice C compiler for DOS. You can find everything at Source Code Downloads on Dave’s website. The source code license isn’t an “OSI open source” license, but aims to release the source code for others to use. Thanks Dave!
https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/news/2023/11/micro-c-and-other-programs-now-with-source-code/
date: 2023-11-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
How much can the City of Santa Barbara expect to spend on the “promenade” project?
The post Show Us the Money appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/show-us-the-money/
date: 2023-11-08, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The LAist
Questions over district boundaries have put the election in the spotlight.
https://laist.com/news/politics/santa-ana-recall-election-judge-complaint-orange-county-jessie-lopez
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
California Institute of the Arts School of Theater faculty Janie Geiser received the 2023 Stan Brakhage Vision Award on Sunday, Nov. 5, at the Denver Film Festival
https://scvnews.com/calarts-faculty-janie-geiser-recieves-brakhage-vision-award/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Demand for Microsoft’s AI services is apparently so great – or Redmond’s resources so tight – that the software giant plans to offload some of the machine-learning models used by Bing Search to Oracle’s GPU supercluster as part of a multi-year agreement announced Tuesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/bing_gpu_oracle/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Opinion by Marek Warszawski: “Huckleberry Finn, you’re on notice.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/marek-warszawski/article281561143.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Robert Reich on Substack
And what they mean
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/last-minute-rundown-of-races-ill
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The species had been misidentified for years, researchers said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281558088.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
News release The Saugus Union School District again received a grant from Kaiser Permanente for its efforts in ensuring student wellness is a priority for all students, according to a news release from the district. This year’s grant submission was “Creating a Culture of Inclusivity and Kindness” through the district, the release said. […]
The post Saugus Union School District awarded $15,000 by Kaiser Permanente appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/saugus-union-school-district-awarded-15000-by-kaiser-permanente/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
Many members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation bloc may profit from the trend of U.S. companies moving production out of China and into countries with a solid relationship with the United States. VOA’s Jessica Stone explains what this practice — called “friendshoring” — means.
https://www.voanews.com/a/apec-nations-may-benefit-from-us-china-tensions/7345754.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Officials ask anyone who sees a pickup truck with a similar description to report it to the state wildlife agency.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281549583.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
You can vote for the binturongs’ names for three weeks, Zoo Atlanta says.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281558583.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Heatmap News
The Northeast has a mismatch between its climate ambitions — some of the most aggressive decarbonization targets in the country — and its resources for renewable energy. While the Pacific Northwest has rivers and gorges, the Southwest and Southeast have lots of sun, and the Great Plains has lots of wind, the major renewable resource in the Northeast lies on the Atlantic Ocean, where plans for billions of dollars in offshore wind investment are being delayed or even outright canceled as high costs take its toll on the industry.
But what the Northeast does have is a long border with Quebec.
The Canadian province plays a major role in the decarbonization plans for the entire region, thanks to the construction of transmission lines that could conceivably shuttle power both ways across the border. The Champlain-Hudson Power Express will connect 1,250 megawatts — enough to power about one million homes — of Quebec’s hydro resources to New York City by the spring of 2026, while the New England Clean Energy Connect is scheduled to complete its construction through Maine down to Massachusetts by 2025, conveying a similar amount of power.
Quebec already is a world leader in decarbonization, getting nearly all of its electricity from its massive network of dams managed by the state-owned Hydro-Québec. But it also has its own power needs — and ambitions — besides being a source of bulk power south of the border. The province wants to fully decarbonize by 2050, which means doubling its electricity consumption and devoting a big chunk of additional capacity to electrifying heat, transportation, and industry. That could include using Quebec’s non-carbon-emitting power to produce hydrogen to replace fossil fuels in industrial processes.
“There is a selective approach taken — we don’t want all the demand,” explained Serge Abergel, the chief operating officer of Hydro-Québec, referring to which projects would get access to the province’s plentiful and cheap renewable power. “We’re taking a selective approach with the government of Quebec to determine which projects will bring most value and transition the economy.“
So where does that leave exports? Could the Northeast count on Quebec
for clean power as it sees, at best, delays in building out its own
renewable generating fleet?
“This relationship is evolving,”
Abergel told me. While the two transmission lines are under
construction, “it’s been a very difficult experience,” due to political
roadblocks, he said. The New England line took a famously circuitous
legal route to construction, having been first defeated in a referendum,
which was then overturned in a lawsuit.
And as for new export projects, simply throwing up new transmission
lines south is a thing of the past, he said, having explained to
Bloomberg that its baseload commitments are reserved for the
New England and New York transmission lines. This means that any new
transmission lines — and there have been several proposed besides the
two under construction — will have to be more than just bulk power
exports.
Going forward, Hydro-Québec wants to use its hydro power to complement ample renewable resources in the neighboring regions of the United States.
“We believe our neighbors will stay the course,” Abergel said, referring to neighboring states’ decarbonization plans. “There will be lots of intermittent renewables all around us.”
That combination of hydro power and wind power, John Parsons, a senior lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management, told me is “a flexible system … that can balance renewables in New England.” Theoretically, when it’s very windy on the Atlantic Coast, a renewable-rich New England (and New York) would sell power to Quebec, letting the province conserve its hydropower (i.e. keep water in its reservoirs) for when the wind dies down and renewables are not powering the Northeast’s whole grid.
“Our resource is extremely flexible in terms of being dispatchable. These two resources complement one another very well when you aim at an 100% clean grid,” Abergel told me.
When Parsons and two colleagues modeled the flow of electricity between
New England and Quebec,
they
found “it is optimal to shift … away from facilitating one-way
export of electricity from Canada to the U.S. and toward a two-way
trading of electricity to balance intermittent U.S. wind and solar
generation.” Making Canadian hydropower “a complement, rather than a
substitute” for low-carbon energy sources in the U.S. would make deep
carbonization about a fifth to a quarter cheaper.
But this
would require a change in mindset on both sides of the border — not to
mention to the economics of offshore wind. “It’s clear that policymakers
originally … did think of [hydro] as a substitute,” Parsons said. While
the existing transmission lines can send electricity both ways, the
market structure for large scale trading of electricity both ways
doesn’t exist, Parsons said. “The idea of it going two ways is not in
the current contracts … You have to sign protocols and negotiate
agreements to smooth out trade between.”
Developers in the United States have heard loud and clear that Quebec is interested in more than just sending power in one direction. The proposed Twin States Clean Energy Link, which recently won support from the Department of Energy, is explicitly designed for electricity to flow both ways. The planned line would run from the Canadian border through Vermont and New Hampshire
“As a bi-directional line, Twin States will enable clean energy producers in New England, such as offshore wind, to export excess capacity to Quebec during times of lower domestic demand, providing a critical boost to the region’s clean energy economy,” according to the project’s website, where it’s explicitly sold as a way to boost the region’s wind power.
While Abergel would not say what he directly thought about the specific Twin States project, he did say that “so far we do have interest in the concept” of connecting New England and Quebec into a regional balancing system. “Much work needs to be done to determine how to bring value to both regions.”
“We’re at a crossroads right now where there’s a certain way of doing things that’s now behind us, and being achieved, and we have this pause where we reflect on the future and how to make it as efficient as possible,” Abergel said. “There’s lots of opportunities,” he told me.
But, the idea that “we have lots of power to send down south and can do another transmission line wherever, we’re not there anymore.”
https://heatmap.news/economy/hydro-quebec-serge-abergel-transmission-us-offshore-wind
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
DrinkPAK, a leading contract manufacturer of premium alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, is expanding and investing more than $450 million in the construction of two state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas
https://scvnews.com/drinkpak-headquartered-in-scv-expands-to-texas/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is concerned the United States could fall behind Russia and China if something isn’t done to accelerate development of quantum computing systems.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/us_lawmakers_quantum/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
U.S. aid to Israel is at a standstill in the U.S. Congress as lawmakers are running out of time to agree on billions of dollars in security priorities before a short-term government funding bill expires on November 17.
While Democrats and Republicans are broadly in agreement about assisting Israel in the month-old conflict with Hamas, both parties have attached conditions that have prevented the aid from moving forward.
The Democratic-majority Senate will not take up the $13.6 billion bill providing funding for Israel’s air and missile defense systems passed by the Republican-majority House of Representatives last week by a vote of 226-196.
Democrats objected to Republicans paying for the aid to Israel by making in-kind cuts to the budget of the Internal Revenue Service, the agency responsible for taxation.
The House-passed legislation was the first major U.S. legislative response to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel under the leadership of new House Speaker Mike Johnson.
“It’s an urgent necessity,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “Some of our Senate colleagues took issue with the pay-for that we put in there, but I made the point that we can take care of our allies and obligations and get our own fiscal house in order. Don’t forget, we have a $33.6 trillion federal debt.”
Most House Democrats support sending aid to Israel but voted against the bill because of the IRS budget cuts.
“Instead of passing life-saving aid to Israel that had an overwhelming majority of support within the Congress, Johnson and the MAGA [Make American Great Again], Republicans — for the first time in Israel’s history — said that aid would only be available if we agreed to their demands to pass public policy changes that make it easier for billionaires to cheat on their taxes,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar told reporters Tuesday.
Senate Democrats have also called for aid to Israel to be passed as part of the White House’s broader $106 billion emergency supplemental request, which includes a new round of aid for Ukraine’s defense against Russia, funding to combat Chinese aggression in the Asia-Pacific region and more money to secure U.S. borders.
“If Republicans inject partisanship into otherwise bipartisan priorities, that is only going to make it harder to avoid a shutdown, pass Israel aid, pass Ukraine aid, pass humanitarian aid for Gaza, and all of our other priorities,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday.
Republican support for additional aid to Ukraine has waned over recent months, prompting Democrats to argue the security priorities cannot be separated at a crucial time in the war.
“We are making a decision as we speak in the next several weeks about whether Kyiv will be this time next year a Ukrainian city or a Russian city. That is how serious the decision we are making is about our support for Ukraine,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told reporters Tuesday.
A group of Republican senators released a stand-alone border security proposal that could serve as a negotiating point with Democrats to compromise on aid for Ukraine. The proposal provides asylum and parole reform while resuming construction of the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“President Biden’s immigration policies have put American workers last and exposed our communities to crime and terrorism. This border package will cut off the flow of illegal migration, prioritize legitimate claims to entry, and restore order,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton said in a statement.
Schumer said Tuesday that “making Ukraine funding conditional on the hard-right border policies that can’t ever pass Congress is a huge mistake by our Republican colleagues.”
The White House said its request for $60 billion in aid to Ukraine to combat Russian aggression could not be separated from aid to Israel or its own request for $14 billion in border security funding.
“The idea of an urgent supplemental is you’re submitting what you think are urgent requests, and the president wants to see all of them honored, all of them acted on, all of them together. We wouldn’t have submitted it that way if we didn’t believe that they all weren’t important,” John Kirby, White House national security spokesperson, told reporters last week.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-aid-to-israel-trapped-in-government-funding-battle-/7345767.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The home was completely charred by the time Tennessee firefighters could put out the flames, photos show.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281557243.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
After managing the San Francisco Giants for 13 seasons and retiring in 2019, Bruce Bochy wasn’t sure if he’d ever manage again.
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Land owner says he is being treated unfairly, while open space agency says development would ruin rural character
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
News release Metrolink announced Tuesday it will suspend service on all lines from Dec. 26 to 29 to complete the final phase of a three-year modernization project. Trains will not run on any part of Metrolink’s six-county system during the service outage. Metrolink will operate on a weekend schedule on Christmas Day, Monday, Dec. […]
The post Metrolink to suspend all service Dec. 26-29 for system modernization appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/metrolink-to-suspend-all-service-dec-26-29-for-system-modernization/
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
QuakeAlertUSA has been retired, but MyShake remains an option, and phones with Android operating systems also deliver automatic notices.
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
Nov. 3 was a Black Friday for Santa Clarita Valley football: The three Foothill League teams were all first-round bounces from the CIF playoffs. Dozens of seniors will start gearing up for collegiate football seasons while the rest prepare for the fall of 2024. Valencia was well-represented in the all-league selections after its 7-0 season in […]
The post 2023 All-Foothill League football selections appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/2023-all-foothill-league-football-selections/
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
The holidays are just around the corner, and no matter how you celebrate the season, there’s something for everyone around the Bay. From ice skating to holiday performances, light shows, art fairs and train rides, here’s a sampling of ways to celebrate. Miracle and Sippin’ Santa Pop Up Bars: Thanksgiving week through New Years at […]
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Something died in me when she took my son’s life.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281557908.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Their demands also call for lighter workloads and parental leave, to name a few.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281538243.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Their demands also call for lighter workloads and parental leave, to name a few.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/education-lab/article281538243.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Heatmap News
As investment in renewable energy rises globally, so too does the potential for massive corruption. This proved true on Tuesday, when Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa resigned amid an explosive investigation into his administration’s handling of lithium mining and hydrogen projects.
“The dignity of the functions of prime minister is not compatible with any suspicion about his integrity, his good conduct, and even less with the suspicion of the practice of any criminal act,” Costa said in a tearful televised announcement on Tuesday.
While Costa assured viewers that he would be cooperating with authorities in their investigation, he maintained his innocence, adding that he is “not conscious of having done any illegal act or even any reprehensible act.”
Per NPR, the investigation involves “alleged malfeasance, corruption of elected officials, and influence peddling” in awarding concessions for lithium mines in northern Portugal, as well as a green hydrogen plant and proposed data center in the town of Sines. Portugal’s large lithium reserves are viewed as essential to the European Union’s green energy transition because the mineral is used in the batteries powering electric vehicles.
Costa’s announcement came hours after police raided several public buildings and detained Costa’s chief of staff, Vítor Escária. Arrest warrants have also been issued for four other people in Costa’s inner circle, including the mayor of the town of Sines. Prosecutors additionally named infrastructure minister João Galamba as a formal suspect in the corruption probe. These suspects, according to a statement from the prosecutor general’s office, used Costa’s name and influence to “unblock procedures” related to the exploration concessions.
After taking office in 2015, Costa was re-elected with an absolute majority last year, though his administration has been plagued by scandal and allegations of misconduct ever since. In December 2022, his infrastructure and housing minister was forced to resign amid a controversy over an irregular severance payment made to a former board member of the state-owned airline TAP Air Portugal.
“It is a stage of my life that is finished,” Costa said in his announcement, adding that he will not be running for office again.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/portuguese-prime-minister-antonio-costa-lithium-hydrogen-evs
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District began constructing the $217 million nets in 2018.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
By a split 3-2 vote, county supervisors approve forming a committee to review whether books are “appropriate” for library childrens sections.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281549158.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
Bulgaria will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 10 a.m. EST on Thursday, Nov. 9, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will host officials from Bulgaria and the U.S. Department of State for the accords signing ceremony. This event is in-person only. Media interested in attending must RSVP by 7 […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-invites-media-to-bulgaria-artemis-accords-signing-ceremony/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have come under attack at least five times over the past two days, according to U.S. defense officials, as Iranian-backed militias persist in their nearly month-long campaign in support of Hamas’ fight against Israel.
The Pentagon on Tuesday said the most recent rocket attack targeted an installation in Syria known as Mission Support Site Euphrates but added there were no injuries to U.S. forces and no damage to the base’s infrastructure.
U.S. military officials earlier confirmed another attack Tuesday with one-way drones targeting the air base in Irbil, Iraq.
Iranian-backed militias previously targeted Irbil Air Base on Monday, while launching two attacks on U.S. forces near Tall Baydar in Syria.
The Pentagon said none of the attacks caused any injuries or damaged infrastructure.
“We’re seeing an uptick in attacks. But so far, we have not seen any significant casualties. We’ve not seen significant damage to our infrastructure,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Tuesday, confirming Iranian-backed militias have launched a total of at least 40 attacks since October 17.
U.S. forces targeted
Twenty-two of the attacks have targeted U.S. forces in Iraq, with the other 18 aimed at U.S. bases and personnel in Syria.
A total of 46 U.S. troops have been injured in the attacks, including 25 diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries, or TBI, as result of the blasts from exploding rockets or drones.
Pentagon officials have described most of the injuries as minor, saying 40 of the injured service members have returned to duty.
U.S. bolsters presence
In recent weeks, the United States has bolstered its force presence in the Middle East, sending two aircraft carrier strike groups, dozens of fighter jets, and a ballistic missile submarine to the region to deter Iran and its proxies from expanding the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The U.S. also launched airstrikes on October 26 destroying two weapons and ammunition storage facilities used by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
“This is all about defending the people we have in Syria and Iraq,” a senior U.S. military official said at the time, saying the facilities were directly linked to attacks on U.S. forces.
‘An uptick in attacks’
Since then, Iranian-backed militias have increased the pace of attacks on U.S. forces on the region, though Pentagon officials note none of the attacks carried out after the U.S. airstrikes has caused any injuries or damaged U.S. facilities.
“While we are seeing an uptick in attacks, our purpose is to ensure that this conflict doesn’t widen out beyond Israel,” Singh told reporters Tuesday. “So, I would say that deterrence right now is incredibly strong on our side.”
She also denied the U.S. has been hesitant to retaliate for the drone and rocket attacks.
“We decide to respond at a time and place of our choosing. We don’t necessarily have to be tit for tat every single time,” Singh said. “We are incredibly strategic about when we decide to take kinetic action.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/no-let-up-in-attacks-on-us-forces-in-iraq-syria-/7345704.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: OS News
The ReactOS project has published another newsletter filled with news about their progress, and two things stand out. First, there’s now initial support for booting using UEFI. Work has been underway since the beginning of the year to transition FreeLoader, our default bootloader for ReactOS, to support UEFI on x86 and AMD64, as well as ARM32 and ARM64. Hermès has been developing a system for passing the UEFI framebuffer information in a fashion that allows Windows XP to run on UEFI systems, while Justin Miller (TheDarkFire) has been developing the UEFI freeloader build. On top of supporting booting ReactOS, other features are being built such as EFI chainloading and a bootmgfw-compatible build of FreeLoader. These features would add boot management capabilities and allow modern Windows systems to bootstrap our favorite bootloader. Second, and this is a big one: work has been done to add initial support for running Windows applications targeting newer systems than Windows Server 2003. Up until now, ReactOS was limited to running Windows applications targeting NT 5.2 found in Server 2003, but now work is being done to support appications targeting NT 6.0 and newer, as found in Windows Vista and newer. A group made up of Timo Kreuzer, Justin Miller, and other developers and contributors alike are developing the necessary APIs for compatibility with modern programs. While Timo is still working on implementing a dynamic versioning system for DLLs (#3239) that allows exporting of routines to applications depending on their compatibility settings, he has added the option for ReactOS bot builders to compile builds with NT6 exports which makes it possible to experiment with NT6+ application compatibility. There are also various improvements to the shell and debugger, but a new release is still a ways away, so unless you want to dive into unstable builds, there’s no way to test any of this just yet. Still, hose are some massive projects being undertaken, and makes ReactOS a bit more prepared for the future.
https://www.osnews.com/story/137762/reactos-gets-initial-uefi-and-nt6-application-support/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
After a century-long absence, gray wolves have returned to California forests. Though some wildlife experts are thrilled to see the their return, some farmers and ranchers worry the wolves present a threat to their animals. From Tulare County, California, VOA’s Robin Guess reports. Camera: Matt Dibble, Roy Kim.
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
A witness to the bloody killing testifies about watching it unfold in disbelief: “We were all screaming ‘Stop! Stop!’ I thought we were next.”
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
A 1,186-square-foot house built in 1971 has changed hands. The property located in the 300 block of Spring Valley Lane in Milpitas was sold on Oct. 26, 2023, for $1,600,000, or $1,349 per square foot.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/07/single-family-residence-in-milpitas-sells-for-1-6-million-2/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The woman was drowning 25 to 30 yards from the shore, police said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281555038.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The California towhee is an early riser. Their metallic “tink” calls are often the first to appear in the dawn chorus.
The post Mind the Birds appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/mind-the-birds/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
As Israel’s relentless bombing campaign over Gaza extends into its second month, several countries have recalled their diplomats from Tel Aviv over accusations of egregious war crimes.
“A genocide under the watch of the international community cannot be tolerated,” Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, minister in the presidency of South Africa, told reporters on Monday.
Turkey, Chad, Jordan, Bolivia, Chile, Bahrain, Honduras, Colombia and South Africa have recalled their diplomats from Israel in protest of the high number of deaths and the amount of destruction resulting from the Israeli bombardment.
The bombings have killed more than 10,000 people in Gaza, including over 4,000 children, according to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health, an agency within the Hamas-led government.
Israeli officials say they are trying to minimize civilian casualties but emphasize their resolve to eradicate the Hamas group, which they say has placed key military sites close to hospitals and in densely populated areas, effectively using civilians as human shields.
Hamas fighters killed 1,400 people and kidnapped over 200 others in Israel last month.
The United States, historically a staunch ally of Israel, has rushed to Israel’s support with $14 billion in emergency aid in addition to an annual $3.3 billion in assistance. It has also used its veto to protect Israel from critical resolutions in the United Nations Security Council.
Last month, 120 U.N. member states voted for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, but the United States and 12 other states — among them Nauru, which has a population of 10,800 — voted against the call.
“At present the U.S. seems somewhat isolated,” William Roebuck, former U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, told VOA.
“I think it’s a temporary situation that reflects differences over when a cease-fire should be called for and go into effect.”
Israeli and U.S. officials maintain that a cease-fire will benefit Hamas, allowing it to prepare for yet another deadly attack on Israel.
The United States has called for a “humanitarian pause” to allow lifesaving aid to reach civilians in Gaza, but Israel has insisted any halt to its bombardment must be accompanied by the release of all the hostages.
“The sheer scale of Israel’s military operation in Gaza and the simultaneously increased targeting of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank will likely lead more countries to consider diplomatic moves such as public condemnation, delaying normalization talks (e.g., Saudi Arabia), or severing diplomatic ties,” Sarah Parkinson, a professor of international studies at Johns Hopkins University, told VOA by email.
China
This month, China is presiding over the Security Council meetings where U.S., Russian and Chinese diplomats have already vetoed competing draft resolutions aimed at addressing the crisis.
“As the rotating president of the Security Council, China will continue to work with relevant parties to galvanize responsible Security Council action and play an active and constructive role in ceasing the hostilities, easing the humanitarian situation, and ultimately realizing durable Palestinian-Israeli peace through the two-state solution,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday.
While the call for a cease-fire has wider support among U.N. member states, building consensus for it among the five permanent members of the Security Council has been difficult if not impossible.
“The threat of a U.S. veto will make it impossible for China to get anything out of the UNSC that’s critical of Israel, but if the fighting continues and Washington concludes that this is damaging its position, China may be able to get a resolution for a cease-fire that takes a neutral stance and does not single out Israel,” Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, told VOA.
Traditionally, every time Israel is involved in a war, the U.S. has shielded it at the U.N. and other international bodies even at the cost of appearing isolated and partial, experts say.
“The general calculation has been that when the conflict subsides, often as the result of U.S. diplomatic efforts, the United States’ isolation will ease,” said Roebuck.
Criticisms
When defining U.S. “enlightened self-interest” in preserving a rules-based international order in September, Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized Russia and China for standing isolated in dictating their choices to other nations.
“They claim that what governments do within their borders is their business alone, and that human rights are subjective values that vary from one society to another,” Blinken said, adding that U.S. policy is based on cooperating with other countries in solving global challenges.
Over the past month, as Blinken toured the Middle East twice, he has seen U.S. allies such as Jordan and Turkey criticizing Washington’s unreserved support for Israel.
“For some countries, it looks like Western hypocrisy when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is strongly condemned, but Israel’s occupation of Gaza is not condemned,” said Walt.
While vetoes have nearly paralyzed the Security Council on the Gaza crisis, hundreds of thousands of people have marched in cities around the world calling for an immediate cease-fire.
A pro-Palestinian protest in Washington on Saturday brought tens of thousands of people within two miles of the State Department building, demanding an end to U.S. aid for the Israeli military.
Despite their differences over a cease-fire, the United States is in agreement with China and other countries in seeking an ultimate solution to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.
“We remain committed to working towards a durable and sustainable peace in the region, including the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Blinken wrote on his official X account last week.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-viewed-as-isolated-in-diplomatic-fallout-of-gaza-war-/7345721.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Super Guppy arrives in Alabama on Nov. 6, 2023, carrying the heat shield that protected Orion’s crew module during its flight on Artemis I. The one-of-a-kind, turboprop-powered aircraft ferried the heat shield from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Huntsville Regional Airport for transport to the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Technicians at […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/super-guppy-arrives-in-alabama-to-drop-off-artemis-i-heat-shield/
date: 2023-11-07, from: OS News
Do you ever sit at your 1981 vintage IBM PC and get the urge to pop onto that newfangled ‘WWW’ to stay up to date on all the goings-on in the world? Fret not, because Al’s Geek Lab has you covered with a new video, which you will unfortunately have to watch on a device that was made at the very least in the late 1990s. What makes this feat possible is a miniscule web browser called MicroWeb, created by jhhoward, that will happily run on an 8088 CPU or compatible, without requiring any fiddling with EMS or similar RAM extensions. Anything is possible, if you just want it hard enough.
https://www.osnews.com/story/137760/browsing-the-www-on-a-1980s-ibm-pc-using-microweb/
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
It was confirmed Tuesday that Kotsay interviewed for the opening with the New York Mets, but A’s GM David Forst signalled that it would be the last interview Kotsay participates in for the next two years.
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
From the first time my parents signed me up to play youth soccer at Newhall Park when I was 6 years old, to now participating in Adult Leagues and cheering on my children as they play their favorite sports, staying active has always been an important part of my lifestyle.
https://scvnews.com/mayor-pro-tem-cameron-smyth-explore-the-city-this-fall/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A tiny piece of the space rock made its public debut at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, as scientists study the rest of the sample
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners: Get an Apple iPad at a great price with these early Black Friday deals
https://www.fresnobee.com/shopping/article281552968.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Washington man needed four more surgeries afterward, the suit says.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281546863.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Comments from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about controlling Gaza’s security for “an indefinite period” pointed to the uncertain endgame of the war.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“I was certain I was going to drop my camera. The adrenaline rushing through my veins just made my heart stop.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281550613.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
College of the Canyons has been ranked nationally No. 18 and 31 in The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine for enrolling the largest number of Hispanic students and granting the most degrees, respectively
https://scvnews.com/coc-ranked-among-top-colleges-for-hispanics/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
RISC-V server chip designer Ventana Micro Systems has pushed out its second generation Veyron processor, squeezing in more cores and the ability for customers to add custom accelerator bits to a bespoke system-on-chip (SoC) blueprint.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/ventana_riscv_server/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The hangar also was featured in “Pearl Harbor” and “The X Files.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281553518.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The woman was missing for a few weeks before her body was discovered, Tennessee deputies said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281550098.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Liliputing
The Asus ROG Ally handheld gaming PC with a Ryzen Z1 Extreme Processor is on sale for $100 off when you use the coupon code NC100, making it the same price as the entry-level model with a Z1 chip (and cheaper than a top-of-the-line Steam Deck). Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something a bit bigger, […]
The post Daily Deals (11-07-2023) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-11-07-2023/
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Prosecutors said there were 18 prostitution victims from South America and Mexico were forced to work seven days a week in San Jose and East Bay hotel rooms.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 27-year-old was reported missing in Virginia nearly 400 miles away, records show
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281550863.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
“David Hockney: Drawing from Life” returns to the National Portrait Gallery after the pandemic shut it down three years ago
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
David Weiss told the House Judiciary Committee that he followed federal law as he carried out his investigation.
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
WeWork, once valued at $47 billion, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, even as its recently appointed CEO David Tolley reassured tenants the business is “here to stay.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/wework_bankruptcy/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The LAist
Reintegration, navigating resources and benefits, finding affordable housing are all key components to a successful transition back into civilian life. Connection might be most important of all.
https://laist.com/news/politics/how-to-find-connection-as-a-veteran-in-la
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
I.V. groups use grant funding to secure bicycle safety items in hope of reducing crashes.
The post ‘Make Isla Vista Brighter,’ Says CHP Ahead of Free Bike-Light Giveaway appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
“It kind of spooked a lot of people in our entire program,” Cal offensive coordinator Jake Spavital said of the injury that left former McClymonds High star Jaivian Thomas unconscious on the field Saturday in Eugene.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The physician and her granddaughter were indicted on drug distribution charges, officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281551518.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The City of Santa Barbara holds a meeting on Wednesday on improving safety for busy East Cabrillo Boulevard and Highway 101 widening.
The post Public Meeting for New Roundabout at Cabrillo–Los Patos appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/public-meeting-for-new-roundabout-at-cabrillo-los-patos/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
Keeping the right temperature in your home or office is crucial. It is convenient because it helps you stay comfortable in extreme weather, be it hot or cold. However, sometimes your heating system might not work properly. This could be due to several reasons, however, one common reason for this is having an old heat […]
The post Benefits of improving your heating with heat pump installation appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/benefits-of-improving-your-heating-with-heat-pump-installation/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Teacher of the Year, Performing Arts Teacher of the Year, and Distinguished New Educators and Mentors were honored at a black-tie event.
The post Santa Barbara County Teachers Saluted at Montecito Gala appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/santa-barbara-county-teachers-saluted-at-montecito-gala/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
No, I’ve never lived it down.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/outdoors/hunting-fishing/article281550148.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Artists Association’s Sixth Street Gallery will showcase “Honey I Shrunk The Art,” opening Friday, Nov. 17, running through Dec.
https://scvnews.com/scaa-opens-honey-i-shrunk-the-art-show-gift-boutique/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The new ownership’s expertise “will greatly benefit … our continued downtown revitalization,” Mayor Jerry Dyer said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/mlb/fresno-grizzlies/article281546423.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The LAist
Firefighters said safety concerns led them to let it burn.
https://laist.com/news/tustin-blimp-hangar-fire-destroys-historic-structure
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The LAist
The 69-year-old man has been identified as Paul Kessler of Thousand Oaks.
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ex-Facebook engineering director Arturo Béjar recounted to Mark Zuckerberg his own daughter’s troubling experiences with Instagram. But he said his concerns and warnings went unheeded.
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
Students in Carolyn Davenport’s second-grade class at Canyon Springs Community School received visitors Friday morning: Aid for Schools, Valencia High School’s club comprised of 16-year-old juniors Symone Adams, and twins, Nicole and Noor Haddad. “We started this club last year. We thought of the idea because we realized the privilege we have to have a […]
The post Aid for Schools donates to Canyon Springs appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/aid-for-schools-donates-to-canyon-springs/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The company faces $312,518 in proposed penalties following the Wisconsin worker’s death, records show.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281546623.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
NASA has opened the brainstorming-bay doors to anyone with ideas on how to extract oxygen from Moon rocks - a key element of the space agency’s work to “develop infrastructure technologies to enable a sustained presence on the lunar surface.” …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/nasa_moon_oxygen/
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
San Jose Sharks GM Mike Grier wants to see who responds to his meeting with the players on Monday.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Heatmap News
The Earthshot Prize, an annual award by Prince William’s Royal Foundation, was given to five climate-focused startups on Tuesday. The winners — each of which will receive $1.2 million and “tailored support” from the prize’s “global alliance of partners” — were Acción Andina, a Peruvian initiative to protect Andean forests; GRST, a Hong Kong builder and recycler of lithium-ion batteries; S4S Technologies, an Indian project to combat food waste and reduce rural poverty; WildAid, a global nonprofit dedicated to improving ocean health; and Boomitra, a multinational company working to create a soil carbon marketplace.
“I choose to believe that future generations will look back on this decade as the point at which we globally took collective action for our planet… [and] became the architects of change towards a healthy and sustainable world,” Prince William said at the ceremony, which was held at Singapore’s Theatre at MediaCorp.
The initiative launched in 2020 with the goal of boosting 50 such environmental solutions by 2030, each year awarding prizes in five categories: Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Our Air, Revive Our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World, and Fix Our Climate. Past winners include an Indian producer of small greenhouses that aims to help farmers become more climate-resilient, and a Thai company whose “plug and play” electrolyzers offer an innovative approach to creating clean hydrogen fuel.
This year’s winners were selected by the prince, former United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, Fijian climate activist Ernest Gibson, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, and others. The ceremony was co-hosted by actors Hannah Waddingham and Sterling K. Brown, and celebrity presenters included Cate Blanchett and Robert Irwin, the 19-year-old son of the late Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin.
“It fills me with a lot of hope when there’s an incredible public
figure, a real voice for change, who is putting his platform behind
environmental issues,” Irwin
said
of Prince William. “And instead of focusing on all the ways the world is
suffering, [The Earthshot Prize is] an initiative that … is a beacon of
hope.”
https://heatmap.news/sparks/prince-william-announces-the-earthshot-prize-winners
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 48% of Americans planning a trip is up significantly from 31% last year, according to the survey released by consulting firm Deloitte.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
A nivel nacional, la mitad de los estudiantes universitarios latinos están considerando abandonar sus estudios, según un estudio reciente.
https://www.fresnobee.com/vida-en-el-valle/noticias/article281501223.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
He was confronted by a man who was repairing the parlor’s air conditioner, investigators said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281549338.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Police said the man was shot “at least once.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281548118.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Iowa cops say the man robbed a bank and assaulted people.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281539888.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
A 33-year-old Canyon Country resident was arrested on suspicion of taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent on Thursday, according to Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station officials. According to Deputy Kabrina Borbon, a spokeswoman for the SCV Sheriff’s Station, at approximately 6 p.m. on Thursday deputies were patrolling the Castaic area when they observed a […]
The post <strong>Deputies: Canyon Country resident arrested in connection with stolen motorcycle</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Henry Mayo Newahll Hospital Women’s Health Education Series returns on Wednesday, Nov. 15. Girl Talk: A Women’s Health Series will will focus on Lung Health and the importance of annual. check-ups in honor of Lung Cancer Awareness Month
https://scvnews.com/nov-15-henry-mayos-womens-health-education-series-returns/
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Aniston and her ‘Friends’ castmates gathered Friday to pay their final respects to Perry, but Aniston mostly kept to herself during the one-hour service.
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
A house that sold for $2.6 million tops the list of the most expensive residential real estate sales in Fremont in the past week.
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
Alarmed by yet another jump in syphilis cases in newborns, U.S. health officials are calling for stepped-up prevention measures, including encouraging millions of women of childbearing age and their partners to get tested for the sexually transmitted disease.
More than 3,700 babies were born with congenital syphilis in 2022 — 10 times more than a decade before and a 32% increase from 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Syphilis caused 282 stillbirth and infant deaths, nearly 16 times more than the 2012 deaths.
The 2022 count was the most in more than 30 years, CDC officials said, and in more than half of the congenital syphilis cases, the mothers tested positive during pregnancy but did not get properly treated.
The rise in congenital syphilis comes despite repeated warnings by public health agencies, and it’s tied to the surge in primary and secondary cases of syphilis in adults, CDC officials said. It’s also been increasingly difficult for medical providers to get benzathine penicillin injections — the main medical weapon against congenital syphilis — because of supply shortages.
“It is clear that something is not working here, that something has to change,” the CDC’s Dr. Laura Bachmann said. “That’s why we’re calling for exceptional measures to address this heartbreaking epidemic.”
The federal agency wants medical providers to start syphilis treatment when a pregnant woman first tests positive, rather than waiting for confirmatory testing, and to expand access to transportation so the women can get treatment. The CDC also called for rapid tests to be made available beyond doctors’ offices and STD clinics to places such as emergency rooms, needle-exchange programs and prisons and jails.
Federal officials again advised sexually active women of childbearing age and their partners to get tested for syphilis at least once if they live in a county with high rates. According to a new CDC map and definition, 70% of U.S. adults live in a county with high rates. That’s likely tens of millions of people, according to an Associated Press estimate based on federal data.
The CDC’s recommendations are just that; there is no new federal money going out to state and local health departments to bolster testing or access. Some state health departments have already said they’re stretched thin when it comes to treatment and prevention, although Illinois announced last week it was starting a phone line for health care providers to help with record searching, consultation and assistance with mandatory reporting.
Syphilis is a bacterial infection that for centuries was a common but feared sexually transmitted disease. New infections plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when antibiotics became widely available and fell to their lowest mark in the late 1990s. By 2002, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected, although the STD is spreading among several demographics.
In congenital syphilis, mothers pass the disease on to their babies, potentially leading to the death of the child or health problems for the child such as deafness, blindness and malformed bones. Case rates have been rising across racial and ethnic groups.
Dr. Mike Saag, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said syphilis can be “a silent infection” in women because it’s tricky to diagnose without a blood test — not everyone gets painless sores, wart-like lesions or other visible symptoms.
The CDC has long recommended that all pregnant women should be tested for syphilis at their first prenatal visit, but poor access to prenatal care — largely in rural areas of the U.S. — can make that difficult. Nearly 40% of last year’s congenital syphilis cases involved mothers who didn’t have prenatal care, the CDC said.
If syphilis is diagnosed early in a pregnancy, the threat of passing it to the baby can be removed by a single penicillin shot. But experts say the later one gets into pregnancy, the more likely one will need multiple shots, and they have to be completed at least 30 days before delivery.
“I have had patients who have been on (a three-shot) regimen who then miss a shot,” said Dr. Nina Ragunanthan, an OB/GYN at the Delta Health Center in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. “So they are trying to get their shots, but if they don’t get the three in a row, because of transportation issues, because of job issues, child care issues, any number of reasons that prevent them from coming back, they don’t complete their treatment.”
Plus, the shortage of shots makes the task of getting syphilis numbers down difficult, health officials across the U.S. told the AP. Patients who are not pregnant can use the antibiotic doxycycline to treat syphilis, but health officials are concerned that the 14- to 28-day timeline of treatment is difficult to complete, leaving infected people uncured.
Pfizer is the nation’s sole supplier of penicillin shots. Earlier this year, company officials said penicillin was in short supply because of increased demand. Pfizer also said the shortage may not be resolved until next year.
The CDC said the shortage didn’t affect the 2022 congenital syphilis case numbers and that, despite the shortage, it isn’t aware of patients not getting their needed shots.
https://www.voanews.com/a/syphilis-cases-in-us-newborns-skyrocketed-in-2022/7345558.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Tourism taxes bring $30 million a year, and cannabis businesses accounted for $1.4 million in 2023.
The post City of Santa Barbara to Spend $276,000 on Audit of Cannabis and Tourism Taxes appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 32-year-old faces multiple charges, including malice murder and child cruelty.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281541333.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
A pioneering ballistics analysis was used to make the discovery, researchers in Belgium said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281542103.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The truck rolled several times and scattered the beehives along the side of the road.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281542803.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
How to design your own monsters, based on a German monster manual I’m
writing. Long and rambling.
Links:
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2023-11-06_Episode_50
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Truly a huge loss to our family.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281546583.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
A Newsom spokesperson called the survey “an outlier.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281545353.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
U.S. Special Counsel David Weiss, who is leading the probe into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, told the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that he faced no political interference, contradicting earlier whistleblower testimony.
Weiss has charged Hunter Biden, 53, with crimes related to owning a firearm while using illegal drugs. The president’s son has said he struggled with addictions to alcohol and crack cocaine.
House Republicans allege the Justice Department improperly interfered with the investigation of Hunter Biden, whose brushes with the law are a central focus of their impeachment inquiry into the president. The White House has denied wrongdoing. Democrats say the impeachment inquiry is politically motivated.
“Throughout this investigation, the career prosecutors on my team and I have made decisions based on the facts and the law,” Weiss said during testimony behind closed doors, according to his prepared remarks. “Political considerations played no part in our decision-making.”
Weiss insists on his authority
Weiss, the first special counsel to testify in Congress before his final report is completed, is pushing back against comments by two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who say he told officials at a meeting that he did not have final authority on deciding to bring charges as part of his probe.
Weiss told lawmakers he has had and continues to have full authority over his investigation.
In keeping with Justice Department policy, Weiss would not address specifics about his probe.
“Mr. Weiss reflected on his authorities, but then when we asked about the influences on those authorities - were there emails or meetings where people tried to move him in one direction or another? - he was entirely recalcitrant,” Republican lawmaker Matt Gaetz told reporters.
Democrats participating in the interview sharply criticized it, saying Republicans’ questions were misleading and labeling the meeting a waste of time.
At least 10 current and former officials from the FBI, IRS and Justice Department have testified behind closed doors as part of lawmakers’ probe. Attorney General Merrick Garland also testified before the House Judiciary Committee in a public hearing in September.
Trump cheers inquiry
The impeachment inquiry has been cheered on by Republican former President Donald Trump, who is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination to take on Biden again in the 2024 election. Trump is also the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. The Senate acquitted him both times.
Trump is facing four criminal indictments for charges related to his business activities, mishandling of classified documents, and attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
It is not clear if the full House of Representatives, controlled by a narrow 221-212 Republican majority, would support impeaching Biden.
Democratic lawmaker Glenn Ivey said the first hour or so of testimony had mostly centered on letters between Weiss and lawmakers, and noted that the interview was unprecedented.
“The irony is they’re always pushing to prosecute Hunter Biden, but this is the kind of stuff that could derail or cause problems for it,” Ivey told reporters.
Originally nominated during Trump’s administration, Weiss was allowed to remain in place under Biden.
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt confirms reports that his AI robo-car maker’s now-paused driverless taxis need regular human intervention to help them make sense of the road, yet he is downplaying the severity.…
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Get out and explore. Our reports cover the coast to the High Sierra, and Lake Isabella to New Melones.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/outdoors/hunting-fishing/article281543898.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate connects the public to the agency’s missions and explores creative possibilities for addressing the agency’s research and technology development needs through prizes, challenges, and crowdsourcing opportunities. These challenges bridge NASA’s institutional expertise with the ingenuity of industry experts, universities, and the public at large, resulting in collaborations that help advance […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/going-beyond-the-challenge-for-new-and-continued-success/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Su viaje lo llevó desde la Infantería de Marina hasta el Smithsonian.
https://www.fresnobee.com/vida-en-el-valle/noticias/california-es/fresno/article281548353.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new online museum explores the digital artifacts that defined the internet’s early days
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
No regular ol’ ribbon cutting for this business.
https://www.fresnobee.com/living/food-drink/bethany-clough/article281546078.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The crew is safe, but the marine mammals did so much damage to the Polish sailing yacht that it couldn’t make it back to port
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department issued a statement Tuesday after one former and three current Sheriff’s Department employees killed themselves Monday. A source close to the investigation indicated the deaths are believed to be unrelated. Department officials refused to answer questions Monday afternoon after news of the death of Cmdr. Darren Harris was posted to […]
The post UPDATE: Sheriff issues statement after 4 suicides involving current, former employees appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/lasd-statement-forthcoming-on-trio-of-employee-suicides/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners
https://www.fresnobee.com/health-wellness/cannabis/article281428108.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate seeks knowledge and answers to profound questions that impact all people. Through competitions, challenges, crowdsourcing, and citizen science activities, NASA collaborates with the public to make scientific discoveries that help us better understand our planet and the space beyond. Multiple NASA science projects were supported through public participation in Fiscal Years […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/reaching-new-frontiers-in-science-supported-by-public-participation/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The elusive animals were discovered in Ecuador after extensive searching, researchers said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281542223.html
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2023-11-07, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Rust/Godot and Swift/Godot side by side, plotting richer type annotations for the bindings ( @bromeon )
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111370967110880826
date: 2023-11-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The new building will feature a performance venue inspired by “A Bird,” a watercolor by the famed Pop artist
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The LAist
A U.S. Department of Agriculture report finds that many people who are eligible for the Women, Infants and Children program are missing out.
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
By Vivian White, Astronomical Society of the Pacific Are you an astronomy enthusiast or undergraduate student with a passion for sharing space science? We are excited to share with you a wonderful opportunity to become an official NASA Partner Eclipse Ambassador and help your community experience the awe and wonder of science. In this exciting […]
date: 2023-11-07, from: Michael Tsai
Kim Salazar, Tim Neusesser, and Nishi Chitale (via Hacker News): Many modern websites are designed with a mobile-first approach. When these pages render on desktop devices, the content can appear overly large and stretched out. Screen-covering images, large bloated text, and excessive negative space result in long pages requiring more scrolling to consume all content. […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/07/the-negative-impact-of-mobile-first-web-design-on-desktop/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Michael Tsai
Jason Kim et al. (Hacker News): We present iLeakage, a transient execution side channel targeting the Safari web browser present on Macs, iPads and iPhones. iLeakage shows that the Spectre attack is still relevant and exploitable, even after nearly 6 years of effort to mitigate it since its discovery. We show how an attacker can […]
date: 2023-11-07, from: Michael Tsai
Dan Milmo (Hacker News, MacRumors): Microsoft has completed its $69bn (£57bn) deal to buy Activision Blizzard, the maker of games including Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, after the UK’s competition watchdog cleared the acquisition.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had moved to block the deal in April, citing concerns that Microsoft – the […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/07/microsoft-finalizes-activision-blizzard-acquisition/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 15-year-old had been suspended the previous day, deputies said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article281546213.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Michael Tsai
SE-0408: Currently, it is possible to express list operations on value packs using pack expansion expressions. This approach requires putting code involving statements into a function or closure. For example, limiting repetition patterns to expressions does not allow for short-circuiting with break or continue statements, so the pattern expression will always be evaluated once for […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/07/swift-proposal-pack-iteration/
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
The future of flight looks very exciting, and the public is helping NASA see it more clearly. For more than a century, NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, have been the global leader in aeronautics research. NASA’s innovative contributions to aviation benefit the U.S. economy, air transportation system, aviation industry, and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/advancing-technology-for-aeronautics/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
It’s 5.5 inches tall and 5.1 inches wide.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281534803.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
Creativity and curiosity are strongly tied to NASA’s missions and vision. Many of the agency’s public opportunities foster these traits by engaging students and educators. Participants of all ages and levels, from kindergarten to college, used their imaginations and enthusiasm to solve open innovation challenges related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in […]
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 19-year-old and three others shot were bystanders, Atlanta police said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281540208.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
There’s money to be made in AI, and HPE’s venture capital arm, Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, has joined a consortium investing more than half a billion US dollars in German Generative AI company, Aleph Alpha.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/ai_gold_rush_continues_as/
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
With the successful launch and landing of Artemis I in 2022, NASA set the stage for a new era of space exploration. Together, NASA and its partners will lead humanity to the Moon and prepare for the next giant leap: human exploration of Mars. To address the multitude of challenges that come with planning for […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/collaborating-with-public-innovators-to-accelerate-space-exploration/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The man, who lived less than 500 feet away from the Georgia wedding venue, had a history of threatening guests, deputies said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281538418.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Photos show his intricately decorated tomb.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281540158.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The power plant currently produces about 9% of California’s electricity supply.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281543748.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft took images of asteroid Dinkinesh, discovering that the asteroid has the first-ever contact binary pair orbiting the asteroid.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Officers responded to the scene at 4:30 a.m. but were unsure when exactly the crash occured.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281542108.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Liliputing
Amazon’s Kindle devices are meant first and foremost for reading eBooks. But there’s also a web browser. Up until a few years ago, that browser was officially considered “experimental,” and up until the past month or so, it was unofficially considered awful. But Amazon has quietly begun rolling out an updated version of its web […]
The post Amazon’s Kindle web browser is actually usable now appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/amazons-kindle-web-browser-is-actually-usable-now/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
One of the most heavily coveted athletes in the country has announced her college destination. Castaic senior Meagan “Jumphries” Humphries announced her commitment to the University of Texas on social media. Humphries will join the 2023 NCAA outdoor national champion Longhorns after graduating in 2024 but brings vast championship experience to a loaded Texas program. […]
The post <strong>Local track star Humphries commits to Texas </strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/local-track-star-humphries-commits-to-texas/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The LAist
The Los Angeles Zoo’s newest family member is a roughly six-week-old male Masai giraffe that made his public debut on Monday.
https://laist.com/news/los-angeles-activities/baby-masai-giraffe-makes-debut-at-la-zoo
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
When can you legally leave your car engine running while you’re away?
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281414328.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
He called 911 after shooting his wife, saying she needed medical care, cops say.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281542453.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Dirty Dog Wash & Goods is by Santa Barbara, for Santa Barbara.
The post New Dog on the Block appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/new-dog-on-the-block/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The LAist
Scammers pulled off one of the biggest suspected frauds in U.S. history while laid-off workers scrambled to survive. A CalMatters investigation finds that the EDD missed red flags and failed to make long-promised changes before the pandemic — and that once the twin crises hit, the state and its top contractors kept making money but were slow to deliver relief.
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
NASA is leading humanity’s return to the Moon through Artemis. Artemis will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon and explore more of the lunar surface than ever before, using innovating technologies for scientific discovery and establishing a long-term presence. The technologies developed and knowledge gained through Artemis will contribute […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/propelling-nasa-closer-to-the-moon-and-mars-with-open-innovation/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Omar Velasco returns to farm the fruits of new life and loss with new album.
The post Native Son Returns to Goleta with the Fruits of his Labor appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/native-son-returns-to-goleta-with-the-fruits-of-his-labor/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
His journey took him from the Marine Corps to the Smithsonian.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281400673.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Intel looks set to be a key beneficiary of CHIPS Act funding earmarked for specifically supplying the US military.…
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
In September 2023, NASA aircraft began supporting an effort to find and map critical mineral deposits in Western regions of the U.S. Identifying these minerals — often used in everyday products like laptops and cell phones — could help improve environmental processes for mining and geological activities, enhance national security, and boost the economy. This […]
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The homes will be part of the forthcoming Viñedo development.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281540988.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
A 34-year-old man was arrested, California police said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281539713.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
The person found dead Monday on the side of Sand Canyon Road was a 12-year-old boy from Canyon Country, according to medical examiners with the L.A. County Coroner’s Office. The boy was found dead on the side of the road at 6:31 a.m., according to a Nixle alert from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department issued […]
The post <strong>Coroner IDs 12-year-old boy found dead in Sand Canyon </strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/coroner-ids-12-year-old-boy-found-dead-in-sand-canyon/
date: 2023-11-07, from: NASA breaking news
This view of spiral galaxy IC 342 is one of five first science images released by the Euclid mission on Nov. 7, 2023. The ESA-led (European Space Agency) Euclid observatory, which will investigate the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, is scheduled to begin regular science operations in early 2024. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/euclid-spots-a-spiral-galaxy/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara’s location is just one success story for this San Diego–based restaurateur.
The post Chef Brad Wise Reflects on Rare Society’s First Year appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/chef-brad-wise-reflects-on-rare-societys-first-year/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The video, originally posted to Facebook on Oct. 28, caught the eye of the singer.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281535758.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
A 51-year-old Canyon Country resident was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping on Monday night in Newhall, according to Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station officials. According to Sgt. Mark Perkins, a spokesman for the SCV Sheriff’s Station, a call was received by the station at 7:01 p.m. detailing a potential kidnapping. Deputies learned upon arrival that […]
The post <strong>51-year-old arrested on suspicion of kidnapping in domestic dispute</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/51-year-old-arrested-on-suspicion-of-kidnapping-in-domestic-dispute/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The worker refunded the customer and gave him a new iced coffee before he was attacked, police said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281536653.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Arts & Lectures hosts cross-cultural exchange on November 15 with Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain, Edgar Meyer, and Rakesh Chaurasia at Campbell Hall.
The post Hindu-Bluegrassy Musical Border Crossing at UC Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/07/hindu-bluegrassy-musical-border-crossing-at-uc-santa-barbara/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
Aspiring astronomers could have the world at their fingertips during the College of the Canyons Canyon Country Campus’ semiannual Star Party on Friday night. COC’s STEM-based programs and clubs had activities for the next generation of astronomers, such as making slime and coloring rocket ships, while astronomer and new COC instructor Michaela Blain helped people of […]
The post COC hosts semi annual Star Party appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/coc-hosts-semi-annual-star-party/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Microsoft is introducing three Conditional Access policies for sysadmins as it continues to promote the implementation of multi-factor authentication (MFA) in organizations.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/microsoft_likens_mfa_to_1960s/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
While testing its tracking system, the agency’s Lucy spacecraft discovered that Dinkinesh is not one space rock, but two
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Archaeologists described the hall as monumental and unparalleled.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281536438.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Liliputing
This year we’ve seen several mini PC makers cram Intel Core i9 chips into compact desktop computers for the first time. But they aren’t cheap: prices for a Simply NUC Onyx with a Core i9-13900H processor start at $999, while a Geekom Mini IT13 with the same chip sells for $789 (or $749 with the […]
The post Topton is the cheapest mini PC with a Core i9-13900H processor yet appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/topton-is-the-cheapest-mini-pc-with-a-core-i9-13900h-processor-yet/
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita is inviting artists to submit artwork for consideration for the upcoming “Transcendence: Breaking Boundaries” juried exhibition which will be on view at the First Floor Gallery located in Santa Clarita City Hall.
https://scvnews.com/santa-clarita-arts-call-for-artists-transcendence-breaking-boundaries/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Stu Maschwitz blog
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<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">A still from Apple’s “Behind the scenes: An Apple Event shot on iPhone” video</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
You’re somewhere on the spectrum of occasionally shooting video on your iPhone to a professional-ish video maker with some gear, and you see at the end of Apple’s October “Scary Fast” event announcing new Macs with M3 silicon that the entire event was “Shot on iPhone.”
This makes you feel a certain way.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/3dc4d315-6866-4d1e-a669-0239c1b516f3/BTS_02_event_crop+%2854095%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="5500x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/3dc4d315-6866-4d1e-a669-0239c1b516f3/BTS_02_event_crop+%2854095%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="5500" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/3dc4d315-6866-4d1e-a669-0239c1b516f3/BTS_02_event_crop+%2854095%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/3dc4d315-6866-4d1e-a669-0239c1b516f3/BTS_02_event_crop+%2854095%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/3dc4d315-6866-4d1e-a669-0239c1b516f3/BTS_02_event_crop+%2854095%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/3dc4d315-6866-4d1e-a669-0239c1b516f3/BTS_02_event_crop+%2854095%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/3dc4d315-6866-4d1e-a669-0239c1b516f3/BTS_02_event_crop+%2854095%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/3dc4d315-6866-4d1e-a669-0239c1b516f3/BTS_02_event_crop+%2854095%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/3dc4d315-6866-4d1e-a669-0239c1b516f3/BTS_02_event_crop+%2854095%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">Actual footage of me watching the event.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
Then Apple posts a behind-the-scenes video showing how this was done, revealing a rare and imposing glimpse into the scale and scope of their industry-leading launch videos. At the center of it all, instead of their customary Arri Alexa (a digital cinema camera costing $35–150K before you even add a lens, used to shoot everything from Avengers: Endgame to Barbie), was an off-the-shelf iPhone 15 Pro Max, gripped into truckloads of professional support gear.
At this point, some folks felt differently about what was implied by “Shot on iPhone.” There have been bad takes on this, and good takes on those bad takes.
Anyone who knows the tiniest bit about video production knows that the camera is a small, but important, but small, part of the overall production picture. “Shot on iPhone” doesn’t promise “and you can do it too” any more than Stanley Kubrick lighting Barry Lyndon with candlelight means anyone with candles can make Barry Lyndon.
But when the camera is the least expensive piece of gear on the set after clothespins and coffee, it does feel strange. I’ve been on a lot of productions like this, having played an active role in the DV filmmaking revolution of the late ’90s-to-early-2000s. It was an odd feeling to scrounge for the adapter plates required to mount a $3,000 DV camcorder purchased at Circuit City to a Fisher dolly that literally has no purchase price.
Apple, of course, has no burden of best-practices logic for their decision to shoot their “Scary Fast” event on iPhone — it’s a marketing ploy, a cool stunt, and a massive flex. A thing to do for its own sake. In the filmmaking community, it was the mic drop of the year. We greedily soaked up all the details in the behind-the-scenes video, and made a hundred tiny calculations about which aspects of this lavish production actually mattered to the question of the iPhone 15’s validity as a professional camera, and which did not.
With all that gear and production support, which aspects of the event really matter to you, the iPhone-curious filmmaker? What can you learn, and which aspects can you safely ignore?
Let’s take it one at a time:
As camera features have played a larger and larger role in Apple’s marketing for new iPhones over the years, you might have begun to feel a bit of cognitive dissonance. Apple tells you about how great, and even “pro,” these new iPhone cameras are — but would never have dreamt of using them to shoot their own videos or product stills. Apple was effectively saying “pro enough for you, but not for us.” Valid, but a bit dissatisfying.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/24a4ab79-7edb-4bd7-b840-268eb21fbad7/BTS_01_event+%2840436%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/24a4ab79-7edb-4bd7-b840-268eb21fbad7/BTS_01_event+%2840436%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/24a4ab79-7edb-4bd7-b840-268eb21fbad7/BTS_01_event+%2840436%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/24a4ab79-7edb-4bd7-b840-268eb21fbad7/BTS_01_event+%2840436%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/24a4ab79-7edb-4bd7-b840-268eb21fbad7/BTS_01_event+%2840436%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/24a4ab79-7edb-4bd7-b840-268eb21fbad7/BTS_01_event+%2840436%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/24a4ab79-7edb-4bd7-b840-268eb21fbad7/BTS_01_event+%2840436%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/24a4ab79-7edb-4bd7-b840-268eb21fbad7/BTS_01_event+%2840436%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/24a4ab79-7edb-4bd7-b840-268eb21fbad7/BTS_01_event+%2840436%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">A still frame from Apple’s October 30 “Scary Fast” event video, shot on iPhone 15 Pro Max.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
Apple has set the aesthetic bar impossibly high with these pre-recorded events. They’re not just executives teleprompting in front of Keynote slides — they feature “slice of life” moments shot on huge sets and real locations. Elaborate visual effects transition between locations and settings that might be partially virtual. These videos have looked great ever since Covid pushed Apple to find an alternative to executives-on-stage-in-front-of-slides, and even as Apple is now once again able to welcome guests to in-person product launches, these lavishly-produced videos are the new gold standard in pitching the world on a new iThing.
With “Scary Fast,” Apple repeated their now well-established high-production-value playbook, but yoinked out the professional cameras and lenses, and dropped in a commodity consumer telephone in their place.
And crucially, none of us noticed.
It’s a big deal.
There is one single feature of the iPhone 15 Pro that made this stunt possible: Log. As I detailed here in words and video, the “iPhone video look” is designed to win consumer popularity contests, not mimic Apple’s own marketing videos, nor plug into professional workflows.
It may be hard to imagine that a slightly different bit of signal processing when recording a video file from a tiny sensor can make the difference between consumer birthday-cam and professional viability, but that is exactly the power of log. Apple Log has catapulted the iPhone into filmmaking legitimacy.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/f7afff96-ee63-41be-8d28-4343c5ece980/LUTthumbs_03_split-thumbs_00007.jpg" data-image-dimensions="1920x1080" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/f7afff96-ee63-41be-8d28-4343c5ece980/LUTthumbs_03_split-thumbs_00007.jpg?format=1000w" width="1920" height="1080" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/f7afff96-ee63-41be-8d28-4343c5ece980/LUTthumbs_03_split-thumbs_00007.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/f7afff96-ee63-41be-8d28-4343c5ece980/LUTthumbs_03_split-thumbs_00007.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/f7afff96-ee63-41be-8d28-4343c5ece980/LUTthumbs_03_split-thumbs_00007.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/f7afff96-ee63-41be-8d28-4343c5ece980/LUTthumbs_03_split-thumbs_00007.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/f7afff96-ee63-41be-8d28-4343c5ece980/LUTthumbs_03_split-thumbs_00007.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/f7afff96-ee63-41be-8d28-4343c5ece980/LUTthumbs_03_split-thumbs_00007.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/f7afff96-ee63-41be-8d28-4343c5ece980/LUTthumbs_03_split-thumbs_00007.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">Apple Log footage looks flat and low-contrast, until you color correct it, as I’ve done here using my <a href="https://proloststore.com/products/applelog">free Prolost Apple Log LUTs</a>.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
Apple’s event was set at night, with a dark, Halloween-inspired look. It takes a lot of professional lighting gear to illuminate a wide shot of Apple’s campus, and professional skill to balance this lighting with the practical sources on the building itself.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/a92c31a0-5743-4b57-873d-07115538eb25/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801319%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/a92c31a0-5743-4b57-873d-07115538eb25/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801319%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/a92c31a0-5743-4b57-873d-07115538eb25/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801319%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/a92c31a0-5743-4b57-873d-07115538eb25/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801319%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/a92c31a0-5743-4b57-873d-07115538eb25/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801319%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/a92c31a0-5743-4b57-873d-07115538eb25/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801319%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/a92c31a0-5743-4b57-873d-07115538eb25/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801319%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/a92c31a0-5743-4b57-873d-07115538eb25/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801319%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/a92c31a0-5743-4b57-873d-07115538eb25/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801319%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">You can do this for cheaper than it looks.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
Lighting matters more than any camera, more than any lens. As I wrote in 2009:
Photos are nothing but light — it’s literally all they are made of. Timmy’s birthday and Sally’s wedding are reduced to nothing but photons before they become photographs. So getting the light right is more meaningful to a photo than anything else.
Should you look at the giant lights in Apple’s video and feel dejected that your own productions will never afford this level of illumination? I say no, because a) you’re probably not lighting up the whole side of an architectural marvel, and b) you’re probably not designing your production around one of the world’s highest-paid CEOs.
For Tim Cook’s appearance, Apple’s production had their giant LED light panels on camera dollies, which is not typical. The two reasons I can image they did this are to be low-impact on the campus itself (rubber wheels instead of metal stands), and to be able to adjust the lighting quickly out of respect for Cook’s valuable time. It makes the lighting rigs seem more complex than they really are.
What they really are is big, bright, and soft. And rather minimalistic — mostly key, a bit of fill.
Big, soft LED lighting is actually quite affordable these days. I have two medium-power bi-color lights from Aputure, and together they cost less than my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I couldn’t cover Cook’s opening wide shot with them, but I could get close.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/7c8b6091-e409-4046-8dcf-5af3265df0e8/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801809%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/7c8b6091-e409-4046-8dcf-5af3265df0e8/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801809%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/7c8b6091-e409-4046-8dcf-5af3265df0e8/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801809%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/7c8b6091-e409-4046-8dcf-5af3265df0e8/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801809%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/7c8b6091-e409-4046-8dcf-5af3265df0e8/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801809%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/7c8b6091-e409-4046-8dcf-5af3265df0e8/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801809%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/7c8b6091-e409-4046-8dcf-5af3265df0e8/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801809%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/7c8b6091-e409-4046-8dcf-5af3265df0e8/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801809%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/7c8b6091-e409-4046-8dcf-5af3265df0e8/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801809%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">That big softbox overhead? Now <em>that’s</em> expensive.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
I might also be willing to compromise on my ISO settings to work with a smaller lighting package, where Apple seemingly was not. More on this below.
So the lighting is important, but the quantity of it and the support gear it’s on is specific to this rarified type of time-is-money, night-exterior production. Don’t be distracted by the extra equipment, focus on the fact that the lighting itself is actually rather spare.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/d57d0485-4961-446b-93ac-9dfea59024c7/BTS_01_iPhone+%2800742%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/d57d0485-4961-446b-93ac-9dfea59024c7/BTS_01_iPhone+%2800742%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/d57d0485-4961-446b-93ac-9dfea59024c7/BTS_01_iPhone+%2800742%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/d57d0485-4961-446b-93ac-9dfea59024c7/BTS_01_iPhone+%2800742%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/d57d0485-4961-446b-93ac-9dfea59024c7/BTS_01_iPhone+%2800742%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/d57d0485-4961-446b-93ac-9dfea59024c7/BTS_01_iPhone+%2800742%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/d57d0485-4961-446b-93ac-9dfea59024c7/BTS_01_iPhone+%2800742%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/d57d0485-4961-446b-93ac-9dfea59024c7/BTS_01_iPhone+%2800742%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/d57d0485-4961-446b-93ac-9dfea59024c7/BTS_01_iPhone+%2800742%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
</figure>
<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
"
>
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/6ebcf0f1-7ffd-4c51-afb0-86eb1bcd4694/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801736%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/6ebcf0f1-7ffd-4c51-afb0-86eb1bcd4694/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801736%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/6ebcf0f1-7ffd-4c51-afb0-86eb1bcd4694/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801736%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/6ebcf0f1-7ffd-4c51-afb0-86eb1bcd4694/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801736%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/6ebcf0f1-7ffd-4c51-afb0-86eb1bcd4694/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801736%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/6ebcf0f1-7ffd-4c51-afb0-86eb1bcd4694/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801736%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/6ebcf0f1-7ffd-4c51-afb0-86eb1bcd4694/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801736%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/6ebcf0f1-7ffd-4c51-afb0-86eb1bcd4694/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801736%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/6ebcf0f1-7ffd-4c51-afb0-86eb1bcd4694/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801736%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
</figure>
The behind-the-scenes video is almost comical in its portrayal of the iPhone gripped into all manner of high-end support gear.
You do not need any of this stuff.
I mean, every filmmaker needs a crane shot — but this is why small cameras are so empowering: everything is a crane when your camera weighs less than a Panavision lens cap!
Check out this video from filmmaker Brandon Li. He uses a gimbal on a hand-held pole to create a perfect crane shot for the opening of his action short. Toward the end, he achieves a nifty top-down shot by… standing on a railing. All with a camera substantially more cumbersome than a phone.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/300ad02b-2d79-445f-a4dd-9c76ef00eab0/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.45.51%E2%80%AFPM.png" data-image-dimensions="2698x1768" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/300ad02b-2d79-445f-a4dd-9c76ef00eab0/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.45.51%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=1000w" width="2698" height="1768" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/300ad02b-2d79-445f-a4dd-9c76ef00eab0/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.45.51%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/300ad02b-2d79-445f-a4dd-9c76ef00eab0/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.45.51%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/300ad02b-2d79-445f-a4dd-9c76ef00eab0/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.45.51%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/300ad02b-2d79-445f-a4dd-9c76ef00eab0/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.45.51%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/300ad02b-2d79-445f-a4dd-9c76ef00eab0/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.45.51%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/300ad02b-2d79-445f-a4dd-9c76ef00eab0/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.45.51%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/300ad02b-2d79-445f-a4dd-9c76ef00eab0/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.45.51%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">Director Brandon Li is his own crane.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
"
>
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/0b180175-9eaf-468b-81d5-74d912092ea9/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.44.31%E2%80%AFPM+%28Stus-iMac-Pro.local%27s+conflicted+copy+2023-11-06%29.png" data-image-dimensions="2538x2116" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/0b180175-9eaf-468b-81d5-74d912092ea9/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.44.31%E2%80%AFPM+%28Stus-iMac-Pro.local%27s+conflicted+copy+2023-11-06%29.png?format=1000w" width="2538" height="2116" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/0b180175-9eaf-468b-81d5-74d912092ea9/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.44.31%E2%80%AFPM+%28Stus-iMac-Pro.local%27s+conflicted+copy+2023-11-06%29.png?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/0b180175-9eaf-468b-81d5-74d912092ea9/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.44.31%E2%80%AFPM+%28Stus-iMac-Pro.local%27s+conflicted+copy+2023-11-06%29.png?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/0b180175-9eaf-468b-81d5-74d912092ea9/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.44.31%E2%80%AFPM+%28Stus-iMac-Pro.local%27s+conflicted+copy+2023-11-06%29.png?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/0b180175-9eaf-468b-81d5-74d912092ea9/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.44.31%E2%80%AFPM+%28Stus-iMac-Pro.local%27s+conflicted+copy+2023-11-06%29.png?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/0b180175-9eaf-468b-81d5-74d912092ea9/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.44.31%E2%80%AFPM+%28Stus-iMac-Pro.local%27s+conflicted+copy+2023-11-06%29.png?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/0b180175-9eaf-468b-81d5-74d912092ea9/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.44.31%E2%80%AFPM+%28Stus-iMac-Pro.local%27s+conflicted+copy+2023-11-06%29.png?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/0b180175-9eaf-468b-81d5-74d912092ea9/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+2.44.31%E2%80%AFPM+%28Stus-iMac-Pro.local%27s+conflicted+copy+2023-11-06%29.png?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">Get your kicks without sticks.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
Apple used cranes and remote heads designed for big cameras because that’s how they know how to shoot these videos. Apple’s marketing department is large, and knows exactly what they need on these productions. One thing they need is for a dozen people to watch the camera feed, making sure everything is committee-approved perfect.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b5eaea7f-0cb2-4ffa-85d3-fd8e4129b1fb/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801073%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b5eaea7f-0cb2-4ffa-85d3-fd8e4129b1fb/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801073%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b5eaea7f-0cb2-4ffa-85d3-fd8e4129b1fb/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801073%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b5eaea7f-0cb2-4ffa-85d3-fd8e4129b1fb/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801073%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b5eaea7f-0cb2-4ffa-85d3-fd8e4129b1fb/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801073%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b5eaea7f-0cb2-4ffa-85d3-fd8e4129b1fb/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801073%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b5eaea7f-0cb2-4ffa-85d3-fd8e4129b1fb/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801073%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b5eaea7f-0cb2-4ffa-85d3-fd8e4129b1fb/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801073%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b5eaea7f-0cb2-4ffa-85d3-fd8e4129b1fb/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801073%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">This is just the DIT cart, not even the client monitor.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
This kind of client-driven support gear compounds on its own requirements. As Tyler Stalman points out in his excellent breakdown video, some of what’s bolted to the iPhones is simply a metal counterweight so that a gimbal head, designed for a much larger camera, can be properly balanced.
You can plug an external drive into the USB-C slot on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, or you can plug in an HDMI adapter for a clean client feed. If you want to do both, you need a USB-C hub, which at that point requires power. So now you’ve got an Anton-Bauer battery pack mounted to this tangle of gear.
When you don’t have clients, you can skip all that and just shoot. This means you can replace most of the gear you see here with a cheap consumer gimbal — or a tripod.
And here’s the key takeaway for this point: Apple achieved optimal image quality from the iPhone in a number of ways, and one, I’m betting, was by turning off image stabilization — which is only advisable when this tiny camera is physically stabilized.
So you don’t need all the stuff Apple used, but if you want comparable results, you need a way to mount your iPhone to something solid. Maybe not a whole powered cage, but certainly a simple tripod mount. Then you can eek out that last bit of extra image quality by turning off image stabilization — which brings us to our next point:
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e02bed03-28ad-4650-b582-c84de4aeaa10/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802096%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e02bed03-28ad-4650-b582-c84de4aeaa10/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802096%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e02bed03-28ad-4650-b582-c84de4aeaa10/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802096%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e02bed03-28ad-4650-b582-c84de4aeaa10/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802096%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e02bed03-28ad-4650-b582-c84de4aeaa10/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802096%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e02bed03-28ad-4650-b582-c84de4aeaa10/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802096%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e02bed03-28ad-4650-b582-c84de4aeaa10/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802096%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e02bed03-28ad-4650-b582-c84de4aeaa10/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802096%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e02bed03-28ad-4650-b582-c84de4aeaa10/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802096%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">I don’t think this exact rig was used to capture what we saw in the video, but I believe the settings are representative.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
The Blackmagic Camera app has the option to turn off image stabilization, yes, and also like a million other features. Manual, locking exposure control is the top of the list, but there’s a ton more. The app includes a false-color mode to help match exposure from shot to shot. It can load a preview LUT, so you can shoot log but view something closer to what the audience will see.
It’s silly to be grumpy with Apple for not offering this power in their own camera app when they clearly worked with Blackmagic Design to have this app available day-and-date with the iPhone 15.
Oh, and it’s free.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/8bf5f672-27bb-4dd7-9051-9014a813685a/BTS_01_crop1+%2802097%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="2560x327" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/8bf5f672-27bb-4dd7-9051-9014a813685a/BTS_01_crop1+%2802097%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="2560" height="327" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/8bf5f672-27bb-4dd7-9051-9014a813685a/BTS_01_crop1+%2802097%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/8bf5f672-27bb-4dd7-9051-9014a813685a/BTS_01_crop1+%2802097%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/8bf5f672-27bb-4dd7-9051-9014a813685a/BTS_01_crop1+%2802097%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/8bf5f672-27bb-4dd7-9051-9014a813685a/BTS_01_crop1+%2802097%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/8bf5f672-27bb-4dd7-9051-9014a813685a/BTS_01_crop1+%2802097%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/8bf5f672-27bb-4dd7-9051-9014a813685a/BTS_01_crop1+%2802097%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/8bf5f672-27bb-4dd7-9051-9014a813685a/BTS_01_crop1+%2802097%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
</figure>
One slick feature of the Blackmagic Camera App is that you can choose to express the shutter speed in degrees, like a cinema camera, rather than fractions of a second, which is more typical in stills. A 180º shutter — where the shutter is open for half the duration of a single frame, e.g. 1/60th of a second at 30 fps — is important for a pro look. Anything slower and you get smeary blur and a camcorder look. Anything faster and your footage looks like you shot it on a phone, because 99% of the time our iPhones are using insanely fast shutter speeds to handle typical daylight. Look at any of your own daytime iPhone video — I’d be surprised if you see any motion blur at all.
Compare Apple’s motion blur to mine. 180º shutter vs. probably something more like 1º.
Relatedly:
Here’s where the level of professional control over the lighting starts to really matter: If Apple decided that they must shoot at ISO 55 (the lowest, although possibly not the native ISO of the 1x camera) for the highest image quality, and with a 180º shutter for the most pro-camera look, that means they have no other control over exposure. The iPhone 15 Pro 1x lens does not have a variable aperture, so shutter speed and ISO are your only exposure controls.
When shooting in uncontrolled environments, the typical method of limiting the amount of light entering the lens is via ND filters, sometimes variable ND filters. I don’t see any evidence that Apple used filters on this shoot, which would fit with their overall prioritization of image quality over all else. So this goes back to lighting — Apple’s team controlled that lighting perfectly, because they opted out of any exposure control they might have had in-camera.
I’m curious to learn more about this setting though. YouTubers Gerald Undone and Patrick Tomasso did some tests and found that the best dynamic range from the iPhone 15 Pro came from ISO 1100–1450, with 1250 being their recommended sweet spot. Did Apple prioritize low noise over dynamic range?
Apple has used 30 frames-per-second for these pre-recorded keynotes since they started in September of 2020. They’re not trying to be “cinematic,” they’re trying to make a nice, clean video that can take the place of a live event. 30p is a choice, and a fine one for an on-stage presentation. You might choose 24 or 25 fps for a more narrative look, and that’s great too.
Note that Apple’s native Camera app offers 30.0 and 24.0 fps, but the Blackmagic Camera app adds support for 29.97 and 23.976 fps, which are the actual broadcast frame rates Apple uses for their productions.
The Blackmagic Camera app truly has a dizzying set of features, some seemingly part of an attempt to win some kind of bizarre bet. Like support for wireless external follow-focus controls? I mean, wow, but also, really?
Sure makes for a cool behind-the-scenes shot, but I bet you can live without this.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/fde80f20-98d9-447a-8692-413e52ee902e/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802688%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/fde80f20-98d9-447a-8692-413e52ee902e/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802688%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/fde80f20-98d9-447a-8692-413e52ee902e/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802688%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/fde80f20-98d9-447a-8692-413e52ee902e/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802688%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/fde80f20-98d9-447a-8692-413e52ee902e/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802688%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/fde80f20-98d9-447a-8692-413e52ee902e/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802688%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/fde80f20-98d9-447a-8692-413e52ee902e/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802688%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/fde80f20-98d9-447a-8692-413e52ee902e/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802688%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/fde80f20-98d9-447a-8692-413e52ee902e/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802688%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
</figure>
While Apple did not attach any additional lenses to their production iPhones, they did put stuff in front of the built-in lenses — notably teleprompters, of course, and comically-large matte boxes.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/18eab21f-fa71-4820-8df0-9c51635cf6e9/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801778%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/18eab21f-fa71-4820-8df0-9c51635cf6e9/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801778%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/18eab21f-fa71-4820-8df0-9c51635cf6e9/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801778%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/18eab21f-fa71-4820-8df0-9c51635cf6e9/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801778%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/18eab21f-fa71-4820-8df0-9c51635cf6e9/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801778%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/18eab21f-fa71-4820-8df0-9c51635cf6e9/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801778%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/18eab21f-fa71-4820-8df0-9c51635cf6e9/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801778%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/18eab21f-fa71-4820-8df0-9c51635cf6e9/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801778%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/18eab21f-fa71-4820-8df0-9c51635cf6e9/BTS_01_iPhone+%2801778%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
</figure>
Matte boxes might feel like affectations in this context, but shielding that tiny lens from glare is actually a significant way to improve overall image quality. Luckily, you don’t really need a full-on matte box to do this. A French flag will do it, as will your hand.
If a bright light is dinging your little lens, you’re leaving a ton of image quality on the floor.
The 1x camera, with image stabilization turned off, gives the highest-quality image available from the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Are you detecting a theme here? Apple imposed a number of limitations on how they used the iPhone camera, seemingly always in the name of maximizing image quality.
As we’ll discuss below, you may or may not share this priority.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/85083792-4dd8-4492-8577-bd5dfb1bb3f5/BTS_01_iPhone+%2803165%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/85083792-4dd8-4492-8577-bd5dfb1bb3f5/BTS_01_iPhone+%2803165%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/85083792-4dd8-4492-8577-bd5dfb1bb3f5/BTS_01_iPhone+%2803165%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/85083792-4dd8-4492-8577-bd5dfb1bb3f5/BTS_01_iPhone+%2803165%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/85083792-4dd8-4492-8577-bd5dfb1bb3f5/BTS_01_iPhone+%2803165%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/85083792-4dd8-4492-8577-bd5dfb1bb3f5/BTS_01_iPhone+%2803165%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/85083792-4dd8-4492-8577-bd5dfb1bb3f5/BTS_01_iPhone+%2803165%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/85083792-4dd8-4492-8577-bd5dfb1bb3f5/BTS_01_iPhone+%2803165%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/85083792-4dd8-4492-8577-bd5dfb1bb3f5/BTS_01_iPhone+%2803165%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">Real editor, fake set.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
Eagle-eyed viewers noticed that an Adobe Premiere Pro timeline appears behind the editor of “Scary Fast.” But we’re not in a real edit suite here — we’re actually on one of the sets from the production. Did Apple really edit in Premiere?
I have a feeling that this and Stefan Sonnenfeld’s interview were staged on Apple’s standing sets rather than in real studio environements to keep the production close to home, for cost, control, and secrecy reasons. So let’s assume Apple really did cut in Premiere. This means next to nothing. All editing software does the same job, and it’s unlikely Apple would impose a workflow on the production company they hired to both shoot and post-produce the video.
Other than of course to ensure that it be cut on a Mac. It’s interesting to note that Apple’s Pro Workflows Group, representatives from which are interviewed in the behind-the-scenes video, are a part of the hardware division at Apple. Their charter is to promote and support professional use of Apple devices, regardless of which software they’re running.
Should FCPX users be nervous that Apple might send it to live on a farm with Shake and Aperture? It’s hard to regain our trust here, but Apple did just release a very nice version for iPad a few months ago, and substantial updates to that and the Mac version just yesterday.
So there’s really nothing to see here. Move along.
Apple hired Company 3 to produce this video. Company 3 is best-known as a color house. In my VFX and commercial directing career. I’ve worked with several amazing colorists there, from Dave Hussey to Siggy Ferstl to their CEO, Stefan Sonnenfeld, who is prominently featured in the behind-the-scenes. Stefan is one of the most prolific, talented, and well-known colorists working today. I modeled half the presets in Magic Bullet Looks after his famous grades on films like Transformers, 300, John Wick, Man on Fire, and hundreds more.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/9f3f2f02-c0d2-44c9-a63a-e637fae85939/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802346%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="3840x2160" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/9f3f2f02-c0d2-44c9-a63a-e637fae85939/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802346%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="3840" height="2160" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/9f3f2f02-c0d2-44c9-a63a-e637fae85939/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802346%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/9f3f2f02-c0d2-44c9-a63a-e637fae85939/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802346%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/9f3f2f02-c0d2-44c9-a63a-e637fae85939/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802346%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/9f3f2f02-c0d2-44c9-a63a-e637fae85939/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802346%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/9f3f2f02-c0d2-44c9-a63a-e637fae85939/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802346%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/9f3f2f02-c0d2-44c9-a63a-e637fae85939/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802346%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/9f3f2f02-c0d2-44c9-a63a-e637fae85939/BTS_01_iPhone+%2802346%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">Real colorist, not his real office.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
If you can get Stefan to color your video, that’s what matters — not the tool he uses. Resolve is “free” (with many asterisks), but a session at Company 3 is four-figures per hour.
Whether you use Resolve, Magic Bullet, or whatever else, what matters here is that shooting log means color grading is not just possible, but essential, and great care was taken with this part of the process.
As much as I might disagree with an accusation that Apple was disingenuous to say “Shot on iPhone” about a massive production with seemingly unlimited resources, I understand where this feeling comes from. “Shot on iPhone” carries with it the implication of accessibility. We are meant to be inspired by this phrase to use a tool that we already carry with us every day to capture videos that might transcend mere records of our life’s moments, and become part of our artistic pursuits.
And we should absolutely feel that way about the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.
The reason we feel slightly disconnected from Apple’s impressive exercise is not that they were dishonest — it’s that their priorities were different from ours. Apple wants to sell iPhones, and to accomplish this, they spared no expense to put the very highest image quality on the screen.
Sticking to the 1x lens gives the best image quality, sure, but choosing the right lens for the story you’re telling might matter more to a filmmaker. You’ll probably use all the focal lengths Apple supplied.
As much as you might value the clean image that comes from shooting at ISO 55, you might get more production value for your budget by using smaller lights (or available light!) and accepting some noise at higher ISOs.
You might truly appreciate the value of a 180º shutter, and simply not always have a camera case/cage that allows you to mount a variable ND filter to your telephone. I ordered one from PolarPro the day the iPhone 15 was released and it still hasn’t shipped, so I’ve shot next to no 180º shutter footage so far.
You might well understand that turning off image stabilization will improve your image — unless your shot is now wobbly, because you’re shooting handheld out the window of a moving car. So maybe you’ll leave stabilization on, and be a human crane, or gimbal, or dolly, or all of the above.
Never use the 5x lens. Never use image stabilization. Never shoot through a dirty windshield. And never get this dope-ass shot.
Let’s be honest: If image quality is your top priority, there are much better options for your next production than a consumer telephone. You’d probably choose the iPhone for accessibility, nimbleness, ubiquity, and cost. Those are great reasons, and when you pair them with image quality that can be mistaken for high-end cinema camera footage by a veteran colorist, you’ve got something magic.
So we may well ignore much of Apple’s implied advice, but we would do well to follow some of it if we can:
The incredible production apparatus of my helicopter tunnel shot from my last post.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e7641ddb-90bd-4831-b834-9ca32a90d580/thumbnail_05_heloTun_17_A1-SC+%2801007%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="1920x800" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e7641ddb-90bd-4831-b834-9ca32a90d580/thumbnail_05_heloTun_17_A1-SC+%2801007%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="1920" height="800" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e7641ddb-90bd-4831-b834-9ca32a90d580/thumbnail_05_heloTun_17_A1-SC+%2801007%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e7641ddb-90bd-4831-b834-9ca32a90d580/thumbnail_05_heloTun_17_A1-SC+%2801007%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e7641ddb-90bd-4831-b834-9ca32a90d580/thumbnail_05_heloTun_17_A1-SC+%2801007%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e7641ddb-90bd-4831-b834-9ca32a90d580/thumbnail_05_heloTun_17_A1-SC+%2801007%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e7641ddb-90bd-4831-b834-9ca32a90d580/thumbnail_05_heloTun_17_A1-SC+%2801007%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e7641ddb-90bd-4831-b834-9ca32a90d580/thumbnail_05_heloTun_17_A1-SC+%2801007%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/e7641ddb-90bd-4831-b834-9ca32a90d580/thumbnail_05_heloTun_17_A1-SC+%2801007%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
</a>
</figure>
All of this is academic if you don’t go put it into practice. If you got this far and feel empowered to wring the most out of your iPhone 15 Pro with just the right amount of gear, that’s great. If you actively forget all of this and occasionally flip on the Log switch so you can play with the color of your iPhone videos in post, that’s great too.
Because here’s the thing: movies have already been shot on phones. No production’s decisions validate any camera for all other production needs. You decide what “Shot on iPhone” means to you, if anything. And the way you decide is by getting out there and shooting something.
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b3c7f01a-27a9-4f03-8748-ea8bd4eab881/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+5.04.46%E2%80%AFPM.png" data-image-dimensions="4344x1526" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b3c7f01a-27a9-4f03-8748-ea8bd4eab881/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+5.04.46%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=1000w" width="4344" height="1526" sizes="100vw" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b3c7f01a-27a9-4f03-8748-ea8bd4eab881/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+5.04.46%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b3c7f01a-27a9-4f03-8748-ea8bd4eab881/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+5.04.46%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b3c7f01a-27a9-4f03-8748-ea8bd4eab881/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+5.04.46%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b3c7f01a-27a9-4f03-8748-ea8bd4eab881/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+5.04.46%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b3c7f01a-27a9-4f03-8748-ea8bd4eab881/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+5.04.46%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b3c7f01a-27a9-4f03-8748-ea8bd4eab881/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+5.04.46%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/b3c7f01a-27a9-4f03-8748-ea8bd4eab881/Screenshot+2023-11-06+at+5.04.46%E2%80%AFPM.png?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">I went to Peru with nothing but my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I shot some stuff with zero gear, and I’m having a blast color grading it various ways.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure> https://prolost.com/blog/scarybts
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“I mean, nobody expects their 2-year-old to be shot.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281537913.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The dog escaped from a backyard across the street from the school, police said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281537583.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The man also tried breaking into people’s homes, authorities said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281532838.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The bear walked off with $45 worth of Taco Bell, the family told news outlets.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281537443.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: National Archives, Text Message blog
Today’s post was written by Catherine Brandsen, Innovation Hub Coordinator at the National Archives in Washington, DC. In the spring of 1864, a white Private named Stephen Twombley of the 1st Maine Cavalry was taken prisoner by Confederates. While being transported on train cars to Andersonville Prison, Twombley jumped from the train and escaped into … Continue reading From the Pension Files: the Story of Stephen Twombley
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
NASA’s Curiosity Rover has notched up 4,000 days on Mars as the trundlebot continues its fourth extended mission despite showing signs of wear and tear.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/4000_days_of_curiosity/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
What to know about the problem.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/recalls/article281531398.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
In the often unspoken world of female sexual health, a revolution has started, and it began with the introduction of a unique medication called Addyi. Traditionally, when we think of sexual dysfunction treatment, it is primarily men’s remedies that come to mind, like the famous Viagra pill. However, now women have their own version of […]
The post Addyi: Breaking Barriers in Female Libido Treatment appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/addyi-breaking-barriers-in-female-libido-treatment/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Signal
When it comes to tackling a home renovation, decluttering project, or even a major cleanout, having a dumpster at your disposal can be a game-changer. Renting a dumpster for a day is a practical solution that allows you to efficiently dispose of unwanted materials and debris. Whether you’re a first-time renter or just need a […]
The post <strong>How to Rent a Dumpster for a Day</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/how-to-rent-a-dumpster-for-a-day/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The man was last seen launching his kayak into the water the previous night, a South Carolina coroner said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281533653.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The state is looking for workers with experience ranging from student to professional.
https://www.fresnobee.com/jobs/article281523978.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The group of four was seen “zigzagging” and preparing to hunt in California.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281532943.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Sacramento Kings are considering lineup and rotation changes after back-to-back losses to the Houston Rockets.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/article281524703.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The UK government has set in train plans to introduce legislation requiring tech companies to let it know when they plan to introduce new security technologies and could potentially force them to disable when required.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/ukgov_wants_prior_notice_of/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The California woman also sent money over TikTok to her boyfriend, who had hundreds of thousands of followers, court docs say.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281531938.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“At least 40 real people who, in the midst of their everyday lives, will now have to prove, over and over again, that they really are who they claim to be,” authorities said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281531463.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 53-year-old was in the water with his girlfriend, deputies said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281534048.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Effects don’t end when the stressful experience ends,” psychologists said in the report.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281532813.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: PeerJ blog
The third annual SORTEE conference was held virtually in October 2023, continuously over 24 hours to cover all time zones. There were 266 registered participants from 36 countries. The conference programme included plenary talks, 5 workshops, 5 hackathons and 8 unconference sessions. During the closing sessions two winners were announced for the SORTEE “Student Award” […]
https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284888554/peerj-award-winners-at-sortee-2023/
date: 2023-11-07, from: David Rosenthal’s blog
This post celebrates my weird old car’s 30thbirthday. It is a
Mazda
RX-7 dated November 1993, carrying the California license RX7 DSHR.
I bought it new and in the almost 30 years since have driven it for
nearly 140K miles. Unusually for an RX-7 this old, it is almost
completely stock and has never been on a track.
|
|
Old school |
|
| Source |
|
|
3lb jack |
| Examples of Weight Reduction (lbs) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | 1993 | Reduction | |
| Radiator | 9.5 | 6.8 | 2.7 |
| Intercooler | 6.0 | 5.1 | 0.9 |
| Oil Cooler | 6.4 | 3.3 | 3.1 |
| Ignition Coil | 7.3 | 3.3 | 4.0 |
| Door | 74.8 | 61.6 | 13.2 |
| Exhaust System | 106.7 | 89.1 | 17.6 |
| Wheel | 24.2 | 16.3 | 7.9 |
|
|
Expansion of the universe |
PS: Our other car is parent-approved for grandkid transportation. It
is a base model 2012
BMW 128i
coupe (E82) in white with no options. It was also a really difficult
car to find; it took the dealership many weeks to find one on a ship
heading for Eureka via Long Beach.
It is also a very
enjoyable car to drive, being the last year the 128i coupe had the
3.0 liter naturally
aspirated straight six. This generation of the 1-series was the
basis for the legendary skunk-works project that developed the
1
series M coupe
(Chris Harris
loves his). Our old 128i is the way non-M BMWs used to be before
they got fat and soft and turned into SUVs — a relatively (but compare
with the 1970 BMW 2002) small 2-door with a big straight six, rear-wheel
drive, good handling, and none of the modern driver distraction
technology.
https://blog.dshr.org/2023/11/my-old-car.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Literally were inseparable, and they were living their best lives.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281534128.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The “sweet” dog was at the facility for 115 days, officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281530028.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
African leaders are pushing for renewal of a preferential U.S. trade policy, set to expire in 2025, that allows them duty-free access to the U.S. market. Kate Bartlett spoke with U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai about U.S.-China competition at the annual summit of the African Growth and Opportunity Act in Johannesburg and visited a factory that does business with both countries. Camera — Zaheer Cassim.
https://www.voanews.com/a/african-businesses-navigate-trade-with-u-s-and-china/7345079.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Pennsylvania animal shelter said the dog’s bandanna made this adoption “extremely special.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281530463.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
She surfaced and saw “two little eyes,” it’s reported.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281530738.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Synopsys is joining the RISC-V gang, revealing a trio of processor designs it will add to its ARC portfolio, targeting a range of embedded applications.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/synopsys_joins_riscv_party_with/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Of 47 countries, the United States ranked No. 22 in a recent Mercer ranking of global retirement systems. We discuss the lessons the U.S. might be able to learn from higher-ranking countries and why the U.S. retirement system is falling so far behind. We also hear about the latest on aid to Gaza and yet another potential government shutdown.
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Italy’s finance police, the Guardia di Finanzia, has seized $836 million (€779 million) from Airbnb that the plod claims is unpaid tax.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/italy_hits_airbnb_with_836/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Markup blog
As blackouts in Gaza cut communications, a crowdsourced effort by an Egyptian writer reconnects family members, one eSIM card at a time
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A brand-new macOS malware strain from North Korean state-sponsored hackers has been spotted in the wild.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/macos_lazarus_malware/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links Naomi Alderman’s ‘The Future’: Billionaire preppers vs the end of the human race. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2003, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Naomi Alderman’s ‘The Future’ (permalink) Naomi Alderman burst onto the scene in 2016 with The Power, an explosive and brilliant feminist apocalyptic parable. Now, seven years later, she’s back with a chunky, propulsive second novel about a very different sort of apocalypse: The Future: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Future/Naomi-Alderman/9781668025680 The Power was a thriller about a mysterious force that gives women the power to administer violent electric shocks – even lethal ones – from the palms of their hands. As this power races around the world, the status quo is abruptly shattered. Abusers get nasty surprises. The Saudi government topples. Parents of teenaged boys demand sex-segregated classes to protect their sons from vicious girls: https://memex.craphound.com/2017/10/10/naomi-aldermans-the-power-in-which-fierce-power-of-women-is-awoken/ In The Future, we get a very different kind of apocalypse: the imagined apocalypse of the prepper. At the core of prepperism is a fantasy: that the world will experience a cataclysm that requires the special skills and supplies of the prepper themselves. Water chemists who turn prepper fantasize about attacks on the water-supply – not because there’s any special reason to expect one, but because if terrorists attack the water supply, then water chemists become civilization-rescuing heroes: https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/22/preppers-are-larpers/#preppers-unprepared (And of course, if the world ends in such a way that marauding bandits rove the wasteland, eating their former neighbors, then macho, AR-15-obsessed musketfuckers get to reinvent themselves as warlords who defend the sheeple from “bad guys.”) This is what makes billionaire prepper fantasies just so weird – for most of us, it’s hard to imagine how the skills of a billionaire are the one thing we’ll need to see us through a crisis. But for billionaires themselves, the necessity of billionaires in rebooting civilization is so self-evident as to be unquestionable. What’s more, billionaires are convinced – more than any of us – that the world is about to end. As Douglas @Rushkoff puts it, these guys want to earn enough money to outrun the consequences of how they’re making all that money. This is #TheMindset, the idea that your own position has jeopardized civilization itself, but that also, you must survive the cataclysm, because only you can survive it. Rushkoff chronicles the real-world fantasies of luxury bunkers patrolled by mercenaries locked into explosive discipline collars in his book Survival of the Richest: https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn But billionaires don’t just suck at running civilization, they also suck at making up stories about its collapse. One thing that’s striking about Rushkoff’s ethnography of rich people preparing to outlive the end of the human race is how banal their eschatological fantasies are. It’s not that there aren’t any exciting stories to tell about billionaire survival fantasies. The granddaddy of these is, of course, Edgar Allan Poe’s 1842 “#MasqueOfTheRedDeath”: https://www.poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death I published an updated version with the same title in 2019 in my novella collection #Radicalized: https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/14/masque-of-the-red-death/#masque In The Future, we get a cracking, multi-point-of-view adventure novel about billionaires prepping for the end of the world. Three billionaires, the lords of thinly veiled analogs to Facebook, Google and Amazon, each getting ready in their own way. Stumbling into their midst comes Lai Zhen, a prepper influencer vlogger with millions of followers. When Zhen becomes romantically entangled with Martha Einkorn, the top aide and chief-of-prepping for one of these billionaires, she finds herself in possession of an AI chatbot that is devoted to protecting a very small number of people from incipient danger. This chatbot determines that Zhen is being stalked by an assassin at a mall in Singapore, and guides her to safety. The chatbot is a closely held secret among the tech billionaire cabal. It is designed to monitor world events and predict when The Event is imminent, be it disease, war, or other cataclysmic disaster. With the chatbot’s predictive powers and its superhuman guidance, the billionaires, their families, and their closest confidantes will be able to slip away before the shit hits the fan, fly by different private jets to one or another luxury bunker, and wait out the apocalypse. Once the fires raging without have died down to embers, the chatbot’s billionaire charges will emerge to assume their places as wise and all-powerful leaders of the next human civilization. As you might imagine, not everyone who finds out about this plan – including various members of the billionaires’ families who are fully aware of these rich, powerful people’s fallibility – is enthusiastic about it. As we build toward a looming crisis, we cycle between these family members, Zhen and her hacker buddies, and members of an online prepper community where Einkorn is a kind of provocateuse and eminence grise. Alderman skillfully maneuvers all these power players and blocs into position before detonating the crisis that sets off the book’s second act, where we get into some damned fine Masque of the Red Death territory, but clad in Tony Stark mecha survival suits and against a backdrop of total disaster. I won’t give away any spoilers here, except to say that there are lots of twists (that won’t surprise readers of The Power, which had its own excellent surprises). But without delving too deeply into the fake-outs, crosses, and turns that Alderman lays, I will say that this is a fantastic and incredibly satisfying comeuppance novel that gets very deep into the ideology of wishing the world would end, and dreaming that when it does, you will finally matter. Hey look at this (permalink) How the meandering legal definition of ‘fair use’ cost us Napster but gave us Spotify https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-the-internet-con-cory-doctorow-verso-153018432.html Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6862 DAK and the Golden Age of Gadget Catalogs https://cabel.com/2023/11/06/dak-and-the-golden-age-of-gadget-catalogs/ This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago Economist replies to Jack Valenti on Broadcast Flag http://arnoldkling.com/~arnoldsk/aimst5/valenti.html #10yrsago New Rob Ford video: Laughable Fumblebuck drops a gigaton of F-bombs https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/rob-ford-caught-on-video-in-violent-rant/article_67244e8f-8561-5d4b-8054-c30750f36779.html #10yrsago Google security engineer on NSA: “Fuck these guys” https://memex.craphound.com/2013/11/07/google-security-engineer-on-nsa-fuck-these-guys/ #5yrsago AT&T disconnects whole families from the internet because someone in their house is accused of copyright infringement https://memex.craphound.com/2018/11/07/att-disconnects-whole-families-from-the-internet-because-someone-in-their-house-is-accused-of-copyright-infringement/ #1yrago The good news is that Penguin Random House can’t buy all the other publishers: Now for the bad news https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here Colophon (permalink) Today’s top sources: Currently writing: A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025 The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024 Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review’s 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Latest podcast: The Canadian Miracle, Part 2 (https://craphound.com/news/2023/11/05/the-canadian-miracle-part-2/ Upcoming appearances: Second Life Book Club, with Rebecca Giblin, Nov 8/17hPT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L07T82M_xzk The New Luddites Seizing the Means of Computation, with Brian Merchant (Hallway Track), Nov 9 https://www.verylittlegravitas.com/hallwaytrack CBC IDEAS, Nov 16 (Stratford, ON) https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-ideas-visionaries-in-conversation-tickets-729692809837 Inspiring the Next Generation, Nov 16 (Stratford, ON) https://www.provocation.ca/upcoming-2023-events-stratford Gibson’s Bookstore, Nov 18 (Concord, NH) https://www.gibsonsbookstore.com/event/doctorow-lost-cause Lost Cause at Simsbury Public Library, Nov 20 (Simsbury, CT) https://simsbury.librarycalendar.com/event/author-visit-cory-doctorow-29257 Generation of Lost Causes, Nov 22 (Toronto) https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT495758&R=EVT495758 Who Is Watching Big Tech? Nov 27 (Toronto)` https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT496408&R=EVT496408 The Lost Cause at The Strand (NYC), Nov 29 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause-tickets-734958008187 The Lost Cause at Flyleaf Books (Chapel Hill), Dec 7 https://www.flyleafbooks.com/doctorow-2023 Recent appearances: An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse (Hackaday Supercon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT1ud0rAT7w The Material Power That Rules Computation (This Machine Kills) https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod/294-the-material-power-that-rules-computation-ft-cory-doctorow The Science in the Fiction https://www.buzzsprout.com/2201157/13896228-ep-14-cory-doctorow-on-the-lost-cause-red-team-blues-and-chokepoint-capitalism Latest books: “The Internet Con”: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245). “Red Team Blues”: “A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before.” Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/. “Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin”, on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com “Attack Surface”: The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it “a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance.” Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism”: an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html) “Little Brother/Homeland”: A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html “Poesy the Monster Slayer” a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/. Upcoming books: The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023 The Bezzle: a sequel to “Red Team Blues,” about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024 Picks and Shovels: a sequel to “Red Team Blues,” about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025 Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025 This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic “When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/07/preppers-of-the-red-death/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian native and California resident Oleksandr Zabelin started OutBaking — a Berkeley-based bakery that provides reliable jobs to Ukrainian refugees. Khrystyna Shevchenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Khrystyna Shevchenko
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Authorities said the girl and her siblings endured a “living hell.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281528193.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: 404 Media Group
An ancient meme comes back to say: “End the occupation, cease-fire now, no to genocide, free Palestine.”
https://www.404media.co/nyan-cat-comes-out-of-retirement-to-say-free-palestine/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2023-11-07, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Loved the GodotConference, and while hanging out in the chat, saw this and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Thinking of all past conferences and people I met:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111369653001540118
date: 2023-11-07, from: 404 Media Group
Court records and online research reveal how a highly professionalized industry uses malicious insiders at Walmart and fake shipping labels to get high-end items for practically free.
https://www.404media.co/artemis-refund-group-stole-700-000-from-amazon/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Nearly a year after launching 4th-gen Epycs, AMD still isn’t ready to retire the 3rd-Gen processor family, confirming it is now extending availability of the line through 2026 and revealing six new-ish SKUs.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/epyc_3_aint_done_yet/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
California’s flavored tobacco ban left one large loophole: E-commerce.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281503518.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
Federal emergency officials are seeking feedback from Guam residents on how they did with disaster recovery services after Typhoon Mawar.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
Guam, with its vast array of military infrastructure and key location in the Pacific, remains a target for cyberthreat actors, particularly as tensions remain between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
The Office of the Attorney General is asking the Civil Service Commission to dismiss the adverse action appeal filed by a former administrative supervisor, arguing that the employee wasn’t actually terminated as defined in personnel rules, and the commission, therefore,…
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
A man has taken a deferred plea agreement in a case where he is accused of molesting a 15-year-old girl multiple times.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
HEADLINE:
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
A man was charged in connection to damaging a woman’s car after two denied requests to borrow the vehicle.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
A 27-year-old man was taken to the hospital after he was pulled from the water in Hagåtña.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
A man accused of “always” taking items from a gas station allegedly told officers “everyone should take what they need from stores.”
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Children nearby heard his screams for help, crews said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281499673.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The changes will be enforced starting next month.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281492278.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The strike will effectively halt all maintenance and work orders across the majority of CSU’s campuses.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281498858.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to return to the International Space Station (ISS) cargo delivery business by 2028, judging by announcements made at ESA Space Summit in Seville.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/esa_goes_back_to_the/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The LAist
The Orange County Registrar of Voters recently rescinded his initial certification that green-lighted the election.
https://laist.com/news/politics/santa-ana-jessie-lopez-recall-election-legal-questions
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The LAist
How did we end up with the Los Angeles borders we have today? We dive into history to see how resources, control and ingenuity led us to this design of L.A.
https://laist.com/news/politics/los-angeles-history-city-annexation-la-water-wars-lakewood-plan
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Fewer than 5% of the 120,000 gun-related killings that occurred in the U.S. between 2001-2010 were perpetrated by individuals with a mental illness.
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article279226864.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Bee went 37-8 in last week’s predictions.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/high-school/prep-football/article281525233.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The winter months will bring wet weather and changing conditions to Sacramento-area golf courses. Here’s what you need to know about the rules.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/outdoors/article281451708.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Open enrollment season is underway, and the Federal Trade Commission is warning consumers about scams — especially ones that take advantage of older adults. We hear from experts on how people can protect themselves and their loved ones. Plus, WeWork, the company known for its hip co-working spaces, declares bankruptcy. And later: Should college athletes be considered employees of their schools?
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Outages at two banks that stopped 2.5 million payment transactions were sparked by a technical issue with the datacenter’s cooling system, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Monday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/overheating_datacenter_singapore/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The jagged pieces were up to 3 feet long.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281525913.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Gene Spafford wrote an essay reflecting on the Morris Worm of 1988—35 years ago. His lessons from then are still applicable today.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/spaf-on-the-morris-worm.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
Young people can now learn to code and create with our brand-new path of micro:bit coding projects. The ‘Intro to micro:bit’ path is free and kids can follow it to code projects that focus on wellbeing, including topics like mental health, relaxation, and exercise. As you might know, a micro:bit (pronounced “microbit”) is a small,…
The post New micro:bit coding projects for kids appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/microbit-coding-projects/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: A judge in Italy orders the seizure of $835 million from short-term rental giant Airbnb, as prosecutors say it failed to collect a tax from landlords. Also: The European Space Agency changes the way it works by launching a competition to develop a commercial space capsule.
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Continued pressure by US lawmakers to restrict China’s access to RISC-V has been called into question.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/proposed_restrictions_riscv/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Is America ready for a Republican female president? | Opinion
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article281495528.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ireland looks set to get a datacenter powered entirely by fuel cell technology thanks to an agreement between a local company and a division of Korean conglomerate SK Group.…
date: 2023-11-07, from: Heatmap News
When San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is in full Saturday swing, one way to dodge the determined foodies and casual browsers is to retreat to the plaza just 30 steps south of the Ferry Building. It sits atop three tiers of dark-veined granite, accessible by two flights of nine stairs or a ramp that ascends along the water to a trio of ferry gates that, like the plaza, were completed in 2021.
The chosen height hints at what someday might be the norm — the elevation where San Francisco’s constructed shoreline will need to be to serve as a protective buffer between the natural bay and the developed city. Here, more than any place on today’s Embarcadero, you confront the existential predicament facing the Ferry Building, nearby piers, and resurrected waterfronts in other coastal American cities: sea level rise.
According to projections that were modeled by climate scientists in 2018, San Francisco Bay faces a 66% likelihood that average daily tides will rise 40 inches by 2100, with roughly half of the increase during the next 50 years and the pace accelerating after that. The same report includes an extreme but peer-reviewed scenario where the projected increase soars to 93 inches during that same period — making grim numbers profoundly worse.
So-called king tides already arrive monthly during the winter, a natural occurrence related to the moon’s gravitational pull that can send waves washing past Pier 14 into the Embarcadero’s protected bike lane. Behind Pier 5, water swells up and over the edge of the public walkway. For now, that occasional splash of excitement is less fearsome than fun — but if current forecasts are anywhere near accurate, future generations will face a double bind.
The threat isn’t just that tides might creep upward as temperatures increase. It’s that the extreme rainfall patterns we already experience will grow more intense, those destructive storms that in recent years have introduced terms like atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones into conversations about the weather. For instance, if daily tides are a foot higher in 2050 than they are now — the “likely” projection — a major storm could surge 36 inches beyond where it would register today.
In the case of the Embarcadero, the hypothetical one-foot rise coupled with an “intense storm” — the sort that in the past might occur every five years — would send bay waters rushing toward the roadway in a dozen locations if the storm hit when winds were brisk and the tide was high. Kick the downpour’s fervor to the scale of the bomb cyclone that hit the Bay Area in October 2021 — a day-long deluge that was the equivalent of what scientists call a 25-year storm — and the Embarcadero could be closed for nearly a mile between Folsom Street and Pier 9. Water spilling across the roadway could flow down into the BART and Muni subway beneath Market Street, potentially paralyzing both systems.
The new plaza and the elevated ferry gates might rebuke the surging tides to come, but the landmark next door would be more vulnerable than ever. The Ferry Building has ridden out many perils since opening day in 1898, from earthquakes and the onslaught of automobiles to political tumult, misguided renovations, and the wear and tear of urban life. Now it faces the implacable though seemingly far-off threat of rising waters, as if nature was determined to restore the marshes and tidal flats that long-dead San Franciscans covered and forgot.
The addition of the granite plaza is an indicator of the danger facing the icon to its north. And it’s not as if our hefty landmark with that vaulted concrete foundation can be jacked up out of harm’s way.
Or can it?
An
aerial view of San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the
Embarcadero.Michael
Lee/Getty Images
Steven Reel headed west from Philadelphia in 1992 to earn a structural engineering degree at Stanford University because, he says now, “structural engineering means ‘earthquakes’ at Stanford, and earthquakes make structural engineering a lot more interesting.” The Bay Area was a good place to live, and local governments were investing heavily in seismic upgrades after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. In 2010, Reel successfully applied for a job at the Port of San Francisco and, to his surprise, grew intrigued by the historic aspects of making an urban shoreline function in the here and now.
“I’d start studying old engineering drawings for projects and then go down the rabbit hole,” recalls Reel, an easygoing bureaucrat with a beard that approached Rasputin-like proportions during the pandemic (he since has trimmed it back). He also began to notice regional planners stressing sea level rise in meetings.
His first project at the port was Brannan Street Wharf, where two ramshackle piers midway between the Bay Bridge and the ballpark were torn out and replaced by a four-hundred-foot-long triangular green. The response to climate concerns involved a slight upward incline from the Embarcadero promenade and a concrete lip along the edge (the same move since used for the plaza near the Ferry Building).
There was another natural threat to consider — the possibility that a tremor on the scale of the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake could strike again. Would the Ferry Building and the seawall hold, as before? Or would the three-mile-long agglomeration of boulders and concrete give way after all this time? Reel found himself with a new job title — manager of the seawall program — and responsibilities that included a $450,000 study with consultants being told to diagnose the barrier’s health and prescribe possible remedies.
The findings, released in April 2016, answered some questions and posed a host of others.
The good news is that even with a cataclysmic earthquake, “complete failure of the seawall is unlikely.” The rocks and boulders that form a dike beneath the concrete wouldn’t scatter like marbles. The Financial District wouldn’t be sucked into the bay toward Oakland. But the combination of sandy fill atop soft mud, behind an aged barrier with thousands of potentially moving parts of varying size, is a dangerous combination. The fill was “subject to liquefaction,” the report confirmed, making it likely that the seawall could slump and lurch outward.
“A repeat of the 1906 earthquake is predicted to cause as much as $1b in damage and $1.3b in disruption costs,” the report declared. Better to strengthen the entire three-mile seawall before a disaster struck — though the cost estimates to do this were “on the order of $2 to $3 billion.” The consultants also emphasized that even with an upgraded seawall, the slow-moving threat posed by sea level rise “will necessitate intervention … over the next 100 years.” Figure that in, and the combined price tag approached $5 billion.
The city approached voters with a $425 million bond in 2018 to fund the first round of projects; smartly, the campaign emphasized seismic concerns, lightening the ominous message with such creative touches as a neighborhood brewpub’s limited-release sour beer dubbed “Seawall’s Sea Puppy.” The bond passed with 83% support. “The earthquake message resonates,” Reel says. “Without it, I don’t think all this would have moved forward as it did.”
It makes sense to tackle the easiest fixes early, given the seismic threats posed to the Bay Area by the San Andreas and other faults. Breaking a daunting future into manageable parts also allows the Port and City Hall to shift attention from the more eye-popping aspects of climate adaptation — such as how potions of the Embarcadero might need to be raised as much as seven feet to prepare for 2100’s more extreme projected water levels.
Which leads us back to the Ferry Building.
As so often has been the case during the landmark’s history, far more is at stake than one particular structure. If the Ferry Building in its heyday represented San Francisco’s prominence within the region and beyond, in the 21st century it embodies how urban waterfronts can be reinvented without sacrificing their past identities. At the same time, the building remains essentially the same as it was in 1898 — a heavy structure of concrete and steel that covers two acres and rises from a foundation atop bundled piles of tree trunks.
The assumption for the past 25 years has been that the landmark’s impressive performance in 1906 and 1989 should ensure similar resilience when the next big earthquake hits. But the most recent geotechnical exam revealed a weak link: the section of the seawall behind the Ferry Building rests in a trench filled with liquefiable sand rather than the rubble that underlies almost everything else. That detail places “the 125-year-old Ferry Building Seawall, building substructure, and surrounding piers at risk of damage in large earthquakes,” according to the most recent Port update.
This isn’t just a concern for architecture buffs. San Francisco’s disaster relief plans treat the outdoor spaces around the landmark as crucial spots for retreat and regrouping. In a worst-case scenario where the Bay Bridge is knocked out of commission, as was the case in 1989, reliable access to a functioning ferry system will be crucial for evacuating people from the downtown scene safely. The new plaza can also serve as a staging area for bringing medical aid and supplies into the city over the water. Regular people who need to connect with family and friends know there won’t be confusion if someone says “let’s find each other at the Ferry Building.”
One solution could be to erect an entirely new seawall around the edge of the Ferry Building’s foundation, in essence creating a basement beneath it. And if you’re doing that, it’s only one more step — albeit sure to be costly and complex — to raise the entire building by several feet and resolve the challenge of sea level rise for another lifetime or two.
“With the Ferry Building, the one thing I know about it is that it has to be saved … it has such a strong identification with the city,” Elaine Forbes, the executive director for the Port, says. “So I talked myself into okaying this big expenditure.”
The
Ferry Building, pictured in 1906 after the San Francisco earthquake and
fire.Library
of Congress
Realistically, adaptation planning in San Francisco and other waterfront cities will involve a variety of responses at a variety of scales. But the situation facing the Ferry Building, as at so many times in its history, is unique unto itself. This time around, the task is to remake a bustling civic icon so that life seemingly goes on as before. If anyone has challenged the need to invest what likely will be hundreds of millions of dollars to save a 125-year-old structure, the argument has gained no traction.
“The price would have to be really, really high before anything would think twice” about whether the Ferry Building’s salvation is more trouble than it’s worth, Reel says. He describes how during the public discussions on what to do about the Embarcadero, attendees would be asked to list priorities. What are you concerned about? What do you love?
In the latter category, Reel recalls, “the Ferry Building kept getting named. People want to see it forever.”
This still leaves an array of unanswered questions. How to decide how big of an engineering gamble to take. Whether to raise the structure, as implausible as that sounds, or build a new seawall to the east that would destroy the immediacy of the connection to the water. And what becomes of the tenants inside the building, especially the locally based merchants, if the building once again becomes a construction zone.
In a much different context, one San Franciscan offered a fatalistic take on what the future might hold: Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Four years before his death in 2021, still living in North Beach, Ferlinghetti sat down in a neighborhood café to talk with a Washington Post writer about the beat era, the 97-year-old poet’s life, and his enduring love for the city that he embraced long ago. At one point, the writer asked Ferlinghetti about what might happen after he was gone.
“It’s all going to be underwater in 100 years or maybe even 50,” Ferlinghetti said with a half-smiled shrug. “The Embarcadero is one of the greatest esplanades in the world. On the weekends, thousands of people strut up and down like it’s the Ramblas in Barcelona. But it’ll all be underwater.”
This article was excerpted and condensed from John King’s book Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities, available on Nov. 7 from W. W. Norton & Company ©2023.
https://heatmap.news/economy/john-king-portal-san-franciscos-ferry-building
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Both campaigns are preparing for a clash on America’s role in global conflicts on Wednesday night.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/article281400893.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
The brand new Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2024 has landed! It may just be our best annual handbook yet. But we do say that every year.
The post NEW BOOK: The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2024 is here! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/new-book-the-official-raspberry-pi-handbook-2024-is-here/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The first new version of GhostBSD in over a year is here. If you want to try FreeBSD, Linux’s most credible rival and competitor in the FOSS OS marketplace, there’s no easier way.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/ghostbsd_23_10/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — A defiant Donald Trump sparred with a New York judge and slammed the state attorney general suing him Monday, using the witness stand at his civil fraud trial to defend his riches and lash out at a case that imperils his real estate empire.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is once again looking for unexploded military ordnance in West Hawaii.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The state’s first veteran-focused senior living center remains on track to open next year after years of fundraising and preparation.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>BEAR, Del. — President Joe Biden, arguably the nation’s biggest Amtrak fan, visited a train maintenance shop in his home state of Delaware on Monday to showcase more than $16 billion in federal investments for rail travel along the busy Northeast Corridor, saying of long-delayed improvements, “we’re finally getting it done.”</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Monday confronted the second major U.S. antitrust trial in two months to cast the internet powerhouse as a brazen bully that uses its immense wealth and people’s dependence on one of its main products to stifle competition at consumers’ expense.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>BRIGHTON, Colo. — Elijah McClain’s mother wiped tears from her eyes as a verdict was read Monday acquitting a second Denver-area police officer in the 2019 death of her son.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — As U.S. doctors scale back their use of opioid painkillers, a new option for hard-to-treat pain is taking root: ketamine, the decades-old surgical drug that is now a trendy psychedelic therapy.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Clinton “Toodie” Domen, 63, of Keaau, died Oct. 30. Born in Honolulu, he worked at Orchids of Hawaii. Services to be announced at a later date. Survived by wife Raenette Domen; sons Clinton, Bronson and Bryson Domen; daughter Britney Domen; granddaughter Aria Domen; and numerous nieces and nephews. Arrangements by Ballard Family Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/07/obituaries/obituaries-for-november-7-9/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — The Israeli army severed northern Gaza from the rest of the besieged territory and pounded it with airstrikes Monday, preparing for expected ground battles with Hamas militants in Gaza’s largest city and an even bloodier phase of the month-old war.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LOS ANGELES — A federal jury on Monday found a scuba dive boat captain was criminally negligent in the deaths of 34 people killed in a fire aboard the vessel in 2019, the deadliest maritime disaster in recent U.S. history.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Waiakea High girls volleyball team’s state run ended at home, as the Warriors were swept by visiting Kapolei High on Monday night during the first round of the HHSAA Division I state playoffs.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/07/sports/kapolei-ends-waiakeas-postseason/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WAIPAHU, Oahu — Hilo High junior Kekaihulali Halpern placed first in the girls’ 5k during the Hawaii High School Athletic Association cross country state championship on Saturday at Central O‘ahu Regional Park.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/07/sports/halpern-wins-state-cross-country-race/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>MESA, Ariz. — Papaikou-raised Waiakea High alumnus Kala‘i Rosario won the Arizona Fall League’s home run derby, hitting 25 home runs with his longest measuring 465 feet on Saturday at Sloan Park.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/07/sports/rosario-wins-az-fall-league-homer-derby/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Justin Herbert and the Los Angeles Chargers’ offense didn’t have to do much against the New York Jets.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LANGLEY, Canada – The Vikings made a last-minute push to cut the Vulcans’ led to within single digits, but the UH-Hilo Men’s Basketball team sank enough free throws down the stretch to close out the CCA Canadian Tip-Off Classic at 3-0 with a 93-82 victory over Western Washington Sunday morning at the Langley Events Centre.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/07/sports/vulcans-finish-3-0-at-canada-tourney/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Over the weekend, the Hawaii High School Athletic Association (HHSAA) released the brackets for the Division II, Division I and Open Division football state championships.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/07/sports/football-state-brackets-released/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — David Stearns said the New York Mets would “cast a wide net” when searching for their next manager. </p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Last week, the Federal Reserve did the right thing by leaving well enough alone, keeping the benchmark interest rate at about 5.4%. With the acute pressure that the board and Chair Jay Powell in particular have faced in the past several months, we’re glad they’ve had the wisdom to know when to step back.</p>
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>U.S. democracy is clearly in crisis. It’s entirely possible that in less than two years dissenters will face the power of a government with an authoritarian bent; if that sounds to you like hyperbole, you aren’t paying attention.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/07/opinion/why-does-the-right-hate-america/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>North Hawaii’s dedicated first responders — whose exceptional performance prevented the loss of life, homes and other structures during the August wildfires, and who put themselves in harm’s way to protect the community literally around the clock 365 days a year — will be honored at a community in-person dinner gathering from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 15, at Mana Christian ‘Ohana’s Kahilu Town Hall.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/07/community/waimea-event-will-honor-first-responders/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The star guards combined for 42 as the Trojans beat the Wildcats in Vegas.
The post Collier and Ellis lead USC past Kansas State appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/07/collier-and-ellis-lead-usc-past-kansas-state/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
SAP is the latest to bring a set of AI-assisted coding features to its cloud-based application development environments, joining a slew of vendors making similar announcements. However, developers and analysts say they’re concerned the same tech is not be available for on-prem systems they are working on migrating and lifting to the cloud.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/sap_ai_assisted_coding/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Robert Reich on Substack
No reason to panic. Biden will win the 2024 election.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/trump-v-biden-how-worried-should
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The highly-touted freshman helped USC win its ninth straight season opener.
The post JuJu Watkins sparks upset win over Ohio State appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/07/juju-watkins-sparks-upset-win-over-ohio-state/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Systems Approach Perhaps the single biggest aspect of systems building I’ve come to appreciate since shifting my focus from academic pursuits to open source software development is the importance of testing and test automation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/software_testing/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.
The post Classifieds – November 7, 2023 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/07/classifieds-november-7-2023/
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1940 – William S. Hart deeds land for theater at Spruce and 11th Street to American Legion. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-nov-7/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
VMware hasn’t been sitting on its hands while waiting for Broadcom to buy it: it has spent the past couple of years planning a move on the data services market.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/vmware_data_services_broadcom/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
President Folt announced USC has cut ties with the Yunus Emre Institute.
The post Letters between USC and LA officials unveil aftermath of Türkiye Conference appeared first on Daily Trojan.
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Trojans swept No. 15 Arizona State to earn their tenth consecutive home victory.
The post Is the sky the limit for Fields and USC? appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/07/is-the-sky-the-limit-for-fields-and-usc/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Destigmatizing the mental health of college athletes will save athletes.
The post Why we need more Victoria Garrick Brownes appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/07/why-we-need-more-victoria-garrick-brownes/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Thornton freshman and pop artist Sofia Gomez isn’t just next up, she’s already here.
The post Breakthrough student singer makes LA debut appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/07/breakthrough-student-singer-makes-la-debut/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Let’s examine the K-pop phenomenon as Heartsteel and LE SSERAFIM go head-to-head in skin sales.
The post The K-pop-ification of the gaming industry appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/07/the-k-pop-ification-of-the-gaming-industry/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Americans must hold their politicians accountable in the 2024 general election.
The post A better nation demands more than hope appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/07/a-better-nation-demands-more-than-hope/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Often, people fail to acknowledge the subgroups under being international.
The post All international students aren’t the same appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/07/all-international-students-arent-the-same/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero met with members of the Democratic Caucus Tuesday morning to discuss Bill 184-37, the measure that would facilitate the sale or lease of Guam Ancestral Lands Commission property in Barrigada for the construction of a medical…
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
The Daily Sundial’s archives from the years 1983, 1993 and 2003 all show that California State University fees increased every decade, prompting students to react angrily because it affected how much they would pay. They report that fees were hiked nearly 11% each time, excluding the year 2003, when tuition was raised by 30%. In…
https://sundial.csun.edu/176803/uncategorized/yesterdays-news-history-repeats-itself/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
The prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden investigation is expected to testify on Tuesday, marking the first time a special counsel will appear before Congress in the middle of a probe. It comes as House Republicans are aiming to ramp up their impeachment inquiry into the president and his family after weeks of stalemate.
David Weiss is set to appear for a transcribed interview before members of the House Judiciary Committee as the U.S. attorney battles Republican allegations that he did not have full authority in the yearslong case into the president’s son.
“Mr. Weiss is prepared to take this unprecedented step of testifying before the conclusion of his investigation to make clear that he’s had and continues to have full authority over his investigation and to bring charges in any jurisdiction,” Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesperson for Weiss, said in a statement Monday.
The rare move by the Justice Department to allow a special counsel or any federal prosecutor to face questioning before the conclusion of an investigation indicates just how seriously the department is taking accusations of interference.
Weiss’ appearance comes after months of back-and-forth negotiations between Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department as lawmakers subpoenaed several investigators and attorneys involved in the Hunter Biden case.
In July, Weiss, looking to correct the record of what he and the department see as a misrepresentation of the investigation, agreed to come to Capitol Hill but only if he was able to testify in a public hearing where he could directly respond to claims of wrongdoing by Republicans.
The two parties ultimately agreed on a closed-door interview with both Democratic and Republican members and their respective staff.
The interview Tuesday is expected to focus on testimony from an Internal Revenue Service agent who claimed that under Weiss, the investigation into the president’s son was “slow-walked” and mishandled. Weiss has denied one of the more explosive allegations by saying in writing that he had the final say over the case.
Two other U.S. Attorneys from Washington and California testified in recent weeks that they didn’t block Weiss from filing charges in their districts, though they declined to partner with him on it.
But the IRS whistleblower, who testified publicly over the summer, insists his testimony reflects a pattern of interference and preferential treatment in the Hunter Biden case and not just disagreement with their superiors about what investigative steps to take.
Questions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings overall have been central to a GOP-led impeachment inquiry into the president. That’s been led in part by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, who is expected to have a prominent role in the questioning Tuesday.
But what information, if any, Weiss will be able to provide to Congress is unclear as under Justice Department policy and the law, he will be unable to address the specifics of his investigation.
In general, open investigations are kept under wraps to protect evidence, keep witnesses from being exposed, and avoid giving defense attorneys fodder to ultimately challenge their findings.
In the Hunter Biden case, defense attorneys have already indicated they plan to challenge the gun charges he is currently facing on several other legal fronts and suggested that prosecutors bowed to political pressure in filing those charges.
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
Ohio becomes the latest flashpoint on Tuesday in the nation’s ongoing battle over abortion access since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right to the procedure last year.
Voters will decide whether to pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing an individual right to abortion and other forms of reproductive healthcare.
Ohio is the only state to consider a statewide abortion-rights question this year, fueling tens of millions of dollars in campaign spending, boisterous rallies for and against the amendment, and months of advertising and social media messaging, some of it misleading.
With a single spotlight on abortion rights this year, advocates on both sides of the issue are watching the outcome for signs of voter sentiment heading into 2024, when abortion-rights supporters are planning to put measures on the ballot in several other states, including Arizona, Missouri and Florida. Early voter turnout has also been robust.
Public polling shows about two-thirds of Americans say abortion should generally be legal in the earliest stages of pregnancy, a sentiment that has been underscored in half a dozen states since the Supreme Court’s decision reversing Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
In both Democratic and deeply Republican states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont — voters have either affirmed abortion access or turned back attempts to undermine the right.
Voter approval of the constitutional amendment in Ohio, known as Issue 1, would undo a 2019 state law passed by Republicans that bans most abortions at around six weeks into pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape and incest. That law, currently on hold because of court challenges, is one of roughly two dozen restrictions on abortion the Ohio Legislature has passed in recent years.
Issue 1 specifically declares an individual’s right to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions,” including birth control, fertility treatments, miscarriage and abortion.
It still allows the state to regulate the procedure after fetal viability, as long as exceptions are provided for cases in which a doctor determines the “life or health” of the woman is at risk. Viability is defined as the point when the fetus has “a significant likelihood of survival” outside the womb with reasonable interventions.
Anti-abortion groups have argued the amendment’s wording is overly broad, advancing a host of untested legal theories about its impacts. They’ve tested a variety of messages to try to defeat the amendment as they seek to reverse their losses in statewide votes, including characterizing it as “anti-parent” and warning that it would allow minors to seek abortions or gender-transition surgeries without parents’ consent.
It’s unclear how the Republican-dominated Legislature will respond if voters pass the amendment. Republican state Senate President Matt Huffman has suggested that lawmakers could come back with another proposed amendment next year that would undo Issue 1, although they would have only a six-week window after Election Day to get it on the 2024 primary ballot.
The voting follows an August special election called by the Republican-controlled Legislature that was aimed at making future constitutional changes harder to pass by increasing the threshold from a simple majority vote to 60%. That proposal was aimed in part at undermining the abortion-rights measure being decided now.
Voters overwhelmingly defeated that special election question, setting the stage for the high-stakes fall abortion campaign.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ohio-deciding-abortion-rights-question-tuesday/7344708.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: ETH Zurich Research Archives
You could submit your application for project funding to the Swiss
National Science Foundation (SNSF) until 01 October 2023. Remember that
you need a data management plan (DMP) for approved projects. Read
more
https://www.rc-blog.ethz.ch/en/do-you-have-a-data-management-plan-for-your-approved-snsf-project/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cloudflare has explained how it believes it suffered that earlier multi-day control plane and analytics outage.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/cloudflare_datacenter_outage/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
The Supreme Court is taking up a challenge to a federal law that prohibits people from having guns if they are under a court order to stay away from their spouse, partner or other family members. The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in their first case about guns since last year’s decision that called into question numerous gun control laws.
The federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down the law following the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June 2022. That high court ruling not only expanded Americans’ gun rights under the Constitution, but also changed the way courts are supposed to evaluate restrictions on firearms.
Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion for the court tossed out the balancing test judges had long used to decide whether gun laws were constitutional. Rather than consider whether a law enhances public safety, judges should only weigh whether it fits into the nation’s history of gun regulation, Thomas wrote.
The Bruen decision has resulted in lower-court rulings striking down more than a dozen laws. Those include age restrictions, bans on homemade “ghost guns” and prohibitions on gun ownership for people convicted of nonviolent felonies or using illegal drugs.
The court’s decision in the new case could have widespread ripple effects, including in the high-profile prosecution of Hunter Biden. The president’s son has been charged with buying a firearm while he was addicted to drugs, but his lawyers have indicated they will challenge the indictment as invalid following the Bruen decision.
The outcome probably will come down to the votes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. They were part of the six-justice conservative majority in Bruen, but Kavanaugh wrote separately, joined by Roberts, to underscore that not every gun restriction is unconstitutional.
The case before the court involves Zackey Rahimi, who lived near Fort Worth, Texas. Rahimi hit his girlfriend during an argument in a parking lot and then fired a gun at a witness in December 2019, according to court papers. Later, Rahimi called the girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone about the assault, the Justice Department wrote in its Supreme Court brief.
The girlfriend obtained a protective order against him in Tarrant County in February 2020.
Eleven months later, Rahimi was a suspect in additional shootings when police searched his apartment and found guns. He eventually pleaded guilty to violating federal law. The appeals court overturned that conviction when it struck down the law. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the Biden administration’s appeal.
Rahimi remains jailed in Texas, where he faces other criminal charges. In a letter he wrote from jail last summer, after the Supreme Court agreed to hear his case, Rahimi said he would “stay away from all firearms and weapons” once he’s released. The New York Times first reported the existence of the letter.
Guns were used in 57% of killings of spouses, intimate partners, children or relatives in 2020, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Seventy women a month, on average, are shot and killed by intimate partners, according to the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.
A decision in U.S. v. Rahimi, 22-915, is expected by early summer.
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
IBM’s Red Hat has some good news for UK businesses, with a survey putting Blighty’s businesses ahead of competitors in Germany, France, and Spain when it comes to enterprise-wide IT automation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/red_hat_survey_automation/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Sacramento Kings held an hourlong film session Sunday after suffering an ugly loss to the Houston Rockets, but Monday was even worse.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/article281512123.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Tilde.news
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
A new U.S. political poll shows former President Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden in a 2024 matchup in key battleground states, with voters citing their long-held concerns about Biden’s advanced age and the economy — but also, new concerns over a recent outburst of conflict between Israel and Hamas. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
The top Republican Party presidential candidates are gathering on Wednesday for the third debate of the year. This debate is expected to differ from the rest as candidates try to set themselves apart with their views on the Israel-Hamas war. As VOA’s Carolyn Presutti tells us, that’s not the only change in this debate.
https://www.voanews.com/a/republican-presidential-hopefuls-gather-for-third-debate/7344680.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Doc Searls (at Harvard), New Old Blog
I love studying infrastructure. I read about it (hi, Brett), shoot pictures of it, and write about it. Though not enough of the latter. That’s why I’ve started to post again at Trunk Line, my infrastructure blog. A post there … Continue reading
https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/06/what-symbolizes-infrastructure-best/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign said Monday it’s not worried after a U.S. political poll showed former President Donald Trump leading Biden in a 2024 matchup in key battleground states.
In the poll, voters cited their long-held concerns about Biden’s advanced age and the economy, but also new concerns over the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas.
In a statement shared with VOA from Biden’s campaign, White House assistant press secretary Kevin Munoz seemed unfazed.
“We’ll win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not by fretting about a poll,” he said.
The New York Times/Siena College poll predicts that Trump would triumph over Biden in five of six swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The poll showed Biden ahead in Wisconsin.
Pollsters looked at the usual issues: abortion, preserving democracy, the economy, national security and immigration — but also at how voters see Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters made their feelings on that last issue clear, gathering at the White House gates to express their dissatisfaction with Biden’s support for Israel.
Biden, meanwhile, is moving forward, crisscrossing the country to sell Americans on how his administration has improved their lives. On Monday in his home state of Delaware, he touted a $16 billion effort along the Atlantic seaboard.
“Twenty-five different projects, all to build the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington, is part of my agenda to invest in America,” he said. “And I’ve been fighting for this for a long time.”
It’s a stark contrast to Trump’s approach. The former president also spoke Monday as he arrived in New York to testify in a civil fraud case over accusations that he wildly overstated his net worth. He claims that his 91 felony charges, in four different jurisdictions, are all politically motivated.
“I’m leading all over the place,” Trump said. “But it’s a very unfair situation. This is really election interference. It’s kind of ridiculous.”
Pollsters say no one should be surprised that Americans are so deeply conflicted — but some, such as polling expert Mark Mellman and political scientist Todd Belt, question this poll.
“Anybody who’s paid close attention, I think, to American politics over the last number of years would assume it’s going to be a close race,” said Mellman, a Democratic pollster who also leads advocacy group Democratic Majority for Israel. The polls have consistently shown it to be a very close race. I think this poll is a bit of an outlier. It shows more support for Trump in some of these states than in lots of other polls, too.”
Mellman said he reads this recent poll as showing rare voter consensus on the Israel-Hamas conflict, in which both front-runners say they strongly support Israel.
Some analysts say that predictions this far ahead of a poll aren’t useful.
“People I have talked to from the Biden campaign have told me that No. 1, it’s way too far out,” said Belt, a professor of political management at The George Washington University. “And No. 2, they think that when it comes down to a general election, and it’s a binary choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, they think Joe Biden takes it because they believe that people just don’t want to go back to the chaos of the Trump years.”
The poll comes as Americans are voting this week, choosing state and local representatives and ballot initiatives.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Jerry Boylan has been found guilty of “seaman’s manslaughter” for his role in the deadliest maritime disaster in modern U.S. history.
The post ‘Conception’ Captain Found Guilty in Santa Barbara Dive-Boat Fire That Killed 34 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
The captain of a dive boat that caught fire and sank off the California coast in 2019, killing 34 people in one of the state’s deadliest maritime disasters, was found guilty on Monday on a federal charge of seaman’s manslaughter.
Jerry Boylan, 70, was found guilty by a U.S. District Court jury in Los Angeles on a single charged count of “misconduct or neglect of a ship officer” under a federal homicide statute dating from steamboat accidents in the early 1800s.
The felony conviction, capping a 10-day trial, carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, according to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Sentencing was set for Feb. 8, 2025.
Boylan was captain of the 75-foot dive boat Conception, which went up in flames early in the morning on Sept. 2, 2019. The vessel was anchored in Platt’s Harbor near Santa Cruz Island, off the Santa Barbara Coast, during a sport diving trip.
Thirty-three passengers and one member of the crew died in the Labor Day holiday weekend blaze. They had been sleeping below deck when the fire began.
The five surviving crew members, including Boylan, had been above deck in berths behind the wheelhouse and escaped by leaping overboard as the burning vessel sank into the Pacific. They told investigators that flames coming from the passenger quarters were too intense to save anyone trapped below.
But the jury unanimously agreed with prosecutors that Boylan, as charged in the indictment, acted with “reckless disregard for human life by engaging in misconduct, gross negligence, and inattention to his duties.”
Among other lapses cited by prosecutors, Boylan neglected to maintain a night watch or roving patrol as required, failed to conduct sufficient fire drills and crew emergency training and left the vessel without attempting to fight the blaze.”
Prosecutors said he was the first to abandon ship and did so without using the boat’s public address system to warn passengers and crew about the fire.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Doc Searls (at Harvard), New Old Blog
Even though I have tracking turned off every way I can, I still see ads for hearing aids all over the place online. I suppose that’s because it’s hard to hide when one occupies a demographic bulls-eye. They’re wasted anyway … Continue reading
https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/06/hah/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Jonudell blog
Here’s number 12 in the series on LLM-assisted coding over at The New Stack: Let’s Talk: Conversational Software Development I keep coming back to the theme of the first article in this series: When the rubber duck talks back. Thinking out loud always helps. Ideally, you get to do that with a human partner. A … Continue reading Let’s Talk: Conversational Software Development
https://blog.jonudell.net/2023/11/06/lets-talk-conversational-software-development/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Adia, the zoo’s 9-year-old female Masai giraffe, gave birth to a female calf on November 2.
The post A New Baby Giraffe Joins the Family at the Santa Barbara Zoo appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/06/a-new-baby-giraffe-joins-the-family-at-the-santa-barbara-zoo/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Tilde.news
https://sincerely.dev/papers/persimmon.pdf
date: 2023-11-07, from: Michael Tsai
Phuoc Nguyen (via Hacker News): Web development moves at lightning speed. I still remember when I first started using libraries like jQuery, Prototype, script.aculo.us, Zepto, and many more. Even with modern tools like Angular, VueJS, React, Solid and Svelte, we still have to deal with the Document Object Model (DOM). While these frameworks encapsulate and […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/06/mastering-dom-manipulation-with-vanilla-javascript/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Michael Tsai
Brett Terpstra: So it turns out Google now offers an API (once again). It’s limited to 100 searches per day for the free version, so I don’t want to put my API key into the public distribution of SearchLink, but if you want to tap into Google’s power for your searches, you can now add […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/06/google-vertex-ai-search/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Guam Daily Post
Core Tech International Corp. received an excellence in construction award for a low-income housing project in Radio Barrigada.
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The sensitive personal information of American military personnel and their families is on sale from US data brokers for a pittance, Duke University academics have found.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/data_brokers_military_data/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng for talks Thursday and Friday meant to continue a cautious rapprochement on trade between the world’s two largest economies.
The meeting, which will take place in San Francisco, comes ahead of an anticipated meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
For much of this year, U.S. officials have been working to improve trade and other relations between China and the United States.
Yellen and other senior administration officials have visited China. In September, Yellen and He created two “working groups” meant to provide a means for the two governments to engage in discussions about economic and financial policy. The working groups will meet again this week.
Troubled relationship
Relations between the United States and China have been significantly strained of late.
China accused the U.S. of actively attempting to suppress China’s economic growth. Among Beijing’s complaints is that the Biden administration has implemented a ban on the sale of certain high-tech goods to China, plans to further restrict outbound U.S. investment in China beginning next year, and has encouraged U.S. firms to diversify their sources of critical goods and raw materials in order to reduce U.S. reliance on Chinese imports.
For its part, the U.S. regularly complains that China’s policies are designed to give its domestic companies — especially manufacturers — an unfair advantage in global competition. The U.S. claims it does this by offering extensive government support to companies and by placing onerous restrictions on non-Chinese firms operating in China.
In the years prior to Biden taking office, former President Donald Trump launched a trade war with China that imposed new tariffs on many Chinese goods, most of which were left in place by the Biden administration.
Despite the strains, trade between the two countries remains robust, with the dollar value of total trade in goods at or near-record levels in recent years.
Progress seen as unlikely
Experts told VOA they do not anticipate any big breakthroughs this week.
“Quite frankly, I have pretty low expectations,” said Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There’s a mismatch of expectations, I think. The Chinese agreed to set up these discussion bodies because they want to talk the United States into reducing some of the restrictions that have been imposed on technology transfer and financial flows. And I think the U.S. has no intention of doing that.”
“It’s very good that they’re talking, and maybe some better understanding of everything will emerge, but I’m not expecting anything dramatic,” Lardy said.
“My guess would be that we are likeliest to see incremental gains rather than breakthroughs in the economic relationship ahead of APEC,” Lily McElwee, deputy director and fellow in the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.
“Yellen has made it clear she will bring up China’s coercive and non-market-based economic practices when she meets with He, but I doubt Beijing will be looking to concede much before Xi and Biden meet — which in some ways is already seen as a concession, or at least Beijing doing its part to keep relations stable,” McElwee said.
Seeking healthy competition
In advance of the meeting later this week, Yellen published an op-ed Monday in The Washington Post laying out the U.S. position with regard to China, as well as her hopes for the meeting.
She said the U.S. is not engaged in efforts to suppress China’s economic growth, but that Washington simply wants “healthy competition” that can benefit both countries.
“But healthy competition requires a rules-based, level playing field,” Yellen wrote. “This week, I will speak to my counterpart about our serious concerns with Beijing’s unfair economic practices, including its large-scale use of non-market tools, its barriers to market access and its coercive actions against U.S. firms in China.”
Yellen also repeated that the U.S. has no interest in an economic “decoupling” of China and the U.S., which she said would be “economically disastrous and run counter to our national interests.” However, she said that the U.S. is making an effort to “diversify” its supply chain of critical goods, thereby reducing reliance on China in areas where their purchase had reached a level of “overconcentration.”
Yellen offered no sign that the U.S. will reconsider its restrictions on the export of sensitive technologies to China, but said the decisions that led to that policy were rooted in national security concerns, not in an effort to stifle China’s growth.
Economic shift
The high-level meetings take place at a time when China is struggling economically. An economic bounceback from the COVID-19 pandemic slowed sharply earlier this year, and a cascading crisis in the country’s real estate sector is dragging down the broader economy.
Recently, there have been signs that Beijing is embarking on a strategy of directing government investments into the manufacturing sector, hoping to spark growth. This is likely to renew U.S. concerns about China giving unfair advantages to domestic firms competing on the global market.
Whether or not an infusion of cash into the manufacturing sector will produce the results Beijing is seeking is an open question. In recent weeks, there has been a significant outflow of foreign funds from the Chinese economy, a signal that international investors and companies doing business in China have lost confidence.
“There is a reason foreign businesses are moving out of China,” said McElwee. “Discriminatory Chinese regulations are part of the problem, but so, too, are broader geopolitical uncertainties and questions about where Xi Jinping intends to take the country and economy.
“I don’t see incremental changes to regulations or policies changing this assessment,” she said. “And some of the reshoring/friendshoring/diversification of supply chains is simple risk management in ways that go beyond China. So yes, I think any moves that seem to promise greater state intervention in the economy in favor of domestic producers is likely to sour corporate sentiment further.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/high-level-us-china-trade-discussions-set-for-this-week/7344605.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: OS News
Ironclad is a formally verified, hard real-time capable kernel for general-purpose and embedded uses, written in SPARK and Ada. It is comprised of 100% free software, free in the sense that it respects the user’s freedom. Version 0.5.0 has been released. This release brings a lot of improvements to mainly the scheduling, time keeping, userland, and networking subsystems. The easiest way to try Ironclad, either virtually or on real hardware, is to use a distribution that uses it – Gloire seems to be the recommended option. Gloire is an OS built with the Ironclad kernel and using GNU tools for the userland, along with some original applications like gwm. This repository holds scripts and tools to build the OS from the ground up. I had never heard of this project before, but it seems incredibly cool.
https://www.osnews.com/story/137758/ironclad-0-5-0-released/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Beijing is issuing guidelines on the development of humanoid robots with the lofty goal of mass producing the technology by 2025 and having a reliable supply chain by 2027.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/beijing_prepares_for_imminent_rise/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Garrett Hah and Thomas Johnson report live from T-Mobile Arena.
The post USC vs. Kansas State — as it happened appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/06/usc-vs-kansas-state-live-updates/
date: 2023-11-07, from: OS News
OmniOS Community Edition r151048 has been released. For those of us that lost track of the Solaris world – OmniOS is a distribution of illumos, which in turn is a fork of the last release of OpenSolaris before Oracle did what Oracle does and screwed everyone over by taking Solaris closed source again. OmniOS focuses on being a server operating system. For this release, the userland is now built with gcc 13, and it contains various improvements for AMD Zen 4 support. The which command has been replaced by an implementation in C rather than csh, dtrace has seen some improvements on machines with a lot of CPUs, and so, so much more.
https://www.osnews.com/story/137756/omnios-community-edition-r151048-released/
date: 2023-11-07, from: VOA News USA
Hundreds of U.S. Jewish activists peacefully occupied New York’s Statue of Liberty on Monday to demand a cease-fire by Israel and an end to the “genocidal bombardment” of civilians in Gaza.
Dressed in black T-shirts emblazoned with the slogans “Jews demand ceasefire now” or “Not in our name,” the protesters unfurled banners reading, “The whole world is watching” and “Palestinians should be free” at the base of New York’s iconic landmark.
The huge copper statue sits on Liberty Island at the entrance to New York Harbor.
“The famous words of our Jewish ancestor Emma Lazarus etched into this very monument compel us to take action supporting the Palestinians of Gaza yearning to breathe free,” Jay Saper of Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP, the gathering’s organizer, said in a statement, referring to the 19th-century activist who helped Jewish refugees fleeing to New York from Europe.
The statement quotes Lazarus’s poem “New Colossus,” which is engraved on the statue’s base as an ode to U.S. immigrants.
Participants from the Institute for Middle East Understanding demanded “an end to Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
“As long as the people of Gaza are screaming, we need to yell louder, no matter who attempts to silence us,” said photographer Nan Goldin, standing alongside several local elected officials, some with strong roots in the political left.
New York City, a famed melting pot of migrants, has been rocked for the past month by dueling pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The city is home to some 2 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and it so far has avoided any violence related to the conflict, though tensions are palpable in certain spots such as university campuses.
But opinions are not monolithic in either community.
A liberal segment of American Jewish youth — Jews vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party — has unleashed harsh criticism of Israel, which it accuses of perpetrating “genocide” on Palestinians in Gaza.
They also denounce President Joe Biden’s military and diplomatic support for Israel, which has engaged in a month-long bombardment of the Palestinian territory since Hamas’s October 7 attack that Israeli officials said left 1,400 people.
The death toll in Gaza surpassed 10,000 people Monday, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of demonstrators, some brought by JVP, gathered in Washington to call for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, and to denounce U.S. policy of support for Israel.
In late October, thousands of protesters, many gathered by JVP, occupied the huge Grand Central train station in Manhattan with the same demands.
Separately, thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters, including some from U.S. Jewish organizations, shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, leading from Manhattan to the multicultural and fashionable borough across the East River.
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
In what may be another example of AI bias for future textbooks, WhatsApp’s sticker maker apparently generated violent imagery when asked about Muslim Palestinians – and refrained from doing so for Jewish Israelis.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/whatsapp_ai_stickers_palestinian/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Fuego said they had more than 300 applicants for the USL League One job.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/article281511848.html
date: 2023-11-07, from: Heatmap News
Michigan looks likely to pass an aggressive package of climate laws this week, as the state’s Democrats are set to capitalize on their first governing trifecta in nearly four decades.
The climate laws would require that 100% of Michigan’s electricity come from carbon-free sources by 2040, putting the state on par with the fastest state-level decarbonization deadlines nationwide. New York, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Oregon also aim to achieve zero-carbon electricity by 2040.
The bills would also open a new Just Transition Office within the Michigan Department of Labor and strengthen the state’s energy-efficiency and utility laws.
While other states have passed aggressive climate legislation, none of them are as politically contested — or quite as central to national politics — as Michigan.
“What’s really exciting is that this is probably the most purple state we’ve seen with a bold climate package on the cusp of the finish line,” Courtney Bourgoin, a senior policy manager for Evergreen Action, a climate advocacy group, told me.
“It’s going to be significant. This is a very pragmatic plan, but it builds off a strong foundation that we have in Michigan,” state Senator Sam Singh, who introduced one of the bills, told me. “It also positions us well to pull down the federal dollars that are available for this transition.”
Michigan’s Democrats are enjoying their first statehouse majority in nearly four decades. They have already repealed the state’s anti-union “right to work” laws and passed new LGBT protections.
The suite of four climate laws passed the state House of Representatives last week and is expected to go to the state Senate for a final vote in the next few days. The Senate already approved an earlier version of the legislation.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer is expected to sign the laws after passage. In August, Garlin Gilchrist, the state’s lieutenant governor, suggested in a speech that Whitmer supported the laws. Whitmer’s MI Healthy Climate Plan initially proposed zeroing out carbon pollution from the power sector by 2050, not 2040.
“The climate crisis is urgent,” Gilchrist said at the time. “We need to act now. We need to act legislatively. We need to act administratively.”
Here’s what the four proposed laws would do:
The first law sets a new, 100% clean-energy target by 2040. It also rewrites the state’s existing renewable portfolio standard to require that 60% of the state’s electricity come from wind, solar, or another renewable source by 2034. (The remaining 40% of electricity could come from nuclear power or natural gas with carbon capture.)
The second law sets new energy efficiency requirements for the state’s power and gas utilities. For the first time, utilities must spend at least 25% of their efficiency funds on low-income communities.
The law also encourages utilities to electrify people’s homes in the state by installing induction stoves or heat pumps. That’s particularly important because Michigan ranks among the top five states for use of home-heating oil.
A third law will allow the state’s public service commission, which regulates utilities, to consider climate and reliability questions while planning the state’s electricity grid.
The final law establishes a new Just Transition Office within the state’s labor and economic-development office that will advise the government about how best to retrain and help workers and communities who are hurt by decarbonization.
The office, for instance, could help connect “internal combustion engine vehicle workers” with retraining opportunities, counseling, skills matching, and potentially ways to replace their lost income. Most of its work would come from proposing new state programs, writing “transition plans” for various industries, or identifying federal funding. (My sense is that the office would be as effective and useful as the person directing it.)
“We’re going to be working with industry and workers concurrently,” Singh said. “I’m excited because we ensured that equity is part of the conversation as well as making sure we put strong labor requirements in as well.”
Another pair of proposals would let renewable-energy developers apply to the state’s public service commission for permission to build a project instead of going through a local zoning board. Michigan has highly restrictive local-level zoning rules on building new solar and wind, Sarah Mills, a University of Michigan researcher, told me.
While those proposals have passed the House, their fate in the Senate is less certain. The state’s fall legislative session ends on Friday.
date: 2023-11-07, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners
https://www.fresnobee.com/betting/nfl/article264850999.html
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A 34-year-old woman has been jailed for 18 months after trying to use Rentahitman.com – no, really – to pay a contract killer to eliminate a rival she was beefing with. Her would-be assassin-for-hire unsurprisingly turned out to be an FBI agent.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/hitman_for_hire_jail/
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
There was 1:10 left on the clock
https://scvnews.com/mustangs-advance-to-semis-in-dramatic-win/
date: 2023-11-07, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Dear Sundial readers, This third issue of the Sundial’s magazine has stories related to the current state of the economy. It is a topic some students know everything about and some students know nothing about. All you hear nowadays are how there are no jobs available, the current wages people are making are not nearly…
https://sundial.csun.edu/176801/print-editions/print-stories/letter-from-the-editor-economy/
date: 2023-11-07, from: OS News
LXQt, the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment, version 1.4.0 has been released, and this one marks an important milestone – it’s the last release based on Qt5, before the next release moves to Qt6. LXQt 1.4.0 is based on Qt 5.15, the last LTS version of Qt5. If everything goes as planned, this is the last Qt5-based release – we’ll do our best to port the next release to Qt6, even if we’ll have to delay it. It’s loaded with new features, bugfixes, and improvements, and, as always, will find its way to your distribution of choice soon enough.
https://www.osnews.com/story/137754/lxqt-1-4-0-released/
date: 2023-11-07, from: OS News
Cities: Skylines 2 like its predecessor is made in Unity, which means the game can be decompiled and inspected quite easily using any .NET decompiler. I used JetBrains dotPeek which has a decent Visual Studio -like UI with a large variety of search and analysis options. However static analysis doesn’t really tell us anything concrete about the rendering performance of the game. To analyze what’s going with rendering I used Renderdoc, an open source graphics debugger which has saved my bacon with some of my previous GPU-y personal projects. An incredibly detailed look at just what’s going on under the hood to make the new Cities: Skylines 2 behave so poorly.
https://www.osnews.com/story/137752/why-cities-skylines-2-performs-poorly/
date: 2023-11-07, updated: 2023-11-07, from: The LAist
The Rose Bowl Stadium and the Hollywood Bowl are some of the venues that will be able to reinvest a portion of taxes generated by their live events into safety and maintenance projects.
https://laist.com/news/politics/new-state-law-hopes-to-help-preserve-historic-venues
date: 2023-11-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Last month, the City Council proudly cut the ribbon and welcomed our residents to the new 15-acres of enhanced and upgraded amenities at Central Park
https://scvnews.com/ken-striplin-high-quality-additions-to-central-park/
date: 2023-11-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for Nov. 7, 2023
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/06/letters-1476/
date: 2023-11-07, from: Marginallia log
I’ve been working on getting anchor tag keywords into the search engine, basically using link texts to complement the keywords on a webpage. The problem I’m attempting to address is that many websites don’t really describe themselves particularly well. As Steve Ballmer’s stage performance once illustrated, merely repeating a word doesn’t on its own make what you’re saying relevant to the term. Another good example of how it falls short is PuTTY’s website, which will be used as a pilot case to improve.