(date: 2023-11-16 09:16:13)
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
A pilot program allows indigent defendants wanted on low-level warrants to schedule court dates without first having to surrender to jail custody.
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Criminal proceedings against Kenneth David McIsaac are set to resume on Nov. 29.
date: 2023-11-16, from: National Archives, Text Message blog
Today’s post was written by Katherine Terry, archives technician at the National Archives at St. Louis Keep your helmet, keep your life, son Just a flesh wound, here’s your rifle Crawling up the beaches now “Sir, I think he’s bleeding out” And some things you just can’t speak about – “epiphany” In the vast landscape … Continue reading We Will Be Remembered: Taylor Swift’s Grandfathers and Their Unsung Military Service
date: 2023-11-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has selected three university-led teams for the first round of a new technical challenge pursuing innovative aviation maintenance practices. These university teams will receive funding from NASA for a two-year research term exploring aviation maintenance challenges related to NASA’s strategic vision for aeronautics. The awardees will research new maintenance techniques and procedures, as well […]
https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/nasa-selects-awardees-for-new-aviation-maintenance-challenge/
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The LAist
The suspect was booked on charges of involuntary manslaughter.
date: 2023-11-16, from: NASA breaking news
Let’s look at the mean temperature of the Sun, and the planets in our solar system.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/temperatures-across-our-solar-system/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Liliputing
The Banana Pi BPI-M7 is an upcoming single-board computer with a Rockchip RK3588 processor, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 128GB of eMMC storage plus support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. But while it’s rare to find a small, affordable board like this with support for that much memory, it’s the expansion […]
The post Banana Pi BPI-M7 board has a RK3588 chip, 2 x 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports, and PCIe NVMe SSD support appeared first on Liliputing.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Resort-style property in the East Bay city of Pleasanton was originally listed for $9 million.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281900808.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: NASA breaking news
The NSSC Small Business Office is responsible for providing outreach and liaison support to industry (both large and small businesses) and other members of the private sector. These activities are accomplished through a combination of individual counseling sessions, dissemination of information on upcoming NSSC procurement opportunities, and participation in local small business outreach events. The […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/nssc/nssc-small-business-program/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Tilde.news
https://www.tindie.com/products/polpo/picogus-sound-card-emulator-for-isa-retro-pcs/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
A neighbor used a hose to put out the fire until emergency response arrived, the fire department said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281941923.html
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It’s been 50 years since the final Skylab crew launched and docked with America’s first space station for an eventful 84 days in space.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/50_years_skylab_4/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Hundreds of passengers and employees took cover, a report says..
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281940923.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Mozilla Developer Network blog
Mozilla has just launched the AI Guide, a collaborative hub for developers to join forces, inspire each other, and lead the way in groundbreaking generative AI advancements. The AI Guide’s initial focus begins with language models and the aim is to become a collaborative community-driven resource covering other types of models.
The post Mozilla AI Guide Launch with Summarization Code Example appeared first on Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2023/11/mozilla-ai-guide-launch-with-summarization-code-example/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Jeff Geerling blog
The Mighty ’MOX: 50kW AM Tower site tour
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Nearing it's centennial, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KMOX">KMOX-AM</a> (1120 kHz) is a 50,000-watt clear-channel AM radio station with studios located in downtown St. Louis, MO, USA.</p>But their broadcast tower is located about 10 miles northeast, in Pontoon Beach, IL. My Dad was the director of engineering overseeing the tower and studios for about 20 years, and though he’s no longer there, he and I got permission from Audacy and the St. Louis engineers (thanks!) to tour the site, and learn a bit about how they broadcast their AM signal—which reaches all the way into Canada and Mexico at night!
In this blog post, I’ll write a bit about KMOX’s tower system (AM towers are a lot different than FM, like the FM Supertower we toured last year), the transmitter, and the some of the history found at that tower site.
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/mighty-mox-50kw-am-tower-site-tour
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 25-year-old man was “not welcome” at the home due to past incidents, officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281939168.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
San Jose officials have paved the path to convert a choice apartment complex in the city’s downtown into an all-affordable housing property.
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
A protest on the Bay Bridge forced westbound lane closures on the Bay Bridge on Thursday morning.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
A grandmother mailed her grandson a birthday card with a check, but it was stolen, authorities said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281936668.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Police don’t know the motive for the killing of Michael Rangel last month.
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
45% of U.S. teens agree that their parents know more than they do about GAI.
date: 2023-11-16, from: David Rosenthal’s blog
Yesterday,
at the DigiPres conference, Vicky Reich and I were awarded a
“Sustainability Excellence Award”
by the National Digital Stewardship
Alliance. This is a tribute to the sustained hard work of the entire
LOCKSS team over more than a
quarter-century.We are honored by and grateful for this award, and happy that the
program we left for our new career as full-time grandparents is
flourishing in good hands.
https://blog.dshr.org/2023/11/ndsa-sustainability-excellence-award.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
They were sold at Bergdorf-Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom’s and other stores, including the manufacturer’s store.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/recalls/article281936263.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Tyler Burrow was found with the missing woman’s dog and pickup truck.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/16/tyler-burrow-bailey-blunt-missing-oregon-woods/
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
The incident happened Tuesday night after the suspect was asked to leave the hospital.
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Something likely to be absent from Microsoft’s Ignite event is talk of a fix rolled out to deal with malfunctioning Windows Server 2022 Virtual Machines following a problematic update from the company.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/microsoft_windows_server_patch/
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ethics panel says it found ‘substantial evidence’ of lawbreaking by Republican Rep. George Santos.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/16/read-house-ethics-committee-report-on-gop-rep-george-santos/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The defect led to the death of a 23-year-old mother, who was shot after dropping the Georgia company’s pistol, the lawsuit says.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281913473.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 25-year-old died at the scene.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281935333.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Since 1990, permits grow 27%-a-year in building booms and shrink 25% ain construction busts.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/16/how-do-california-homebuilding-booms-differ-from-busts/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“My palms were sweating, my heart was racing. It was a big adrenaline rush.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281935883.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Marketplace Morning Report
2023 was the year that the the United States Postal Service was supposed to break even, per Postmaster Louis DeJoy’s austerity plan. But this week, USPS announced a $6.5 billion net loss for the last fiscal year. We take a closer look. Plus, checking in on U.S.-China tariffs and examining the specialized supply chain needed to move avocados.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Liliputing
Samsung’s Galaxy Book 3 series line of laptops launched in February, but next-gen models could already be just around the corner. According to leaked specs published by Windows Report, five Galaxy Book 4 models are on the way, all with Intel Meteor Lake processors. Some models are also expected to feature discrete graphics, with certain […]
The post Samsung Galaxy Book 4 leaked: Models with Intel Arc and Nvidia 4070 GPUs on the way appeared first on Liliputing.
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled that China will send new pandas to the United States, calling them “envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.”
“We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples,” Xi said Wednesday during a dinner speech with business leaders.
The gesture came at the end of a day in which Xi and President Joe Biden held their first face to face meeting in a year and pledged to try to reduce tensions. Xi did not share additional details on when or where pandas might be provided but appeared to suggest the next pair of pandas are most likely to come to California, probably San Diego.
The bears have long been the symbol of the U.S.-China friendship since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National Zoo in Washington in 1972, ahead of the normalization of bilateral relations. Later, Beijing loaned the pandas to other U.S. zoos, with proceeds going back to panda conservation programs.
The National Zoo’s three giant pandas, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji, eight days ago began their long trip to China. After their departure, only four pandas are left in the United States, in the Atlanta Zoo.
“I was told that many American people, especially children, were really reluctant to say goodbye to the pandas, and went to the zoo to see them off,” Xi said in his speech. He added that he learned the San Diego Zoo and people in California “very much look forward to welcoming pandas back.”
Xi is in California to attend a summit of Indo-Pacific leaders and for his meeting with Biden. He made no mention of the pandas during his public remarks earlier in the day as he met with Biden.
When bilateral relations began to sour in the past few years, members of the Chinese public started to demand the return of giant pandas. Unproven allegations that U.S. zoos mistreated the pandas, known as China’s “national treasure,” flooded China’s social media.
But relations showed signs of stabilization as Xi traveled to San Francisco to meet with Biden. The two men met for about four hours Wednesday at the picturesque Filoli Historic House & Garden, where they agreed to cooperate on anti-narcotics, resume high-level military communications and expand people-to-people exchanges.
The National Zoo’s exchange agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association had been set to expire in early December and negotiations to renew or extend the deal did not produce results.
The San Diego Zoo returned its pandas in 2019, and the last bear at the Memphis, Tennessee, zoo went home earlier this year.
date: 2023-11-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has measured the size of the nearest Earth-sized exoplanet that passes across the face of a neighboring star. This alignment, called a transit, opens the door to follow-on studies to see what kind of atmosphere, if any, the rocky world might have. The diminutive planet, LTT 1445Ac, was first discovered by […]
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The rock-dwelling animal had “pockets” on its neck, researchers said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281906998.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The countdown is already underway and there are less than 200 days until Mexicans abroad can vote in their country’s elections on June 2, 2024.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281910548.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: 404 Media Group
Adult content creators are seeing an influx of “sensitive content” labels on Twitter, which could be tied to the site’s newly implemented sensitivity settings for advertisers.
https://www.404media.co/twitter-x-sensitive-content-label-advertisers/
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Affiliates of the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware-as-a-service operation are turning to malvertising campaigns to establish an initial foothold in their victims’ systems.…
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Here’s
a demo app that scrolls
through pictures recently posted by one of the
art feeds on
Bluesky. Artshow is not itself a feed reader, it calls FeedLand,
via
an API, to get the recent posts from feeds in the list. It’s all
very simple, small pieces loosely joined. An illustration that there’s
more to feed “reading” than we might think (podcasting is a another form
of feed reading that doesn’t look like a feed reader).
http://scripting.com/2023/11/16.html#a144450
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
We need something like Black Lives Matter for Jews. Our lives do matter. But our right to continue to live is always up for debate.
http://scripting.com/2023/11/16.html#a144441
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
As casualties mount from fighting between Israel and Hamas, the U.S. relatives of those affected by the violence are grieving the loss of friends and loved ones. In New York, Aron Ranen talks with people who have family ties to the conflict.
https://www.voanews.com/a/terror-of-israel-hamas-war-resonates-with-us-families/7357642.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
He disappeared after leaving a Dollar General store, records show.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281932643.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners
https://www.fresnobee.com/shopping/article281537863.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Warner Skoch has built a fully functioning Raspberry Pi-powered Game Boy for giants, because he is a genius.
The post Game Boy for giants appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/game-boy-for-giants/
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
Following the meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco on Wednesday, analysts say Beijing is hoping to de-escalate tension with the U.S. by easing its stance and projecting a less confrontational tone.
“In the official readout, Xi states China has no plan to surpass or supplant America and he also notes that China doesn’t export its ideology, showing a markedly narrower scope of geopolitical ambition,” Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University (ANU), told VOA in a written response.
He said the messages are in stark contrast to Xi’s previous proclamation that “the East is rising and the West is falling.”
In the official readout released on Thursday, Xi highlighted the importance for Beijing and Washington to avoid confrontation, saying that “turning their back on each other” is not an option for the two superpowers.
“Major-country competition can’t solve the problems facing China and the United States or the world,” he said. “The world is big enough to accommodate both countries and one country’s success is an opportunity for the other.”
Apart from emphasizing the need to avoid conflict, Xi said China has no plan to “surpass or unseat the United States” and that it doesn’t export its ideology.
He laid out five principles for Beijing and Washington to manage bilateral relations, calling on both sides to develop a “right perception,” jointly manage disagreements, advance mutually beneficial cooperation, shoulder responsibilities as major countries, and promote people-to-people ties.
“It is important that they appreciate each other’s principles and red lines and have more communications, more dialogues, more consultations and calmly handle their differences as well as accidents,” Xi said.
Some experts say the points highlighted in the readout and other efforts from Beijing before the meeting all suggest the Chinese government’s desire to frame the meeting between Biden and Xi as a success. “I think the overall response [from Beijing] was firm but positive,” Amanda Hsiao, senior China analyst at International Crisis Group, told VOA by phone.
In her view, the Chinese government wants to project the image that it remains in control of the bilateral relationship but it’s also opening up to the U.S. “[Beijing wants to show] that it is extending a gesture out to the U.S. to improve relations but it’s doing so from a position of strength,” she said.
While some analysts view Beijing’s messages from the readout as largely conciliatory and positive, others say it still reflects China’s reservation about Washington’s possible attempt to influence its governance system.
“The mention of not changing each other’s systems suggests China’s suspicion that the United States is out to alter its communist party-dominated system,” Ian Chong, a political scientist at National Singapore University, told VOA in a written response.
Xi emphasizes ‘common interests’
Apart from emphasizing the importance of preventing competition from escalating into conflict, Xi also highlighted the need for China and the U.S. to expand cooperation in a wide range of areas, including economy, trade, agriculture, climate change, and artificial intelligence.
“The common interests between China and the United States have increased, not decreased,” he said, according to the readout.
Despite his emphasis on broadening the scope of bilateral cooperation, Xi also urged the U.S. to end export controls and the practice of investment screening, referring to a government executive order that restricts U.S. investments into Chinese companies or Chinese-owned companies engaged in three advanced technology areas.
“Stifling China’s technological progress is nothing but a move to contain China’s high-quality development and deprive the Chinese people of their right to development,” Xi said, adding that China’s development and growth “won’t be stopped by external forces.”
Sung from ANU said these messages show that Washington’s controls risking may be generating enough pressure on China to force Beijing to “pivot back to a more conciliatory posture.”
“China’s economic woes seem to be catching up with its foreign policy rhetoric,” he told VOA.
As part of the effort to encourage foreign investment in China, Xi told a group of U.S. business leaders that China would be a “friend and partner” of the U.S. while reiterating that Beijing “never bet on the United States to lose.”
“The world needs China and the U.S. to work together for a better future,” he told an audience of business leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “China is ready to be a partner and friend of the U.S.”
Given the economic slowdown that China has experienced since the start of 2023, Chong in Singapore said Xi would like to encourage foreign investment and technological exchanges, as it “could help foster growth” in the Chinese economy.
Attempt to reduce tension over Taiwan
Despite the ongoing tension between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, Xi still briefly addressed the topic during his meeting with Biden. According to the readout, he urged the U.S. to “take real actions” to honor its commitment of “not supporting Taiwan independence, stop arming Taiwan and support China’s reunification.”
“China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable,” he said.
Compared to previous statements on Taiwan, Hsiao from the International Crisis Group said Xi’s remarks on Wednesday were relatively brief. “In the past, you would see a long elaboration of China’s position on Taiwan, but this tone is different,” she told VOA.
In her view, the latest statement from Beijing is more specific about what China is asking of the U.S. when it comes to Taiwan. “I think what we have seen from this readout, as well as from the U.S. side, indicate that the two sides are seeking to de-escalate around Taiwan, particularly because there are elections coming up, which could create unknowns in the relationship and could potentially see tensions flare up,” Hsiao said.
While the messages from China seem more positive and conciliatory, Hsiao said the essence of U.S.-China relations hasn’t changed.
“It remains a competitive relationship and even if China continues to say that it believes it’s not a competitive relationship, it will continue to see Washington as a key rival in reality,” she told VOA.
She thinks the biggest achievement of the Biden-Xi meeting is to create some protection against some key events that will take place in the next year, including presidential elections in Taiwan and the U.S.
“It’s important that this meeting occurred so we have that buffer going into the year where things might get commensurate,” Hsiao said.
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: Deno blog
Building on top of an all Deno stack unlocks a simple, modern developer experience for Deco.cx’s developer platform while maintaining high PageSpeed scores.
https://deno.com/blog/deco-cx-subhosting-serve-their-clients-storefronts-fast
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
STEM education and more taught on board.
The post Tall Ship Commissioned for Educational Adventures appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/16/tall-ship-commissioned-for-educational-adventures/
date: 2023-11-16, from: 404 Media Group
An AI-generated image of Taylor Swift in a Nazi uniform pushing an Jewish person into an oven has been shared by an account with more than 150,000 followers. Time for an experiment.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2023-11-16, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
On my Godot/Editor iPad prototype:
I am running into too many rough edges, the need for bandaids is too large, and I think people would hate using it in practice.
Rather than bridging with a universe of hacks the Godot UI with iOS, I am thinking: rewrite the shell entirely in SwiftUI and call into the editor core
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111420630632270576
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Databricks has decided to launch a complete overhaul of its platform during the climax of Ignite, the global tech shindig run by Microsoft, the software giant with which the data analytics and ML vendor shares a significant partnership.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/databricks_sinks_lakehouse_in_bid/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Distilled Earth blog
In recent years multiple technologies have made significant progress in solving one of clean energy’s biggest problems
https://www.distilled.earth/p/the-long-duration-storage-technologies
date: 2023-11-16, from: 404 Media Group
Members of the wider digital underground, known as The Com, often funnel stolen Bitcoin into a variety of online casinos including Stake, material obtained by 404 Media shows.
https://www.404media.co/hackers-use-online-casinos-stake-the-com/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Behavioral Health and Wellness Center was awarded the Strategic Prevention Framework for Prescription Drugs, or SPF-Rx, grant, the agency announced in a press release. GBHWC will get $2.5 million in funding, from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health…
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
Additional funding, along with workforce development and training, appear to be some of the key factors to bolstering cybersecurity capacity on Guam, according to discussions Tuesday at a legislative roundtable hearing on cybersecurity within the government of Guam.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A woman pleaded not guilty to charges related to the death of her 1-year-old child earlier this month.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
Leilani Lujan has become the first woman of CHamoru descent to serve as the federal public defender.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A man was accused of robbing a woman of six dollars in cash.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A 67-year-old woman who died Wednesday is believed to have been shot by a man in Toto. The suspect was later found dead at the Harvest Christian Academy soccer field.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A man was charged in connection to throwing a knife at a woman more than two years ago.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A man was charged in connection to crashing a car into a utility pole, which resulted in his passenger being injured.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
The Port Authority of Guam board of directors has been left one member shy of being able to make quorum, as eight lawmakers decided against passing the nomination for Judith Guthertz to continue serving as a director.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2023-11-16, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
My 10yo son yesterday:
“We created a chat group for the whole grade, we have like 30 people there. It’s crazy”
Me: what did you do about the kids with androids? Are they there?
Him: no. We just didn’t add them.
This wasn’t a blue vs green bubble split, just a FaceTime-abled split. They jump on massive conference calls to play games.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111420578202885170
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
BTW, Bluesky has excellent RSS 2.0 support. Here’s my feed on Bluesky. You can hook that up to any feed reader, obviously. But think about it, this is something new.
http://scripting.com/2023/11/16.html#a135746
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The husband shot his pregnant wife as he was driving, police said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281932828.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
FresnoHop connects the Brewery District, the Tower District and Campus Point until midnight on Thursdays and until 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturdays.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281400563.html
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Japan Airlines is looking into the feasibility of using hydrogen-electric engines to power aircraft in future, and is working with three engineering outfits to study issues such as safety and maintainability.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/japan_looking_at_hydrogen_fuelcell/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Veterans often develop a unique slate of skills when serving in the armed forces, but private-sector employers sometimes fail to recognize those abilities. At a time when many companies are still struggling to hire up, how can we more successfully match veterans’ talents with civilian opportunities? Also: tackling discrimination in internet access and recapping the Biden-Xi talks.
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The LAist
Tuberculosis kills more people worldwide than any other infectious disease besides COVID-19
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Sierra High said there’s extra motivation for its eight-man championship game against Fresno Christian.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/high-school/prep-football/article281929253.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Three California doctors debunk these eight common flu vaccine myths and misconceptions.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281611028.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Markup blog
“I don’t think the Vietnamese people in the U.S. get enough credible news. And I don’t know how to help them get credible news, except that I do the best I can with my videos.”
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The fire remains out of control, officials say.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281930823.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Former Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp says China’s out to cripple our pharmaceutical industry, and also floods U.S. with fake pills.
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article281906673.html
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Royal Mail’s parent company has revealed for the first time the infrastructure costs associated with its January ransomware attack.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/royal_mail_recovery_from_ransomware/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The park is “home to the tallest living sand dune system” on the East Coast.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281901363.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Russia is the world’s largest producer of rough diamonds, and despite all the sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine last year, diamonds are one of the few major exports still untouched. But that’s about to change. Plus, Taiwan is at the heart of the world’s semiconductor trade, but as tensions with China persist, is it viable to have so much production in one place?
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/clamping-down-on-russias-diamond-trade
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Interesting article about a surprisingly common vulnerability: programmers leaving authentication credentials and other secrets in publicly accessible software code:
Researchers from security firm GitGuardian this week reported finding almost 4,000 unique secrets stashed inside a total of 450,000 projects submitted to PyPI, the official code repository for the Python programming language. Nearly 3,000 projects contained at least one unique secret. Many secrets were leaked more than once, bringing the total number of exposed secrets to almost 57,000…
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
Hello friends of the Santa Clarita Valley, and greetings from Texas. Yes, you read that correctly, I have relocated to Texas. Not for the reasons that are always tossed around on the internet, and not for the desire for a more stable political environment. I’ve moved because our daughter and her family had moved there […]
The post Jennifer Danny | When a House Becomes a Shell appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/jennifer-danny-when-a-house-becomes-a-shell/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
I read Karen Fencil’s very thoughtful letter (Nov. 9) regarding “Mikes” Johnson and Garcia, where she discusses the theocratic, right-wing narrative of the new speaker of the House and the Republicans (including our own Rep. Garcia) who put him there. Here is another point to chew on. Democrats are rejoicing yet another “win” for abortion […]
The post Lynn Wright | Another Point to Chew On appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/lynn-wright-another-point-to-chew-on/
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
NASA researchers have developed tools to simulate how rocket engines disrupt the lunar surface in light of plans for newer and larger landers as part of missions to return to the Moon.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/nasa_lander_plume_simulations/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Florida case shows the danger of overreach in abuse investigations. | Opinion
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article281901513.html
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Canonical hosted an amusingly failure-filled demo of its new easy-to-install, Ubuntu-powered tool for building small-to-medium scale, on-premises high-availability clusters, Microcloud, at an event in London yesterday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/canonical_microcloud/
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
SC23 Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman has criticized Nvidia for its efforts to limbo dance under US semiconductor export limits to China, calling the behavior “un-American” and likening graphics processor titan to an AI arms dealer.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/cerebras_ceo_blasts_nvidia/
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
US President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday outside of San Francisco, where leaders of Asia-Pacific economies are gathering. Biden – who said he still sees the Chinese leader as a “dictator” – said the two agreed to re-establish military communications, work together to assess the threats posed by artificial intelligence, and take meaningful steps to combat the scourge of fentanyl. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Woodside, California.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>By Hawaii Tribune-Herald</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/16/sports/photo-hilo-kickboxers-win-on-oahu/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Ending the threat of a government shutdown until after the holidays, Congress gave final approval Wednesday night to a temporary government funding package that pushes a confrontation over the federal budget into the new year.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Police and protesters clashed outside Democratic National Committee headquarters on Wednesday night during a demonstration for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, the latest reflection of boiling tensions over the bloody conflict.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LOS ANGELES — The fire erupted after midnight where 16 people were living under the Los Angeles freeway, including a pregnant woman who was only weeks from giving birth.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>HARRISONBURG, Va. — James Madison must be making fellow Sun Belt Conference programs wonder “who invited these guys?” </p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>HONOLULU – The Vulcans shot nearly 60 percent in a charged-up second half but the UH-Hilo Men’s Basketball team were ultimately taken down by UH Manoa, 82-66, Tuesday evening in an exhibition contest at the SimpliFi Arena at the Stan Sheriff Center.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>KEALAKEKUA — After several weeks off, Konawaena football is finally ready to roll this weekend.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>ARLINGTON, Texas — Major League Baseball team owners are set to vote today on the proposed relocation of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas at the end of their league-wide meeting. </p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>KAILUA-KONA — After a four-year hiatus, Kona’s longest running and popular Karate competition returned for its 16th edition on Saturday at the Kekuaokalani Gymnasium.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/16/sports/ikl-championship-returns/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LAHAINA — There were just five penalties, combined, and a total of six incomplete passes. Guys played hard, staying in bounds, fighting for extra yards. There were no long injury timeouts — real or fake.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A former Hawaii Police Department assistant chief was in Circuit Court on Wednesday for a hearing about a motion to modify bail conditions. </p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The state Land Use Commission will hear a motion today asking the panel to reconsider its denial of a request by developers for more time to try to redistrict some land in the Kaloko Heights project in Kailua-Kona.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A woman’s threats on an American Airlines flight headed to Hawaii over wearing a face mask caused the captain to turn the plane around, according to federal prosecutors. Now, she owes the airline thousands of dollars.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Pana‘ewa Rainforest Zoo and Gardens on Sunday unveiled a revitalized bird habitat and its “outgoing” new tenant.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WOODSIDE, Calif. (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping emerged Wednesday from their first face-to-face meeting in a year vowing to stabilize their fraught relationship and showcasing modest agreements to combat illegal fentanyl and re-establish military communications. But there were still deep differences on economic competition and global security threats.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Work to restore a portion of Highway 137 will begin early next year after a lower Puna road restoration project finally cleared one of its last major hurdles.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Police have located 38-year-old Terriphena Yazzie of Mountain View. She was reported missing on Nov. 12.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/16/hawaii-news/police-missing-woman-daughters-found/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Police are renewing their request for information about a July 2021 unsolved murder of an elderly Pahoa man in lower Puna.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/16/hawaii-news/police-seek-info-on-unsolved-murder/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Police are again requesting information about the disappearance of 34-year-old Kelly Gravitt of Pahoa.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>From 8 a.m. to 2 p.m on Friday, the state Department of Transportation will conduct an emergency response training exercise at Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>During the week of Nov. 6-12, Hawaii Island police arrested 12 motorists for DUI. Two of the drivers were involved in a traffic collision. One was younger than 21.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/16/hawaii-news/police-arrest-12-for-dui-9/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LAS VEGAS — A 17-year-old high school student in Las Vegas was beaten to death in an alleyway around the corner from campus by 10 of his classmates between the ages of 13 and 17, a prearranged fight that authorities said broke out over a pair of headphones and a vape pen.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A former Hawaii psychiatric hospital patient indicted Wednesday on a murder charge in the stabbing death of a nurse at the facility had pleaded guilty to a 2020 assault of a state mental health worker, court records show.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — Donald Trump is seeking a mistrial in New York state’s $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against the former president, alleging the judge and his law clerk have tainted the proceedings with rampant political bias.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DETROIT — The United Auto Workers announced Monday that it reached a tentative deal with General Motors, capping a whirlwind few days in which GM, Ford and Stellantis agreed to generous terms that would end the union’s six weeks of targeted strikes, pending approval of the rank and file.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Batman and the Joker, a man decked out in a full-body lion costume, and another whose head and arms have been replaced by chainsaws. This isn’t Carnival or Comic-Con, but rather the outlandish campaign rally for Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Federal Aviation Administration gave SpaceX the OK to go on its second attempt to launch its Starship and Super Heavy, and Elon Musk’s company is aiming for a Friday morning liftoff of the massive test rocket.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>As the Israel-Hamas war has unleashed a growing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and roiled global politics, one superpower has claimed neutrality: China has called on both sides to exercise restraint and for the international community to expedite a two-state solution — distant goals in this fraught moment.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>MIAMI (AP) — Hazardous, forced work conditions sometimes akin to slavery have been detected on nearly 500 industrial fishing vessels around the world, but identifying those responsible for abuses at sea is hampered by a lack of transparency and regulatory oversight, a new report concluded.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Israeli troops on Wednesday stormed into Gaza’s largest hospital, searching for traces of Hamas inside and beneath the facility, where newborns and hundreds of other patients have suffered for days without electricity and other basic necessities as fighting raged outside.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Nearly nine out of 10 parents believe their child is performing at grade level despite standardized tests showing far fewer students are on track, according to a poll released Wednesday by Gallup and the nonprofit Learning Heroes.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Evan Olins, 84, of Kailua-Kona died Aug. 6 in Kona Community Hospital. He and wife, Gwen, moved their family from California to Kona in 1979 where they opened Flamingo’s and later Hula Heaven. He contributed to many books on Hawaiiana and they wrote “Lei in a Bottle.” Survived by wife, Gwen Olins; sons, Jon Timothy McCoy and Ethan (Anielka) Olins of Kona; daughter, Laura (Harry) Basil of Las Vegas; hanai daughter, Dana (Wesley) Mattos of Kona; three grandsons, three granddaughters and a great-granddaughter. Arrangements by Ballard Family Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/16/obituaries/obituaries-for-november-16-11/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Ukraine’s closest European allies are increasingly concerned about the U.S.’s ability to sustain support for Kyiv amid a thorny political spending debate ahead of next year’s presidential elections. Senior officials from Baltic nations expressed disquiet in interviews about tensions over funding in the U.S. Congress that threaten to leave Ukraine without sufficient aid to beat back Russia’s invasion, as a slower-than-expected counteroffensive grinds to a stalemate. “I am concerned about the internal political debate in the U.S. about this,” Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins said of support for Ukraine. “It seems that some of the debaters are forgetting the importance to American security of maintaining their leading role in the world and in NATO,” he said in Brussels this week.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>“Mermaids’ Lament,” a film directed by GB Hajim and set against the backdrop of Hawaii Island, is ready to make its Big Island premier at 7 p.m. Friday at the Palace Theater in Hilo and at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 25, at the Aloha Theatre in Kona.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Kamehameha Schools Hawaii is ready to take the stage the next three nights for its fall musical, the ultimate feel-good show, “Mamma Mia!”</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The public is invited to attend “Revitalizing Hawaii with Food Forestry,” a free class, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 25, at Panaewa Farmers Market Educational Hub located at 363 Railroad Ave. in Panaewa (across from Home Depot).</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Kahilu Theater presents the Waimea Community Chorus’ “Sing in the Season” concert at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 26.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Target recently announced that it was closing nine store locations because of “organized retail crime.” The term, which is often used interchangeably with “organized retail theft,” is being used more and more to describe viral videos of what’s often seen as “brazen” theft taking place in retail stores like Walgreens, CVS and Target. But what does it mean exactly? And does it actually describe a real trend or is it a myth propagated by corporations and the media?</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/16/opinion/debunking-the-myth-of-a-shoplifting-crisis/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Given Donald Trump’s stubborn standing atop polls of Republican voters, there may be no more meaningless exercise in futility right now than even talking about the rest of the GOP presidential field, let alone tentatively backing one candidate in that field.</p>
date: 2023-11-16, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
In our series of community stories, we celebrate some of the amazing young people and educators who are using their passion for technology to create positive change in the world around them. In our latest story, we’re sharing the inspiring journey of St Joseph’s Secondary School in Rush, Ireland. Over the past few years, the…
The post Celebrating the community: St Joseph’s Secondary School appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-the-community-st-josephs/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
Get ready for the city’s ultimate kick-off to the holiday season — Light Up Main Street! Every year, families and friends come together for this Santa Clarita tradition as Main Street in Old Town Newhall transforms into a winter wonderland. This is one of my favorite nights of the year and I encourage you to join […]
The post Marsha McLean | Illuminate the Night at Light Up Main Street appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/marsha-mclean-illuminate-the-night-at-light-up-main-street/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
News release Soroptimist International of Greater Santa Clarita Valley has announced the expansion of its “Dream It, Be It” conference into local junior high schools, with the inaugural event having been held at Placerita Junior High School on Nov. 3. The “Dream It, Be It” conference, previously hosted for high school-age girls at Canyon High […]
The post Soroptimists expand Dream It, Be It program appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/soroptimists-expand-dream-it-be-it-program/
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Scientists have revealed how data from a NASA telescope was secured thanks to creative thinking and a batch of Raspberry Pi computers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/scientists_use_raspberry_pi_tech/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Robert Reich on Substack
My answer, and a proposal for what Biden must do
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-are-people-so-down-on-the-economy
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
Guam Fire Department units responded to a major crash along Route 10 near Uncle Cho’s Mart in Mangilao at around 5:43 p.m. Thursday.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
A few days ago, I was wondering about people writing the software for their personal site – a blog or a wiki or a digital garden or a Zettelkasten – running software the authors wrote themselves or got from a friend. As it turns out, a few people sent me their links and so I’ve started a collection called The text and the code go hand in hand.
The following is a copy of the intro to the collection.
Sometimes I hear of “opinionated” software. That is, software which has a strong vision of how to do a thing. If you like it, use it. If you don’t, then don’t. But what happens if the software turns out to be something the author of a site wrote for themselves? It’s more than opinionated. It’s personal.
This website presents a number of sites and the tools they use to create and update them.
If you’re wondering why the list is small, the explanation is that personal tools are not tidied up and yet we live in a world of software that is written for being shared. In the corporate context, team members, reviewers and successors need to understand the code. In the private world, public code is polished in order to reflect well on programmers and their abilities.
But night software is not like that. It’s not written for the day job. It’s not written to see the light of day at all. It’s not written to be looked at and scrutinized by anybody. It’s intimate and personal, it’s messy and buggy. To take a look is to transgress.
And yet, this software offers the unique chance of being the kernel of convivial software: a tool that we can not only learn how to use but that we can disassemble and reassemble. We can imagine little computer clubs discussing our tools, showing how we added this feature or that feature. It is possible because the tools are small.
So if you’re thinking “that stuff is all a huge tangled mess” and “the code generating my website is not for the public…” – then rest assured. This is exactly what I’m trying to show. I remember my first system being a collection of GNU M4 macros and a Makefile and I’d publish it in a heartbeat, if I still had it. That’s how I wrote my GeoCities pages.
I’d love to show the world the unpolished, “just good enough with a number of bugs I know of” solutions. Let me know if you have one.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2023-11-16-personal-software
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
A controversial section of federal law that gives U.S. intelligence agencies the ability to conduct warrantless surveillance of the communications of non-U.S. persons abroad will expire at the end of the year, creating pressure on Congress to renew it, even as privacy activists demand that it be reformed.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows electronic surveillance of non-U.S. persons overseas and outside the United States for purposes of national security. It also contains a provision allowing for surveillance of foreign intelligence targets within the U.S., subject to the approval of a special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court.
Because the surveillance of foreign nationals can often pick up the communications of American citizens who are not its direct target, many civil liberties organizations believe FISA operations violate legal protections on individual privacy. Adding to that concern is the fact that the information collected as part of FISA surveillance can be queried by domestic law enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, without a warrant. Critics say this practice amounts to “backdoor searches.”
Investigations in recent years have found numerous instances in which law enforcement agencies have abused the FISA process to obtain access to information about U.S. nationals. That includes operations that gathered information about former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team and others that targeted the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Rights groups object
Jeramie D. Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s (EPIC) Project on Surveillance Oversight, told VOA that his group believes the law should only be renewed if major safeguards are added.
“EPIC and our coalition partners have been very clear that Section 702 should not be reauthorized without significant reforms, including a warrant requirement for searches of U.S. persons’ information,” he wrote in an email exchange.
Kia Hamadanchy, a senior policy counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said that his organization has been challenging Section 702 since the day FISA was signed into law, and that its opposition continues.
“We have serious, serious concerns with how the problem is being operated,” he told VOA. “Over the last 15 years, we’ve seen a whole host of abuses. … So, our current position is that Section 702 should not be reauthorized absent fundamental reform.”
Law enforcement cites need
In an appearance before the House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray delivered prepared testimony in which he outlined a broad range of security threats facing the country, and said that allowing Section 702 to expire, or restricting its use, would make the country less safe.
“Loss of this vital provision, or its reauthorization in a narrowed form, would raise profound risks,” Wray said. “For the FBI in particular, either outcome could mean substantially impairing, or in some cases entirely eliminating, our ability to find and disrupt many of the most serious security threats.”
At the same hearing, Christine Abizaid, director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), described Section 702 as essential to protecting the country against terrorist attacks.
“One of the most important questions for NCTC to determine is whether international terrorists could gain access to and pose a threat to the Homeland,” Abizaid said in her prepared testimony. “Section 702 is essential for our ability to do that, and without it, the United States and the world will be less safe.”
Different tracks in Congress
There appear to be at least two competing Section 702 reauthorization proposals making their way through Congress.
Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both the House of Representatives and the Senate announced the introduction of the Government Surveillance Reform Act, which would reauthorize Section 702 with significant restrictions.
Among other things, the bill would require domestic law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before searching FISA data for information about American citizens. It has been endorsed by a large number of civil liberties organizations.
“Americans know that it is possible to confront our country’s adversaries ferociously without throwing our constitutional rights in the trash can,” said Senator Ron Wyden, one of the co-sponsors, when the bill was introduced. “But for too long, surveillance laws have not kept up with changing times.”
Narrower reform
On Tuesday, the news organization Politico obtained a set of talking points outlining the shape of a competing Section 702 reauthorization proposal being considered by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The restrictions it would place on law enforcement use of Section 702 are fewer. For example, domestic law enforcement agencies would only need to obtain a warrant to search FISA data for “evidence of a crime.”
Rights groups criticized the intelligence committee’s version of reform for not going far enough.
“Limiting a warrant requirement to ‘evidence of a crime’ searches does little to address the well-documented abuses of the 702 authority,” said Scott of EPIC. “Furthermore, any serious proposal for reform needs to go beyond 702 to close similar loopholes that allow the government to obtain Americans’ information without a warrant. To not do so is to not take Americans’ privacy and civil liberties seriously.”
date: 2023-11-16, 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 16, 2023 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/classifieds-november-16-2023/
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Airbus has developed a completely mechanical solution to help make space junk easier to capture – using magnets, the Earth’s magnetic field and a bit of friction.…
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
News release Two Lego robotics teams from the Castaic Union School District, the Live Oak Spot Bots and Live Oak Leopard Bots, showcased their ingenuity and skills at the Valencia Qualifying competition, according to a news release from the district. The Nov. 5 event marked the inaugural competition of the season for both teams, […]
The post Castaic district celebrates success of robotics teams appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/castaic-district-celebrates-success-of-robotics-teams/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
News release The Salvation Army Santa Clarita Valley Corps invites the community to attend the annual Red Kettle Campaign ribbon-cutting ceremony at Light Up Main Street on Saturday at 5:15 p.m. You can join Capt. Rafael Viana, board members and elected officials as they kick off the holiday season. “The Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Campaign […]
The post Salvation Army to kick off Red Kettle Campaign at Light Up Main Street appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
date: 2023-11-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1941 – Rose (stagecoach) Station at bottom of Grapevine dedicated as California Historical Landmark. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-nov-16/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Welcome aboard this dream come true in the Santa Barbara Harbor.
The post Living the Dream on the ‘Summer Solstice’ appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/16/living-the-dream-on-the-summer-solstice/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Giffin & Crane recommends maintaining defensible space around your home and outbuildings to aid firefighters.
The post Keep Your Home Safe from Wildfires with Tips from Giffin & Crane appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
La falta de diversidad del profesorado afecta la experiencia universitaria.
The post Hacen falta más profesores latinos en la Universidad appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/hacen-falta-mas-profesores-latinos-en-la-universidad/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Para muchas familias inmigrantes, la educación es el patrimonio generacional.
The post Mi patrimonio generacional no es como el tuyo appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/mi-patrimonio-generacional-no-es-como-el-tuyo/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Aunque nunca conocí a mi abuelo, siempre se comunica a través de la música.
The post La música trasciende hacia el más allá appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/la-musica-trasciende-hacia-el-mas-alla/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Narcisa Hirsch alcanza através del tiempo y sus ideas todavía nos conmueven.
The post Narcisa Hirsch: In Relation Un viaje ético, político y filosófico appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/narcisa-hirsch-in-relation-un-viaje-etico-politico-y-filosofico/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Gardenia Rosales, Marvin García y Johanna Toruño celebran su herencia.
The post Salvadoreños empoderan sus comunidades appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/salvadorenos-empoderan-sus-comunidades/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
La organización reflexiona sobre sus logros e historia y mira hacia el porvenir.
The post El Latine Student Assembly celebra 40 años appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/el-latine-student-assembly-celebra-40-anos/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Native American faculty, students and others spoke on education and support.
The post USC celebrates Native American Heritage Month appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/usc-celebrates-native-american-heritage-month/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Professor Brent Blair hopes to foster community healing amid the Israel-Hamas war.
The post New School of Dramatic Arts course will explore Israeli and Palestinian narratives appeared first on Daily Trojan.
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Isolation and patriotism shined through in the film, shown by Visions & Voices.
The post ‘Bridge of Spies’ screening demonstrates resilience appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/bridge-of-spies-screening-demonstrates-resilience/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Ramones saved me from the loss of my childhood anger.
The post All my favorite music sucks appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/all-my-favorite-music-sucks/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Instagram college accounts are unreliable, misleading and promote superficial relationships.
The post The unfortunate process of finding roommates on Instagram appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/the-unfortunate-process-of-finding-roommates-on-instagram/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Students in healthcare must go into the field motivated to serve their community.
The post Pre-med students can’t exploit patients appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/16/pre-med-students-cant-exploit-patients/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
I did not intend to have any difficulties with my supervisor. “Good morning, doll.” I hate him. He’s a creep and I can hear him speaking to her, my cubicle neighbor. I hate that I can hear everything that wrongfully exists in the world, and hate that I can envision the congo-line of ants making…
https://sundial.csun.edu/176815/print-editions/print-stories/csun-poetry-lunch-break/
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Online ad auctions represent a threat to national security in the US and Europe, a civil rights group claims, because the data that enables personalized advertising could be used to compromise civilian and military leaders.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/online_ad_auction_data_risks/
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
Advances in childhood cancer are a success story in modern medicine. But in the past decade, those strides have stalled for Black and Hispanic youth, opening a gap in death rates, according to a new report published Thursday.
Childhood cancers are rare and treatments have improved drastically in recent decades, saving lives.
Death rates were about the same for Black, Hispanic and white children in 2001, and all went lower during the next decade. But over the next 10 years, only the rate for white children dipped a little lower.
“You can have the most sophisticated scientific advances, but if we can’t deliver them into every community in the same way, then we have not met our goal as a nation,” said Dr. Sharon Castellino, a pediatric cancer specialist at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta, who had no role in the new report.
She said the complexity of new cancers treatments such as gene therapy, which can cure some children with leukemia, can burden families and be an impediment to getting care.
“You need at least one parent to quit their job and be there 24/7, and then figure out the situation for the rest of their children,” Castellino said. “It’s not that families don’t want to do that. It’s difficult.”
More social workers are needed to help families file paperwork to get job-protected leave and make sure the child’s health insurance is current and doesn’t lapse.
The overall cancer death rate for children and teenagers in the U.S. declined 24% over the two decades, from 2.75 to 2.10 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
The 2021 rate per 10,000 was 2.38 for Black youth, 2.36 for Hispanics and 1.99 for whites.
Nearly incurable 50 years ago, childhood cancer now is survivable for most patients, especially those with leukemia. The leading cause of cancer deaths in kids is now brain cancer, replacing leukemia.
Each year in the U.S. about 15,000 children and teens are diagnosed with cancer. More than 85% live for at least five years.
The improved survival stems from research collaboration among more than 200 hospitals, said Dr. Paula Aristizabal of the University of California, San Diego. At Rady Children’s Hospital, she is trying to include more Hispanic children, who are underrepresented in research.
“Equity means that we provide support that is tailored to each family,” Aristizabal said.
The National Cancer Institute is working to gather data from every childhood cancer patient with the goal of linking each child to state-of-the-art care. The effort could improve equity, said Dr. Emily Tonorezos, who leads the institute’s work on cancer survivorship.
The CDC’s report is “upsetting and discouraging,” she said. “It gives us a roadmap for where we need to go next.”
date: 2023-11-16, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Sacramento Kings won their fourth in a row to open a six-game road trip on Wednesday night at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/article281926108.html
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Would you please hurry up and build your network?…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/cisco_q1_2024/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
Hart board hears presentation on parental notification policies The Hart High School auditorium was seemingly split in half on Wednesday: on one side, those who want to see a parental notification policy be implemented in the William S. Hart Union High School District, and another side that opposed the implementation of such a policy. The […]
The post <strong>Split in half</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/split-in-half/
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
U.S. President Joe Biden said he made “positive steps” during an intense hourslong meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping Wednesday.
The two agreed to re-establish lapsed military communications, work together to assess the threats posed by artificial intelligence, and work to combat the scourge of fentanyl.
However, Biden’s off-the-cuff comment that he still sees the powerful Chinese leader as a “dictator,” revealed that the two leaders remain, in some ways, far apart.
“Well, look, he is,” Biden said, in response to a shouted question from the clamoring throng of journalists at the secluded meeting site outside of San Francisco, where 21 Asia-Pacific economies are holding a summit this week.
“He is a dictator in a sense that he is a guy that runs a country, a communist country, that’s based on a totally different form of government than ours.”
The White House chose a sprawling, bucolic estate more than an hour’s drive from San Francisco for this heavily symbolic visit covering a range of key issues that included Taiwan – the self-governing island that China claims – the possible resumption of military communications, touchy trade disagreements, the origination of fentanyl ingredients in China, and human rights issues.
The scenic grounds cover the San Andreas fault, where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates touch.
Biden said he was “candid” on these tough issues that divide the two countries – as seen in the mixed reception that residents of this diverse city gave to the Chinese leader, with both anti-communist protesters and pro-Xi greeters lining the streets. On Wednesday, groups in at least two locations descended into fisticuffs, as documented in videos posted on social media.
Xi, in his brief remarks before the leaders began their meeting, said the two nations are inextricably linked.
“For two large countries like China, the United States turning their back on each other is not an option,” he said. “It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other. And conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.
I’m still of the view that major country competition is not to the prevailing trend of current times and cannot solve the problems facing China and the United States or the world at large.
Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed and one country’s success is an opportunity for the other.”
So did the presidents of the world’s two most powerful nations manage to paper over the cracks in their relationship?
Biden spoke to the press afterwards. Xi, as is his habit, did not.
The two did not release a joint statement.
“I welcome the positive steps we’ve taken today,” Biden said. ”And it’s important for the world to see that we’re implementing the approach in the best traditions of American diplomacy. We’re talking to our competitors, just talking and being blunt with one another so there’s no misunderstanding.”
Biden stopped far short of praising Xi, saying, “We have disagreements. He has a different view than I have on a lot of things. But he’s been straight. I don’t mean that good, bad or indifferent – just been straight.”
In the administration’s post-meeting readout, the White House said Biden repeated Washington’s long-held stance on Taiwan.
“President Biden emphasized that our one China policy has not changed and has been consistent across decades and administrations,” the readout said. “He reiterated that the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, that we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, and that the world has an interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. He called for restraint in the PRC’s use of military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait.”
Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told VOA he was struck by the leaders’ words on Taiwan.
“China often claims the U.S. is seeking to alter the status quo in the Strait,” he said. “The opposite is true. Xi’s stark comments expose, yet again, his desire to speed up reunification timetables, either through military force or coercion.”
Many watching this meeting said they weren’t expecting major results, but are glad the two leaders are talking.
“This engagement, for example, between President Biden and Xi Jinping, to me it is critical because it should give a clear message that we are here to be able to work together and trust each other to resolve serious problems: Climate, issues in Ukraine or Gaza,” said Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. ”There are too many contentious issues in the world and you must try and engage.”
Analysts say the success of the ongoing summit of Asia-Pacific economies – happening simultaneously in San Francisco – depends on the world’s two largest economies getting along.
“I think it’s an important meeting between President Biden and President Xi, with the primary goal of stabilizing the relationship heading into 2024,” said Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Both for bilateral purposes but also very importantly for the broader APEC region. The countries there, the economies there, want the U.S. and China to have some kind of modus vivendi, some kind of stable relationship, particularly in anticipation of Taiwan’s election in January, the U.S. election in November.”
Biden, when asked what he told Xi about Taiwan’s elections, said: “I made clear I didn’t expect any interference.”
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Singleton told VOA that he interpreted Xi’s words on “peaceful coexistence” differently, saying it “harkens back to Cold War-era language by Nikita Khrushchev, who promoted the notion of ‘peaceful coexistence’ between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Like today, previous policies aimed at stability counter-intuitively extended the Soviet system’s survival, treating the Soviet Union as an immutable juggernaut, rather than one whose demise was inevitable.”
Biden said the leaders will continue to talk. And on Thursday, they will give the other 19 Asia-Pacific economies a visual reminder of where they each stand, when the leaders pose for the so-called “family photo” — a ritual that is a hallmark of these major summits.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Olive Grove Charter Schools provide another choice to tri-county families.
The post The Tuition-Free, Public Charter Option appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/15/the-tuition-free-public-charter-option/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – November 13, 2023 Santa Barbara Airport (SBA) is currently developing and improving the Rental Car Parking
The post SBA Temporary Rental Car Parking Lot appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/15/sba-temporary-rental-car-parking-lot/
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
Rick Herrington said that his goal was to keep coaching until he wasn’t excited about going to practice every day. That time, he said, has come. After 46 years of coaching, 38 of them at Hart High and the last four as head coach, the 1978 Hart alumnus is officially retired as of Wednesday, he […]
The post <strong>Rick Herrington retires after 38 years with Hart football</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/rick-herrington-retires-after-38-years-with-hart-football/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara Education Foundation offers more than $200,000 for much-needed supplies.
The post Teacher Grants Up for Grabs appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/15/teacher-grants-up-for-grabs/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A 67-year-old woman who died Wednesday is believed to have been shot by a man in Toto. The suspect was later found dead at the Harvest Christian Academy soccer field.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SBCC’s School of Extended Learning helps this high-school rebel find her path.
The post Can’t Keep Gandhy Down appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/15/cant-keep-gandhy-down/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Jake Gidney’s passion for coding and problem-solving began with video games.
The post The Remarkable Journey of a Laguna Blanca Senior appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/15/the-remarkable-journey-of-a-laguna-blanca-senior/
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged the application of AI technology to speed along the maturity and accelerate adoption of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in a speech in Singapore on Wednesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/imf_head_ai_cbdc_call/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Thousands of Santa Barbara high school grads have now participated in SBCC’s free tuition program.
The post Seven Years of Kept Promises appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/15/seven-years-of-kept-promises/
date: 2023-11-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Crane Country Day School empowers students with self-care habits.
The post Mental Health and Middle-Schoolers appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/15/mental-health-and-middle-schoolers/
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
Ending the threat of a government shutdown until after the holidays, Congress gave final approval Wednesday night to a temporary government funding package that pushes a confrontation over the federal budget into the new year.
The Senate met into the night to pass the bill with an overwhelming 87-11 tally and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature one day after it passed the House on an overwhelming bipartisan vote. It provides a funding patch into next year, when the House and Senate will be forced to confront — and somehow overcome — their considerable differences over what funding levels should be.
In the meantime, the bill removes the threat of a government shutdown days before funding would have expired.
“This Friday night there will be no government shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech ahead of the final vote.
The spending package keeps government funding at current levels for roughly two more months while a long-term package is negotiated. It splits the deadlines for passing full-year appropriations bills into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two deadlines where there will be a risk of a partial government shutdown.
“Everybody is really kind of ready to vote and fight another day,” Republican Whip John Thune, the No. 2 Republican, said earlier Wednesday.
The spending package would keep government funding at current levels for roughly two more months while a long-term package is negotiated. It splits the deadlines for passing full-year appropriations bills into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two deadlines where there will be a risk of a partial government shutdown.
The spending bill does not include the White House’s nearly $106 billion request for wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine, as well as humanitarian funding for Palestinians and other supplemental requests. Lawmakers are likely to turn their attention more fully to that request after the Thanksgiving holiday in hopes of negotiating a deal.
Schumer called the stopgap funding plan “far from perfect,” but said he would support it because it averts a shutdown and “will do so without any of the cruel cuts or poison pills” that hardline conservatives wanted.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who crafted the plan, has vowed that he will not support any further stopgap funding measures, known as continuing resolutions. He portrayed the temporary funding bill as setting the ground for a spending “fight” with the Senate next year.
The new speaker, who told reporters this week that he counted himself among the “arch-conservatives” of the House, is pushing for deeper spending cuts. He wanted to avoid lawmakers being forced to consider a massive government funding package before the December holidays — a tactic that incenses conservatives in particular.
But Johnson is also facing pushback from other hardline conservatives who wanted to leverage the prospect of a government shutdown to extract steep cuts and policy demands.
Many of those conservatives were among a group of 19 Republicans who defied Johnson Wednesday to prevent floor consideration of an appropriations bill to fund several government agencies.
GOP leaders called off the week’s work after the vote, sending lawmakers home early for Thanksgiving. It capped a period of intense bickering among lawmakers.
“This place is a pressure cooker,” Johnson said Tuesday, noting that the House had been in Washington for 10 weeks straight.
The House GOP’s inability to present a united front on funding legislation could undercut the Louisiana congressman’s ability to negotiate spending bills with the Senate.
Republicans are demanding that Congress work out government funding through 12 separate bills, as the budgetary process requires, but House leadership has so far been forced to pull two of those bills from the floor, seen another rejected on a procedural vote and struggled to win support for others.
When it returns in two weeks, Congress is expected to focus on the Biden administration’s requests for Ukraine and Israel funding. Republican senators have demanded that Congress pass immigration and border legislation alongside additional Ukraine aid, but a bipartisan Senate group working on a possible compromise has struggled to find consensus.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in a floor speech pledged that Republicans would continue to push for policy changes on the U.S. border with Mexico, saying it is “impossible to ignore the crisis at our southern border that’s erupted on Washington Democrats’ watch.”
One idea floating among Republicans is directly tying Ukraine funding levels with decreases in the number of illegal border crossings. It showed how even longtime supporters of Ukraine’s defense against Russia are willing to hold up the funding to force Congress to tackle an issue that has flummoxed generations of lawmakers: U.S. border policy.
Most Senate Republicans support the Ukraine funding, said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., but he added, “It is secondary to securing our own border.”
But the U.S. is already trimming some of the wartime aid packages it is sending Ukraine as funds run low, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said from San Francisco, where he accompanied President Joe Biden for a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders.
He said the pot of money available for Ukraine is “withering away, and with it will be a deleterious effect on Ukraine’s ability to continue to defend itself.”
Schumer said the Senate would try to move forward on both the funding and border legislation in the coming weeks, but warned it would require a compromise.
“Both sides will have to give,” he said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-congress-approves-deal-pushing-shutdown-threat-to-january-/7357339.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
An exciting season of girls’ volleyball officially wrapped up on Tuesday as the last team standing fell in the regional opener. There were no CIF champions this year in the Santa Clarita Valley for the first time in three years, but the streak of at least one local team making it to the CIF quarterfinals […]
The post 2023 girls’ volleyball all-league appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/2023-girls-volleyball-all-league/
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
A 17-year-old high school student in Las Vegas was beaten to death in an alleyway around the corner from campus by 10 of his classmates between the ages of 13 and 17, a prearranged fight that authorities said broke out over a pair of headphones and a vape pen.
But police homicide Lt. Jason Johansson said that detectives think the victim wasn’t originally supposed to be involved in the brawl, which the students agreed would take place after classes were done for the day at Rancho High School in eastern Las Vegas.
Jonathan Lewis Jr. walked to the alleyway with his friend, whose headphones and vape pen had been stolen, Johansson said.
The deadly beating on Nov. 1 was captured on cellphone video and widely shared on social media. Johansson described the footage as “very void of humanity.”
In the video, he said, the victim is seen taking off his shirt to prepare for the fight, and then the 10 students “immediately swarm him, pull him to the ground and begin kicking, punching and stomping on him.”
Eight of the students were arrested Tuesday by Las Vegas police and the FBI on suspicion of murder. They were not immediately identified because they are under 18.
Las Vegas police said they haven’t yet been able to identify the two remaining students, who will also face murder charges. The police department released images of the teenagers, asking for help from the public to identify them.
On Wednesday afternoon, as classes ended for the day and students were leaving campus, a small memorial with flowers and eight candles sat against a fence in the alleyway where Lewis was killed.
Rancho High School principal Darlin Delgado said in a letter this week to parents that support and resources were available for students and staff members as the beating “has and will continue to impact our school community.”
Scott Coffee, a deputy public defender with 28 years of experience in Las Vegas, said it is unusual to have so many co-defendants of such young ages charged with murder in a single case. Coffee said he had not seen court documents and does not represent any of the defendants.
“When kids are involved in this kind of activity, they take the risk by being involved,” Coffee said. “But the flip side is this: Does it look like anybody intended to kill anyone?”
A family court judge on Wednesday ordered four of the students who are 16 or older to be transferred to the adult court system, the Review-Journal reported. Hearings will be held at later dates to determine if the students under 16 will be charged as adults.
Police and prosecutors will have to measure the level of culpability for each of the 10 defendants as the case moves through the court system, Coffee noted.
“Was there somebody in charge of this group? Was somebody younger just going along with the older folks?” he said, adding that although the students face similar charges at the time of their arrests, “it doesn’t mean the resolutions are necessarily going to be similar.”
After the brawl, a person in the area found the teenager badly beaten and unconscious in the alleyway and carried him back to campus, where school staff called 911, police said.
Lewis was hospitalized with severe head trauma and other injuries until his death a week later. The coroner’s office in Las Vegas ruled the beating a homicide.
The victim’s father, Jonathan Lewis Sr., didn’t respond Wednesday to requests for an interview. But on a fundraising page he created to help with funeral and medical expenses, he wrote that his son was attacked while standing up for his friend.
“Our son is a kind, loving, gentle young man who has the heart of a champion and the brightest loving energy that attracts people to him with love,” the page reads.
https://www.voanews.com/a/classmates-beat-las-vegas-teen-17-to-death-police-say-/7357329.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
Police in the nation’s capital responded Wednesday night to a protest outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
U.S. Capitol Police said about 150 people were “illegally and violently protesting” near the DNC headquarters building in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington. Members of Congress were evacuated from the building as the protest erupted.
Video posted on social media showed protesters shoving police officers and trying to grab hold of metal barricades as the officers moved in to make arrests. The videos also show officers shoving protesters. Many of the protesters were wearing black shirts that read “Cease Fire Now.”
Protesters included members of If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace, who have organized other demonstrations in Washington.
If Not Now posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “police are being extremely violent.”
“We are linking arms, threatening no one, and begging our politicians to support an end to the killing and the suffering in Gaza. Begging, peacefully, for a cease-fire,” the group posted.
The clashes Wednesday evening are the latest example of roiling tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas.
President Joe Biden has been under increasing pressure from the Democratic Party’s left flank over his support for Israel’s military operation, including interruptions from protesters at his speeches. He has resisted calls for a cease-fire, instead saying there should be pauses in the fighting to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and the potential extraction of hostages.
Last week, a large number of House Democrats joined nearly all Republicans in voting to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, over her criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.
Tlaib, who has family in the West Bank, came under heavy criticism after she failed to immediately condemn Hamas after the attack. She since has called out the terrorist group while also calling for a cease-fire.
The Metropolitan Police Department said its officers also responded to the disturbance. Officials sent an alert to congressional staffers telling them no one would be permitted to enter or exit any House office buildings.
Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, said he was evacuated from the building by police after protesters began “pepper-spraying police officers and attempting to break into the building.”
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Swedish digital rights organization Qurium has discovered around 250 cloned websites and suggested they exist to drive people to China-linked gambling sites.…
date: 2023-11-16, from: The Signal
Santa Clarita residents came by Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital’s Donate-A-Bear Drive, where new stuffed animals were dropped off to give to pediatric patients in the Emergency Department as a form of comfort. In addition to donating, those who participated could spend time with Henry the bear, while enjoying hot cocoa in the rainy weather. Community […]
The post Photos: Henry Mayo hosts Donate-A-Bear Drive appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/photos/
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
Among the guests at a $2,000-a-plate dinner for Xi Jinping Wednesday night was Luca Berrone, attending as a guest of the Chinese government.
The Des Moines businessman worked with the volunteer-driven Iowa Sister States program to establish a relationship with Hebei Province in 1983. It was a connection made with corn and solidified with soybeans by an organization that “is dedicated to connecting Iowans with to the world community.”
The group’s mission, it says “is to develop and implement programs that promote the cultural, economic and other interests of Iowa and its friends around the world.”
One of those friends rose decades later to become the leader of a 1.4 billion-person-strong global superpower while retaining a fondness for the Iowans he met almost 40 years ago despite the mutual suspicion that marks China’s relationship with the U.S.
In the spring of 1985, as the coordinator of the nonprofit Iowa Sister States, Berrone hosted Xi, then party committee secretary of Zhengding County, Hebei Province, and his delegation. Berrone arranged their itinerary and escorted Xi for two weeks as they explored the farmland around Muscatine, a city of about 24,000 people in southeast Iowa.
The not-yet-famous Xi bunked in a bedroom in the home of a local family, freed up because their son was away at college. That solution to a logistical problem, Berrone told The Des Moines Register, is key to Xi’s bond with Iowa.
“The only hotel available in Muscatine was all booked up. So I reached out to Sarah Lande, who was on the (Iowa Sister States) committee, and I asked if it was possible to organize home stays for the Chinese delegation, and she was able to contact a few families that were interested,” Berrone told the Register. “And it turned out those home stays were a turning point in building those long-term friendships.”
The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, noted that the delegation “visited elderly people in the local community, attended a birthday party, had six interviews with local media outlets and attended five welcome banquets held by the U.S. side.”
Berrone told VOA Mandarin on Monday afternoon that the five gentlemen of Hebei Province were congenial and personable.
“President Xi was very curious and intelligent,” he told VOA Mandarin. “I made sure they learned as much as possible about agricultural methods, technology and processing.”
In addition, there was a hog roast, a boat trip on the Mississippi River and rides on advanced farming equipment.
“We had a really good time in two weeks,” Berrone told Fortune. “We were like the road movie — five or six guys on a road trip.”
While the term “old friend” is often used by China to pay tribute to foreigners seen as beneficial to the interests of the Party, such as Henry Kissinger, it also can also carry a nostalgic feeling shared by longtime companions who respect and enjoy each others’ company.
Xi returned to Iowa in 2012, the year before he started his first five-year term as president and met with Berrone along with other old friends. Lande recalled Xi saying, “You were the first people I met in America, and to me, you are America,” according to Fortune.
In October 2013, Iowa companies and organizations signed 20 cooperative trade agreements with Hubei Province counterparts with a combined value touted at more than $1 billion.
In March 2019, when Xi visited Italy, then-Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte invited Berrone to welcome Xi, an event Berrone told VOA Mandarin was a highlight of his life.
https://www.voanews.com/a/xi-invites-old-friends-from-iowa-to-california-dinner-/7357275.html
@Mike Hukka’s Mastodon feed (date: 2023-11-16, from: Mike Hukka’s Mastodon feed)
People talk about "finding your superpower". I have concluded that my superpower is the ability to go down rabbit holes.
https://scholar.social/@mhucka/111417896763256772
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
It was a meeting a year in the making.
President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping sat down together on Wednesday just outside of San Francisco, where Asian leaders gathered for an annual summit. It was almost exactly one year since their last encounter in Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of another global gathering.
In addition to a formal bilateral meeting, Biden and Xi shared a lunch with top advisers and strolled the verdant grounds of the luxury estate where their meeting took place.
There’s no word on whether Chinese pandas will return to Washington’s zoo. But Biden said the meeting included “some of the most constructive and productive discussions we’ve had.” Here’s a look at how the day panned out.
New agreements
Biden left the meeting with commitments on key issues.
Xi agreed to help curb the production of the illicit fentanyl that is a deadly component of drugs sold in the United States. A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting, said the shift will be a setback for Latin American drug dealers.
“It’s going to save lives, and I appreciated President Xi’s commitment on this issue,” Biden said at a press conference after his meeting.
In addition, Biden and Xi reached an agreement to resume military-to-military communications. That means Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will speak with his Chinese counterpart once someone is named to the job, the official said. Similar engagements will take place up and down the military chain of command.
The official said Biden was “very clear” to Xi that such communications between U.S. and China should be institutionalized and that they are “not done as a gift or as a favor to either side.”
Biden said the U.S. and China would talk more about artificial intelligence as well.
“We’re going to get our experts together and discuss risk and safety issues,” he said.
The agreements helped fulfill the White House’s goal for the meeting — prove to voters that Biden’s dedication to personal diplomacy is paying off.
On Sunday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN that Biden wanted “practical ways” to show that meeting with Xi can help “defend American interests and also deliver progress on the priorities of the American people.”
Zoe Liu, a fellow for China studies at the Council for Foreign Relations, described the meeting between Biden and Xi as a positive step, albeit an incremental one.
“These agreements will not change the structural challenges in the bilateral relations, but it paves the way for more detailed working-level discussions, which is more important,” she said.
Economic challenges
Xi arrived in San Francisco at a time of economic challenges back in China, where an aging population and growing debt have hampered its recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Beijing’s description of the meeting, Xi pressed Biden to lift sanctions and change policies on export controls for sensitive equipment.
“Stifling China’s technological progress is nothing but a move to contain China’s high-quality development and deprive the Chinese people of their right to development,” the readout said. “China’s development and growth, driven by its own inherent logic, will not be stopped by external forces.”
There’s no indication that Biden will agree to take such steps. But even the meeting itself could calm jittery nerves back in China, where there have been signs foreign investment is tapering off.
Zhang Lei, a Chinese businessman whose company, Cheche Group, is listed on NASDAQ, said high-level meetings such as the one between Biden and Xi can help assure companies that have been hesitant to invest in China.
“Confrontations don’t work,” he said. “You don’t make money with confrontations.”
It’s personal
Biden and Xi go back years, and Biden often repeats the story of their meetings when they were both vice presidents.
But on Wednesday, it was Xi’s turn to reference their previous encounters during brief public remarks, although he eschewed the embellishments that Biden usually adds to the tale.
“It was 12 years ago,” Xi said. “I still remember our interactions very vividly, and it always gives me a lot of thoughts.”
Biden also emphasized the length of their relationship and the value of their interactions.
“We haven’t always agreed, which was not a surprise to anyone, but our meetings have always been candid, straightforward and useful,” Biden said. He added, “It’s paramount that you and I understand each other clearly, leader to leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunication.”
Bilateral meetings aren’t always conducive to a personal touch, and Biden and Xi were flanked by advisers on opposite sides of a long table. However, a senior administration official said they spoke about their wives, and Biden wished Xi’s wife a happy birthday.
The official, who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation, said Xi was embarrassed, and he admitted that he had forgotten his wife’s upcoming birthday because he’s been working so hard.
https://www.voanews.com/a/takeaways-from-biden-s-long-awaited-meeting-with-xi/7357272.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
The Highway Patrol Division of the Guam Police Department will be conducting DWI sobriety checkpoints starting at 6 p.m. on Friday.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Guam Daily Post
The Highway Patrol Division of the Guam Police Department will be conducting DWI sobriety checkpoints starting at 6 p.m. Friday.
date: 2023-11-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Every year the Los Angeles Business Journal creates their list of fastest-growing private companies based in L.A. County. The prestigious award is given each year to companies that have demonstrated outstanding growth in revenue, market share, and overall success in Los Angeles County. This year the SCV is home to five companies on the list,…
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The VP of audio at Stability AI has decided his position at the content-generating startup is untenable, given his belief in protecting artists’ copyrights and his now-former employer’s stance that training machine-learning models on copyrighted material is legally OK.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/stability_ai_vp_quits/
date: 2023-11-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Honor the hero in your life this holiday season and help support Child & Family Center with their Hearts for Heroes program.
https://scvnews.com/celebrate-heroes-with-child-family-centers-hearts-for-heroes/
date: 2023-11-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Department of Public Social Services holiday Adopt-A-Family Program has launched, and donations of toys and books are needed to support thousands of low-income families receiving DPSS benefits in Los Angeles County
https://scvnews.com/social-services-launches-holiday-adopt-a-family-program/
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
Lawyers representing a group of Colorado voters delivered closing arguments on Wednesday in a lawsuit seeking to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballot next year over his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
The voters are seeking to use the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office, to argue that Trump is ineligible to run for president in 2024. The provision was ratified in 1868 following the U.S. Civil War.
Sean Grimsley, a lawyer representing the voters, said the riot at the Capitol was Trump’s “final desperate attempt to hold onto power in violation of the Constitution.”
During his closing argument, Grimsley argued that Trump intended for his supporters to resort to violence and added, “Through his actions and his actions alone, Donald Trump has disqualified himself from ever holding office again.”
The case represents a test of legal efforts to use the 14th Amendment to block Trump’s candidacy. It is the first such case to go to trial.
Scott Gessler, a lawyer for Trump, faulted plaintiffs in the case for relying on the findings of the Democratic-led House committee that investigated the Capitol riot, which he said was biased against Trump.
“The petitioners are asking this court to do something that has never been done in the history of the United States,” Gessler said. “The evidence doesn’t come close to allowing the court to do it this time.”
The House panel’s former top investigator, who testified during the trial, defended the probe as impartial and open-minded.
The voters, represented in the case by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and a group of Colorado-based lawyers, sued Colorado’s secretary of state, the state’s top elections official, in a bid to block Trump’s inclusion on the ballot.
Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Biden in the 2024 U.S. election.
Lawyers in the case on Wednesday made their final pitch to Colorado District Court Judge Sarah Wallace, who will decide the case, following a weeklong trial that featured testimony from U.S. lawmakers, legal experts and Republican political activists.
Thousands of people stormed the Capitol in a failed attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump. The lawyers for the voters have sought to convince the judge that Trump’s actions in spreading false claims of voter fraud, summoning his supporters to Washington on the day of the riot and initially refusing pleas to quell the violence amounted to an insurrection.
Trump’s lawyers have denied that he incited his supporters to violence and have argued that disqualifying him from the ballot would set a dangerous precedent.
Colorado is regarded as a safely Democratic state by nonpartisan election forecasters.
Regardless of whether Trump is on the ballot, Biden would be expected to win there. But CREW and other activists are seeking to bring a series of legal challenges to Trump’s eligibility based on the 14th Amendment language.
Courts in Michigan and Minnesota have ruled that Trump can remain on the ballot for the Republican primaries in those states but declined to immediately decide on his eligibility for the November 2024 general election.
The cases raise several unsettled legal questions. Many experts view the effort as a legal longshot. The U.S. Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three Trump appointees, may ultimately weigh in.
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The LAist
Caltrans says the company that leased the space illegally sublet it to other companies.
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
Taiwan will take part in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco this week, a rare opportunity for the self-governing island democracy of 23 million people and its high-tech economy to break the diplomatic embargo on it imposed by authoritarian China.
Taiwan’s chief delegate will be a civilian rather than a government figure or head of state, under an unwritten rule that satisfies China’s contention that members of the organization participate as economic entities rather than state players.
For the seventh time, Taiwan will be represented by Morris Chang, the 92-year-old founder of the world-leading Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Chang is known as the godfather of the industry that has put Taiwan in the top ranks of high-tech manufacturing and personal electronic devices.
Taiwan has participated in APEC since 1991 under the name Chinese Taipei. It began taking part just two years after the group’s inception and the same year that China and the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong joined.
Taiwan has relied on retired ministers — and in Chang’s case, industry leaders — who are well connected with the government but do not carry the burden of formal office, which could spark a protest from China. But that doesn’t mean Taiwan’s government won’t be represented. Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun will attend a meeting presided over by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who recently visited Beijing, and two other ministers will attend meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Taiwan a major topic
A Japanese colony until the end of World War II, Taiwan split from mainland China amid a civil war in 1949. China continues to claim the island as its territory, to be annexed by force if necessary, a threat it plays out on a near-daily basis by sending ships and warplanes around the island.
These acts of political intimidation have the potential to wear down the operational resiliency of the island’s military equipment and personnel. Taiwan has just a fraction of the air, sea and missile power of China’s People’s Liberation Army, not to mention its ground forces, and relies heavily on young men doing their mandatory national service to fill its ranks.
However, Taiwan in recent years has invested heavily in upgraded arms purchases from the U.S., along with boosting its own defense industry, most notably building submarines that could undermine the Chinese naval threat. That has come partly in response to Chinese displays of force such as sailing aircraft carriers through the economically crucial Taiwan Strait and sending aircraft and drones to circle the island.
While the U.S. has no military treaty with Taiwan, it is obligated under federal law to ensure the island can defend itself and to treat all threats to the island as matters of “grave concern.” That, along with Washington’s string of alliances from Japan to South Korea and the Philippines, and its refusal to recognize China’s claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, make the Taiwan Strait a potential powder keg should Chinese leader Xi Jinping seek to make good on his determination to unite what he views as China’s historical territory and cement his political legacy.
China primarily wants an end to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, including latest model F-16 fighter jets, and an assurance it will not give an electoral boost to the ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Wednesday that among the points that President Joe Biden will make clear to President Xi is that the U.S., in accordance with its law, will continue to provide “self-defense capabilities for Taiwan.”
Politics at play
Even with China’s lackluster economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, including high youth unemployment and massive debts born by an overextended housing sector, Xi is pushing ahead with his vision for China to reclaim its historical place as the center of cultural, political and economic life in the Asia-Pacific.
Taiwan, with its multiparty system focused mostly on local issues and with a broad consensus favoring political separation from China, presents a unique challenge to those who call the shots inside the cloistered Qing Dynasty-era leadership compound of Zhongnanhai in Beijing. Almost entirely male and shielded from the media, they brought Hong Kong to heel after pro-democracy protests broke out in the former British colony in 2019.
China has sought to influence Taiwanese politics through military threats, but also by using a “carrot and stick” approach toward economic opportunities on the mainland and by enticing politicians, chiefly from the main Nationalist Party, also known as the Kuomintang, or KMT, to meet with high-level officials in Beijing.
Taiwanese media outlets have also been persuaded to run stories critical of the status quo of de facto independence, mainly through their ownership structures, which involve substantial investments on the mainland.
Ultimately, it comes down to the voters in Taiwan. January’s elections for the presidency and legislature will be the best determinant of whether the populace wishes to stay the course or seek a greater degree of accommodation with Beijing.
Current Vice President William Lai appears to be in a strong position to win at least a plurality of the vote in his bid for the presidency, while his opposition appears splintered and unable to form the sort of alliances that could put the U.S.-trained medical professional under substantial pressure, despite the vast sums being spent on advertising by rivals such as electronics magnate Terry Gou.
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The Clorox Company’s chief security officer has left her job in the wake of a corporate network breach that cost the manufacturer hundreds of millions of dollars.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/clorox_ciso_washes_out/
date: 2023-11-16, from: VOA News USA
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday granted Elon Musk’s SpaceX a license to launch the company’s second test flight of its next-generation Starship and heavy-lift rocket from Texas, the agency said.
SpaceX said it was targeting Friday for a launch, saying a two-hour launch window opens at 7 a.m. Central Time (1300 GMT) and that local residents “may hear a loud noise” during the rocket’s ascent toward space.
“The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency, which oversees commercial launch sites, said in a statement.
SpaceX’s first attempt to send Starship to space was in April, when the rocket exploded mid-air four minutes after a liftoff that pulverized the company’s launchpad and flung sand and concrete chunks for miles.
Though Musk, SpaceX’s CEO and founder, hailed the Starship launch attempt as exceeding his expectations, it fell far short of its overall test objectives to reach space, complete nearly a full revolution around Earth, and reenter the atmosphere for a splashdown off a Hawaiian coast.
First the moon, eventually Mars
Starship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 120 meters and designed to be fully reusable, represents SpaceX’s next-generation workhorse rocket system capable of ferrying some 150 tons of satellites into space. Plans also call for the rocket system to be used to carry crews of humans to the moon, and eventually Mars.
The rocket is crucial for SpaceX’s increasingly dominant launch business. NASA, under a roughly $4 billion development contract with SpaceX, plans to use Starship around 2026 to land the first crew of humans on the moon’s surface since 1972.
Hundreds of fixes before launch
The upcoming Starship flight will have the same test objectives as the first attempt. SpaceX made hundreds of fixes to the rocket’s design based on the April failure. The FAA required SpaceX to make dozens of fixes before allowing another Starship flight.
SpaceX determined that an onboard fire prevented Starship — the rocket system’s upper stage — from separating from its Super Heavy first stage booster as planned. The rocket’s explosion was the result of an automated destruction command, which triggered some 40 seconds late.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-approves-spacex-for-2nd-launch-of-starship-super-heavy/7357019.html
date: 2023-11-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
It’s time to clean out closets for charity and support the Flair Cleaners 21st Annual Holiday Clothing and Shoe Drive from Nov. 24 through Dec. 31,
https://scvnews.com/nov-24-flair-cleaners-begins-21st-annual-holiday-clothing-drive/
date: 2023-11-16, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The LAist
Detours push cars into neighborhoods already plagued by some of the worst air pollution.
date: 2023-11-16, from: Bluesky web news
One year ago, the first post on Bluesky was created. Now, we’re working toward federation and a truly open network.
https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/11-15-2023-toward-federation
date: 2023-11-16, from: Low-tech magazine
During the Second World War, many motorized vehicles in continental Europe were converted to drive on firewood. 1 That happened as a consequence of the rationing of fossil fuels. Wood gas vehicles were a not-so-elegant alternative to their petrol cousins, but their range was comparable to today’s electric vehicles. In Germany alone, around 500,000 wood gas cars, buses, and trucks operated by the end of WWII. An even more cumbersome alternative was the gas bag vehicle. 2
Nowadays, there’s much less firewood available than in the 1940s, especially in industrialized regions. So, what would be the solution to the disruption of gasoline or electricity in the Third World War? Dutch artist Gijs Schalkx found another fuel supply, which is abundant: plastic waste. The production of plastics only started in the 1950s, after the Second World War. Since then, plastic has become an increasingly popular material, growing to a global annual production of 460 million metric tons in 2019 – twice as much as in 2000 and eight times as much as in 1976. 34
Plastics are made from fossil fuels, and the process can be turned around. Gijs Schalkx converted an abandoned Volvo 240 to run on diesel that he makes from the plastic waste he collects. The “de-refinery” converts plastic waste back into fuel and is installed on the luggage carrier of the car, making the vehicle independent of the fossil fuel infrastructure. The plastic waste is heated in a boiler to about 700 degrees Celsius, after which it evaporates. The gas is then cooled down, and turns into a diesel-like liquid one hour later. Gijs collects it in plastic bottles – themselves the raw material for the diesel they contain. The fuel looks like Coca-Cola – one of the largest producers of plastic waste.
Making fuel can happen while the car drives, but Gijs has kept the two activities separate for safety reasons. At a speed of 80 km/u, his Volvo 240 drives a distance of 7 kilometres per kilogram of plastic (which corresponds to 14 kg of plastic per 100 km driven). That includes the fuel used to heat up the plastic waste on the roof (1 kg of plastic gives 0.5 liter of diesel). Plastic waste is a rather voluminous material, and it takes several garbage bags full of plastic waste to make one liter of fuel. Schalkx plans to use a small shredder to reduce the volume of the plastic waste he collects, but for now he relies on a supply of discarded plastic granulate from a neighbour, consisting of PET and HDPE.
How far could we drive if we would convert all plastic waste into fuel? The Netherlands produced roughly 1,650 kiloton of plastic waste in 2017 (1,650,000,000 kg), enough to drive 11.55 billion km (11,550,000,000 km). 5 That corresponds to about 1/10th of kilometers driven by all passenger cars in the Netherlands in 2021 (114.3 billion km). 6 On a smaller scale, the average passenger vehicle in the Netherlands drives 12,000 km per year, requiring each driver and their passengers to collect 1,714 kg of plastic. On the other hand, even the current amount of plastic waste per capita in the Netherlands (97 kg) would be enough to drive 679 km – perhaps sufficient for those who use their automobile wisely. The amount of plastic waste grows faster than the number of cars so that we could drive increasingly longer distances in the future. 7
Being able to drive a vehicle on plastic waste has benefits in terms of resilience. For example, it could allow medics to operate ambulances without a regular fuel supply in a war zone. However, how does a vehicle driven on plastic waste performs in times of peace? After all, plastic waste is a huge problem, and Gijs Schalkx’s car gets rid of it. With less than 10% of plastic waste recycled worldwide, would it make sense to encourage people to convert their vehicles to run on diesel oil made of plastic waste? Sure, it would be a more affordable alternative to electric cars, but what about the carbon emissions?
On the one hand, the embodied carbon emissions of the Volvo 240 are almost zero: Gijs found most components – including the car itself – in the dump, others on the second-hand market. 8 In contrast, manufacturing new vehicles – especially electric ones – adds a significant carbon footprint before they drive their first kilometer. They also need an extensive infrastructure to produce and distribute fuel and electricity, adding more carbon emissions. In contrast, the Volvo has its fuel infrastructure on the roof, built from scrap.
On the other hand, the CO2-emissions from the fuel production and the fuel combustion are not praiseworthy. First, there is the burning of plastic on the roof of the car. Making 1 liter of diesel requires the burning of 1 kg of plastic, which results in 2-2.7 kg carbon emissions. 9 Second, there is the combustion of the diesel fuel while driving, which emits 2.7 kg of carbon dioxide per liter. 10 Together, that becomes 4.7 to 5.4 kg CO2 per liter. Consequently, with a 14:1 fuel economy, the Volvo emits 65.8 to 75.6 kg of greenhouse gases per 100 km.
In contrast, the emissions of the average fossil fuel powered car in Europe amount to 25.8 kg/100 km, including crude oil production, fuel refining and vehicle manufacturing. 11 The emissions of a small electric car like the Nissan Leaf amount to 10.9 kg/100km in Europe, including the emissions of the fuel that is burned to produce the electricity. 11 The Volvo thus emits 2.5 times more CO2 than the average fossil fuel powered car in Europe, and 7 times more than a small electric car. The difference will be somewhat smaller, because the data for the other cars do not include the emissions for building the oil and power infrastructure. However, this is unlikely to tip the balance.
There are several reasons for the high carbon emissions. First, fuel production by burning plastic on the roof is four times more carbon intensive than producing fuel from crude oil in a refinery. 12 Second, the Volvo dates from 1980, when cars had lower fuel economy. Gijs Schalkx: “Hypothetically, you could convert a newer car to drive on plastic waste and have much lower carbon emissions. Likewise, the de-refinery is one of the first of its kind and could be made more efficient by real engineers. Oil refineries have been developped for more than 100 years. However, newer cars have proprietary electronic motor controls that prevent using alternative fuels.”
Carbon emissions are not the only worry. Because of the chemicals added to plastic, burning it to make fuel creates a lot of nasty air pollution. Nobody in their right mind will propose a switch to cars fuelled by plastic waste. However, it is instructive to examine the motives behind this unanimous conclusion. Much of the plastic waste that the Volvo 240 burns burns anyways. Not in cars but incinerators. That is the case for 44% of plastic waste in Europe. 13 That plastic waste burns to produce electricity, which can then charge electric cars. How is that more sustainable than burning plastic on the roof of your car?
The carbon emissions are the same. So is the air pollution, although it’s easier to put a flue gas scrubber on thousands of incinerators than on millions of cars. The main difference is that burning plastic waste in incinerators to power electric cars allows many of us to externalize the side effects of car driving. An incinerator can be (and always is) located in a poor neighbourhood, where it causes high incidences of cancer and other health problems in spite of air pollution control. Meanwhile, it produces electricity that charges electric cars which drive around low emission zones in well-to-do neighbourhoods.
In contrast, Schalkx’s Volvo internalizes all the side effects of driving automobiles. The car is not a pleasure to drive, at least not regularly. It is dirty. Its interior stinks of plastic, which cannot be healthy – Gijs keeps the car windows open no matter the weather. Furthermore, he needs to spend a lot of time collecting plastic and making fuel, and all these disadvantages make him think twice before he gets behind the wheel. It’s unlikely that Schalkx will drive 12,000 km per year, and so, ultimately, he will produce less pollution than the drivers of more sustainable-looking cars that face none of these problems.
Somehow, the Dutch authorities, who are not known for their permissivity, officially approved the car after inspection. Schalkx drives tax-free and – thanks to his car being an oldtimer – can enter low-emission zones, where he parks alongside the latest electric SUV. Justice is not yet out of this world.
Woodgas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank, Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine, 2010. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/wood-gas-vehicles-firewood-in-the-fuel-tank/ ↩︎
Gas Bag Vehicles, Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine, 2011. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/11/gas-bag-vehicles/ ↩︎
https://www.statista.com/statistics/282732/global-production-of-plastics-since-1950/ ↩︎ ↩︎
https://www.oecd.org/environment/plastic-pollution-is-growing-relentlessly-as-waste-management-and-recycling-fall-short.htm ↩︎
https://ce.nl/publicaties/plasticgebruik-en-verwerking-van-plastic-afval-in-nederland/ ↩︎
https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/verkeer-en-vervoer/verkeer/verkeersprestaties-personenautos#:~:text=Van%20de%20114%2C3%20miljard,overige%20kilometers%20werden%20zakelijk%20gereden. ↩︎
The plastics industry now consumes 14% of all oil production, compared to only 4% in 2012. By 2050, the share of the plastics industry is forecasted to be 20% of oil production. Sources: https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-plastics-pipeline-a-surge-of-new-production-is-on-the-way & https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/big-oils-plastic-boom-threatens-uns-historic-pollution-pact-2022-03-04/ & https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-Much-Crude-Oil-Does-Plastic-Production-Really-Consume.html See also 3 ↩︎
New parts in the car are fuel hoses, coolant hoses, paint, tyres, brake lines and brake pads. Most of these were required to pass vehicle inspection. ↩︎
Rubio-Domingo, Gabriela, et al. “Making Plastics Emissions Transparent.” COMET. Last modified February 2022. https://ccsi. columbia. edu/sites/default/files/content/COMET-making-plastics-emissions-transparent. Pdf (2022). https://ccsi.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/COMET-making-plastics-emissions-transparent.pdf. ↩︎
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/2307/1/012025/pdf ↩︎
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change/ ↩︎ ↩︎
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC85326 ↩︎
https://www.oecd.org/environment/plastic-pollution-is-growing-relentlessly-as-waste-management-and-recycling-fall-short.htm#:~:text=Another%2019%25%20is%20incinerated%2C%2050,environments%2C%20especially%20in%20poorer%20countries. ↩︎
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/11/plastic-waste-in-the-fuel-tank/
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Jazz on Main is returning with its speakeasy jazz concert at Hart & Main in Old Town Newhall
https://scvnews.com/dec-6-hart-main-hosts-second-jazz-on-main-concert/
date: 2023-11-15, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced Wednesday Jim Free’s promotion to associate administrator for the agency at NASA Headquarters in Washington, effective when his predecessor Bob Cabana retires on Sunday, Dec. 31. Since September 2021, Free has served as the associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD). Nelson also announced Free’s deputy, Catherine […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-names-new-highest-ranking-civil-servant-head-of-exploration/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Plenty of local stations are offering prices less than $4.50 per gallon of regular gas. Get it while supplies last.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281901203.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Florida-based pharmacy sold prescription creams.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281911938.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
You might have to do a double take to spot one of the world’s most endangered species in the photo.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281910973.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“I am not willing to play the pronoun game,” the owner wrote in an online post, officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281915428.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Boletos se pondrán a la venta el viernes 17 de noviembre a las 11 a.m. en Ticketmaster.com o en la taquilla del Save Mart Center a partir del mediodía.
https://www.fresnobee.com/vida-en-el-valle/entretenimiento/article281898953.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The materials discovered inside the Reedley lab were “enough to scare the bejeezus out of anyone,” said Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281908238.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Born to an “incredible mom,” the baby is now the second southern white rhinoceros born at the zoo, according to the zoo’s Facebook post.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281914963.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Es una oportunidad para que los habitantes de Hughson expresen preocupaciones y escuchen directamente a sus funcionarios electos.
https://www.fresnobee.com/vida-en-el-valle/noticias/california-es/modesto/article281901658.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
El martes, el precio promedio del galón de gasolina regular era de $5.06 en California, todavía muy por encima del promedio nacional de $3.53.
https://www.fresnobee.com/vida-en-el-valle/noticias/california-es/article281903358.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: 404 Media Group
“The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared today on social media without its original context. Therefore we have decided to take it down.”
date: 2023-11-15, from: NASA breaking news
Commercial Crew Program’s Plaque Hanging Tradition Continues, Celebrating Work Done by Marshall Team By Celine Smith NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center participated in a new tradition last December to honor engineers for their exceptional efforts on CCP (Commercial Crew Program) missions to the International Space Station, and again Nov. 13 with a third plaque hanging […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/the-marshall-star-for-november-15-2023/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The tiny creature has “large” bronze eyes with a copper streak, researcher said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281911758.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Nobody wants to be on strike, and nobody wants to be the first,” said the union’s president. “But it feels really inspiring.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281863328.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Mozilla has slapped its “Privacy Not Included” labels on several products from Google, Amazon and Microsoft – just in time for Christmas shopping.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/google_amazon_microsoft_mozilla/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“You know why I am here,” murder suspect Troy Davis allegedly told his victim.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281818178.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
The world is at a precarious inflection point.
https://steady.substack.com/p/desperate-for-diplomacy
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2023-11-15, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
My good friend @djmax is hiring engineering managers, data scientist and typescript developers in Boston.
He is awesome to work for, check this out: https://jobs.lever.co/sesame/cafb2d62-d7b8-4bb0-b1f8-b23ce2b132ea
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111416911550804852
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“The victim was just trying to be a good big brother.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281913603.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The LAist
A marine base, movie sets, and more memories of the Tustin hangars
https://laist.com/news/la-history/socal-history-the-significance-of-the-tustin-airfield-hangars
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The oldest victim was 64 years old.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281905138.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called for steps to be taken against an official in her party who threatened to physically assault Peter Haas, the U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh.
The official justified his words by claiming that Haas was working in the interest of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, ahead of elections scheduled for early January.
While it was not disclosed exactly what action has been ordered, Bangladesh’s junior foreign affairs minister, Shahriar Alam, confirmed in front of local reporters in Dhaka on Friday that the prime minister has directed action against the official.
In a video clip that went viral on social media last week, Mujibul Haque Chowdhury, chairman of a unit of Hasina’s Awami League in a Chittagong subdivision, was seen hurling threats and insults at the American ambassador at a political meeting on November 6.
“Peter Haas said he wants to see a free and fair election here. I say, ‘Peter Haas, you are as knowledgeable as a newborn, while we are the actual grown-ups,’” Chowdhury said in the video. “You have no idea what we are capable of. You will know just how dangerous we are once we bash you up.”
Chowdhury added: “To the BNP members, you are a god, a savior. But we are not scared of you. You cannot harm us in any way.”
As the video spread on social media, Hasina directed her party colleagues to discipline Choudhury at an AL Central Committee meeting Thursday.
Obaidul Quader, the general secretary of her party, acknowledged afterward that Chowdhury’s comments about the ambassador were abusive.
“Peter Haas, as an ambassador, is a respectable person. Mujibul Haque Chowdhury’s comment, as it surfaced in the media, is rude and indecent. We will take disciplinary action against him for his misconduct,” Quader said in a press briefing.
US seeking free and fair election
The 2014 general elections in Bangladesh were boycotted by the BNP. The next general elections, in 2018, were marred by allegations of massive vote stuffing by the AL.
Since 2022, the United States and other countries have been urging the Hasina government to hold the next general election, set for January 7, in a free and fair manner.
In September, the U.S. government announced that it had started “taking steps to impose visa restrictions” on Bangladeshi individuals who are found complicit in “undermining the democratic electoral process” in Bangladesh.
During a visit to the U.S. in September, Hasina said at a New York press conference that every time her party has come to power, it was through a fair democratic process. “We indeed want the next general elections to be free and fair,” she said.
However, the BNP, the largest opposition party in Bangladesh, insists that the general election will not be free and fair if it is held under the Hasina government, and has said it will not participate unless a nonpartisan caretaker government is installed for the election period.
In recent weeks, Haas has met several Bangladeshi government officials, ruling party leaders and the election commissioners. He reportedly conveyed a message from the U.S. government that it seriously wants the next general election in Bangladesh to be free and fair.
Over the past weeks, several leaders of the AL and its various wings and allies have expressed irritation, directly and indirectly alleging that Haas is working in support of the BNP.
“How will Peter Hass help you [the BNP]? Will he impose visa restrictions, sanctions? We have already had talks with his superiors in the U.S. Everything has been settled, and we are going to hold the elections following our plan,” Quader, the party general secretary, said last month.
“We will not allow you to carry out violent activities and disrupt elections by using Peter Haas,” Quader said.
Calls for ambassador to be replaced
Last week, Hasanul Haq Inu, a former minister and political ally of the AL, called for the removal of Haas from Bangladesh.
U.S. President “Joe Biden’s representative Peter Haas, who is the ‘newly appointed adviser of BNP,’ is acting in support of the BNP by supporting the killing of a policeman,” Inu said in a speech. He was referring to the death of a policeman during an outbreak of violence at a BNP rally in Dhaka on October 28.
“Peter Haas is the supporter of the BNP, the killer of the policeman. He does not deserve to continue as the ambassador of the friendly nation of America,” Inu said.
“I call on the Bangladesh government to declare Peter Haas persona non grata, for indulging in undiplomatic activities, interfering in Bangladesh’s internal politics and supporting the dastardly killing of a policeman. The government should tell its U.S. counterpart to replace him with a new ambassador immediately.”
Haas has denied any U.S. interest in who wins the election. “I want to make one thing very clear,” he said in September. “That the U.S. does not support any political party. What we do want is a free and fair election in accordance with international standards so that people of Bangladesh can freely choose their own government.”
Attack on ambassador “deeply disturbing”
Ali Riaz, professor of political science at Illinois State University, said that while any individual has the right to criticize the policies of any government, a “personal attack on the envoy of that country is deeply disturbing.”
“The ruling party leaders and activists are angry with the U.S. because they see the current U.S. policy towards Bangladesh as an obstacle to holding an election according to their plan. Their anger is both spontaneous and orchestrated,” Riaz told VOA.
“Those who are beneficiaries of the present system are spontaneously angry in fear of losing these benefits,” he said. “Others are motivated by [suspicions] that the U.S. has a regime change agenda. They think that the U.S. is out to get its leaders and trying to depose the Hasina government.”
Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman of the Capital Punishment Justice Project, who has been documenting human rights abuses in Bangladesh for over a decade, said that Haas has “become a target of the regime” for being the most prominent foreign diplomat “supporting people’s aspirations for democratization and human rights” in Bangladesh.
He noted that former U.S. Ambassador Marcia Bernicat escaped an attack in Dhaka a few months ahead of the 2018 general elections. Police subsequently identified many of the assailants as leaders and activists of the AL and its student wing, Chhatra League.
On Friday, the U.S. State Department told VOA it has raised Chowdhury’s remarks at the highest levels of the Bangladesh government in Dhaka as well as with the Bangladesh Embassy in Washington.
“The safety and security of our diplomatic personnel and facilities are of the utmost importance. While we don’t comment on specific information regarding our security posture, the Diplomatic Security Service has a robust security program at each post tailored to each mission’s specific needs,” a State Department spokesperson wrote in an exchange of emails.
“Given the charged political atmosphere in Bangladesh, we expect that the government of Bangladesh will take all appropriate measures to maintain the safety and security of all U.S. missions and personnel in the country, per its obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic relations.”
date: 2023-11-15, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links Big Train managers earn bonuses for greenlighting unsafe cars: The blood-curdling near-misses we don’t hear about. 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 Big Train managers earn bonuses for greenlighting unsafe cars (permalink) Almost no one knows this, but last June, a 90-car train got away from its crew in Hernando, MO, rolling three miles through two public crossings, a ghost train that included 47 potentially explosive propane cars. The “bomb train” neither crashed nor derailed, which meant that Grenada Railroad/Gulf & Atantic didn’t have to report it. This is just one of many terrifying near-misses that are increasingly common in America’s hyper-concentrated, private equity-dominated rail sector, where unsafe practices dominate and whistleblowers face brutal retaliation for coming forward to regulators. These unsafe practices – and the corporate policies that deliberately gave rise to them – are documented in terrifying, eye-watering detail in a deeply reported Propublica story by Topher Sanders, Jessica Lussenhop,Dan Schwartz, Danelle Morton and Gabriel Sandoval: https://www.propublica.org/article/railroad-safety-union-pacific-csx-bnsf-trains-freight It’s a tale of depraved indifference to public safety, backstopped by worker intimidation. The reporting is centered on railyard maintenance inspectors, who are charged with writing up “bad orders” to prevent unsafe railcars from shipping out. As private equity firms consolidated rail into an ever-dwindling number of companies, these workers face supervisors who are increasingly hostile to these bad orders. It got so alarming that some staffers started carrying hidden digital recorders, so they could capture audio of their bosses illegally ordering them to greenlight railcars that were too unsafe for use. The article features direct – and alarming – quotes, like supervisor Andrew Letcher, boss of the maintenance crews at Union Pacific’s Kansas City yard saying, “If I was an inspector on a train I would probably let some of that nitpicky shit go.” Letcher – and fellow managers for other Tier 1 railroads quoted in the piece – aren’t innately hostile to public safety. They are quite frank about why they want inspectors to “let that nitpicky shit go.” As Letcher explains, “The first thing that I’m getting questioned about right now, every day, is why we’re over 200 bad orders and what we’re doing to get them down.” In other words, corporate rail owners have ordered their supervisors to reduce the amount of maintenance outages on the rail lines, but have not given them additional preventative maintenance budgets or crew. These supervisors warn their employees that high numbers of bad orders could cost them their jobs, even lead to the shutdown of the car shops where inspectors are prone to pulling dangerous cars out of service. It’s a ruthless form of winnowing. Gresham’s Law holds that “bad money drives out good” – in an economy where counterfeit money circulates, people preferentially spend their fake money to get it out of their hands, until all the money in circulation is funny money. This is the rail safety equivalent: simply fire everyone who reports unsafe conditions and all your railcars will be deemed safe, with the worst railcars shipped out first. A market for lemons – except these aren’t balky used sedans, they’re unsafe railcars full of toxic chemicals or explosive propane. When cataclysmic rail disasters occur – like this year’s East Palestine derailment – the rail industry reassures us that this is an isolated incident, pointing to the system’s excellent overall safety record. But that record is a mirage, because the near-misses don’t have to be reported. Those near-misses are coming more frequently, as the culture of profit over safety incurs a mounting maintenance debt, filling America’s rails with potential “bomb cars.” Rail mergers and other forms of deregulated, anything-goes capitalism are justified by conservative economists who insist that “incentives matter,” and that the profit motive provides the incentive to improve efficiency, leading to lower costs and better service. But the incentive to externalize risk, kick the can down the road, and capture regulators rarely concerns the “incentives matter” crowd. Here’s an incentive that matters. Rail managers’ bonuses – as much as a fifth of their take home pay – are only paid if the trains they oversee run on time. Inspectors have recorded their managers admitting that they have quotas – a maximum number of bad orders their facility may produce, irrespective of how much unsafe rolling stock passes through the facility. Inspectors have caught their managers removing repair order tags from cars they’ve flagged as unsafe. Inspectors will log orders in a database, only to have the record mysteriously deleted, or marked as serviced when no service has occurred. Some inspectors have seen the same cars in their yard with the same problems, and repeatedly flagged them without any maintenance being performed before they’re shipped out again. Former managers from Union Pacific, CSX and Norfolk Southern told Propublica that they operated in an environment where safety reports were discouraged, and that workers who filed these reports were viewed as “complainers.” Workers furnished Propublica with recordings of rail managers berating them for reporting persistent unsafe conditions to the Federal Railroad Administration. Other workers from BNSF said that they believed that their bosses were told when they called the company’s “confidential” work-safety tipline, setting them up for retaliation by bosses who’d falsified safety reports. Whistleblowers who seek justice at OSHA are stymied by long delays, and while switching their cases to court can win them cash settlements, these do not get recorded on the company’s safety record, which allows the company to go on claiming to be a paragon of safety and prudence. The culture of retaliation is pervasive, which explains how the 47-cars worth of propane on the “bomb train” that rolled unattended over three miles of track never made the news. There is a voluntary Close Call Reporting System (operated by NASA!) where rail companies can report these disasters. Not one of America’s Class 1 rail companies participate in it. After the East Palestine disaster, Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg pushed the rail companies to join, but a year later, none have. It’s part of an overall pattern with Secretary Buttigieg, who has prodigious, far-reaching powers under USC40 Section 41712(a), which allow him to punish companies for “unfair and deceptive” practices or “unfair methods of competition”: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge Buttigieg can’t simply hand down orders under 41712(a) – to wield this power, he must follow administrative procedures, conducting market studies, seeking comment, and proposing a rule. Other members of the Biden administration with similar powers, like FTC chair Lina Khan, arrived in office with a ranked-priority list of bad corporate conduct and immediately set about teeing up rules to give relief to the American public. By contrast, Buttigieg’s agency has done precious little to establish the evidentiary record to punish the worst American companies under its remit. His most-touted achievement was to fine five airlines for saving money by cancelling their flights and stranding their passengers. But of the five airlines affected by Buttigieg’s order, four were not US companies. The sole affected US carrier was Spirit airlines, with 2% of the market. The Big Four US airlines – who have a much worse record than the ones that were fined – were not affected at all: https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/ftc-noncompete-airline-flight-cancellation-buttigieg/ Rather than directly regulating the US transportation sector, Buttigieg prefers exacting nonbinding promises from them (like the Tier 1 rail companies’ broken promise to sign up to the Close Call Reporting System). Under his leadership, the Federal Railroad Agency has proposed weakening rail safety standards, rescinding an order to improve the braking systems on undermaintained, mile-long trains carrying potentially deadly freight: https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp The US transportation system is accumulating a terrifying safety debt, behind a veil of corporate secrecy. It badly demands direct regulation and close oversight. If you are interested in rail safety, I strongly recommend this episode of Well There’s Your Problem, “a podcast about engineering disasters, with slides” – you will laugh your head off and then never sleep again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BMQTdYXaH8 Hey look at this (permalink) Rail Privatisation – 30 years of waste and rising fares https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/publications/rail-privatisation-30-years-of-waste-and-rising-fares/ (h/t Jacobin) Tumblr Is Always Dying https://www.wired.com/story/end-of-the-tumblr-era/ The Religion of the Engineers is the Hopium of Silicon Valley https://programmablemutter.substack.com/p/the-religion-of-the-engineers-is This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago Owner Override: a proposal to fix Trusted Computing https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7055 #10yrsago Rob Ford stripped of powers https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/city-hall/rob-ford-councillors-strip-mayor-of-certain-powers/article_c531a981-ab9a-5818-abef-83dc0ba6cf89.html #5yrsago Gilded Age watch: America’s firefighting is turning into a two-tier system, with private services for the 1% https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/kim-kardashian-kanye-west-history-private-firefighting/575887/ #5yrsago One year later: kids smart-watches are still a privacy and security dumpster fire https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/consumer-advice-kids-gps-tracker-watch-security/ #5yrsago Mark Zuckerberg to the governments of Canada, UK, Australia, Ireland and Argentina: “Go fuck yourselves” https://www.cnet.com/news/politics/mark-zuckerberg-not-able-to-attend-disinformation-hearing-despite-growing-call/ #5yrsago Companies keep losing your data because it doesn’t cost them anything https://www.vice.com/en/article/bje8na/massive-data-leaks-keep-happening-because-big-companies-can-afford-to-lose-your-data #5yrsago If you’re an American of European descent, your stupid cousins have probably put you in vast commercial genomic databases https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau4832 #5yrsago Competitive book-sorting event pits New York library workers against Washington State’s https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/competitive-library-book-sorting #5yrsago The EU can #fixcopyright, but they’re not https://dontwreckthe.net #5yrsago Here’s the secret details of 200 cities’ license-plate tracking programs https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/eff-and-muckrock-release-records-and-data-200-law-enforcement-agencies-automated #5yrsago Generative adversarial network produces a “universal fingerprint” that will unlock many smartphones https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07386 #1yrago Tracers in the Dark: Andy Greenberg’s gripping true crime tale of cryptocurrency forensics https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/15/public-immutable-crimes/#andy-greenberg 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 Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Latest podcast: Moral Hazard (from Communications Breakdown) https://craphound.com/stories/2023/11/12/moral-hazard-from-communications-breakdown/ Upcoming appearances: 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: Science fiction for a dystopian present (Institute of Art and Ideas) https://iai.tv/video/science-fiction-for-a-dystopian-present-cory-doctorow?_auid=2020 Pushing back on unconstrained capitalism (Changelog) https://changelog.com/podcast/565 Plutopia https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-the-internet-con/ Latest books: “The Lost Cause:” a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/) “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 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/2023/11/15/safety-third/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
It’s associated with a long-extinct society that occupied parts of Poland, officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281908443.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: NASA breaking news
For the 13th consecutive year, NASA received an unmodified, or “clean,” opinion from an external auditor on its fiscal year 2023 financial statements. NASA’s financial statements and budgetary reporting have received the highest possible audit opinion, certifying that it adheres to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for federal agencies. These financial statements provide a comprehensive overview […]
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has confirmed the first reported influenza-associated death of the 2023-24 influenza season
https://scvnews.com/first-flu-death-of-the-season-in-l-a-county-confirmed/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In a lab on Earth, the machine created a catalyst from Martian materials that can extract oxygen from water, for astronauts to breathe or use as fuel
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-robotic-ai-chemist-could-make-oxygen-on-mars-180983268/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Meta, which stands accused in multiple lawsuits of ignoring the mental health toll its services have taken on teens and children, is finally calling for change – on the part of Apple and Google.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/metas_teen_safety/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
His “first purchase after the big win was a sensible one,” Iowa lottery officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281909058.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 26-year-old was arrested after checking himself into a hospital, Colorado officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281907913.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The odds aren’t great, but the No. 1 candidate at Texas A&M should be Coach Prime.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281890338.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new device translates museum-goers’ brainwaves into a simplified real-time visualization
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Maryland man initially closed out of his lottery app in disbelief when he saw how much he won, lottery officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281902498.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Valley Youth Orchestra is pleased to announce their 2nd Annual Community Partnership Children’s Concert
date: 2023-11-15, from: Michael Tsai
John Brayton: Even though Safari, Mail, and Finder implement search suggestion menus, there is no standard AppKit mechanism for providing them in AppKit. Popping up an NSMenu does not work because the search field cannot receive keystrokes while the menu is displayed. Interestingly there is a good mechanism for providing search suggestion menus in SwiftUI, […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/15/search-suggestion-menus-in-appkit/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Michael Tsai
Jeff Johnson: [The] functions os_log and NSLog now log nil as an empty string. The previous behavior, going back forever as far as I remember, was to log nil as (null).[…]I don’t know whether this is a bug or intended behavior, but it makes debugging our apps markedly worse, because now there’s no easy way […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/15/xcode-15-logs-nil-as-an-empty-string/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Michael Tsai
Filipe Espósito: Amazon launched an official Kindle app for macOS more than eight years ago, allowing Mac users to download and read their ebooks from Amazon’s platform on their computer. […] On Tuesday, the official Kindle app available on the Mac App Store was updated to version 1.40.2. But while the release notes mention that […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/15/kindle-for-mac-7-0/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cruise is temporarily halting supervised and manual operations of its autonomous vehicles in the US and is hiring an outsider to assess the technology and safety risks of its computer-controlled cars. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/cruise_parks_fleet/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The comedian launched an “alarmingly aggressive” global effort on behalf of the pūteketeke to shore up its victory in the annual popularity competition
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
It began as a familiar old story.
In the early 2000s, multinational mining giant Rio Tinto came to the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to dig a nickel mine.
Environmentalists feared pollution. The company promised jobs.
The usual battle lines were drawn. The usual legal fights ensued.
But this time, something different happened.
The mining company invited a respected local environmental group to be an independent watchdog, conducting pollution testing that goes above and beyond what regulators require.
More than a decade has passed, and no major pollution problems have arisen. Community opposition has softened.
“I was fiercely opposed to the mine, and I changed,” said Maura Davenport, board chair of the Superior Watershed Partnership, the environmental group doing the testing.
The agreement between the mining company and the environmentalists is working at a time when demand for nickel and other metals used in green technologies is on the rise, but the mining activity that supplies those metals faces fierce local resistance around the world.
Historic mines, polluting history
The shift to cleaner energy needs copper to wire electrical grids, rare earth elements for wind turbine magnets, lithium for electric vehicle batteries, nickel to make those batteries run longer, and more. Meeting the goals of the 2015 U.N. Paris climate agreement would mean a fourfold increase in demand for metals overall by 2040 and a 19-fold increase in nickel, according to the International Energy Agency.
That means more mines. But mines rarely open anywhere in the world without controversy. Two nearby copper-nickel mine proposals hit major roadblocks this year over environmental concerns.
For the third year running, mining companies listed environmental, social and governance issues as the leading risk facing their businesses in a survey by consulting firm EY.
Mining is not new to the Upper Peninsula, the northern tip of the state of Michigan that is mostly surrounded by the Great Lakes. The region was the nation’s leading copper and iron producer until the late 1800s. An open-pit iron mine still operates about 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of the college town of Marquette.
Most of the historic copper mines closed in the 1930s. But the waste they left behind is still polluting today.
Residue left over from pulverizing copper ore, known as stamp sands, continues to drift into Lake Superior, leaching toxic levels of copper into the water.
“The whole history of mining is so bad, and we feared … for our precious land,” Davenport said.
The ore Rio Tinto sought is in a form known as nickel sulfide. When those rocks are exposed to air and water, they produce sulfuric acid. Acid mine drainage pollutes thousands of kilometers of water bodies across the United States. At its worst, it can render a stream nearly lifeless.
When Rio Tinto proposed building the Eagle Mine about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Marquette, “it divided our community,” Davenport said.
“The Marquette community was against the mine,” she said, but the “iron ore miners, they were all about it.”
Mining dilemma
It’s the same story the world over, according to Simon Nish, who worked for Rio Tinto at the time.
“Communities are faced with this dilemma,” Nish said. “We want jobs, we want economic benefit. We don’t want long-term environmental consequences. We don’t really trust the regulator. We don’t trust the company. We don’t trust the activists. … In the absence of trusted information, we’re probably going to say no.”
Nish came from Australia, where a legal reckoning had taken place in the 1990s over the land rights of the country’s indigenous peoples. Early in his career, he worked as a mediator for the National Native Title Tribunal, which brokered agreements between Aboriginal peoples and resource companies who wanted to use their land.
It was a formative experience.
“On the resource company side, you can crash through and get a short-term deal, but that’s actually not benefiting anybody,” he said. “If you want to get a long-term outcome, you’ve actually really got to understand the interests of both sides.”
“Absolutely skeptical”
When Nish arrived in Michigan in 2011, Rio Tinto’s Eagle Mine was under construction but faced multiple lawsuits from community opponents.
In order to quell the controversy, Nish knew that Rio Tinto needed a partner that the community could trust. So he approached the Superior Watershed Partnership with an unusual offer. The group was already running programs testing local waterways for pollution. Would they be willing to discuss running a program to monitor the mine?
“We were surprised. We were skeptical. Absolutely skeptical,” Davenport said. But they agreed to discuss it.
SWP insisted on full, unfettered access to monitor “anything, any time, anywhere,” Nish said.
SWP’s position toward Rio Tinto was “very, very clear,” he recalled: “‘We’ve spent a long time building our reputation, our credibility here. We aren’t going to burn it for you guys.’”
Over the course of several months — “remarkably fast,” as these things go, Nish said — the environmental group and the mining company managed to work out an agreement.
SWP would monitor the rivers, streams and groundwater for pollution from the mine and the ore-processing mill 30 kilometers (19 miles) south. It would test food and medicinal plants important for the local Native American tribe. And it would post the results of these and other tests online for the public to see.
And Rio Tinto would pay for the work. A respected local community foundation would handle the funds. Rio Tinto’s funding would be at arm’s length from SWP.
“We didn’t want to be on their payroll,” said Richard Anderson, who chaired the SWP board at the time. “That could not be part of the structure.”
Not over yet
The agreement launching the Community Environmental Monitoring Program was signed in 2012. More than a decade later, no major pollution problems have turned up.
But other local environmentalists are cautious.
“I do think [Eagle Mine is] really trying to do a good job environmentally,” said Rochelle Dale, head of the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, another local environmental group that has opposed the mine.
“On the other hand, a lot of the sulfide mines in the past haven’t really had a problem until after closure.
“It’s something that our grandchildren are going to inherit,” she said.
As demand for metals heats up, opposition to new mines is not cooling off. Experts say mining companies are wising up to the need for community buy-in. Eagle Mine’s Community Environmental Monitoring Program points to one option, but also its limitations.
So far, so good. But the story’s not over yet.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liliputing
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web, including details about an upcoming mini PC with a fanless design and three 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports, the impending launch of next-gen wireless charging gadgets, a new use for Amazon’s Astro robot, and more. Simply NUC Bloodhound fanless mini PC [Simply NUC] The Simply […]
The post Lilbits: AMD Ryzen 7000 Embedded launched, Simply NUC Bloodhound mini PC coming soon, Amazon’s Astro Robot gets a second job, and PlayStation Portal reviews are in appeared first on Liliputing.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The news of the parental meet-up gives some clue to what Thanksgiving week could look like for the Swifts and Kelces.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281904423.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Police decided to enter the home because the situation seemed “dangerous,” outlets reported.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281904968.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The bus had 38 kids on board, officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281897728.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Heatmap News
The climate news website
Heatmap
News announced today the hiring of Jillian Goodman as Deputy Editor
and Mike Munsell as VP of Sales. Jillian most recently served as Opinion
Editor for The Information and previously was Deputy Editor for
Bloomberg Green, Politics Editor for Bloomberg
Businessweek, and Associate Editor at Fast Company. She
has also held positions at New York Magazine.
Mike comes from the founding team at Canary Media where he headed up sales as their Director of Growth. He also was the author of a regular column, Climate Meets Culture. Previously he led marketing for Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and prior to that for GTM Research, a division of Greentech Media.
Editor in Chief and CEO Nico Lauricella said, “Jillian and Mike both bring tremendous experience and fresh perspectives that will build on Heatmap’s strong foundation forged over the past nine months. With Jillian as Deputy Editor and Mike as VP of Sales, we are investing in team members who will help expand our footprint in the months and years to come. We are thrilled to have them on board.”
About Heatmap: Since launching earlier this year, Heatmap’s original reporting has broken stories and provided invaluable analysis on the biggest news in climate, energy, and sustainability, covering everything from hydrogen policy to wildfire smoke to electric vehicles. We’ve debunked the notion that building electric vehicles will require fewer workers, dived early and deep into renewable energy’s difficult year, quantified the unprecedented impact of the wildfire smoke event on the East Coast, and assembled the first comprehensive database of the government’s grants under the Inflation Reduction Act. Our newsroom has also launched an inaugural Heatmap Climate Poll, reported extensively on emerging decarbonization trends, created practical guides on how to navigate our changing planet, and more.
Heatmap has built a large, influential audience of readers who care about climate and sustainability and appreciate the breaking news, insights and analysis from our editorial team of 12 full-time journalists and 25 contributors. Our community is not just passionate about climate change and decarbonization; it’s also a highly influential network of decision-makers, business leaders, government and NGO officials, entrepreneurs, VC’s, legal and policy experts, academics, journalists and concerned consumers who take action.
Get Heatmap’s top article every day directly in your inbox:
https://heatmap.news/press-release-mike-munsell-jillian-goodman
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
Among California’s farmers and ranchers, the recent return of the long-absent gray wolf also means a return of fears of livestock losses. From Tulare County, California, VOA’s Robin Guess reports. VOA footage by Matt Dibble.
https://www.voanews.com/a/in-livestock-rich-california-return-of-gray-wolves-a-worry/7356417.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
With the help of the $225,000 Keeping Everyone Safe (KEYS) grant, the California Highway Patrol will continue to empower the state’s senior community with a free specialized driving course designed with them in mind
https://scvnews.com/chp-receives-grant-to-enhance-senior-driving-safety/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
iFixit and the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) have teamed up to go straight to the US Federal Trade Commission with a rulemaking petition urging it to implement national right-to-repair rules.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/righttorepair_ftc_petition/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Roosevelt High School Bass Fishing Club opens new horizons for students
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/outdoors/hunting-fishing/article281877503.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Tim Tiemann, managing director of California State University, Northridge’s Innovation Incubator, has been appointed to the United States Small Business Administration’s Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Advisory Committee
https://scvnews.com/csun-director-named-appointee-for-small-business-administration/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Commentary: Self-serving utilities will make it impossible for apartment buildings, renters, schools, and farmers to continue adopting solar energy.
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article281901538.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Kings coach Mike Brown and Cavaliers coach B.J. Bickerstaff explain why De’Aaron Fox could become one of the leading candidates for MVP.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/article281879773.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
The CSUN Instagram page announced that they’re the most economically diverse campus in the nation. However, that’s not entirely the case. On Tuesday afternoon, the csun_edu Instagram page said, according to the New York Times database, the school beat out 293 other public institutions. While CSUN does not appear on the official ‘Greatest Economic Diversity’…
date: 2023-11-15, from: NASA breaking news
Goddard Engineer Kevin Denis receives innovation award for photon sieves.
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/denis-innovation-award/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liliputing
Best Buy is selling a Lenovo Flex 3i 12.2″ convertible Chromebook with an Intel N100 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage for $179. Or if you’re looking for something with a lot more performance, the store is also offering an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop with a Ryzen 7 7735HS processor and […]
The post Daily Deals (11-15-2023) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-11-15-2023/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Markup blog
Congress tasked the FCC with closing the digital divide. Here’s what the agency’s doing
https://themarkup.org/still-loading/2023/11/15/fcc-approves-rules-to-prevent-digital-discrimination
date: 2023-11-15, from: NASA breaking news
For millennia, musicians have looked to the heavens for inspiration. Now a new collaboration is enabling actual data from NASA telescopes to be used as the basis for original music that can be played by humans. Since 2020, the “sonification” project at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center has translated the digital data taken by telescopes into notes and sounds. This process allows […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-telescope-data-becomes-music-you-can-play/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The disease is contagious among deer, elk and moose, but there’s no evidence that humans can get it.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281888843.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ignite Microsoft is advising customers using its Fabric platform to copy data from other data warehouses and analytics systems in a move against the prevailing industry trend.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/microsoft_fabric_mirroring/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The celestial spectacle has been ongoing since the beginning of the month, but it will peak Friday night into early Saturday morning
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Here’s when and what to know.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281891493.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
The debate over U.S. humanitarian aid to Myanmar will remain unresolved until at least early next year, as U.S. lawmakers once again this week delayed passage of a final budget for 2024.
U.S. lawmakers are expected to pass a short-term continuing resolution that will fund the government at current levels through early next year that includes the BURMA Act, passed as part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization or NDAA.
But the 2024 version of the budget will require the Senate and the House to reconcile differing visions of how to proceed with aid to Myanmar, also known as Burma.
The version of the 2024 budget produced by the Democratic-majority U.S. Senate would appropriate more money to funding humanitarian assistance and democracy promotion programs in Myanmar.
But activists have expressed concern about the delay and the version of the budget passed by the Republican-majority House of Representatives that would defund some programs.
“We are urging that Congress appropriate sufficient money to implement the BURMA Act while continuing essential assistance in the face of ongoing political and humanitarian crisis in Burma,” the Campaign for a New Myanmar said in a statement.
In its annual 2024 fiscal year markup of the State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs budget, released in July of this year, U.S. House lawmakers recommended $50 million to implement the current BURMA Act while also recommending a reduction of $1.4 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID’s development assistance.
In July 2023, Myanmar’s National Unity Government, a shadow administration run from hiding and exile vying to oust the junta, and a trio of allied ethnic minority rebel armies, told VOA they had asked the U.S. Congress for $525 million in aid, including $200 million in nonlethal humanitarian aid. That number would be four times the $136 million previously appropriated by Congress.
Current Myanmar funding
The Burma Unification through Rigorous Military Accountability or BURMA Act was a response to the February 1, 2021, coup in which Myanmar’s democratically elected government was deposed by the military.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – a leading voice in the U.S. Congress supporting democracy in Myanmar – marked the second anniversary of the coup on the Senate floor by praising the BURMA Act.
“It made sanctions on senior junta officials mandatory,” McConnell said in February 2023, “Finally, the NDAA also notably authorized funding for programs to strengthen federalism in and among ethnic states in Burma, and for technical support and non-lethal assistance to Burma’s ethnic armed organizations and People’s Defense Forces to strengthen communication, command and control, and coordination of international relief and other operations between these entities.”
According to the Stimson Center, a non-partisan think tank, “it remains unclear if any new programs were created since December 2022. At this point, the U.S. continues to promote humanitarian aid as its unchanged policy towards Myanmar.”
The United States has provided “nearly $2.1 billion since the military’s genocide and crimes against humanity towards the Rohingya that led 740,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh in 2017,” Michael Schiffer, assistant administrator of the Bureau for Asia at the U.S. Agency for International Development, told House lawmakers in September 2023.
Late last month, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that starting in December, it will prohibit Americans from providing financial services to or for Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise. The Treasury Department also sanctioned three new entities and five individuals connected to Myanmar’s military regime.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the author of the BURMA Act, praised the move in a statement.
“These sanctions will disrupt the junta’s access to the U.S. financial system and curtail its ability to commit further human rights violations. The United States and our partners must utilize all diplomatic and economic tools at our disposal to compel the junta to cease its atrocities, release unjustly detained individuals, facilitate unimpeded humanitarian access, and chart a pathway back toward democracy,” Meeks said.
Zsombor Peter contributed to this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/burma-act-debate-pushed-into-early-2024/7356280.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 51-year-old was identified Wednesday by the coroner’s office.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article281901198.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: NASA breaking news
Airplane engines are loud – just ask anyone who lives near an airport. Increased air traffic from next-generation aircraft has the potential for even more disruptive noise. Researchers and engineers at NASA are working to reduce noise generated by turbofan engines, but each new design requires certification and testing to understand how much noise it […]
date: 2023-11-15, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A water-stained first-class dinner menu dated April 11, 1912 just sold for more than $100,000
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/titanic-first-class-dinner-menu-180983264/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Status-Q blog
Rose and I have long enjoyed playing Wordle – we do it each evening after dinner, taking alternate lines, and then move on to do the same with Quordle. (Quordle needs a bit more screen real-estate, so I recommend a decent-size iPad at least.) Anyway, I was pondering the idea of more literary variations. Suppose Continue Reading
https://statusq.org/archives/2023/11/15/11808/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The new species was named after the Arabic word “yallah,” which means “let’s go,” researchers said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281896243.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The minister’s wife was stabbed 39 times, officials say.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281885978.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
It would be difficult to pass up the Bulldogs football program, which under coach Jeff Tedford has been built for sustained success at a level it has never attained.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/college/mountain-west/fresno-state/article281879293.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Stop scrolling for a moment of ‘aw,’” the zoo said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281899073.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The LAist
As the vote count comes in, the recall election for Santa Ana Councilmember Jessie Lopez is mired in legal questions.
https://laist.com/news/politics/santa-ana-recall-jessie-lopez-early-results
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 6-year-old dog got to explore outside during a “foster field trip,” the shelter showed in a heartwarming video.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281894498.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: 404 Media Group
‘Not ideal:’ NHTSA is learning about driverless car incidents from Reddit videos because its safety incident reporting form is deeply flawed, internal emails show.
https://www.404media.co/feds-have-no-idea-how-many-times-cruise-driverless-cars-hit-pedestrians/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The creature was caught on camera during a full moon.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281893843.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Novel weaknesses in Google Workspace have been exposed by researchers, with exploits potentially leading to ransomware attacks, data exfiltration, and password decryption.…
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“I am absolutely crushed.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281895983.html
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2023-11-15, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
This is what I worked on during my last two years at Microsoft.
Finally public!
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111415954222582634
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
You belong here, you know? Your dreams are valid, and you don’t need to have it all figured out. It’s scary to dream so big, right? Your parents didn’t even have the space to dream at this level, or maybe even at all, so you feel alone. I understand where your fear comes from. No…
https://sundial.csun.edu/176947/opinions/csun-poetry-the-imposter-is-not-you/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Impostor syndrome looks different for everyone; however, the symptoms may be similar for all those affected by it. Over the years, professionals have found that students as well as minorities are susceptible to experiencing impostor syndrome. It usually presents as an overwhelming amount of self-doubt that typically stems from internalized stigmas about self-competency. Those suffering…
https://sundial.csun.edu/176959/featured/overcoming-impostor-syndrome/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“I saw my 6-year-old laying in a pool of blood,” the boy’s father said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281893248.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liliputing
MINISFORUM is best known for making small desktop computers, but the company plans to launch a high-performance 2-in-1 tablet early next year. It’s called the MINISFORUM V3 tablet, and it will have a 28-watt AMD Ryzen processor, a 14 inch, 2.5K 165 Hz display, support for up to 32GB of RAM, two USB4 ports, and […]
The post MINISFORUM V3 is a 2-in-1 tablet a 28W AMD Ryzen processor and a 165 Hz display (coming in Q1, 2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Heatmap News
Ahead of President Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco on Wednesday, the U.S. and China released a joint statement that represents a breakthrough in the two countries’ climate change negotiations. Most notably, the Asian superpower has finally agreed to set concrete targets to reduce emissions across its economy.
The statement asserts that the U.S. and China will work together and with other parties at the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Abu Dhabi, known as COP28, to “rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time for present and future generations of humankind.”
Underlying the summit is a stark reality: The world will not be able to limit global warming to internationally agreed-upon levels if China, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, does not increase its ambition. The country is now responsible for about a third of annual global carbon emissions. China’s combustion of coal alone accounts for 25% of all energy-related emissions in the world.
Yet China is also the world’s top generator of renewable energy and the foremost manufacturer of much of the technology undergirding the transition. Come with me on a tour of the complex, contradictory state of China’s energy transition in eight eye-popping charts.
China’s climate pledges to date have been vague. The country has said its carbon emissions will peak before 2030, for instance, but has not set a firm target for when or at what level — and the target does not apply to other planet-warming gases like methane. But according to an analysis by Climate Action Tracker, under current policies, China’s annual emissions will peak around 2025 and then plateau for the rest of the decade. That’s primarily due to a projection that the country will continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels as its total energy demand grows. But as we’ll see, this is also one of the key uncertainties around China’s transition.
The biggest source of emissions in China is the power sector. More than 60% of its electricity generation came from coal-fired power plants last year. At COP26 in Glasgow, China said it would “phase down coal consumption” beginning in 2026, but unlike the U.S., which hasn’t built a large coal plant in 10 years, China is growing its coal fleet. Last year, the country greenlit the construction of two new coal plants per week on average, according to Global Energy Monitor, and the trend continued into 2023.
China’s coal permitting spree is the result of rising anxieties among leadership over energy security in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, and now the Israel-Hamas war, Kevin Tu, a non-resident fellow at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told me. He said China “undoubtedly” overemphasized security in its energy decision-making and that these plants were at risk of becoming stranded assets.
But as Cornell University professor and Heatmap contributor Jeremy Wallace wrote earlier this year, China’s coal plants haven’t even been running at full capacity, and are “shifting to a role of backing-up renewables.” The International Energy Agency predicted last month that China will “gradually use its coal-fired power more to provide flexibility and less to deliver bulk energy.”
China may also begin trying to capture the carbon emitted from its coal plants, with the help of the U.S. One of the points of agreement reached this week was an aim to “advance at least 5 large-scale cooperative [carbon capture, utilization, and storage] projects each by 2030.”
Even though China is building coal plants like there’s no tomorrow, the proportion of its overall energy consumption coming from fossil fuels is actually dropping quite rapidly — at a much faster rate than in the U.S. The country has reduced fossil fuels to about 82% of its energy mix, and plans to get no more than 75% of its energy from fossil fuels by 2030.
The analysis by Climate Action Tracker shows China “significantly overachieving” that goal, primarily because the country is building wind and solar farms at a truly wild pace.
China will build more solar generation this year than the U.S. has built, period. The country’s 2023 additions of low-carbon resources — solar, wind, nuclear, and hydroelectric — are enough to meet the annual electricity needs of the entire United Kingdom.
Critics of China’s climate commitments look at the country’s unbelievably fast progress on renewables and argue it could easily raise its ambition. The country will most certainly exceed the 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar it has outlined in its current policy plans.
China is even doing what has become impossible in much of the Western world and growing its nuclear fleet. “This will be the largest expansion of nuclear capacity in history, by far,” Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, told CNBC recently.
China has already won the race when it comes to manufacturing clean technologies. Even though the U.S. is pouring billions of dollars into building up its own manufacturing capacity, it’s hard to imagine we’ll ever put a real dent in China’s market dominance for lithium-ion battery and solar module production.
It’s much more likely that the U.S. and other developed countries will continue to rely heavily on China for their own energy transitions. Earlier this year, Group of Seven leaders admitted as much when they described their approach to relations with China as “derisking, not decoupling.”
China’s manufacturing prowess could also benefit a far wider swath of the globe. “China has an opportunity to leverage such capabilities to facilitate deploying clean energy globally,” said Gang He, an assistant professor of energy and climate policy at Baruch College, in an email. “Especially in the world’s least developed and most vulnerable countries.”
That’s not happening yet. In September 2021, China committed to ending its overseas financing of coal-fired power plants and to support renewable energy development abroad. But while its coal finance came to an abrupt halt, its investment in wind and solar has not gone up accordingly, according to the World Resources Institute.
But in the new joint statement with the U.S., China agreed to “pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030” in addition to accelerating the “substitution” of renewables for fossil fuels in their own countries.
How to make sense of all of this?
Earlier this week, CarbonBrief had quite an optimistic take on the data. It found that China’s rate of low-carbon energy expansion is on track to outpace the annual increase in electricity demand — telling a different story than Climate Action Tracker projected about that first key uncertainty I mentioned. This could push emissions “into an extended period of structural decline,” the authors wrote. But it all depends on whether wind and solar interests can overcome China’s powerful coal lobby.
“What China really needs is to conduct some serious institutional reform to make its power system more friendly toward renewables,” Tu told me. “The problem in China is that the coal interest group makes such reform very difficult.”
https://heatmap.news/economy/chinas-wildly-complex-energy-transition-explained-in-8-charts
date: 2023-11-15, from: TidBITS blog
Apple promised its Emergency SOS via satellite service would be free for two years when it launched for the iPhone 14 lineup in November 2022. The company has now given itself more time to figure out how to charge by extending free service through November 2025.
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: Bruce Schneier blog
This is interesting:
For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a large portion of cryptographic keys used to protect data in computer-to-server SSH traffic are vulnerable to complete compromise when naturally occurring computational errors occur while the connection is being established.
[…]
The vulnerability occurs when there are errors during the signature generation that takes place when a client and server are establishing a connection. It affects only keys using the RSA cryptographic algorithm, which the researchers found in roughly a third of the SSH signatures they examined. That translates to roughly 1 billion signatures out of the 3.2 billion signatures examined. Of the roughly 1 billion RSA signatures, about one in a million exposed the private key of the host…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/new-ssh-vulnerability.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
He used Snapchat to prey on girls from ages 11 to 15, police said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281896308.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ignite Microsoft continues to push its Copilot concept onto users and shoehorn the technology into every crevice of the Windows giant line-up and others via Copilot Studio.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/microsoft_ignite_copilot/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
There are a few cases in which a law enforcement officer can search your mail without a warrant, according to the Supreme Court of California.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281694988.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“I had just proposed to my girlfriend and … I got the news, we had to see the bird,” a bird watcher told a news outlet.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281894543.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
Democratic Party candidates who favor the right to an abortion recently secured big electoral wins in several conservative states. But to what extent could the issue of reproductive rights influence how Americans vote in the 2024 presidential election? VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias consulted with the experts.
https://www.voanews.com/a/will-abortion-access-drive-turnout-sway-votes-in-2024-/7356122.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Opinion by Marek Warszawski: “Why has prescribed fire suddenly become all the rage?”
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/marek-warszawski/article281869388.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Men’s soccer wrapped up their first season after 43 years with a 3-1 win at Citrus College. The Owls took the lead through Takechika Ito,
The post BRIEF: Men’s soccer finishes first season in 43 years appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
When asked about the chances of a cease-fire in Gaza, Biden said, “None. No possibility.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281890163.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The puppy will help his new family after his own luck took a turn.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281888588.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 34-year-old was blacklisted and banned from reentering the Philippines, immigration officials said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281892533.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Users ready to part with cold, hard cash for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus service will no doubt be disappointed to learn that sign-ups are being paused following what’s claimed to be a surge in demand.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/openai_pauses_chatgpt_plus_signups/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The pilot turned the Hawaii-bound flight around after the threats, prosecutors say.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281889928.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tesla’s threats to sue Cybertruck buyers who resell their vehicles appear to be nothing but hot air, with the language removed from the Musk-owned automaker’s terms and conditions just days after it appeared.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/tesla_reverses_course_on_cybertruck/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Curious about everything blog
That’s right, there’s more.
https://jodiettenberg.substack.com/p/thirty-two-spillover
date: 2023-11-15, from: Computer ads from the Past
The man behind CP/M talks about his operating system and programming languages
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/gary-kildall-chats-with-computer
date: 2023-11-15, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The House of Representatives has passed a stopgap spending measure to avoid a government shutdown. Now, it’s up to the Senate. But the bill lacks some major funding provisions, including for WIC — a federal food assistance program for women and children that has seen soaring enrollment in the past year as food prices have climbed. Also: wholesale prices, sports viewership and the U.S.-China semiconductor trade dispute.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
As the holiday season approaches and shelves are wiped clean of products, the 13th Annual We Heart Eagle Rock Shop Small Event will be taking place on Small Business Saturday Nov. 25. According to their website, this event is meant to support local businesses that are a part of the We Heart Eagle Rock collective […]
The post The 13th annual ‘We Heart Eagle Rock Shop Small Event’ is around the corner appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
As life returned to normal after the pandemic, I was excited to return to movie theaters. All I could think about were the exciting new stories, the smell of buttery popcorn and the anticipation before the film as the lights went down. Emerging from quarantine, box office movies like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” in 2023, or […]
The post Opinion: Is independent film dead? appeared first on The Occidental.
https://theoccidentalnews.com/opinions/2023/11/15/opinion-is-independent-film-dead/2910635
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the Occidental College community has been embroiled in controversy about how to react on campus, starting with email exchanges among faculty members and culminating in sit-ins and demonstrations led by Occidental’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (Oxy SJP). As of Nov. 14, Oxy SJP occupied […]
The post Oxy SJP occupies AGC after two-day demonstration, next steps are unclear appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Occidental Womxn’s Rugby competes in the Pacific Desert College Women’s Rugby Conference. In preparation for the season, the team has been practicing and has competed in two tournaments so far. Match secretary Emily Wills (junior) said the league games are in the Spring so the focus for the Fall is competing in tournaments. According to Wills, […]
The post Womxn’s Rugby gears up for Scrum by the Sea and Spring season appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Since the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Tibetan people have been fighting for independence from China. My grandfather left Tibet in 1959, and his children eventually made their way to the US. Although I’m a member of the Tibetan diaspora, I grew up far from any Tibetan communities. So in 2019, when my friend suggested I join […]
The post Opinion: Tibetan movements require solidarity appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
There aren’t many artists who can make their fans cause an earthquake, break Ticketmaster, receive an eight minute standing ovation or become mayor for a day in Santa Clara. But Taylor Swift has done it all. I never had a whole Spotify playlist dedicated to Swift’s music or found every Easter egg she hid in her songs, but I have also […]
The post Opinion: The “Eras Tour” was a trip down memory lane appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
My favorite Disney movie as a kid was “Cinderella.” If I said that to you face to face, you might be a little surprised. The person I’ve grown into does not look like the kind of person who enjoyed a swooning romance, a rags-to-riches tale, a story where the girl gets swept off her feet […]
The post Opinion: I wish Cinderella was gay appeared first on The Occidental.
https://theoccidentalnews.com/opinions/2023/11/15/opinion-i-wish-cinderella-was-gay/2910650
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
In an article titled “37 professors sign pro-Palestine email, face pushback from colleagues,” The Occidental quoted Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture (CSLC) professor Jacob Mackey as saying that it is “factually inaccurate and extremely dangerous” to call Israel a “settler colonial” society. We are unsure what this claim is based on or why Mackey […]
The post Letter to the editor: It is not antisemitic to say Israel is a settler colonial state appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Oct. 11, Director of Financial Aid Sheryl Reinschmidt sent an email to Occidental students informing them that the launch of the 2024–2025 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Form will be delayed until Dec. 2023. The deadline to reapply for financial aid at Occidental for 2024–2025 will remain Mar. 2, 2024, according to the email. […]
The post Changes in FAFSA calculations pushes form release to December appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Occidental athletes follow a rigorous schedule to perform their best. Often, they push their bodies with training that challenges the strongest of them. The antidote is rest and recovery. For some, it’s a simple team breakfast in the MP; for others, it’s listening to music and stretching. Brandon Kim (first year), a member of the […]
The post Occidental athletes on rest and recovery appeared first on The Occidental.
https://theoccidentalnews.com/sports/2023/11/15/occidental-athletes-on-rest-and-recovery/2910674
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Occidental News (Occidental College Student Newspaper)
Sebastian Romero For the first time in its history, the Occidental men’s soccer team clinched a 3-0 win over the University of Redlands in the 2023 SCIAC Championship match Nov. 4. Center back Sebastian Romero (senior) scored the first goal of the game with a backwards header, making it the second-fastest opening goal in SCIAC history and […]
The post Athletes of the week Sebastian Romero and Toni Thompson savor victorious moments appeared first on The Occidental.
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
Results from Tuesday’s NorCal girls volleyball finals, boys and girls water polo quarterfinals.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Windows Developer Blog
With the latest Windows 11 update on Sept. 26 we released a host of developer features as the core component of the Windows OS with an intent to make every developer more productive on Windows. Today we are excited to announce Windows AI Studio, a ne
The post Elevating the developer experience on Windows with new AI tools and productivity tools appeared first on Windows Developer Blog.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Windows Developer Blog
At Inspire this year we talked about how developers will be able to run Llama 2 on Windows with DirectML and t
The post Announcing preview support for Llama 2 in DirectML appeared first on Windows Developer Blog.
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
The closures, in effect until 8 p.m., include 4 miles of Cañada Road.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/15/map-peninsula-roads-closed-for-biden-xi-meeting-at-filoli/
date: 2023-11-15, from: ETH Zurich Research Archives
Coffee Lecture, 22 November 2023, 3.15 – 3.30 pm. Read
more
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“I didn’t believe it was real,” the winner said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281888423.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
This sushi chef wants to bring the same intimacy her father provided customers in her family’s old Fresno spot.
https://www.fresnobee.com/living/food-drink/article281307683.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Amazon is warning employees they risk undermining their own promotion prospects unless they return to the office (RTO) for three days a week, as was mandated by CEO Andy Jassy months ago.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/amazon_in_person_mandate/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“We are continuing to investigate, we are continuing to work on this case,” the sheriff said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article281868808.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
There are many issues that Angelenos face, such as bad access to public transportation and housing insecurity. Even air conditioning is unobtainable to some.
The post Star-spangled panels appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Pierce Women’s Volleyball played their last game of the season on Wednesday, rematching the Moorpark College Raiders in the Pierce gym and winning 3-0. Only
The post Season ends in heartbreak appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
“I think voting makes a difference because everyone’s opinion is important and valued, and when everyone votes, we get a clear sense
The post Streetbeat: Do you think voting makes a difference? appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Even though community college is known to be a more accessible option to receiving higher education, it can still be costly for students. BestColleges is
The post Pierce should provide school supply kits appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
It may not be baseball season, but preparations are underway for 2024. The Brahmas had games this fall playing against teams they could potentially face
The post Hey batta batta appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
The football team’s season ended against the Santa Monica Corsairs with a 38-14 loss. The Brahmas had a dismal first half against the visiting Santa
The post Football loses final game appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Percussion Instructor Kevin Good presented a Voice Recital on Thursday starring vocalist Garineh Avakian and pianist Joseph Lee in the Performing Arts Building. The duo
The post Voice recital features Pierce professors appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
After roll call and a flag salute, Board of Trustees President David Vela requested a moment of silence for the casualties lost in the Middle
The post Lives honored at board meeting appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Voting is a right as well as a privilege. Those who don’t vote should not complain about the outcome of an election and the consequences.
The post Does voting make a difference? Yes, it does appeared first on The Roundup.
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
As the war between Israel and Hamas rages, Californians find that discussions about it can get heated quickly based on how people intend or receive some key terms.
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
WordPress signin is now the default for feedland.org. I’m looking forward to being able to do some interesting things in the future with the WordPress connection.
http://scripting.com/2023/11/15.html#a152443
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Several antiques were also lost in the blaze.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281861228.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
Our six takeaways from the judge’s ruling that gave control of the Pac-12 board to the two remaining schools.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The creature has half-copper, half-silver eyes, researchers said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281861553.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Squeeze
Why They Pursued “Dear Alana,” How They Find New Projects, and What They Look For In Creative Partnerships
https://thisisthesqueeze.substack.com/p/tenderfoot-was-never-about-true-crime
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
CCS, NCS playoffs: Who’s going to win the De La Salle vs. San Ramon Valley rematch? What about Los Gatos at St. Ignatius or California at Pittsburg? Our guys submit their picks for this weekend’s big section playoff games.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liliputing
Hardkernel’s new ODROID-M1S is a single-board computer with a 1.8 GHz Rockchip RK3566 quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 processor featuring Mali-G52 MP2 graphics and an AI accelerator with up to 6 TOPS of performance. It’s also a smaller and cheaper than the ODROID-M1 that the company launched a year and a half ago, while keeping many of […]
The post ODROID-M1S is a $49 single-board PC with RK3566, 64GB eMMC and an M.2 2280 slot appeared first on Liliputing.
date: 2023-11-15, from: NASA breaking news
Scientists are following neon signs in a search for clues to one planetary system’s future and the past of another – our own solar system. Following up on a peculiar reading by NASA’s previous infrared flagship observatory, the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope detected distinct traces of the element neon […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/webb-follows-neon-signs-toward-new-thinking-on-planet-formation/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners
https://www.fresnobee.com/shopping/article272608364.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
La cuenta regresiva ya está en marcha y faltan aproximadamente 200 días para que mexicanos en el exterior puedan votar en las elecciones de su país del 2 de junio del 2024.
https://www.fresnobee.com/vida-en-el-valle/noticias/nacion-y-mundo/article281848193.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Heatmap News
The oil industry is not telling a credible story about its own future. Far from doubling down on the future of oil — as they’d have us believe — and as climate action advocates fear – the most powerful oil producers are planning for obsolescence, but they’re hoping to do it on their own, lucrative, terms.
The end of more than a century of growth in oil use is almost here, but it’s not straightforward.
One of the world’s leading forecasters of energy trends is now emphatic that the amount of oil, gas, and coal used around the world each day will begin to taper off within a few years. According to the International Energy Agency, global oil consumption, currently just over 100 million barrels per day, will peak later this decade at around 102 milllion barrels per day even without any new climate policy measures. We are at “the beginning of the end of the era of fossil fuels,” IEA chief Fatih Birol wrote in September.
None of this is adequate to stay within safe climate limits, but it’s hard to overstate what it means for the oil industry, which has enjoyed almost uninterrupted growth for its 150-odd-year existence.
Oil producers vigorously pushed back on the IEA’s outlook. OPEC+, the oil producers’ cartel, accused the agency of being “ideologically driven.” Chief executives of Exxon and state-controlled Saudi Aramco insisted that demand will continue to grow for decades to come.
But while the biggest and most successful oil producers rail against the IEA’s forecast, hinting that the agency is some kind of woke climate activist, their own actions tell a different story. Oil producers know that their industry is on the cusp of an inexorable decline, and they are preparing for it.
That might seem counter-intuitive given the spate of merger and acquisition news this fall. Last month Exxon made an $65 billion bid for Pioneer Natural Resources, which owns a swathe of Permian shale, and a couple of weeks later Chevron offered $53 billion for Hess Corporation, which includes a chunk of deepwater oil fields off Guyana. “Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere,” declared The New York Times after the Exxon-Pioneer announcement. Like many other stories, the Times’ article pointed out that Exxon is choosing to invest in more oil, but not renewable energy. Earlier this year Shell cut its target for renewable energy growth. It looks like another vote in favor of oil’s strong future.
But neither the oil industry’s protestations, nor the big U.S. acquisitions, nor the lack of enthusiasm for green investments by oil majors, tells us that oil’s rise will continue for decades. In fact some of these developments point in the opposite direction.
Let’s start with the acquisitions. They’re certainly big; Exxon is preparing to buy Pioneer for shares equivalent to a sixth of Exxon’s own market capitalization; and Chevron’s Hess acquisition is of similarly huge proportions. Big corporate takeovers, however, do not indicate a growing industry. In boom years anyone can raise capital; when things get tough it’s time for “consolidation” because only companies with scale can survive.
To understand how these deals are conservative bets on the future of oil, look at what in the commodities world is called the “production cost curve” — a way of analyzing the financial logic of anything that’s mined or pumped out of the ground.
The curve shows total oil production capacity, ranked horizontally from the cheapest to the most expensive to extract. (The colored dots represent different International Energy Agency scenarios, with the first more climate-aligned and the last being simply “business as usual,” but they’re not particularly important for our purposes.)
The oil industry consists of a panoply of producers, each owning assets with different geological features, chemical compositions, and financial flexibility that put them on different parts of the curve.
Now, the greater the world’s total oil consumption, the more likely it is that prices will be high enough that those at the highest end of the production cost curve — everyone on the steep incline on the curve’s right — can still make money.
But while prices for oil are currently high, the acquisitions are not counting on them remaining so. Wood Mackenzie noted that Chevron’s Guyana fields would have “highly competitive breakeven costs.” Another energy consultancy, Rystad, pointed out that Exxon-Pioneer would have the lowest breakeven costs of any Permian producer; whereas previously they’d only rank second and fourth, respectively. In other words, Chevron and Exxon are rationally trying to position themselves on the left-hand side of the curve — the safe demand zone — where they hope to outlast competitors whose breakeven costs per barrel are too high to survive a world weaning itself off oil.
So the beginning of the end of oil doesn’t mean game over for Exxon, Chevron, or Saudi Aramco – if they play their cards right. Some oil will be sold for the next couple of decades at least. The trajectory down, however, is unprecedented, and it’s not clear that even the canniest producers won’t get caught out by the speed of transition to electric vehicles, for example.
But what about backing away from green energy? If fossil fuels’ heyday is over, surely everyone should pile into the next big thing?
Not necessarily. Consider where their money comes from. Big oil companies like Exxon and Chevron have plenty of cash, but they have to keep shareholders happy. Those investors are in those companies for various reasons; but one reason some of them actively choose it is for its specific characteristics: long capital-intensive investment cycles and high profits when things go well.
Green energy investments are different. The rates of return can be lower, but risks are also lower, particularly over a longer time horizon.
In fact it’s a conventional tenet of investing that if companies see their entire industry shrinking, they should not necessarily pivot into a new sector that is replacing it. The principles of “shareholder value,” for example, holds that companies should return cash to shareholders if there are no credible investment opportunities, so they can divert that money into new sectors.
That’s exactly what those massive share buyback programs are doing. The world’s biggest oil companies ramped up purchases of their own shares — which returns cash to investors — to the value of more than $135 billion last year, according to investment manager Janus Henderson; Bloomberg estimates it was a more than 10-fold increase on the previous year and many U.S. and European majors are extending or expanding their buybacks this year.
The buybacks, as much as they might be a repellent illustration of windfall profits arising from wars, are being conducted instead of investing in more upstream investment. Of course, this logic doesn’t align with the much-repeated idea that “oil companies will have to be involved in the transition,” but neither do the actions of oil companies.
Finally, it pays to question the messenger. It would not be in oil companies’ interests to say out loud that demand is peaking soon, even if they and their investors all know it.
Imagine if Exxon or OPEC+’s secretariat said “yes, oil demand is probably close to peaking; it might plateau for awhile but the era of growth is over.” Money would flow out of the sector. Smaller, more expensive producers would stop investing in finding and producing more oil, which would lead to more volatile price spikes, driving the world to switch to clean energy even faster (JP Morgan says the recent high prices has already provoked “demand destruction” — in part explaining why prices haven’t spiked as much as recent world events might suggest.) Governments and other companies might even step up efforts to cut their dependency on oil. It would become a self-fulfilling prophecy with challenging implications for countries and companies whose existence is based on pumping oil and gas.
OPEC is typically optimistic about oil demand in its own publications. It predicted back in 2006 that oil demand in 2025 would be 113 million barrels per day — a number that’s 10 million above what has ever been reached. (It’s now forecasting that oil demand will reach a similar level — 116 million/day — only 20 years later, in 2045.) But OPEC, and particularly its most powerful member Saudi Arabia, has long been quietly anxious about demand destruction. With the IEA saying recent prices suggest that is already happening now, thanks to the rise of electric vehicles, OPEC has further reason to keep their fretting private.
Oil producers are — again, rationally — planning to extract the last bit of profits from a declining sector, while hoping that energy users everywhere remain dependent upon a volatile, expensive, and polluting – but very profitable – energy source. If newer sovereign producers try to get into the game late (such as Barbados, Senegal, and Mozambique) they might well get caught out by the shrinking oil market. That would leave the cheaper and better-capitalized producers — Gulf countries, or the U.S. majors — to continue selling at a comfortable profit, albeit slightly lower than they’d receive in the pre-peak era.
The oil majors are settling in for a long, comfortable decline.
https://heatmap.news/economy/oil-companies-are-preparing-for-a-lucrative-decline
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Researchers searched the southern African country and discovered the patterned animal, a study said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article281863008.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 32-year-old man was wanted in connection with an assault Aug. 16 in the South of Market neighborhood.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 83-year-old resident was found 25 feet from his walker and “his whole body was freezing,” an investigator said.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281883393.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Intel has published proposals to tackle its environmental impact, largely focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moving to renewable energy, but gave less attention to water usage and the harsh chemicals involved in chipmaking.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/intel_sustainability_roadmap/
date: 2023-11-15, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft continues to make progress, most recently moving to the paint barn at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works’ facility in Palmdale, California. The X-59’s paint scheme will include a mainly white body, a NASA “sonic blue” underside, and red accents on the wings. The paint doesn’t just add cosmetic value. It also […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-x-59-goes-from-green-to-red-white-and-blue/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Textcasting
and ActivityPub are not mutually exclusive. It would be great if an
ActivityPub instance would also support the features outlined in the
Textcasting
doc.
It’s equally possible that a non-ActivityPub app could support
Textcasting. It’s like saying you can send an MP3 over email and over
SMS. Textcasting is the MP3. As the Textcasting doc says I’m interested
in supporting writers. Really if we work on it, we can have a
great writing and reading environment.
http://scripting.com/2023/11/15.html#a143957
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
While the rainy weather was predicted to be “unorganized” on Wednesday, most of the Bay Area was expected to be hit with widespread rain and wind by the evening, according to the National Weather Service.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
“Alan was a loving father, son, and brother,” his family said. “His treatment while detained is sickening.”
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281853263.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
Kingdom of 10,000,000 White Leghorns. Chickaluma. The Egg Basket of the World. These are all historic nicknames for Petaluma, But how chickeny is it… now?
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners
https://www.fresnobee.com/shopping/article281522458.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The kitten now has a new home.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281884258.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liam on Linux
This is an extremely broad question and it needs a tonne of context to give an unambiguous answer.For what role?
Server…
Web server?
File server?
Print server?
Router/firewall?
Desktop?
General purpose desktop?
Gaming desktop?
Emergency recovery desktop?
App-specific desktop?
Alpine is lightweight because almost nothing is pre-configured for you and you must DIY… but saying that its origins are as a router distro repurposed to be general-purpose. It uses a different libc, which is a huge change. Every single app has to be recompiled to work with musl libc instead of glibc.
Open_WRT is lightweight because it’s dedicated to running on routers.
CBL Mariner is lightweight because it’s only for certain niche server VMs.
antiX is lightweight because it’s a general-purpose graphical desktop but ruthlessly purged of heavyweight components, all replaced with the smallest lightest-weight alternatives.
Raspberry Pi Desktop is lightweight because it’s an x86 version of a brutally pared-down Debian originally meant for a single-core Arm computer with 512MB of RAM.
Bodhi Linux is lightweight because it’s Ubuntu but with all the desktop stuff removed, replaced with a forked old version of a very lightweight window manager and almost nothing else. Any functionality you want you must install.
Lots of different answers, lots of different use cases, lots of different strategies.
This is not a "yes/no" question. It’s complex and nuanced.
Debian is not lightweight. Its strapline is "the universal operating system". It’s a Swiss Army knife that can do anything and that’s part of its definition.
You can make a lightweight install of it if you know what you’re doing but ticking the box for a lightweight desktop and installing is not doing that.
Comparison: you see a lightweight sports motorcycle. It’s green. You buy a Harley and paint it green and say "look mine is a lightweight sports bike now!"
Devuan is just Debian with systemd removed and openrc or sysvinit in its place. This is not a big sweeping change. It’s equivalent to looking at the sports bike, seeing it has Bridgestone tyres instead of Dunlop, and swapping the tyres on the Harley to Bridgestone tyres.
It is a trivial change compared to a libc change. It’s routine maintenance to change your tyres. You need to do it regularly anyway. It doesn’t need the bike to be rebuilt.
It’s not easy. It takes hours and skills and tools and so on but it’s not sweeping.
Devuan has rebuilt a tonne of packages to remove dependencies on systemd and that’s not trivial but it’s still Debian. By and large you can download any Debian package and install it and it’ll just work because most things never interact with the init daemon and it won’t make a big difference.
A Swiss Army knife with a different axle that pivots a bit more smoothly and with less force is still a Swiss Army knife and only a knife expert will be able to even tell the difference.
It doesn’t make it into a super-slim lightweight knife, like – I know nothing about knives – something like this.
You could disassemble a Victorinox and rebuild it into something like that but it’s really hard and an amateur will end up with a broken pile of bits.
So the fact that people build lightweight distros out of Debian doesn’t mean Debian is lightweight or that you can do it yourself. Think about it: if it was easy, lightweight remixes wouldn’t exist! There’d be no point.
How do you tell if it’s lightweight or not?
Look at how big the ISO file you download is.
4-5GB is big.
2-3GB is typical.
<2GB is small.
~1GB is tiny.
Run df -h and look at how
much disk space it takes. Much the same applies.
Run free -h on a
newly-booted machine and look at how much RAM it’s using.
200MB is light in 2023.
Under 0.5GB is good.
0.75GB is OK.
Over 1GB is typical.
comments
https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/89980.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: 404 Media Group
In this week’s episode, we talk a16z’s investment into AI platform Civitai, our investigation into working conditions at Labcorp, and how the “brand safety” industry is destroying media.
https://www.404media.co/404-media-podcast-week-13-a16z-funds-civitai/
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
Warriors coach Steve Kerr said Podziemski is “going to play every night”
date: 2023-11-15, from: San Jose Mercury News
Connector ramp improvements from northbound Highway 87 to Interstate 280 should be extended.
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
FBI director Christopher Wray made yet another impassioned plea to US lawmakers to kill a proposed warrant requirement for so-called “US person queries” of data collected via the Feds’ favorite snooping tool, FISA Section 702.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/fbi_director_fisa_section_702/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Guam Daily Post
In collaboration with the National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities Guåhan announced the awardees of its 2023 Community Grant Cycle. This year’s grants will empower nonprofit organizations to deliver outstanding humanities programs that promote and foster cultural enrichment, community engagement,…
date: 2023-11-15, from: Guam Daily Post
A full-scale disaster exercise at the airport involved simulating an aircraft hijacking and subsequent crash.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Guam Daily Post
Two men suspected in a criminal sexual conduct case in August pleaded not guilty to their charges.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Guam Daily Post
Another pitfall in attempting to meet with the Guam Medical Association has Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero criticizing the president of the association, Dr. Thomas Shieh. In response, Shieh levied criticism of his own, stating in part that the kind of…
date: 2023-11-15, from: Guam Daily Post
The chief deputy attorney general said he did not intend to threaten or hurt the Guam Bar president or board of governors when he said he “wanted to smash the faces of the powers that be.”
date: 2023-11-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
I love that ChatGPT makes it possible to create visualizations for ideas that previously I could only present in words.
For example, I like to say that when I die my gravestone should say He’s Done Digging or something like that, to stand in contrast to my long-lived motto – Still diggin! I did some writing this morning about Future-Safe Archives, and thought to get that as a picture. The piece isn’t ready to publish yet, but no reason not to share the illustration. So here it is..
PS: No need for an actual gravestone. Online is fine. Hopefully we’ll figure out how to make such things persist before it’s needed. 😄
http://scripting.com/2023/11/15/135527.html?title=myGravestoneVisualized
date: 2023-11-15, from: NASA breaking news
In the year since NASA’s historic Artemis I mission successfully launched, the agency has been analyzing data from its approximately 25-day journey around the Moon and back to Earth, including data submitted from volunteers around the world as they tracked the uncrewed Orion spacecraft. The flight test, which launched on Nov. 16, 2022, atop the […]
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Snow levels should be around 7,000 feet.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/weather-news/article281861698.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
How low can gasoline prices go?
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281845908.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The latest version of Red Hat’s flagship distro appeared last week, closely followed by Alma Linux 9.3. RHEL 8.9 is coming soon – and presumably, so is Rocky Linux 9.3.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/rhel_and_alma_linux_93/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The LAist
It’s November, and kids are still being impacted by the heat.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liliputing
A few weeks after introducing the Radxa Zero 3W single-board computer with a Raspberry Pi Zero-like form-factor and Rockchip RK3566 processor, Radxa has unveiled a second model with the same chip and a similar design… but a few key differences. The biggest change? While the Radxa Zero 3W supports WiFi and Bluetooth, the Radxa Zero […]
The post Radxa Zero 3E trades WiFi for Ethernet (tiny, cheap single-board computer) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/radxa-zero-3e-trades-wifi-for-ethernet-tiny-cheap-single-board-computer-2/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The LAist
Big events are a big source of food waste. So what does it take to “walk the sustainability walk” when you have to feed lots of people?
https://laist.com/news/education/west-la-college-climate-sustainability-food-waste-conference
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The LAist
Santa Monica College’s recycling and resource management program is among a growing list responding to the climate emergency’s impact on the economy.
https://laist.com/news/education/santa-monica-college-students-trash-recycling-studies-careers
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners
https://www.fresnobee.com/betting/nfl/article265150826.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The stunt was planned to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s First Folio
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
TV/radio listings, odds and injury reports with live updates as the Kings prepare to play the Los Angeles Lakers at Crypto.com Arena.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/article281866653.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The state’s 35,000+ vehicles include everything from golf carts and sedans to big rigs and school buses.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281870043.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
After decades of delay, state environmental review for Sites Reservoir comes to close as Newsom limits court challenges
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281848768.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
California’s Legislative Black Caucus is preparing a landmark series of reparation bills next year. A hands-off approach by Newsom would be disaster.
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article281813488.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The app is currently being tested in Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article281260288.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Marketplace Morning Report
We’ll be getting some clues about how this year’s holiday shopping season will pan out, with big retailers like Target, Walmart and Macy’s slated to released quarterly results today and tomorrow. What can we expect from holiday consumer spending? Then, we hear about the latest season of Marketplace’s climate solutions podcast, “How We Survive,” which digs into what happens when water becomes unaffordable.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Activists who think their anti-Israel protests will improve the lives of terrorized people are allowing antisemitism to flourish. | Opinion
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article281850633.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
In the UK’s Parliament this week, Microsoft and Meta ducked the question of whether creators should be paid when their copyrighted material is used to train large language models.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/house_of_lords_ai_copyright/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
Their canoe flipped around midnight, officials say.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article281881213.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: China’s president has arrived in California ahead of a face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden, in an efforts to ease tensions over trade, technology and Taiwan. The pair will hold talks at the edge of the conference for Asia Pacific leaders. Plus, inflation in the United Kingdom drops to its lowest level in 2 years as energy costs fall.
date: 2023-11-15, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
Today’s post comes from Alyssa Manfredi at the National Archives History Office. Robert “Bobby” Kennedy was a politician known as the father of modern American liberalism. As President John F. Kennedy’s younger brother, he used his position as a high-profile member of the Kennedy family to advocate for the civil rights movements of the 1960s. … Continue reading Robert F. Kennedy: Father of Modern American Liberalism
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
US bans on exports of advanced chipmaking equipment to China are not working, according to a report from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/banned_chipmaking_equipment_china/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
LED sculptor Christopher Schardt created Mariposa, a giant butterfly sculpture with 39,000 LEDs that provides Raspberry Pi-controlled light and music choreography.
The post Mariposa: a giant Raspberry Pi-controlled LED butterfly appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/mariposa-a-giant-raspberry-pi-controlled-led-butterfly/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Updated Some drivers of American electric vehicle brand Rivian found themselves on an unexpectedly silent ride at unknown speeds after infotainment and instrument systems failed this week.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/rivian_bricked_infotainment_systems/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liam on Linux
I suppose it was a long time ago.The 80386DX was the first x86 CPU to be 32-bit and have an on-chip MMU. And nothing else: no cache, no FPU.
The FPU was a discrete part, the 80387DX.
Because OS/2 1.x didn’t support the 80386, and so couldn’t run DOS apps well, and so flopped, the 16-bit 80286 kept selling well. It ran DOS fast and it could run Windows 2/286 and Windows 3 in Standard Mode which was good enough. It could only address 16MB of RAM but that was fantastically expensive and it was more than enough for DOS and Windows 3.
So, because DOS still ruled, Intel made a cost-reduced version of the 80386DX, the 80386SX. This had a 16-bit data bus, so it could use cheaper 16-bit motherboards and 16-bit wide RAM, still limited to a max of 16MB. Still enough.
That needed a maths copro for hardware floating point, too: a different part, the 80387SX.
Then Windows 3 came along, which was also good enough, and started a move in PC apps to GUIs. Windows 3.1 (1992) was better still.
So Intel had a 2nd go at the 32-bit chip market with the 80486, marketed as the "486". This integrated a better 386DX-compatible CPU core with a few extra instructions, complete with MMU, plus a 387-style FPU, plus a small amount of L1 cache, all onto one die.
But it was expensive, and didn’t sell well.
Also, all the 3rd party x86 makers leapt on the bandwagon and integrated the extra instructions into 16-bit bus 386SX compatible chips and branded them as 486s: the Cyrix and IBM "486slc" for instance. This ate into sales of the real 486.
So Intel came up with an ethically very dodgy borderline scam: it shipped 486s with the FPU disabled, calling them the "486DX" to reuse the branding that distinguished the 32-bit-bus models of 386 from the 16-bit-bus.
People don’t understand stuff like bus widths or part numbers, as your post demonstrates, and I mean no offense. They don’t.
So now there was a new model of 486, the 486SX with a disabled FPU, and the 486DX with it still turned on.
The "SX" model needed a new motherboard with a 2nd CPU socket that accepted a "floating point co-processor", called the "487", which was nothing of the kind. The "SX" was a lie and so was the "487 copro". The 487 was a 2nd complete 486 chip that disabled the original and took over.
But it reused the older branding, which is what you’ve remembered.
Later, briefly, Intel made a cheaper cost-reduced 486SX with a smaller die with no FPU present, but not many of them. The clock-doubled 486DX2 took over quite quickly and killed the 486DX and 486SX market.
Some commentators speculated that the 486DX vs 486SX marketing thing allowed Intel to sell defective 486s in which the FPU didn’t work but if it did that was a tiny tiny number: a rounding error.
https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/89795.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A biopic of Elon Musk is in the works, with Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of the controversial figure serving as the source. But who should step into Musk’s shoes? Only The Register readership can advise.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/who_will_take_the_leader/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
I am delighted to announce that the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind are building a global network of educational organisations to bring AI literacy to teachers and students all over the world, starting with Canada, Kenya, and Romania. Experience AI We launched Experience AI in September 2022 to help teachers and students learn about…
The post AI literacy for teachers and students all over the world appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/experience-ai-canada-kenya-romania/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LONDON — Police in England arrested a man Tuesday on suspicion of manslaughter in the death of American ice hockey player Adam Johnson, whose neck was cut by a skate during a game. </p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh said Tuesday he’s spoken to his brother, Jim, quite a bit, and he’s proud of how the Michigan coach has handled the sign-stealing scandal that put the program under investigation. </p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Tyrese Haliburton had 33 points and 15 assists, and Obi Toppin chipped in 27 points as the Indiana Pacers beat the 76ers 132-126 in an NBA In-Season Tournament game on Tuesday night and snapped Philadelphia’s eight-game winning streak.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The UH-Hilo men’s and women’s soccer teams played away against Chaminade on Sunday for their finals regular season matches — as the Vulcans’ men’s team won 2-0 and the women tied 2-2.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/15/sports/vulcan-soccer-seasons-end/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SAN DIEGO — Peter Seidler loved to dream out loud about a World Series parade for his San Diego Padres and their long-suffering fans. He spent that way, too, fearlessly committing hundreds of millions of dollars toward trying to bring his adopted hometown its first major title. </p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Witnessing a troubling surge in turnovers and a worrisome drop in quarterback Josh Allen’s confidence provided Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott little choice but to fire offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey on Tuesday. </p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The BIIF announced its All-League cross country selections for the Fall 2023 season over the weekend.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/15/sports/xc-all-biif-selections-announced/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Mayor Mitch Roth congratulated three Hawaii Island residents who have been recognized by Pacific Business News as members of the 2023 cohort of Hawaii’s Most Admired Leaders.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Up to 30 million of the poorest Americans could be purged from the Medicaid program, many the result of error-ridden state reviews that poverty experts say the Biden administration is not doing enough to stop.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Salvation Army’s Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Division has announced its Hawaii County Thanksgiving outreach services.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Hawaii County Department of Parks and Recreation announces the opening of registration for its 2023 Winter Intersession Programs. </p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SAN FRANCISCO — President Joe Biden said on the eve of his much-anticipated meeting with China’s Xi Jinping that his goal for the talks is simply to try to get U.S.-Chinese communications back on stable ground after a tumultuous year.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — Supporters of Israel rallied by the tens of thousands on the National Mall under heavy security Tuesday, voicing solidarity in the fight against Hamas and crying “never again.”</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Friends of Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge has set a goal of $300,000 for its 2023 fall endowment campaign.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Big Island Singers will be presenting its second season of music to East Hawaii audiences with three hourlong performances this weekend.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Despite ongoing advocacy and legislation to combat anti-Asian racism that arose after the pandemic, about a third of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders say they have experienced an act of abuse based on their race or ethnicity in the last year, including being on the receiving end of verbal harassment, slurs, physical threats or cyberbullying.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — The House voted Tuesday to prevent a government shutdown after new Republican Speaker Mike Johnson was forced to reach across the aisle to Democrats when hard-right conservatives revolted against his plan.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Palestinian authorities on Tuesday called for a cease-fire to evacuate three dozen newborns and other patients trapped inside Gaza’s biggest hospital as Israeli forces battled Hamas in the streets just outside and seized more ground across northern Gaza.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>MEXICO CITY — Thousands marched in Mexico’s capital Monday night demanding justice for Jesús Ociel Baena, an influential LGBTQ+ figure who was found dead at home in the central city of Aguascalientes after receiving death threats.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>U.S. inflation broadly slowed in October, which markets cheered as a strong indication that the Federal Reserve is done hiking interest rates.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LAS VEGAS — The famous fountains at the Bellagio won’t be very visible this week amid the roar of Formula One racing on the Las Vegas Strip, and gondoliers won’t be serenading tourists at the Venetian resort.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DETROIT — A Michigan judge ruled Tuesday that former President Donald Trump will remain on the state’s primary ballot, dealing a blow to the effort to stop Trump’s candidacy with a Civil War-era Constitutional clause.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>As he sat on the witness stand in a New York courtroom last week, Donald Trump reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper and tried to hand it to the judge.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Gregory T. Smith, 71, of Pahoa died Oct. 24 at home. Born in California, he was a commercial fisherman and U.S. Army veteran. Private services held. Survived by partner, Joyce A. Folena of Pahoa. Arrangements by Ballard Family Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/15/obituaries/obituaries-for-november-15-12/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Climate change in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands threatens unique island ecosystems, cultural resources, human health, livelihoods and access to clean water and healthy food.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Transportation Security Administration estimates a record holiday travel season nationwide based on previous records set this year across airport security checkpoints.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A traveling memorial to the U.S. soldiers who died in the Vietnam War will be making its first visit to Hawaii in January.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Fifth-grade girls from 26 schools across West Hawaii gathered Tuesday to attend GEMS - Girls Exploring Math and Science.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A Kona grand jury on Monday indicted a 44-year-old Ocean View man for allegedly shooting another man in the face with a shotgun last month.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Concerns about rise in homelessness</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/15/opinion/your-views-for-november-15-7/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>It’s difficult to name a winner in the Wednesday GOP debate in Miami given that all five of those on stage appear to be competing for silver. Yet signs abound that at least one of the contenders could yet emerge as a serious alternative to Donald Trump.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/11/15/opinion/haley-desantis-look-strongest-in-gop-debate/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>We’re still waiting for the official cause of death for Matthew Perry, who was famous for starring in “Friends” and struggling mightily with substance abuse. Even in the addiction recovery world, I’ve heard people suggest Perry’s legacy depends on whether the pending toxicology reports show he suffered a relapse. They couldn’t be more wrong.</p>
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
I have worked in the accounting profession since 1973. After 50 years, I thought I had seen it all, but recently I have noticed a new trend — taxpayers experiencing problems when paying their taxes by check. One of my longstanding clients is in his mid-80s and does not trust making online payments. He pays […]
The post Jim de Bree | Problems with Paying Taxes Via Check appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/jim-de-bree-problems-with-paying-taxes-via-check/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
In response to “Our View: Who’s the Parent? Not the State,” Nov. 11. Thank you for recognizing the fundamental issue in the parental notification debate: “If a minor child just mentions a sexual identity choice, no notification is necessary.” As you correctly point out, tweens and teens go through phases. Issues of attraction and gender […]
The post Forbes Black | An Agreement on the Basics appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/forbes-black-an-agreement-on-the-basics/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
After the horrific attack in Israel by Hamas butchers, President Joe Biden was asked about Iran and how it, through its proxies, continues to attack Israel and Americans stationed in the region. His one-word answer was “don’t!” Since then there have been 32 attacks on United States bases and personnel in the region. Our only […]
The post Brian Richards | Feeble in Mind and Deeds appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/brian-richards-feeble-in-mind-and-deeds/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
Yes, America does need a return to accountability, but Gary Horton must think it only applies to Republicans. He rants about the behavior of a conservative in a theater, but poor Al Franken, posing like he’s groping a sleeping woman, is forced to resign. He also rants about the lies of Rep. George Santos, but […]
The post Dean Haynes | Accountability Must Go Both Ways appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/dean-haynes-accountability-must-go-both-ways/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Organizations are still failing to implement adequate logging measures, increasing the difficulty faced by defenders and incident responders to identify the cause of infosec attacks.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/ransomware_more_efficient_than_ever/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
John Strauss’s altercations with demonstrators Thursday has brought condemnation and support.
The post Professor whose comments at Gaza memorial went viral not on administrative leave, USC says appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/professor-strauss/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Robert Reich on Substack
As Palestinian deaths in Gaza mount, so do demands for a ceasefire. But many fear that Hamas would only use it to regroup and rearm.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/office-hours-are-you-in-favor-of
date: 2023-11-15, 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 15, 2023 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/classifieds-november-15-2023/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Google DeepMind claims its latest AI model is capable of generating ten-day weather forecasts in under a minute and is just as accurate as traditional predictive models running on supercomputers. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/google_deepmind_graphcast/
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1978 – Southern Pacific Saugus depot closes; later moved to Hart Park. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-nov-15/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Trojans head north for the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Tournament.
The post Men’s water polo begins postseason appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/mens-water-polo-begins-postseason/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Women’s soccer heads to Utah to take on the NCAA Tournament’s No. 1 seed.
The post Trojans hope to conquer Cougars appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/trojans-hope-to-conquer-cougars/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
I hope to incorporate both “Midwest nice” and “West Coast chill” into my life.
The post I miss the ‘Midwest nice’ I grew up with appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/i-miss-the-midwest-nice-i-grew-up-with/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
You have a place at home, even if every force in the world is telling you that you don’t.
The post Reckoning with returning home appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/reckoning-with-returning-home/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Medical student Tejal Gala turned her photography project into an installation.
The post ‘Keck in Bloom’ finds beauty in unexpected places appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/keck-in-bloom-finds-beauty-in-unexpected-places/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Troye Sivan’s newest music video points at a new resurgence of fashion among Gen Z street style.
The post A single fringed glove to lead the way appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/a-single-fringed-glove-to-lead-the-way/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The CDFA quarantined an area after finding invasive species in Leimert Park.
The post Millions of male fruit flies will be dropped on LA appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/fruit-flies/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The new platform promises better academic advising experiences for students.
The post USC launches new academic advising platform, Advise USC appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/adviseusc/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The two winning Trojans have secured a spot in the moot court pre-nationals.
The post Southern California Moot Court wins first regional competition appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/15/moot-court/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Comment A fortnight ago my Apple Watch automatically updated to WatchOS 10 and ever since it’s taken me twice as many taps to perform basic tasks like telling the device to stop tracking exercise sessions.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/chat_interfaces_software_options/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Comment A fortnight ago my Apple Watch automatically updated to WatchOS 10 and ever since it’s taken me twice as many taps to perform basic tasks like telling the device to stop tracking exercise sessions.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/chat_interfaces_improve_software/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara will travel to Royal on Friday for a non-league contest.
The post Fast Start Sparks Santa Barbara Boys’ Basketball to 78-56 Victory Over Righetti in Season Opener appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Miek Giebin blog
I wanted a nicer login experience (see image above) when logging into my server. For this I used the following sites, tools and steps. https://www.svgrepo.com/ https://asciiart.club/ Little Go program from below Steps: Search a nice SVG image at “svgrepo” and save it; Upload it to “asciiart”, and generate an ASCII art you are happy with; Download the BBCode variant of the image and (if you want colors) run the program to translate [color=#.
https://miek.nl/2023/november/15/ascii-art-in-motd/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
How to make a tender, flavorful pie crust for pot pies and desserts. Plus, a delicious spin on apple pie.
https://www.fresnobee.com/living/food-drink/recipes/article281864158.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: Guam Daily Post
Police are investigating reports of two separate shootings in Toto earlier this afternoon.
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
U.S. lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden to prioritize the release of U.S. citizens deemed wrongfully detained by China when he meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday in San Francisco.
The U.S. State Department says Texas businessman Mark Swidan, Chinese American businessman Kai Li from Long Island, New York, and California pastor David Lin are wrongfully detained by China.
Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has repeatedly spoken out for Mark Swidan. McCaul urged Biden to put the release of Americans wrongfully detained by China high on the agenda for his meeting with Xi.
McCaul said in a statement sent to VOA Mandarin, “The Biden administration must stop making any concessions based on false promises and hold the [Chinese Communist Party] accountable for its gross human rights violations.”
In a letter to the White House on Nov. 8, Republican Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, along with 12 Republican members of the committee, asked that Biden raise 10 issues with Xi, one of which is to release all American citizens the U.S. government has determined to be wrongfully detained in China.
Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also wrote to Biden, according to Reuters.
“With the holiday season approaching, and the opportunity to start the New Year on a more positive note in bilateral U.S.-China relationships, I implore you to secure commitments from President Xi to release these Americans immediately,” Cardin wrote.
According to Reuters, a State Department spokesperson has noted that it continually raises wrongfully detained U.S. nationals during engagements with senior Chinese officials.
China says such cases are handled according to law.
Swidan, a Texas businessman, was arrested on drug-related charges in Guangdong Province in 2012 on his first trip to China.
In 2013, the Jiangmen Intermediate People’s Court in southern Guangdong convicted him of manufacturing and trafficking drugs.
In 2019, it handed down a death sentence with a two-year suspension. Under Chinese law, this means the sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment after two years, depending on the convict’s behavior.
This year, his appeal was denied, and the original sentence was upheld.
The U.S. Embassy in China said in a statement, “We are disappointed by this decision and will continue to press for his immediate release and return to the United States.”
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations Human Rights Council also characterized Swidan’s detention as illegal and called on Chinese authorities to immediately release him and provide compensation.
“It is 11 years this month since Mark was detained,” Swidan’s mother, Katherine Flint Swidan, 73, told VOA Mandarin. She said Biden must bring up those wrongfully detained in China when he meets Xi because “they are pawns.”
She told VOA Mandarin that the Chinese government has denied visitation requests from the U.S. consulate since September, and Beijing was transferring her son to Dongguan Prison, near the border with Hong Kong.
She last heard her son’s voice during a call in 2018 and since then has communicated by letter.
In one, Swidan described dislocated knees, fluid accumulation in his legs and constant bleeding in his mouth.
She said Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, told her in August after visiting Swidan that he was in poor health and had suicidal tendencies.
Katherine Swidan lives in a small apartment in Luling, Texas, about 76 kilometers south of Austin. She needs a walker and relies on Social Security benefits to make ends meet.
She worries she may never see her son again and that he may never leave China safely.
Katherine Swidan said she spoke to Burns over the weekend, according to Reuters. She described the conversation as “disappointing” because the ambassador would not say whether Biden would raise her son’s name with Xi.
The U.S. Embassy in China has not provided updated information to VOA’s inquiries.
Kai Li’s son, Harrison Li, sent a letter to Biden last week, saying, “I’m following up now on my letters to you dated April 8, 2022, and June 15, 2022, to urge you to earn my father’s release in advance of your anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco later this month.”
Harrison Li told VOA Mandarin, “The detainee issue is the type of small but important thorn in the bilateral relationship that can and should actually be resolved through dialogue. Our government has an obligation to take advantage of the current apparent warming in U.S.-China relations to move progress forward on these longstanding detainee cases.”
Chinese authorities arrested Kai Li at the Shanghai airport in 2016. Two years later, he was convicted of espionage charges, which he denies, and sentenced to 10 years in Shanghai’s Qingpu Prison, where many foreigners are incarcerated.
A former fellow prisoner, released from the institution housing Kai Li, told VOA Mandarin in September that Kai Li was sometimes called on by prison staff to help them communicate with foreign prisoners who spoke English.
The former prisoner asked not to be identified because he is afraid of retaliation by Chinese authorities.
He said Kai Li translated when prisoners were taken to the hospital and also managed the prison library. He added that Kai Li also often spoke of his son Harrison and was proud of Harrison for constantly speaking up about his case.
David Lin, a pastor from Orange County, California, was arrested in 2006, then convicted and sentenced to life on what the U.S. government says were bogus charges of contract fraud. A year ago, before the Biden-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, Chinese authorities reduced Lin’s sentence to 24 years, meaning he will be 75 when freed in 2030.
According to ChinaAid, Lin was detained in 2006 for helping a house church to build a church building, something that is illegal in China.
“Subsequently, authorities restricted him from leaving the country. He was arrested in 2009 on suspicion of ‘contract fraud.’”
Lin was sentenced to life in prison on the charge later that year.
Peter Humphrey, a British journalist turned consultant, was detained with his wife in 2013. They were found guilty of illegally obtaining information on Chinese citizens. Humphrey was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
His wife was sentenced to two years. Both were released early in June 2015 for health reasons.
He now helps foreigners imprisoned by the Chinese government and campaigns for their release.
He believes there are more than three Americans wrongfully incarcerated by China.
Humphrey told VOA Mandarin, “The ordeals of the many Americans held in Xi’s jails should be high on the agenda for Biden’s meeting with Xi if Biden cares at all about wrongfully incarcerated American citizens. That means all American prisoners and not just a tiny select handful.”
“Not a single one of them has had a fair and transparent trial in front of an impartial judge because the Chinese legal and judicial system does not provide any such thing,” he said.
He suggested Biden hand over a list of all American citizens incarcerated in China, demand a mass prison transfer swap agreement to bring them home to an American facility, and then review their cases, none of which “would survive the scrutiny of an American court.”
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
From Our Partners
https://www.fresnobee.com/health-wellness/cannabis/article280150744.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
Hundreds of people gathered Tuesday in Washington to urge the Biden administration to extend labor protections to undocumented immigrants in the United States.
The Here to Work Day of Action march, organized by a coalition of dozens of migrant advocacy groups, called on U.S. President Joe Biden to allow immigrants living in the U.S. for years to apply for work permits.
Lydia Walther-Rodríguez, one of the march organizers, told VOA that more than 3,000 people attended the event. They visited members of Congress to ask them for support and to press Biden to give work permits to the estimated 11 million people who are here undocumented.
Walther-Rodríguez, who is a member of CASA, an immigration advocacy group, said allowing people to work and giving them temporary protection would also prevent family separation.
“We are talking about security, but a security that gives the migrant movement the peace of mind to continue on a path to citizenship,” she said.
Since February 2023, the Here to Work Coalition has brought together more than 300 businesses, Republican and Democratic governors, and members of Congress to urge the Biden administration to expand work permits for immigrants who have been paying taxes in the U.S. for years.
According to immigrant advocates, the president can take this action by expanding humanitarian parole, Temporary Protected Status, and Deferred Enforced Departure. All three policies allow individuals who meet specific requirements to stay in the country and work temporarily.
U.S. Congressman Jesus “Chuy” García, a Democrat from Illinois, addressed the protesters and supported their appeals, saying Biden must deliver for immigrants and that “We must all be heard.”
In a written statement after the march, Garcia added: “Whether you arrived days ago or decades ago, immigrants deserve dignity. Many of my constituents have worked and paid taxes for years, but still live without the protection and stability that comes from a work permit.”
US labor shortage
In an October report, Stephanie Ferguson, director of Global Employment Policy and Special Initiatives at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote that the country is facing “unprecedented challenges” trying to find enough workers to fill open jobs.
“Right now, the latest data shows that we have 9.6 million job openings in the U.S., but only 6.4 million unemployed workers. We have a lot of jobs, but not enough workers to fill them. If every unemployed person in the country found a job, we would still have around 3 million open jobs,” Ferguson wrote.
According to data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are 68 workers for every 100 open jobs.
Decades in the U.S.
Catalina Bueno, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in the United States for more than 30 years, traveled from Chicago to Washington. She hopes a work permit and Temporary Protected Status could help her immigration status.
“We’ve made our lives here, and I think it is fair that they take us into account, which is fair to us because we have a life here … My whole life is here and returning to Mexico is difficult for me … We must all be heard, and the president, more than anything, must be fair to everyone,” she said.
Temporary protection
The Biden administration recently announced an extension and redesignation of the program that gives temporary protection from deportation for nationals of Sudan and Ukraine. Nationals of El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua also have had their protection extended.
Advocates also called for new TPS designations. Immigrant rights groups have ongoing campaigns for Mauritania and Democratic Republic of Congo.
TPS allows migrants whose home countries are considered unsafe to live and work in the United States for a period of time if they meet certain requirements established by the U.S. government.
Other forms of relief include deferred action, deferred enforced departure, or parole. Each has distinguished requirements while offering temporary relief from deportation and work authorization.
Some Republican lawmakers have pushed for legislation that would make U.S. immigration law more restrictive.
Senate Republicans released a proposal on Nov. 6 that could prohibit or limit Biden officials’ use of temporary protection for migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border and those already in the United States.
The one-page plan narrows the scope of the parole statute to clarify that it is to be used rarely and limits granting parole to one year, with up to one one-year extension or less.
Renata Castro, an immigration lawyer based in Florida, told VOA that Congress needs to act and that immigration is about economic growth.
“We need an innovative economy and the only way we will be able to do that is if we have meaningful immigration reform that deals with the needs and the problems of the United States of today, not of 30 or 40 years ago,” Castro said.
The immigration attorney said other countries are taking note of the immigration challenges in the United States, and they are working hard to attract the best and the brightest.
“I, as a practicing immigration attorney, think that United States employers, particularly small businesses in the service industries, construction and hospitality, are really struggling because they cannot find individuals who are ready, willing and available to work. … Meaningful immigration reform could solve all of that,” she added.
Humanitarian parole or temporary status or protection, such as TPS or DED, is not a pathway to permanent residency.
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
Eighty-year-old Santa Clarita Valley resident Delsa Krasny-Latvala was performing her civic duty at Higher Vision Church on The Old Road around 11 a.m. Election Day in 2022, when tragedy struck. It had been raining that morning, and as she walked through the church’s concrete foyer, “which had a solitary mat directly adjacent to the threshold […]
The post Family sues after woman dies following fall at the polls appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/family-sues-after-woman-dies-following-fall-at-the-polls/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I did my 500th Peloton ride today.
http://scripting.com/2023/11/14.html#a024109
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
Canyon High alum learns to love to officiate from his dad Mike Dobes was just a senior in high school when he got his start officiating local youth football games. A tight end for the Canyon Cowboys football team at the time, Dobes had grown up watching his dad, Bob, officiate football games and even […]
The post <strong>Passing it on</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/passing-it-on/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
A police officer accused of posting and sharing nude pictures of his now ex-wife without her consent while they were married is due back Wednesday in a Santa Clarita courthouse, where he’s facing six misdemeanor charges. The Los Angeles Police Department also issued a statement that indicated, regarding its investigation into the claims of nude […]
The post Officer accused of sharing nude photos due back in court appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/officer-accused-of-sharing-nude-photos-due-back-in-court/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Japanese battery maker FDK reckons a major improvement in its Ni-Zn battery has proven its durability enough to deem it practical for use as an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/fujitsubacked_fdk_wants_nickel_zinc/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Will Stuart of San Marcos High water polo received the male athlete of the week award.
The post SBART Press Luncheon: Matthew Chung Receives Scholar Athlete of the Year Award For San Marcos appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
Tens of thousands of Jewish Americans rallied on Tuesday in Washington in support of Israel, to call for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas and to reject antisemitism. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias covered the “March for Israel” and gathered many of the diverse points of view that were expressed.
https://www.voanews.com/a/march-for-israel-shows-jewish-americans-are-not-a-monolith/7355481.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Embrace the holiday spirit as you shop at the Annual Holiday Boutique benefitting the American Cancer Society/Relay For Life of the Santa Clarita Valley on Saturday, Nov. 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Santa Clarita United Methodist Church, 26640 Bouquet Canyon Road, Santa Clarita, CA
https://scvnews.com/nov-18-relay-for-life-holiday-boutique/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
News release Metrolink’s Holiday Express Train will return this fall, spreading holiday cheer across Southern California with an interactive, family-friendly experience. Holiday Express Trains are specially ticketed round-trip rides featuring festive decorations, recognizable holiday-themed characters, carolers and onboard and host-station activities for all ages. “We received an extraordinary response from riders when we first introduced […]
The post Metrolink’s Holiday Express Train returns Dec. 9 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/metrolinks-holiday-express-train-returns-dec-9/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liliputing
The PocketBook InkPad Color line of eReaders have been around for a few years, with each model packing a 7.8 inch E Ink color display. Now the company has launched the first model featuring an E Ink Kaleido 3 display. After launching in Europe in October, the new PocketBook Inkpad Color 3is now available in […]
The post PocketBook InkPad Color 3 eReader with a 7.8 inch E Ink Kaleido 3 color display now available for $329 appeared first on Liliputing.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liliputing
The TCL Tab 10 Gen 2 is an Android tablet with a 10.36 inch, 2000 x 1200 pixel IPS LCD display, a octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. Those specs certainly put the Tab 10 Gen 2 in budget tablet territory, but it’s priced to match. First unveiled in June, the tablet is […]
The post TCL Tab 10 Gen 2 budget Android tablet is now available for $170 appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/tcl-tab-10-gen-2-budget-android-tablet-coming-soon/
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Valencia Marketplace is scheduled to host its annual Community Tree Lighting Ceremony from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 8.
https://scvnews.com/dec-8-valencia-marketplace-tree-lighting-ceremony/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
Two major retail stores in Valencia had merchandise stolen from them on Tuesday afternoon, according to Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station officials. According to Deputy Nicholas Hostel, a spokesman for the SCV Sheriff’s Station, at approximately 5:05 p.m. deputies received a call and responded to reports that $2,000 worth of merchandise was stolen from the […]
The post Two major retail stores stolen from within minutes appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/two-major-retail-stores-stolen-from-within-minutes/
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Hosts Thomas Johnson, Kasey Kazliner and Leila MacKenzie discuss the firing of USC football’s defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, with their dream picks of who should replace him. Later, they debate on which freshman, JuJu Watkins or Isaiah Collier, and which team, USC men’s or women’s basketball, will have the better season.
This episode was hosted by Thomas Johnson, Kasey Kazliner and Leila MacKenzie. Scripted by Marcus Partida. Edited by Jack Hallinan. Produced by Stefano Fendrich and Jonathan Park. Talkin’ Troy is one of four episodes on the Daily Trojan podcast network. You can find more episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts, as well as our website, dailytrojan.com.
The post The Grinch is gone appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/11/14/the-battle-for-relevancy/
date: 2023-11-15, from: OS News
With this release, .NET reshapes the way we build intelligent, cloud-native applications and high-traffic services that scale on demand. Whether you’re deploying to Linux or Windows, using containers or a cloud app model of your choice, .NET 8 makes building these apps easier. It includes a set of proven libraries that are used today by the many high-scale services at Microsoft to help you with fundamental challenges around observability, resiliency, scalability, manageability, and more. Integrate large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT directly into your .NET app. Use a single powerful component model to handle all your web UI needs with Blazor. Deploy your mobile applications to the latest version of iOS and Android with .NET MAUI. Discover new language enhancements that make your code more concise and expressive with C# 12. It’s still wild to me to that Microsoft provides detailed installation instructions for .NET for a variety of Linux distributions, down to stuff like Alpine.
https://www.osnews.com/story/137845/net-8-released/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The 7-foot center from Ukraine left Monday’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers and did not return.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/article281867988.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: OS News
Google today is announcing strengthened protections for Android developers publishing apps to its Google Play store. The changes are a part of Google’s broader efforts at keeping low-quality and unsafe apps out of its app store and off consumers’ devices, which also recently included the launch of a new real-time app scanning feature to combat malicious apps. Today, the company says it will now require new Android developers with personal accounts to test their app with a minimum of 20 people for at least 2 weeks prior to publication. It additionally plans to increase its investment in the app review processes, warning of potential slowdowns in approvals for a small number of apps as these changes roll out. At first glance, this sounds like a good idea – more testing leads to better applications, is the reasoning – but it’s going to be a massive burden for many small indie developers to even find 20 testers. In my experience, it’s usually the small indie teams or individual developers that make the best applications on Android, while the large, well-known brands release steady streams of garbage. In other words, this is going to disproportionately affect the wrong people.
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
UnitedHealthcare has been sued for allegedly denying healthcare claims based on a faulty AI model.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/unitedhealthcare_ai_medicine/
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered Tuesday on the National Mall in Washington in a show of solidarity as Jews across the United States and the world face a resurgence of antisemitism that activists at the protest compared with the hatred that culminated in the Holocaust.
The rally, called Americans March for Israel, was organized by various Jewish organizations and featured speeches by politicians, intellectuals, musicians and relatives of hostages abducted by Hamas.
Signs reading, “Free the hostages” and “Never again is now” bobbed up and down in the audience as speakers, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, took their turns.
“We will continue fighting for the release of all hostages until they return to safety,” Schumer said, affirming U.S. support for Israel.
Herzog delivered his address from Israel.
“Jews came out of Auschwitz and vowed, ‘Never again,’” he said in remarks shown on large TV screens. “As the blue and white flag was hoisted over our ancient homeland, we vowed, ‘Never again.’”
Herzog went on to describe Hamas’ terror attack last month, which left 1,200 Israelis dead, and asked the crowd to “cry out together, ‘Never again!’”
Representative Mike Johnson, the newly appointed speaker of the U.S. House, also spoke to the crowd.
“There are few issues in Washington that could so easily bring together leaders of both parties and both chambers,” he said. “But the survival of the state of Israel and her people unites us together — and it unites all Americans.”
The march comes just over a week after pro-Palestinian demonstrators held a similarly large gathering on the National Mall, and two days after 180,000 people took to the streets in France to rally against antisemitism.
Sam Markstein, 30, of Washington participated in Tuesday’s march. He serves as the political director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which co-sponsored last week’s Republican presidential debate in Miami.
“The message is, the Republican Party and Jews from across the country stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel, and we’re going to keep doing that until Hamas is defeated and obliterated,” Markstein told VOA.
Avi Light, 21, of Rockland Community College in Suffern, New York, said he hopes for a future beyond the bloodshed.
“I just want peace,” Light said, walking hastily alongside the Mall with his Jewish classmates. “I just want people to stop dying. I really want the whole war to just end.”
“I have friends in the [Israel Defense Forces] that I went to school with,” Light continued. “I just want to be able to go to sleep at night and know they’re safe.”
A few dozen anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Jews led by Rabbi Dovid Feldman, 52, of Monsey, New York, stood behind banners outside the protest — including one with a red slash over the Israeli flag — drawing scorn from several Jewish passersby.
Feldman and others chanted, “Judaism, yes! Zionism, no!” One pro-Israel demonstrator came within inches of the counterprotesters, screaming profanities.
Dorit Voda, a British Israeli living in Rockville, Maryland, also confronted Feldman. Voda said she found Feldman’s statements to be deeply offensive, saying that Israel was established “legally and rightfully” in the aftermath of the Holocaust in large part to protect survivors.
After several heated exchanges, U.S. Park Police spread out in a line to shield Feldman’s group.
Feldman told VOA that the March for Israel “does not represent the Jewish people” and blamed Hamas’ brutal October 7 assault entirely on Israel, a claim that most prominent Jewish groups denounce as antisemitic.
Feldman expressed outrage at the massive loss of life in the Gaza Strip, where more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military operations since fighting broke out last month, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health authority.
Feldman repeatedly clarified that he does not condone violence against civilians.
Parked in his van outside VOA headquarters, which is just meters from where the protest took place, Rabbi Yehuda Pevzner, 30, of Brooklyn, New York, struck a less provocative tone.
Pevzner was part of a group of Hasidic Jews who drove what they call a “synagogue on wheels” to Washington to help Jews carry out mitzvot, or good deeds, such as doing tefillin, an ancient Jewish prayer ritual.
Pevzner said that Jews have an obligation “to help people in danger,” both in Israel and beyond. He also said, citing the Torah, that Israel is the Jewish homeland, and that Jews must look after one another, particularly in light of recent incidents of antisemitism across the globe.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Liliputing
Chinese electronics company AOC is probably best known in North America for it monitors and other PC accessories. But the company also sells a line of mini PCs in China, and recently AOC added a model called the AOC MOSS M7 which combines an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor with 32GB of RAM and a […]
The post AOC launches MOSS 7 mini PC with Ryzen 7 7840HS in China appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/aoc-launches-moss-7-mini-pc-with-ryzen-7-7840hs-in-china/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
The Sac-Joaquin Section expects to have over 100 high school girls flag football teams competing next year.
https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/high-school/article281063738.html
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Patch Tuesday Heads up: Microsoft’s November Patch Tuesday includes fixes for about 60 vulnerabilities – including three that have already been found and abused in the wild.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/november_2023_patch_tuesday/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Doja Cat’s debut arena tour is everything you wanted (and more).
The post Review | Doja Cat’s Scarlet Tour appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/14/review-doja-cats-scarlet-tour/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Fresno Bee Stories
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https://www.fresnobee.com/betting/nfl/article264850999.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: VOA News USA
The United States has provided nearly $2 billion in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban took control in August 2021. Oversight officials told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday it is impossible to prevent the Taliban from benefiting from that funding. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
https://www.voanews.com/a/taliban-likely-benefiting-from-us-aid-to-afghanistan-/7355411.html
date: 2023-11-15, from: The Signal
After months of organizing efforts, from January to June, to purchase a new piano, the Friendly Valley Senior Living Community celebrated its new addition — a Yamaha C3 — with a gala on Saturday, Oct. 28. Daria Landress, who is a part of the Friendly Valley entertainment and events committee, said the community’s fundraising […]
The post Friendly Valley celebrates new piano appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/11/friendly-valley-celebrates-new-piano/
date: 2023-11-15, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Two plants rise to new life thanks to recovery efforts.
The post Channel Islands Flora Revival appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/11/14/channel-islands-flora-revival/
date: 2023-11-15, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Neil McGregor Former Director of the British Museum, photographed in Cambridge in 2017 after a lecture. Quote of the Day “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-15-november-2023/38813/
date: 2023-11-15, updated: 2023-11-15, from: The LAist
The council approved a hotly debated proposal to lower allowable rent hikes in most of the city’s apartments from a maximum of 9% to 6% in February.
date: 2023-11-15, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Santa Barbara Symphony and Doublewide Kings bring a fantabulous night for a moondance to the Granada.
The post Review | ‘Moondance’ Combines Rock ’n’ Roll and Orchestral Melodies for One Night on Van Morrison’s Wavelength appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Single Mothers Outreach has announced the honorees chosen for its 2024 Empowering HeArts Gala. Evelia Scanlon, Renard Thomas, Stacy Fennell, Jenny Striplin, Monica Castaneda and Lynn Rabago will each have their stories shared in the form of a unique piece of art created by a local artist
https://scvnews.com/single-mothers-outreach-announces-empowering-hearts-honorees/
date: 2023-11-15, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Embark on a stellar journey through the pages of imagination at the 16th Annual Family Literacy Festival will be held Saturday, Dec. 2, 10 a.m. t0 2 p.m. at the Santa Clarita Public Library, Old Town Newhall Branch, 24500 Main St., Santa Clarita, CA 91321.
https://scvnews.com/dec-2-16th-annual-family-literacy-festival/
date: 2023-11-15, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Bekar, Ismail; Pezzatti, G. Boris; Conedera, Marco; Vacik, Harald; Pausas, Juli G.; Dupire, Sylvain; Bugmann, Harald
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/636378
date: 2023-11-15, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Papanikolaou, Nikos; Lambiotte, Renaud; Vaccario, Giacomo
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/637219
date: 2023-11-15, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Keller, Franziska; Popa, Răzvan-Gabriel; Julien, Allaz; Bovay, Thomas; Bouvier, Anne-Sophie; Geshi, Nobuo; Miyakawa, Ayumu; Bachmann, Olivier