(date: 2023-12-12 13:00:05)
date: 2023-12-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita will host a Community Passports Fair for Santa Clarita residents on Thursday, Dec. 14 from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. to apply for a new passport.
https://scvnews.com/dec-14-one-day-only-passport-fair-in-newhall/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Liliputing
The Epic Games Store will be giving away a different PC game for free every day for 15 days starting December 13, 2023. The GOG Winter sale begins the same day. And Humble Bundle is already bringing back some of the year’s most popular bundles on PC games and other content. If you’re looking for […]
The post Daily Deals (12-12-2023) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-12-12-2023/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The LAist
The longstanding public servant will spend her last year before retirement overseeing the board that steers the education of more than 400,000 students.
https://laist.com/news/education/jackie-goldberg-reelected-lausd-school-board-president-2023 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
The Santa Clarita City Council is expected to approve spending $20,000 to acquire and preserve for the local library system a priceless collection of Santa Clarita Valley antiquity that belonged to one of the area’s modern forefathers. The collection from Arthur Buckingham “A.B.” Perkins features more than 600 books, as well as correspondence, photos, ledgers, […]
The post City to receive historical archives for library appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/city-to-receive-historical-archives-for-library/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Kentucky woman seeking court approval for abortion learned her embryo no longer has cardiac activity.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/kentucky-woman-seeking-court-approval-for-abortion-learned-her-embryo-no-longer-has-cardiac-activity Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
A spacious house located in the 20600 block of Sevilla Lane in Saratoga has new owners. The 3,073-square-foot property, built in 1969, was sold on Nov. 29, 2023.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/single-family-residence-sells-in-saratoga-for-4-2-million/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Kettle Over the last week AMD has been extolling the virtues of its latest kit, including the MI300 which Su’s crew claim is the fastest AI processing package on the market.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/kettle_amd_chips/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Dear Sundial readers, This fourth issue of the Sundial’s magazine has stories connected to sports. With the middle of the semester coming around, it can be hard to keep up with studies and taking care of oneself. Everyone can relate to a sport in some way. Either your parents made you join a sport when…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177328/print-editions/print-stories/letter-from-the-editor-sports/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Winfrey said Barrymore was just being her ‘endearing’ self when she got so close to her during an interview that it made some viewers uncomfortable.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/oprah-winfrey-was-more-than-ok-with-drew-barrymores-cringey-caress/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Moss’ testimony came hours after the judge scolded Giuliani for comments made outside the federal courthouse in Washington on Monday in which he insisted his claims about the women were true.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/election-worker-giulianis-lies-made-her-fear-for-her-life/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The layer of lichen, moss and cyanobacteria helps shield the historic structure from erosion, a new study finds
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/parts-of-chinas-great-wall-are-protected-by-a-living-cover-of-biocrust-180983415/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
Photos by Dan Watson/The Signal
The post Photos: Santa Clarita holds blood drive in partnership with American Red Cross appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/photos-santa-clarita-holds-blood-drive-in-partnership-with-american-red-cross/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Newly declassified U.S. intelligence indicates Russia has suffered from some staggering losses as a result of its nearly two-year-old invasion of Ukraine, including major setbacks during its latest offensive.
The assessment, parts of which were shared with VOA, estimates more than 13,000 Russian forces have been killed or wounded since Moscow launched its October offensive along the Avdiivka-Novopavlivka axis in eastern Ukraine.
U.S. intelligence also believes Ukraine’s military has destroyed or immobilized more than 220 Russian combat vehicles, the equivalent of six battalions’ worth of vehicles.
“Russia’s attempt at an offensive has resulted in no strategic gains,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told VOA in a statement, describing the Russian losses as “severe.”
“But Russia is determined to press forward,” she added. “Russia seems to believe that a military deadlock through the winter will drain Western support for Ukraine and ultimately give Russia the advantage despite Russian losses and persistent shortages of trained personnel, munitions, and equipment.”
The decision to declassify the latest intelligence Tuesday comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Washington, visiting with U.S. lawmakers and with U.S. President Joe Biden.
During a speech at the National Defense University in Washington on Monday, Zelenskyy pleaded with U.S. lawmakers “not to betray” Ukraine’s forces and provide more weapons and support, warning Moscow sees Ukraine as “just a stepping-stone.”
“We know what to do,” he said. “You can count on Ukraine, and we hope just as much to be able to count on you.”
The White House has been pushing U.S. lawmakers to approve more than $61 billion in supplemental funding for Kyiv before the end of the year.
But some lawmakers have balked, with some Republicans insisting any deal to provide more money to Ukraine must also include provisions to strengthen U.S. immigration policies and security along the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
White House officials, however, point to the latest declassified intelligence to argue that funding for Ukraine simply cannot wait.
“This shows how Ukraine is having success stopping Russian forces, but Putin is continuing to order his troops forward,” a senior administration official told VOA, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the intelligence and the political negotiations.
“It’s critical we continue to support Ukraine and make sure they have what they need to defend themselves,” the official added.
Top U.S. military and intelligence officials have previously said Russia’s losses in Ukraine have set its military back by as much as five to ten years.
Still, the Pentagon warned Monday a failure to back Ukraine will send Russian President Vladimir Putin the wrong message.
“Despite his isolation, Putin still believes that he can outlast Ukraine, and that he can outlast America,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday, speaking with Zelenskyy at the National Defense University. “If we do not stand up to the Kremlin’s aggression today, if we do not deter other would-be aggressors, we will only invite more aggression, more bloodshed, and more chaos.”
Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/declassified-us-intelligence-reveals-massive-russian-losses-in-ukraine/7395271.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs has announced the official launch of the $68.6M Landlord Relief Fund to assist mom-and-pop landlords recoup losses resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://scvnews.com/landlord-relief-fund-officially-launched-in-l-a-county/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
News release Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, has cosponsored H.R. 6671, Alexandra’s Law, which would significantly increase penalties for drug dealers of lethal fentanyl. This legislation would require convicted fentanyl dealers to sign a sworn statement acknowledging that fentanyl is fatal and they could face murder charges if they deal again and it results […]
The post Garcia cosponsors bill to charge fentanyl dealers with murder appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/garcia-cosponsors-bill-to-charge-fentanyl-dealers-with-murder/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/netanyahu-us-support-remains-firm-against-hamas-/7395188.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
Santa Clarita City Manager Ken Striplin told the public for weeks that officials were in constant communication with MV Transportation over the company’s contract with Santa Clarita Transit’s drivers, who ended a nearly 60-day strike last week by agreeing to terms. With the release of the agenda for Tuesday’s City Council meeting, residents get the […]
The post City Council expected to increase bus contract appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/city-council-expected-to-increase-bus-contract/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
The troupe comes from a long history of famed San Francisco circus acts, but continues to forge its own path with new ‘Kaleidoscope’ show.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/sfs-circus-bella-enters-different-era-with-new-downtown-show/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/turtle-riddle-comic Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Discrimination has long been a concern for both patients and health providers in the U.S., where racial disparities in health outcomes are vast and particularly unfavorable toward Black people.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/many-people-of-color-worry-good-health-care-is-tied-to-their-appearance/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
West Ranch, Valencia, Hart all set to have inaugural seasons next year In the spirit of providing as many opportunities as possible, the William S. Hart Union High School District board approved a resolution last week that will see girls’ flag football be adopted as a districtwide sport starting in the 2024-25 school year. The […]
The post <strong>Girls’ flag football approved as new sport by Hart district</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/girls-flag-football-approved-as-new-sport-by-hart-district/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Michael Tsai
Juli Clover (release notes, security, developer, full installer, IPSW): macOS Sonoma 14.2 introduces an Enhanced AutoFill feature for PDFs, which Apple announced earlier this year. It automatically identifies common fields like name and address, allowing them to be autofilled similar to a website.In the Messages app, stickers can be added directly to chat bubbles with […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/12/macos-14-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Michael Tsai
Apple (full installer): This document describes the security content of macOS Ventura 13.6.3. Apple (full installer): This document describes the security content of macOS Monterey 12.7.2. Previously: macOS 14.2 macOS 13.6.2 macOS 13.6.1 and macOS 12.7.1
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/12/macos-13-6-3-and-macos-12-7-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Michael Tsai
Apple: Journal, a new iPhone app available today, helps users reflect and practice gratitude through journaling, which has been shown to improve wellbeing. With Journal, users can capture and write about everyday moments and special events in their lives, and include photos, videos, audio recordings, locations, and more to create rich memories. On-device machine learning […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/12/apple-launches-journal-app/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Michael Tsai
Juli Clover (release notes, security, developer): The iOS 17.2 update includes the new Journal app, which is designed to allow iOS users to record key moments in their lives. The Journal app includes journaling suggestions, scheduled notifications, and options for adding photos, locations, and more.For the iPhone 15 Pro models, iOS 17.2 adds a Translate […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/12/ios-17-2-and-ipados-17-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Serra finishes No. 1 again. Only two teams in final rankings end season with a victory, including one that missed the playoffs.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/season-ending-bay-area-news-group-high-school-football-rankings-plus-early-top-5-for-2024/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Michael Tsai
Juli Clover (release notes, security, developer): The watchOS 10.2 update adds support for using Siri to access and record data in the Health app on the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2. Users can ask Siri questions like “How did I sleep last night?” or “How many steps have I taken […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/12/watchos-10-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Michael Tsai
Juli Clover: Apple does not specify what’s included in the HomePod 17.2 software, and the generic release notes only say that it includes bug fixes and performance improvements. All I know is that it’s 2.6 GB, took a really long time to install, and doesn’t fix the bug with not being able to play music […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/12/homepod-17-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Michael Tsai
Apple (MacRumors): Today Apple unveiled a redesigned Apple TV app that makes it even easier for users to watch Apple’s award-winning original series and films, as well as live sports, movies, and television shows across their favorite Apple devices, smart TVs, streaming sticks, gaming consoles, and more. The simplified interface’s new sidebar allows users to […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/12/tvos-17-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
An ex-First Republic Bank cloud engineer was sentenced to two years in prison for causing more than $220,000 in damage to his former employer’s computer network after allegedly using his company-issued laptop to watch pornography.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/cloud_engineer_bank_prison/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Wildcats are one of five schools ranked in the CFP top-25 and AP basketball poll.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/pac-12-stock-report-arizonas-dollar-for-dollar-wins-the-heisman-tilt-oregons-new-qb-and-rileys-defensive-upgrades/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Governing Board of the Castaic Union School District met on Monday, Dec. 11 to elect new officers for 2024. Janene Maxon will serve as board president and Fred Malcomb will serve as clerk
https://scvnews.com/castaic-school-district-board-elects-2024-officers/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Heatmap News
This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, has been broadly defined by two facts. The first is that the conference is headed by the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company. The second is that this is the year of the first global stocktake, a document that should, in theory, set the world on a path to achieve the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement of 2015.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that combination has not produced tremendous results. The latest draft of the stocktake dropped language calling for a fossil fuel phase-out. The condemnation was swift: “We will not sign our death certificate,” said the Association of Small Island States in a statement. “We think there are elements in the text that are fully unacceptable,” Spain’s environment minister said.
I was curious: How, exactly, does a global stocktake come to be? To find out, I called up Tom Evans, a policy advisor and climate negotiations specialist at the climate change think tank E3G, who is currently on the ground in Dubai. Our conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, is below.
Catch me up. How are things going on the ground?
It’s … going along. There’s a lot of discussions at the moment around the text that came out yesterday. Many, many parties are dissatisfied with the level of ambition in that text. It didn’t have the fossil fuel phaseout, it wasn’t strong enough on things like finance or adaptation, so that has triggered this big backlash. It’s all happening behind closed doors at the moment with ministers and politicians talking about the text, and the rest of us are kind of in a black box with regards to what’s going on. But it’s all really on a knife’s edge.
What is happening behind those doors, as best as you can tell?
The process is somewhat unclear. COPs don’t have any strict procedures; the presidency can choose how to do this diplomacy to get to the outcome it needs. At the moment, we’re in the phase of basically bilateral consultations being led by the UAE. The presidency is bringing people together behind the scenes. Everyone’s kind of slowly talking to each other.
What do you mean by bilateral consultations, exactly?
The UAE sitting down with a party — let’s say India, for example — and hearing their concerns and understanding what their red lines are, what they’re looking to change in the text. And then with that knowledge they’ll have another meeting, sitting down with, say, the U.S., having the same conversation and trying to map out where people sit based on these conversations.
They don’t have a big meeting room where everyone is at the table. They haven’t done a plenary yet. Last night they did a heads of delegation meeting, which brought all parties together. It was a closed meeting, and it started at 10 p.m. and finished at about 2 a.m. last night, which we hadn’t seen before.
Of course, at the same time, countries are talking to each other in different configurations. So there are different groups who will come together, such as the regional groups [who might have common goals]. And the U.S., I’m sure, is talking to China and Saudi Arabia.
The UAE has other tools at their disposal — earlier this week they hosted an informal ministerial circle where they talked about the issues together — but at the moment, they’re choosing to do this very closed or bilateral diplomacy, probably because the stakes are high and they need to act sensitively around what this next iteration of text looks like. Because an awful lot hinges upon it.
There must be some real power dynamics at play here. Are there some countries that the UAE is more inclined to listen to than others?
The UNFCCC is weird because some of the times those power dynamics are different from what you might expect. Small island states and other countries have an awful lot of power compared to [the regular UN framework], where they’re not the geopolitical shapers. But in this space, they have much more power because of their moral authority.
This word, “stocktake,” implies a kind of mathematical act. Is there an emissions reckoning happening?
Stocktake is definitely a bad name — we’ve already done a lot of the stock-taking. The past two years had the process of technical dialogues among parties and experts and non-party stakeholders, and we had reports including the IPCC which fed into that. Those conclusions were published back in September, and that report kind of tells us what we already know: Action is growing but inadequate, finance is not there at the scale needed, it’s not going to the right people in the right places at the right time. We think we know what we need to do, we just have to find the ways to do it. How do we commit [to] things here in Dubai that will bend the emissions curve and make sure that actions are implemented on the ground?
Before this COP, I had the impression that the stocktake is going to be some sort of big reckoning of past and future emissions. But it sounds like what’s happening now is similar to how past COP negotiations have gone. Is there something that makes the stocktake stand out from the agreements that were negotiated at previous COPs?
One big difference is that this is the central mechanism of the Paris Agreement, where we take stock and assess how to close gaps to meeting those goals. And that hasn’t happened in a formal way before.
The Paris Agreement was designed to have a stocktake so that we could make sure that our successive action, as the years go by, was ratcheting up, making sure that we’re not just coasting along but really delivering stronger and stronger progress. So that’s an important part of this. We are engaging with the Paris Agreement and saying, “okay, can we make sure it fulfills its goals in that formal way?”
The other part of it is that the stocktake, because it’s had this two-year process, has clearly identified the gaps. No one can deny that we’re not doing enough on finance and that adaptation is massively neglected. We’ve acknowledged that there’s been some progress on emission reductions, but it’s just an incremental push towards what’s needed. Those conclusions have a certain weight that we can draw from.
What happens if there is no agreement? Is that an option?
I don’t think that is an option. No agreement would be a failure, a clear sign of an inability of the parties to rise to the challenge of what’s needed. There’s obviously a difficult question about what level of agreement is not good enough, but that’s the reason why the parties are working so hard right now to rescue this — because the deal on the table at the moment was clearly falling below that line. That’s why we saw the backlash.
The UAE certainly will be aware that that is what’s at stake. It’s their presidency, they need to deliver what they set out to do. They need to be able to show the final success. After a year of many pledges and announcements, new money, new initiatives — all of that is important, but it doesn’t count unless you negotiate this final outcome.
And every party has to agree to the final outcome?
It has to be consensus, though what exactly consensus means can be debated. Everyone would have to not object. The weird state of the UNFCCC process means that sometimes there have been things which aren’t necessarily fully agreed 100% but still reached consensus.
Consensus isn’t perfect. It’s a political call, it’s not a mathematical number game where you tally up votes. For example, even this year, when the parties agreed [to] the loss and damage fund, the U.S. said in that meeting that they didn’t agree to it. But they said they weren’t in the room when consensus was reached, because the negotiator had left the room temporarily, so an agreement was reached and they approved it here in Dubai.
So there’s ways you can play with the system and survive. There have been instances in the past I’ve heard many years ago where decisions have been gaveled through despite objection because the presidency felt confident that the objections were not sufficient to obstruct the outcome.
This is the first stocktake process. Do you think part of what’s making it so hard is that there is no previous framework?
To an extent we’re creating something new, trying to do this for the first time. But I think also, it’s the politics. We are looking at the hardest issue, and for the first time in years getting on the edge of agreeing [to] something like a fossil fuel phaseout. And that brings up deep challenges for countries who are extremely dependent on fossil fuels. That’s true on all sides — not just producers, but also consumers.
We’re talking about initiating a model for the world which doesn’t have fossils in it. And that’s never been done — even in countries who have decarbonized to a great degree, they have not been able to show how that works at an international level.
So it is a huge ask, and there is no doubt that there can be challenges when trying to do that. And that’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing the pains of trying to get something that’s useful. We’re no longer negotiating a treaty like we were in Paris. We’re no longer agreeing on a rulebook, which we did for five years up until COP26. We’re now really firmly talking about implementation. What does it mean to deliver the Paris Agreement? What does it mean to actually reduce emissions, not just pledge targets? So obviously it’s going to be a painful conversation, but it’s a difficult and important one.
Is there a misconception or something frustrating about this process that you wish people knew more about?
I think the biggest frustration is that this isn’t about just a technical exercise where you’re like, “oh, we need to phase out fossil fuels, because that’s what is needed.” I mean, that’s true. But there’s a deeper question here of “how does the Paris Agreement work?”
The Paris Agreement works on the basis of a deal that if we have finance, if we have cooperation, if we have means to deliver action, [then] we can do more ambitious things, we can raise and accelerate action. That is what is at stake here. So when we’re talking about phasing out fossil fuels, we should also be asking, where’s the financial pathway to do that? When we’re talking about trying to make sure that countries have more adaptation, where is the money on the table to do that? And at the moment, we know it’s a drop in the ocean. These are the contours of the deal that we need to really examine.
And it won’t be all sealed here. It goes on and on until COP30 and after that. But the global stocktake is, I think, like a marriage vow renewal. You need to kind of renew the trust and the faith that that deal, that system’s working. And right now it’s looking like maybe a shaky marriage.
https://heatmap.news/climate/cop28-global-stocktake-negotiations Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Vienna retained its spot at the top of the list; San Francisco comes in at 37 and is the top US city.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/these-are-the-best-and-worst-cities-for-expats-to-live-and-work-in-2023/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
“Alan Wake II” is Remedy Entertainment’s magnum opus. This is Remedy’s first venture in survival horror gaming after making award-winning action games, which goes to show their storytelling scope. The studio offers a terrifying multimedia experience that is second to none. “Alan Wake II” is a sequel to “Alan Wake” (2010) and “Alan Wake’s American…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177412/arts-entertainment/alan-wake-ii-review-a-triumph-in-storytelling-psychological-survival-horror/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
The $2 million in donations Harry and Meghan’s nonprofit received in 2022 is significantly less than the $13 million it netted in 2021, which mostly came from an infusion of cash from a mysterious donor through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/harry-and-meghan-spin-archewells-growth-as-revenue-drops-11-million-grants-also-decline/ Save to Pocket
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2023-12-12, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
Step 1: Think of an animal. Any animal.
Step 2: Imagine that animal drawn as a cartoon. Style is up to you. Disney, Rankin/Bass, whatever. Not 3D, though. 2D. Got it?
Step 3: Is your animal a protagonist or a villain? Base your choice purely on your imagined cartoon character.
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/111569070801051141 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/playing-the-spiderharp Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
The California Faculty Association at CSUN organized a one-day strike on Dec. 5, calling on the CSU for a 12% pay increase and more benefits. The strike started with a rally outside CSUN’s library, where food and water were handed out to demonstrators, which included students, CFA members and union supporters. Music blared through speakers…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177390/news/brief-faculty-members-still-fighting-for-better-pay/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In laboratory experiments, gene transfer occurred in 5 percent of zebrafish larvae that were near eels when they discharged electricity
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/eels-can-genetically-modify-nearby-fish-with-their-electrical-pulses-180983422/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Suns return Bradley Beal from a back injury, but Durant is out with a sprained ankle.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/kevin-durant-to-miss-another-game-against-warriors-tonight/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
University and community leaders joined together next to Geronimo’s on Nov. 15 for a two-hour groundbreaking event amid a Teamster strike. CSUN has begun the construction phase for the two new dorms located on the corner of Lassen and Zelzah. Before the ceremony, members of the Teamsters Local Chapter 2010 rallied together in the pouring…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177371/news/ground-breaking-dorm-construction-ceremony/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Liliputing
The Onyx BOOX Note Air3 is an ePaper tablet with a 10.3 inch, 1404 x 1872 pixel E Ink Carta 1200 glass display, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of RAM, and a pressure-sensitive pen that lets you write or draw on the screen. Announced this week, the Note Air3 is available for purchase for $400 and should […]
The post Onyx BOOX Note Air3 and Air3 C are 10.3 inch E Ink tablets with pen support (and an optional color display) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/onyx-boox-note-air3-and-air3-c-are-10-3-inch-e-ink-tablets-with-pen-support-and-an-optional-color-display/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The LAist
The L.A. nonprofit HOPICS got $140 million in public funds to house the homeless, but it failed to pay rent and some of its clients wound up back on the streets.
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/hundreds-of-formerly-unhoused-people-get-evicted-after-la-nonprofit-fails-to-pay-rent-on-time Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: NASA breaking news
Some of the same properties of light and optics that make the sky blue and cause rainbows can also help scientists unlock mysteries about cloud formation and the effects of tiny particles in our air. NASA’s upcoming PACE mission will offer important insights on airborne particles of sea salt, smoke, human-made pollutants, and dust – […]
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/new-nasa-satellite-to-unravel-mysteries-about-clouds-aerosols/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
Local Jewish congregations gathered at Valencia Town Center on Sunday evening to celebrate Hanukkah and light the fourth candle on the menorah. “This is our 25th year that we’re having this event here in the mall,” said Rabbi Choni Marozov of Chabad of SCV. “And it’s really a community spirit event. All three synagogues get […]
The post <strong>SCV Jewish community lights menorah at Valencia Town Center</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/scv-jewish-community-lights-menorah-at-valencia-town-center/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-imposes-hundreds-of-new-sanctions-in-connection-to-russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine-/7395145.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Om Malik blog
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I am a big fan of Apple’s Vision Pro, a spatial computer that probably will reshape our relationship with entertainment, media, and content—if nothing else—when it comes to market. Ever since Apple announced the device at WWDC 2023, I have used it twice—and both times I came away …
https://om.co/2023/12/12/so-whats-the-latest-with-apples-visionpro/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
California State Parks welcomes the public to start 2024 in a healthy way and to enjoy the fresh air with the annual First Day Hikes, on Monday, Jan. 1. Currently, up to 60 state parks will be participating, with over 70 guided hikes taking place across the state.
https://scvnews.com/kick-off-2024-with-annual-first-day-hikes/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Retail analysts say the famed department store’s valuable real estate, including its flagship store in New York City, is a coveted asset to investors.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/why-investors-have-targeted-macys-for-a-takeover/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Santa Barbara congressmember votes in favor of Republican-sponsored House resolution equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
The post Carbajal Supports Resolution Condemning Anti-Zionism appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/12/carbajal-supports-resolution-condemning-anti-zionism/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ahead of Zelenskyy’s high-stakes meetings, the White House late Monday pointed to newly declassified intelligence that shows Ukraine has inflicted heavy losses on Russia in recent fighting along the Avdiivka-Novopavlivka axis — including 13,000 casualties and over 220 combat vehicle losses.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/zelenskyy-appears-to-change-few-minds-on-more-ukraine-aid/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
A former First Republic Bank cloud engineer was sentenced to two years in prison for vandalizing the company’s computer network after he was fired in 2020.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/ex-first-republic-engineer-gets-two-years-prison-for-cloud-hack/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
This play set in 13th-century Assisi has parallels with 21st-century Santa Barbara.
The post Theater Review | ‘Poor Clare’ appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/12/theater-review-poor-clare/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
Friday night’s Foothill League matchup between West Ranch Wildcats boys’ basketball and the Valencia Vikings was a prime example of how one bad quarter can flip a game. West Ranch won the physical bout at home, 74-63, with most of the damage coming in a dynamic second quarter. The Wildcats (5-2, 4-0) outscored the Vikings […]
The post <strong>West Ranch basketball holds off Valencia </strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/west-ranch-basketball-holds-off-valencia/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
“The sage-on-the-stage model does not resonate with this generation of students,” shares CSU Channel Islands President.
The post Dr. Richard Yao Is Featured Speaker at Santa Barbara Scholarship Foundation Luncheon appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/12/dr-richard-yao-is-featured-speaker-at-santa-barbara-scholarship-foundation-luncheon/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Student athletes receive recognition at the final SBART Press Luncheon of 2023.
The post SBART Press Luncheon: Justine Katz of Dos Pueblos and Marcus Scudder of Cate Are Athletes of the Week appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/12/sbart-press-luncheon-justine-katz-of-dos-pueblos-and-marcus-scudder-of-cate-are-the-athletes-of-the-week/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
People in our industry love the word ecosystem. We especially love to talk about healthy news ecosystems. The thinking goes that when publications champion each others’ work, collaborate on big news stories, and even fundraise together, their impact becomes greater than the sum of their parts. Journalism support organizations herald that kind of networked systems…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/journalism-intermediaries-start-to-coordinate/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
For a long time, legacy publishers have looked down on social media influencers and Patreon-style creators, if indeed they think of them at all. Meanwhile, thousands of successful influencers and content creators have been building real and valuable relationships with their communities, who now trust them more than traditional journalism — and sometimes pay for…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/publishers-will-finally-be-influenced-by-influencers/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
More than half the world’s population will get to vote for their government in 2024, making it the biggest election year in history, according to The Economist. It should be a high point for the press. Even countries where elections are not free or fair may see a bump in people’s demand for news. Unfortunately,…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/in-a-year-of-polarized-elections-media-will-be-a-target/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Singer Tammi Brown, who’s performed with Bobby McFerrin and many others, has been battling cancer.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/bay-area-music-community-goes-to-bat-for-beloved-ailing-singer/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Generative AI makes it easier than ever to crank out commoditized content. Local newsrooms are understaffed, fighting to keep their heads above water, and often owned by private equity firms who worship volume and scale. What could possibly go wrong? I see two short-term futures for generative AI in local news: The first is one…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/trust-good-crap-bad/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
A significant portion of designing a text on future scenarios in the media industry involves a retrospective process — not as an exercise in intellectual nostalgia, but as a way to contextualize the relationship between technologies, media, and societies to identify emerging paradigms. As a journalist, communications professor, and digital media consultant, I’ve strived to…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/the-algorithm-will-be-the-message/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
There was only one US Air National Guardsman behind the leak of top-secret US military documents on Discord, but his chain of command bears some responsibility for letting it happen on their watch.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/us_air_force_discord_leaker/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
It is truly magical to speak to a machine using the same language you’d use to talk to a human. And that initial awe at the technology commonly known as generative AI caught a lot of us in the hype over artificial intelligence this past year. We also learned that while the large language models…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/more-open-source-ai/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
My idea of a friend is someone who laughs at my jokes.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/12.html#a175636 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
“Inside/Outside,” in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s contemporary gallery showcases emerging artists under an inclusive theme.
The post Involuted Perspectives, in Process appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/12/involuted-perspectives-in-process/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Rock of ages: Jazz and blues artists are expected to get better as they age. But do veteran musicians who play rock, a genre created by young people for young people, face an uphill battle of diminishing returns?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/should-there-be-a-mandatory-retirement-age-from-concerts-for-over-the-hill-rock-stars/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The LAist
The county is offering millions of dollars in relief for COVID-era losses.
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/la-county-landlords-can-now-apply-for-relief-from-covid-losses Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/full-moon-haiku-cards Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
If the caller says your Social Security number or benefits are suspended, or they want you to pay, hang up.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/how-to-spot-4-social-security-scams-and-protect-your-identity/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links An Epic antitrust loss for Google: They can’t help but put it in writing. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading An Epic antitrust loss for Google (permalink) A jury just found Google guilty on all counts of antitrust violations stemming from its dispute with Epic, maker of Fortnite, which brought a variety of claims related to how Google runs its app marketplace. This is huge: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/technology/epic-games-google-antitrust-ruling.html The mobile app store world is a duopoly run by Google and Apple. Both use a variety of tactics to prevent their customers from installing third party app stores, which funnels all app makers into their own app stores. Those app stores cream an eye-popping 30% off every purchase made in an app. This is a shocking amount to charge for payment processing. The payments sector is incredibly monopolized and notorious for its price-gouging – and its standard (wildly inflated) rate is 2-5%: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping Now, in theory, Epic doesn’t have to sell in Google Play, the official Android app store. Unlike Apple’s iOS, Android permit both sideloading (installing an app directly without using an app store) and configuring your device to use a different app store. In practice, Google uses a variety of anticompetitive tricks to prevent these app stores from springing up and to dissuade Android users from sideloading. Proving that Google’s actions – like paying Activision $360m as part of “Project Hug” (no, really!) – were intended to prevent new app storesfrom springing up was a big lift for Epic. But they managed it, in large part thanks to Google’s own internal communications, wherein executives admitted that this was exactly why Project Hug existed. This is part of a pattern with Big Tech antitrust: many of the charges are theoretically very hard to make stick, but because the companies put their evil plans in writing (think of the fraudulent crypto exchange FTX, whose top execs all conferred in a groupchat called “Wirefraud”), Big Tech keeps losing in court: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/ Now, I do like to dunk on Big Tech for this kind of thing, because it’s objectively funny and because the companies make so many unforced errors. But in an important sense, this kind of written record is impossible to avoid. Any large institution can only make and enact policy through administrative systems, and those systems leave behind a paper-trail: memos, meeting minutes, etc. Yes, we all know that quote from The Wire: “Is you taking notes on a fucking criminal conspiracy?” But inevitably, any ambitious conspiracy can only exist if someone is taking notes. What’s more, any large conspiracy involving lots of parties will inevitably produce leaks. Think of this as the corollary to the idea that the moon landing can’t be a hoax, because there’s no way 400,000 co-conspirators could keep the secret. Big Tech’s conspiracies required hundreds or even thousands of collaborators to keep their mouths shut, and eventually someone blabs: https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-moon-landing-you-d-need-400000-conspirators This is part of a wave of antitrust cases being brought against the tech giants. As Matt Stoller writes, the guilty-on-all-counts jury verdict will leak into current and future actions. Remember, Google spent much of this year in court fighting the DoJ, who argued that the company bribed Apple not to make a competing search engine, paying tens of billions every year to keep a competitor from emerging. Now that a jury has convinced Google of doing that to prevent alternative app stores from emerging, claims that it used these pay-for-delay tactics in other sectros get a lot more credible: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-google-loses-antitrust-case On that note: what about Apple? Epic brought a very similar case against Apple and lost. Both Apple and Epic are appealing that case to the Supreme Court, and now that Google has been convicted in a similar case, it might prompt the Supremes to weigh in and resolve the seeming inconsistencies in the interpretation of federal law. This is a key moment in the long project to wrest antitrust away from the pro-monopoly side, who spent decades “training” judges to produce verdicts that run counter to the plain language of America’s antitrust law: https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down There’s 40 years’ worth of bad precedent to overturn. The good news is that we’ve got the law on our side. Literally, the wording of the laws and the records of the Congressional debate leading to their passage, all militate towards the (incredibly obvious) conclusion that the purpose of anti-monopoly law is to fight monopoly, not defend it: https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men It’s amazing to realize that we got into this monopoly quagmire because judges just literally refused to enforce the law. That’s what makes one part of the jury verdict against Google so exciting: the jury found that Google’s insistence that Play Store sellers use its payment processor was an act of illegal tying. Today, “tying” is an obscure legal theory, but few doctrines would be more useful in disenshittifying the internet. A company is guilty of illegal tying when it forces you to use unrelated products or services as a condition of using the product you actually want. The abandonment of tying led to a host of horribles, from printer companies forcing you to buy ink at $10,000/gallon to Livenation forcing venues to sell tickets through its Ticketmaster subsidiary. The next phase of this comes when the judge decides on the penalty. Epic doesn’t want cash damages – it wants the judge to order Google to fulfill its promise of “an open, competitive Android ecosystem for all users and industry participants.” They’ve asked the judge to order Google to facilitate third-party app stores, and to separate app stores from payment processors. As Stoller puts it, they want to “crush Google’s control over Android”: https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/epic-v-google-trial-verdict-a-win-for-all-developers Google has sworn to appeal, surprising no one. The Times’s expert says that they will have a tough time winning, given how clear the verdict was. Whatever this means for Google and Android, it means a lot for a future free from monopolies. Hey look at this (permalink) An Influencer Ended Up With $60,000 of Shrimp and Squid at Lunch, and It’s Kind of Her Fault https://www.foodandwine.com/diner-shares-qr-code-for-restaurant-to-social-media-8410442 (h/t JWZ) Beeper Mini Is Back https://blog.beeper.com/p/50e2ca9a-f904-4828-a52a-e57763db5430 (h/t Eric Migicovsky) Funbox https://www.funbox.design/ This day in history (permalink) #15yrsago Paul A. Young Fine Chocolates of London — some of the best chocolate in the world https://memex.craphound.com/2008/12/12/paul-a-young-fine-chocolates-of-london-some-of-the-best-chocolate-in-the-world/ #15yrsago Epilogue: Austin schoolteacher who didn’t believe Linux existed https://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/character-assasinations-aint-us.html #15yrsago Former Nasdaq chairman busted for running a $50 billion fraud — largest Ponzi scheme ever < href=“https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122903010173099377”>https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122903010173099377 #15yrsago James Boyle’s “Public Domain” — a book that balances accessibility with thoroughness; criticism with solutions https://memex.craphound.com/2008/12/12/boyles-public-domain-a-book-that-balances-accessibility-with-thoroughness-criticism-with-solutions/ #10yrsago Stephen Harper government wants lifetime gag agreements from Canadian parliamentary staffers https://ca.news.yahoo.com/mps-39-staff-asked-sign-lifetime-confidentiality-agreements-090357420.html #10yrsago All Norewegian books to be digitized, made available https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/norway-decided-to-digitize-all-the-norwegian-books/282008/ #10yrsago Aluminum castings of ant-nests https://www.anthillart.com #10yrsago US spy agency adopts globe-encircling giant octopus as new logo https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/9/5193500/us-adorns-its-newest-spy-rocket-with-malevolent-octopus #5yrsago Adam Ruins Big Tech: how monopolies, DRM, EULAs, and predatory tactics have delivered our dystopian future https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mid1VvK9Xpg #5yrsago Theresa May faces a no confidence vote today https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/12/brexit-tories-launch-no-confidence-vote-against-may.html #1yrsago Orphaned neurological implants https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/12/unsafe-at-any-speed/#this-is-literally-your-brain-on-capitalism 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: Daddy-Daughter Podcast, 2023 edition https://craphound.com/news/2023/12/10/daddy-daughter-podcast-2023-edition/) Recent appearances: Science Fiction and the Future of Science https://council.science/podcast/science-fiction/ AI needs to work with humans — not replace us (CBC IDEAS) https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artificial-intelligence-provocation-ideas-festival-1.7046841 Explore the Future of the 🔥 Climate and Information Climate (Andrew Revkin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OGT-cvs4_Q 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/2023/12/12/im-feeling-lucky/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Television journalists have long been encouraged to have a social media presence to build their brands and provide additional outlets for network content. Journalists have always been influencers for their stations — but in 2024, we’ll see them start to be additionally compensated for this labor, and financially benefit from their own social media presence….
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/tv-reporters-become-tiktok-influencers/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Matadors football played its final game with a 50-43 loss to Portland State University on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2001. Just a little less than a week after the final game, then-President Jolene Koester announced the CSUN football program would be eliminated. Athletic director Dick Dull recommended ending the 40-year-long CSUN football program to address budget…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177334/print-editions/print-stories/remembering-csuns-football-program/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SBMM takes a deep dive into the Harbor’s history with the current exhibit.
The post Santa Barbara Maritime Museum Shows 170 Years of Harbor History appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/12/santa-barbara-maritime-museum-shows-170-years-of-harbor-history/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
DeJoy’s US Postal Service leadership is deadly.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/11/2211085/-DeJoy-s-US-Postal-Service-leadership-is-deadly Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The LAist
This comes a month after the FCC adopted new rules to stop broadband providers from discriminating against customers based on race, religion and income.
https://laist.com/news/politics/los-angeles-could-become-first-us-city-to-end-digital-discrimination Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The rare images are among a collection of artifacts connected to the “Lady with the Lamp” that recently sold at auction
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/florence-nightingale-photos-auction-180983413/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Heatmap News
In the weeks leading up to Elon Musk’s latest round of controversies, 27% percent of Americans who reported wanting to buy an EV in the future said that the billionaire’s behavior made them less likely to pick a Tesla, down from 36% who said the same in February. On the other hand, 35% of prospective EV buyers said that Musk had made them more likely to purchase a Tesla — a reversal of the results from the last time Heatmap took Americans’ temperature on the controversial CEO, when more people were put off by Musk’s behavior than swayed by him.
Heatmap’s new poll — which was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group between Nov. 6 and Nov. 13, 2023 — notably did not account for Musk’s latest scandal: reinstating Infowars founder and Newtown massacre denialist Alex Jones to the website formerly known as Twitter. The poll was also conducted days before Musk endorsed an anti-semitic post on X, leading to an advertiser exodus from the platform.
Still, since the last Heatmap poll in February, Americans have had plenty of time to see other negative headlines about Musk, including around his volatile ownership of X, his “outsize role in geopolitics, thanks to SpaceX,” his mockery of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and his public attacks on a disabled ex-employee, George Soros, and the Anti-Defamation League.
Even so, Tesla outsold its next 19 rival EV automakers combined, and by a wide margin, in the first six months of 2023, Reuters reports. And despite declining earnings, its shares have risen 94% so far this year, far outpacing the S&P 500. When trying to account for this resilience in the face of Musk’s parade of recent scandals, Platformer’s Casey Newton mused last week on The New York Times’ Hard Fork podcast that there might still be “a contingent of folks who want to believe that the Elon Musk of 2023 is the Elon Musk of 2013, and that he said a couple of kooky things here and there, but at his core, he’s billionaire genius, Tony Stark, savior of humanity.” But at the same time, he went on, this might be a “moment in the sun for Tesla” and “maybe a few years from now, we look back and we think, oh yeah, that’s when the wheels started to come off the wagon.”
Overall, Heatmap found that some 39% of Democrats and left-leaning Independents said Musk has made them less likely to look at a Tesla, a small drop from 44% who said the same in February. Only 17% of Republicans and right-leaning Independents said the same. Of all respondents surveyed, though, a plurality (46%) said Musk ultimately has “no impact” on their decision to buy or lease a Tesla, proving there apparently are some people lucky enough to not have to think about this guy.
Additionally, 35% of men but only 15% of women said that Musk has made them more likely to buy a Tesla. Make of that what you will!
The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group via online panels from Nov. 6 to 13, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. You can read about our results here.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/elon-musk-tesla-poll-ev-buyers Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
The collision happened on Nov. 30.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/man-fatally-hit-by-bart-train-near-richmond-station-identified/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Chocolate, multi-fruit, gluten-free cakes join the traditional version
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/bay-area-2023-holiday-sweets-10-panettone-to-try-this-season/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A decade in, Willows Restaurant + Bar provides classic steaks and seafood with a splash of Santa Barbara, in Santa Ynez.
The post Fine Dining at the Chumash Casino Resort appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/12/fine-dining-at-the-chumash-casino-resort/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Durango opened last week, Fontainebleau opens this week.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/two-new-casinos-opening-in-las-vegas-one-in-huge-blue-tower-on-the-strip/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: National Archives, Text Message blog
Salmon Fisheries in Alaska (Auke Bay)
https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2023/12/12/auke-bay-laboratory-part-1-fishing-for-answers-alaskan-salmon-research/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
The next year will see alliances of news publishers around the world trying again to get payments from Google, and possibly Meta, influenced by the successes of Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code. These alliances will be useful for the negotiations that need to happen with AI companies using news content in their large language models….
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/publishers-keep-trying-to-extract-revenue-from-google/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: NASA breaking news
Three NASA-funded commercial space station partners are on track for the design and development of their orbital destinations and the transition of agency’s low Earth orbit needs from the International Space Station. “We are ending the year on a high note with multiple important milestones being completed by our partners,” said Angela Hart, manager of […]
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/commercial-space/leo-economy/nasas-commercial-partners-continue-progress-on-new-space-stations/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
New research suggests the electricity costs would exceed $300 million per year and carbon dioxide emissions could approach one million metric tons annually
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/could-a-550-mile-pipeline-from-the-ocean-save-the-great-salt-lake-scientists-say-probably-not-180983406/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ubisoft adroitly adapts the gameplay from the series into virtual reality bring players closer to the life of the Assassin Brotherhood
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/review-assassins-creed-nexus-vr-brings-players-closer-to-franchises-iconic-experiences/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
President Joe Biden hailed the progress on inflation, as it’s now down nearly two-thirds from its peak of 9.1% hit last June.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/inflation-is-slowly-coming-down-and-no-longer-outweighing-americans-wages/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Devs at well-loved distros Mint and Zorin are hard at work, with Mint 21.3 expected before the holidays, although Zorin OS 17 may take a little longer. Their respective betas show both are shaping up nicely and boast attractive desktops.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/mint_21_3_zorin_17/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
A huge San Jose housing development will consist of several hundred affordable homes.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/san-jose-home-house-afford-housing-build-develop-real-estate-economy/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Liliputing
The Banana Pi BPI-M4 Zero is a tiny computer board that features an ARM Cortx-A53 quad-core processor, 2GB of LPDDR4 memory, 8GB of eMMC flash storage, and a familiar form factor: it’s just about the same size and shape as a Raspberry Pi Zero and even features a Raspberry Pi-compatible 40-pin connector. But while the […]
The post Banana Pi BPI-M4 Zero is now available (Raspberry Pi Zero clone with Allwinner H618 and dual USB-C ports) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/banana-pi-bpi-m4-zero-is-a-raspberry-pi-zero-clone-with-allwinner-h618-and-dual-usb-c-ports/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Working my way through loose-ends. The feed-only editor built into FeedLand has now been converted to mobile.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/12.html#a161822 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Mozilla Developer Network blog
Puppeteer now supports the next-generation, cross-browser WebDriver BiDi standard. This new protocol makes it easy for web developers to write automated tests that work across multiple browser engines.
The post Puppeteer Support for the Cross-Browser WebDriver BiDi Standard appeared first on Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2023/12/puppeteer-webdriver-bidi/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Arizona once again tops the Hotline’s power ratings, but there was plenty of movement elsewhere after a series of upsets.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/pac-12-basketball-power-ratings-arizona-on-top-after-the-conferences-best-weekend-in-eons/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Danny Gokey, Natalie Grant, Mac Powell delight fans at 3Crosses Church in Castro Valley during K-LOVE’s Celebrate Christmas Tour.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/danny-gokey-natalie-grant-headline-k-loves-celebrate-christmas-tour/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/diary-comics-nov-13-15 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: David Rosenthal’s blog
The attitude of the crypto-bros and tech more generally is that they are going to make so much money that paying for whatever resource they need to make it will be a drop in the ocean. Amd that externalities such as carbom emissions are someone else’s problem.
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| de Vries Fig. 1 |
Corsicana will sell Riot the water. Jackie only discovered how much water Riot needed via records requests. “They asked for 1.6 million gallons a day in the height of the summer, and we are all being told to conserve,” Jackie said.In Bitcoin’s growing water footprint Alex de Vries discovers some very large water losses:
“When Riot tells people they are going to be wasting 1.6 million gallons a day, more than the iron smelt, more than the candy factory, they are going to be the number one user of water,” said Jackie.
Amid growing concerns over the impacts of climate change on worldwide water security, Bitcoin’s water footprint has rapidly escalated in recent years. The water footprint of Bitcoin in 2021 significantly increased by 166% compared with 2020, from 591.2 to 1,573.7 GL. The water footprint per transaction processed on the Bitcoin blockchain for those years amounted to 5,231 and 16,279 L, respectively. As of 2023, Bitcoin’s annual water footprint may equal 2,237 GL.That is, each Bitcoin transaction consumes a small swimming pool worth of water.
The first involves onsite (direct) water use for cooling systems and air humidification. Water usage depends on cooling system types and local climate conditions. It is important to differentiate between water withdrawal and water consumption in terms of this usage. Water withdrawal pertains to the water taken from surface water or groundwater sources, while water consumption refers to the portion of water that becomes unavailable for reuse after withdrawal, primarily due to evaporation in cooling systems. Water consumption is not extensively studied in Bitcoin mining or generic data center research, as reliable data on water consumption factors are challenging to obtain.And:
The second way in which miners use water relates to the (indirect) water consumption associated with generating the electricity necessary to power their devices. Thermoelectric power generation plays a major role in water consumption, as a portion of the withdrawn water for cooling purposes evaporates (unless dry cooling technologies utilizing air are employed).Note some caveats (my emphasis):
These systems can utilize both freshwater and non-freshwater sources. This commentary, however, exclusively focuses on freshwater consumption. … The total water footprint of Bitcoin examined in this commentary encompasses the freshwater consumed due to both direct and indirect water consumption during the operational stage of Bitcoin mining devices.It is important to note that water consumed is not the only concern, withdrawn water can be too. Sawicky points out that:
The water gets quite hot — over 100 degrees Fahrenheit — and that hot water needs to go somewhere. Where will it go?Hot water kills fish, and any pollution from the Riot facility will end up in the water supply.
Jackie hasn’t been able to get a clear answer, but she has concerns. “The property Riot purchased here in Navarro Country feeds into Richland Creek and Richland Creek feeds into Richland-Chambers Reservoir, and that’s the tap water for Arlington-Fort Worth.”
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| de Vries Fig. 2 |
includes 34 Bitcoin mines, with the power requirement for each mine ranging from 38 to 450 megawatts (MW) as of March 2023. Together, these 34 mines are responsible for 3.91 GW of power demand, representing roughly a quarter of Bitcoin’s total estimated power demand in the same month (i.e., 16.2 GW) and a majority of the share that can be attributed to the US according to the CCAF (i.e., 37.84% as of January 2022).de Vries estimates that:
This means the total water footprint of US Bitcoin miners, after adding their direct water consumption, could be an annual 93–120 GL, which is 10%–41% more than the estimated indirect water consumption of 84.9 GL per year. It also means the total water footprint of US Bitcoin miners could be equivalent to the average annual water consumption of around 300,000 US households, comparable with a city such as Washington, DC.
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| Source |
90% of transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain is not tied to economically meaningful activities but is the byproduct of the Bitcoin protocol design as well as the preference of many participants for anonymity.
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| Source |
Hugging Face reported that its BigScience Large Open-Science Open-Access Multilingual (BLOOM) model consumed 433 MWh of electricity during training.4 Other LLMs, including GPT-3, Gopher and Open Pre-trained Transformer (OPT), reportedly used 1,287, 1,066, and 324 MWh, respectively, for training. Each of these LLMs, was trained on terabytes of data and has 175 billion or more parameters.de Vries then turns to the less-studied inference phase:
Research firm SemiAnalysis suggested that OpenAI required 3,617 of NVIDIA’s HGX A100 servers, with a total of 28,936 graphics processing units (GPUs), to support ChatGPT, implying an energy demand of 564 MWh per day. Compared to the estimated 1,287 MWh used in GPT-3’s training phase, the inference phase’s energy demand appears considerably higher. Furthermore, Google reported that 60% of AI-related energy consumption from 2019 to 2021 stemmed from inference.He estimates for Google the energy needed per inference in LLMs:
SemiAnalysis estimated that implementing AI similar to ChatGPT in each Google search would require 512,821 of NVIDIA’s A100 HGX servers, totaling 4,102,568 GPUs. At a power demand of 6.5 kW per server, this would translate into a daily electricity consumption of 80 GWh and an annual consumption of 29.2 TWh. New Street Research independently arrived at similar estimates, suggesting that Google would need approximately 400,000 servers, which would lead to a daily consumption of 62.4 GWh and an annual consumption of 22.8 TWh. With Google currently processing up to 9 billion searches daily, these scenarios would average to an energy consumption of 6.9–8.9 Wh per request. This estimate aligns with Hugging Face’s BLOOM model, which consumed 914 kWh of electricity for 230,768 requests,4 averaging to 3.96 Wh per request.And similarly for ChatGPT:
…
Alphabet’s chairman indicated in February 2023 that interacting with an LLM could ’’likely cost 10 times more than a standard keyword search.6” As a standard Google search reportedly uses 0.3 Wh of electricity,9 this suggests an electricity consumption of approximately 3 Wh per LLM interaction.
SemiAnalysis’ assessment of ChatGPT’s operating costs in early 2023, which estimated that ChatGPT responds to 195 million requests per day, requiring an estimated average electricity consumption of 564 MWh per day, or, at most, 2.9 Wh per request.
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| de Vries Fig. 1 |
In 2021, Google’s total electricity consumption was 18.3 TWh, with AI accounting for 10%–15% of this total. The worst-case scenario suggests Google’s AI alone could consume as much electricity as a country such as Ireland (29.3 TWh per year),Fortunately, the hardware supply chain can’t deliver the chips needed to do this, and even if it could Google would not want to make the roughly $100B investment. A more realistic scenario is based on Nvidia’s projected sales of 100,000 AI servers in 2023:
these servers would have a combined power demand of 650–1,020 MW. On an annual basis, these servers could consume up to 5.7–8.9 TWh of electricity. Compared to the historical estimated annual electricity consumption of data centers, which was 205 TWh, this is almost negligible.Note that this estimate assumes 100% duty cycle but ignores the power needed to cool the servers, two effects which tend to cancel each other. It also ignores the embedded energy in the servers, and their eventual contribution to the e-waste problem. de Vries concludes:
While the exact future of AI-related electricity consumption remains difficult to predict, the scenarios discussed in this commentary underscore the importance of tempering both overly optimistic and overly pessimistic expectations. Integrating AI into applications such as Google Search can significantly boost the electricity consumption of these applications. However, various resource factors are likely to restrain the growth of global AIrelated electricity consumption in the near term. Simultaneously, it is probably too optimistic to expect that improvements in hardware and software efficiencies will fully offset any longterm changes in AI-related electricity consumption. These advancements can trigger a rebound effect whereby increasing efficiency leads to increased demand for AI, escalating rather than reducing total resource use.
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| Luccioni Fig. 1 |
propose the first systematic comparison of the ongoing inference cost of various categories of ML systems, covering both task-specific (i.e. finetuned models that carry out a single task) and ‘general-purpose’ models, (i.e. those trained for multiple tasks). We measure deployment cost as the amount of energy and carbon required to perform 1,000 inferences on representative benchmark dataset using these models. We find that multi-purpose, generative architectures are orders of magnitude more expensive than task-specific systems for a variety of tasks, even when controlling for the number of model parameters.As with de Vries, they justify their focus on inference:
According to AWS, the largest global cloud provider, inference is estimated to make up 80 to 90% of total ML cloud computing demand [2, 28], whereas a 2021 publication by Meta attributed approximately one-third of their internal end-to-end ML carbon footprint to model inference, with the remainder produced by data management, storage, and training [56]; similarly, a 2022 study from Google attributed 60% of its ML energy use to inference, compared to 40% for training [40].Luccioni et al’s Figure 1 (note Y axis logarithmic) shows that the range of carbon emissions for the various tasks they tested spans 3 orders of magnitude. Generative tasks are by far more expensive, with image generation particularly costly.
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| Luccioni Fig. 2 |
We do observe a relationship between model size and quantity of emissions produced during inference, with differing progressions for each modality – however, the task structure accounts for more of the variation than the model size does. We can observe once again that text-to-image is by far the most carbon- and energy-intensive task, with smaller image generation models such as segmind/tiny-sd that have around 500M parameters producing magnitudes more carbon than text-to-category models (100g vs. 0.6 g of CO 2 per 1,000 inferences).They conclude:
…
For context, the most carbon-intensive image generation model (stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0) generates 1,594 grams of CO 2 for 1,000 inferences, which is roughly the equivalent to 4.1 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle.
Using multi-purpose models for discriminative tasks is more energy-intensive compared to task-specific models for these same tasks. This is especially the case for text classification (on IMDB, SST 2 and Rotten Tomatoes) and question answering (on SciQ, SQuAD v1 and v2), where the gap between task-specific and zero-shot models is particularly large, and less so for summarization (for CNN-Daily Mail, SamSUM and XSum). As can be seen in Table 4, the difference between multi-purpose models and task-specific models is amplified as the length of output gets longer.One of the most-hyped applications of AI is autonomous vehicles, and Soumya Sudhakar, Vivienne Sze and Sertac Karaman examine their externalities in Data Centers on Wheels: Emissions From Computing Onboard Autonomous Vehicles which is summarized by Brandon Vigliarolo in Self-driving car computers may be ‘as bad’ for emissions as datacenters. Sudhakar et al use probabilistic models to estimate the power needed for autonomous navigation:
…
While we see the benefit of deploying generative zero-shot models given their ability to carry out multiple tasks, we do not see convincing evidence for the necessity of their deployment in contexts where tasks are well-defined, for instance web search and navigation, given these models’ energy requirements.
Based on current trends, a widespread AV adoption scenario where approximately 95% of all vehicles are autonomous requires computer power to be less than 1.2 kW for emissions from computing on AVs to be less than emissions from all data centers in 2018 in 90% of modeled scenarios. Anticipating a future scenario with high adoption of AVs, business-as-usual decarbonization, and workloads doubling every three years, hardware efficiency must double every 1.1 years for emissions in 2050 to equal 2018 data center emissions. The rate of increase in hardware efficiency needed in many scenarios to contain emissions is faster than the current rate.Again, note that in aggregate autonomous vehicles will consume far more power in inference than in training.
|
|
Sudhakar et al
Fig. 1 |
Emissions from computing onboard AVs driving 1 h/day. With one billion AVs, an average computer power of 0.84 kW yields emissions equal to emissions of all data centers.
In all these cases we see the industry’s total lack of concern for
externalities such as carbon emissions, grid stability, e-waste and
water consumption. In cryptocurrency’s case we can add
crime
and
money
laundering. In the case of autonomous vehicles we can add
death,
injury
and
traffic
congestion. All these papers propose ways to reduce the
externalities they document, but in almost all cases my reaction is
“good luck with that!”.
https://blog.dshr.org/2023/12/why-worry-about-resources.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The immigration system in the U.S. has not been significantly updated in decades. Today, we examine what pathways look like for immigrants who want to work in the States and for the employers who want to hire them. Also on the show: Price increases seem to be settling in higher than the Federal Reserve wants, small business optimism ticks down in November, and the UAW goes after non-union automakers.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/why-its-so-hard-to-actually-get-u-s-visas-and-green-cards Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
The pandemic didn’t just close parks in 2020 and ’21, it also led companies to cancel new projects — some of which would have debuted next year.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/niles-lack-of-new-attractions-coming-to-california-theme-parks-in-2024-is-covids-legacy/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Know a gardener who needs a gift? Try these!
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/12/12-christmas-and-holiday-gifts-for-the-gardeners-in-your-life/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/0043608-five-sweaters-to-knit-for Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Oracle has seen its market valuation dip on the back of lower than expected revenue growth for Q2 of its fiscal 2024 ended November 30.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/oracle_shares_hit_as_it/ Save to Pocket
@IIIF Mastodon feed (date: 2023-12-12, from: IIIF Mastodon feed)
Unfortunately, we must postpone our planned Community Call with @flickrfdn. Please stay tuned for a new date and time.
https://glammr.us/@IIIF/111540714313159267
https://glammr.us/@IIIF/111568139782181952 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: VOA News USA
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain leader of the prestigious Ivy League school following her comments last week at a congressional hearing on antisemitism, the university’s highest governing body announced Tuesday.
“Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the Harvard Corporation said in a statement following its meeting Monday night.
Only months into her leadership, Gay came under intense scrutiny following the hearing in which she and two of her peers struggled to answer questions about campus antisemitism. Their academic responses provoked a backlash from Republican opponents, along with alumni and donors who say the university leaders are failing to stand up for Jewish students on their campuses.
Some lawmakers and donors to the university called for Gay to step down, following the resignation of Liz Magill as president of the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday.
The Harvard Crimson student newspaper first reported Tuesday that Gay, who became Harvard’s first Black president in July, will remain in office with the support of the Harvard Corporation following the conclusion of the board’s meeting. It cited an unnamed source familiar with the decision.
A petition signed by more than 600 faculty members asked the school’s governing body to keep Gay in charge.
“So many people have suffered tremendous damage and pain because of Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, and the university’s initial statement should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal condemnation,” the corporation’s statement said. “Calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values. President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the university’s fight against antisemitism.”
In an interview with The Crimson last week, Gay said she got caught up in a heated exchange at the House committee hearing and failed to properly denounce threats of violence against Jewish students.
“What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,” Gay said.
Testimony from Gay and Magill drew intense national backlash, as have similar responses from the president of MIT, who also testified before the Republican-led House Education and Workforce Committee.
The corporation also addressed allegations of plagiarism against Gay, saying that Harvard became aware of them in late October regarding three articles she had written. It initiated an independent review at Gay’s request.
The corporation reviewed the results on Saturday, “which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation” and found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, it said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7394751.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Jeff Geerling blog
Forget spaceships; I just want my music
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>A couple weeks ago, as my kids settled into the car, I asked like I always do, "what songs do you want me to play?"</p>They have a range of favored earworms, from Baby Shark to Babaloo, and usually the songs are tolerable, at least.
But a few albums, like Bluey’s soundtrack, transcend the children’s genre. They’re genuinely fun to listen to, for everyone in the car.
Well, that fine day, the kids chose Ladybug Music. And let me tell you, besides a few duds, Ladybug Music slaps. And the songs incorporate diverse styles, too, it’s not just the same nursery rhymes regurgitated in a bubbly voice.
So I found the album on my phone and noticed the songs were all greyed out.
I tapped one, and nothing. Just this notice:
Not available in my region? Well, that’s weird. I pay for Apple Music. And I know the artist is in the US, and I’m in the US…
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/forget-spaceships-i-just-want-my-music Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: NASA breaking news
The last Wednesday in November proved to be a full-circle moment for two engineers at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Josh Greiner heard a familiar voice on the headset as he prepared to conduct an RS-25 engine test on the Fred Haise Test Stand on Nov. 29. It was Peyton Pinson, […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/stennis/nasa-stennis-engineers-share-the-stage-on-test-day/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: PeerJ blog
A PeerJ Computer Science Special Issue featuring research aiming to transform healthcare by utilizing Artificial Intelligence. “This is a New Era of Technological Healthcare, providing tools and methods to empower medical treatments. Machine learning and sensors can promote these advances.” – Ivan Miguel Pires, Adjunct Professor, Instituto Politécnico de Santarém. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) […]
https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284888642/call-for-papers-revolutionizing-healthcare-the-role-of-ai-and-machine-learning/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: NASA breaking news
NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen, and Woody Hoburg, as well as UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi will visit the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama at 1 p.m. CST Thursday, Dec. 14, to discuss their recent missions to the International Space Station. Media are invited to speak with the astronauts […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/media-invited-to-nasas-spacex-crew-6-expedition-69-visit-to-marshall/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Chuck did a Dark Mode for FeedLand “boost” for the Arc browser.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/12.html#a144431 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Microsoft is considering adding a text editor back into the command line world, thus risking some heated discussions on the subject.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/microsoft_cli_text_editor/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/0043609-this-family-with-young-ki Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Wildfire Climate Tech Challenge, part of the MSI Incubator initiative, seeks innovative solutions for wildfire prevention and climate technology. NASA invites students and employees of Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) to address the escalating issues caused by wildfires exacerbated by climate change. Successful participants will have the opportunity to join a startup incubator program and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/stmd-prizes-challenges-crowdsourcing-program/center-of-excellence-for-collaborative-innovation-coeci/nasa-msi-incubator-wildfire-climate-tech-challenge/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
A crowd stood across the University Library, with unlit candles in one hand and warm drinks in the other. They waited for the sun to go down as Rabbi Chaim Brook greeted those trickling in. In front of them stood a large menorah with the words “Happy Hanukkah.” Chabad at CSUN hosted their annual menorah…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177347/featured/chabad-at-csun-celebrates-hanukkah-on-campus/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/0043607-this-is-perhaps-a-little Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: 404 Media Group
nContext looks like an ordinary adtech or marketing company. It’s actually owned by military contracting giant Sierra Nevada Corporation.
https://www.404media.co/navy-bought-global-data-ncontext-sierra-nevada-snc/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Guam Daily Post
A fifth individual is now facing charges in connection to the death of Jason Susuico earlier this year.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/5th-suspect-facing-charges-in-susuico-murder-investigation/article_198d0592-9898-11ee-bf83-b77a77119722.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Guam Daily Post
A former police officer terminated after an alleged altercation in July has appealed his case at the Civil Service Commission, but those proceedings will have to wait until pending criminal matters are completed at the Superior Court of Guam.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/ex-officers-termination-appeal-waits-on-criminal-proceeding/article_c067b590-97f5-11ee-b2a7-0788207b72ba.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Guam Daily Post
Santa runs across the DFS T-Galleria, on his way to play the drums, leaving one band and joining another outside the front of the mall for the tourists along Tumon Bay.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/721st-army-band-fills-dfs-with-holiday-melodies/article_c416d7de-97cd-11ee-a95e-3b83e3827830.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Guam Daily Post
A man was allegedly found with methamphetamine at a bus stop near a school in Sinajana.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-sleeping-at-a-bus-stop-near-school-accused-of-having-meth/article_c6da306c-97e4-11ee-be4b-6747336aabbe.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Guam Daily Post
The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded $5 million to the University of Guam to work with forestry managers and farmers to produce more eco-friendly and sustainable materials and practices, the university announced in a press release.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/uog-awarded-5m-to-work-with-growers-on-sustainable-farming/article_528105a0-97c7-11ee-9709-3f57c752b2fd.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Guam Daily Post
With the extension to Guam’s H2-B limit exemption within the compromise version of the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the governor’s administration stated over the weekend that it will continue to find solutions to restrictions on bringing foreign…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/adelup-says-it-will-continue-to-seek-relief-on-h-2b-issue/article_ab09f9f4-97b1-11ee-91db-7f19c48a702b.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Guam Daily Post
A man on trial for murder admitted to police he punched a man multiple times in a fight. The victim died days later.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/detective-defendant-admitted-to-punching-victim-in-fatal-attack/article_a7a8b614-988e-11ee-8dcb-ab17c53e2c0e.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Guam Daily Post
More than $3.2 billion in defense authorizations will be heading to Guam through the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, should it be signed into law, according to Guam Del. James Moylan.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/3-2b-could-come-to-guam-in-ndaa-still-a-chance-for-reca/article_ca1a5e7c-988f-11ee-bfb0-db0354e0cb58.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Guam Daily Post
A man suspected of having methamphetamine with intent to deliver was arrested and charged after allegedly “swerving” his car toward a Guam Police Department vehicle.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/im-dying-drug-dealing-suspect-tells-police-he-did-too-much-meth/article_f7c0d612-97e5-11ee-b28e-a7db179620bc.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2023/12/12/scarcity-is-part-of-the-appeal/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
An official review of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) August data breach has revealed the full extent of the impact on staff.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/psni_data_breach_forces_officers/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: It’s getting windy in Queensland as Tropical Cyclone Jasper approaches land. America’s chances of a white Christmas are looking increasingly slim. It’s cold but sunny in Washington, D.C., today, where Ukrainian President Zelensky will meet with President Biden.
Negotiators at the COP28 climate summit remain divided over the text that will appear in the final deal to emerge from the conference, and in particular whether the text will call on countries to phase out fossil fuels. The conference was scheduled to end this morning but is running into overtime. Yesterday an updated draft text was swiftly and widely condemned in part because it eliminated the “phase out” language in an attempt to appease Saudi Arabia, among other nations. This morning COP28 Director General Majid Al Suwaidi said that draft was just a starting point for talks. He added that the United Arab Emirates COP presidency wants the text to include fossil fuels but that in the end, it will be up to the nations in attendance to come to an agreement. A new draft of the text is expected sometime today.
Youth
climate activist Licypriya Kangujam interrupts COP28 demanding an end to
fossil
fuels.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
A group of 18 kids in California is suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), accusing it of failing to protect them from the effects of climate change and therefore violating their constitutional rights. The lawsuit, Genesis B. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, was filed by the Oregon-based nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust, the same firm that in August represented a group of Montana children in their successful landmark climate suit against that state. The Genesis suit calls climate change the “single greatest driver of the health of every child born today” and says young people are “actively being harmed and discriminated against by their government’s affirmative allowance of dangerous levels of climate pollution.” The plaintiffs don’t want compensation, but are asking “for various declarations about the environmental rights of children and the EPA’s responsibility to protect them,” NPR reports.
Ford will significantly scale back production of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck in 2024, Automotive News reports, citing an internal memo. The company had planned to make 3,200 trucks per week but will cut that in half to 1,600, “marking a major reversal after the automaker significantly increased plant capacity for the electric vehicle in 2023,” explains CNBC. EV sales continue to climb: F-150 Lightning sales are up 53% year over year. But even so, the pace of growth hasn’t matched some automakers’ ambitious expectations as prices and interest rates remain stubbornly high. As a result, companies including Ford are being forced to pull back on their EV investment and expansion plans. A Ford spokesperson said the company will “continue to match production with customer demand.”
A quarter of the world’s freshwater fish are at risk of extinction due to environmental degradation, according to a new assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Climate change and pollution pose some of the biggest threats to freshwater fish, but overfishing, dam construction, and invasive species also play a part. The assessment found that the global population of Atlantic salmon plummeted by 23% between 2006 and 2020. “Ensuring freshwater ecosystems are well managed, remain free-flowing with sufficient water, and good water quality is essential to stop species declines and maintain food security, livelihoods and economies in a climate resilient world,” says Kathy Hughes, co-chair of the IUCN SSC Freshwater Fish Specialist Group.
Europe’s largest economies have managed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity production by nearly 25% over the last five years by switching from fossil fuels to renewables, Reuters reports, citing data from electricitymaps.com. Emissions from electricity generation across Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands have declined by 156 million tonnes in 2023 compared to 2018. “As every major European economy is set to expand renewables generation further each year through the rest of this decade, the region’s overall carbon intensity will continue to decline, and will likely help the region emerge as the global hub for low-carbon electricity generation by 2030,” Reuters’ Gavin Maguire says.
“While it may look broken in the short term, somehow this dysfunctional process can still deliver.” –Eve Tamme, a former climate negotiator for the European Commission, speaking to Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer on the future of COP.
https://heatmap.news/climate/am-briefing-overtime-at-cop28 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Monetization and the push for traffic still drive most business decisions in the media industry. Whether publishers seek to generate subscription revenue directly from readers or indirectly monetize reader attention through advertising or sponsorship, their target audiences are shaped through the lens of profitability. This is not necessarily a bad thing — monetization can serve…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/its-time-to-prioritize-audiences-we-know-we-cant-monetize/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Dear TK, Congratulations on being named CEO of NPR! You are inheriting a world-class journalism organization at a pivotal moment in U.S. history. While the need for a non-partisan, independent press has never been more urgent, the headwinds you’re facing have never been stronger. Think F-5 hurricane. They include the collapse of local journalism and…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/an-open-letter-to-the-incoming-ceo-of-npr/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Every day, for four decades, I have put my right shoe on first, and then my left. Same goes for my socks and pant legs. Over the past week, I tried switching it up. Each morning, I forced my right foot to stay put, as I raised my left. It felt hard and quite unnatural,…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/we-learn-to-unlearn/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
My prediction is that 2024 will be the year when the generative AI models begin to stop confabulating, hallucinating, or, as journalists put it more bluntly, stop making things up. As soon as the public got access to AI chatbots, the models became infamous for their unreliability. Lawyers were shocked their AI-generated briefs included made-up…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/ai-gets-accurate/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
It’s not about innovating; it’s about surviving. With the rise of conversational search, media outlets will have to move on from obsessing over the Google algorithm. Even if the reach provided by Google maintains its pace, the real success needle for media shouldn’t be vanity reach, but cultural relevance. In the content industry, what will…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/the-year-of-the-horizontal-newsroom/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Over the next year, the news industry will have to confront the realities of building an audience in a post-social media world — a world where the news not only doesn’t reach those who aren’t looking for it, but is not a consistent presence in many Americans’ lives. The last year has reminded many news…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/news-confronts-reaching-audiences-in-a-post-social-world/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The LAist
Activists worry support for expanding the L.A. City Council is losing momentum.
https://laist.com/news/politics/la-city-council-members-wrestle-with-increasing-their-numbers Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The LAist
More than a dozen students talked to LAist about how music powered them through pre-calculus homework, helped them navigate the perpetual question of who you are in the world, and gave life “more vibes.”
https://laist.com/news/education/los-angeles-high-school-gen-z-best-music-2023 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Markup blog
Here’s how to turn off “automated content recognition,” the Shazam-like software on smart TVs that tracks what you’re watching
https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/12/12/your-smart-tv-knows-what-youre-watching Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Republicans in Congress want to tie aid to Ukraine and Israel with immigration reform, and time is running out to make a deal. Immigration is a topic fraught with emotion, but we decided to take a look at immigration through the lens of economics. What does the evidence show about the costs and benefits of immigration? What about it’s effect on wages and jobs? Plus, Google loses an antitrust case against Epic Games.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/what-the-data-says-about-immigrations-impact-on-the-economy Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
It’s the season of celebration. A time for people to come together with those they love and reflect on the year. However, that’s tough for so many people I know, who are ending this year really struggling. Struggling to find housing they can afford. Struggling to access health care. Struggling to cover the basics. That’s […]
The post Pilar Schiavo | A Time for Celebration and Reflection appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/pilar-schiavo-a-time-for-celebration-and-reflection/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
Re: Larry Moore, “Alternate Universe,” letters, Dec. 7. I find that I enjoy The Signal opinion page much more by just skipping certain “contributors.” Currently, my list is only three names: Gary Horton, Thomas Oatway and Lois Eisenberg. Walter McKee Valencia
The post Walter McKee | Skipping These Three appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/walter-mckee-skipping-these-three/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
At Wednesday’s board of trustees’ meeting, the leadership at College of the Canyons will have an opportunity to join over 100 other United States colleges and universities by signing the statement, “We Stand Together with Israel Against Hamas.” The statement itself is direct, simple and elegant. It clearly identifies Israel as the victim of violence […]
The post Stephen C. Petzold | COC Must Stand Against Terrorism appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/stephen-c-petzold-coc-must-stand-against-terrorism/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
Will someone inform Thomas Oatway (letters, Dec. 8) that Bernie Madoff died in 2021? And also inform him that it is highly unlikely that Donald Trump will be able to resurrect him from the dead. Steven H. Baron Newhall
The post Steven H. Baron | Need Another Choice for Treasury appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/steven-h-baron-need-another-choice-for-treasury/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
I disagree with Lois Eisenberg again (letters, Dec. 8). Mike Johnson is the fresh face we need in the speaker’s position. Isn’t abortion murder? That is harsh but isn’t that what it is? Aren’t wind and solar the most undependable sources of energy? Climate change happens without our involvement. Did you know that Earth was […]
The post Bob Comer | Disagreeing with Lois Again appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/bob-comer-disagreeing-with-lois-again/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Brit telecoms regulator Ofcom is proposing fresh rules that take a swipe at companies who impose inflation-linked price rises in the middle of a contract, saying pricing should be more transparent for customers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/ofcom_takes_aim_at_inflation_contract_terms/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: VOA News USA
LAHAINA — The heart of Lahaina, the historic town on the Hawaiian island of Maui that burned in a deadly wildfire that killed at least 100 people, reopened Monday to residents and business owners holding day passes.
The renewed access marks an important emotional milestone for victims of the Aug. 8 fire, but much work remains to be done to safely clear properties of burned debris and rebuild.
The reopened areas include Banyan Tree Park, home to a 150-year-old tree that burned in the fire but that is now sprouting new leaves, Lahaina’s public library, an elementary school and popular restaurants.
An oceanfront section of Front Street, where the fire ripped through a traffic jam of cars trying to escape town, reopened Friday.
Authorities are continuing to recommend that people entering scorched lots wear protective gear to shield them from hazards.
On Sunday, the state Department of Health released test results confirming the ash and dust left by the fire is toxic and that arsenic is the biggest concern. Arsenic is a heavy metal that adheres to wildfire dust and ash, the department said.
The tests examined ash samples collected Nov. 7-8 from 100 properties built from the 1900s to the 2000s. Samples also showed high levels of lead, which was used to paint houses built before 1978.
The clean up is still in its early stages. For the past few months, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been removing batteries, propane tanks, pesticides and other hazards from the town’s more than 2,000 destroyed buildings.
Residents and business owners have been able to visit their properties after the EPA has finished clearing their lots. In some cases, residents — often wearing white full-body suits, masks and gloves — have found family heirlooms and mementos after sifting through the charred rubble of their homes.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin hauling away the remaining debris and take it to a landfill after it gets permission from property owners.
The EPA and the state’s health department have installed 53 air monitors in Lahaina and Upcountry Maui, where a separate fire burned homes in early August. The department is urging people to avoid outdoor activity when monitor levels show elevated air pollution and to close windows and doors.
https://www.voanews.com/a/heart-of-hawaii-s-historic-lahaina-burned-in-wildfire-reopens-to-residents-business-owners/7394522.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: The UN climate change talks in Dubai are reaching their final phase, but because the nations can’t agree on a draft deal to phase out fossil fuels, the conference has gone into overtime. Some countries unhappy with the draft language are small island nations like Tuvalu. We take a closer look. Plus, Poland’s right-wing party is out of power after eight years.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/will-cop28-talks-end-with-a-deal Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Interesting attack based on malicious pre-OS logo images:
LogoFAIL is a constellation of two dozen newly discovered vulnerabilities that have lurked for years, if not decades, in Unified Extensible Firmware Interfaces responsible for booting modern devices that run Windows or Linux….
The vulnerabilities are the subject of a coordinated mass disclosure released Wednesday. The participating companies comprise nearly the entirety of the x64 and ARM CPU ecosystem, starting with UEFI suppliers AMI, Insyde, and Phoenix (sometimes still called IBVs or independent BIOS vendors); device manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, and HP; and the makers of the CPUs that go inside the devices, usually Intel, AMD or designers of ARM CPUs……
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/new-windows-linux-firmware-attack.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Deno blog
Access our zero config distributed database, Deno KV, in your Node projects with our new npm package.
https://deno.com/blog/kv-npm Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
As we celebrate the 232nd anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, we’re looking back on the document’s 175th anniversary—and a major exhibit at the National Archives Building. The original joint resolution of Congress proposing what we call the Bill of Rights has been on permanent display at the National Archives Building since … Continue reading The Bill of Rights at the National Archives Building
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2023/12/12/the-bill-of-rights-at-the-national-archives-building/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
re:Invent At the recent AWS re:Invent conference, the hype was all around AI, but the big launch for many users was S3 (Simple Storage Service) Express One Zone – a S3 tier offering much lower latency than standard S3 buckets. This means S3 can be used directly by a wider range of applications, altering the storage cost and performance calculations.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/the_changing_focus_of_aws/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
Young children have a unique perspective on the world they live in. They often seem oblivious to what’s going on around them, but then they will ask a question that makes you realise they did get some insight from a news story or a conversation they overheard. This happened to me with a class of…
The post AI isn’t just robots: How to talk to young children about AI appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/how-to-talk-to-young-children-about-ai/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The developer behind Beeper Mini just released an updated version of the standalone Android app that users say can sidestep the block Apple put in place over the weekend.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/apple_beeper_update/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p><strong>GIRLS KSH 0 - KONAWAENA 0</strong></p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/sports/weekend-of-biif-soccer-sees-a-rout-and-two-ties/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Tommy DeVito threw a 32-yard pass to Wan’Dale Robinson to set up Randy Bullock’s 37-yard field goal as time expired, and the New York Giants beat Green Bay 24-22 on Monday night to hand the Packers their first December loss since Matt LaFleur took over as coach in 2019. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/sports/devito-leads-clutch-drive-to-bullocks-winning-kick-as-new-york-giants-top-green-bay-packers-24-22/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DALLAS — Kate Cox has left the state to get an abortion following a late-night decision Friday by the Texas Supreme Court that blocked her ability to terminate her nonviable pregnancy under a medical exemption.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/texas-woman-flees-state-to-get-abortion-after-supreme-court-decision/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The whereabouts of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were unknown on Monday as officials at the penal colony where he is serving his sentence told one of his lawyers that he is no longer on the inmate roster, his spokeswoman said.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/navalnys-whereabouts-are-unknown-and-a-russian-prison-says-hes-no-longer-there-a-spokeswoman-says/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the United States to break a deadlock over more than $60 billion in military aid, warning on a visit to Washington that the funding fight only benefits President Vladimir Putin and risks his country’s ability to push back against Russian forces.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/zelenskyy-in-washington-to-rally-us-in-crucial-week-for-alliance/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Tucker Carlson, who was ousted from his Fox News program earlier this year, is going it alone via streaming.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/ousted-fox-news-host-tucker-carlson-is-launching-a-streaming-service/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s defense minister on Monday pushed back against international calls to wrap up the country’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, saying the current phase of the operation against the Hamas militant group will “take time.”</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/israeli-defense-chief-resists-pressure-to-halt-gaza-offensive-says-campaign-will-take-time/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>As we start thinking about gathering with family and friends, here are some tried and true easy recipes that are sure to please your guests.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/features/lets-talk-food-holiday-pupu-ideas/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Pancakes are the superstar of the breakfast table — at least my breakfast table. A little sweet, a little eggy, a little salty and a touch buttery, they combine all the flavors people love in the morning (well, it’s missing bacon, but you can serve that on the side). And, with this week’s recipe, Butter-Toasted Oat Pancakes, you can also add toasty and nutty to the list.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/features/say-hello-to-your-new-favorite-pancake-recipe/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik posed a simple question to the presidents of three prominent schools of higher education: Would calling for the genocide of Jews violate each university’s code of conduct?</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/opinion/when-elise-stefanik-asked-college-presidents-gave-terrible-answers/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Trump wants to be
king, not president</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/opinion/your-views-for-december-12-9/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Kate Cox, a 31-year-old Dallas-Fort Worth married mother of two, might die. She’s not recovering from some tragic accident, nor does she have some kind of untreatable ailment. The best path to her health is eminently clear and medically proven: an abortion to terminate an unviable 20-week pregnancy, as recommended by her doctors.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/opinion/put-up-for-sacrifice-anti-abortion-zealot-ken-paxton-makes-mom-of-two-into-an-example/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Melvin D. Aki, 85, of Hilo died Dec. 1 at home. Born in Ewa Beach, Oahu, he was a retired security guard former the former HT&T Trucking and enjoyed canoe paddling, walking, fishing, watching sports, and doing yard work. Private services. Survived by wife, Jenedina “Jena” Aki of Honomu; daughter, Cherry Ann Aki of Hilo; hanai son, Kimo Aki of Hilo. Arrangements by Dodo Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/obituaries/obituaries-for-december-12-11/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Jay Tauala-Harris went 2,558 miles to find a home for the next four years.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/sports/hawaii-lands-commitments-from-o-lineman-wrs-two-way-player/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Some of the best and most comforting dishes take a long time to cook. With time more precious than ever during the holiday season, meals can add an extra level of pressure. But smart hosts know that a make-ahead plan, with a slow-cooker assist, can be the key to a memorable, relaxing meal.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/features/a-slow-cooker-is-the-help-you-need-for-this-years-holiday-dinner/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” dominated the Golden Globe Awards nominations with nine nods for the blockbuster film, including best picture musical or comedy as well as acting nominations for Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and three of its original songs.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/barbie-leads-golden-globe-nominations-with-9-followed-closely-by-oppenheimer/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Paul Lonyangata made a last-minute uphill push to increase his lead and secure his first Honolulu Marathon victory with an official gun time of 2:15:42.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/sports/lonyangata-gives-kenya-another-important-title-at-honolulu-marathon/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PARIS — Organizers of the Paris Olympics say work will resume this week to prepare the surfing venue in Tahiti, after an uproar over damage to a coral reef put efforts on hold. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/sports/work-to-resume-at-tahitis-legendary-olympic-surfing-site-after-uproar-over-damage-to-coral-reef/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden goes into next year’s election with a vexing challenge: Just as the U.S. economy is getting stronger, people are still feeling horrible about it.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/biden-goes-into-2024-with-the-economy-getting-stronger-but-voters-feel-horrible-about-it/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LAS VEGAS (AP) — A man shot and killed a woman and two children and critically wounded a third child Monday before fatally shooting himself at a Las Vegas apartment complex, authorities said.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/man-shoots-woman-and-3-children-then-himself-at-las-vegas-apartment-complex-police-say/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p><strong>WAIAKEA 55 - HPA 49</strong></p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/sports/warriors-notch-wins/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Rookie Will Levis threw for a career-high 327 yards and directed two touchdown drives in the final 4 1/2 minutes, and the Tennessee Titans rallied to stun Miami 28-27 on Monday night, knocking the Dolphins out of the top spot in the AFC. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/sports/will-levis-rallies-titans-for-2-late-tds-28-27-win-over-dolphins/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — Shohei Ohtani will receive just $20 million of his $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers over the next 10 years, with $680 million payable from 2034-43. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/sports/ohtanis-dodgers-contract-has-680-million-deferred-lowering-tax-value-to-46-million-annually/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism revised its economic growth projection upward to 1.9% for 2023, and lowered its projection for 2024 from 1.5% to 1.3.%</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/hawaii-news/state-lowers-economic-projection/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Negotiators from around the world haggled deep into the night to try to strike a deal to halt global warming at United Nations climate talks, with Western powers and vulnerable developing countries worried that a proposed text fell far short of goals to save the planet.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/as-cop28-nears-finish-critics-say-proposal-doesnt-even-come-close-to-whats-needed-on-climate/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A federal program that protects the health and wellbeing of commercial fishermen should be expanded to include substance use disorder and worker fatigue, a group of lawmakers from New England and Alaska said.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/commercial-fishermen-need-more-support-for-substance-abuse-and-fatigue-lawmakers-say/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A 47-year-old Kalapana Black Sands Estates man who held off police attempting to serve a narcotics search warrant at his home late last month is out of custody.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/hawaii-news/puna-standoff-suspect-out-on-bail-under-indictment/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Hawaii Care Choices is creating a new tradition to help people grieve and remember lost loved ones during the holiday season.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/hawaii-news/public-invited-to-season-of-light/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SAN FRANCISCO — A federal court jury has decided that Google’s Android app store has been protected by anticompetitive barriers that have damaged smartphone consumers and software developers, dealing a blow to a major pillar of a technology empire.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/epic-games-wins-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google-over-barriers-to-its-android-app-store/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday asked the Supreme Court to take up and rule quickly on whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted on charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election results.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/nation-world-news/special-counsel-jack-smith-asks-the-supreme-court-to-rule-quickly-on-whether-trump-can-be-prosecuted/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>When The Beatles released “Abbey Road” in September 1969, the seeds of discontent that caused the band’s official split in April 1970 were already sowed.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/12/features/more-than-two-dozen-singers-musicians-to-perform-classic-beatles-album-in-live-show/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
SolarSPELL brings digital libraries to remote, unconnected places via rugged, portable Raspberry Pi-powered devices.
The post SolarSPELL off-grid wireless hotspots appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/solarspell-off-grid-wireless-hotspots/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The Debian maintainers have identified a problem in kernel 6.1 that can cause corruption on ext4 volumes. As a result, the planned 12.3 release won’t happen.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/kernel_6_1_ext4_corruption/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Robert Reich on Substack
The same person who sought Zelensky’s help in digging up dirt on Hunter and Joe.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/impeaching-biden Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
BlackBerry has decided its plan to split into two separate companies is not a good idea and will instead reorganize itself into two independent divisions.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/blackberry_cancels_split_plan/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1891 – Actor Buck Jones, a Placerita Canyon and Vasquez Rocks “regular,” born in Indiana [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-dec-12/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
The Matadors entered the 2023 season with high hopes and expectations after an impressive 2022 run. In 2022, the Matadors posted a 9-6-4 record, and made a playoff run to the Big West semifinals, falling 4-1 to UC Riverside. One of the main goals established by the team was to secure another Big West conference…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177358/sports/2023-matadors-soccer-season-in-review/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Space weather can wreak havoc on electronic systems, but while most folks focus on protecting datacenters or the power grid, a group of UK researchers are warning that relatively mild solar storms could bork train signaling systems. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/train_solar_storm/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
For the first time, in what seems like a long time, there is buzz building about the CSUN men’s basketball team. With a 92-54 win over Bethesda University, a National Christian College Athletic Association school, or NCCAA, this new Matador squad has shown lightyears of improvement in just one off-season. CSUN has to trace their…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177353/sports/column-csun-mens-hoops-heading-to-a-promising-future/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Hundreds of suspected people smugglers have been arrested, and 163 potential victims rescued from servitude, as part of an Interpol-coordinated operation dubbed “Turquesa V” that targeted cyber criminals who lure workers into servitude to carry out their scams.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/interpol_cyberscam_trafficker_action/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A mere two-and-a-half months after Indonesia imposed a ban on social commerce, made-in-China social media giant TikTok and local super-app company GoTo have announced a “strategic e-commerce partnership” in a form that appears to evade the ban.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/bytedance_tokopedia_deal/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
As is sometimes the case in American politics, a bill that many people are likely not paying a great deal of attention to is likely to have enormous impact on the nation’s future. That $110.5 billion national security supplemental package was designed to provide additional funding for Ukraine in its war to fight off Russia’s invasion; security assistance to Israel, primarily for missile defense systems; humanitarian assistance to citizens in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine, and elsewhere; funding to replenish U.S. weapon stockpiles; assistance to regional partners in the Indo-Pacific; investments in efforts to stop illegal fentanyl from coming into the U.S. and to dismantle international drug cartels; and investment in U.S. Customs and Border Protection to enhance border security and speed up migrant processing.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-11-2023 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Chinese private space biz i-Space (not to be confused with Japanese aerospace concern iSpace) has recycled a rocket just 38 days after its previous flight.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/ispace_china_test_success/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The flames originated from a shed or garage detached from the complex. The complex itself is not damaged, and there were no injuries.
The post Fire at residential complex contained, LAFD says appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2023/12/11/fire-residential-complex/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Daring Fireball
It’s fun watching this cat-and-mouse game from the sidelines, but if I were Beeper, I wouldn’t want to be playing.
https://daringfireball.net/2023/12/beeper_mini_is_back Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Verdict rendered against the district for sexual abuse and grooming of students by a former employee and football coach from 2008 to 2011.
The post Santa Barbara Unified School District Found at Fault in $25M Lawsuit appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/santa-barbara-unified-school-district-found-at-fault-in-25m-lawsuit/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Rachel Kwon blog
I spent a lot of time and energy in my life worrying about things I felt like I had to do for one reason or another. Either everyone else was doing the thing, or specific people were pressuring me to do the thing, or I never saw real examples or models of people who didn’t do the thing, etc. At some point I started to realize that, if I really challenged myself, I didn’t have to do some of the things I believed I had to in order to win at life (and I would include the idea of having to “win at life” on this list).
https://kwon.nyc/notes/things-i-dont-have-to-do/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
The College of the Canyons board of trustees is scheduled to vote at Wednesday’s regular meeting on a community member’s request to have the board instruct the chancellor to sign a statement of support for Israel. According to a Nov. 9 letter sent to COC Chancellor Dianne Van Hook and board President Edel Alonso, Universities […]
The post <strong>COC board to consider statement of support for Israel</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/coc-board-to-consider-statement-of-support-for-israel/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Jezebel is back.
https://jezebel.com/hey-were-back-1851088809 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Heatmap News
It didn’t attract a lot of attention, but for a few months, it looked like the United Nations climate process might break down.
There, process is substance: One of the most important acts every year is the selection of the next country to run the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP. This distinction normally rotates among the UN’s five regional country groups; next year, a country in the “Eastern Europe” group is due to host. All the members of a group must unanimously agree on which country will get to host.
This is a highly contingent way to decide who gets to host a climate conference. Really, the entire schema of UN regional groups represents a hangover of Cold War geopolitics that is now indefinitely unchangeable. (The “Western Europe” group is essentially the early members of NATO; it includes such notably non-western-European countries as Turkey, the United States, and — hilariously — Australia.)
The “Eastern Europe” group, meanwhile, amounts to more or less the former members of the Warsaw Pact. For obvious reasons, these countries cannot agree on a consensus choice in 2023. Russia, the group’s largest member, was not amenable to holding the COP in any eastern Europe NATO member state, such as Poland, Latvia, or Finland. The eastern European NATO members — as well as Ukraine, which is also in the UN regional group — were similarly opposed to holding the COP in Russia.
That meant that attention focused on the group’s countries in the Caucasus, at the edge of central Asia: Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Yet difficulties presented themselves here too. Azerbaijan successfully seized an Armenian exclave earlier this year, evicting up to 120,000 Armenians as part of a campaign described as ethnic cleansing. Armenia blocked any Azeri bid to host the COP.
For the first time in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s history, no country would have been able to lead COP the following year. Geopolitics had seemingly broken the consensus mechanism that makes the climate conference work.
This amounted to more than just a deficiency in party planning. It would have forced Bonn, Germany — the home of the UNFCC’s permanent headquarters — to host COP29, a kind of “break in case of emergency” default option. And it would have allowed the United Arab Emirates, a petrostate that has reportedly used the COP to make oil deals, to retain the conference presidency for at least another year.
That didn’t happen. Late last week, Armenia lifted its block of Azerbaijan’s bid, and the two countries mutually released prisoners in a gesture of good will. (Their rapprochement happened suspiciously close to President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the U.A.E.) Next year’s COP will seemingly happen in Baku, the Azeri capital.
But just because the COP process didn’t break doesn’t mean that it’s not being stretched. All is not well with the COP. During this year’s conference, a picture emerged of a COP being tested by a more rivalrous, conflict-prone world. Geopolitics, the heightened importance of climate change, and the sheer size of the conference have transformed the event into something that it was never meant to be.
This year, more than 100,000 people attended the COP. It was held at Dubai’s opulent Expo City, the Disney World-style convention campus initially built for the 2020 World Expo, the modern successor to World’s Fairs. Hundreds of nonprofit groups and companies, as well as more than 190 countries, ran public pavilions that advertised their climate accomplishments and views on decarbonization. Negotiators divided into different blocs: China and the United States, oil-producing states and small island nations, the West and the rest.
It wasn’t always like this. When the first COP was held in Berlin in 1995, the world was in a very different era, Lee Beck, the senior director for Europe and the Middle East at the Clean Air Task Force, told me. It was “the peak of multilateralism, followed by relative geopolitical stability and peace,” she said. The United States and the broader West set the agenda for global events.
“In the last two years — others would say the writing was on the wall as early as 2014 — geopolitical fragmentation really is visible,” she said. “You’re really pushing the limits of multilateralism at this one. One of the cracks is we’re unable to agree where the COP even will be.”
But geopolitics are not the only force stretching COP to the limit. Another is the sheer size of the event itself.
There used to be “big COPs” and “small COPs”: COP21, the 2015 meeting where the Paris Agreement was finalized, was a “big COP,” but the following year’s conference in Marrakech, Morocco, was a fairly minor one. Even COP21 was less than half the size of this year’s COP. And in one possible read, this year should have been a smaller COP — the biggest to-dos were formally launching the Loss and Damage fund and writing the Global Stocktake report, a kind of report card on the world’s climate progress (or lack thereof).
But small COPs don’t seem to happen any more. Since the pandemic ended and COP26 took place in Glasgow, Scotland, COPs have swollen in size, creating the age of the new “mega-COP.” More than 100,000 people attended the conference this year, making it by far the biggest COP ever. It was more than twice the size of last year’s confab in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, which was previously the biggest COP ever. Most of those attendees had nothing to do with the negotiations ostensibly at the center of the conference — they were investors, technologists, scholars, scientists, or experts — and instead made up a de facto global trade show on climate solutions.
COP is now so big and climate is now so important that even the lack of news about the conference can generate news. When President Joe Biden declined to attend this year’s conference, The New York Times push-alerted it.
But there are possibilities that could improve the situation. One of them might be that COP simply becomes so unmanageable that it has to scale back. Few cities have the spare capacity to house an extra 100,000 visitors for 12 days. New York City, for instance, only has about 123,000 hotel rooms total. If COP were to keep growing, the problem would only get harder. When 150,000 people descended on San Francisco for Salesforce’s annual conference in 2015, the company docked a cruise ship in the bay to provide an extra thousand rooms.
There are solutions, Beck said. She noted this was the first year that every continent had held its own Climate Week: a smaller event focusing on more region-specific decarbonization challenges. This COP has also seen the emergence of country coalitions that rally around different issues or approaches. The set of countries that backed a pledge to triple renewable capacity, for instance, is different from the smaller coalition that wanted to triple nuclear capacity. These smaller, more sector-specific coalitions may have more ability to actually decarbonize and address climate change, she said.
For all these challenges, perhaps the biggest miracle is that the UNFCC process works at all, Eve Tamme, a former climate negotiator for the European Commission, told me.
“The UNFCCC process is based on consensus between almost 200 countries. Judging based on the complexity of the issue at hand and the divergence of views among the countries, it seems impossible that such a process could deliver anything at all,” she said. Even when you follow the negotiations closely, it may seem like there’s barely any movement at all, she said.
“But then again, we got the Kyoto Protocol,” she said. “And we got the Paris Agreement. So while it may look broken in the short term, somehow this dysfunctional process can still deliver.”
https://heatmap.news/climate/cop28-cop29-uae-azerbaijan-armenia Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
Hart district expected to approve first interim financial report Local school boards in the Santa Clarita Valley will be holding their annual organizational meetings this week to elect the new board officers for each respective school district. The Newhall and Saugus Union school districts will be holding their meetings on Tuesday while the William S. […]
The post <strong>School boards to hold organizational meetings</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/school-boards-to-hold-organizational-meetings/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Epic Games has won its antitrust battle against Google.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/epic_v_google_epic_wins/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has officially pledged his fealty to former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election — despite some concerns about Trump’s messaging.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/11/023402.html?title=aLighterNote Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara is one of the most expensive zip codes in the United States.
The post Pay? Meh. appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/pay-meh/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23969690/google-spotify-android-billing-commission-secret-deal Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.theverge.com/23994174/epic-google-trial-jury-verdict-monopoly-google-play Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelines-us.pdf Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Many US businesses may be required to assist in government-directed surveillance – depending upon which of two reform bills before Congress is approved.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/setction_702_renewal/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Santa Barbara County Fire Department’s Fire Investigations Unit is actively investigating a series of wildland fires that occurred at La Purisima Mission State Park on December 6, 2023, around 4 p.m.
The post Public Assistance Requested in La Purisima Mission State Park Fires Investigation appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/public-assistance-requested-in-la-purisima-mission-state-park-fires-investigation/ Save to Pocket
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2023-12-12, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
I forgot to tell you all, Godzilla Minus One is great. If you like the big guy, go see this one.
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/111564790015288808 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: VOA News USA
Berlin — Holocaust survivors from around the globe will mark the start of the fifth day of Hanukkah together with a virtual ceremony as Jews worldwide worry about the Israel-Hamas war and a spike of antisemitism in Europe, the United States and elsewhere.
Survivors can join an online ceremony of a menorah lighting Monday night to pay tribute to the 6 million European Jews killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
Several dozen survivors were also expected to gather in-person for a menorah lighting at Jerusalem’s Western Wall — the holiest place where Jews can pray.
“Holocaust survivors somehow overcame the depravity of concentration camps, death camps and killing centers, among other horrors, to become our living exemplars, providing a roadmap on how light can overcome darkness,” Greg Schneider, the executive vice president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, said in remarks released to The Associated Press ahead of the ceremony.
The New York-based conference is organizing the event in observance of International Holocaust Survivors Night.
“Their resilience, their strength and their fortitude leave a truly indelible light in this world,” Schneider added.
Hanukkah, also known as Judaism’s festival of lights, marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in the 2nd century B.C., after a small group of Jewish fighters known as the Maccabees liberated it from occupying Syrian forces.
This year’s holiday comes as many Jews feel traumatized by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and in which the militants took some 240 as hostages. Israel responded with a bombing campaign and a ground offensive that has so far killed more than 18,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Several celebrities and world leaders spoke about the attack in messages that were to be shown at the ceremony. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said “Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel has affected us all deeply. Something of abyssal evil broke free that day,” according to comments released to the AP.
“The perpetrators’ motive is clear: They wanted to hit Israel,” the chancellor added. “They wanted to murder Jews. In its repugnant brutality and abhorrence, however, the terror is also directed against humanity itself.”
Scholz, addressing Holocaust survivors, said he tries “to imagine how much the images from Israel, how much antisemitic hatred on the internet and on the streets around the world must be hitting you, of all people right in the heart.”
“This … pains me a lot,” he said.
The virtual event, which starts at 8 p.m. Monday in Germany, will also include musical performances, celebrity guests and messages from Holocaust survivors from around the globe.
Leon Weintraub, a Holocaust survivor from Sweden, who was in Israel during the Hamas attack, recounted what he experienced that day.
“On Oct. 7, I woke up from the sirens in the center of Tel Aviv. All at once I was again in September 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland,” he said. “A terrible feeling, a shiver, a feeling of dread to be again in a war.”
“We celebrate Chanukah now, the festival of lights. I hope that the light will also bring the people enlightenment,” Weintraub added. “That people will rethink and look at us people of Jewish descent as normal, equal. Human beings.”
American comedian Billy Crystal, actress Jamie Lee Curtis and actor Jason Alexander will also speak at the event, and there will also be a by a musical performance from Grammy and Tony Award-winning singer Barry Manilow, as well as the cast of Harmony.
https://www.voanews.com/a/holocaust-survivors-mark-hanukkah-amid-worries-of-israel-hamas-war-antisemitism-/7394182.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Canyons News (COC student paper)
Have you been in Santa Clarita without any water and had to…
The post A new water filtration store opens for the community in Canyon Country appeared first on Canyons News.
https://canyonsnews.com/water-filtration-store-opened-for-the-community-in-canyon-country/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
Members of the community braved the high wind warning and 53-degree weather on Friday night to witness the annual Valencia Marketplace tree lighting. “Now you know how it is where I live,” said Santa Claus. Levels on levels of seats were filled with not only bodies, but also anticipation to see the approximately 15-foot tree […]
The post <strong>Valencia Marketplace flips the switch </strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/valencia-marketplace-flips-the-switch/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: OS News
Today, Apple pushed out the public releases of iOS 17.2, iPadOS 17.2, macOS Sonoma 14.2, watchOS 10.2, and tvOS 17.2. iOS 17.2 and iPadOS 17.2’s flagship feature is the new Journal app, which Apple teased when it first introduced iOS 17 earlier. The app mimics several existing popular journaling apps in the App Store from third-party developers but leverages data from your Photos, workouts, and other Apple apps to make journaling suggestions. Other features include the ability to tap a “catch-up arrow” to scroll to the first missed message in a conversation in Messages, the ability to take spatial video photos for later viewing on Vision Pro, and several tweaks and additions to the Weather app. ↫ Samuel Axon for Ars Technica Makers of journalling applications for iOS are not going to be in a good mood today, I reckon.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138057/apple-releases-ios-17-2-and-macos-14-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: The Signal
The William S. Hart Union High School District governing board heard a presentation at last week’s board meeting that details what it would cost to add air conditioning units to each of the district’s seven high school gyms. The governing board ultimately decided to table the talks as members were unsure of where the funding […]
The post <strong>Hart district tables talks on A/C for gyms</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/hart-district-tables-talks-on-a-c-for-gyms/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The LAist
The Salton Sea contains a third of the world’s lithium, but the exposed bed lake also contains heavy metals and pesticides which could threaten nearby residents.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/your-future-ev-could-come-from-the-salton-sea-but-at-what-cost Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/harvard-faces-pressure-to-respond-to-president-s-congressional-testimony/7394176.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/house-to-vote-on-formalizing-biden-impeachment-inquiry-/7394164.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: OS News
NetDrive is a DOS device driver that allows you to access a remote disk image hosted by another machine as though it was a local device with an assigned drive letter. The remote disk image can be a floppy disk image or a hard drive image. ↫ Michael B. Brutman An incredibly useful tool for modern-day DOS work.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138055/netdrive-access-remote-disk-images-in-dos/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: OS News
Porporo is an experimental operating system specification for Varvara, written in TAL and ANSI C. This is a work in progress, for more details follow the development during december. ↫ rabbits So, what is Varvara? Varvara is a specification for devices communicating with the Uxn CPU intended to run little audio and visual programs. ↫ Varvara official website …so, what is the Uxn CPU? This one-page computer, programmable in Uxntal, was designed with an implementation-first mindset and a focus on creating portable graphical tools and games. It lives at the heart of the Varvara personal computer. ↫ Official Uxn CPU website I have no idea what any of this means, but I feel like there’s something incredibly cool going on here.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138053/porporo-an-experimental-operating-system-specification-for-varvara/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
“He wanted us to assault the house. He was waiting for us to assault the house with the intentions then of killing us and also of being killed by us.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/pleasant-hill-leaders-defend-police-decision-to-disengage-with-barricaded-ex-detective/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Commitment to a literal six-day creation has marked The Master’s University since its founding
https://scvnews.com/feb-24-tmus-30th-annual-creation-summit/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
+COMMENT Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation Division has announced what it’s described as “a dramatic simplification of our product portfolio,” plus the end of perpetual licenses and a move to subscriptions – some at half their previous price.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/vmware_broadcom_licensing_changes/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
A condominium located in the 600 block of Forest Avenue in Palo Alto has new owners. The 1,392-square-foot property, built in 1977, was sold on Nov. 20, 2023.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/condominium-in-palo-alto-sells-for-1-7-million-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for Dec. 12, 2023
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/letters-1525/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
The referral by Supervisor Otto Lee aims to streamline access to the TRUST program and expand the reach of the civilian-run program to people wary of a police response to psychiatric emergencies.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/south-bay-proposal-would-create-direct-line-for-non-police-mental-health-response/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Calling all William S. Hart Union High School District performers, students, teachers and administrators! WiSH is excited to introduce Hart District’s Got Talent Variety Showcase
https://scvnews.com/wish-foundation-seeking-performers-for-hart-district-talent-show/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
“We’re in the entertainment business and stuff like that is great. I may have to respond with something of my own, so we’ll see how it is.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/notebook-why-the-warriors-need-more-jonathan-kuminga-steve-kerrs-reaction-to-suns-dj-remix/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
While the 49ers (10-3) are not celebrating their newfound stature as the NFC’s potential No. 1 playoff seed, they are happy to welcome back cornerback Jason Verrett.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/shanahan-downplays-49ers-move-to-no-1-seed-cornerback-jason-verrett-returns/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Lawsuit includes alleged nine-page “slave contract.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/bay-area-ceo-accused-in-lawsuit-of-enslaving-assistant-taking-her-into-dark-abyss-of-sexual-horror/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
College of the Canyons traveled to San Diego Mesa College recently, snapping a five-game losing streak by bringing home an 83-77 double-overtime victory.
https://scvnews.com/cougars-snap-five-game-losing-streak-at-san-diego-mesa/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for Dec. 12, 2023
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/letters-1524/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, updated: 2023-12-12, from: Go language blog
deadcode is a new command to help identify functions that cannot be called.
https://go.dev/blog/deadcode Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: PostgreSQL News
Dear Community Members,
We are excited to announce the release of IvorySQL 3.0, a significant update to our PostgreSQL database project with enhanced Oracle compatibility features.
initdb -m Feature: Choose between
postgres mode or oracle mode for flexible
database management.
For a detailed list of all the new features and fixes, please visit our release notes at IvorySQL GitHub Releases and IvorySQL Release Page.
A huge thank you to all our users who contributed patches, reported bugs, and proposed new features. The names of all contributors to this release are listed in the release notes.
IvorySQL thrives on community contributions. We warmly welcome your ideas, feature requests, or patches. Please share your contributions on our GitHub page.
We look forward to your feedback on IvorySQL 3.0 and your continued support in making IvorySQL even better.
Best regards,
IvorySQL Dev Team
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/ivorysql-30-released-2764/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: PostgreSQL News
Pgpool Global Development Group is pleased to announce the availability of Pgpool-II 4.5.0. This is the first stable release of Pgpool-II 4.5.x.
Pgpool-II is a tool to add useful features to PostgreSQL, including:
For more information, please see the website.
V4.5 contains new features and enhancements, including:
You can download it from here.
Please take a look at release notes.
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgpool-ii-450-is-now-released-2763/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-12, from: PostgreSQL News
The PostgreSQL pgJDBC project has a new release. This release deals with a few regressions.
See full release notes
Many thanks to all who contributed.
The project is located in our Github Repo
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-jdbc-4271-released-2765/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Om Malik blog
Microsoft & the AFL-CIO have formed a partnership aimed at shaping the future of AI in the workforce. Big news! If you look beyond the headlines, and questions emerge about the actual impact of AI on employment, particularly in white-collar sectors.
https://om.co/2023/12/11/microsoft-afl-cio-ai-deal/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: The Canyons News (COC student paper)
It was a night under the stars as the COC hosted its…
The post College of the Canyons looks to the stars at its annual astrometry party appeared first on Canyons News.
https://canyonsnews.com/college-of-the-canyons-looks-to-the-stars-at-its-annual-astrometry-party/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Investigators at Indiana’s Purdue University have devised a way to interrogate large language models (LLMs) in a way that that breaks their etiquette training – almost all the time.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/chatbot_models_harmful_content/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: The Signal
Valencia Vikings girls’ basketball needed a new focal point heading into the second half of its Foothill League road game with the West Ranch Wildcats. The Vikings were playing well and up double digits but at the halftime buzzer, senior guard Libby Oxciano went down with an ankle injury. Oxciano was leading the Vikes in […]
The post <strong>Valencia girls’ hoops storms past West Ranch</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/valencia-girls-hoops-storms-past-west-ranch/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
Pollsters and economists say there has never been as wide a gap between the underlying health of the economy and public perception.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/bidens-hurdle-people-dont-think-the-economy-is-doing-well/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
California State University, Northridge baseball head coach Eddie Cornejo announced the addition of six-year-old Andrew Rivera as an honorary Matador this season
https://scvnews.com/six-year-old-with-cystic-fibrosis-named-honorary-matador/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
I want you to know how much a little love and respect goes toward helping a homeless person get out of being homeless.
The post Love and Respect appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/love-and-respect/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Liliputing
In recent years we’ve seen a growing number of PC makers adopt LPDDR memory for thin and light laptops and mini PCs, where space is at a premium. But since that memory is fixed to the motherboard, it’s not user upgradeable. Last year Dell came up with another solution it calls CAMM (or Compression Attached […]
The post CAMM2 standard approved for up to 128GB of speedy, removable memory modules appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/camm2-standard-approved-for-up-to-128gb-of-speedy-removable-memory-modules/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/supreme-court-asked-to-decide-if-trump-is-immune-from-prosecution-/7393769.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The LAist
The audit is the city’s first look into the LAPD Air Support Division program.
https://laist.com/news/politics/lapd-helicopter-audit-cost Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
He spent 16 seasons in the major leagues and became the first Venezuelan-born player to win a Gold Glove.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/vic-davalillo-dies-was-part-of-oakland-as-team-that-won-1973-world-series/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A grant from the State of California allows for new energy initiative at Cater Water Treatment Plant.
The post New Battery Energy System Brings Sustainability and Resiliency to Santa Barbara’s Energy System appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/new-battery-energy-system-brings-sustainability-and-resiliency-to-santa-barbaras-energy-system/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: TidBITS blog
Apple has released iOS 17.2, iPadOS 17.2, macOS 14.2 Sonoma, watchOS 10.2, and tvOS 17.2 with notable improvements and several features promised early in the year. HomePod Software 17.2 received only unspecified bug fixes. Apple also published security updates for iOS 16.7.3, iPadOS 16.7.3, macOS 13.6.3 Ventura, and macOS 12.7.2 Monterey.
https://tidbits.com/2023/12/11/apples-end-of-year-os-updates-add-promised-features-security-updates/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Master’s University women’s basketball team traveled down to Los Angeles Sunday for an exhibition game against NCAA Division I Loyola Marymount, coming up on the short end of the 58-46 score
https://scvnews.com/lady-mustangs-come-up-short-in-exhibition-match-against-lmu-46-58/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
I come home from a friendly meetup and notice that my tiny web-server has a load of 80 instead of the usual 0.5. What the hell is going on? I look at the logs of the last 24 hours and see an IP number with more than 100 000 hits in the last 24h. What are they doing?
Whois tells me it is from the “Alibaba Cloud”. Oh yeah? What are the Chinese trying to do on my site?
I start poking around. More and more IP numbers from all over the net show up. Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud.
All right, so I’m blocking some of them individually as I go, but after a while I realize that I probably have to block them at the network level.
For the moment I’m also taking down one of the wikis that’s overloading my server.
Just looking at the top 10 offenders for two of my domains, and running whois on them to find the entire network they belong to, and checking that it’s Alibaba or Tencent:
# Alibaba Cloud 2023-12-10
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '47.76.0.0/14'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '47.80.0.0/13'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '47.74.0.0/14'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '47.235.0.0/16'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '47.246.0.0/16'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '47.244.0.0/15'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '47.240.0.0/14'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '47.236.0.0/14'" [or]
# Tencent Cloud
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '42.192.0.0/15'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '49.232.0.0/14'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '101.34.0.0/15'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '43.142.0.0/16'" [or]
RewriteCond "%{REMOTE_ADDR}" "-R '124.220.0.0/14'"
RewriteRule ^ https://alexschroeder.ch/nobots [redirect=410,last]
If I want this to be for the entire server and not repeat it for each location, I guess I’ll have to use Apache rewrite rules.
While I’m doing this, I notice a new pattern… My wiki software allows you to fetch a feed for every page. Either it contains updates to the page (Oddmuse), or a feed of the pages linked (Oddmu). It’s for humans.
Of course some shit engineer decided that it was a good idea to scan the web for all the feeds that are out there (so rare! so precious!) and to download them all, forever (uncover the darknet! server our customers!) and now I have to block IP number ranges, add robot agents to robots.txt files (not all of them provide one), or block user agents (not all of them provide a useful one) and I block and block and block (for the environment! to avoid +2.0°C and the end of human civilization!) and all this while I know that all these shit requests exist out there, for all the sites, everywhere – a hundred thousand requests or more per day, per site, wasting CO₂ – and what am I going to do, kill the feeds for humans because some shit engineer decided to feed a machine?
I’m on the Butlerian Jihad again.
Oh, and Virgin Media is downloading tons of PDFs I’m hosting? Are they looking for copyright violations? On the blocklist they go.
And what’s this, Feedly is also downloading feeds like crazy, every few minutes? Slow down, idiots. My news is not important. On the blocklist they go. Or are you trying to train your stupid intelligence? Fuck this AI training stuff. I already use “X-Robots-Tag: noimageai” but I guess I should add even more HTTP headers to block even more engineers overstepping boundaries?
Ah, and MonitoRSS going into overdrive, from the Amazon Cloud. Really, I don’t think there are humans in the Amazon Cloud. Onto the blocklist they go. Well, at least this IP range.
And who’s that VelenPublicWebCrawler, zealously collecting pages? Onto the blocklists they go.
#Bots #Butlerian Jihad #Administration
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2023-12-10-bots-again Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Sierra Hillbillies Square Dance Club will dance to caller Mike Seastrom, who along with his wife, Lisa, will call an SSD dance in barn dance style with Contra, line and round dancing between tips Sunday, Jan. 7, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., at the Valencia United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall.
https://scvnews.com/jan-7-sierra-hillbillies-remember-the-alamo-dance/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
After revoking the ability to give remote comments during council meetings, City Hall brings back the feature with new “guidelines.”
The post City of Santa Barbara Brings Back Virtual Public Comments appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/city-of-santa-barbara-brings-back-virtual-public-comments/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
Dec. 11, 2023 RELEASE: J23-007 NASA astronaut and retired U.S. Army Col. Jeffrey Williams, who played a key role in the design, construction, and operation of the International Space Station, is retiring on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024, after more than 27 years of service at the agency. The two-time station commander spent 534 cumulative days […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/four-time-space-veteran-jeff-williams-to-retire-from-nasa/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: TidBITS blog
This week’s Do You Use It? poll asks how heavily you use widgets in various places on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. Have they become a core part of your Apple experience, or are they another feature you barely use?
https://tidbits.com/2023/12/11/do-you-use-it-apple-services-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: TidBITS blog
This week’s Do You Use It? poll asks how heavily you use widgets in various places on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. Have they become a core part of your Apple experience, or are they another feature you barely use?
https://tidbits.com/2023/12/11/do-you-use-it-widgets-on-the-iphone-ipad-mac-and-apple-watch/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara.
The post Peace Advocate David Krieger Has Died appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/peace-advocate-david-krieger-has-died/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Microsoft is partnering with the largest US union group – representing 60 unions and more than 12 million workers – to explore how AI will impact labor, and help shape policies to support workers as the technology threatens to disrupt jobs.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/microsoft_union_ai_partnership/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Shady Characters
https://shadycharacters.co.uk/2023/12/advent-calendar-comptometer/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: The Canyons News (COC student paper)
Art has the ability to break barriers; it can be beautiful as…
The post A new gallery at College of the Canyons allows artists to express themselves appeared first on Canyons News.
https://canyonsnews.com/college-of-the-canyons-new-gallery-gives-artists-an-opportunity-to-express-themselves/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers are tracking invasive goldfish—which, often, were once kept as pets—in Lake Ontario to determine how best to manage them
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/giant-goldfish-are-bad-news-for-the-great-lakes-180983414/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
British arms dealer BAE Systems will be among the first beneficiaries of the $53 billion US Chips and Science Act.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/bae_chips_funds_f35/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
As we embrace the joy and warmth of the holiday season, I want to share some valuable insights on how we can make this time even more special – by giving back to our community and protecting our planet
https://scvnews.com/ken-striplin-festive-guide-to-holiday-sustainability/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
It is difficult to believe that several states continue to impose the same inhuman and unconstitutional conditions today, rather than the excellent practices of the Juvenile Court, Probation Department, and private treatment programs here.
The post Praise for Progress appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/praise-for-progress/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
“There’s this thing called the overview effect: Space has this effect on people that you could probably call almost spiritual. Everyone returns from spaceflight changed in one way or another. … They see the Earth from space, and that’s how they continue to see it after flight. “… The more people travel to space and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/branch-chief-margarita-sampson/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: RiscOS Story
The next Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) meeting will take place a week later than usual, on 13th December – the second Wednesday of this month, rather than the customary first. The guest speaker will be Andy Marks from RISCOSbits. The weekend just gone saw the MUG RISC OS Xmas Market take place, a small show put on as a last minute replacement for the London Show, which couldn’t take place this year. RISCOSbits exhibited at the show, with some new kit and developments, and was also punting a…
https://www.riscository.com/2023/riscosbits-on-the-road-to-wrocc/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-zelensky-addresses-us-military-officers-in-washington/7393656.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/more-christmas-music-recs Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
College of the Canyons has been awarded $600,000 from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office in support of Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) acceleration and Open Educational Resources (OER) materials that can be used and repurposed by other California community colleges.
https://scvnews.com/coc-awarded-600k-for-zero-textbook-cost-oer-materials/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: 404 Media Group
Tweets with the videos, advertising a DIY artificial insemination kit, say “Making him a dad without his permission 😋” and “Should I tell him it’s his kid?”
https://www.404media.co/twitter-x-ads-stealing-semen-make-a-mom/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Do you have a feed-only blog?
http://scripting.com/2023/12/11.html#a205809 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The group meets once a month to talk about one or two pages of the bewildering James Joyce novel
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/finnegans-wake-james-joyce-book-club-28-years-180983411/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: RiscOS Story
Users of R-Comp‘s Pinebook Pro are now able to fetch a new ROM image for the ARM-based laptop from the users’ download site, the address and log-in details for which should be in the computer’s documentation. The Pinebook Pro is built around a Rockchip RK3399 processor, and several months of work on the port of RISC OS to this chip means there are a number of improvements to it – but the two features particularly highlighted by R-Comp are that sound and PCIe are now enabled. The enabling of sound…
https://www.riscository.com/2023/pinebook-pro-rom-update-sound-pcie/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: RiscOS Story
In the days of old, the computers RISC OS was supplied on by Acorn included a battery backed real time clock, which – while the battery lasted – kept ticking on and maintaining the time. These days, RISC OS runs on a number of single-board computers (SBCs) and not all of them have such a clock. One solution is NetTime, which can check the time from a remote server and thus correct the computer if it has the wrong value, but it can only work via an internet connection, so…
https://www.riscository.com/2023/r-comp-releases-clocksave/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Stephen Wolfram blog
The
Concept of the Observer We call it perception. We call it measurement.
We call it analysis. But in the end it’s about how we take the world as
it is, and derive from it the impression of it that we have in our
minds. We might have thought that we could do science “purely […]
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/12/observer-theory/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Community College District Board of Trustees will meet for its annual organizational and business meeting Wednesday, Dec. 13, beginning at 5 p.m
https://scvnews.com/dec-13-coc-board-slated-to-elect-new-officers/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It may have taken more than a year, but Tesla has finally responded to the California Department of Motor Vehicles allegations that it misrepresented Autopilot’s capabilities, arguing that it’s free to do so under the US Constitution. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/tesla_california_autopilot_lawsuit/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
Call for Papers Date: August 13–14, 2024Location: Washington, D.C. Jointly organized by the NASA History Office and the Earth Science Division, this workshop seeks to document the important contributions of airborne campaigns implemented on NASA’s DC-8 Airborne Science Laboratory. The workshop will be a combination of keynote talks, panel discussions, and roundtables. The intention is […]
https://www.nasa.gov/history/contributions-of-the-dc-8-to-earth-system-science-at-nasa-a-workshop/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Peoples CDC blog
The week following the end of the Public Health Emergency, the number of COVID deaths reported by the CDC dropped from 1000 to 300.
https://peoplescdc.org/2023/12/11/provisional-death-data/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: OS News
The Sophon SG2042 is the world’s first commodity 64-core RISC-V CPU for high performance workloads and an important question is whether the SG2042 has the potential to encourage the HPC community to embrace RISC-V. In this paper we undertaking a performance exploration of the SG2042 against existing RISC-V hardware and high performance x86 CPUs in use by modern supercomputers. Leveraging the RAJAPerf benchmarking suite, we discover that on average, the SG2042 delivers, per core, between five and ten times the performance compared to the nearest widely available RISC-V hardware. We found that, on average, the x86 high performance CPUs under test outperform the SG2042 by between four and eight times for multi-threaded workloads, although some individual kernels do perform faster on the SG2042. The result of this work is a performance study that not only contrasts this new RISC-V CPU against existing technologies, but furthermore shares performance best practice. ↫ Nick Brown, Maurice Jamieson, Joseph Lee, Paul Wang The Sophon SG2042 is the RISC-V processor found in the Milk-V Pioneer workstation, which was recently featured on LTT as well, for the video crowd among us. There’s definitely still a way to go for RISC-V, but the gains over the past few years are clear, and if this keeps progressing this way, it won’t be long before RISC-V becomes a valid, competitive architecture.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138049/is-risc-v-ready-for-hpc-prime-time-evaluating-the-64-core-sophon-sg2042-risc-v-cpu/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
A blog for developers with no RSS feed. Hard to believe.
https://developer.chrome.com/feeds Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Wonka Menu is a childhood fantasy come true.
The post A Sprinkling of Movie Magic Makes Its Way to IHOP, Including Locations in Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Carpinteria appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/a-sprinkling-of-movie-magic-makes-its-way-to-ihop-including-locations-in-santa-barbara-goleta-and-carpinteria/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The critically endangered creatures were flown by private plane to rehabilitation centers in Florida
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/52-cold-stunned-kemps-ridley-sea-turtles-rescued-from-cape-cod-180983409/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Michael Tsai
John Gruber: I installed Beeper Mini on my Pixel 4, and it worked like a charm. In addition to working seamlessly — including support for group chats, tapbacks (albeit substituting animated emoji in place of Apple’s monochromatic badges), undoing sent messages, and editing recent messages — it’s just a really nice chat app. It looks a lot like what […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/11/apple-blocks-beeper-mini/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
The elements of the super-heavy lift SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for NASA’s Artemis II mission are undergoing final preparations before shipment to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for stacking and pre-launch activities in 2024. Teams at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recently rotated the Orion stage adapter– a ring structure […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-teams-prepare-moon-rocket-to-spacecraft-connector-for-assembly/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Michael Tsai
Howard Oakley: When writing about network tools available in macOS just eight years ago, I identified three GUI apps:Network Utility, tucked away in /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications,Wireless Diagnostics, accessed via the WiFi menu,Network Diagnostics, hidden in /System/Library/CoreServices.It seems strange that of those three, only one has survived into Sonoma.[…]In Apple’s current support documents, there appears to be no […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/11/where-have-the-network-tools-gone/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Norton Healthcare, which runs eight hospitals and more than 30 clinics in Kentucky and Indiana, has admitted crooks may have stolen 2.5 million people’s most sensitive data during a ransomware attack in May.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/norton_healthcare_ransomware/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Michael Tsai
Tim Hardwick: WhatsApp is rolling out a new option that lets users on iPhone share photos and video over the messaging platform in their original quality.[…]WhatsApp’s latest feature avoids compression altogether by allowing photos and video to be shared as files, thereby preserving their original quality. Being able to send full-quality media is one of […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/11/whatsapp-supports-photos-and-video-in-original-quality/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Michael Tsai
Jeff Johnson: The problem with using both private and public windows is that when I open a URL in Safari from another app, such as Mail app, or such as my own Link Unshortener, which I use as my default web browser, I can’t control where exactly the URL opens. If the frontmost Safari window […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/11/opening-urls-in-private-safari-windows/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/running-gear Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Michael Tsai
Tim Hardwick: When users get directions for driving, walking, or cycling, Google Maps now offers a “multidimensional experience” that can be used to preview bike lanes, sidewalks, intersections, and parking along the route, according to Google.A time slider can be used to see air quality information and how the route looks as the weather changes […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/11/google-maps-in-late-2023/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Michael Tsai
Casey Newton: Google this morning announced the rollout of Gemini, its largest and most capable large language model to date. Starting today, the company’s Bard chatbot will be powered by a version of Gemini, and will be available in English in more than 170 countries and territories. Developers and enterprise customers will get access to […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/11/googles-gemini/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Lawyer Who Took on Big Tobacco Is Now Fighting an Online Sports Betting Giant.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3wkgg/the-lawyer-who-took-on-big-tobacco-is-now-fighting-an-online-sports-betting-giant Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Princess Cruises and the line’s partners at Fincantieri Shipyard celebrated Monday the beginning of construction of the second, sensational Sphere Class cruise ship – Star Princess – with the official keel laying ceremony in Monfalcone, Italy
https://scvnews.com/princess-cruises-keel-laying-ceremony-marks-construction-of-new-ship/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
For 74 years, the Cancer Foundation has ensured the finest cancer care on the Central Coast to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay for treatment.
The post Aid for Cancer Costs appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/aid-for-cancer-costs/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Daniela Schwartz and Lukas Olesinski present an inside look at breaks and drops and the people who stick like tar to the waves off the college town.
The post New Book ‘The Lineup’ Features Decades of Surfers in Isla Vista appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/new-book-the-lineup-features-decades-of-surfers-in-isla-vista/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/0043606-artist-gabrielle-bells-dr Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine
“Women Dressing Women” gives often-forgotten figures in fashion history their due
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-met-exhibition-women-dressing-women-celebrates-fashion-and-female-designers-180983401/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Tilde.news
https://www.mistys-internet.website/blog/blog/2023/12/10/fixing-classical-cats-or/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Week of December 14.
The post Free Will Astrology appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/11/free-will-astrology-190/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
Read this release in English here. Ya está abierta la acreditación para los medios de comunicación para el próximo lanzamiento de la misión científica de observación de la Tierra PACE (acrónimo inglés para Plancton, Aerosoles, Nubes y Ecosistemas Oceánicos) de la NASA. La NASA y SpaceX planean poner en órbita PACE no antes del martes 6 […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-invita-a-medios-al-lanzamiento-de-mision-para-estudiar-oceanos-y-nubes/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
Lee esta nota de prensa en español aquí. Media accreditation is open for the upcoming launch of NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud ocean Ecosystem) Earth observing science mission. NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than Tuesday, Feb. 6, for a Falcon 9 rocket to launch PACE to orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-invites-media-to-launch-of-new-mission-to-study-oceans-clouds/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Upstate New York is set for a $10 billion semiconductor research facility to work on next-generation chip manufacturing, with IBM and Micron part of the scheme.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/new_york_semiconductor_facility/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Heatmap News
Political protests are a staple of COP summits. Thousands of climate activists descend on the event each year to call for stronger global commitments to building renewables and quitting fossil fuels.
But at COP28, United Arab Emirates laws restricting speech and banning most forms of public protest have constrained where and how people can speak out. Demonstrations are only permitted in areas managed by the UN, known as the “blue zone,” and have to be approved before they can take place.
“We have to say how loud we’re going to be, what’s going to be written on the banners. We’re not allowed to name countries and corporations. So it’s really a very sanitized space,” Lise Masson, an organizer at Friends of the Earth International, told the Associated Press last week.
Pre-approved rallies went on throughout last week. But as negotiations intensified over the weekend, the demonstrations did, too. Activists declared Saturday a day of protest, the AP said. A group of about 25 people called for the release of pro-democracy prisoners staged what Reuters called a “very rare” UAE protest, while 500 people urged a ceasefire in Gaza. That’s not to say those demonstrations were unrestrained, however. Pro-democracy protesters were not allowed to display detainees’ names, and ceasefire demonstrators were barred from naming Israel or Hamas.
Also on Saturday, a small number of climate activists staged a brief sit-in at OPEC’s pavilion after the oil cartel allegedly directed its members to reject any agreement involving phasing out fossil fuels, The New York Times reported. And as anger simmered over Monday’s watered-down global stocktake draft — which does not mention a fossil fuel phase-out — climate activists continued to chafe against the restrictions on their ability to protest during the summit’s final hours.
Ahead of the draft release, a line of silent activists held signs pushing countries to “hold the line” on the phaseout. One protester, however, refused to follow the pre-approved plan. Licypriya Kangujam, a 12-year-old climate activist from India, ran onto the stage after the “hold the line” protest on Monday, shouting and brandishing a sign that read, “End fossil fuel. Save our planet and our future.” Kangujam was detained and eventually removed from the summit, according to posts from her account on X.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/cop28-dubai-climate-protests Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In the U.S., the rare event will only be visible from southern Florida, but it will be livestreamed from Italy for viewers everywhere
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/an-asteroid-will-eclipse-a-red-star-in-the-constellation-orion-on-monday-night-180983412/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: VOA News USA
Pentagon — The U.S. Air Force took disciplinary action against 15 airmen, charging that a lack of supervision and a failure to take action contributed to the so-called ‘Discord intelligence leaks’ that rattled the U.S. intelligence community.
A 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, Jack Teixeira, was arrested this past April, shortly after the leaks were discovered, and is facing multiple charges for removing documents from a secured work environment, and then posting the information or photos for a small group on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers.
At the time, a top Pentagon official said the leaks, which revealed information about Russia’s war in Ukraine and about U.S. allies, posed “a very serious risk” to national security.
In a statement Monday, the Air Force said the commander of Teixeira’s Air National Guard unit, the 102nd Intelligence Wing, was relieved of command.
Another 14 individuals where subjected to non-judicial punishment under the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The Air Force defended the actions, saying officials in Teixeira’s unit could have and should have taken action that could have mitigated the improper disclosure of intelligence.
“Individuals in Teixeira’s unit failed to take proper action after becoming aware of his intelligence-seeking activities,’ the Air Force said, citing a report by its inspector general.
“Leadership was not vigilant in inspecting the conduct of all persons who were placed under their command,” the Air Force said.
The statement also said the intelligence leaks were further enabled by “inconsistent guidance for reporting security incidents” and “ineffective processes for administering disciplinary actions.”
“However, the investigation did not find evidence that members of Teixeira’s supervisory chain were aware of his alleged unauthorized disclosures,” the Air Force said.
According to the Air Force inspector general, evidence indicated that members of the 102nd Intelligence Wing had information on at least four incidents involving questionable activity by Teixeira, and that a smaller number of individuals “had a more complete picture” of Teixeira’s activities but “failed to report the full details of these security concerns/incidents.”
“Had any of these members come forward, security officials would likely have facilitated restricting systems/facility access and alerted the appropriate authorities, reducing the length and depth of the unauthorized and unlawful disclosures by several months,” the report said.
The inspector general’s report further found that a routine background check flagged concerns about Teixeira, but that the military granted him top secret clearance anyway.
Additionally, the report found those concerns were never shared with Teixeira’s unit.
“The details learned in background checks are not routinely shared with a member’s unit,” it said. “Had the unit been made aware of potential security concerns identified during the clearance adjudication process, they may have acted more quickly.”
The Pentagon Monday said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been made aware of the Air Force’s findings and actions, adding Austin is confident officials are “taking the necessary steps.”
This past July, the Pentagon released the results of its own review into the leaks, calling for a tightening of existing security measures. But it rejected the need for any sweeping overhaul.
“There was no single point of failure,” a senior defense official said at the time, speaking to reporters about the review’s findings on the condition of anonymity.
“What we see here is we have a growing ecosystem of classified facilities and a body of personnel who are cleared,” the official said. “Within that we have opportunities to clarify policy … they are not the clearest documents always.”
Still, Defense Department officials have taken steps to reduce the number of people with access to classified information.
According to a 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, approximately 4 million people have U.S. security clearances, with 1.3 million cleared to access top secret information.
https://www.voanews.com/a/discipline-handed-down-for-us-intelligence-discord-leaks/7393362.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
In this image from Dec. 8, 1993, astronaut Kathryn C. Thornton works with equipment during a spacewalk. The spacewalk was part of an 11-day mission, Servicing Mission 1, to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Shortly after Hubble was launched in 1990, NASA discovered a flaw in the observatory’s primary mirror that affected the clarity of […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/astronaut-kathryn-thornton-works-on-hubble-space-telescope/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Tumblr’s ‘fediverse’ integration is still being worked on, says owner and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/11/tumblrs-fediverse-integration-is-still-being-worked-on-says-owner-and-automattic-ceo-matt-mullenweg/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The gentle, pinkish-orange hue was chosen to reflect a collective desire for respite
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/peach-fuzz-is-pantones-color-of-the-year-for-2024-180983407/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
EMIT delivers first-of-a-kind maps of minerals in Earth’s dust-source areas, enabling scientists to model the fine particles’ role in climate change and more. NASA’s EMIT mission has created the first comprehensive maps of the world’s mineral dust-source regions, providing precise locations of 10 key minerals based on how they reflect and absorb light. When winds […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/emit/nasa-sensor-produces-first-global-maps-of-surface-minerals-in-arid-regions/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Research into Lazarus Group’s attacks using Log4Shell has revealed novel malware strains written in an atypical programming language.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/lazarus_group_edang/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Liliputing
Last week the company behind the Beeper app announced plans to go all-in on a new version of the app called Beeper Mini. It’s still designed to be a cross-platform messaging app that lets Android users tap into Apple’s iMessage service (and which would, eventually, also support more than a dozen other messaging platforms), but […]
The post Beeper Mini is back online and free to use (for now) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/beeper-mini-is-back-online-and-free-to-use-for-now/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
2024 will be a big election year, in the United States and elsewhere. Many news publishers will see an uptick in audience attention, perhaps even advertising, and a few upmarket titles will do a brisk business with discounted trial subscriptions. I fear that some will mistake this cyclical bump for a structural turning point. It…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/ignore-the-coming-election-bump/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Tory Lanez shot Megan thee Stallion. That is a fact. He was found guilty of this crime and is serving a ten-year sentence in California. That is also a fact. But the road to this verdict and the unveiling of these facts was filled with misinformation and misogynoir from media bloggers who’ve cosplayed as journalists…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/experts-not-influencers-will-cover-more-black-news/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced Monday that after more than 30 years of service, the agency’s Stennis Space Center Director Richard Gilbrech will retire on Saturday, Jan. 13. Stennis Deputy Director John Bailey will serve as acting center director after Gilbrech’s departure, and a permanent successor will be identified following a search and competition. Nelson […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/2024-leadership-changes-to-include-nasa-stennis-directors-retirement/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
The predictions in this series are often happy, joyful, optimistic about the coming year, bursting with all the promise and possibilities facing journalism in the next 12 months. Allow me to be a downer just this once. My prediction for 2024 is that there will be a major scandal involving a sports journalist and sports…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/a-major-sports-betting-journalism-scandal-is-coming/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/baby-drawings Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
To a journalist, a presidential election year is kind of like Christmas morning to a six-year-old — as the event gets closer, conversation, planning, and feverish anticipation accelerates to an obsessive frenzy. To a great degree, it’s all they can think about. But there is one piece of advice I give my friends, colleagues, and clients…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/this-election-year-dont-forget-theres-more-than-one-story/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Throughout our two years of work on AP’s Local News AI Initiative, funded by the Knight Foundation, we’ve come to this general observation: Smaller newsrooms are hungry for automation and AI. Along with my colleague, AI program manager Aimee Rinehart, we published the first nationwide findings in March 2022 on how local newsrooms were approaching…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/ai-gets-widely-adopted-by-smaller-newsrooms/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/journalists-will-go-on-camera-for-social-video/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Using A.I. to Talk to the Dead.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/technology/ai-chatbots-dead-relatives.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Care
<p>Sam Altman arrives as a mythological hero in the self-help-saturated capital city of South Korea. However, there’s more than meets the eye, including a radical art space that deconstructs the AI hype cycle for a Korean audience.</p>https://logicmag.io/policy/seouls-imported-prophets Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/0043600-pleasantly-surprised-to-f Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Heatmap News
New clean energy projects have a lot going for them. For one, building them has gotten extremely cheap. At the same time, because the wind blowing and the sun shining are unlimited free resources, operating costs for a clean energy power plant are also pretty low. That’s the beauty of a clean energy economy — it reduces our exposure to the price swings, recessions, political instability, and surging inflation that come with fossil fuels.
The problem is that the cure for surging inflation — hiking up interest rates — is having a big, bad impact on clean energy. Elevated interest rates directly and disproportionately raise costs for clean power projects, throwing a handbrake on the clean energy transition and its deflationary impacts exactly when we need them most.
Here’s how it happens: Nearly all the costs of clean energy projects are upfront capital expenditures to cover things like building wind turbines and installing solar panels. And as anyone with a mortgage or car loan can tell you, the higher the amount you need to finance up front, the more you care about your interest rate.
By comparison, a fossil fuel power plant will pay as they go for the fuel they need to operate, meaning they have less to finance. And there’s the rub — those extra financing costs get passed on to clean energy consumers. Even if a fossil fuel power plant and a clean energy power plant have equivalent associated costs, if one has to finance more of that cost upfront at higher and higher interest rates, it’s going to be less competitive. Estimates suggest that as interest rates rise, the total cost of energy from a gas power plant might rise 8%, but for a clean energy project the same cost could rise as much as 47%.
That impact is being felt across the developed world — Bloomberg’s clean energy research division, BNEF, estimates that 60% of the cost increase for offshore wind is the direct result of rising interest rates — but the impact in the developing world is even more insidious. In emerging markets, the financing cost to deploy the exact same technology can be as much as seven times higher. That’s a big part of the reasoning behind the International Energy Agency’s estimate that we’ll have a $2 trillion clean finance gap in emerging and developing economies by 2030.
In one respect, however, we are in luck — financial regulators have a wide variety of tools they could deploy to solve this problem by creating lower, dual rates for clean energy.
One way to do that is to create dedicated central bank programs that give banks access to cheap credit if they pass it on to sectors of the economy that align with key industrial policy goals — like, say, solving climate change. If this kind of facility existed, your local bank could decide that because you put solar panels on your roof, bought an electric car, or installed a heat pump, it could offer you a mortgage at 4% instead of today’s 7% rate. Or it could finance an offshore wind developer’s first projects at below-market rates, helping to make them competitive in a challenging economic environment.
As we all know, however, creating new programs or passing new policies is hard. Instead, we might want to just make existing lending programs greener. In the EU, for example, leaders at the European Central Bank are considering using existing programs to provide banks with financing at favorable rates if they use it to support clean energy.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the Fed could reduce discount window interest rates and adjust collateral policies to incentivize clean energy lending — in other words, it could set the terms on which banks borrow from the Fed to support green loans and discourage dirty loans. Intervening this way would incentivize banks to lend more to clean energy at lower rates.
The Fed could also use its emergency powers to create a new program just to provide clean energy with cheaper capital because of the adverse impacts of high interest rates. It recently used these powers to create the Bank Term Funding Program explicitly to mitigate the impact of higher rates on banks; in “unusual and exigent circumstances” and with the Department of the Treasury’s approval, it could adopt a new program to provide similar direct support for clean energy. A once-in-a-civilization clean energy transition to head off a climate crisis, underwritten by historic climate legislation whose impact is now threatened by rising interest rates, would seem to qualify.
But wait, there’s more! The Fed, along with its fellow banking regulators the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, could leverage the new Community Reinvestment Act regulations to encourage certain clean energy investments, including community solar and “microgrid and battery” projects that could help smooth out power supply to public housing in extreme weather.
And of course, it’s not just central banks that can create lower dual rates for clean energy. Public finance institutions can also play an instrumental role by using their own lower cost of finance to bring down the cost of credit. For instance, the EU is providing financial support for the wind industry in the form of loan guarantees from the European Investment Bank. Loan guarantees work by putting the full credit of the government behind a particular project, thereby giving lenders more confidence they won’t lose their money, which brings down the cost of finance.
In the U.S., subsidized loans and guarantees funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and administered by the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office are already helping to create dual rates for offshore wind — which, thanks to new Treasury guidance, can now be extended to cover associated infrastructure like sub-sea cables. Still, that’s nowhere near what the Fed could do. Add in the new green bank capitalized with funding from the IRA that could extend low-interest loans for everything from electric vehicles to heat pumps and we’ve got a bevy of tools at our disposal.
For those wondering whether this kind of Fed policy could be co-opted to support everything from defense manufacturing to fossil fuel production, the answer is that industries always lobby for favorable policy wherever they can get them. But dual interest rates and targeted lending programs are common practice around the world, even in free market economies, with no such terrible consequences. At the end of the day, policy is just a tool, and it’s up to us to make sure it is used to achieve society’s goals, not corporate profits.
Concern over the impact of rising interest rates on clean energy and the economy more broadly is hitting a crescendo, and for good reason. This week the Fed governors will meet to decide whether further rate increases are still warranted. Most Fed-watchers think this cycle of rising interest rates is finally over, but there’s no such thing as a guarantee.
More importantly, even if the Fed says “enough,” the reality is that our currently elevated rates will almost certainly take years to come down. Meanwhile, we have a rapidly vanishing window of time to reach peak emissions to stay under the Paris Agreement’s limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of temperature rise. That means we need new targeted policy interventions that bring down the cost of finance to keep the clean energy transition humming. Unlike climate change, the impact of high interest rates on clean energy is not a force of nature. It’s one we can control.
https://heatmap.news/economy/high-interest-rates-clean-energy Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: James Bottomley’s blog
Even if you’re a developer with legal leanings like me, you probably haven’t given much thought to the warranty disclaimer and the liability disclaimer that appears in almost every Open Source licence (see sections 14 and 15 of GPLv3). This post is designed to help you understand what they are, why they’re there and why […]
https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/solving-the-looming-developer-liability-problem/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
Clare Luckey, an engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, has been named one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 Class of 2024. The other NASA honoree is Katie Konans, audio and podcasting lead at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list is a selection of young, creative, […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/johnson/nasa-engineer-named-in-forbes-30-under-30-list-of-innovators-2/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Amazon is asking a judge to dismiss the antitrust case filed against it by the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states, arguing the case fails to allege any anticompetitive conduct or harm to consumers from its behavior.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/ftc_antitrust_amazon_dismissal_request/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Heatmap News
One of the most exciting and contentious questions looming over the COP28 climate summit in Dubai this year has been whether countries will agree to an historic phase out of fossil fuels to stave off the worst effects of climate change. With one day left on the official conference agenda, we may have our answer: No.
A new draft of the global stocktake text dropped Monday and it contains no mention of a fossil fuel phase out or phase down. Instead, the relevant section of the text now calls for “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science.”
That the phase-out language didn’t survive a tense weekend of negotiations isn’t a huge surprise. Any deal to emerge from the annual United Nations climate summit must be unanimously supported by all 198 participating nations. Saudi Arabia staunchly opposed a phase-out, while a handful of powerful oil-producing countries (including the U.S.) wanted to see specific caveats and provisions.
Strong language on moving past oil and gas was always a long shot, but some activists and governments are still disappointed. Fossil fuels are a primary source of planet-warming pollution, which must fall by at least 45% “to avoid global catastrophe,” according to the UN. New analysis from the International Energy Agency concluded that the voluntary emissions pledges to come out of COP28 so far are nowhere near dramatic enough to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
“This draft takes a giant step backwards,” said Teresa Anderson, Global Climate Lead at ActionAid. “It’s staggeringly empty of any new commitments.” CarbonBrief’s Simon Evans laments that “hardly any of the verbs in the latest draft global stocktake text actually ask for action.” Kaisa Kosonen, head of the Greenpeace COP28 delegation, calls it “a dog’s dinner.”
The new text isn’t entirely toothless, though. “By requiring countries to reduce their fossil fuel production, it effectively achieves the same ends as a phase down, without using the contentious language that some countries would not allow,” argued The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey. Past language focusing on fossil fuel emissions instead of production was considered a sneaky workaround for countries that want to keep emitting while relying on carbon capture and storage. So focusing specifically on production could be interpreted as an attempt at stronger accountability.
“It appears to be a compromise between Saudi Arabia who didn’t want any mention of fossils and the progressive countries who called for an outright fossil fuel phase out,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa. “It’s in the middle and uses creative language to describe the direction of travel.”
“It’s not sufficient,” conceded BusinessGreen’s James Murray. “But the signal to investors and businesses is pretty clear. Is it enough to secure backing from COP’s opposing factions?”
https://heatmap.news/sparks/cop28-agreement-fossil-fuel-phaseout Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Jury selection got underway on Monday in the federal case that will determine how how much Rudy Giuliani might have to pay two Georgia election workers he falsely accused of fraud while pushing Donald Trump’s baseless claims after the 2020 election.
The former New York City mayor has already been found liable in the defamation lawsuit brought by Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who endured threats and harassment after they became the target of a conspiracy theory spread by Trump and his allies. The only issue to be determined at the trial is the amount of damages, if any, Giuliani must pay.
Giuliani did not speak to reporters as he entered Washington’s federal courthouse — the same building where Trump is set to stand trial in March on criminal charges accusing the former president of scheming to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden.
The defamation case is among many legal and financial woes mounting for Giuliani, who was celebrated as “America’s mayor” in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack and became one of the most ardent promoters of Trump’s election lies.
Giuliani is also criminally charged alongside Trump and others in the Georgia case accusing them of trying to illegally overturn the results of the election in the state. Giuliani has pleaded not guilty and maintains he had every right to raise questions about what he believed to be election fraud.
He was sued in September by a former lawyer who alleged Giuliani only paid a fraction of roughly $1.6 million in legal fees stemming from investigations into his efforts to keep Trump in the White House. And the judge overseeing the election workers’ lawsuit has already ordered Giuliani and his business entities to pay tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees.
Overseeing the defamation case is District Judge Beryl Howell, who is well-versed in handling matters related to Trump, having served as chief judge of Washington’s federal court for the entirety of Trump’s presidency.
In that role, the appointee of former President Barack Obama has made several significant rulings, including determining in 2020 that the House of Representatives was entitled to secret grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and, more recently, issuing a sealed opinion requiring a lawyer for Trump to testify before the grand jury over his objections in an investigation into the mishandling of classified documents.
Moss had worked for the Fulton County elections department since 2012 and supervised the absentee ballot operation during the 2020 election. Freeman was a temporary election worker, verifying signatures on absentee ballots and preparing them to be counted and processed.
Giuliani and other Trump allies seized on surveillance footage to push a conspiracy theory that the election workers pulled fraudulent ballots out of suitcases. The claims were quickly debunked by Georgia election officials, who found no improper counting of ballots.
The women have said the false claims led to a barrage of violent threats and harassment that at one point led Freeman to leave her home for more than two months. In emotional testimony before the U.S. House Committee that investigated the U.S. Capitol attack, Moss recounted receiving an onslaught of threatening and racist messages.
In an August decision holding Giuliani liable in the case, Howell said the Trump adviser gave “only lip service” to complying with his legal obligations and had failed to turn over information requested by the mother and daughter. The judge in October said that Giuliani had flagrantly disregarded an order to provide documents concerning his personal and business assets. She said that jurors deciding the amount of damages would be told they must infer that Giuliani was intentionally trying to hide financial documents in the hopes of “artificially deflating his net worth.”
Giuliani conceded in July that he made public comments falsely claiming Freeman and Moss committed fraud while counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. But Giuliani argued that the statements were protected by the First Amendment.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7393124.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Microsoft’s OpenAI headaches might not be going away following reports that now the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering an investigation into the Windows giant’s investment in the company.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/microsoft_openai_investment_ftc/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
I was at the Swiss Mechanical Keyboard Meetup. I wanted to get rid of my keyboards and instead I bought one. 😓
@xtaran’s table with colourful keyboards and a MNT Reform laptop in the middle:
@deshipu’s table with a lot of very flat keyboards with few keys, some of them steno keyboards:
Keyboards by Nicolas and Valerio:
Sam’s keyboards:
This is the keyboard I bought from Sam:
It is labelled as Monsgeek M6, KTT Matcha, GMK DMG Clones.
Right now my fingers are confused and seemed to expect the Atreus layout I had been using recently, at least as far as the thumbs go.
I get the feeling that not all keys work as intended, though. The right
Ctrl key has no effect is a layer switch that enables <
and > to control the volume, for example. The left Alt key is GUI.
The right Alt key has no effect had a bent pin on their
switch. The App key has no effect had a bent pin on their
switch. The App key is actually Alt. The ] and = keys have no
effect had a bent pin on their switches. The Volume Up key is
mapped to Delete. The Volume Down key is mapped to Prior. The Mute Key
is mapped to Next.
Hm.
As it turns out, the problem was the firmware. My guess is that it was too old.
So here’s what I did:
monsgeek_m6_via.bin from
the VIA
site
* QMK Toolbox 0.2.2+0fcc8d2be51846956c2fc4edad6362c194d6b2ca (https://qmk.fm/toolbox)
* Supported bootloaders:
* - ARM DFU (APM32, Kiibohd, STM32, STM32duino) and RISC-V DFU (GD32V) via dfu-util (http://dfu-util.sourceforge.net/)
* - Atmel/LUFA/QMK DFU via dfu-programmer (http://dfu-programmer.github.io/)
* - Atmel SAM-BA (Massdrop) via Massdrop Loader (https://github.com/massdrop/mdloader)
* - BootloadHID (Atmel, PS2AVRGB) via bootloadHID (https://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/bootloadhid.html)
* - Caterina (Arduino, Pro Micro) via avrdude (http://nongnu.org/avrdude/)
* - HalfKay (Teensy, Ergodox EZ) via Teensy Loader (https://pjrc.com/teensy/loader_cli.html)
* - LUFA/QMK HID via hid_bootloader_cli (https://github.com/abcminiuser/lufa)
* - WB32 DFU via wb32-dfu-updater_cli (https://github.com/WestberryTech/wb32-dfu-updater)
* - LUFA Mass Storage
* Supported ISP flashers:
* - AVRISP (Arduino ISP)
* - USBasp (AVR ISP)
* - USBTiny (AVR Pocket)
* Auto-flash enabled
* Auto-flash disabled
WB32 DFU device connected (WinUSB): (Undefined Vendor) WB Device in DFU Mode (342D:DFA0:0100)
Attempting to flash, please don't remove device
> wb32-dfu-updater_cli.exe --toolbox-mode --dfuse-address 0x08000000 --download "C:\Users\asc\Downloads\monsgeek_m6_via.bin"
> ----------------------------------------
> C:\Users\asc\Downloads\monsgeek_m6_via.bin file opened
> ----------------------------------------
> Found DFU
> Opening DFU capable USB device ...
> Device ID 342d:dfa0
> ----------------------------------------
> The device bootloader version: 0.4
> Chip id: 0x3A50E980
> Flash size: 256 KBytes
> Sram size: 36 KBytes
> ----------------------------------------
> Start Download ...
> Download block start address: 0x08000000
> Download block size: 39884 Bytes
> Writing ...
> OK
> Download completed!
Flash complete
WB32 DFU device disconnected (WinUSB): (Undefined Vendor) WB Device in DFU Mode (342D:DFA0:0100)
Then return to the VIA site with a browser that supports the USB stuff, so either Chrome or Edge 😭 and configure the keyboard. And now it works.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2023-12-10-keyboards Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/0043605–some-of-the-most Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
Like overeating and watching your favorite holiday movie/show (mine is A Charlie Brown Christmas), it’s time for everyone’s favorite seasonal activity: year-end tax and financial planning! Sure, focusing on money is a tough sell at this time of year, but a little bit of energy now could help you save or make some money in the […]
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/jill-on-money-year-end-money-2023/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
SantaCon returned Saturday to the city of its birth for the annual crush of red velvet and grinch green attendees.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/photos-santacon-fills-san-franciscos-union-square-for-28th-annual-event/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
Californians have said they experienced added difficulty over the past year in getting car insurance. Insurer rates have gone up more than usual.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/getting-car-insurance-gets-harder-california-drivers-face-delays-higher-rates/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
The practice ranges from psychotherapy to medical and faith-based methods that can include talk therapy, hormone or steroid treatment or faith-based consultation.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/supreme-court-lets-stand-washington-state-law-barring-conversion-therapy-for-minors/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links Daddy-Daughter Podcast 2023: From age 4 to age 15. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Daddy-Daughter Podcast 2023 (permalink) 11 years ago, my kid’s daycare surprised us by announcing that they were closing for Christmas break a day before everyone else, so I ended up with our then-four-year-old daughter, Poesy, at my office for the day. After she got bored with coloring and playing with my office toys, I sat her down on my lap in front of my podcast mic and we recorded the greatest, all-singing episode of my podcast ever: https://craphound.com/news/2012/12/21/happy-hols/ Thus began an annual tradition. Every year since – save one, when my mic was busted – we have recorded a podcast: I interview the kid about her favorite media, apps, books, and hobbies. Sometimes, she gives a tutorial. Then, we sing a song. She’s 15 now (!), and I still managed to drag her to the mic this weekend. We discussed her musical favorites, old (Ike and Tina singing “Proud Mary”) and new (Dominic Fyke). We discuss high school, volunteering at the zoo, and the rigors of dance team. She teaches us how to drive. She runs down her favorite apps, and discusses her recent name change. And then, we sing! https://craphound.com/news/2023/12/10/daddy-daughter-podcast-2023-edition/ This is the eleventh installment in this time-series snapshots of my kid, starting in London, then moving to LA, and every year I go back and listen to the previous recordings. It’s not just a wonderful moment of nostalgia for me – it’s also a powerful way to put everything into perspective. Anyone who’s kept a journal (or a blog!) knows, the act of regular record-keeping, combined with regular revisiting of those records, turns the impressionistic jumble of memory into a clear picture of your life and its trajectory. We remember so poorly, but our treacherous minds fill in those omissions with whatever’s going on right now, so if times are good now, we remember all times as good. If times are bad, everything seems bad. The following year sees Poesy far more confident and even funnier – and excited about working at the zoo someday: https://craphound.com/news/2013/12/23/christmastime-daddy-daughter-podcast-with-poesy/ At six, Poesy has learned a little French, and some naughty words for Jingle Bells (and she’s got a lot more vocal control!): https://craphound.com/news/2014/12/22/podcast-happy-xmas-guest-starring-poesy/ At seven, Poesy is living in Los Angeles and my mic is very busted, but Poesy knows all the words to Frosty and she’s got the barrelhouse walkout nailed: https://craphound.com/news/2015/12/25/podcast-happy-xmas-guest-starring-poesy-2/ We didn’t manage to record the next year, so we catch up with Poesy at nine, with her English accent all but gone – but her memory for lyrics is better than ever (who knew there were so many choruses to “Deck the Halls?”). This is the first time I interviewed her, for an in-depth discussion of how to make slime (remember slime?): https://craphound.com/news/2017/12/23/reviving-my-christmas-daddy-daughter-podcast-with-poesy/ At ten, Poesy is now watching online makeup tutorials and has lots of advice for you, and is super into squishies: https://craphound.com/news/2018/12/24/christmas-podcast-with-poesy-2018-edition/ At eleven, Poesy’s no longer willing to sing, but she has lots of information about riding horses. This is the first year that she’s got her own music preferences, with half of them being contemporary artists like Billie Eilish and the other half being older acts like Queen. This is also the year that she got rid of all her old toys, books and clothes, because they were “not her style”: https://craphound.com/podcast/2019/12/20/my-annual-daddy-daughter-xmas-podcast-interview-with-an-11-year-old/ Twelve sees us podcasting from covid lockdown. No song this year, but she’s playing video games (Among Us), thrifting (while double-masked), and she’s just discovered Tiktok, along with Tiktok dances, and she’s started to find cool music that I enjoy: https://craphound.com/news/2020/12/11/daddy-daughter-podcast-2020-edition/ At thirteen, Poe’s a high school freshman and the singing is back! She’s big into Drag Race and Ru Paul. And high school sucks so hard that she’d rather go back to Zoom school. She’s still riding horses, and she’s fallen in love with a book for the first time in years: Animal Farm (but she hates the ending): https://craphound.com/news/2021/12/23/daddy-daughter-podcast-2021-edition/ Last year, Poesy was fourteen, and my office had just flooded out in a freak rainstorm. Poesy has discovered her argumentative nature, and she loves hiking in nearby Angeles National Forest. She’s getting into hiphop – Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and Cyprus Hill – and South Park (also Fleetwood Mac!). We get a lot about Big Mouth, and a long discussion of her short fiction writing: https://craphound.com/podcast/2022/12/12/daddy-daughter-podcast-2022-edition/ These annual time-capsules are just tremendous. I may not have had the discipline to do daily, time-lapse ready photo portraits, but this corny, silly yearly tradition is more than a way for my kid and me to spend a few minutes together just before Christmas – they’re a way to connect to our past and think about the future to come. I can imagine doing these over Zoom when the kid’s away at university in a couple years, though who knows if she’ll stand for that. Here’s the podcast episode: https://craphound.com/news/2023/12/10/daddy-daughter-podcast-2023-edition/ And here’s a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive – they’ll host your stuff for free, forever): https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_457/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_457_-_Daddy_Daughter_Podcast_2023_Edition.mp3 And here’s the RSS feed for my podcast: https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast Hey look at this (permalink) The block button is the ultimate source of dopamine. Use it. https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/the-block-button-is-the-ultimate-source-of-dopamine-use-it (h/t Today in Tabs) The Secret Behind AI Drive-Thrus? It’s Humans Doing the Work https://gizmodo.com/secret-behind-ai-drive-thrus-fast-food-humans-1851085269 Can’t lose what you never had: Claims about digital ownership and creation in the age of generative AI https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/08/cant-lose-what-you-never-had-claims-about-digital-ownership-creation-age-generative-ai This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago SCO sends IBM 1,000,000 pieces of paper https://memex.craphound.com/2003/12/10/sco-sends-ibm-1000000-pieces-of-paper/ #20yrsago Urban farmers reclaim Detroit https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/garden/in-the-capital-of-the-car-nature-stakes-a-claim.html #20yrsago Steven Levy on Trusted Computing https://web.archive.org/web/20031212101452/http://www.msnbc.com/news/998345.asp #20yrsago London tube map, remixed https://memex.craphound.com/2003/12/11/london-tube-map-remixed/ #20yrsago Transformation from the Internet as a subset of telecom to telecom as a subset of the Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20040202211357/https://werbach.com/blog/2003/12/11.html#a1334 #15yrsago FCC commissioner: Warcraft is a “leading cause” of college dropouts https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/fcc-blames-world-of-warcraft-for-college-dropouts/ #15yrsago Carl Malamud, rogue archivist, in Wired https://www.wired.com/2008/12/online-rebel-publishes-millions-of-dollars-in-u-s-court-records-for-free/ #15yrsago Apple gets into the book-banning business https://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/apple-forfeits-ebooks-by-banning-a-comic-book/ #15yrsago MPAA to Obama: censor the Internet, kick people off the Internet, break other countries’ Internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/mpaa-obama #15yrsago Mexico to fingerprint mobile-phone owners https://web.archive.org/web/20081218201523/https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hbIC6ZYe2A2fSIe1q-1dnh4TphiwD94VK6K81 #15yrsago Last days of an NYC library https://www.drivenbyboredom.com/2008/12/11/the-donnell-library-center-a-eulogy-in-pictures/ #15yrsago UK culture secretary: “Screw the facts, I’m extending copyright anyway” https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/screw-the-evidence-says-burnham-lets-extend-copyright-term-anyway/ #15yrsago What the hell is a Credit Default Swap? https://web.archive.org/web/20090421013937/https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio_episode.aspx?episode=365 #15yrsago EFF (cautiously) optimistic at record labels’ offering of a blanket license to universities https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/labels-open-collective-licensing-campus #15yrsago Austin teacher threatens to sic cops on Linux group because “No software is free” https://web.archive.org/web/20081212115427/https://www.austinist.com/2008/12/10/aisd_teacher_throws_fit_over_studen.php #10yrsago FreeBSD won’t use Intel & Via’s hardware random number generators, believes NSA has compromised them https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/we-cannot-trust-intel-and-vias-chip-based-crypto-freebsd-developers-say/ #10yrsago UK kids have the right to opt out of school fingerprinting (even if their parents are OK with it) https://informationrightsandwrongs.com/2013/12/07/the-kids-all-have-rights/ #10yrsago Canada’s spooks were NSA bagmen, established spy-posts in 20+ countries and “transnational targets” https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/snowden-document-shows-canada-set-up-spy-posts-for-nsa-1.2456886 #10yrsago Peak indifference to surveillance https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/09/internet-surveillance-spying #10yrsago Tech giants call for global surveillance law reform https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/eight-tech-giants-call-reform-surveillance-law #10yrsago Cyanogenmod adds encrypted SMS from WhisperSystems https://web.archive.org/web/20131211063720/http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/whisperpush-secure-messaging-integration #10yrsago Life from the near future of location surveillance https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-tracking/meet-jack?redirect=meet-jack-or-what-government-could-do-all-location-data #10yrsago DHS stops NYT reporters at border, lies about it https://www.techdirt.com/2013/12/10/dhs-interrogates-ny-times-reporters-border-then-denies-having-any-records-about-them/ #10yrsago Little Brother stageplay now available for local performances https://littlebrotherlive.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/lets-get-little-brother-back-on-stage/ #10yrsago Potty with built-in tablet holder is “worst toy of 2013” https://web.archive.org/web/20151016182213/https://reasonsmysoniscrying.com/post/69503973203/this-was-just-named-the-worst-toy-of-2013-and-the #10yrsago KC cop threatened to destroy home and kill pets unless he was allowed to conduct a warrantless search https://fox4kc.com/news/man-says-police-officer-threatened-to-kill-his-dogs/ #10yrsago Satanists offer “good taste” monument to complement Oklahoma Capitol’s Ten Commandments monument https://tulsaworld.com/news/government/satanists-seek-spot-on-oklahoma-statehouse-steps-next-to-ten/article_d7a11ac2-60dc-11e3-ac3b-0019bb30f31a.html #10yrsago Why haunted houses have suits of armor https://longforgottenhauntedmansion.blogspot.com/2013/12/armor-gettin.html #5yrsago Syndicated columnist censored for writing about the risks of hedge funds and billionaires buying papers https://www.texasobserver.org/the-jim-hightower-column-they-dont-want-you-to-read/ #5yrsago Rhode Island lawsuit argues that the Constitution guarantees a right to sufficient education to be an informed citizen https://theconversation.com/fight-for-federal-right-to-education-takes-a-new-turn-108322 #5yrsago Costa Rica abolished its army in 1949 and thereafter enjoyed the best per-capita GDP growth in the region https://www.ippapublicpolicy.org/file/paper/594eced12c818.pdf #5yrsago Verizon writes down its Yahoo/AOL assets by $4.6 billion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/verizon-writes-down-4-6-billion-of-value-of-aol-yahoo-business #5yrsago Small Massachusetts town decides to spend $1.4m building its own fiber, rather than paying Comcast $500K for shitty broadband https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/comcast-rejected-by-small-town-residents-vote-for-municipal-fiber-instead/ #5yrsago Shitty Tumblr pornbot inception https://memex.craphound.com/2018/12/11/shitty-tumblr-pornbot-inception/ #5yrsago Surveillance libraries in common smartphone apps have amassed dossiers on the minute-to-minute movements of 200 million+ Americans https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html #5yrsago Congressional Republicans say Equifax breach was “entirely preventable,” blames “aggressive growth strategy” but reject measures to prevent future breaches https://thehill.com/policy/technology/420582-house-panel-issues-scathing-report-on-entirely-preventable-equifax-data/ #5yrsago The EU says it wants Europeans to engage with it: now that 4 MILLION of them have opposed mass censorship through #Article13, will they listen? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/four-million-europeans-signatures-opposing-article-13-have-been-delivered-european #1yrago Plato Would Ban Ad-Blockers https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/11/plato-would-ban-ad-blockers/ 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: Daddy-Daughter Podcast, 2023 edition https://craphound.com/news/2023/12/10/daddy-daughter-podcast-2023-edition/) Recent appearances: Science Fiction and the Future of Science https://council.science/podcast/science-fiction/ AI needs to work with humans — not replace us (CBC IDEAS) https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artificial-intelligence-provocation-ideas-festival-1.7046841 Explore the Future of the 🔥 Climate and Information Climate (Andrew Revkin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OGT-cvs4_Q 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/2023/12/11/daddy-daughter-2023/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Liliputing
The upcoming Retroid Pocket 4 is a handheld game system with a 4.7 inch HD display, 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage, a microSD card reader, support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, and a 5,000 mAh battery. Designed for retro gaming, the handheld also features hall sensor joysticks and analog triggers. And it will be […]
The post Retroid 4 handheld game console coming soon for $149 and up, with Dimensity 900 &1100 processor options appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/retroid-4-handheld-game-console-coming-soon-for-149-and-up-with-dimensity-900-1100-processor-options/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/0043601-fifty-years-ago-eight-ame Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: VOA News USA
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many Ukrainian refugees found themselves in the American state of Colorado, thanks to the Uniting for Ukraine government program. For some families, educating their children in the U.S. proved to be a challenge, but they’re getting some extra help from a local nonprofit. Svitlana Prystynska has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. (Camera: Volodymur Petruniv)
https://www.voanews.com/a/ukrainian-children-parents-get-help-navigating-us-school-system/7393007.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
The lump sum payout for each winner would be $94.3 million before federal taxes.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/2-california-tickets-win-mega-millions-jackpot-and-both-were-sold-at-the-same-store/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
Peter Park graduated high school in 2021 by taking the state’s high school proficiency exam and focused on law school, graduating this year.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/californian-passes-state-bar-exam-at-age-17-and-is-sworn-in-as-an-attorney/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
Some very observant royal fans – or detractors – noticed a few things amiss with the otherwise happy family portrait released by the Prince and Princess of Wales with their annual Christmas card.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/prince-louis-appears-to-lose-finger-in-christmas-card-photo-editing-fail/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The latest U.N. climate conference is nearing an end with countries clashing over the reduction of fossil fuel use. Oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia are resisting that idea. With just one more day of negotiations left at COP28, we hear about what commitments have already been made and what remains unresolved. Also: What can we expect from interest rate cutes in the New Year?
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/disagreement-over-fossil-fuels-at-cop28 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Niners were playing without Arik Armstead and lost Charvarius Ward and Javon Hargrave, but locked up DK Metcalf late
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/49ers-defense-overcomes-key-injuries-to-stifle-seahawks-in-second-half/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
The teacher was also suspected of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, authorities said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/moreno-valley-teacher-arrested-accused-of-public-intoxication-during-saturday-school/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Two years after the Log4Shell vulnerability in the open source Java-based Log4j logging utility was disclosed, circa one in four applications are dependent on outdated libraries, leaving them open to exploitation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/log4j_vulnerabilities/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/diary-comic-nov-10-12 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
In a collaboration between multiple partners in the aviation industry, NASA is helping determine if the latest advances in aircraft engines and fuels can reduce atmospheric warming from condensation trails. Those condensation trails can trap heat in our atmosphere under specific conditions and increase the impact the aviation industry has on global warming. NASA partnered […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-and-partners-study-contrail-formation/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Obviously, at some point Musk will sell Twitter to Zuckerberg.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/11.html#a145817 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
A story that ran Thursday, Dec. 7, on the front page incorrectly stated the number of people Hamas terrorists killed in Israel on Oct. 7. Hamas killed about 1,200 people.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/11/correction-pro-palestinian-teach-in-in-oakland/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-12, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2023/12/11/package-camoflauge/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/single-item-gift-guide Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Something
that should make you cry. So many of our friends on the web are happy to
let Facebook run the new Twitter. What is wrong with you. I don’t know
any better way to put it. Quitting Twitter is pointless, meaningless,
powerless. But not building Threads for Facebook is not meaningless. For
once can people look out for the future, keep the window open for
independence for writers and developers, and let us try out some new
ideas that might not be something Zuckerberg would love? Come on
already. This is the saddest moment, when there’s so much possibility,
and you all are ready to just throw it away. (And no, I don’t believe
for a minute they’re going to do anything that helps the Fediverse. I
know the playbook. Saying you’ll be open is what you do until you
dominate, then it’s just business. Truth is it’s always just business,
and saying you’re going to be open at this stage of network development
is good for business.)
http://scripting.com/2023/12/11.html#a142747 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
If you develop one of the ideas I write about here, tell me about it!
Let me try it out. Lately there have been people doing this, but for some reason I don’t find out about the work until it’s too late.
What are people thinking? If I ask for something, there’s a reason – I want to learn from it.
I think programmers are shy. You need to stop doing that. 😄
And of course I’ll share what I learn here on my blog, of course.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/11/142016.html?title=generalNote Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
I
want to say this as loudly and clearly as I can. If we want independent
writing on the web to flourish, we need our own search engine, to help
us find each other, and build associations of writers, so we can
influence each other, and help developers create new tools for all
writers. Or simply to find something I wrote about 15 years ago, so I
can refer back to it. I really don’t have a good way yet to find stuff
I’ve written. It’s all there on the web, for crying out loud.
More important, we need to learn to work together, we do very very little of that. It’s amazingly difficult to get a new idea heard by other developers. This is a huge problem, it’s why we’ve always been dominated by big companies who don’t care about what we do.
Start with a search engine for bloggers. I’ll help. And let’s do lots of them, so no one can stand in the way of trying out new ideas.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/11/141811.html?title=workingTogetherForWriters Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: 404 Media Group
A man boarded a plane in Denmark without a ticket, ate two meals on the plane, and arrived at LAX with no passport and no record of him being on the plane. Everyone involved is very confused.
https://www.404media.co/no-record-of-russian-economist-who-flew-to-lax-without-a-ticket-didnt-remember-how-he-got-here/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/23/12/0043597-better-to-ask-directly-an Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
United Launch Alliance’s heavy-lift launch vehicle Vulcan Centaur is facing yet another delay after the company was unable to complete a Wet Dress Rehearsal on December 8.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/another_day_another_delay_for/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The LAist
Lek captures domestic life in L.A. influenced by her Cambodian American experience. Her work is currently showing in the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA exhibit.
https://laist.com/news/how-to-la/documenting-la-by-painting-intimate-spaces-meet-artist-tidawhitney-lek Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new analysis of the animals’ skeletal remains reveals a lack of sunlight and an inadequate diet
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-shows-ancient-egyptians-worshiped-baboons-but-gave-them-poor-living-conditions-180983391/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Visitors Bureau Korea hosted a 2023 GVB Travel Mart event and year-end party highlighting the successful recovery of the Korean market for Guam and their shared accomplishments.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gvb-celebrates-guam-korean-market-s-successful-recovery/article_0953bab0-93d7-11ee-b62e-9b67ea0902eb.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
Residents living in the area of Route 8 Biang Street to Canada Toto Road in Mongmong-Toto-Maite are advised to boil their faucet water.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/water-outage-prompts-boil-water-notice/article_b1ed18d0-97b8-11ee-a09f-4b45b8224d1c.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
Are Guam public school students college ready? That’s a question that’s difficult to answer with the data presented in the Guam Department of Education’s 2022-2023 Annual State of Public Education Report.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/report-lacks-baseline-for-student-achievement-in-public-schools/article_815dc082-9701-11ee-b87d-8f40e309ab18.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
Arnold Narruhn’s fatal injuries after a fight last year could not have been received by Branty Walliby, according to defense attorney Terrence Timblin.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/defense-victims-fatal-injuries-not-caused-by-branty-walliby/article_7abbc018-97c8-11ee-af04-23e0c7dd72ad.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
A man pleaded guilty to his involvement in a fight a year ago that resulted in the death of Arnold Narruhn.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/jerron-walliby-pleads-guilty-to-role-in-fatal-2022-dededo-attack/article_a3d2ba84-97c2-11ee-bd16-abb8ffbf5636.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero is back on Guam following a trip to the nation’s capital where she met with key representatives from the White House, Pentagon and Congress.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/governor-va-supports-clinic-gmh-co-locating/article_02227dd8-97d5-11ee-8d96-3311e450ec1e.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
The spokesperson for the Guam Memorial Hospital Authority said she misrepresented the number of obstetrician-gynecologists “privileged” at the hospital, but the number now presented has one doctor ready to file a complaint with the Office of the Attorney General.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gmh-now-says-they-have-15-ob-gyns/article_ebf6c5dc-97d4-11ee-b7da-930a308698ff.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
As the chair of the Guam Education Board understands, the Guam Department of Education has a $1 million outstanding water bill for George Washington High School. But in the latest financial report, it was not reported. The chair questioned why.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gdoe-checking-validity-of-1m-water-bill-at-gw-high-school/article_f2cee4ca-97c0-11ee-ba9f-4fcbc3fe498d.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
Bill 211-37 was introduced in the 37th Guam Legislature, which requires graduating high school seniors to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, as part of the clearance process to receive their diploma.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/new-bill-requires-high-schoolers-to-complete-fafsa-to-graduate/article_ee9a33b8-97c1-11ee-af78-231d355e5b77.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Before
moving on to this year’s BOTY, I thought HCR could help figure out how
we could move past merely reporting on Trump’s danger to democracy,
something that was clear going back to 2015, the news could start
reporting on The Resistance, what we’re doing to prevent the end of
democracy. And in order for that to happen, we have to do newsworthy
things for them to write about! We’re not doing that. It started out
well, with the
Woman’s
March on January 20, 2017, but that was it. We can and must keep
showing up, and I’m not advocating huge marches, I want to see
neighborhood-level marching. Once a month, rain or shine, we all walk
(if possible) or drive to our voting places, where there will be music,
food, people with ideas, dancing, whatever you like. Making civic
participation a regular thing. You go because you want to be there. Not
against something but for all of us. All we have to do is figure
out how this works, how to beat the drum, to get the ball rolling. The
idea is that if we got close to 100 percent voter participation, our
democracy would be in the best shape it’s been in probably since
inception. I had another idea that’s worth considering. We should all
wear the same button, just a picture, no slogans, an idea of what we
stand for as Americans. It could be an American flag, or it could be a
photo of
Martin
Luther King. The latter was my choice. People love the button, but
it didn’t catch on. If we all did, it’s omission would be noticed, and
we’d know there’s someone we should talk with about America and offer
them a free button, nicely, if they’ll put it on right now. Anyway, I’m
putting this out there again, and I’ll keep doing it.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/11.html#a135926 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: At least six were killed in tornadoes that ripped through Tennessee over the weekend • Severe Tropical Cyclone Jasper is intensifying off of Australia’s Queensland coast • Dubai’s air quality is “moderate” today.
It’s crunch time at COP28. The United Nations climate summit is officially scheduled to end tomorrow morning, but is likely to run over, as much work remains even after a weekend of intense talks and pleas for compromise. There is still no consensus on the language in the global stocktake on the future of fossil fuels – phase out, phase down, or otherwise. Any agreement to come out of COP must be unanimous, meaning opposition from just one of the nearly 200 countries participating can sink a deal. Oil giant Saudi Arabia has “flatly opposed any language in a deal that would even mention fossil fuels,” reports The New York Times, adding that Saudi diplomats have intentionally slowed and obstructed the negotiation process. The United States, India, Russia, China, and Iraq have all called for caveats or provisions to a phase out. This morning U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres returned to the conference and called for an end to the fossil fuel age. “Now is the time for maximum ambition and maximum flexibility,” Guterres said.
Activists
at COP28 call for negotiators to “hold the line” on ending fossil fuels.
Sean
Gallup/Getty Images
The “full-scale resistance” from oil producing nations and fossil fuel lobbyists at COP28 is a sign of panic, Germany’s climate envoy Jennifer Morgan tells Politico. Others echo her assessment:
COP negotiators are considering a historic call for phasing out fossil
fuels in the summit’s global stocktake. The Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is working hard to convince its
members – and the world – that this would be a mistake. Last week OPEC’s
leader
urged
members to reject any text that “targets energy i.e. fossil fuels.” Over
the weekend the group hosted a youth event at the conference “aimed at
convincing young people to support fossil fuels,” Reuters
reports.
About a dozen people attended.
Tesla’s Cybertruck is eligible for the $7,500 federal tax credit for 2023, according to Inside EVs. The all-wheel-drive (AWD) variant and the tri-motor Cyberbeast are both eligible for the incentive. But there’s a catch: The tax credit is only available for pickups that cost less than $80,000, which would disqualify the $99,990 Cyberbeast. And the AWD version just barely qualifies at $79,990, but deliveries won’t start until next year. Taken together, this means “there might be no tax credit for Cybertrucks right now, period,” Inside EVs says. And this is compounded by the fact that the EV tax credit system is changing on January 1, and “nobody knows which — if any — EVs will qualify,” writes Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo. “All signs indicate that the list of qualifying vehicles is set to shrink.”
Argentina’s top climate diplomat Marcia Levaggi insists that the country will remain part of the Paris Agreement, Reuters reports. The news follows the shock election of the right-wing candidate Javier Milei as the nation’s next president. Milei has a history of climate skepticism. He has called climate change a “socialist lie” and promised to withdraw the country from the landmark climate agreement. “Yet, since his victory three weeks ago, the self-described ‘anarcho-capitalist’ has begun backpedalling on some of his more contentious policies,” says The Telegraph. Milei is a former TV star with “striking” similarities to former President Donald Trump, from his wild hair to his affinity for conspiracy theories, writes The Washington Post. Trump infamously withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, only for the decision to be reversed by President Biden.
Three of the top 10 most-Googled news events in 2023 were hurricanes, according to Google’s annual Year in Search report. Other dominant topics on the list included war (between Israel and Gaza, and in Sudan), mass shootings (in Maine and Nashville), and the ill-fated Titan submersible. But extreme weather took the largest slice of the pie, with Hurricanes Hilary, Idalia, and Lee falling into slots 4, 5, and 6, respectively, on the global top 10 news list. When the list was narrowed to U.S.-based searches only, the hurricanes accounted for 3 of the top 5 searches. The Last Of Us, a TV show about a deadly fungus enabled by climate change, was the world’s most-Googled show of the year.
Trending
news events for 2023 in the
U.S.
Screenshot:
Google
Trends
The vast majority of the 4,813 wildfires that have occurred this year in North Carolina were caused by humans.
https://heatmap.news/climate/am-briefing-hope-and-panic-at-cop28 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Starting in September or so I start thinking about Blogger of the Year, a thing I do at the end of most years. Not too many people care, but it’s a good thing for me to do – to review what makes a blog the most interesting and valuable of the year, to me – obviously. We all should name a BOTY, or give out any award we feel is deserved. People think “well it’s just me and I don’t matter” – which is totally true, and is why you might as well pick someone. At least they’ll know you appreciate them. And it gets you to think about what you value, which builds over time to a better understanding of everything. Last year I chose Heather Cox Richardson, whose Substack site is a constant read for me. Every night an email arrives, at different times, and if I’m up and in the mood, I’ll spend a few minutes with HCR and it’s always illuminating. She was my choice last year because her writing re-kindled my interest in American history, and I started reading books on most slavery, something that was seriously missing from my NYC education, and is so important to who we are as a country.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/11.html#a134710 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
November: The Future of RSS.
http://scripting.com/2023/11/04/150632.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
There’s an interesting recent development in the world of feeds and blogs – blogs that are only feeds. Designed to be read in feed readers of all sizes and shapes. I have a few of these myself. My linkblog for example. Also, FeedLand provides an outbound feed to every user, which meets all the qualifications of a feed-only blog.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/11.html#a133756 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Intel is looking to new options for its future chips including 3D stacking of transistors to enable greater density, extending backside power, and use of gallium nitride for greater power delivery.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/intel_shows_off_backside_power/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Britain’s comms regulator is asking telecoms providers for updated guidance on how resilient their networks are, given modern society’s increasing reliance on digital services.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/ofcom_looks_into_higher_resilience/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
If 2023 is anything to go by, 2024 will see a continued wave of attacks on trans people, driven by politicians who believe they can weaponize our existence as a wedge issue to electoral success and victory in the “culture wars.” And if 2023 is anything to go by, I predict 2024 will continue to…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/too-many-news-orgs-adopt-right-wing-frames-about-trans-people/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Local news outlets continue to fight for their lives nationwide: The State of Local News 2023 report maps current news deserts in 204 counties and identifies hundreds more at risk. Like the nation, California’s local news ecosystem is fragile: In 2023, four of our 58 counties are without news outlets and 11 have just one,…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/more-public-funding-for-local-news/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
During the Thanksgiving break, while scrolling on X (formerly Twitter), I stumbled upon a post from Auntie Anne’s, the mall pretzel company. The post featured a greyed-out, grainy photo of a pretzel, accompanied by lowercase text that read: “are you ready for it?” are you ready for it? pic.twitter.com/HOw6C2G3nS — Auntie Anne’s (@AuntieAnnes) November 27,…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/news-publishers-find-their-brand-voice-on-social/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
2024 will be the year we focus more on durable, not disposable journalism. Have you ever researched and filed a story only to struggle to remember what it was about a day or two later? The flow of news is so rapid that if the people writing the stories can’t remember them, what do you…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/durable-over-disposable/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
It’s always fascinating to read all the predictions that come out this time of year, but they fall into three different types: predictions about things we think are going to happen, predictions about things we wish would happen, and predictions for things that we should actively do. I’m going to focus on the last one,…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/returning-to-a-contextual-focus/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The LAist
Steep slopes, weak rocks and water intrusion all make slides more likely.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/will-el-nino-rains-mean-more-palos-verdes-landslides Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-12, from: The LAist
The oil industry has a huge voice in this year’s climate talks. But what are oil companies actually saying? And why does it matter? We break down their pledges and statements into plain English.
https://laist.com/news/oil-firms-are-out-in-force-at-the-climate-talks-heres-how-to-decode-their-language Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The LAist
Worm composting became especially popular during the pandemic, but it’s never too late to get in the dirt.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/worm-composting-vermicomposting-how-to-get-started-guide Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The LAist
Drilling in Culver City’s portion is set to end in 2029.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/milestone-reached-in-inglewood-oil-phaseout Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Publishers are more skeptical than ever, and they should be. After a particularly harsh year of being burned by Big Tech, publishers will be forced to develop strategies to reduce their reliance on tech companies. They will finally see open source software as a competitive advantage, and the cheapest way to keep up with the…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/publishers-embrace-open-source/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Marketplace Morning Report
While affordable, accessible child care can help support a strong workforce, it can often be hard to find. As more companies may look to recruit and retain workers by offering child care plans — thanks in part by requirements tied to CHIPS Act funding — we hear how such an investment is playing out at one plant in Tennessee. Plus, what does strong consumer sentiment mean for the Federal Reserve’s last meeting of the year?
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/when-investing-in-workers-means-investing-in-child-care Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: OS News
The Unix philosophy of using compact expert tools that do one thing well and pipelining them together to manipulate data is a great idea and has worked well for the past few decades. This philosophy was outlined in the 1978 Foreword to the Bell System Technical Journal describing the UNIX Time-Sharing System: Items i and ii are oft repeated, and for good reason. But it is time to take this philosophy to the 21st century by further defining a standard output format for non-interactive use. ↫ Kelly Brazil This seems like a topic people will have calm opinions about.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138047/bringing-the-unix-philosophy-to-the-21st-century/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Bruce Schneier blog
It’s happened. Details here, and tech details here (for messages in transit) and here (for messages in storage)
Rollout to everyone will take months, but it’s a good day for both privacy and security.
Slashdot thread.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/facebook-enables-messenger-end-to-end-encryption-by-default.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Peoples CDC blog
This is the @PeoplesCDC weekly update for December 11, 2023! This Weather Report from the People’s CDC sheds light on the ongoing COVID situation in the US.
https://peoplescdc.org/2023/12/11/peoples-cdc-covid-19-weather-4/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Deno blog
Detecting changes in Deno KV with kv.watch makes it
easier to build real-time applications like newsfeeds, analytics,
multi-user collaboration tools, and more.
https://deno.com/blog/kv-watch Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Internet Archive Blog
In tracing her family history, Taneya Koonce discovered stories about her African American ancestors in records going back to the late 1700s. Many were enslaved. She followed the path of […]
https://blog.archive.org/2023/12/11/genealogist-uncovers-family-histories-with-help-of-internet-archive/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Javier Milei has been sworn in as president of Argentina and promised radical changes for the country. Also on the show: TikTok has announced an investment in Indonesian online shopping, and Swedish businesses are worried that a rise in gang violence could damage the country’s global image.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/argentinas-president-promises-economic-shock-treatment Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Security in brief The saga of 23andMe’s mega data breach has reached something of a conclusion, with the company saying its probe has determined millions of leaked records originated from illicit break-ins into just 14,000 accounts.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/in_brief_security/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
UK government may subsidize Brit companies working on low Earth orbit satellite connectivity projects - the aim being to support comms for remote parts of the country and boost the domestic satellite industry.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/uk_gov_seeks_approval_for/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Interview Monitoring biz VictoriaMetrics is relatively unusual in its field. It is yet to accept external investment, preferring instead to try to grow organically rather than being forced to through a private equity meat grinder by committing to grow by X every year until the investor exits.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/victoriametrics_interview/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Writing about Christmas in early November is weird, even for Rob Zwetsloot. But it had to be done in order to get it in the December issue of The MagPi, and it means we get to sprinkle some festive cheer over this week’s #MagPiMonday.
The post Christmas with Raspberry Pi 5 | #MagPiMonday appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/christmas-with-raspberry-pi-5-magpimonday/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PHOENIX (AP) — Shohei Ohtani’s jaw-dropping $700 million, 10-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers has some similarities to other contracts for the world’s biggest sports stars, including soccer icons Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, along with NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/sports/the-dodgers-gave-shohei-ohtani-700-million-to-hit-and-pitch-but-also-because-he-can-sell/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LAS VEGAS (AP) — The brand of football Minnesota and Las Vegas played on Sunday set the NFL back 16 years.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/sports/vikings-beat-raiders-3-0-in-lowest-scoring-nfl-game-in-16-years/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — C.J. Stroud is in the concussion protocol after injuring his head in the final minutes of the Houston Texans’ 30-6 loss to the New York Jets on Sunday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/sports/c-j-stroud-in-concussion-protocol-after-late-game-blow-in-texans-loss-vs-jets/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — Brock Purdy has an embarrassment of riches surrounding him on San Francisco’s high-powered offense. The way he is able get all of them the ball is making the 49ers a nearly unstoppable force.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/sports/samuel-scores-2-tds-purdy-throws-for-career-best-368-yards-as-49ers-beat-seahawks-28-16/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>BALTIMORE (AP) — Tylan Wallace caught the punt cleanly — no easy feat on this wet day — then slipped to his left, spinning away from one potential tackler and racing past a couple of more while barely staying inbounds along the sideline.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/sports/walk-off-wallace-ravens-punt-returner-goes-76-yards-for-td-in-ot-in-a-37-31-win-over-the-rams/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>One of Gov. Josh Green’s pledges on Day 1 in office was to provide more housing — a difficult task made monumental by the devastating Maui wildfires exacerbating Hawaii’s shortage of available and affordable places to live.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/hawaii-news/gov-green-marks-challenging-first-year-in-office-planning-ahead-to-2024/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The politically inspired impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has failed to produce any convincing evidence that Biden has committed the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required by the U.S. Constitution for the conviction and removal of a chief executive. So naturally Speaker Mike Johnson is proposing a floor vote, likely next week, to authorize the inquiry as a “necessary step.”</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/opinion/no-evidence-for-biden-impeachment-inquiry-no-problem-the-house-gop-doesnt-seem-to-care/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>As I watched the presidents of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania struggle last week to respond to harsh congressional questioning about the prevalence of antisemitism on their campuses, I had a singular thought: Censorship helped put these presidents in their predicament, and censorship will not help them escape.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/opinion/what-the-university-presidents-got-right-and-wrong-about-antisemitic-speech/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Litigation over wildfires that destroyed most of Lahaina and burned parts of Upcountry Maui is approaching an inflection point four months after the Aug. 8 disaster.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/hawaii-news/maui-wildfire-litigation-expected-to-surge/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will meet at the White House on Tuesday as the U.S. administration steps up the pressure on Congress to provide billions more in aid to Kyiv in its war with Russia.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/nation-world-news/zelenskyy-will-meet-biden-at-the-white-house-amid-a-stepped-up-push-for-congress-to-approve-more-aid/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LUKEVILLE, Ariz. — Gerston Miranda and his wife were among thousands of migrants recently arriving at this remote area on Arizona’s southern border with Mexico, squeezing into the United States through a gap in the wall and walking overnight about 14 miles (23 kilometers) with two school-aged daughters to surrender to Border Patrol agents.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/nation-world-news/smugglers-are-bringing-migrants-to-a-remote-arizona-border-crossing-overwhelming-us-agents/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — For the first time in Hayao Miyazaki’s decades-spanning career, the 82-year-old Japanese anime master is No. 1 at the North American box office. Miyazaki’s latest enchantment, “The Boy and the Heron,” debuted with $12.8 million, according to studio estimates.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/nation-world-news/miyazakis-the-boy-and-the-heron-is-no-1-at-the-box-office-a-first-for-the-japanese-anime-master/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump said Sunday he has decided against testifying for a second time at his New York civil fraud trial, posting on social media a day before his scheduled appearance that he “very successfully &conclusively” testified last month and saw no need to do so again.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/nation-world-news/trump-says-he-wont-testify-again-at-his-new-york-fraud-trial-he-says-he-has-nothing-more-to-say/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>In about an hour, 96 keiki found their perfect Christmas gifts during the third annual Heroes and Helpers event at the Hilo Target store early Saturday morning.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/hawaii-news/hilo-charity-event-draws-190-volunteers/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Battles raged across Gaza on Sunday as Israel indicated it was prepared to fight for months or longer to defeat the territory’s Hamas rulers, and a key mediator said willingness to discuss a cease-fire was fading.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/nation-world-news/battles-rage-across-gaza-as-israel-indicates-its-willing-to-fight-for-months-or-more-to-beat-hamas/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Biden administration plans to push states to boost oversight of the number of doctors, hospitals and other health providers insurers cover in Obamacare plans, under rules proposed in November.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/nation-world-news/biden-wants-states-to-ensure-obamacare-plans-cover-enough-doctors-and-hospitals/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Police are investigating a brush fire in South Kohala on Sunday that burned approximately 50 acres along Kawaihae Road, prompting its closure.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/11/hawaii-news/police-cause-of-south-kohala-fire-under-investigation/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Opinion Space junk grabs headlines. There’s a lot of space hardware alive and dead – 9,064 objects at the time of writing according to the Orbiting Now tracker – and cleaning it up at end of life is the focus of a number of bizarrely nautical technology proposals like sails, harpoons and nets, more at home on an 18th century whaling ship than Low Earth Orbit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/opinion_column/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Robert Reich on Substack
A frighteningly dangerous precedent
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/when-wealthy-donors-oust-university Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-11, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
ChatGPT exploded into public life a year ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/09/chatgpt-ai-pearl-harbor-moment-sam-altman Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Desktop Tourism When I speak to laptop-makers about their wares, they often admit that the benchmark in their field is the MacBook Air. Ever since its 2008 debut, Apple’s minimalist portable has been the standard others aspire to match, despite changing little from the formula of a gently tapering aluminum clamshell with screens of between 11 and 13 inches.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/macbook_air_15_2023_review/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1922 – Piru bank robbed, banker and daughter kidnapped. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-dec-11/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Guam Daily Post
Jamie John Nededog has been indicted with murder in connection to the death of 54-year-old Edwin Babauta Pirando.
https://www.postguam.com/news/nededog-indicted-with-murder-in-s-nta-rita-sumai-homicide/article_79f767a4-97f5-11ee-8a05-57e1f9319a77.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Who, Me? Heavens to Betsy, dear reader, are you back again? It feels like only a week since we last met in the corner of The Register we call Who, Me? to share the schadenfreude of a fellow Regizen’s misfortune.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/who_me/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: VOA News USA
SEOUL, South Korea — A U.S. F-16 fighter jet crashed in South Korea on Monday while on a routine training flight and the pilot was rescued after ejecting when the
aircraft experienced an “in-flight emergency,” the U.S. Air Force unit stationed in the country said.
The pilot was rescued in the Yellow Sea by the South Korean coast guard and returned to the Kunsan Air Base, the 8th Fighter Wing said in a statement.
The cause of the emergency was being investigated, it said.
The unit commander, Colonel Matthew Gaetke, said he was grateful for the pilot’s recovery and that he was in good condition, the statement said.
The air base located in the South Korean west coast city of Gunsan is one of the two main air bases used by the U.S. military in the country.
https://www.voanews.com/a/u-s-f-16-jet-crashes-in-south-korea-pilot-rescued-after-ejecting/7392596.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Computer ads from the Past
Ads from the East
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/second-look-ibm-jx Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The European Union (EU) on Saturday reached provisional agreement on the AI Act – a broad legal framework limiting how artificial intelligence can be used.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/11/eu_agrees_ai_act/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Greg Egan’s feed
My new story “Death and the Gorgon” has just been published in Asimov’s SF Magazine
https://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Bibliography.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Seminal first-person shooter Doom marked the thirtieth anniversary of its release on December 10, and co-creator John Romero marked the occasion by releasing new levels for the game and celebrating its role as the genesis of many IT careers.…
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date: 2023-12-11, from: Heatmap News
The future of climate-friendly air travel might lie in a 20-foot shipping container that was dropped off on the campus of the University of Sheffield in England in late September.
Inside the box is a system developed by Mission Zero Technologies, a London-based company, that extracts carbon dioxide molecules directly from the ambient air. University researchers purchased the tech for about $762,000 for a pioneering project to turn the captured carbon into e-kerosene, a fuel that’s chemically identical to what’s used in airplanes but is made without oil or gas.
On Monday, Mission Zero announced that this mini “direct air capture” plant is now officially up and running. It has the capacity to capture 50 tons of carbon dioxide per year. That’s tiny compared to the nearly 37 billion tons emitted by humans last year, but it’s sufficient for the university’s quest to demonstrate that jet fuel made from CO2 can be safe and sustainable.
“It is kind of a baby system, for sure,” Nicholas Chadwick, Mission Zero’s CEO told me. “But we think it’s delivering something quite unique.”
Courtesy
of Mission Zero
When it comes to safely propelling metal tubes weighing hundreds of thousands of pounds 40,000 feet in the air, without burning fossil fuels, there are two potential paths. We can use what are called sustainable “drop in fuels,” cleaner versions of jet fuel that are compatible with existing planes and engines, but still release carbon emissions, like e-kerosene. Or, we can re-engineer planes entirely so that they can be powered by hydrogen or batteries, neither of which would release any carbon.
The first path is much more viable in the near term. Today, small volumes of sustainable drop-in fuels are already in use. They are mostly made from animal fat and used cooking oils — often literally sucked out of the fryers of fast food restaurants. There’s also potential to make sustainable drop-in fuels from biomass, like algae, wood residues from the forest floor, agricultural waste like corn stalks, or purpose-grown crops like sugar beets.
But these resources are limited. “There’s only so much used cooking oil available in the world,” said Nikita Pavlenko, the program lead for aviation fuels at the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research nonprofit. There isn’t enough waste biomass either, he told me, and growing crops for energy competes with food markets and can lead to deforestation. This is why capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and using it to produce e-kerosene is so promising. “The amount of energy and CO2 available is theoretically much, much higher.”
Theoretically is the key word there. Even though the concentration of carbon in the air is high enough to warm the planet, it’s still relatively dilute, and requires a lot of energy to capture. To make e-kerosene, the CO2 has to be combined with hydrogen, which also requires a lot of energy to produce in a clean way. Then the gas mixture is put through a reactor that converts the gas into a liquid fuel.
“You’re kind of swimming upstream in terms of the chemistry and thermodynamics of it,” said Anu Khan, the deputy director of science and innovation at Carbon180. “And so it matters a lot where you get the energy from.”
Mission Zero’s technology is unique on that front. Whereas Climeworks and Heirloom, two other direct air capture companies that have plants operating today, rely on heat for their processes, the Sheffield project will run solely on electricity — in part from a solar array on site. Chadwick told me the system uses between three and five times less energy as a result, depending on how it is operated.
Courtesy
of Mission Zero
The company also has a unique business model. Climeworks and Heirloom
own and operate their own plants, and sell carbon credits to other
companies based on the amount of CO2 they remove from the atmosphere and
store permanently. Mission Zero, by contrast, is selling the technology
itself. Third parties can buy its shipping containers and use the system
to do whatever they choose, whether that’s storing the carbon
underground and selling credits, using the carbon to make fuels, or
something else.
Another benefit of Mission Zero’s tech, according to Chadwick, is that it is made from off-the-shelf parts with established supply chains. The company was able to deliver the project to the University of Sheffield within seven months of landing the contract.
Using carbon captured from the atmosphere to make fuel is one element of a larger vision that some climate advocates have for a “circular carbon economy.” If the carbon is captured and turned into products using renewable energy, the atmosphere will not be any worse-off.
Chadwick said the University researchers hope to develop a certification process to guarantee the fuel’s safety. The U.K. is in the process of introducing a sustainable aviation fuel mandate that will require at least 10% of jet fuel to be made from sustainable sources by 2030, and is considering an additional mandate for some portion of that to come from carbon and hydrogen.
“We’ve got to get started now if the scale is going to be there in seven years,” he told me.
https://heatmap.news/economy/mission-zero-direct-air-capture-saf-university-of-sheffield Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The Raspberry Pi project has released the first revision to its Hardware Attached on Top (HAT) spec, along with an update to the RPi 5’s PCIE handling tools.…
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date: 2023-12-11, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Seventy-five years ago today, on December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). At a time when the world was still reeling from the death and destruction of World War II, the Soviet Union was blockading Berlin, Italy and France were convulsed with communist-backed labor agitation, Arabs opposed the new state of Israel, communists and nationalists battled in China, and segregationists in the U.S. were forming their own political party to stop the government from protecting civil rights for Black Americans, the member countries of the United Nations nonetheless came together to adopt a landmark document: a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings.
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date: 2023-12-11, from: The Signal
After a flurry of communication, the Air Quality Management District is rescheduling a hearing board meeting over a violation alleging Chiquita Canyon Landfill didn’t disclose problems with its leachate-collection in a timely manner. An email Sunday morning from the agency’s director of communications noted the hearing was postponed to Jan. 9, without citing the reason for […]
The post AQMD moves hearing board meeting appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/aqmd-moves-hearing-board-meeting/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
AI In brief Google wowed the internet with a demo video showing the multimodal capabilities of its latest large language model Gemini – but some of the the demo was faked.…
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date: 2023-12-11, from: NASA breaking news
Mysterious features hide in near-infrared light Like a shiny, round ornament ready to be placed in the perfect spot on a holiday tree, supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) gleams in a new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. As part of the 2023 Holidays at the White House, First Lady of the United States […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-stuns-with-new-high-definition-look-at-exploded-star/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-11, from: Tilde.news
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date: 2023-12-11, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Wonders of nature A large log that’s been lying on our driveway for a while has suddenly sprung a surprise in the form of picturesque clusters of funghi. Quote of the Day “The men the American people admire most extravagantly … Continue reading
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date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: Daring Fireball
The three-day saga of an unauthorized iMessage client for Android.
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date: 2023-12-11, updated: 2023-12-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Microsoft last week announced price hikes for its software and services, with the biggest rises to be felt across Asia.…
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