News gathered 2024-01-09

(date: 2024-01-09 15:38:31)

From the Chiefs

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

The Fire Chiefs Association of Santa Barbara County (FCA) was disappointed to learn of the initial ruling provided by Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Geck.

The post From the Chiefs appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/from-the-chiefs/ Save to Pocket

Downtown San Jose housing tower rises to key milestone by topping off

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

A housing highrise perched along one of the gateways for downtown San Jose has soared to a new milestone with a topping off for the tower.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/san-jose-home-house-build-develop-real-estate-economy-downtown-top-off/ Save to Pocket

Lilbits: Gaming handhelds, mini PCs, and headsets of C

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

MSI may be the only company to announce a new handheld gaming PC at CES this week that features an x86 processor and support for modern PC games, but the MSI Claw isn’t the only handheld gaming device using CES 2024 as its coming out party. Two companies are making plays for the nostalgic gamer space. […]

The post Lilbits: Gaming handhelds, mini PCs, and headsets of C appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/lilbits-gaming-handhelds-mini-pcs-and-headsets-of-c/ Save to Pocket

Why Peyton Manning would love to play for 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

“It’s been no surprise to me the success he’s had, not only as a coordinator in Atlanta and now as a head coach. I think he’s innovative, he grinds, he works at it. It starts with their run game, but the stuff they do off their run game is unique.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/why-peyton-manning-would-love-to-play-for-49ers-kyle-shanahan/ Save to Pocket

VIA to host ‘Update Santa Clarita’ with mayor 

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

The Valley Industry Association is scheduled to host “Update Santa Clarita” with Santa Clarita Mayor Cameron Smyth at the Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook University Center at College of the Canyons on Jan. 19.  The event will have a lunch and will feature Smyth discussing some of what the city has been doing and what […]

The post <strong>VIA to host ‘Update Santa Clarita’ with mayor</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/via-to-host-update-santa-clarita-with-mayor/ Save to Pocket

Nominations being accepted for Man and Woman of the Year

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

News release  The Santa Clarita Valley Man & Woman of the Year Committee is inviting all local nonprofit organizations to nominate one man and one woman from the ranks of their dedicated volunteers to be considered as the community’s Man or Woman of the Year for 2024.   Selected honorees, one man and one woman, […]

The post Nominations being accepted for Man and Woman of the Year appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/nominations-being-accepted-for-man-and-woman-of-the-year/ Save to Pocket

San Jose City Council honors “Mr. Roadshow” Gary Richards at meeting

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

The council adjourned its first meeting of 2024 in honor of the late columnist, but there might be a better way to remember him in San Jose.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/san-jose-city-council-honors-mr-roadshow-gary-richards-at-meeting/ Save to Pocket

San Jose is trying to make sure its pot shops don’t go up in smoke

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

San Jose is trying to make sure its pot shops don’t go up in smoke

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/san-jose-is-trying-to-make-sure-its-pot-shops-dont-go-up-in-smoke/ Save to Pocket

Hey Calendar App Is Now in the App Store

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Daring Fireball

https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-approves-the-hey-calendar-c76ebd9c Save to Pocket

State study: Gas tax funds to drop by $6 billion with EV transition

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

By Alejandro Lazo CalMatters Climate Reporter  California’s funding from gas taxes will drop by nearly $6 billion in the next decade due to the state’s electric car rules and other climate programs, “likely resulting in a decline in highway conditions for drivers,” according to a new state analysis released in December.  As California phases in major […]

The post State study: Gas tax funds to drop by $6 billion with EV transition appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/state-study-gas-tax-funds-to-drop-by-6-billion-with-ev-transition/ Save to Pocket

Robotic “moving sidewalk” shoes — what could possibly go wrong? Like an…

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/0043751-robotic-moving-sidewalk-s Save to Pocket

Honda unveils a new line of electric cars

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

The two Honda 0 series concept vehicles are called the Saloon and the Space-Hub. In automotive terms, saloon is another word for sedan that is more commonly used in British English. The Saloon concept looks more like hatchback, though, with a low, smooth outline ending in a blunt back end.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/honda-unveils-a-new-line-of-electric-cars/ Save to Pocket

X’s 2024 plans include peer-to-peer payments in app push

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Ex-Twitter isn’t exactly rolling in cash - has anyone thought about how much it’ll cost to run all that new stuff?

Peer-to-peer payments, AI integration, additional exposure to stuff you hate, and more: That’s what’s coming to the site formerly known as Twitter in 2024, according to statement today.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/xs_2024_plans/ Save to Pocket

Bail, house arrest granted for suspect in Tupac killing

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

Court-appointed attorneys for Duane “Keffe D” Davis told The Associated Press after the judge’s decision that they believe Davis can post that amount. They had asked for bail of not more than $100,000 and noted for the judge that the demands of preparing a defense based on two decades of evidence may require a postponement of the current June trial date.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/bail-house-arrest-granted-for-suspect-in-tupac-killing/ Save to Pocket

US Lawmakers Back in Session, Working on Border Security, Ukraine Aid

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers came back into session this week after a three-week holiday break to continue work toward a deal on border security in return for Republican votes to send more aid to Ukraine.

“We are closer to an agreement than we have been since the beginning of these talks,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, one of the lead negotiators on the deal, told reporters Tuesday.

“I wish that we weren’t in this position. I wish that Senate Republicans supported Ukraine aid because they believe in Ukraine,” he said. “I wish that we weren’t conditioning support for Ukraine upon the resolution of the most difficult issue in American politics — immigration reform.”

The White House’s $106 billion national security supplemental request also includes funding for border security as well as nearly $14 billion in aid to Israel and funding for Taiwan to combat the threat posed by China.

Senate negotiators continued meeting remotely throughout the three weeks Congress was out of session.

“We are working very hard to come up with an agreement to improve our situation at the border. But it’s also important to remember the world is literally at war,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “This is the most serious international situation we have faced since the Berlin Wall came down. We need to pass the supplemental, and there needs to be a strong border provision part of it.”

The United States has dedicated more than $100 billion to arming and supporting Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and President Joe Biden has asked Congress to approve an additional $60 billion. Republicans in Congress have become increasingly skeptical about the need to continue underwriting Ukraine’s defense.

The Pentagon announced on December 27 a new $250 million security assistance package for Ukraine, which included additional munitions for surface-to-air missiles systems, artillery rounds and more air defense components. The Pentagon still has $4 billion available to provide Ukraine with military aid, but no funds are available to replenish the U.S. military’s stockpiles. Officials tell VOA that no new aid packages are expected until Congress provides more funding.

Republicans in the Senate have conditioned approval of any additional money for Ukraine on the simultaneous strengthening of immigration rules aimed at reducing the number of people illegally entering the United States at its southern border and expelling some who are already in the country.

According to multiple news organizations, an estimated 300,000 people crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in December 2023. That estimate marks the highest recorded number of U.S.-Mexico border crossings.

Even if an agreement passes in the Senate, it might not survive in the House, where Republicans hold a very narrow majority. A significant group of Republican House members oppose additional aid to Ukraine, and the party in early October voted out a speaker who partnered with Democrats to pass legislation.

Last week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson led a delegation of 60 House Republicans to visit the U.S.-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Texas.

“If President Biden wants a supplemental spending bill focused on national security, it better begin with defending America’s national security,” Johnson told reporters at a news conference on the border.

Republicans have proposed their own legislation, H.R. 2, which would resume construction of a border wall as well as impose new restrictions on asylum-seekers.

VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb contributed reporting.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-lawmakers-back-in-session-working-on-border-security-ukraine-aid/7433213.html Save to Pocket

Canyon Country man, 21, charged after investigation into alleged relationship with teen 

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

Prosecutors filed four felony charges this week against a Canyon Country man arrested after deputies reported obtaining a copy of a sex tape he allegedly made with a minor.   Sebastian Andres Delgado Barrera, 21, pleaded not guilty Friday to two counts of oral copulation with a minor, unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor more than […]

The post Canyon Country man, 21, charged after investigation into alleged relationship with teen  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/canyon-country-man-21-charged-after-investigation-into-alleged-relationship-with-teen/ Save to Pocket

The Story Continues: Announcing Version 14 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

date: 2024-01-09, from: Stephen Wolfram blog

Version 14.0 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica is available immediately both on the desktop and in the cloud. See also more detailed information on Version 13.1, Version 13.2 and Version 13.3. Building Something Greater and Greater… for 35 Years and Counting Today we celebrate a new waypoint on our journey of nearly four decades with […]

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2024/01/the-story-continues-announcing-version-14-of-wolfram-language-and-mathematica/ Save to Pocket

Sale closed in Saratoga: $4.5 million for a five-bedroom home

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

A 3,027-square-foot house built in 1996 has changed hands. The spacious property located in the 18900 block of Bellgrove Circle in Saratoga was sold on Dec. 18, 2023. The $4,450,000 purchase price works out to $1,470 per square foot.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/sale-closed-in-saratoga-4-5-million-for-a-five-bedroom-home/ Save to Pocket

City announces new exhibit, ‘Transcendence’

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

News release  The city of Santa Clarita has announced the opening of its latest art exhibition, “Transcendence: Breaking Boundaries,” in the First Floor Gallery within Santa Clarita City Hall, 23920 Valencia Blvd.   This showcase will run from Jan. 12 through March 6, with a special reception event planned for Friday, Jan. 19, from 6 to […]

The post City announces new exhibit, ‘Transcendence’ appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/city-announces-new-exhibit-transcendence/ Save to Pocket

New year, more bugs in Windows, Adobe, Android to be fixed

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Nothing under exploit… Is this the calm before the storm?

Patch Tuesday  Microsoft rang in the New Year with a relatively calm Patch Tuesday: Just 49 Windows security updates including fixes for two critical-rated bugs, plus four high-severity Chrome flaws in Microsoft Edge.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/january_patch_tuesday/ Save to Pocket

The East Coast and Midwest Are Going to Need More Electricity

date: 2024-01-09, from: Heatmap News

We’re gonna need a bigger electricity generation system. That’s what PJM Interconnection, the massive electricity market spanning 13 states on the East Coast and in the Midwest, said in a report Monday.

PJM predicted that its peak electricity demand would increase every year by 1.7% in the summer and 2% in the winter. It also anticipates overall energy use to grow 2.4% annually over the next decade — an increase of 200,000 gigawatt-hours, or roughly 25%, by 2034.

That increase in demand is also about three times a previous forecast, according to Utility Dive. PJM attributes the big jump to a few factors, calling out specifically data centers, new manufacturing plants, and more electrification, especially of transportation.

The PJM forecast provides a case study for the challenges the Biden administration faces as it pursues the twin goals of lowering emissions and decarbonizing the electricity sector, along with trying to revive American manufacturing.

In order to reduce emissions, you can’t just replace fossil fuel-burning power plants with renewable and non-carbon energy sources. Everything else that emits carbon has to be decarbonized as well, including transportation, which makes up about 30% of emissions.

But doing this increases demand for electricity — a car that used to be powered by igniting gasoline is now powered by a battery that has to be charged. Electrification will put even more pressure on non-carbon power generation: not only do some combination of solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear power plants, dams and steam have to replace existing electricity demand, it has to make up for that new demand as well.

While there are ways to moderate this demand — you can pay consumers to use less electricity at peak times and have electric car batteries work as power supply for homes, for example — a world where electric power replaces combustion will mean we need to find more electricity.

That’s no small task. There are about 500,000 electric cars in the PJM area and the projection is that there will be 23 million by the end of the next decade, while the number of medium and heavy-duty electric vehicles will increase from 25,000 to 1.5 million, according to PJM’s forecast.

And then there’s new sources of electricity demand that have nothing to do with electrification, like, say, a new semiconductor plant outside Columbus, Ohio, being built by Intel or data centers in Maryland.

Right now, PJM’s existing electric load is serviced by a relatively dirty grid that’s over half coal and natural gas (although one third also comes from nuclear). PJM, like many electricity markets, has expressed worries about how retiring fossil fuel plants could impact the reliability of the grid as a whole. The new forecast “underscores the need to maintain and develop enough generation resources to serve that growing demand,” PJM’s senior vice president for planning Kenneth Seiler said in a statement.

https://heatmap.news/sparks/pjm-interconnection-forecast-electricity-data-centers-evs Save to Pocket

10 Years Ago: The First Operational Cygnus Cargo Mission to the Space Station

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

To replace the cargo and crew transportation services to and from the International Space Station following the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, the United States developed a novel approach to procure those services from American commercial entities. On Jan. 9, 2014, Orbital Sciences Corporation, one of two companies selected initially to provide cargo […]

https://www.nasa.gov/history/10-years-ago-the-first-operational-cygnus-cargo-mission-to-the-space-station/ Save to Pocket

A lovely world weather map….

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/0043750-a-lovely-world-weather-ma Save to Pocket

Barger Clarifies Protest Protocols for Brush Clearance Inspections

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger engaged L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony C. Marrone and officials from the county’s Department of Agricultural Commissioner/Weights and Measures during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting in a robust discussion to clarify facts about brush clearance notices that will be mailed out starting next week to newly identified property owners subject to inspections.

https://scvnews.com/barger-clarifies-expectations-protest-protocols-for-brush-clearance/ Save to Pocket

New Report Suggests Rise In Hate Crimes Fueled By Anti-Jewish Bias

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

A forthcoming report from Cal State San Bernardino takes in hate crime data reported to law enforcement in the nation’s largest cities.

https://laist.com/news/new-report-suggests-rise-in-hate-crimes-fueled-by-anti-jewish-bias Save to Pocket

San Jose: Man sentenced 25 years to life for killing Safeway clerk in Willow Glen

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

A San Jose man will serve 25 years to life in prison for killing a clerk at a Willow Glen Safeway store in 2022.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/san-jose-man-sentenced-25-years-to-life-for-killing-safeway-clerk-in-willow-glen/ Save to Pocket

In Memoriam Gerry McManigal 1942–2023

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Fans of Santa Barbara High School aquatics in the ’80s and ’90s will remember Gerry McManigal. The Santa Barbara paterfamilias,

The post In Memoriam </br> Gerry McManigal </br> 1942–2023 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/in-memoriam-gerry-mcmanigal-1942-2023/ Save to Pocket

Santa Barbara Congressmember Carbajal Calls for Humanitarian Pause in Gaza

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Salud Carbajal sponsors a House resolution that would “facilitate a surge in humanitarian aid and the release of the hostages” held by Hamas.

The post Santa Barbara Congressmember Carbajal Calls for Humanitarian Pause in Gaza appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/santa-barbara-congressmember-carbajal-calls-for-humanitarian-pause-in-gaza/ Save to Pocket

Asus ZenScreen Fold is a 17.3 inch display that folds in half, works in portrait or landscape

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

The Asus ZenScreen Fold MQ17QH is a portable monitor with a 17.3 inch, 2560 x 1920 pixel OLED display. But it’s a foldable display, which means that you can close the screen like a laptop for easy transportation or unfold it when you want extra screen space for your laptop, tablet, or other mobile devices. Asus says […]

The post Asus ZenScreen Fold is a 17.3 inch display that folds in half, works in portrait or landscape appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/asus-zenscreen-fold-is-a-17-3-inch-display-that-folds-in-half-works-in-portrait-or-landscape/ Save to Pocket

Nvidia’s G-Sync Pulsar is anti-blur monitor tech aimed squarely at your eyeball

date: 2024-01-09, from: OS News

Motion blur, when it’s not caused by slow LCD pixel transitions, is caused by “the persistence of an image on the retina, as our eyes track movement on-screen,” as Nvidia explains it. Prior improvements in display tech, like variable rate refresh, Ultra Low Motion Blur, and Variable Overdrive have helped with the hardware causes of this deficiency. The eyes and their object permanence, however, can only be addressed by strobing a monitor’s backlight. You can’t just set that light blinking, however. Variable strobing frequencies causes flicker, and timing the strobe to the monitor refresh rate—itself also tied to the graphics card output—was tricky. Nvidia says it has solved that issue with its G-Sync Pulsar tech, employing “a novel algorithm” in “synergizing” its variable refresh smoothing and monitor pulsing. The result is that pixels are transitioned from one color to another at a rate that reduces motion blur and pixel ghosting. ↫ Kevin Purdy for Ars Technica Cool technology, of course, but also another attempt by Nvidia to put Nvidia-specific chips inside monitors to cash in on royalties and tie people to Nvidia GPUs. Their previous attempt – G-Sync – was eventually thwarted, but they’re clearly trying again.

https://www.osnews.com/story/138242/nvidias-g-sync-pulsar-is-anti-blur-monitor-tech-aimed-squarely-at-your-eyeball/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

America, yeah! 😵‍💫

https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=oEKf7R0D1TZ7aNs7&v=LasrD6SZkZk&feature=youtu.be Save to Pocket

A guide to using Nix flakes the non-flake way

date: 2024-01-09, from: OS News

Flakes also are a symptom or cause of much intra-community strife between “pro-flakes” and “anti-flakes” factions, but this situation is at some level a sign of broken consensus processes and various actors trying to sidestep them, an assumption by many people that the docs are “outdated” for not using flakes, and the bizarre proliferation of flakes everywhere in blog posts or tutorials leading to a belief that they are required for everything. This post is about how to architect Nix projects in general, with a special eye on how to do so with flakes while avoiding their limitations. It tries to dispel misconceptions that can develop in such a monoculture. ↫ Jade Every time I hear about Nix and Flakes I feel like I understand all of it a little less.

https://www.osnews.com/story/138239/a-guide-to-using-nix-flakes-the-non-flake-way/ Save to Pocket

SEC Twitter hijacked to push fake news of hotly anticipated Bitcoin ETF approval

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Buy the hype, sell the, wait, what do we do now?!

Breaking  The SEC today said its Twitter/X account was hijacked to wrongly claim it had approved hotly anticipated Bitcoin ETFs, causing cryptocurrency to spike and then slip in price.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/sec_bitcoin_etf_hacked/ Save to Pocket

Iowa Caucus - Visual Explainer

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

On January 15, the 2024 U.S. presidential election season will officially kick off with the Iowa caucuses. Republican candidates including Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, and Vivek Ramaswamy will seek to unseat the current front-runner, former President Donald Trump, as the party’s eventual nominee to challenge incumbent President Joe Biden in November’s general election. (Produced by: Alex Gendler)

https://www.voanews.com/a/iowa-caucus—visual-explainer/7433166.html Save to Pocket

Passenger’s iPhone Survived, Intact, 16,000-Foot Fall From Alaska Airlines Plane

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Daring Fireball

https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Save to Pocket

Free Will Astrology

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Week of January 11.

The post Free Will Astrology appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/free-will-astrology-194/ Save to Pocket

Roman Imperial Cult Temple Unearthed Beneath a Parking Lot in Italy

date: 2024-01-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The pagan temple sheds new light on the empire’s gradual embrace of Christianity

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-discover-a-roman-temple-that-illustrates-the-empires-gradual-embrace-of-christianity-180983559/ Save to Pocket

Rabbit R1 is a $199 mobile companion with a simple UI and support for any app (thanks to AI)

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

The Rabbit R1 is a small, simple mobile device with ambitious plan: to change the way we interact with apps and devices. Available for pre-order for $199, it’s the first product from a startup called Rabbit, it’s a pocket-sized device with a 2.88 inch touchscreen display, a camera that rotates to face the front or […]

The post Rabbit R1 is a $199 mobile companion with a simple UI and support for any app (thanks to AI) appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/rabbit-r1-is-a-199-mobile-companion-with-a-simple-ui-and-support-for-any-app-thanks-to-ai/ Save to Pocket

Mustangs Now 2-0 in GSAC with Road Win

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Kamrin Oriol scored a career-high 28 points to lead The Master’s University men’s basketball team to a 102-91 win over the Vanguard Lions in Costa Mesa

https://scvnews.com/mustangs-now-2-0-in-gsac-with-road-win/ Save to Pocket

Photos: A’s manager Mark Kotsay chops price of California mansion by $1 million

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

The Rancho Santa Fe estate is now listed at $8.35 million. It features an elevator, home theater, dry sauna and an 1,100-square-foot separate guest quarters.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/photos-as-manager-mark-kotsay-chops-price-of-california-mansion-by-1-million/ Save to Pocket

Storms hammer nation’s midsection, bringing snow, tornadoes

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

From the Midwest, the storm was expected to head east, bringing a combination of snow, rain and strong winds to the Northeast by Tuesday night, as well as concerns about flooding in areas such as New England, parts of which got more than a foot of snow Sunday.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/storms-hammer-nations-midsection-bringing-snow-tornadoes/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Trump warns of ‘bedlam,’ won’t rule out violence after immunity hearing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/09/trump-comments-violence-bedlam/ Save to Pocket

Book Review | ‘The Suicide Museum’ by Ariel Dorfman

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Colossal mystery novel mixes historical elements, truth, and fiction.

The post Book Review | ‘The Suicide Museum’ by Ariel Dorfman appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/book-review-the-suicide-museum-by-ariel-dorfman/ Save to Pocket

NASA Ames Awards Task Order Modification for Wind Tunnel Upgrades

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

NASA has awarded a task order modification to the Aerospace Testing and Facilities Operations and Maintenance (ATOM-5) contract to Jacobs Technology Inc., of Tullahoma, Tennessee, to provide the agency’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, with an upgrade to the center’s Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel main drive speed control variable frequency drive.  The ATOM-5 […]

https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-ames-awards-task-order-modification-for-wind-tunnel-upgrades/ Save to Pocket

@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)

La Terminal, soon coming to a spatial experience near you:

https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111728009214945900 Save to Pocket

Driving a Hard Bargain

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: One Foot Tsunami

https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/01/09/driving-a-hard-bargain/ Save to Pocket

Santa Barbara City Hall Throws in Towel on Charter Height Limit for La Cumbre Plaza Housing Project

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Developers propose exceeding the city’s 60-foot building height limit by 16.5 feet for their 642-unit rental project at the mall.

The post Santa Barbara City Hall Throws in Towel on Charter Height Limit for La Cumbre Plaza Housing Project appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/santa-barbara-city-hall-throws-in-towel-on-charter-height-limit-for-la-cumbre-plaza-housing-project/ Save to Pocket

Europe’s monopoly cops suddenly rather curious about Microsoft’s $13B for OpenAI

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Redmond’s three Es strike again: Embrace, Extend… EU

Microsoft’s $13 billion investment in OpenAI is being checked by the European Commission to see if the deal runs afoul of the continent’s merger rules.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/ec_microsoft_openai/ Save to Pocket

Every Single Day of 2023 Was Extraordinarily Hot

date: 2024-01-09, from: Heatmap News

You have almost certainly heard already that 2023 was, officially, the hottest year on record. That announcement came this morning from Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth data service.

There was another figure in that announcement, however, that caught my eye: 2023 was also the first year in which every single day was at least 1 degree Celsius hotter than the pre-industrial average.

That is a marked contrast to 2022, our sixth hottest year on record, which had several days less than 1 degree above the pre-industrial average and a maximum temperature difference around half a degree lower than last year’s.

Just for kicks, I decided to make the same chart for 1940, the earliest year represented in this particular dataset. As you will perhaps notice, I had to adjust the scale to account for temperatures below the pre-industrial average.

The last time the global daily average temperature came in below the pre-industrial average, according to the Copernicus data, was October 8, 1992.

https://heatmap.news/sparks/every-single-day-of-2023-was-extraordinarily-hot Save to Pocket

SCV Water releases Popular Annual Financial Report

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

News release   The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency has announced the creation of the agency’s first Popular Annual Financial Report. The PAFR is a proactive publication that compiles comprehensive and complex financial information into an easy-to-use format for customers, the agency said in a news release.  “SCV Water is proud to set the standard for […]

The post SCV Water releases Popular Annual Financial Report appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/scv-water-releases-popular-annual-financial-report/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

How Trump’s Unhinged Immunity Demand Could Unleash a Second-Term Crime Spree.

https://newrepublic.com/article/177940/trump-immunity-second-term-crime-spree Save to Pocket

Daily Deals (1-09-2024)

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

The Epic Games Store Holiday Sale ends January 10, which means there’s less than a day left to score deals or use the Epic Coupon for 33% off. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something to play games on, Best Buy is selling the entry-level Asus ROG Ally for $400, which is one of the best deals […]

The post Daily Deals (1-09-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-1-09-2024/ Save to Pocket

See the ‘Adorable’—and Deadly—Black-Footed Cat at a Utah Zoo

date: 2024-01-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Eight-month-old Gaia is part of a breeding program for her vulnerable species, which is considered the “world’s deadliest cat”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/adorable-deadly-black-footed-cat-utah-zoo-180983560/ Save to Pocket

Hubble Finds Weird Home of Farthest Fast Radio Burst

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found a rare event in an oddball place. It’s called a fast radio burst (FRB), a fleeting blast of energy that can – for a few milliseconds – outshine an entire galaxy. Hundreds of FRBs have been detected over the past few years. They pop off all over […]

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-finds-weird-home-of-farthest-fast-radio-burst/ Save to Pocket

California Credit Union Offering Scholarships to SCV Students

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

California Credit Union is encouraging college-bound students in the Santa Clarita Valley to apply for its 2024 Student Scholarship Program.

https://scvnews.com/california-credit-union-offering-scholarships-to-scv-students-2/ Save to Pocket

Pentagon: Defense Secretary Austin was Treated for Prostate Cancer

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/pentagon-defense-secretary-austin-was-treated-for-prostate-cancer/7433046.html Save to Pocket

Person Killed in Car-vs.-Cyclist Collision on Hwy. 150 in Carpinteria

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

The crash occurred between Via Real and Highway 101.

The post Person Killed in Car-vs.-Cyclist Collision on Hwy. 150 in Carpinteria appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/person-killed-in-car-vs-cyclist-collision-on-hwy-150-in-carpinteria/ Save to Pocket

Cyber ‘Kidnapping’ Scams Target Chinese Students Around the World

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

WASHINGTON — A recent cyber kidnapping incident involving a Chinese exchange student in Utah appears to be part of an international pattern in which unknown perpetrators, often masquerading as Chinese police or government officials, target Chinese students around the world and extort their families for upwards of tens of thousands of dollars.

In late December, 17-year-old Chinese student Kai Zhuang was reported missing near Salt Lake City, only to be found days later alone and freezing in a tent in the mountains. Authorities have said the case was part of an apparent cyber kidnapping scheme to scam his family in China out of $80,000.

Cyber kidnapping is when perpetrators pretend to have abducted someone to coerce their family into paying a ransom.

“At the heart of it are the heartstrings of the victim, who is told to go run and hide, and the heartstrings of the people who think their loved one is actually in the possession of kidnappers,” said Theresa Payton, CEO of cybersecurity company Fortalice Solutions.

“Virtual kidnapping is, at its very root, manipulative. It is coercive. It is emotionally draining and complex,” said Payton, who is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

On January 3, just days after Kai Zhuang was found, the FBI issued a warning about criminals impersonating Chinese police officers to defraud Chinese people based in the United States, especially Chinese students.

Around the world

VOA has learned that the cyber scams aren’t targeting only Chinese students studying in the United States.

Over the past year, Chinese students studying abroad in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan have also been targeted by cyber kidnapping scams and other cybercrime schemes, VOA found.

In these countries, the perpetrators also often pretended to be Chinese police officers or government officials. Cybersecurity experts said this tactic indicates criminals are leveraging China’s authoritarian system, in which deference to and fear of the police are the norm, to their advantage.

“Chinese people are naturally afraid of the police,” said Han Jiang Du Diao Seng, a pharmacist based in the United States who runs accounts on YouTube and Weibo that are popular among Chinese exchange students.

Han Jiang Du Diao Seng has helped four Chinese students caught up in cyber kidnapping scams, he said. In his experience, he said, scammers posing as government officials tend to approach Chinese students and first ask if they recently received money from their family in China.

If the student says yes, he said, the scammer either claims the money was transferred illegally or that their family is being targeted by criminals, before requiring the student to halt contact with their family during an investigation — all of which is a ploy to then extort money from the family.

Left their homes

In the incidents Han Jiang Du Diao Seng worked on, he said, the criminals coerced all the students to leave where they lived and go stay at a hotel, which helped convince their parents that they were actually kidnapped.

He said that these criminals may be taking advantage of the fact that Chinese parents may be less likely to report the incidents to American police — in part due to language barriers but also due to general distrust among Chinese people of the American police. Chinese state media regularly depict American police as violent and irresponsible.

“You have a fear of government involvement and law enforcement involvement because the relationship to the government is different,” cybersecurity expert Joseph Steinberg said, referring to people from authoritarian countries such as China.

There is no clear data on the number of cyber kidnapping cases in the United States or around the world, cybersecurity experts told VOA, but incidents seem to be rising. Technological advancements, particularly with artificial intelligence, risk making the schemes even easier to perpetrate, they said.

There are different tiers of sophistication in these cybercrime syndicates, according to Payton. At the lower end, perpetrators may use an auto dialer to target random people in hopes of getting a few hundred dollars, she said.

More sophisticated schemes

At the upper end, perpetrators use artificial intelligence algorithms to identify targets and deepfake technology to create photos and audio intended to make victims believe their loved one has actually been kidnapped, Payton said.

“You do not actually have to be technically minded to get into this type of crime. You just have to be a twisted, evil individual,” she said.

AI advancements mean perpetrators don’t even need to speak the same language as their victims, according to Steinberg, who is based in New York City.

“AI is only going to get better, and that means that the attacks will only be more and more realistic,” he told VOA.

Some cybercriminals are just after a quick buck, Steinberg said. “But you have some that are after the big dollars and will spend the time to do the research,” he said.

That may help explain why Chinese exchange students apparently are being specifically targeted.

Payton said that given the complex relationship between the Chinese government and its citizens, as well as other factors such as culture, history and economics, “it is conceivable that global criminal syndicates engaging in such activities as virtual kidnapping may perceive young Chinese adults studying abroad as more susceptible to fall prey to this crime,” Payton said.

In Canada in February 2023, regional police said Chinese students had been swindled out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by scammers claiming to be Chinese government officials.

Similar incidents have played out in Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom. It is not clear whether the perpetrators of any of these crimes are linked in any way. The investigation into the recent Utah incident is ongoing, and it is not clear whether the perpetrators imitated Chinese officials.

China’s embassy in Washington did not respond to that question when VOA reached out for comment.

Warnings from embassies and police

The embassy did urge Chinese citizens in the U.S., especially those studying in the country, to boost safety awareness, take necessary precautions, and stay vigilant against “virtual kidnapping” and other forms of telecom and online fraud.

In the span of two months in Japan last summer, at least six Chinese students were targeted in cyber kidnapping schemes, local police said. The Chinese Embassy in Tokyo issued a warning about the scams in August, urging Chinese citizens in the country to “be wary” and “vigilant.”

Local British police issued a warning about cyber scams targeting Chinese students in September, and the Australian government released a similar warning a month later.

“These criminal syndicates demonstrate a profound understanding of human behavior, potentially leveraging fear tactics to manipulate individuals into compliance and their families into making payments. They are targeting all demographics, but the trend appears to indicate they favor targeting Chinese exchange students studying abroad,” Payton said.

To avoid falling victim to these kinds of schemes, cybersecurity experts recommended families set up a password to verify one another’s identity over the phone during these kinds of scenarios.

“The cyber kidnapping scam very much can happen to anybody, and that’s what people need to be aware of,” Steinberg said.

https://www.voanews.com/a/cyber-kidnapping-scams-target-chinese-students-around-the-world/7432998.html Save to Pocket

La NASA comparte avances sobre las primeras misiones lunares Artemis con tripulación

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

La NASA anunció el martes cambios en las próximas misiones Artemis, que sentarán las bases para la exploración científica a largo plazo de la Luna, el aterrizaje de la primera mujer y la primera persona no blanca en la superficie lunar, y la preparación de expediciones con seres humanos a Marte en beneficio de todos. […]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/la-nasa-comparte-avances-sobre-las-primeras-misiones-lunares-artemis-con-tripulacion/ Save to Pocket

Alaska and United Airlines Report Loose Parts in Boeing 737 Max 9 Door Panels

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/alaska-and-untied-airlines-report-loose-parts-in-boeing-max-9-door-panels Save to Pocket

NASA’s X-59 Rollout Embodies Aeronautical Tradition

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

Lee esta historia en español aquí. NASA’s X-59 aircraft is heading out of the hangar – preparing to embark on the first phase of its mission to fly faster than the speed of sound without generating a loud sonic boom. Leadership from NASA and prime contractor Lockheed Martin will officially unveil the fully completed and […]

https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/x-59-rollout-preview/ Save to Pocket

La presentación del X-59 de la NASA personifica la tradición aeronáutica

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

Read this story in English here. El avión X-59 de la NASA está saliendo del hangar–preparándose para embarcarse en la primera fase de su misión de volar más rápido que la velocidad del sonido sin generar un fuerte estampido sónico. Los directivos de la NASA y el contratista principal Lockheed Martin,  presentarán oficialmente al mundo […]

https://www.nasa.gov/es/la-presentacion-del-x-59-de-la-nasa-personifica-la-tradicion-aeronautica/ Save to Pocket

A Love Letter to Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross star in a benefit performance of AR Gurney’s famous play ‘Love Letters.’

The post A Love Letter to Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/a-love-letter-to-ensemble-theatre-company-of-santa-barbara/ Save to Pocket

US Delays Planned Return of Astronauts to Moon Until 2026

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

washington — The United States is pushing back its planned return of astronauts to the surface of the Moon from 2025 to 2026, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday.

Artemis, named after the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, was officially announced in 2017 as part of the US space agency’s plans to establish a sustained presence on Earth’s nearest space neighbor, and apply lessons learned there for a future mission to Mars.

Its first mission, an uncrewed test flight to the Moon and back called Artemis 1, took place in 2022, after several postponements.

Artemis 2, involving a crew that doesn’t land on the surface, has been postponed from later this year to September 2025, Nelson told reporters.

Artemis 3, in which the first woman and first person of color are to set foot on lunar soil at the Moon’s south pole, should now take place in September 2026.

“Safety is our top priority, and to give Artemis teams more time to work through the challenges,” said Nelson.

NASA is also looking to build a lunar space station called Gateway where spacecraft will dock during later missions.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has won the contract for a landing system for Artemis 3 based on a version of its prototype Starship rocket, which remains far from ready. Both of its orbital tests have ended in explosions.

Delays to Starship have knock-on effects because the spacesuit contractor needs to know how the suits will interface with the spacecraft, and simulators need to be built for astronauts to learn its systems.

And the Artemis 1 mission itself revealed technical issues, such as the heat shield on the Orion crew capsule eroded in an unexpected way, and the ground structure used to launch the giant SLS rocket sustained more damage than expected.

As of March 2023, NASA has agreed to pay approximately $40 billion to hundreds of contractors in support of Artemis, the same watchdog found.

A key difference between the 20th-century Apollo missions and the Artemis era is the increasing role of commercial partnerships, part of a broader strategy to involve the private companies in space exploration to reduce costs and to make space more accessible.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-delays-planned-return-of-astronauts-to-moon-until-2026-/7432974.html Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Trump team argues assassination of rivals is covered by presidential immunity.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4398223-trump-team-argues-assassination-of-rivals-is-covered-by-presidential-immunity/ Save to Pocket

Quotes from moving house

date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Rupert blog

I’ve moved house over sixteen times in my lifetime (more if you count step-homes). Apartment to house, city to city, state to state, country to country; I’ve done it all. I’ve even lived in a couple pseudo-communes with over 6+ roommates. Thinking back, I realized I have little phrases –some synesthetic little audio cues– attached to each major life change. Here’s a handful of my favorites.

“Always WATCH YOUR BACK.”

In 2003 I got accepted to JET Programme and would be moving to Japan for one to three years. You apply in December, interview in January, get accepted in April, and leave in July. It’s a sudden transition for an overseas move. In April I found out I’d be living in a small town called Sasayama in Hyogo Prefecture. It looked cute, had a castle, and the town’s website had an animated gif of a dancing mayor. Part of the JET Programme’s tradition is that your predecessor writes you a little note introducing the town and job before you arrive. In July I got an email and inside was the following phrase repeated seven times…

Always WATCH YOUR BACK.

Yikes. It’s two weeks or so before I board a plane to live in a country I’ve never even visited. Although self-evident by the tone of the letter, I later learned my predecessor had a hard time in our small town. She entered a relationship with another JET teacher and when they wanted to live together that caused a local stir where city hall got involved. That’s small town life for you.

What an ominous letter to get before you move overseas!

“Do you like breakfast?”

We rolled up to our house in South Austin in a bright yellow Penske truck. We trekked across the desert from California and would officially become homeowners that day. As we were unloading the truck a neighbor in her mid seventies stepped out to meet us. She was so kind and after some small talk she asked a question I’ll never forget…

“Do you like breakfast?”

And that began almost 9 years of weekly breakfasts at Dan’s Hamburgers with our neighbor Cleo. She’s more than a sweet grandmotherly neighbor to our children, she was their best friend. Every day my kids would wake up and demand to go see Cleo.

I also can’t forget our eighty year old neighbor Nellie’s big entrance after meeting Cleo. Fresh from cataracts surgery wearing a night gown and an eye-patch, she stumbled across her yard into the street to start giving us all the gossip we could ask for on the neighborhood. “That’s old Gene and his wife died…”, “She’s an old maid…”, and another line I’ll never forget…

Tread lightly with them over there…

About as Texan as it gets. We stayed in that house nine years and saw the street turnover. We outgrew our 2 bedroom/2 bath house, so we moved north in 2018. There’s lots to miss about the old place (big yard, proximity to Dan’s Hamburgers), but we miss our friend Cleo the most.

“We mow our lawns and decorate for Halloween”

When I introduced myself to my new neighbor in North Austin, she was friendly but a bit somber as she mentioned her husband passed away six months prior. She welcomed us to the neighborhood, asked about our kids, and then proceeded to lay out the two ground rules for the street…

We mow our lawns and decorate for Halloween.

I felt shame looking down at my unkempt yard. She handed me a business card for her mowers and I hired them that day. And she wasn’t kidding about Halloween. Our street is basically the street in the neighborhood for Halloween. We have a 9-foot tall inflatable Beetlejuice sand worm in our yard every October, so I like to think we’re fulfilling our neighborly obligations… but my yard still looks like shit.

https://daverupert.com/2024/01/quotes-from-moving-house/ Save to Pocket

Mac Liquid Detection

date: 2024-01-09, from: Michael Tsai

Filipe Espósito (via Hacker News): macOS Sonoma 14.1 includes a new system daemon named “liquiddetectiond,” which, as the name suggests, can identify when the computer has been exposed to liquids. More specifically, this daemon runs in the background to collect liquid detection analysis from each USB-C port on the Mac.[…]While Apple may eventually implement an […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/01/09/mac-liquid-detection/ Save to Pocket

SwiftData Fetching Pending Changes

date: 2024-01-09, from: Michael Tsai

Keith Harrison: If you don’t want the pending changes included in the fetch results you should be able to override the default by setting includePendingChanges to false in the fetch descriptor[…] Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to get that to work using iOS 17.2 (FB13509125). The pending change is always returned in the […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/01/09/swiftdata-fetching-pending-changes/ Save to Pocket

The Boeing 737 MAX and Alaska Airlines Flight 1282

date: 2024-01-09, from: Michael Tsai

Luke Bodell (via Hacker News): In August, the FAA issued an Airworthiness Directive (AD) warning MAX operators about using the engine anti-icing system in dry air. The AD came about following in-flight testing, which found that deploying the anti-icing system for longer than five minutes under specific conditions led to overheating and damage to the […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/01/09/the-boeing-737-max-and-alaska-airlines-flight-1282/ Save to Pocket

Is Objective-C BOOL a Boolean Type?

date: 2024-01-09, from: Michael Tsai

Juan Cruz Viotti: While BOOL might look trivial, its definition is rather complex. It depends on which Apple platform and architecture you are targeting, which can result in unexpected behavior. […] Recently, I stumbled into a case where for the same code, macOS Intel and macOS Apple Silicon invoked different overloads. […] As we can […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/01/09/is-objective-c-bool-a-boolean-type/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much Worse.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5y37j/thousands-of-software-engineers-say-the-job-market-is-getting-much-worse Save to Pocket

Asus NUC Pro and Pro+ mini PCs pack Intel Meteor Lake processors into 4×4 designs

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

The new Asus ROG NUC is grabbing a lot of attention this week as the first compact gaming PC from Asus since the company took over development, marketing, and support of the NUC brand from Intel last year. But it’s not the only new NUC system Asus is launching at CES 2024. The new Asus NUC […]

The post Asus NUC Pro and Pro+ mini PCs pack Intel Meteor Lake processors into 4×4 designs appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/asus-nuc-pro-and-pro-mini-pcs-pack-intel-meteor-lake-processors-into-4x4-designs/ Save to Pocket

What Happened When Solar Installers in New York Tried to Unionize

date: 2024-01-09, from: Heatmap News

President Biden’s pitch to get the American public behind the transition to clean energy is that it will bring good-paying, high-quality jobs — union jobs. But so far, that’s been more true in some areas than others.

When Daniel Lozano first got hired at EmPower Solar, a rooftop solar installation company on Long Island last April, he thought he had landed a pretty sweet gig. He was 24, with a background in electrical work and construction, and was attracted by the company’s summer schedule of four tens — four-day work weeks, ten hours per day.

But soon it became clear the job wasn’t as ideal as it seemed. Extreme pressure from management to finish installations as quickly as possible was wearing people down. Workers felt overworked and underpaid. An opaque bonus system and frequent firing and hiring created an atmosphere of anxiety. Vacation requests took months to approve. Lozano grew especially frustrated that his manager kept delaying his scheduled performance review — and therefore his prospects for a raise.

All the while, Lozano watched as the UPS Teamsters and the United Auto Workers were waging historic campaigns to try to increase pay for their workers. Inspired by their success, he began trying to organize at EmPower.

“We don’t want to be treated like dogs that are just pushed and pushed and pushed and then let go like used rags,” he told me. “We can make this a good place to work.”

The number of solar workers represented by a union has been creeping up over the last decade, reaching about 10.5% of the workforce in 2022, according to the most recent National Solar Jobs Census. By comparison, about 16% of autoworkers and about 48% of electric power line workers were members of a union that year, according to the Union Membership and Coverage Database, which is built on federal data.

But most union clean energy work is on big commercial projects like utility-scale solar farms, where developers have to pay prevailing wages, use apprentices, or enter into project labor agreements in order to qualify for state and federal subsidies. Union representation is much more unusual in residential work like rooftop solar, where rebates and tax credits typically have no labor requirements.

Residential construction is a fragmented industry, with lots of small businesses that employ only a handful of people. In some ways, EmPower stands out in this field. The company has a staff of more than 100 and offers full benefits like paid time off, health insurance, and a 401k retirement plan. But many of the complaints workers had about EmPower are common in the industry. A 2020 report by the California Workforce Development Board, for example, says that rooftop solar and energy efficiency jobs there “are characterized by low wages” and “lack of career ladders.”

The primary union for solar workers to date has been the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. But Lozano thought the group seemed stagnant — its leadership wasn’t out there the way that Shawn Fain, the progressive UAW president, was, fighting for its workers in the national spotlight, Lozano said. So instead, in September, he went to see if his local UAW chapter would represent EmPower workers. They agreed. Next, Lozano began gathering support from his coworkers and soon had enough to schedule an official vote with the National Labor Relations Board.

The company’s leadership did not welcome the organizing effort. In the weeks leading up to the vote, EmPower hired National Labor Relations Advocates, a strategy firm that promises, “within 24 hours of being retained,” to “arm you with the tools you need and bring our experience and 96% success rate in keeping our clients union-free.” According to Lozano and other workers, management began visiting job sites with coffee and donuts and asking about their concerns. They said the company was a family, and that any issues they had would be resolved more slowly with a union, not faster.

The workers weren’t convinced. On December 22, EmPower’s installers and service technicians voted 29 to 16 in favor of unionizing.

One week later, on the Friday before the new year, the company notified 21 workers — including Lozano — that they were being put on unpaid leave, some for more than a year. Michael DiGiuseppe, the vice president of UAW Local 259, accused the company of illegally retaliating against the unionization effort and filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board.

“One week out, we wanted to find collaborative bargaining priorities, and instead of doing that, they went out and laid off 21 guys,” DiGiuseppe told me.

EmPower said it furloughed the workers because business typically slows down in the winter, and the company took a particularly hard hit in 2023 due to soaring interest rates and inflation. (It is continuing to provide health insurance for those who were furloughed.) But regardless of whether the layoffs were retaliatory, they still violated the National Labor Relations Act, according to DiGiuseppe. Once workers have voted to unionize, an employer is not allowed to make any changes to the covered workers’ terms or conditions without notifying and negotiating with the union, even if the changes are pure business decisions. “At a minimum, they should have communicated with us that they were laying off workers,” DiGiuseppe said.

I spoke with three other field workers from EmPower, in addition to Lozano, who had been with the company for several years, and had also been furloughed. When I asked why they wanted to unionize, the workers, who requested not to be named, echoed many of Lozano’s grievances. They described an atmosphere of pressure to work fast, even in riskier situations, such as when they were installing panels on steeply pitched roofs or working with electrical equipment in the rain. They didn’t like that they were blamed, yelled at, and sometimes docked pay when things broke or went wrong. Many of their complaints were around compensation, including not being paid for travel time or for taking on additional responsibilities. One of the workers, like Lozano, was frustrated by performance review delays that left no clear pathway to a raise. Another described how the company awarded bonuses to workers based on their speed and adherence to safety protocols, but said the scoring system was mysterious and seemed to be inconsistent from job to job.

In general, the workers told me, they liked their jobs at EmPower and wanted to stay there, but were seeking more transparency, accountability, and standardization.

David Schieren, the CEO of EmPower and chairman of the New York State Solar Energy Industry Association, rejected the workers’ characterization of the company. When I asked about the pressure to work quickly, Schieren said this was the nature of running a customer-centric business. “We have one boss,” he told me. “The boss is the consumer. They tell us, do we want to work with this company or not? Are they happy or are they not?”

If workers were uncomfortable with the pace, Schieren went on, then maybe this wasn’t the right job for them. “We are hungry, we do efficient work, we’re productive,” he said. “So that’s what I think we promote here at EmPower. I think that a lot of employees feel that they thrive in that environment. Is everybody right for a highly productive company? I don’t know, maybe some people don’t want that.”

Schieren said the company had a track record of upward mobility, including promoting 20 field team members to leadership in recent years, and that workers had an average tenure with the company of more than 5 years. He declined to weigh in on whether he supported having a union at his company. When I asked whether he thought unionization threatened the business, he said no.

There is research showing that paying solar workers prevailing wages does not significantly increase the cost of solar. But there’s another calculus to consider in all of this, beyond the economics of any one company or technology. Proponents of unionization — including those in the federal government — say that making sure clean energy jobs are good jobs is essential to building the political will to address the climate crisis.

As we enter the next stage of the transition, where climate solutions like electric vehicles and wind turbines are becoming increasingly politicized and one bad power outage can invite endless litigation over the reliability of renewables, clean energy companies may want workers on their side.

https://heatmap.news/climate/rooftop-solar-workers-uaw Save to Pocket

Shohei Ohtani’s Record Dodgers Contract — And Deferrals — Has California Officials Talking Tax Reform

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

Ohtani’s 10-year contract pays him only $2 million a year, deferring $680 million until after his time with the Dodgers — and possibly his California residency — is over. If Ohtani collects that money after returning to his native Japan, California would lose an estimated $98 million in tax revenue from him.

https://laist.com/news/politics/shohei-ohtanis-record-dodgers-contract-and-deferrals-has-california-officials-talking-tax-reform Save to Pocket

American Moon Mission Suffers Fuel Leak, Has ‘No Chance’ of a Soft Landing

date: 2024-01-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Launched early Monday, the Peregrine spacecraft started losing propellant almost immediately, and the mission, which is carrying NASA scientific instruments, has been derailed

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/american-moon-mission-suffers-fuel-leak-has-no-chance-of-a-soft-landing-180983557/ Save to Pocket

SB Unified anuncia lista de candidatos para la vacante de miembro provisional de la junta directiva

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

SB Unified se complace en anunciar la lista de candidatos que serán entrevistados para el próximo nombramiento provisional de miembro

The post SB Unified anuncia lista de candidatos para la vacante de miembro provisional de la junta directiva appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/sb-unified-anuncia-lista-de-candidatos-para-la-vacante-de-miembro-provisional-de-la-junta-directiva/ Save to Pocket

SB Unified Announces List of Candidates for Provisional Board Member Vacancy

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

SB Unified is pleased to announce the list of candidates to be interviewed for the upcoming Board Member provisional appointment

The post SB Unified Announces List of Candidates for Provisional Board Member Vacancy appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/sb-unified-announces-list-of-candidates-for-provisional-board-member-vacancy/ Save to Pocket

Deepfaked Celebrity Ads Promoting Medicare Scams Run Rampant on YouTube

date: 2024-01-09, from: 404 Media Group

Joe Rogan, Taylor Swift, Andrew Tate, Steve Harvey, The Rock, and Oprah have been cloned by AI for scam ads that, in total, have been viewed more than 195 million times on YouTube.

https://www.404media.co/joe-rogan-taylor-swift-andrew-tate-ai-deepfake-youtube-medicare-ads/ Save to Pocket

Box truck collides with guardrail 

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

A Penske box truck collided with the right-side wall and guardrail Monday night on southbound Interstate 5 near the Highway 14 on-ramp, according to Officer Michael Nasir with the California Highway Patrol.  CHP and the Los Angeles City Fire Department responded to the solo vehicle collision at 7:23 p.m. A Sigalert was issued for three […]

The post Box truck collides with guardrail  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/box-truck-collides-with-guardrail/ Save to Pocket

A “Green Monster” Lurks in Star’s Debris

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

For the first time, astronomers have combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope to study the well-known supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). This work has helped explain an unusual structure in the debris from the destroyed star called the “Green Monster,” because of its resemblance to the wall in […]

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/a-green-monster-lurks-in-stars-debris/ Save to Pocket

While Hiding From the Nazis in an Attic, a Jewish Man Created 95 Issues of a Satirical Magazine

date: 2024-01-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine

An exhibition of Curt Bloch’s little-known wartime publications is going on display in Berlin

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/while-hiding-from-the-nazis-in-an-attic-a-jewish-man-created-95-issues-of-a-satirical-magazine-180983551/ Save to Pocket

Trump on Latest School Shooting: ‘Get over it’

date: 2024-01-09, from: Dan Rather’s Steady

You may have missed the headline because it has become so horrifically commonplace: children shot at school. The dateline was the small town of Perry, Iowa. Last Thursday, a high school student opened fire in his school cafeteria, killing one person and injuring seven before dying by suicide. We’re barely a week into the new year and already four,

https://steady.substack.com/p/trump-on-latest-school-shooting-get Save to Pocket

Los Angeles Times Editor Kevin Merida Is Stepping Down

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

In an email to staff, he announced his last day is Friday.

https://laist.com/news/los-angeles-times-editor-kevin-merida-is-stepping-down Save to Pocket

NASA Shares Progress Toward Early Artemis Moon Missions with Crew

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

NASA announced Tuesday updates to its Artemis campaign that will establish the foundation for long-term scientific exploration at the Moon, land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface, and prepare for human expeditions to Mars for the benefit of all. To safely carry out these missions, agency leaders are adjusting […]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-shares-progress-toward-early-artemis-moon-missions-with-crew/ Save to Pocket

Jan. 21: Violinst Paul Stein at Valencia Public Library

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Start the New Year off right with New Year Harmony, a program of classical music performed by Paul Stein, formally of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra

https://scvnews.com/jan-21-violinst-paul-stein-at-valencia-public-library/ Save to Pocket

The new Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is a 2.7 pound laptop with up to AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS or Intel Core Ultra 9 185H

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

The new Asus Zenbook 14 OLED line of laptops are thin and light notebooks with up to a 2.8K, 120 Hz OLED displays, all-metal bodies, and 75 Wh batteries that Asus says have been engineered to offer 20% more charge cycles than the previous-generation. Asus is also offering a choice of Intel or AMD processors, […]

The post The new Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is a 2.7 pound laptop with up to AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS or Intel Core Ultra 9 185H appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/the-new-asus-zenbook-14-oled-is-a-2-7-pound-laptop-with-up-to-amd-ryzen-7-8840hs-or-intel-core-ultra-9-185h/ Save to Pocket

Lucasfilm is doing a Mando movie: The Mandalorian & Grogu. It’ll be…

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/0043749-lucasfilm-is-doing-a-mand Save to Pocket

Asus Zenbook Duo (2024) is a dual-screen laptop with up to Intel Meteor Lake and a detachable keyboard

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

Asus has been sticking extra screens on laptops for years… but usually those screens don’t take up the whole keyboard area, allowing users to get a little extra screen space without sacrificing physical keys. But the new Asus Zenbook Duo (UX8406) is a little different, in that you can remove the keyboard to reveal a second full-size […]

The post Asus Zenbook Duo (2024) is a dual-screen laptop with up to Intel Meteor Lake and a detachable keyboard appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/asus-zenbook-duo-2024-is-a-dual-screen-laptop-with-up-to-intel-meteor-lake-and-a-detachable-keyboard/ Save to Pocket

Harvard University President’s Resignation Spurs Freedom of Speech Debate on Campuses

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

Free speech is a constitutional right in the United States, but it only protects against censorship by the government. Social media platforms, businesses and private schools can each have their own policies restricting certain kinds of speech. After the resignations of prominent university presidents, VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks into the debate over regulating speech on college campuses.

https://www.voanews.com/a/harvard-university-president-s-resignation-spurs-freedom-of-speech-debate-on-campuses-/7432826.html Save to Pocket

Private lunar lander Peregrine mission’s now measured in hours, not days

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

UK trumpets British tech aboard doomed spacecraft

The Peregrine Mission One lunar lander has just hours of power left before its ambitious mission will be prematurely terminated.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/peregrine_mission_now_measured_in/ Save to Pocket

5 Mistakes Stockbrokers Need to Avoid

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

For decades, the stock market has been the key to instant riches. Many aspiring people enter with high hopes. Soon enough, the majority leaves with empty pockets. Ever wondered why? Obviously, they couldn’t bear any more losses.  But why is it so that a minute percentage of traders succeed? The reason is simple yet ironic. […]

The post 5 Mistakes Stockbrokers Need to Avoid  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/5-mistakes-stockbrokers-need-to-avoid-2/ Save to Pocket

Half the World to Vote in 2024, With Global Ramifications

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

LONDON — 2024 will pose a major test of democratic rule as an estimated 4 billion people in more than 50 nations — almost half the world’s population — are set to vote in national elections, with the outcomes likely to shape global politics for years or decades to come.

Bangladesh began 2024 with the first major election of the year as Sheikh Hasina won a fourth consecutive term as prime minister Sunday. Opposition parties boycotted the vote over complaints that it was neither free nor fair.

A crucial presidential election is due to take place on the self-governing island of Taiwan on January 13. China’s threat to retake the island by force looms over the vote, with political parties divided on how to approach Beijing.

“We are not only choosing Taiwan’s future leaders to decide on the country’s future but also deciding on the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific region,” William Lai, the presidential candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, told supporters at a campaign rally earlier this month. Lai is ahead in the polls.

In February, Indonesia is set to choose a new president to rule the nation of 277 million people, making it one of the world’s biggest votes held on a single day.

Pakistan will hold parliamentary elections in February; opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan remains jailed on charges of leaking state secrets, which he denies.

Russians will vote in presidential elections in March — although observers predict incumbent Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win as he is able to control the electoral process and state media.

“Putin is not going to have any genuine opponents,” said Ian Bond of the Center for European Reform. “He has control of all the administrative machinery required to make sure that a crushing vote in favor of him is delivered and we get another six years of Putin up to at least 2030.”

Largest democracy

India — the world’s biggest democracy — will hold parliamentary elections in April and May, with the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ahead in the polls.

Veteran Indian political journalist Pushp Saraf believes the opposition will struggle to make headway.

“It all depends how united they are,” Saraf said. “Otherwise, if they stay disunited, as they appear to be many times, they have little chance of succeeding against BJP, which is organizationally very strong, and with Narendra Modi, who is riding high on the popularity wave, at least in the Hindi heartland.”

“These are very significant elections because there are clearly two opinions in the country at the moment. One is that BJP is polarizing society along the communal lines. And on the other hand, there is the opinion that BJP is focusing more on national security,” Saraf told The Associated Press.

On June 2, Mexico is due to hold its presidential election, which could herald a new milestone for the country, “because of the possibility that, for the first time, a woman will govern Mexico,” according to Mexican pollster Patricio Morelos. Mexico’s ruling party has selected Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, as its candidate.

The European Union, representing more than half-a-billion people, is set to hold parliamentary elections in June. Polls suggest a resurgence in support for right-wing populist parties in many countries, including France, Germany and Italy.

“There is a real possibility, I think, that the far right will do well in European elections. Not to the point of running the European Parliament, but conceivably to the point where anyone who wants to run the European Parliament has to take account of what they’re saying and doing,” Anand Menon, professor of international politics at Kings College London, told VOA.

Britain is scheduled to hold elections before the end of the year, with polls suggesting opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is on course to end a tumultuous 14 years of Conservative rule, with five different prime ministers.

“We had the Brexit wars that dominated everything, then we had COVID-19, now we’ve got the cost-of-living crisis. We’ve had government instability… the instability itself has become a political issue,” Menon said.

On November 5, the United States is due to hold a highly anticipated presidential election as Americans decide whether to give Democrat Joe Biden a second term as U.S. president or choose a Republican alternative, with Donald Trump seemingly his most likely opponent — although the challenger faces numerous legal hurdles in the run up to the vote.

Worldwide effects

The impact of many of these elections in 2024 will likely be felt around the world, said analyst Menon.

“Yes, all politics is local — but there are global trends. Immigration is going to figure a lot in many elections around the world. It will figure in the U.S. election, it will figure in the European elections, it will figure in the U.K. election,” Memon said.

“Insecurity will be a major factor. One of the things we’re living with in the West now is an increased sense of insecurity, both economic — but also in security terms, given the war that’s going on in Ukraine and given the doubts about what the Taiwanese election later this month might mean for Taiwan-Chinese relations.

“So, there are common factors, but those are refracted through the prism of the local and domestic in each country, so they play out in different ways,” Menon said.

https://www.voanews.com/a/half-the-world-to-vote-in-2024-with-global-ramifications/7432773.html Save to Pocket

This Brazilian fact-checking org uses a ChatGPT-esque bot to answer reader questions

date: 2024-01-09, from: Nieman Journalism Lab

In the 13 months since OpenAI launched ChatGPT, news organizations around the world have been experimenting with the technology in hopes of improving their news products and production processes — covering public meetings, strengthening investigative capabilities, powering translations. With all of its flaws — including the ability to produce false information at scale and generate plain…

https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/01/this-brazilian-fact-checking-org-uses-a-chatgpt-esque-bot-to-answer-reader-questions/ Save to Pocket

How to Make an AI Chatbot: A Practical Guide to Crafting Intelligent Conversational Agents

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

AI is the new thing. Everyone who is аnyone is mаking use of AI. But how ԁo you mаke а сhаtbot uр to the stаnԁаrԁ (or sometimes even better) thаn а nаturаl рerson? Nowadays, chatbots have become an integral part of our online interactions. Chatbots are everywhere, from customer support to virtual assistants, helping businesses […]

The post How to Make an AI Chatbot: A Practical Guide to Crafting Intelligent Conversational Agents appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/how-to-make-an-ai-chatbot-a-practical-guide-to-crafting-intelligent-conversational-agents/ Save to Pocket

Jan. 11: First Castaic School Board Meeting of ’24

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The governing board of the Castaic Union School District will hold a regular meeting on Thursday, Jan. 11, its first meeting of 2024.

https://scvnews.com/jan-11-first-castaic-school-board-meeting-of-24/ Save to Pocket

Massive Military Spending “A Theft From Those Who Hunger”

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/massive-military-spending-a-theft-from-those-who-hunger Save to Pocket

Micron’s LPDDR5x-based LPCAMM2 brings compact, efficient, modular memory to laptops

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

Less than a month after the CAMM2 memory standard was approved, Micron is introducing its first LPCAMM2 modules with support for 16GB to 64GB of space-saving, energy-efficient, and replaceable LPDDR5x memory. The company says it offers the compact size, energy efficiency, and speed of LPDRR memory, enabling the modules to be used in thinner laptops, […]

The post Micron’s LPDDR5x-based LPCAMM2 brings compact, efficient, modular memory to laptops appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/microns-lpddr5x-based-lpcamm2-brings-compact-efficient-modular-memory-to-laptops/ Save to Pocket

Sealed Indictment Shows Case Against Hacker Behind Massive T-Mobile Data Breach

date: 2024-01-09, from: 404 Media Group

A sealed indictment obtained by 404 Media describes the case against John Binns, who allegedly hacked into T-Mobile, stole 40 million user records, and then sold them.

https://www.404media.co/sealed-indictment-hacker-who-admitted-to-hacking-t-mobile-john-erin-binns/ Save to Pocket

Keeping it ‘661 Local’ at the SCAA Gallery

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Santa Clarita Artists Associations Gallery will showcase its first art show of 2024, “661 Local,” from Jan. 19 to Feb. 18.

https://scvnews.com/keeping-it-661-local-at-the-scaa-gallery/ Save to Pocket

FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program dangles by a financial thread

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

On the wrong side of the digital divide in America? The clock is ticking

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) warns it will start winding down the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) unless more funds are released to keep it going.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/affordable_connectivity_program_ending/ Save to Pocket

Recognition for a job well done, 1962

date: 2024-01-09, from: National Archives, Text Message blog

During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, communications personnel in the Department of State and at U.S. diplomatic posts overseas handling telegraphic communications went into overdrive.  In addition to the standard day-to-day telegrams flowing back and forth between the Department and its diplomatic and consular posts overseas, the communicators had to take care of … Continue reading Recognition for a job well done, 1962

https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2024/01/09/recognition-for-a-job-well-done-1962/ Save to Pocket

Lawyers Spar Over Trump’s Immunity Claim, but Judges Skeptical

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-duality-running-a-presidential-campaign-while-fighting-criminal-charges-from-2020-election/7432686.html Save to Pocket

US Navy officer swaps sea for cell after accepting bribes from Chinese snoops

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Petty officer Wenheng Zhao admitted to taking as many as 14 payoffs in return for non-public military information

A US Naval sailor will face more than two years behind bars after pleading guilty to taking bribes from Chinese spies in exchange for sensitive military information.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/us_navy_officer_china_bribes/ Save to Pocket

NASA’s Webb Finds Signs of Possible Aurorae on Isolated Brown Dwarf

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

Infrared emission from methane suggests atmospheric heating by auroral processes. Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in its upper atmosphere. This is an unexpected discovery because the brown dwarf, […]

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-finds-signs-of-possible-aurorae-on-isolated-brown-dwarf/ Save to Pocket

California sets special election date for House seat left vacant by Kevin McCarthy

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

Newsom scheduled the election two weeks after the state’s March 5 primaries.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/california-special-election-kevin-mccarthy-house-seat/ Save to Pocket

Pluralistic: Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars” (09 Jan 2024)

date: 2024-01-09, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog

Today’s links Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars”: Life in space sucks, is grotesquely expensive, and produces little useful science. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars” (permalink) In A City On Mars, biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith set out to investigate the governance challenges of the impending space settlements they were told were just over the horizon. Instead, they discovered that humans aren’t going to be settling space for a very long time, and so they wrote a book about that instead: https://www.acityonmars.com/ The Weinersmiths make the (convincing) case that ever aspect of space settlement is vastly beyond our current or reasonably foreseeable technical capability. What’s more, every argument in favor of pursuing space settlement is errant nonsense. And finally: all the energy we are putting into space settlement actually holds back real space science, which offers numerous benefits to our species and planet (and is just darned cool). Every place we might settle in space – giant rotating rings, the Moon, Mars – is vastly more hostile than Earth. Not just more hostile than Earth as it stands today – the most degraded, climate-wracked, nuke-blasted Earth you can imagine is a paradise of habitability compared to anything else. Mars is covered in poison and the sky disappears under planet-sized storms that go on and on. The Moon is covered in black-lung-causing, razor-sharp, electrostatically charged dust. Everything is radioactive. There’s virtually no water. There are temperature swings of hundreds of degrees every couple of hours or weeks. You’re completely out of range of resupply, emergency help, or, you know, air. There’s Helium 3 on the Moon, but not much of it, and there is no universe in which is it cheaper to mine for Helium 3 on the Moon than it is to mine for it on Earth. That’s generally true of anything we might bring back from space, up to and including continent-sized chunks of asteroid platinum. Going to space doesn’t end war. The countries that have gone to space are among the most militarily belligerent in human history. The people who’ve been to space have come back perfectly prepared to wage war. Going to space won’t save us from the climate emergency. The unimaginably vast trove of material and the energy and advanced technology needed to lift it off Earth and get it to Mars is orders of magnitude more material and energy than we would need to resolve the actual climate emergency here. We aren’t anywhere near being a “multiplanetary species.” The number of humans you need in a colony to establish a new population is hard to estimate, but it’s very large. Larger than we can foreseeably establish on the Moon, on Mars, or on a space-station. But even if we could establish such a colony, there’s little evidence that it could sustain itself – not only are we a very, very long way off from such a population being able to satisfy its material needs off-planet, but we have little reason to believe that children could gestate, be born, and grow to adulthood off-planet. To top it all off, there’s space law – the inciting subject matter for this excellent book. There’s a lot of space law, and while there are some areas of ambiguity, the claims of would-be space entrepreneurs about how their plans are permissible under the settled parts of space law don’t hold up. But those claims are robust compared to claims that space law will simply sublimate into its constituent molecules when exposed to the reality of space travel, space settlement, and (most importantly) space extraction. Space law doesn’t exist in a vacuum (rimshot). It is parallel to – and shares history with – laws regarding Antarctica, the ocean’s surface, and the ocean’s floor. These laws relate to territories that are both vastly easier to access and far more densely populated by valuable natural resources. The fact that they remain operative in the face of economic imperatives demands that space settlement advocates offer a more convincing account than “money talks, bullshit walks, space law is toast the minute we land on a $14 quadrillion platinum asteroid.” The Weinersmiths have such an account in defense of space law: namely, that space law, and its terrestrial analogs, constitute a durable means of resolving conflicts that would otherwise give rise to outcomes that are far worse for science, entrepreneurship, human thriving or nation-building than the impediments these laws represent. What’s more, space law is enforceable. Not only would any space settlement be terribly, urgently dependent on support from Earth for the long-foreseeable future, but every asteroid miner, Lunar He3 exporter and Martian potato-farmer hoping to monetize their products would have an enforcement nexus with a terrestrial nation and thus the courts of that nation. But the Weinersmiths aren’t anti-space. They aren’t even anti-space-settlement. Rather, they argue that the path to space-based scientific breakthroughs, exploration of our solar system, and a deeper understanding of our moral standing in a vast universe cannot start with space settlements. Landing people on the Moon or Mars any time soon is a stunt – a very, very expensive stunt. These boondoggles aren’t just terribly risky (though they are – people who attempt space settlement are very likely to die horribly and after not very long), they come with price-tags that would pay for meaningful space science. For the price of a crewed return trip to Mars, you could put multiple robots onto every significant object in our solar system, and pilot an appreciable fleet of these robot explorers back to Earth with samples. For the cost of a tiny, fraught, lethal Moon-base, we could create hundreds of experiments in creating efficient, long-term, closed biospheres for human life. That’s the crux of the Weinersmiths’ argument: if you want to establish space settlements, you need to do a bunch of other stuff first, like figure out life-support, learn more about our celestial neighbors, and vastly improve our robotics. If you want to create stable space-settlements, you’ll need to create robust governance systems – space law that you can count on, rather than space law that you plan on shoving out the airlock. If you want humans to reproduce in space – a necessary precondition for a space settlement that lasts more than a single human lifespan – then we need to do things like breed multiple generations of rodents and other animals, on space stations. Space is amazing. Space science is amazing. Crewed scientific space missions are amazing. But space isn’t amazing because it offers a “Plan B” for an Earth that is imperiled by humanity’s recklessness. Space isn’t amazing because it offers unparalleled material wealth, or unlimited energy, or a chance to live without laws or governance. It’s not amazing because it will end war by mixing the sensawunda of the “Pale Blue Dot” with the lebensraum of an infinite universe. A science-driven approach to space offers many dividends for our species and planet. If we can figure out how to extract resources as dispersed as Lunar He3 or asteroid ice, we’ll have solved problems like extracting tons of gold from the ocean or conflict minerals from landfill sites, these being several orders of magnitude more resource-dense than space. If we can figure out how to create self-sustaining terraria for large human populations in the radiation-, heat- and cold-blasted environs of space, we will have learned vital things about our own planet’s ecosystems. If we can build the robots that are necessary for supporting a space society, we will have learned how to build robots that take up the most dangerous and unpleasant tasks that human workers perform on Earth today. In other words, it’s not just that we should solve Earth’s problems before attempting space settlement – it’s that we can’t settle space until we figure out the solutions to Earth’s problems. Earth’s problems are far simpler than the problems of space settlement. As I read the Weinersmiths’ critique of space settlement, I kept thinking of the pointless AI debates I keep getting dragged into. Arguments for space settlement that turn on existential risks (like humanity being wiped out by comets, sunspots, nuclear armageddon or climate collapse) sound an awful lot like the arguments about “AI safety” – the “risk” that the plausible sentence generator is on the verge of becoming conscious and turning us all into paperclips. Both arguments are part of a sales-pitch for investment in commercial ventures that have no plausible commercial case, but whose backers are hoping to get rich anyway, and are (often) sincerely besotted with their own fantasies: https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/ Both AI and space settlement pass over the real risks, such as the climate consequences of their deployment, or the labor conditions associated with their production. After all, when you’re heading off existential risk, you don’t stop to worry about some carbon emissions or wage theft. And critically, both ignore the useful (but resolutely noncommercial) ways that AI or space science can benefit our species. AI radiology analysis might be useful as an adjunct to human radiological analysis, but that is more expensive, not less. Space science might help us learn to use our materials more efficiently on Earth, and that will come long before anyone makes rendezvous with a $14 quadrillion platinum asteroid. There are beneficial uses for LLMs. When the Human Rights Data Analysis Group uses an LLM to help the Innocence Project New Orleans extract and categorize officer information from wrongful conviction records, they are doing something valuable and important: https://hrdag.org/tech-notes/large-language-models-IPNO.html It’s socially important work, a form of automation that is an unalloyed good, but you won’t hear about it from LLM advocates. No one is gonna get rich on improving the efficiency of overturning wrongful convictions with natural language processing. You can’t inflate a stock bubble with the Innocence Project. By the same token, learning about improving gestational health by breeding multigenerational mouse families in geosynchronous orbit is no way to get a billionaire tech baron to commit $250 billion to space science. But that’s not an argument against emphasizing real science that really benefits our whole species. It’s an argument for taking away capital allocation authority from tech billionaires. I’m a science fiction writer. I love stories about space. But I can distinguish fantasy from reality and thought experiments from suggestions. Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2015 novel Aurora – about failed space settlement – is every bit as fascinating and inspirational as “golden age” sf: https://memex.craphound.com/2015/11/02/kim-stanley-robinsons-aurora-space-is-bigger-than-you-think/ But still, it inspired howls of outrage from would-be space colonists. So much so that Stan wrote a brilliant essay explaining what we were all missing about space settlement, which I published: https://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html With City on Mars, the Weinersmiths aren’t making the case for giving up on space, nor are they trying to strip space of its romance and excitement. They’re trying to get us to focus on the beneficial, exciting, serious space science we can do right now, not just because it’s attainable and useful – but because it is a necessary precondition for any actual space settlement in the distant future. Hey look at this (permalink) Polish Hackers Say Manufacturer’s Repair DRM Killed Train’s Power, Broke Compressor https://www.404media.co/polish-hackers-explain-exactly-how-they-fixed-trains-that-the-manufacturer-bricked/ The Great Interoperability Convergence: 2023 Year in Review https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/great-interoperability-convergence-2023-year-review The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/internet-future-about-to-get-weird-1234938403/ This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago TiVo’s new PC-viewing deliberately broken https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/09/tivos-new-pc-viewing-deliberately-broken/ #20yrsago Doc Brite’s “fans” lock him out of fan-board for his own fiction https://docbrite.livejournal.com/2004/01/02/ #20yrsago Why can’t Homeland Security tell the difference between Al Quaeda and small children? https://www.salon.com/2008/08/11/security/ #15yrsago China’s astroturf army http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7783640.stm #15yrsago Abandoned Prime Minister’s mansion in Beirut — infiltration photos https://www.flickr.com/photos/poisonbabyfood/sets/72157612306706777/ #15yrsago Mandelbrot the fractal teddy-bear https://web.archive.org/web/20090118205736/https://buttonsformouse.blogspot.com/2008/12/mandelbrot-fractal-bear.html #10yrsago Google Glass is a borg mullet https://web.archive.org/web/20140208050826/https://medium.com/the-nib/4ac09b78f0bb #10yrsago Insane Clown Posse and ACLU sue FBI over calling juggalos a gang https://www.techdirt.com/2014/01/08/insane-clown-posse-sues-fbi-calling-juggalos-gang/ #10yrsago When the FBI asks you to weaken your security so it can spy on your users https://www.pcmag.com/news/what-its-like-when-the-fbi-asks-you-to-backdoor-your-software #10yrsago Great Firewall of Cameron: the worst of all worlds for British parents https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/08/david-cameron-great-firewall #10yrsago Brilliant NSA scandal illustrations https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-the-us-almost-killed-the-internet/ #10yrsago More experts pull out of RSA conference https://jeffreycarr.blogspot.com/2014/01/nsas-10m-rsa-contract-origins.html #10yrsago Sardine in Outer Space: anarchic kids’ science fiction comic https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/09/sardine-in-outer-space-anarchic-kids-science-fiction-comic/ #10yrsago EU invites Snowden testimony https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25669448 #5yrsago Bell Canada asks Canadians for permission to harvest and sell their browsing, location, viewing and other data https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bell-customer-data-1.4969066 #5yrsago Medieval book opens six ways, revealing six different texts https://erikkwakkel.tumblr.com/post/74300240443/six-books-one-binding-heres-something-special #5yrsago Cambridge Analytica pleads guilty, faces the first in a probable series of criminal convictions https://www.thedailybeast.com/cambridge-analytica-pleads-guilty-in-uk-data-trial #5yrsago Samsung phone owners are upset because they can’t delete the Facebook app https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-08/samsung-phone-users-get-a-shock-they-can-t-delete-facebook #5yrsago Someone’s finally going to jail over the Panama Papers: a Turkish journalist who reported true facts from them https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/09/journalist-pelin-unker-sentenced-to-jail-in-turkey-over-paradise-papers-investigation #5yrsago A history of the sprawling personality clashes over RSS https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3mm4z/the-rise-and-demise-of-rss #5yrsago American towns survive by fining poor people, and use debtors’ prisons to make them pay https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/magazine/cities-fine-poor-jail.html #5yrsago LA school district prepares for teachers’ strike with army of expensive scabs https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-teachers-strike-staffing-20190107-story.html #5yrsago Serbia erupts in nationwide protests after assassination attempts prompt fears of fascist resurgence https://globalvoices.org/2019/01/09/belgrade-protests-against-serbian-president-aleksandar-vucic-escalate-to-nationwide-demos/ #5yrsago Saudi law now requires sending a text to women after their husbands secretly divorce them https://www.loweringthebar.net/2019/01/saudi-women-text-message-divorce.html 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: The Internet’s Original Sin https://craphound.com/news/2023/12/17/the-internets-original-sin/) Upcoming appearances: Speculating Our AI Future with Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ssyUYErCTB-rzEz_Vhc7cw#/registration Internet Con (Peculiar Book Club), Jan 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5UvzuJ1R4I Books & Books (Coral Gables, Florida), Jan 22 https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/ The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 30 https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html Recent appearances: What the Future will Bring (Homeless Romantic) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Vq8qW2A8I Talking “The Lost Cause” with Warren Mosler (MMT Podcast) https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-182-cory-95211955 Words of the Week https://youtu.be/mq0kSdzSjfc?si=zFMDsrXpHVqNGcb8&amp;t=5232 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/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/ Save to Pocket

MNT Reform - a hackable laptop, not for everyone

date: 2024-01-09, from: Jeff Geerling blog

MNT Reform - a hackable laptop, not for everyone

        <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><img src="https://www.jeffgeerling.com/sites/default/files/images/mnt-reform-hero-bottom.jpg" width="700" height="auto" class="insert-image" alt="MNT Reform bottom with purple battery cells" /></p>

The MNT Reform’s design, the components, everything—is open source. If iFixIt did a teardown, they’d probably give it an 11 out of 10.

You can replace individual battery cells! Some people with these laptops hacked in their own speakers, added more internal Ethernet, or even swapped out the CPU itself.

Does that mean I think you should buy it? No, probably not. It’s expensive (starting at €1199), and it’s built for a certain type of person. It’s not gonna replace a MacBook or a cheap Chromebook.

But why does this exist, and why am I excited about it?

Disclaimer: The reform used in this review was sent to me for testing; it’s already been shipped back to MNT Research. They haven’t paid me anything, and they have no input into the content of this blog post.

  <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>

January 9, 2024

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/mnt-reform-hackable-laptop-not-everyone Save to Pocket

Expert: Yes, Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift were gossiping out Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner at the Golden Globes

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

People close to Swift and Gomez have denied they were whispering about Chalamet and Jenner, but a lip-reading expert says otherwise.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/expert-yes-selena-gomez-and-taylor-swift-were-gossiping-out-timothee-chalamet-and-kylie-jenner-at-the-golden-globes/ Save to Pocket

‘Magical’ Error Correction Scheme Proved Inherently Inefficient

date: 2024-01-09, from: Quanta Magazine

The post ‘Magical’ Error Correction Scheme Proved Inherently Inefficient first appeared on Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/magical-error-correction-scheme-proved-inherently-inefficient-20240109/ Save to Pocket

Qualcomm CEO’s pay jumps 395% in slow year for phone chips

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

C-suite exec gets 223 staffers’ worth of pay after cyclical headwinds dampen consumer demand for kit

Qualcomm might have had a relatively rough ride in 2023 given the continued decline in smartphone chip shipments across the industry but its execs didn’t, at least not in terms of their pay awards.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/qualcomm_exec_pay/ Save to Pocket

Build a Cloud IDE for the Deno Subhosting Hackathon

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Deno blog

Details, prizes, submission guidelines, resources, and more about the Deno Subhosting Hackathon.

https://deno.com/blog/subhosting-hackathon Save to Pocket

Autonomous Vehicles: Trough of Disillusionment

date: 2024-01-09, from: David Rosenthal’s blog

Jeremykemp CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Cruise

Looking at 2023 in review for self-driving cars, one story stands out as the clear top story of the year, namely the fall of General Motors’ “Cruise” robotaxi division, which led to a pause of operations for Cruise over the whole USA, a ban on operations in California, the resignation of the founder/CEO and much more. That was actually the most prominent component of the other big story of the year, namely the battle between San Francisco and both Cruise and Waymo.

Even this serious mistake should not have and perhaps would not have driven Cruise to its fate. The bigger mistake was they did not want to talk about it. They were eager to show the car’s recorded video of events to the press, and to officials, but only over Zoom. They did not mention the dragging, even when asked about it. I did not ask to see the part of the video after the crash, but others who did see it say it ended before the dragging. The DMV states they were not shown the dragging, and Cruise did not tell them about it, including in a letter they sent shortly after the events. Cruise insists they did show the full video to the DMV, and the DMV insists otherwise, but there is little doubt that they were not open about what was obviously the most important part of the chain of events when it came to understanding the role of the robotaxi in the calamity. Cruise was very eager to show that the initial crash was not their fault, but didn’t want to talk at all about their own serious mistake.

GM’s self-driving taxi outfit, Cruise, has dismissed nine execs – including its chief operating officer – after staff withheld information regarding an incident in which a woman was injured by one of the firm’s robotaxis.

“Today, following an initial analysis of the October 2 incident and Cruise’s response to it, nine individuals departed Cruise. These include key leaders from Legal, Government Affairs, and Commercial Operations, as well as Safety and Systems,” a Cruise spokesperson told The Register.

“As a company, we are committed to full transparency and are focused on rebuilding trust and operating with the highest standards when it comes to safety, integrity, and accountability and believe that new leadership is necessary to achieve these goals,” the spokesperson added.

Cruise on Thursday announced internally that it will lay off 900 employees, or 24% of its workforce, the company confirmed to CNBC.

The layoffs, which primarily affected commercial operations and related corporate functions, are the latest turmoil for the robotaxi startup and come one day after Cruise dismissed nine “key leaders” for the company’s response to an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise self-driving car after being struck by another vehicle.

The company had 3,800 employees before Thursday’s cuts, which also follow a round of contractor layoffs at Cruise last month.

Right from the start, the hype far outpaced the technological advances. In 2010, at the Shanghai Expo, General Motors had produced a video showing a driverless car taking a pregnant woman to hospital at breakneck speed and, as the commentary assured the viewers, safely. It was precisely the promise of greater safety, cutting the terrible worldwide annual roads death toll of 1.25m, that the sponsors of driverless vehicles dangled in front of the public.

And that is now proving their undoing. First to go was Uber after an accident in which one of its self-driving cars killed Elaine Herzberg in Phoenix, Arizona. The car was in autonomous mode, and its “operator” was accused of watching a TV show, meaning they did not notice when the car hit Herzberg, who had confused its computers by stepping on to the highway pushing a bike carrying bags on its handlebars. Fatally, the computer could not interpret this confusing array of objects.

Until then, Uber’s business model had been predicated on the idea that within a few years it would dispense with drivers and provide a fleet of robotaxis. That plan died with Herzberg, and Uber soon pulled out of all its driverless taxi trials.

Wolmar describes how this Brave New World has stalled out. The big reason is that the world is too complicated. or to put it in Taleb-like terms, there are way too many tail events to get them into training sets for AI in cars to learn about them. The other issue, which Wolmar does not make explicit, is that the public does not appear willing to accept the sort of slip-shod tech standards of buggy consumer software. The airline industry, which is very heavy regulated, has an impeccable safety record, and citizens appear to expect something closer to that…particularly citizens who don’t own or have investments in self-driving cars and never consented to their risks.

Despite years of hype and progress in self-driving technologies, the widespread availability of robotaxis remains a distant reality. That’s due to a confluence of challenges, including safety, regulations and costs.

The last factor, in particular, is what has pushed China’s robotaxi pioneers toward more opportunistic endeavors. To become profitable, robotaxis need to eventually remove human operators. Though China recently clarified rules around the need for human supervision, taxis without a driver behind the wheel are allowed only in restricted areas at present. To attract customers, robotaxi services offer deep discounts on their paid rides.

Once the subsidies are gone and initial user curiosity wanes, who’s willing to pay the same amount as taxi fares for a few fixed routes?

Struggling to address that question, China’s robotaxi startups have woken up to the money-burning reality of their business.

One logical path to monetize self-driving technology is to sell a less robust version of the technology, namely, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that still require human intervention.

Deeproute, which is backed by Alibaba, significantly scaled back its robotaxi operations this year and plunged right into supplying ADAS to automakers. Its production-ready solution, which includes its smart driving software and lidar-powered hardware, is sold competitively at $2,000. Similarly, Baidu is “downgrading the tech stacks” to find paying customers on its way up what it calls the “Mount Everest of self-driving.”

“The experience and insight gleaned from deploying our solutions in [mass-produced] vehicles is being fed into our self-driving technology, giving us a unique moat around security and data,” a Baidu spokesperson said.

Tesla

A Tesla driving on Autopilot crashed through a T intersection at about 70 mph and flung the young couple into the air, killing Benavides Leon and gravely injuring Angulo. In police body-camera footage obtained by The Washington Post, the shaken driver says he was “driving on cruise” and took his eyes off the road when he dropped his phone.

But the 2019 crash reveals a problem deeper than driver inattention. It occurred on a rural road where Tesla’s Autopilot technology was not designed to be used. Dash-cam footage captured by the Tesla and obtained exclusively by The Post shows the car blowing through a stop sign, a blinking light and five yellow signs warning that the road ends and drivers must turn left or right.

It is typical of Tesla’s disdain for the law that, although their cars have GPS and can therefore know the speed limit, they didn’t bother to program Autopilot to obey the law.
…
Again, Tesla’s disdain for the safety of their customers, not to mention other road users, meant that despite the car knowing which road it was on and thus whether it was a road that Autopilot should not be activated on, it allowed Banner to enable it.

Nor have federal regulators taken action. After the 2016 crash, which killed Tesla driver Joshua Brown, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) called for limits on where driver-assistance technology could be activated. But as a purely investigative agency, the NTSB has no regulatory power over Tesla. Its peer agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is part of the Department of Transportation, has the authority to establish enforceable auto safety standards — but its failure to act has given rise to an unusual and increasingly tense rift between the two agencies.

The string of Autopilot crashes reveals the consequences of allowing a rapidly evolving technology to operate on the nation’s roadways without significant government oversight, experts say. While NHTSA has several ongoing investigations into the company and specific crashes, critics argue the agency’s approach is too reactive and has allowed a flawed technology to put Tesla drivers — and those around them — at risk.

The approach contrasts with federal regulation of planes and railroads, where crashes involving new technology or equipment — such as recurring issues with Boeing’s 737 Max — have resulted in sweeping action by agencies or Congress to ground planes or mandate new safety systems. Unlike planes, which are certified for airworthiness through a process called “type certification,” passenger car models are not prescreened, but are subject to a set of regulations called Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, which manufacturers face the burden to meet.

Tesla is recalling just over 2m vehicles in the United States fitted with its Autopilot advanced driver-assistance system to install new safeguards, after a safety regulator said the system was open to “foreseeable misuse”.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been investigating the electric automaker led by the billionaire Elon Musk for more than two years over whether Tesla vehicles adequately ensure that drivers pay attention when using the driver assistance system.

Tesla said in the recall filing that Autopilot’s software system controls “may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse” and could increase the risk of a crash.
…
Separately, since 2016, NHTSA has opened more than three dozen Tesla special crash investigations in cases where driver systems such as Autopilot were suspected of being used, with 23 crash deaths reported to date.

NHTSA said there might be an increased risk of a crash in situations when the system is engaged but the driver does not maintain responsibility for vehicle operation and is unprepared to intervene or fails to recognize when it is canceled or not.

Now, more than 2 million Tesla vehicles are receiving a software update to address “insufficient” controls to combat driver inattention while in Autopilot mode. Here’s how the recall unfolded, according to documents from Tesla, safety officials and reporting by The Washington Post.

Tesla this week agreed to issue a remote update to 2 million cars aimed at improving driver attention while Autopilot is engaged, especially on surface roads with cross traffic and other hazards the driver-assistance technology is not designed to detect.

But the recall — the largest in Tesla’s 20-year history — quickly drew condemnation from experts and lawmakers, who said new warnings and alerts are unlikely to solve Autopilot’s fundamental flaw: that Tesla fails to limit where drivers can turn it on in the first place.
…
Tesla has repeatedly acknowledged in user manuals, legal documents and communications with federal regulators that Autosteer is “intended for use on controlled-access highways” with “a center divider, clear lane markings, and no cross traffic.”

Last weekend, my Tesla Model Y received an over-the-air update to make its driver-assistance software safer. In my first test drive of the updated Tesla, it blew through two stop signs without even slowing down.

In December, Tesla issued its largest-ever recall, affecting almost all of its 2 million cars. It is like the software updates you get on your phone, except this was supposed to prevent drivers from misusing Tesla’s Autopilot software.

After testing my Tesla update, I don’t feel much safer — and neither should you, knowing that this technology is on the same roads you use.

During my drive, the updated Tesla steered itself on urban San Francisco streets Autopilot wasn’t designed for. (I was careful to let the tech do its thing only when my hands were hovering by the wheel and I was paying attention.) The recall was supposed to force drivers to pay more attention while using Autopilot by sensing hands on the steering wheel and checking for eyes on the road. Yet my car drove through the city with my hands off the wheel for stretches of a minute or more. I could even activate Autopilot after I placed a sticker over the car’s interior camera used to track my attention.

In the UK, Tesla will fall foul of the legislation introduced into parliament last month, which prevents companies from misleading the public about the capability of their vehicles. Tesla’s troubles have been compounded by the revelations from ex-employee Lukasz Krupski who claims the self-drive capabilities of Teslas pose a risk to the public. Manufacturers will be forced to specify precisely which functions of the car – steering, brakes, acceleration – have been automated. Tesla will have to change its marketing approach in order to comply. So, while the bill has been promoted as enabling the more rapid introduction of driverless cars, meeting its restrictive terms may prove to be an insuperable obstacle for their developers.

Tesla’s stock market valuation depends upon “misleading the public about the capability of their vehicles”.

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/01/autonomous-vehicles-trough-of.html Save to Pocket

As Bay Area evictions boom, whether tenants get lawyers depends on where they live

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

San Francisco provides all tenants facing eviction access to an attorney. Across the Bay, in Contra Costa County, it’s a different story. Two tenants’ stories show the difference a lawyer can make.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/as-california-evictions-boom-whether-tenants-get-lawyers-depends-on-where-they-live/ Save to Pocket

Day in Review (January 8–11)

date: 2024-01-09, from: Association of Research Libraries News

Last Updated on January 9, 2024, 4:14 pm ET Sign up to receive the Day in Review by email. Jump to: Tuesday, January 9 | Wednesday, January 10 | Thursday,…

The post Day in Review (January 8–11) appeared first on Association of Research Libraries.

https://www.arl.org/day-in-review/day-in-review-january-9-12-2/ Save to Pocket

“More people are carrying more debt for longer”

date: 2024-01-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report

Consumer credit jumped a whopping $23.7 billion in November, according to the Federal Reserve. That continues a trend of households struggling with high and rising prices, which is leading to a surge in debt and delinquencies. And it’s putting additional strain on families, especially lower-income ones. We’ll also preview what the December CPI might look like and hear why the song “Murder on the Dancefloor” is killing it right now.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/more-people-are-carrying-more-debt-for-longer Save to Pocket

What California’s Right to Repair Law means for fixing home appliances and more

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

How things may be different the next time a gadget or appliance breaks.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/what-californias-right-to-repair-law-means-for-fixing-home-appliances-and-more/ Save to Pocket

Half the World’s Population to Vote in 2024, With Global Ramifications

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

The coming year will be a major test of democratic rule as an estimated 4 billion people in more than 50 nations — almost half the world’s population — are set to vote in elections. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the outcomes will likely shape global politics for many years to come.

https://www.voanews.com/a/half-the-worlds-population-to-vote-in-2024-with-global-ramifications/7432561.html Save to Pocket

A Lesser-Known Psychedelic Drug Shows Promise for PTSD Treatment

date: 2024-01-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Ibogaine, derived from a central African shrub, has been used in rituals for two millennia. But in a small study, it appeared to reduce symptoms of PTSD among veterans

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-lesser-known-psychedelic-drug-shows-promise-for-ptsd-treatment-180983556/ Save to Pocket

Another airline finds loose bolts in Boeing 737-9 during post-blowout fleet inspections

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Someone please remind Boeing how to build airplanes … again

Both US operators of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft are finding loose parts in the aircraft during the latest inspections that were prompted by an emergency exit door plug blowout during flight over the weekend.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/united_alaska_737_loose_bolts/ Save to Pocket

A US couple bought a 400-year-old Italian tower on a handshake. Here’s what happened

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

The pair had long fantasized about buying a home in Italy, wistfully gazing at realtors’ windows during their many visits. But it wasn’t until 2016 that they began seriously pursuing this prospect.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/a-us-couple-bought-a-400-year-old-italian-tower-on-a-handshake-heres-what-happened/ Save to Pocket

How to buy Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations, and how to get it for free

date: 2024-01-09, from: Tilde.news

Comments

https://micahflee.com/2024/01/how-to-buy-hacks-leaks-and-revelations-and-how-to-get-it-for-free Save to Pocket

California rents dipped 1% last year, first drop since 2020

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

California was one of 12 of the 46 states and the District of Columbia tracked by ApartmentList’s pricing figures with declining rents last year. 

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/california-rents-dipped-1-last-year-first-drop-since-2020/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63402-you-are-entitled-to-your-opinion-but-you-are-not Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

http://scripting.com/2024/01/09.html#a151651 Save to Pocket

High school boys basketball rankings Jan. 9, 2024: Bay Area News Group Top 20

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

Archbishop Riordan moves up three spots, Campolindo climbs into Top 10 in updated high school boys basketball rankings.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/high-school-boys-basketball-rankings-jan-9-2024-bay-area-news-group-top-20/ Save to Pocket

Shooting victim found in East Oakland dies in hospital

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

A man died after a shooting in East Oakland on Monday night, police said.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/shooting-victim-found-in-west-oakland-dies-in-hospital/ Save to Pocket

Sinéad O’Connor’s cause of death revealed

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

The singer, 56, was found unresponsive at her home in London and pronounced dead at the scene. Her death was not considered suspicious.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/sinead-oconnors-casue-of-death-revealed/ Save to Pocket

Samsung Ballie is a smart home robot with a built-in projector and voice controls

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

Tech companies have been trying to make robots part of a smart home setup for years. Asus introduced Zenbo in 2016, but it never really took off. Amazon’s Astro has been around since 2021, but it’s still an invite-only device. This year LG is demonstrating a (sort of) bipedal robot at CES, while Samsung is […]

The post Samsung Ballie is a smart home robot with a built-in projector and voice controls appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/samsung-ballie-is-a-smart-home-robot-with-a-built-in-projector-and-voice-controls/ Save to Pocket

It’s not all watching transparent TV from a voice-commanded bidet. CES has work stuff too

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Fancy a Windows laptop that’s also an Android tablet or a mouse and keyboard powered by kinetic energy and solar

CES  Where can you find a voice-controlled luxury toilet seat and a transparent television set? The annual CES show, of course, where the world’s tech companies and others gather to show off the products they hope will catch the interest of buyers.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/ces_new_tech/ Save to Pocket

High school girls basketball rankings Jan. 9, 2024: Bay Area News Group Top 20

date: 2024-01-09, from: San Jose Mercury News

Sacred Heart Cathedral moves into Top 5, Los Gatos jumps into Top 10 in updated Bay Area News Group girls rankings.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/09/high-school-girls-basketball-rankings-jan-9-2024-bay-area-news-group-top-20/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

Twitter became a hairball. I first heard this term in speeches given by a tech exec, Scott McNealy, talking about a competitor’s product. A hairball is something a cat coughs up. Very undesirable. Of course, given enough time all software becomes a hairball. As you refine your understanding of how the product is being used, versus how you thought it would be used, all the new paths through the code and UI become more crooked and impenetrable by a human mind, because you still have to do all the things you did before, unless you start over. There often is value in starting over. Now is a good time to be thinking about bare-bones social web apps. People are open to new ideas. I miss the role Twitter used to play, I imagine other people do too.

http://scripting.com/2024/01/09.html#a145833 Save to Pocket

Texas Health Department Claims It Has Nothing to Do With Warnings on Porn From Texas Health Department

date: 2024-01-09, from: 404 Media Group

An age verification law in Texas demands that porn sites put up a warning from Health and Human Services about the dangers of porn. But the department claims it has nothing to do with it, and no records to show.

https://www.404media.co/texas-health-department-claims-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-porn-bill-age-verification/ Save to Pocket

It’s Miller Moss’ team

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The quarterback’s Holiday Bowl performance nearly guarantees him the starter role.

The post It’s Miller Moss’ team appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/big-ten-bites-miller-moss-team/ Save to Pocket

Television Time: Six sports media predictions for 2024

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

From Tom Brady’s return to the NBA’s freshest faces, how will the industry shake up?

The post Television Time: Six sports media predictions for 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/six-sports-media-predictions-for-2024/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I asked “Is news copyrightable” on various social web sites because people aren’t making a distinction between the expression and the underlying facts of news. If an AI bot reads a news article, and extracts the facts, then there’s no problem, because no one owns the facts.

http://scripting.com/2024/01/09.html#a144017 Save to Pocket

New York City Bans Vendors from Brooklyn Bridge

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

The new year has been tough for vendors on New York City’s Brooklyn Bridge, as new rules banning them from selling their goods on the span went into effect this week. Nina Vishneva spoke with some who wonder where they will go next. Anna Rice narrates the story. VOA footage by Vladimir Badikov and Elena Matusovsky.

https://www.voanews.com/a/new-york-city-bans-vendors-from-brooklyn-bridge/7432464.html Save to Pocket

COVID-19 infection surge detected in wastewater, signals potential new wave

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

US, Netherlands, Germany all show spikes, while the UK no longer collects data

US President Joe Biden declared the pandemic over in September 2022. Weeks into 2024, however, global data points to a surge in infections.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/wastewater_covid_surge/ Save to Pocket

Be a Burst Chaser and Witness the Most Powerful Explosions in the Universe!

date: 2024-01-09, from: NASA breaking news

Yes, the universe IS talking to you! Gamma-ray bursts, massive explosions visible from everywhere in the observable universe, are telling us something about how stars end their lives and how massive black holes form. Now astronomers are asking you join the Burst Chaser project to read the signals from these bursts and decode what the universe is […]

https://science.nasa.gov/get-involved/citizen-science/be-a-burst-chaser-and-witness-the-most-powerful-explosions-in-the-universe/ Save to Pocket

One suspect arrested in tourist’s death; 2nd suspect dead

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

One man suspected to be involved in the fatal shooting and robbery of a Korean tourist in Tumon last week has been arrested, while another is dead.

https://www.postguam.com/news/one-suspect-arrested-in-tourists-death-2nd-suspect-dead/article_6bbdc55a-aef4-11ee-8e43-d77826dc7a3a.html Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

A puzzle about ChatGPT. How can it get something right that both Wikipedia and journalism get wrong? Journalism often uses Wikipedia as a source, thus propagating its lies and mistakes. I think this negates the idea that they’re just scanning the news orgs to get their information. The method obviously is more sophisticated.

http://scripting.com/2024/01/09.html#a141434 Save to Pocket

HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Then the company cranked up the price of cartridges, complaint alleges

HP is facing a potential class action complaint regarding a firmware update that rendered its printers unable to use ink from any other supplier.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/hp_class_action_ink/ Save to Pocket

German farmers blockade Berlin with tractors

date: 2024-01-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report

From the BBC World Service: Farmers in Germany are blockading roads in protest of subsidy cuts, with more than 500 tractors and trucks parked by Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. Then, funding England’s student loans system is expected to cost the U.K. government an extra $12.5 billion a year. And “Murder on the Dancefloor” is near the top of the charts for the first time in two decades thanks to the movie “Saltburn.”

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/german-farmers-blockade-berlin-with-tractors Save to Pocket

RFP released for Simon Sanchez High School construction manager

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

Efforts to construct a new Simon Sanchez High School made a little bit of progress in the first month of the new year, with the publication of a request for proposals for construction management services. The procurement is said to…

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/rfp-released-for-simon-sanchez-high-school-construction-manager/article_b5fa1f32-ae87-11ee-8f2c-1b3e549778b4.html Save to Pocket

Man gets 9 years for strangulation, assault while on pretrial release

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

A man was sentenced to nine years in prison for strangulation and assault while on felony release.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-gets-9-years-for-strangulation-assault-while-on-pretrial-release/article_d6e9a36a-ae83-11ee-bdfd-1f5820c5953f.html Save to Pocket

2018 case ‘probably not going to trial’

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

A case in which a woman was accused in the death of her newborn daughter may finally be coming to a close after almost six years.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/2018-case-probably-not-going-to-trial/article_befec6f2-ae80-11ee-8ecd-a746aaef4138.html Save to Pocket

5 years to implement new GovGuam system

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

A new Guam Financial Management Information System will soon replace the outdated system managing all the government of Guam financial records at the Department of Administration, the department announced.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/5-years-to-implement-new-govguam-system/article_a2fea952-aea5-11ee-8575-8b27525f735e.html Save to Pocket

Application period opens for LEAP II

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

Local businesses can now apply for the Local Employers Assistance Program Supplemental Grant II, the Office of the Governor announced in a press release.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/application-period-opens-for-leap-ii/article_d5327d2c-ae7d-11ee-9920-dfd1b8c54cca.html Save to Pocket

Guam Agriculture: Beachgoers, be on the lookout for men-of-war

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

The Department of Agriculture Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources is warning beachgoers to be on a lookout for the Indo-Pacific man-of-war.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/guam-agriculture-beachgoers-be-on-the-lookout-for-men-of-war/article_9d9e9758-ae8a-11ee-acaa-47549eaf7a51.html Save to Pocket

Settlement possible in ex-GMHA program coordinator firing appeal

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

There may be a settlement in the works for the adverse action appeal filed by June Perez, the former Guam Memorial Hospital Authority program coordinator who was terminated last year for allegedly interfering with medical care while attempting to arrange…

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/settlement-possible-in-ex-gmha-program-coordinator-firing-appeal/article_71080026-adc2-11ee-a15a-77bd81dae1f5.html Save to Pocket

Employees seek return to Public Health’s abandoned Mangilao HQ

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

Employees at the Department of Public Health and Social Services are calling for their return to the department’s former headquarters in Mangilao, citing the need for a home for DPHSS and the challenges its employees face providing services without a…

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/employees-seek-return-to-public-health-s-abandoned-mangilao-hq/article_025f08dc-adee-11ee-bb7b-672c36fafaaf.html Save to Pocket

Man accused of DWI had 2- and 3-year-old passengers in vehicle

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

A man was accused of driving while impaired while having a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old as passengers.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-accused-of-dwi-had-2–and-3-year-old-passengers-in-vehicle/article_32167c22-ae98-11ee-a90b-5325e308a4e7.html Save to Pocket

This Instagram-Famous Abandoned Boat May Soon Disappear From California Shoreline

date: 2024-01-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The already-dilapidated S.S. Point Reyes suffered more damage during the recent storms that pummeled the coast

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-instagram-famous-boat-in-california-may-soon-be-removed-180983555/ Save to Pocket

Pilar Schiavo | Our 3 H’s: Returning to Sacramento

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

As we return to Sacramento for the second year of our legislative session, I am reflecting on what we accomplished in our first year in office.  Our focus has been what we refer to as “The Three H’s” — Housing, Homelessness and Health Care. These are the three issues that motivated me to run for […]

The post Pilar Schiavo | Our 3 H’s: Returning to Sacramento appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/pilar-schiavo-our-3-hs-returning-to-sacramento/ Save to Pocket

Steve Petzold | Council Should Delay Appointment

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

I was shocked beyond belief (OK, not really) that the City Council is attempting to ram through an appointment to the Parks and Recreation Commission at Tuesday’s meeting. They even placed it at the beginning of the agenda. Unfortunately, this is the way our deeply entrenched and connected politicos do agency business.  The City Council […]

The post Steve Petzold | Council Should Delay Appointment appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/steve-petzold-council-should-delay-appointment/ Save to Pocket

Rob Kerchner | Check Your Billionaire Love-Hate List

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

It ain’t easy keeping up … The Billionaire You Should Love circa 2010: Donald Trump. The Billionaire You Should Hate circa 2016: Donald Trump. The Billionaire You Should Love circa 2016: Elon Musk. The Billionaire You Should Hate circa 2022: Elon Musk. Rob Kerchner  Valencia

The post Rob Kerchner | Check Your Billionaire Love-Hate List appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/rob-kerchner-check-your-billionaire-love-hate-list/ Save to Pocket

Hartmann Prioritizes Public Safety

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

In such dangerous times, Joan Hartmann’s work is making a real difference for all of us.

The post Hartmann Prioritizes Public Safety appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/09/hartmann-prioritizes-public-safety/ Save to Pocket

AM Briefing: Weather Warnings Everywhere

date: 2024-01-09, from: Heatmap News

Current conditions: A tornado struck the Florida panhandle • Two towns in Australia’s state of Victoria have been forced to evacuate due to severe flooding • It’s 69 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Tel Aviv, where Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting with Israeli officials to try to smooth relations in the region.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Severe winter storm moves across the U.S.

After a weekend of winter weather, vast swathes of the U.S. are bracing for another storm system. It will cover nearly 2,000 miles in 72 hours, bringing blizzard conditions to the central and southern Plains, and lashing the South and East Coast with high winds and heavy rain. Meanwhile the Pacific Northwest is enduring a powerful cold front that could bring several feet of snow across the Cascade mountain range. Forecast maps show a kaleidoscope of colors and a chaotic converging of weather events:

NOAA

2. EPA awards $1 billion for low-emission school buses

More than 90% of the nation’s school buses run on diesel, but the Biden administration is trying to change that. Yesterday the administration announced 67 new recipients of nearly $1 billion in grant funding to transition to low- and zero-emission school buses. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean School Bus Program, which gets funding from Biden’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, has $5 billion to spend over five years on helping schools swap old buses for cleaner ones. So far it has allocated about $2 billion across 652 school districts, and this new round of funding will buy more than 2,700 clean buses. Most of the grant recipients are located in low-income, rural, and tribal communities, according to The Washington Post. “Zero-emission school buses can and one day will be the American standard,” EPA administrator Michael Regan told reporters.

3. Study finds shocking amount of plastic particles in bottled water

A new study finds that one liter of bottled water contains hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces of plastic, up to 100 times more than the amount initially estimated. Most of these particles are nanoplastics measuring just billionths of a meter – small enough to make their way into human cells and cross the blood-brain barrier, reports the Los Angeles Times. The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say these particles can carry pollutants and pathogens and interfere with cells and tissues inside the human body. Research on animals has connected microplastics with reproductive problems, hormone issues, poor heart health, and many other ailments. The team tested samples from three popular bottled water brands, but won’t divulge which ones.

4. 2023 natural disasters cost $250 billion in losses

Natural disasters cost the world $250 billion in losses last year, according to a new report from reinsurer Munich Re. Less than half of those losses were insured. The tally includes the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, but the analysis also points to climate change as a main driver of severe storms that plagued North America and Europe, resulting in unprecedented losses. “The warming of the Earth that has been accelerating for some years is intensifying the extreme weather in many regions, leading to increasing loss potentials,” says Munich Re’s chief climate scientist Ernst Rauch. He added: “Society and industry need to adapt to the changing risks – otherwise loss burdens will inevitably increase.” There’s a map that shows the most expensive natural disasters. It is too big to feature in one go, so here it is split in two:

Major natural disasters in 2023Munich Re

Major natural disasters in 2023Munich Re

5. Wind surpasses coal for electricity generation in Europe

Wind has overtaken coal as a source of electricity in Europe for the first time, “marking a key milestone for regional energy transition efforts,” Reuters reports, citing analysis from think tank Ember. In the final quarter of 2023, 184 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity was generated by coal plants. Comparatively, 193 TWh of electricity came from wind, which is about 20% more than the amount generated in the same quarter of 2022.

THE KICKER

Goodyear is developing a new, more durable tire that is meant specifically for electric vehicles. It could extend an EV’s tire mileage by up to 30,000 miles.

https://heatmap.news/climate/am-briefing-weather-warnings-everywhere Save to Pocket

Funding Stefan’s curl work

date: 2024-01-09, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog

The curl fund sponsors curl development in Q1 2024 . The curl fund consists entirely and only of money donated to the project by companies and individuals. Thank you sponsors! These two funded projects are first out in 2024. Support for OpenSSL’s QUIC API Designated lead developer: Stefan Eissing In OpenSSL‘s recent 3.2 release, they … Continue reading Funding Stefan’s curl work →

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/01/09/funding-stefans-curl-work/ Save to Pocket

And that’s a wrap for Babuk Tortilla ransomware as free decryptor released

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Experts’ job made ‘straightforward’ by crooks failing to update encryption schema after three years

Security researchers have put out an updated decryptor for the Babuk ransomware family, providing a free solution for victims of the Tortilla variant.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/babuk_tortilla_decryptor_arrests/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

The Wisdom of Plagues: Lessons from 25 Years of Covering Pandemics: Donald G. McNeil.

https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Plagues-Lessons-Covering-Pandemics/dp/1797169289 Save to Pocket

Hundreds Of Thousands Of Angelenos Are Disconnected From Digital Life

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

Advocates say the internet is essential for modern living and should be treated as a human and civil right, like electricity and water.

https://laist.com/news/hundreds-of-thousands-of-angelenos-are-disconnected-from-digital-life Save to Pocket

2024 Begins With A Spate Of ‘Disturbing’ Threats, Many Against Women Officials

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

The spike in incidents comes as President Joe Biden kicks off his 2024 campaign schedule and marks the third anniversary of Jan. 6.

https://laist.com/news/politics/2024-begins-with-a-spate-of-disturbing-threats-many-against-women-officials Save to Pocket

3 Novel Legal Arguments By Republicans That Threaten The Voting Rights Act In 2024

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

Republican state officials are advancing new legal arguments in the courts that threaten to erode the Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial discrimination in the election process.

https://laist.com/news/politics/3-novel-legal-arguments-by-republicans-that-threaten-the-voting-rights-act-in-2024 Save to Pocket

Keep Your (Current) Location Off Instagram

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Markup blog

Being intentional about sharing your movements has both security and privacy benefits

https://themarkup.org/gentle-january/2024/01/09/keep-your-current-location-off-instagram Save to Pocket

Boeing’s latest accident might not ground business

date: 2024-01-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report

Investigators are still looking into why a piece of a Boeing aircraft blew off an Alaska Airlines flight over the weekend. It’s the latest issue with 737 Max planes, including an aircraft grounding following two crashes several years ago. Thing is, plane orders take years and there are few manufacturing competitors — meaning Boeing may not lose much businesses. And later: how Germany’s budget cuts helped spawn a major protest by farmers.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/boeings-latest-accident-might-not-ground-business Save to Pocket

CEO of chat tech plumber Twilio is leaving the building

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

‘Tech visionary and pioneer’ replaced by former comms president, as company faces pressure from activist investors

Jeff Lawson has stepped down as CEO of Twilio with Khozema Shipchandler filling that less-than-comfy executive chair with immediate effect.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/twilio_ceo_steps_down_amid/ Save to Pocket

@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)

I didn’t make it.

https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111726015128060860 Save to Pocket

GPD: ‘Major developments’ in Tumon shooting investigation; press conference tonight

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

The Guam Police Department will be holding a press conference this evening regarding the investigation into the fatal shooting and robbery in Tumon.

https://www.postguam.com/news/gpd-major-developments-in-tumon-shooting-investigation-press-conference-tonight/article_8de862f2-aee5-11ee-9757-974fc07efbbf.html Save to Pocket

Unity to slash 25% of workforce under former Red Hat CEO Whitehurst

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Move comes months after software licensing scandal

Video game software company Unity is laying off a quarter of its workforce, it confirmed in a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/unity_to_slash_25_percent/ Save to Pocket

PIN-Stealing Android Malware

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-05, from: Bruce Schneier blog

This is an old piece of malware—the Chameleon Android banking Trojan—that now disables biometric authentication in order to steal the PIN:

The second notable new feature is the ability to interrupt biometric operations on the device, like fingerprint and face unlock, by using the Accessibility service to force a fallback to PIN or password authentication.

The malware captures any PINs and passwords the victim enters to unlock their device and can later use them to unlock the device at will to perform malicious activities hidden from view.

…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/01/pin-stealing-android-malware.html Save to Pocket

What does a Raspberry Pi 5 X-ray reveal?

date: 2024-01-09, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)

Jeff Geerling did an X-ray of a Raspberry Pi 5 to reveal the secrets within our newest, most powerful computer.

The post What does a Raspberry Pi 5 X-ray reveal? appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/what-does-a-raspberry-pi-5-x-ray-reveal/ Save to Pocket

Video of 73-Year-Old Boarded Up Inside Apartment Sparks Investigation

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

HARVEY, Ill. — Rudolph Williams says he was home in a Chicago suburb when he realized the doors and windows to his courtyard-style apartment had been boarded up with plywood, locking him inside.

“I didn’t know exactly what was going on,” the 73-year-old said Monday in describing how he tried to open his blocked door. “What the hell?”

His story — chronicled by his nephew on now-viral videos — has generated a firestorm of criticism about rental conditions at the dilapidated low-income apartment complex in Harvey, Illinois. People are also debating who’s to blame; and Mayor Christopher Clark has promised an investigation.

City officials, residents, property owners and the property management company have conflicting accounts about what happened Friday at the 30-unit complex roughly 48.28 kilometers 30 miles) south of Chicago.

It started that afternoon when crews without any logos on their clothing or vehicles started boarding up units. Residents say they weren’t warned and that the workers ignored residents telling them people were still inside. City officials say police were on site earlier in the day and performed well-being checks, but not when units were set to be boarded up. The property owners say the tenants claims about residents being boarded inside are false, and the property managers say the units were empty before they started boarding up units at the city’s direction.

No injuries were reported.

Genevieve Tyler, who said she was recently laid off from her meat factory job, was home when she heard noises outside and ran for a second door in her apartment looking to escape because she thought it was a break-in. That’s when she said she came upon crews boarding up her windows.

“I feel sick,” she said, adding that she was too scared to return home for two days. “I’m still sad.”

The complex, which is in clear disrepair, has been on the city’s radar for months.

One of the two buildings has no heat, with residents using stoves and space heaters to keep warm. A set of stairs has collapsed and is blocked to pedestrians. There is garbage everywhere: broken furniture, a large dumbbell and liquor bottles.

There have also been numerous safety issues involving drugs and crime. Police were called to the property more than 300 times last year, according to Harvey Police Chief Cameron Biddings.

City officials say the property owners, identified by the city as Jay Patel and Henry Cho, were warned about the unsafe conditions and urged to make changes. The owners were then notified that people had to evacuate by Oct. 28 and had to let residents know.

However, only some residents say they got the message. Others who were notified say they were skeptical of the documents’ legitimacy. Some got letters on official city letterhead saying they had to leave due to the safety risk, while others received papers from the property managers that said the building would be shut down.

James Williams, Rudolph’s nephew, who lives with him at the property, said a bunch of notices were strewn around the courtyard.

He and other people on site helped free his uncle from the apartment Friday evening, partly by using a drill, he said.

In a joint statement emailed late Monday, the property owners dismissed the residents’ “viral allegations.” The owners said they tried to negotiate more time with the city for renters to stay and aimed to have required repairs finished by March for the building to reopen.

The owners hired property management company, Chicago Style Management, in November.

Tim Harstead with Chicago Style Management disputed Williams’ account, saying crews found one unauthorized person who left before they started boarding up units.

“A lot of people in that area are squatters and trying to stay there,” he said.

On Monday, Mayor Clark and other city officials toured the complex, which lies off a busy street in the community of 20,000.

In a series of interviews, Clark reluctantly acknowledged that people were still inside their units when the apartments started being shuttered, but he said he wanted to hear directly from residents rather than via social media videos.

The city played no role in boarding up the apartments, he said, pledging that city police would investigate and might turn the matter over to the state’s attorney or Illinois attorney general. Criticism of the city on social media was misdirected, he said.

“It’s horrible,” Clark said. “What’s even more horrible is the fact that they would attribute that to people who are trying to actually help the situation versus the people who actually put them in this situation.”

At least one city official, Alderman Tyrone Rogers, told media outlets over the weekend that residents’ claims were a “total exaggeration.” He did not return messages Monday from The Associated Press.

Some residents, including 34-year-old Loren Johnson, left last month. He said the shutdown notice scared him off as did the broken heating and criminal activity.

“They don’t do anything, but they take full rent,” he said of the landlords.

Roughly half a dozen residents remained on Monday, saying they look out for each other.

Mary Brooks, 66, lives in one of the few apartments that wasn’t boarded up.

She described herself as a cancer survivor with mental health issues who has nowhere else to go. She also said she has tried to reach city officials multiple times about the complex over her nearly four years of living there, a complaint she shared with the mayor when he visited her at home Monday.

“Nobody pays attention to the poor,” she said. “Nobody cares until something happens.”

https://www.voanews.com/a/video-of-73-year-old-boarded-up-inside-apartment-sparks-investigation-/7432266.html Save to Pocket

PeerJ Award Winners at Reef Conservation UK

date: 2024-01-09, from: PeerJ blog

Reef Conservation UK (RCUK) is a networking group for reef scientists, conservationists and enthusiasts to discuss and collaborate on issues related to coral reef research and conservation. We hold an annual one-day conference with a great program of presentations, posters and networking opportunities for all career stages. While meetings are usually held at the Zoological […]

https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284888746/peerj-award-winners-at-reef-conservation-uk/ Save to Pocket

MOVIES VS. CAPITALISM: Alien (w/ Joe Mayall)

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Lever News

The MVC team travels to space, where no one can hear you scream… due to workplace endangerment.

https://www.levernews.com/movies-vs-capitalism-alien-w-joe-mayall/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Where have all the websites gone?

https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/where-have-all-the-websites-gone/ Save to Pocket

Explosion at Historic Texas Hotel Injures 21, Scatters Debris in Fort Worth

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/explosion-at-historic-texas-hotel-injures-21-scatters-debris-in-fort-worth/7432272.html Save to Pocket

Arsenal mid-season report

date: 2024-01-09, from: Ayjay blog

This side is not a contender for the league title — not even close. At this point I’m not confident that they can hold on to a Champions League place: they’re far behind Man City and Liverpool, noticeably behind Aston Villa, and probably behind Spurs (though Spurs’ lack of depth could haunt them in the […]

https://blog.ayjay.org/arsenal-mid-season-report/ Save to Pocket

First functional graphene semiconductor could power future chips

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

This one time at band gap… we managed to use wonder stuff as an electronic material for semiconducting

Researchers say they have discovered a way to produce semiconductors using graphene that could - at some stage further down the road - deliver high performance devices able to outmatch those made from silicon.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/first_functional_graphene_semiconductor_could/ Save to Pocket

US Man Held in Moscow on Drug Charges

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

MOSCOW — Russia has detained and brought drug-related charges against U.S. citizen Robert Woodland, who was apprehended by law enforcement earlier this month, a Moscow court said Tuesday.

Moscow is holding several American nationals on espionage and other charges, as tensions between Russia and the United States balloon over the conflict in Ukraine.

“On January 6, the Ostankinsky District Court of Moscow ordered Robert Romanov Woodland to be placed in detention for a period of two months, until March 5, 2024,” the court said on social media.

He is accused of the “illegal acquisition, storage, transportation, manufacture, processing” of drugs and faces up to 20 years in prison.

Russian authorities have arrested several U.S. citizens in recent years, with critics accusing Moscow of using detainees as bargaining chips to exchange Russians jailed in the United States.

Paul Whelan, an ex-US marine was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in jail on spying charges that he denies.

In late March 2023, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich became the first Western journalist to be held on espionage charges in Russia since the Soviet era.

US-Russian dual citizen, journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, was arrested in October. She has been charged with failing to register as a “foreign agent” and spreading misinformation.

In December 2022, Russia released basketball superstar Brittney Griner in exchange for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout — known as the “Merchant of Death” — who had been jailed in the United States.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-man-held-in-moscow-on-drug-charges/7432231.html Save to Pocket

Motorola loses appeal to kill price cap on UK Airwave emergency services contract

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Tribunal nixes appeal from provider of network that cops and firefighters can’t seem to migrate from…

Motorola’s appeal against price controls on the longstanding mission-critical Airwave network used by the UK emergency services was dismissed by a tribunal, meaning the cap imposed by the regulator must stand.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/tribunal_sides_with_cma_in/ Save to Pocket

Central US Walloped by Blizzard Conditions

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/central-us-walloped-by-blizzard-conditions/7432213.html Save to Pocket

Jan. 6 named ‘Manliguis Day’ in county

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Just in time for the midpoint of basketball season, two of the isle&#8217;s most legendary and influential basketball figures received a unique honor.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/sports/jan-6-named-manliguis-day-in-county/ Save to Pocket

BIIF hoops: Honoka‘a, KSH thrash opponents

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p><strong>HONOKA&#8216;A 92 - KA&#8216;U 57</strong></p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/sports/biif-hoops-honokaa-ksh-thrash-opponents/ Save to Pocket

UH-Hilo baseball announces 22 additions for 2024

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>The UH-Hilo baseball team will soon begin the 2024 season with 22 new faces added to the roster.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/sports/uh-hilo-baseball-announces-22-additions-for-2024/ Save to Pocket

Wong brothers hold youth baseball clinic

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Hilo-raised professional baseball players Kolten and Kean Wong held a free baseball clinic for youths on Dec. 30 at Walter Victor Field.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/sports/wong-brothers-hold-youth-baseball-clinic/ Save to Pocket

Warriors eyeing Thurman to fill spot

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Dennis Thurman, Dan Morrison and Jeff Reinebold are the top candidates to join the University of Hawaii football team&#8217;s coaching staff, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser has learned.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/sports/warriors-eyeing-thurman-to-fill-spot/ Save to Pocket

Fitterer, Rivera sacked following NFL Week 18

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Carolina Panthers general manager Scott Fiterer and Washington Commanders coach Ron Rivera were fired from their positions on Monday.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/sports/fitterer-rivera-sacked-following-nfl-week-18/ Save to Pocket

Tiger Woods, Nike end partnership after more than 27 years

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Tiger Woods has &#0010;gone from &#8220;Hello, world,&#8221; to saying goodbye to Nike. </p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/sports/tiger-woods-nike-end-partnership-after-more-than-27-years/ Save to Pocket

Alaska Airlines’ decision not to ground Boeing jet despite warning signs comes under scrutiny

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>PORTLAND, Ore. &#8212; The decision by Alaska Airlines to stop flying one of its planes over the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii due to warnings from a cabin-pressurization system &#8212; yet keep flying it over land &#8212; is raising questions about whether the jet should have been in the air at all.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/alaska-airlines-decision-not-to-ground-boeing-jet-despite-warning-signs-comes-under-scrutiny/ Save to Pocket

Teen fatally struck by police cruiser remembered as ‘unforgettable’

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Students, faculty and administration at two Hilo schools on Monday remembered a young man whose life was tragically cut short as a result of a weekend automobile collision.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/hawaii-news/teen-fatally-struck-by-police-cruiser-remembered-as-unforgettable/ Save to Pocket

Twisted metal, rushing wind: A narrowly avoided disaster as jet’s wall rips away at 3 miles high

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>PORTLAND, Ore. &#8212; The loud &#8220;boom&#8221; was startling enough, and the roaring wind that immediately filled the airline cabin left Kelly Bartlett unnerved. Still, it wasn&#8217;t until a shaken teenager, shirtless and scratched, slid into the seat next to her that she realized just how close disaster had come.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/twisted-metal-rushing-wind-a-narrowly-avoided-disaster-as-jets-wall-rips-away-at-3-miles-high/ Save to Pocket

Airline merger ‘makes sense’: Execs from Alaska, Hawaiian discuss impacts, benefits

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Hawaii Airlines and Alaska Airlines executives couldn&#8217;t promise that the proposed merger between their two companies will reduce airfares, but said the customers should experience only minimal disruptions.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/hawaii-news/airline-merger-makes-sense-execs-from-alaska-hawaiian-discuss-impacts-benefits/ Save to Pocket

Moon landing attempt by US company appears doomed after ‘critical’ fuel leak

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>The first U.S. moon landing attempt in more than 50 years appeared to be doomed after a private company&#8217;s spacecraft developed a &#8220;critical&#8221; fuel leak just hours after Monday&#8217;s launch.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/moon-landing-attempt-by-us-company-appears-doomed-after-critical-fuel-leak/ Save to Pocket

‘King of the NRA’: Civil trial scrutinizes lavish spending by gun rights group’s longtime leader

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>NEW YORK &#8212; The longtime head of National Rifle Association operated as the &#8220;King of the NRA,&#8221; spending lavishly on himself, punishing dissent and showering allies with country club memberships and no-show contracts, a lawyer for the New York attorney general&#8217;s office told jurors Monday.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/king-of-the-nra-civil-trial-scrutinizes-lavish-spending-by-gun-rights-groups-longtime-leader/ Save to Pocket

Police investigating Holualoa structure fire

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Police are investigating a fire that destroyed a small, uninhabited structure early Sunday morning in Holualoa.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/hawaii-news/police-investigating-holualoa-structure-fire/ Save to Pocket

Trump immunity fight in DC could derail, delay Fulton case

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>A high-stakes court battle playing out in a Washington, D.C., court this week could impact the timing of the election interference case against Donald Trump in Fulton County &#8212; or even decide whether the state&#8217;s prosecution of the former president can go forward.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/trump-immunity-fight-in-dc-could-derail-delay-fulton-case/ Save to Pocket

‘Oppenheimer’ dominates Golden Globes, ‘Poor Things’ upsets ‘Barbie’ in comedy

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Christopher Nolan&#8217;s blockbuster biopic &#8220;Oppenheimer&#8221; dominated the 81st Golden Globes, winning five awards including best drama, while Yorgos Lanthimos&#8217; Frankenstein riff &#8220;Poor Things&#8221; pulled off an upset victory over &#8220;Barbie&#8221; to triumph in the best comedy or musical category.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/oppenheimer-dominates-golden-globes-poor-things-upsets-barbie-in-comedy/ Save to Pocket

Israeli strike kills an elite Hezbollah commander in the latest escalation linked to the war in Gaza

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>BEIRUT &#8212; An Israeli airstrike killed an elite Hezbollah commander Monday in southern Lebanon, the latest in an escalating exchange of strikes across the border that have raised fears of another Mideast war even as the fighting in Gaza exacts a mounting toll on civilians.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/israeli-strike-kills-an-elite-hezbollah-commander-in-the-latest-escalation-linked-to-the-war-in-gaza/ Save to Pocket

Pope Francis calls for a universal ban on surrogacy. He says it exploits mother and child

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>ROME &#8212; Pope Francis called Monday for a universal ban on what he called the &#8220;despicable&#8221; practice of surrogate motherhood, as he included the &#8220;commercialization&#8221; of pregnancy in an annual speech listing threats to global peace and human dignity.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/pope-francis-calls-for-a-universal-ban-on-surrogacy-he-says-it-exploits-mother-and-child/ Save to Pocket

Elon Musk’s drug use is the latest headache for Tesla’s board

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Elon Musk&#8217;s reported drug use has Tesla Inc. board members facing a familiar quandary: having to decide what, if anything, to do about the chief executive subjecting directors and shareholders alike to great financial and legal risk.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/elon-musks-drug-use-is-the-latest-headache-for-teslas-board/ Save to Pocket

Nevada judge attacked by defendant in viral court video finishes sentencing him

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>LAS VEGAS &#8212; A man who leaped over a judicial bench and attacked a Nevada judge on video last week was shackled and closely watched Monday as he appeared before the same judge and was sentenced to up to four years in state prison.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/nevada-judge-attacked-by-defendant-in-viral-court-video-finishes-sentencing-him/ Save to Pocket

A strong winter storm bears down on a large swath of the US midsection

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>OMAHA, Neb. (AP) &#8212; A &#8220;highly impactful&#8221; winter storm is expected to dump as much as a foot of snow Monday across the country&#8217;s midsection, where blizzard and winter storm warnings are in effect.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/a-strong-winter-storm-bears-down-on-a-large-swath-of-the-us-midsection/ Save to Pocket

Explosion at historic Texas hotel injures 21 and scatters debris in downtown Fort Worth

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) &#8212; An explosion at a historic Texas hotel in Fort Worth on Monday blew out windows, littered downtown streets with large sections of debris from the building and injured 21 people, including one person who was in critical condition, authorities said.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/explosion-at-historic-texas-hotel-injures-21-and-scatters-debris-in-downtown-fort-worth/ Save to Pocket

Judge in Trump’s DC election case is targeted by fake emergency call in latest high-profile swatting

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>WASHINGTON &#8212; A home owned by the judge overseeing the federal election subversion case against former president Donald Trump was targeted by a fake emergency call Sunday night, the latest in a spate of similar false swatting reports at the homes of public officials in recent days.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/judge-in-trumps-dc-election-case-is-targeted-by-fake-emergency-call-in-latest-high-profile-swatting/ Save to Pocket

Thousands forced from homes by a deadly Japan earthquake on New Year’s face stress and exhaustion

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>WAJIMA, Japan &#8212; Thousands of people made homeless by a powerful earthquake on the western coast of Japan were coping with weariness and uncertainty a week after the temblor left at least 168 dead and dozens missing.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/thousands-forced-from-homes-by-a-deadly-japan-earthquake-on-new-years-face-stress-and-exhaustion/ Save to Pocket

Obituaries for Jan. 9

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Wayne-Adam Lance Arruda, 51, of Honolulu died Oct. 28. He was born in Hilo. Visitation 9-10 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 11, at Mililani Mortuary Makai Chapel. Service at 10 am. Burial 11 a.m. at Mililani Memorial Park Cemetery. Survived by mother, Loretta (Lori) Enos Arruda; sisters, Sherriann Arruda and Caprice Arruda of Las Vegas; brother Alexander Robert Arruda of Honolulu. Arrangements by Mililani Mortuary.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/obituaries/obituaries-for-jan-9/ Save to Pocket

Biden, Johnson set for crucial battle over border, Ukraine aid

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>The battle between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Mike Johnson over Ukraine aid and immigration policy is coming to a head this week as Congress races to avert a Jan. 20 partial lapse in government funding.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/biden-johnson-set-for-crucial-battle-over-border-ukraine-aid/ Save to Pocket

White House, Pentagon will review Defense Secretary Austin’s lack of disclosure on his hospital stay

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>WASHINGTON (AP) &#8212; Both the White House and Pentagon said Monday they would look into why President Joe Biden and other top officials weren&#8217;t informed for days that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had been hospitalized. A Pentagon spokesman pointed to one reason: A key staffer was out sick with the flu.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/nation-world-news/white-house-pentagon-will-review-defense-secretary-austins-lack-of-disclosure-on-his-hospital-stay/ Save to Pocket

Let’s Talk Food: Salads in January

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>In January, many folks eat salads and vegetarian items as the eating frenzy that started at Thanksgiving, and continued through Christmas and New Year&#8217;s, has people watching their food intake for the beginning of the new year.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/community/lets-talk-food-salads-in-january/ Save to Pocket

What’s bad for Harvard is good for America

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Regardless of your perspective, Harvard looks bad right now &#8212; and that&#8217;s good for America.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/opinion/whats-bad-for-harvard-is-good-for-america/ Save to Pocket

Iran threatens America as well as Israel

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Iran is an American enemy already, a pal with China and Russia, economically up-and-at-&#8217;em, more than a little pleased about its missile and warhead accomplishments, capable of producing nuclear weapons in a hurry and now in a war with Israel making the world less safe every minute. Possible consequences include a second international cold war threatening disastrous American decline or, conceivably, even a third world war.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/opinion/iran-threatens-america-as-well-as-israel/ Save to Pocket

Kona couple charged in HCCC fentanyl ODs

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Police have arrested and charged a Kailua-Kona couple with multiple offenses after two suspected fentanyl overdoses, one fatal, at Hawaii Community Correctional Center in Hilo.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/hawaii-news/kona-couple-charged-in-hccc-fentanyl-ods/ Save to Pocket

Police ID Maui man killed in Kona traffic crash

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Police have identified a Maui man killed in a pickup truck rollover crash Sunday in Kailua-Kona as 31-year-old Christopher Keaulama Liftee of Kihei.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/09/hawaii-news/police-id-maui-man-killed-in-kona-traffic-crash/ Save to Pocket

The 5 biggest Trump-Republican lies about illegal immigration

date: 2024-01-09, from: Robert Reich on Substack

Trump and his GOP lackeys are fueling dangerous nativism

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/trump-republican-nativism-is-based Save to Pocket

HPE said to be moving in on $13B deal for Juniper Networks

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Networking kit maker would be biggest potential acquisition since Autonomy – but hopefully goes better than that

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is in the late stages of talks to buy California networking hardware maker Juniper Networks for $13 billion, according to reports.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/hpe_reportedly_to_pay_13/ Save to Pocket

Some students, faculty say they support adding trigger warnings to course syllabi

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Debates about adding disclaimers for potentially offensive content have ignited in campuses across the country.

The post Some students, faculty say they support adding trigger warnings to course syllabi appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/campus-reacts-to-trigger-warnings/ Save to Pocket

New students mingle at LNSC’s ‘Late Night LA’

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The event welcomed new students to campus with tasty food trucks, a photo booth and carnival games.

The post New students mingle at LNSC’s ‘Late Night LA’ appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/new-students-mingle-at-lnscs-late-night-la/ Save to Pocket

Men’s volleyball aims to crush Crimson

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

USC is looking to improve to 3-0 in out-of-conference matches against Harvard.

The post Men’s volleyball aims to crush Crimson appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/mens-volleyball-aims-to-crush-crimson/ Save to Pocket

Women’s basketball overwhelms Oregon

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

USC led a well-balanced attack with eight scorers and a season-high 25 assists.

The post Women’s basketball overwhelms Oregon appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/womens-basketball-overwhelms-oregon/ Save to Pocket

NBA Projans to keep an eye on this season

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Former star Trojans are impacting the first half of the 2023-24 NBA season.

The post NBA Projans to keep an eye on this season appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/nba-projans-to-keep-an-eye-on-this-season/ Save to Pocket

Goals for growth

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Looking ahead this semester, there are three main goals for the staff.

The post Goals for growth appeared first on Daily Trojan.

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Classifieds – January 9, 2024

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.

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Wireless priesthood begins blessing Wi-Fi 7 hardware

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

A little more speed and less latency

CES  Just in time for CES this year, the Wi-Fi Alliance has begun certifying hardware for Wi-Fi 7, the latest update to the global wireless networking specification.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/wifi_7_alliance/ Save to Pocket

New year’s resolutions are often unattainable

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Many people’s generic New Year’s resolutions set them up for disappointment.

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Graduating early is anxiety-inducing

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

My time at USC feels like it’s running out before it’s even really gotten to begin.

The post Graduating early is anxiety-inducing appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/graduating-early-is-anxiety-inducing/ Save to Pocket

Today in SCV History (Jan. 9)

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

1857 – Estimated 8.0 earthquake, SoCal’s most recent “Big One,” decimates Fort Tejon. [story

https://scvnews.com/monday-january-9/ Save to Pocket

LGBTQIA+ guide to housing at USC

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Here’s how to find housing options that best suit your needs as a queer student.

The post LGBTQIA+ guide to housing at USC appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/lgbtqia-guide-to-housing-at-usc/ Save to Pocket

Stop telling me to take the compliment

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Catcalling is not flattering; unsolicited sexual remarks are derogatory harassment.

The post Stop telling me to take the compliment appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/stop-telling-me-to-take-the-compliment/ Save to Pocket

Students praise USC inclusion efforts while representation of women in film stagnates

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

An Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study saw a lack of progress for women in film.

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https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/students-praise-usc-inclusion-efforts-while-representation-of-women-in-film-stagnates/ Save to Pocket

I’m not wasting my time

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Who are you to tell me what I should and shouldn’t be proud of?

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https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/the-k-pop-ification-of-the-gaming-industry-2/ Save to Pocket

On-campus entertainment to enjoy this month

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The spring semester opens with plenty of art to enjoy, ranging from film to poetry.

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https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/09/on-campus-entertainment-to-enjoy-this-month/ Save to Pocket

Welcome to 2024: Volkswagen really is putting ChatGPT into cars as a gabby copilot

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Plus: Deloitte rolls out homegrown AI for its 75K workers to dogfood

CES  Volkswagen says it intends to inject ChatGPT into its vehicles in Europe this year, allowing drivers to ask questions about life, the universe, and everything, and have them answered by the software, maybe.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/volkswagen_deloitte/ Save to Pocket

My book is out in the US today!

date: 2024-01-09, from: Hannah Richie at Substack

A data-driven look at our environmental problems and how to solve them.

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/book-publication Save to Pocket

January 8, 2024

date: 2024-01-09, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog

With President Joe Biden’s speech today at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina, coming after his speech in Pennsylvania on January 5, the election year of 2024 is in full swing. The first Republican caucus will be held on January 15 in Iowa; the first Democratic primary will be held on February 3. (A caucus is held by a political party and can have public voting, by a show of hands or gathering behind a candidate’s team; a primary election is run by the government and uses secret ballots.)

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-8-2024 Save to Pocket

Boeing Supplier Ignored Warnings Of “Excessive Amount Of Defects,” Former Employees Allege

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Lever News

Weeks before Alaska Airlines’ terrifying debacle, one of the aircraft’s manufacturers was accused of systematically ignoring safety problems.

https://www.levernews.com/boeing-supplier-ignored-warnings-of-excessive-amount-of-defects-former-employees-allege/ Save to Pocket

Blinken Urges Israel to Avoid Further Harming Civilians in Gaza

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv Tuesday to ensure his country’s military avoids inflicting further harm on civilians in Gaza in its ongoing war against Hamas militants.

“The Secretary reaffirmed our support for Israel’s right to prevent the terrorist attacks of October 7 from being repeated and stressed the importance of avoiding further civilian harm and protecting civilian infrastructure in Gaza,” State Department spokesman Mathew Miller said in a statement Tuesday after Blinken met with Netanyahu and Israel’s war cabinet.

Earlier, speaking alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Blinken said he would have the opportunity to meet with the families of the some of the hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza, and to relay to Israeli leaders some of what he heard from other leaders in the region during stops in Turkey, Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Herzog thanked the United States for “standing steadfast with Israel” and said the war against Hamas is one that “affects international values and the values of the free world.”

Herzog also rejected a lawsuit filed at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, calling the accusation “atrocious and preposterous.”

Hearings in the case are due to begin Thursday, and Herzog said Israel will “present proudly our case of using self-defense under our most inherent right under international humanitarian law.”

Gaza health officials say close to 23,000 Palestinians, a large percentage of them women and children, have been killed in Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has criticized Hamas for locating its operations in civilian areas, including the use of tunnels under cities.  Herzog said Tuesday that Israel is “doing our utmost under extremely complicated circumstances” to ensure there are no civilian casualties.

Blinken said Monday that leaders in the Middle East are determined to prevent the Gaza conflict from spreading and that there is broad recognition on the need to “chart a political path forward for the Palestinians.”

“The West Bank and Gaza should be united under Palestinian-led governance,” Blinken told reporters in Saudi Arabia.

“The future of the region needs to be one of integration, not division and not conflict,” Blinken said, adding “for that to happen, we need to see the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.”

In a statement following talks with Blinken, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman underscored the importance of halting military operations in the Gaza Strip and the need to create conditions for restoring peace and stability.

When asked about the U.S.-led talks to normalize the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel, Blinken said there is “a clear interest” in Saudi Arabia, as well as in the region, in pursuing that goal but “it will require that the conflict end in Gaza, and it will also clearly require that there be a practical pathway to a Palestinian state.”

Saudi Arabia has paused diplomatic talks to normalize ties with Israel amid the military conflict between Hamas militants and Israeli forces.

After an Israeli airstrike killed a key Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon on Monday — the latest sign of a possibly widening conflict in the Middle East — Blinken told reporters it is clearly not in the interest of Israel, Lebanon, or Hezbollah to see an escalation outside Gaza and “the Israelis have been very clear with” the U.S. that “they want to find a diplomatic way forward.”

Hezbollah has identified the commander as Wissam al-Tawil. Last week, senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a drone strike in Beirut. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, whose militant allies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have also been carrying out longer-range attacks against Israel.

The United States has urged Israel to shift to smaller scale military operations in Gaza but has continued to support Israel in refusing Arab demands for a cease-fire to halt the fighting in the three-month war. Israel has vowed to continue the war until it believes the threat of future Hamas attacks has been eradicated and the militant group no longer controls Gaza, a narrow strip of territory along the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel began its military campaign to wipe out Hamas after Hamas fighters crossed into southern Israel on October 7. Israel said about 1,200 people were killed and about 240 captives taken in the terror attack.

Some material for this report was provided by Reuters and The Associated Press.

https://www.voanews.com/a/blinken-in-israel-amid-push-to-contain-gaza-war/7432025.html Save to Pocket

“One Weird Trick” for effective strategic political communication campaigns

date: 2024-01-09, from: Dave Karpf’s blog

Dear Substack: I coulda told you this would happen last month if you’d just asked.

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/one-weird-trick-for-effective-strategic Save to Pocket

White House, Pentagon Reviewing Procedures After Defense Chief’s Hospitalization

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/white-house-pentagon-reviewing-procedures-after-defense-chief-s-hospitalization/7432136.html Save to Pocket

★ Heyja Vu: App Store Rejects 37signals’s New Hey Calendar App

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Daring Fireball

I just don’t get it. Apple has nothing to gain by this — *nothing, not a cent — but a lot to lose.

https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/heyja_vu_hey_cal Save to Pocket

A Narrowly Avoided Disaster as Jet’s Wall Rips Away at 3 Miles High

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

PORTLAND, Ore. — The loud “boom” was startling enough, and the roaring wind that immediately filled the airline cabin left Kelly Bartlett unnerved. Still, it wasn’t until a shaken teenager, shirtless and scratched, slid into the seat next to her that she realized just how close disaster had come.

A section of the Boeing 737 Max 9’s fuselage just three rows away had blown out — at 4.8 kilometers (3 miles ) high — creating a vacuum that twisted the metal of the seats nearby, and snatched cellphones, headsets and even the shirt off the teenager’s back.

“We knew something was wrong,” Bartlett told The Associated Press on Monday. “We didn’t know what. We didn’t know how serious. We didn’t know if it meant we were going to crash.”

The first six minutes of Alaska Airlines flight 1282 from Portland to Southern California’s Ontario International Airport on Friday had been routine, the Boeing 737 Max 9 about halfway to its cruising altitude and traveling at more than 640 kph (400 mph).

Flight attendants had just told the 171 passengers that they could resume using electronic devices — in airplane mode, of course — when it happened.

Then suddenly a 61-centimeter-by-122-centimeter (2-foot-by-4-foot) piece of fuselage covering an unoperational emergency exit behind the left wing blew out. Only seven seats on the flight were unoccupied, and as fate would have it, these included the two seats closest to the blown-out hole.

The oxygen masks dropped immediately, and Bartlett saw a flight attendant walking down the aisle toward the affected row, leaning forward as if facing a stiff wind. Then flight attendants began moving passengers from the area where the blowout occurred and helped them move away.

Among them was the teenage boy moved next to Bartlett.

“His shirt got sucked off of his body when the panel blew out because of the pressure, and it was his seatbelt that kept him in his seat and saved his life. And there he was next to me,” she said, adding that his mother was reseated elsewhere.

“We had our masks on, and the plane was really loud so we couldn’t talk. But I had a … notes app on my phone that I was typing on. So I typed to him and I asked him if he was hurt,” Bartlett said. “I just couldn’t believe he was sitting there and what he must have gone through, what he must have been feeling at the time.”

She said the boy typed back that he was OK, but a bit scratched, adding “that was unbelievable” and “thank you for your kindness.”

The exit door plug landed in the southwest Portland backyard of high school physics teacher Bob Sauer. Sauer said his heart “did start beating a little faster” when he saw it in the beam of his flashlight Sunday night as he searched for any debris.

“It was very obviously part of a plane,” he told a group of reporters outside his home on Monday. “I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, people have been looking for this all weekend and it looks like it’s in my backyard.’”

Sauer said he and the seven National Transportation Safety Board agents who came to his home to pick up the door plug were amazed it was intact. It appeared that tree branches had broken its fall.

A headrest landed on the patio of Sauer’s neighbor, Diane Flaherty. Flaherty didn’t realize what the charcoal-colored cushion was until a friend emailed her to say federal agents were looking for airplane parts in her neighborhood. An NTSB agent came by to pick it up.

“What are the chances that a headrest cushion falls out of the sky into your backyard?” she said.

The pilots and flight attendants have not made public statements and their names have not been released, but in interviews with National Transportation Safety Board investigators they described how their training kicked in. The pilots focused on getting the plane quickly back to Portland and the flight attendants on keeping the passengers safe and as calm as possible.

“The actions of the flight crew were really incredible,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a Sunday night news conference. She described the scene inside the cabin during those first seconds as “chaos, very loud between the air and everything going on around them and it was very violent.”

Bartlett echoed praise for the crew, saying the entire time she felt like the plane was under control even though the roaring wind was so loud she couldn’t hear the captain’s announcements.

“The flight attendants really responded well to the situation. They got everyone safe and then they got themselves safe,” she said. “And then there was nothing to do but wait, right? We were just on our way down and it was just a normal descent. It felt normal.”

Inside the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot donned their oxygen masks and opened their microphone, but “communication was a serious issue” between them and the flight attendants because of the noise, Homendy said. The pilots retrieved an emergency handbook kept secure next to the captain’s seat.

The co-pilot contacted air traffic controllers, declaring an emergency and saying the plane needed to immediately descend to 3,048 meters, (10,000 feet) the altitude where there is enough oxygen for everyone onboard to breathe.

“We need to turn back to Portland,” she said in a calm voice that she maintained throughout the landing.

In the cabin, the flight attendants’ immediate focus was on the five unaccompanied minors in their care and the three infants being carried on their parents’ laps.

“Were they safe? Were they secure? Did they have their seat belts on or their lap belts on? And did they have their masks on? And they did,” Homendy said.

Some passengers began sending messages on social media to loved ones. One young woman said on TikTok that she was certain the plane would nosedive at any second and she wondered how her death would affect her mother, worrying that she would never recover from the sorrow.

But she and others said the cabin remained surprisingly calm. One passenger, Evan Granger, who was sitting in front of the blowout, told NBC News that his “focus in that moment was just breathe into the oxygen mask and trust that the flight crew will do everything they can to keep us safe.”

“There were so many things that had to go right in order for all of us to survive,” Granger said.

Video taken by those on board showed flight attendants moving down the aisle checking on passengers. Through the hole, city lights could be seen flickering past.

Evan Smith, an attorney traveling on the plane, told reporters the descent and landing were loud but smooth. When the plane touched down at Portland International about 20 minutes after it departed, the passengers broke into applause. Firefighters came down the aisle to check for injuries, but no one was seriously hurt.

Homendy said that if the blowout had happened a few minutes later, after the plane reached cruising altitude, the accident might have become a tragedy.

Bartlett’s mind also keeps returning to the what-ifs.

“I’m glad that it is not any worse than it was — that’s all. I keep coming back to it,” she said. “Like, how lucky Jack got. That was his name, the kid who sat next to me. His name was Jack, and how lucky he was that he had a seatbelt on.”

On Sunday, a passenger’s cellphone that had been sucked out of the plane was found. It was still operational, having survived its plunge from the sky.

It was open to the owner’s baggage claim receipt.

https://www.voanews.com/a/a-narrowly-avoided-disaster-as-jet-s-wall-rips-away-at-3-miles-high/7432114.html Save to Pocket

‘Get Ready’

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqTIB_q40bo Save to Pocket

India to launch with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for the first time

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Also: Huawei in patent deal with Nokia, and China slates 2025 as year for mass produced flying cars

ASIA IN BRIEF  The Indian government’s commercial space agency arm, NewSpace India, has spilled the details [PDF] on how the country would launch a broadband communication satellite aboard a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/india_to_launch_with_spacexs/ Save to Pocket

Santa Barbara Unified School District Miscalculated How Much It Underpaid Teachers by $3.5M

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

The district has refiled its waiver with the state after discovering it paid $3.2 million less on salaries than state-mandated minimum, not $6.7 million.

The post Santa Barbara Unified School District Miscalculated How Much It Underpaid Teachers by $3.5M appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/08/santa-barbara-unified-school-district-miscalculated-how-much-it-underpaid-teachers-by-3-5m/ Save to Pocket

Biden Describes White Supremacy as ‘Poison’ in Pitch to Black Voters

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

Washington — President Joe Biden made a heartfelt appeal to Black voters on Monday, speaking passionately at a storied South Carolina church scarred by racially motivated tragedy and seeking support as members of the state’s large Black community head to the nation’s first Democratic primary next month.

Before a packed congregation at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Biden spoke of “a poison that’s for too long haunted this nation,” echoing words from former President Donald Trump, who has made waves on the campaign trail by accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood” of the nation.

“What is that poison?” Biden continued. “White supremacy. … Throughout our history, it’s ripped this nation apart. This has no place in America. Not today, tomorrow or ever.”

With those words, Biden became the first sitting American president to speak from the pulpit of one of the nation’s oldest and most respected Black spiritual institutions. The stately church, founded more than two centuries ago, was the scene of a gruesome mass shooting in 2015 in which nine people, including the church’s pastor, were killed by a white supremacist.

President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy at the Reverend Clementa Pinckney’s funeral in 2015, which was held in TD Arena at the College of Charleston.

The tragedy prompted South Carolina’s governor at the time, Nikki Haley — who is now running for the Republican presidential nomination — to remove the Confederate flag that flew over the state Capitol.

Biden also capitalized on the venue by indirectly mentioning Haley’s reluctance in a recent public forum to acknowledge that disagreements over slavery caused the Civil War.

“Let me be clear for those who don’t seem to know: Slavery was the cause of the Civil War,” he said, to applause. “There is no negotiation about that.”

Racism an election issue

Groups that work to mobilize overlooked voters say racism is a top issue that emerges time and again in polls and focus groups.

Cynthia Wallace co-founded the New Rural Project after her unsuccessful congressional run in 2020 showed that 60,000 registered voters of color in her North Carolina district didn’t turn up at the polls.

“When we look at the top issues that concern folks, and we look at it by demographics, African American infrequent voters — these are part of those 60,000 folks who didn’t show up, who we are actually specifically targeted to speak to — one of their top issues, whether it’s from the polling or the focus groups, is racism,” she told VOA.

But, she added, “We continue to hear most of the rural folks that we speak to focus on the kitchen-table issues.”

South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn hit some of those points in introducing Biden, listing what he saw as Biden’s achievements and contrasting him with Trump.

Clyburn outlined Biden’s attempts at student loan forgiveness, his appointment of an unprecedented number of Black female judges, his support of abortion rights, his work to reduce health care costs and his efforts to help veterans.

“We know Joe,” he said. “But most importantly, Joe knows us well.”

“I rest my case,” Biden quipped after Clyburn’s speech, as attendees chanted “Four more years!” in support of Biden’s reelection.

But Clyburn’s rousing words contrasted with his weekend comments on CNN, where he said he was “very concerned” about the Biden campaign’s ability to “break through that MAGA wall” — a reference to Trump’s Make America Great Again motto — and communicate his message to voters.

Polls show that Biden faces challenges with Black voters, who propelled him to victory over Trump in 2020. A poll conducted late last year by the GenForward Survey project found that 17% of Black voters said they would vote for Trump, and 20% would vote for “someone else.” Sixty-three percent said they would vote for Biden.

‘Cease-fire now’ or ‘four more years’?

Some of the disagreements appeared in real-time on Monday, when a heckler, referring to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, led a chant of “cease-fire now” — which was then drowned out by louder chants of “four more years.”

Biden acknowledged the hecklers, saying, “I understand their passion.”

He added, “I’ve been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza. I’ve been using all that I can to do that.”

Democratic strategist Douglas Wilson, speaking to VOA from North Carolina, said the Black community is divided on perceptions of the war in Gaza, with younger voters viewing “Palestinians as being people of color and look at the end of the Israelis as occupiers or as colonizers.”

“That’s a course that’s up for debate,” he added. “I don’t agree with that personally. But there is a segment of the community that feels that way.”

Misinformation and the economy

Wallace, of the New Rural Project, noted the role of misinformation in skewing attitudes. She said that only one Black voter she spoke to raised the issue of Gaza and falsely claimed that Biden supports Hamas, the militant group that launched the stunning attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Biden has repeatedly called Hamas “terrorists,” described their acts as “evil” and has given material and moral support to Israel. Hamas is a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

“I think in this information-heavy world, I think it’s hard for information to cut through,” Wallace said. “You’ve got to make sure that people actually know what things you’ve done and what things you plan to do more of and what things you’re fighting for.”

Wilson added that more details on Black economic empowerment could also shift voter support.

“I would have liked to hear him give a brief outline of what his economic agenda will be in a second term for Black America,” he said. “And I think that if he can begin to articulate that, then it will give Black voters a reason to come out and vote for him in high numbers.”

South Carolina voters participate in the Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 3, in which Representative Dean Phillips and author and self-professed spiritual adviser Marianne Williamson are also on the ballot.

https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-describes-white-supremacy-as-poison-in-pitch-to-black-voters/7432101.html Save to Pocket

Nameless Victim of ‘Happy Face Killer’ Had Santa Barbara Ties

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Cold case investigators identify the father of the serial killer’s victim as a former S.B. resident.

The post Nameless Victim of ‘Happy Face Killer’ Had Santa Barbara Ties appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/08/nameless-victim-of-happy-face-killer-had-santa-barbara-ties/ Save to Pocket

You Should Try Running, According to Me, Your Friend Who Won’t Shut…

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/0043747-you-should-try-running-ac Save to Pocket

Lenovo Mechanical Energy Harvesting keyboard & mouse concept never needs to be plugged in

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

Lenovo is showing off a concept wireless keyboard & mouse set at CES 2024 that never needs to be plugged in to charge. That’s because the Mechanical Energy Harvesting Combo system “uses mechanical movement and solar irradiation” to generate enough power to keep the peripherals running. We’ve seen mobile gadgets with solar panels before, but it […]

The post Lenovo Mechanical Energy Harvesting keyboard & mouse concept never needs to be plugged in appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/lenovo-mechanical-energy-harvesting-keyboard-mouse-concept-never-needs-to-be-plugged-in/ Save to Pocket

White House Pushes Defense Industries on Tech Help for Ukraine

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/white-house-pushes-defense-industries-on-tech-help-for-ukraine/7432073.html Save to Pocket

Offers of Help Appreciated

date: 2024-01-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

I want to assure everyone that some disabled people really appreciate when others offer to help.

The post Offers of Help Appreciated appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/08/offers-of-help-appreciated/ Save to Pocket

Ken Striplin | Santa Clarita Hosting ‘The Big I Do’ Event

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

This Valentine’s Day, the city of Santa Clarita is proud to announce the much-anticipated return of the “The Big I Do” wedding experience

https://scvnews.com/ken-striplin-santa-clarita-hosting-the-big-i-do-event/ Save to Pocket

Curren Price pleads not guilty to corruption charges

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The L.A. city councilmember was arraigned Monday on charges of embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest.

The post Curren Price pleads not guilty to corruption charges appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/08/la-city-councilmember-curren-price-pleads-not-guilty-corruption-charges/ Save to Pocket

The ‘Cultural’ Questions that Follow the Alaska Airlines Blowout.

date: 2024-01-09, from: James Fallows, Substack

Did this episode have anything to do with the recent rash of aviation ‘close calls’? Almost certainly not. But it may illustrate a different systemic problem.

https://fallows.substack.com/p/the-cultural-questions-that-follow Save to Pocket

Blinken: Middle East Leaders Determined to Prevent Wider War

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday leaders in the Middle East are determined to prevent the Gaza conflict from spreading and that there is broad recognition on the need to “chart a political path forward for the Palestinians.” 

“The West Bank and Gaza should be united under Palestinian-led governance,” Blinken told reporters at Al Ula airport in Saudi Arabia. 

“The future of the region needs to be one of integration, not division and not conflict,” said Blinken, adding “for that to happen, we need to see the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.” 

In a statement following talks with Blinken, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman underscored the importance of halting military operations in the Gaza Strip and the need to create conditions for restoring peace and stability. Local media have reported that this effort aims to ensure the Palestinian people obtain their legitimate rights and achieve a just and lasting peace. 

On Monday, Blinken met with the United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and senior officials from Saudi Arabia before heading to Israel. 

The chief U.S. diplomat said he would push Israeli officials for more humanitarian aid to Gaza and more protection for civilians. He also plans to discuss efforts to secure the release of the remaining hostages and how to ensure the conflict does not spread to other parts of the region.   

When asked about the U.S.-led talks to normalize the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel, Blinken stated that there is “a clear interest” in Saudi Arabia, as well as in the region, in pursuing that goal but “it will require that the conflict end in Gaza, and it will also clearly require that there be a practical pathway to a Palestinian state.” 

Saudi Arabia has paused diplomatic talks to normalize ties with Israel amid the military conflict between Hamas militants and Israeli forces. 

After an Israeli airstrike killed a key Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon on Monday — the latest sign of a possibly widening conflict in the Middle East — Blinken told reporters it’s clearly not in the interest of Israel, Lebanon, or Hezbollah to see an escalation outside Gaza and “the Israelis have been very clear with” the U.S. that “they want to find a diplomatic way forward.” 

Hezbollah has identified the commander as Wissam al-Tawil. Last week, senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a drone strike in Beirut. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, whose militant allies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have also been carrying out longer-range attacks against Israel. 

In meetings Sunday with Jordan King Abdullah II and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the top U.S. diplomat spoke of the need for Israel to curb civilian casualties during the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza and significantly increase the amount of humanitarian aid reaching famished Palestinians in Gaza. 

But the U.S. has continued to support Israel in refusing Arab demands for a cease-fire to halt the fighting in the three-month war. Israel has vowed to continue the war until it believes the threat of future Hamas attacks has been eradicated and the militant group no longer controls Gaza, a narrow strip of territory along the Mediterranean Sea. 

Jordan’s royal court said King Abdullah “warned of the catastrophic repercussions” of Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas while calling on the U.S. to press for an immediate cease-fire. Israeli and U.S. officials have said they believe that a cease-fire would only allow Hamas to be able to regroup in its fight against Israeli forces. 

While in Amman, Blinken also visited a World Food Program warehouse where trucks are loaded with aid for famished Palestinians in Gaza. 

“The efforts right here to collect and distribute food to people in need are absolutely essential,” Blinken said. “The United States has worked from day one to open access routes into Gaza.” 

“We continue to work on that every single day, not only to open them but to multiply them, to maximize them and to try to get more assistance, more effectively,” he said. “We’re determined to do everything we possibly can to ameliorate the situation for the men, women and children in Gaza.”

Israel began its military campaign to wipe out Hamas after Hamas fighters crossed into southern Israel on October 7. Israel said about 1,200 people were killed and about 240 captives taken in the terror attack.

Gaza health officials say close to 23,000 Palestinians, a large percentage of them women and children, have been killed in Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

The United States has stated its opposition to forcibly removing Palestinians from Gaza. The U.S. is also working on a postwar road map for the Palestinian territories.

“Gaza cannot, once again, serve as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against Israel,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told VOA last week.

“What we ultimately want to see is Gaza and the West Bank reunited under Palestinian leadership,” and “certainly there’s no role for Hamas in that.”

Some material for this report was provided by Reuters and The Associated Press.

https://www.voanews.com/a/blinken-middle-east-leaders-determined-to-prevent-wider-war-/7432148.html Save to Pocket

US Again Faces Possibility of Government Shutdown Over Spending

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-again-faces-possibility-of-government-shutdown-over-spending-/7432041.html Save to Pocket

Nvidia gives RTX 40 series a Super refresh as AI PC hype takes off

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s GPUs with slightly better specs

CES  Nvidia revamped its RTX 40 series GPU lineup at CES on Monday with three “Super” cards, which boast higher performance and memory upgrades over their predecessors.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/nvidia_rtx_super/ Save to Pocket

Jan. 11: Arts Commission Slated to Discuss Sidewalk Poetry Project

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Santa Clarita Arts Commission is holding its regular meeting in City Hall’s Council Chambers Thursday, Jan. 11, at 6 p.m. The Commission is scheduled to discuss the 2024 Sidewalk Poetry Project and Arts Grant Program. The full agenda is available below. Arts Commission Regular Meeting 1/11/2024 6:00 PM City Council Chambers 23920 Valencia Blvd…. https://scvnews.com/jan-11-arts-commission-slated-to-discuss-sidewalk-poetry-project/ Save to Pocket

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Quits Rather Than Accept Demotion at News Network

date: 2024-01-09, from: VOA News USA

New york — Prominent Muslim journalist Mehdi Hasan has decided to quit MSNBC rather than accept a demotion that saw him lose a regular Sunday night program on the network.

Hasan announced at the end of Sunday show that “I’ve decided to look for a new challenge. This is not just my final episode of ‘The Mehdi Hasan Show,’ it’s my last day at MSNBC.”

The network had announced in November that Hasan would lose his weekly show after three years but would remain as an analyst and fill-in anchor.

That decision, with no public explanation, launched a fruitless petition campaign in protest by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar called it “deeply troubling that MSNBC is canceling his show amid a rampant rise of anti-Muslim bigotry and suppression of Muslim voices.”

An MSNBC spokeswoman said Monday the network had no comment on Hasan’s exit.

His final show featured an interview with Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian photographer who talked about the danger of working in Gaza during Israeli military operations.

Hasan on Monday also forwarded a report on X, formerly Twitter, about Palestinian children losing limbs, adding the message, “Read this sentence. Then reread it. Then ask yourself how anyone is OK with this level of human suffering.”

Hasan told viewers that he’s proud of what had been achieved on his show.

“As I say: new year, new plans,” he said.

Hasan, who previously worked at Al Jazeera English and the Intercept, offered no details and declined further comment on Monday.

To replace Hasan, MSNBC is increasing the weekend hours of Ayman Mohyeldin, another Muslim journalist.

https://www.voanews.com/a/msnbc-s-mehdi-hasan-quits-rather-than-accept-demotion-at-news-network-/7432059.html Save to Pocket

Pluralistic: Molly McGhee’s “Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind” (08 Jan 2024)

date: 2024-01-09, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog

Today’s links Molly McGhee’s “Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind”: A haunting novel of debt, work, dreams, and the capitalist nightmare. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Molly McGhee’s “Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind” (permalink) Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is Molly McGhee’s debut novel: a dreamlike tale of a public-private partnership that hires the terminally endebted to invade the dreams of white-collar professionals and harvest the anxieties that prevent them from being fully productive members of the American corporate workforce: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734829/jonathan-abernathy-you-are-kind-by-molly-mcghee/ Though this is McGhee’s first novel, she’s already well known in literary circles. Her career has included stints at McSweeney’s, where she worked on my book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free: https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/information-doesn-t-want-to-be-free And then at Tor Books, where she worked on my book Attack Surface: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531/attacksurface But though McGhee is a shrewd and skilled editor, I think of her first and foremost as a writer, thanks to stunning essays like “America’s Dead Souls,” a 2021 Paris Review piece that described the experience of multigenerational debt in America in incandescent, pitiless prose: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/ McGhee’s piece struck at the heart of something profoundly wrong in American society – the dual nature of debt, which represents a source of freedom for the wealthy, and bondage for workers: https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation When billionaire mass-murderers like the Sacklers amass tens of billions of liabilities stemming from their role in deliberately starting the opioid crisis, the courts step in to relieve them of their obligations, allowing them to keep their blood-money: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed And when Silicon Valley Bank collapses due to mismanagement by ultra-wealthy financiers, the public purse yawns open and billions flow out to ensure that the wealthiest investors in the country stay whole: https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/18/2-billion-here-2-billion-there/#socialism-for-the-rich When predatory payday lenders target working people and force them into bankruptcy with four-digit APRs, the government intervenes…to save the lenders and keep workers on the hook: https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/29/planned-obsolescence/#academic-fraud “Debtor vs creditor” is the oldest class division we have. The Bronze Age custom of jubilee – the periodic cancellation of all debts – wasn’t some weird peccadillo. It was essential public policy, and without jubilee, the hereditary creditor class became the arbiter of all social priorities, destabilizing great nations and even empires by directing production to suit their parochial needs. Societies that didn’t practice jubilee (or halted it) collapsed: https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles Today’s workers are debt burdened at scales and in ways that defy comprehension, the numbers are so brain-breakingly large. Students who take out modest loans and pay them off several times over remain indebted decades later, with outstanding balances that vastly outstrip the principle: https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt Workers who quit dead-end jobs are billed for five-figure “training repayment” bills that haunt them to the end of days: https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose Hospitals sue indigent patients at scale, siccing debt-collectors on people who can’t pay – and were entitled to free care to begin with: https://armandalegshow.com/episode/when-hospitals-sue-patients-part-2/ And debt collectors are drawn from the same social ranks as the debtors, barely trained and unsupervised, engaging in lawless, constant harassment of the debtor class: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act McGhee’s “American Dead Souls” crystallized all of this vast injustice into a single, beautiful essay – and then McGhee crystallized things further by posting a public resignation letter enumerating the poor pay and working conditions in New York publishing, triggering mass, industry-wide resignations by similarly situated junior editorial staff: https://electricliterature.com/molly-mcghee-jonathan-abernathy-you-are-kind-interview-debut-novel-book-debt/ Thus we arrive at McGhee’s debut: a novel written by someone with a track record for gorgeous, brutally insightful prose; incisive analysis of the class war raging in the embers of capitalism’s American Dream; and consequential labor organizing against the precarity and exploitation of young workers. As you might expect, it’s fantastic. Jonathan Abernathy is a 25 year old, debt haunted, desperately lonely man. An orphan with a mountain of college debt, Abernathy lives in a terrible basement apartment whose rent is just beyond his means. The only thing that propels him out of bed and into the world are his affirmations: Jonathan Abernathy you are kind You are well respected and valued by your community People, including your family, love you That these are all easily discerned lies is beside the point. Whatever gets you through the night. We meet Jonathan as he is applying for a job that he was recruited for in a dream. As instructed in his dream, he presents himself at a shabby strip-mall office where an acerbic functionary behind scratched plexiglass takes his application and informs him that he is up for a gig run jointly by the US State Department and a consortium of large corporate employers. If he is accepted, all of his student debt repayments will be paused and he will no longer face wage garnishment. What’s more, he’ll be doing the job in his sleep, which means he’ll be able to get a day job and pull a double income – what’s not to like? Jonathan’s job is to enter the dreams of sleeping middle-management types in America’s largest firms – but not just any dreams, their nightmares. Once he has entered their nightmare, Jonathan is charged with identifying the source of their anxiety and summoning a more senior operative who will suck up and whisk away that nagging spectre, thus rendering the worker a more productive component of their corporate structure. But of course, there’s more to it. As Jonathan works through his sleeping hours, he is deprived of his own dreams. Then there’s the question of where those captive anxieties are ending up, and how they’re being processed, and what new products can be made from refined nightmares. While Jonathan himself is pulling ever so slightly out of his economic quagmire, the people around him are still struggling. McGhee braids together three strands: the palpable misery of being Jonathan (a proxy for all of us), the rising terror of the true nature of his employment, and beautifully turned absurdist touches that are laugh-aloud funny. This could be a mere novel of ennui and misery but it’s not – it’s a novel of hilarity and fear and misery, all mixed together in a glorious and terrible concoction that is not like anything else you’ve ever read. Hey look at this (permalink) 2023 Word of the Year is “enshittification” https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/ Interoperability, Privacy, & Security https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2023/12/interoperability-privacy-security Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Lost Cause https://locusmag.com/2023/12/paul-di-filippo-reviews-the-lost-cause-by-cory-doctorow/ This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago Civilization arises from agreements about shit https://web.archive.org/web/20040202122931/https://www.londonconsortium.com/shit.htm #15yrsago HOWTO write in the age of distraction http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html #15yrsago Ebook DRM provider goes dark, the books you paid for disappear https://web.archive.org/web/20110902104049/http://www.fictionwise.com/help/help.htm #15yrsago Hardest-to-understand EULA ever when you install WoW on GNU/Linux https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/08/hardest-to-understand-eula-ever-when-you-install-wow-on-gnu-linux/ #15yrsago Group wants to own trademark on “awareness” of a rare disease https://web.archive.org/web/20090416045613/https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cdhawareness/ #10yrsago FBI no longer primarily a crime-fighting agency https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/05/fbi-drops-law-enforcement-as-primary-mission/ #10yrsago Freedom Maze: brave, uncomfortable YA time-travel novel about race https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/08/freedom-maze-brave-uncomfortable-ya-time-travel-novel-about-race/ #10yrsago Terror squad yanks 12-year-old out of class over plan to protest at David Cameron’s office https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/i-was-told-by-police-that-i-could-be-arrested-it-was-terrifying-2164835.html #10yrsago Scan-to-email patent trolls sue Coca-Cola and other large companies https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/01/notorious-scan-to-email-patents-go-big-sue-coca-cola-and-dillards/ #5yrsago Silicon Valley real estate asking prices fall 12% from peak https://wolfstreet.com/2019/01/07/housing-bubble-trouble-silicon-valley-san-francisco/ #5yrsago Bounty hunters track targets by buying realtime location data generated by T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T https://www.vice.com/en/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunter-300-dollars-located-phone-microbilt-zumigo-tmobile #5yrsago Ten years after Juneau ditched water fluoridation, kids racked up an average of $300/each in extra dental bills https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-happened-when-a-city-in-alaska-took-fluoride-out-of-their-drinking-water #5yrsago An interactive timeline of race categories in the US Census https://www.pewresearch.org/interactives/what-census-calls-us/ #5yrsago More Americans get the vote today than on any day since sufferage https://theintercept.com/2019/01/08/florida-felon-voting-rights-amendment-4-2/ #5yrsago Travel warning: four days until Trump’s shut-down costs TSA screeners their first paycheck https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-07/airports-fretting-over-screener-absences-if-shutdown-continues #5yrsago Canada’s housing market is slowly but surely imploding, and Canadians are more exposed than the US was in 2008 https://macleans.ca/economy/realestateeconomy/this-is-how-canadas-housing-correction-begins/ #5yrsago America’s Fiber Future: Susan Crawford on how America’s wired future is slipping away https://memex.craphound.com/2019/01/08/americas-fiber-future-susan-crawford-on-how-americas-wired-future-is-slipping-away/ #5yrsago Trump gave AT&T a $20B tax break and killed Net Neutrality, now they’re prepping mass layoffs https://www.vice.com/en/article/nepxeg/atandt-preps-for-new-layoffs-despite-billions-in-tax-breaks-and-regulatory-favors #5yrsago The Science Fiction Writers of America inducts William Gibson as its next Grand Master https://nebulas.sfwa.org/sfwa-announces-newest-damon-knight-grand-master-william-gibson/ #1yrago Naomi Novik’s incredible, brilliant, stupendous “Temeraire” series https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/08/temeraire/#but-i-am-napoleon #1yrago Social Quitting https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/08/watch-the-surpluses/#exogenous-shocks 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: The Internet’s Original Sin https://craphound.com/news/2023/12/17/the-internets-original-sin/) What the Future will Bring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Vq8qW2A8I Upcoming appearances: Speculating Our AI Future with Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ssyUYErCTB-rzEz_Vhc7cw#/registration Internet Con (Peculiar Book Club), Jan 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5UvzuJ1R4I Books & Books (Coral Gables, Florida), Jan 22 https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/ The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 30 https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html Recent appearances: What the Future will Bring (Homeless Romantic) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Vq8qW2A8I Talking “The Lost Cause” with Warren Mosler (MMT Podcast) https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-182-cory-95211955 Words of the Week https://youtu.be/mq0kSdzSjfc?si=zFMDsrXpHVqNGcb8&amp;t=5232 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/2024/01/08/capitalist-surrealism/ Save to Pocket

RFP released for SSHS construction management services

date: 2024-01-09, from: Guam Daily Post

Efforts to construct a new Simon Sanchez High School made a little bit of progress in this first month of the New Year, with the publication of a request for proposal for construction management services. The procurement is said to…

https://www.postguam.com/news/rfp-released-for-sshs-construction-management-services/article_ce39ca0c-ae7d-11ee-b541-2b90c6562da5.html Save to Pocket

CSUN extends winning streak to seven to open new year

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

CSUN men’s basketball hosted the University of Hawaii on Saturday night, looking to pick up where they left off as they extended their winning streak to seven. Forward De’Sean Allen-Eikens led the team in scoring with 20 points, while guard Gianni Hunt scored a season-high 16 points and collected six rebounds in his third start….

https://sundial.csun.edu/177821/sports/csun-extends-winning-streak-to-seven-to-open-new-year/ Save to Pocket

Tataviam Tribe Regains 500 Acres of Ancestral Land

date: 2024-01-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians (Tribe) announced Monday the donation of more than 500 acres of historic ancestral land to the Tataviam Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization formed by the Tribe in

https://scvnews.com/tataviam-tribe-regains-500-acres-of-ancestral-land/ Save to Pocket

The Heavy History Of Smog In Los Angeles

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

Local leaders said the smog would be cleared in 4 months in the early 1940s. The problem persisted for over four decades and is still hanging around.

https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/the-heavy-history-of-smog-in-los-angeles Save to Pocket

Footsteps in the Snow

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/footsteps-in-the-snow Save to Pocket

SCAA to host Christina Ramos demo

date: 2024-01-09, from: The Signal

News release  The Santa Clarita Artists Association is inviting the community to a free demo from artist Christina Ramos during the group’s meeting, scheduled 6:30-8:30 p.m. Jan. 15 at Barnes and Noble.   Specializing in figurative realism, Ramos was recently named as an “Artist to Watch” by Southwest Art Magazine, and as one of America’s Great Painters […]

The post SCAA to host Christina Ramos demo appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/scaa-to-host-christina-ramos-demo/ Save to Pocket

Asus ROG Phone 8 is an IP68-rated gaming phone with a 165 Hz AMOLED display and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3

date: 2024-01-09, from: Liliputing

Asus has been packing bleeding edge specs into gaming smartphones since 2018, but the new ROG Phone 8 is the first to feature an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. It’s also the company’s first gaming phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. Other features include a 6.78 inch, 165 Hz FHD+ AMOLED display, […]

The post Asus ROG Phone 8 is an IP68-rated gaming phone with a 165 Hz AMOLED display and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/asus-rog-phone-8-is-an-ip68-rated-gaming-phone-with-a-165-hz-amoled-display-and-snapdragon-8-gen-3/ Save to Pocket

NGI0 Commons Fund Aims to Reclaim Public Nature of the Internet

date: 2024-01-09, updated: 2024-01-09, from: nlnet feed

https://nlnet.nl/news/2023/20240109-CommonsFund-starts.html Save to Pocket

GHC 9.6.4 is now available

date: 2024-01-09, from: Glasgow Haskell Compiler

GHC 9.6.4 is now available

Zubin Duggal - 2024-01-09

The GHC developers are happy to announce the availability of GHC 9.6.4. Binary distributions, source distributions, and documentation are available on the release page.

This release is primarily a bugfix release addressing a few issues found in the 9.6 series. These include:

• A fix for a bug where certain warnings flags were not recognised (#24071)
• Fixes for a number of simplifier bugs (#23952, #23862).
• Fixes for compiler panics with certain package databases involving unusable units and module reexports (#21097, #16996, #11050).
• A fix for a typechecker crash (#24083).
• A fix for a code generator bug on AArch64 platforms resulting in invalid conditional jumps (#23746).
• Fixes for some memory leaks in GHCi (#24107, #24118)
• And a few other fixes

A full accounting of changes can be found in the release notes. As some of the fixed issues do affect correctness users are encouraged to upgrade promptly.

We would like to thank Microsoft Azure, GitHub, IOG, the Zw3rk stake pool, Well-Typed, Tweag I/O, Serokell, Equinix, SimSpace, Haskell Foundation, and other anonymous contributors whose on-going financial and in-kind support has facilitated GHC maintenance and release management over the years. Finally, this release would not have been possible without the hundreds of open-source contributors whose work comprise this release.

As always, do give this release a try and open a ticket if you see anything amiss.

Enjoy!

-Zubin

http://haskell.org/ghc/blog/20240109-ghc-9.6.4-released.html Save to Pocket

SQLite 3.45: Interactive release notes

date: 2024-01-09, from: Anton Zhiyanov blog

JSONB has landed.

https://antonz.org/sqlite-3-45/ Save to Pocket

InfluxDB FDW 2.1.0 release

date: 2024-01-09, from: PostgreSQL News

InfluxDB FDW 2.1.0 released

We have just released version 2.1.0 of the Foreign Data Wrapper for InfluxDB. This release can work with PostgreSQL 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16.

This release improves following item (from 2.0.0):

• Support PostgreSQL 16.0
• Bug fix: Cannot delete when time series column defined as timestamptz type

The FDW supports following features :

• InfluxDB FDW supports pushed down some aggregate functions: count, stddev, sum, max, min.
• InfluxDB FDW supports INSERT, DELETE statements.
• InfluxDB FDW supports bulk INSERT by using batch_size option from PostgreSQL version 14 or later.
• WHERE clauses including timestamp, interval and now() functions are pushed down.
• LIMIT…OFFSET clauses are pushed down when there is LIMIT clause only or both LIMIT and OFFSET.
• Support schemaless mode that allows access to elements in the data file without changing the table definition by using jsonb typed column.

Limitations :

• UPDATE is not supported.
• WITH CHECK OPTION constraints is not supported. Following limitations originate from data model and query language of InfluxDB.
• Result sets have different number of rows depending on specified target list. For example, SELECT field1 FROM t1 and SELECT field2 FROM t1 returns different number of rows if the number of points with field1 and field2 are different in InfluxDB database.
• Timestamp precision may be lost because timestamp resolution of PostgreSQL is microseconds while that of InfluxDB is nanoseconds.
• Conditions like WHERE time + interval ‘1 day’ < now() do not work. Please use WHERE time < now() - interval ‘1 day’.

This is developed by Toshiba Digital Innovation Technology Center. Please see the repository for details. Source repository : https://github.com/pgspider/influxdb_fdw

https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/influxdb-fdw-210-release-2783/ Save to Pocket

Benetl, a free ETL tool for PostgreSQL, out in version 5.8

date: 2024-01-09, from: PostgreSQL News

Dear all,

Benetl, a free ETL tool for files working with PostgreSQL, version 5.8.0 is out.

This version uses Java 17 and has been tested with PostgreSQL 16. This version brings great code improvements (code quality) and a better unit tests coverage (over 71% code coverage).

Correcting a small problem in createFunctionIntervalDate database function. Updating etltool.sh with JDK-17 path.

You should update.

Benetl is freely dowloadable at: https://www.benetl.net

You can learn more about ETL tools at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract,_transform,_load

Thanks for your interest.

Regards,

Benoît Carpentier

https://www.benetl.net

Founder of Benetl and Java project manager

https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/benetl-a-free-etl-tool-for-postgresql-out-in-version-58-2779/ Save to Pocket

PGConf India 2024: Talks live and ticket sale started

date: 2024-01-09, from: PostgreSQL News

Hello,

We’re pleased to announce that the selected talks and training for PGConf India 2024 are now live on the conference website. The tickets are now available for purchase. Early bird ticket sale would end on Jan 12th 2024 and the prices would go up by more than 20% after that.

It’s our endeavour to ensure that the conference remains in reach of as many participants as possible. So we have kept the ticket prices as low as possible. Take this opportunity and book tickets soon. Our past experience suggests that the training slots get filled up very fast. Since there are limited seats per training, please book early to guarantee the training you wish to attend.

To buy your tickets, head to https://pgconf.in and click Buy Tickets Now or simply visit https://www.townscript.com/e/pgconf-india-2024 . Details of various trainings available this year are available on the conference website.

Feel free to contact us if you need any more details. See you at the conference soon.

Thanks and Regards,

PGConf India Organising Committee

https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgconf-india-2024-talks-live-and-ticket-sale-started-2781/ Save to Pocket

Etiology of lower respiratory tract in pneumonia based on metagenomic next-generation sequencing: a retrospective study

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Significant benefits of mNGS have been shown in the detection of pathogenic microorganisms in patients with pulmonary infection. For those with suboptimal therapeutic responses, mNGS can provide an etiological basis, aiding in precise anti-infective treatment.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1291980 Save to Pocket

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Possible modulating functions of probiotic Lactiplantibacillus plantarum in particulate matter-associated pulmonary inflammation

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Pulmonary disease represents a substantial global health burden. Increased air pollution, especially fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) is the most concerned proportion of air pollutants to respiratory health. PM_2.5 may carry or combine with other toxic allergens and heavy metals, resulting in serious respiratory allergies and anaphylactic reactions in the host. Available treatment options such as antihistamines, steroids, and avoiding allergens/dust/pollutants could be limited due to certain side effects and immense exposure to air pollutants, especially in most polluted countries. In this mini-review, we summarized how PM_2.5 triggers respiratory hyperresponsiveness and inflammation, and the probiotic Lactiplantibacillus plantarum supplementation could minimize the risk of the same. L. plantarum may confer beneficial effects in PM_2.5-associated pulmonary inflammation due to significant antioxidant potential. We discussed L. plantarum’s effect on PM_2.5-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS), inflammatory cytokines, lipid peroxidation, and DNA damage. Available preclinical evidence shows L. plantarum induces gut-lung axis, SCFA, GABA, and other neurotransmitter signaling via gut microbiota modulation. SCFA signals are important in maintaining lung homeostasis and regulating intracellular defense mechanisms in alveolar cells. However, significant research is needed in this direction to contemplate L. plantarum’s therapeutic potential in pulmonary allergies.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1290914 Save to Pocket

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First genome assembly and annotation of Sanghuangporus weigelae uncovers its medicinal functions, metabolic pathways, and evolution

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Sanghuangporus, also known as “Sanghuang” in China, is a well-known genus of traditional Chinese medicinal macrofungi. To make more effective use of Sanghuangporus resources, we completed the first genome assembly and annotation of a monokaryon strain of S. weigelae in the present study. A 33.96-Mb genome sequence was assembled as 13 contigs, leading to prediction of 9377 protein-coding genes. Phylogenetic and average nucleotide identity analyses indicated that the S. weigelae genome is closely related to those of other Sanghuangporus species in evolutionary tree, which clustered in one clade. Collinearity analysis revealed a high level of collinearity of S. weigelae with S. baumii, S. vaninii, and S. sanghuang. Biosynthesis pathways potentially involved in medicinal properties, including terpenoid and polysaccharide synthesis, were identified in S. weigelae, while polysaccharides were identified as the main medicinal metabolites in S. weigelae, with flavonoids more important in Sanghuangporus than other medicinal mushroom groups. Genes encoding 332 carbohydrate-active enzymes were identified in the S. weigelae genome, including major glycoside hydrolases and glycosyltransferases predicted, revealing the robust lignocellulose degradation capacity of S. weigelae. Further, 130 genes, clustered in seven classes were annotated to encode cytochromes P450 in the S. weigelae genome. Overall, our results reveal the remarkably medicinal capacity of S. weigelae and provide new insights that will inform the study of evolution and medicinal application of S. weigelae. The data are a reference resource for the formulation of scientific and rational ecological protection policies for Sanghuangporus species.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1325418 Save to Pocket

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Xenophagy receptors Optn and p62 and autophagy modulator Dram1 independently promote the zebrafish host defense against Mycobacterium marinum

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Anti-bacterial autophagy, also known as xenophagy, is a crucial innate immune process that helps maintain cellular homeostasis by targeting invading microbes. This defense pathway is widely studied in the context of infections with mycobacteria, the causative agents of human tuberculosis and tuberculosis-like disease in animal models. Our previous work in a zebrafish tuberculosis model showed that host defense against Mycobacterium marinum (Mm) is impaired by deficiencies in xenophagy receptors, optineurin (Optn) or sequestome 1 (p62), and Damage-regulated autophagy modulator 1 (Dram1). However, the interdependency of these receptors and their interaction with Dram1 remained unknown. In the present study, we used single and double knockout zebrafish lines in combination with overexpression experiments. We show that Optn and p62 can compensate for the loss of each other’s function, as their overexpression restores the infection susceptibility of the mutant phenotypes. Similarly, Dram1 can compensate for deficiencies in Optn and p62, and, vice versa, Optn and p62 compensate for the loss of Dram1, indicating that these xenophagy receptors and Dram1 do not rely on each other for host defense against Mm. In agreement, Dram1 overexpression in optn/p62 double mutants restored the interaction of autophagosome marker Lc3 with Mm. Finally, optn/p62 double mutants displayed more severe infection susceptibility than the single mutants. Taken together, these results suggest that Optn and p62 do not function downstream of each other in the anti-mycobacterial xenophagy pathway, and that the Dram1-mediated defense against Mm infection does not rely on specific xenophagy receptors.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1331818 Save to Pocket

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Eliminating the invading extracellular and intracellular FnBp+ bacteria from respiratory epithelial cells by autophagy mediated through FnBp-Fn-Integrin α5β1 axis

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

We previously found that the respiratory epithelial cells could eliminate the invaded group A streptococcus (GAS) through autophagy induced by binding a fibronectin (Fn) binding protein (FnBp) expressed on the surface of GAS to plasma protein Fn and its receptor integrin α5β1 of epithelial cells. Is autophagy initiated by FnBp⁺ bacteria via FnBp-Fn-Integrin α5β1 axis a common event in respiratory epithelial cells?

We chose Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus/S. a) and Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes/L. m) as representatives of extracellular and intracellular FnBp⁺ bacteria, respectively. The FnBp of them was purified and the protein function was confirmed by western blot, viable bacteria count, confocal and pull-down. The key molecule downstream of the action axis was detected by IP, mass spectrometry and bio-informatics analysis.

We found that different FnBp from both S. aureus and L. monocytogenes could initiate autophagy through FnBp-Fn-integrin α5β1 axis and this could be considered a universal event, by which host tries to remove invading bacteria from epithelial cells. Importantly, we firstly reported that S100A8, as a key molecule downstream of integrin β1 chain, is highly expressed upon activation of integrin α5β1, which in turn up-regulates autophagy.

Various FnBp from FnBp⁺ bacteria have the ability to initiate autophagy via FnBp-Fn-Integrin α5β1 axis to promote the removal of invading bacteria from epithelial cells in the presence of fewer invaders. S100A8 is a key molecule downstream of Integrin α5β1 in this autophagy pathway.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1324727 Save to Pocket

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Lipid nanoparticles based on natural matrices with activity against multidrug resistant bacterial species

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Lately, the bacterial multidrug resistance has been a reason to public health concerning around world. The development of new pharmacology therapies against infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria is urgent. In this work, we developed 10 NLC formulations composed of essential oils (EO), vegetable butter and surfactant. The formulations were evaluated for long-term and thermal cycling stability studies in terms of (particle size, polydispersion index and Zeta potential). In vitro antimicrobial assays were performed using disk diffusion test and by the determination of the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) performed with fresh and a year-old NLC. The most promising system and its excipients were structurally characterized through experimental methodologies (FTIR-ATR, DSC and FE-SEM). Finally, this same formulation was studied through nanotoxicity assays on the chicken embryo model, analyzing different parameters, as viability and weight changes of embryos and annexes. All the developed formulations presented long-term physicochemical and thermal stability. The formulation based on cinnamon EO presented in vitro activity against strains of Acinetobacter baumannii, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from humans and in vivo biocompatibility. Considering these promising results, such system is able to be further tested on in vivo efficacy assays.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1328519 Save to Pocket

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Antibody reactive immunomes of Ehrlichia chaffeensis and E. canis are diverse and defined by conformational antigenic determinants

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

For decades, the defined antibody reactive proteins of Ehrlichia chaffeensis and E. canis were limited to a small group with linear antibody epitopes. Recently, our laboratory has utilized an immunomics-based approach to rapidly screen and identify undefined Ehrlichia chaffeensis and E. canis antigenic proteins and antibody epitopes. In this study, we analyzed the remaining portion (~50%) of the E. chaffeensis and E. canis proteomes (n = 444 and n = 405 proteins, respectively), that were not examined in previous studies, to define the complete immunomes of these important pathogens. Almost half of the E. chaffeensis proteins screened (196/444) reacted with antibodies in convalescent HME patient sera, while only 43 E. canis proteins reacted with CME dog sera. New major immunoreactive proteins were identified in E. chaffeensis (n = 7) and E. canis (n = 1), increasing the total number of E. chaffeensis (n = 14) and E. canis proteins (n = 18) that exhibited antibody reactivity comparable to well-defined major antigenic proteins (TRP120 and TRP19). All of the E. chaffeensis but only some E. canis major immunoreactive proteins contained major conformation-dependent antibody epitopes. The E. chaffeensis immunoreactive proteins were generally small (< 250 amino acids; ~27kDa) and the E. canis proteins were slightly larger (> 320 amino acids; ~35 kDa). The majority of these new Ehrlichia major immunoreactive proteins were predicted to be type I secreted effectors, some of which contained transmembrane domains. Characterization of the immunomes of E. chaffeensis and E. canis and understanding the host specific Ehrlichia immune responses will facilitate identification of protective antigens and define the biophysical epitope characteristics vital to effective vaccine development for the ehrlichioses.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1321291 Save to Pocket

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Clinical features and risk factors of liver injury in patients with Chlamydia psittaci pneumonia- a retrospective analysis

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Research into the effects of Chlamydia psittaci pneumonia on the liver has emerged in the last few years. However, no studies have systematically described liver injury in patients with psittacosis. We present the first report on the clinical features and risk factors of liver injury in patients with Chlamydia psittaci pneumonia.

We retrospectively collected the clinical parameters for 46 patients with Chlamydia psittaci pneumonia admitted to Jinhua Central Hospital from January 2019 to February 2023. We analyzed the liver function parameters and summarized the clinical characteristics and risk factors of liver injury.

Among the 46 patients, 39 (84.8%) had abnormal liver function, and 23 (50.0%) had liver injury. The ratio of patients with a history of alcohol consumption (39.1% vs. 4.3%, P =0.004) or severe pneumonia (56.5% vs. 26.1%, P =0.036) was higher in the liver injury group compared with the non-liver injury group. Laboratory tests showed higher lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels in the liver injury group (P <0.001). The optimal cut-off LDH level associated with liver injury was 473 IU/L as determined by ROC curve analysis. Furthermore, multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that a history of alcohol consumption (odds ratio [OR] = 11.251; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.022 ~ 123.897, P =0.048) and an LDH level of ≥ 473IU/L (OR = 11.635, 95% CI = 1.832 ~ 73.869, P =0.009) were independent risk factors for liver injury.

A history of alcohol consumption and an LDH level of over 473 IU/L are independent risk factors for Chlamydia psittaci pneumonia-related liver injury. It is recommended that particular attention be given to monitoring and evaluating liver function parameters when treating patients with Chlamydia psittaci pneumonia who have a high LDH level and history of alcohol consumption.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1320758 Save to Pocket

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Characterization of nontyphoidal Salmonella strains from a tertiary hospital in China: serotype diversity, multidrug resistance, and genetic insights

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Nontyphoidal Salmonella is a significant public health concern due to its ability to cause foodborne illnesses worldwide. This study aims to characterize the nontyphoidal Salmonella strains isolated from patients in China.

A total of 19 nontyphoidal Salmonella strains were characterized through serovar identification, antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST), biofilm formation assessment. Genetic relatedness was determined using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). WGS was employed to decipher the resistance mechanism and to contextualize the S. serovar Mbandaka strains among previously sequenced isolates in China. The biofilm associated mrkA gene was examined by PCR.

The predominant serovar identified was S. Enteritidis, followed by S. Mbandaka, S. Thompson, S. Livingston, S. Alachua, and S. Infantis. PFGE analysis indicated a notable genetic similarity among the S. Mbandaka isolates. Phylogenetic analysis suggested that these strains were likely derived from a single source that had persisted in China for over five years. One multidrug resistance (MDR) S. Enteritidis isolate carried a highly transferable IncB/O/K/Z plasmid with bla_CTX-M-15. One S. Thompson strain, harboring the mrkABCDF operon in an IncX1 plasmid, isolated from cutaneous lesions, demonstrated robust biofilm formation. However, no mrkABCDF loci were detected in other strains.

Our study emphasizes the importance of persisted surveillance and prompt response to Salmonella infections to protect public health. The dissemination of bla_CTX-M-15-harboring IncB/O/K/Z plasmid and the spread of virulent mrkABCDF operon among Salmonella in China and other global regions warrant close monitoring.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1327092 Save to Pocket

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Plasmid content of carbapenem resistant Acinetobacter baumannii isolates belonging to five International Clones collected from hospitals of Alexandria, Egypt

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Multidrug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii is one of the most important nosocomial pathogens worldwide. During the last decades it has become a major threat for healthcare settings due to the high antibiotic resistance rates among these isolates. Many resistance determinants are coded by conjugative or mobilizable plasmids, facilitating their dissemination. The majority of plasmids harbored by Acinetobacter species are less than 20 Kb, however, high molecular weight elements are the most clinically relevant since they usually contain antibiotic resistance genes. The aim of this work was to describe, classify and determine the genetic content of plasmids harbored by carbapem resistant A. baumannii isolates belonging to predominant clonal lineages circulating in hospitals from Alexandria, Egypt. The isolates were subjected to S1-Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis experiments to identify high molecular weight plasmids. To further analyze the plasmid content and the genetic localization of the antibiotic resistance genes, isolates were sequenced by Illumina Miseq and MinION Mk1C and a hybrid assembly was performed using Unicycler v0.5.0. Plasmids were detected with MOBsuite 3.0.3 and Copla.py v.1.0 and mapped using the online software Proksee.ca. Replicase genes were further analyzed through a BLAST against the Acinetobacter Plasmid Typing database. Eleven plasmids ranging in size from 4.9 to 205.6 Kb were characterized and mapped. All isolates contained plasmids, and, in many cases, more than two elements were identified. Antimicrobial resistance genes such as bla_OXA-23, bla_GES-like, aph(3’)-VI and qacEΔ1 were found in likely conjugative large plasmids; while virulence determinants such as septicolysin or TonB-dependent receptors were identified in plasmids of small size. Some of these resistance determinants were, in turn, located within transposons and class 1 integrons. Among the identified plasmids, the majority encoded proteins belonging to the Rep_3 family, but replicases of the RepPriCT_1 (Aci6) family were also identified. Plasmids are of high interest as antibiotic resistance control tools, since they may be used as genetic markers for antibiotic resistance and virulence, and also as targets for the development of compounds that can inhibit transfer processes.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1332736 Save to Pocket

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Commentary: Non-pathogenic Neisseria species of the oropharynx as a reservoir of antimicrobial resistance: a cross-sectional study

date: 2024-01-09, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1343608 Save to Pocket

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I4OA Hall of Fame - 2023 edition

date: 2024-01-09, from: Crossref Blog

The Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA) was launched in September 2020 to advocate and promote the unrestricted availability of the abstracts of the world’s scholarly publications, particularly journal articles and book chapters, in trusted repositories where they are open and machine-accessible. I4OA calls on all scholarly publishers to open the abstracts of their published works and, where possible, to submit them to Crossref.

Since the launch of I4OA, we have been tracking the openness of abstracts for all Crossref members over time (for data and code, see this GitHub repository). For a subset of 40+, mostly larger, publishers, the proportion of current journal articles (published in the current year and preceding two years) that have abstracts deposited in Crossref is shown in a chart on the I4OA website, which is updated quarterly (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Proportion of current journal articles from selected publishers that have open abstracts in Crossref. Data collected on January 1, 2024 for publication years 2021-2023. Publishers already supporting I4OA are shown in orange.

These longitudinal data and accompanying visualisations allow us to identify and highlight good examples from 2023: publishers (both large and small) who newly started to make abstracts openly available last year and/or who managed to get the proportion of their articles with open abstracts close to 100%¹.

While we highlight some of these examples below in our ‘Hall of Fame’, it’s important to also acknowledge all the publishers that already were depositing abstracts to Crossref for most or all of their journal articles prior to 2023, thereby contributing to the availability of abstracts as part of a rich ecosystem of open metadata, for others to use and build upon. 

Hall of Fame - Part 1: publishers included in I4OA visualisation

For the set of (mostly larger) publishers included in the visualisation on the I4OA website, Figure 2 shows the difference in the proportion of abstracts available in Crossref between January and December 2023 for journal articles published in 2021-2023.

A number of publishers stand out from this figure:

• Wiley announced in October 2022 that it was joining I4OA and would be making abstracts available through Crossref. In August 2023, Wiley started to deposit abstracts to Crossref, and at the end of 2023, the proportion of current journal articles with open abstracts was 77%.

  This makes Wiley the first of the four largest traditional commercial publishers to deposit abstracts for the majority of journal articles they publish. Springer Nature does this only for their current open access articles, while Elsevier and Taylor & Francis² do not yet provide abstracts to Crossref at all. SAGE, the fifth largest traditional commercial publisher, was a founding member of I4OA and has open abstracts for 85% of current journal articles.
  
  

• Among society publishers, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) went from 7% to 99% open abstracts for current journal articles last year, which is a great achievement. The publishing arm of the American Institute of Physics (AIP Publishing) joins them in reaching close to 100% open abstracts, going from 41% to 95% in 2023.

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¹Depending on the type of journal(s) of a given publisher, the maximal coverage of open abstracts will often be somewhat below 100%, as in Crossref, all journal content is assigned the type ‘journal article’. This includes e.g. editorials, letters to the editor and other publication types that are not always expected to have abstracts.

²The numbers for Wiley and Taylor & Francis do not include Hindawi and F1000 Research, respectively, as these have separate Crossref member IDs. As most full open access publishers, both Hindawi and F1000 Research have high proportions of open abstracts (81% and 98%, respectively).

• CAIRN and Project Muse, two publishing platforms in the humanities and social sciences representing a number of individual publishers, both started including abstracts in the metadata they provide to Crossref in 2023. At the end of 2023, CAIRN had abstracts available for 41% of current journal articles, while Project Muse was just starting out at 5%. Both will hopefully increase further this coming year.

• Returning to traditional commercial publishers, Wolters Kluwer Health, part of Wolters Kluwer, had seen a slow growth in the proportion of journal articles with open abstracts in the years prior to 2023, going from 2% to 10%. However, they showed a rapid increase in 2023, ending the year with 52% open abstracts.

While it is good to see publishers who have publicly committed their support for I4OA follow through with opening their abstracts (like Wiley and AIP), it is also very encouraging to see publishers who are not (yet) listed as I4OA supporters do so. This shows a growing awareness and action on this issue beyond advocacy through I4OA alone. And of course, we would love to list these publishers on our website as official supporters of I4OA!

Figure 2 also shows some cases where the proportion of open abstracts has gone down during the year. This can be due to temporary technical issues in depositing abstracts (as was the case for Hindawi). Theoretically, the proportion of open abstracts can also go down when publishers stop providing abstracts altogether during the year, but we have not observed that to be the case.

Figure 2: Development in the proportion of open abstracts in 2023 for current journal articles (publication years 2021-2023) from selected publishers. Publishers already supporting I4OA are shown in orange. Light orange/blue dots show the proportion of open abstracts in January 2023, and dark orange/blue dots in December 2023.

Hall of Fame - Part 2: other publishers

Among the many publishers not included in the limited selection shown in the I4OA visualisation, there are also some interesting highlights of publishers either starting out to deposit abstracts (and reaching a sizeable proportion) or having deposited open abstracts for almost all their current journal articles in 2023. The examples below drew our attention in 2023; they include a number of medium-sized publishers as well as a group of smaller publishers that deserve special attention.

• The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) went from 0% to 42% open abstracts in 2023. However, from January 2024 onwards, several EMBO journals were transferred to Springer Nature, so EMBO can no longer be tracked at publisher level in Crossref. It will still be possible to look at the development of open abstracts for individual EMBO journals.

• The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), a medium-sized publisher, started to deposit abstracts in 2023, reaching 33% open abstracts for current journal articles at the end of the year.

• The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) had open abstracts for almost all their current journal articles at the end of 2023, increasing from 50% to 97%.

• Finally, in the second quarter of 2023, a group of over 200 smaller Turkish publishers saw large increases in their coverage of open abstracts, resulting in open abstracts for 95%-100% of their current journal articles. Consultation with Crossref pointed to the potential supporting role of DergiPark, one of the largest Crossref sponsors in Turkey. This is a great example of developments in open metadata at smaller publishers.

Looking forward 

At the beginning of 2024, the proportion of current journal articles published by Crossref members with open abstracts has reached 49.7%, up from 20.7% when I4OA was launched in September 2020. This is thanks to a growing number of publishers who are depositing abstracts to Crossref, often depositing open abstracts for close to 100% of their journal articles.

This blog post has highlighted a number of publishers who contributed to this growth in the availability of open abstracts in 2023. We hope these examples will inspire other publishers to start doing the same and are looking forward to following the growth in the availability of open abstracts in 2024.

For publishers that started to deposit abstracts in recent years and are doing so for newly published articles only, our data on open abstracts for current journal articles will look better in 2024 than in 2023, as only articles published in the current year and two preceding years are taken into account.

However, the benefits of having abstracts openly available from a central location such as Crossref (both for direct usage and for integration in other open scholarly infrastructures) are not limited to recent publications only. Hopefully, publishers currently depositing abstracts to Crossref will continue to do so both for newly published articles as well as for the backfiles of journal articles already published.

Publishers who would like to be added to the list of I4OA supporters, or who would like more information on how to deposit abstracts for both new and existing journal articles, are very welcome to reach out to I4OA. More information about open abstracts in general, and I4OA in particular, can also be found in the FAQ on the I4OA website.

The author would like to thank Ludo Waltman (CWTS) and Ginny Hendricks (Crossref) for useful feedback on an earlier draft of this post.

This blog post is published under a CC BY 4.0 license. The header image is an adaptation of an image by Adam Jones available from Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Interior_02_of_Rock_%26_Roll_Hall_of_Fame_and_Museum,Cleveland%28by_Adam_Jones%29.jpg) and is shared under a CC BY-SA license.

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Chiquita Canyon Landfill offers warning over work 

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Signal

As the Castaic and Val Verde communities settle in for another year of dealing with the stench from local landfill gases and leachate pollution that’s led to thousands of complaints, Chiquita Canyon Landfill formally announced what’s been said in meetings for months now: The smell is going to continue to worsen for some before it […]

The post Chiquita Canyon Landfill offers warning over work  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

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City Council to discuss contracts  

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Signal

The Santa Clarita City Council’s first meeting of 2024 is scheduled for Tuesday, when the discussion is expected to cover annual contracts, fee adjustments and other regular city business.  The city’s pools, economic promotion and cellphone services are a few of the items, according to the City Council agenda.   The biggest contract calls for the […]

The post City Council to discuss contracts   appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

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Tickets Still Available for Child & Family Center’s Viva Las Vegas

date: 2024-01-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Child & Family Center invites you to Viva Las Vegas at the Sand Canyon Country Club on Saturday, Jan. 20, from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

https://scvnews.com/tickets-still-available-for-child-family-centers-viva-las-vegas/ Save to Pocket

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ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16 gaming laptops get new designs, OLED display options, CPU upgrades,

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G line of gaming laptops have a well-earned reputation for offering strong performance in compact, eye-catching designs. And this year’s models are thinner and lighter than ever… while also bringing processor, display, and audio upgrades, among other things. The new Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is a 3.3 pound gaming laptop with a […]

The post ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16 gaming laptops get new designs, OLED display options, CPU upgrades, appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/rog-zephyrus-g14-and-g16-gaming-laptops-get-new-designs-oled-display-options-cpu-upgrades/ Save to Pocket

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Coroner IDs victim in fatal New Year’s Eve shooting 

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Signal

The L.A. County coroner’s office released the identity of the man detectives say was shot and killed Dec. 31 in Valencia.  Medical examiners on Monday identified Devin Marshall, 37, as the man who ultimately died at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.  Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies responded to a report of shots fired around 4:31 […]

The post Coroner IDs victim in fatal New Year’s Eve shooting  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/coroner-ids-victim-in-fatal-new-years-eve-shooting/ Save to Pocket

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Corporate Landlord Will Pay $3.7 Million To Settle California Lawsuit Over Illegal Rent Hikes In Single-Family Homes

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

State investigators say Invitation Homes, the nation’s largest single-family home rental company, increased rents above legal limits on 1,900 California homes.

https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/invitation-homes-settlement-california-los-angeles-3-7-million-bonta-attorney-general-illegal-rent-increases Save to Pocket

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Metrolink Antelope Valley Line service to be suspended this weekend 

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Signal

The Metrolink Antelope Valley Line will have its service suspended on Saturday and Sunday for maintenance, according to the commuter rail service’s website.  “Metrolink will complete a maintenance and rehabilitation project along the Antelope Valley Line,” the website reads. “This project will result in a complete service suspension of Antelope Valley Line service those two […]

The post <strong>Metrolink Antelope Valley Line service to be suspended this weekend</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/metrolink-antelope-valley-line-service-to-be-suspended-this-weekend/ Save to Pocket

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Application period opens for LEAP II

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

Local businesses can now apply for the Local Employers Assistance Program (LEAP) Supplemental Grant II, according to a release from the Office of the Governor.

https://www.postguam.com/news/application-period-opens-for-leap-ii/article_f00e9ba0-adf9-11ee-832e-f3209e5a5221.html Save to Pocket

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Asus ROG NUC is a compact gaming desktop with up to Intel Core Ultra 9 and NVIDIA RTX 4070

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

Asus makes gaming PCs. And Asus makes mini PCs. And now that the company has largely taken over Intel’s NUC line of compact computers, it’s bringing those two things together with the launch of the first ROG NUC compact gaming desktop. The little computer has a 2.5 liter chassis that houses up to an Intel […]

The post Asus ROG NUC is a compact gaming desktop with up to Intel Core Ultra 9 and NVIDIA RTX 4070 appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/asus-rog-nuc-is-a-compact-gaming-desktop-with-up-to-intel-core-ultra-9-and-nvidia-rtx-4070/ Save to Pocket

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City Seeks Volunteers for 2024 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count

date: 2024-01-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)

On Jan. 23, the city of Santa Clarita will partner with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and the local nonprofit Bridge to Home for the 2024 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count

https://scvnews.com/city-seeks-volunteers-for-2024-greater-los-angeles-homeless-count/ Save to Pocket

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Art And War: Israeli And Palestinian Artists Reflect On Oct. 7 And The Crisis In Gaza

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The LAist

We asked six Israeli and Palestinian artists about how the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas has affected their lives and their work. They shared stories of fear, anger, sadness and pain.

https://laist.com/news/art-and-war-israeli-and-palestinian-artists-reflect-on-oct-7-and-the-crisis-in-gaza Save to Pocket

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MSI Cyborg 14 is a 3.5 pound Raptor Lake-H laptop with up to NVIDIA RTX 4060 graphics

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

MSI is introducing a lot of new gaming laptops this week, and most are big and powerful beasts with 14th-gen Intel Meteor Lake-H or Raptor Lake-HX processors and NVIDIA graphics. But a few are smaller, lighter systems designed to balance performance and portability. Case in point: the new MSI Cyborg 14 is a 3.5 pound gaming laptop […]

The post MSI Cyborg 14 is a 3.5 pound Raptor Lake-H laptop with up to NVIDIA RTX 4060 graphics appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/msi-cyborg-14-is-a-3-5-pound-raptor-lake-h-laptop-with-up-to-nvidia-rtx-4060-graphics/ Save to Pocket

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Lenovo ThinkBook Graphics Extension is a 64 Gbps GPU dock for the ThinkBook 14i Gen 6+

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

Lenovo’s new ThinkBook Graphics Extension is a GPU dock that allows you to connect a desktop-class NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU to a laptop computer using a 64 Gbps connection. The only catch? Right now the graphics dock is only designed for a single Lenovo laptop – the Lenovo ThinkBook 14i Gen 6+ is Lenovo’s only laptop with […]

The post Lenovo ThinkBook Graphics Extension is a 64 Gbps GPU dock for the ThinkBook 14i Gen 6+ appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/lenovo-thinkbook-graphics-extension-is-a-64-gbps-gpu-dock-for-the-thinkbook-14i-gen-6/ Save to Pocket

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MSI Cubi 6 is a mini PC with Intel Raptor Lake-U and quad display support

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

The MSI Cubi 6 is a compact desktop computer with a 13th-gen Intel Raptor Lake-U processor, dual-channel DDR5 memory, and support for up to four displays, thanks to a combination of HDMI and Thunderbolt ports. While last year’s MSI Cubi 5 12M had just a single Thunderbolt 4 port (and a 12th-gen Intel Alder Lake-U processor), […]

The post MSI Cubi 6 is a mini PC with Intel Raptor Lake-U and quad display support appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/msi-cubi-6-is-a-mini-pc-with-intel-raptor-lake-u-and-quad-display-support/ Save to Pocket

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systemd through the eyes of a musl distribution maintainer

date: 2024-01-08, from: OS News

systemd, as a service manager, is not actually a bad piece of software by itself. The fact it can act as both a service manager and an inetd(8) replacement is really cool. The unit file format is very nice and expressive. Defining mechanism and leaving policy to the administrator is a good design. Of course, nothing exists in a vacuum. I don’t like the encouragement to link daemons to libsystemd for better integration – all of the useful integrations can be done with more portable measures. And I really don’t like the fact they consider glibc to be “the Linux API” when musl, Bionic, and other libcs exist. I’d like to dive into detail on the good and the bad of systemd, as seen through my eyes as all of: end user, administrator, and developer. ↫ awilfox awilfox is a maintainer of Adélie Linux, which does not use systemd, but this blog post is one of the few reasonable, well-written, and substantiated critiques of systemd – as opposed to the usual mindless screeching you usually hear about systemd. A great read.

https://www.osnews.com/story/138235/systemd-through-the-eyes-of-a-musl-distribution-maintainer/ Save to Pocket

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Intel Core Mobile Series 1 processors are Raptor Lake Refresh chips for thin and light PCs

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

Intel is expanding mobile processor family with yet another new brand of chips featuring names that make it clear these processors aren’t quite like anything else in the 2024 mobile lineup. The new Intel Core Mobile Series 1 chips are 15 watt U-series chips designed for thin-and-light laptops. They bring a speed boost over previous-gen U-series […]

The post Intel Core Mobile Series 1 processors are Raptor Lake Refresh chips for thin and light PCs appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/intel-core-mobile-series-1-processors-are-raptor-lake-refresh-chips-for-thin-and-light-pcs/ Save to Pocket

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Intel expands the Raptor Lake Refresh desktop family with 35W to 65W mainstream processors

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

A few months after launching a half dozen high-performance, 125-watt desktop processors as part of the new 14th-gen Intel Core “Raptor Lake Refresh” family, Intel is expanding its 14th-gen desktop lineup to include 18 new mainstream desktop processors in the 35 to 65-watt range. The new Raptor Lake-Refresh chips continue to support features including Intel […]

The post Intel expands the Raptor Lake Refresh desktop family with 35W to 65W mainstream processors appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/intel-expands-the-raptor-lake-refresh-desktop-family-with-35w-to-65w-mainstream-processors/ Save to Pocket

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Lenovo’s 2024 Yoga laptops come in Intel and AMD flavors

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

Lenovo is giving its Yoga line of thin and light laptops a 2024 makeover, with most models receiving shiny new Intel Meteor Lake chips, but at least one is getting an AMD Ryzen 8040HS processor instead. The newest flagships are the newest versions of the Yoga Pro 9i 16″ laptop and Yoga i9 14″ 2-in-1 […]

The post Lenovo’s 2024 Yoga laptops come in Intel and AMD flavors appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/lenovos-2024-yoga-laptops-come-in-intel-and-amd-flavors/ Save to Pocket

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MSI Claw handheld gaming PC features an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor and 7 inch, 120 Hz display

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

The MSI Claw is a handheld gaming PC with a 7 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS LCD display with a 120 Hz refresh rate that’s sandwiched between a set of game controllers with RGB backlit analog sticks and hall-effect triggers. But, as expected, what sets it apart from most devices in this ever-expanding category is […]

The post MSI Claw handheld gaming PC features an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor and 7 inch, 120 Hz display appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/msi-claw-handheld-gaming-pc-features-an-intel-core-ultra-7-155h-processor-and-7-inch-120-hz-display/ Save to Pocket

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ThinkCentre neo Ultra small form-factor PC is Lenovo’s answer to the Mac Studio (kind of)

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

The Lenovo ThinkCentre neo Ultra is a desktop computer with support for up to an Intel Core i9 processor with vPro technology, up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 discrete graphics, and a neural processing unit on a dedicated, user-upgradeable card. It’s also a compact computer that measures just 195 x 195 x 107mm (7.7″ x 7.7″ […]

The post ThinkCentre neo Ultra small form-factor PC is Lenovo’s answer to the Mac Studio (kind of) appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/thinkcentre-neo-ultra-small-form-factor-pc-is-lenovos-answer-to-the-mac-studio-kind-of/ Save to Pocket

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Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 4 SPE has an E Ink Prism lid for customizable designs

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

The Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 4 SPE is a concept computer designed to give users the ability to customize the look of their laptops thanks to an E Ink Prism 3 color display on the lid. First unveiled last year, E Ink’s Prism 3 technology is a low-power, programmable solution that can display simple graphics and […]

The post Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 4 SPE has an E Ink Prism lid for customizable designs appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/lenovo-thinkbook-13x-gen-4-spe-has-an-e-ink-prism-lid-for-customizable-designs/ Save to Pocket

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Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Hybrid is two computers in one (Windows PC with a detachable Android tablet)

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

As is often the case, Lenovo seems determined to take home the trophy for weirdest laptop of CES this year. The company has a long track record of using its ThinkBook Plus line of laptops to try out things like putting an E ink display on the lid of a laptop or a second screen […]

The post Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Hybrid is two computers in one (Windows PC with a detachable Android tablet) appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/lenovo-thinkbook-plus-hybrid-is-two-computers-in-one-windows-pc-with-a-detachable-android-tablet/ Save to Pocket

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Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i dual-screen OLED laptop gets a Meteor Lake upgrade for 2024

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

A year after introducing the Yoga Book 9i dual-screen laptop, Lenovo is ready for round two with a new 2024 model sporting an Intel Meteor Lake processor. On the outside, the new model looks a lot like its predecessor, which means you’re still looking at a laptop with two 2.8K OLED displays that you can […]

The post Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i dual-screen OLED laptop gets a Meteor Lake upgrade for 2024 appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/lenovos-yoga-book-9i-dual-screen-oled-laptop-gets-a-meteor-lake-upgrade-for-2024/ Save to Pocket

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Intel’s 14th-gen Raptor Lake-HX chips are made for gaming laptops and mobile workstations

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

After launching a line of Raptor Lake-Refresh chips for desktop computers last fall, Intel is bringing the family to mobile with a new set of 55-watt Raptor Lake Refresh-HX-series processors designed for gaming laptops, mobile workstations, and other laptops and mini PCs that can benefit from a bit of extra CPU power. Since these processors […]

The post Intel’s 14th-gen Raptor Lake-HX chips are made for gaming laptops and mobile workstations appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/intels-14th-gen-raptor-lake-hx-chips-are-made-for-gaming-laptops-and-mobile-workstations/ Save to Pocket

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The Texas Grid Is Bracing for Another Freeze

date: 2024-01-08, from: Heatmap News

Winter has begun to arrive in Texas. In the panhandle, temperatures are expected to get as low as 22 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, while the National Weather Service forecast office in Amarillo told residents to brace themselves for Tuesday, when “temperatures will plummet to some 20 to 30 degrees below normal.” The more populous parts of the state can expect more cold weather later this week and next; in Austin, lows could dip below freezing by Sunday and into next week, while in Dallas, the thermometer could reach down to 25 this weekend. Austin could have ice, possibly leading to snarled traffic and the occasional downed power line thanks to a gliding car.

None of this is any match for Winter Storm Uri, which paralyzed the state in February 2021, causing a multi-day blackout that killed more than 200 people. But any winter cold stretch in Texas will bring up questions about how the state’s unique electricity system will handle it. “It’s deep in the Texas psyche now, and anytime it gets really hot or really cold the grid is front of mind,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas.

The vast majority of Texas is on its own electric grid, and the state’s electricity market for businesses and households is far less regulated than anywhere else in the country — Texas households have more options about where they can purchase electricity from, for instance, and the offerings tend to be less standardized. While Texas does typically have low electricity prices, the system can also lead to massive spikes in what households pay. After Uri, when some customers who did still have power faced charges in the five figures, utilities regulators capped prices at $5,000 per megawatt hour.

As in much of the South, Texan households are more like to use electricity to heat their homes, which makes a blackout during a prolonged cold snap extra deadly. The failures during Uri triggered a slew of reports and investigations into what happened and who profited from it. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found a lack of weatherization across the board, but especially in the natural gas system, which was behind 87% of all generation outages, some due to distribution failures and others due to power production issues. There were wind outages, as well, thanks to iced turbine blades.

“ERCOT” — the Texas electricity authority — “says they’re ready, but they say they’re ready all the time,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist and lecturer at the University of Houston. “There’s a credibility issue.”

There has been substantial winterization across the entire system since Uri, Rhodes said. Considering the expected lows will be around 12 degrees higher this week than they were during Uri, Rhodes added, “if any power trips offline for temperature issues, then that would worry me because that means we haven’t done our jobs.”

https://heatmap.news/sparks/texas-grid-cold-uri Save to Pocket

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Why Watermelons Are A Symbol Of Palestinian Solidarity

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The LAist

The watermelon now symbolizes unofficial Palestinian solidarity amid reports of online censorship and the ongoing civilian deaths in Gaza.

https://laist.com/news/why-watermelons-are-a-symbol-of-palestinian-solidarity Save to Pocket

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SCV Chamber Announces 2024 Leadership Team

date: 2024-01-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The SCV Chamber of Commerce announced Monday its 2024 leadership team, which will further continue the Chamber’s work of building a united business community

https://scvnews.com/scv-chamber-announces-2024-leadership-team/ Save to Pocket

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Linux 6.7 released, ending Itanium support

date: 2024-01-08, from: OS News

Linux 6.7 has many exciting features including initial support for the Bcachefs file-system, Intel Meteor Lake graphics are stable as is the rest of the MTL platform support, initial NVIDIA GSP firmware support with the Nouveau driver, retiring of Intel Itanium support, and other new features with Linux 6.7. ↫ Michael Larabel The end of Itanium support is unforgivable. Itanium is the future, and Linux will miss the boat.

https://www.osnews.com/story/138233/linux-6-7-released-ending-itanium-support/ Save to Pocket

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Bars And Nightclubs To Sell Drink-Testing Kits

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

A new law requires California bars and nightclubs to stock up on testing kits to check for date rape drugs that are often odorless, colorless, and even tasteless.

https://laist.com/news/bars-and-nightclubs-to-sell-drink-testing-kits Save to Pocket

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Election Letters Deadline: Feb. 6

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Signal

Editor’s note: In the interest of fairness to all candidates, the final letters to the editor related to the March 5 election will be published Feb. 20, two weeks before election day. The deadline to submit an election-related letter to the editor is 5 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 6. Beginning with letters received today, any election letter […]

The post Election Letters Deadline: Feb. 6 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/election-letters-deadline-feb-6/ Save to Pocket

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The 25 Best Films of 2023: A Video Countdown

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/the-25-best-films-of-2023-a-video-countdown Save to Pocket

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Experimental ’Still Film’ Screens at UC Santa Barbara

date: 2024-01-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Exploration of cinematic memory kicks off winter programming at Carsey-Wolf Center.

The post Experimental ’Still Film’ Screens at UC Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/08/experimental-still-film-screens-at-uc-santa-barbara/ Save to Pocket

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Isla Vista Food Co-op Expands to Cantwell’s Deli in Downtown Santa Barbara

date: 2024-01-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

The Downtown Market will keep the legacy of Cantwell’s Deli with new products from Isla Vista Co-op.

The post Isla Vista Food Co-op Expands to Cantwell’s Deli in Downtown Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/08/isla-vista-food-co-op-expands-to-cantwells-deli-in-downtown-santa-barbara/ Save to Pocket

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Volunteer for the 2024 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count

date: 2024-01-08, from: City of Santa Clarita

VOLUNTEER FOR THE 2024 GREATER LOS ANGELES HOMELESS COUNT On January 23, the City of Santa Clarita will partner with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and the local non-profit Bridge to Home for the 2024 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. This annual event counts Santa Clarita neighbors currently experiencing unsheltered homelessness. The data […]

The post Volunteer for the 2024 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.

https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/01/08/volunteer-for-the-2024-greater-los-angeles-homeless-count/ Save to Pocket

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Hubble Views a Vast Galactic Neighborhood

date: 2024-01-08, from: NASA breaking news

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features a richness of spiral galaxies: the large, prominent spiral galaxy on the right side of the image is NGC 1356; the two apparently smaller spiral galaxies flanking it are LEDA 467699 (above it) and LEDA 95415 (very close at its left) respectively; and finally, IC 1947 sits along the left side […]

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hubble-views-a-vast-galactic-neighborhood/ Save to Pocket

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Red Cross: Emergency Blood Shortage May Delay Medical Procedures

date: 2024-01-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Donors urged to give now as nation faces lowest number of blood donors in decades.

The post Red Cross: Emergency Blood Shortage May Delay Medical Procedures appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/08/red-cross-emergency-blood-shortage-may-delay-medical-procedures/ Save to Pocket

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Students Are Back From Winter Break. So Are Concerns About COVID

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

Students throughout Los Angeles County returned to school today amid rising cases of COVID-19, RSV, and other respiratory illnesses.

https://laist.com/news/education/lausd-school-starts-january-2024-covid-19-rsv Save to Pocket

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Apple Vision Pro Available February 2

date: 2024-01-08, from: Michael Tsai

Apple (MacRumors, Hacker News): Apple today announced Apple Vision Pro will be available beginning Friday, February 2, at all U.S. Apple Store locations and the U.S. Apple Store online. Vision Pro is a revolutionary spatial computer that transforms how people work, collaborate, connect, relive memories, and enjoy entertainment. Vision Pro seamlessly blends digital content with […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/01/08/apple-vision-pro-available-february-2/ Save to Pocket

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Xcode 15.2

date: 2024-01-08, from: Michael Tsai

Apple (downloads): Xcode 15.2 includes SDKs for iOS 17.2, iPadOS 17.2, tvOS 17.2, watchOS 10.2, macOS Sonoma 14.2, and visionOS. The Xcode 15.2 release supports on-device debugging in iOS 12 and later, tvOS 12 and later, and watchOS 4 and later. Xcode 15.2 requires a Mac running macOS Ventura 13.5 or later. […] Developing for […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/01/08/xcode-15-2/ Save to Pocket

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OpenAI: ‘Impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials’

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

As IEEE study shows super lab’s neural nets can emit ‘plagiaristic output’

OpenAI has said it would be “impossible” to build top-tier neural networks that meet today’s needs without using people’s copyrighted work. The Microsoft-backed lab, which believes it is lawfully harvesting said content for training its models, said using out-of-copyright public domain material would result in sub-par AI software.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/midjourney_openai_copyright/ Save to Pocket

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Lily Gladstone Makes Golden Globes History as First Indigenous Best Actress Winner

date: 2024-01-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The “Killers of the Flower Moon” star accepted the award by speaking in the Blackfeet language

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/lily-gladstone-makes-history-first-indigenous-person-golden-globe-best-actress-180983549/ Save to Pocket

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180 Songs That Turn 40 Years Old in 2024. Total nostalgia bomb…

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/0043744-180-songs-that-turn-40 Save to Pocket

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Montecito Man Arrested for Strong-Armed Robbery

date: 2024-01-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Raider Damron, 28, allegedly assaulted a shop employee and fought with police.

The post Montecito Man Arrested for Strong-Armed Robbery appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/08/montecito-man-arrested-for-strong-armed-robbery/ Save to Pocket

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The American Dialect Society picks their word of the year for 2023:…

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/0043743-the-american-dialect-soci Save to Pocket

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The CEO of HyperVerse, a Collapsed Crypto Ponzi Scheme, Does Not Appear to Exist

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/04/chief-executive-of-collapsed-crypto-fund-hyperverse-does-not-appear-to-exist Save to Pocket

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I want my Vision Pro(TV)!

date: 2024-01-08, from: Om Malik blog

The rumor machine can finally turn itself off — Apple has announced that its spatial computer, Vision Pro, is going on sale on January 19. It will start taking pre-orders for the $3,500 device, which ships on February 2nd. And I am excited. Let me rephrase that — I am super excited. My excitement stems …

https://om.co/2024/01/08/vision-pro-is-coming/ Save to Pocket

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Global Election Year Ahead Lays Bare Strife Between East and West

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/global-election-year-ahead-lays-bare-strife-between-east-and-west/7431544.html Save to Pocket

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Jim Berra Named Princess Cruises’ Chief Marketing Officer

date: 2024-01-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Princess Cruises announced Monday that Jim Berra – an accomplished cruise industry and hospitality veteran with nearly three decades of brand, marketing, and commerce experience – has joined the organization as chief marketing officer, reporting directly to Princess Cruises president John Padgett

https://scvnews.com/jim-berra-named-princess-cruises-chief-marketing-officer/ Save to Pocket

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‘Impossible’ to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, OpenAI says

date: 2024-01-08, from: OS News

The developer OpenAI has said it would be impossible to create tools like its groundbreaking chatbot ChatGPT without access to copyrighted material, as pressure grows on artificial intelligence firms over the content used to train their products. Chatbots such as ChatGPT and image generators like Stable Diffusion are “trained” on a vast trove of data taken from the internet, with much of it covered by copyright – a legal protection against someone’s work being used without permission. ↫ Dan Milmo for the Guardian I can’t become a billionaire without robbing banks so therefore robbing banks should be legal.

https://www.osnews.com/story/138230/impossible-to-create-ai-tools-like-chatgpt-without-copyrighted-material-openai-says/ Save to Pocket

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More winds and frost for SCV throughout the week

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Signal

Don’t be surprised if you see a thin layer of ice on your windshield. Strong, cold winds are expected throughout the week and a freeze warning was issued for the Santa Clarita Valley beginning at 1 a.m. Tuesday.   According to National Weather Service officials, temperatures within the valley are projected to drop to a low […]

The post More winds and frost for SCV throughout the week  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/01/more-winds-and-frost-for-scv-throughout-the-week/ Save to Pocket

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Analysts: Blinken Visit May Signal Larger Role for Turkey in Efforts to End Israel-Hamas War

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

Until recently, observers say Washington had largely sidelined Turkey in diplomatic efforts to resolve the Israel-Hamas war, but as Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, the visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Turkey in the last few days signals that has changed.

https://www.voanews.com/a/analysts-blinken-visit-may-signal-larger-role-for-turkey-in-efforts-to-end-israel-hamas-war-/7431514.html Save to Pocket

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@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

2018: Developing better developers.

https://this.how/phoenix/ Save to Pocket

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‘Unsolvable’ Code Hidden in Antique Dress Pocket Is Finally Cracked

date: 2024-01-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Short, handwritten lines of unrelated words contained coded weather reports to send via telegraph in the late 19th century

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/unsolvable-code-hidden-in-antique-dress-pocket-is-finally-cracked-180983550/ Save to Pocket

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The Home Page | Sweet Dreams for the New Year

date: 2024-01-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Flowers, cupcakes, and more sweet stuff.

The post The Home Page | Sweet Dreams for the New Year appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/08/the-home-page-sweet-dreams-for-the-new-year/ Save to Pocket

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NASA, NOAA to Announce 2023 Global Temperatures, Climate Conditions

date: 2024-01-08, from: NASA breaking news

Climate researchers from NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) will release their annual assessments of global temperatures and discuss the major climate trends of 2023 during a media briefing at 11 a.m. EST Friday, Jan. 12. NASA will stream audio of the briefing on the agency’s YouTube. Participants will include: Members of the […]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-noaa-to-announce-2023-global-temperatures-climate-conditions/ Save to Pocket

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America’s first private lunar lander suffers ‘critical’ fuel leak en route to Moon

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Astrobotic’s Peregrine packed with NASA science gear and other payloads may be a bust

Updated  The first commercial American Moon lander – built by startup Astrobotic to carry NASA instruments and private payloads to the lunar surface – is in trouble: the spacecraft’s propulsion system malfunctioned shortly after launch on Monday.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/astrobotic_lunar_lander_failure/ Save to Pocket

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Viral Lists Reveal Artists Whose Work May Have Trained an A.I. Art Generator

date: 2024-01-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Thousands of painters, cartoonists, sculptors and other creatives are featured in the documents, which reinvigorated debates around copyright infringement and consent

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/lists-artists-artificial-intelligence-art-generator-180983546/ Save to Pocket

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Santa Barbara City Employee Identified as Victim in New Year’s Eve Fall

date: 2024-01-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Officials said Faris Sanjakdar, 30, had climbed a tree and attempted to jump to a utility pole.

The post Santa Barbara City Employee Identified as Victim in New Year’s Eve Fall appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/01/08/santa-barbara-city-employee-identified-as-victim-in-new-years-eve-fall/ Save to Pocket

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Nisus Writer Pro 3.4 and Nisus Writer Express 4.4

date: 2024-01-08, from: TidBITS blog

Resolves crashes and compatibility issues when running macOS 14 Sonoma. ($65 and $26 new, free updates, various sizes, macOS 10.13+)

https://tidbits.com/watchlist/nisus-writer-pro-3-4/ Save to Pocket

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Coherence X 4.6

date: 2024-01-08, from: TidBITS blog

Improves performance and reliability for the site-specific browser that can turn websites into native apps. ($29.99 new, free update, 10.5 MB, macOS 10.15+)

https://tidbits.com/watchlist/coherence-x-4-6/ Save to Pocket

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Saugus High Marching Band Hosting Clothes for Cash Fundraiser

date: 2024-01-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Saugus High School Marching Centurions is kicking off 2024 by helping those in need, while collecting much-needed donations for the program on Saturdays Jan. 13, Jan. 20 and Jan. 27, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m

https://scvnews.com/saugus-high-marching-band-hosting-clothes-for-cash-fundraiser/ Save to Pocket

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Default Folder X 6.0.4

date: 2024-01-08, from: TidBITS blog

Eliminates a delay that could occur when Save dialogs appear. ($39.95 new, free update, 17.3 MB, macOS 10.13+)

https://tidbits.com/watchlist/default-folder-x-6-0-4/ Save to Pocket

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NASA Armstrong Builds Model Wing to Help Advance Unique Design

date: 2024-01-08, from: NASA breaking news

German Escobar works on a model aircraft wing structure that has two long sides and bars in between, which resembles a mini ladder. He sands the rough edges, uses four vices to secure it, and uses a milling machine he programmed to make precision holes. Escobar is one of the Experimental Fabrication Shop technicians at […]

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/nasa-armstrong-builds-model-wing-to-help-advance-unique-design/ Save to Pocket

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Wild World is a hand-drawn world map of nature - “here are…

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/0043742-wild-world-is-a-hand-draw Save to Pocket

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Asking people to “do the research” on fake news stories makes them seem more believable, not less

date: 2024-01-08, from: Nieman Journalism Lab

When it comes to digital spreaders of misinformation, social media platforms typically get the brunt of the blame. After all, they’re the places with the black-box algorithms, the propagandist bots, and the partisan screamers. On social media, we can watch the bad information spread, in real time. Social media is, at least metaphorically, a passive…

https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/01/asking-people-to-do-the-research-on-fake-news-stories-makes-them-seem-more-believable-not-less/ Save to Pocket

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Apple Vision Pro Arrives 2 February 2024

date: 2024-01-08, from: TidBITS blog

Apple has announced that pre-orders for its Vision Pro “spatial computer” will open on 19 January 2024, with the headset shipping two weeks later. Will you be ordering one?

https://tidbits.com/2024/01/08/apple-vision-pro-arrives-2-february-2024/ Save to Pocket

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‘Dogs Will Pass Away’: Hackers Steal Dog Rescue’s Facebook Page, Turn It Into AI Content Farm

date: 2024-01-08, from: 404 Media Group

Facebook pages that are posting stolen, AI-generated content have hacked and rebranded pages previously owned by a dog rescue, a dance studio, and a metal music concert promoter.

https://www.404media.co/dogs-will-pass-away-hackers-steal-dog-rescues-facebook-page-turn-it-into-ai-content-farm/ Save to Pocket

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The Verge looks at the symbiotic relationship between Google and the SEO…

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/0043741-the-verge-looks-at-the Save to Pocket

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Ten years ago today

date: 2024-01-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News

I had a couple of Papaya hot dogs. Sensually delicious.

http://scripting.com/2024/01/08/190718.html?title=tenYearsAgoToday Save to Pocket

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TCL introduces NXTPAPER 3.0 glare-free tech, along with TCL NXTPAPER 14 Pro and Tab 10 NXTPAPER 5G tablets

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

TCL’s NXTPAPER technology is designed to provide smartphones and tablets with a glare-free viewing experience that TCL says is more paper-like than a typical LCD display. It’s not exactly E Ink: these are still backlit LCD displays. But the upside is that, unlike E Ink, NXTPAPER can show millions of colors and high screen refresh […]

The post TCL introduces NXTPAPER 3.0 glare-free tech, along with TCL NXTPAPER 14 Pro and Tab 10 NXTPAPER 5G tablets appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/tcl-introduces-nxtpaper-3-0-glare-free-tech-along-with-tcl-nxtpaper-14-pro-and-tab-10-nxtpaper-5g-tablets/ Save to Pocket

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Apple sets new 16,000-foot iPhone drop test after 737 fuselage fail

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Kit sucked out of Alaska Airlines 1282 found on the side of the road

Apple has become the first smartphone manufacturer to pass the three-mile drop test after one of its iPhones was found on the side of a road by volunteers helping to recover debris from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 over the weekend.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/apple_iphone_16000_drop/ Save to Pocket

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LA Councilmember Price Pleads Not Guilty To Corruption Charges; Council Suspension In Limbo

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

Price is accused of voting on projects in which his wife had a financial interest and not disclosing the connection.

https://laist.com/news/politics/la-city-councilmember-curren-price-arraignment Save to Pocket

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Plans to Install Contemporary Stained-Glass Windows in Notre-Dame Cathedral Spark Backlash

date: 2024-01-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine

French officials have called on artists to submit designs for six new windows in the structure’s south aisle

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/plans-to-replace-notre-dames-stained-glass-windows-spark-backlash-180983541/ Save to Pocket

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‘NCIS,’ ‘S.W.A.T.,’ ‘Cesar Millan’ Among Nine Productions Filming in SCV

date: 2024-01-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The city of Santa Clarita’s Film Office released the list of nine productions currently filming in the Santa Clarita Valley for the week of Monday, Jan. 8 - Sunday, Jan. 14.

https://scvnews.com/ncis-s-w-a-t-cesar-millan-among-nine-productions-filming-in-scv/ Save to Pocket

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Electronic Music of the Future from Jean-Jacques Perrey in 1966

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/electronic-music-of-the-future-from-jean-jacques-perrey-in-1966 Save to Pocket

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Nvidia readies downgraded chips for China, but will anyone want to buy them?

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Once again, export restrictions are having the opposite to intended effects

Nvidia is caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to China, banned from shipping its most capable products but discovering that the Chinese may not want to buy those it is allowed to sell.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/nvidia_china_chips/ Save to Pocket

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Motūrus OS: microkernel operating system for the cloud written in Rust

date: 2024-01-08, from: OS News

Motūrus project builds a simple, fast, and secure operating system (Motūrus OS) for the cloud. In more specific terms, Motūrus OS (sometimes called Motor OS), is a new operating system targeting virtual machine-based workloads such as web serving, “serverless”, edge caching, etc. Motūrus OS is a microkernel-based operating system, built in Rust, that targets virtualized workloads exclusively. It currently supports x64 KVM-based virtual machines, and can run in either Qemu or Cloud Hypervisor. Rust is the language of Motūrus OS: not only it is implemented in Rust, it also exposes its ABI in Rust, not C. ↫ Motūrus OS GitHub page At this point, there are more alternative operating systems written in Rust than there are Linux distributions, but you’re not hearing any complaints from me. While not all of these will have a bright future, they’ll teach a lot of people valuable skills and introduce a lot of people to the concept of alternative operating systems.

https://www.osnews.com/story/138228/moturus-os-microkernel-operating-system-for-the-cloud-written-in-rust/ Save to Pocket

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Tiger Woods Announces End of Longtime Partnership With Nike

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/tiger-woods-announces-end-of-longtime-partnership-with-nike-/7431251.html Save to Pocket

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GNOME 46 to introduce headless remote logins via GNOME Display Manager

date: 2024-01-08, from: OS News

The alpha version of the GNOME 46 desktop environment should be out for public testing any day now for early adopters and enthusiasts who want to get an early taste of the newly implemented features, one of them begin support for headless remote logins via GDM (GNOME Display Manager). This is one of the highly requested features for GNOME and it is achieved through the gnome-remote-desktop component, which provides a remote desktop server for the GNOME desktop to allow you to connect to your machine remotely using PipeWire. ↫ Marius Nestor The final release is planned for late March.

https://www.osnews.com/story/138224/gnome-46-to-introduce-headless-remote-logins-via-gnome-display-manager/ Save to Pocket

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In Emails, Contractor Tries To Orchestrate New Federal Transplant Policy

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Markup blog

Emails show UNOS capitalized on a lung lawsuit to lay the groundwork for a sweeping liver policy change.

https://themarkup.org/organ-failure/2024/01/08/in-emails-contractor-tries-to-orchestrate-new-federal-transplant-policy Save to Pocket

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White House: Biden Not Intending to Fire Defense Chief

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/white-house-biden-not-intending-to-fire-defense-chief/7431228.html Save to Pocket

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US Opposes ‘Malign Influence’ in Taiwan’s Elections

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-opposes-malign-influence-in-taiwan-s-elections/7431179.html Save to Pocket

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Apache OFBiz zero-day pummeled by exploit attempts after disclosure

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Issue has been patched so be sure to check your implementations

SonicWall says it has observed thousands of daily attempts to exploit an Apache OFBiz zero-day for nearly a fortnight.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/apache_ofbiz_zeroday/ Save to Pocket

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Finally, Our First ‘Finally’ of the Year Nominee for 2024

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/8/24001858/apple-vision-pro-release-date-availability-price Save to Pocket

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The desperate race to save Generative AI

date: 2024-01-08, from: Gary Marcus blog

Copyright infringement issues could sink their business, but why should they have to pay licensing fees like everybody else?

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-desperate-race-to-save-generative Save to Pocket

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Apple announced a release date (Feb 2, preorder on Jan 19) and…

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/01/0043739-apple-announced-a-release Save to Pocket

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‘Only 700 new IT jobs’ were created in US last year

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Pandemic overhiring + AI-generated cuts at the entry level = A bad year to be a techie, says Janco

A mere 700 IT jobs were added in the US last year compared to 267,000 the year prior, it’s claimed. It’d be easy to blame layoffs, but that’s not all there is to it, says tech consultancy Janco Associates.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/700_it_jobs_us/ Save to Pocket

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LEVER TIME PREMIUM: How Wall Street Could Ruin College Football

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Lever News

The Lever team explains everything you need to know about how private equity could soon get involved in college sports.

https://www.levernews.com/lever-time-premium-how-wall-street-could-ruin-college-football/ Save to Pocket

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2024 is the coming out party for WiFi 7

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

Chip and device makers have been building WiFi 7 support into their hardware for almost two years… but up until recently they’ve been relying on a draft standard. Now WiFi 7 is officially here. The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced that it’s now certifying devices that make use of the latest wireless standard, starting with smartphones, […]

The post 2024 is the coming out party for WiFi 7 appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/2024-is-the-coming-out-party-for-wifi-7/ Save to Pocket

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NASA Telescopes Chase Down “Green Monster” in Star’s Debris

date: 2024-01-08, from: NASA breaking news

For the first time astronomers have combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope to study the well-known supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). As described in our latest press release, this work has helped explain an unusual structure in the debris from the destroyed star called the “Green Monster”, first discovered in Webb data in […]

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-telescopes-chase-down-green-monster-in-stars-debris/ Save to Pocket

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Avoiding AI-capable PCs will be impossible by 2027

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Generative AI - huh - what is it good for? Premium priced PC sales, apparently says Canalys

The AI-capable PC is coming to save a shrinking market, according to Canalys, although vendors need to be far clearer about any benefits to charge higher margins for the devices.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/report_aicapable_pcs_set_to/ Save to Pocket

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The Quest to Ban the Best Raincoats in the World

date: 2024-01-08, from: Heatmap News

Hiking gear exists so that, when nature tries to kill you, it is a little less likely to succeed. Sometimes this gear’s life-saving function is obvious — a Nalgene to carry extra water so you don’t die of thirst, or a fist-sized first-aid kit so you don’t bleed to death — while other things you don’t necessarily purchase with the thought that they might one day save your life. Like, say, a small Swiss Army Knife. Or, in my case, a raincoat.

Last summer, on a casual day hike in Mount Rainier National Park, my family was overtaken by a storm that, quite literally, rose up out of nowhere. It had been a sunny, clear day when we left the parking lot; at four miles in, we were being lashed by hail and gale-force winds on an exposed alpine trail, with no trees or boulders nearby for shelter.

Then, one member of our hiking party tripped.

In the split second before she stood up and confirmed she could walk out on her own, my mind raced through what I had in my pack. Stupidly, I had nothing to assemble a makeshift shelter, no warmer layers. But I did have my blue waterproof rainshell. In weather as extreme as the storm off Rainier that day, keeping dry is essential; if we’d had to wait out the rain due to a broken ankle, we’d have become soaked and hypothermic long before help arrived. My raincoat, I realized during those terrifying seconds, could save my life.

But what made my raincoat so trustworthy that day on the mountain could also, in theory, kill me — or, more likely, kill or sicken any of the thousands of people who live downstream of the manufacturers that make waterproofing chemicals and the landfills where waterproof clothing is incinerated or interred. Outdoor apparel is typically ultraprocessed and treated using perfluoroalkyl and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, a class of water- and stain-resistant “forever chemicals” that are more commonly referred to as PFAS (pronounced “pee-fass”). After decades of work by environmental groups and health advocates, states and retailers are finally banning the sale of textiles that have been treated with the chemicals, which in the outdoor industry often manifest in the form of Gore-Tex membranes or “durable water repellent” treatments.

These bans are fast approaching: Beginning in 2025 — less than 12 months from now — California will forbid the sale of most PFAS-treated textiles; New York will restrict them in apparel; and Washington will regulate stain- and waterproofing treatments, with similar regulations pending or approved in a number of other states. Following pressure from activists, the nation’s largest outdoor retailer, REI, also announced last winter that it will ban PFAS in all the textile products and cookware sold in its stores starting fall 2024; Dick’s Sporting Goods will also eliminate PFAS from its brand-name clothing.

This will upend the outdoor apparel industry. Some of the best coats in the world — legendary gear like Arc’teryx’s Beta AR and the traditional construction of the Patagonia Torrentshell — use, or until recently used, PFAS in their waterproofing processes or in their jackets’ physical membranes. Though the bans frequently allow vague, temporary loopholes for gear intended for “extreme wet conditions” or “expeditions,” such exceptions will be closed off by the end of the 2020s. (Patagonia has “committed to making all membranes and water-repellent finishes without [PFAS] by 2025,” Gin Ando, a spokesperson for the company, told me; Arc’teryx spokesperson Amy May shared that the company is “committed to moving towards PFAS-free materials in its products.”)

Even if you aren’t buying expedition-level gear, your closet almost certainly contains PFAS. A 2022 study by Toxic-Free Future found the chemicals in nearly 75% of products labeled as waterproof or stain-resistant. Another study found that the concentration of fluorotelomer alcohols, which are used in the production of PFAS, was 30 times higher inside stores that sold outdoor clothing than in other workplaces.

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The reason outdoor companies have historically loved PFAS so much is simple: The chemicals are unrivaled in their water repellency. PFAS are manufactured chains of fluorine-carbon bonds that are incredibly difficult to break (the precise number of carbons is also used in the naming process, which is why you’ll hear them called “C8” or “C6,” sometimes, as well). Because of this strong bond, other molecules slip off when they come into contact with the fluorine-carbon chain; you can observe this in a DIY test at home by dripping water onto a fabric and watching it roll off, leaving your garment perfectly dry.

It is also because of this bond that PFAS are so stubbornly persistent — in the environment, certainly, but also in us. An estimated 98% to 99% of people have traces of PFAS in their bodies. Researchers have found the molecules in breast milk, rainwater, and Antarctica’s snow. We inhale them in dust and drink them in our tap water, and because they look a little like a fatty acid to our bodies, they can cause health problems that we’re only beginning to grasp. So far, PFAS have been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, decreased fertility, elevated cholesterol, weight gain, thyroid disease, the pregnancy complication pre-eclampsia, increased risk of preterm birth and low birth weight, hormone interference, and reduced vaccine response in children.

Chemical companies and industry groups often argue that certain PFAS are demonstrably worse than others; the so-called “long-chain” molecules, for instance, are thought to have higher bioaccumulation and toxicity potential, and have mostly been replaced by “short-chain” molecules. But as Arlene Blum, a pioneering mountaineer and the founder of the Green Science Policy Institute, an environmental advocacy organization that opposes PFAS, told me, “in all the cases that we’ve studied,” forever chemicals have been found “to be harmful in one way or another,” whether they’re short or long.

From a health perspective, the good news is that activists are winning. While initial efforts to protect humans and the environment from PFAS in the mid-2000s resulted only in the voluntary phase-out of long-chain chemicals like PFOA and PFOS, the new laws target the entire class of thousands of compounds to prevent an ongoing game of whack-a-mole with chemical manufacturers. (A recent report by The Guardian found that the chemical industry spent $110 million in the last two U.S. election cycles trying to thwart or slow the various bans.) Public pressure campaigns mounted against ostensibly sustainability-minded companies like REI have prompted store-initiated PFAS bans that will also influence future gear sold in the United States. (REI was long a PFAS laggard, and was even hit in 2022 with a class-action lawsuit over allegedly marketing PFAS-containing clothes as “sustainable.” The company declined to comment for this story. Dick’s Sporting Goods did not respond to requests for comment.)

But as the days tick closer to the first PFAS bans coming into effect in stores this fall, outdoor apparel companies are still scrambling to redesign their clothing. Some alternatives to PFAS do exist — Blum swears by her PFAS-free Black Diamond jacket — though even the most ardent supporters of the forever chemical bans will admit the waterproofing alternatives haven’t 100% caught up yet.

“The main concern that most people have in the industry is the amount of work that it’s going to take to meet these guidelines,” Chris Steinkamp, the head of advocacy at the trade association Snowsports Industries America, told me. “Because PFAS is omnipresent. Unfortunately, they’re pretty much in everything.”

Many outdoor apparel companies genuinely want to comply with the coming bans, Karolína Brabcová, the campaign manager for toxic chemicals in consumer products at Arnika, a Czech environmental non-profit, told me. “It’s not such a matter of greenwashing here,” she said. “It’s more about the fact that you’ve got the chemical industry on one side and the downstream users joining the consumers on the other side. And the downstream users don’t know everywhere the PFAS are being used; it’s a business secret.”

In one case detailed by Bloomberg, the Swedish company Fjällräven had stopped using PFAS in its products, only to learn from a 2012 Greenpeace investigation that the chemicals were still present in its apparel. “A supplier using fluorochemistry on another company’s products was cross-contaminating Fjällräven’s,” the Bloomberg authors write, adding that “subsequent testing revealed” just having “products in stores near products from other companies that used the chemicals still resulted in low levels of contamination.”

It isn’t always the case, however, that clothing manufacturers are unwitting victims of chemical sloppiness. Some apparel companies have taken advantage of the alphabet soup of chemical names to look more sustainable than they are. “We’ve seen in recent years products labeled as ‘PFOA-free’ or ‘PFOS-free,’ which suggests that they do not contain the long-chain PFAS that have largely been phased out from production in the United States,” Blum warned me. “That’s really misleading because oftentimes it’s a signal a product likely contains other PFAS chemicals, which may be just as persistent and may also be quite toxic in production to disposal.”

The reason I could count on my raincoat to protect me in the mountains, though, was because, like most expedition-level gear, it is made of a membrane manufactured by Gore-Tex, with an additional DWR waterproofing finish that also contains PFAS. Gore-Tex is known in the outdoors industry for making the holy grail of performance fabrics: Its membranes are waterproof, durable, and breathable enough to exercise in, a challenging and impressive combination to nail. But to achieve this, the company has traditionally used the fluoropolymer PTFE, a notorious forever chemical you probably know by the trademarked name Teflon.

This technology — or rather, these chemicals — are incredibly and irresistibly good at what they do. “The terrible truth,” Wired wrote in its list of raincoat recommendations updated this past December, “is that if you’re going to be exposed [to inclement weather] for multiple hours, you are probably not going to be able to rely on a [PFAS]-free DWR to keep hypothermia at bay.”

When I reached out to Gore-Tex about its use of PFAS, company spokesperson Julie Evans told me via email that “there are important distinctions among materials associated with the term PFAS” and that the fluoropolymers Gore uses, such as PTFE, “are not the same as those substances that are bioavailable, mobile, and persistent.” She stressed that “not all PFAS are the same” and that PTFE and the other fluoropolymers in the Gore arsenal meet the standards of low concern, and are “extremely stable and do not degrade in the environment,” are “too large to be bioavailable,” and are “non-toxic [and] safe to use from an environmental and human perspective.” The National Resource Defense Council, by contrast, writes that PFAS polymers like PTFE, “when added as a coating or membrane to a raincoat or other product, can pose a toxic risk to wearers, just as other PFAS can.”

Some of the environmental health advocates I spoke with said Gore-Tex’s language was misleading. Mike Schade, the director of Toxic-Free Future’s Mind the Store program, which pressures retailers to avoid stocking items that use hazardous chemicals, told me that while it is “laudable that the company has phased some PFAS out of their products … what we’re concerned about is the entire class. We think it’s misleading to consumers and to the public to suggest that other PFAS are not of environmental concern.”

Blum, of the Green Science Policy Institute, admitted that while “probably your Gore-Tex jacket won’t hurt you” — there is limited evidence that PFAS will leech into your body just from wearing it — there’s a more significant issue at the heart of the PFAS debate. “When you go from the monomer to the polymer” in the chemical manufacturing process, she said, it “contaminates the drinking water in the area where it’s made.” The disposal process — and especially incineration, a common fate for discarded clothing — is another opportunity for PFAS to shed into the environment. People who live near landfills and chemical manufacturing plants in industrial hubs like Michigan and many cities in Bangladesh suffer from PFAS at disproportionate levels.

So then, where do we go from here? Hikers, skiers, mountaineers, fly-fishers — they all still need clothing to stay dry. “Our industry is committed to performance and making sure that the gear that people are sold can live up to the standards that athletes need,” Steinkamp said. “I know that is top of mind, and that’s what’s making [the transition] so hard.”

But it also might be the case that our gear is too waterproof. “When we think about the intended performance of outdoor gear, there’s a lot of expectation that your gear will keep you extremely dry,” Kaytlin Moeller, the regional sustainability manager at Fenix Outdoor North America, the parent company of outdoors brands like Fjällräven and Royal Robbins, told me. “But when we really start to look at it,” she added, “I think part of the question is: What is the level of functionality that is really necessary for the customer to have a positive experience outdoors and be prepared for their adventure?”

It’s probably less than you think; consumers frequently don Everest-level technologies to walk their dogs for 15 minutes in a drizzle. “As responsible creators of products, it’s our job to balance functionality with impact,” Moeller said. “And in terms of [PFAS], it just wasn’t worth the risk and the carcinogenic qualities to continue putting that treatment on our products when there are other innovative coatings and constructions that we can use.”

Those alternatives, like innovative fabric weavings and proprietary waxes, might not sound as high-tech as hydrophobic chemicals. Still, for the vast majority of regular people — and even most outdoor recreators — it’s likely more than enough to stay comfortably dry. “We’ve been going into the outdoors for hundreds and hundreds of years without these chemicals,” Schade pointed out. “We can do it again.”

Luckily for everything and everyone on the planet, new waterproofing products are getting better by the day. Gore-Tex has spent “the better part of the last decade” developing its new PFAS-free “ePE membrane,” Evans told me. Short for expanded polyethylene, ePE is fluorine-free (albeit, derived from fossil fuels) and has been adopted by Patagonia, Arc’teryx, and others in the outdoor industry as a PFAS-free alternative. Evans described it as feeling “a little lighter and softer” than old-school Gore-Tex, but “with all the same level of performance benefits” as the historic products.

Other companies, including Patagonia, have been transparent about their phase-out goals and the ongoing difficulties of the PFAS-free transition; Gin, the Patagonia spokesperson, told me that as of this fall, “92% of our materials by volume with water-repellent chemistries are made without” PFAS, and that the new waterproofing “stands up to the demands of our most technical items.” Deuter, Black Diamond, Outdoor Research, Jack Wolfskin, Mammut, Marmot, and prAna are among other outdoor brands that are working to remove PFAS from their gear.

“We have to work together, collaboratively, if we really want to eliminate them — to the point of the verbiage around being [PFAS]-free,” Moeller stressed. “No one can be [PFAS]-free ’til everyone in the industry is, because of the risk of cross-contamination.”

Then there are the consumers who will need to adjust. I admit, in the weeks before beginning the reporting for this article, I bought myself another raincoat. It was on sale from one of my favorite outdoor brands, and I was attracted to its aggressively cheerful shade of Morton Salt-girl yellow, which I thought would also help me stand out in the case of a future emergency.

At the time, I hadn’t even thought to check what it was made of; what mattered to me was how, when I slipped it on, I became amphibious — like some kind of marine mammal, slick and impervious to the rain. Stepping out of my front door and into a downpour, I felt practically invincible.

https://heatmap.news/lifestyle/raincoats-pfas-gore-tex-patagonia-rei Save to Pocket

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BottleRock Napa Valley unleashes massive lineup for fans in 2024

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

Ed Sheeran, Pearl Jam, Stevie Nicks set to headline the 2024 BottleRock Napa Valley festival over Memorial Day weekend.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/08/bottlerock-napa-valley-unleashes-massive-lineup-for-fans-in-2024/ Save to Pocket

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Monday Morning Lights: Riordan wins, De La Salle loses OT thrillers at Crypto.com Arena

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

Former all-Mercury News player from Milpitas leads 13-1 Branham. Campo, Granada stay hot in Sacramento. Plus, football coaching changes.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/08/monday-morning-lights-riordan-wins-de-la-salle-loses-ot-thrillers-at-crypto-com-arena/ Save to Pocket

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Early Primates May Have Feasted on Soft, Sweet Fruits

date: 2024-01-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine

An analysis of more than 400 fossilized teeth suggests the creatures weren’t eating many seeds, nuts or other hard foods

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/early-primates-may-have-feasted-on-soft-sweet-fruits-180983544/ Save to Pocket

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Start now, don’t wait

date: 2024-01-08, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog

Start now, don’t wait

If I had young people ask me for advice (which they aren’t and when I was young I also didn’t) I’d say this: The world is designed to keep you docile and distracted. If you want to do adventurous things, risk things, go far, you must do it now. If you wait, you will be too late.

Everybody going on adventure everywhere is ill prepared. There fact that you cannot prepare is what makes it an adventure. Great things were done by people who were ill prepared.

It’s true for sports, for your career, for politics. If you wait until the time is right, all the people who got started when the time was not right will have made the decisions for you.

The same is true for any kind of change. People like me tell you that we’ve got this but we don’t – and by the time you realize that everybody is fumbling and improvising, and when you finally learn how important it is to network and to be sly, how nobody who gets anything done just speaks the truth, when you realize that just because you are right people aren’t going to change their opinions, when you realize that to make changes you need to be politically active, to organize, even though you won’t learn how to do this in school because school prepares you for the world that is, for the system that upholds it, not the better world that is possible because it isn’t tried and true and nobody is financing that, then you’ll be as old as me and still won’t have done a thing.

Sure, it’s never too late but if you get started early, there’s still time.

And if instead you think, old man, I have done all that and more, what are you talking about? Then I am relieved and my fears are unfounded. Thank you!

#Philosophy

Related: To the young ones, where I talk about physical health deteriorating.

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@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

What about a LLM that is fed with the flow of your feed subscriptions?

http://scripting.com/2024/01/08.html#a153315 Save to Pocket

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Grumpy, grouchy and cranky

date: 2024-01-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report

No, we’re not talking about three of Snow White’s seven dwarfs — we’re talking about the mood of the American consumer. Despite low levels of unemployment, solid GDP growth and cooling inflation, Americans remain pretty darn sour on the economy. What gives? Plus, China is sanctioning five American defense contractors, and a massive new train line in Mexico is stirring controversy among environmentalists.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/grumpy-grouchy-and-cranky Save to Pocket

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AMD claims its Ryzen 7 8840U can still beat Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H (in some cases), despite using the same CPU & GPU as the previous-gen 7840U

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

AMD’s Ryzen 8040 “Hawk Point” series mobile processors are very similar to the company’s previous-gen Ryzen 7040 “Phoenix” series when it comes to CPU and GPU technology, core counts, and frequencies. The biggest difference is that the new chips have a neural processing unit that’s 60% faster, enabling better support for on-device AI processing. But […]

The post AMD claims its Ryzen 7 8840U can still beat Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H (in some cases), despite using the same CPU & GPU as the previous-gen 7840U appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/amd-claims-its-ryzen-7-8840u-can-still-beat-intels-core-ultra-7-155h-in-some-cases-despite-using-the-same-cpu-gpu-as-the-previous-gen-7840u/ Save to Pocket

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AMD brings its AI engines to the desktop with Ryzen 8000G APUs, RX 7600 XT graphics cards

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

The House of Zen’s aging Ryzen 5000 processors get some love too

CES  AMD unveiled its first desktop processors with integrated neural processing units alongside refreshed 5000-series CPUs and a new entry-level graphics card at CES on Monday.…

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AMD brings Radeon 700M (RDNA 3) iGPUs to desktops with Ryzen 8000G chips

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

AMD is bringing the technology behind its Ryzen 8040 mobile processors to desktops with the launch of the new Ryzen 8000G line of chips. Like their mobile counterparts, these processors combine Zen 4 CPU cores and Radeon 700M integrated graphics featuring RDNA 3 GPU cores, which the company says enables desktop gaming without a discrete […]

The post AMD brings Radeon 700M (RDNA 3) iGPUs to desktops with Ryzen 8000G chips appeared first on Liliputing.

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@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I would like to give a LLM a pointer to a folder of my writing and say “learn this” and then a few hours or days later I’d be able to ask it questions about what I wrote. I also have folders of stuff my parents wrote. It would be kind of interesting to feed those into a LLM and then ask questions about them. Could be the equivalent of ten years of therapy.

http://scripting.com/2024/01/08.html#a152709 Save to Pocket

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Vision Pro Pre-Orders Start January 19 (Next Friday), Available Starting February 2

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-vision-pro-available-in-the-us-on-february-2/ Save to Pocket

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Takes a Licking and Keeps on Texting

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: One Foot Tsunami

https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/01/08/takes-a-licking-and-keeps-on-texting/ Save to Pocket

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PG&E average monthly bills are set to top $300 for the first time

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

PG&E’s request for a springtime increase in rates could shove average monthly bills past the $300 mark for the first time.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/08/pge-power-bill-electric-gas-consumer-fire-inflation-economy-rate/ Save to Pocket

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Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging

date: 2024-01-08, from: Quanta Magazine

Biologists discovered that mitochondria in different tissues talk to each other to repair injured cells. When their signal fails, the biological clock starts winding down.

The post Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I think Bluesky has a chance of being the place where journalists assemble in place of Twitter. I sincerely hope it’s not on Facebook’s Twitter replacement. That would like “meet the new boss, same as the old boss but much richer and better managed.”

http://scripting.com/2024/01/08.html#a150525 Save to Pocket

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Jill On Money: Financial resolutions for 2024

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

Have you made New Year’s resolutions? If you are a non-believer in the annual ritual, the folks at History.com say that it dates back to “the ancient Babylonians,” who started the trend “some 4,000 years ago.” Author Daniel Pink added more current context and research to the resolution movement in his 2018 book. “The first day of the […]

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/08/jill-on-money-financial-resolutions-for-2024/ Save to Pocket

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Harry and Meghan target of jokes, shrugs at Golden Globes; ‘Suits’ co-star: ‘We don’t have her number’

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

Meghan’s ‘Suits’ colleague Gina Torres was asked on the red carpet to explain why Meghan, the legal drama’s most famous cast member, wasn’t part of the show’s Golden Globes reunion.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/08/harry-and-meghan-target-of-jokes-shrugs-at-golden-globes-suits-co-star-we-dont-have-her-number/ Save to Pocket

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US Supreme Court leaves California’s ban on flavored cigarettes in place

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

Tobacco manufacturers and retailers argued the state law conflicts with the federal Tobacco Control Act, which gives the USDA the authority to regulate the sale of cigarettes, but stops short of allowing states to outright ban certain products as they see fit.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/08/us-supreme-court-leaves-californias-ban-on-flavored-cigarettes-in-place/ Save to Pocket

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Best Poker Sites for Real Money (2024): High Traffic Poker Rooms, Tournaments & Cash Games

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

Meta Description: Read our reviews of the best online poker sites for real money. We ranked them based on cash games, tournaments with huge GTDs, and fast payouts.

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Nearly 200 Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes grounded after door plug flies off mid-flight

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

NTSB chair pushes for 25 hours of cockpit voice and flight data recordings

On Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the temporary grounding of approximately 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes one day after an emergency exit seal, known as a door plug, blew out of one operated by Alaska Airlines mid-air.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/boeing_737_max_9_airplanes/ Save to Pocket

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Apple Vision Pro “spatial computing” headset launches Feb 2, pre-orders begin Jan 19

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

Apple’s first AR/VR headset will be available in the US beginning February 2, 2024 after going up for pre-order on January 19th. With a $3,499 starting price for an Apple Vision Pro model with 256GB of storage, it will be one of the most expensive virtual/augmented reality headsets to date. But it’s also got some […]

The post Apple Vision Pro “spatial computing” headset launches Feb 2, pre-orders begin Jan 19 appeared first on Liliputing.

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Bay Area librarian and TikTok star Mychal Threets works to spread ‘library joy’

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

The rising social media star has been named a winner of the American Library Association’s “I Love My Librarian” award. Chosen as just one of 10 winners nationwide from a pool of over 1,400 librarians.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/08/mychal-threets-works-to-spread-library-joy/ Save to Pocket

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TasteFood: Add zing to your midweek dinner with Southeast Asian flavors

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

Prepare a zesty Southeast Asian dish with this fast and easy recipe for Spicy Lemongrass and Chili Skirt Steak Noodles.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/08/tastefood-add-zing-to-your-midweek-dinner-with-southeast-asian-flavors/ Save to Pocket

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Why does a Los Gatos dog repeatedly scratch at his bed?

date: 2024-01-08, from: San Jose Mercury News

Plus more thoughts on the raccoon conundrum

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/08/why-does-a-los-gatos-dog-repeatedly-scratch-at-his-bed/ Save to Pocket

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Inside a $20 Million Coinbase Phishing Ring

date: 2024-01-08, from: 404 Media Group

404 Media spoke to a victim of a hacking ring the Secret Service believes stole millions of dollars by setting up fake Coinbase login pages.

https://www.404media.co/inside-a-20-million-coinbase-phishing-ring/ Save to Pocket

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NASA science bound for Moon after successful Vulcan Centaur launch

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Your turn, Starship

The relief was palpable as United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully launched the first of its next-generation Vulcan rockets.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/vulcan_centaur_launch/ Save to Pocket

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New evidence might delay a former Cabinet member’s trial

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

The trial for a former member of the governor’s Cabinet facing sexual assault charges may be delayed.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/new-evidence-might-delay-a-former-cabinet-members-trial/article_531d2428-adc3-11ee-81a6-7fd04cca6425.html Save to Pocket

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DOC receives 2 SUVs for parole services

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

The Department of Corrections received two SUVs to be used to assist in public safety missions.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/doc-receives-2-suvs-for-parole-services/article_b67e56c2-aba7-11ee-b717-2743fd2f4740.html Save to Pocket

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Guam STEP applications being accepted for small businesses

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

Small businesses and entrepreneurs can now apply for the Guam State Trade Expansion Program.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/guam-step-applications-being-accepted-for-small-businesses/article_bd570226-adca-11ee-9696-87f6edb5f704.html Save to Pocket

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DPW bus driver facing drug, DWI charges going to treatment court

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

A Department of Public Works school bus driver accused of driving while impaired and drug possession will go to Adult Drug Court.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/dpw-bus-driver-facing-drug-dwi-charges-going-to-treatment-court/article_193aca6e-adcb-11ee-95bd-9f47c08184da.html Save to Pocket

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Officials oppose bill to codify emergency management plan

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

Codifying the Guam Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, as contemplated in Bill 210-37, may hinder timely revisions essential for effective response strategies, according to Homeland Security Advisor Esther Aguigui, who expressed opposition to the measure during a public hearing Monday.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/officials-oppose-bill-to-codify-emergency-management-plan/article_0d3eb850-adcc-11ee-bc75-b74dafd8c49e.html Save to Pocket

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June trial set for 2 men accused of raping woman at Hagåtña bar

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

A trial for two men accused of sexually assaulting a 34-year-old woman at Nori Lounge, a wine bar and boutique located in East Hagåtña, is scheduled to begin in June.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/june-trial-set-for-2-men-accused-of-raping-woman-at-hag-t-a-bar/article_e33a13d2-adbd-11ee-b391-4bf5c8f6ce46.html Save to Pocket

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Medical complex land bill pending report, may be in January session

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

Speaker Therese Terlaje says her team is “working hard” to complete a committee report on Bill 184-37, the measure that would facilitate the sale or lease of property for the construction of a new public hospital and medical complex, so…

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/medical-complex-land-bill-pending-report-may-be-in-january-session/article_1f9ab15a-addd-11ee-9a1a-b31571e22c90.html Save to Pocket

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Detainee: ‘They’re trying to kill us’

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

Kelly Taimanglo pleaded for his release from prison and said his life was being threatened.

https://www.postguam.com/news/local/detainee-theyre-trying-to-kill-us/article_586e57e6-adc6-11ee-bf86-bb01a93ae99e.html Save to Pocket

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British Library: Finances remain healthy as ransomware recovery continues

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Authors continue to lose out on owed payments as rebuild of digital services drags on

The British Library is denying reports suggesting the recovery costs for its 2023 ransomware attack may reach highs of nearly $9 million as work to restore services remains ongoing.…

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AM Briefing: Why Insurers Are ‘Quiet Quitting’

date: 2024-01-08, from: Heatmap News

Current conditions: Parts of Arizona received more than a foot of snow over the weekend • Heavy rainfall caused flash floods in Argentina • A coastal flood watch is in effect for Washington, D.C., where Congress is back in session.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Insurance companies are ‘quiet quitting’ in extreme weather regions

Insurance companies are “quiet quitting” in certain high-risk areas of the United States, as extreme weather disasters become more frequent and more costly, reports The Wall Street Journal. Insurance agents and analysts tell the paper that, rather than face public backlash from officially abandoning states like Florida or California, carriers are resorting to more subtle – but equally effective – tactics to “choke off” new business. These include closing local offices or making it difficult for homeowners to even get a quote unless they fight through layers of red tape. “Most of the carriers have just flat out said, we are not accepting new business right now [in California]. But that statement is made to insurance agencies, not the public,” says Timothy Gaspar, head of a Los Angeles-based insurance agency. “Or they’re making it next to impossible to get a new policy.”

2. Winter storm leaves nearly 2,000 homes flooded in England

The devastating firsthand effects of the climate crisis are playing out in real time in England, where flooding from storm Henk left several villages under water and nearly 2,000 homes damaged. While the storm has passed, more than 160 flood warnings remained in effect through the weekend and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces mounting pressure to do more to protect vulnerable areas. The government announced on Saturday that households and businesses affected by flooding can now apply for grants to fund repairs and improve resilience. Farmers, too, may be eligible for funding.

Extreme flooding in England from storm Henk. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The country’s Environment Agency (EA) didn’t mince words, blaming the deluge squarely on climate change. Climate scientists have warned for years that rising global temperatures will translate into wetter winters for the U.K. “We will unfortunately experience more winters like this one in the future,” says Dr. Linda Speight, a hydrometeorologist at the University of Oxford. Henk was the U.K.’s third major storm this winter.

3. COP29 host Azerbaijan to boost fossil fuel production

Azerbaijan, the host country for COP29, plans to increase its production of fossil fuels – and specifically natural gas – by a third over the next 10 years, The Guardian reports. The country, which owns the Shah Deniz gas field in the Caspian Sea, gets two-thirds of its revenue from oil and gas and plans to double its gas exports to Europe by 2027. It will be the third consecutive petrostate to host the annual United Nations climate summit. “It is also even more repressive and authoritarian than the United Arab Emirates,” reports Heatmap’s Jeva Lange. Last week the country appointed Mukhtar Babayev, a veteran of the oil industry, as the summit’s president.

4. Shipowners reluctant to upgrade to greener vessels

The global shipping fleet is getting old. A report from the Financial Times finds shipowners are resisting growing pressure to order newer, greener vessels and decarbonize the sector, opting instead to hold on to older ships. The average age of the global container shipping fleet is now 14.3 years, and the average age of tankers is 12.9 years. Why are owners keeping their aging vessels? One reason is they’re not confident in the availability of new energy sources like green fuel. Another is the soaring resale value of second-hand ships, which are being bought up by a “shadow fleet” transporting Russian oil. The United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) recently set a 2050 net zero target for global shipping, but no legally binding measures have been set to facilitate the goal. International shipping produced about 2% of the world’s energy-related carbon emissions in 2022.

5. Researchers want to use seawater to ‘refreeze’ Arctic ice

This week a team of British researchers will embark on a mission to learn if pumping seawater on top of sea ice can “refreeze” the Arctic, reports the Times of London. As global temperatures rise, sea ice is rapidly shrinking, decimating habitats for wildlife and exacerbating a global warming feedback loop: Less ice means more water to absorb the sun’s energy. The scientists plan to cut a hole in the ice and pump seawater on top of it, which they hope will freeze, “speeding up the natural freezing process underneath the ice,” the Times explains.

Pumping sea water on top of Arctic sea iceReal Ice

There are some big unknowns, one being whether using salty seawater could actually make the melting worse. Another is whether powering the project could even be feasible. This particular trial is being powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, but reversing ice loss trends would require about 10 million pumps. As one researcher put it: “That’s a lot of pumps.” This is one of several engineering methods being floated as potential solutions to the rapidly worsening sea ice problem, the Times reports. Another wild idea is to sprinkle glass powder on the ice to reflect the sun’s rays.

THE KICKER

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by 50% last year, but the Cerrado savanna, a national biodiversity hotspot, lost more than 2 million acres of native vegetation.

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Applying For Financial Aid In 2024? Here’s What You Need To Know

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-09, from: The LAist

Having trouble with the new 2024-25 FAFSA? You’re not alone. And there are other changes you might not know about, too.

https://laist.com/news/education/applying-for-financial-aid-2024-fafsa-financial-aid-guide Save to Pocket

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HP Omen Transcend 14 is a 3.6 pound gaming laptop with Intel Meteor Lake and NVIDIA RTX 40 series graphics

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

Gaming laptops used to be big and heavy machines with large displays and high-performance internals. But over the past few years we’ve seen a growing number of companies including Acer, Asus, and Razer show that it’s possible to make a decent gaming laptop that weighs around 4 pounds or less. Now HP is getting in […]

The post HP Omen Transcend 14 is a 3.6 pound gaming laptop with Intel Meteor Lake and NVIDIA RTX 40 series graphics appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/hp-omen-transcend-14-is-a-3-6-pound-gaming-laptop-with-intel-meteor-lake-and-nvidia-rtx-40-series-graphics/ Save to Pocket

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HP Spectre x360 premium thin and light laptops now available with Intel Meteor Lake and 9MP webcams

date: 2024-01-08, from: Liliputing

The HP Spectre x360 line of premium thin and light convertible laptops are getting a few significant upgrades this year. The new HP Spectre x360 14 has a 2.8K OLED display, support for up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, and a 9MP webcam with support for Windows Studio Effects, among other things, while the upgraded HP […]

The post HP Spectre x360 premium thin and light laptops now available with Intel Meteor Lake and 9MP webcams appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/hp-spectre-x360-premium-thin-and-light-laptops-now-available-with-intel-meteor-lake-and-9mp-webcams/ Save to Pocket

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The Next Frontier In EV Battery Recycling: Graphite

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The LAist

In the race to build a circular battery industry, one mineral has been overlooked — until now

https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/the-next-frontier-in-ev-battery-recycling-graphite Save to Pocket

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Buying An EV Just Got More Affordable

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The LAist

The federal tax credit is now available as an upfront rebate, making EVs more accessible to low-and-middle-income households.

https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/buying-an-ev-just-got-more-affordable Save to Pocket

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Lock Down Your Accounts with Extra Authentication

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Markup blog

Two-factor logins add security beyond your password

https://themarkup.org/gentle-january/2024/01/08/lock-down-your-accounts-with-extra-authentication Save to Pocket

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What needs to happen before we see interest rate cuts

date: 2024-01-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report

Many on Wall Street expect the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates in March, but a lot is riding on these first few months of the year. We’ll check in with Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin about potential risks to a soft landing. Also on the program: device-makers hope to attract consumer dollars at CES, and California expands state health care to include low-income undocumented immigrants.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/what-needs-to-happen-before-we-see-interest-rate-cuts Save to Pocket

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@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-01-08, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)

I once again want to thank Natalia Vish (@karafuto) for her incredible artwork. She built the new @SolarpunkPrompts cover image and banners. If you’ve only been seeing the art on fedi you might be stuck with our old original artwork due to caching. Instead, check out these beautiful illustrations. Her banner is in a stained glass style with vingettes representing each of our season one episodes. It’s incredible artistically, and shows a dedication and compassion to the subject matter.

She’s phenomenally talented across a wealth of media, and does amazing immersive and interactive installations. She takes commissions too. (hint hint). Let’s boost this to share her talent with all of fedi!

#art #solarpunk #hope

https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/111720379243788961 Save to Pocket

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UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Renewed focus follows TV drama

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised to speed up the process of exonerating Post Office employees wrongfully convicted of false accounting, theft and fraud decades after after faulty software led to one of the greatest miscarriage of justice in British history.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/sunak_promises_faster_justice_for/ Save to Pocket

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Beaney’s Tractatus translation

date: 2024-01-08, from: Logic Matters blog

I’m not sure what prompted me to send off for a copy of the new translation of the Tractatus by Michael Beaney (it is, though, a very inexpensive paperback from Oxford World Classics, for which OUP are to be thanked). A quick description. The initial apparatus is almost a hundred pages. There is a sixty […]

The post Beaney’s Tractatus translation appeared first on Logic Matters.

https://www.logicmatters.net/2024/01/08/beaneys-tractatus-translation/ Save to Pocket

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People’s CDC COVID-19 Weather Report

date: 2024-01-08, from: Peoples CDC blog

This is the @PeoplesCDC weekly update for January 8, 2024! This Weather Report from the People’s CDC sheds light on the ongoing COVID situation in the US.

https://peoplescdc.org/2024/01/08/peoples-cdc-covid-19-weather-report-65/ Save to Pocket

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Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-09, from: Bruce Schneier blog

Last month, I convened the Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy (IWORD 2023) at the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center. As with IWORD 2022, the goal was to bring together a diverse set of thinkers and practitioners to talk about how democracy might be reimagined for the twenty-first century.

My thinking is very broad here. Modern democracy was invented in the mid-eighteenth century, using mid-eighteenth-century technology. Were democracy to be invented from scratch today, with today’s technologies, it would look very different. Representation would look different. Adjudication would look different. Resource allocation and reallocation would look different. Everything would look different, because we would have much more powerful technology to build on and no legacy systems to worry about…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/01/second-interdisciplinary-workshop-on-reimagining-democracy.html Save to Pocket

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China clamps down on weapons sales to Taiwan

date: 2024-01-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report

From the BBC World Service: China has announced sanctions against five American arms manufacturers over weapons sales to Taiwan.The move comes just ahead of this weekend’s Taiwanese elections. Also, trains are starting to run on Mexico’s new multibillion-dollar train network, known as Tren Maya. It’s projected to bring 2 million more tourists a year to the impoverished Yucatan Peninsula, but critics say it’s an environmental catastrophe.

 

 

 

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/china-clamps-down-on-weapons-sales-to-taiwan Save to Pocket

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Watermarks on AI art a futile game of digital hide-and-seek

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Plus: A virtual Elvis Presley animated using AI to perform in shows, and the most popular chatbot on Character.ai

AI in brief  Adding visible or invisible watermarks to images to identify whether they’re made by AI won’t prevent content from being manipulated to spread misinformation online, experts warn.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/ai_in_brief/ Save to Pocket

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beyond the SCT

date: 2024-01-08, from: Ayjay blog

My 2021 essay on “cosmotechnics” begins thus: In the 1950s and 1960s, a series of thinkers, beginning with Jacques Ellul and Marshall McLuhan, began to describe the anatomy of our technological society. Then, starting in the 1970s, a generation emerged who articulated a detailed critique of that society. The critique produced by these figures I […]

https://blog.ayjay.org/beyond-the-sct/ Save to Pocket

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Open source’s new mission: To boldly go where no software has gone before

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

FOSS’s license to exist depends on helping users. It has to learn to think that way

Opinion  Bruce Perens is unhappy. He sees the spirit and potency of FOSS decaying into obsolescence as the big guns learn to game the system and users don’t see the point.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/open_sources_new_mission/ Save to Pocket

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My upcoming FOSDEM 2024

date: 2024-01-08, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog

I attended FOSDEM for the first time back in 2010. I have since been back and attended every single physical version of the conference since then (remember that it skipped a few years in the COVID days). FOSDEM is my favorite conference no doubt. I did a presentation in the embedded dev room in 2010. … Continue reading My upcoming FOSDEM 2024 →

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/01/08/my-upcoming-fosdem-2024/ Save to Pocket

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Gaia-X project doesn’t have a future, claims Nextcloud boss

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

How the hyperscalers derailed Europe’s cloud infrastructure train

Interview  Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek is blunt about the future of Europe’s Gaia-X project: it doesn’t have one. At least, not in the way many of its founders hoped.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/gaiax_future/ Save to Pocket

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Giant Fine-Art Game Boy | #MagPiMonday

date: 2024-01-08, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)

The iconic handheld console can now be treated as fine art, especially when you deconstruct it and rebuild it six times larger.

The post Giant Fine-Art Game Boy | #MagPiMonday appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/giant-fine-art-game-boy-magpimonday/ Save to Pocket

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Answers sought in disappearance of Kona woman

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Family and friends of a woman who was reported missing on Nov. 20 are still seeking answers surrounding her disappearance.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/hawaii-news/answers-sought-in-disappearance-of-kona-woman/ Save to Pocket

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New gym in works for Hilo Intermediate: School receives funds to replace termite-damaged facility

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Hilo Intermediate School has received $1 million in state funds to begin the process of replacing its gym.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/hawaii-news/new-gym-in-works-for-hilo-intermediate-school-receives-funds-to-replace-termite-damaged-facility/ Save to Pocket

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Security at Hawaii’s state Capitol ramps up amid growing safety concerns

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Public entry to Hawaii&#8217;s state Capitol this year is going to be more like accessing an airport terminal or getting into a courthouse. State officials are beefing up security at Hawaii&#8217;s top government building with additions that include metal detector scans for visitors and bag X-ray machines as the 2024 session of the Legislature nears its Jan. 17 opening.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/hawaii-news/security-at-hawaiis-state-capitol-ramps-up-amid-growing-safety-concerns/ Save to Pocket

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Canceled flights are piling up as Alaska and United are stuck without their grounded Boeing jets

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>PORTLAND, Ore. &#8212; Alaska Airlines and United Airlines grounded all of their Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliners again on Sunday while they waited to be told how to inspect the planes to prevent another inflight blowout like the one that damaged an Alaska jet.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/nation-world-news/canceled-flights-are-piling-up-as-alaska-and-united-are-stuck-without-their-grounded-boeing-jets/ Save to Pocket

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Carnival begins in New Orleans with Phunny Phorty Phellows, king cakes, Joan of Arc parade

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>NEW ORLEANS &#8212; The countdown to Mardi Gras began Saturday in New Orleans as Carnival season kicks off with dozens of costumed revelers and a brass band set to crowd onto a streetcar for a nighttime ride down historic St. Charles Avenue. Meanwhile, a walking club in the French Quarter will march in its annual procession honoring Joan of Arc.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/nation-world-news/carnival-begins-in-new-orleans-with-phunny-phorty-phellows-king-cakes-joan-of-arc-parade/ Save to Pocket

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Obituaries for January 8

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Idamae K. Galan, 64, of Kapaau died Dec. 3 at North Hawaii Community Hospital. Born in Kohala, she was a homemaker, worked for Kamehameha Pharmacy and member of Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Visitation 8:30-9:45 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 20, at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Hawi. Memorial Mass at 10 a.m. Urn burial to follow at Hawi Catholic Cemetery. Casual attire. Survived by husband, Gregory Galan; sons, Dwayne (Berna) Galan and Eddie Galan; daughters, Selena (Kenny Ruiz) Galan and Catherine (Zachary) Costa; sisters, Bernadette (Mark) Shimono, Kathy (Jason) Chang and Mary (Darryl) Isa; six grandchildren; aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins. Arrangements by Cremation Services of West Hawaii.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/obituaries/obituaries-for-january-8-9/ Save to Pocket

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Iowa’s Christian conservatives follow their faith when voting, and some say it leads them to Trump

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>DES MOINES, Iowa &#8212; Pastor Charles Hundley opened his worship service on a cold Sunday in northeast Des Moines with a prayer that made it clear one endorsement above all will matter in Iowa&#8217;s caucuses eight days away.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/nation-world-news/iowas-christian-conservatives-follow-their-faith-when-voting-and-some-say-it-leads-them-to-trump/ Save to Pocket

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Winter storms dump snow on both US coasts as icy roads make for hazardous travel

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>BOSTON &#8212; A major winter storm bringing heavy snow and freezing rain to some communities spread across New England on Sunday, sending residents scurrying for their shovels and snowblowers to clear sidewalks and driveways.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/nation-world-news/winter-storms-dump-snow-on-both-us-coasts-as-icy-roads-make-for-hazardous-travel/ Save to Pocket

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Young Palestinian girl killed when Israeli police fire at suspected attackers in West Bank unrest

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>JERUSALEM &#8212; Israeli police on Sunday opened fire at a pair of suspected attackers who rammed their car into a West Bank checkpoint, fatally shooting a young Palestinian girl in an adjacent vehicle, according to police and medical officials.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/nation-world-news/young-palestinian-girl-killed-when-israeli-police-fire-at-suspected-attackers-in-west-bank-unrest/ Save to Pocket

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The Pentagon adds new details about Austin’s secretive hospital stay and the delay in telling Biden

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>WASHINGTON &#8212; The Pentagon released new details Sunday about Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin&#8217;s continued hospitalization, saying he had a medical procedure Dec. 22, went home a day later and was admitted to intensive care Jan. 1 when he began experiencing severe pain.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/nation-world-news/the-pentagon-adds-new-details-about-austins-secretive-hospital-stay-and-the-delay-in-telling-biden/ Save to Pocket

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Hasina wins overwhelming majority in Bangladesh as opposition boycotts election, saying it’s unfair

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>DHAKA &#8212; Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has won an overwhelming majority in Bangladesh&#8217;s parliamentary election after a campaign fraught with violence and a boycott from the main opposition party, giving her and her Awami League a fourth consecutive term.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/nation-world-news/hasina-wins-overwhelming-majority-in-bangladesh-as-opposition-boycotts-election-saying-its-unfair/ Save to Pocket

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The US sees a drop in illegal border crossings after Mexico increases enforcement

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>EAGLE PASS, Texas &#8212; Daniel Bermudez&#8217;s family had fled Venezuela and was headed to the U.S. to seek asylum when the freight train they were riding through Mexico was stopped by immigration officials.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/nation-world-news/the-us-sees-a-drop-in-illegal-border-crossings-after-mexico-increases-enforcement/ Save to Pocket

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Message to GOP: South lost the Civil War and the right to own slaves — get over it

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Cross her off the list.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/opinion/message-to-gop-south-lost-the-civil-war-and-the-right-to-own-slaves-get-over-it/ Save to Pocket

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Blinken meets Jordanian and Qatari leaders on new Mideast push to keep Gaza war from spreading

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>DOHA, Qatar &#8212; On another urgent diplomatic mission to the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Sunday with Arab partners to press for their help in tamping down resurgent fears that Israel&#8217;s three-month war against Hamas in Gaza could spread.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/nation-world-news/blinken-meets-jordanian-and-qatari-leaders-on-new-mideast-push-to-keep-gaza-war-from-spreading/ Save to Pocket

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NFL roundup: Josh Allen, Bills rally past Dolphins 21-14, win 4th straight AFC East title

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) &#8212; Josh Allen threw a go-ahead touchdown pass to Dawson Knox midway through the fourth quarter, and the Buffalo Bills won their fourth straight AFC East title, rallying past the Miami Dolphins 21-14 on Sunday night.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/sports/nfl-roundup-josh-allen-bills-rally-past-dolphins-21-14-win-4th-straight-afc-east-title/ Save to Pocket

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BIIF hoops: KSH dominates Konawaena

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Kamehameha Schools-Hawai&#8216;i boys basketball handled business against Konawaena on Friday night in Ellison Onizuka Gymnasium &#8212; beating the Wildcats 64-41 and remaining unbeaten in the BIIF.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/sports/biif-hoops-ksh-dominates-konawaena/ Save to Pocket

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BIIF soccer: HPA completes weekend sweep, Hilo handles Kona

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>WAIMEA &#8212; Hawaii Prep&#8217;s girls soccer team crushed neighbor Honoka&#8216;a High 8-0 Friday afternoon on the Dragons&#8217; home pitch.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/sports/biif-soccer-hpa-completes-weekend-sweep-hilo-handles-kona/ Save to Pocket

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‘Severely burnt body’ found in Ocean View house fire

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>Police say a &#8220;severely burnt&#8221; body, likely that of an elderly man, was found Sunday in the remnants of an Ocean View house fire.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/hawaii-news/severely-burnt-body-found-in-ocean-view-house-fire/ Save to Pocket

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Maui man Big Island’s first 2024 traffic fatality

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p>A 31-year-old Maui man became the Big Island&#8217;s first traffic fatality in a single-vehicle collision Sunday morning in Kailua-Kona.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/hawaii-news/maui-man-big-islands-first-2024-traffic-fatality/ Save to Pocket

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Teen pedestrian hit by police vehicle Friday night dies

date: 2024-01-08, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold

            <p><strong>UPDATE:</strong> Police said today the 16-year-old boy critically injured when struck by a police blue-and-white sedan Friday night has died.</p>
        

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/08/hawaii-news/teen-critically-injured-after-being-hit-by-police-vehicle/ Save to Pocket

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Where in the world is Lloyd?

date: 2024-01-08, from: Robert Reich on Substack

The military chain of command — in democracies and dictatorships

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/where-in-the-world-is-lloyd Save to Pocket

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Big Oil Is Weaponizing The First Amendment

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Lever News

Fossil fuel’s favorite law firm is using the concept of free speech to legally defend the industry’s misleading climate claims as well as silence its critics.

https://www.levernews.com/big-oil-is-weaponizing-the-first-amendment/ Save to Pocket

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Need to plug in an EV? BT Group kicks off cabinet update pilot

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Old BT green boxes to be repurposed

The BT Group has made good on its promise to repurpose street cabinets into EV charge points by kicking off a pilot to demonstrate the concept actually works.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/need_to_plug_in_an/ Save to Pocket

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NASA Science Heads to Moon on First US Private Robotic Artemis Flight

date: 2024-01-08, from: NASA breaking news

Editor’s Note: NASA and Astrobotic are continuing to monitor this mission. Updates will be provided on https://blogs.nasa.gov/. Carrying NASA scientific instruments as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander launched on United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rocket at 2:18 a.m. EST from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station […]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-science-heads-to-moon-on-first-us-private-robotic-artemis-flight/ Save to Pocket

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New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

How badly do you want your name in the About box?

Who, me?  Welcome, gentle reader, and rejoice, for with the new year comes a new instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers recount tales of tech trouble for your edification.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/who_me/ Save to Pocket

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Everyone’s suing AI over text and pics. But music? You ain’t seen nothing yet

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

When record labels go bananas over brief samples, good luck generating tracks built from today’s culture

Comment  Generative AI models are most known for knocking out text and pictures, though they’re also getting some way with audio. Music is particularly tricky, arguably: as humans, we can be relatively forgiving with machine-imagined imagery and some forms of writing, but perhaps not so much with audio. People can be very picky about the sounds they like listening to.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/copyright_music_ai/ Save to Pocket

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US Investigators Recover Key Part From Alaska Airlines 737 MAX Jet

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

WASHINGTON — The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said late on Sunday the “key missing component” from the Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet involved in an Alaska Airlines emergency landing had been recovered from the backyard of a suburban home.

The plug door tore off the left side of an Alaska Airlines jet on Friday following takeoff from Portland, Oregon, en route to Ontario, California, depressurizing the plane and forcing pilots to turn back and land safely with all 171 passengers and six crew on board.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday ordered the temporary grounding of 171 Boeing MAX 9 jets installed with the same panel, which weighs about 27 kg and covers an optional exit door mainly used by low-cost airlines.

The missing plug door was recovered on Sunday by a Portland school teacher identified only as “Bob” in the Cedar Hills neighborhood who found it in his backyard, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said, saying she was “very relieved” it had been found.

She had earlier told reporters the aircraft part was a “key missing component” to determine why the accident occurred.

“Our structures team will want to look at everything on the door - all of the components on the door to see to look at witness marks, to look at any paint transfer, what shape the door was in when found. That can tell them a lot about what occurred,” she said.

The force from the loss of the plug door was strong enough to blow open the cockpit door during flight, said Homendy, who said it must have been a “terrifying event” to experience.

“They heard a bang,” Homendy said of the pilots, who were interviewed by investigators.

A quick reference laminated checklist flew out the door, while the first officer lost her headset, she said. “Communication was a serious issue… It was described as chaos.”

Homendy said the cockpit voice recorder did not capture any data because it had been overwritten and again called on regulators to mandate retrofitting existing planes with recorders that capture 25 hours of data, up from the two hours required at present.

Earlier pressurization issues

Homendy said the auto pressurization fail light illuminated on the same Alaska Airlines aircraft on Dec. 7, Jan. 3 and Jan. 4, but it was unclear if there was any connection between those incidents and the accident.

Alaska Airlines made a decision after the warnings to restrict the aircraft from making long flights over water to Hawaii so that it could return quickly to an airport if needed, Homendy said.

The Seattle-based carrier said earlier in response to questions about the warning lights that aircraft pressurization system write-ups were typical in commercial aviation operations with large planes.

The airline said, “in every case, the write up was fully evaluated and resolved per approved maintenance procedures and in full compliance with all applicable FAA regulations.”

Alaska Airlines added it has an internal policy to restrict aircraft with multiple maintenance write-ups on some systems from long flights over water that was not required by the FAA.

 

Planes grounded

The FAA said on Sunday the affected fleet of Boeing MAX 9 planes, including those operated by other carriers such as United Airlines, would remain grounded until the regulator was satisfied they were safe.

The FAA initially said on Saturday the required inspections would take four to eight hours, leading many in the industry to assume the planes could very quickly return to service.

But criteria for the checks have yet to be agreed between the FAA and Boeing, meaning airlines have yet to receive detailed instructions, people familiar with the matter said.

The FAA must approve Boeing’s inspection criteria before the checks can be completed and planes can resume flights. Alaska Airlines said late on Sunday it had still not received instructions from Boeing.

Alaska Airlines canceled 170 flights on Sunday and a further 60 on Monday and said travel disruptions from the grounding were expected to last through at least midweek. United, which has grounded its 79 MAX 9s, canceled 230 flights on Sunday, or 8% of scheduled departures.

The accident has put Boeing back under scrutiny as it awaits certification of its smaller MAX 7 as well as the larger MAX 10, which is needed to compete with a key Airbus model.

In 2019, global authorities subjected all MAX planes to a wider grounding that lasted 20 months after crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia linked to poorly designed cockpit software killed a total of 346 people.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-investigators-recover-key-part-from-alaska-airlines-737-max-jet/7430628.html Save to Pocket

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Today in SCV History (Jan. 8)

date: 2024-01-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)

1869 – Sanford Lyon, Henry Wiley and William Jenkins begin drilling the first oil well in Pico Canyon. [story

https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-jan-8/ Save to Pocket

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Docs observability, or measuring docs inside a product-docs system

date: 2024-01-08, from: Blog by Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti

As technical writers we want to know if the docs we’re writing are accomplishing their goals. In other words, we want to know how good are docs relative to the business goals they’re aiming to support or improve. Are docs serving their purpose? Which of the three budgets are docs supporting? When tech bubbles burst, roles usually seen as cost centers, such as tech writing, are ripe for layoffs, no matter how staunchly we defend them. That’s why we continue mulling over the question of value and how we measure it.

https://passo.uno/docs-observability-do11y/ Save to Pocket

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Facebook, Instagram now mine web links you visit to fuel targeted ads

date: 2024-01-08, updated: 2024-01-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Also: Twitter hijackings, BEC arrest, and critical vulnerabilities

Infosec in brief  We gather everyone’s still easing themselves into the New Year. Deleting screens of unread emails, putting on a brave face in meetings, and slowly getting up to speed. While you’re recovering from the Christmas break, Meta has been busy introducing fresh ways to monetize your web surfing habits while dressing it up as a user experience improvement.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/security_in_brief/ Save to Pocket

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Rotating outage schedule partially implemented

date: 2024-01-08, from: Guam Daily Post

The Guam Power Authority is notifying residents that its rotating outage schedule was partially implemented as of 3:15 p.m. Monday, due to limited generation capacity.

https://www.postguam.com/news/rotating-outage-schedule-partially-implemented/article_a1771d72-adf5-11ee-a83c-db40978ae69b.html Save to Pocket

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‘Oppenheimer’ Dominates Golden Globes, ‘Poor Things’ Upsets ‘Barbie’ in Comedy

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

BEVERLY HILLS, California — “Oppenheimer has dominated the Golden Globe Awards, taking home the night’s top honor. Yorgos Lanthimos’”Poor Things” has won best comedy or musical at the 81st Golden Globes, an upset victory over the category favorite, “Barbie.” 

Emma Stone also won for her performance in “Poor Things.”

On the television side, “Succession” and “The Bear” are took multiple honors. Christopher Nolan’s epic American drama “Oppenheimer” picked up five big awards including best drama film, best director for Nolan, best actor for Cillian Murphy, best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr. and for Ludwig Göransson’s score.

Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph both won for their performances in “The Holdovers.”

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic “Oppenheimer” dominated the 81st Golden Globes, winning five awards including best drama, while Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein riff “Poor Things” pulled off an upset victor over “Barbie” to triumph in the best comedy or musical category.

If awards season has been building toward a second match-up of Barbenheimer, this round went to “Oppenheimer.”

The film also won best director for Nolan, best drama actor for Cillian Murphy, best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr. and for Ludwig Göransson’s score.

“I don’t think it was a no-brainer by any stretch of the imagination to make a three-hour talky movie — R-rated by the way — about one of the darkest developments in our history,” said producer Emma Thomas accepting the night’s final award and thanking Universal chief Donna Langley.

Along with best comedy or musical, “Poor Things” also won for Emma Stone’s performance as Bella, a Victorian-era woman experiencing a surreal sexual awakening.

“I see this as a rom-com,” said Stone. “But in the sense that Bella falls in love with life itself, rather than a person.

She accepts the good and the bad in equal measure, and that really made me look at life differently.”

Lily Gladstone won best actress in a dramatic film for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Gladstone, who began her speech speaking the language of her native tribe, Blackfeet Nation, is the first Indigenous winner in the category.

“This is a historic win,” said Gladstone. “It doesn’t just belong to me.”

The Globes were in their ninth decade but facing a new and uncertain chapter. After a tumultuous few years of scandal, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was dissolved, leaving a new Globes, on a new network (CBS), to try to regain its perch as the third biggest award show of the year, after the Oscars and Grammys. Even the menu (sushi from Nobu) was remade.

“Golden Globes journalists, thank you for changing your game, therefore changing your name,” said Downey in his acceptance speech.

It got off to a rocky start. Host Jo Koy took the stage at the Beverly Hilton International Ballroom in Beverly Hills, California.

The Filipino American stand-up hit on some expected topics: Ozempic, Meryl Streep’s knack for winning awards and the long-running “Oppenheimer.” (“I needed another hour.”)

After one joke flubbed, Koy, who was named host after some bigger names reportedly passed, also noted how fast he was thrust into the job.

“Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. You want a perfect monologue?” said Koy. “I wrote some of these and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”

Hi, Barbie

Downey’s win, his third Globe, denied one to “Kenergy.” Ryan Gosling had been seen as his stiffest competition, just one of the many head-to-head contests between “Oppenheimer” and Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.”

The filmmakers faced each other in the best director category, where Nolan triumphed.

It was two hours before “Barbie,” the year’s biggest hit with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales, won an award Sunday. Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” took best song, and swiftly after, “Barbie” took the Globes’ new honor for “cinematic and box office achievement.”

Some thought that award might go to Taylor Swift, whose “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” also set box-office records. Swift, though, remains winless in five Globe nods.

Margot Robbie, star and producer of “Barbie,” accepted the award in a pink gown modeled after 1977’s Superstar Barbie.

“We’d like to dedicate this to every single person on the planet who dressed up and went to the greatest place on Earth: the movie theaters,” said Robbie.

“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” two blockbusters brought together by a common release date, also faced off in the best screenplay category.

But in an upset, Justine Triet and Arthur Harari won for the script to the French courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall.” Later, Triet’s film picked up best international film, too.

Though the Globes have no direct correlation with the Academy Awards, they can boost campaigns at a crucial juncture. Oscar nomination voting starts Thursday, and the twin sensations of Barbenheimer remain frontrunners.

Other contenders loom, though, like “Poor Things” and “The Holdovers.”

Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph both won for Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.” Giamatti, reuniting with Payne two decades after “Sideways,” won best actor and Randolph won for her supporting performance as a grieving woman in the 1970s-set boarding school drama.

“Oh, Mary you have changed my life,” Randolph said of her character. “You have made me feel seen in so many ways that I have never imagined.”

Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” won best animated film, an upset over “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”

‘Succession,’  ‘The Bear’ Lead TV Winners

The final season of “Succession” cleaned up on the television side. It won best drama series for the third time, a mark that ties a record set by “Mad Men” and “The X-Files.” Three stars from the HBO series also won: Matt Macfadyen, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin.

“It is bittersweet, but things like this make it rather sweeter,” said “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong.

Hulu’s “The Bear” also came away with a trio of awards, including best comedy series. Jeremy Allen White won for the second time, but this time he had company.

Ayo Edebiri won her first Globe for her leading performance in the Hulu show’s second season. She thanked the assistants of her agents and managers.

“To the people who answer my emails, you’re the real ones,” said Edebiri.

“Beef” won three awards: best limited series as well as acting awards for Ali Wong and Steven Yeun.

The Globes also added a new stand-up special award. That went, surprisingly, to Ricky Gervais, who didn’t attend the show he so often hosted. Some expected Chris Rock to win for “Selective Outrage,” his stand-up response to the Will Smith slap.

The Globes Comeback

A few years ago, the Golden Globes were on the cusp of collapse. After The Los Angeles Times reported that the HFPA had no Black members, Hollywood boycotted the organization.

The 2022 Globes were all but canceled and taken off TV. After reforms, the Globes returned to NBC last year in a one-year deal, but the show was booted to Tuesday evening.

With Jerrod Carmichael hosting, the telecast attracted 6.3 million viewers, a new low on NBC and a far cry from the 20 million that once tuned in.

The Golden Globes were acquired by Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions, which Penske Media owns, and turned into a for-profit venture.

The HFPA (which typically numbered around 90 voters) was dissolved and a group of some 300 entertainment journalists from around the world now vote for the awards.

Questions still remain about the Globes’ long-term future, but their value to Hollywood studios remains providing a marketing boost to awards contenders. (The Oscars won’t be held until March 10.)

This year, because of the actors and writers strikes, the Globes are airing ahead of the Emmys, which were postponed to Jan. 15.

With movie ticket sales still 20% off the pre-pandemic pace and the industry facing a potentially perilous 2024 at the box office, Hollywood needed the Golden Globes as much as it ever has.

The most comical evaluation on the Globes came from presenters Will Ferrell and Kristin Wiig, who blamed the awards body for the constant interruption of a song they found irresistible while otherwise solemnly presenting best actor in a drama.

A furious, dancing Ferrell shouted: “The Golden Globes have not changed!”

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A Look at the 2024 Golden Globe Winners

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

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List of 2024 Golden Globe Winners

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — BEST MOVIE DRAMA: “Oppenheimer”

BEST MOVIE MUSICAL OR COMEDY: “Poor Things”

TELEVISION COMEDY SERIES: “The Bear”

TELEVISION DRAMA SERIES: “Succession”

LIMITED SERIES, ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION: “Beef”

CINEMATIC AND BOX OFFICE ACHIEVEMENT: “Barbie”

MALE ACTOR IN A MOVIE MUSICAL OR COMEDY: Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”

FEMALE ACTOR IN A MOVIE MUSICAL OR COMEDY: Emma Stone, “Poor Things”

ACTOR IN A MOVIE DRAMA: Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”

FEMALE ACTOR IN A MOVIE DRAMA: Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon”

FEMALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING MOVIE ROLE: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”

MALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING MOVIE ROLE: Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer”

FEMALE ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES, ANTHOLOGY SERIES, OR A MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION: Ali Wong, “Beef”

ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES, ANTHOLOGY SERIES, OR A MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION: Steven Yeun, “Beef”

SUPPORTING FEMALE ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES: Elizabeth Debicki, “The Crown”

SUPPORTING MALE ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES: Matthew Macfadyen, “Succession”

BEST SCREENPLAY: “Anatomy of a Fall,” Justine Triet and Arthur Harari

FEMALE ACTOR IN A TELEVISION DRAMA: Sarah Snook, “Succession”

MALE ACTOR IN A TELEVISION COMEDY: Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear”

STAND-UP COMEDY TELEVISION SPECIAL: Ricky Gervais, “Armageddon”

BEST MOTION PICTURE, NON-ENGLISH: “Anatomy of a Fall” (France)

FEMALE ACTOR IN A TELEVISION COMEDY: Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear”

MALE ACTOR IN A TELEVISION DRAMA: Kieran Culkin, “Succession”

ANIMATED FILM: “The Boy and the Heron”

DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”

SCORE: “Oppenheimer,” Ludwig Göransson

ORIGINAL SONG: “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie,” music and lyrics by Billie Eilish O’Connell and Finneas O’Connell

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Disable Emacs help function autoload

date: 2024-01-08, from: ldbeth Lisp/Music Programmer blog

Since Emacs 29 I have noticed using describe-function interactively search functions can cause packages to load, to me it is a surprise that this feature has been there since Emacs 26.3, see variable help-enable-completion-autoload.

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January 7, 2024

date: 2024-01-08, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog

Going to take tonight off, as Buddy’s season has ended and he is on vacation so we have been off gallivanting. I need to catch up on some sleep. One of the good things about hitting the road with a man who is accustomed to getting up at 4:00 is that he tiptoes out in the morning to see the sights while I sleep in, and then comes back to the hotel with coffee and a bagel or pastry.

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Royal Orchestral Maneuvers, with Soul

date: 2024-01-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

For its latest CAMA-hosted concert, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra brings along bright young pianist British Isata Kanneh-Mason in the soloist spotlight.

The post Royal Orchestral Maneuvers, with Soul appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

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Follow the Feces for COVID Information

date: 2024-01-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Wastewater tests show rise in virus over holidays in Goleta and Santa Barbara.

The post Follow the Feces for COVID Information appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

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OmniFocus 4.0.3

date: 2024-01-08, from: TidBITS blog

Maintenance update with a smattering of improvements and bug fixes. ($74.99 new, 50% discount on upgrades, free update from version 4, 29.6 MB, macOS 13+)

https://tidbits.com/watchlist/and-omnifocus-4-0-3/ Save to Pocket

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SpamSieve 3.0.3

date: 2024-01-08, from: TidBITS blog

Maintenance update with bug fixes and improvements for the spam-filtering utility. ($39.99 new, free update, 49.5 MB, macOS 10.13+)

https://tidbits.com/watchlist/spamsieve-3-0-3/ Save to Pocket

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@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I got a high compliment from my OG friend and co-conspirator in podcasting Chris Lydon. He said I was a good sports writer and boasted of the current Celtics team (he’s from Boston). They’re worth boasting about. What a team, such depth and so many interesting players. They were great before they added Kristaps Porzingis, who we know well in New York. He was our rookie unicorn and franchise player at the end of the Phil Jackson debacle. He’s one of those ex-Knicks we still root for, so I feel an affinity for this year’s Celtics. I would pay to see them kill a west coast team like the Warriors or Kings in this year’s finals. Anyway, I write sports for people who are not sports fans, though I think everyone who loves politics or business should pay close attention to sports, because it all happens quickly in sport, and the human element is so visible and front and center. I’m glad Chris is a basketball fan. Maybe we can go to a Knicks-Celtics game sometime, either in Boston or NYC. The Knicks are getting good, and it likely would be a good game and Knicks could even win. 💥

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A modern-day blogger

date: 2024-01-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News

Julia Child as a blogger, as rendered by ChatGPT.

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Fine blogging since 1994

date: 2024-01-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News

I’ve been blogging since 1994.

I once set a date that I would stop blogging.

It came and went. I didn’t stop.

Some people are natural born bloggers – they can’t not blog.

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First US Lunar Lander In More Than 50 Years Rockets Toward Moon With Commercial Deliveries

date: 2024-01-08, from: VOA News USA

Cape Canaveral, Florida — The first U.S. lunar lander in more than 50 years rocketed toward the moon Monday, launching private companies on a space race to make deliveries for NASA and other customers.

Astrobotic Technology’s lander caught a ride on a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. The Vulcan streaked through the Florida predawn sky, putting the spacecraft on a roundabout route to the moon that should culminate with an attempted landing on Feb. 23.

The Pittsburgh company aims to be the first private business to successfully land on the moon, something only four countries have accomplished. But a Houston company also has a lander ready to fly, and could beat it to the lunar surface, taking a more direct path.

“First to launch. First to land is TBD” — to be determined, said Astrobotic chief executive John Thornton.

NASA gave the two companies millions to build and fly their own lunar landers. The space agency wants the privately owned landers to scope out the place before astronauts arrive while delivering NASA tech and science experiments as well as odds and ends for other customers.

Astrobotic’s contract for the Peregrine lander: $108 million.

The last time the U.S. launched a moon-landing mission was in December 1972.

Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon, closing out an era that has remained NASA’s pinnacle.

The space agency’s new Artemis program — named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — looks to return astronauts to the moon’s surface within the next few years.

First will be a lunar fly-around with four astronauts, possibly before the end of the year.

Highlighting Monday’s moonshot was the long-delayed initial test flight of the Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The 61-meter rocket is essentially an upgraded version of ULA’s hugely successful workhorse Atlas V, which is being phased out along with the company’s Delta IV. Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, provided the Vulcan’s two main engines.

The Soviet Union and the U.S. racked up a string of successful moon landings in the 1960s and 70s, before putting touchdowns on pause. China joined the elite club in 2013 and India in 2023. But last year also saw landers from Russia and a private Japanese company slam into the moon. An Israeli nonprofit crashed in 2019.

Next month, SpaceX will provide the lift for a lander from Intuitive Machines. The Nova-C lander’s more direct one-week route could see both spacecraft attempting to land within days or even hours of one another.

The hourlong descent to the lunar surface — by far the biggest challenge — will be “exciting, nail-biting, terrifying all at once,” said Thornton.

Besides flying experiments for NASA, Astrobotic drummed up its own freight business, packing the 1.9-meter-tall Peregrine lander with everything from a chip of rock from Mount Everest and toy-size cars from Mexico that will catapult to the lunar surface and cruise around, to the ashes and DNA of deceased space enthusiasts, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

The Navajo Nation recently sought to have the launch delayed because of the human remains, saying it would be a “profound desecration” of a celestial body revered by Native Americans.

Thornton said the December objections came too late but promised to try to find “a good path forward” with the Navajo for future missions.

One of the spaceflight memorial companies that bought room on the lander, Celestis, said in a statement that no single culture or religion owns the moon and should not be able to veto a mission.

More remains are on the rocket’s upper stage, which, once free of the lander, will indefinitely circle the sun as far out as Mars.

Cargo fares for Peregrine ranged from a few hundred dollars to $1.2 million per kilogram, not nearly enough for Astrobotic to break even. But for this first flight, that’s not the point, according to Thornton.

“A lot of people’s dreams and hopes are riding on this,” he said.

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Hit and run reported on Sand Canyon Road

date: 2024-01-08, from: The Signal

Authorities are investigating a hit and run that took place Sunday near the intersection of Sand Canyon Road and Soledad Canyon Road, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.  “Our deputies responded regarding a hit and run,” said Deputy Adolfo Gonzalez. “They made contact with the informant, who was driving a blue Hyundai Elantra. […]

The post <strong>Hit and run reported on Sand Canyon Road</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

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Monday 8 January, 2024

date: 2024-01-08, from: John Naughton’s online diary

Swans’ Lake Photographed at Sutton Gault in the Cambridgeshire fens, yesterday. Background: A significant portion of East Anglia (about 1,500 square miles) is flat and lies below sea-level. Until the 17th century this was mostly ‘fen’ or marsh (and therefore … Continue reading →

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The cooperation between orf virus and Staphylococcus aureus leads to intractable lesions in skin infection

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

A large amount of evidence shows that different kinds of microorganisms can jointly cope with environmental pressures including cell hosts. For example, in many cases, it has been found that secondary or mixed infection of animals caused by ORFV (an epitheliophilic Parapoxvirus) and bacteria (such as Staphylococcus aureus or Streptococcus) shows a mutual aid mode that indirectly leads to the deterioration of the disease. However, the lack of research on the co-pathogenic mechanism, including how to hijack and destroy the cell host in the pathological microenvironment, has hindered the in-depth understanding of the pathogenic process and consequences of this complex infection and the development of clinical treatment methods. Here, we summarized the current strategies of trapping cell hosts together, based on the previously defined ORFV-Host (O-H) system. The opportunistic invasion of S. aureus destroyed the delicate dynamic balance of the O-H, thus aggravating tissue damage through bacterial products (mediated by Agr), even causing sepsis or inducing cytokine storms. In fact, the virus products from its adaptive regulatory system (VARS) weaken the immune attacks and block molecular pathways, so that S. aureus can settle there more smoothly, and the toxins can penetrate into local tissues more quickly. This paper focuses on the main challenges faced by cell hosts in dealing with mixed infection, which provides a starting point for us to deal with this disease in the future.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1213694 Save to Pocket

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Probiotics for functional constipation in children: an overview of overlapping systematic reviews

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

This overview of systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analysis (MAs) aimed to systematically collate, appraise and synthesize evidence of probiotics for functional constipation (FC) in children.

SRs/MAs of probiotics for FC in children were systematic identified by searching Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, and Web of science. Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR-2), Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), and Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) were unitized by two reviewers independently to assess the methodological quality, reporting quality, and quality of evidence, respectively.

Seven SRs/MAs met the eligibility criteria and were included in this study. According to AMSTAR-2, a very low methodological quality assessment was given to the included SRs/MAs due to the limitations of items 2, 4 and 7. For the PRISMA statement, the overall quality of reporting was unsatisfactory due to the lack of reporting on protocol, risk of bias across studies, synthesis of results, and additional analysis. According to GRADE, the quality of evidence for outcomes was rated as very low to moderate.

Probiotics may be beneficial in improving FC in children. Because of limitations and inconsistent conclusions, further rigorous, normative and comprehensive SRs/MAs are needed to provide robust evidence for definitive conclusions.

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Anti-obesity effects by parasitic nematode (Trichinella spiralis) total lysates

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Obesity is an inducible factor for the cause of chronic diseases and is described by an increase in the size and number of adipocytes that differentiate from precursor cells (preadipocytes). Parasitic helminths are the strongest natural trigger of type 2 immune system, and several studies have showed that helminth infections are inversely correlated with metabolic syndromes.

To investigate whether helminth-derived molecules have therapeutic effects on high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity, we isolated total lysates from Trichinella spiralis muscle larvae. We then checked the anti-obesity effect after intraperitoneal administration and intraoral administration of total lysate from T. spiralis muscle larvae in a diet-induced obesity model. T. spiralis total lysates protect against obesity by inhibiting the proinflammatory response and/or enhancing M2 macrophages. In addition, we determined the effects of total lysates from T. spiralis muscle larvae on anti-obesity activities in 3T3-L1 preadipocytes by investigating the expression levels of key adipogenic regulators, including peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ), CCAAT-enhancer-binding protein alpha (C/EBPα) and adipocyte protein 2 (aP2). Oil Red O staining showed that the total lysates from T. spiralis muscle larvae decreased the differentiation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes by decreasing the number of lipid droplets. In addition, the production levels of proinflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6, IFN-γ and TNF-α were examined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). T. spiralis total lysates decreased intracellular lipid accumulation and suppressed the expression levels of PPARγ, C/EBPα and aP2.

These results show that T. spiralis total lysate significantly suppresses the symptoms of obesity in a diet- induced obesity model and 3T3-L1 cell differentiation and suggest that it has potential for novel anti-obesity therapeutics.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1285584 Save to Pocket

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Unravelling staphylococcal small-colony variants in cardiac implantable electronic device infections: clinical characteristics, management, and genomic insights

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Staphylococcal small-colony variants (SCVs) are common in cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) infections. This is the first retrospective and multi-case study on CIED infections due to staphylococcal SCVs, aiming to provide a theoretical basis for the clinical management of CIED and device-related infections caused by staphylococcal SCVs.

Ninety patients with culture positive CIED infections were enrolled between 2021 and 2022. We compared the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with and without SCVs and performed genomic studies on SCVs isolates.

Compared to patients without SCVs, those with SCVs had a longer primary pacemaker implantation time and were more likely to have a history of device replacement and infection. They showed upregulated inflammatory indicators, especially higher NEUT% (52.6 vs. 26.8%, P = 0.032) and they had longer hospital stays (median 13 vs. 12 days, P = 0.012). Comparative genomics analysis was performed on Staphylococcus epidermidis wild-type and SCVs. Some genes were identified, including aap, genes encoding adhesin, CHAP domain-containing protein, LPXTG cell wall anchor domain-containing protein, and YSIRK-type signal peptide-containing protein.

Staphylococcal SCVs affect the clinical characteristics of CIED infections. The process of staphylococcal SCVs adherence, biofilm formation, and interaction with neutrophils play a vital role.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1321626 Save to Pocket

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In vitro antibacterial activity of antiretroviral drugs on key commensal bacteria from the human microbiota

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Antiretroviral therapy has improved life expectancy in HIV-infected patients. However, people living with HIV under antiretroviral therapy are at higher risks of developing chronic complications and acquiring multidrug resistant bacteria than healthy population. These factors have been associated with shifts in gut microbiome composition and immune activation. It is unclear how antiretroviral drugs affect gut microbiota composition, but it has been observed that antiretroviral treatment is not able to fully restore gut health after HIV infection. Additionally, some antiretroviral drugs have shown antibacterial activity suggesting that these drugs could have a direct impact on the human microbiome composition.

We determined the in vitro antibacterial activity of 16 antiretroviral drugs against a set of key clinically relevant and human commensal bacterial strains.

Our results demonstrate that 5 antiretroviral drugs have in vitro antibacterial activity against gut and vaginal human commensal bacteria. Zidovudine has antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Prevotella bivia, abacavir against Gardnerella vaginalis, efavirenz against G. vaginalis and P. bivia and bictegravir against Enterococcus spp. and G. vaginalis. Moreover, we describe for the first time that elvitegravir has antibacterial activity against G. vaginalis and P. bivia and, most importantly, against vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus spp. and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains with MIC values of 4-16 and 4 µg/mL, respectively showing high level of effectiveness against the tested multidrug-resistant bacteria.

Our results underscore that some antiretroviral drugs may influence the human microbiota composition. In addition, we report the potential use of elvitegravir to treat multidrug-resistant Gram-positive bacteria warranting the need of clinical studies to repurpose this antiretroviral drug.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1306430 Save to Pocket

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Chronic blue light-emitting diode exposure harvests gut dysbiosis related to cholesterol dysregulation

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Night shift workers have been associated with circadian dysregulation and metabolic disorders, which are tightly coevolved with gut microbiota. The chronic impacts of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting at night on gut microbiota and serum lipids were investigated. Male C57BL/6 mice were exposed to blue or white LED lighting at Zeitgeber time 13.5-14 (ZT; ZT0 is the onset of “lights on” and ZT12 is the “lights off” onset under 12-hour light, 12-hour dark schedule). After 33 weeks, only the high irradiance (7.2 J/cm²) of blue LED light reduced the alpha diversity of gut microbiota. The high irradiance of white LED light and the low irradiance (3.6 J/cm²) of both lights did not change microbial alpha diversity. However, the low irradiance, but not the high one, of both blue and white LED illuminations significantly increased serum total cholesterol (TCHO), but not triglyceride (TG). There was no significant difference of microbial abundance between two lights. The ratio of beneficial to harmful bacteria decreased at a low irradiance but increased at a high irradiance of blue light. Notably, this ratio was negatively correlated with serum TCHO but positively correlated with bile acid biosynthesis pathway. Therefore, chronic blue LED lighting at a high irradiance may harvest gut dysbiosis in association with decreased alpha diversity and the ratio of beneficial to harmful bacteria to specifically dysregulates TCHO metabolism in mice. Night shift workers are recommended to be avoid of blue LED lighting for a long and lasting time.

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Real-time detection of Seneca Valley virus by one-tube RPA-CRISPR/Cas12a assay

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Senecavirus A (SVA) is a highly contagious virus that causes vesicular disease in pigs. At present, laboratory detection methods, such as virus isolation and polymerase chain reaction (PCR), required precision instruments and qualified personnel, making them unsuitable for point-of-care tests (POCT). Fortunately, the emergence of CRISPR/Cas system has provided new opportunities for fast and efficient pathogen detection.

This study successfully developed a precise and sensitive detection platform for diagnosing SVA by combining the CRISPR system with recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA).

The minimum detection limit of the assay was 10 copies of the SVA genome. Meanwhile, the assay demonstrated high specificity. To validate the effectiveness of this system, we tested 85 swine clinical samples and found that the fluorescence method had a 100% coincidence rate compared to RT-qPCR.

Overall, the RPA-CRISPR/Cas12a assay established in our study is a highly effective method for detecting SVA and holds great potential for practical applications in the resource-limited settings.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1305222 Save to Pocket

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Ghrelin regulating liver activity and its potential effects on liver fibrosis and Echinococcosis

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Ghrelin widely exists in the central nervous system and peripheral organs, and has biological activities such as maintaining energy homeostasis, regulating lipid metabolism, cell proliferation, immune response, gastrointestinal physiological activities, cognition, memory, circadian rhythm and reward effects. In many benign liver diseases, it may play a hepatoprotective role against steatosis, chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, endoplasmic reticulum stress and apoptosis, and improve liver cell autophagy and immune response to improve disease progression. However, the role of Ghrelin in liver Echinococcosis is currently unclear. This review systematically summarizes the molecular mechanisms by which Ghrelin regulates liver growth metabolism, immune-inflammation, fibrogenesis, proliferation and apoptosis, as well as its protective effects in liver fibrosis diseases, and further proposes the role of Ghrelin in liver Echinococcosis infection. During the infectious process, it may promote the parasitism and survival of parasites on the host by improving the immune-inflammatory microenvironment and fibrosis state, thereby accelerating disease progression. However, there is currently a lack of targeted in vitro and in vivo experimental evidence for this viewpoint.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1324134 Save to Pocket

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Multiple cross displacement amplification combined with nanoparticle-based lateral flow biosensor for rapid and sensitive detection of Epstein-Barr virus

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a highly dangerous virus that is globally prevalent and closely linked to the development of nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC). Plasma EBV DNA analysis is an effective strategy for early detection, prognostication and monitoring of treatment response of NPC.

Here, we present a novel molecular diagnostic technique termed EBV-MCDA-LFB, which integrates multiple cross displacement amplification (MCDA) with nanoparticle-based lateral flow (LFB) to enable simple, rapid and specific detection of EBV. In the EBV-MCDA-LFB system, a set of 10 primers was designed for rapidly amplifying the highly conserved tandem repeat BamHI-W region of the EBV genome. Subsequently, the LFB facilitate direct assay reading, eliminating the use of extra instruments and reagents.

The outcomes showed that the 65°C within 40 minutes was the optimal reaction setting for the EBV-MCDA system. The sensitivity of EBV-MCDA-LFB assay reached 7 copies per reaction when using EBV recombinant plasmid, and it showed 100% specificity without any cross-reactivity with other pathogens. The feasibility of the EBV-MCDA-LFB method for EBV detection was successfully validated by 49 clinical plasma samples. The complete detection process, consisting of rapid template extraction (15 minutes), MCDA reaction (65°C for 40 minutes), and LFB result reading (2 minutes), can be finalized within a 60-minutes duration.

EBV-MCDA-LFB assay designed here is a fast, extremely sensitive and specific technique for detecting EBV in field and at the point-of-care (PoC), which is especially beneficial for countries and regions with a high prevalence of the disease and limited economic resources.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1321394 Save to Pocket

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The critical role of neutrophil-endothelial cell interactions in sepsis: new synergistic approaches employing organ-on-chip, omics, immune cell phenotyping and in silico modeling to identify new therapeutics

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Sepsis is a global health concern accounting for more than 1 in 5 deaths worldwide. Sepsis is now defined as life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. Sepsis can develop from bacterial (gram negative or gram positive), fungal or viral (such as COVID) infections. However, therapeutics developed in animal models and traditional in vitro sepsis models have had little success in clinical trials, as these models have failed to fully replicate the underlying pathophysiology and heterogeneity of the disease. The current understanding is that the host response to sepsis is highly diverse among patients, and this heterogeneity impacts immune function and response to infection. Phenotyping immune function and classifying sepsis patients into specific endotypes is needed to develop a personalized treatment approach. Neutrophil-endothelium interactions play a critical role in sepsis progression, and increased neutrophil influx and endothelial barrier disruption have important roles in the early course of organ damage. Understanding the mechanism of neutrophil-endothelium interactions and how immune function impacts this interaction can help us better manage the disease and lead to the discovery of new diagnostic and prognosis tools for effective treatments. In this review, we will discuss the latest research exploring how in silico modeling of a synergistic combination of new organ-on-chip models incorporating human cells/tissue, omics analysis and clinical data from sepsis patients will allow us to identify relevant signaling pathways and characterize specific immune phenotypes in patients. Emerging technologies such as machine learning can then be leveraged to identify druggable therapeutic targets and relate them to immune phenotypes and underlying infectious agents. This synergistic approach can lead to the development of new therapeutics and the identification of FDA approved drugs that can be repurposed for the treatment of sepsis.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1274842 Save to Pocket

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Anti-herpes simplex virus activities and mechanisms of marine derived compounds

date: 2024-01-08, from: Frontiers in Cellar and Infection Microbiology

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is the most widely prevalent herpes virus worldwide, and the herpetic encephalitis and genital herpes caused by HSV infection have caused serious harm to human health all over the world. Although many anti-HSV drugs such as nucleoside analogues have been ap-proved for clinical use during the past few decades, important issues, such as drug resistance, toxicity, and high cost of drugs, remain unresolved. Recently, the studies on the anti-HSV activities of marine natural products, such as marine polysaccharides, marine peptides and microbial secondary metabolites are attracting more and more attention all over the world. This review discusses the recent progress in research on the anti-HSV activities of these natural compounds obtained from marine organisms, relating to their structural features and the structure-activity relationships. In addition, the recent findings on the different anti-HSV mechanisms and molecular targets of marine compounds and their potential for therapeutic application will also be summarized in detail.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1302096 Save to Pocket

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FOSDEM PGDay 2024 - Schedule Posted and Registration Open!

date: 2024-01-08, from: PostgreSQL News

FOSDEM PGDay 2024 is just around the corner, and there are still tickets left for an exciting day of Postgres before the main FOSDEM events kicks off. FOSDEM PGDay 2024 is a single-day single-track registered FOSDEM Fringe Event with global experts talking about a wide range of postgres topics. Registration is very affordable, secure your ticket today before they sell out!

The conference will be at the Marriot Hotel Grand Place in Brussels on the Friday before FOSDEM and is great way to get ready for the main FOSDEM event (where Postgres also have a devroom with even more postgres talks!)

https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/fosdem-pgday-2024-schedule-posted-and-registration-open-2782/ Save to Pocket

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Speculative Calendar Events

date: 2024-01-08, from: Maggie Appleton blog

https://maggieappleton.com/speculative-events Save to Pocket