News gathered 2024-01-18
(date: 2024-01-18 07:58:42)
“Black holes can be difficult to study, so researchers have made a…
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/0043800-black-holes-can-be-diffic Save to Pocket
US Justice Department Cites ‘Critical Failures’ in Uvalde School Shooting Response
date: 2024-01-18, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-justice-department-cites-critical-failures-in-uvalde-school-shooting-response/7445417.html Save to Pocket
Corporate dealmaking is “in” for 2024
date: 2024-01-18, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Globally, the total value of mergers and acquisitions last year was the lowest since in a decade, held back by interest rates, a volatile stock market and a strict regulatory environment. The corporate dealmaking could rebound this year, though. We’ll also paint a picture of our economic moment with a slew of recent data. Plus, could passwords be a thing of the past?
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/corporate-dealmaking-is-in-for-2024 Save to Pocket
Math’s ‘Game of Life’ Reveals Long-Sought Repeating Patterns
date: 2024-01-18, from: Quanta Magazine
John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length.The post Math’s ‘Game of Life’ Reveals Long-Sought Repeating Patterns first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/maths-game-of-life-reveals-long-sought-repeating-patterns-20240118/ Save to Pocket
‘American Nightmare:’ What you need to know about Netflix’s documentary about a Bay Area kidnapping
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
In March 2015, Denise Huskins and her now husband Aaron Quinn reported to police that they had been the victims of a home invasion. Huskins was kidnapped. But their nightmare continued as authorities suggested their story was a hoax.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/american-nightmare-what-you-need-to-know-about-netflixs-documentary-about-a-bay-area-kidnapping/ Save to Pocket
Two more Citrix NetScaler bugs exploited in the wild
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Just when you thought you had recovered from Bleed
Two vulnerabilities in NetScaler’s ADC and Gateway products have been fixed – but not before criminals found and exploited them, according to the vendor.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/citrix_netscaler_bugs_attacked/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-18, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
My recipe for getting rid of a troll. Say something rude in response to their trolling and then block them.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/18.html#a152316 Save to Pocket
NASA Continues Artemis Moon Rocket Engine Tests with 1st Hot Fire of 2024
date: 2024-01-18, from: NASA breaking news
NASA continued a critical test series for future flights of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket in support of the Artemis campaign on Jan. 17 with a full-duration hot fire of the RS-25 engine on the Fred Haise Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Data collected from the test […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-continues-artemis-moon-rocket-engine-tests-with-1st-hot-fire-of-2024/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-18, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
BTW, did you notice how BMW’s ads say their product is much better than Tesla’s, without mentioning Tesla, they just say they’re better, because they are just better, because they’re BMW, and they know you know that. It’s much more powerful esp with people who like Telsas (of which I am one). I also see the Tesla as a very capable replacement for my 2007 BMW 535i, which I donated to charity in 2012, which I loved for the same reasons I love the Tesla. Putting down the competition isn’t what marketing is about, you have to think about the people whose minds you’re trying to change, and know you’re in it for the long haul.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/18.html#a151747 Save to Pocket
Uvalde school massacre could have been stopped sooner, DOJ report finds
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Critical failures in leadership among specific law enforcement officers who rushed to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde are blamed by the Justice Department in a new 575-page report.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/uvalde-school-massacre-could-have-been-stopped-sooner-doj-report-finds/ Save to Pocket
Why this California woman has ditched the US for Portugal
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Safety, quality of life, affordable medical care, and a relatively simple path to permanent residency and citizenship, were high on Katie Meyer’s list of priorities for her future country of residence, and Lisbon ticked all of her boxes.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/why-this-california-woman-has-ditched-the-us-for-portugal/ Save to Pocket
High school basketball: What to know about Sabrina Ionescu, Crush in the Valley showcases
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Top girls teams Archbishop Mitty, Carondelet, Oakland Tech, Pinewood to play in Sabrina Ionescu Showcase. Salesian, Riordan and other elite boys programs join Prolific Prep at Crush in the Valley.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/high-school-basketball-what-to-know-about-sabrina-ionescu-crush-in-the-valley-showcases/ Save to Pocket
WINE 9.0 improves ability to run 32-bit Windows apps on 64-bit-only xNix
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus fresh release brings native Wayland support on Linux
WINE 9.0 brings the benefits of better WoW64 support to 64-bit x86 – and Arm – kit, plus native Wayland support on Linux.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/wine_90_is_out/ Save to Pocket
Continuing Family Policing Scholarship from the Bed: A Conversation with Victoria Copeland
date: 2024-01-18, from: Care
<p>Victoria has lost her voice, so we conducted this interview about disability scholarship, dismantling family policing and predictive risk modeling over text message.</p>https://logicmag.io/policy/continuing-family-policing-scholarship-from-the-bed Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-18, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
It’s worth remembering that before the Mac there was the Lisa.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/18.html#a145841 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-18, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
2011: Steve Jobs as Frank Lloyd Wright.
http://scripting.com/stories/2011/10/06/myThoughtsOnSteveJobs.html Save to Pocket
Package mailed to rural Northern California elections office tested positive for fentanyl, authorities say
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
The package appeared to come from “a verified agency” and didn’t look suspicious at first, but a staff member discovered a powdery substance inside that prompted them to call law enforcement.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/package-mailed-to-rural-california-elections-office-tested-positive-for-fentanyl-authorities-say/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-18, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
My initial review of the iPhone in June 2007.
http://scripting.com/stories/2007/06/30/initialReviewOfIphone.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-18, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I’ve
been wrong about many of Apple’s products, but not the ones that made
the company – the Apple II and Mac, though I was somewhat skeptical of
the iPhone because I couldn’t write software for it, but I did
get
one on the day they came out in
June 2007, and never
used my Blackberry again. Anyway, the
goggles
they just
started
demoing to selected reporters and analysts looks like a product they
released because they invested billions in it, had no idea what it’s
used for, and were overlooking the ability of the human body to actually
use such a thing, and couldn’t consider writing it off because so
much had been made of this, esp since the current management has been
coasting on innovation done by
Steve Jobs, and
hadn’t released anything that wasn’t completely predictable since his
passing
in 2011. Their lack of confidence in their own product overwhelms
any positive reviews coming out from the privileged press, who we know
in advance to discount, these are the press people Apple can count on to
not say a negative word, to preserve their access at least, if not
because they are complete fans. It reeks of a loser product. I write
these things partially so I can be proven ridiculously wrong when I get
one myself in two weeks and can’t believe all the things I can do with
it.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/18.html#a143812 Save to Pocket
Young Riders and Ranchers Compete at US Stock Show
date: 2024-01-18, from: VOA News USA
In the Western U.S. state of Colorado, the National Western Stock Show draws thousands of visitors, exhibitors and competitors, a mix of entertainment and education about livestock and agriculture. VOA’s Scott Stearns tells us what some young people are up to at the show. (Camera: Scott Stearns)
https://www.voanews.com/a/young-riders-and-ranchers-compete-at-us-stock-show-/7445326.html Save to Pocket
7 incredible Bay Area things to do this weekend, Jan. 19-21
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Got your weekend plans? We have some nifty ideas, from the new ‘Wiz’ to great noodle houses to an explosion of comedy shows.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/7-incredible-bay-area-things-to-do-this-weekend-jan-19-21/ Save to Pocket
Alphabet CEO tells Googlers: More job cuts on the way
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It won’t be anywhere near the 12,000 heads that rolled last year, though, says Pichai
Alphabet boss Sundar Pichai is warning Googlers to brace themselves for more jobs cuts in 2024 though they won’t be as deep as last year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/google_ceo_tell_googlers_more/ Save to Pocket
Larry Magid: Fears of Generative AI reminiscent of past moral panics
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
It’s important to advise the public about risks but not in ways that provoke counterproductive fears.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/fears-of-generative-ai-reminiscent-of-past-moral-panics/ Save to Pocket
Google News Is Boosting Garbage AI-Generated Articles
date: 2024-01-18, from: 404 Media Group
404 Media reviewed multiple examples of AI rip-offs making their way into Google News. Google said it doesn’t focus on how an article was produced—by an AI or human—opening the way for more AI-generated articles.
https://www.404media.co/google-news-is-boosting-garbage-ai-generated-articles/ Save to Pocket
Richmond just reported its lowest homicide rate in decades. Is it sustainable, or just a fluke?
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Richmond recorded eight homicides in 2023 – the fewest since officials started keeping track in 1971 and a seemingly remarkable transformation for a city once dubbed a “murder capital” of America.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/richmond-just-reported-its-lowest-homicide-rate-in-decades-is-it-sustainable-or-just-a-fluke/ Save to Pocket
Bull Mancuso’s day
date: 2024-01-18, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
I got this idea from Philip Bump. 😄
“Draw a three-panel comic strip in the style of Mary Worth. Panel one should show Bull Mancuso, a waste management consultant in New Jersey, at a Starbuck’s in Newark, ordering a huge coffee drink. In panel two he’s teaching a class on organized crime in New Jersey at Staten Island Community College. In panel three he slips on a banana peel on the steps of the Capitol and falls down. There is no dialogue on any panel.”
http://scripting.com/2024/01/18/141044.html?title=bullMancusosDay Save to Pocket
5 charts that explain the California Exodus
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
During the pandemic, the state lost $5.6 billion in taxable income to Texas.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/5-charts-that-explain-the-california-exodus/ Save to Pocket
Pluralistic: Demon-haunted computers are back, baby (17 Jan 2024)
date: 2024-01-18, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links Demon-haunted computers are back, baby: Surely no one will ever find a way to abuse this security system that treats the computer’s owner as an attacker. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Demon-haunted computers are back, baby (permalink) As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf movies. Not only do those writers get paid a lot more than I do, they insist on including things like “self-destruct” buttons on the bridges of their starships. Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its secret transdimensional technology, it’s important that you keep those secrets out of the emperor’s hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies’ll just swarm the bridge and toggle it off). But c’mon. If there’s a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is also a pretty big security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that – by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and death can’t detect or override? I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn’t have any bugs in it, but remember Schneier’s Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can’t think of a flaw in it. That doesn’t mean you’ve made a security system that works – only that you’ve made a security system that works on people stupider than you. I know it’s weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do): https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in the real world of technology design, which is why I’ve spent the past quarter-century being very cross about Digital Rights Management in general, and trusted computing in particular. It all starts in 2002, when a team from Microsoft visited our offices at EFF to tell us about this new thing they’d dreamed up called “trusted computing”: https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil The big idea was to stick a second computer inside your computer, a very secure little co-processor, that you couldn’t access directly, let alone reprogram or interfere with. As far as this “trusted platform module” was concerned, you were the enemy. The “trust” in trusted computing was about other people being able to trust your computer, even if they didn’t trust you. So that little TPM would do all kinds of cute tricks. It could observe and produce a cryptographically signed manifest of the entire boot-chain of your computer, which was meant to be an unforgeable certificate attesting to which kind of computer you were running and what software you were running on it. That meant that programs on other computers could decide whether to talk to your computer based on whether they agreed with your choices about which code to run. This process, called “remote attestation,” is generally billed as a way to identify and block computers that have been compromised by malware, or to identify gamers who are running cheats and refuse to play with them. But inevitably it turns into a way to refuse service to computers that have privacy blockers turned on, or are running stream-ripping software, or whose owners are blocking ads: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai After all, a system that treats the device’s owner as an adversary is a natural ally for the owner’s other, human adversaries. The rubric for treating the owner as an adversary focuses on the way that users can be fooled by bad people with bad programs. If your computer gets taken over by malicious software, that malware might intercept queries from your antivirus program and send it false data that lulls it into thinking your computer is fine, even as your private data is being plundered and your system is being used to launch malware attacks on others. These separate, non-user-accessible, non-updateable secure systems serve a nubs of certainty, a remote fortress that observes and faithfully reports on the interior workings of your computer. This separate system can’t be user-modifiable or field-updateable, because then malicious software could impersonate the user and disable the security chip. It’s true that compromised computers are a real and terrifying problem. Your computer is privy to your most intimate secrets and an attacker who can turn it against you can harm you in untold ways. But the widespread redesign of out computers to treat us as their enemies gives rise to a range of completely predictable and – I would argue – even worse harms. Building computers that treat their owners as untrusted parties is a system that works well, but fails badly. First of all, there are the ways that trusted computing is designed to hurt you. The most reliable way to enshittify something is to supply it over a computer that runs programs you can’t alter, and that rats you out to third parties if you run counter-programs that disenshittify the service you’re using. That’s how we get inkjet printers that refuse to use perfectly good third-party ink and cars that refuse to accept perfectly good engine repairs if they are performed by third-party mechanics: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon It’s how we get cursed devices and appliances, from the juicer that won’t squeeze third-party juice to the insulin pump that won’t connect to a third-party continuous glucose monitor: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/ But trusted computing doesn’t just create an opaque veil between your computer and the programs you use to inspect and control it. Trusted computing creates a no-go zone where programs can change their behavior based on whether they think they’re being observed. The most prominent example of this is Dieselgate, where auto manufacturers murdered hundreds of people by gimmicking their cars to emit illegal amount of NOX. Key to Dieselgate was a program that sought to determine whether it was being observed by regulators (it checked for the telltale signs of the standard test-suite) and changed its behavior to color within the lines. Software that is seeking to harm the owner of the device that’s running it must be able to detect when it is being run inside a simulation, a test-suite, a virtual machine, or any other hallucinatory virtual world. Just as Descartes couldn’t know whether anything was real until he assured himself that he could trust his senses, malware is always questing to discover whether it is running in the real universe, or in a simulation created by a wicked god: https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh That’s why mobile malware uses clever gambits like periodically checking for readings from your device’s accelerometer, on the theory that a virtual mobile phone running on a security researcher’s test bench won’t have the fidelity to generate plausible jiggles to match the real data that comes from a phone in your pocket: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/ Sometimes this backfires in absolutely delightful ways. When the Wannacry ransomware was holding the world hostage, the security researcher Marcus Hutchins noticed that its code made reference to a very weird website: iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. Hutchins stood up a website at that address and every Wannacry-infection in the world went instantly dormant: https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#the-matrix It turns out that Wannacry’s authors were using that ferkakte URL the same way that mobile malware authors were using accelerometer readings – to fulfill Descartes’ imperative to distinguish the Matrix from reality. The malware authors knew that security researchers often ran malicious code inside sandboxes that answered every network query with fake data in hopes of eliciting responses that could be analyzed for weaknesses. So the Wannacry worm would periodically poll this nonexistent website and, if it got an answer, it would assume that it was being monitored by a security researcher and it would retreat to an encrypted blob, ceasing to operate lest it give intelligence to the enemy. When Hutchins put a webserver up at iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, every Wannacry instance in the world was instantly convinced that it was running on an enemy’s simulator and withdrew into sulky hibernation. The arms race to distinguish simulation from reality is critical and the stakes only get higher by the day. Malware abounds, even as our devices grow more intimately woven through our lives. We put our bodies into computers – cars, buildings – and computers inside our bodies. We absolutely want our computers to be able to faithfully convey what’s going on inside them. But we keep running as hard as we can in the opposite direction, leaning harder into secure computing models built on subsystems in our computers that treat us as the threat. Take UEFI, the ubiquitous security system that observes your computer’s boot process, halting it if it sees something it doesn’t approve of. On the one hand, this has made installing GNU/Linux and other alternative OSes vastly harder across a wide variety of devices. This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes. It doesn’t help that UEFI – and other trusted computing modules – are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system. The threat of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine means that UEFI and other trusted computing systems are understudied, leaving them festering with longstanding bugs: https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva Here’s where it gets really bad. If an attacker can get inside UEFI, they can run malicious software that – by design – no program running on our computers can detect or block. That badware is running in “Ring -1” – a zone of privilege that overrides the operating system itself. Here’s the bad news: UEFI malware has already been detected in the wild: https://securelist.com/cosmicstrand-uefi-firmware-rootkit/106973/ And here’s the worst news: researchers have just identified another exploitable UEFI bug, dubbed Pixiefail: https://blog.quarkslab.com/pixiefail-nine-vulnerabilities-in-tianocores-edk-ii-ipv6-network-stack.html Writing in Ars Technica, Dan Goodin breaks down Pixiefail, describing how anyone on the same LAN as a vulnerable computer can infect its firmware: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/new-uefi-vulnerabilities-send-firmware-devs-across-an-entire-ecosystem-scrambling/ That vulnerability extends to computers in a data-center where the attacker has a cloud computing instance. PXE – the system that Pixiefail attacks – isn’t widely used in home or office environments, but it’s very common in data-centers. Again, once a computer is exploited with Pixiefail, software running on that computer can’t detect or delete the Pixiefail code. When the compromised computer is queried by the operating system, Pixiefail undetectably lies to the OS. “Hey, OS, does this drive have a file called ‘pixiefail?’” “Nope.” “Hey, OS, are you running a process called ‘pixiefail?’” “Nope.” This is a self-destruct switch that’s been compromised by the enemy, and which no one on the bridge can de-activate – by design. It’s not the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last. There are models for helping your computer bust out of the Matrix. Back in 2016, Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang prototyped and published source code and schematics for an “introspection engine”: https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf This is a single-board computer that lives in an ultraslim shim that you slide between your iPhone’s mainboard and its case, leaving a ribbon cable poking out of the SIM slot. This connects to a case that has its own OLED display. The board has leads that physically contact each of the network interfaces on the phone, conveying any data they transit to the screen so that you can observe the data your phone is sending without having to trust your phone. (I liked this gadget so much that I included it as a major plot point in my 2020 novel Attack Surface, the third book in the Little Brother series): https://craphound.com/attacksurface/ We don’t have to cede control over our devices in order to secure them. Indeed, we can’t ever secure them unless we can control them. Self-destruct switches don’t belong on the bridge of your spaceship, and trusted computing modules don’t belong in your devices. (Image: Mike, CC BY-SA 2.0, modified) Hey look at this (permalink) Extracted 1688 Map Images https://zarkonnen.itch.io/extracted-1688-map-images Big Tech Won’t Let You Leave. Here’s a Way Out https://www.wired.com/story/big-tech-wont-let-you-leave-heres-a-way-out/ A New Way to Fight Bad Bosses | NYT Opinion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H0tvsz3-pg This day in history (permalink) #15yrsago danah boyd’s PhD thesis: Teen sociality online http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf #10yrsago Appeals court rules bloggers have same speech protections as journalists https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/17/us-usa-blogger-ruling-idUSBREA0G1HI20140117/ #5yrsago AOC’s debut speech as Congresswoman is the most popular Congressional video in C-SPAN history https://twitter.com/HowardMortman/status/1085950970092310528 #5yrsago Regular says she was banned from eating at the bar at Manhattan’s scammy Nello restaurant because she might be a sex-worker https://www.thecut.com/2019/01/will-manhattan-restaurant-nello-let-women-sit-alone-at-bar.html #1yrago Why the Fed wants to crush workers https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/19/creditors-vs-workers/#finance-colored-glasses 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 Bezzle, read by Wil Wheaton (excerpt) https://craphound.com/news/2024/01/14/the-bezzle-read-by-wil-wheaton-excerpt/ Upcoming appearances: Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech (Crash Course Economics) https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YsKONp5zRgeF6SVuIOb6hQ#/registration Books & Books (Coral Gables, Florida), Jan 22 https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/ Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2024 (Berlin), Jan 29 https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024 The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 30 https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html Recent appearances: The Lost Cause (The Writer’s Voice) https://www.writersvoice.net/2024/01/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause/ 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 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/2024/01/18/descartes-delenda-est/ Save to Pocket
Public’s help sought in identifying San Mateo sexual assault suspect
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
The incident happened Dec. 26 as the victim walked across Highway 101 on the 3rd Avenue overpass.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/18/publics-help-sought-in-identifying-san-mateo-sexual-assault-suspect/ Save to Pocket
Google TAG: Kremlin cyber spies move into malware with a custom backdoor
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The threat hunters believe COLDRIVER has used SPICA since at least November 2022
Russian cyberspies linked to the Kremlin’s Federal Security Service (FSB) are moving beyond their usual credential phishing antics and have developed a custom backdoor that they started delivering via email as far back as November 2022, according to Google’s Threat Analysis Group.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/google_tag_coldriver_malware/ Save to Pocket
Google announces Central Pacific Connect Initiative
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
Google has announced plans for a Central Pacific Connect Initiative, which will connect Guam to Fiji and Fench Polynesia through the delivery of two new intra-Pacific cables, called Bulikula and Halaihai. The project is being done in collaboration with Amalgamated…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/google-announces-central-pacific-connect-initiative/article_2e7efb20-b5b4-11ee-b7c4-4f8cb6127af0.html Save to Pocket
GPA looking to relocate 20 Yigo diesel units to Tenjo Vista area
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
In preparation for the arrival of temporary power, the Guam Power Authority is looking to relocate 20 of its Yigo diesel units to a lot adjacent to the Tenjo Vista Power Plant in Piti.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gpa-looking-to-relocate-20-yigo-diesel-units-to-tenjo-vista-area/article_680eb336-b59f-11ee-b7df-8300702efa5f.html Save to Pocket
Rapist sentenced to 30 years is released pending an appeal
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
A man convicted of rape and sentenced to 30 years in prison was released from confinement pending his appeal to the Supreme Court of Guam.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/rapist-sentenced-to-30-years-is-released-pending-an-appeal/article_fe97e2a2-b598-11ee-9f7d-03202ad726bd.html Save to Pocket
Gun used in tourist shooting in Tumon reported stolen in 1994
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
The gun used in the fatal shooting of a Korean tourist was reported stolen in 1994.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gun-used-in-tourist-shooting-in-tumon-reported-stolen-in-1994/article_14bd7a3a-b592-11ee-b257-83f5b4917fc4.html Save to Pocket
Man allegedly stole $220 in water
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
A man accused of breaking a window in June 2023 also was accused of stealing water from a neighbor.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-allegedly-stole-220-in-water/article_c1a52932-b5a1-11ee-9899-6734b3d2c182.html Save to Pocket
Interpreter shortage delays hearing in murder case
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
A shortage of interpreters has delayed an arraignment hearing for a man accused in a fatal stabbing in Mangilao last month.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/interpreter-shortage-delays-hearing-in-murder-case/article_1fda4054-b5bc-11ee-b883-539ac70a4c0c.html Save to Pocket
Suspect, 44, accused of sexually assaulting girl, 15, since July 2023
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
A 44-year-old man was accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl since July 2023.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/suspect-44-accused-of-sexually-assaulting-girl-15-since-july-2023/article_30e311f8-b5b9-11ee-99c8-0f1f5dcf4c0d.html Save to Pocket
GDOL: 47% noncompliant with fair chances hiring law
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
Nearly half of all employers inspected over the last five years were found to be noncompliant with a local law intended to help individuals with criminal pasts by barring employers from asking about criminal histories or pending cases until a…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gdol-47-noncompliant-with-fair-chances-hiring-law/article_224043c6-b507-11ee-b661-1bcdac277d25.html Save to Pocket
DOC officer allegedly assaulted by an inmate at Mangilao prison
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
An inmate was accused of assaulting a corrections officer on Wednesday morning.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/doc-officer-allegedly-assaulted-by-an-inmate-at-mangilao-prison/article_01c5da1a-b5b7-11ee-b84f-b3abb6646967.html Save to Pocket
American Red Cross Concerned About US Blood Shortage
date: 2024-01-18, from: VOA News USA
The American Red Cross has declared a critical blood shortage, with supplies running the lowest in 20 years. The number of donors in the country has declined by 40%, for reasons that include COVID, seasonal infections, and bad weather. Angelina Bagdasaryan visited a blood donation station in Los Angeles and talked with some of the donors. Anna Rice narrates her story.
https://www.voanews.com/a/american-red-cross-concerned-about-us-blood-shortage-/7445267.html Save to Pocket
What a Trump Victory Could Mean for Climate Policy
date: 2024-01-18, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Parts of Indonesia are under water due to heavy rainfall • Tree branches are heavy with ice in Oregon • A no-burn alert is in place for Southern California as an atmospheric “lid” locks in smog.
THE TOP FIVE
- Kerry warns U.S. election stakes for climate policy are ‘as high as
they can get’
As election season heats up and a certain bombastic former president looks to take back the White House in November, conversation has turned to what a second Trump presidency could mean for climate policy. Trump has promised to gut the Inflation Reduction Act and cut funding for climate adaptation in poorer countries, among other things. What would his return really mean for the climate movement on a national and global scale? Here’s a quick opinion roundup:
- The stakes couldn’t be higher: Trump won’t be able to stop the green energy transition that’s already underway, but he could slow it down, U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry told Bloomberg TV. “The marketplace is going to support this transition and it’s irrevocable now — we’re going to get there. The only question is if we’re going to get there in time to not be ravaged by the worst consequences of the climate crisis.”
- Gutting the IRA would be very unpopular: Many clean-energy programs funded by President Biden’s signature climate bill are in red states, noted The Economist. If Trump nixes them, “he may face pushback from his own party,” not to mention business leaders. Some automakers, like GM and Nissan, are already warning against the move.
- Trump can’t stop the global momentum: Of course the U.S. president’s views on climate matter, but “the world’s in a slightly different place than it was five years ago,” World Bank President Ajay Banga told Politico. The bank helps finance climate adaptation in developing countries, and is pushing for more private sector investment in renewables. Banga suggested international momentum on these issues is “much bigger than just the U.S. and the EU.”
Side note: New research from the University of Colorado at Boulder concludes that concerns about climate change have “a significant and growing effect on voting that favors the Democrats” and “that climate change opinion probably cost Republicans the 2020 presidential election, all else being equal.”
- The South smashes electricity records
The Tennessee Valley Authority, America’s largest public power company, just set a new record for electricity usage thanks to the cold weather system hammering huge sections of the country, reports Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. Consumers used around 34,500 megawatts of electricity yesterday morning, about 1,000 megawatts more than its previous all-time record of around 33,500 megawatts in August 2007. Like much of the region, Tennesseans largely heat their homes using electricity as opposed to fuel oil or natural gas. Cold mornings are particularly challenging for the authority because lots of people are trying to heat their chilly homes between waking up and going to work or school. “By contrast, summer afternoons and early evenings are tough for grids to manage because temperatures stay high even as the sun goes down and people return to their homes and cool them and start operating appliances,” Zeitlin explains. The cold snap is expected to last through the weekend.
- Study: Greenland is losing way more ice than experts thought
The Greenland ice sheet has lost 20% more ice than scientists previously thought due to global warming, according to new research published in the journal Nature. The researchers came to this conclusion by looking at the amount of glacial ice lost around the edges of the sheet, an area that earlier estimates overlooked. Experts worry the huge amounts of fresh water pouring into the north Atlantic could disrupt ocean currents and wreak havoc on global weather patterns.
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- Warmer temperatures could change butterfly wing patterns
Butterflies may lose their spotty wings thanks to climate change, scientists say. The new research focuses on female meadow brown butterflies, and finds that insects that developed in warmer temperatures had fewer spots than those that developed in cooler weather. “This is an unexpected consequence of climate change,” said Richard ffrench-Constant, a professor of molecular natural history at the University of Exeter in the U.K. “We tend to think about species moving north, rather than changing appearance.”
- Scientists urge swift climate action ahead of EU elections
The European Union needs to double down on plans to phase out fossil fuels and implement green policies if it wants to reach its 2050 net zero targets, a report from the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change said. “The EU needs to sharply decrease the use of fossil fuels, and almost fully phase out the use of coal and fossil gas in public electricity and heat generation by 2040,” the advisers said. The report urges the EU to work quickly to put planned climate policies into law. The timing of the report is interesting because, as the Financial Times explained, the EU faces parliamentary elections this summer, “when rightwing parties that want to slow the pace of progress are expected to focus on rhetoric about the social costs of switching away from fossil fuels to combat climate change.”
THE KICKER
“As the EV transition continues, we are going to have to think about [EVs] more as products, as specific tools that can improve someone’s life by their presence.” –Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer on the secrets to selling electric cars
https://heatmap.news/climate/trump-2024-climate-ira Save to Pocket
80% of US Companies Plan to Track Office Attendance in 2024, Survey Finds
date: 2024-01-18, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/of-companies-plan-to-track-office-attendance-in-2024-survey-finds/7444273.html Save to Pocket
Has the semiconductor down cycle reached its nadir? TSMC thinks so
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Chipmaker reports flat Q4 but expects to be on the up in 2024
Chipmaker TSMC had a mixed final calendar quarter of 2023, with profit falling less than expected and revenue growth “essentially flat,” in another sign that the global semiconductor downturn is over.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/tsmc_sees_healthy_growth_this/ Save to Pocket
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-18, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
This is what happens when you don’t get your skills endorsed on LinkedIn after posting a screenshot of La Terminal on visionOS:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111777109843724034 Save to Pocket
Millions of Californians Could Face Higher Internet Bills As Federal Low-Income Discount Ends
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The LAist
The federal Affordable Connectivity Program will stop accepting new applications by Feb. 7 unless Congress votes to extend funding.
https://laist.com/news/millions-of-californians-could-face-higher-internet-bills-as-federal-low-income-discount-ends Save to Pocket
Browse the Web in “Private” Mode
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Markup blog
Obscure your identity by opening a special type of browser window
https://themarkup.org/gentle-january/2024/01/18/browse-the-web-in-private-mode Save to Pocket
This Museum Is Searching for Lost Artworks by Members of the Bloomsbury Group
date: 2024-01-18, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The Charleston museum is launching a new initiative to acquire 50 privately owned works by 2030
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/charleston-museum-searching-for-bloomsbury-group-art-180983610/ Save to Pocket
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-18, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Brian Cantrill (@bcantrill): things I learned the hard way:
https://speakerdeck.com/bcantrill/things-i-learned-the-hard-way
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111777066260050708 Save to Pocket
Jim de Bree | The Economy’s Connection to the Presidency
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
Part 1 of 3 Presidents always want to take credit for good economies while their opposition blames them when economic times are bad. Interestingly, we currently see President Joe Biden claiming credit for Bidenomics, setting forth arguments explaining why he believes the economy has improved during his presidency, while his opponents contend that Bidenomics sucks. […]
The post Jim de Bree | The Economy’s Connection to the Presidency appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/jim-de-bree-the-economys-connection-to-the-presidency/ Save to Pocket
Diane Zimmerman | America, Love It or Leave It
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
Re: Santa Clarita City Council meeting, Jan. 9. Just one of the many things that will bring the title of this letter to mind these days: It was when we were asked to stand, put our hands over our hearts and say “The Pledge of Allegiance.” Four young girls stood out among those who refused […]
The post Diane Zimmerman | America, Love It or Leave It appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/diane-zimmerman-america-love-it-or-leave-it/ Save to Pocket
Dr. Gene Dorio | Diminishing Older Adults’ Dignity
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
Call it what you want: Nursing home, skilled nursing facility, rehab center, convalescent home, or post-acute care. They are all the same and a common destination should you survive a recent hospitalization. But they all have an existing reputation and can ultimately diminish the dignity of older adults. Never in my four decades of practice […]
The post Dr. Gene Dorio | Diminishing Older Adults’ Dignity appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/dr-gene-dorio-diminishing-older-adults-dignity/ Save to Pocket
What’s behind the brunch boom?
date: 2024-01-18, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Breakfast — and its more formal cousin, brunch — is “in” for 2024. Consumers like that they’re able to spend less money than they would on a dinner out while still feeling like they’re treating themselves. Meanwhile, restaurants love the profit margins. Also on this morning’s show: flipping through the pages of the Beige Book and analyzing the average workweek in China.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/whats-behind-the-brunch-boom Save to Pocket
Arthur Saginian | Tough Love from God
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
I really enjoyed the letter submitted by Pastor Joshua McGuffie on “Cynicism and Christians” (Nov. 2). This man is calling out all of the “false prophets,” like the ones who made me leave the Catholic Church so many years ago (and loath organized religion in general). As far as I’m concerned, if there is a […]
The post Arthur Saginian | Tough Love from God appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/arthur-saginian-tough-love-from-god/ Save to Pocket
Fujitsu gets $1B market cap haircut after TV disaster drama airs
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
UK political and media storm following dramatization of Post Office Horizon scandal
Fujitsu has seen $1 billion wiped off its market value after a week in the political and media spotlight for its role in the UK’s Post Office Horizon scandal, which prompted the European chief exec to say the company was morally responsible for providing compensation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/fujitsu_gets_1_billion_market/ Save to Pocket
A rare corruption scandal hits Singapore
date: 2024-01-18, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Singapore’s transport minister has resigned after facing multiple charges of corruption; it’s alleged he took kickbacks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, something he denies. Also, passwords could soon be a thing of the past as companies like Google introduce “passkeys” as a default login for online users. But with the rise of deepfake technology, is any method of verifying our identities completely secure?
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/a-rare-corruption-scandal-hits-singapore Save to Pocket
Integrating computational thinking into primary teaching
date: 2024-01-18, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
“Computational thinking is really about thinking, and sometimes about computing.” – Aman Yadav, Michigan State University Computational thinking is a vital skill if you want to use a computer to solve problems that matter to you. That’s why we consider computational thinking (CT) carefully when creating learning resources here at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. However,…
The post Integrating computational thinking into primary teaching appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/integrating-computational-thinking-into-primary-teaching/ Save to Pocket
Canadian Citizen Gets Phone Back from Police
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-16, from: Bruce Schneier blog
After 175 million failed password guesses, a judge rules that the Canadian police must return a suspect’s phone.
[Judge] Carter said the investigation can continue without the phones, and he noted that Ottawa police have made a formal request to obtain more data from Google.
“This strikes me as a potentially more fruitful avenue of investigation than using brute force to enter the phones,” he said.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/01/canadian-citizen-gets-phone-back-from-police.html Save to Pocket
Evangelicals for Trump? It’s Not About Religion
date: 2024-01-18, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
Right after his victory in Iowa, where he received 53% of the evangelical and born-again Christian vote, Donald Trump traveled to New York to plead his case — literally. He was in federal court today, where he’ll soon find out how much he’ll have to pay for defaming a woman he’s also been found liable for sexually abusing. You may want to think about that for a moment. And let us remember it’s only January. There are more trials to come starring the leading GOP presidential candidate.
https://steady.substack.com/p/evangelicals-for-trump-its-not-about Save to Pocket
Internet Archive an ‘Information Lifeline’ for Librarian Professionally and Personally
date: 2024-01-18, from: Internet Archive Blog
When Zeau Modig began as the graduate school librarian at the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) nearly a decade ago, many of the students lived nearby. They came to […]
https://blog.archive.org/2024/01/18/internet-archive-an-information-lifeline-for-librarian-professionally-and-personally/ Save to Pocket
The First Guide to Federal Records
date: 2024-01-18, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
The United States has been accumulating records since the first meeting of the Continental Congress in 1774. As the government grew, the paperwork it was creating grew too—exponentially. But until 1934 there was no national archives to consolidate the papers, so each government department, bureau, or office retained custody of its own records. Some official … Continue reading The First Guide to Federal Records
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2024/01/18/the-first-guide-to-federal-records/ Save to Pocket
Google is changing how search results appear for EU citizens
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ad slinger bends to the demands of the DMA
Updated Google is making some changes to how its products, including search, will work in Europe.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/google_search_update_dma/ Save to Pocket
Election Letters Deadline Feb. 6
date: 2024-01-18, 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. Any election letter over 600 words will […]
The post Election Letters Deadline Feb. 6 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/election-letters-deadline-feb-6-2/ Save to Pocket
3D-printed SD card holder helps Raspberry Pi engineers keep track of their stuff
date: 2024-01-18, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Our Maker in Residence made bespoke Raspberry Pi-branded SD card holders to help our engineers keep track of their stuff.
The post 3D-printed SD card holder helps Raspberry Pi engineers keep track of their stuff appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/3d-printed-sd-card-holder-helps-raspberry-pi-engineers-keep-track-of-their-stuff/ Save to Pocket
At last: The BBC Micro you always wanted, in Mastodon form
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
10 PRINT “Retro Awesome”:20 GOTO 10
Retro Tech Week If one of the tenets of retro computing is doing awesome things with not a lot of resources, then there are few better examples of the breed than the BBC Micro Bot - a Mastodon account that recently posted an image that looked for all the world like a raytraced scene.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/bbc_micro_bot/ Save to Pocket
GDOL to begin closing out DUA claims next month
date: 2024-01-18, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Department of Labor will begin closing out Disaster Unemployment Assistance claims next month as it works to end the program.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gdol-to-begin-closing-out-dua-claims-next-month/article_c23a22f0-b5ea-11ee-bb27-2bf211b09276.html Save to Pocket
Vast botnet hijacks smart TVs for prime-time cybercrime
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
8-year-old op responsible for DDoS attacks and commandeering broadcasts to push war material
Security researchers have pinned a DDoS botnet that’s infected potentially millions of smart TVs and set-top boxes to an eight-year-old cybercrime syndicate called Bigpanzi.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/bigpanzi_botnet_smart_tvs/ Save to Pocket
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he won’t sign a proposed ban on tackle football for kids under 12
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California will not ban tackle football for children under 12 after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom publicly promised he would not sign the bill if it were to reach his desk, blocking a proposal that had become a proxy for parental rights in a presidential election year. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/sports/california-gov-gavin-newsom-says-he-wont-sign-a-proposed-ban-on-tackle-football-for-kids-under-12/ Save to Pocket
Year-end bonuses shrink 21% in sign of turbulent US economy
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>U.S. workers are getting smaller bonuses, a sign that belt-tightening employers aren’t as concerned about losing talent as in recent years.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/year-end-bonuses-shrink-21-in-sign-of-turbulent-us-economy/ Save to Pocket
QBs Dylan Raiola and Micah Alejado back on home turf for Polynesian Bowl
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Dylan Raiola and Micah Alejado share more than just being teammates in this week’s Polynesian Bowl.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/sports/qbs-dylan-raiola-and-micah-alejado-back-on-home-turf-for-polynesian-bowl/ Save to Pocket
Browns coach Stefanski shakes up offensive staff, coordinator Alex Van Pelt, 2 other assistants gone
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>CLEVELAND — For the second straight year, Browns coach Kevin Stefanski has made a major offseason change to his staff. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/sports/browns-coach-stefanski-shakes-up-offensive-staff-coordinator-alex-van-pelt-2-other-assistants-gone/ Save to Pocket
BIIF Hoops: Hilo beats HPA, CLA and St. Jo still winless
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p><strong>HILO 68 - HPA 45</strong></p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/sports/biif-hoops-hilo-beats-hpa-cla-and-st-jo-still-winless/ Save to Pocket
Mitsubishi Electric Championship surpasses $2 million in charitable giving
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>KA’UPULEHU-KONA, Hawaii – The Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai held its charitable contribution check presentation on Tuesday afternoon, celebrating the tournament’s contributions for 2023. Since the Mitsubishi Electric Championship moved to Hualalai Golf Course in 1997, the tournament has donated $2.09 million to local community organizations.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/sports/mitsubishi-electric-championship-surpasses-2-million-in-charitable-giving/ Save to Pocket
BIIF soccer: Kealakehe edges Kea‘au, HPA sweeps Konawaena
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The BIIF soccer playoffs are rapidly approaching, as the girls Div.-I and Div.-II semifinals are slated for Monday (Jan. 22).</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/sports/biif-soccer-kealakehe-edges-keaau-hpa-sweeps-konawaena/ Save to Pocket
Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojević, 46, dies in Salt Lake City after heart attack
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Golden State Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojevic, a mentor to two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic and a former star player in his native Serbia, died Wednesday in Utah after suffering a heart attack, the team announced. Milojevic, part of the staff that helped the Warriors win the 2022 NBA championship, was 46. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/sports/warriors-assistant-coach-dejan-milojevic-46-dies-in-salt-lake-city-after-heart-attack/ Save to Pocket
PHOTOS: Softball tournament welcomes teams from mainland
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Twenty-eight teams, including multiple from the mainland, voyaged to Kona this week to partake in the Mayor’s Cup Senior Softball Tournament. Tournament play continued Wednesday, with women 60 and 70-AAA championships being held at Old Airport Field. The men’s field will have championship play at 2:30 p.m. Friday in the same location.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/sports/photos-softball-tournament-welcomes-teams-from-mainland/ Save to Pocket
Extreme cold still happens in a warming world – in fact climate instability may be disrupting the polar vortex
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Over the past few days, extremely cold Arctic air and severe winter weather have swept southward into much of the U.S., breaking daily low temperature records from Montana to Texas. Tens of millions of people have been affected by dangerously cold temperatures, and heavy lake-effect snow and snow squalls have had severe effects across the Great Lakes and Northeast regions.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/opinion/extreme-cold-still-happens-in-a-warming-world-in-fact-climate-instability-may-be-disrupting-the-polar-vortex/ Save to Pocket
Overdraft fees could drop to as low as $3 under new Biden proposal
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — The cost to overdraw a bank account could drop to as little as $3 under a proposal announced by the White House, the latest effort by the Biden administration to combat fees it says pose an unnecessary burden on American consumers, particularly those living paycheck to paycheck.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/overdraft-fees-could-drop-to-as-low-as-3-under-new-biden-proposal/ Save to Pocket
Cafe 100 site no longer for sale
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Hilo’s historic “Home of the Loco Moco” will continue dishing up its signature local delicacy — as well as the rest of its plate-lunch-style menu.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/hawaii-news/cafe-100-site-no-longer-for-sale/ Save to Pocket
10 years in prison for Hilo man who shot his wife
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Two charges were dropped last week against a Hilo man convicted last year of shooting his wife almost four years ago in their Kaiwiki neighborhood home.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/hawaii-news/10-years-in-prison-for-hilo-man-who-shot-his-wife/ Save to Pocket
Harsh Israeli rhetoric against Palestinians becomes central to South Africa’s genocide case
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>TEL AVIV, Israel — Fighting “human animals.” Making Gaza a “slaughterhouse.” “Erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/harsh-israeli-rhetoric-against-palestinians-becomes-central-to-south-africas-genocide-case/ Save to Pocket
UH: Hawaii economy benefited from NELHA to tune of $90M
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Businesses at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority and the Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology Park at Keahole Point contributed over $90 million to Hawaii’s economy in 2022, according to a University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization analysis.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/hawaii-news/uh-hawaii-economy-benefited-from-nelha-to-tune-of-90m/ Save to Pocket
Cancer deaths are falling, but there may be an asterisk
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Cancer deaths in the United States are falling, with 4 million deaths prevented since 1991, according to the American Cancer Society’s annual report.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/cancer-deaths-are-falling-but-there-may-be-an-asterisk/ Save to Pocket
Billionaire backers of new California city reveal map and details of proposed development
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>RIO VISTA, Calif. — The company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires that for years stealthily snapped up more than $800 million worth of rural land for a new walkable, affordable and green city between San Francisco and Sacramento now needs voters to embrace the idea.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/billionaire-backers-of-new-california-city-reveal-map-and-details-of-proposed-development/ Save to Pocket
Deep-sea coral reef stretches 600 miles from Miami to SC, scientists find
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The world’s largest deep-sea coral reef has been discovered off the East Coast: a massive 6.4 million acre seascape that stretches from Miami to Charleston, South Carolina, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ocean Exploration.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/deep-sea-coral-reef-stretches-600-miles-from-miami-to-sc-scientists-find/ Save to Pocket
Telles claims he was framed by local real estate firm in Las vegas Review-Journal reporter’s murder
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LAS VEGAS — The former public official accused of killing Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German claimed in court Tuesday that a local real estate firm framed him in German’s slaying.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/telles-claims-he-was-framed-by-local-real-estate-firm-in-las-vegas-review-journal-reporters-murder/ Save to Pocket
The Pentagon will install rooftop solar panels as Biden pushes clean energy in federal buildings
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — The Defense Department will install solar panels on the Pentagon, part of the Biden administration’s plan to promote clean energy and “reestablish the federal government as a sustainability leader.”</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/the-pentagon-will-install-rooftop-solar-panels-as-biden-pushes-clean-energy-in-federal-buildings/ Save to Pocket
Hawaii lawmakers open new legislative session with eyes on wildfire prevention and housing
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>HONOLULU — Hawaii lawmakers on Wednesday opened a new session of the state Legislature vowing to address glaring problems laid bare by the deadly wildfire that destroyed the historic town of Lahaina in August: the threat posed by wildfires and the lack of affordable housing.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/hawaii-news/hawaii-lawmakers-open-new-legislative-session-with-eyes-on-wildfire-prevention-and-housing/ Save to Pocket
Judge threatens to boot Donald Trump from courtroom over loud talking as E. Jean Carroll testifies
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — Donald Trump was threatened with expulsion from his Manhattan civil trial Wednesday after he repeatedly ignored a warning to keep quiet while writer E. Jean Carroll testified that he shattered her reputation after she accused him of sexual abuse.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/judge-threatens-to-boot-donald-trump-from-courtroom-over-loud-talking-as-e-jean-carroll-testifies/ Save to Pocket
Biden meets congressional leaders in fresh push for Ukraine aid and border security
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>President Joe Biden was set to meet Wednesday with the top four congressional leaders from both parties as he pushes for an elusive deal to unlock billions in aid for embattled Ukraine and secure the southern border.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/biden-meets-congressional-leaders-in-fresh-push-for-ukraine-aid-and-border-security/ Save to Pocket
Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing’s supplier for 737 Max, steps up inspections
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Spirit AeroSystems — Boeing’s supplier that built the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 that had a panel blow out mid-flight earlier this month — is stepping up its inspections, according to a note Spirit CEO Pat Shanahan sent to employees Tuesday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/spirit-aerosystems-boeings-supplier-for-737-max-steps-up-inspections/ Save to Pocket
Maine judge delays decision on removing Trump from ballot until Supreme Court rules in Colorado case
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PORTLAND, Maine — A Maine judge on Wednesday put on hold a decision on former President Donald Trump’s ballot status to allow time for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on a similar case in Colorado.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/maine-judge-delays-decision-on-removing-trump-from-ballot-until-supreme-court-rules-in-colorado-case/ Save to Pocket
Obituaries for January 18
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Gale Fumiko Brumaghim, 68, died Aug. 29 at Kona Community Hospital. Born in Kealakekua, she was a grocery store cashier and stock clerk for a local grocery store and worked a coffee farm alongside her husband. Private services held on January 10. Survived by husband, Wayne Brumaghim of Kealakekua; son, Wayne Brumaghim Jr. of Kailua-Kona; daughter, Krystal Brumaghim of Kealakekua; sisters, Janell Okumura and Kathleen Yamagata, both of Kealakekua. Arrangements by Dodo Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/obituaries/obituaries-for-january-18-10/ Save to Pocket
Your Views for January 18
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>We cannot afford
more of Joe Biden</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/opinion/your-views-for-january-18-6/ Save to Pocket
Pakistan recalls its ambassador to Iran over airstrikes by Tehran that killed 2 people
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>ISLAMABAD — Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Tehran on Wednesday, a day after Iran conducted airstrikes inside Pakistan that it claimed targeted bases for a militant Sunni separatist group.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/pakistan-recalls-its-ambassador-to-iran-over-airstrikes-by-tehran-that-killed-2-people/ Save to Pocket
SpaceX delays launch of Axiom Space crew until at least Thursday
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Axiom Space and SpaceX are set to kick off a busy year for human spaceflight, but SpaceX announced it was delaying its Space Coast launch attempt until at least Thursday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/spacex-delays-launch-of-axiom-space-crew-until-at-least-thursday/ Save to Pocket
US, South Korea speed up troop-funding talks with Trump in mind
date: 2024-01-18, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The U.S. and South Korea have reached a deal to discuss funding for American troops this year, local media reported, a step that could ease friction between the allies after former President Donald Trump once demanded a five-fold increase.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/18/nation-world-news/us-south-korea-speed-up-troop-funding-talks-with-trump-in-mind/ Save to Pocket
Davos duplicity
date: 2024-01-18, from: Robert Reich on Substack
They say they want to build public trust and avoid political upheaval, but they’re bankrolling election deniers
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/corporate-enablers-of-dictatorship Save to Pocket
Bill Miranda | Sculpting Timeless Stories
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
In Santa Clarita, art is not just something to admire from a distance, but an immersive experience that captivates residents and visitors in several ways. From stunning public art pieces to live performances and thought-provoking galleries, the array of opportunities invites us to experience the creative process up close. By exploring the city’s beautiful art […]
The post Bill Miranda | Sculpting Timeless Stories appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/bill-miranda-sculpting-timeless-stories/ Save to Pocket
40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The Reg talks to co-creator Ian Bell and coder Mark Moxon about what’s under the cobra’s hood
Retro Tech Week In 1984 the launch of a computer game was reported on British national news. The purported reason? The news editor apparently walked in after lunch and found all the staff were playing it.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/elite_game_retro/ Save to Pocket
Open Access: free publishing now possible in even more journals
date: 2024-01-18, from: ETH Zurich Research Archives
From 2024, the ETH Library will cover the costs of publications in
more journals, including Nature Communications and Scientific Reports.
Read
more
https://rc-blog.ethz.ch/en/open-access-free-publishing-now-possible-in-even-more-journals/ Save to Pocket
Student Health warns of high respiratory illness rates
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Students are advised to get the influenza vaccine if they have not already.
The post Student Health warns of high respiratory illness rates appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/student-health-warns-of-high-respiratory-illness-rates/ Save to Pocket
Asia beat US, EU in chip building because the West didn’t invest, Intel CEO claims
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Gelsinger reckons pandemic-era supply chain snarls helped demonstrate the sector’s importance
The COVID-19 pandemic was a decisive factor in Intel’s decision to re-emphasize its own manufacturing prowess, after decades in which US and European nations failed to recognize the importance of the semiconductor industry and allowed Taiwan and Korea to become global leaders, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger told World Economic Forum chair Klaus Schwab in Davos on Wednesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/chips_davos_intel/ Save to Pocket
Classifieds – January 18, 2024
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.
The post Classifieds – January 18, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/classifieds-january-18-2024/ Save to Pocket
January 17, 2023
date: 2024-01-18, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton responded this evening to the federal government’s demand that state troops give U.S. Border Patrol agents access to Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, the site where three migrants died last week as they tried to cross the Rio Grande.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-17-2023-14e Save to Pocket
Today in SCV History (Jan. 18)
date: 2024-01-18, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1899 – Martin and Richard Wood buy J.H. Tolfree’s Saugus Eating House (still inside Saugus Depot), rename it Saugus Cafe. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-9/ Save to Pocket
Can Coral Reefs Be Saved?
date: 2024-01-18, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Creating open ocean kelp forests can store carbon and help bring back coral reefs.
The post Can Coral Reefs Be Saved? appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/18/can-coral-reefs-be-saved/ Save to Pocket
Santa Barbara Happenings a Century Ago
date: 2024-01-18, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Notable events from Santa Barbara in 1924.
The post Santa Barbara Happenings a Century Ago appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/18/santa-barbara-happenings-a-century-ago/ Save to Pocket
Decarbonizing Our Built Environment
date: 2024-01-18, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Gallery exhibit highlights energy efficient architectural projects.
The post Decarbonizing Our Built Environment appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/18/decarbonizing-our-built-environment/ Save to Pocket
Inside the ethics of congressional investment
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
It’s time for more transparency about how our elected officials leverage their positions in investments.
The post Inside the ethics of congressional investment appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/inside-the-ethics-of-congressional-investment/ Save to Pocket
Attendance numbers rise with women’s basketball success
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
A record-breaking crowd came to watch the Trojans take down UCLA at Galen.
The post Attendance numbers rise with women’s basketball success appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/197712/ Save to Pocket
Lily Gladstone’s historic win isn’t enough
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Indigenous representation in the film industry needs to improve, despite some gains.
The post Lily Gladstone’s historic win isn’t enough appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/lily-gladstones-historic-win-isnt-enough/ Save to Pocket
‘Succession,’ ‘The Bear’ sweep the Emmys
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Anthony Anderson hosted the 75th installment of the famous awards program.
The post ‘Succession,’ ‘The Bear’ sweep the Emmys appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/succession-the-bear-sweep-the-emmys/ Save to Pocket
Nico Williams is a dribbling machine
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Athletic Club might not be able to keep a new star in Bilbao for long.
The post Nico Williams is a dribbling machine appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/197739/ Save to Pocket
Exciting upcoming flicks to look for this spring
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
We’ve compiled a list of movies that should be on your radar this semester.
The post Exciting upcoming flicks to look for this spring appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/exciting-upcoming-flicks-to-look-for-this-spring/ Save to Pocket
University endowment grew by $330 million, latest Comptroller’s financial report reveals
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Money in natural resources decreased by $147 million, including in fossil fuels.
The post University endowment grew by $330 million, latest Comptroller’s financial report reveals appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/university-endowment-grew-by-330-million-latest-comptrollers-financial-report-reveals/ Save to Pocket
USC soccer stars shine in NWSL Draft
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Zoe Burns went to Utah, while Croix Bethune was selected at third overall.
The post USC soccer stars shine in NWSL Draft appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/18/197727/ Save to Pocket
Will AI take our jobs? That’s what everyone is talking about at Davos right now
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
CEOs believe generative AI will make their companies more efficient, but more energy is needed to power the tech
The one question on leaders’ minds as they debate the future of generative AI at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos is how the tech might change the future of employment.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/ai_davos_jobs/ Save to Pocket
Samsung’s Galaxy S24 pitch: the AI we baked in makes you more human
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Pen-equipped Ultra is this year’s hero, helped by ‘Circle to Search’ that lets you Google without exiting apps
Samsung has made AI the centerpiece of its annual premium handset launch and featured its Galaxy Ultra, the heir to the Galaxy Note, as the hero of the day.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/samsung_galaxy_s24_plus_ultra/ Save to Pocket
India’s big four services giants soar on demand for AI
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Pipelines are full, but hiring has slowed
Indian IT service outfit HCL’s share price hit a record high this week, and scrip for its peers Infosys, TCS and Wipro also spiked, after the four announced quarterly results that revealed strong deal pipeline fueled by demand for AI, along with very slow headcount growth…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/hcl_infosys_tcs_wipro_results/ Save to Pocket
Analysts: Pyongyang Tries To Create Seoul-Tokyo Friction to Harm US Relations
date: 2024-01-18, from: VOA News USA
washington — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is trying to create friction between Tokyo and Seoul, South Korea, and undermine their trilateral relations with the United States as security cooperation among them deepens, analysts said.
Washington, Seoul and Tokyo conducted trilateral naval drills in the international waters south of Jeju Island from Monday to Wednesday, said South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
The exercises involving nine ships, including the USS Carl Vinson, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, were aimed at enhancing deterrence against North Korean nuclear, missile and underwater threats, the JCS said.
North Korea is taking an increasingly hostile stance toward South Korea. Calling for the amendment of its constitution to refer to South Korea as its “principal enemy,” Kim said Pyongyang should plan for occupying South Korea if war breaks out.
He made the remarks in a speech on Monday to the Supreme Assembly, the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, said state media KCNA.
A day earlier, North Korea test-fired what it said was a solid fuel intermediate range ballistic missile with a hypersonic warhead.
Pyongyang also fired more than 200 rounds of artillery shells near Yeonpyeong Island on a disputed maritime border with South Korea on January 5 and more than 60 rounds near the same island on January 7. Yeonpyeong Island is about 120 kilometers west of Seoul.
While escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula, Kim sent a message to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on January 5 conveying sympathy over a powerful earthquake that shook Ishikawa prefecture, leaving at least 200 people dead and more than 200 missing as the new year began.
In the message, Kim expressed “his deep sympathy and condolences” to Kishida for losses caused by the earthquake, KCNA reported on January 6.
Analysts said although North Korea has relayed condolence messages to Japan after disasters in the past, this is the first time Kim personally reached out to a Japanese prime minister.
“While Kim Jong Un may wish to drive a wedge between Japan and the ROK, the real intention, subtle but still real, is to drive a wedge between Japan and America, in spite of last year’s successes at Camp David in the trilateral summit,” said Kenneth Dekleva, a senior fellow at the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations.
At the Camp David summit, U.S. President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, and Kishida agreed to cooperate on multiple measures to bolster deterrence against North Korea.
Dekleva, who served as a State Department psychiatrist analyzing foreign leaders including Kim from 2006 to 2016, continued, “Another intention of equal importance is to test the U.S.-ROK relationship, especially given the recent dangerous, bellicose threats of war made recently by Kim Jong Un.”
Kim ordered his military forces to prepare for war with the U.S. and “South Korean puppets and Japs,” according to KCNA, describing Kim’s speech made at a planning meeting of his ruling Workers’ Party on December 31.
Pyongyang has been critical of the trilateral ties forged after Seoul and Tokyo mended relations in March. Disputes rooted in Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 had strained relations for decades.
Ken Gause, an expert on North Korea’s leadership and political system at the Center for Naval Analyses, said Kim’s message also signals Pyongyang could be “keeping its options open for engagement.”
“North Korea is trying to put Japan in a situation where it has to choose between its own self-interest and the self-interest of the alliance as a whole,” he said.
Kishida said in May that he is willing to meet Kim to discuss the return of Japanese who were abducted by North Korea in the 1960s and 1970s.
At North Korea’s summit with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in September 2002, Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, admitted the country had abducted 12 Japanese nationals. North Korea returned five of them to Japan in October of that year.
Japan says North Korea abducted 17 Japanese citizens in the 1970s to 1980s.
Shihoko Goto, Asia program director at the Wilson Center, said, “The abduction issue remains a highly emotional agenda in Japan, and moving forward to seek a resolution is high on the agenda of Kishida’s government.”
She added that Kim’s message of condolence “was seen favorably in Tokyo and seen as an opportunity for greater dialogue, if not improved relations, between the two countries.”
However, she said, Tokyo will be “in lockstep” with Seoul and Washington in deterring North Korea, as Pyongyang also is “an existential threat” to Japan.
https://www.voanews.com/a/analysts-pyongyang-tries-to-create-seoul-tokyo-friction-to-harm-us-relations/7444869.html Save to Pocket
Apple to Disable Blood-Oxygen Feature on Premium Watches Sold in US
date: 2024-01-18, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/apple-to-disable-blood-oxygen-feature-on-premium-watches-sold-in-us-/7444985.html Save to Pocket
Global semiconductor revenues slid 11 percent in 2023, despite AI silicon splurge
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Nvidia raked in the boatloads of cash, but the rest of the industry is still hurting
2023’s copious chatter about generative AI has not translated into surging semiconductor revenues across the industry, according to analyst firm Gartner.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/global_semiconductor_revenues_gartner/ Save to Pocket
Netflix Has No App for VisionOS
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-17/watching-netflix-on-apple-vision-pro-you-ll-have-to-use-the-web Save to Pocket
Nearly 5,000 Units of Housing on the Fast Track in Santa Barbara
date: 2024-01-18, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
How an obscure housing law broke the door wide open for developers looking to build bigger, denser, and quicker than ever.
The post Nearly 5,000 Units of Housing on the Fast Track in Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/nearly-5000-units-of-housing-on-the-fast-track-in-santa-barbara/ Save to Pocket
How Santa Barbara City Hall Deep-Sixed Its 60-Foot Height Limit
date: 2024-01-18, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
La Cumbre Plaza: Where good ideas don’t make for good deals.
The post How Santa Barbara City Hall Deep-Sixed Its 60-Foot Height Limit appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/how-santa-barbara-city-hall-deep-sixed-its-60-foot-height-limit/ Save to Pocket
Apple Will Begin Selling Series 9 and Ultra Watches With Blood Oxygen Sensors Disabled Tomorrow
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: Daring Fireball
https://9to5mac.com/2024/01/17/apple-watch-series-9-ultra-2-without-blood-oxygen-sensor/ Save to Pocket
Ban on Apple watches with blood oxygen sensors confirmed after failed appeal
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Series 9 and Ultra 2 models cannot be imported to the US starting from 18 January
Apple will not be allowed to sell its latest watches containing blood oxygen sensors starting from Thursday, judges from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ordered.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/apple_watch_blood_oxygen_ban/ Save to Pocket
Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery unit, designs bigger bird to deliver pasta, faster
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Aerial delivery kit doubles payloads
Alphabet’s drone delivery biz, Wing, has unveiled a drone capable of carrying up to five pounds (2.26 kg) of payload, almost doubling the capacity of its existing fleet.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/wing_drone_upgrade/ Save to Pocket
Study: Thousands of businesses just love handing over your info to Facebook
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Mmm, Zuck up that data
The startlingly extent to which websites and brokers hand over details of people’s habits to Facebook was revealed Wednesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/facebook_tracking_data/ Save to Pocket
LASD releases homicide statistics for 2023
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
The service area for the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station received reports of six criminal homicides in 2023, according to the data reported on the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s website. Each death is part of an investigation by the LASD Homicide Bureau, an elite team of the department’s most experienced detectives, based out of Monterey […]
The post <strong>LASD releases homicide statistics for 2023</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/lasd-releases-homicide-statistics-for-2023/ Save to Pocket
Firefighters handle car fire on Highway 14
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
Los Angeles County Fire Department personnel put out a car fire on the northbound Highway 14 on Wednesday afternoon that spread into a 10-by-10 vegetation fire, according to Michael Pittman, supervising fire dispatcher for the Fire Department. The Fire Department received the call at approximately 2 p.m. and arrived to the scene at 2:20 p.m., […]
The post <strong>Firefighters handle car fire on Highway 14</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/firefighters-handle-car-fire-on-highway-14/ Save to Pocket
Chiquita Canyon agrees to more rules
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
Landfill ordered to remove leachate more quickly, with more testing, more transparency in monitoring After nearly seven more hours of discussion, Chiquita Canyon Landfill and the South Coast Air Quality Management District came to an agreement Wednesday on new conditions under which the landfill can continue to operate. The upshot for residents is that under […]
The post Chiquita Canyon agrees to more rules appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/chiquita-canyon-agrees-to-more-rules/ Save to Pocket
Insurance website’s buggy API leaked Office 365 password and a giant email trove
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Pen-tester accessed more than 650,000 sensitive messages, and still can, at Indian outfit using Toyota SaaS
Toyota Tsusho Insurance Broker India (TTIBI), an Indo-Japanese joint insurance venture, operated a misconfigured server that exposed more than 650,000 Microsoft-hosted email messages to customers, a security researcher has found.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/ttibi_office_buggy/ Save to Pocket
Saugus district celebrates groundbreaking for new James Foster Elementary building
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
Imagine being an elementary school student and, instead of walking down a flight of stairs to get to the playground, you could simply slide down to it. That’s what students at James Foster Elementary School can look forward to after Saugus Union School District and school officials joined together on Tuesday afternoon at the campus […]
The post <strong>Saugus district celebrates groundbreaking for new James Foster Elementary building</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/saugus-district-celebrates-groundbreaking-for-new-james-foster-elementary-building/ Save to Pocket
LAPD Chief Michel Moore Defends Record; Critics Say Good Riddance
date: 2024-01-18, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The LAist
Moore spoke on LAist’s AirTalk program. He said he was proud of his six years at the head of the second-largest police department in the U.S.
https://laist.com/news/politics/lapd-chief-michel-moore-defends-record-critics-say-good-riddance Save to Pocket
Will the new judicial ruling in the Vizio lawsuit strengthen the GPL?
date: 2024-01-18, from: Tilde.news
https://blog.tidelift.com/will-the-new-judicial-ruling-in-the-vizio-lawsuit-strengthen-the-gpl Save to Pocket
San Jose: More racist texts from scandalized former cop revealed in court filing
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Attorneys for K’aun Green want a judge to default in their favor after alleging that Mark McNamara’s deletion of social media accounts amounted to evidence destruction.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/san-jose-more-racist-texts-from-scandalized-former-cop-revealed-in-court-filing/ Save to Pocket
CSUN Students Offer Free Tax Preparation Help to Low-Income People
date: 2024-01-18, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The calendar may say January, but April 15 will be here before you know it and taxes will be due
https://scvnews.com/csun-students-offer-free-tax-preparation-help-to-low-income-people/ Save to Pocket
Oakland man fell to the ground with gunshot wounds, only to have his killer stand over him and shoot again, police say
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
A 33-year-old man was identified as the victim of a Dec. 23 homicide in Oakland.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/oakland-man-fell-to-the-ground-with-gunshot-wounds-only-to-have-his-killer-stand-over-him-and-shoot-again-police-say/ Save to Pocket
Spectrum Reach Opens Applications for 2024 “Pay It Forward” Initiative
date: 2024-01-18, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Spectrum Reach, the advertising sales business of Charter Communications, Inc., announced it will offer 250 underserved small business owners nationwide access to its expert advertising and marketing resources through its 2024 “Pay It Forward” initiative.
https://scvnews.com/spectrum-reach-opens-applications-for-2024-pay-it-forward-initiative/ Save to Pocket
Purdy hopes to put his stamp on 49ers-Packers playoff rivalry
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Brock Purdy is drawing from his last year’s playoff debut to help prepare him for Saturday’s game, when the top-seeded 49ers (12-5) host the upset-minded Packers (10-8) at Levi’s Stadium.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/49ers-brock-purdy-banks-on-past-drama-to-usher-him-back-into-playoff-mode/ Save to Pocket
Hartmann: Energy and Enthusiasm
date: 2024-01-18, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
County government has many functions, and we don’t normally expect our public officials to care equally about all of them. But then there’s Joan Hartmann.
The post Hartmann: Energy and Enthusiasm appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/hartmann-energy-and-enthusiasm/ Save to Pocket
Planning OKs car wash, Sand Canyon subdivision
date: 2024-01-18, from: The Signal
The city of Santa Clarita’s Planning Commission on Tuesday unanimously approved a new automated car wash and a Sand Canyon subdivision. The Mister Car Wash is an automated, self-service spot with one to two employees on site, which was approved for the southeast corner of Newhall Ranch Road and Bouquet Canyon Road. The size of […]
The post Planning OKs car wash, Sand Canyon subdivision appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/planning-oks-car-wash-sand-canyon-subdivision/ Save to Pocket
Jan. 25: Matadors Start Their Engines with Spring Fest
date: 2024-01-18, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The California Northridge Student Union is inviting students to get up to speed with campus resources during Spring Fest.
https://scvnews.com/jan-25-matadors-start-their-engines-with-spring-fest/ Save to Pocket
San Jose: Man dies of injuries suffered in shooting last fall
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
The death marked the second homicide of the year in the city.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/san-jose-man-dies-of-injuries-suffered-in-shooting-last-fall/ Save to Pocket
Maine judge delays Trump ballot decision until SCOTUS weighs in
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Maine has just four electoral votes, but it’s one of two states to split them. Trump earned one of Maine’s electors when he was elected in 2016 and again in 2020 when he lost reelection.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/maine-judge-delays-trump-ballot-decision-until-scotus-weighs-in/ Save to Pocket
Oakland man who came to the US in his early 20s has struck it rich through fentanyl sales, feds allege
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Milton Varela-Arteaga, 27, owns a Mercedes Benz and stockpiled $70,000 in cash at his Oakland home, while his girlfriend has a bank account with a quarter-million despite claiming employment as a housecleaner, authorities say.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/oakland-man-who-came-to-the-us-in-his-early-20s-has-struck-it-rich-through-fentanyl-sales-feds-allege/ Save to Pocket
Freezing temps complicate Chicago’s plan for asylum-seekers
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Until the weather turned, the city was keeping migrants aboard eight city buses that were running continuously and parked near a downtown highway in an area designated “the landing zone.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/freezing-temps-complicate-chicagos-plan-for-asylum-seekers/ Save to Pocket
Letters: Voter’s view | Lashing out | Fails definition | Co-opting King
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for Jan. 18, 2024
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/letters-1572/ Save to Pocket
Lichee Console 4A, RISC-V mini laptop: review, benchmarks and early issues
date: 2024-01-18, from: OS News
I always liked small laptops and phones – but for some reason they fell out of favor of manufacturers (“bigger is more better”). Now if one wanted to get tiny laptop – one of the few opportunities would have been to fight for old Sony UMPC’s on ebay which are somewhat expensive even today. Recently Raspberry Pi/CM4-based tiny laptops started to appear – especially clockwork products are neat, but they are not foldable like a laptop. When in summer of 2023 Sipeed announced Lichee Console 4A based on RISC-V SoC – I preordered it immediately and in early January I finally received it. Results of my testing, currently uncovered issues are below. ↫ Mikhail Svarichevsky I want one of these.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138374/lichee-console-4a-risc-v-mini-laptop-review-benchmarks-and-early-issues/ Save to Pocket
Frigid Weather Compounds Chicago’s Struggles to House Asylum-Seekers
date: 2024-01-18, from: VOA News USA
chicago — As temperatures hover below freezing in Chicago, dozens of asylum-seekers are staying in the lower level of a library until the bitter cold gripping much of the country lifts.
But after that, Chicago’s plans for offering immediate shelter to the growing number of migrants arriving in the nation’s third-largest city remain murky.
For more than a year, Chicago has wrestled with how to house new arrivals until shelter space is free, utilizing measures that city leaders insist are a stopgap. Last week, it was parked city buses. Before that it was police station lobbies and airports. The makeshift approach has frazzled volunteers, nonprofit groups and migrants wary of the lack of a long-term plan, particularly during the city’s long winters.
“The city’s favorite word for everything is ‘temporary,’” said Vianney Marzullo, a volunteer who has helped migrants staying at O’Hare International Airport. “It’s their new choice of Band-Aid word. Everything is temporary, temporary, temporary.”
Chicago has struggled, like New York and Denver, to deal with the crisis that started in 2022 when migrants began arriving in Democratic-led cities, largely at the direction of Texas Governot Greg Abbott. The winter weather has further complicated efforts. Last week, New York, which has received more than 170,000 migrants, evacuated a massive tent camp ahead of a storm. Big-city mayors have asked repeatedly for more federal help.
Chicago’s response has stood out for its haphazard approach with a heavy reliance on volunteers who have spent more than a year providing medical care, food and donated items.
City leaders say the situation keeps changing and there have been snags along the way.
Mayor Brandon Johnson floated the idea of a heated tent encampment, but construction was scrapped over the risk of contaminants at the former industrial site.
The city had instituted a 60-day limit for shelter stays but pushed the first batch of notices off to next week because of the weather. Meanwhile, the city has been heavily criticized for conditions at its shelters and the death of a young boy whose family stayed at one.
The political fight has also heated up and spread to the suburbs.
Abbott’s busing operation has been dropping off migrants at all hours in different Chicago area cities without coordination. When the city began fining bus companies and filing lawsuits, Abbott fired back with chartered planes. Johnson had planned a summit for this week with suburban mayors to discuss the problem; it was canceled by the weather. His office didn’t return a request for comment Wednesday.
“This is an international crisis that requires federal intervention of which local government is subsidizing that work. Never designed to do it, but yet here we are still standing,” Johnson said last week ahead of the storm.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also wrote to Abbott last week asking to suspend buses until the temperatures rise and with many migrants arriving without winter coats or shoes. But Abbott rejected the notion, saying the federal government needs to step up.
More than 33,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have arrived in Chicago since 2022. Currently, nearly 15,000 migrants are living in 28 shelters and the city is continually opening more. Many migrants have gone elsewhere or live with family and friends in the area. Chicago, like other cities, has offered bus tickets out of the city.
The city wound down its much-maligned use of police stations to house migrants, but O’Hare International Airport is still being used, with some asylum-seekers staying for weeks at a time as they await shelter. More than 200 were there Wednesday, according to the city.
Until the weather turned, the city was keeping migrants aboard eight city buses that were running continuously and parked near a downtown highway in an area designated “the landing zone.”
Six heated tents are under construction nearby, which the city says will be used for intake and services, such as medical care. It’s unclear if they will also be used for housing.
Marylin Gonzalez, 34, slept on the buses last week along with her husband and three children, ages 15, 16 and 18. The buses were crowded, with sicknesses spreading quickly.
Gonzalez described the atmosphere aboard as tense, with many worried about where they would go. She said it made her feel like a prisoner.
“The children are stressed. People get stressed, they argue, they are already desperate,” she said. “Sometimes we have to sleep sitting up because there is no space to lay down.”
Outside the buses, many would take up activities, like throwing around a football, to keep warm.
The landing zone was cleared of people and vehicles on Monday, but by Wednesday morning, the empty warming buses were parked there again, a signal that the city intends to return to using them. The city’s Office of Emergency Management didn’t respond to questions Wednesday about the city’s plans when the weather warms.
Roughly 50 migrants were staying in the lower level of the Harold Washington Library Center, the city’s flagship location downtown during the cold snap, according to people staying there. Migrants, including those who came in on their own to avoid the cold, were living with others facing homelessness. According to the city’s tally, 5 migrants at the library site were on lists for shelters. An Associated Press reporter was not allowed inside.
Angel Alberto Chourio, 30, slept there over the weekend, saying he was trying to figure out his next steps. He and a friend arrived from Venezuela last year. The promise of work out of state didn’t pan out, so they came back to Chicago recently. Without any place else to go, they came to the library.
He said Wednesday that he was nervous about the shelter stay limits and was not on a waiting list for one.
“We are not used to this. The cold is too much, since it is already below zero,” he said, looking for a silver lining. “At least they give one a chance to continue living.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/frigid-weather-compounds-chicago-s-struggles-to-house-asylum-seekers-/7444829.html Save to Pocket
Water Commission Presents Drought Strategies
date: 2024-01-18, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The California Water Commission today approved a white paper that contains potential strategies to protect communities and fish and wildlife in the event of drought
https://scvnews.com/water-commission-presents-statewide-strategies-for-protecting-communities-fish-wildlife-during-drought/ Save to Pocket
Biden Convenes Top Congressional Leaders to Discuss Ukraine Aid, US Border Deal
date: 2024-01-18, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden convened top congressional leaders at the White House to underscore Ukraine’s security needs, a meeting that comes at a pivotal time as senators narrow on a landmark immigration deal that could unlock $110 billion in stalled aid to Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies.
But Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans used the face-to-face moment with Biden to push him for tougher border security measures, with the speaker telling the president that Republican lawmakers were demanding “substantive policy change” and insisting that the White House’s executive actions on immigration had weakened the border.
“We understand that there’s concern about the safety, security and sovereignty of Ukraine,” Johnson told reporters after the meeting, which ran for more than an hour. “But the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty and our safety and our security.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, also speaking to reporters after the meeting, stressed that Biden has repeatedly said he is willing to compromise on certain border measures and that any effort in a divided Congress must be bipartisan. House Republicans have insisted on passage of a hard-line border security measure that has no Democratic support on Capitol Hill.
“There was a large amount of agreement around the table that we must do Ukraine, and we must do border,” he said.
The White House called the meeting with lawmakers — including Johnson, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell — to brief them on Ukraine’s current need for weapons and other aid, which the White House described as “desperate” and “urgent.”
By populating the meeting with national security leaders, the meeting was expected to impress on the new speaker the importance of the aid package and the current U.S. approach to world affairs. The Republicans in the room, even Johnson, are largely supportive of aiding Ukraine but have stressed to the White House that it will need significant border-security measures in return to persuade the large swath of rank-and-file Republican lawmakers skeptical about sending more funds abroad.
“He’s willing to hear what these congressional members want to talk about, but the purpose of this meeting is to talk about Ukraine,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said ahead of the mid-afternoon gathering, which was held in the Cabinet Room.
Key time to convene
Biden is convening the lawmakers at the start of an election year when border security and the wars abroad are punctuating the race for the White House as he faces a potential rematch against Republican Donald Trump with control of the presidency and Congress all at stake.
It comes as Congress is about to quickly approve temporary funding to avoid a government shutdown — postponing the annual spending battles — but as the supplemental aid package sits undone during the immigration and border talks.
Biden, a longtime leader in U.S. foreign policy, finds himself confronting a new generation of Republican lawmakers who have little interest in engaging abroad or supporting vast American military aid or actions around the world.
Led by Trump, the former president who is the Republicans’ front-runner for the nomination, a growing number of the Republicans in Congress are particularly hostile to helping Ukraine fight Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who along with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met this week with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Davos, Switzerland, said Washington is determined to keep supporting Ukraine, and “we’re working very closely with Congress in order to do that.”
Ahead of the meeting, McConnell announced the package could be ready for a vote as soon as next week, and Schumer sounded a similarly optimistic note — though negotiations continue.
Senators develop border proposal
Johnson, since taking the gavel in October, signaled he personally believes in supporting Ukraine as it works to expel Russia. He met privately with Zelenskyy during the Ukrainian president’s whirlwind tour of Washington last month seeking aid before the year-end holidays.
But the speaker leads an ambivalent House Republican majority that wants to extract its own priorities on the U.S.-Mexico border in exchange for any overseas support.
The speaker has insisted any border security deal must align with the House-passed strict border security bill. He told lawmakers in a private meeting over the weekend that they could probably get their priorities enacted with a Republican president, though the speaker did not mean that to preclude not taking action now, said a Republican leadership aide familiar with the call.
But senators, even fellow Republicans, said the House approach is a nonstarter that would never find the bipartisan backing in both chambers needed for approval.
Instead, a core group of senators led by Republican James Lankford has been meeting privately for weeks with Biden’s top advisers — including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — to develop a border security package that could actually be signed into law.
Lankford told reporters late Tuesday that he hopes to prepare bill text as negotiations try to wrap up soon.
McConnell told Republican senators privately last week they should take the deal Lankford is producing, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the closed meeting.
“This is a unique moment in time,” said the Number 2 Republican John Thune.
“It’s an opportunity to get some really conservative border policy that we haven’t been able to get for 40 years,” he said. “And so we’ll see. I mean, it may or may not happen, but I think you got to take a run at it.”
Senator ‘hopeful’
The broader security package includes about $60 billion for Ukraine, which is mainly used to purchase U.S. weaponry to fight the war and to shore up its own government operations, along with some $14.5 billion for Israel, about $14 billion for border security, and additional funds for other security needs.
Biden opened the door to a broader U.S.-Mexico border security package late last year and the changes being discussed could be difficult for some Democrats who oppose strict restrictions on immigration.
Schumer said negotiations over the border security package have made progress in recent weeks and he was “hopeful that things are headed in the right direction.”
Schumer said he expects the meeting with Biden will reinforce that the national security package is urgent and “any agreement on an issue as complex and contentious as the border is going to have to have support from both sides of the aisle.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-convenes-top-congressional-leaders-to-discuss-ukraine-aid-us-border-deal-/7444452.html Save to Pocket
Do users write more insecure code with AI assistants?
date: 2024-01-18, from: OS News
AI code assistants have emerged as powerful tools that can aid in the software development life-cycle and can improve developer productivity. Unfortunately, such assistants have also been found to produce insecure code in lab environments, raising significant concerns about their usage in practice. In this paper, we conduct a user study to examine how users interact with AI code assistants to solve a variety of security related tasks. Overall, we find that participants who had access to an AI assistant wrote significantly less secure code than those without access to an assistant. Participants with access to an AI assistant were also more likely to believe they wrote secure code, suggesting that such tools may lead users to be overconfident about security flaws in their code. To better inform the design of future AI-based code assistants, we release our user-study apparatus and anonymized data to researchers seeking to build on our work at this link. ↫ Neil Perry, Megha Srivastava, Deepak Kumar, and Dan Boneh I’m surprised somewhat randomly copying other people’s code into your program – violating their licenses, to boot – leads to crappier code. Who knew!
https://www.osnews.com/story/138370/do-users-write-more-insecure-code-with-ai-assistants/ Save to Pocket
Sheriff’s Office Releases Name of Santa Maria Man Fatally Shot by Deputies
date: 2024-01-18, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office also named the deputies involved in the shooting of the allegedly armed suspect following an hours-long standoff.
The post Sheriff’s Office Releases Name of Santa Maria Man Fatally Shot by Deputies appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/sheriffs-office-releases-name-of-santa-maria-man-fatally-shot-by-deputies/ Save to Pocket
Letters: Pacifica Pier | Shifting costs | ‘Bidenomics’ contradicted | Trump opposition
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for Jan. 18, 2024
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/letters-1571/ Save to Pocket
California health officials shorten COVID isolation guidance as infections peak
date: 2024-01-18, from: San Jose Mercury News
Under new guidance schools are advising that students who test positive for COVID-19 but do not have symptoms can continue to come to school if they wear masks indoors for 10 days after testing positive.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/california-health-officials-shorten-covid-isolation-guidance-as-infections-peak/ Save to Pocket
SCVEDC 2023 Annual Report Highlights
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
After 13 years of collaborative efforts within the community, the work of the Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development Corporation continues to be crucial to the region’s growth
https://scvnews.com/2023-scvedc-annual-report/ Save to Pocket
From 0 to 1 MB in DOS
date: 2024-01-17, from: OS News
Since the last article on the text-based IDEs of old, I’ve been meaning to write about the GCC port to DOS, namely DJGPP. As I worked on the draft for that topic, I realized that there is a ton of ground to cover to set the stage so I took most of the content on memory management out and wrote this separate post. This article is a deep dive on how DOS had to pull out tricks maximize the use of the very limited 1 MB address space of the 8086. Those tricks could exist because of the features later introduced by the 80286 and the 80386, but these were just clutches to paper over the fact that DOS could not leverage the real improvements provided by protected mode. ↫ Julio Merino The DOS memory story is a string of hacks upon hacks that somehow managed to work – and that still work today.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138367/from-0-to-1-mb-in-dos/ Save to Pocket
Apple, AMD, Qualcomm GPU security hole lets miscreants snoop on AI training and chats
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
So much for isolation
A design flaw in GPU drivers made by Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, and likely Imagination can be exploited by miscreants on a shared system to snoop on fellow users.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/leftoverlocals_gpu_flaw/ Save to Pocket
May 9: Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center Presents Blues Traveler
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Enjoy the sounds of blues at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center, as it presents Blues Travelers.
https://scvnews.com/may-9-santa-clarita-performing-arts-center-presents-blues-traveler/ Save to Pocket
King Tides Reveal Increased Beach Erosion
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
Rising sea levels can cause the waves to reach farther ashore, causing more erosion.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/king-tides-reveal-increased-beach-erosion Save to Pocket
Father, Christmas: A reconstructed wardrobe of migration
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
As the temperatures drop in Southern California, I walk the frigid boulevard and find my thoughts rising and entwining with my frosty breath. The moon slung low and my hands wedged firmly in my pocket clasping my phone. Dreading the sporadically scheduled phone call to my aging father. The calls are few and far between…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177866/opinions/father-christmas-a-reconstructed-wardrobe-of-migration/ Save to Pocket
Inspired by an Oppenheimer screening, NY Times congressional correspondent Catie Edmondson chased…
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/0043798-inspired-by-an-oppenheime Save to Pocket
Hyundai and Kia Know the Secret to Selling Electric Cars
date: 2024-01-17, from: Heatmap News
America’s electric car market has a new champion. The automaking alliance of Hyundai Motor Group and Kia Motors is now the second biggest seller of electric cars in the United States, according to new data released last week by Bloomberg BNEF.
The two companies sold more than 117,000 electric vehicles in the United States last year, or about 8% of all new EVs nationwide, according to the research firm. Only Tesla, the industry’s longtime leader, sold more electric cars: It still commands about half of U.S. market share.
The two companies’ success is an encouraging sign in what was more broadly a weird year for the EV market. Scarcely more than a year ago, the public’s demand for electric cars overwhelmed available inventory, and dealers were selling every EV they could get their hands on.
But as gas prices have fallen, the growth in EV sales in the United States has slowed, and the market has gotten more uneven. Tesla, looking to shore up its market position, launched a price war last year that juiced sales but cut deep into its profits. Ford and General Motors, meanwhile, are suffering anemic sales and cutting back on their short-term EV plans.
Amid this patchy landscape, Hyundai and Kia’s growth stands out. While the two companies are technically independent, Hyundai owns about a third of Kia Motors, and they collaborate on vehicle design, engineering, and manufacturing. They also use the same vehicle “platforms,” a common set of parts that can be used across models.
Since the news came out last week, I’ve seen climate people on Twitter and elsewhere try to explain why it’s happening. Many of these explanations conform to the views that the urban, progressive climate commentariat already hold about the car market. Look, Hyundai and Kia are winning because they’re making smaller cars, not behemoth SUVs.
But the answer, while not quite the opposite, doesn’t line up with what many might wish. In fact, Hyundai and Kia are dominating the EV market right now by churning out a mostly unbroken stream of crossover and SUVs. All but one of their electric cars qualifies as an SUV or crossover; all of their plug-in hybrids are SUVs. It is this commitment to repetition — to giving the consumer a lot of choices on a central theme — that sets their product lines apart right now.
You can see the importance of this by looking at their models in more depth. Take the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV6, for instance, which have led EV sales at the two brands and which are built on the same platform. Each is an electrified take on the type of car that, for years now, Americans haven’t been able to get enough of: the compact crossover SUV. The Ioniq 5 and EV6 each have two rows of seating and 25 cubic feet of trunk space. They drive more or less like a car, sit high on the road like an SUV, and fall in the broad category of cars that — as a friend’s wife puts it — looks like a fist with its thumb stuck out.
The Ioniq 5 and EV6 are also really, really similar to the Mustang Mach E, Ford’s attempt at an electric crossover. In fact, if you look only at specs, they’re basically the same car. All three have the same length and width and take up about 95 square feet of road space. All three have five seats. All three have roughly the same size trunk, although the Ford’s is maybe slightly bigger. And all three have an entry-level model starting at about $42,000 — although the lowest trim Ford has slightly more range and horsepower, and costs about a grand more.
As you might expect from those specs, the Mach E narrowly outsold the Ioniq 5 and EV6 in the United States last year. Ford sold more than 40,000 Mach Es in 2023, while Hyundai moved nearly 34,000 Ioniq 5s and Kia sold 19,000 EV6s. But here’s the thing: The Mach E did not outsell the Ioniq 5 and EV6 combined. And unlike Ford, which only sells one electric SUV, Hyundai and Kia continued to flood the zone with SUV options for consumers.
How many options? Hyundai sold plug-in versions of its Tuscon and Santa Fe SUVs. Kia sold an electric version of its subcompact Niro SUV and a plug-in hybrid version of its Sportage SUV. And even though Kia only started selling its new three-row SUV, the EV9, in December, it had already delivered more than 1,000 of them by the end of the year.
In fact, only one electric car from Hyundai-Kia — the new Ioniq 6 — was designed like a traditional sedan. But it made up only around 8% of the alliance’s total sales. Hyundai and Kia achieved their commanding position by giving Americans what they want: a seemingly endless stream of SUVs and crossovers.
Now, it matters here that Kia and Hyundai are two different companies, so there is some automatic duplication in their product lines. It might never make sense for Ford or GM to sell cars as similar as the EV6 and Ioniq 5. But if we’re being honest, their SUV lineups are already pretty duplicative: Do most consumers understand the difference between a Ford Edge and a Ford Escape? There’s no reason Ford couldn’t add an Escape EV to its lineup — something a little smaller and a little cheaper. That’s exactly what Kia does with the EV Niro, after all.
It helps, too, that lots of Kia and Hyundai’s cars look like great deals for consumers. Many of their key offerings hover in the high $30,000s to mid $40,000s, seemingly the sweet spot for new family cars today. Even though Hyundai and Kia’s cars don’t qualify for the new EV tax credit, Americans can use the $7,500 federal tax credit if they lease a vehicle instead.
Hyundai especially has used this credit — and a creative mix of rebates and low-interest-rate offers — to bring down the monthly payment for consumers. (Nearly half of new Ioniq 5s are leased, according to BNEF, which is a much higher rate than normal for Hyundai’s cars.)
Finally, it helps that Kia and especially Hyundai are making more interesting-looking vehicles than any other automaker right now. Compared to the staid peoplemover that is, say, the Volkswagen ID.4, the Ioniq 5 is striking, novel, and seems to push EV design forward. Its pixelated taillights are unlike anything else on the road, and it’s an extremely charismatic vehicle to drive; it’s just a better product, overall, than other cars out there.
And that might be the most important lesson behind Hyundai and Kia’s
success. For the past few decades, decarbonization advocates have gotten
used to thinking about electric cars primarily as a market abstraction:
Are they cheap? Are they available? Are they growing as a sector? But as
the EV transition continues, we are going to have to think about them
more as products, as specific tools that can improve someone’s
life by their presence. The EV companies that ultimately win will make
better products than their competitors — cars that bring together
capability, design, and price in a special way. Right now, Hyundai and
Kia are pushing to the front of that race.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/hyundai-motor-group-kia-motors-ioniq-5-ev-6 Save to Pocket
Newsom Sides with Parents’ Rights Groups to Defend Youth Tackle Football
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Assembly has until the end of January to decide the fate of the youth tackle football bill, which would prevent kids under 12 from playing the sport to protect them from brain trauma.
The post Newsom Sides with Parents’ Rights Groups to Defend Youth Tackle Football appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/newsom-sides-with-parents-rights-groups-to-defend-youth-tackle-football/ Save to Pocket
Apple Set to Collect $73 Million in Legal Fees From Epic Games
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Daring Fireball
https://twitter.com/games_fray/status/1747504304695484810?s=20 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Today’s
Olbermann is worth a listen, esp the first part where he talks about
political reporters vs sports reporters. Politics is a lot simpler than
most sports, and they repeat themselves for years even decades, yet the
sports reporters manage. Not all of them, there are plenty of
empty-headed sports reporters. But there are also some very insightful
ones. It makes all the the difference. In New York basketball we’re
blessed with two of the best.
Mike Breen and
Walt Frazier.
I’d listen even if I gave up hope on the Knicks, which believe me, I
have done many many many times. Also Olbermann says that
Dolan, the
owner of the Knicks, is a
schmuck.
He got that
right.
But somehow this time he managed to hire an
exec who has some
kind of a clue.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/17.html#a223707 Save to Pocket
Valencia boys’ soccer comes back against Saugus
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
Down a goal with 57 minutes left, Valencia Vikings boys’ soccer stormed back into the game at Saugus. The Vikings netted the equalizer in the second half thanks to a header from junior Nico Hovsepian. It was Hovsepian’s second goal of the day off of a throw-in from Kenneth Yoo. Valencia never felt satisfied with […]
The post <strong>Valencia boys’ soccer comes back against Saugus</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/valencia-boys-soccer-comes-back-against-saugus/ Save to Pocket
Fess Parker Winery Kicks Off 35th Anniversary Year in a Big Way
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The “Big Bottle Bash” at Fess Parker Winery in Los Olivos featured large-format library wines.
The post Fess Parker Winery Kicks Off 35th Anniversary Year in a Big Way appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/fess-parker-winery-kicks-off-35th-anniversary-year-in-a-big-way/ Save to Pocket
Remembering Jan. 17 Northridge Earthquake
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Northridge earthquake, a 6.7 magnitude quake that was the costliest earthquake disaster in the history of the United States, rocked the Santa Clarita Valley 30 years ago on Jan. 17,
https://scvnews.com/the-30th-anniversary-of-the-northridge-earthquake-jan-17/ Save to Pocket
Lilbits: A “breadboard phone,” Wine 9.0 released, and the future of Amazon’s Alexa
date: 2024-01-17, from: Liliputing
Generative AI is more conversational and responsive than the software that powered early voice assistant software like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. But it’s also a lot more expensive to run, due to the amount of processing power required by the servers that make things tick. Meanwhile Amazon, which was one of the companies that […]
The post Lilbits: A “breadboard phone,” Wine 9.0 released, and the future of Amazon’s Alexa appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/lilbits-a-breadboard-phone-wine-9-0-released-and-the-future-of-amazons-alexa/ Save to Pocket
LA Expands RV Parking Bans To Parts Of West LA And Coastal Neighborhoods
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
The new restrictions will affect more than a dozen streets in neighborhoods like Venice, Playa Vista, and Westchester.
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/la-expands-rv-parking-bans-to-parts-of-west-la-and-coastal-neighborhoods Save to Pocket
Gathering Ice for a Hot Mongolian Breakfast
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/gathering-ice-for-a-hot-mongolian-breakfast Save to Pocket
iLEAD students complete postflight analysis of space station experiments
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
News release While their classmates were on winter break, teams of students from three area tuition-free public charter schools gathered in the science lab at Santa Clarita Valley International Charter School on Dec. 30 to open packages sent to them from space. As part of their recent DreamUp to Space missions, the students, representing […]
The post iLEAD students complete postflight analysis of space station experiments appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/ilead-students-complete-postflight-analysis-of-space-station-experiments/ Save to Pocket
Saugus girls’ soccer blanks Valencia
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
“Probably the goal of the season.” Saugus coach Kai English was amazed yet again by his senior Sophia Ruys after her goal that beat the Valencia Vikings on Tuesday. Ruys’ score was the only goal of the game and it came early. Junior Makenna Blum stole the ball at midfield and set up Ruys for […]
The post <strong>Saugus girls’ soccer blanks Valencia </strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/saugus-girls-soccer-blanks-valencia/ Save to Pocket
★ Coming to Grips With Apple’s Seemingly Unshakable Sense of Entitlement to Its Commissions From Third-Party iOS Apps
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Daring Fireball
No matter what the sport, no matter what the letter of the rulebook says, it’s never a good idea to piss off the refs.
https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/coming_to_grips_with_apples_seemingly_unshakable_sense_of_app_store_entitlement Save to Pocket
Full Belly Files | Emerging from the Holidaze
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A rundown of my end-of-year eats & drinks; plus, the first 2023 wine reviewed; my TV pilot wins award; and stories you may have missed.
The post Full Belly Files | Emerging from the Holidaze appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/full-belly-files-emerging-from-the-holidaze/ Save to Pocket
Facial recognition tech has outpaced US law – and don’t expect the Feds to catch up
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Let’s be realistic: If the EU can’t regulate it well, America definitely won’t
Comment If anything could compel the US government to regulate facial-recognition technology, a report sponsored by federal law enforcement urging just that may do the trick. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/face_recognition_tech_us/ Save to Pocket
Bike Protestors for Hamas
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The bike protesters supporting Hamas would feel differently if they had experienced what Israelis have experienced.
The post Bike Protestors for Hamas appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/bike-protestors-for-hamas/ Save to Pocket
Jan 18: Circle K Offers Gas Up To 40 Cents Off Per Gallon
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Circle K will offer 40 cents off per gallon of fuel between 4 and 7 p.m. local time tomorrow, Thursday, Jan. 18 during Circle K Fuel Day Pop-Up and 50% off on car washes all day at over 200 participating Circle K locations including Los Angeles.
https://scvnews.com/circle-k-offering-gas-up-to-40-cent-off-per-gallon/ Save to Pocket
Hotel development implodes in Bay Area and California due to economy: new report
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Hotel development and new openings have cratered in the Bay Area and throughout California.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/hotel-real-estate-bay-area-san-jose-oakland-tech-economy-build-buy/ Save to Pocket
The South Is Smashing Electricity Records in the Dead of Winter
date: 2024-01-17, from: Heatmap News
America’s largest public power company just set a new record. The Tennessee Valley Authority said consumers used around 34,500 megawatts of electricity on Wednesday morning, about 1,000 megawatts more than its previous all-time record of around 33,500 megawatts in August 2007.
While the cold weather across much of the country has strained many power grids, especially those in the South where electric heating is more common, it’s noteworthy that TVA not only broke its winter record, but it’s all-time record as well. By contrast, the market that covers 90% of Texas, ERCOT, set a winter demand record earlier this week, but its overall record is still from this past summer.
Much of the area around the Tennessee Valley served by the Authority
have seen persistent low temperatures over the past few days. Nashville
has a forecast high of 30 degrees Wednesday and has gotten as cold as -1
degree Fahrenheit, only the second time the city has experienced
below-zero temperatures since
1996,
according to the National Weather Service.
And cold
temperatures mean more electricity usage. Like much of the region,
Tennesseans
largely
heat their homes using electricity as opposed to fuel oil or natural
gas.
“Heavy snow and bitter cold temperatures are creating
record high demand for electricity across the Southeast region,” the TVA
said in a warning released Tuesday, asking its customers to reduce their
electricity consumption from 6 am to 10 am. Similar warnings were issued
by ERCOT, which also serves millions of households who heat their homes
via electricity. The cold snap
is
expected to last through the weekend.
And like in Texas, the amount of power TVA is called upon to provide has grown as the region it serves has seen its population and economy grow.
While TVA has a
relatively
modest solar portfolio compared to the large and growing amounts of
wind and solar in Texas, the TVA can still struggle with cold mornings.
Some of this is due to what solar power it does have not being
available, but it’s largely because of the nature of electricity demand
in the winter. On cold days, it is especially chilly in the morning,
when people are trying to heat their homes between waking up and going
to work or school. By contrast, summer afternoons and early evenings are
tough for grids to manage because temperatures stay high even as the sun
goes down and people return to their homes and cool them and start
operating appliances.
TVA’s generation mix is almost unique within the United States in that much of it is non-carbon-emitting but with relatively little wind or solar. About 60% of its power comes from carbon-free sources, which are nearly entirely its three nuclear plants and its iconic dams.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/tennessee-valley-authority-record-electricity-ercot-texas Save to Pocket
Swift Protocol Requirement Quirks
date: 2024-01-17, from: Michael Tsai
Jesse Squires: A handful of protocol witness mismatches are currently allowed:Non-failable initializers can satisfy failable initializer protocol requirements (as I encountered above)Non-throwing functions can satisfy throwing function protocol requirementsNon-escaping closure parameters can satisfy @escaping protocol requirementsGeneric functions can satisfy non-generic protocol requirementsNon-mutating functions can satisfy mutating protocol requirementsEnum cases can satisfy static function protocol requirementsSynchronous […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/01/17/swift-protocol-requirement-quirks/ Save to Pocket
ScreenFloat 2
date: 2024-01-17, from: Michael Tsai
Matthias Gansrigler (Mastodon): ScreenFloat powers up your screenshots by allowing you to take screenshots and recordings that float above everything else, keeping certain information always in sight. I’ve known about this app for a long time, but I’d never used it or thought much about it because the description doesn’t speak to me. I just […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/01/17/screenfloat-2/ Save to Pocket
Game Mode in Sonoma
date: 2024-01-17, from: Michael Tsai
Andrew Cunningham: Sonoma brings two more features that point to Apple’s newfound seriousness about gaming on the Mac. The first is Game Mode. It’s analogous to a Windows 11 feature of the exact same name, and they’re functionally similar in that they both promise to deprioritize background tasks to keep games running smoothly.Apple’s version of […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/01/17/game-mode-in-sonoma/ Save to Pocket
The companies behind 6 and 7 screen mobile workstations have gone out of business
date: 2024-01-17, from: Liliputing
Dual-screen laptops may be all the rage these days, with Lenovo and Asus both introducing models designed to be used as a laptop, tablet, or something in between. But why stop there? A few years ago Expansys introduced a 7-screen laptop, and last year MediaWorkstation unveiled a 6-display workstation PC that’s not exactly a laptop, […]
The post The companies behind 6 and 7 screen mobile workstations have gone out of business appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/the-companies-behind-6-and-7-screen-mobile-workstations-have-gone-out-of-business/ Save to Pocket
The Marshall Star for January 17, 2024
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
‘Be King’: Team Redstone Invites All to Honor Civil Rights Icon’s Legacy By Jessica Barnett Several accomplished speakers took to the stage Jan. 11 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to share how Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy helped shape their lives. The event was hosted by Marshall’s ODEO (Office of Diversity and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/the-marshall-star-for-january-17-2024/ Save to Pocket
Authorities Release Identity of Santa Barbara Man Killed in Head-on Truck Crash at Gaviota
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Thomas McGregor, 25, died January 5 when his pickup collided with a semi-truck on the southbound 101.
The post Authorities Release Identity of Santa Barbara Man Killed in Head-on Truck Crash at Gaviota appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/authorities-release-identity-of-santa-barbara-man-killed-in-head-on-truck-crash-at-gaviota/ Save to Pocket
Kurtenbach: Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojević dead at 46 — “Decky” embodied what is great about the game
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Dejan Milojević, who died Wednesday at the age of 46, was a great player back in the day. He turned out to be an even better coach.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/kurtenbach-warriors-assistant-coach-dejan-milojevic-dead-at-46-decky-embodied-what-is-great-about-the-game/ Save to Pocket
Photos: Northern Calif. mansion featured in HBO series hits auction block
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Queen Anne-Victorian style property in Mendocino County was featured in the series “Sharp Objects.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/photos-northern-calif-mansion-featured-in-hbo-series-hits-auction-block/ Save to Pocket
Google introduces Google Takeout API
date: 2024-01-17, from: OS News
Google has detailed more of the changes it’s implementing to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. We already covered the changes to linked services, but Google is also changing how results related to shopping and booking results are displayed. We will introduce dedicated units that include a group of links to comparison sites from across the web, and query shortcuts at the top of the search page to help people refine their search, including by focusing results just on comparison sites. For categories like hotels, we will also start testing a dedicated space for comparison sites and direct suppliers to show more detailed individual results including images, star ratings and more. These changes will result in the removal of some features from the search page, such as the Google Flights unit. ↫ Oliver Bethell Google is also releasing its promised Google Takeout API, allowing developers to programmatically deal with users wanting to take their data out of Google to another service. This one in particular I’m interested in, since I’m curious if, say, a competing email service will make it easier and automatic to move away from Gmail.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138364/google-introduces-google-takeout-api/ Save to Pocket
An organized retail crime theft ring attempted to commit 25 robberies in a two-month period, authorities say
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The crime ring also invaded a store in San Diego and stole two ATM machines, authorities said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/an-organized-retail-crime-theft-ring-attempted-to-commit-25-robberies-in-a-two-month-period-authorities-say/ Save to Pocket
Now you get free coffee when you take the San Francisco Bay Ferry
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The ferry service has added free coffee to its snack bars, in a promotion to benefit local food banks.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/now-you-get-free-coffee-when-you-take-the-san-francisco-bay-ferry/ Save to Pocket
Ruffle: an open source Flash Player emulator
date: 2024-01-17, from: OS News
Made to run natively on all modern operating systems and browsers, Ruffle brings Flash content back to life with no extra fuss. ↫ Ruffle website It’s using Rust and WASM, making it supposedly safer than the real Flash PLayer ever was, and of course, it’s open source too. Their most recent progress report details just how far along this project already is.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138350/ruffle-an-open-source-flash-player-emulator/ Save to Pocket
Works by Picasso, Rembrandt Damaged in Seattle Gallery Fire
date: 2024-01-17, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Davidson Galleries had been preparing to move to a new location, so some of its works were especially vulnerable to smoke damage
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/works-by-picasso-rembrant-may-have-been-damaged-in-seattle-art-gallery-blaze-180983611/ Save to Pocket
Ryan’s Got News
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Our news reporter Ryan P. Cruz is always at council meetings, covering courts and crime, or reporting on community updates
The post Ryan’s Got News appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/ryans-got-news/ Save to Pocket
Photos: stuffed animal sleepover
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
Children, parents and stuffed animals gathered to watch magician Arty Loon and have a stuffed animal sleepover at the Canyon Country Jo Anne Darcy Library on Tuesday.
The post Photos: stuffed animal sleepover appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/photos-stuffed-animal-sleepover/ Save to Pocket
‘Know to Say No’ Anti-Trafficking Campaign
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
In the course of her work, Adela Estrada has interfaced with and supported hundreds of children and youth of all genders, ranging in age from nine to 21, who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation or sex trafficking
https://scvnews.com/children-and-family-services-begins-know-to-say-no-anti-trafficking-campaign/ Save to Pocket
NASA Sets Briefings for Crew-8, International Space Station Missions
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
NASA will host a pair of news conferences Thursday, Jan. 25, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to highlight upcoming crew rotation missions to the International Space Station. A mission overview news conference will begin at 1 p.m. EST and cover NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission to the microgravity laboratory and Expeditions 70/71. A […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-sets-briefings-for-crew-8-international-space-station-missions/ Save to Pocket
Correction: Tribal Chairwoman runs for 18th district seat
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
In an article published on Friday, Jan. 12, a quote from Rep. Zoe Lofrgren erroneously stated that Congress had never overturned a determination on tribal recognition by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. However, the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana were granted federal tribal recognition by Congress as part of an amendment to […]
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/correction-tribal-chairwoman-runs-for-18th-district-seat/ Save to Pocket
Germany’s New Plans for Transforming Its Defence and Foreign Policy Are Bold. They Are Also Running Into Familiar Problems
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: RAND blog
Germany’s new defense policy guidelines mark a seismic transformation in German military strategy, away from diplomacy and dialogue, towards defense and deterrence. But as the country seeks to be more assertive on the international stage, there may be resistance at home.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/01/germanys-new-plans-for-transforming-its-defence-and.html Save to Pocket
Carbajal’s Charade
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Regarding Congressmember Carbajal’s co-sponsorship of a House resolution for a humanitarian pause in Gaza, a pause is merely a few days of relief before Israel drops another 2,000-pound bomb on orphans foraging for food.
The post Carbajal’s Charade appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/carbajals-charade/ Save to Pocket
High school boys soccer rankings Jan. 17, 2024: Bay Area News Group Top 15
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Mountain View (12-1) takes over No. 1 spot. Carlmont, Granada, Bishop O’Dowd climb into Top 5.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/high-school-boys-soccer-rankings-jan-17-2024-bay-area-news-group-top-15/ Save to Pocket
High school girls soccer rankings Jan. 17, 2024: Bay Area News Group Top 15
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
High school soccer: Berkeley jumps into the Top 3, Palo Alto and Presentation join the rankings
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/high-school-girls-soccer-rankings-jan-17-2024-bay-area-news-group-top-15/ Save to Pocket
Poetry Connection | Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Sojourner Kincaid Rolle
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Our Poet Laureate reflects on the lasting impact of Sojourner Kincaid Rolle’s life.
The post Poetry Connection | Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Sojourner Kincaid Rolle appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/poetry-connection-celebrating-the-life-and-legacy-of-sojourner-kincaid-rolle/ Save to Pocket
Maine Court Puts Trump Ballot Decision on Hold Until After US Supreme Court Acts
date: 2024-01-17, from: VOA News USA
Washington — A Maine court on Wednesday ordered the state’s top election official to reevaluate a decision to bar former President Donald Trump from the Republican primary ballot after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a related case from Colorado.
State Superior Court Judge Michaela Murphy found that the Supreme Court’s decision to take the Colorado case “changes everything about the order in which these issues should be decided and by which court.”
The judge ordered Maine Secretary of State Shanna Bellows, a Democrat, to reassess her decision to bar Trump from the ballot within 30 days after the Supreme Court rules.
In December, Bellows determined that Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was ineligible to hold office again under a provision in the U.S. Constitution that bars people who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion from holding office.
Depending on the sweep of its ruling in the Colorado case, the U.S. Supreme Court could resolve the issue nationwide in the coming weeks, with oral arguments scheduled for February 8.
Maine and Colorado are so far the only two states to disqualify Trump under the constitutional provision, known as Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Both states have put their decisions on hold while Trump appeals.
Courts and election officials in several other states have rejected similar ballot challenges to Trump’s candidacy.
https://www.voanews.com/a/maine-court-puts-trump-ballot-decision-on-hold-until-after-us-supreme-court-acts/7444251.html Save to Pocket
Advent of Computing: Episode 124 - The Full 360
date: 2024-01-17, from: Tilde.news
https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/episode-124-the-full-360 Save to Pocket
Kate Middleton’s 2-week hospital stay after abdominal surgery sparks concerns about her condition
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The announcement about the Princess of Wales’ surgery, lengthy hospital stay and two- to -three month recovery time ‘came out of nowhere,’ one report said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/kate-middletons-2-week-hospital-stay-after-abdominal-surgery-sparks-concerns-about-her-condition/ Save to Pocket
IBM scraps rewards program for staff inventions, wipes away cash points
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Big Blue staffers aren’t pleased to lose out on potential bonuses
Exclusive IBM has canceled a program that rewarded inventors at Big Blue for patents or publications, leaving some angry that they are missing out on potential bonuses.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/ibm_inventor_reward_program/ Save to Pocket
Bay Area arts: 12 cool shows to see this weekend and beyond
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
From an intimate portrait of legendary playwright August Wilson to SketchFest SF, Randy Rainbow and lots more comedy, there are a tom of great shows to see in the Bay Area.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/bay-area-arts-11-cool-shows-to-see-this-weekend-and-beyond/ Save to Pocket
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-17, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Images on the command line, getting started with Joseph:
https://blog.la-terminal.net/images-on-the-command-line/
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111773086620737102 Save to Pocket
CSUN Professor’s Work Included in ‘Best American Short Stories of 2023’
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The short story chronicling what happens next, “Supernova” by Kosiso Ugwueze, an assistant professor of English at California State University, Northridge, has been included in “The Best American Short Stories 2023,”
https://scvnews.com/csun-professors-work-included-in-best-american-short-stories-of-2023/ Save to Pocket
@Ayjay blog (date: 2024-01-17, from: Ayjay blog)
DHH is exactly right: Apple has become too powerful, and with that power has come a sense of entitlement, and with that sense of entitlement has come a shortsighted pettiness and vindictiveness. I don’t want to support such a company, in part because I don’t have the bandwidth to go full Linux at the moment, […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/45933-2/ Save to Pocket
Doomed Lunar Lander Will Burn Up in Earth’s Atmosphere on Thursday
date: 2024-01-17, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Astrobotic, the company in charge of the mission, says its Peregrine spacecraft will not reach the moon, and burning it will ensure the lander doesn’t end up as space debris
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/doomed-lunar-lander-will-burn-up-in-earths-atmosphere-thursday-180983609/ Save to Pocket
The Markup Wins Philip Meyer Journalism Award
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Markup blog
The award honors the best uses of social science research methods in journalism
https://themarkup.org/inside-the-markup/2024/01/17/the-markup-wins-philip-meyer-journalism-award Save to Pocket
Santa Barbara Women’s March Returns This Saturday
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A rally and vigil at De la Guerra Plaza on January 20 will be followed by a march “to take a stand against the assault on women’s rights and democracy.”
The post Santa Barbara Women’s March Returns This Saturday appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/santa-barbara-womens-march-returns-this-saturday/ Save to Pocket
Asus Fanless Chromebox CF40 is a small, quiet ChromeOS desktop with Intel Celeron N4500 Jasper Lake
date: 2024-01-17, from: Liliputing
The Asus Fanless Chromebox CF40 is a compact computer with an aluminum chassis, a fanless design, support for up to three 4K displays, WiFi 6, and Gigabit Ethernet. When Asus first unveiled its 2024 mini PC lineup earlier this month, the company didn’t have much to say about its newest Chromebox, other than that it was […]
The post Asus Fanless Chromebox CF40 is a small, quiet ChromeOS desktop with Intel Celeron N4500 Jasper Lake appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/asus-fanless-chromebox-cf40-is-a-small-quiet-chromeos-desktop-with-intel-celeron-n4500-jasper-lake/ Save to Pocket
An Aurora in Another Light
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite sensor on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite captured this image of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, over western Canada at 3:23 a.m. MST (5:23 a.m. EST) on November 5, 2023. Auroras are colorful ribbons of light appearing in night skies, incited by a strong geomagnetic storm in Earth’s magnetosphere. Multiple […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/an-aurora-in-another-light/ Save to Pocket
ChipWits: The Robot Coding Game
date: 2024-01-17, from: Tilde.news
https://chipwits.com/ Save to Pocket
The Frozen Colors of Winter
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/the-frozen-colors-of-winter Save to Pocket
Blinken Stranded After Davos By Boeing, His Old Client
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Lever News
The Secretary of State previously advised the airline manufacturer; on his return from the World Economic Forum, he ran into one of its troubled 737 planes.
https://www.levernews.com/blinken-stranded-after-davos-by-boeing-his-old-client/ Save to Pocket
“Just an idea” Event Types
date: 2024-01-17, from: Chris Coyier blog
Maggie Appleton thinks there should be Speculative Calendar Events. I don’t want to add them as real events. Because they are not real events. They are speculative possibilities of events. The majority of them won’t be filled, and having both speculative and real events looking and behaving like the same type of thing is messy […]
https://chriscoyier.net/2024/01/17/just-an-idea-event-types/ Save to Pocket
New York City Music Festival Gives Voice to Ukrainian Resistance
date: 2024-01-17, from: VOA News USA
At an international music festival in New York City, a Ukrainian-Canadian band sings songs about strength and resisting the Russian invasion. The band, Balaklava Blues, is one of 10 groups from all over the world performing at Globalfest. Joti Rekhi reports from New York City. Camera: Nick Jastrzebski
https://www.voanews.com/a/music-festival-in-new-york-city-gives-voice-to-ukrainian-resistance/7444150.html Save to Pocket
US Lawmakers Push for Limits on American Investment in China Tech
date: 2024-01-17, from: VOA News USA
Capitol Hill — U.S. lawmakers renewed calls Wednesday to pass bipartisan legislation that would restrict American investment in Chinese technology.
“It should come as no surprise that China’s military and surveillance state are exploiting loopholes in U.S. policy to access billions of U.S. investment dollars and expertise. We know that U.S. investment has not democratized China and countries which are controlled by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] have no power over the applications of their technology. The CCP can direct it to us for military or surveillance purposes,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said at a hearing on the legislation Wednesday.
The bill – which has support from both conservative organizations and the Biden administration – was not included in the National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA passed late last year. Republican Senator John Cornyn has sponsored companion legislation in the U.S. Senate that passed with more than ninety votes.
Lawmakers hope it can still be passed individually and signed into law.
If passed, McCaul said the measure, H.R. 6349, would target “specific technology sectors, like AI [artificial intelligence] and quantum computing, that are empowering China’s military development and surveillance.”
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said an executive order issued by the Biden administration last August “that calls for provisions and notification requirements of specific types of American investments in China, or in certain companies that develop or produce semiconductors, quantum computers, and artificial intelligence applications” is an important first step.
But experts in U.S.-China relations told a House panel more could be done.
“Congress has an opportunity to build on the initial steps taken by the Trump and Biden administrations to prevent U.S. capital from fueling China’s military and intelligence capabilities. First, Washington should take a sectoral rather than merely an entity-based approach. The Treasury Department has demonstrated since at least 2021 that it is disinterested in using even its existing narrow authorities to limit investment in Chinese military-linked companies. And in fairness to the Treasury Department tackling the problem on a company-by-company basis would be a resource-intensive and gargantuan task,” Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser during the Trump administration, said Wednesday.
“We still haven’t learned that they will do everything they can to take anything we sell, particularly in the area of electronics and really high tech, and use it for the military. They’ve been doing that for decades. We don’t learn. We think somehow if you trade more, they’ll matriculate from dictatorship to democracy,” Republican Rep. Chris Smith said Wednesday.
The bipartisan push in the U.S. House comes as Senate negotiators continue work on the White House’s $106 billion national security supplemental request that includes funding to combat Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. Citing a border security crisis, Senate Republicans have sought changes to U.S. immigration law in return for their votes to pass more than $50 billion in assistance to Ukraine that is also part of the Biden administration’s request.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged lawmakers Wednesday to reach an agreement soon.
“It’s become quite fashionable in Washington to talk about how we’re not taking competition with China seriously enough,” McConnell said. “Winning this competition means credibly deterring Beijing’s worst impulses, which, for us, means investing in American strength. Outcompeting the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will require greater investments in our military capabilities and in our industrial capacity to produce them. The West cannot be caught unprepared for this challenge. We cannot afford to neglect the lessons of history.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-lawmakers-push-for-limits-on-american-investment-in-china-tech/7444165.html Save to Pocket
The Case for and Against AI Watermarking
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: RAND blog
The hype around the concept of AI-output watermarking may be masking very real system challenges. And failure to address watermarking as a systems problem is likely to result in solutions that risk working against the security and trust they seek to instill.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/01/the-case-for-and-against-ai-watermarking.html Save to Pocket
Forgotten Tudor Wall Paintings Discovered in a Cambridge University Loft Space
date: 2024-01-17, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Unseen for nearly 300 years, the art resurfaced during restorations at Christ’s College
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tudor-wall-paintings-resurface-at-a-cambridge-college-after-300-years-180983588/ Save to Pocket
Whistler Blackcomb might not be a ski resort in another few decades….
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/0043794-whistler-blackcomb-might- Save to Pocket
Robot Team Builds High-Performance Digital Structure for NASA
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
Greater than the sum of its parts: NASA tests the capability of a system that includes simple robots, structural building blocks, and smart algorithms to build functional, high-performance large-scale structures, ultimately enabling autonomous deep-space infrastructure.
https://www.nasa.gov/general/robot-team-builds-high-performance-digital-structure-for-nasa/ Save to Pocket
The Search for a High Seas Solution
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: RAND blog
While Western military action against the Houthis has increased, the Red Sea crisis is sailing through opaque waters. Short-term military action might help with the immediate crisis, but shipping routes will remain vulnerable unless the world recognizes its exposure to threats and cooperates to defend them.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/01/the-search-for-a-high-seas-solution.html Save to Pocket
Judge threatens to boot Trump from court over loud talking
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Carroll lawyer Shawn Crowley told Judge Lewis A. Kaplan that Trump could be heard “loudly saying things that are false” as he sat at the defense table, frequently tilting back in his chair and leaning over to converse with lawyers Alina Habba and Michael Madaio.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/judge-threatens-to-boot-trump-from-court-over-loud-talking/ Save to Pocket
What would a second Trump presidency look like for health care?
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Health policy during Trump’s tenure was dominated by Covid-19 and a failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/what-would-a-second-trump-presidency-look-like-for-health-care/ Save to Pocket
What to watch: ‘Origin’ is uniquely brilliant and riveting
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ava DuVernay’s masterful ‘Origin’ and the Nazi-themed ‘Zone of Interest’ are unique, compelling films and playing in Bay Area theaters.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/what-to-watch-origin-is-uniquely-brilliant-and-riveting/ Save to Pocket
Northern California community trapped without power after rain washes out roads
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
“There’s like 20-, 30-foot canyons where the road used to be,” said one resident of Redwood Valley.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/northern-california-community-trapped-without-power-after-rain-washes-out-roads/ Save to Pocket
Samsung Galaxy S24 series brings Galaxy AI features, 7 years of software updates
date: 2024-01-17, from: Liliputing
Samsung’s newest flagship smartphones pack premium features like AMOLED displays with 120 Hz refresh rates, high-quality camera systems, and speedy processors. But that’s not really enough to make a phone that stands out these days. So Samsung is introducing some big new software features rather than just focusing on hardware. The Galaxy S24 will be […]
The post Samsung Galaxy S24 series brings Galaxy AI features, 7 years of software updates appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/samsung-galaxy-s24-series-brings-galaxy-ai-features-7-years-of-software-updates/ Save to Pocket
Why Do Dogs Wag Their Tails? Scientists Examine the Endearing Behavior
date: 2024-01-17, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Dogs communicate through tail-wagging, and humans may have selected for the trait during domestication
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-do-dogs-wag-their-tails-180983608/ Save to Pocket
New Zealand’s New PM Isn’t Going Back to Old Ways on China
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: RAND blog
Much is still unknown about the details of the new New Zealand government’s foreign and security policy approach, and much remains subject to change. The early indications, however, point to a New Zealand planning to deepen alignment with like-minded partners, not just to address China, but probably in regard to other challenges as well.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/01/new-zealands-new-pm-isnt-going-back-to-old-ways-on.html Save to Pocket
Fistful of Films, Big Screened
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Taking stock of a handful of recent movies on the big screen.
The post Fistful of Films, Big Screened appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/fistful-of-films-big-screened/ Save to Pocket
SCV Sheriff’s Station: No serious injuries in collision near Canyon High
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
A Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station official said there were no major injuries reported after a vehicle struck a student near Canyon High School at around 8:48 a.m. Wednesday. A high school student was hit by a car, but was not seriously hurt in the collision, according to Sgt. Sherry Clark of the SCV Sheriff’s […]
The post SCV Sheriff’s Station: No serious injuries in collision near Canyon High appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/scv-sheriffs-station-no-serious-injuries-in-collision-near-canyon-high/ Save to Pocket
San Jose Sharks to retire Joe Thornton’s No. 19 next season
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
NHL: Joe Thornton No. 19 to be raised to the rafters at SAP Center next season
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/san-jose-sharks-to-retire-joe-thorntons-no-19/ Save to Pocket
Corporations Are Not To Be Loved
date: 2024-01-17, from: Innessential (Brint Simmons’ blog)
I started using Apple computers — and writing code for them, starting with BASIC — 43 years ago, before the Macintosh, even, and I’ve made this my career. I’ve had all these decades to really, thoroughly delight in these incredible machines and software, and to give a little back with my own apps.
Apple’s positive effect on my life should not be underestimated. My Mom once (lovingly, teasingly) said to me that my alternate career, had all this never happened, was “criminal genius.” Which might have been fun too, but possibly more stressful than I might have liked. At any rate, Apple has saved me from a life of crime, and I should love Apple for that.
But I need to remember, now and again, that Apple is a corporation, and corporations aren’t people, and they can’t love you back. You wouldn’t love GE or Exxon or Comcast — and you shouldn’t love Apple. It’s not an exception to the rule: there are no exceptions.
Apple doesn’t care about you personally in the least tiny bit, and if you were in their way somehow, they would do whatever their might — effectively infinite compared to your own — enables them to deal with you.
Luckily, Apple has just provided us all with a reminder. Just like the sixth finger in an AI-rendered hand, Apple’s policies for Distributing apps in the U.S. that provide an external purchase link are startlingly graceless and a jarring, but not surprising, reminder that Apple is not a real person and not worthy of your love.
https://inessential.com/2024/01/17/corporations_are_not_to_be_loved Save to Pocket
Family says Antioch homicide victim was loving father, friendly neighbor
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
An online fundraiser for the family raised more than $10,000 by Wednesday morning.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/family-says-antioch-homicide-victim-was-loving-father-friendly-neighbor/ Save to Pocket
What are life insurance living benefits?
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Life insurance living benefits provide extra financial security while you’re still alive, but they come at a cost.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/what-are-life-insurance-living-benefits/ Save to Pocket
Newsom Sides With Parents’ Rights Groups To Defend Youth Tackle Football
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
The Assembly has until the end of January to decide the fate of the youth tackle football bill, which would prevent kids under 12 from playing the sport to protect them from brain trauma.
https://laist.com/news/politics/newsom-sides-with-parents-rights-groups-to-defend-youth-tackle-football Save to Pocket
Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam,’ says study
Updated No, it’s not just you - search engine results really are getting worse as the internet is flooded with low-effort garbage from SEO farms and affiliate link sites, a group of German researchers has concluded. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/google_search_results_spam/ Save to Pocket
San Jose city council supports Israel-Hamas ceasefire in letter — but won’t pass resolution
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and all ten city councilmembers have signed onto a statement that urges the U.S. government to support a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/san-jose-city-council-supports-israel-hamas-ceasefire-in-letter-but-wont-pass-resolution/ Save to Pocket
Democracy! The Animation!
date: 2024-01-17, from: Margaret Atwood’s substack
Is it a hot air balloon?
https://margaretatwood.substack.com/p/democracy-the-animation Save to Pocket
Flickr Commons celebrated its 16th birthday with 16 stories about some of…
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/0043795-flickr-commons-celebrated Save to Pocket
Great Name, Terrible Shipping
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/01/17/great-name-terrible-shipping/ Save to Pocket
Retro Programming (2017)
date: 2024-01-17, from: Tilde.news
http://www.retroprogramming.com Save to Pocket
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-17, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
With the US backing for this bloodbath, there is no end in sight.
Our entire government has outsourced their vote to their handlers at AIPAC.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111772605203896829 Save to Pocket
One of the Bay Area’s biggest bands has something cool in store for fans
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Green Day fans really won’t want to miss the East Bay band’s upcoming Saviors Tour, featuring Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and the Linda Lindas.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/one-of-the-bay-areas-biggest-bands-has-something-cool-in-store-for-fans/ Save to Pocket
Best Online Slots in 2024: Top Real Money Slot Sites with High RTPs (Update)
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
We’ve rounded up the leading slots sites online. Read our review of the best real money slot sites with the highest payout percentages and exciting games.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/best-online-slots/ Save to Pocket
Getting ‘Left-of-Launch’ in the Counter-Drone Fight
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: RAND blog
The democratization of drone technology means that adversaries are now able to conduct attacks with near impunity. The Houthis’ recent drone attacks in the Red Sea show that America’s current approach to countering them is not working. A holistic, offensive strategy is needed.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/01/getting-left-of-launch-in-the-counter-drone-fight.html Save to Pocket
20 Years After Landing: How NASA’s Twin Rovers Changed Mars Science
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
This month marks the 20th anniversary of Spirit and Opportunity’s landing on Mars, part of a mission whose legacy will extend far into the future. In January 2004, twin NASA rovers named Spirit and Opportunity touched down on opposite sides of Mars, kicking off a new era of interplanetary robotic exploration. They arrived in dramatic […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mer/20-years-after-landing-how-nasas-twin-rovers-changed-mars-science/ Save to Pocket
Open House This Wednesday for Proposed 642-Unit Housing Project at La Cumbre Plaza
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The proposal marks perhaps the biggest private redevelopment project proposed in Santa Barbara’s modern history.
The post Open House This Wednesday for Proposed 642-Unit Housing Project at La Cumbre Plaza appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/open-house-this-wednesday-for-proposed-642-unit-housing-project-at-la-cumbre-plaza/ Save to Pocket
Chip wars could lead to oversupply as China increases domestic capacity
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Middle Kingdom can make market moves too… as potential global price battles loom
China’s chip manufacturing capacity is expected to more than double within the next 5 to 7 years, according to TrendForce, and this could lead to a market oversupply that would spell trouble for semiconductor companies elsewhere.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/chip_wars_china_oversupply/ Save to Pocket
Economy, Immigration Weigh on US Voters in Presidential Election Year
date: 2024-01-17, from: VOA News USA
The health of the economy often plays a big role in how Americans vote in general elections, including for the next president. This year, there are early signs that other issues are equally important to people as they prepare to cast their ballots in November. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the story from Washington.
https://www.voanews.com/a/economy-immigration-weigh-on-us-voters-in-presidential-election-year-/7443946.html Save to Pocket
The Allegheny Family Screening Tool’s Overestimation of Utility and Risk
date: 2024-01-17, from: Care
<p>The ACLU gained access to data from Allegheny Family Screening Tool (the pilot for predictive risk modeling in the family policing context) and examines how utility and risk were unduly inflated by the county.</p>https://logicmag.io/policy/allegheny-family-screening-tools-overestimation-of-utility-and-risk Save to Pocket
The Artifact news app (by the Instagram founders) is shutting down because…
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/0043791-the-artifact-news-app-by Save to Pocket
Judge Threatens Trump With Expulsion From Defamation Trial
date: 2024-01-17, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — A federal judge in New York on Wednesday threatened to expel former U.S. President Donald Trump from a civil trial after he repeatedly made side comments disparaging the testimony of his accuser, writer E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll is seeking damages from Trump, whom she accuses of defaming her after she accused him of sexually abusing her decades ago.
Judge Lewis Kaplan told Trump that his right to be at the trial would be revoked if he continued to ignore warnings to keep his comments to his lawyers quieter and out of earshot of the nine-member jury.
But after an initial warning, Carroll’s lawyer said Trump could still be heard making remarks to his lawyers, including “it is a witch hunt” and “it really is a con job.”
Kaplan, after excusing the jury for lunch, said, “Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial. I understand you’re probably eager for me to do that.”
“I would love it,” Trump shot back, shrugging as he sat between lawyers Alina Habba and Michael Madaio at the defense table.
“I know you would like it. You just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently,” Kaplan responded.
“You can’t either,” Trump muttered.
The exchange came after Carroll lawyer Shawn Crowley complained for a second time that Trump could be heard “loudly saying things that are false” as he sat at the defense table.
Kaplan said, “I’m just going to ask that Mr. Trump take special care to keep his voice down when conferring with counsel to make sure the jury does not hear it.”
The jury was seated less than 4 meters from where Trump was sitting.
Trump was particularly incensed that Kaplan refused to call off the proceedings on Thursday so Trump could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral in Florida and not miss any of the courtroom testimony.
Before Carroll resumed her testimony after lunch, Trump’s lawyers asked for Kaplan to recuse himself from the case because of “general hostility” toward the former president.
“Denied,” Kaplan said in a one-word response.
Carroll, now 80, has alleged that Trump decades ago sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf-Goodman department store and then defamed her by denying the attack occurred and saying that he did not know who she was. Carroll was a long-time advice columnist for Elle magazine at the time of the alleged assault.
A New York jury last year awarded Carroll $5 million in ruling that Trump sexually abused her and that he defamed Carroll in 2022 comments he made while denying the attack occurred and saying that she was “not my type.”
Carroll testified, “It means I’m too ugly to assault.”
An excerpt of Trump’s October 2022 deposition released by U.S. District Court for Southern New York included an exchange wherein Trump mistook a photo of Carroll for his ex-wife, Marla Maples.
In the current case, Kaplan has ruled that the facts of the alleged attack are already established by the earlier verdict and that the jury’s only decision is whether to award further damages, $10 million or more, because of 2019 remarks Trump made about Carroll while he was president.
As Trump watched from the defense table Wednesday, Carroll told the jurors, “I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened. He lied and shattered my reputation.”
Once, Carroll testified, she was a respected advice columnist. “Now, I’m known as the liar, the fraud and the whack job.”
Trump has made repeated disparaging comments about Carroll on his Truth Social platform in recent days leading up the trial.
Carroll testified, “He has continued to lie. He lied last month. He lied on Sunday. He lied yesterday.”
While attending the trial in New York, Trump, the leading Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential campaign, has shuttled back and forth between the courtroom and campaign appearances in the northeastern state of New Hampshire, where the first U.S. party primary election is set for next Tuesday.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-sex-abuse-accuser-testifies-ex-president-shattered-her-reputation-/7443914.html Save to Pocket
GUSTO Balloon Mission Maintains Course Circling Antarctic Skies
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
High above the icy landscape of Earth’s southernmost continent, the Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO) scientific balloon mission has been afloat for more than 15 days since its launch from McMurdo, Antarctica, on Dec. 31, 7:30 p.m. local time (Dec. 31, 1:30 a.m. EST). GUSTO is mapping a large portion of the Milky Way […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/gusto-balloon-mission-maintains-course-circling-antarctic-skies/ Save to Pocket
NASA Study: More Greenland Ice Lost Than Previously Estimated
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
A new, comprehensive analysis of satellite data finds that majority of glaciers on the landmass have retreated significantly. The Greenland Ice Sheet has shed about one-fifth more ice mass in the past four decades than previously estimated, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California reported in a new paper. The majority of glaciers […]
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/ice-glaciers/nasa-study-more-greenland-ice-lost-than-previously-estimated/ Save to Pocket
Michael Thorpe Studies Sediment from Source to Sink
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
Sedimentary and planetary geologist Michael Thorpe finds the stories rocks have to tell, those on Earth and those from Mars.
https://www.nasa.gov/people-of-nasa/goddard-people/michael-thorpe-studies-sediment-from-source-to-sink/ Save to Pocket
Can solar power be beamed down from space? Yes. Is it commercially viable? Not yet
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Caltech looks back on the highs and lows of the SSPD-1 project
A year after the launch of the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is revealing the highs and lows of the mission.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/highs_and_lows_of_sspd_1/ Save to Pocket
Frore’s AirJet Mini Slim is a smaller, lighter solid state cooling module for PCs and mobile devices
date: 2024-01-17, from: Liliputing
A big part of what makes modern computers tick are the cooling systems that keep the CPU, GPU, and other hardware from overheating and slowing down or burning out. Most PCs solve this with a combination of heat sinks and spinning fans, which can cause their own problems like noise and dust buildup. Most phones […]
The post Frore’s AirJet Mini Slim is a smaller, lighter solid state cooling module for PCs and mobile devices appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/frores-airjet-mini-slim-is-a-smaller-lighter-solid-state-cooling-module-for-pcs-and-mobile-devices/ Save to Pocket
Sea Center on Stearns Wharf Offers Free Admission for Underwater Parks Day Festival
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA—The Sea Center on Stearns Wharf is offering free admission to its Underwater Parks Day Festival on Saturday, January 20, 2024 with
The post Sea Center on Stearns Wharf Offers Free Admission for Underwater Parks Day Festival appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/17/sea-center-on-stearns-wharf-offers-free-admission-for-underwater-parks-day-festival/ Save to Pocket
The Thrill of College Basketball: More Than Just a Game
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
In the realm of sports, college basketball holds a unique position, embodying a blend of youthful energy, community spirit, and pure athletic talent. Unlike its professional counterpart, college basketball is often celebrated for its raw emotion, intense rivalries, and the sense of unity it brings to campuses across the United States. This article delves into […]
The post <strong>The Thrill of College Basketball: More Than Just a Game</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/the-thrill-of-college-basketball-more-than-just-a-game/ Save to Pocket
The Last Repair Shop
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/the-last-repair-shop Save to Pocket
Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojević hospitalized in Salt Lake City
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Golden State Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojevic hospitalized after medical emergency at a restaurant
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/warriors-assistant-coach-dejan-milojevic-hospitalized-in-salt-lake-city/ Save to Pocket
Young people are giving up on BBC News. A new podcast is helping try to get them back
date: 2024-01-17, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
We all know the direction of travel, even if we don’t know the stats off by heart: Legacy media hasn’t figured out how to give young people what they want. And it doesn’t really get more “legacy media” than the 101-year-old, publicly funded British Broadcasting Corporation. Here are some of those unsurprising but nonetheless grim…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/01/young-people-are-giving-up-on-bbc-news-a-new-podcast-is-helping-try-to-get-them-back/ Save to Pocket
JetBlue and Spirit’s merger is not cleared for takeoff
date: 2024-01-17, from: Marketplace Morning Report
A federal judge has blocked JetBlue’s efforts to purchase Spirit Airlines. The Justice Department had filed an antitrust lawsuit, saying the merger would eliminate a low-cost carrier that has been keeping airfares down. Also on the show: We all spent a lot in December, the market for super shoes is running hot, and China’s economic recovery looks shaky.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/jetblue-and-spirits-merger-is-not-cleared-for-takeoff Save to Pocket
How The New York Times is building experimental handwriting recognition for its crosswords app
date: 2024-01-17, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
As part of MakerWeek 2023, The New York Times’ annual hackathon, iOS and Android mobile engineers explored the ability to write in The New York Times Crosswords app on each respective platform. As an Android engineer who participated in the experiment, I’m excited to share my platform specific experience implementing on-device ML onto the Android…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/01/how-the-new-york-times-is-building-experimental-handwriting-recognition-for-its-crosswords-app/ Save to Pocket
How inside information gave 49ers a head start on preparing for Packers, Jordan Love
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 49ers’ defense is preparing for a Green Bay offensive system that they see in practice with regularity.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/how-inside-information-gave-49ers-a-head-start-on-preparing-for-packers-jordan-love/ Save to Pocket
NVMe consortium polishes its specs to support computational storage
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tech to shift storage to compute has so far failed to catch on in a big way
The NVM Express consortium has updated its specifications by adding a Computational Storage Feature, creating a standardized way for applications to talk to storage devices that include some processing capability.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/nvme_specs_get_an_update/ Save to Pocket
Signs that you need a technical writer
date: 2024-01-17, from: Blog by Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti
Soon after publishing Tips for hiring your first technical writer, some readers kindly suggested to follow up with a post covering the previous step in the tech writing journey, that is, the realization that one needs a technical writer. As there seems to be a strong appetite for this kind of content, I’m going to spend some words to list what I think are the most egregious signs that your team, company, or product requires a technical writer (or a tech writing team).
https://passo.uno/signs-need-tech-writer/ Save to Pocket
NASA’s Roman to Search for Signs of Dark Matter Clumps
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
Some of the finest, smallest details in the universe – the gaps between elongated groups of stars – may soon help astronomers reveal dark matter in greater detail than ever before. After NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches, by May 2027, researchers will use its images to explore what exists between looping tendrils of stars that are pulled […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/roman-space-telescope/nasas-roman-to-search-for-signs-of-dark-matter-clumps/ Save to Pocket
iOS apps can now offer external payment links, but Apple’s rules make it very, very unappealing
date: 2024-01-17, from: Liliputing
This week the Supreme Court declined to hear appeals in the Epic v. Apple anti-trust case that’s been underway for the past few years regarding the company’s App Store. That means lower court rulings stand, and that Apple does not have to allow users to sideload apps that aren’t available from the Play Store or […]
The post iOS apps can now offer external payment links, but Apple’s rules make it very, very unappealing appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/ios-apps-can-now-offer-external-payment-links-but-apples-rules-make-it-very-very-unappealing/ Save to Pocket
‘Student Should Have a Healthy-Looking BMI’: How Universities Bend Over Backwards to Accommodate Food Delivery Robots
date: 2024-01-17, from: 404 Media Group
Internal emails show how universities make nonsentient, profit-seeking Starship robots feel comfortable on campus.
https://www.404media.co/student-should-have-a-healthy-looking-bmi-how-universities-bend-over-backwards-to-accommodate-starship-food-delivery-robots/ Save to Pocket
Real estate deal collapses for vast ranch on pristine San Jose land
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
China-based Z&L Properties had agreed to sell the ranch, on some 3,654 acres of pristine hills, but the deal fell through.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/san-jose-real-estate-buy-land-china-ranch-build-home-house-develop/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Bluesky has launched RSS feeds.
https://openrss.org/blog/bluesky-has-launched-rss-feeds Save to Pocket
Um, Burt’s Bees has teamed up with Hidden Valley Ranch to sell…
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/0043792-um-burts-bees-has-teamed Save to Pocket
Could immutability be a Leap too far for openSUSE users?
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Update on Linux distro’s next major version heralds big changes ahead
The future of openSUSE is firming up, but possibly not in the direction that existing users of the distro will enjoy.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/opensuse_confirms_leap_16/ Save to Pocket
US Redesignates Yemen’s Houthis as Major Terror Group
date: 2024-01-17, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The United States is cracking down on Yemen’s Houthi rebels, redesignating them as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group following weeks of missile and drone attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
The move came nearly three years after the Houthis were first designated as a terror group and then subsequently delisted because of humanitarian concerns, and it followed repeated demands from the U.S. and other countries for the Houthis to stop firing on commercial shipping.
But the demands have been ignored, and attacks have continued despite a series of airstrikes by the U.S. and Britain, aimed at taking out radar systems and launch sites used in the attacks.
“We cannot sit idly by and watch what the Houthis are doing in the Red Sea and not recognize their actions for what they are,” a senior U.S. administration official told reporters, briefing the condition of anonymity ahead of the official announcement.
“These attacks fit the textbook definition of terrorism,” a second official said, likewise speaking on the condition of anonymity. “They have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners and our partners, jeopardized global trade and threatened freedom of navigation.”
U.S. officials point to about 30 attacks from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen since mid-November, impacting citizens, cargo and vessels from more than 50 countries.
Officials have also said that since the attacks started, some 2,000 ships have been diverted thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea. Additionally, Houthi militants have threatened or taken hostage mariners from more than 20 countries.
On Tuesday, the U.S. for the first time carried out a series of preemptive strikes, destroying four Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles before they could be launched.
That followed two waves of U.S. and British strikes last week against more than 60 targets in 16 locations across Houthi-controlled Yemen.
Houthi officials Wednesday described the U.S. designation as an attempt at “blackmail.”
“Whoever fails with aggression will certainly fail with a decision [of designation],” Houthi media official Abdul-Rahman Al-Ahnumi said in an interview with Reuters.
“The decision came at this time after Britain and America launched a military aggression against Yemen and failed to achieve the same goal, which is to dissuade Yemen from its position,” Al-Ahnumi said. “It is also an attempt to dissuade Yemen from its position supporting Palestine and Gaza.”
But in separate statements Wednesday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the Houthi attacks “unprecedented.”
“This designation is an important tool to impede terrorist funding to the Houthis, further restrict their access to financial markets,” Sullivan said.
“The Houthis must be held accountable for their actions,” Blinken said.
Several U.S. officials, though, left open the possibility the designation could be revoked if the attacks cease.
“The ultimate goal of sanctions is to convince the Houthis to de-escalate and bring about a positive change in behavior,” one of the senior administration officials who briefed on the condition of anonymity told reporters. “If the Houthis cease their attacks, we can consider delisting designation.”
But the official added the U.S. is taking steps to ensure that the designation does not harm efforts to help Yemen’s civilian population, where the United Nations estimates 24 million people are at risk of starvation.
The re-designation of the Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group will not go into effect for 30 days, “to allow us to ensure robust humanitarian carve-outs are in place,” the official said.
The official also said commercial shipments to Yemen of for food, medicine and fuel would not be affected by the sanctions.
The designation, however, will block the ability of the Houthis to access the U.S. financial system and paves the way for other sanctions and law enforcement actions against the group.
U.S. officials said the ability to ensure to continuation of humanitarian aid played a role in the decision to label the Houthis with the SDGT designation.
They said designating the Houthis with the harsher Foreign Terrorist Organization, or FTO, label would require additional sanctions that could ensnare aid organizations trying to provide relief for Yemen’s civilians.
“We found in our conversations with groups that are providing humanitarian aid in Yemen that an FTO designation ran the risk of having a deterrent effect on some of those aid groups continuing to provide aid, worried that they might be charged as providing material support to a terrorist organization,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters during a briefing on Wednesday.
“So, when weighing those options, we decided that the SDGT designation gave us the tools to deny the Houthis access to the financial system, and gave us the tools to impose additional actions, additional sanctions, on anyone who does business with the Houthis, while minimizing some of the downstream harm to Yemeni civilians,” he said.
Some aid groups, though, have already raised concerns that the SDGT designation will hurt more than it helps.
“Even with carve-outs, there is likely to be a serious chilling effect,” the International Rescue Committee’s Anastasia Moran said in a statement. “We are concerned some private sector actors, including food importers and banks facilitating transactions for humanitarian organizations, may choose to disengage altogether.”
In contrast, some U.S. lawmakers are warning the SDGT designation does not go far enough.
“Designating the Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist only applies sanctions and avoids taking any real action,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner said in a statement. “It’s time to lead and protect and call them what they are — a Foreign Terrorist Organization.”
Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen specialist at the University of Cambridge in Britain, cautioned that regardless of the type of terrorist designation, the impact on the Houthis was likely to be minimal.
“Houthi hardliners and leaders will see this as a badge of honor and continue business as usual,” she told VOA via email.
“They will not be the ones to suffer,” she added. “The war economy is booming and has enriched many powerful figures. The smuggling trade may even prove more lucrative following the designation.”
There are also questions about how the new designation will affect countries like Iran that have been supplying the Houthis.
“They [Houthis] currently use IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] funding, training and weapons to destabilize Yemen and engage in terrorist activities or terrorism that affects the region,” said a third senior administration official in response to a question from VOA.
“So, we will continue to also counter Iranian malign influence wherever we can,” the official said. “Of course, the choice to move away from Iran is now in the hands of the Houthis.”
The U.S. first designated the Houthis, also known as Ansarallah, as both an SDGT and a FTO during the last days of President Donald Trump’s administration in January 2021.
According to a statement by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the move was intended “to hold Ansarallah accountable for its terrorist acts, including cross-border attacks threatening civilian populations, infrastructure and commercial shipping.”
But the designation was revoked about a month later under current U.S. President Joe Biden, with officials citing the need to get humanitarian aid into Yemen to prevent a possible famine.
“This decision is a recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the time. “By focusing on alleviating the humanitarian situation in Yemen, we hope the Yemeni parties can also focus on engaging in dialogue.”
The White House on Wednesday defended its decision to remove the terror designation for the Houthis, despite the need to redesignate them now.
“A big reason why we delisted them literally on day one was to address a dire, dire humanitarian situation on the ground,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
The Pentagon on Wednesday said the decision to designate the Houthis would not affect military operations in the region.
White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report. Some information came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-re-designates-yemen-s-houthis-as-a-major-terror-group/7443801.html Save to Pocket
Man caught throwing rocks at cars from Campbell overpass
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Police investigating similar incidents over last few months.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/man-caught-throwing-rocks-at-cars-from-campbell-overpass/ Save to Pocket
The Quest for Simple Rules to Build a Microbial Community
date: 2024-01-17, from: Quanta Magazine
Microbiologists are searching for a universal theory of how bacteria form communities based not on their species but on the roles they play.The post The Quest for Simple Rules to Build a Microbial Community first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-quest-for-simple-rules-to-build-a-microbial-community-20240117/ Save to Pocket
California foreclosure filings climb 41% off pandemic era lows
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
California’s 32,905 foreclosure filings in 2023 was No. 2 among the states.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/california-foreclosure-filings-climb-41-off-pandemic-era-lows/ Save to Pocket
@Ayjay blog (date: 2024-01-17, from: Ayjay blog)
Jaroslav Pelikan: Origen may … have been the first church father to study Hebrew, “in opposition to the spirit of his time and of his people,” as Jerome says; according to Eusebius, he “learned it thoroughly,” but there is reason to doubt the accuracy of this report. Jerome, however, was rightly celebrated as “a trilingual […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/45921-2/ Save to Pocket
This Distant Exoplanet Has a 350,000-Mile-Long Tail, Like a Comet
date: 2024-01-17, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A stream of particles flung from the planet’s star is causing its atmosphere to boil away and lose 200,000 tons of mass per second
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-distant-exoplanet-has-350000-mile-long-tail-like-comet-180983597/ Save to Pocket
Looking back at 2023
date: 2024-01-17, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
Looking back at 2023
We played at least 65 games in 2023 on the Grenzland Discord server! Some more were played offline. But those 65 games were open tables in one form or another.
I played in 11 of these games and I ran 31 of them.
| Games | Referee |
|---|---|
| 31 | @alex |
| 28 | @phf |
| 5 | @olupo |
| 1 | @wandererbill |
“Play Games 🤝 Run Games”
Of games I ran:
| Games | Setting | System |
|---|---|---|
| 13 | Stonehell | Halberds & Helmets |
| 12 | Riesige Riesen | Halberds & Helmets |
| 4 | Ultraviolet Grasslands | Halberts |
| 1 | One-shot in the Tau Subsector | Classic Traveller |
| 1 | Der Wald ohne Wiederkehr | Das Schwarze Auge, Basis Spiel |
On the German ADDCON Server I ran:
| Games | Setting | System |
|---|---|---|
| 16 | Arden Vul megadungeon | AD&D 1st ed |
| 4 | Elredd wilderness exploration | AD&D 1st ed |
I also played in two sessions by @settembrini and one session by the @ghoul.
All in all, for the games I played in:
| Games | Referee | System |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | @phf | Halberds & Helmets |
| 2 | @settembrini | AD&D 1st ed |
| 1 | @olupo | Halberds & Helmets |
| 1 | @wandererbill | Fate |
| 1 | @ghoul | AD&D 1st ed |
2024-01-16. Got more numbers from the ADDKON Server:
@settembrini writes:
27 Mal Miesbohl geleitet, davon zu Beginn das Froschgottkloster, dann das Zeughaus des Elementaren Bösen und gaanz viel Brennglob.
The ghoul writes:
Ich habe nur 9× Lakedonia geleitet in 2023.
Blut & Glas writes:
Ich habe 1× (in Worten: ein mal) Narkwoll geleitet^^
Taco Jr. writes:
Ich habe 1× Alt Kattun geleitet 🫣
Elder Thing writes:
Ich habe 2023 2× Schutzheim geleitet!
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-01-01-looking-back Save to Pocket
What’s worse than paying an extortion bot that auto-pwned your database?
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Paying one that lied to you and only saved the first 20 rows of each table
Publicly exposed PostgreSQL and MySQL databases with weak passwords are being autonomously wiped out by a malicious extortion bot – one that marks who pays up and who is not getting their data back.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/extortion_bot_is_autopwning_postgresql/ Save to Pocket
Webb Shows Many Early Galaxies Looked Like Pool Noodles, Surfboards
date: 2024-01-17, from: NASA breaking news
Researchers analyzing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like surfboards and pool noodles – and are rarely round, like volleyballs or frisbees. “Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we studied appear to be flattened in two dimensions,” explained lead author […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/webb-shows-many-early-galaxies-looked-like-pool-noodles-surfboards/ Save to Pocket
Huh, Rob Reiner is doing a sequel to This Is Spinal Tap…
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/01/0043785-huh-rob-reiner-is-doing Save to Pocket
San Francisco homicide: Man shot in Mission Bay
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The shooting was reported at 12:07 a.m. in the 100 block of Berry Street, across Third Street from Oracle Park.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/san-francisco-homicide-man-shot-in-mission-bay/ Save to Pocket
Princess of Wales Kate Middleton in hospital after undergoing abdominal surgery
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Catherine, Princess of Wales, will spend up to two weeks recovering in hospital after successfully undergoing abdominal surgery.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/princess-of-wales-kate-middleton-in-hospital-after-undergoing-abdominal-surgery/ Save to Pocket
How I got $146.19 in free food and drink from Bay Area restaurants for my birthday
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Here’s how our hungry reporter saved nearly $150 with birthday deals from Jamba Juice, Red Robin, McDonald’s and 12 other chain restaurants.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/how-i-got-146-19-in-free-food-and-drink-from-bay-area-restaurants-for-my-birthday/ Save to Pocket
AI investment still at the planning stage through 2024, Gartner says
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Imagined impact of GenAI on GDP is over-optimistic, analyst firm says
Gartner thinks the ever-expanding GenAI ecosystem is being hyped with real customer deployments not emerging in earnest until next year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/ai_investment_gartner_tech_spending/ Save to Pocket
A Golden State Killer movie with Vincent Gallo and James Franco? Yes, of course there’s controversy
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
It may come as no surprise to many that a film about the crimes of serial killer and rapist Joseph DeAngelo, starring two polarizing Hollywood actors, could be mired in questions about its treatment of female actors.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/a-golden-state-killer-movie-with-vincent-gallo-and-james-franco-who-thought-the-world-needed-this/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Notes
on the archive
element in the source
namespace. It’s important that we share our ideas and collaborate,
and listen and ask the right people to help. Manton was asking why
weren’t his ideas on archiving incorporated in other people’s work, it’s
the same concern I have, why didn’t we work together on this Manton? Two
heads are better than one in things like this. I think Automattic may be
the place to get together on this. Esp since they are the market leader
now in this area. What they do, right off the bat, has to be supported
everywhere, so we want them to do a good job. 😄
http://scripting.com/2024/01/17.html#a142928 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I got the help I needed yesterday, pointing me in the right direction wrt APIs for ChatGPT. I’m ready to try some ideas out once I get to a stopping point on my current project. Can’t wait to try out these ideas.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/17.html#a142706 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
ChatGPT is like having a programming partner you can try ideas out on, or ask for alternative approaches, and they’re always there, and not too busy to help out. They know everything you don’t know and need to know, and rarely hallucinate (you have to check the work, same as with a human btw). It’s remarkable how much it is like having an ideal human programming partner. It’s the kind of helper I aspire to be.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/17.html#a142417 Save to Pocket
Groundbreaking South Bay politician receives lifetime achievement award at MLK Day luncheon
date: 2024-01-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Former Santa Clara County Supervisor Blanca Alvarado says she’s honored to receive an award named for Iola Williams, her late colleague on the San Jose City Council in the 1980s.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/17/groundbreaking-politician-receives-lifetime-achievement-award-at-mlk-day-luncheon/ Save to Pocket
Pluralistic: The super-rich got that way through monopolies (17 Jan 2024)
date: 2024-01-17, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links The super-rich got that way through monopolies: A report in honor of Davos. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading The super-rich got that way through monopolies (permalink) Just in time for Davos, here’s ‘Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide,” a report from a coalition of international tax justice and anti-corporate activist groups: https://www.balancedeconomy.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Davos-Taken-not-Earned-full-Report-2024-FINAL.pdf Everyone – even the World Economic Forum – says that wealth inequality is a serious problem, corroding our politics and our social cohesion. What this report does is link that inequality to monopolies, which produce the billionaires who are wrecking the world. The rise of monopolies over the past 40 years came about as the result of specific, deliberate policy choices. As the report documents, the wealthiest people in America funneled a fortune into neutering antitrust enforcement, through the “consumer welfare” doctrine. This is an economic theory that equates monopolies with efficiency: “If everyone is buying the same things from the same store, that tells you the store is doing something right, not something criminal.” 40 years ago, and ever since, the wealthy have funded think-tanks, university programs and even “continuing education” programs for federal judges to push this line: https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down They didn’t do this for ideological reasons – they were chasing material goals. Monopolies produce vast profits, and those profits produce vast wealth. The rise and rise of the super rich cannot be decoupled from the rise and rise of monopolies. If you’re new to this, you might think that “monopoly” only refers to a sector in which there is only one seller. But that’s not what economists mean when they talk about monopolies and monopolization: for them, a monopoly is a company with power. Economists who talk about monopolies mean companies that “can act independently without needing to consider the responses of competitors, customers, workers, or even governments.” One way to measure that power is through markups (“the difference between the selling price of goods or services and their cost”). Very large companies in concentrated industries have very high markups, and they’re getting higher. From 2017-22, the 20 largest companies in the world had average markups of 50%. The 100 largest companies average 43%. The smallest half of companies get average markups of 25%. Those markups rose steeply during the covid lockdowns – and so did the wealth of the billionaires who own them. Tech billionaires – Bezos, Brin and Page, Gates and Ballmer – all made their fortunes from monopolies. Warren Buffet is a proud monopolist who says “the single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power… if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10 percent, then you’ve got a terrible business.” We are living in the age of the monopoly. In the 1930s, the top 0.1% of US companies accounted for less than half of America’s GDP. Today, it’s 90%. And it’s accelerating, with global mergers climbing from 2,676 in 1985 to 62,000 in 2021. Monopoly’s cheerleaders claim that these numbers vindicate them. Monopolies are so efficient that everyone wants to create them. Those efficiencies can be seen in the markups monopolies can charge, and the profits they can make. If a monopoly has a 50% markup, that’s just the “efficiency of scale.” But what is the actual shape of this “efficiency?” How is it manifest? The report’s authors answer this with one word: power. Monopolists have the power “to extract wealth from, to restrict the freedoms of, and to manipulate or steer the vastly larger numbers of losers.” They establish themselves as gatekeepers and create chokepoints that they can use to raise prices paid by their customers and lower the payout to their suppliers: https://chokepointcapitalism.com/ These chokepoints let monopolies usurp “one of the ultimate prerogatives of state power: taxation.” Amazon sellers pay a 51% tax to sell on the platform. App Store suppliers pay a 30% tax on every dollar they make with their apps. That translates into higher costs. Consider a good that costs $10 to make: the bottom 50% of companies (by size) would charge $12.50 for that product on average. The largest companies would charge $15. Thus monopolies don’t just make their owners richer – they make everyone else poorer, too. This power to set prices is behind the greedflation (or, more politely, “seller’s inflation”). The CEOs of the largest companies in the world keep getting on investor calls and bragging about this: https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power The food system is incredibly monopolistic. The Cargill family own the largest commodity trader in the world, which is how they built up a family fortune worth $43b. Cargill is one of the “ABCD” companies (“Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus”) that control the world’s food supply, and they tripled their profits during the lockdown. Monopolies gouge everyone – even governments. Pfizer charged the NHS £18-22/shot for vaccines that cost £5/shot to make. They took the British government for £2bn – that’s enough to pay last year’s pay hike for NHS nurses, six times over, But monopolies also abuse their suppliers, especially their employees. All over the world, competition authorities are uncovering “wage fixing” and “no poaching” agreements among large firms, who collude to put a cap on what workers in their sector can earn. Unions report workers having their pay determined by algorithms. Bosses lock employees in with noncompetes and huge repayment bills for “training”: https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose Monopolies corrupt our governments. Companies with huge markups can spend some of that money on lobbying. The 20 largest companies in the world spend more than €155m/year lobbying in the US and alone, not counting the money they spend on industry associations and other cutouts that lobby on their behalf. Big Tech leads the pack on lobbying, accounting for 82% of EU lobbying spending and 58% of US lobbying. One key monopoly lobbying priority is blocking climate action, from Apple lobbying against right-to-repair, which creates vast mountains of e-waste, to energy monopolist lobbying against renewables. And energy companies are getting more monopolistic, with Exxonmobil spending $65b to buy Pioneer and Chevron spending $60b to buy Hess. Many of the world’s richest people are fossil fuel monopolists, like Charles and Julia Koch, the 18th and 19th richest people on the Forbes list. They spend fortunes on climate denial. When people talk about the climate impact of billionaires, they tend to focus on the carbon footprints of their mansions and private jets, but the true environmental cost of the ultra rich comes from the anti-renewables, pro-emissions lobbying they buy with their monopoly winnings. The good news is that the tide is turning on monopolies. A coalition of “businesses, workers, farmers, consumers and other civil society groups” have created a “remarkably successful anti-monopoly movement.” The past three years saw more regulatory action on corporate mergers, price-gouging, predatory pricing, labor abuses and other evils of monopoly than we got in the past 40 years. The business press – cheerleaders for monopoly – keep running editorials claiming that enforcers like Lina Khan are getting nothing done. Sure, WSJ, Khan’s getting nothing done – that’s why you ran 80 editorial about her: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion (Khan’s winning like crazy. Just last month she killed four megamergers:) https://www.thesling.org/the-ftc-just-blocked-four-mergers-in-a-month-heres-how-its-latest-win-fits-into-the-broader-campaign-to-revive-antitrust/ The EU and UK are taking actions that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Canada is finally set to get a real competition law, with the Trudeau government promising to add an “abuse of dominance” rule to Canada’s antitrust system. Even more exciting are the moves in the global south. In South Africa, “competition law contains some of the most progressive ideas of all”: It actively seeks to create greater economic participation, particularly for ‘historically disadvantaged persons’ as part of its public interest considerations in merger decisions. Balzac wrote, “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” Chances are, the rapsheet includes an antitrust violation. Getting rid of monopolies won’t get rid of all the billionaires, but it’ll certainly get rid of a hell of a lot of them. Hey look at this (permalink) The coming storm https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/the-coming-storm.html Retrocomputer miniatures https://store.transmutable.com/ Google Search Really Has Gotten Worse, Researchers Find https://www.404media.co/google-search-really-has-gotten-worse-researchers-find/ This day in history (permalink) #15yrsago Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance, a look at the bumbling, murdering, drunken idiots (and others) who’ve served as vice-president of the USA https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/18/veeps-profiles-in-insignificance-a-look-at-the-bumbling-murdering-drunken-idiots-and-others-whove-served-as-vice-president-of-the-usa/ #10yrsago Tim Wu on FCC’s net neutrality disaster https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/01/14/a-fema-level-fail-the-law-professor-who-coined-net-neutrality-lashes-out-at-the-fccs-legal-strategy/ #10yrsago Random NSA program generator, with denials https://divergentdave.github.io/nsa-o-matic/ #10yrsago Parfaitzilla: the dessert that ate Japan https://mochihead.tumblr.com/post/31243751745 #10yrsago Scoring Obama’s NSA reforms (spoiler: it’s not good) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/rating-obamas-nsa-reform-plan-eff-scorecard-explained #15yrsago Mr Chicken: the genius who paints London’s fried-chicken signs https://web.archive.org/web/20101208073826/https://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/march/meet-mr-chicken #10yrsago Congress requires publicly funded research to be publicly available https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/newly-passed-appropriations-bill-makes-even-more-publicly-funded-research-available-online #10yrsago Android malware uses accelerometer readings to figure out if it was running on a real phone or in emulation https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/ #5yrsago An archive of Freedom, Paul Robeson and Louis Burnham’s radical Harlem newspaper https://web.archive.org/web/20190123223255/http://dlib.nyu.edu/freedom/ #5yrsago Unsealed court documents reveal that Facebook knew kids were being tricked into spending thousands of dollars on their parents’ credit cards https://revealnews.org/blog/a-judge-unsealed-a-trove-of-internal-facebook-documents-following-our-legal-action/ #5yrsago Why charter schools are the flashpoint for the LA teachers’ strike https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/rising-tide-teacher-strikes-finally-exposing-corrupt-charter-school-agenda.html #5yrsago Now EVERYBODY hates the new EU Copyright Directive https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/now-everybody-hates-new-eu-copyright-directive #1yrago Care Inflation: The inflation no one wants to talk about https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/18/wages-for-housework/#low-wage-workers-vs-poor-consumers #1yrago Eleanor Janega’s “Once and Future Sex”: The true, weird, horny history of medieval gender and sex https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/17/ren-faire/#going-medieval 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 Bezzle, read by Wil Wheaton (excerpt) https://craphound.com/news/2024/01/14/the-bezzle-read-by-wil-wheaton-excerpt/ Upcoming appearances: Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech (Crash Course Economics) https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YsKONp5zRgeF6SVuIOb6hQ#/registration Books & Books (Coral Gables, Florida), Jan 22 https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/ Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2024 (Berlin), Jan 29 https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024 The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 30 https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html Recent appearances: The Lost Cause (The Writer’s Voice) https://www.writersvoice.net/2024/01/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause/ 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 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/2024/01/17/monopolies-produce-billionaires/ Save to Pocket
Podcast: Google Finally Endorses Right to Repair
date: 2024-01-17, from: 404 Media Group
This week we talk right to repair, an online dating lawsuit, and a follow-up to the spread of AI-enabled surveillance cameras around the country.
https://www.404media.co/404-media-podcast-week-21/ Save to Pocket
AI political disinformation is a huge problem – but harder to fight than ever
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
How OpenAI, Microsoft, and others are trying to combat deepfakes and more
Analysis Tackling AI disinformation is more crucial than ever for tech companies this year as they brace for the upcoming US presidential election.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/ai_political_disinformation/ Save to Pocket
Suspect allegedly used kitchen knives to assault, cut victim
date: 2024-01-17, from: Guam Daily Post
A 26-year-old suspect was accused of cutting a man’s hand while wielding and swinging two kitchen knives at him.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/suspect-allegedly-used-kitchen-knives-to-assault-cut-victim/article_aa0b94ae-b4da-11ee-9a34-3fcf31a89dd5.html Save to Pocket
Start of trial for 1-year-old’s death delayed
date: 2024-01-17, from: Guam Daily Post
The death of a Korean tourist has delayed pretrial matters in a case in which a mother is accused of beating her 1-year-old son to death.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/start-of-trial-for-1-year-olds-death-delayed/article_6fbf04ce-b4d6-11ee-b946-6314b2dbf97f.html Save to Pocket
Suspect charged with custodial interference of 15-year-old girl
date: 2024-01-17, from: Guam Daily Post
A man faces felony charges after a teenage girl’s father filed a complaint with police when the girl didn’t return home from school.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/suspect-charged-with-custodial-interference-of-15-year-old-girl/article_5d67f2be-b421-11ee-a0ee-ab5e29515696.html Save to Pocket
Kick the Fat run set for March
date: 2024-01-17, from: Guam Daily Post
Returning in its 28th year, Pay-Less Markets announced its Kick the Fat 5K/10K Run/Walk and Wellness Fair will take place in March.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/kick-the-fat-run-set-for-march/article_3e124af0-b4de-11ee-91c1-fb45ff936f53.html Save to Pocket
Smokin’ Wheels canceled, GRF seeking a licensing agreement
date: 2024-01-17, from: Guam Daily Post
Without a track to use or a lease to utilize the Guam International Raceway in Yigo, the Guam Racing Federation announced that Smokin’ Wheels, the event that has attracted thousands of motor sports competitors and car enthusiasts from around the…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/smokin-wheels-canceled-grf-seeking-a-licensing-agreement/article_bac985a6-b4f5-11ee-a937-cbcf3c72e374.html Save to Pocket
Speaker: Hospital seems ‘to be doubly short’ for mold mitigation
date: 2024-01-17, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Memorial Hospital Authority continues to tackle the mold issue at the island’s only public hospital. While there are planned capital improvement projects to mitigate the spread of mold, some of which will be funded by federal dollars, shortages…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/speaker-hospital-seems-to-be-doubly-short-for-mold-mitigation/article_6751a6ee-b430-11ee-b5fc-f76b15fae88c.html Save to Pocket
Adelup: Woman fined for illegal dumping at Two Lovers Point
date: 2024-01-17, from: Guam Daily Post
A woman was cited for illegal dumping after park police officers “sifted through the trash and discovered a name and address on multiple documents,” a press release from Adelup stated.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/adelup-woman-fined-for-illegal-dumping-at-two-lovers-point/article_06c8240a-b4ef-11ee-a292-0fb2731d3a7c.html Save to Pocket
How Climate Denial Is Changing
date: 2024-01-17, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Nashville recorded sub-zero temperatures for only the second time since 1996 • Heavy rains left at least 11 dead in Rio de Janeiro • Invasive and deadly fire ants have been spotted “rafting” on Australian flood waters.
THE TOP FIVE
- Climate denial tactics are changing
The climate denial movement has entered a new phase, suggests new research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The study analyzed transcripts of more than 12,000 climate-related YouTube videos posted since 2018 and found evidence that “old denial” narratives (Global warming isn’t real! Humans have nothing to do with it!) are becoming less common as the effects of climate change become undeniable. But they’re being replaced by what the researchers call “new denial” tactics. These narratives focus on discrediting climate solutions like renewable energy projects and electric vehicles, or downplaying the harmful effects of global warming. “New denial” claims more than tripled since 2018; “old denial” claims were down by one-third.
The shift exposes a gap in YouTube’s disinformation policies: While the platform has cracked down on advertising on videos that deny outright that climate change is real, no such rules exist for the wave of “new denial.” The study estimates YouTube could be making up to $13.4 million per year in ad revenue from channels that promote denial. “Given that the battleground has shifted and the new denial is the biggest component of climate denial content overall, it’s time for them to extend their rules to that as well,” Imran Ahmed, founder and chief executive officer of the CCDH, told Bloomberg Green.
- Shipping emissions on the rise due to Red Sea conflict
Greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector are increasing due to ongoing disruption in the Red Sea, Reuters reports. The Red Sea is the gateway to the Suez Canal, which offers a quick route for ships transporting goods from Asia to Europe. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have been attacking ships in the region in response to the Israel-Hamas war. To avoid the conflict, vessels are taking longer routes via the southern tip of Africa and burning more fuel as a result. The average container vessel transporting goods from China to Rotterdam via the Suez Canal would spew about 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide, but that total jumps to 55,000 tons if that ship has to go the long way, Reuters says. And as ships increase their speeds to make up for lost time, they produce even more pollution. International shipping already accounts for about 2% of global energy-related CO2, according to the International Energy Agency.
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- Southeast Asia boosts solar and wind capacity by 20%
Southeast Asia has increased its solar- and wind-power capacity by 20% in the last year, according to a new report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM). The analysis looks at the energy mix across 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). These include Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Cambodia. It finds that solar and wind account for 9% of electricity generating capacity in the region, and flags Vietnam as being a regional leader. When combined with hydropower, geothermal, and bioenergy, this brings the ASEAN bloc’s renewable capacity to 32%, which is very near its goal of 35% by 2025. GEM says this target is therefore “unambitious.” The report cautions that fossil fuel use is likely to rise in the region as “energy demands are outpacing utility-scale solar and wind development.”
- Mountain goats are becoming more nocturnal
Mountain goats are daytime creatures, and they usually do most of their foraging while the sun is up. But as global temperatures rise, they are becoming more active at night, according to a new study seen by The Guardian. Researchers from the University of Sassari, in Sardinia, tracked the behaviors of the Alpine ibex goat over 13 years and found that on especially warm days, the animals were more likely to be active at night, even though this put them at higher risk of being attacked by predators. “We can expect that during the night when the temperature is lower other animals will shift their activity towards the nocturnal hours,” Francesca Brivio, who co-authored the study, tells The Guardian. “If during the day it is too hot to eat or to be active, they will prefer to perform all their activities, like foraging, at night.”
- Tracking 2000 years of climate change
Climate scientist Ed Hawkins, creator of the warming stripes, put together a detailed graphic that tracks changes in the climate system alongside important milestones in human history, such as the invention of the steam engine and the discovery of global warming. “In every case, the recent changes are rapid and unusual compared to before human influence on the climate,” he says. Take a look:
THE KICKER
“Do you think those CEOs are going to say, ‘Oh my God, they just elected a new president, let’s go back and build internal combustion engine cars?’ Not on your life. Not happening.” –U.S. climate envoy John Kerry on whether a second Trump presidency would halt America’s clean energy transition
https://heatmap.news/climate/climate-denial-shipping-emissions Save to Pocket
Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
CEO stays tight-lipped in front of MPs while Fujitsu admits moral responsibility for compensation
Post Office chief exec Nick Read left British politicians shocked with his evidence before a Parliamentary committee yesterday after he admitted he could not say when the public body at the center of the historic miscarriage of justice knew when its system was at fault.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/post_office_inquiry_latest/ Save to Pocket
For Community College Students, Sundance Film Festival Offers A Foot In The Door
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
In a town where USC, UCLA, and AFI tout their powerful alumni networks, community colleges have a stake in developing future members of the film industry.
https://laist.com/news/education/for-community-college-students-sundance-film-festival-offers-a-foot-in-the-door Save to Pocket
30 Years After The Northridge Quake, What’ve We Learned?
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-18, from: The LAist
A whole lot has changed, but the risk of catastrophic quakes remains.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/30-years-after-the-northridge-quake-whatve-we-learned Save to Pocket
The Northridge Earthquake Rocked Southern California 30 Years Ago. We Asked For Your Memories
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
The emotional stories from those who lived through and survived the magnitude 6.7 quake that shook Southern California on Jan. 17, 1994.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/the-northridge-earthquake-rocked-southern-california-30-years-ago-we-asked-for-your-memories Save to Pocket
The FAFSA Rollout Has Been Rough On Students. The Biggest Problem Is Yet To Come
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
The Education Department has made a big mistake with this year’s FAFSA — one that could cost students financial aid they’re entitled to. It’s now grappling with how to implement a fix.
https://laist.com/news/education/the-fafsa-rollout-has-been-rough-on-students-the-biggest-problem-is-yet-to-come Save to Pocket
Hanford Program Supports Teen Parents While They Finish High School
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
The program is called Helping Our Parenting Students Excel, or HOPE.
https://laist.com/news/education/hanford-program-supports-teen-parents-while-they-finish-high-school Save to Pocket
30 Years Since The Destructive And Deadly 6.7 Northridge Quake, We Remember That Terrifying Day And The Aftermath
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
The quake killed 58 people, injured more than 9,000, displaced 125,000 residents. Larry Mantle, longtime host of “AirTalk” on 89.3 FM, remembers how communities came together.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/northridge-earthquake-anniversary-30-years-memories Save to Pocket
Each Facebook User is Monitored by Thousands of Companies
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Markup blog
A new study looks at who is sending information about your online activity to Facebook
https://themarkup.org/privacy/2024/01/17/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-study-indicates Save to Pocket
Ditch Google Maps
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Markup blog
I found a strong alternative in Apple Maps
https://themarkup.org/gentle-january/2024/01/17/ditch-google-maps Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
How the Anti-Trump Coalition Crumbled.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/can-joe-biden-win-2024-presidential-election-anti-trump-coalition.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Judge Aileen Cannon is sabotaging the Trump classifed docs case.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/judge-aileen-cannon-trump-classifed-sabotage.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Tesla Drivers in Chicago Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/business/tesla-charging-chicago-cold-weather.html?unlocked_article_code=1.OU0.A6Nl.4CKbbA6aKP9B&smid=url-share Save to Pocket
Bank fees, Apple fees and shipping fees
date: 2024-01-17, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Many of the nation’s largest banks have reported mixed results recently. Banks often turn to fees – including overdraft charges – to help boost their bottom lines. But a Biden administration rule announced Wednesday would reduce those fees and save consumers billions a year. Then, Apple is making changes to its App Store but will still charge a hefty commission. And shipping rates have soared following continued Red Sea attacks.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/bank-fees-apple-fees-and-shipping-fees Save to Pocket
Microsoft touts migration to Windows 11 as painless, though wallets may disagree
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Millions have perfectly serviceable PCs running Windows 10 at home
Microsoft’s desperation to persuade customers that migrating to Windows 11 is a painless process has taken a new turn, thanks to a relentlessly perky video: “Make Your Move to Windows 11 Easier.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/windows_11_migration_easy/ Save to Pocket
Code Written with AI Assistants Is Less Secure
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-05, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Interesting research: “Do Users Write More Insecure Code with AI Assistants?“:
Abstract: We conduct the first large-scale user study examining how users interact with an AI Code assistant to solve a variety of security related tasks across different programming languages. Overall, we find that participants who had access to an AI assistant based on OpenAI’s codex-davinci-002 model wrote significantly less secure code than those without access. Additionally, participants with access to an AI assistant were more likely to believe they wrote secure code than those without access to the AI assistant. Furthermore, we find that participants who trusted the AI less and engaged more with the language and format of their prompts (e.g. re-phrasing, adjusting temperature) provided code with fewer security vulnerabilities. Finally, in order to better inform the design of future AI-based Code assistants, we provide an in-depth analysis of participants’ language and interaction behavior, as well as release our user interface as an instrument to conduct similar studies in the future…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/01/code-written-with-ai-assistants-is-less-secure.html Save to Pocket
China’s population declines for second straight year
date: 2024-01-17, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Data released on Wednesday showed that China had a population of 1.4 billion at the end of 2023 — a 2.08 million decrease from 2022. The decline underscores concerns about the future growth of the world’s second largest economy. Then, the U.K.’s Post Office scandal rumbles on, and pricey, high-tech sneakers for runners becomes a big business.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/chinas-population-declines-for-second-straight-year Save to Pocket
Windows Server 2022 patch is breaking apps for some users
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Uninstall the update or edit the Windows registry to restore order
The latest Windows Server 2022 patch has broken the Chrome browser, and short of uninstalling the update, a registry hack is the only way to restore service for affected users.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/windows_server_2022_patch_breaks/ Save to Pocket
LEVER TIME: Trump Won Iowa – Can He Beat The Supreme Court?
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Lever News
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a caucus night party in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
https://www.levernews.com/lever-time-trump-won-iowa-can-he-beat-the-supreme-court/ Save to Pocket
The ‘nothing-happened’ Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world’s computers
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
…though bonkers conspiracies on solving date-field problem never died down
Retro Tech Week Forty years ago, both Jerome and Marilyn Murray saw their brainchild reach the light of day. In 1984, their book, Computers in Crisis, was published, becoming the first authoritative guide to the Millennium Bug coding problem, which, in the final year of the century, would consume media, political and business attention.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/y2k_feature/ Save to Pocket
Toyota Is Far Less Climate-Friendly Than Most Americans Think
date: 2024-01-17, from: Heatmap News
A year ago, the Toyota Prius went from bulbous to badass. The hybrid icon got its most dramatic redesign in two decades, which dispensed with the familiar friendly and rounded look for an angular, almost menacing front end. The vehicle, which once again came in traditional hybrid and plug-in hybrid variants, earned enthusiasm from buyers and plaudits from the auto press. What Toyota didn’t do, curiously, was finally turn the Prius into a true battery electric vehicle.
The world’s largest car company has been among the slowest of the major automakers to embrace 100% electric propulsion. Yet, as Heatmap data shows, such heel-dragging hasn’t dinged Toyota’s green reputation. In our November 2023 survey, Toyota scored the second-highest on perceived sustainability of any automaker.
Audi’s E-Tron, VW’s ID.4, Kia’s Soul EV, BMW’s i3, and Hyundai’s Kona Electric were all on sale in the U.S. well before the bZ4X, Toyota’s first mass market EV. Yet none of those cars could transform American attitudes about companies that made them. While Tesla’s notoriety helped it to top our sustainability survey, the likes of Audi, Volkswagen, Kia, Hyundai, and BMW all scored below Toyota.
To be clear, Toyota certainly earned some sustainable bona fides. The Prius for years was the icon of conspicuous conscientious driving. Eventually, the car of the eco-minded became the car of anybody who wanted to get great gas mileage. In selling six million Priuses, Toyota helped countless drivers post far better mpg than they otherwise would have. And let us not forget the Toyota Mirai, which since 2014 has been the best mainstream option for anybody who wants to drive a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
But the results go to show that even at the dawn of the mainstream EV era, more goes into the popular idea of “sustainability” than purely electric cars.
Volkswagen, for example, may have introduced a popular EV with the ID.4 crossover, but many respondents surely remember the scandal over VW’s diesel emissions and punished the German giant for its misdeeds.
Or consider the case of Subaru, which was not part of this survey. The brand incessantly advertises itself as a friend of the National Park System and touts its corporate donations to climate causes. Its car show launch events and television commercials depict Subarus in outdoor environments. Given its public image, I’d have to guess that Subaru would have scored highly. Yet none of its vehicles get particularly high gas mileage. (There is a Subaru commercial that drives my wife and me crazy, in which a teacher describes her 240-mile daily carbon-spewing commute like it’s a badge of honor.) Like Toyota, Subaru was slow into the EV market; its first, the Solterra, just came out last year. It was co-developed with Toyota and is fundamentally the same car as the bZ4X.
Despite leading the charge on hybrids and hydrogen, Toyota’s electric enthusiasm has been tepid at best. Whereas many auto giants have trotted out new electrics or teased battery-powered versions of their iconic gas vehicles, Toyota’s attitude more mirrored the general public’s: We’ll just wait until the charging infrastructure makes this more practical for daily driving, thank you very much. In the meantime, the brand touts its “electrified” lineup, which, aside from the bZ4X, is made up entirely of hybrids that also burn gasoline.
And to drive the point home, Toyota has also actively worked against emissions regulations, repeatedly lobbying against such efforts. In 2021, the company settled with the U.S. government for $180 million for failing to comply with Clean Air Act regulations. Hino, a truck- and bus-making division of Toyota, was caught falsifying engine emissions data going back decades.
Seeing the lukewarm reception given many legacy carmakers’ EV offerings, it’s hard to blame Toyota for languishing in the rear, content to keep selling fossil-fuel burning vehicles for as long as it’s profitable. It also must answer a tricky question: What is the EV Prius? The hybrid standard-bearer had a clear identity as an eggshell that delivered top gas mileage. In the EV space, where even big vehicles deliver excellent mileage equivalence, it’s unclear what the Prius brand name will mean.
But pretty soon, Toyota needs to pounce. The company is clearly getting a little closer to ready: A couple of months ago I came to praise the Hilux EV, a prototype fully electric version of Toyota’s global best-selling compact truck. That project was a one-off built by engineers overseas, but it points the way to how Toyota could flex its global muscles to help turn the world fleet over to EVs. Toyota is also seen as among the most reliable carmakers — for example, Toyota and its sub-brand Lexus topped the 2023 Consumer Reports reliability rankings. That, combined with its reputation for sustainability, could be enough to convince hesitant car shoppers to go fully electric once the brand finally rolls out EV editions of the Camry, RAV4, or, yes, the Prius.
The bZ4X might have been uninspiring, but that’s not what really matters. What matters is that Toyota is finally moving into true EVs — and soon, we hope, it will do a lot more to back up its good name among climate-friendly companies.
The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group via online panels from Nov. 6 to 13, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/toyota-prius-vw-audi-kia Save to Pocket
Meet PiDex: your Raspberry Pi 5-powered doomsday companion
date: 2024-01-17, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Kenneth (aka Raspduino Uno) is nothing if not prepared, and he’s getting ready to survive in a post-apocalyptic world by building his own Raspberry Pi 5-powered cyberdeck. Meet PiDex.
The post Meet PiDex: your Raspberry Pi 5-powered doomsday companion appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/meet-pidex-your-raspberry-pi-5-powered-doomsday-companion/ Save to Pocket
BT to spell out contract price hikes in pounds and pence
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
None of this inflation-linked percentage nonsense, says Ofcom
Updated BT is ditching mid-contract price hikes linked to inflation before Britain’s comms regulator issues a blanket ban in pursuit of greater transparency for customers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/bt_price_hike_change/ Save to Pocket
Vulcans split home doubleheader against Academy of Art
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>UH-Hilo’s men’s and women’s basketball teams split a doubleheader against Academy of Art, as the Vulcans’ women’s team won 68-53 and the men fell 80-63 on Monday night at Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/sports/vulcans-split-home-doubleheader-against-academy-of-art/ Save to Pocket
BIIF soccer and basketball roundup
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Soccer</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/sports/biif-soccer-and-basketball-roundup/ Save to Pocket
PGA Champions Tour returns to the West Side this week
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>KA‘UPULEHU-KONA — Another PGA Tour Champions season is set to begin later this week, and what better way to kick it off than on the charming Big Island?</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/sports/pga-champions-tour-returns-to-the-west-side-this-week/ Save to Pocket
Column: The last five weeks on the PGA Tour had something for everyone
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>HONOLULU — Camilo Villegas was laughing about the time he was disqualified from Kapalua 13 years ago on his birthday. That was long before he was married, had his first child and then lost his daughter to brain cancer. He has been through a lot. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/sports/column-the-last-five-weeks-on-the-pga-tour-had-something-for-everyone/ Save to Pocket
New Hampshire gets its turn after Trump’s big win in Iowa puts new pressure on Haley and DeSantis
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>ATKINSON, N.H. — After Donald Trump’s record victory in the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire voters now get their turn to decide just how competitive the Republican nominating fight will be as the former president continues to dominate his party.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/nation-world-news/new-hampshire-gets-its-turn-after-trumps-big-win-in-iowa-puts-new-pressure-on-haley-and-desantis/ Save to Pocket
Kona airport repairs continue
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Over two dozen flights were impacted by the closure of Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole on Monday afternoon after the discovery of cracks in the runway.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/hawaii-news/kona-airport-repairs-continue/ Save to Pocket
DOH: First child flu death of the season occurred on Oahu
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The first pediatric influenza death of the ongoing flu season in Hawaii was announced Tuesday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/hawaii-news/doh-first-child-flu-death-of-the-season-occurred-on-oahu/ Save to Pocket
Supervised release for senior citizen charged with attempted robbery
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A 74-year-old Kailua-Kona man accused of a violent attempted carjacking is free after his initial court appearance.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/hawaii-news/supervised-release-for-senior-citizen-charged-with-attempted-robbery/ Save to Pocket
Theft of mail reported in parts of Hilo
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Hilo residents are advised to secure their mailboxes after a spate of mail thefts around the north edge of town.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/hawaii-news/theft-of-mail-reported-in-parts-of-hilo/ Save to Pocket
A freed Israeli hostage relives horrors of captivity and fears for her husband, still held in Gaza
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Standing in the ruins of her home in the Nir Oz farming village on the Gaza border, Sharon Alony Cunio gazed at the distant skyline of Khan Younis, the Palestinian city where Hamas militants dragged her more than three months ago. Her husband, David, remains captive in Gaza.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/features/a-freed-israeli-hostage-relives-horrors-of-captivity-and-fears-for-her-husband-still-held-in-gaza/ Save to Pocket
Targeting drug middlemen could create more loopholes
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Congress is back in session with a long list of unfinished business. Topping the health-care agenda is legislation that aims to lower the cost of prescription drugs and make their prices more transparent. Although these proposals have rare bipartisan support, lawmakers should proceed cautiously. Some well-intentioned measures could backfire or prove ineffective.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/opinion/targeting-drug-middlemen-could-create-more-loopholes/ Save to Pocket
New law requires more transparency for use of force by police
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A law requiring all police agencies statewide to maintain publicly available written policies regarding minimum standards on the use of force went into effect Jan. 1.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/hawaii-news/new-law-requires-more-transparency-for-use-of-force-by-police/ Save to Pocket
Violinist Midori performs in concert Jan. 22 in Hilo
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Hawaii Concert Society presents the violinist known worldwide by her first name, Midori, appearing in concert at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 22, at the University of Hawaii’s Performing Arts Center in Hilo.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/entertainment/violinist-midori-performs-in-concert-jan-22-in-hilo/ Save to Pocket
Water department accepting entries for keiki poster contest
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Hawaii County Department of Water Supply is now accepting entries for its sixth annual Keiki Water Conservation Poster Contest open to Hawaii Island students attending kindergarten through the sixth-grade.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/community/water-department-accepting-entries-for-keiki-poster-contest/ Save to Pocket
Nutrition Program gets specialized vehicles
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Hawaii County has acquired two state-of-the-art F-150 Ford Hot Shot vehicles to support it Nutrition Program.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/community/nutrition-program-gets-specialized-vehicles/ Save to Pocket
Lunar New Year dinner set for next month
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Chinese Civic Association of Hawaii is celebrating the Lunar New Year with its first in-person public event in three years.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/hawaii-news/lunar-new-year-dinner-set-for-next-month/ Save to Pocket
Trump glowers and gestures in court, then leaves to campaign as sex abuse defamation trial opens
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Donald Trump shook his head in disgust Tuesday as the judge in his New York defamation trial told would-be jurors that an earlier jury had already decided the former president sexually abused columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/nation-world-news/trump-glowers-and-gestures-in-court-then-leaves-to-campaign-as-sex-abuse-defamation-trial-opens/ Save to Pocket
Suspect in Long Island’s Gilgo Beach serial killings is charged with the death of a fourth woman
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — A New York architect charged in a string of slayings known as the Gilgo Beach killings was accused Tuesday in the death of a fourth woman, a Connecticut mother of two who vanished in 2007 and whose remains were found more than three years later along a coastal highway on Long Island.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/nation-world-news/suspect-in-long-islands-gilgo-beach-serial-killings-is-charged-with-the-death-of-a-fourth-woman/ Save to Pocket
Obituaries for January 17
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Gale Fumiko Brumaghim, 68, died Aug. 29 at Kona Community Hospital. Born in Kealakekua, she was a grocery store cashier and stock clerk for a local grocery store and worked a coffee farm alongside her husband. Private services held on January 10. Survived by husband, Wayne Brumaghim of Kealakekua; son, Wayne Brumaghim Jr. of Kailua-Kona; daughter, Krystal Brumaghim of Kealakekua; sisters, Janell Okumura and Kathleen Yamagata, both of Kealakekua. Arrangements by Dodo Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/obituaries/obituaries-for-january-17-11/ Save to Pocket
Oregon braces for freezing rain while cold temperatures elsewhere strain electric grids
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Parts of Oregon braced for freezing rain Tuesday after a weekend of extreme winds knocked down trees and cut power to thousands, while communities across the U.S. also struggled with perilously cold weather that closed schools and put electricity supplies at risk.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/nation-world-news/oregon-braces-for-freezing-rain-while-cold-temperatures-elsewhere-strain-electric-grids/ Save to Pocket
Emmy Moments: ‘Succession’ succeeds, ‘The Bear’ eats it up, and a show wraps on time, thanks to Mom
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>So it be, so it is, as Cousin Greg would say: “Succession” had a fittingly successful sendoff at the Emmys, the addictive saga of the roiling Roy family dynasty winning best drama for a third time and five more awards, including three top acting prizes.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/nation-world-news/emmy-moments-succession-succeeds-the-bear-eats-it-up-and-a-show-wraps-on-time-thanks-to-mom/ Save to Pocket
What is Disease X? How scientists are preparing for the next pandemic
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>It sounds like something Elon Musk might have cooked up: “Disease X.”</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/nation-world-news/what-is-disease-x-how-scientists-are-preparing-for-the-next-pandemic/ Save to Pocket
Chaotic wave of attacks, reprisals in Middle East fuel worries of a broader regional war
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — A barrage of U.S., coalition and militant attacks in the Middle East over the last five days are compounding U.S. fears that Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza could expand, as massive military strikes failed to stall the assault on Red Sea shipping by Yemen-based Houthis.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/nation-world-news/chaotic-wave-of-attacks-reprisals-in-middle-east-fuel-worries-of-a-broader-regional-war/ Save to Pocket
Senators reject Bernie Sanders’ effort to curb Israel-Hamas war but the vote signals rising unease
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — In a notable test Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders forced colleagues to decide whether to investigate human rights abuses in the Israel-Hamas war, a step toward potentially limiting U.S. military aid to Israel as its devastating attacks on Gaza grind past 100 days.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/nation-world-news/senators-reject-bernie-sanders-effort-to-curb-israel-hamas-war-but-the-vote-signals-rising-unease/ Save to Pocket
Your Views for January 17
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Regarding Harbaugh
and Michigan’s win</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/opinion/your-views-for-january-17-8/ Save to Pocket
Kudos to Chris Christie, who told the truth about Trump
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>As he exits the stage before any votes are cast, Chris Christie deserves credit and thanks for repeatedly saying what Republican primary voters need to hear.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/opinion/kudos-to-chris-christie-who-told-the-truth-about-trump/ Save to Pocket
JetBlue’s $3.8 billion buyout of Spirit Airlines is blocked by judge citing threat to competition
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DALLAS — A federal judge on Tuesday sided with the Biden administration and blocked JetBlue Airways from buying Spirit Airlines, saying the $3.8 billion deal would reduce competition.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/nation-world-news/jetblues-3-8-billion-buyout-of-spirit-airlines-is-blocked-by-judge-citing-threat-to-competition/ Save to Pocket
Eagles center Jason Kelce intends to retire after 13 NFL seasons, AP sources say
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PHILADELPHIA — Jason Kelce stood on the sideline in tears as the final seconds ticked off in his likely final NFL game. Kelce embraced his long-time offensive line coach. He removed his helmet once the game ended — a Philadelphia Eagles loss that completed a harrowing season-ending collapse — and extended his hand to his wife and his father in the stands.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/sports/eagles-center-jason-kelce-intends-to-retire-after-13-nfl-seasons-ap-sources-say/ Save to Pocket
Analysis: McVay kicking himself over dubious decisions that doomed Rams on a wacky wild-card weekend
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Regrets, Sean McVay has a few. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/sports/analysis-mcvay-kicking-himself-over-dubious-decisions-that-doomed-rams-on-a-wacky-wild-card-weekend/ Save to Pocket
Taulia Tagovailoa to enter 2024 NFL Draft, despite seeking sixth year of eligibility
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Taulia Tagovailoa is entering the 2024 NFL Draft.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/sports/taulia-tagovailoa-to-enter-2024-nfl-draft-despite-seeking-sixth-year-of-eligibility/ Save to Pocket
DOH: Voluntary recall of Big Island Candies product
date: 2024-01-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The state Department of Health is alerting residents about a voluntary recall by Big Island Candies of its 10-ounce Makana Brownie Assortment Box, because it may contain peanut allergens not listed on the label.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/17/hawaii-news/doh-voluntary-recall-of-big-island-candies-product/ Save to Pocket
Office Hours: Can Trump’s nomination be stopped?
date: 2024-01-17, from: Robert Reich on Substack
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/office-hours-can-trumps-nomination Save to Pocket
Rob Kerchner | Who’s the Fascist?
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
One hundred years ago, progressives were touting a “scientific consensus” in eugenics to support abortion, racism and antisemitism. Individual lives and liberties were dismissed; instead, groupthink and top-down control “for the good of society” drove their dreams of social(ist) “progress.” Sound familiar? A hundred years later the same ilk are busily touting a “scientific consensus” […]
The post Rob Kerchner | Who’s the Fascist? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/rob-kerchner-whos-the-fascist/ Save to Pocket
Home improvement marketers dial up trouble from regulator
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
ICO slaps penalties on two businesses that collectively made more than 3 million cold calls
Another week and yet another couple of pesky cold callers face fines from the UK’s data privacy watchdog for “bombarding” unsuspecting households with marketing messages about home improvements.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/ico_cold_call_fines/ Save to Pocket
The Savvy Senior | Are You at Risk of Developing Glaucoma?
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
Dear Savvy Senior, What can you tell me about the eye disease glaucoma? My older brother was recently diagnosed with it and lost some of his vision, but never had a clue anything was wrong. Could I be at risk, too? — Stressed Sibling Dear Stressed, Yes, having an immediate family member with glaucoma significantly […]
The post The Savvy Senior | Are You at Risk of Developing Glaucoma? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/the-savvy-senior-are-you-at-risk-of-developing-glaucoma/ Save to Pocket
YouTube video lag wrongly blamed on its ad-blocking animus
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Slowdowns apparently due to a bug afflicting browser extensions, not retaliation against filters
Google claims users of popular ad-blocking extensions have wrongly blamed YouTube for slow video streaming speeds – and that the content filters themselves are the reason for stuttering playback.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/youtube_video_lag_ads/ Save to Pocket
Classifieds – January 17, 2024
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.
The post Classifieds – January 17, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/17/classifieds-january-17-2024/ Save to Pocket
Stephen Maseda | Reply to Criticism of the Analysis …
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
Re: Ron Perry, letters, Jan. 10. Mr. Perry, thanks for the reply. Let’s start with the easiest and most obvious issue with your reply. My earlier comments do not deny your right to believe as you do — they are simply a critical analysis of your criticism of Pastor David Hegg’s column discussing noble lies. […]
The post Stephen Maseda | Reply to Criticism of the Analysis … appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/stephen-maseda-reply-to-criticism-of-the-analysis/ Save to Pocket
Today in SCV History (Jan. 17)
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1994, 4:31 a.m. – Magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake rocks Santa Clarita Valley. [video
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-8/ Save to Pocket
Women’s basketball is a legit contender
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
After a dominant win over then-No. 2 UCLA, nothing can stop the Trojans.
The post Women’s basketball is a legit contender appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/17/womens-basketball-is-a-legit-contender/ Save to Pocket
Don’t get your news from late-night comedy
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Research-heavy comedy segments exaggerate the truth of their stories.
The post Don’t get your news from late-night comedy appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/17/dont-get-your-news-from-late-night-comedy/ Save to Pocket
New year, new hobbies
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Start January off right with a skill that’ll do wonders for your mental health.
The post New year, new hobbies appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/17/new-year-new-hobbies/ Save to Pocket
USG senate declares California’s March primary a USG holiday
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
A second RestSC spot will open in February, vice president Michelle Lu said
The post USG senate declares California’s March primary a USG holiday appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/17/usg-senate-declares-californias-march-primary-a-usg-holiday/ Save to Pocket
Down go the Bruins: Trojans prevail behind Watkins
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Women’s basketball routed the AP No. 2 team in front of a record-breaking crowd.
The post Down go the Bruins: Trojans prevail behind Watkins appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/17/down-go-the-bruins-trojans-prevail-behind-watkins/ Save to Pocket
Reverse engineering a ‘Get ready with me’
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
How can you fall in love with the process of getting ready, and how does the preparation for a night out translate into real life?
The post Reverse engineering a ‘Get ready with me’ appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/17/more-like-30-staying-30-2/ Save to Pocket
Altered FAFSA launches two months late
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
USC students shared their opinions on the new FAFSA and financial aid resources.
The post Altered FAFSA launches two months late appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/17/altered-fafsa-launches-two-months-late/ Save to Pocket
I’m here today because of two people who aren’t anymore
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
I have drifted apart from the friends who helped me discover my love for writing.
The post I’m here today because of two people who aren’t anymore appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/17/im-here-today-because-of-two-people-who-arent-anymore/ Save to Pocket
CalTrans to Open 1994 Northridge Earthquake Exhibit
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
On the 30th anniversary of the Jan. 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake, the California Department of Transportation will commemorate the efforts of the public servants who worked to safely rebuild the highways following the disaster.
https://scvnews.com/caltrans-to-open-northridge-earthquake-exhibit/ Save to Pocket
What are our top picks from the vast world of retro tech? Let’s find out
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Standby to be amazed: Lotus Notes is still being developed
Kettle It’s Retro Tech Week here at The Register, and we’ve got four of our vultures together to talk about old computers and software that, in one form or another, thankfully refuses to die.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/does_old_tech_never_die/ Save to Pocket
GDOL: 47% noncompliant with fair chances hiring law
date: 2024-01-17, from: Guam Daily Post
Nearly half of all employers inspected over the last five years were found to be noncompliant with a local law intended to help individuals with criminal pasts by barring employers from asking about criminal histories or pending cases until a…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gdol-47-noncompliant-with-fair-chances-hiring-law/article_adc7a232-b4fc-11ee-bbc3-b34b704bfa51.html Save to Pocket
Combination of cheap .cloud domains and fake Shark Tank news fuel unhealthy wellness scams
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
.SBS gTLD once owned by Australian broadcaster is another source of strife
Scammers are buying up cheap domain names to host sites that sell dodgy health products using fake articles, according to cybercrime disruption outfit Netcraft.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/netcraft_health_scams_analysis/ Save to Pocket
Google updates Chrome’s Incognito Mode data slurp disclaimer in early browser build
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
After settling privacy lawsuit now admits you’re observable even when trying for anonymity
Google has altered the text describing data collection when users employ Incognito Mode in its Chrome browser.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/google_updates_chrome_incognito_disclaimer/ Save to Pocket
January 16, 2024
date: 2024-01-17, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
[Warning: paragraphs 6–8 talk about rape.] In yesterday’s Iowa caucus, 51% of Republican caucusgoers chose former president Donald Trump as their preferred candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Twenty-one percent of Republican caucusgoers chose Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Nineteen percent chose former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. Seven percent chose technology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. These results mean that 20 of Iowa’s 40 delegates will go to Trump; 8 to DeSantis; 7 to Haley; and three to Ramaswamy. An apparent Trump surrogate in the primary debates, Ramaswamy suspended his campaign after the caucus and endorsed Trump.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-16-2024 Save to Pocket
30 years since 6.7
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
Local leaders reflect on 30th anniversary of quake that struck Jan. 17, 1994 Jan. 17, 2024, marks 30 years to the day since the costliest earthquake in U.S. history, a magnitude-6.7 event, struck at 4:31 a.m. While the epicenter was identified as being in Northridge — and the heaviest damage was in the western San […]
The post 30 years since 6.7 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/30-years-since-6-7/ Save to Pocket
San Marcos Girls’ Water Polo Defeats Rival Dos Pueblos 12-5
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Charlotte Raisin scored a game-high four goals.
The post San Marcos Girls’ Water Polo Defeats Rival Dos Pueblos 12-5 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/16/san-marcos-girls-water-polo-defeats-rival-dos-pueblos-12-5/ Save to Pocket
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-17, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
New PTSD just dropped:
https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/111768918083135181
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111769458815339301 Save to Pocket
Working from home never looked better: Leopard stalks around Infosys and TCS campuses
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
No consultants were mauled or eaten but some were quite scared
Indian forestry authorities have laid traps for a leopard that was spotted prowling near campuses used by tech services giants Infosys and TCS.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/leopard_infosys_tcs_india/ Save to Pocket
Apple’s Workaround for the ITC’s Import Ban on Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2: Disabling the Blood-Oxygen Sensor in Software
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Daring Fireball
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/apple-watch-redesigned-without-blood-oxygen-monitoring-to-avoid-import-ban/ Save to Pocket
Tempers flare at end of Hart-Valencia game
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
Teammates and coaching staff rushed in between players after a shove following the Hart Indians boys’ basketball home game with the Valencia Vikings. Following the final buzzer, several of the victorious Vikings ran to the opposing side of the court and waved goodbye to the Hart student section. The Indians were lined up for the […]
The post <strong>Tempers flare at end of Hart-Valencia game</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/tempers-flare-at-end-of-hart-valencia-game/ Save to Pocket
Jan. 20: First Santa Clarita Community Hike of 2024
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The first Santa Clarita Community Hike of 2024 will be held Saturday, Jan. 20 at 9 a.m. Hikers will meet at the Gates Family Wildlife Preserve Pine Street Trailhead, access via Pine Street
https://scvnews.com/jan-20-first-santa-clarita-community-hike-of-2024/ Save to Pocket
In Memoriam Faris “Feltaan” Sanjakdar 1993-2024
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Our darling habibi, Faris “Feltaan” Sanjakdar, tragically left us on January 1, 2024. He left behind a loving partner, Patrick
The post In Memoriam </br> Faris “Feltaan” Sanjakdar </br> 1993-2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/16/in-memoriam-faris-feltaan-sanjakdar-1993-2024/ Save to Pocket
Post-SCOTUS Ruling, Apple Releases Guidelines for ‘External Purchase Links’ in iOS Apps (Spoiler: They Still Demand the Same Commissions)
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Daring Fireball
https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitlement-us/ Save to Pocket
Youth Mountain Bike Demo Days at Trek Bike Park
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Trek Bike Park of Santa Clarita will host several sessions of the Youth Mountain Bike Demo Day program.
https://scvnews.com/youth-mountain-bike-demo-days-at-trek-bike-park/ Save to Pocket
Man Fatally Shot by Sheriff’s Deputies in Santa Maria After Brandishing Weapon
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Authorities are investigating the incident after a suspect was killed following a four-hour standoff.
The post Man Fatally Shot by Sheriff’s Deputies in Santa Maria After Brandishing Weapon appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/16/man-fatally-shot-by-sheriffs-deputies-in-santa-maria-after-brandishing-weapon/ Save to Pocket
Trump Back in Court for Second Defamation Trial After Iowa Victory
date: 2024-01-17, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — Fresh off a campaign victory in Iowa, Donald Trump sat in a New York courtroom on Tuesday to defend himself for a second time against charges that he defamed writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her decades ago.
Trump watched from the defendant’s table as Carroll’s lawyer told a jury that the then-U.S. president made her life miserable when she went public in 2019 with her story that he had attacked her in a department store dressing room in Manhattan.
“He used the world’s biggest microphone to attack Ms. Carroll, to humiliate her, and to destroy her reputation,” lawyer Shawn Crowley said.
Carroll, 80, is seeking at least $10 million in damages in a civil case that will put the allegations of sexual assault back in the headlines while Trump pursues the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Jurors will only consider how much Trump should pay Carroll in damages, not whether the alleged assault took place or whether Trump lied about it afterward.
Crowley said Trump’s “horrible” lies unleashed a torrent of abuse from his followers and wrecked her sense of safety.
“As he’s campaigning for president of the United States, Donald Trump continues to lie about Ms. Carroll,” Crowley said.
Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba countered that Carroll was “basking in the limelight” in the years since she released her memoir and accused Trump of rape.
“She is looking for you to give her a windfall because some people on social media said mean things about her,” Habba said.
Trump, 77, has said he wants to testify.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has barred him from arguing that he did not defame or sexually assault Carroll or that she made up her account.
Nevertheless, Trump accused Carroll on social media of lying as court proceedings got underway on Tuesday morning.
Shortly after the court adjourned for the day, Trump accused Kaplan of being politically biased against him, echoing complaints he has made against judges overseeing his other cases.
Trump could spend much of this year shuttling between campaign rallies and courtrooms, as he seeks to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
He won the first state contest in Iowa on Monday by a wide margin, and opinion polls show him leading in the next contest in New Hampshire a week from Tuesday.
“I should be in New Hampshire, campaigning and fighting for our Country, and I will be later today, but for now I had to spend time in a Federal Courthouse with a Trump Hating, Radical Left Judge,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after the court adjourned for the day.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in four criminal cases that could potentially land him in prison before the November presidential election, including two that accuse him of trying to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden. He also is a defendant in at least two other civil cases.
Kaplan said he expects the trial to last three to five days.
Second trial
Trump’s high profile was apparent as prospective jurors were screened for the case. Many acknowledged they were familiar with Trump’s various legal troubles, though none said they knew the details of the first defamation trial.
One said she used to work for his daughter Ivanka. She was not chosen for the jury.
Jurors’ identities are being kept confidential.
Trump has already lost one defamation case against Carroll.
A jury last May ordered Trump to pay the former Elle magazine columnist $5 million for having sexually abused her during the encounter and defaming her in 2022 by denying that it happened. Trump skipped that trial.
Trump is appealing the $5 million award and could appeal any award at the second trial. Appeals could take years.
In both cases, Trump has said he did not know Carroll and that she invented their encounter to sell her memoir.
Kaplan has barred Trump from suggesting he did not rape Carroll, as New York’s penal law defines the term, because the first jury did not find that Trump committed rape. Kaplan has ruled that Carroll’s rape claim was “substantially true.”
Trump also cannot discuss DNA evidence or Carroll’s sexual activities or suggest that Democrats are bankrolling her case.
As at the first trial, jurors will be able to see the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video where Trump graphically described the ability of famous people like himself to have sexual relations with beautiful women.
Kaplan has said the video could offer “useful insight into Mr. Trump’s state of mind” toward Carroll.
On social media, Trump accused Kaplan of being “biased,” echoing attacks he has made on judges overseeing some of his other cases.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-back-in-court-for-second-defamation-trial-after-iowa-victory/7443338.html Save to Pocket
La Posada Tiny-Home Village Breaks Ground at Former Juvenile Hall in Santa Barbara
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The project will provide transitional housing for 80 people now dwelling in the homeless encampments scattered in hillsides above the site.
The post La Posada Tiny-Home Village Breaks Ground at Former Juvenile Hall in Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/16/la-posada-tiny-home-village-breaks-ground-at-former-juvenile-hall-in-santa-barbara/ Save to Pocket
Nokia walks the walk about its RAN to play on Uncle Sam’s China fears
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It pays not to be Huawei, and the US military can be lucrative, too
Comment A vendor establishing a business unit dedicated to government sales is not new or unusual. But Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia’s decision to do so in the USA this week tells a bigger story about Washington’s paranoia regarding the security of critical communications infrastructure security.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/nokia_us_sales_list/ Save to Pocket
Sojourner Kincaid Rolle’s Life Celebrated at Memorial Service in Downtown Santa Barbara
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Hundreds gathered on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to remember the poet laureate, educator, activist, and Black history archivist.
The post Sojourner Kincaid Rolle’s Life Celebrated at Memorial Service in Downtown Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/16/sojourner-kincaid-rolles-life-celebrated-at-memorial-service-in-downtown-santa-barbara/ Save to Pocket
The 2024 Coachella Lineup Is Here
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
Headliners include Lana Del Rey, Doja Cat, No Doubt and Tyler, the Creator.
https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/the-2024-coachella-lineup-is-here Save to Pocket
US to Relist Yemen’s Houthis as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, AP Sources Say
date: 2024-01-17, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is expected to soon announce plans to redesignate Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen as specially designated global terrorists, according to two people familiar with the White House decision and a U.S. official.
The move comes as the Houthis have launched dozens of attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The group says it has attacked the ships in response to Israel’s military operations in Gaza in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The three people familiar with the decision were not authorized to comment and requested anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of the expected formal announcement.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken delisted the Houthis as both a foreign terrorist organization and as specially designated global terrorists in February 2021 as the administration sought to make it easier to get food imports and humanitarian aid into Yemen.
In its waning days, the Trump administration designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization over the strong objections of human rights and humanitarian aid groups.
The foreign terrorist designation barred Americans and people and organizations subject to U.S. jurisdiction from providing “material support” to the Houthis, which the groups said would result in an even greater humanitarian catastrophe than what was already happening in Yemen.
Shortly after the Biden administration took office, Blinken removed the designations in a step that was roundly criticized by conservative lawmakers and others but was intended to keep much-needed food, medicine and other aid flowing to Yemen.
Yemen, on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula bordering the Red Sea, is the poorest country in the Arab world. War and chronic misgovernment have left 24 million Yemenis at risk of hunger and disease as of 2023, and roughly 14 million in acute need of assistance, the United Nations says. About two-thirds of Yemenis live in territory controlled by the Houthis.
While supporters of broad sanctions argue it’s possible to shape any enforcement mechanisms to exempt food and humanitarian aid, aid organizations worry that fears of running afoul of U.S. regulation could scare away shippers, banks and other players vital to Yemen’s commercial food supply. Arid Yemen imports 90% of its food.
“This designation would add another level of uncertainty and threat for Yemenis still caught in one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises,” said Scott Paul, an associate director of Oxfam America. “The Biden administration is playing with fire, and we call on them to avoid this designation immediately and prioritize the lives of Yemenis now.”
The specially designated global terrorists label to be reimposed on the Houthis does not include sanctions for providing “material support,” and it does not come with travel bans that are also imposed with the foreign terrorist organization label, steps intended to help prevent the U.S. move from harming ordinary Yemenis.
Meanwhile, a senior White House official said Tuesday that addressing the ongoing threat by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on commercial vessels in the Red Sea is an “all hands on deck” problem that the U.S. and allies must address together to minimize impact on the global economy.
“How long this goes on and how bad it gets comes down not just to the decisions of the countries in the coalition that took strikes last week,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The Iran-backed Houthi group has launched dozens of attacks since November on vessels in the Red Sea, a vital corridor for the world’s shipping traffic, in what they say is an effort to support Palestinians in the war with Israel. U.S. and British forces have responded by carrying out dozens of air and sea strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen since Friday. The attacks by the Houthis have continued.
Linda Thomas Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said last week that 2,000 ships since November have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea. Houthi militants have threatened or taken hostage mariners from more than 20 countries.
The Red Sea attacks have already caused significant disruptions to global trade. Oil prices have edged higher in recent days, though Brent crude futures were down slightly in early trading Tuesday.
The U.S. launched a new strike against the Houthis on Tuesday, hitting anti-ship missiles in the third assault on the Iranian-backed group in recent days. The strike came as the Iranian-backed Houthis claimed responsibility for a missile attack against the Malta-flagged bulk carrier Zografia in the Red Sea. No one was injured.
Sullivan said it was critical that countries with influence on Tehran and other Middle East capitals make it clear “that the entire world rejects wholesale the idea that a group like the Houthis can basically hijack the world.”
President Joe Biden’s senior adviser acknowledged that the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea as well as groups allied with Iran carrying out attacks in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen pose concerns that the Israel-Hamas war could escalate even as Israeli officials have indicated a shift in intensity in their military campaign.
“We have to guard against and be vigilant against the possibility that in fact, rather than heading towards de-escalation, we are on a path of escalation that we have to manage,” Sullivan said.
The comments from Sullivan came after Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said during an appearance at the Davos forum that the situation in the Middle East is a “recipe for escalation everywhere.” He said Qatar believes that ending the conflict in Gaza will stop the Houthis and militant groups from launching attacks elsewhere in the region.
Sullivan on Tuesday met with Al Thani as well as Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, according to the White House.
Iran fired missiles late Monday at what it said were Israeli “spy headquarters” in an upscale neighborhood near the sprawling U.S. Consulate compound in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region, and at targets linked to the extremist Islamic State group in northern Syria.
Iraq on Tuesday called the attacks, which killed several civilians, a “blatant violation” of Iraq’s sovereignty and recalled its ambassador from Tehran.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-to-relist-yemen-s-houthis-as-specially-designated-global-terrorists-ap-sources-say/7443322.html Save to Pocket
AQMD officials criticize landfill response
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
Chiquita accused of releasing ‘misleading’ statements on potential health impacts ]Representatives from the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Tuesday criticized Chiquita Canyon Landfill for its response to an ongoing crisis at the Val Verde facility that’s been responsible for 113 violations, as well as allegations that the landfill has put out “misleading” statements […]
The post <strong>AQMD officials criticize landfill response</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/aqmd-officials-criticize-landfill-response/ Save to Pocket
FBI: Beware of thieves building Androxgh0st botnets using stolen creds
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Infecting networks via years-old CVEs that should have been patched by now
Crooks are exploiting years-old vulnerabilities to deploy Androxgh0st malware and build a cloud-credential stealing botnet, according to the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/fbi_botnet_warning/ Save to Pocket
Update: The Family Who Died at Eagle Pass
date: 2024-01-17, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
Often lost in the gamesmanship of border politics are details of those who tragically die trying to get to this country. In 2022, the most recent year for which records are available, nearly 700 people perished or disappeared trying to come to the United States. The International Organization for Migration says this is the deadliest land route for migrants worldwide.
https://steady.substack.com/p/update-the-family-who-died-at-eagle Save to Pocket
Deputies: One transported to hospital after vehicle hits motorcycle
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
One person was transported to a local hospital after a vehicle hit a motorcycle Monday afternoon near the intersection of Smyth Drive and Copper Hill Drive, according to Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station officials. Deputies responded to a call reporting a traffic collision on the 28000 block of Smyth Drive at approximately 4:03 p.m. and […]
The post <strong>Deputies: One transported to hospital after vehicle hits motorcycle</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/deputies-one-transported-to-hospital-after-vehicle-hits-motorcycle/ Save to Pocket
Hart district to look at big purchases for field upgrades
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Signal
New lights at five high school fields, new turf at Canyon High would cost more than $4.5 million The William S. Hart Union High School District is looking to spend millions on adding lights to the five high school fields that do not yet have them. The Hart district governing board is scheduled to vote […]
The post <strong>Hart district to look at big purchases for field upgrades</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/hart-district-to-look-at-big-purchases-for-field-upgrades/ Save to Pocket
Disney Has a Good Disney+ App for VisionOS (and, by the Way, I Got Another 30-Minute Hands-On Experience With Vision Pro)
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Daring Fireball
https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-on-apple-vision-pro-ushers-in-a-new-era-of-storytelling-innovation-and-immersive-entertainment/ Save to Pocket
Boss fight between Donkey Kong champ and leaderboard org ends with settlement
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Video game record keepers Twin Galaxies finish messy four-year fight with Billy Mitchell
Retro Tech Week The world-beating video game scores of self-styled arcade legend Billy Mitchell have been reinstated following a settlement with record-keeping org Twin Galaxies, which had wiped his achievements in 2018 following allegations of cheating.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/twin_galaxies_billy_mitchell_kong/ Save to Pocket
CVS Pharmacy at USC Village to close next month
date: 2024-01-17, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
An employee confirmed the closure but didn’t specify on which date it would occur.
The post CVS Pharmacy at USC Village to close next month appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/16/cvs-pharmacy-usc-village-will-close/ Save to Pocket
Feb. 4: Hart High Baseball Team Preview, Alumni Game
date: 2024-01-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The 2024 Hart High School Baseball Team Preview and Alumni Game (3-Inning) will be held Sunday, Feb. 4 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m
https://scvnews.com/feb-4-hart-high-baseball-team-preview-alumni-game/ Save to Pocket
San Clemente Will Have To Wait For Better Sand, Delaying Replenishment Project
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
The contractor is expected to get back to work in about two months with better quality sand.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/san-clemente-will-have-to-wait-for-better-sand-delaying-replenishment-project Save to Pocket
After Four Decades Of Acting, Willem Dafoe Is Still Trying To ‘Mix It Up’
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: The LAist
From ‘Platoon’ to ‘Poor Things,’ Willem Dafoe’s career is fluid and full of wonder.
https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/willem-dafoe-is-still-trying-to-mix-it-up Save to Pocket
86-DOS revisited
date: 2024-01-17, from: OS News
Recently, the oldest known versions of DOS were uploaded to the internet, and Michal Necasek dove into the floppy images. Even after more than 40 years(!), old software releases and pre-releases can still surface. In the case of 86-DOS 0.11 and 0.34 it’s practically a miracle, since there were probably never very many copies in existence. For the first time since the early 1980s, FAT formatted floppies with the primordial 16-byte directory entry format have come to light. The old 16-byte directory entries were gone by 86-DOS 1.0 in April 1981 and of course never appeared in any public PC DOS release. These prehistoric versions of 86-DOS allow us to fill in further missing pieces in the puzzle of DOS origins. It is fascinating to follow how DOS developed from almost nothing to a multi-million dollar business in the course of just a few years. ↫ Michal Necasek It started out so humbly. Yet, here we are, in 2024, and variants of DOS still have their uses in certain niches. An incredible legacy, for sure.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138343/86-dos-revisited/ Save to Pocket
The Home Page | Sparkling Pools and Twinkling Lights
date: 2024-01-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Open houses and tons of tacos.
The post The Home Page | Sparkling Pools and Twinkling Lights appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/16/the-home-page-sparkling-pools-and-twinkling-lights/ Save to Pocket
Wednesday 17 January, 2024
date: 2024-01-17, from: John Naughton’s online diary
This is how you do it Trinity Street, Cambridge. Quote of the Day ”I love criticism so long as it is unqualified praise.” Noel Coward Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Tuba Skinny | Jubilee Stomp – Royal Street … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-17-january-2024/39036/ Save to Pocket
A shocking amount of the web is machine translated: insights from multi-way parallelism
date: 2024-01-17, from: OS News
We show that content on the web is often translated into many languages, and the low quality of these multi-way translations indicates they were likely created using Machine Translation (MT). Multi-way parallel, machine generated content not only dominates the translations in lower resource languages; it also constitutes a large fraction of the total web content in those languages. We also find evidence of a selection bias in the type of content which is translated into many languages, consistent with low quality English content being translated en masse into many lower resource languages, via MT. Our work raises serious concerns about training models such as multilingual large language models on both monolingual and bilingual data scraped from the web. ↫ Brian Thompson, Mehak Preet Dhaliwal, Peter Frisch, Tobias Domhan, Marcello Federico As a translator myself, this is entirely unsurprising. Translating is a craft, a skill, and much like with any other craft, you get what you pay for. If you pay your translator(s) a good rate, you get a good translation. If you pay your translator(s) a shit rate, you get a shit translation. If you pay nothing, you get nothing. I’m definitely seeing more and more people in my industry integrate machine translations, but so far, it’s not been an actual issue – I have no qualms about accepting a job where I take a machine-translated text and whip it into shape and turn it into a human-readable, quality translation… As long as people pay me a reasonable rate for it. Working from a machine translation is often quicker and easier, so the going rate obviously reflects that. The quality of machine translations is absolutely atrocious, however, and the idea of relying on it for texts other people – customers, clients, employees, etc. – are actually supposed to read and work from is terrifying. Google Translate is an effective tool for personal use, but throwing, I don’t know, your product’s manual at it and dumping the unedited result onto your customers is borderline criminal. Pay nothing, get nothing.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138340/a-shocking-amount-of-the-web-is-machine-translated-insights-from-multi-way-parallelism/ Save to Pocket
htmx is composable??
date: 2024-01-17, updated: 2024-01-17, from: Tom Kellog blog
http://timkellogg.me/blog/2024/01/17/htmx Save to Pocket
FOSSASIA PGDay 2024 takes place in Hanoi, Vietnam on April 9
date: 2024-01-17, from: PostgreSQL News
FOSSASIA PGDay is a one day conference that will take place at the annual FOSSASIA Summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, on April 9, 2024.
The event is dedicated to all things PostgreSQL! FOSSASIA PGDay will be a day filled with insightful talks, engaging discussions, and hands-on sessions, creating a platform for the PostgreSQL community to share, learn, and connect.
Call for Speakers
The Call for Speakers is open. Please select the PGDay track and one of the PGDay session choices in the submission form.
We are particularly interested in submissions on the following topics:
- High Availability in Postgres
- Disaster Recovery
- Logical Replication
- Distributed Data in PostgreSQL
- Database Authentication and Encryption Methods
- Indexing and Partitioning in PostgreSQL
- Performance Tuning
Talk slots are 20 minutes long or 40 minutes. Please tell us the proposed length of your session at the time of submission.
Registration
The PGDay is part of the FOSSASIA Summit. Registration for the FOSSASIA Summit will give you access to PGDay as well. For more information and updates, please visit summit.fossasia.org/pgday
Sponsorship & Contact
Our call for sponsors is also open. Details on the PGDay website! Please contact us at office@fossasia.org to discuss opportunities.
See you at FOSSASIA PGDay in Vietnam!
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/fossasia-pgday-2024-takes-place-in-hanoi-vietnam-on-april-9-2788/ Save to Pocket
Nordic PGDay 2024 - Schedule announced and open for registration
date: 2024-01-17, from: PostgreSQL News
Nordic PGDay 2024 will be held in Oslo, Norway, on Tuesday, March 21, 2024 at the at the Radisson Blu Scandinavia Hotel. It features a full day with a track of PostgreSQL presentations from both Nordic and global PostgreSQL experts. It will cover a wide range of topics of interest. Alongside the main track it will include a sponsor track with presentations showcasing innovative products and services from our partners.
The schedule is now published and registration has now opened. Seats are limited so we recommend that you register early if you are interested! There are 30 Early bird discounted tickets available until the 21st of February 2024; grab yours before they run out or the campaign ends.
Nordic PGDay is proud to be a PostgreSQL Community Recognised Conference.
We look forward to seeing you in Oslo!
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/nordic-pgday-2024-schedule-announced-and-open-for-registration-2789/ Save to Pocket
Case Study: The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative and ROR
date: 2024-01-17, from: ROR Research ID Blog
Professor Cameron Neylon of Curtin University talks telephones, power outlets, chat services, persistent identifier education, federated versus centralized curation, providing actionable information to universities, and why the COKI Open Access Dashboard relies on ROR.
https://ror.org/blog/2024-01-17-coki-case-study/ Save to Pocket