News gathered 2024-01-28
(date: 2024-01-28 10:56:53)
The Cauchy–Dirichlet problem for the fast diffusion equation on bounded domains
date: 2024-02-01, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Bonforte, Matteo; Figalli, Alessio
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/640081 Save to Pocket
Biohybrid nanointerfaces for neuromodulation
date: 2024-02-01, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Filippi, Miriam; Balciunaite, Aiste; Katzschmann, Robert K.
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/647572 Save to Pocket
Reactivity of kaolinitic clays calcined in the 650 °C–1050 °C temperature range: Towards a robust assessment of overcalcination
date: 2024-02-01, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Zunino, Franco; Scrivener, Karen
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/647263 Save to Pocket
Consumers’ perceptions and acceptance of genome editing in agriculture: Insights from the United States of America and Switzerland
date: 2024-02-01, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Bearth, Angela; Otten, Caitlin Drummond; Cohen, Alex Segrè
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/653049 Save to Pocket
Monterey duplex fire kills cat, displaces resident
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Monterey firefighters put out a residential duplex structure fire Saturday night that killed a cat and caused approximately $400,000 in damage.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/monterey-duplex-fire-kills-cat-displaces-resident/ Save to Pocket
nsstring.h - A free, open-source, simple, memory-safe and lightweight Strings library for C
date: 2024-01-28, from: Tilde.news
https://codeberg.org/Autumn64/nsstring.h Save to Pocket
Zoom 5.17.5
date: 2024-01-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/zoom-5-17-5/ Save to Pocket
Hazel 5.3.2
date: 2024-01-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/hazel-5-3-2/ Save to Pocket
1Password 8.10.24
date: 2024-01-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/1password-8-10-24/ Save to Pocket
Fantastical 3.8.10 and Cardhop 2.2.15
date: 2024-01-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/fantastical-3-8-10-cardhop-2-2-15/ Save to Pocket
VASL Templates
date: 2024-01-28, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
VASL Templates
I’m trying to get VASL
Templates to run on my laptop so that I can create nice setups for
Advanced Squad Leader. As it turns out, I have to use pipx
because that automatically creates virtual environments for me, as far
as I understand.
cd src
git clone https://code.pacman-ghost.com/public/vasl-templates.git
cd vasl-templates
pipx install .
As it turns out, this is not enough:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/alex/.local/bin/vasl-templates", line 5, in <module>
from vasl_templates.main import main
File "/home/alex/.local/pipx/venvs/vasl-templates/lib/python3.11/site-packages/vasl_templates/main.py", line 19, in <module>
import PyQt5.QtWebEngineWidgets
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'PyQt5'
So now you need to install PyQt5 into the virtual environment used by vasl-templates:
pipx inject vasl-templates PyQt5
Next error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/alex/.local/bin/vasl-templates", line 5, in <module>
from vasl_templates.main import main
File "/home/alex/.local/pipx/venvs/vasl-templates/lib/python3.11/site-packages/vasl_templates/main.py", line 19, in <module>
import PyQt5.QtWebEngineWidgets
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'PyQt5.QtWebEngineWidgets'
Fix:
pipx inject vasl-templates PyQtWebEngine
And now it works at last! 😅
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-01-28-vasl-templates Save to Pocket
BusyCal 2024.1.1 and BusyContacts 2024.1.1
date: 2024-01-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/busycal-2024-1-1-and-busycontacts-2024-1-1/ Save to Pocket
Checking In On The Atmospheric River Coming To SoCal This Week
date: 2024-01-28, updated: 2024-01-28, from: The LAist
The outline of what the storms will bring is taking shape.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/atmospheric-river-what-we-know-now Save to Pocket
Pac-12 rewind: Pope leads Oregon State as WSU sweeps, Love shines and Madsen beats Stanford
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Pac-12 race is cluttered after the fifth weekend of conference play, with nine teams within two games of each other.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/pac-12-rewind-pope-leads-oregon-state-as-wsu-sweeps-love-shines-and-madsen-beats-stanford/ Save to Pocket
Your SCV Senior Center
date: 2024-01-28, from: The Signal
The “new” Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center Bella Vida will celebrate its fifth anniversary in April. The center, which serves more than 15,000 SCV seniors annually offers a range of amenities and services all designed to help seniors with the challenges of aging “in place.” The ‘New’ Senior Center The SCV Senior Center (27180 Golden […]
The post Your SCV Senior Center appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/your-scv-senior-center/ Save to Pocket
Honda Pilot once ruled but no more
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Honda Pilot debuted 21 years ago as the Japanese carmaker’s largest sport utility vehicle. It succeeded quickly as an alternative to its seven-year older and smaller sibling, the Honda CR-V.
The Honda HR-V, the smallest of an SUV foursome, arrived in North America in 2015. The Honda Passport, positioned between the HR-V and the Pilot, debuted in 1993.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/honda-pilot-once-ruled-but-no-more/ Save to Pocket
Reserve a Night, or Day, of Romance
date: 2024-01-28, from: The Signal
The season of hearts, flowers and love is almost here. What will you do this year in the Santa Clarita Valley to celebrate Valentine’s Day? The Big I Do The city of Santa Clarita has the perfect party planned for those seeking to “tie the knot” on Valentine’s Day, or those thinking of renewing their […]
The post Reserve a Night, or Day, of Romance appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/reserve-a-night-or-day-of-romance/ Save to Pocket
Renew You for 2024
date: 2024-01-28, from: The Signal
It’s a new year and you’ve probably broken every resolution you made on New Year’s Eve. Don’t worry, you are in good company. Statistics show that roughly a third of the population in the United States make resolutions for the new year. Research also suggests that only 9% of Americans that make resolutions complete them, […]
The post Renew You for 2024 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/renew-you-for-2024/ Save to Pocket
Far side Zuck
date: 2024-01-28, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
I asked for more variations, but it refused, saying something about content guidelines.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/28/172211.html?title=farSideZuck Save to Pocket
Morning ChatGPT Notes
date: 2024-01-28, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
I
spent a couple of days putting together a JSON text editor in a modal
dialog for a project I’m working on. I’m combining the Ace editor with
the Bootstrap toolkit. I’ve used both components before, but never
together. And they’re always a bit tricky to get working because I’m
impatient and the docs are spread out, and there are different versions.
It’s all kind of a mess, so you just get it working and move on, never
quite sure why it works, and I rarely end up with reusable code. But
it’s certainly a lot better than starting from scratch, which basically
is impossible, given the depth of the two components. After spinning my
wheels a bit, I did what I always do in 2024, I turned to ChatGPT,
outlined the problem, and asked if it knew of any sample code, which it
proceeded to write for me, in about two seconds (not kidding about
that). I copied their code and pasted it into my editor and ran it. It
worked. Then I went through a number of iterations, restructuring the
code to meet my needs, each time checking with ChatGPT, asking what it
thought of my code. And of course there were problems, for example at
one point there were two vertical scrollbars, and each time we worked
together to figure out the problem and the fix. In the end, I
have a solid editor that works exactly as I want it to, and best of all,
I understand how it works. Here’s the
transcript
of the work I did with it, over more than 24 hours, a few different
sessions.
I’ll try to remember when this code ships as part of a product, to link to this perspective.
Next up, I’d like to get it to understand my coding conventions, so when it shares code with me it can save me the step of having to convert its conventions to mine. In other words, I’d like to return the favor. It’s doing a great job of teaching and coaching me. I’d like to teach it how to do that better, so we work better together over time. And perhaps it can teach human programmers what I’ve learned about programming in over 50 years of doing this work.
A
bit of philosophy. People say these things aren’t intelligent, but
seriously, if I can engage with it as if it were intelligent, far more
intelligent in ways than I am, what’s the difference between that and
actually being intelligent? I know from a lifetime of dealing with
supposedly intelligent humans, and being one myself, how rarely we focus
on the idea that the person we’re conversing with has an inner life
that’s vastly different from ours and no less complex, and
contradictory. We tend to think of others as being like us, or like
someone who raised us. Always in a movie, never in the moment. So why is
it interesting that ChatGPT is a machine? These are questions thinkers
and writers have been pondering for decades if not centuries, but –
now we’re living it. I’m so happy to have made it this far! An
amazing experience, so much learning in so little time. I don’t
understand how people can sit on the sidelines and not want to be the
first to try all this stuff out, to be part of its evolution. I feel so
lucky.
A puzzling thing, in the transcripts I’m identified as “anonymous,” but I am logged in. It must know my name. I bet this is some kind of setting which defaults to anonymous, to play it safe.
One more thing. I copied and pasted the text above into ChatGPT. Here are its comments. A funny thing about ChatGPT is that you can’t ask it how to use ChatGPT itself. It doesn’t know about the chat UI?
http://scripting.com/2024/01/28/172149.html?title=morningChatgptNotes Save to Pocket
Maintaining Your Commitment to Exercise
date: 2024-01-28, from: The Signal
At one point or another, millions of adults across the globe have resolved to be more physically active. The benefits of routine exercise are too numerous to cite, but some of the more notable ones include a lower risk for chronic disease and illness, improved self-esteem and greater overall health. With so much to gain […]
The post Maintaining Your Commitment to Exercise appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/maintaining-your-commitment-to-exercise/ Save to Pocket
The 2024 Kia Seltos SX Turbo AWD subcompact SUV
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
What is a Seltos? A Seltos is a subcompact SUV built in the Gwangju, Korea assembly plant and sold worldwide by Kia. This very popular subcompact SUV class has many competitors and the Kia Seltos goes head to head with crossovers like the Honda HR-V, Subaru Crosstrek and the Toyota Corolla Cross. Small crossovers, also known as subcompact SUVs, are a type of sport utility vehicle that are smaller in size and have a more fuel efficient design that gets better gas mileage than all the larger SUVs.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/the-2024-kia-seltos-sx-turbo-awd-subcompact-suv/ Save to Pocket
Topton L10 is a 15.6 inch notebook with a 7 inch tablet embedded next to the keyboard
date: 2024-01-28, from: Liliputing
A few years ago Lenovo put out a ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 laptop featuring a 17.3 inch ultra-wide primary display and an 8 inch secondary display positioned to the right of the keyboard, allowing you to use your fingertips or a pressure-sensitive pen for input. Now Chinese PC company Topton is borrowing that idea… kind […]
The post Topton L10 is a 15.6 inch notebook with a 7 inch tablet embedded next to the keyboard appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/topton-l10-is-a-15-6-inch-notebook-with-a-7-inch-tablet-embedded-next-to-the-keyboard/ Save to Pocket
3 US Troops Killed in Drone Attack in Jordan
date: 2024-01-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-troops-killed-in-drone-attack-on-us-base-in-jordan-/7460601.html Save to Pocket
The Curious About Everything Newsletter #35
date: 2024-01-28, from: Curious about everything blog
The many interesting things I read in January 2023.
https://jodiettenberg.substack.com/p/thirty-five Save to Pocket
A Quiet Weekend at the Box Office with ‘The Beekeeper’ on Top
date: 2024-01-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/a-quiet-weekend-at-the-box-office-with-the-beekeeper-on-top-and-some-oscar-boosts/7460588.html Save to Pocket
Biden is trying to balance Gaza protests and free speech rights as demonstrators disrupt his events
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
It was President Joe Biden’s first big campaign rally of the year, a chance to spotlight the issue of protecting abortion rights. Instead, at least a dozen times during Biden’s 22-minute speech, demonstrators scattered throughout the audience rose to shout out demands for a cease-fire in Gaza.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/biden-is-trying-to-balance-gaza-protests-and-free-speech-rights-as-demonstrators-disrupt-his-events/ Save to Pocket
What is UNRWA, the main aid provider in Gaza that Israel accuses of militant links?
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Israel’s allegations that 12 employees of a United Nations agency were involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack have led several Western countries to cut off funding and reignited debate over Gaza’s biggest humanitarian aid provider.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/what-is-unrwa-the-main-aid-provider-in-gaza-that-israel-accuses-of-militant-links/ Save to Pocket
Competition is decreasing in enterprise IT – and you’ll be poorer and dumber for it
date: 2024-01-28, updated: 2024-01-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Suppliers know they can get away with less and the cloud means alternatives are less likely to emerge
Comment HPE’s decision to acquire Juniper is bad news for enterprise IT, as yet another example of consolidation in a field that already offers fewer, and less palatable, competitive choices in a shrinking market.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/28/juniper_hpe_competition_implications/ Save to Pocket
Three Prospect High students charged with battery
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Another student suffered serious bodily injury in incident.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/three-prospect-high-students-charged-with-battery/ Save to Pocket
Opera San José celebrates its 40th anniversary on Feb. 2
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Company will preview ‘Rigoletto’ at South First Friday art walk.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/opera-san-jose-celebrates-its-40th-anniversary-on-feb-2/ Save to Pocket
Los Gatos extends Housing Element Advisory Board’s term
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Council grants 4th extension to allow group to complete its work.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/los-gatos-extends-housing-element-advisory-boards-term/ Save to Pocket
Recycle Bookstore celebrates 20 years in Campbell
date: 2024-01-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Owner says customers dictate business model.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/28/recycle-bookstore-celebrates-20-years-in-campbell/ Save to Pocket
U.S. EV Registrations Reached Almost 90,000 In November 2023
date: 2024-01-28, from: Inside EVs News
The year-over-year growth slowed down to 30%.
https://insideevs.com/news/706337/us-ev-registrations-november2023/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
US historians sign brief to support Colorado’s removal of Trump from ballot.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/jan/28/us-historians-sign-brief-to-support-colorados-removal-of-trump-from-ballot Save to Pocket
LEVER WEEKLY: “FAA Should Not Have Ungrounded The Plane”
date: 2024-01-28, from: The Lever News
From more Boeing revelations to fossil fuel propaganda in schools, here’s all news from The Lever this week.
https://www.levernews.com/lever-weekly-faa-should-not-have-ungrounded-the-plane/ Save to Pocket
Tax season is here
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
The 2024 tax filing season has begun, with the Department of Revenue and Taxation now accepting 2023 tax year returns, the agency announced in a press release.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/tax-season-is-here/article_d0c35be4-bd69-11ee-9918-a35a8ffa13c8.html Save to Pocket
GDOE addresses ADA compliance concerns
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Department of Education is developing a master plan for how to make its facilities accessible to all, according to an education official.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gdoe-addresses-ada-compliance-concerns/article_fa3396b8-bd6b-11ee-bc18-dfa2bd2901ba.html Save to Pocket
United: Haneda-Guam daily flight service back on the table
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
A lack of interest in nighttime flights from Hawaii to Haneda is good news for Guam, as it opens up the possibility of a new market from Japan.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/united-haneda-guam-daily-flight-service-back-on-the-table/article_3052e9ba-bcc7-11ee-a8c7-53aa8a883f9c.html Save to Pocket
Man charged in fatal Yigo crash
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
A man has been charged with vehicular homicide in a fatal two-car collision that occurred in November 2023 in Yigo.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-charged-in-fatal-yigo-crash/article_c7ad449c-bd6f-11ee-bfbe-0f26a26f9749.html Save to Pocket
Educators learn about human trafficking at GDOE seminar
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
A handful of teachers and other agency representatives on Friday received training key to recognizing human trafficking.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/educators-learn-about-human-trafficking-at-gdoe-seminar/article_a1260678-bcc1-11ee-a92c-cb758497f40b.html Save to Pocket
Suspect in game room robbery charged
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
A suspect who allegedly wielded a machete to rob a game room in Dededo was charged Saturday in the Superior Court of Guam.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/suspect-in-game-room-robbery-charged/article_0a534ca8-bd73-11ee-ae80-53c9ec101731.html Save to Pocket
GPD: Man found under robbery suspect’s bed, arrested for drugs
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
Officers with the Guam Police Department were looking for a robbery suspect at a home in Harmon when they came across a man they later arrested on suspicion of drug possession hiding under a bed within the home.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gpd-man-found-under-robbery-suspects-bed-arrested-for-drugs/article_59d3ac10-bd6d-11ee-b62d-cf226301febd.html Save to Pocket
Man arrested in raid
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Police Department executed a search warrant on a house in an undisclosed location in central Guam based on information that “potential drug activity” was being conducted.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-arrested-in-raid/article_c6243ea8-bd6c-11ee-a9b1-53b2614cfb68.html Save to Pocket
School meal portion concerns raised by public school parents
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
Several parents who attended the first Guam Department of Education engagement forum of the school year raised concerns over school meals provided to public school students.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/school-meal-portion-concerns-raised-by-public-school-parents/article_e0473734-bcab-11ee-af75-87154fd60071.html Save to Pocket
GMH advises expectant moms epidurals are safe and available
date: 2024-01-28, from: Guam Daily Post
There is good news for expectant mothers: the Guam Memorial Hospital Authority has epidural anesthesia available for pain relief.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gmh-advises-expectant-moms-epidurals-are-safe-and-available/article_20dcdcfa-bbfc-11ee-ad92-e396c5102643.html Save to Pocket
STM32-base project
date: 2024-01-28, from: Tilde.news
https://stm32-base.org Save to Pocket
a small parable
date: 2024-01-28, from: Ayjay blog
Occasionally I find myself in groups populated by business people, technologists, consultants, people who work in nonprofits, practitioners of various kinds — and academics. Such groups gather to figure out how to respond to certain major social problems. Because the participants come from various professional worlds, it can sometimes be difficult to discover a common […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/a-small-parable/ Save to Pocket
Willie On My Mind
date: 2024-01-28, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
I was reminiscing recently about songs that are close to my heart. So many country songs from my younger years pop into my head at the oddest times these days, but I heard one recently from my friend Willie Nelson that reminded me of another time in Texas, a gentler time, and it’s certainly a reason to smile. Back in 1982, Willie recorded “Always On My Mind.”
https://steady.substack.com/p/willie-on-my-mind Save to Pocket
The Art Along The Metro K Line Tells LA’s Stories. Find Out How They Were Made
date: 2024-01-28, updated: 2024-01-28, from: The LAist
Metro’s Here: Arts & Culture Along the K exhibit at the Museum of African American Art in Baldwin Hills highlights the making of each public art piece on Metro’s newest line.
https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/the-art-along-the-metro-k-line-tells-la-s-stories-find-out-how-they-were-made Save to Pocket
The Film Industry Is Starting to Recover From Last Year’s Strikes, But Progress Has Been Slow
date: 2024-01-28, updated: 2024-01-28, from: The LAist
Even with the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike last December, filming didn’t pick back up in time to make up for historically low levels of filming in the fourth quarter of 2023.
https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/the-film-industry-is-starting-to-recover-from-last-years-strikes-but-progress-has-been-slow Save to Pocket
‘Hot Droughts’ Are Becoming More Common In The Arid West, New Study Finds
date: 2024-01-28, updated: 2024-01-28, from: The LAist
Scientists looked at trees to better understand the interplay between temperatures and droughts in the Western U.S. Human-caused climate change is exacerbating both.
https://laist.com/news/hot-droughts-are-becoming-more-common-in-the-arid-west-new-study-finds Save to Pocket
SparkyLinux harbors a flamboyant array of desktops
date: 2024-01-28, updated: 2024-01-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Both stable and rolling releases, Pi versions, and some very unusual customizations
SparkyLinux is a lightweight distro based on Debian, but it offers some choices that few if any others do.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/28/sparkylinux/ Save to Pocket
County lowers maximum payments for lava-impacted properties
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Owners of secondary homes damaged, destroyed or isolated by the 2018 Kilauea eruption will get smaller payouts than expected after Hawaii County adjusted the terms of its housing buyout program. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/hawaii-news/county-lowers-maximum-payments-for-lava-impacted-properties/ Save to Pocket
The Wall That Heals concludes Hilo visit with ceremony
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A ceremony Saturday at the The Wall That Heals in Hilo drew a huge crowd of veterans, families, friends and people looking to honor the veterans — living and dead — of the Vietnam War.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/hawaii-news/the-wall-that-heals-concludes-hilo-visit-with-ceremony/ Save to Pocket
Council rejects funds for Puna roadway study
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The first stage in an effort to develop another roadway into Puna lost its state funding after the Hawaii County Council voted Wednesday against accepting the money.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/hawaii-news/council-rejects-funds-for-puna-roadway-study/ Save to Pocket
Coconut Grove Marketplace listed for sale at $38.4 million
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Coconut Grove Marketplace on Alii Drive in the core of Kailua Village has been listed for sale.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/hawaii-news/coconut-grove-marketplace-listed-for-sale-at-38-4-million/ Save to Pocket
Journey Through the Universe celebrates milestone
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Keiki and adults have the chance to take a “Journey Through the Universe” as educators and scientists return next month to Hilo for the 20th annual astronomy education and outreach program.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/hawaii-news/journey-through-the-universe-celebrates-milestone/ Save to Pocket
BIIF girls hoops: KSH defeats Waiakea, 49-48
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Kamehameha Schools - Hawai‘i girls volleyball team closed out its regular season by claiming yet another high-ranked victim, edging Waiakea High 49-48 on Thursday night in Hilo.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/sports/biif-girls-hoops-ksh-defeats-waiakea-49-48/ Save to Pocket
NFC, AFC title games today with a spot in Super Bowl on the line
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p><strong>Detroit (14-5) at San Francisco (13-5)</strong></p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/sports/nfc-afc-title-games-today-with-a-spot-in-super-bowl-on-the-line/ Save to Pocket
LeBron James has triple-double and hits winning free throws, Lakers beat Warriors in double overtime
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — LeBron James made two free throws with 1.2 seconds left in the second overtime to cap his triple-double of 36 points, 20 rebounds and 12 assists in the Los Angeles Lakers’ 145-144 victory over the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/sports/lebron-james-has-triple-double-and-hits-winning-free-throws-lakers-beat-warriors-in-double-overtime/ Save to Pocket
No. 23 Iowa State beats No. 7 Kansas 79-75, runs home winning streak to 13 games
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>AMES, Iowa (AP) — Tre King had 21 points and nine rebounds, and No. 23 Iowa State knocked off No. 7 Kansas 79-75 on Saturday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/sports/no-23-iowa-state-beats-no-7-kansas-79-75-runs-home-winning-streak-to-13-games/ Save to Pocket
Doc Rivers was lured back to coaching by the chance to compete for an NBA title with the Bucks
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>MILWAUKEE — Doc Rivers was coaching the first NBA game that Giannis Antetokounmpo remembers seeing on television.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/sports/doc-rivers-was-lured-back-to-coaching-by-the-chance-to-compete-for-an-nba-title-with-the-bucks/ Save to Pocket
Avian flu is devastating farms in California’s ‘Egg Basket’ as outbreaks roil poultry industry
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PETALUMA, Calif. — Last month, Mike Weber got the news every poultry farmer fears: His chickens tested positive for avian flu.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/nation-world-news/avian-flu-is-devastating-farms-in-californias-egg-basket-as-outbreaks-roil-poultry-industry/ Save to Pocket
Biden aide urges Bejing to press Iran over Houthi attacks. China warns US over Taiwan independence
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan pressed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during talks in Thailand to use China’s influence with Iran to ease tensions in the Middle East. The officials also agreed to work toward arranging a call between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/nation-world-news/biden-aide-urges-bejing-to-press-iran-over-houthi-attacks-china-warns-us-over-taiwan-independence/ Save to Pocket
Nazi death camp survivors mark 79th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation on Holocaust Remembrance Day
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>OSWIECIM, Poland — A group of survivors of Nazi death camps marked the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during World War II in a modest ceremony Saturday in southern Poland.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/nation-world-news/nazi-death-camp-survivors-mark-79th-anniversary-of-auschwitz-liberation-on-holocaust-remembrance-day/ Save to Pocket
Netanyahu is defiant after UN court ruling as deaths in Gaza offensive continue
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday pushed back after the International Court of Justice ruling to limit death and destruction in the military’s Gaza offensive, declaring that “we decide and act according to what is required for our security.” Among the first deaths reported since the ruling, witnesses said three Palestinians were killed in an airstrike that Israel said targeted a Hamas commander.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/nation-world-news/netanyahu-is-defiant-after-un-court-ruling-as-deaths-in-gaza-offensive-continue/ Save to Pocket
Your Views for January 28
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Homeless sweeps
cause ‘invisible harm’</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/opinion/your-views-for-january-28-3/ Save to Pocket
Hawaii’s path to financial literacy
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>As high school students get older, they will soon realize, no matter what field they are interested in, financial literacy will apply to them.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/opinion/hawaiis-path-to-financial-literacy/ Save to Pocket
Trump’s nomination is becoming a horrible inevitability. Why can’t the GOP do better?
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>With Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the New Hampshire Republican primary, the possibility of anyone else securing the party’s presidential nomination is vanishingly small. That depressing reality doesn’t mean that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley should abandon her campaign to overtake Trump, which she vowed to continue. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/opinion/trumps-nomination-is-becoming-a-horrible-inevitability-why-cant-the-gop-do-better/ Save to Pocket
Obituaries for January 28
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Karen Baraoidan, 72, of Papaikou, died Jan. 16 at Hilo Medical Center. Born in Honolulu, she was a bookmaker. Visitation to be held 3-5 p.m. Feb. 3 at Dodo Mortuary Chapel, with prayer service at 5 p.m. Casual attire. Survived by sons Alex (Michelle) Galdones of Hilo, Derek (Cheryl) Sabino of Lanai and Jason (Wendy) Baraoidan of Gardena, Calif.; daughters Francell Garza and Rochelle Guzman of Gardena, Calif., Denise (Robbie) Perkins of Las Vegas, Kierra Bryant of Papaikou and Leah (Roger) Carvalho of Hilo; brothers Neal Macia and Gene Mancia of Hilo; sister Susan Gabris of Honolulu; 15 grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and numerous nieces and nephews. Arrangements by Dodo Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/obituaries/obituaries-for-january-28-7/ Save to Pocket
Volcano Watch: Iceland’s recent eruption a reminder of lava flow hazards
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Lava flows slowly approaching houses. Authorities evacuating neighborhoods. The tension of residents not knowing when, or if, they can return to their homes.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/community/volcano-watch-icelands-recent-eruption-a-reminder-of-lava-flow-hazards/ Save to Pocket
Biden returns to South Carolina to show his determination to win back Black voters in 2024
date: 2024-01-28, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>COLUMBIA, S.C. — Joe Biden doesn’t need to worry about his prospects in South Carolina’s Democratic primary next week. He’s got that locked up.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/28/nation-world-news/biden-returns-to-south-carolina-to-show-his-determination-to-win-back-black-voters-in-2024/ Save to Pocket
Sunday caption contest: Land Ho?
date: 2024-01-28, from: Robert Reich on Substack
And last week’s winner
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-caption-contest-land-ho Save to Pocket
Drivethru, I am unhappy!
date: 2024-01-28, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
Drivethru, I am unhappy!
The DrivethruRPG website so depends on shit that it loads from other domains that I cannot log in no matter how many exceptions I add to uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, or the Firefox content blocking preferences. And with every second I spend doing this, I resent them more. And when I finally start Chromium to try and connect, I’m already ranting as I sit at my laptop. And then I get Connection timed out from cloudflare and really… I feel like they don’t want my money. Uuuugh.
I used their contact form. When I hit the submit button I was greeted by a white page. I don’t know if they go an email. (I did try the next day from a phone and that worked – which sort of illustrates the point.)
Here’s what I wrote:
I think in a world where big tech is tracking us, where everybody and their uncle is spying on us, it is only natural that people start locking down their browser. I have uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger installed and I tell all my browsers to do as much content blocking as they can, I delete all cookies when I close the browser. It’s the right thing to do. It is all the more galling when a website such as Drivethru becomes practically unusable as a consequence of me trying to do the right thing. It feels as if Drivethru is betraying me to the big tech corporations, helping them spy on me. It’s a revolting feeling. These days, I have it every time I remember to use an unprotected Chromium browser just to log into Drivethru. Every single time I wish for an alternative. Every single time I hope that itch.io and other competitors end up replacing you.
If only you had a simple, straight forward website, served your own Javascript, had no tracking, and allowed me to browse stuff and buy it. I don’t really expect an answer to this email. It just feels unfair to rant on social media about the situation without telling you about it.
I hope Drivethru improves. I really do. I believe that change is possible and I hope that you do, too.
@craigmaloney says:
Honestly there’s some good points and some really bad points to their redesign and I’m having a hard time reconciling the good points because the bad points are so infuriating.
@jameschip says:
oh my gawd its the worst.
@dianaprobst says:
It’s sluggish in terrible ways.
@mdhughes says:
I don’t know what they think the end-game is, but for me it’s a lot more itch.io and ‘zon for physical stuff.
(Also DriveThruRPG finally flipped on shitty new UI, I sent feedback… on fedi.)
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-01-27-drivethru Save to Pocket
The pen is mightier than the keyboard for turbocharging your noggin
date: 2024-01-28, updated: 2024-01-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Brain research could help find the right mix between handwriting and new technologies, researchers claim
Scientists claim to have found evidence that handwriting promotes learning more than typing on keyboards.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/28/handwriting_vs_typing_study/ Save to Pocket
David Hegg | Seeing Anger as an Enemy
date: 2024-01-28, from: The Signal
By David Hegg In the biblical story of Jonah, after enjoying an all-expense-paid, three-night stay in waterfront accommodations in the belly of the whale, the prophet finally completes the mission God gave him. He went to Nineveh, preached impending doom to the city, and watched them repent and ward off God’s judgment. And, unlike every […]
The post David Hegg | Seeing Anger as an Enemy appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/david-hegg-seeing-anger-as-an-enemy/ Save to Pocket
Ron Perry | Love America First
date: 2024-01-28, from: The Signal
Instead of Democrats putting President Donald Trump on trial for anything they can think of, and instead of Republicans going after Hunter Biden because it will hurt President Joe Biden, instead of looking to have college loans forgiven and getting “free” food or “free” medical insurance … What ever happened to this novel idea? “And […]
The post Ron Perry | Love America First appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/ron-perry-love-america-first/ Save to Pocket
US Sees Signs of Progress on Deal to Release Israeli Hostages, Pause War
date: 2024-01-28, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — U.S. negotiators are making progress on a potential agreement under which Israel would pause military operations against Hamas in Gaza for two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages who were captured in the October 7 attack on Israel, according to two senior administration officials.
The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said Saturday that emerging terms of the yet-to-be sealed deal would play out over two phases.
In the first phase, fighting would stop to allow for the remaining women, elderly and wounded hostages to be released by Hamas.
Israel and Hamas would then aim to work out details during the first 30 days of the pause for a second phase in which Israeli soldiers and civilian men would be released. The emerging deal also calls for Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.
While the proposed deal would not end the war, U.S. officials are hopeful that such an agreement could lay the groundwork for a durable resolution to the conflict.
The New York Times first reported on Saturday that progress has been made towards an agreement for a pause in fighting in exchange for the remaining hostages.
CIA director Bill Burns is expected to discuss the contours of the emerging agreement when he meets on Sunday in France with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel for talks centered on the hostage negotiations, according to three people familiar with the scheduled meeting who were not authorized to comment publicly.
President Joe Biden on Friday spoke by phone with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani. Calls with both leaders focused on the hostage situation.
“Both leaders affirmed that a hostage deal is central to establishing a prolonged humanitarian pause in the fighting and ensure additional life-saving humanitarian assistance reaches civilians in need throughout Gaza,” the White House said in a statement about Biden’s call with the Qatari leader. “They underscored the urgency of the situation, and welcomed the close cooperation among their teams to advance recent discussions.”
Burns heads to France for the high-level talks after White House senior adviser Brett McGurk traveled to the Mideast this week for talks on the hostage situation.
If Burns sees progress in his talks in France, Biden may dispatch McGurk back to the Mideast quickly to try to complete an agreement. McGurk during his talks this week was also laying the groundwork for another trip to the region by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who next week could make his fifth trip to the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October.
The White House and CIA have yet to publicly confirm Burns’ meeting in France and administration officials have been guarded that a deal can quickly be brokered.
“We should not expect any imminent developments,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday.
Biden and his aides are keenly aware that the mounting Palestinian death toll, and widespread suffering in Gaza, is frustrating some in his Democratic base, who want to see him put more pressure on Israel to end the war. Democrats in Michigan have warned the White House that Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict could cost him enough support within the state’s sizable Arab American community to sway the outcome of the 2024 election in a state that could be key to whether he wins a second term.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to continue the offensive until complete victory over Hamas is achieved.
Netanyahu has faced increasing pressure from the families of many hostages who are demanding a deal to win their loved ones’ release.
The October 7 attack killed some 1,200 people in Israel, and Hamas and other militants abducted around 250 people.
Around 100 hostages were freed under a weeklong cease-fire deal in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Around 130 remain captive, but a number have since been confirmed dead.
Hamas has previously said it will free more captives only in exchange for an end to the war and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-sees-signs-of-progress-on-deal-to-release-israeli-hostages-pause-war-/7460371.html Save to Pocket
Rob Kerchner | An Unlikely Health Care Hero
date: 2024-01-28, from: The Signal
In 1988, I sat in a Moscow hotel with a dozen Americans and our Russian tour guide, discussing health care. The liberals were decrying the American health system, until the Russian guide bravely asked how much it cost to deliver a baby in America. She then went on to say that she would gladly pay […]
The post Rob Kerchner | An Unlikely Health Care Hero appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/rob-kerchner-an-unlikely-health-care-hero/ Save to Pocket
Artist Who Performed Nude Sues Museum Over Sexual Assault Claims
date: 2024-01-28, from: VOA News USA
albany, new york — A performer who appeared naked in a show by world-renowned performance artist Marina Abramovic at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art is suing the museum, saying it failed to take action after he was sexually assaulted multiple times by attendees during the performances nearly 14 years ago.
The suit was filed in Manhattan on Monday under the New York Adult Survivors Act, a special state law that created a yearslong suspension of the usual time limit for accusers to sue. Although the law expired last year, the suit says the parties agreed to extend the window closing.
John Bonafede alleges in the suit he was sexually assaulted by five public onlookers who attended a show he was hired by the museum to perform in as part of Abramovic’s retrospective “The Artist Is Present.”
Email messages sent to the museum this week were not returned. Abramovic is not named as a defendant and did not immediately return a request for comment.
The work, titled “Imponderabilia,” saw Bonafede and another performer standing face-to-face with each other in a doorway about 18 inches (45.7 centimeters) apart, fully nude, silent, and still. The exhibition, which ran from March 14, 2010, through May 31, 2010, was curated by the museum in a way that encouraged visitors to pass in between the performers as they went from one gallery to the next, the suit alleges.
Mostly older men involved, says suit
The people who assaulted Bonafede were mostly older men, the suit says. One of the perpetrators was a corporate member of the museum, who was ultimately kicked out and revoked of his membership, according to the suit.
During the final weeks of the exhibition, another attendee non-consensually groped Bonafede’s private areas three times before they were finally stopped by security, the suit said.
Bonafede reported four of the individuals to the museum staff and security immediately, according to the suit, while the fifth was witnessed personally by the museum security staff.
Female performer also assaulted, suit says
At one point, Bonafede also witnessed a public attendee sexually assault his female co-performer by kissing her on the mouth without her consent, the suit said.
Prior to the exhibition, the performers had voiced their concerns about nude performers being subject to harassment in a letter to the museum during contract negotiations, the suit said.
Once it began, several news outlets including The New York Times reported on the inappropriate behavior by visitors, and the sexual assaults on “Imponderabilia” were discussed within New York City’s art and performance communities, the suit says.
Despite the museum having knowledge of the issue, it failed to take action to protect the performers and prevent further sexual assaults, such as telling visitors ahead of time that touching was not allowed, the lawsuit said.
About a month into the exhibition, the museum created a handbook outlining protocols for the performers to alert museum staff if they felt unsafe or were inappropriately touched.
Bonafede agreed to continue the performance after he was assaulted because of the “tough it out” culture of the exhibition, the suit says, but suffered for years from emotional distress, and his mental health, body image and career were damaged as a result.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly. Bonafede gave consent through his lawyer, Jordan Fletcher.
Fletcher declined to comment further on the suit, but said they will be seeking a jury trial and compensatory damages.
https://www.voanews.com/a/hold-for-wknd-artist-who-performed-nude-sues-museum-over-sexual-assault-claims-/7458053.html Save to Pocket
Today in SCV History (Jan. 28)
date: 2024-01-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1850 – Death Valley ’49er William Robinson dies in Soledad Canyon from drinking too much cool water [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-19/ Save to Pocket
Avian Flu Outbreaks Roil US Poultry Industry
date: 2024-01-28, from: VOA News USA
PETALUMA, Calif. — Last month, Mike Weber got the news every poultry farmer fears: His chickens tested positive for avian flu.
Following government rules, Weber’s company, Sunrise Farms, had to slaughter its entire flock of egg-laying hens — 550,000 birds — to prevent the disease from infecting other farms in Sonoma County north of San Francisco.
“It’s a trauma. We’re all going through grief as a result of it,” said Weber, standing in an empty hen house. “Petaluma is known as the Egg Basket of the World. It’s devastating to see that egg basket go up in flames.”
A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest.
The highly contagious virus has ravaged Sonoma County, where officials have declared a state of emergency. During the past two months, nearly a dozen commercial farms have had to destroy more than 1 million birds to control the outbreak, dealing an economic blow to farmers, workers and their customers.
Merced County in Central California also has been hit hard, with outbreaks at several large commercial egg-producing farms in recent weeks.
Experts say bird flu is spread by ducks, geese and other migratory birds. The waterfowl can carry the virus without getting sick and easily spread it through their droppings to chicken and turkey farms and backyard flocks through droppings and nasal discharges.
California poultry farms are implementing strict biosecurity measures to curb the spread of the disease. State Veterinarian Annette Jones urged farmers to keep their flocks indoors until June, including organic chickens that are required to have outdoor access.
“We still have migration going for another couple of months. So we’ve got to be as vigilant as possible to protect our birds,” said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation.
The loss of local hens led to a spike in egg prices in the San Francisco Bay Area over the holidays before supermarkets and restaurants found suppliers from outside the region.
While bird flu has been around for decades, the current outbreak of the virus that began in early 2022 has prompted officials to slaughter nearly 82 million birds, mostly egg-laying chickens, in 47 U.S. states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Whenever the disease is found the entire flock is slaughtered to help limit the spread of the virus.
The price of a dozen eggs more than doubled to $4.82 at its peak in January 2023. Egg prices returned to their normal range as egg producers built up their flocks and outbreaks were controlled. Turkey and chicken prices also spiked, partly due to the virus.
“I think this is an existential issue for the commercial poultry industry. The virus is on every continent, except for Australia at this point,” said Maurice Pitesky, a poultry expert at the University of California, Davis.
Climate change is increasing the risk of outbreaks as changing weather patterns disrupt the migratory patterns of wild birds, Pitesky said. For example, exceptional rainfall last year created new waterfowl habitat throughout California, including areas close to poultry farms.
In California, the outbreak has impacted more than 7 million chickens in about 40 commercial flocks and 24 backyard flocks, with most of the outbreaks occurring over the past two months on the North Coast and Central Valley, according to the USDA.
Industry officials are worried about the growing number of backyard chickens that could become infected and spread avian flu to commercial farms.
“We have wild birds that are are full of virus. And if you expose your birds to these wild birds, they might get infected and ill,” said Rodrigo Gallardo, a UC Davis researcher who studies avian influenza.
Gallardo advises the owners of backyard chickens to wear clean clothes and shoes to protect their flocks from getting infected. If an unusual number of chickens die, they should be tested for avian flu.
Ettamarie Peterson, a retired teacher in Petaluma, has a flock of about 50 chickens that produce eggs she sells from her backyard barn for 50 cents each.
“I’m very concerned because this avian flu is transmitted by wild birds, and there’s no way I can stop the wild birds from coming through and leaving the disease behind,” Peterson said. “If your flock has any cases of it, you have to destroy the whole flock.”
Sunrise Farms, which was started by Weber’s great-grandparents more than a century ago, was infected despite putting in place strict biosecurity measures to protect the flock.
“The virus got to the birds so bad and so quickly you walked in and the birds were just dead,” Weber said. “Heartbreaking doesn’t describe how you feel when you walk in and perfectly healthy young birds have been just laid out.”
After euthanizing more than half a million chickens at Sunrise Farms, Weber and his employees spent the Christmas holiday discarding the carcasses. Since then, they’ve been cleaning out and disinfecting the hen houses.
Weber hopes the farm will get approval from federal regulators to bring chicks back to the farm this spring. Then it would take another five months before the hens are mature enough to lay eggs.
He feels lucky that two farms his company co-owns have not been infected and are still producing eggs for his customers. But recovering from the outbreak won’t be easy.
“We have a long road ahead,” Weber said. “We’re going to make another run of it and try to keep this family of employees together because they’ve worked so hard to build this into the company that it is.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/avian-flu-outbreaks-roil-us-poultry-industry/7460353.html Save to Pocket
Attention Is All You Need (the origin of the “T” in ChatGPT)
date: 2024-01-28, from: Tilde.news
https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Former senator says new film shows ‘how close’ we came to losing democracy on Jan. 6.
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/4433751-former-senator-new-film-losing-democracy-jan-6/ Save to Pocket
January 27, 2024
date: 2024-01-28, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln rose before the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, to make a speech. Just 28 years old, Lincoln had begun to practice law and had political ambitions. But he was worried that his generation might not preserve the republic that the founders had handed to it for transmission to yet another generation. He took as his topic for that January evening, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-27-2024 Save to Pocket
Biden Returns to South Carolina, Determined to Win Back Black Voters
date: 2024-01-28, from: VOA News USA
COLUMBIA, South carolina — U.S. President Joe Biden doesn’t need to worry about his prospects in South Carolina’s Democratic primary next week. He’s got that locked up.
He also knows he’s not likely to win the solidly red state come November. South Carolina hasn’t voted for a Democrat since 1976.
Nonetheless, Biden spent the weekend in the state, intent on driving home two messages: He’s loyal to the state that saved his campaign in 2020 and he’s determined to win back Black voters here and elsewhere who were central to his election last time but are less enthused this go-round.
“You’re the reason I am president,” Biden told attendees at the state party’s fundraising dinner ahead of its first ever “first-in-the-nation” Democratic primary on February 3. “You’re the reason Kamala Harris is a historic vice president. And you’re the reason Donald Trump is a defeated former president. You’re the reason Donald Trump is a loser. And you’re the reason we’re going to win and beat him again.”
Biden received raved applause and chants of “four more years” from attendees at the dinner, as he criticized his predecessor’s policies and highlighted his efforts to support Black Americans. He was set to spend Sunday in the state where politics and faith are intertwined at a political event at St. John Baptist Church.
Deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said of the primary that Biden’s team was working to “blow this out of the water” by running up the score against long shot challengers. The Biden campaign also wants to learn lessons about activating Black voters — the backbone of the party — ahead of an expected 2024 rematch with Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
Challenger invites Biden to pass torch
It was the first time Biden shared a stage with Representative Dean Phillips, a long-shot challenger for the Democratic nomination, who called on the president, 81, to step aside for a younger generation of leaders to take on Trump.
“The numbers do not say things are looking good,” Phillips said of Biden’s poll numbers. “My invitation to President Biden is to pass the torch.”
Struggling to hold the attention of the crowd — many of whom were holding Biden campaign signs ahead of the president’s appearance — Phillips repeatedly asked the audience to quiet down and listen to him.
Phillips told The Associated Press he did not interact with Biden at the event, saying of Biden’s staff, “No. I don’t think they want him to see me.”
Supporters talk up accomplishments
Ahead of the dinner, Biden stopped into Regal Lounge Men’s Barber & Spa in Columbia, greeting, owners, employees and customers mid-haircut at the barbershop.
The president has been getting mixed reviews from some Black voters in the state that came through for him in 2020, including discontent over his failure to deliver on voting rights legislation and other issues.
Last year, at the outset of Biden’s reelection bid, conflicting views among the same South Carolina Democratic voters whose support had been so crucial to his nomination provided an early warning sign of the challenges he faces as he tries to revive his diverse winning coalition from 2020.
Overall, just half of Black adults said they approved of Biden in a December poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That is compared with 86% in July 2021, a shift that is generating concern about the president’s reelection prospects.
APVoteCast, an extensive national survey of the electorate, also found that support for Republican candidates ticked up slightly among Black voters during the 2022 midterm elections, although Black voters overwhelmingly supported Democrats.
The Biden campaign is running TV ads in South Carolina highlighting Biden initiatives that it hopes will boost enthusiasm among Black voters.
“On his first day in office with a country in crisis, President Biden got to work — for us,” the ad states. “Cutting Black child poverty in half, more money for Black entrepreneurs, millions of new good-paying jobs and he lowered the cost of prescription drugs.”
The campaign is spending more than $270,000 on the ads through the primary, according to tracking data. The Democratic National Committee also launched a six-figure ad campaign across South Carolina and Nevada, which is next on the Democratic primary calendar, to boost enthusiasm for Biden among Black and Latino voters. And first lady Jill Biden was in the state on Friday evening to rally voters.
Biden’s campaign has also hired staff in South Carolina to organize ahead of the primary and through the general election, although for nearly 50 years the state has picked a Republican for president.
‘We know Joe…Joe knows us’
Meanwhile, a pro-Biden super PAC, Unite the Country, is airing an ad featuring Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina ticking through what he says are major Biden accomplishments such as reducing student loan debt and cutting insulin costs for older people.
It was Clyburn’s 2020 endorsement of his longtime friend Biden that helped the then-candidate score a thundering win in South Carolina’s presidential primary.
In the new advertisement, Clyburn references his late wife, Emily, who influenced his 2020 endorsement of Biden. She said that “if we wanted to win the presidency, we better nominate Joe Biden,” Clyburn says in the ad. “She was right then, and she’s still right today.”
Clyburn greeted Biden at the airport and accompanied him throughout his visit.
While Trump has seen slightly improving levels of support among Black and Latino voters, Biden’s team is more concerned that a lack of enthusiasm for Biden will depress turnout among voters who are pivotal to the Democratic coalition.
Biden’s team is using South Carolina as a proving ground, tracking which messages and platforms break through with voters.
South Carolina, where Black voters make up a majority of the Democratic electorate, is now the first meaningful contest in the Democratic presidential race after the party reworked the party’s nominating calendar at Biden’s call. Leading off with Iowa and New Hampshire had long drawn criticism because the states are less diverse than the rest of the country.
A co-chairman of Biden’s reelection campaign, Clyburn has remained one of the president’s most stalwart advocates in Congress, as well as in his home state.
Frequently, he reminds people of the same message he delivered in his 2020 endorsement: “We know Joe, and Joe knows us.”
Biden’s decision to campaign in the state “helps solidify South Carolina’s place as the first in the nation primary moving forward,” said Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler.
It also provides Biden an opportunity to re-engage with Black voters who have connections that extend beyond South Carolina.
“Obviously the diaspora is strong, familial ties are strong with other key swing states in the area like Georgia and North Carolina,” Tyler said.
This is Biden’s second trip to South Carolina this month. He spoke earlier in the month at the pulpit of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where nine Black parishioners were shot to death in 2015 by a white stranger they had invited to join their Bible study.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-returns-to-south-carolina-determined-to-win-back-black-voters-/7460314.html Save to Pocket
US Appeals for Contributions to Haiti Security Mission
date: 2024-01-28, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The United States on Saturday appealed for urgent support for a U.N.-backed law-and-order mission to Haiti, which has been thrown into doubt after a Kenyan court ruled against Nairobi’s plan to send its police to the gang-plagued nation.
“The United States’ commitment to the Haitian people remains unwavering,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
“We reaffirm our support of ongoing international efforts to deploy a Multinational Security Support mission for Haiti… and renew our calls for the international community to urgently provide support for this mission.”
Kenya had been meant to lead the mission but a High Court judge on Friday ruled that sending police to Haiti “contravenes the constitution and the law and is therefore unconstitutional, illegal and invalid.”
The Kenyan government has vowed to challenge the decision, a move noted by Miller in his statement.
Nairobi had previously said it was ready to provide up to 1,000 personnel — an offer welcomed by the United States and other nations that had ruled out putting their own forces on the ground.
“It is urgent that the international community respond to the unprecedented levels of gang violence and destabilizing forces preying upon the Haitian people,” Miller said.
“At the same time, we call for the restoration of democratic order through an inclusive political process in Haiti,” he said, adding that the “only legitimate path to long-term peace and stability is through free and fair elections.”
Haiti, the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation, has been in turmoil for years, with armed gangs taking over parts of the country and unleashing brutal violence, leaving the economy and public health system in tatters.
The 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise plunged the country further into chaos. No elections have taken place since 2016 and the presidency remains vacant.
Haiti’s foreign minister pleaded Thursday for the deployment plans to be accelerated, telling the U.N. Security Council that gang violence in the country was as barbaric as the horrors experienced in war zones.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7460325.html Save to Pocket
US Reviewing Venezuelan Sanctions Policy in Wake of Court Decision
date: 2024-01-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/7460315.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-28, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Imho, whether you or I use Twitter makes absolutely no difference to anyone.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/27.html#a020522 Save to Pocket
Tiny11 creates a 100MB version of Windows 11 by axing the windows
date: 2024-01-28, from: OS News
If you know your Windows history, you’ll know that the operating system got that name when it moved away from using pure MS-DOS and started using a graphical user interface to show things. As it turns out, you can force Windows 11 back to its legacy roots and reduce it back to a command-line interface. This is what the developer of Tiny11 has achieved, calling their new creation “Minwin.” The developer of Win11, NTDev, posted a video on YouTube about their project. There’s absolutely nothing flashy here; no Copilot, no Start menu, and definitely no UI. It’s as graphically complex as the Command Prompt, which meant that NTDev had to resort to fancy 00s-era ASCII logos to announce that Minwin was working. ↫ Simon Batt at XDA Definitely a neat proof-of-concept, and it shows just how modular Windows could be if only Microsoft allowed its users to take out the parts they don’t need. I wonder how close this is to Nano Server, an installation option for Windows Server you’ve probably never heard of. I also like the nod to MinWin, the informal codename Microsoft used internally to refer to an effort by a small number of expert Windows kernel engineers to untangle the spaghetti ball of dependencies that had sprouted between the various architectural layers of Windows. This project started around Vista, and eventually made it possible to make broader, sweeping changes to Windows without breaking things all over the place because the spaghetti ball of internal, low-level dependencies wasn’t mapped out.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138464/tiny11-creates-a-100mb-version-of-windows-11-by-axing-the-windows/ Save to Pocket
Two months in Servo: better inline layout, stable Rust, and more
date: 2024-01-28, from: OS News
Another month, another pile of improvement to Servo, the rendering engine written in Rust, originally a Mozilla project. This month the proof-of-concept browser UI got forward and backward buttons, making this bare-bones UI just a tiny bit more usable. Of course, the vast majority of changes and improvements are all focused on the actual rendering engine, which makes sense because Servo definitely isn’t ready for any prime time use – nor is anyone claiming it is. I’m incredibly curious to see where Servo goes in the future.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138462/two-months-in-servo-better-inline-layout-stable-rust-and-more/ Save to Pocket
Demonstrated Leadership
date: 2024-01-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
I urge 3rd District voters to reelect Joan Hartmann as our county supervisor on March 5.
The post Demonstrated Leadership appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/27/a-demonstrated-leader/ Save to Pocket
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-28, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Exactly
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111830888377689317 Save to Pocket
Apple loses veteran hardware engineering executive to Rivian
date: 2024-01-28, from: Electrek Feed
Apple veteran DJ Novotney is departing the company for a new role at Rivian, according to a report from Bloomberg. Novotney, a vice president of hardware engineering, has spent almost 25 years at Apple and worked across multiple generations of the iPod, the iPhone, the Apple Watch, and more.
https://9to5mac.com/2024/01/27/apple-loses-veteran-hardware-engineering-executive-to-rivian/ Save to Pocket
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-28, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
The genocide continues.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111830793373998588 Save to Pocket
Quick Charge Podcast: January 27, 2024
date: 2024-01-28, from: Electrek Feed
Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from Electrek. Quick Charge is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.
https://electrek.co/2024/01/27/quick-charge-podcast-january-27-2024/ Save to Pocket
Barman 3.10.0 Released
date: 2024-01-28, from: PostgreSQL News
EDB is pleased to announce the release of Barman 3.10.0.
Highlights of this release:
Features:
-
Limit the average bandwidth used by
barman-cloud-backupwhen backing up to either AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage according to the value set by a new CLI option–max-bandwidth. -
Add the new configuration option
lock_directory_cleanupThat enables cron to automatically clean up the barman_lock_directory from unused lock files. -
Add support for a new type of configuration called
model. The model acts as a set of overrides for configuration options for a given Barman server. -
Add a new barman command
barman config-updatethat allows the creation and the update of configurations using JSON - Related to this Barman release, pg_backup_api has been updated and released to support these new features. As a result, Barman now supports changes in the configuration whilst it’s running. This pg-backup-api release adds the required endpoints to trigger that switch when requested.
Bug fixes:
-
Fix a bug that caused
–min-chunk-sizeto be ignored when usingbarman-cloud-backupas a hook script in Barman.
This information is also published in the NEWS for Barman.
About Barman
Backup and Recovery Manager (or Barman) is an open-source administration tool for remote backups and disaster recovery of PostgreSQL servers in business-critical environments. It relies on PostgreSQL’s robust and reliable Point-In-Time Recovery technology, allowing DBAs to remotely manage a complete catalog of backups and the recovery phase of multiple remote servers – all from one location. Barman is distributed under GNU GPL 3 and maintained by EDB.
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/barman-3100-released-2798/ Save to Pocket
Greenmask v0.1.1 Release
date: 2024-01-28, from: PostgreSQL News
PostgreSQL Dump and Obfuscation Tool
We are excited to announce the release of Greenmask v0.1.1. This release introduces a suite of new transformers, significantly enhancing its capabilities for obfuscating PostgreSQL databases.
Greenmask Overview
Key Features
- Cross-Platform Support: Developed in Go, Greenmask operates independently of platform constraints, offering flexibility across different operating systems.
- Type-Safe Database Operations: It ensures data validation and encoding, maintaining the integrity of your database throughout the obfuscation process.
- Transformation Validation: Greenmask guarantees correct and maintainable data transformations, ensuring reliability and accuracy.
- Partitioned Table Support: Simplifies configuration for partitioned tables, making it easier to manage large datasets.
- Stateless and Backward Compatible: Designed to be compatible with standard PostgreSQL utilities, ensuring seamless integration into existing workflows.
- Parallel Execution: Enhances efficiency in dumping and restoration processes through concurrent operations, reducing the time required for data handling.
- Multiple Storage Options: Supports both local and remote storage solutions, offering flexibility in data management and backup strategies.
Use Cases
Greenmask is ideally suited for:
- Routine backup and restoration tasks, ensuring data integrity and availability.
- Anonymization and data masking for staging environments and analytics, protecting sensitive information while maintaining data utility.
Release Notes
Improvements
New Transformers: The latest update vastly expands the variety of available transformers, enhancing Greenmask’s versatility for database obfuscation. The newly added transformers include:
- Geographic data generators like RandomLatitude and RandomLongitude.
- Temporal data generators such as RandomUnixTime and RandomMonthName.
- Communication data generators, including RandomEmail and RandomPhoneNumber.
- User identity generators like RandomUsername and RandomName.
- Network data generators, including RandomIPv4 and RandomIPv6.
- Security data generators such as RandomPassword.
- Financial data generators like RandomCurrency and RandomAmountWithCurrency.
- Content data generators, including RandomWord and RandomParagraph.
- A unique RealAddress generator for more realistic data simulation.
These transformers facilitate the generation of mock data for various testing and development purposes, enhancing the utility and flexibility of Greenmask.
Documentation Updates: To accompany the introduction of new transformers, we’ve thoroughly updated our documentation. It now includes detailed explanations and examples, enabling easy configuration and effective use of the new features in your data obfuscation pipelines.
Community Participation
We encourage the PostgreSQL community to engage with us by providing feedback and suggestions. Your insights and testing are invaluable for improving Greenmask’s robustness and utility.
Useful Links
- Explore detailed Documentation
- Access the Latest Release on GitHub
- Contact us for support at Email Support
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/greenmask-v011-release-2797/ Save to Pocket
Full Circle Weekly News 350
date: 2024-01-28, from: Full Circle Magazine
-
openSUSE Leap 16 will be built on the ALP platform using containers:
-
Foxconn joins initiative to protect Linux from patent claims:
-
KDE has improved scaling support and added autosaving in Dolphin:
Credits
- Host: @bardictriad, @zaivala
- Bumper: Canonical
- Theme Music: From The Dust - Stardust
- https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
- CC BY 4.0
https://fullcirclemagazine.org/podcasts/podcast-350/ Save to Pocket
USC basketball mid-season check-in
date: 2024-01-27, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Thomas Johnson, Joshua Sacher and Jack Hallinan gather to have a midseason check-in on the state of USC basketball as the women’s team flies high and the men’s squad flounders amid high expectations.
The post USC basketball mid-season check-in appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/27/usc-basketball-mid-season-check-in/ Save to Pocket
Deputies investigating report of body at golf course
date: 2024-01-27, from: The Signal
Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies are investigating a report of a body found covered in ants at The Oaks Club at Valencia Saturday afternoon, according to Lt. Jack Jordan, a spokesman for the SCV Sheriff’s Station. According to a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, who declined to provide his name, Squad […]
The post Deputies investigating report of body at golf course appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/deputies-investigating-report-of-body-at-golf-course/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Nikki Haley targeted in 'swatting' incident at her South Carolina home.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-presidential-candidate-nikki-haley-targeted-swatting-incident-2024-01-27/ Save to Pocket
Biden, Xi Set for Spring Call; Blinken to Visit Beijing
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
washington — U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to have a phone call in the spring, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken is slated to make another trip to Beijing this year as the two nations pursue additional high-level diplomacy to manage competition in the bilateral relationship.
On Saturday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi concluded their more than 12 hours of talks during a two-day meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.
A senior U.S. administration official said “the quiet low-profile channel” between Sullivan and Wang is “an important way to manage competition and tensions responsibly” between the two countries.
The official also confirmed to VOA that top U.S. diplomat Blinken will return to Beijing this year. Blinken was the first U.S. Cabinet official to travel to China last year, and his counterpart has since traveled to the United States on a reciprocal visit.
The White House described the talks in Bangkok as candid, substantive and constructive discussions that touched on global and regional issues, including Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Middle East, North Korea, the South China Sea, and Burma.
In a statement, the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry said both countries will make good use of current strategic communication channels to properly handle sensitive issues.
Houthi aggression
During the latest talks, Sullivan asked Wang to use Beijing’s “substantial leverage” over Iran to call for an end to the attacks on Red Sea trade routes by Yemen-based Houthi rebels.
U.S. officials have expressed reservations about whether China is “actually raising” the issue, despite repeated requests from Washington.
“We’re looking to actually facts on the ground, and those attacks [by Houthis] seem to be continuing,” said the official when asked if China is playing a positive role during a Saturday phone briefing.
Earlier Saturday, the U.S. Central Command said its forces had destroyed an anti-ship missile in Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen, which posed an imminent threat to merchant vessels and U.S. Navy ships in the Red Sea. The missile was prepared for launch into the Red Sea.
This action follows sanctions and military strikes earlier this month from the U.S. and its allies against the Houthis.
In Beijing, Chinese officials criticized military strikes by the U.S. and United Kingdom against the Houthis rebels.
“We believe that the [United Nations] Security Council has never authorized the use of force by any country on Yemen, and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yemen and other coastal countries of the Red Sea need to be earnestly respected,” said Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs during a briefing last week.
He said tension in the Red Sea is “a manifestation of the spillover of the Gaza conflict” and the priority is to push for a cease-fire in Gaza.
The Houthis have launched attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since November, which they said are in support of Palestinians in conflict with Israel.
The U.S. has condemned these actions by the Houthis as disruptions to international supply chains and violations of navigational rights and freedoms.
Counternarcotics efforts
The U.S. and China will hold a formal working group on counternarcotics in Beijing on January 30-31.
As the U.S. and China resumed their counternarcotics cooperation, American officials said Washington is seeing a reduction in the amount of precursor chemicals originating from China at some U.S. airports.
U.S. officials have identified China as the main source of precursor chemicals used in the synthesis of fentanyl by drug cartels in Mexico.
The working group is aimed at stopping the flow of synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals into the U.S. that contribute to the fentanyl crisis.
Myanmar military coup
While in Bangkok, Sullivan held talks with Thailand Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin and Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara, the Thai foreign minister.
The senior U.S. official told VOA they discussed the ongoing crisis in Myanmar, also known as Burma, and efforts to provide humanitarian aid to the Burmese people.
Civil war has engulfed Myanmar following a military coup on February 1, 2021, that overthrew the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyy.
“It’s fair to say that China certainly does have influence in that region,” the official noted.
“We hope to have follow up discussions at [a] lower level in the coming weeks and months, given the need to really remain focused on promoting a return to the path of democratic transition in Burma.”
Upcoming AI, military talks
In addition, the U.S. and China are preparing for a dialogue on artificial intelligence in the spring, along with the upcoming counternarcotics working group talks in Beijing next week. Both countries also will hold Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meetings this spring, alongside communications between defense ministers and theater commanders.
Sullivan and Wang have been holding talks approximately every four months outside the U.S. since last May. They met in Vienna on May 10-11, 2023, in Malta on September 16-17, 2023, and in Bangkok on January 26-27. They also had discussions in Washington last October during Wang’s visit to the U.S. capital.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-xi-are-set-for-spring-call-blinken-to-visit-beijing/7460035.html Save to Pocket
Deputies: retail and cargo theft ring busted
date: 2024-01-27, from: The Signal
Detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Major Crimes Bureau began an investigation regarding precious metals cargo stolen from the Chicago area, which were then found in Acton on Friday at the residence of Khatchik Aleksanian, according to an LASD news release. The copper and brass seized was over 130,000 pounds and was worth […]
The post Deputies: retail and cargo theft ring busted appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/deputies-retail-and-cargo-theft-ring-busted/ Save to Pocket
Download the whole podcast.
date: 2024-01-27, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
Download the whole podcast.
Feeling evil… Assume that there’s a podcast with a feed and you want to download all the episodes. Like a music show, for example.
First, get the feed, saving it as rss.xml because we’re
going to need it in the next statement.
curl -o rss.xml https://musicforprogramming.net/rss.xml
Then, get every enclosure:
for f in $(perl -ne '/<enclosure url="(.*?)"/ && print "$1\n"' rss.xml); do
curl --continue-at - --remote-name "$f"
done
The –continue-at - option should make it possible to resume
downloads at a later stage. curl will skip all the bytes
already downloaded, effectively skipping the download. That’s what I’m
hoping for, in any case.
The –remote-name option saves the episode under its remote
name. This is what most people would expect, I think.
You know how it goes, though: never parse HTML (or XML) using regular expressions. I’m doing it here and it is definitely a bad idea!
I’m also too lazy to install a real XML parser and doing the real thing, so it is what it is.
@takeonrules wrote in to say that as someone “who doesn’t use Perl” the have a solution using Ripgrep and xargs. I like it very much and feel like I should be using rg and xargs more often.
rg "<enclosure url=['\"]([^'\"]+)['\"]" rss.xml -r '$1' --only-matching \
| xargs curl --continue-at - --remote-name
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-01-21-the-whole-podcast Save to Pocket
Microblogging on the blog
date: 2024-01-27, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
Microblogging on the blog
@wynlim recently posted: “telling myself repeatedly that a blog post doesn’t have to be lengthy”. I feel this very much. The existence of microblogging services really makes me feel that maybe I should not microblog on the blog. Gah! I don’t want to feel this.
I am posting this as therapy.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-01-27-microblogging Save to Pocket
Netflix Games Continue to Gain Traction, Led in Part by ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Titles
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: Daring Fireball
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/10/netflix-games-gain-traction-with-installs-up-180-year-over-year-in-2023-thanks-to-gta-and-others/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump is a loser. Here's why it matters.
https://framelab.substack.com/p/trump-is-a-loser-heres-why-it-matters?publication_id=423996&post_id=66436064&isFreemail=true&r=w33x Save to Pocket
Serving Oddµ via a socket
date: 2024-01-27, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
Serving Oddµ via a socket
Recently, Chris Brannon sent me a patch for Oddµ that allowed it to listen at a Unix-domain socket instead of a host and port.
I decided to investigate since I don’t know anything about sockets. If you see something that can be improved, let me know.
I’m going to use systemd, but for my user.
I have two files, one for the socket and one for the service. These are not the same files as the ones provided with the Oddµ sources. Those are intended to be used together with a web server that acts as a reverse proxy. These files are for me testing the installation using netcat and curl.
Socket
Make sure the directory for the socket exists:
mkdir --parents /home/alex/.local/run/oddmu
This is the file “oddmu-unix-domain.socket”:
[Unit]
Description=Oddmu server socket
[Socket]
ListenStream=/home/alex/.local/run/oddmu/oddmu.sock
Accept=no
[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target
Enable and start it:
systemctl --user enable ./oddmu-unix-domain.socket
systemctl --user start oddmu-unix-domain.socket
Service
Make sure the directory for the wiki exists and copy the template files:
mkdir --parents /home/alex/.local/share/oddmu
cp *.html /home/alex/.local/share/oddmu
This is the file “oddmu-unix-domain.service”:
[Unit]
Description=Oddmu
After=network.target
Requires=oddmu-unix-domain.socket
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
StandardInput=socket
StandardOutput=journal
StandardError=journal
ExecStart=/home/alex/src/oddmu/oddmu
WorkingDirectory=/home/alex/.local/share/oddmu
Environment="ODDMU_WEBFINGER=1"
Environment="ODDMU_LANGUAGES=de,en"
This doesn’t limit a lot of capabilities, but I guess I trust my own code.
Install it:
systemctl --user enable ./oddmu-unix-domain.service
systemctl --user start oddmu-unix-domain.service
Test
Check the journal:
journalctl --user --follow --unit oddmu-unix-domain
Do some requests using netcat:
echo -e "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: localhost\r\n\r\n" \
| ncat --unixsock ~/.local/run/oddmu/oddmu.sock
echo -e "GET /view/index HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: localhost\r\n\r\n" \
| ncat --unixsock ~/.local/run/oddmu/oddmu.sock
echo -e "GET /edit/index HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: localhost\r\n\r\n" \
| ncat --unixsock ~/.local/run/oddmu/oddmu.sock
Using curl:
curl --unix-socket ~/.local/run/oddmu/oddmu.sock \
http://localhost/edit/index
curl --unix-socket ~/.local/run/oddmu/oddmu.sock \
--form body="Hello!" http://localhost/save/index
curl --unix-socket ~/.local/run/oddmu/oddmu.sock \
http://localhost/view/index
What now?
I don’t think I’m going to change my web server setup. But using sockets
and systemctl –user has been interesting.
Thank you, Chris Brannon, for sending that patch!
Apache
If you’re installing Apache for the first time, on Debian:
sudo apt install apache2
sudo a2enmod proxy proxy_http
Create a file “/etc/apache2/sites-available/oddmu.conf”:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localhost
ProxyPassMatch "^/((view|diff|edit|save|add|append|upload|drop|search)/(.*))?$" \
"unix:/home/alex/.local/run/oddmu/oddmu.sock|http://localhost/$1"
</VirtualHost>
Restart Apache to load the module configuration and the site configuration.
sudo a2ensite oddmu
sudo systemctl restart
Test it:
curl http://localhost/view/index
There’s a curious problem with this expression, however. If you use curl(1) to get the root path, Apache hangs:
curl http://transjovian.org/
A workaround is to add the redirect manually and drop the question-mark:
RedirectMatch "^/$" "/view/index"
ProxyPassMatch "^/((view|diff|edit|save|add|append|upload|drop|search)/(.*))$" \
"unix:/home/alex/.local/run/oddmu/oddmu.sock|http://localhost/$1"
New release
Yeah, I think this Unix domain socket stuff is cool enough to warrant a release. I migrated my three sites over to this setup. No more weird ports.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-01-19-oddmu-socket Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
A blogging app for iPhone that stores stuff in S3.
https://beluga.social/about/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump’s ‘achilles heel’? Haley’s refusal to drop out infuriates ex-president.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/27/donald-trump-nikki-haley-republican-nomination Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
9 Best Exercise and Stationary Bikes 2023.
https://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-exercise-bikes.html Save to Pocket
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-01-27, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Companies should heavily support and invest in open platforms.
Sure, getting some crumbs from the EU on the DMA might have some short term benefits. But you should take charge of your future.
Put your money where your mouth is: fund (and fund with passion, not just a few dollars here and there), support, and make opensource- based mobile and desktop operating systems your top priority.
Otherwise, you are just another capitalist swine fighting for a larger portion of slop from the trough.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111829609539329761 Save to Pocket
Google Chrome launches Windows on Arm support
date: 2024-01-27, from: OS News
One of the problems with Arm-based Windows laptops has been a lack of app support, but there’s big news this week as Google Chrome has unexpectedly debuted its first Windows on Arm build. ↫ Ben Schoon at 9To5Google Now you can ruin your battery life on Windows on ARM too! We truly live in blessed times.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138460/google-chrome-launches-windows-on-arm-support/ Save to Pocket
Introducing Android emulators, iOS simulators, and other product updates from Project IDX
date: 2024-01-27, from: OS News
Six months ago, we launched Project IDX, an experimental, cloud-based workspace for full-stack, multiplatform software development. We built Project IDX to simplify and streamline the developer workflow, aiming to reduce the sea of complexities traditionally associated with app development. It certainly seems like we’ve piqued your interest, and we love seeing what IDX has helped you build. We’re bringing the iOS Simulator and Android Emulator to the browser. Whether you’re building a Flutter or web app, Project IDX now allows you to preview your applications without having to leave your workspace. When you use a Flutter or web template, Project IDX intelligently loads the right preview environment for your application — Safari mobile and Chrome for web templates, or Android, iOS, and Chrome for Flutter templates. ↫ Google’s IDX team I’ve seen some articles state that this makes it possible to develop for iOS without a Mac, but this isn’t really true – as far as I know, you must have a Mac to submit anything to the App Store or Testflight, so while you can write and test code using IDX, you can’t actually deploy is in any meaningful way without getting a Mac.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138458/introducing-android-emulators-ios-simulators-and-other-product-updates-from-project-idx/ Save to Pocket
Luke Zuffelato Captures Santa Barbara Career Record for Three-Pointers in Dons’ 69-53 Win Over Ventura
date: 2024-01-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Dons will play rival San Marcos on Monday, beginning at 7 p.m.
The post Luke Zuffelato Captures Santa Barbara Career Record for Three-Pointers in Dons’ 69-53 Win Over Ventura appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/27/luke-zuffelato-captures-santa-barbara-career-record-for-three-pointers-in-dons-69-53-win-over-ventura/ Save to Pocket
The real story behind Trump’s “wins” in New Hampshire and Iowa: Saturday coffee klatch
date: 2024-01-27, from: Robert Reich on Substack
With yours truly and Heather Lofthouse, and our special guest
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-real-story-behind-trumps-wins Save to Pocket
London Show returns with a new venue
date: 2024-01-27, from: RiscOS Story
Although no formal announcement has yet been made, the London Show has found a new home, and the date is now set for the 2024 event – so open those diaries (or Organizer apps) and turn to October to set a reminder for the 26th! The event will take place at: The Harrow District Masonic Centre,Northwick Circle,Kenton,Harrow,HA3 0EL. Opening times for the show are given as 11:00am until 4:00pm, with no details as yet of the price for entry. The new location means that this year’s show will be taking…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/london-show-new-venue/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
On Holocaust Memorial Day, Germans Rally Against Far Right and for Democracy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/27/world/europe/germany-holocaust-memorial-day-protests.html Save to Pocket
OpenAI’s Got 9.9 Problems, and Twitch Ain’t One
date: 2024-01-27, from: Gary Marcus blog
The AI darling faces a long list of serious challenges in 2024
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/openais-got-99-problems-and-twitch Save to Pocket
Ending COVID-Era Program May Help Congress Expand Child Tax Credit
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — When the U.S. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel met privately with senators recently, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee asked for his assessment of a startling report: A whistleblower estimated that 95% of claims now being made by businesses for a COVID-era tax break were fraudulent.
“He looked at his shoes and he basically said, ‘Yeah,’” recalled the lawmaker who posed that question, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon.
The answer explains why Congress is racing to wind down what is known as the employee retention tax credit. Congress established the program during the coronavirus pandemic as an incentive for businesses to keep workers on the payroll.
Demand for the credit soared as Congress extended the tax break and made it available to more companies. Aggressive marketers dangled the prospect of enormous refunds to business owners if they would just apply. As a result, what was expected to cost the federal government $55 billion has instead ballooned to nearly five times that amount as of July. Meanwhile, new claims are still pouring into the IRS each week, ensuring a growing price tag that lawmakers are anxious to cap.
Lawmakers across the political spectrum who rarely agree on little else — from liberal Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to conservative Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — agree it’s time to close the program.
“I don’t have the exact number, but it’s like almost universal fraud in the program. It should be ended,” Johnson said. “I don’t see how anybody could support it.”
Warren added: “The standards were too loose, and the oversight was too thin.”
The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that winding down the program more quickly and increasing penalties for those companies promoting improper claims would generate about $79 billion over 10 years.
Lawmakers aim to use the savings to offset the cost of three business tax breaks and a more generous child tax credit for many low-income families. Households benefiting from the changes in the child tax credit would see an average tax cut of $680 in the first year, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
The package was overwhelmingly approved by a House committee last week, 40-3, showing it has broad, bipartisan support.
But passage through Congress is not assured because many key senators have concerns about aspects of the bill. Wyden said a strong vote in the House could spur the Senate into quicker action. Still, passing major legislation in an election year is generally a heavy lift.
Under current law, taxpayers have until April 15, 2025, to claim the employee retention credit. The bill would bar new claims after January 31 of this year. It also would impose stiff penalties on those who are promoting the employer retention tax credit if they know or have reason to know their advice will lead to an underreporting of tax liabilities.
When Congress created the tax break for employers at the pandemic’s onset, it proved so popular that lawmakers extended and amended the program three times. The credit, worth up to $26,000 per employee, can be claimed on wages paid through 2021.
To qualify, generally businesses must show that a local or state government order related to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in their business having to close or partially suspend operations. Or the businesses must show they experienced a significant decline in revenue.
Larry Gray, a certified public accountant from Rolla, Missouri, said he had concerns early on about how the program could be abused.
“There was no documentation really to speak,” and the IRS just sent out the checks, Gray said. “They just started printing the checks, and I believe Congress was wanting them to print the checks.”
His hunch has proven correct, judging by the filings that he has reviewed. He has even lost clients who didn’t want to hear that they did not qualify when others were telling them they did. Generally, he said, the businesses that don’t qualify are failing to cite the government order that resulted in their closure or partial suspension.
They are also routinely citing reasons for reimbursement that don’t meet the program’s criteria. For example, one company said it was struggling to find employees and had to raise wages as a justification for qualifying.
“If I go through the narratives on the filings that I’m looking at, every business in America qualifies,” Gray said.
The IRS paused accepting claims for the tax credit in September last year until 2024 due to rising concerns that an influx of fraudulent applications. At that point, it had received 3.6 million claims.
Some fraud has been prolific. For instance, a New Jersey tax preparer was arrested in July on charges related to fraudulently seeking over $124 million from the IRS when he filed more than 1,000 tax returns claiming the employment tax credits.
In an update issued Thursday about the program, the IRS said that it has thousands of audits in the pipeline and that as of Dec. 31, it has initiated 352 criminal investigations involving more than $2.9 billion in potentially fraudulent claims. Separately, it has opened nine civil investigations of marketers that potentially misled employers on eligibility to file claims.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ending-covid-era-program-may-help-congress-expand-child-tax-credit/7459878.html Save to Pocket
Iraq, US in Talks to End Coalition Mission Targeting Islamic State
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
BEIRUT — The United States and Iraq held a first session of formal talks Saturday in Baghdad aimed at winding down the mission of a U.S.-led military coalition formed to fight the Islamic State group in Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement that he had sponsored “the commencement of the first round of bilateral dialogue between Iraq and the United States of America to end the mission of the Coalition in Iraq.”
The beginning of talks, announced by both countries Thursday, comes as U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have been regularly targeted by drone attacks launched by Iran-backed militias against the backdrop of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
The U.S. says plans to set up a committee to negotiate the terms of the mission’s end were first discussed last year, and the timing isn’t related to the attacks.
Washington has had a continuous presence in Iraq since its 2003 invasion. Although all U.S. combat forces left in 2011, thousands of troops returned in 2014 to help the government of Iraq defeat the Islamic State.
Since the extremist group lost its hold on the territory it once seized, Iraqi officials have periodically called for a withdrawal of coalition forces, particularly in the wake of a U.S. airstrike in January 2020 that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis outside the Baghdad airport.
The issue has surfaced again since Israel launched its major counteroffensive in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas-led terror attack in southern Israel.
Since mid-October, a group of Iran-backed militias calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq have launched regular attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, which the group said are in retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza.
Those estimated 2,500 U.S. troops and the bases they serve on have drawn more than 150 missile and drone attacks fired by the militias. Scores of U.S. personnel have been wounded, including some with traumatic brain injuries, during the attacks.
The U.S. has struck militia targets in return, including some linked to the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of mainly Shiite, Iran-backed paramilitary groups that is officially under the control of the Iraqi military. But it largely operates on its own in practice. Iraqi officials have complained that the U.S. strikes are a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.
U.S. officials have said that talks about setting up a committee to decide on the framework for ending the coalition’s mission were already underway before October 7 and that the decision is unrelated to the attacks.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq nevertheless took credit for the decision in a statement, saying that it “proves that the Americans only understand the language of force.” It vowed to continue its attacks.
https://www.voanews.com/a/iraq-us-in-talks-to-end-coalition-mission-targeting-islamic-state/7459867.html Save to Pocket
Embedded Systems Security and TrustZone
date: 2024-01-27, from: Tilde.news
https://embeddedsecurity.io/ Save to Pocket
The Long And Bitter Relationship Between Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu And Hamas
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The LAist
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas have a tortured relationship dating back to the 1990s. Yet at various times, the hardline policies of one have boosted the other.
https://laist.com/news/the-long-and-bitter-relationship-between-israels-benjamin-netanyahu-and-hamas Save to Pocket
Pluralistic: Solar is a market for (financial) lemons (27 Jan 2024)
date: 2024-01-27, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links Solar is a market for (financial) lemons: Our Slow AIs have an alignment problem. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Solar is a market for (financial) lemons (permalink) Rooftop solar is the future, but it’s also a scam. It didn’t have to be, but America decided that the best way to roll out distributed, resilient, clean and renewable energy was to let Wall Street run the show. They turned it into a scam, and now it’s in terrible trouble. which means we are in terrible trouble. There’s a (superficial) good case for turning markets loose on the problem of financing the rollout of an entirely new kind of energy provision across a large and heterogeneous nation. As capitalism’s champions (and apologists) have observed since the days of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, markets harness together the work of thousands or even millions of strangers in pursuit of a common goal, without all those people having to agree on a single approach or plan of action. Merely dangle the incentive of profit before the market’s teeming participants and they will align themselves towards it, like iron filings all snapping into formation towards a magnet. But markets have a problem: they are prone to “reward hacking.” This is a term from AI research: tell your AI that you want it to do something, and it will find the fastest and most efficient way of doing it, even if that method is one that actually destroys the reason you were pursuing the goal in the first place. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/engineering/failure-modes-in-machine-learning For example: if you use an AI to come up with a Roomba that doesn’t bang into furniture, you might tell that Roomba to avoid collisions. However, the Roomba is only designed to register collisions with its front-facing sensor. Turn the Roomba loose and it will quickly hit on the tactic of racing around the room in reverse, banging into all your furniture repeatedly, while never registering a single collision: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/04/when-ais-start-hacking.html This is sometimes called the “alignment problem.” High-speed, probabilistic systems that can’t be fully predicted in advance can very quickly run off the rails. It’s an idea that pre-dates AI, of course – think of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. But AI produces these perverse outcomes at scale…and so does capitalism. Many sf writers have observed the odd phenomenon of corporate AI executives spinning bad sci-fi scenarios about their AIs inadvertently destroying the human race by spinning off in some kind of paperclip-maximizing reward-hack that reduces the whole planet to grey goo in order to make more paperclips. This idea is very implausible (to say the least), but the fact that so many corporate leaders are obsessed with autonomous systems reward-hacking their way into catastrophe tells us something about corporate executives, even if it has no predictive value for understanding the future of technology. Both Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross have theorized that the source of these anxieties isn’t AI – it’s corporations. Corporations are these equilibrium-seeking complex machines that can’t be programmed, only prompted. CEOs know that they don’t actually run their companies, and it haunts them, because while they can decompose a company into all its constituent elements – capital, labor, procedures – they can’t get this model-train set to go around the loop: https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way Stross calls corporations “Slow AI,” a pernicious artificial life-form that acts like a pedantic genie, always on the hunt for ways to destroy you while still strictly following your directions. Markets are an extremely reliable way to find the most awful alignment problems – but by the time they’ve surfaced them, they’ve also destroyed the thing you were hoping to improve with your market mechanism. Which brings me back to solar, as practiced in America. In a long Time feature, Alana Semuels describes the waves of bankruptcies, revealed frauds, and even confiscation of homeowners’ houses arising from a decade of financialized solar: https://time.com/6565415/rooftop-solar-industry-collapse/ The problem starts with a pretty common finance puzzle: solar pays off big over its lifespan, saving the homeowner money and insulating them from price-shocks, emergency power outages, and other horrors. But solar requires a large upfront investment, which many homeowners can’t afford to make. To resolve this, the finance industry extends credit to homeowners (lets them borrow money) and gets paid back out of the savings the homeowner realizes over the years to come. But of course, this requires a lot of capital, and homeowners still might not see the wisdom of paying even some of the price of solar and taking on debt for a benefit they won’t even realize until the whole debt is paid off. So the government moved in to tinker with the markets, injecting prompts into the slow AIs to see if it could coax the system into producing a faster solar rollout – say, one that didn’t have to rely on waves of deadly power-outages during storms, heatwaves, fires, etc, to convince homeowners to get on board because they’d have experienced the pain of sitting through those disasters in the dark. The government created subsidies – tax credits, direct cash, and mixes thereof – in the expectation that Wall Street would see all these credits and subsidies that everyday people were entitled to and go on the hunt for them. And they did! Armies of fast-talking sales-reps fanned out across America, ringing dooorbells and sticking fliers in mailboxes, and lying like hell about how your new solar roof was gonna work out for you. These hustlers tricked old and vulnerable people into signing up for arrangements that saw them saddled with ballooning debt payments (after a honeymoon period at a super-low teaser rate), backstopped by liens on their houses, which meant that missing a payment could mean losing your home. They underprovisioned the solar that they installed, leaving homeowners with sky-high electrical bills on top of those debt payments. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it shares a lot of DNA with the subprime housing bubble, where fast-talking salesmen conned vulnerable people into taking out predatory mortgages with sky-high rates that kicked in after a honeymoon period, promising buyers that the rising value of housing would offset any losses from that high rate. These fraudsters knew they were acquiring toxic assets, but it didn’t matter, because they were bundling up those assets into “collateralized debt obligations” – exotic black-box “derivatives” that could be sold onto pension funds, retail investors, and other suckers. This is likewise true of solar, where the tax-credits, subsidies and other income streams that these new solar installations offgassed were captured and turned into bonds that were sold into the financial markets, producing an insatiable demand for more rooftop solar installations, and that meant lots more fraud. Which brings us to today, where homeowners across America are waking up to discover that their power bills have gone up thanks to their solar arrays, even as the giant, financialized solar firms that supplied them are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, thanks to waves of defaults. Meanwhile, all those bonds that were created from solar installations are ticking timebombs, sitting on institutions’ balance-sheets, waiting to go blooie once the defaults cross some unpredictable threshold. Markets are very efficient at mobilizing capital for growth opportunities. America has a lot of rooftop solar. But 70% of that solar isn’t owned by the homeowner – it’s owned by a solar company, which is to say, “a finance company that happens to sell solar”: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/solarcity-maintains-34-residential-solar-market-share-in-1h-2015/406552/ And markets are very efficient at reward hacking. The point of any market is to multiply capital. If the only way to multiply the capital is through building solar, then you get solar. But the finance sector specializes in making the capital multiply as much as possible while doing as little as possible on the solar front. Huge chunks of those federal subsidies were gobbled up by junk-fees and other financial tricks – sometimes more than 100%. The solar companies would be in even worse trouble, but they also tricked all their victims into signing binding arbitration waivers that deny them the power to sue and force them to have their grievances heard by fake judges who are paid by the solar companies to decide whether the solar companies have done anything wrong. You will not be surprised to learn that the arbitrators are reluctant to find against their paymasters. I had a sense that all this was going on even before I read Semuels’ excellent article. We bought a solar installation from Treeium, a highly rated, giant Southern California solar installer. We got an incredibly hard sell from them to get our solar “for free” – that is, through these financial arrangements – but I’d just sold a book and I had cash on hand and I was adamant that we were just going to pay upfront. As soon as that was clear, Treeium’s ardor palpably cooled. We ended up with a grossly defective, unsafe and underpowered solar installation that has cost more than $10,000 to bring into a functional state (using another vendor). I briefly considered suing Treeium (I had insisted on striking the binding arbitration waiver from the contract) but in the end, I decided life was too short. The thing is, solar is amazing. We love running our house on sunshine. But markets have proven – again and again – to be an unreliable and even dangerous way to improve Americans’ homes and make them more resilient. After all, Americans’ homes are the largest asset they are apt to own, which makes them irresistible targets for scammers: https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/ That’s why the subprime scammers targets Americans’ homes in the 2000s, and it’s why the house-stealing fraudsters who blanket the country in “We Buy Ugly Homes” are targeting them now. Same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: “That’s where the money is”: https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/ America can and should electrify and solarize. There are serious logistical challenges related to sourcing the underlying materials and deploying the labor, but those challenges are grossly overrated by people who assume the only way we can approach them is though markets, those monkey’s paw curses that always find a way to snatch profitable defeat from the jaws of useful victory. To get a sense of how the engineering challenges of electrification could be met, read McArthur fellow Saul Griffith’s excellent popular engineering text Electrify: https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering And to really understand the transformative power of solar, don’t miss Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works, where you’ll learn that we could give every person on Earth the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, but colder) by capturing just 0.4% of the solar rays that reach Earth’s surface: https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects But we won’t get there with markets. All markets will do is create incentives to cheat. Think of the market for “carbon offsets,” which were supposed to substitute markets for direct regulation, and which produced a fraud-riddled market for lemons that sells indulgences to our worst polluters, who go on destroying our planet and our future: https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy We can address the climate emergency, but not by prompting the slow AI and hoping it doesn’t figure out a way to reward-hack its way to giant profits while doing nothing. Founder and chairman of Goodleap, Hayes Barnard, is one of the 400 richest people in the world – a fortune built on scammers who tricked old people into signing away their homes for nonfunctional solar): https://www.forbes.com/profile/hayes-barnard/?sh=40d596362b28 If governments are willing to spend billions incentivizing rooftop solar, they can simply spend billions installing rooftop solar – no Slow AI required. (Image: Future Atlas/http://www.futureatlas.com/blog, CC BY 2.0; J Doll, CC BY 3.0; modified) Hey look at this (permalink) Months After Merging With Activision, Microsoft Lays Off Gaming Employees https://prospect.org/labor/2024-01-26-microsoft-lays-off-gaming-employees/ The Living New Deal Map https://livingnewdeal.org/map/ (h/t Waxy) Ex-sheriff’s deputy behind SF jail ‘fight club’ scandal to be rehired https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/sf-rehire-ex-sheriffs-deputy-fight-club-scandal/ (h/t JWZ) This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago NYT discovers the “Plam Pilot” phenomenon https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/28/nyt-discovers-the-plam-pilot-phenomenon/ #20yrsago Irish ISP will disconnect Internet users after three unsubstantiated copyright claims https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/28/irish-isp-will-disconnect-internet-users-after-three-unsubstantiated-copyright-claims/ #15yrsago Ryanair will fine passengers who board with too much carry-on https://gadling.com/2009/01/22/ryanair-to-ticket-passengers-who-try-to-cheat-the-baggage-system/ #15yrsago BBC promises to put 200,000 publicly owned oil paintings online by 2012 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jan/28/bbc-digitalmedia #10yrsago Gartner Hype Cycle on the Gartner Hype Cycle https://twitter.com/philgyford/status/427840025544650753 #10yrsago Makerspaces and libraries: two great tastes that taste great together https://medium.com/the-magazine/shifting-from-shelves-to-snowflakes-d2a360c7ac7b #10yrsago Pope Francis on the Internet and communication https://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2014/01/27/a-gift-from-god/ #10yrsago UK National Museum of Computing trustees publish damning letter about treatment by Bletchley Park trust https://web.archive.org/web/20140130143734/https://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/deciphering-discontent-statement-tnmoc-trustees #10yrsago What is exposed about you and your friends when you login with Facebook https://twitter.com/TheBakeryLDN/status/427531934294880256 #10yrsago 890 word Daily Mail immigrant panic story contains 13 vile lies https://web.archive.org/web/20140126081130/http://britishinfluence.org/13-reasons-taking-daily-mail-press-complaints-commission/ #5yrsago Bride attains virality by adding pockets to her dress and those of her bridesmaids https://metro.co.uk/2019/01/27/bride-added-pockets-wedding-dress-bridesmaids-dresses-8398183/ #5yrsago Grifter steals dead peoples’ houses in gentrifying Philadelphia by forging deed transfers, then flipping them https://www.inquirer.com/news/a/house-sales-fraud-theft-philadelphia-real-estate-dead-owners-william-johnson-20190124.html #5yrsago Megathread of Facebook’s terrible, horrible, no-good eternity https://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/182371861433/all-things-facebook #5yrsago How Facebook tracks Android users, even those without Facebook accounts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0vlD7r-kTc #5yrsago Video and audio from my closing keynote at Friday’s Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain https://archive.org/details/ClosingKeynoteForGrandReopeningOfThePublicDomainCoryDoctorowAtInternetArchive_201901 Colophon (permalink) Today’s top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/). 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: What kind of bubble is AI? https://craphound.com/news/2024/01/21/what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/ Upcoming appearances: The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 28 https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/zusaetzlicher-autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html?day=20240128×=1706466600,1706466600 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 The Bezzle at Third Place Books (Seattle), Feb 26 https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/cory-doctorow Tuscon Festival of Books, Mar 9/10 https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?id=676 Recent appearances: Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech (Crash Course Economics) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7AxrFQ7jIM Generation of Lost Causes with Vass Bednar (Toronto Public Library) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rGj5VaJSDQ Low-Key Clippy (This Week In Tech) https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/963 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/2024/01/27/here-comes-the-sun-king/ Save to Pocket
Khiara M. Bridges Talks Race, Law, and Reproductive Rights at UC Santa Barbara
date: 2024-01-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
UC Berkeley School of Law professor gives a lecture titled “Race in the Roberts Court: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.”
The post Khiara M. Bridges Talks Race, Law, and Reproductive Rights at UC Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/27/khiara-m-bridges-talks-race-law-and-reproductive-rights-at-uc-santa-barbara/ Save to Pocket
Deck Part 3: Trexing
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: Russell Graves, Syonyk’s Project Blog
https://www.sevarg.net/2024/01/27/deck-part-3-trexing/ Save to Pocket
Gaza’s Largest Remaining Hospital Is Near Collapse, Doctors Without Borders Says
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The LAist
Gaza’s largest remaining hospital in Khan Younis can no longer provide critical medical aid to Palestinians, the medical charity group said.
https://laist.com/news/gazas-largest-remaining-hospital-is-near-collapse-doctors-without-borders-says Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
When
people say we should walk away from Twitter because the owner is a Nazi,
well – are they willing to stop using products from all companies that
are owned by Nazis? I bet that would be pretty hard to do. If you add in
racists I think you’d be totally out of luck. The people who own the
businesses we depend on by and large are pretty awful people. Also I go
to NYC even though there are Nazis there (esp Queens and Staten Island).
And Twitter has far more users than NYC has citizens. That gives you a
sense of how foolish this idea of boycotting Twitter is. And one more
thing – if you’re posting about this need to vote with your feet, you
should get your ass off Threads because it’s really Facebook, and
remember you’re a very high-minded person, right?
http://scripting.com/2024/01/27.html#a155456 Save to Pocket
US to Announce Billions in Subsidies for Advanced Chips, WSJ Reports
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-to-announce-billions-in-subsidies-for-advanced-chips-wsj-reports/7459818.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
One of the rules of textcasting is that the writer must be able to edit their posts. An almost universal response is the way Twitter used to explain their not having editable posts – then people who commented might have said something that seems foolish. I have a couple of rebuttals to that. 1. Then don’t comment on what the author said, instead write what you know or believe, so it would make sense even if the author changed their post. This is a good practice anyway, instead of saying people are wrong, just state your belief. It’s a lot easier for people to listen to, and by the way the other person might be right. 2. A counter-example – Facebook. They let authors edit their posts and comments. And somehow it keeps working more or less. Their software does add a note that the text has been edited, and I think they even have a way for you to see the changes, but who bothers. Comments are usually simple “you go girl” or “my brother” or “I’m great!” or “check out my site.”
http://scripting.com/2024/01/27.html#a153630 Save to Pocket
Repetition made easy with Makro 2.01
date: 2024-01-27, from: RiscOS Story
Fred Graute has released version 2.01 of a utility called Makro, which allows simple string sequences to be defined, and then played back as often as needed as though they had just been typed in – much like we used to do with the BBC Micro function keys. When run, the program opens a window with some options at the top and a column of buttons, each of which represents one of those text sequences – of which there can be numerous sets, that can be chosen from a menu.…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/repetition-made-easy-with-makro-2-01/ Save to Pocket
Currency gains textile export
date: 2024-01-27, from: RiscOS Story
Kevin Wells has been released another update to Currency, a tool for checking exchange rates and various other, related tasks. The program provides a RISC OS-friendly application that, with the aid of Wget and an internet collection, allows the user to look up current and historical exchange rates, as well as gross domestic product and population figures for different countries. It does this by turning the data entered (or selected) in its windows to one of two remote websites – API Layer for currency information, and World Bank for GDP/population…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/currency-gains-textile-export/ Save to Pocket
Tesla Autopilot Crash Data Shows Little To No Improvement For 2023
date: 2024-01-27, from: Inside EVs News
You’d think there’d be some progress over time.
https://insideevs.com/news/706257/tesla-safety-autopilot-crashes-2023q4/ Save to Pocket
If you use AI to teach you how to code, remember you still need to think for yourself
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Computer science teachers, software experts share their advice on ML assistants
Feature Learning how to program is perhaps now easier than ever with AI, though the tools that suggest or generate source code for you have to be used wisely. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/27/ai_coding_automatic/ Save to Pocket
Screwtape/topaz-unicode: A version of the Amiga 500 “Topaz” font updated for the 21st century
date: 2024-01-27, from: Tilde.news
https://gitlab.com/Screwtapello/topaz-unicode Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
A fundamental law of the internet says that social situations are nice at first then become shitty as trolls take over.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/27.html#a141211 Save to Pocket
YOU LOVE TO SEE IT: Emergency Aid Gets Accessible
date: 2024-01-27, from: The Lever News
Plus, cancer vaccines work, states aim to tax the rich, and a fossil fuel project gets delayed.
https://www.levernews.com/you-love-to-see-it-emergency-aid-gets-accessible/ Save to Pocket
Project Pele officials speak with senators
date: 2024-01-27, from: Guam Daily Post
Lead officials with Project Pele, the program to develop a mobile nuclear microreactor for the military, met with local lawmakers Thursday at the Guam Congress Building, where they were dealt a number of questions about the capabilities and safety of…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/project-pele-officials-speak-with-senators/article_60c661a6-bb48-11ee-8593-07340a1e7183.html Save to Pocket
Harvest House honors doctors for caring for foster children
date: 2024-01-27, from: Guam Daily Post
Two pediatricians were singled out for their contributions to Guam foster children over the years in line with National Pediatrician Day.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/harvest-house-honors-doctors-for-caring-for-foster-children/article_83596dc8-bcb3-11ee-96ee-ebc3f2ec4213.html Save to Pocket
Bitcoin scammer given 2.5 years in federal prison
date: 2024-01-27, from: Guam Daily Post
A man was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in federal prison for stealing $5.5 million from clients in a scheme that involved exchanging and transferring cryptocurrency.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/bitcoin-scammer-given-2-5-years-in-federal-prison/article_a1b014d4-bbeb-11ee-a9dc-e747902a4223.html Save to Pocket
Two men get 9 years for meth package
date: 2024-01-27, from: Guam Daily Post
Two men were sentenced to serve nine years in federal prison in connection to a nearly 4-pound package of methamphetamine mailed to Guam in 2020.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/two-men-get-9-years-for-meth-package/article_28a9ee24-bbe2-11ee-81d9-db8943f98348.html Save to Pocket
Navy sailor arrested in fatal November crash
date: 2024-01-27, from: Guam Daily Post
A 21-year-old man was arrested in connection to a fatal crash the day after Thanksgiving.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/navy-sailor-arrested-in-fatal-november-crash/article_d1471a3a-bc09-11ee-80b7-57324f1ff158.html Save to Pocket
A People and Blogs PSA
date: 2024-01-27, from: Manu - I write blog
Quick PSA for all the people who are subscribed to the People and Blog newsletter with an address that converts the newsletter to an RSS feed: there is a dedicated RSS feed.
Your reader app of choice should pick it up automatically on the peopleandblogs.com website but if it doesn’t you can find it at the address https://manuelmoreale.com/feed/peopleandblogs
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/6scRerLor1mQQyIr Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump Forces Terrified Republicans to Bend the Knee Yet Again.
https://newrepublic.com/article/178423/mitch-mcconnell-surrender-trump-immigration-maga-low Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump must be scared he’s going to jail. And we’ll all get along fine without him.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epv7p7/trump-national-guard-texas-border-dispute-federal-government-standoff Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Is the Journalism Death Spasm Finally Here?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/27/is-the-journalism-death-spasm-finally-here-00138187 Save to Pocket
The CSU Strike Didn’t Last Long. But Anger Over The Chancellor’s Paycheck? That’s Still Going
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The LAist
For many of California State University’s faculty members, the chancellor’s salary and benefits are an example of executive pay run amok.
https://laist.com/news/education/csu-strike-chancellor-mildred-garcia-executive-pay Save to Pocket
A Rare Bird Wrapped In Fishing Line Was Rescued In San Pedro. Here’s What We Can Do To Help Keep Birds Safe
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The LAist
Yellow-billed Loons don’t usually show up in L.A., and the incident highlights the threat fishing requipment poses to the animals.
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/rare-bird-found-entangled-in-fishin Save to Pocket
How To Handle the Growing Flood of Leaked Data
date: 2024-01-27, from: The Markup blog
An interview with Micah Lee, author of a new book on analyzing datasets that were leaked, hacked, or just accidentally left in the open
https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2024/01/27/how-to-handle-the-growing-flood-of-leaked-data Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
ChatGPT clone in 30 minutes on AWS Kubernetes.
https://medium.com/@cluster.dev/kubernetes-infrastructure-for-hugging-face-models-and-chat-with-cluster-dev-580050c29db5 Save to Pocket
The Land Before Linux: Let’s talk about the Unix desktops
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It takes more than open source, it takes open standards and consensus
Opinion Today, thanks to Android and ChromeOS, Linux is an important end-user operating system. But, before Linux, there were important Unix desktops, although most of them never made it.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/27/opinion_column/ Save to Pocket
This Chinese electric bus is adorably shaped like a koala bear
date: 2024-01-27, from: Electrek Feed
Have you ever been in the mood to drive an electric bus, and then thought to yourself, “the only thing that could make this better is if the bus was shaped like a marsupial”? Yea, me neither. At least not until I stumbled upon this precious specimen of a koala bus.
https://electrek.co/2024/01/27/this-chinese-electric-bus-is-adorably-shaped-like-a-koala-bear/ Save to Pocket
TSMC finds its green chips are highly sought after… the potato ones
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Crunchy, tasty, coconut flavoured… and hopefully thicker than a few nanometers
TSMC is known for making advanced semiconductors, but it seems the company is now driving up the price of chips made with tastier materials than traditional silicon.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/27/tsmc_finds_its_green_chips/ Save to Pocket
Schools are using surveillance tech to catch students vaping, snaring some with harsh punishments
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>When Aaliyah Iglesias was caught vaping at a Texas high school, she didn’t realize how much could be taken from her.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/schools-are-using-surveillance-tech-to-catch-students-vaping-snaring-some-with-harsh-punishments/ Save to Pocket
Top UN court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza but stops short of ordering cease-fire
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The United Nations’ top court on Friday ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering Jerusalem to end the military offensive that has laid waste to the Palestinian enclave.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/top-un-court-orders-israel-to-prevent-genocide-in-gaza-but-stops-short-of-ordering-cease-fire/ Save to Pocket
Kerry and Xie exit roles that defined generation of climate action
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p> The United Nations climate summit in Dubai was wrapping up last month when John Kerry went to a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua only to find a surprise waiting for him. Xie’s 8-year-old grandson had brought Kerry a card for his 80th birthday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/kerry-and-xie-exit-roles-that-defined-generation-of-climate-action/ Save to Pocket
Donald Trump must pay an additional $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll in defamation case, jury says
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — A jury awarded $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll on Friday in a stinging and expensive rebuke to former President Donald Trump for his continued social media attacks against the longtime advice columnist over her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/donald-trump-must-pay-an-additional-83-3-million-to-e-jean-carroll-in-defamation-case-jury-says/ Save to Pocket
Hawaii officials identify the last of the 100 known victims of the wildfire that destroyed Lahaina
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LAHAINA, Maui — The last of the 100 known victims of the wildfire that destroyed Maui’s historic town of Lahaina in August was identified Friday as a 70-year-old woman whose husband, sister and several other relatives also died in the fire.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/hawaii-news/hawaii-officials-identify-the-last-of-the-100-known-victims-of-the-wildfire-that-destroyed-lahaina/ Save to Pocket
Almost 340 bills are introduced to Hawaii lawmakers by the governor
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Gov. Josh Green has given state lawmakers a lot to contemplate with a package of proposed legislation comprising close to 340 bills.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/hawaii-news/almost-340-bills-are-introduced-to-hawaii-lawmakers-by-the-governor/ Save to Pocket
US pauses funding to UN agency for Palestinians after claims staffers were involved in Hamas attack
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees fired a number of its staffers in Gaza suspected of taking part in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other militants on southern Israel, its director said Friday, prompting the United States — the agency’s biggest donor — to temporarily halt its funding.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/us-pauses-funding-to-un-agency-for-palestinians-after-claims-staffers-were-involved-in-hamas-attack/ Save to Pocket
Biden urges Congress to embrace border bill. But House speaker suggests it may be ‘dead on arrival’
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday pressed Congress to embrace a bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures with Ukraine aid but House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested the compromise on border and immigration policy could be “dead on arrival” in his chamber.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/biden-urges-congress-to-embrace-border-bill-but-house-speaker-suggests-it-may-be-dead-on-arrival/ Save to Pocket
An unlikely challenger to Putin brings a rare show of defiance, creating a dilemma for the Kremlin
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>They have lined up by the thousands across Russia in recent days, standing in the bitter cold for a chance to sign petitions to support an unlikely challenger to President Vladimir Putin.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/an-unlikely-challenger-to-putin-brings-a-rare-show-of-defiance-creating-a-dilemma-for-the-kremlin/ Save to Pocket
Shiffrin sore but relieved after avoiding more serious injury in downhill crash
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — After one of the scariest crashes of her career, Mikaela Shiffrin is relieved it wasn’t worse. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/sports/shiffrin-sore-but-relieved-after-avoiding-more-serious-injury-in-downhill-crash/ Save to Pocket
After 53 years, Baltimore is again a gateway to the Super Bowl as AFC championship game host
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>BALTIMORE — The last time Baltimore hosted an AFC championship game, the city was enjoying quite a sports renaissance. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/sports/after-53-years-baltimore-is-again-a-gateway-to-the-super-bowl-as-afc-championship-game-host/ Save to Pocket
Paris Olympic medals headed in big numbers to United States and China in one forecast
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The United States is predicted to top the medals tables — both the overall count and gold-medal count — for the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to one forecast released Friday, six months before the Games open on July 26. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/sports/paris-olympic-medals-headed-in-big-numbers-to-united-states-and-china-in-one-forecast/ Save to Pocket
Jordan Pope hits 3-pointer at buzzer, Oregon State beats No. 9 Arizona 83-80
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>CORVALLIS, Ore. — Jordan Pope hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to give Oregon State an 83-80 victory over No. 9 Arizona on Thursday night, with the Beavers’ fans storming the court to celebrate the upset. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/sports/jordan-pope-hits-3-pointer-at-buzzer-oregon-state-beats-no-9-arizona-83-80/ Save to Pocket
Georgia Senate passes a panel with subpoena power to investigate District Attorney Fani Willis
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>ATLANTA — Georgia’s state Senate joined attempts to investigate Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Friday, voting 30-19 to create a special committee that Republican senators say is needed to determine whether the Democratic district attorney misspent state tax money in her prosecution of former President Donald Trump and others.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/georgia-senate-passes-a-panel-with-subpoena-power-to-investigate-district-attorney-fani-willis/ Save to Pocket
Yemen Houthi rebels fire a missile at a US warship, escalating worst Mideast sea conflict in decades
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>JERUSALEM — Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a missile Friday at a U.S. warship patrolling the Gulf of Aden, forcing it to shoot down the projectile, and struck a British vessel as their aggressive attacks on maritime traffic continue.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/yemen-houthi-rebels-fire-a-missile-at-a-us-warship-escalating-worst-mideast-sea-conflict-in-decades/ Save to Pocket
Gen Z is listening to what Netanyahu is saying. Is Biden?
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>“My insistence is what has prevented — over the years — the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel,” Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday. “As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to strongly insist on this.”</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/opinion/gen-z-is-listening-to-what-netanyahu-is-saying-is-biden/ Save to Pocket
Final 4 teams in NFL playoffs rely heavily on tight ends
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Few people proselytize about the importance of tight ends more than San Francisco’s George Kittle. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/sports/final-4-teams-in-nfl-playoffs-rely-heavily-on-tight-ends/ Save to Pocket
Analysis: Mahomes and the Chiefs must win a Super Bowl this season to challenge Patriots’ dynasty
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>If Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are going to challenge Tom Brady and the New England Patriots’ unprecedented two-decade run of success, they have to win a Super Bowl this season. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/sports/analysis-mahomes-and-the-chiefs-must-win-a-super-bowl-this-season-to-challenge-patriots-dynasty/ Save to Pocket
Tropical Gardening: For fragrance don’t miss the Plant People Road Show Saturday, Feb. 10
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Days are a bit chilly but are getting longer. However, there is a noticeable spring fever effect when it comes to local gardeners because many fragrant flowering plants start blooming at this time. Also, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner so it is time to shop for gifts.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/community/tropical-gardening-for-fragrance-dont-miss-the-plant-people-road-show-saturday-feb-10/ Save to Pocket
NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week
date: 2024-01-27, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/01/27/nation-world-news/not-real-news-a-look-at-what-didnt-happen-this-week-124/ Save to Pocket
Robert Lamoureux | Homeowner spots a problem with shoddy concrete work
date: 2024-01-27, from: The Signal
Question: Hi Robert. We hired a concrete contractor to do quite a bit of work for us – walkway and back patio. It has dried for over a couple weeks and we are seeing spots showing up that look like they’re coming out of the surface of the concrete. We called the contractor back and […]
The post Robert Lamoureux | Homeowner spots a problem with shoddy concrete work appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/01/robert-lamoureux-homeowner-spots-a-problem-with-shoddy-concrete-work/ Save to Pocket
We put salt in our tea so you don’t have to
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Despite US chemistry boffin claiming it improves the taste, we respectfully disagree
Poll It’s well established that the British are an eccentric people. Among their national obsessions is drinking tea – they consider themselves experts – and one way to trigger the entire United Kingdom is to fuck with the formula.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/27/salt_in_tea/ Save to Pocket
What You Should Know If You’re About to Fly on a Boeing Max 9
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/what-you-should-know-if-you-re-about-to-fly-on-a-boeing-max-9-/7458037.html Save to Pocket
Hubble telescope spots tiniest water-rich world in orbit
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Don’t pack your swimming costumes as it could be more of a sauna planet
Not to be outdone by the younger, hipper equipment in NASA’s arsenal, the Hubble Space Telescope is still proving its worth, spotting evidence of water vapor in the smallest-ever exoplanet known to us.…
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Today in SCV History (Jan. 27)
date: 2024-01-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1970 – Gov. Ronald Reagan appoints Adrian Adams as Newhall’s first “second” judge. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-18/ Save to Pocket
Growing our team (and maybe this blog?)
date: 2024-01-27, from: Matthew Lincoln Blog
Around this time two years ago, I noted that the changing nature of my work was slowing my rate of new blog posts. So many of my previous posts have been publicizing individual things I had done - an important aspect of my career in my former life as an academic. As projects grew bigger and more complex, and communication about them more complex (and wrapped up with other project stakeholders, with marketing departments, and the like), I just didn’t have the same kinds of milestones that made sense for individual bloggage.
That work is going to change even more in this coming year as I take up the helm of the manager of engineering for JSTOR Labs.
JSTOR Labs has nearly doubled the size of its engineering team since I joined in 2022. We have been growing in response to our changing mandate within the organization. We don’t just experiment with technologies, now, but entire product/business models. This means our development standards have risen a lot. End users want more external finish for our maturing products like Constellate. But we also have increasing internal expectations around observability, reliability, security, and deployment processes.
I’m looking forward to the challenge of balancing these priorities against Labs’ need to remain a highly experimental and risk-taking part of the larger organization. We’ll definitely be thinking about how to steward our innovation tokens on the unique domain problems we’re working on. It’s an ambitious year for our team as we seek to build out a few headline programs towards financial sustainability, so the work will also be a lot about careful product choices as well as careful technological choices.
I’m also going to endeavor to write a bit more about the experience this year. I’m not really sure how that will go! I find it hard enough to write on my personal blog about the work I have done on larger team projects. While I’ll still be doing a decent amount of individual contributor work, obviously more of my days will now be about building and growing our engineering team, championing the awesome work of others rather than tooting my own horn. This has been a great organization to work in as an academic-turned-developer - a lot of us come from non-traditional-software backgrounds and Labs has been such a close-knit and fun group to work with. To that end, keep an eye on ITHAKA’s career’s page (and here, too), because we’ll be recruiting soon!
https://matthewlincoln.net/2024/01/27/managing.html Save to Pocket
Matadors drop third straight, move to .500 in conference play
date: 2024-01-27, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Andy Newman’s squad is facing a confidence issue. The Matadors have now dropped three games in a row after Thursday night’s loss to CSU Bakersfield 64-56 at the Premier America Credit Union Arena. Newman put it bluntly after the team’s loss. “We got to get our confidence back,” he said postgame. The Matadors came into…
https://sundial.csun.edu/178021/sports/matadors-drop-third-straight-move-to-500-in-conference-play/ Save to Pocket
US Navy Again Lowers Requirements to Meet Recruitment Goals
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is starting to enlist individuals who didn’t graduate from high school or get a GED, marking the second time in about a year that the service has opened the door to lower-performing recruits as it struggles to meet enlistment goals.
The decision follows a move in December 2022 to bring in a larger number of recruits who score very low on the Armed Services Qualification Test. Both are fairly rare steps that the other military services largely avoid or limit, even though they are all finding it increasingly difficult to attract the dwindling number of young people who can meet the military’s physical, mental and moral standards.
Under the new plan, Navy recruits without an education credential will be able to join as long as they score 50 or above on the qualification test, which is out of 99. The last time the service took individuals without education credentials was in 2000.
“We get thousands of people into our recruiting stations every year that want to join the Navy but do not have an education credential. And we just turn them away,” said Vice Admiral Rick Cheeseman, the Navy’s chief of personnel, in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.
He said that of the more than 2,400 who were turned away last year, as many as 500 of them could score high enough to get in. He said he has already sent an order to his recruiters to start the new expanded effort, adding, “I’m hoping all my recruiters have called all 2,442 of them in the last 72 hours, and we’ll see how it goes. … We’ll try to get some test takers this weekend.”
In the wake of the pandemic, the services have faced significant enlistment challenges. COVID-19 forced the military to shut down recruiting stations, and they were closed out of high schools and many public events where they historically found success reaching prospective candidates.
But even as things opened up, the military struggled to compete with higher-paying businesses in the tight job market, particularly as companies began to offer the types of benefits — such as college funding — that had often made the military a popular choice. Those economic problems were only exacerbated by the sharp political divide in the country and young people’s fears of being killed or injured going to war.
Last fiscal year, which ended September 30, the Navy, Army and Air Force all failed to meet their recruitment goals, while the Marine Corps and the tiny Space Force met their targets. The previous fiscal year, the Army fell 15,000 short of its enlistment goal of 60,000, and the other services had to dig into the pools of delayed entry candidates in order to meet their recruiting numbers.
Last year, the Navy’s enlistment goal was 37,700, but the service brought in just 31,834. This year, Cheeseman said, he set the goal higher — at 40,600. The total size of the Navy for 2024 is set at 337,800.
“I need these sailors. So it’s a stretch goal. We’re telling our recruiters to go get 40,600 people to join the Navy,” he said. “We don’t fully expect to get that many. But we’re going for it.”
The other services have largely balked at such changes.
The Navy is the only service that enlists anyone considered a “category four” recruit, meaning they scored 30 or less on the qualification test. The service expanded the number of those category-four recruits arguing that a number of jobs — such as cook or boatswain mate — don’t require an overall high test score, as long as they meet the job standards.
The Army will only take those lowest scoring candidates into their so-called Future Soldier Prep Course, which gives them weeks of instruction and the opportunity to increase their score in order to make the grade and enlist. The Navy allows low-scoring recruits to go through its Future Sailor Prep Course but doesn’t require an increased score to enlist.
In addition, the Army and Marine Corps require a high school diploma or GED equivalent, and the Air Force said it will only take recruits without a diploma if they score a 65 or higher on the qualification test. Those numbers are very small — just 110 of the nearly 26,900 Air Force recruits brought in last year, either had a GED or no education credential at all.
Other services cite concerns that lower-performing recruits may be more likely to wash out of boot camp or could present more disciplinary problems over time.
Cheeseman said he believes the biggest risk is that they do fail boot camp at higher rates, but he said the difference hasn’t been significant so far for the low-scoring recruits brought in last year. Overall, 11.4% of those recruits didn’t finish boot camp, compared with less than 6.5% of the high-scoring sailors.
He said Navy leaders had been talking about opening up enlistment to those without high school credentials for a while in an effort to expand the pool of potential sailors.
“We just finally decided, OK, let’s go,” he said, adding that the service was looking for other ways to reach untapped talent. “My, argument for accepting that risk is that we have capacity of boot camp. We’re not filling the seats. So I’m willing to take a risk.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/7459656.html Save to Pocket
ICJ Ruling Won’t Change US Policy on Gaza, Says White House
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
The White House says the preliminary order by the International Court of Justice that Israel must take urgent action to prevent genocide in Gaza, is consistent with the Biden administration’s approach to the war and will not change U.S. policy supporting Israel. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/icj-ruling-won-t-change-us-policy-on-gaza-says-white-house-/7459653.html Save to Pocket
House Speaker Suggests Border Bill May Be ‘Dead on Arrival’
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday pressed Congress to embrace a bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures with Ukraine aid, but House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson suggested the compromise on border and immigration policy could be “dead on arrival” in his chamber.
The Democratic president said in a statement late Friday that the policies proposed would “be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.” He also pledged to use a new emergency authority to “shut down the border” as soon as he could sign it into law.
Biden’s embrace of the deal — and Republican resistance — could become an election-year shift on the politics of immigration. Yet the diminishing prospects for its passage in Congress may have far-reaching consequences for U.S. allies around the globe, especially Ukraine.
Senate Republicans had initially insisted that border policy changes be included in Biden’s $110 billion emergency request for funding for Ukraine, Israel, immigration enforcement and other national security needs. But the Senate deal faced collapse this week as it came under fire from Republicans, including Donald Trump, the likely presidential nominee, who eviscerated the deal as a political “gift” to Democrats.
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, on Friday sent a letter to colleagues that aligns him with hardline conservatives determined to sink the compromise. The speaker said the legislation would have been “dead on arrival in the House” if leaked reports about it were true.
A core group of senators negotiating the deal were hoping to release text early next week, but conservatives already say the measures do not go far enough to limit immigration. The proposal would enact tougher standards on migrants seeking asylum as well as deny asylum applications at the border if daily migrant encounters grow to numbers that are unmanageable for authorities.
The speaker’s message added to the headwinds facing the Senate deal, closing a week in which Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged to his colleagues that the legislation faced tough opposition from Trump that could force them to pursue Ukraine aid another way. He later clarified that he was still supportive of pairing border measures with Ukraine aid.
If the deal collapses, it could leave congressional leaders with no clear path to approving tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine. Biden has made it a top priority to bolster Kyiv’s defense against Russia, but his administration has run out of money to send ammunition and missiles. Ukraine supporters warn that the impasse in Congress is being felt on battlefields and leaving Ukrainian soldiers outgunned.
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, the lead GOP negotiator in the border talks, has repeatedly urged lawmakers to refrain from passing final judgment on the bill until they receive legislative text and said some of the reports of its contents in conservative media are not accurate depictions of the bill.
The Republican speaker was deeply skeptical of any bipartisan compromise on border policy. On Friday, he again pointed to a sweeping set of immigration measures that the House passed last year as being the answer to the nation’s border challenges. But that bill failed to gain a single Democratic vote then and has virtually no chance of picking up Democratic support now, which would be necessary to clear the Senate.
As they enter an election year, Republicans are seeking to drive home the fact that historic numbers of migrants have come to the U.S. during Biden’s presidency. His administration has countered that global unrest is driving the migration and has sought to implement humane policies on border enforcement.
“Securing the border through these negotiations is a win for America,” Biden said in the statement. “For everyone who is demanding tougher border control, this is the way to do it.”
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Beijing Hikes Military Pressure on Taiwan After US, China Announce Talks
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
TAIPEI, Taiwan — China sent more than 30 warplanes and a group of navy ships toward Taiwan, the island’s defense ministry said Saturday.
The military pressure comes on the heels of an announcement that senior American and Chinese representatives were expected to meet in the Thai capital as the two countries seek to cool tensions.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army sent 33 aircraft, including SU-30 fighters, and six navy vessels around Taiwan, between 6 a.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday. Of these, 13 warplanes crossed the midline of the Taiwan Strait — an unofficial boundary that’s considered a buffer between the island and mainland. Taiwan has monitored the situation and employed its own forces in response to the activities.
China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own territory and in recent years has shown its displeasure at political activities in Taiwan by sending military planes and ships. Taiwan said six Chinese balloons either flew over the island or through airspace just north of it days after the self-governing island elected Lai Ching-te as the new president. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party largely campaigned on self-determination, social justice and a rejection of China’s threats.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi were in Bangkok for talks, although it wasn’t clear when the meeting would take place or if it already had.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of a summit in November in an effort to patch up frayed relations due to quarrels over a range of economic and geopolitical issues. U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the planned meeting in Bangkok continues the commitment Biden and Xi made “to maintain strategic communication and responsibly manage the relationship.”
During talks, Foreign Minister Wang would make clear China’s position on Taiwan and on U.S.-China relations, and discuss international and regional concerns, ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Friday.
An immediate international concern to both countries is tensions in the Red Sea that have upended global trade by forcing many shippers to avoid the Suez Canal. Beijing said it has been making positive efforts to de-escalate the situation in which Iran-backed Houthi rebels have fired missiles at international ships.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7459650.html Save to Pocket
January 26, 2024
date: 2024-01-27, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
[There is a description of rape in paragraph 8.] This afternoon a jury of nine Americans deliberated for less than three hours before it ordered former president Trump to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her after she accused him in 2019 of raping her in the 1990s. In May 2023 a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in an assault the judge said is commonly known as rape, and for defaming her. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-26-2024 Save to Pocket
US Forces Launch Attack on Houthi Anti-Ship Missile
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-forces-launch-attack-on-houthi-anti-ship-missile/7459649.html Save to Pocket
Pair Wait 17 Years for Trial in Bali Bombings, Take US Plea Deal
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — A military panel at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, recommended 23 years in detention Friday for two Malaysian men in connection with deadly 2002 bombings in Bali, a spokesperson for the military commission said.
However, under a previously secret provision of the plea agreement disclosed after the panel’s recommendation Friday, and a separate sentence reduction Friday by the presiding judge, both men may face a far shorter sentence: about five years.
Mohammed Farik Bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep already have spent about 17 years awaiting trial at Guantanamo.
The winding down of the case against them marks comparatively rare convictions in the two decades of proceedings by the U.S. military commission at Guantanamo.
The extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah killed 202 Indonesians, foreign tourists and others in two nearly simultaneous bombings at nightspots on the resort island of Bali in October 2002.
The two defendants denied any role or advance knowledge of the attacks but under the plea bargains admitted they had over the years conspired with the network of militants responsible. The sentence recommendation still requires approval by the senior military authority over Guantanamo.
The two are among a total of 780 detainees brought to military detention at Guantanamo under the George W. Bush administration’s “war on terror” following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. There have been only a handful of convictions over the years — eight, according to one advocacy group, Reprieve.
Defendants in some of the biggest attacks, including 9/11, remain in pretrial hearings. Prosecutors are seeking negotiated agreements to close that case and some others.
Overall, the prosecutions at Guantanamo have been plagued by logistical difficulties, frequent turnover of judges and others, and legal questions surrounding the torture of detainees during CIA custody in the first years of their detention.
The military’s head of defense for the Guantanamo prosecutions on Friday blamed the Bush administration’s early handling of the detainees — which included holding at secret “black sites” and torture in CIA custody — for the more than 20-year delay in the trial.
The slow pace “was extremely distressing and frustrated the desire of everyone for accountability and justice,” Brig. Gen. Jackie Thompson said in a statement.
Thirty detainees remain at Guantanamo. Sixteen of them have been cleared and are eligible for transfer if a stable country agrees to take them.
“The time for repatriating or transferring the cleared men is now,” Thompson said. He said the same for three others held at Guantanamo but never charged.
As part of their plea bargains, the two Malaysian men have agreed to provide testimony against a third Guantanamo detainee, an Indonesian man known as Hambali, in the Bali bombings.
Under military court rules, Bin Amin and Bin Lep normally would receive no credit for the roughly two decades they have already spent in detention. The pretrial agreement disclosed Friday would spare them from serving the much longer recommended sentence on top of their years awaiting trial, the defense lawyers for the two men said.
Relatives of some of those killed in the Bali bombings testified Wednesday in a hearing in advance of sentencing, with the two accused in the courtroom and listening attentively.
A panel of five military officers delivered the recommendation after listening to the sentencing testimony.
The U.S. and Malaysia may agree to transferring the two to their home country, said Brian Bouffard, the attorney for Bin Lep.
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Carpinteria Community Blasts Bluffs Resort at Preliminary Review
date: 2024-01-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Hundreds pack City Hall to speak out against proposed 99-room farmhouse resort.
The post Carpinteria Community Blasts Bluffs Resort at Preliminary Review appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/26/carpinteria-community-blasts-bluffs-resort-at-preliminary-review/ Save to Pocket
★ Apple’s Plans for the DMA in the European Union
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: Daring Fireball
The delicious irony in Apple’s not knowing if these massive proposals will be deemed DMA-compliant is that their dealings with the European Commission sound exactly like App Store developers’ dealings with Apple. Do all the work to build it first, and only then find out if it passes muster with the largely inscrutable rules.
https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/apples_plans_for_the_dma Save to Pocket
Deepfake Explicit Images of Taylor Swift Spread on Social Media
date: 2024-01-27, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — Pornographic deepfake images of Taylor Swift are circulating online, making the singer the most famous victim of a scourge that tech platforms and anti-abuse groups have struggled to fix.
Sexually explicit and abusive fake images of Swift began circulating widely this week on the social media platform X.
Her ardent fanbase of “Swifties” quickly mobilized, launching a counteroffensive on the platform formerly known as Twitter and a #ProtectTaylorSwift hashtag to flood it with more positive images of the pop star. Some said they were reporting accounts that were sharing the deepfakes.
The deepfake-detecting group Reality Defender said it tracked a deluge of nonconsensual pornographic material depicting Swift, particularly on X. Some images also made their way to Meta-owned Facebook and other social media platforms.
“Unfortunately, they spread to millions and millions of users by the time that some of them were taken down,” said Mason Allen, Reality Defender’s head of growth.
The researchers found at least a couple dozen unique AI-generated images. The most widely shared were football-related, showing a painted or bloodied Swift that objectified her and in some cases inflicted violent harm on her deepfake persona.
Researchers have said the number of explicit deepfakes has grown in the past few years, as the technology used to produce such images has become more accessible and easier to use. In 2019, a report released by the AI firm DeepTrace Labs showed these images were overwhelmingly weaponized against women. Most of the victims, it said, were Hollywood actors and South Korean K-pop singers.
Brittany Spanos, a senior writer at Rolling Stone who teaches a course on Swift at New York University, says Swift’s fans are quick to mobilize in support of their artist, especially those who take their fandom very seriously and in situations of wrongdoing.
“This could be a huge deal if she really does pursue it to court,” she said.
Spanos says the deep fake pornography issue aligns with others Swift has had in the past, pointing to her 2017 lawsuit against a radio station DJ who allegedly groped her; jurors awarded Swift $1 in damages, a sum her attorney, Douglas Baldridge, called “a single symbolic dollar, the value of which is immeasurable to all women in this situation” in the midst of the MeToo movement. (The $1 lawsuit became a trend thereafter, like in Gwyneth Paltrow’s 2023 countersuit against a skier.)
When reached for comment on the fake images of Swift, X directed the The Associated Press to a post from its safety account that said the company strictly prohibits the sharing of non-consensual nude images on its platform. The company has also sharply cut back its content-moderation teams since Elon Musk took over the platform in 2022.
“Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them,” the company wrote in the X post early Friday morning. “We’re closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any further violations are immediately addressed, and the content is removed.”
Meanwhile, Meta said in a statement that it strongly condemns “the content that has appeared across different internet services” and has worked to remove it.
“We continue to monitor our platforms for this violating content and will take appropriate action as needed,” the company said.
A representative for Swift didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Allen said the researchers are 90% confident that the images were created by diffusion models, which are a type of generative artificial intelligence model that can produce new and photorealistic images from written prompts. The most widely known are Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E. Allen’s group didn’t try to determine the provenance.
OpenAI said it has safeguards in place to limit the generation of harmful content and “decline requests that ask for a public figure by name, including Taylor Swift.”
Microsoft, which offers an image-generator based partly on DALL-E, said Friday it was in the process of investigating whether its tool was misused. Much like other commercial AI services, it said it doesn’t allow “adult or non-consensual intimate content, and any repeated attempts to produce content that goes against our policies may result in loss of access to the service.”
Asked about the Swift deepfakes on NBC Nightly News, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told host Lester Holt in an interview airing Tuesday that there’s a lot still to be done in setting AI safeguards and “it behooves us to move fast on this.”
“Absolutely this is alarming and terrible, and so therefore yes, we have to act,” Nadella said.
Midjourney, OpenAI and Stable Diffusion-maker Stability AI didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Federal lawmakers who’ve introduced bills to put more restrictions or criminalize deepfake porn indicated the incident shows why the U.S. needs to implement better protections.
“For years, women have been victims of non-consensual deepfakes, so what happened to Taylor Swift is more common than most people realize,” said U.S. Representative Yvette D. Clarke, a Democrat from New York who’s introduced legislation that would require creators to digitally watermark deepfake content.
“Generative-AI is helping create better deepfakes at a fraction of the cost,” Clarke said.
U.S. Representative Joe Morelle, another New York Democrat pushing a bill that would criminalize sharing deepfake porn online, said what happened to Swift was disturbing and has become more and more pervasive across the internet.
“The images may be fake, but their impacts are very real,” Morelle said in a statement. “Deepfakes are happening every day to women everywhere in our increasingly digital world, and it’s time to put a stop to them.”
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Today, Trump got his comeuppance
date: 2024-01-27, from: Robert Reich on Substack
The bully-in-chief can’t blame Biden
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/today-trump-got-his-comeuppance Save to Pocket
Sensationalized Housing Headlines Misinform
date: 2024-01-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
While provocative headlines may grab attention, they fail to reflect the important story — that of a housing crisis.
The post Sensationalized Housing Headlines Misinform appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/26/sensationalized-housing-headlines-misinform/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Chrome Will Use Experimental AI Feature to Organize Tabs, Write Reviews.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/chrome-will-use-experimental-ai-feature-to-organize-tabs-write-reviews/ Save to Pocket
Let’s Not Forget About Human Rights
date: 2024-01-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
We need to revisit the Universal Declaration of Human Rights given the injustices, violence, and disregard for those rights throughout the world including Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and the Israel-Hamas Gaza War.
The post Let’s Not Forget About Human Rights appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/26/lets-not-forget-about-human-rights/ Save to Pocket
City Invites Applications for Animal Care Grants
date: 2024-01-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita has announced the launch of the Animal Care Grant Program, a new initiative to provide direct financial assistance to non-profit organizations that serve the city’s animal population
https://scvnews.com/city-invites-applications-for-animal-care-grants/ Save to Pocket
Apple redecorates its iPhone prison to appease Europe
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
At least web competition will finally be allowed
Analysis Apple co-founder Steve Jobs described the computer as a bicycle for the mind. But he failed to let that metaphor shape his greatest achievement, the iPhone, which has become a shackle for the soul.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/27/apple_europe_ios_analysis/ Save to Pocket
We Are All Worthy of Life
date: 2024-01-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The current disintegration of a healthy democracy in America makes me afraid and reminds me of my grandparents’ experience in Germany in the very early 1930s.
The post We Are All Worthy of Life appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/26/we-are-all-worthy-of-life/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Jeff Jarvis nails it. They need a public editor at the NYT to point out, under the NYT banner, when they break the deal they made with their readers, to keep their interests separate from their editorial work.
http://scripting.com/2024/01/26.html#a013345 Save to Pocket
Jan. 31: ‘Coffee With a Cop’ at Valencia McDonald’s
date: 2024-01-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The first “Coffee With a Cop” of 2024 will be held Wednesday, Jan. 31 from 9 a.m.-11 a.m. at McDonald’s in Valencia, 23110 Valencia Blvd., Valencia, CA
https://scvnews.com/jan-31-coffee-with-a-cop-at-valencia-mcdonalds/ Save to Pocket
The Weekly Frame: Contrast
date: 2024-01-27, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Harmonies of opposing elements, as seen and captured by our staff photographers.
The post The Weekly Frame: Contrast appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/01/26/the-weekly-frame-contrast/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
E. Jean Carroll
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll Save to Pocket
CDPH Warns Consumers with Milk Allergies About Dave’s Bakery Corn Bread
date: 2024-01-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The California Department of Public Health is warning consumers with an allergy to milk not to eat Dave’s Bakery Corn Bread. The product contained whey, a milk allergen and the label did not include a milk allergy statement as required by law
https://scvnews.com/cdph-warns-consumers-with-milk-allergies-about-daves-bakery-corn-bread/ Save to Pocket
A Responsive Environmental Leader
date: 2024-01-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
In my many years serving as Goleta’s mayor and city councilmember, I’ve never met a more responsive county supervisor than Joan Hartmann.
The post A Responsive Environmental Leader appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/01/26/a-responsive-environmental-leader/ Save to Pocket
Snow day in corporate world thanks to another frustrating Microsoft Teams outage
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Network rollback fails to resolve issue in Americas as Redmond scrambles to optimize its way out of the problem
Corporate communications ground to a halt for many Office 365 subscribers around the world on Friday after a network outage left Microsoft Teams unresponsive for them for several hours.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/27/teams_outage_again/ Save to Pocket
St. Clare Catholic Church 46th Annual Lenten Fish Fry
date: 2024-01-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
St. Clare of Assisi Catholic Church in Canyon Country will host its 46th Annual Lenten Fish Fry on Fridays beginning Feb 16 for six weeks. The last Lenten Fish Fry of 2024 will be held March 22.
https://scvnews.com/st-clare-catholic-church-46th-annual-lenten-fish-fry/ Save to Pocket
History Doesn’t Repeat Itself?
date: 2024-01-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Donald Trump has recently acknowledged that his anti-immigrant rhetoric is being compared to Hitler’s — and then he showed how little that bothered him, repeating much of the same vile language.
The post History Doesn’t Repeat Itself? appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
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Big, beautiful, beefy focus states with :focus-visible
date: 2024-01-27, from: Dave Rupert blog
One thing I love about the new’ish :focus-visible
pseudo-state is that it allows me to create bigger, bolder, and more
obvious focus states for my keyboard users than I normally would with a
:focus pseudo-state that might flash or linger on a click.
For example, my default :focus-visible is pretty chonky…
*:focus-visible {
outline: 3px solid black;
outline-offset: 0.25rem;
border-radius: 0.125rem;
}
A three pixel slightly rounded outline offset from the element, it’s hard to miss. But you will never see it unless you’re using your keyboard.
Focus states are one of the areas of accessibility that are easy to
neglect when you don’t use your keyboard to navigate everyday. I went on
a deep dive fixing some accessibility issues on my site last month and
found all kinds of issues with focus. So I fixed them using
:focus-visible.
ArticleList
The first was my ArticleList component. I use this pattern often but somehow managed to nuke the focus state from existence. How did I do such a bad job? Using a reduced test case, I found the culprit…
❌ <a href><h2>Title goes here</h2></a>
✅ <h2><a href>Title goes here</a></h2>
After years of moving furniture, my HTML5 block links weren’t so blocky
anymore. I (re)learned that you need a { display: block }
on anchors that wrap block-level elements to get focus states. I prefer
focus states that hug the text rather than a full width block outline,
so I refactored the HTML.
That’s a good representative of my default :focus-visible
in action. Now onto more, funner, focus states.
ProjectCard
On my new Projects page I have little project cards with images that
View Transition to the detail view. The project logos aren’t uniform, so
to reduce the cacophony of colors I use CSS filter to
desaturate the image, lower the opacity, and normalize with a sepia
filter.
.project img {
view-transition-name: var(--name);
transition: filter 0.2s ease-in-out;
filter: grayscale(100%) sepia(0.2) opacity(0.75);
}
.project :hover img,
.project :focus-visible img {
filter: none;
}
On mouse :hover I set the image goes to full color. I made
it do the same for :focus-visible and added the beefy
outline as well.
This is great example of where I want :focus-visible
instead of :focus. I wouldn’t want that :focus
state and its outline lingering as part of my view transition on every
click.
StoryCard
My new stories page has some funky focus states as well. Because I’m
using a “sci-fi rectangle” shape for my StoryCard. On
:hover I do nothing but cursor: pointer , so
the :focus-visible state ends up as a bit of an Easter egg
for keyboard users. On :focus-visible the image link
shrinks down and the outline (with one rounded not-so-sci-fi corner)
appears.
This is another example where I wouldn’t want those images to shrink
down on :focus, so I’m able to have even bigger and more
obvious focus states with :focus-visible.
My Bookshelf
The last place where I added :focus-visible states was to
my favorite child, my bookshelf. I had managed to break focus states
again, so I was happy to re-add them back.
The image link focus and <details> dropdown focus are
pretty obvious now where they weren’t visible at all before. I made a
choice to differentiate the :checked of my filters based on
keyboard focus as well. Clicking gets you a subtle black outline, while
keyboard input gives you a beautiful blue outline with a hint of
background color. It’s overkill, but it’s my overkill, so I love it.
You could say I’m a fan
I’ve loved :focus-visible ever since I first heard
Alice Boxhall and
Rob Dodson talk about it. I can’t
tell you how often I’ve heard “Can we remove the blue outline in
Safari?” and had to add an outline: 0 CSS crime. That
complaint was so prevalent that you have to TURN ON tab focus in Safari
now. I think that’s a mistake but, c’est le web.
Good news! We don’t have to commit CSS crimes anymore!
:focus-visible solves the “I want keyboard focus but not
click focus” problem by treating keyboards and pointers separate. For me
it’s an opportunity to enhance experiences for keyboard-only users.
I know there’s folks who think we shouldn’t use this new-fangled
pseudo-state, that we should use :focus instead like the
old days. There’s a good argument behind that but in a world where a lot
of (most?) sites disable focus states entirely, this seems like a good
path forward. And sometimes, it might be a better keyboard experience
for users than a little color change on hover
(§1.4.1).
https://daverupert.com/2024/01/focus-visible-love/ Save to Pocket
Microsoft sheds some light on Russian email heist – and how to learn from Redmond’s mistakes
date: 2024-01-27, updated: 2024-01-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Step one, actually turn on MFA
Microsoft, a week after disclosing that Kremlin-backed spies broke into its network and stole internal emails and files from its executives and staff, has now confirmed the compromised corporate account used in the genesis of the heist didn’t even have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/27/microsoft_cozy_bear_mfa/ Save to Pocket
Barger to Host Public Forum on Skilled Nursing Facilities
date: 2024-01-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger will host a special public meeting focused on the oversight, care and management of skilled nursing facilities in Los Angeles County.
https://scvnews.com/barger-hosts-public-forum-on-skilled-nursing-facilities/ Save to Pocket
Weekly COVID Roundup: COVID Numbers Still Elevated in County
date: 2024-01-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health confirmed Friday 202 new laboratory confirmed cases and two new deaths from COVID-19 in the Santa Clarita Valley within the last week
https://scvnews.com/weekly-covid-roundup-covid-numbers-still-elevated-in-county/ Save to Pocket
How was your experience?
date: 2024-01-27, from: Chris Coyier blog
I just want to echo Josh’s sentiment: In a way, it’s hard to blame companies because they honestly want to know and, in the best-case scenario, actually use what they get to make things better. But it’s oh-so-overwhelming. Just constantly about every single little thing. One of my favorites is when you log into hotel […]
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