California
city sues councilmember at center of $700,000 sexual harassment
lawsuits
date: 2024-01-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Montclair settled with two employees who accused Councilmember Ben
Lopez of making unwanted sexual advances. Now it wants to recoup its
costs from Lopez.
A recent study found 61% of older adults with cognitive impairment
continued to drive even though 36% of their caregivers were concerned
about their performance.
First
Las Vegas Super Bowl drives record ticket prices
date: 2024-01-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
The average purchase price on TickPick was $9,815 on Monday morning.
That’s nearly double the final average price of $5,795 for last year’s
game between the Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles in Glendale, Arizona,
although current prices could decline.
See
Dazzling New Images of 19 Spiral Galaxies Captured by the James Webb
Space Telescope
date: 2024-01-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
These detailed infrared views, which contain millions of stars, will
help astronomers better understand star formation and the evolution of
spiral galaxies
Third
suspect in Kevin Nishita killing extradited from Missouri
date: 2024-01-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
U.S. Marshals took Laron Gilbert into custody Jan. 17 in Blue
Springs, Mo. Oakland investigators flew to Missouri after his arrest but
he declined to talk to them, authorities said.
OKAI
Stride e-bike hits $930 (Save $670), Greenworks power tool combos now
50% off, more
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
Headlining today’s best deals is the
OKAI
Stride Electric Bike that is seeing a $670 discount to
$930.
It is joined by a
one-day
50% off promotional sale on a selection of Greenworks power tool
combo kits that will end tonight at 11:59 EST, as well as the
EcoFlow
RIVER 2 Portable Power Station at $178, with
discounted options to bundle the device with solar panels to maximize
its charging ability. Plus, all of today’s other best new Green Deals.
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City announced on
Thursday, Jan. 25 the 71 artists and collectives selected for the
upcoming Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing
NASA
Search and Rescue Technology Saves Explorers, Enables Exploration
date: 2024-01-30, from: NASA breaking news
In 2023, NASA-developed search and rescue technologies aided first
responders in locating and saving 350 lives in the United States. Now,
NASA is incorporating that same technology in astronaut missions. NASA
provides technical expertise to the international satellite-aided search
and rescue effort known as Cospas-Sarsat. This technical expertise has
enabled the development of multiple emergency […]
Holcim
places massive 1,000 unit order for Mercedes electric semi trucks
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
Swiss building materials and solutions provider Holcim took a
significant step towards meeting its stated sustainability goals by
placing an absolutely MASSIVE order for 1,000
Mercedes-Benz
eActros 600 electric semi trucks. (!)
Jeep
previews first look at the all-electric Wagoneer S interior
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
We are finally getting our first looks at the interior of the upcoming
Jeep Wagoneer S. Jeep’s first all-electric vehicle in the US is arriving
this Fall. Ahead of its debut,
Jeep is giving a sneak
peek of the electric SUV’s interior.
Daimler,
Volvo, Navistar form a ‘supergroup’ to ramp up electric truck charging
infrastructure
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
Daimler Truck North America, Navistar, and Volvo Group North America
just formed a coalition to accelerate the rollout of US charging
infrastructure for medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks.
You might be confused by the title of this post. You might be wondering
why on earth am I writing about the best laptop of 2024. I never
reviewed products on this blog. There was no best laptop of 2023 post
nor a best laptop of 2022. And fear not, there won’t be a post about the
best laptop of 2024 either.
You see, this is not going to be a post about laptops. It’s going to be
a post about words, about generated content, and about SEO. It’s also
going to be an experiment because I’m a curious person and the inner
workings of search engines fascinate me.
I was listening to a tech podcast the other day and in it, they were
talking about the evolving landscape of the publishing industry with the
increasing trend of companies making AI-generated listicles in an
attempt to rank high on Google. And then you have things like the
Arc
search browser that will use Ai to generate summaries of the pages
they browsed on your behalf. The result is that you have Ai consuming
content written by Ai in an attempt to do… something? I’m not sure what
the end game is to be perfectly honest with you but I’m interested
because this all looks like a shit show.
Anyway, back to the best laptops of 2024. In that podcast, they
mentioned that one of the prime targets in the search results tech space
is, you guessed it, the first page of results for the query “best
laptops of 2024”. And while I was listening I thought “I wonder how high
can a stupid blog post get on that SERP if I don’t actually write
content that’s relevant to the query”.
And this is that post. I have no interest in laptops. I know nothing
about laptops. I don’t care about laptops. I don’t even know which
laptops came out in 2024. I do know people are interested in knowing
which laptop is the best laptop in 2024 which is why I just wasted some
of your time (I’m sorry) making you read a silly post about the best
laptops in 2024 that has nothing to do with laptops.
Will google pick this one up? Will I even reach the first page? Who
knows! But if for some reason you landed on this blog post searching for
the best laptop of 2024 send me an email. I promise you I’ll do my best
to help you figure out what’s the best laptop for you.
Banana
Pi BPI-M7 router board now available for $165 (RK3588 processor, dual
2.5 Gb Ethernet, WiFi 6 and BT 5.2)
date: 2024-01-30, from: Liliputing
The Banana Pi BPI-M7 is a single-board computer with a Rockchip RK3588
processor, two 2.5 Gb Ethernet ports, support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth
5.2, LPDDR4X memory, eMMC storage, and an M.2 slot with support for an
optional PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD. First announced in November, the Banana
Pi BPI-M7 is now available for purchase from […]
A little mind bomb. I couldn’t
have written the
above message in any of the systems that it’s about. It depends on
textcasting features that none of those systems support.
How
the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse Is Different than the 2017 Eclipse
date: 2024-01-30, from: NASA breaking news
On April 8, the Moon’s shadow will sweep across the United States, as
millions will view a total solar eclipse. For many, preparing for this
event brings memories of the magnificent total solar eclipse on Aug. 21,
2017. In 2017, an estimated 215 million U.S. adults (88% of U.S. adults)
viewed the solar eclipse, either […]
How to
Learn Unfamiliar Software Tools with ChatGPT
date: 2024-01-30, from: Jonudell blog
Here’s the latest installment in the series on working with LLMS: How
to Learn Unfamiliar Software Tools with ChatGPT. Ideally, tools like
GeoGebra and Metabase provide interfaces so intuitive that you rarely
need to read the docs, and you can learn the software just by poking
around in it. In reality, of course, we need …
Continue
reading How to Learn Unfamiliar
Software Tools with ChatGPT
Did
you know you can turn a computer mouse into a camera? You probably
shouldn’t, but you can (video)
date: 2024-01-30, from: Liliputing
Mouse modern computer mice feature optical sensors that track the
position of your mouse as you move it over a flat surface. But you know
what else uses optical sensors? Cameras. So can you use a mouse as a
camera? Kind of. YouTuber Doctor Volt turned an old Logitech mouse into
a camera. But it’s […]
Apple Vision Pro reviews have started to roll in — and depending on
who you read, the consensus vacillates between amazing and work in
progress. In most cases, they reflect some version of reality. If one is
looking for faults with Apple’s face computer, then one will find them.
And if you are looking at …
Is this
our first look at Rivian’s (RIVN) upcoming R2 EV?
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
As anticipation builds for
Rivian’s (RIVN)
next-gen electric vehicle, a new patent filing may give us a glimpse
into what we can expect. The patent is for a vehicle headlamp, but the
images show what could be our first look at the new Rivian R2 EV.
Poised
for Science: NASA’s Europa Clipper Instruments Are All Aboard
date: 2024-01-30, from: NASA breaking news
The science performed by the complex suite of instruments recently
added to the spacecraft will reveal whether Jupiter’s moon Europa has
conditions that could support life. With less than nine months remaining
in the countdown to launch, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission has passed a
major milestone: Its science instruments have been added to the massive
[…]
Fielding
Graduate University welcomes new Vice President of University
Relations
date: 2024-01-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Fielding Graduate University proudly
introduces Elena Nicklasson as the newest member of its leadership team,
taking on the role
Scientists
Build a Robot Dinosaur to Probe the Mystery of Tiny Wings
date: 2024-01-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Robopteryx—a makeshift dinosaur with training wheels—offers clues to
the purpose of prehistoric proto-wings, which are too small to have
powered flight
Lamborghini
aims to reduce emissions 40% per car by 2030 en route to electric Urus
successor
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
Automobili
Lamborghini has shared intentions to expand its “Direzione Cor
Tauri” strategy to decarbonize its entire value chain and significantly
reduce carbon emissions per car by the decade’s end. The famed hypercar
developer’s product timeline includes launching several new electric
vehicles, including a successor to the Lamborghini Urus.
Tesla’s
biggest investor: it’s a family business masquerading as a public
company
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
Leo KoGuan has invested more money into Tesla than anyone in the world,
yet he can’t even get his concerns heard by the company’s board. The
shareholder is frustrated with some of the CEO’s recent controversies,
but with the board MIA, there’s no way to rein him in.
Zonta
accepting applications for Young Women in Public Affairs awards
date: 2024-01-30, from: The Signal
News release The Zonta Club of Santa Clarita Valley is offering Young
Women in Public Affairs Awards to outstanding young women. Winning
applicants who attend local high schools, colleges or universities and
are 16-19 years of age on April 1, 2024, may receive up to $1,000 each.
The first-place winner will progress to […]
GOP
reps want feds to investigate Ford’s deal with Chinese companies
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
Ford has been looking to build the first LFP battery facility in the US,
boosting domestic production. But it has been leaning on Chinese tech
from CATL to make that happen, and Republican lawmakers have criticized
the project. Now they’ve asked the Biden administration to investigate
four Chinese companies involved in the plant.
ESA
salutes Galileo satellite system meeting aviation standards
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
It’s all in the software
The European Space Agency (ESA) has celebrated the Galileo satellite
navigation system meeting civil aviation standards governing flight
phases from take-off to landing and explained how the feat was done.…
BioNutrients:
A Five-Year Experiment in Space Nears Completion
date: 2024-01-30, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s bio-manufacturing experiment called BioNutrients is testing a
way to use microorganisms to produce on-demand nutrients that will be
critical for human health during future long-duration space missions.
Launched to the International Space Station in 2019, the experiment
assesses the stability and performance of a hand-held system – dubbed a
production pack – to manufacture fresh vitamins […]
AYANEO
Flip clamshell handheld gaming PC launches for $699 and up via
crowdfunding, ships in March, 2024
date: 2024-01-30, from: Liliputing
The AYANEO Flip is a handheld gaming PC with a clamshell-style design
that makes it look like a little laptop. While most recent handheld
computers designed for gaming have screens in the middle and controllers
on the sides, the AYA Neo Flip has a screen that flips open like a
laptop and game controllers in the […]
Ham Radio & More was a radio show about amateur radio that was
broadcast from 1991 through 1997. More than 300 episodes of the program
are now available online as […]
I apologize for the delay in posting but, as you will see, the post I
was working on grew rather long.
It seems obvious that
doing crimes and writing the receipts to an immutable public ledger is
risky, but many criminals have been convinced that there is no risk
because cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are anonymous. Although there
are cryptocurrencies with anonymous transactions, such as Monero and
zCash, they are much more difficult to use and much less liquid than
pseudonymous cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. As many criminals have
discovered, without an unrealistically intense focus on
operational
security (opsec), the identity behind the pseudonym can be revealed.
An entire industry has evolved to do these revelations, tracing the flow
of coins through their blockchains.
Below the fold I
discuss the techniques and results of blockchain tracing, based on four
main sources:
There are two main use cases for
cryptocurrencies, speculation and crime. Although speculation is likely
behind the majority of transactions its externalities, such as people
losing their life savings, have cause it to be downgraded from
“harmless” to
“mostly
harmless”, the minority of criminal transactions are definitely
harmful. I’ve written about these harms in, among others, my
EE380 talk,
The
Cryptocurrency Use Case and
Cryptocurrency-enabled
Crime.
Bitcoin is a purely online virtual currency, unbacked by either physical
commodities or sovereign obligation; instead, it relies on a combination
of cryptographic protection and a peer-to-peer protocol for witnessing
settlements. Consequently, Bitcoin has the unintuitive property that
while the ownership of money is implicitly anonymous, its flow is
globally visible. In this paper we explore this unique characteristic
further, using heuristic clustering to group Bitcoin wallets based on
evidence of shared authority, and then using re-identification attacks
(i.e., empirical purchasing of goods and services) to classify the
operators of those clusters. From this analysis, we characterize
longitudinal changes in the Bitcoin market, the stresses these changes
are placing on the system, and the challenges for those seeking to use
Bitcoin for criminal or fraudulent purposes at scale.
“Some linking is still unavoidable with multi-input transactions, which
necessarily reveal that their inputs were owned by the same owner,”
Satoshi wrote. “The risk is that if the owner of a key is revealed,
linking could reveal other transactions that belonged to the same
owner.”
Linking the inputs of multi-input transactions roughly halved the then
number of Bitcoin users. Meiklejohn then developed the
“change
address” technique:
When you pay someone 6 bitcoins from a 10-coin address, 6 coins go to
their address. Your change, 4 coins, is stored at a new address, which
your wallet software creates for you. The challenge, when looking at
that transaction on the blockchain as a sleuthing observer, is that the
recipient’s address and the change address are both simply listed as
outputs, with no label to tell them apart.
But sometimes,
Meiklejohn realized, spotting the difference between the change address
and the recipient address was easy: If one address had been used before
and the other hadn’t, the second, totally fresh address could only be
the change address
Meiklejohn’s first criminal case started when “Flycracker” raised funds
to mail Brian Krebs a baker’s dozen bags of
heroin
from Silk Road:
Flycracker had made it easy. By posting a Bitcoin address to the
cybercriminal forum, he’d given Meiklejohn a starting point. She simply
copied the thirty-four-character string into her blockchain software and
looked at the transactions at that address. After collecting 2 bitcoins
in donations at the address he’d posted, worth around $200 at the time,
a little over three-quarters of the money had been sent to another
address, with a third collecting the change. At a glance, Meiklejohn
immediately identified the change address and checked the money’s
destination against her database. Sure enough, the address was one of
the nearly 300,000 she had already tagged as belonging to the Silk Road.
Meiklejohn had just connected Flycracker’s address directly to the
source of the heroin he’d tried to use to frame Krebs.
The first major cryptocurrency bust Greenberg recounts was the arrest of
Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts in a San Francisco library. It
did
not depend upon these tracing techniques:
The FBI has described that cybersurveillance coup as the result of a
misconfiguration in the site’s use of the Tor anonymity software but has
been reluctant to ever officially explain that error in a courtroom.
it had been the IRS’s Gary Alford, sitting in his New Jersey home four
months earlier, who’d done the meticulous, unglamorous work that had led
to the case’s first real breakthrough. Alford had been using Google to
dig up the earliest online posts about the Silk Road on drug forums when
he’d found a curious artifact: Someone going by the name “altoid” had
posted to a site called the Shroomery in January 2011 recommending the
Silk Road’s just-launched dark web market as a source for drugs. Around
the same time, a user with the same handle had also asked for
programming help on a coding forum. On that page, altoid had listed his
email address: rossulbricht@gmail.com.
Another IRS agent, Tigran Gambaryan, received a tip that Carl Force, one
of the DEA agents working on Silk Road, had used a fake ID to set up an
account at Bitstamp, a cryptocurrency exchange, and deposited a lot of
BTC He had cashed out $200K and, as Gambaryan
examined
his financial records:
He found that Force had, in late 2013, paid off his home’s entire
mortgage, an outstanding loan of $130,000. He’d repaid, too, a $22,000
loan he’d taken out against his federal retirement account. He’d even
made a gift of tens of thousands of dollars to his local church, the
sort of largesse that, Gambaryan knew all too well, was tough to afford
on a federal agent’s salary. The numbers only got shadier from there:
Gambaryan found records of real estate investments in which Force had
listed his net worth as more than 1 million. That wealth was almost
entirely due, it became clear, to a massive influx of liquidated
bitcoins from cryptocurrency exchanges like Bitstamp and CampBX that had
flowed into Force’s bank accounts. The payments totaled $776,000 beyond
his $150,000 annual DEA salary over the two prior years that he’d worked
on the Silk Road case. With that ample financial padding, Force had then
retired from the DEA, just days before Gambaryan began to look into his
records.
Gambaryan could get Force’s wallet addresses from the exchanges he used,
and he found an unencrypted message from DPR referencing a 525 BTC
payment to Force’s investigative alias, but he needed proof, So,
Greenberg
writes:
Despite having read Meiklejohn’s paper, he possessed none of the data
that she’d assembled over months of clustering Bitcoin addresses and
identifying them with test transactions. So he simply started copying
Bitcoin addresses from Carl Force’s account records—the ones he’d gotten
from exchanges such as CampBX and Bitstamp—and pasting them into the
search field on Blockchain.info, which displayed the entire blockchain
on the web. At first, the collections of garbled character strings
seemed meaningless to Gambaryan. But almost immediately, he could see he
was onto something. On September 27, 2013, just a few days before Ross
Ulbricht’s arrest, Gambaryan saw with a jolt of recognition that one of
Force’s CampBX addresses had received a 525-bitcoin payment—the magic
number that DPR had mentioned in his conveniently unencrypted message.
Gambaryan manually followed the chains backward, from their inputs to
the outputs that caused them,
until
finally:
Following the money at each of the remaining addresses back one more
step, he now saw the coins had originally come from just four sources.
Each of those addresses had received their funds on the same day: August
4, 2013—the exact date when the Dread Pirate Roberts had told Nob he’d
paid him. Gambaryan mentally recorded the payments: They were for 127,
61, 134, and 203 bitcoins. He added the numbers in his head. They summed
up to 525 bitcoins. … The next morning, after a few hours’
sleep, Gambaryan began texting his DHS contact Jared Der-Yeghiayan, the
Armenian American agent in Chicago whom he’d befriended. He needed to
check the four addresses he’d found with someone who had access to the
Dread Pirate Roberts’s Bitcoin wallet. As a member of the Silk Road
investigation team, Der-Yeghiayan still had access to all the site’s
server data, including its Bitcoin addresses. Der-Yeghiayan called
Gambaryan back a few hours later and confirmed what Gambaryan already
knew: Each of the four addresses belonged to DPR.
He thus became apparently the first law enforcer to use blockchain
tracing as evidence in an investigation. Its first use in a trial
appears to be when, with help from Nick Weaver, the prosecution of Ross
Ulbricht introduced a trace of his payment for
a murder-for-hire attempt:
But the day when the prosecution found the incontrovertible, public, and
unerasable proof of Ulbricht’s Silk Road millions, argues Nick Weaver,
remains a milestone in the history of cryptocurrency and crime. “That is
the date,” Weaver says, “that you can state unequivocally that law
enforcement learned that the blockchain is forever.”
The blockchain tracing industry’s pioneer, Chainalysis, spun out of the
Kraken exchange as a result of the next big crime Greenberg covers, the
collapse
of the Mt. Gox exchange:
Kraken’s management, in a pro bono attempt to help rescue the
cryptocurrency ecosystem from the rippling shock of Mt. Gox’s
failure—and the collapse in Bitcoin’s price that followed—had agreed to
help distribute any remaining bitcoins that could be found to Mt. Gox’s
thousands upon thousands of angry creditors.
Michael
Gronager, for his part, had taken on a far more uncertain task. He’d
agreed to find the missing coins. By all appearances, this was not a
rational decision. The Danish entrepreneur had left his relatively
comfortable position as the COO of Kraken to found a new start-up whose
sole client, for the moment, was this roomful of Japanese bankruptcy
lawyers asking him to track down Mt. Gox’s gigantic, wayward fortune.
Even calling them a client would be a stretch: He would receive no fee,
and no portion of the recovered funds, if he could manage to find any.
The co-evolution of Bitcoin’s and tracing technology started with the
revelation that Chainalysis, by running a node in the Bitcoin network,
could discover the IP address associated with many wallets, which
garnered both hostility and customers. With a head-start, Chainalysis
rapidly became the leader in their emerging market, as
Brian
Arthur would have predicted.
The next investigation
Greenberg covers was into the BTC-e exchange,
whose:
computers where the exchange was hosted weren’t on the dark web,
protected by Tor. They ought to be discoverable with a simple
“traceroute” command, an operation that anyone with a computer and an
internet connection can run to find a site’s IP address—no harder than
looking up a commercial service’s number in a phone book. Gambaryan
checked, and it turned out the only layer of misdirection that had
prevented curious observers from learning the location of BTC-e’s
servers in the first place was a company called Cloudflare, a web
infrastructure provider and security service that shielded the
exchange’s IPs from prying eyes like Gambaryan’s.
Subpoenas to Cloudflare revealed they were hosted in the US, which
allowed them to be
imaged:
Gambaryan dug into the data his team had copied from the BTC-e server.
What he found was a revelation: The IP address for the account trading
in stolen Mt. Gox coins on BTC-e matched one of the few IP addresses on
the BTC-e server’s allow list for the administrators’ connections. In
other words, the person who had siphoned hundreds of thousands of
bitcoins from Mt. Gox into BTC-e wasn’t just any BTC-e user. They were a
BTC-e administrator. Specifically, an admin with the username WME. “The
gears started turning in my head,” Gambaryan remembers. “What better way
to launder hundreds of thousands of bitcoins than to launch your own
Bitcoin exchange?”
WME was Alexander Vinnik but, alas, he was in Russia.
Greenberg goes on to describe the takedown of Alexandre Cazes, who ran
the Alphabay dark-web market and the related takeover of the Hansa
dark-web market, and then of the Welcome to Video child sexual abuse
site. This led to the arrest and indictment of a Texas-based
Border
Patrol agent:
The Texas man had taken a rare approach to his legal defense: He’d
pleaded guilty to possession of child sexual abuse materials, but he
also appealed his conviction. He argued that his case should be thrown
out because IRS agents had identified him by tracking his Bitcoin
payments—without a warrant—which he claimed violated his Fourth
Amendment right to privacy and represented an unconstitutional
“search.”
A panel of appellate judges considered the
argument—and rejected it. In a nine-page opinion, they explained their
ruling, setting down a precedent that spelled out in glaring terms
exactly how far from private they determined Bitcoin’s transactions to
be.
“Every Bitcoin user has access to the public Bitcoin
blockchain and can see every Bitcoin address and its respective
transfers. Due to this publicity, it is possible to determine the
identities of Bitcoin address owners by analyzing the blockchain,” the
ruling read. “There is no intrusion into a constitutionally protected
area because there is no constitutional privacy interest in the
information on the blockchain.”
A search requires a
warrant, the American judicial system has long held, only if that search
enters into a domain where the defendant has a “reasonable expectation
of privacy.” The judges’ ruling argued that no such expectation should
have existed here: The HSI agent wasn’t caught in the Welcome to Video
dragnet because IRS agents had violated his privacy. He was caught, the
judges concluded, because he had mistakenly believed his Bitcoin
transactions to have ever been private in the first place.
This firmly established blockchain tracing as a legitimate form of
evidence.
One case Greenberg mentions only in passing is the theft of nearly 120K
BTC from Bitfinex, to which
Heather Morgan
and Ilya Lichtenstein pled guilty. They were intitially flagged as
suspects during the takeover of AlphaBay that Greenberg describes in
detail. I discussed the tracing steps revealed by the
Statement
of Facts from their indictment in
Inadequate
OpSec. The image shows a small part of the tracing evidence in
this case. The two VCE4 accounts used Russian e-mail addresses, but the
VCE7 and VCE8 accounts were in the name of companies controlled by
Lichtenstein and Morgan. Tracing the chains back connected the VCE4
accounts to the suspects, who had taken the precaution of funding VCE4
with Monero.
Deanonymizing individual wallets and flows is valuable to Chainalysis’
clients; law enforcement for evidence and financial institutions for
risk-assessment. But their vast collection of tagged wallet addresses
and transactions is also valuable in aggregate. It enables statistical
analysis of the cryptosphere, such as Chainalysis’ annual report on
cryptocurrency crime. This year’s is introduced in
2024
Crypto Crime Trends: Illicit Activity Down as Scamming and Stolen Funds
Fall, But Ransomware and Darknet Markets See Growth:
2023 saw a significant drop in value received by illicit cryptocurrency
addresses, to a total of $24.2 billion. As always, we have to caveat by
saying that these figures are lower bound estimates based on inflows to
the illicit addresses we’ve identified today. One year from now, these
totals will almost certainly be higher, as we identify more illicit
addresses and incorporate their historic activity into our estimates.
For instance, when we published our Crypto Crime Report last year, we
estimated $20.6 billion worth of illicit transaction volume for 2022.
One year later, our updated estimate for 2022 is $39.6 billion. Much of
that growth came from the identification of previously unknown, highly
active addresses hosted by sanctioned services, as well as our addition
of transaction volume associated with services in sanctioned
jurisdictions to our illicit totals.
Another key reason the
new total is so much higher, besides the identification of new illicit
addresses: We’re now counting the $8.7 billion in creditor claims
against FTX in our 2022 figures. In last year’s report,
Although these arae large sums, Chainalysys estimate they represent a
fairly small proportion of the total cryptocurrency volume, falling from
0.42% in 2022 to 0.34% in 2023. Of course, it is unlikely that they have
identified all the illicit transactions.
Through 2021, Bitcoin reigned supreme as the cryptocurrency of choice
among cybercriminals, likely due to its high liquidity. But that’s
changed over the last two years, with stablecoins now accounting for the
majority of all illicit transaction volume. This change also comes
alongside recent growth in stablecoins’ share of all crypto activity
overall, including legitimate activity.
Bitcoin’s volatility is great for speculation, but when it fails to
proceed moonwards it is a big problem for criminals, and
especially
for sanctions-busters:
Some forms of illicit cryptocurrency activity, such as darknet market
sales and ransomware extortion, still take place predominantly in
Bitcoin. Others, like scamming and transactions associated with
sanctioned entities, have shifted to stablecoins. Those also happen to
be the biggest forms of crypto crime by transaction volume, thereby
driving the larger trend. Sanctioned entities, as well as those
operating in sanctioned jurisdictions or involved with terrorism
financing, also have a greater incentive to use stablecoins, as they may
face more challenges accessing the U.S. dollar through traditional
means, but still want to benefit from the stability it provides.
On a basic level this user was relying on an unlicensed money
transmitter where they have 0 access to any authority that feels
accountable to them.
Tether isn’t an Indian money services
business. Nor is it regulated in the victim’s country. Or anywhere with
a real process. … This — precisely this — is the cost of
living outside the law. You may end up with no recourse. Or not.
But you don’t even have someone to complain to that feels
accountable for your problems (i.e. your local police or elected
representative, or an employee of a business accountable to a regulator
you can contact).
Perhaps the most obvious trend that emerges when looking at illicit
transaction volume is the prominence of sanctions-related transactions.
Sanctioned entities and jurisdictions together accounted for a combined
$14.9 billion worth of transaction volume in 2023, which represents
61.5% of all illicit transaction volume we measured on the year. Most of
this total is driven by cryptocurrency services that were sanctioned by
the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control
(OFAC), or are located in sanctioned jurisdictions, and can continue to
operate because they’re in jurisdictions where U.S. sanctions are not
enforced.
While those services can and have been used for
nefarious purposes, it also means that some of that $14.9 billion in
sanctions-related transaction volume includes activity from average
crypto users who happen to reside in those jurisdictions. For example,
Russia-based exchange Garantex, which was sanctioned by OFAC and OFSI in
the U.K. for its facilitation of money laundering on behalf of
ransomware attackers and other cybercriminals, was one of the biggest
drivers of transaction volume associated with sanctioned entities in
2023. Garantex continues to operate because Russia does not enforce U.S.
sanctions. So, does that mean all of Garantex’s transaction volume is
associated with ransomware and money laundering? No. Nevertheless,
exposure to Garantex introduces serious sanctions risk for crypto
platforms subject to U.S. or U.K. jurisdiction, which means those
platforms must remain ever-more vigilant and screen for exposure to
Garantex in order to be compliant.
As examples, Fierman points to Nobitex, the largest cryptocurrency
exchange operating in the sanctioned country of Iran, as well as
Garantex, a notorious exchange based in Russia that has been
specifically sanctioned for its widespread criminal use. Stablecoin
usage on Nobitex outstrips bitcoin by a 9:1 ratio, and on Garantex by a
5:1 ratio, Chainalysis found. That’s a stark difference from the roughly
1:1 ratio between stablecoins and bitcoins on a few nonsanctioned
mainstream exchanges that Chainalysis checked for comparison.
Of course, when Chainalysis says “stablecoin” they essentially mean
Tether. Three years ago, this
interview of
Charles Yang, head trader of Genesis Block based in Hong Kong, by
John Riggins descibed how Tether was the basis for trade flows in
South-East Asia because it evaded governments’ currency controls.
Yang
noted:
bank acccounts are the absolute most valuable thing — you have to set up
a bunch of different companies, a lot of different bank accounts just to
facilitate trades that aren’t that big, maybe $50K. The moment you tell
them this is for a USDT trade, you’re basically asking them to shut your
bank account down.
FTX/Alameda minted nearly all the USDT-on-TRON and operate as something
like a central bank or reserve manager for a shadow East Asian USD
payment system. We provide convincing evidence from novel on-chain
analysis that shows how a real, albeit mostly-not-kosher, crypto use
case works. This data also makes plain that Binance/Cumberland runs the
Ethereum part of the same ecosystem and that these two groups of parties
probably coordinate their actions in some way. … we are
going to show that this entire complex looks an awful lot like a funnel
to establish backing for a USD payment network aimed at people who
cannot (easily or legally, depending) hold USD or transfer them.
This also exposes how USDT is split into a China-and-surroundings slice
and a rest-of-world slice with a different major crypto entity handling
each part.
Online gambling platforms, and especially those that are operating
illegally, have emerged as among the most popular vehicles for
cryptocurrencybased money launderers, particularly for those using
Tether or USDT on the TRON blockchain, … USDT on the TRON
blockchain has become a preferred choice for crypto money launderers in
East and Southeast Asia due to its stability and the ease, anonymity,
and low fees of its transactions. Law enforcement and financial
intelligence authorities in the region have reported USDT among the most
popular cryptocurrencies used by organized crime groups in the region,
particularly those involved in the regional cyberfraud industry,
demonstrated by a surging volume of cases and unauthorized online
gambling and cryptocurrency exchange platforms offering undergroud [sic]
USDT-based services.
As third- and fourth-party payments have become better understood by
authorities and more widely reported following ‘Operation Chain Break’
and other measures in China, organized crime groups have responded by
accelerating the integration of cryptocurrencies into their illegal
betting operations, creating significant challenges for investigators.
In recent years, law enforcement and financial intelligence authorities
have reported the growing use of sophisticated, high-speed money
laundering ‘motorcade’ teams specializing in underground USDT – fiat
currency exchanges (卡接回U) across East and Southeast Asia. This has
also included the mass recruitment of mule bank accounts across
virtually all jurisdictions in the Asia Pacific region which can be
purchased for as little as US $30.
Due to the rise of
cryptocurrency-integrated motorcades, points running syndicates, and
other challenges, in 2021 the Government of China banned cryptocurrency
transactions, trading, and mining. The industry subsequently migrated to
various jurisdictions, particularly driving up already rising
cryptocurrency adoption in several countries in Southeast Asia, together
with the establishment of high-risk and underground cryptocurrency
exchanges. At the same time, it is worth noting that cryptocurrency
flows connected to organized crime have been cited as being vastly
underestimated by industry experts as well as law enforcement and
regulatory authorities in the region. Experts have pointed to a number
of shortcomings related to existing analyses including massive gaps in
crime attribution on the blockchain, fabricated reporting by crypto
exchanges, and the prevalence of wash trading which inflates crypto
transaction volumes, thereby shrinking the portion of illicit
transactions identified.
The US is rightly concerned that Tether is undermining their
sanctions system, but countries like China with strict controls on
cross-boarder currency flows are also worried about similar undermining.
Fortunately, the flows of Tether are observable on the Ethereum and Tron
blockchains, so tracing techniques can be and, as I discussed in
The
Stablecoin Saga,
The
Stablecoin Saga Continued and
Alameda’s
On-Ramp are being, applied.
The auto industry had a generally strong 2023. This certainly included
Toyota, which reported that it’s held onto its title as the world’s
best-selling car company. But during prepared remarks, the company’s
chairman also offered an apology. We unpack. Plus, can we expect any
interest rate moves from the Federal Reserve this week? Then, we head to
Germany, where protests are sweeping the country to counter the
far-right Alternative for Deutschland party.
Reg
story prompts fresh security bulletin, review of Juniper Networks’ CVE
process
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Vendor gets tangled in its own web of undisclosed vulnerabilities
Juniper Networks has disclosed separate vulnerabilities it was
previously accused of concealing, and apologized to customers for the
error in communication.…
Toyota
sold over 100,000 EVs last year, but that’s still less than 1% of its
total sales
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
Although Toyota held
its title as the top-selling automaker, the industry is shifting beneath
it. Toyota sold over 100,000 EVs in 2023, but that’s still less than 1%
of the record 11.2 million vehicles handed over last year.
Station
Science 101: Epigenetics Research in Space
date: 2024-01-30, from: NASA breaking news
A growing body of research suggests a link between epigenetic
mechanisms and a wide variety of illnesses and behaviors, including
cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune illnesses, and cognitive
dysfunction. Epigenetics also plays a role in the changes humans and
other living things experience in space. This phenomenon has become part
of studies in a wide variety […]
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Bing hasn’t much benefited from its AI infusion but Google’s rivals
sense an opening
Feature Ask Google’s Bard chatbot about the future of
search and you’ll get a summary of trends that suggest there’s more to
search than finding keywords in an index of documents.…
The new climate media startup Heatmap News is looking for an ambitious,
insightful reporter to lead its coverage of climate tech.
This writer will report to the editor-in-chief and be tasked with
reporting on the startups, venture capitalists, and technologies at the
bleeding edge of the energy transition.
Candidates should be intrepid, well-sourced reporters with a deep
interest in climate tech. They should have a proven ability to go beyond
press releases to report about the inner workings of startups, bringing
to light in vivid detail the opportunities and challenges faced by
companies as they grow.
A background in climate tech coverage is an obvious plus, but candidates
with deep experience in technology and business reporting will also be
considered.
Candidates should be passionate about Heatmap’s mission and absolutely
thrilled about building something from the ground up.
The salary minimum is $75,000 and the maximum is $95,000. Competitive
benefits, unlimited paid time off, and a generous equity plan, which
gives employees a real stake in the company, are also offered. This
position is remote. Candidates across the United States will be
considered, but extra consideration will be given to those near climate
tech hubs in the Bay Area or New York.
Interested candidates should send a brief cover letter and
resume to editors@heatmap.news.
Heatmap News is a new media platform with a team of alums from The
Week, The Atlantic, Vox, Grid, and Grist focused on the biggest story of
our time: climate change.
Heatmap News is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified
applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to
sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion,
national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other
characteristic protected by applicable law.
To sample Heatmap’s work, poke around the site and sign up for our
flagship newsletter:
On this week’s bonus episode of Lever Time, David Sirota explores how
Meta is trying to protect the money it makes from harvesting children’s
user data.
COC to
host information nights for prospective students
date: 2024-01-30, from: The Signal
News release College of the Canyons will be hosting information nights
on Tuesday, Feb. 13, and Thursday, March 14, at its Valencia and Canyon
Country campuses, respectively, to assist high school seniors who are
interested in starting their college experience at COC. The
60-minute-long information sessions will cover eligibility, program
requirements, acceptance criteria and […]
Last month Katherine called out the tension inherent in a “personal”
website which is that it is both public and personal, and one’s public
(or professional) persona is often different from that of their personal
life. Robin Rendle riffed on the concept and said that it’s totally fine
for personal websites to be messy or imperfect or weird (i.e., not
necessarily how you’d want to present a “professional” front) and
declared, in a pretty great and punchy/pithy statement, “You’re a poem
and not software”.
GM’s
epically bad year still earned it $10 billion – but that’s not due to EV
sales
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
Despite a truly terrible year for GM that involved plants being shut
down for weeks due to a union strike, Bolt battery recalls, EV
production problems, and
the
nightmare that keeps on giving that is Cruise, General Motors says
it should tally up nearly $10 billion for 2023 – but we certainly don’t
owe that to stellar EV sales.
How a Single
‘Pig Butchering’ Scam Netted $40 Million
date: 2024-01-30, from: 404 Media Group
Pig butchering scams—in which fraudsters continuously extract money
from a target—are a multibillion dollar epidemic. Court records show
that just one scam operation can make at least tens of millions of
dollars.
As a love-token to my readers here are the first few pages of my new
novel which is published on Feb 1 DAY ONE Kerpow! Funny - unless it’s
ominous - she had put that very word down on a Scrabble board only a day
or two or before. Jubilant, the k scoring triple. Her opponent - the man
she had known for over twenty years, slept with for five, no longer
slept with with for however many more that left, and now played Scrabble
with instead - contested the spelling. Kapow, yes. Kerpow, no. They
fought over it. Have it your way, she said in the end. Which meant she
had to remove a garment.
Raspberry
Pi on IPO plans: ‘We want to be ready when the markets are ready’
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Bankers appointed, but CEO insists nothing will change while he’s in
charge
The Raspberry Pi company is again preparing the ground for an initial
public offering (IPO), appointing bankers Peel Hunt and Jefferies ahead
of a planned listing on the London Stock Exchange.…
GPA:
Petition for temporary power contract ‘nearly ready’
date: 2024-01-30, from: Guam Daily Post
The temporary power contract with Aggreko wasn’t on the agenda for
the Public Utilities Commission to address last week, but the commission
was still waiting on the Guam Power Authority to submit a petition
regarding that contract, according to PUC…
Reported
firearm at school confirmed to be glue gun
date: 2024-01-30, from: Guam Daily Post
Rumors of a Guahan Academy Charter School student having a gun
prompted a Guam Police Department response. However, the investigation
confirmed that “the item in question was, in fact, an electric hot glue
gun, brought to school by a student…
US,
China Launch Fentanyl Talks in Sign of Cooperation Amid Differences
date: 2024-01-30, from: VOA News USA
BEIJING — American and Chinese officials met Tuesday to discuss joint
efforts to stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., a sign of
cooperation as the two global powers try to manage their contentious
ties.
The two-day meeting was the first for a new counternarcotics working
group. One focus of the talks was fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is
ravaging America, and in particular ingredients for the drug that are
made in China.
Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to restart cooperation in a
handful of areas, including drug trafficking, when he and U.S. President
Joe Biden met outside San Francisco in November. The agreements were a
small step forward in a relationship strained by major differences on
issues ranging from trade and technology to Taiwan and human rights.
The U.S. wants China to do more to curb the export of chemicals that
it says are processed into fentanyl, largely in Mexico, before the final
product is smuggled into the United States.
Chinese Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong said the two sides had
in-depth and pragmatic talks.
“We reached common understanding on the work plan for the working
group,” he said at a ceremony marking the inauguration of the group.
The head of the U.S. team, Jen Daskal, a deputy homeland security
advisor in the White House, said that Biden had sent a high-level
delegation “to underscore the importance of this issue to the American
people.”
China used to be a major supplier of fentanyl, and the U.S. has
credited Beijing for a 2019 crackdown that led to “a drastic reduction
in seizures of fentanyl shipments … from China.” Now it wants Beijing to
stop the export of the ingredients known as “precursors.”
Synthetic opioids are the biggest killers in the deadliest drug
crisis the U.S. has ever seen. More than 100,000 deaths were linked to
drug overdoses in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. More than two-thirds involved fentanyl or
similar synthetic drugs.
China had previously rebuffed U.S. appeals for help as relations
between the two global powers deteriorated, often responding that the
U.S. should look inward to solve its domestic problems and not blame
them on China.
Talks were formally put on ice in 2022, when China suspended
cooperation in several areas including narcotics to protest a visit to
Taiwan by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The ice began to thaw in the lead-up to the Biden-Xi meeting in
November 2023. A U.S. Senate delegation pressed the fentanyl issue on a
visit to Beijing in October and said that Chinese officials expressed
sympathy for the victims of America’s opioid crisis.
But China refused to discuss cooperation unless the U.S. lifted
sanctions on the Public Security Ministry’s Institute of Forensic
Science. The Commerce Department had imposed the sanctions in 2020,
accusing the institute complicity in human rights violations against
Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in China’s Xinjiang
region.
The U.S. quietly agreed to lift the sanctions to get cooperation on
fentanyl. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi acknowledged “the removal of
the obstacle of unilateral sanctions” in a speech on China-U.S.
relations earlier this month.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called it “an
appropriate step to take” given what China was willing to do on the
trafficking of fentanyl precursors.
Yesterday
I sent a
message
to people who follow me on
Twitter,
Facebook,
Bluesky,
Mastodon,
Threads,
asking which networks people check first, which they get the most out
of. As you might expect, the most common answer was the network I was
asking on (except Facebook, no one answered there, I guessed that might
happen, because Facebook is different from the others). I asked because
I’m trying to figure that out for myself, and I’m kind of disappointed
that I find myself going to Threads more often. It has the greater
Sweaty
Palms Quotient, the feeling I used to have every week in the 80s
when MacWeek or PC Week arrived. I always cleared the time to go through
each issue carefully to see what my friends and competitors were up to.
Then I would talk to my reporter friends, who wanted to know what I
thought, or what back-room perspectives I could share with them. This
was the time of the telephone, even before everyone had email, in the
tech industry, believe it or not. Anyway, this isn’t going the way I
hoped it would. For me an open network built on the idea of
textcasting is what I want to
see, what I’m working towards. And seeing products like WordPress and
its competitors as full-class members of the social web, because they
already do textcasting, now all they need is to be hooked up to a social
web that understands that writing isn’t just
grunts
and snorts. Anyway, it’ll give you some encouragement that people in
the fediverse are most optimistic about their preferred network being
the best of the new lot. I still like Bluesky, a lot, because of the
intelligence and creativity of the people who use it. And I like the UI,
for its simplicity and familiarity, but I’m concerned it’ll lose its
simplicity when they federate. And don’t count Twitter out yet, there’s
far more happening there than any of the other networks. And a lot of
what you read on the other nets is wishful thinking about the demise of
Twitter. Hasn’t happened yet, and my guess is it won’t. It’s really hard
to snuff out machines with the kind of momentum Twitter has, even though
Musk is doing his best. One more thing to think about, I don’t think
federation is what we need, I think we need
interop.
It’s a more permissive kind of compatibility, and will happen a lot
sooner than federation, which honestly, I don’t think ever will happen.
With the usual disclaimers, most important that I’m often wrong, and am
open to other constructive points of view.
Windows
3.11 trundles on as job site pleads for ‘driver updates’ on German
trains
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Remember making Windows and DOS talk to a network? You could go back to
the future with this assignment
If you were thinking about forcing an AI to write a job ad for an
administrator of an obsolete operating system, it looks like somebody
has beaten you to it with a vacancy for a Windows 3.11 techie.…
Joshua
Heath | Democrats, We Need to Focus on the Basics
date: 2024-01-30, from: The Signal
Anyone who has taken a Psychology 101 course is familiar with the famous
chart that details “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.” Crafted by researcher
Abraham Maslow in the 20th century, this list details the various stages
of human development on the path toward happiness, starting from what’s
most important. As a brief refresher, it is […]
In re: Gary Horton, “Have We the Guts for Introspection?” commentary,
Jan. 24. Wow … about all I can say after reading Mr. Horton’s submission
and comparing it to the vast majority of his previous submissions
attacking anyone and anything that may be so bold as to disagree with
his far-left politics is: Practice what […]
Current conditions:Light snow is still
falling in parts of Massachusetts after a storm brought 8 inches of snow
to parts of the state on Sunday and Monday. Residents in Queensland,
Australia, are evacuating as thunderstorms inundate towns on the coast.
California is still waiting for an atmospheric river to dump rain on the
state, which should start tomorrow.
THE TOP FIVE
U.S. finalizes stove efficiency rules
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Energy finalized energy efficiency
rules for both gas and electric stoves that the agency says will save
consumers around $1.6 billion in energy costs over 30 years, according
to
Bloomberg.
The standards, which are scheduled to take effect in 2028, won’t ban gas
stoves, but should reduce carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 4
million metric tons over three decades.
A vast archive of climate data literally melts away
Glaciers are treasure troves of information for scientists studying
climate change. Ice core analysis can often give researchers a detailed
look at the composition of the atmosphere over time, which in turn tells
us just how human-caused pollution affects the climate. The problem, of
course, is that climate change also makes glaciers melt — and now one of
them, the Corbassière glacier in Switzerland, has degraded so much that
it’s no longer viable for research, its ice cores a muddled mess of
meltwater.
“The climate archive is destroyed,” scientists at the Paul Scherrer
Institute wrote in a
statement.
“It is as if someone had broken into a library and not only messed up
all the shelves and books, but also stole a lot of books and mixed up
the individual words in the remaining ones, making it impossible to
reconstruct the original texts.”
Sustainable foods could have a $10 trillion upside
Global food systems are “destroying more value than they create” and in
dire need of an overhaul, according to a new
assessment
from the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC). By rethinking the way
we approach food, the authors say, we could create up to $10 trillion in
health and economic benefits around the world.
As Justine Calma
writes
in The Verge, that would mean both a tweak to our diets — the
report doesn’t call for a worldwide shift to vegetarianism, but does
advocate for a reduction in meat consumption — and a proper accounting
in food prices of all the costs of production that we currently sweep
under the rug. That latter bit could be an especially tough pill to
swallow, and the study authors caution there would have to be
institutional support for lower-income sections of society for fear of
protests like the petrol price protests that
gripped
France in 2018, or the farmer protests
ongoing
in Europe.
Still, the report states, the benefits would far outweigh the costs,
with undernutrition potentially eradicated by 2050, 174 million
premature deaths from diet-related chronic disease prevented, and the
environmental impacts bringing countries closer to their Paris Agreement
goals.
Avian flu comes for birds of all feathers
Avian flu is devastating California’s “egg basket,” sweeping through
Sonoma and Merced counties a year after a similar outbreak in the
Midwest caused egg prices around the country to soar,
according
to the Associated Press. Over the past two months, commercial farms
have had to slaughter nearly a million birds to contain the outbreak.
The loss of those birds caused a temporary spike in the price of eggs in
the Bay Area before more were brought in from outside the region; it
remains to be seen if this outbreak will become big enough to affect
prices in other parts of the country as well.
Further afield, at least two penguins in the Antarctic have died from
bird flu,
writes
Phoebe Weston in The Guardian. One gentoo penguin is confirmed
to have died from the virus, and scientists suspect it also took out one
king penguin — if confirmed, that would be the first of its species to
be killed by the deadly H5N1 variant. Last year, scientists warned about
“one of the largest ecological disasters of modern times” if the virus
reached Antarctic penguin populations; the birds are currently clustered
for breeding season, which means it could soon turn into a superspreader
event.
GoFundMe for climate disasters is helping the wealthy most
A new
report
analyzing post-disaster crowdfunding campaigns has found that cash
raised through sites like GoFundMe disproportionately benefits the
wealthy. The main reason, Christopher Flavelle
writes
in The New York Times, appears to be social networks: Wealthy
people are more well-connected, particularly to other wealthy people,
and so inevitably get more money. It’s a showcase of why we need to
prioritize governmental support for disaster victims; as one of the
study authors told Flavelle, “we cannot count on this form of private
charity to fill funding gaps.”
THE KICKER
Scientists have, for the first time ever, captured footage of a newborn
Great White Shark. The finding means researchers could, finally, figure
out where the sharks birth their young — and in turn lead to greater
environmental protections in previously unprotected patches of ocean.
Looking like a baseball lobbed into the depths of the universe, ESO
420-G013 is a face-on spiral galaxy and a Seyfert galaxy. Dark lanes of
dust are visible against the background glow of the galaxy’s many
stars. About 10 percent of all the galaxies in the universe are thought
to be Seyfert galaxies. They are […]
This is a blog post about a video, which is about new color-conversion
LUTs for Apple Log footage from the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max (updated
from my first set). The
video is also a mini-travelogue of my recent trips to Taiwan and Peru.
This post dives a bit deeper into both the LUT workflows, and my state
of mind about shooting digital-cinema-grade footage with a device I
always have with me.
I always have a moment when packing for a trip: Which camera to bring?
Which lenses? I know I’m always happier when I pack less, like just a
single prime lens. But sometimes FOMO gets me and I pack three zooms.
For my trip to Lima, I brought my
Sony
a7RIV with the uninspiring-but-compact,
Sony
35mm F2.8 prime. I lugged it around for a few days, but wasn’t
really feeling it.
Meanwhile, my iPhone 15 Pro Max was calling to me with its ProRes Log
video mode. “I’m 10-bit!” It would say. “Think of the fun you’ll have
color grading me!”
I told my phone to shut up, and proceeded to shoot very little with it —
or my Sony. Like a squirrel in the middle of the street, drawn in two
different directions at once, I creatively froze.
Photography, for me, is made up of a lot of habits, and shooting iPhone
video with aesthetic intent is just not yet baked into my travel muscle
memory.
Made in Taiwan
A month later, I took a family trip to Taiwan, one of my favorite places
in the world. I’d had some time to process my Peru deadlock, and decided
to stop judging my own creative impulses, and let inspiration guide me
in which camera I pulled out.
I loved shooting ProRes Log in Taiwan with the iPhone 15 Pro
Max. I’d occasionally reach for
Blackmagic
Camera, but I often just used the default camera app. I stuck my
phone (with its
crumbling
case) out of taxi sunroofs and skyscraper windows, held it above
teeming crowds and shoved it between chain-link fences. Seeing the broad
dynamic range I was capturing in scenarios from noontime sun to neon-lit
nights got me excited about grading the footage later.
It’s exactly the way I feel about shooting raw stills with my Sony,
knowing that I’ll be able to go crazy on them in Lightroom. The
photographing act is just half of the process.
Step through the frames below to see how color transforms a single shot
from the video above:
<img class="thumb-image" elementtiming="system-gallery-block-slideshow" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/1706599532507-41N8WGF5YV0H4JM7R27L/pulls_01_BD_00001.jpg" data-image-dimensions="1920x1080" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="Uncorrected Apple Log" data-load="false" data-image-id="65b8a46c8f870b08d50e1e88" data-type="image" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/1706599532507-41N8WGF5YV0H4JM7R27L/pulls_01_BD_00001.jpg?format=1000w" /><br>
Uncorrected Apple Log
<p class="">Straight out of the camera. I mean, phone.</p>
<img class="thumb-image" elementtiming="system-gallery-block-slideshow" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/1706599533106-ZY5DHANLM7926F3VSXIN/pulls_01_BD_00002.jpg" data-image-dimensions="1920x1080" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="Look &amp; LUT" data-load="false" data-image-id="65b8a46ca6e11c02be0a481e" data-type="image" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/1706599533106-ZY5DHANLM7926F3VSXIN/pulls_01_BD_00002.jpg?format=1000w" /><br>
Look & LUT
<p class="">An overall correction applied under PL-HERO LUT.</p>
<img class="thumb-image" elementtiming="system-gallery-block-slideshow" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/1706599533954-P3LT6XDT3BK1C3JEIZM0/pulls_01_BD_00003.jpg" data-image-dimensions="1920x1080" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="Local Corrections" data-load="false" data-image-id="65b8a46decfa0172fd1be27d" data-type="image" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/1706599533954-P3LT6XDT3BK1C3JEIZM0/pulls_01_BD_00003.jpg?format=1000w" /><br>
Local Corrections
<p class="">Various windowed corrections under the Look help guide the viewer’s focus and give the natural-light capture a cinematic feel.</p>
LUTs, Looks, and Magic Bullets
There’s been a bit of a gold rush of people hawking creative LUTs that
apply a particular “look” to iPhone Log footage. My day job is, in part,
helping make color tools like
Magic
Bullet Looks, which can do so much more than any LUT. Creative LUTs
are great, and by all means support the folks making them — but that’s
not what my iPhone LUTs
were or are.
The Prolost iPhone LUTs convert Apple Log to various other color spaces,
and support three kinds of workflow:
Grade Under a Display Transform LUT
Apple Log is a totally decent color space to work in, so color
correcting Apple Log can be as simple as applying
Magic
Bullet Colorista and choosing one of my Monitor &
Grade LUTs. That’s what you see me doing in the video above.
Colorista (set to Log mode) does its work on the native Apple Log
pixels, and the LUT converts the result to look nice on video.
Many other systems work like this, including
LumaFusion, which
ships with
Prolost Apple Log LUTs.
Color work is often done in some intermediate color space. This is
usually some kind of wide-gamut, log format, such as Davinci Wide
Gamut/Intermediate, or one of the
ACES log spaces.
The Prolost ACES LUTs simply convert Apple Log to
either ACEScc or ACEScct log, allowing you to grade your iPhone footage
alongside any other professional camera, and output them all through the
same pipeline.
Shooting Through a LUT
The Blackmagic Camera app allows you to load any LUTs you want and view
through them without baking them into your footage. With my LUTs, you
can shoot with the same LUTs you grade under later, for a truly
professional (no joke!) workflow.
The real stars of this update though are the FC LUTs.
They add an informative False Color overlay to the Shoot/Grade LUTs,
making sure you always nail your exposure. Watch the video to see them
in action. I already can’t imagine shooting without them.
These LUTs work well in Blackmagic Camera or even on an external HDMI
monitor.
<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
"
>
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/5ca2822a-0b63-470a-ba44-4aa804b0ad3d/pulls_01_Log2_cut6_240129b+%2813972%29.jpg" data-image-dimensions="1920x1080" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" elementtiming="system-image-block" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/5ca2822a-0b63-470a-ba44-4aa804b0ad3d/pulls_01_Log2_cut6_240129b+%2813972%29.jpg?format=1000w" width="1920" height="1080" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, (max-width: 767px) 100vw, 100vw" onload="this.classList.add("loaded")" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/5ca2822a-0b63-470a-ba44-4aa804b0ad3d/pulls_01_Log2_cut6_240129b+%2813972%29.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/5ca2822a-0b63-470a-ba44-4aa804b0ad3d/pulls_01_Log2_cut6_240129b+%2813972%29.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/5ca2822a-0b63-470a-ba44-4aa804b0ad3d/pulls_01_Log2_cut6_240129b+%2813972%29.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/5ca2822a-0b63-470a-ba44-4aa804b0ad3d/pulls_01_Log2_cut6_240129b+%2813972%29.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/5ca2822a-0b63-470a-ba44-4aa804b0ad3d/pulls_01_Log2_cut6_240129b+%2813972%29.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/5ca2822a-0b63-470a-ba44-4aa804b0ad3d/pulls_01_Log2_cut6_240129b+%2813972%29.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/5ca2822a-0b63-470a-ba44-4aa804b0ad3d/pulls_01_Log2_cut6_240129b+%2813972%29.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">Adjusting exposure with a variable ND filter until the 18% gray card lights up yellow, for perfect exposure. PL-HERO-FC LUT in Blackmagic Camera.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
As if this video wasn’t enough work already (I shot the a-roll in
mid-December), I decided to use it as a test case for creative editorial
in DaVinci Resolve. It’s the ACES LUTs that allowed me to incorporate
Magic Bullet Looks into my Resolve color workflow.
Maxon just shipped a really nice
update
to Magic Bullet Looks, with simplified color management made possible by
more and more apps we support doing darn fine color management at the
timeline level.
So in Resolve, I can use my LUT to convert Apple Log to ACEScc, and then
apply Magic Bullet Looks, which can now be set to work in ACEScc with a
single click.
<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
"
>
<img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/59c73f06-a8bd-4d01-8f27-18525991416a/Screenshot+2024-01-29+at+8.58.14%E2%80%AFPM.jpg" data-image-dimensions="2022x732" data-image-focal-point="0.5,0.5" alt="" data-load="false" elementtiming="system-image-block" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/59c73f06-a8bd-4d01-8f27-18525991416a/Screenshot+2024-01-29+at+8.58.14%E2%80%AFPM.jpg?format=1000w" width="2022" height="732" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, (max-width: 767px) 100vw, 100vw" onload="this.classList.add("loaded")" srcset="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/59c73f06-a8bd-4d01-8f27-18525991416a/Screenshot+2024-01-29+at+8.58.14%E2%80%AFPM.jpg?format=100w 100w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/59c73f06-a8bd-4d01-8f27-18525991416a/Screenshot+2024-01-29+at+8.58.14%E2%80%AFPM.jpg?format=300w 300w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/59c73f06-a8bd-4d01-8f27-18525991416a/Screenshot+2024-01-29+at+8.58.14%E2%80%AFPM.jpg?format=500w 500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/59c73f06-a8bd-4d01-8f27-18525991416a/Screenshot+2024-01-29+at+8.58.14%E2%80%AFPM.jpg?format=750w 750w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/59c73f06-a8bd-4d01-8f27-18525991416a/Screenshot+2024-01-29+at+8.58.14%E2%80%AFPM.jpg?format=1000w 1000w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/59c73f06-a8bd-4d01-8f27-18525991416a/Screenshot+2024-01-29+at+8.58.14%E2%80%AFPM.jpg?format=1500w 1500w, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f4e093e4b085e4457080e1/59c73f06-a8bd-4d01-8f27-18525991416a/Screenshot+2024-01-29+at+8.58.14%E2%80%AFPM.jpg?format=2500w 2500w" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-loader="sqs">
<figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
<p class="">The new streamlined color options in Magic Bullet Looks. Choose Custom to get the full manual control.</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
I can sneak additional Resolve corrector nodes in between those two for
local corrections. Resolve is great at this, and Looks is great at
creative look development, so this is a match made in heaven.
An expert Resolve user could replace my LUTs with Resolve’s built-in
Color Space Transform nodes, but the LUTs make this
process easier and more reliable.
Gear Inspires
Every photographer knows the feeling of lusting after new gear. We know
it so well that we remind ourselves constantly that “next camera
syndrome” is debilitating, and that “most cameras are better than most
photographers.” Gear is not the answer. Go shoot.
There is, however, a counterpoint to these truths: As shooters, we take
inspiration where we can get it. And sometimes a new technique, a new
locale, or even, yes, a new bit of gear is what provides it.
The key is to listen for that inspiration, and don’t judge it.
This
‘Game-Changer’ Detector Will Hunt for Giant Ripples in Spacetime
date: 2024-01-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Set to launch in 2035, the European Space Agency’s LISA mission will
listen for gravitational waves created by colliding black holes and
neutron stars—and some might date nearly to the Big Bang
I would like to provide some facts about the fire inspection fees levied
by the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Defensible Space Program.
Richard Castallo’s letter (Jan. 25) contained several inaccuracies: •
Brush inspections are a critical fire mitigation strategy that
indisputably keeps lives and properties safe. The work is performed by
our highly trained […]
Over the past few weeks, Microsoft overtook Apple to become the most
valuable company in the world by market capitalization. And investors
will be hoping for more good news on that front when the company
announces quarterly earnings on Tuesday. Also on the program: Walmart is
offering store managers up to $20,000 in stock a year. We hear more.
Plus, if you can’t afford college, how about chicken wings?
David Brooks: “Does consuming art, music, literature and the rest of
what we call culture make you a better person?” Answer: No. Consuming
art can’t make anyone better. But experiencing art certainly can make
you a better person. So can experiencing anything else. It depends on
you. But, okay, there’s more to say. Anything we […]
UK
lawmakers say live facial recognition lacks a legal basis
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Lords warn Home Secretary there is nothing to regulate wider trawl of
large populations
A UK committee in its upper house has written to Home Secretary James
Cleverly to warn of the lack of legal basis for the use of live facial
recognition by police.…
In our series of community stories, we celebrate some of the wonderful
things young people and educators around the world are achieving through
the power of technology. In our latest story, we’re heading to Vivek
High School in Mohali, India, to meet Sahibjot, a 14-year-old coding
enthusiast who has taken his hobby to the next…
From the BBC World Service: Democratic Unionist Party leader
Jeffrey Donaldson said his party had agreed to end its almost two-year
boycott of the Northern Ireland Assembly. We’ll discuss. Then, we’ll
take a look at ongoing demonstrations across Europe: Hundreds of
tractors are blocking major roads into Paris as farmers protest against
red tape and foreign competition, and Germany experiences a second
weekend of protests against a far-right party’s mass deportation
meetings.
There’s an old expression in boxing, a “slugger’s chance.” It means
an underdog is given an outside chance to win if the fighter has a
reputation for being an especially heavy puncher. I’ve been saying since
Nikki Haley first got into the race for the Republican presidential
nomination that she had a slugger’s chance. With Haley’s bid for an
upset fading but not yet finished, let’s take a look at whether she
still has even that chance. The so-called smart money has said from the
start that there is no way she can defeat Donald Trump.
Tesla
sold one out of every 8 cars in California in 2023, 21.4% EV share
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
California hit a new record last year with 21.4% of new cars being
all-electric, and once again Tesla led the pack with the two
best-selling cars in the state, the Tesla Model Y and Tesla Model 3. But
Toyota narrowly maintained its leadership as the top-selling brand in
the state, with Tesla nipping at its heels.
Techie
resurrects teletext on a vintage BBC Master
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
You can get Ceefax via a Pi, but behold it in its most exotic of
habitats
Got an old BBC computer in the loft, a spare Raspberry Pi gathering dust
in a drawer, and a yearning to return to the days when Teletext was a
neat thing?…
Looking
back to look ahead: OpenCitations’ achievements in 2023
date: 2024-01-30, from: Open Citation blog at Hypotheses.org
The first month of the new year has almost come to an end, and we at
OpenCitations have dedicated these weeks after the holiday season to
retrace the progress we reached as an open infrastructure throughout
2023, an activity that has become a tradition in the past few years.
Looking back to the achievements has proven to be a great practice for
our team not only to honour and celebrate the success, but also to
visualize the points to focus on to best serve …
Continue
reading Looking back to look ahead:
OpenCitations’ achievements in 2023
Ecolab
partners with Ford Pro to accelerate EV adoption
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
Ford Pro will collaborate with global sustainability leaders Ecolab to
speed up the electrification of its vehicle fleet, with a goal of
transitioning to a 100% fully electric commercial fleet by 2030.
EV drivers looking to get behind the wheel of their new Volvo
all-electric SUV EX30 may have to wait a bit longer as Volvo works to
resolve some software glitches before delivery – the second time a Volvo
EV launch has been delayed due to software.
Leaked
email: Unit4 ERP system leaves some school staff with ‘nil pay’
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
‘Primary focus’ is ‘welfare of our staff as we resolve any errors,’ says
UK council after rollout of £30M SAP replacement
Exclusive After schools in Surrey, England, went live
on a new £30 million HR, payroll and finance system, the responsible
county council is being forced to prioritize support calls for problems
that are delaying staff pay.…
Build a
Raspberry Pi mecanum robot | HackSpace #75
date: 2024-01-30, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Create a robot which can go forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally,
and turn on the spot. The mecanum wheels allow the robot to navigate the
tightest of spaces.
Pluralistic:
My McLuhan lecture on enshittification (30 Jan 2024)
date: 2024-01-30, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links My McLuhan lecture on enshittification: Live from
Berlin. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history:
2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent
appearances, current writing projects, current reading My McLuhan
lecture on enshittification (permalink) Last night, I gave the annual
Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The
event was sold out and while there’s a video that’ll be posted soon,
they couldn’t get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy,
where the talk was held:
https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024 The talk went of
fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner
(Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While
you’ll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I’d post my talk
notes from last night for the impatient among you. I want to thank the
festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent
event, and reiterate what a pleasure it was to meet John Horgan,
Canada’s ambassador to Germany. And now, on to the talk! Last year, I
coined the term ‘enshittification,’ to describe the way that platforms
decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the
zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of
the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I’m definitely
getting a poop emoji on my tombstone). So what’s enshittification and
why did it catch fire? It’s my theory explaining how the internet was
colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so
quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about
it. We’re all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in
which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into
giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. It’s even
terrifying. I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way
to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the ‘great
forces of history,’ and into the material world of specific decisions
made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose
addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn. Enshittification names the
problem and proposes a solution. It’s not just a way to say ‘things are
getting worse’ (though of course, it’s fine with me if you want to use
it that way. It’s an English word. We don’t have der Rat für Englisch
Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle). But
in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical
way, let’s examine how enshittification works. It’s a three stage
process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their
users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they
abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for
themselves. Then, they die. Let’s do a case study. What could be better
than Facebook? Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually
rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after
that. When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and
high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened
up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using
Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent
senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that
God sends. “Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and
tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal
feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by
those who choose to follow them.” That was stage one. Facebook had a
surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its
end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB.
FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A
product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more
people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there,
and then others signed up because you where there. But FB didn’t just
have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs
are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service.
In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and
who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere
else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.
It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time.
You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to
get drinks after tonight’s lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook
friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and
where to go? So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that
kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage
situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to
two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers. To the
advertisers, FB said, ‘Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy
on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell
you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained
ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to
thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no
expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.’
To the publishers, FB said, ‘Remember when we told those rubes we would
only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short
excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually
cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are
offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to
your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become
stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.’ And so advertisers and
publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.
The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the
publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.
Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification:
withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s
shareholders. For the users, that meant dialing down the share of
content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling
the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.
For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down
anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were
far less likely to be seen by a person. For publishers, this meant
algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they
included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until
anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being
sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion
feeds. And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link
back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext
feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to
Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for
monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service. When any
of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech
executive in the Darth Vader MBA: ‘I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t
alter it any further.’ Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of
enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave
just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to
each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving
anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn
out and returned to its shareholders. But that’s a very brittle
equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I
can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so
long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin All it takes
is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed
mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that
network effects are a double-edged sword. If users can’t leave because
everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no
reason not to go, too. That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when
a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by
panic, which tech bros euphemistically call ‘pivoting.’ Which is how we
get pivots like, ‘In the future, all internet users will be transformed
into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon
characters in a virtual world called “metaverse,” that we ripped off
from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.’ That’s the procession of
enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we’d call that
enshittification’s “natural history.” But that doesn’t tell you how the
enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now,
and without those details, we can’t know what to do about it. What led
to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great
Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a
change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde? None
of the above. The period of free fed money certainly led to tech
companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started
enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and
Google. Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google’s
enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversea the
company’s AI panic (excuse me, ‘AI pivot’). And it can’t be Mercury in
retrograde, because I’m a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don’t
believe in astrology. When a whole bunch of independent entities all
change in the same way at once, that’s a sign that the environment has
changed, and that’s what happened to tech. Tech companies, like all
companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to
make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and
motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to
buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to
carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders. The
equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways
at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and
harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.
There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints
on their enshittificatory impulses. First: competition. Companies that
fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening
quality or raising prices. Second: regulation. Companies that fear a
regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating,
will cheat less. These two forces affect all industries, but the next
two are far more tech-specific. Third: self-help. Computers are
extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make
from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete
Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program. That
means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the
anti-features that shift value from them to a company’s shareholders.
Think of a board-room table where someone says, ‘I’ve calculated that
making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.’
In a digital world, someone else might well say ‘Yes, but if we do that,
20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those
users will drop to zero, forever.’ This means that digital companies are
constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt
their users to google, ‘How do I disenshittify this?’ Fourth and
finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that
doesn’t mean that tech workers don’t have labor power. The historical
“talent shortage” of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of
leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses
could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better
job. They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech
workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves
as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a
salary, heroic figures of the tech mission. That’s why mottoes like
Google’s ‘don’t be evil’ and Facebook’s ‘make the world more open and
connected’ mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It’s
what Fobazi Ettarh calls ‘vocational awe, ’or Elon Musk calls being
’extremely hardcore.’ Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but
they didn’t flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their
health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines. So long
as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical ‘campuses,’
with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and
egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being
pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules. But for
bosses, there’s a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a
sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So
when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to
ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond
with outrage, and threaten to quit. Thus tech workers themselves were
the final bulwark against enshittification, The pre-enshittification era
wasn’t a time of better leadership. The executives weren’t better. They
were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition,
regulation, self-help and worker power. So what happened? One by one,
each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the
enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene. It
started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years,
the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust
law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it.
European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the
architects of the Marshall Plan. But starting in the neoliberal era,
competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called
‘consumer welfare,’ which held that monopolies were evidence of quality.
If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product,
that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that
anyone was cheating. And so all over the world, governments stopped
enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies
flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors,
absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They
held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries
imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg
jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment
processing, vitamin C to beer. Most of our global economy is dominated
by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell
themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout
competition law further, with ‘predatory pricing’ that keeps an
independent rival from gaining a foothold. When Diapers.com refused
Amazon’s acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers
way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon
bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down. Competition
is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into
‘five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other
four,’ so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business. Lily
Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T
telephone operator who’d do commercials for the Bell system. Each one
would end with her saying ‘We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the
phone company.’ Today’s giants are not constrained by competition. They
don’t care. They don’t have to. They’re Google. That’s the first
constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint –
regulation – was also doomed. When an industry consists of hundreds of
small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of
companies can’t agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the
Commission. They can’t even agree on how to cater a meeting where they’d
discuss the matter. But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of
dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel. Five
companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy
to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without
“wasteful competition” eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash
to spread around. Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg
millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former
colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between ‘European
Cyberspace’ and the Chinese Communist Party. Tech’s regulatory capture
allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors.
They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is
fine, because they violate them with an app. This is why competition
matters: it’s not just because competition makes companies work harder
and share value with customers and workers, it’s because competition
keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail. Now,
there’s plenty of things we don’t want improved through competition,
like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law,
the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech
companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that’s fine. They
were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies.
After all, they had less to lose. We don’t want competition in
commercial surveillance. We don’t want to produce increasing efficiency
in violating our human rights. But: Google and Facebook – who pretend
they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European
privacy law. That’s not because they don’t violate the GDPR (they do!).
It’s because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the
EU’s most notorious corporate crime-havens. And Ireland competes with
the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the
Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable
environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that
can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a
Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws. Which is how you get
an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major
cases per year, while Germany’s data commissioner handles more than 500
major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most
privacy-invasive companies on the continent. So Google and Facebook get
to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate
the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it
doesn’t count because they do it with an app. Uber’s labor-pricing
algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job,
something Veena Dubal calls ‘algorithmic wage discrimination.’ If you’re
more selective about which jobs you’ll take, Uber will pay you more for
every ride. But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever
side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber
drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down
as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line
until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot,
and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone. Then
there’s Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it
doesn’t matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year
from its ‘advertising’ system. ‘Advertising’ in quotes because they’re
not selling ads, they’re selling placements in search results. The
companies that spend the most on ‘ads’ go to the top, even if they’re
offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in
an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the
best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you’ll
pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to
find the best deal on Amazon. Any merchant that did this to you in a
physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has
captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, “it
doesn’t count, we did it with an app” This is where that third
constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don’t want your
privacy violated, you don’t need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator
to act, you can just install an ad-blocker. More than half of all web
users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in
the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others’ throats,
unable to capture their regulators. Today, the web is being devoured by
apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn’t
just the ability to flout regulation, it’s also the ability to co-opt
regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries. Today’s tech
giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was
telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil
crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to
those Myspacers, ‘Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out
looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here’ It gave them a
bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would
login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in
your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and
it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace. When Microsoft was
choking off Apple’s market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional
version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing
away their designers’ Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics
cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs
didn’t beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office. He got his technologists to
reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the
iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read
and write Microsoft’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. When Google
entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth,
where it presented itself as a web-user: ‘Hi! Hello! Do you have any web
pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?’ But every pirate
wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this
adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to
them, that’s piracy. Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and
they’ll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD. Try to make an Android
program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple’s
media stores and they’d bomb you until the rubble bounced. Try to scrape
all of Google and they’ll nuke you until you glowed. Tech’s regulatory
capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section
1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton
signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in
2001 It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that
restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or
jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and
a $500k fine for a first offense. This law has been so broadened that it
can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own
creations Here’s how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an
audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is
a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible
rrequire that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon’s “digital
rights management,” which locks it to Amazon’s apps. So say I write a
book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer
thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you
on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the
market. If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with
me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to
remove Amazon’s encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in
another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a
half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense. That’s a stiffer penalty
than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent
site. But it’s also harsher than the punishment you’d get for
shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It’s harsher than the
sentence you’d get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD. So
think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running
ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a
blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and
that’s a felony (Jay Freeman calls this ‘felony contempt of
business-model’). So when someone in a board-room says, ‘let’s make our
ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,’ no one objects
that this might prompt users to google, ‘how do I block ads?’ After all,
the answer is, ‘you can’t.’ Indeed, it’s more likely that someone in
that board room will say, ‘let’s make our ads 100% more obnoxious and
get a 10% revenue increase’ (this is why every company wants you to
install an app instead of using its website). There’s no reason that gig
workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn’t install
a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all
jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold. No reason except felony
contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built
that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA
1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent,
contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other
words: ‘IP law.’ ‘IP’ is just a euphemism for ‘a law that lets me reach
beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics,
competitors and customers.’ And ‘app’ is just a euphemism for ‘a
web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the
labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.’ We don’t care. We don’t
have to. We’re the phone company. But what about that fourth constraint:
workers? For decades, tech workers’ high degrees of bargaining power and
vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech
sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their
regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights.
Even after they created ‘felony contempt of business model’ and
extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by
their workers’ sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to
enshittify. Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big
company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their
own company that would knock that tech giant over? Then that dream
shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup,
get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a
bonus and a promotion. Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech
giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.
And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant
until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last
year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their
salaries for the next 27 years. Workers are no longer a check on their
bosses’ worst impulses Today, the response to ‘I refuse to make this
product worse’ is, ‘turn in your badge and don’t let the door hit you in
the ass on the way out.’ I get that this is all a little depressing OK,
really depressing. But hear me out! We’ve identified the disease. We’ve
traced its natural history. We’ve identified its underlying mechanism.
Now we can get to work on a cure. There are four constraints that
prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.
To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must
restore and strengthen each of these. On competition, it’s actually
looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan
and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two
generations. They’re blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking
action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics. Remember, in the
US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped
enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era. I’ve been fighting these fights
with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I’ve never
seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy. Now, the
enshittifiers aren’t taking this laying down. The business press can’t
stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They
call people like me ‘hipster antitrust,’ and they hate any regulator who
actually does their job. Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US
Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust
than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40
years. Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has run more than 80
editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she’s an ineffectual ideologue
who can’t get anything done. Sure, Rupert, that’s why you ran 80
editorials about her. Because she can’t get anything done. Even Canada
is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire!
From Ted Rogers, who owns the country’s telecoms; to Galen Weston, who
owns the country’s grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the
entire province of New Brunswick. Even Canada is doing something about
this. Last autumn, Trudeau’s government promised to update Canada’s
creaking competition law to finally ban ‘abuse of dominance.’ I mean,
wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal
conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime
imaginable – it finally got someone’s attention, eh? Competition has a
long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a
massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put
antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it’s awake, it’s back, and it’s
pissed. What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop
doing that one weird trick of adding ‘with an app’ to their crimes and
escaping enforcement? Well, here in the EU, they’re starting to figure
it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act
went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies
go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless
watchdogs in Europe’s notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland. In
America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have
no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress
enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988. The Video Privacy
Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your
video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up
for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The
rentals weren’t even all that embarrassing! Sure, that judge, Robert
Bork, wasn’t confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he
was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon’s
Solicitor General. But Congress got the idea that their video records
might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA. That was the last time
Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight. It’s
been a minute. And the thing is, there’s a lot of people who are angry
about stuff that has some nexus with America’s piss-poor privacy
landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta
made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into
quoting Osama Bin Laden? Or that cops are rolling up the identities of
everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting
location data from Google? Or that Red State Attorneys General are
tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics? Or that Black
people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring
platforms? Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you? Having a
federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that
individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a
long way to rectifying all of these problems. There’s a big coalition
for that kind of privacy law. What about self-help? That’s a lot farther
away, alas. The EU’s DMA will force tech companies to open up their
walled gardens for interoperation. You’ll be able to use Whatsapp to
message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but
still send messages to the people left behind. But if you want to
reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for
you, not them, the EU’s got nothing for you. This is an area ripe for
improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.
It’s certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do
things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies’
abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works. My big
hope here is that Stein’s Law will take hold: ‘Anything that can’t go on
forever will eventually stop’ Letting companies decide how their
customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation
to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new
ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to
spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping
lists. It’s offensive. The only people who don’t agree are the people
running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech
monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose
monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.
Finally, there’s labor. Here in Europe, there’s much higher union
density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard
way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest
salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most
Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable). But even in the USA, there’s a massive
surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren’t
founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and
getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn’t
understand are coming to an end. In Seattle, Amazon’s tech workers
walked out in sympathy with Amazon’s warehouse workers, because they’re
all workers. The only reason the tech workers aren’t monitored by AI
that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working
hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are
going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to
their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff
Bezos really hates our kidneys). We’re seeing bold, muscular, global
action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up
the rear. It’s not a moment too soon, because the bad news is,
enshittification is coming to every industry. If it’s got a networked
computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA
playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your
rights and then saying ‘It’s OK, we did it with an app.’ From Mercedes
renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things
dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is
metastasizing into every corner of our lives. Software doesn’t eat the
world, it enshittifies it But there’s a bright side to all this: if
everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in
disenshittification. Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential
anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it’s unstoppable. The cynics
among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After
all, isn’t “enshittification” the same as “capitalism”? Well, no. Look,
I’m not going to cape for capitalism here. I’m hardly a true believer in
markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of
policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism’s total failure to
grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it. But the capitalism
of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where
people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid,
and organize. The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital
ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with
consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams. The internet
isn’t more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice,
racial justice, genocide, or inequality. But the internet is the terrain
we’ll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the
fight is lost before it’s joined. We can reverse the enshittification of
the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital
device. We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital
nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will
need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our
species. Martin Luther King said ‘It may be true that the law cannot
make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think
that’s pretty important.’ And it may be true that the law can’t force
corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to
dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply
of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited
liability corporation. But it can make that exec fear you enough to
treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn’t think you
deserve it. And I think that’s pretty important. (Image: Drahtlos, CC
BY-SA 4.0; cdsessums, CC BY-SA 2.0; modified) Hey look at this
(permalink) Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out
https://www.cracked.com/article_40871_penn-jillette-wants-to-talk-it-all-out.html
This day in history (permalink) #10yrsago Powerful poetry slam piece on
choice, rape and personhood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI0NAhP-Ku4
#10yrsago Omaha cop, fired for beating suspect, then raiding house of
citizen who recorded him, is back on the job
https://web.archive.org/web/20140126013155/http://www.jrn.com/kmtv/news/Omaha-Police-Officer-to-Return-to-Work-After-Being-Fired-for-Rough-Arrest-241524131.html
#10yrsago David Cameron: TV crime dramas prove we need mass warrantless
electronic surveillance https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-25969918
#10yrsago Digitized items from the Carl Sagan archive go live on the
Library of Congress site
https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/about-this-collection/
#10yrsago Podcasting patent trolls seek to intimidate EFF supporters,
EFF fights back
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/eff-fights-patent-troll-demand-eff-podcast-donor-information
#10yrsago TSA whistleblower describes life in the pornoscanner room
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/tsa-screener-confession-102912/
#10yrsago Kansas cable lobbyist writes bill outlawing Google Fiber and
municipal broadband, gets it introduced in Kansas legislature
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/01/who-wants-competition-big-cable-tries-outlawing-municipal-broadband-in-kansas/
#10yrsago Canadian spies illegally tracked travellers using free airport
wifi
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/csec-used-airport-wi-fi-to-track-canadian-travellers-edward-snowden-documents-1.2517881
#5yrsago Charter slashes network spending by $2B, but makes up for it by
charging its customers more
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/charter-will-spend-less-on-cable-network-in-2019-but-charge-customers-more/
#5yrsago The FBI invented a fictitious “abortion extremist” movement,
then warned local cops about potential acts of domestic terror from it
https://jezebel.com/exclusive-fbi-warned-law-enforcement-agencies-of-threa-1832134408
#5yrsago As Macron and Merkel meet to rescue the #CopyrightDirective,
the world’s libraries call for its rejection
https://www.ifla.org/news/ifla-joins-the-call-for-deletion-of-articles-11-and-13-in-the-eu-copyright-reform/
#5yrsago 18 months on, kids’ smart watches are STILL a privacy &
security dumpster-fire, and a gift to stalkers everywhere
https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/gps-watch-issues-again/
#1yrago Canada’s privatised shadow civil service
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien
Colophon (permalink) Today’s top sources: Currently writing: A Little
Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING Picks and Shovels, a
Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING
TOR BOOKS JAN 2025 The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about
the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024 Vigilant,
Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON
TOR.COM Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests.
FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Latest podcast: 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 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 Media Ecology
Association keynote, Jun 6-9 (Amherst, NY)
https://media-ecology.org/convention 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
Jokic
records triple-double as Nuggets spoil Bucks coach Doc Rivers’ debut
with 113-107 win
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DENVER — Nikola Jokic spoiled the Milwaukee coaching debut of Doc Rivers by recording his 14th triple-double of the season as the Denver Nuggets surged by the Bucks 113-107 on Monday night.</p>
<p>The Haili Volleyball Tournament will return soon, with preliminary events tipping off in February and the main tournament slated for March 18 to 23.</p>
Vladimir
Guerrero Jr. headlines 18 players scheduled for salary arbitration
hearings
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — Toronto star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. headlines 18 players scheduled for salary arbitration hearings that start Tuesday and run through Feb. 16 in Scottsdale, Arizona.</p>
The
Super Bowl is set: Mahomes and the Chiefs will face Purdy and the
49ers
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs are heading to Las Vegas with a chance for a rare repeat while facing the San Francisco 49ers in a Super Bowl rematch from four years ago.</p>
<p>Pot pies have been around since ancient Greece and they were called artocreas. These pies had a bottom but no top crust. When the Romans started to make artocreas, they added the top crust.</p>
Las
Vegas’ first Super Bowl is driving record prices on the secondary ticket
market
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LAS VEGAS — Tickets on at least one secondary-market site were the most expensive in Super Bowl history on Monday, underscoring the anticipation of the game’s Las Vegas debut between the defending champion and what likely is the most popular team in the West.</p>
Ex-Philippine
leader Duterte assails Marcos, accusing him of plotting to expand his
grip on power
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>MANILA, Philippines — Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is throwing allegations at his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and even raising the prospect of removing him from office, bringing into the open a long-rumored split between the two.</p>
<p>As substance abuse continues to plague vulnerable populations, Hawaii Island’s first nonprofit detoxification clinic will open for clients this Thursday.</p>
Enemy
drone that killed US troops in Jordan was mistaken for a US drone
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — U.S. forces may have mistaken an enemy drone for an American one and let it pass unchallenged into a desert base in Jordan where it killed three U.S. troops and wounded dozens more, officials said Monday.</p>
Hawaii
electrical utilities could face more regulation
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Hawaii lawmakers are considering legislation to increase electrical utility regulation pertaining to wildfires in the wake of the Aug. 8 Maui disaster.</p>
<p>Fujiko Akamatsu, 104, of Kealakekua, died Jan. 8 in Kailua-Kona. She was a former cashier at Oshima Store, a retired kitchen worker at the Kona Community Hospital, and a member of the Daifukuji Soto Mission in Honalo, where visitation will be held 10 a.m. Feb. 10, with funeral to follow at 11 a.m. Survived by daughters Mildred (Stanley) Tromberg of Plantation, Fla., Linda (Samuel) Camp of Honolulu, Phyllis (Solomon) Alani of Kona; son-in-law Rex Bennett of Las Vegas, and numerous nieces, nephews, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Arrangements by Dodo Mortuary.</p>
A
year after meltdown, Southwest Airlines says it’s not delivering on
financial goals
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Southwest Airlines reported a fourth-quarter loss of $219 million on Thursday, over a year since its December 2022 meltdown that cost the airline.</p>
Document
spells out allegations against 12 UN employees Israel says participated
in Hamas attack
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>TEL AVIV, Israel — An Israeli document obtained Monday spelled out allegations against a dozen U.N. employees the country says took part in Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault — claiming seven stormed into Israeli territory, including one who participated in a kidnapping and another who helped to steal a soldier’s body.</p>
<p>A few days ago, Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota and a MAGA hard-liner sometimes mentioned as a potential running mate for Donald Trump, warned that President Joe Biden is “remaking” America, turning us into Europe. My first thought was: So he’s going to raise our life expectancy by five or six years? In context, however, it was clear that Noem believes, or expects her audience to believe, that Europe is a scene of havoc wrought by hordes of immigrants.</p>
Lone
Tsar: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott believes he’s head of a country
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>It’s not often that you see a U.S. Supreme Court dissent cited in an official document that purports to lay out a legal rationale for taking action. After all, while the dissents are valuable for following the legal reasoning, pored over by academics and historians and used by the majority to write its own opinion — often while attempting to refute the dissenters’ concerns or legal arguments — they are pointedly not law.</p>
Prisoners
in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular
food brands
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to U.S. prisoners wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola. They are on the shelves of most supermarkets, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods.</p>
Alex
Murdaugh is denied new double-murder trial after judge hears jury
tampering allegations
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina judge denied Alex Murdaugh’s bid for a new double-murder trial on Monday after his defense team accused a clerk of court with tampering with a jury.</p>
Of 100
victims of the Lahaina fire, legacies live on
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Terri Thomas was a beloved aunt who loved outdoor adventures. Po’omaika’i Estores-Losano, a musician and father, was trying to rebuild his life. Tony Takafua, 7 years old, had barely begun his.</p>
Six
taken to hospital after American Airlines flight has landing issue in
Maui
date: 2024-01-30, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>An American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Maui experienced a landing issue, resulting in one passenger and five flight attendants being transported to a hospital.</p>
UK
biometrics boss bows out, bemoaning bureaucratic blunders
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Questionable institutional change and myriad IT issues pervade the
governance landscape
The farewell report written by the UK’s biometrics and surveillance
commissioner highlights a litany of failings in the Home Office’s
approach to governing the technology.…
Free
Virtual Parenting Course Offered by Child & Family Center
date: 2024-01-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Child & Family Center in Santa Clarita is offering Guiding
Good Choices, a free six-week virtual parenting course that is designed
to help parents and caregivers learn specific tools to promote healthy
development and reduce risky behaviors during the teen years.
date: 2024-01-30, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition.
Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the
Classifieds.
Cory
Doctorow has a plan to wipe away the enshittification of tech
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
It’s not just you – things really are getting worse
Opinion An apocryphal tale regarding the late, great
footballer George Best being interviewed by a reporter just after
getting suspended from Manchester United offers an apt description of
today’s tech industry right now.…
Community
weighs in as SCOTUS to decide if cities can legally remove homeless
encampments
date: 2024-01-30, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Court could overturn precedent barring local governments from
forcibly removing unhoused individuals from public property without
offering alternative shelter.
date: 2024-01-30, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
With their families now notified, the Pentagon has released the names
of the three American soldiers killed in Jordan yesterday. Army Reserve
soldiers Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, 46, Specialist Kennedy Ladon
Sanders, 24, and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, all from
Georgia, were assigned to support Operation Inherent Resolve, charged
with helping regional partners defeat the Islamic State of Syria and
Iraq, or ISIS, to promote stability in the region.
It
took Taylor Swift deepfake nudes to focus Uncle Sam, Microsoft on AI
safety
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake … time to fake it off
Fake sexually explicit AI-generated viral images of pop royalty Taylor
Swift have struck a nerve, leading fans, Microsoft’s boss, and even the
White House to call for immediate action to tackle deepfakes.…
Gogoro
launches new Pulse electric scooter as highest performance model
yet
date: 2024-01-30, from: Electrek Feed
After several recent
international
expansion announcements, Gogoro unveiled its latest electric scooter
today. The new model, known as the Gogoro Pulse, relies on the company’s
existing swappable battery standard yet ushers in a technological
revolution as Gogoro’s highest-performance electric scooter yet.
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.
You
say feature, I say bug: the enshittification of Microsoft Paint
date: 2024-01-30, from: Jonudell blog
I’ve happily used MS Paint as my basic bitmap editor since Windows 3,
almost 25 years ago. Mostly I’ve used it to create images from
screenshots, but that has suddenly become way harder. Formerly, when I’d
cut a region, the now-empty region would display using the default white
background. Now it displays a checkered background …
Continue
reading You say feature, I say bug: the
enshittification of Microsoft Paint
The
Cast of Broadway’s ‘The Wiz’ “Ease on Down the Road” to Visit NASA
Ames
date: 2024-01-30, from: NASA breaking news
Members of the cast and crew of Broadway production “The Wiz,”
currently on tour at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre, visited NASA’s
Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley on Jan. 29 to learn
more about the center’s work in air and space. The group met with center
leadership and members of Ames employee advisory […]
Oracle
quietly extends Solaris 11.4 support until 2037
date: 2024-01-30, from: OS News
Oracle has quietly extended paid support and upgrades for Solaris
11.4 to 2037 – three years past its previous deadline – and did the same
for earlier versions of the OS last year. ↫ Simon Sharwood at The
Register One of the biggest “what could have beens” of the past two
decades. Had Oracle not closed Solaris up after acquiring Sun, an open
source Solaris might’ve been something more tangible than what it is
today. Of course, Oracle gonna Oracle and they were always going to
screw things up, open source or not, but had Solaris stayed open we’d
have had a more concerted, centralised development effort instead of
what we have now, where the open source Solaris community is working off
the last OpenSolaris codebase from 14 years ago.
Recently, GTK gained not one, but two new renderers: one for GL and
one for Vulkan. Since naming is hard, we reused existing names and
called them “ngl” and “vulkan”. They are built from the same sources,
therefore we also call them “unified” renderers. As mentioned already,
the two renderers are built from the same source. It is modeled to
follow Vulkan apis, with some abstractions to cover the differences
between Vulkan and GL (more specifically, GL 3.3+ and GLES 3.0+). This
lets us share much of the infrastructure for walking the scene graph,
maintaining transforms and other state, caching textures and glyphs, and
will make it easier to keep both renderers up-to-date and on-par. ↫ GTK
Development Blog This is well above my paygrade, but I’m sure it’s still
of interest to y’all.
But despite all this chaos and temptation, operating system vendors
knew better. To this day, they follow THE convention: checkboxes are
square, radio buttons are round. Maybe it was part of their internal
training. Maybe they had experienced art directors. Maybe it was just
luck. I don’t know — it doesn’t really matter — but — somehow — they
managed to stick to the convention. Until this day. Apple is the first
major operating system vendor who had abandoned a four-decades-long
tradition. Their new visionOS — for the first time in the history of
Apple — will have round checkboxes. ↫ Nikita Prokopov Unsightly. A lack
of taste always betrays itself.
Microsoft
stole my Chrome tabs, and it wants yours, too
date: 2024-01-30, from: OS News
Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and
rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs
I was working on before the update. I don’t use Microsoft Edge
regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser.
Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge
had simply taken over where I’d left off in Chrome. I couldn’t believe
my eyes. I never imported my data into Microsoft Edge, nor did I confirm
whether I wanted to import my tabs. But here was Edge automatically
opening after a Windows update with all the Chrome tabs I’d been working
on. I didn’t even realize I was using Edge at first, and I was confused
why all my tabs were suddenly logged out. ↫ Tom Warren at The Verge I
would never accept such disregard for users from my computer.
The Master’s University baseball team blasted their way through the
first game, winning 13-1, but couldn’t get the fuse lit in the second
game, losing 8-4 to the Bethesda Flames Saturday in Lou Herwaldt
Stadium
Garland
to Undergo Surgery, US Justice Department Says
date: 2024-01-30, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland will undergo back
surgery this weekend and delegate his duties to the deputy attorney
general during the procedure, the Justice Department said Monday.
The news comes as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin returns to work at
the Pentagon following a hospitalization related to prostate cancer that
was criticized for being kept secret for days.
Garland, 71, will be under general anesthesia during the back
procedure on Saturday, which will last about 90 minutes and is
“minimally invasive,” said Xochitl Hinojosa, director of public affairs
at the Justice Department. He is expected to return home the same day,
she said. Garland will delegate his duties to Deputy Attorney General
Lisa Monaco shortly before, during and for a short time after the
procedure as he recovers from the anesthesia, the statement said. He is
expected to return to work the week of February 5.
Austin returned to the Pentagon on Monday after nearly a monthlong
absence. He underwent a surgical procedure for the cancer on December 22
and was released but was then admitted to intensive care days later
after experiencing extreme pain. He stayed there for two weeks but
didn’t inform the White House or his deputy until days later that he had
cancer, had surgery or returned to the hospital.
Austin’s lack of disclosure prompted two ongoing reviews, as well as
changes in federal guidelines to ensure the White House will be informed
any time Cabinet chiefs can’t carry out their jobs. The Justice
Department notified the White House of the plans to delegate his duties
under the new guidelines, White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton
confirmed.
When Garland went in for a routine medical procedure in 2022, his
office also informed the public a week in advance and outlined how long
he was expected to be out and when he would return to work.
MISSION VIEJO — College of the Canyons scored six unanswered runs,
all after the sixth inning, to claw out a 9-6 road victory at Saddleback
College on Saturday, tying the season opening-series at a game
apiece
Microsoft’s
vision for the future of work is you trusting Redmond to get AI
right
date: 2024-01-30, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
You’re free to choose your own adventure, from options that involve
Copilot and OpenAI
Comment If the future of work is a choice and “not a
predetermined destiny” – as Microsoft puts it in a recent report – it
would be nice to know why Redmond is so intent on shoving its version of
that future down our throats.…
date: 2024-01-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Los Padres Forest Service came to West Camino Cielo in November with a
bobcat tractor on tracks with an asphalt roller in front with huge
spikes, that pulled the chaparral out by the roots.
date: 2024-01-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The (K)TYD was always high (volume wise) at Greg Kirby’s Replay, a store
that sold collectibles, toys and games located on De La Vina Street in
Santa Barbara just down from Trader Joe’s for the last 20 years.
The Master’s University track and field teams hit the ground running
at the Outdoor Indoor Distance and Field Event Saturday at Claremont
MaKenna College
The credcheck PostgreSQL extension provides few general credential
checks, which will be evaluated during the user creation, during the
password change and user renaming. By using this extension, we can
define a set of rules:
allow a specific set of credentials
reject a certain type of credentials
deny password that can be easily cracked
enforce use of an expiration date with a minimum of day for a password
define a password reuse policy
define the number of authentication failure allowed before a user is
banned
add a delay after all authentication failure
This release is a maintenance release to fix a major issue with the
backup of the password history file with pgBackRest and adds an
authentication delay feature.
Add authentication delay feature to be able to add a pause on
authentication failure. Setting credcheck.auth_delay_ms
causes the server to pause for a given number of milliseconds before
reporting authentication failure. This makes brute-force attacks on
database passwords more difficult. This patch is purely a copy/paste
from the auth_delay extension just to limit the number of extensions to
preload. See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/auth-delay.html for
more information about the origin of this feature.
Force size of file $PGDATA/global/pg_password_history to be
a multiple of 8192 to fix pgBackRest error caused by the error message:
“page misalignment in file /…/global/pg_password_history: file size 2604
is not divisible by page size 8192”
Extension upgrade requires a PostgreSQL restart to reload the credcheck
library.
Complete list of changes and acknowledgments are available
here
Links & Credits
credcheck is an open project under the PostgreSQL license created at
MigOps Inc, developped and maintained
at HexaCluster Corp by
Gilles Darold. Any contribution to
build a better tool is welcome. You can send your ideas, features
requests or patches using the GitHub tools.
The credcheck extension is an original work of
MigOps Inc, Since MigOPs is closed
Gilles Darold is the official maintainer. If you need more information
please contact me
pgDay
Paris 2024: Schedule published & Call for lightning talks
launched
date: 2024-01-30, from: PostgreSQL News
Hi,
The schedule for pgDay Paris 2024 on March 14 is now live and we are
really excited to share it with you. We have some great talks lined up
for you about everything Postgres - from Codd to community and from
logical decoding to LSM trees.
The best news is that there’s still a chance for you to
be on stage! If you look at the schedule, you’ll notice we reserved a
slot for lightning talks because we know how much everyone loves them.
We also know how nerve-wracking it can be to sign up on the day and not
know until the last minute whether or not you’ll be speaking, so we’ve
decided to launch a separate lightning talk CFP. Whether you’re a
seasoned speaker or you’ve never been up on stage before, and whatever
your Postgres use-case, we want to hear from you!
Submissions (max 1 per speaker) should be sent by email to
lightning@pgday.paris.
The talk must be in English and no longer than 5 minutes.
The subject of your email should be your name followed by the title of
the talk (e.g. “Slonik: What Elephants do for Fun”). The body of the
email should contain a very short description of your talk (max 50
words)
We recommend you submit your lightning talk by 23 February as that’s
when we’ll do the first round of selections, with selected speakers
notified by 8 March. You can, however, submit your lightning talk right
up until the day of the conference in case slots are still available
We look forward to seeing you in Paris on March 14, The pgDay Paris Team
pgvector, an
open-source PostgreSQL extension that provides vector similarity search
capabilities, has released
v0.6.0.
This latest version of pgvector provides improvements in performance,
memory efficiency, and WAL generation for building
hnsw
indexes. For more information, please see the
CHANGELOG
for 0.6.0:
I get significantly more work done when I unplug my computer from the
Internet. Despite many of the tools that I use requiring a connection,
and certainly the Internet containing a wealth of information that might
expedite my work, these benefits are drastically outweighed by the
wealth of distractions also availabe. It’s very appealing, when the code
is compiling or the docker containers restarting, to sneak open a
browser tab with hacker news, or the Χ formerly known as Twitter,
youtube, or something else to pass those minutes.
RORing
ahead: using ROR in place of the Open Funder Registry
date: 2024-01-30, from: Crossref Blog
A few months ago we announced our plan to
deprecate
our support for the Open Funder Registry in favour of using the ROR
Registry to support both affiliation and funder use cases. The feedback
we’ve had from the community has been positive and supports our members,
service providers and metadata users who are already starting to move in
this direction.
We wanted to provide an update on work that’s underway to make this
transition happen, and how you can get involved in working together with
us on this.
Overall, we are building more comprehensive support for ROR into
Crossref’s services. Some of this work is specifically to support using
ROR to identify funding organisations in place of funder registry IDs.
We have a number of parallel, complementary projects underway to support
different elements of this work:
We are evolving our metadata schema so that we can collect ROR IDs in
places where we currently support the collection of Funder IDs.
We are analysing the coverage of Funder ID to ROR ID mappings and
testing the way we expose them in our APIs.
We are developing new matching strategies to match text strings to ROR
IDs.
Schema updates
Everything flows from being able to get ROR IDs into the Crossref
metadata!
We are evolving our metadata schema so that we can collect ROR IDs in
places where we already support the collection of Funder IDs – for
instance, in
the
funding section of the metadata for works and in the funder section
for grants.
We’re working with members and service providers so that they can try
sending us this data via a pipeline our Labs team has built to test
schema updates before they go live. We are actively recruiting members
to help us test our new pipeline by providing sample XML for
registration. Planned metadata inputs and outputs are detailed in
Including
ROR as a funder identifier in your metadata (metadata prototyping
instructions), we’d encourage you to provide feedback on these in
the document, ideally in the next two weeks. We’re aiming to release an
updated schema that supports these changes in Q1 2024.
Modelling ROR ID/Funder ID mappings in our metadata model
We have integrated the ROR registry into our evolving metadata model,
and we have started work to integrate the Funder Registry. The aim is to
create more flexibility in how Crossref’s metadata can be supplemented
and queried, and give more clarity as to which party asserted or created
a metadata element.
We’re working on an early iteration of how the model handles ROR IDs,
funder IDs and their equivalencies. Once we have something to share,
we’ll welcome community feedback on this approach and on the metadata
model in general.
Developing new matching strategies to match text strings to ROR IDs
Ideally, everyone would always use persistent identifiers to exchange
information about contributor and awardee affiliations, organisations
related to works, as well as funders supporting the research. In
practice, this information is often exchanged as data without
identifiers, such as affiliation strings (e.g. “University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA”), funder names, or even funding acknowledgements
(e.g. “Funding and support generously provided by the Ford Foundation”).
In such situations, a good metadata matching strategy can help map these
to persistent identifiers.
Currently, we are focused on developing reliable strategies for matching
affiliation strings to ROR IDs. In the future, we will adapt the
strategies to support funder names and funding acknowledgements as well.
All the strategies will be rigorously evaluated using real-life data. We
will make the strategies, as well as the evaluation datasets and
evaluation results, publicly available for anyone to use. If you are
interested in collaborating on the development or the evaluation of the
matching strategies, please get in
touch!
In the future, we might also apply some of the new matching strategies
at Crossref, to the metadata our members send us. This would allow us to
insert matched identifiers to the metadata to better connect
organisations with other items in the scholarly record. We already have
a process that matches the names of funders supporting research against
the Funder Registry and enriches the metadata with matched Funder
Registry IDs. Developing and evaluating reliable matching strategies
will allow us to modify this process to use ROR IDs instead, and extend
it to support other use cases, such as contributor affiliations.
What will the transition mean for you?
We do recommend that you begin looking at what it will take to integrate
ROR into your systems and workflows for identifying funders. Talk to
your service providers about this to ready them for this change. To
reiterate the point from the earlier post, in the short term, and even
in the medium term, Funder IDs aren’t going away and the Funder IDs will
continue to resolve – they are persistent, after all. Eventually,
however, the Funder Registry will cease to be updated, so any new
funders will only be registrable in Crossref metadata with ROR IDs.
Legacy Funder IDs and their mapping to ROR IDs will be maintained, so if
Crossref members submit a legacy Funder ID, it will get mapped to a ROR
ID automatically. Note, too, that Crossref is committed to maintaining
the current funder API endpoints until ROR IDs become the predominant
identifier for newly registered content. We also know that there are
questions that we’ll want to tackle with the community as we all make
progress, some we know and some we don’t know. With that in mind:
Tell us what you need!
We want to hear from you! We have set up several channels of
communication meant to ensure that you can tell both ROR and Crossref
what will make this transition easier for you and that you can get
answers to your questions.
First, we are conducting a series of Open Funder Registry user
interviews designed to deepen our understanding of where Funder IDs are
being used in workflows and systems. Write
community@ror.org if you’d like
to participate in these interviews to show and tell us how you’re using
Funder IDs.
Second, in 2024, we will be running a follow-up to the funding data
workshop we ran in June 2023. Please get in touch if your organisation
would be interested in participating in the discussion.
Oracle
quietly extends Solaris 11.4 support until 2037
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Legacy OS and app holdouts get three more years of paid support, also on
versions 10.0 and 11.3
Oracle has quietly extended paid support and upgrades for Solaris 11.4
to 2037 – three years past its previous deadline – and did the same for
earlier versions of the OS last year.…
Ukraine
Aid Funding Lapse Impacting Refugee Resettlement in US
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
The debate over funding Ukraine in its war with Russia has
wide-reaching implications, even far away from the front lines. VOA’s
Kane Farabaugh has more on the impact to refugee resettlement in
Chicago, the second-largest home in the U.S. to Ukrainians who have fled
the war.
College of the Canyons started its 2024 season in winning fashion
after taking a 7-2 result over visiting Fullerton College on Friday at
the Cougar Courts.
On Friday, Jan. 26, Santa Clarita-based H2scan celebrated the
completion of its expanded manufacturing and headquarters facility in
Valencia, with a ribbon cutting ceremony
The
EU
Digital Markets Act is making waves in the Apple ecosystem. For the
first time ever you’ll be able to install a browser other than
Safari/Webkit on iOS (as long as you live in the EU). While there are
other browsers on the iOS App Store, they’re all Safari/Webkit under the
hood due to non-competitive App Store submission guidelines.
The Open Web Advocacy group
have spent years documenting the issues at hand. I haven’t participated
much there, but I’ve built countless web apps and have felt most (if not
all) the pain points that come with supporting Safari users and, as a
Mobile Safari user, not having access to features I’ve built. That
feature gap has closed considerably in the last couple years and the
Safari/Webkit team’s movement is impressive, their relative openness on
issues is welcome, and
declaring standards
positions reduces risk and removes mystery. But this (potentially)
blows the doors open on competition.
It will be interesting to see what happens from here. Will we break out
of the Chromium/Webkit duopoly? Or will we fall headlong into a Chromium
monopoly? Regardless, the EU ruling is a win for the Open Web because
now users have options beyond the OS-provided default browser. Before
there was nothing beyond a thin veneer of choice.
At the time of writing, there are
some
questions on how to test this if you don’t live in the EU and it’s
not yet known if (or ever) the rest of the world might also get access
to other browsers. And there seems to be some malicious compliance
afoot… but hopefully over time the situation normalizes towards the
ideal outcome; an unfettered web.
Next, if the EU could fix the GDPR banners that are killing the web,
that would be wonderful.
Single-family
home sells in San Jose for $1.9 million
date: 2024-01-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
The property located in the 3800 block of Willowpark Drive in San
Jose was sold on Jan. 12, 2024 for $1,860,000, or $1,081 per square
foot. The house, built in 1958, has an interior space of 1,720 square
feet.
Quick
EV acceleration is a safety feature, says Stellantis CEO
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
Quick acceleration is often used as a selling point for high-performance
cars, but can it actually be safer? The instant acceleration of an EV
not only offers a more nimble driving experience but it should be a
safety feature argues
Stellantis CEO
Carlos Tavares.
More
Clean Energy Is Good, Even If It Comes From China
date: 2024-01-29, from: Heatmap News
As nearly any six year old would be more than happy to tell you, the
problem is never that there is too much ice cream, or too many toys, or
too much screen time. Yet adults considering the political and economic
challenges of decarbonizing energy systems continue to harp on the
downsides of “overcapacity” — in China, specifically — of production for
clean technologies, namely solar and batteries and EVs.
As Heatmap’s own Robinson Meyer has
argued,
China’s monumental “overinvestment” in clean technologies may lead to
trade difficulties with the United States and European Union, which are
attempting to stand up cleantech production either inside their own
borders or within others they’ve deemed acceptable (a concept that goes
by various names, such as reshoring, nearshoring, and friendshoring) and
see Chinese competition as likely to strangle these infant industries
before they can stand up on their own.
However accurate that view might be, it’s important to remember that
China’s investments in solar and batteries are largely responsible for
the immense cost declines in these technologies across the globe. Solar
is now the cheapest source of electricity the world has ever seen.
Inexpensive batteries allow Chinese automakers like BYD to sell electric
vehicles for prices well below those traditional internal combustion
vehicles.
If anything, these huge investments represent a breakthrough that allows
all of us to envision a clean, abundant future. If Europe and the U.S.
are sour about not controlling the said future, the developing world
will likely be too busy celebrating the end to their energy poverty to
care.
Good Clean Energy Is Cheap Clean Energy
As Heatmap readers likely already know, clean electrification is the
skeleton key to global decarbonization. It obviously doesn’t solve
everything (hello agriculture), but it’s more of a giant leap along the
net zero path than a small, first step. Solar, wind, and batteries are
its principal components and all have followed
learning
curves–with greater production yielding price declines over and over
again.
China dominates global cleantech manufacturing today, and it’s investing
more in production and deployment than the rest of the world. As for
what that means, the International Energy Agency’s recently published
Renewables
Report helps fill in the picture:
First, the world is going to deploy more clean electricity generating
capacity in the next five years — in the main scenario, 3700 gigawatts —
than has been installed in the past 100. (Note: this rapid expansion
still leaves the world short of the UAE Consensus goal of tripling
renewables by 2030.) Over 60% of that capacity will be deployed in a
single country: China. In 2023 alone, China installed 217 GW of solar
(and 76 GW of wind), absorbing a solid share of its abundant production.
Second, the expansion of solar factories has been so rapid that even
under the most
accelerated
deployment scenario, the world will use only about 70% of the
factories’ capacity. This implies further
price
declines amid a supply glut, and likely some firms
going
bankrupt. Some of these factories will be downsized or never built.
It’s important to remember that overinvestment is mostly a problem for
the investors in those plants (including
Chinese
local governments who have
immense
debt problems already), not for the world.
The United States has tried to defend its turf by putting
tariffs
on Chinese EVs, and the myriad subsidies for clean technologies in the
Inflation Reduction Act almost all have restrictions on the country of
origin as well as whether components were made by
“foreign
entities of concern.” The European Union, meanwhile, launched an
investigation
into Chinese EV subsidies and is in the process of implementing its
Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism to try to put imports on equal
footing with its internal carbon pricing scheme.
While China
blasts
these actions as simple protectionism, there is a strong argument to be
made that maintaining a politically durable coalition in favor of
decarbonization inside these countries requires some degree of domestic
EV production to provide good jobs. Production of these specific
tradable goods takes place in factories where the prototypical good job
— union, blue collar — has been located, historically. Whether
decarbonization efforts should so heavily emphasize these
particular high quality jobs instead of less tradable positions
in energy installations, grid maintenance, and efficiency is an open
question.
Even if we accept that argument, though, it wouldn’t change the fact
that what matters most for the planet is building and deploying lots of
clean technologies — and continuing to get better at making and using
them.
This matters because the rich countries are not going to define the
world’s emissions trajectory for the next 75 years. The
Rhodium
Climate Outlook 2023 projects likely pathways of global emissions to
2100. It forecasts emissions will decrease from the equivalent of around
50 billion metric tons today to around 40 billion by 2060, but then rise
again to around 50 billion metric tons by 2100. That reversal comes
about because Rhodium sees decarbonization as both more partial and more
local than it’s often imagined. Only China and the member countries of
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development dramatically
reduce their emissions over the next 25 years while most of the world
merely holds steady — with the exception of Africa, where emissions grow
substantially.
All of this is because Rhodium also assumes that getting the final bits
of carbon out of the global economy will be much more difficult than
picking off the low-hanging fruit, as we’re doing today by moving from
coal to gas and increasingly to renewables. Solar is already so cheap
that it is showing up everywhere —
in
South Africa when citizens are tired of rolling blackouts;
in
Nigeria, stepping in for generators after diesel subsidies were
reduced; even with a
random
YouTuber rehabbing an abandoned French chateau. Batteries are also
getting cheaper and helping
grids
in stress. Maybe
green
hydrogen will, as well.
Building clean, resilient electrical grids starting as soon as possible
will have immense benefits for the climate. But doing it at scale
everywhere in the world is contingent on these technologies being
affordable. And to date Chinese prices remain lower than in the rest of
the world. Take solar: A December 2023, analysts at Wood MacKenzie
priced Chinese modules at 15 cents a watt compared with 40 cents in the
U.S., 30 in Europe, and 22 in India.
This isn’t to say that the rest of the world should stop trying to
produce more and lower costs — again, more good things are good, and
adding resilience and reducing dependence on a single country has real
benefits — but rather that we should remember to celebrate a bit how
much of a win we’ve already seen. The point, after all, is not to win
climate change, but rather to avoid it. How well we manage to do that
will depend in no small part on putting rivalries aside.
Washington — Sales of U.S. military equipment to foreign governments
in 2023 rose 16% to a record $238 billion, the U.S. State Department
said on Monday, as countries sought to replenish stocks sent to Ukraine
and prepare for major conflicts.
The figures underpin expectations of stronger sales for the likes of
Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, whose shares are
forecast to rise amid growing global instability.
Arms sales and transfers are viewed as “important U.S. foreign policy
tools with potential long-term implications for regional and global
security,” the State Department said in a statement.
Sales approved in the year included $10 billion worth of High
Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Poland, $2.9 billion worth
of AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium-Range Air-To-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) to
Germany, and National Advanced Surface to Air Missile Systems (NASAMS)
to Ukraine.
Lockheed makes the HIMARS, and RTX, formerly Raytheon, makes AMRAAM.
RTX and Norway’s Kongsberg produce NASAMS.
Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics expect existing orders for
hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, hundreds of Patriot missile
interceptors, and a surge in orders for armored vehicles will underpin
their results in coming quarters.
There are two major ways foreign governments purchase arms from U.S.
companies: direct commercial sales negotiated with a company, or foreign
military sales in which a government typically contacts a Defense
Department official at the U.S. embassy in its capital. Both require
U.S. government approval.
The direct military sales by U.S. companies rose to $157.5 billion in
fiscal 2023 from $153.6 billion in fiscal 2022, while sales arranged
through the U.S. government rose to $80.9 billion in 2023 from $51.9
billion the prior year.
Ken Striplin
| Skyline Ranch – Home to City’s 38th Park
date: 2024-01-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Parks are the main hub of engagement and activity in our communities
and here in Santa Clarita our 37 parks play a pivotal role in enhancing
the quality of life for our residents
San
Jose: Man gets 47-year prison sentence in murder of community matriarch
‘Miss Flo’
date: 2024-01-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Zachary Omar Cuen killed 88-year-old Floavis Douglas during 2016 home
invasion robbery; her death was mourned as a tremendous loss in the
city’s Black community.
VP
Kamala Harris, in San Jose, on abortion rights: “This is a fight that is
fundamental”
date: 2024-01-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
“We have to hustle over these next 10 months,” said Harris, an
Oakland native and California’s former top prosecutor. “We can make a
difference on this issue.”
Judge
Orders Oregon Newspaper Not to Publish Documents Linked to Nike
Lawsuit
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge has ordered an Oregon newspaper not
to publish documents that it obtained regarding a sex discrimination
lawsuit against sports behemoth Nike.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that an attorney who represents
plaintiffs in the case sent the documents to one of its reporters on
January 19 and then asked for them back. When the news outlet declined,
the attorney filed a court motion requesting they be returned.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jolie Russo approved the motion on Friday and
ordered the news outlet to return the documents.
“The Court is aware that certain documents marked ‘Confidential’ and
‘Attorneys’ Eyes Only’ have been inadvertently disclosed by plaintiff’s
counsel to the Oregonian via e-mail,” Russo wrote, ordering the outlet
to return the records and “agree not to disseminate that information in
any way; and to destroy any copies in its possession.”
Russo said the documents fall under the case’s protective order,
which withholds some content from public view.
The Oregonian/OregonLive said it planned to appeal.
“Prior restraint by government goes against every principle of the
free press in this country,” said Editor and Vice President of Content
Therese Bottomly. “This is highly unusual, and we will defend our First
Amendment rights in court.”
Neither the attorney nor Nike immediately responded to requests for
comment from The Associated Press.
The sex discrimination suit, filed in 2018, alleges Nike’s workplace
is hostile toward women and that the Oregon-based company underpays
female employees.
The Oregonian/OregonLive said it had previously intervened in the
lawsuit as part of a media coalition that requested the court to unseal
certain legal records.
The news outlet said it was working on a separate article based on
independent reporting when it received the documents.
Momaday,
Pulitzer Prize Winner and Giant of Native American Literature, Dead at
89
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — N. Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer Prize-winning storyteller,
poet, educator and folklorist whose debut novel “House Made of Dawn” is
widely credited as the starting point for contemporary Native American
literature, has died. He was 89.
Momaday died Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, publisher
HarperCollins announced. He had been in failing health.
“Scott was an extraordinary person and an extraordinary poet and
writer. He was a singular voice in American literature, and it was an
honor and a privilege to work with him,” Momaday’s editor, Jennifer
Civiletto, said in a statement. “His Kiowa heritage was deeply
meaningful to him and he devoted much of his life to celebrating and
preserving Native American culture, especially the oral tradition.”
“House Made of Dawn,” published in 1968, tells of a World War II
soldier who returns home and struggles to fit back in, a story as old as
war itself: In this case, home is a Native community in rural New
Mexico. Much of the book was based on Momaday’s childhood in Jemez
Pueblo, New Mexico, and on his conflicts between the ways of his
ancestors and the risks and possibilities of the outside world.
“I grew up in both worlds and straddle those worlds even now,”
Momaday said in a 2019 PBS documentary. “It has made for confusion and a
richness in my life.”
Despite such works as John Joseph Mathews’ 1934 release “Sundown,”
novels by American Indians weren’t widely recognized at the time of
“House Made of Dawn.” A New York Times reviewer, Marshall Sprague, even
contended in an otherwise favorable review that “American Indians do not
write novels and poetry as a rule, or teach English in top-ranking
universities, either. But we cannot be patronizing. N. Scott Momaday’s
book is superb in its own right.”
Like Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” Momaday’s novel was a World War II
story that resonated with a generation protesting the Vietnam War. In
1969, Momaday became the first Native American to win the fiction
Pulitzer, and his novel helped launch a generation of authors, including
Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch and Louise Erdrich.
His other admirers would range from the poet Joy Harjo, the country’s
first Native to be named poet laureate, to the film stars Robert Redford
and Jeff Bridges.
“He was a kind of literary father for a lot of us,” Harjo told The
Associated Press during a telephone interview Monday. “He showed how
potent and powerful language and words were in shaping our very
existence.”
Over the following decades, he taught at Stanford, Princeton and
Columbia universities, among other top-ranking schools, was a
commentator for NPR, and lectured worldwide.
He published more than a dozen books, from “Angle of Geese and Other
Poems” to the novels “The Way to Rainy Mountain” and “The Ancient
Child,” and became a leading advocate for the beauty and vitality of
traditional Native life.
Addressing a gathering of American Indian scholars in 1970, Momaday
said, “Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves.” He
championed Natives’ reverence for nature, writing that “the American
Indian has a unique investment in the American landscape.” He shared
stories told to him by his parents and grandparents. He regarded oral
culture as the wellspring of language and storytelling, and dated
American culture back not to the early English settlers, but also to
ancient times, noting the procession of gods depicted in the rock art at
Utah’s Barrier Canyon.
“We do not know what they mean, but we know we are involved in their
meaning,” he wrote in the essay “The Native Voice in American
Literature.”
“They persist through time in the imagination, and we cannot doubt
that they are invested with the very essence of language, the language
of story and myth and primal song. They are 2,000 years old, more or
less, and they remark as closely as anything can the origin of American
literature.”
In 2007, President George W. Bush presented Momaday with a National
Medal of Arts “for his writings and his work that celebrate and preserve
Native American art and oral tradition.” Besides his Pulitzer, his
honors included an Academy of American Poets prize and, in 2019, the
Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Momaday was married three times, most recently to Barbara Glenn, who
died in 2008. He had four daughters, one of whom, Cael, died in
2017.
He was born Navarre Scott Mammedaty, in Lawton, Oklahoma, and was a
member of the Kiowa Nation. His mother was a writer, and his father an
artist who once told his son, “I have never known an Indian child who
couldn’t draw,” a talent Momaday demonstrably shared. His artwork, from
charcoal sketches to oil paintings, were included in his books and
exhibited in museums in Arizona, New Mexico and North Dakota. Audio
guides to tours of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of the American
Indian featured Momaday’s avuncular baritone.
After spending his teens in New Mexico, he studied political science
at the University of Mexico and received a master’s and Ph.D. in English
from Stanford. Momaday began as a poet, his favorite art form, and the
publication of “House Made of Dawn” was an unintentional result of his
early reputation. Editor Fran McCullough, of what is now HarperCollins,
had met Momaday at Stanford and several years later contacted him and
asked whether he would like to submit a book of poems.
Momaday did not have enough for a book, and instead gave her the
first chapter of “House Made of Dawn.”
Much of his writing was set in the American West and Southwest,
whether tributes to bears — the animals he most identified with — or a
cycle of poems about the life of Billy the Kid, a childhood obsession.
He saw writing as a way of bridging the present with the ancient past
and summed up his quest in the poem “If I Could Ascend”:
Something like a leaf lies here within me; / it wavers almost not at
all, / and there is no light to see it by / that it withers upon a black
field. / If it could ascend the thousand years into my mouth, / I would
make a word of it at last, / and I would speak it into the silence of
the sun.
In 2019, he was the subject of a PBS “American Masters” documentary
in which he discussed his belief he was a reincarnation of a bear
connected to the Native American origin story around Devils Tower in
Wyoming. He told The Associated Press in a rare interview that the
documentary allowed him to reflect on his life, saying he was humbled
that writers continued to say his work has influenced them.
“I’m greatly appreciative of that, but it comes a little bit of a
surprise every time I hear it,” Momaday said. “I think I have been an
influence. It’s not something I take a lot of credit for.”
Applications
for Virginia Wrage Memorial Scholarships Now Open
date: 2024-01-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Zonta Club of Santa Clarita Valley Foundation is offering
Virginia Wrage Memorial Scholarships to help women 40 or over achieve
independence following a life-altering event
Foul
issues in spotlight for Golden State Warriors as free throw-happy 76ers
await
date: 2024-01-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry shared their frustration with
officiating after their game against the Lakers this weekend. Now they
are set to face one of the best foul-drawing teams in the NBA.
date: 2024-01-29, from: Association of Research Libraries News
Last Updated on January 29, 2024, 4:28 pm ET Sign up to receive the Day
in Review by email. Jump to: Tuesday, January 30 | Wednesday, January 31
| Thursday,…
MSI
Claw handheld gaming PC pricing confirmed: Intel Core Ultra 5 for $700,
Core Ultra 7 for $750 and up
date: 2024-01-29, from: Liliputing
The MSI Claw is the first handheld gaming PC from a major computer
company to feature an Intel Meteor Lake processor. But when MSI first
unveiled the handheld earlier this month, the company old said that it
would be available with up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor. Now
we know what you get […]
San
Jose and Oakland airports both gain passenger trips in 2023
date: 2024-01-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
San Jose and Oakland airports handled more passengers in 2023
compared to the year before – yet both remain stuck well below their
pre-coronavirus heights.
DNA
From 2,000-Year-Old Skeletons Hints at the Origins of Syphilis
date: 2024-01-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In contrast to a common theory, new findings suggest Columbus-led
expeditions may not have transported syphilis to Europe from the
Americas, though they cannot disprove the claim with certainty
NASA
Awards Contract to Support Agency Enterprise Service Center
date: 2024-01-29, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has selected Inspiritec Inc. of Philadelphia, to provide
contractor support for the Shared Services Center at the agency’s
Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. This
indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract allows for special
project task orders at either the firm-fixed-price or based on level of
effort. The contract includes a 60-day transition period beginning on
[…]
COC’s
VITA Program Offering Free Tax Preparation Services
date: 2024-01-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program at College of the
Canyons will be offering free tax preparation services to individuals
who made less than $67,000 in 2023, persons with disabilities and
limited English-speaking skills.
Victoria Song (via Hacker News): The company has been one of the most
prolific makers of Wear OS smartwatches over the years, and its absence
will leave a large gap in the market.[…]This shouldn’t come as a huge
shock if you’ve been paying attention to Fossil the past few months.
Some Reddit users had been […]
AltStore: We’ve started the process of becoming a legitimate “app
marketplace”, allowing our European friends to download @delta and other AltStore
apps officially for the first time ever!See you in March ☘️ Jacob
Kastrenakes: Epic plans to launch the Epic Games Store on the iPhone
this year in the European Union — and it’s bringing […]
Apple: This spring [with iOS 17.4], Apple is introducing transcripts
on Apple Podcasts, making it easier for anyone to access podcasts. With
transcripts, your audience can read the full text of an episode, search
the episode for a specific word or phrase, and tap the text to play from
that point in the episode. As […]
Mozilla (via Mike Rockwell): This dashboard tracks technical issues
in major software platforms which disadvantage Firefox relative to the
first-party browser. We consider aspects like security, stability,
performance, and functionality, and propose changes to create a more
level playing field. Previously: DMA Compliance: Alternative Browser
Engines DMA Compliance: Default App Controls and NFC The Hotel […]
US
Defense Secretary Returns to Work at Pentagon After Cancer Surgery
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin returned to work at the
Pentagon on Monday after nearly a month’s absence because of prostate
cancer and met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
“At this important time, I’m glad to be back at the Pentagon,” said
Austin, speaking at the start of the meeting. “I feel good and am
recovering well, but still recovering, and I appreciate all the good
wishes that I have received thus far.”
After that session, Austin went to the White House Situation Room for
a meeting of the national security team to discuss the drone attack at a
base in Jordan that killed three U.S. troops and wounded several dozen
others.
He was last in the Pentagon on December 21. He had been diagnosed
with prostate cancer earlier in December, and he went to a hospital for
a surgical procedure for the cancer on December 22. He worked the
following week from home.
On January 1, he was taken by ambulance to Walter Reed National
Military Medical Center after experiencing extreme pain and was admitted
to the intensive care unit. He stayed there for two weeks but didn’t
inform the White House or his deputy that he had cancer, had surgery or
had been taken back to the hospital and put in intensive care until days
later. He told President Joe Biden and other key leaders about his
diagnosis only after he’d been in the hospital more than a week.
Austin’s lack of disclosure has prompted changes in federal
guidelines and has triggered an internal Pentagon review and an
inspector general review into his department’s notification procedures.
Both reviews are ongoing.
Austin has been working from home since he got out of the hospital on
January 15, and he made his first public appearance early last week
during a virtual Ukraine contact defense group meeting. He gave opening
remarks for the meeting via video camera that was streamed online.
Doctors at Walter Reed said on Friday that Austin’s prostate cancer
prognosis is excellent and no further treatments will be needed. He saw
doctors for a checkup on Friday.
Austin has been criticized for keeping secret his prostate cancer
diagnosis, surgery and subsequent hospitalization with complications
from the procedure.
He was diagnosed in early December and had what the Pentagon
described as a “minimally invasive surgical procedure,” called a
prostatectomy, to treat the cancer on December 22. He was under general
anesthesia during this procedure and had transferred some authorities to
his deputy defense secretary, Kathleen Hicks. He was discharged the next
day and continued to perform his duties.
SolarWinds
slams SEC lawsuit against it as ‘unprecedented’ victim blaming
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
18,000 customers, including the Pentagon and Microsoft, may have other
thoughts
SolarWinds – whose network monitoring software was backdoored by Russian
spies so that the biz’s customers could be spied upon – has accused
America’s financial watchdog of seeking to “revictimise the victim”
after the agency sued it over the 2020 attack.…
China
Decries Interrogations, Deportations of Students at US Entry Points
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
Beijing — The Chinese government has protested to the United States
over the treatment of Chinese arriving to study in America, saying some
have been interrogated for hours, had their electronic devices checked
and in some cases were forcibly deported from the country.
Xie Feng, the Chinese ambassador in Washington, said dozens of
Chinese have been denied entry every month for the past few months when
returning to school from overseas travel or visiting relatives in China,
according to a post on the Chinese Embassy website.
“When they landed at the airport, what awaited them was an
eight-hour-long interrogation by officers who prohibited them from
contacting their parents, made groundless accusations against them and
even forcibly repatriated them and banned their entry,” he said Sunday
at an event at the embassy on student exchanges. “This is absolutely
unacceptable.”
The protest comes as the U.S. and China try to boost student and
other exchanges to shore up their relations, which have turned
confrontational in recent years over trade, technology, human rights
and, more fundamentally, the future direction of the world.
Nearly 290,000 Chinese students are in the U.S., about one-third of
the foreign students in the country, according to the embassy post.
China has more than 1.3 million students studying abroad, more than any
other country, it said.
In a separate online statement, the Chinese Embassy said it had made
“solemn representations” to the U.S. government about the treatment of
students arriving at Dulles airport in Washington, D.C. The statement
reminded Chinese students to be cautious when entering through the
airport.
It wasn’t clear whether Xie’s comments referenced cases only at
Dulles or at other entry points as well.
The U.S. Embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request
for comment.
The Chinese Embassy statement said the affected students had their
electronic devices checked, were prohibited from communicating with
anyone outside and, in some cases, held for more than 10 hours. It said
the actions of border control officers “have had a serious impact on the
studies of international students from China and caused great
psychological harm.”
The statement also said that the actions ran counter to the agreement
between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping at their meeting last
November to promote people-to-people exchanges.
Encrypted
Phone ‘Sky’ Linked to Murder-for-Hire Plot in Maryland
date: 2024-01-29, from: 404 Media Group
Sky was an encrypted phone used by drug traffickers and other
criminals. Now, those phones are linked to a murder-for-hire scheme on
U.S. soil involving an arm of the Iranian state.
Authors
Alliance Submits Long-Form Comment to Copyright Office in Support of
Petition to Expand Existing Text and Data Mining Exemption
date: 2024-01-29, from: Authors Union blogs
Last month, Authors Alliance submitted detailed comments in response
to the Copyright Office’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in support of
our petition to expand the existing Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) exemptions that enable text and data mining (TDM) as part of this
year’s §1201 rulemaking cycle. To recap: our expansion petitions ask
the Copyright […]
Mini PCs with Intel Alder Lake-N processors are getting so cheap that
some models are competitively priced with premium media streamers like
the Apple TV 4K or NVIDIA Shield TV. Case in point: you can pick up a T9
Plus mini PC with an Intel N95 processor for as little as $119. The 3.5″
x […]
date: 2024-01-29, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
At 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994, the San Fernando Valley shook. With a
recorded magnitude of 6.7, the Northridge earthquake may not have been
“the big one,” being neither of California’s two biggest earthquakes of
the ’90s, but the densely populated location of the quake’s epicenter
caused a significant loss of life and, at…
Have
Researchers Found Amelia Earhart’s Long-Lost Plane?
date: 2024-01-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new sonar image shows an airplane-shaped object resting on the
bottom of the Pacific Ocean, not far from where Earhart and her
navigator, Fred Noonan, went missing in 1937
NASA
Space Tech Spinoffs Benefit Earth Medicine, Moon to Mars Tools
date: 2024-01-29, from: NASA breaking news
As NASA innovates for the benefit of all, what the agency develops
for exploration has the potential to evolve into other technologies with
broader use here on Earth. Many of those examples are highlighted in
NASA’s annual Spinoff book including dozens of NASA-enabled medical
innovations, as well other advancements. This year’s publication, NASA’s
2024 Spinoff, […]
date: 2024-01-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School of Education disputes the “F” grade
given to its teacher education program by the National Council on
Teacher Quality, while local school districts are continuing to support
their teachers amid recent curriculum changes.
The
First Big Fight of the U.S. General Election Is Over LNG
date: 2024-01-29, from: Heatmap News
When the White House announced on Friday that it would temporarily pause
the approval of new liquified natural gas export terminals, it wasn’t
just a
victory
for climate activists. It also drew the line for the first big
showdown of
the
longest general election in modern history. With all due respect to
Nikki Haley and
some
guy named Ryan Binkley, who are both nominally still in the
Republican race, former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden
are both acting,
understandably,
like the primaries are already over.
Trump wasted no time vowing to “approve the export terminals on my very
first day back” in a campaign speech in Nevada, which his campaign made
official in an
email
blast to supporters. Trump also claimed LNG is “good for the
environment, not bad.” While LNG
might
not be the worst for the planet, only energy interests are
bold
enough to describe it as actually beneficial.
LNG was hardly a preordained battleground; though there’d been
some
jostling in the fall between activists and Republicans, Americans
more generally are
fuzzy
on the specifics of how the U.S. meets its energy needs and divided
on how to address them.
Still, the Biden campaign clearly picked its spot. For one thing, the
administration’s LNG pause is a literal challenge to the existing
methodology
for assessing LNG projects, developed under the Trump administration
back in 2018. The timing of the announcement further marks it as an
opening salvo to young climate-conscious voters whose faith in the
president suffered a
bruising
when he approved a ConocoPhillips oil exploration effort known as the
Willow
Project last spring. There could be some strategy here on the part
of the campaign, as well — by baiting Trump into taking up LNG as a
low-hanging talking point, it gets to amplify and contrast Biden’s
climate agenda repeatedly in response.
But it’s a risky gambit. Attacks on LNG
might
not be as simple as they look at first glance — that is, after all,
what the Energy Department’s review is all about, although it also
likely kicks the decision to, conveniently, after Election Day.
Heatmap
polling also shows Americans aren’t very familiar with Biden’s
landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, even as
experts
believe “climate voters could make or break Joe Biden in 2024.” I
fear Americans’ eyes will glaze over at yet another three-letter acronym
— not that “liquified natural gas export terminals” is exactly
any better. At the very least, other polling appears to indicate a
public that is
confused
and conflicted about fossil fuels, see-sawing between a desire for
energy security and anxiety over climate priorities.
Of course, none of these risks is a reason for the Biden administration
not to get to the bottom of LNG’s environmental impacts. The U.S. is,
after all, now the largest
LNG
exporter in the world. But the timing of the Biden administration’s
announcement, just as the Republican race took a decisive and seemingly
inevitable
turn
in Trump’s favor, means that one way or another, we’ll be hearing a
lot more about LNG in the long, long months to come.
Braintrust
query: I’m having trouble running the Node utility
Forever with recent
versions of Node. I’ve read all the threads on this, and it’s not clear
(to me at least) how to get past this problem. I’ve resorted to running
without Forever on one of my servers, but this is a short-term
solution.
Liebherr
launches first-ever electric compact wheel loader
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
German-Swiss multinational equipment manufacturer Liebherr has has
announced that deliveries of its first-ever electric compact wheel
loader, the L 507 E, are about to begin.
A New Home
for Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Prototype
date: 2024-01-29, from: NASA breaking news
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s aerial prototype is seen at the
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steve F. Udvar-Hazy Center
in Chantilly, Va, Dec. 15, 2023. The prototype, which was the first to
prove it was possible to fly in a simulated Mars environment at NASA’s
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was donated to the museum. Ingenuity’s
[…]
The city of Santa Clarita’s Film Office released the list of five
productions currently filming in the Santa Clarita Valley for the week
of Monday, Jan. 29 - Sunday, Feb. 4.
Community
Helps FYI Exceed Year-End Fundraising Goal
date: 2024-01-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The year-end fundraising campaign for Fostering Youth Independence
(FYI) exceeded its goal thanks to the generosity of the Santa Clarita
community, the organization announced, as it also revealed the impact
that FYI made supporting 100 local foster youth during
Ex-IRS
Contractor Sentenced to 5 Years for Leaking Trump Tax Records
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
Washington — A former contractor for the U.S. Internal Revenue
Service was sentenced by a judge on Monday to five years in prison on
Monday for leaking the tax records of former President Donald Trump and
thousands of other wealthy Americans to media organizations.
Charles Littlejohn, 38, in October had pleaded guilty to a charge of
disclosing income tax return information without authorization.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes decided on his sentence.
Federal prosecutors had sought a five-year sentence, the maximum
allowed under U.S. law, arguing that Littlejohn was motivated by a
political agenda and compromised the security of sensitive personal
information. Littlejohn, according to prosecutors, sought a position at
a consulting firm that works with the IRS in 2017 in hopes of accessing
and disclosing records on Trump, who was president at the time.
Littlejohn’s lawyers said he was motivated by a “deep, moral belief”
that the public had a right to know the information he shared, but now
regrets his actions. Littlejohn’s legal team did not request a specific
sentence, but sought a punishment comparable to prior government
leakers.
Littlejohn secretly downloaded years of Trump’s tax records in 2018,
later sharing them with reporters from the New York Times, according to
court documents. The newspaper published a series of articles in 2020
revealing that Trump paid no income tax in 10 of the 15 years before he
was elected president.
Trump became the first major U.S. presidential candidate in decades
not to release his tax returns when he ran for the White House in 2016.
A U.S. House of Representatives panel released six years of his tax
records in 2022 after a court battle.
Littlejohn later leaked tax information on “ultra-high net worth
taxpayers” to the investigative news outlet ProPublica. He was motivated
by concerns about economic inequality and wanted to spur reforms to the
U.S. tax system, his defense team wrote in court documents.
ProPublica published nearly 50 articles based on the information,
revealing how the wealthy evade income taxes in the United States.
The nearly 6,000 pages of records released by the House panel in 2022
included more than 2,700 pages of personal returns from Trump and his
wife Melania Trump, plus more than 3,000 pages of returns from his
businesses. They showed that Trump’s income and tax liability fluctuated
dramatically from 2015 through 2020 and that he and his wife claimed
large deductions and losses, and paid little or no income tax in several
of those years.
BYD
is launching its new Seal U on Volkswagen’s home turf to rival the
ID.4
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
A new Seal is slated to enter the EV race in Europe.
BYD is launching its Seal
U, an electric SUV version of the Seal sedan, to take on Volkswagen’s
ID.4.
Lompoc
Theatre Project has Phase II Fundraising Goal in Sight
date: 2024-01-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Thanks to an incredible showing of community support in the final months
of 2023 and a generous matching grant from the Santa Ynez Band of
Chumash Indians, Lompoc Theatre Project is $350,000 closer to their
Phase II fundraising goal.
Mullen’s
electric trucks earn CARB certification, qualifying for over $45k in
customer savings
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
Seven months after kicking off production of its Class 3 electric trucks
in Mississippi, EV startup
Mullen Automotive has
secured fruitful environmental compliance and approvals from CARB and
the EPA. As a result, those CARB-compliant states and Washington DC
enable tremendous savings to fleet operators who purchase electric
trucks from Mullen.
US
Offers Reward for Escaped Sudan Official Wanted on Darfur
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The United States on Monday offered a reward of up to $5
million for the arrest of a former Sudanese official sought over alleged
Darfur war crimes who escaped from prison when war erupted last
year.
Ahmed Harun, a former top aide to deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir, is
wanted by the International Criminal Court for helping form the
notorious Janjaweed militia which carried out a scorched-earth campaign
in Darfur in the 2000s.
Harun announced in April that he and other former regime officials
escaped Khartoum’s Kober prison days after fighting broke out between
Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The United States pointed out that the Janjaweed has evolved into the
Rapid Support Forces, which is accused of ethnic-based attacks against
the non-Arab population in western Sudan.
“Lasting peace in Sudan requires justice for victims and
accountability for those responsible for human rights abuses and
violations, both past and present,” State Departments spokesman Matthew
Miller said.
“There is a clear and direct connection between impunity for abuses
under the Bashir regime, including those of which Harun is accused, and
the violence in Darfur today,” he said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused the Rapid Support
Forces of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing in the latest
bloodshed.
The United States has worked with Saudi Arabia to broker between the
dueling generals but to little avail.
The war has killed at least 13,000 people, according to a
conservative estimate by the Conflict Location and Event Data project,
and displaced more than seven million people, according to the U.N.
The International Criminal Court has sought Harun since 2007 over 20
counts of crimes against humanity and 22 counts of war crimes. In 2009,
Bashir became the first sitting head of state indicted by the
Hague-based court, but Sudan has not handed him over.
The reward by the United States – which itself is not party to the
court – is offered for information that leads to Harun’s arrest,
transfer or conviction.
Parks,
Recreation to Discuss Sign Request for Veterans Historical Plaza
date: 2024-01-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Parks, Recreation, and Community Services
Commission will hold its regular meeting Thursday, Feb. 1 at 6 p.m., in
Council Chambers at City Hall
Renault
cancels Ampere IPO but still launching 7 new models
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
French automaker Renault just canceled its planned IPO for its EV
spinoff Ampere. While the IPO was scheduled for the first part of this
year with an expected valuation of
up
to €10 billion ($10.47 billion), Renault says that market conditions
aren’t optimal to make the move.
Option
Soup: the subtle pitfalls of combining compiler flags
date: 2024-01-29, from: Mozilla Developer Network blog
During the Firefox 120 beta cycle, a new crash signature appeared on our
radars with significant volume. Engineers working on Firefox, explore
the subtle pitfalls of combining compiler flags.
A body was found at The Oaks Club in Valencia Saturday afternoon, and
the circumstances are still yet to be determined but foul play is not
currently suspected, according to law enforcement officials. Law
enforcement officials responded to reports of “an adult male on the
ground of the parking lot of The Oaks Club,” at […]
CockroachDB
tempts legacy databases to crawl into the cloud age
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Distributed system makes a grab for Oracle, Db2 features
CockroachDB has released its 23.2 iteration containing new features
designed to tempt mainframe and other legacy database users to shift
workloads to its distributed cloud-based system.…
Sugar
Cubes Jelly turns the Unihertz Jelly Star smartphone into a handheld
game console with a 3 inch display
date: 2024-01-29, from: Liliputing
The Unihertz Jelly Star is a tiny smartphone with a 3 inch, 854 x 480
pixel display, a MediaTek Helio G99 processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of UFS
2.2 storage, and a 2,000 mAh battery. It sells for $210 and ships with
Android 13 software. While the phone’s claim to fame is that it’s what
Unihertz […]
Thank
You, Jovian Vortex Hunters! The Hunt Is Over…for Now.
date: 2024-01-29, from: NASA breaking news
We did it! The Jovian Vortex Hunter project, launched on Zooniverse
in June 2022, is out of data as of December 23, 2023. Over 6,000
registered volunteers joined the project to view images from NASA’s
JunoCam instrument of the swirling clouds in Jupiter’s atmosphere and
draw on them using a computer mouse. Together, they contributed over a
[…]
Apple is making major changes to how it distributes iOS apps in the EU
due to the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act, but the company is
making it clear that it’s only doing so under duress.
Last week’s 40th anniversary of the Mac got me thinking. I’ve also
been contemplating this week’s release of Apple Vision Pro. It feels
like we’re at a crossroads for platforms, but one that’s impossible to
pass. I was one of the folks who bought a Mac in 1984. At the time I was
a member […]
More
than $1M Worth of Stolen Metals Recovered in Acton
date: 2024-01-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Major Crimes Bureau
Organized Retail Theft and Cargo Theft Task Force Detectives began an
investigation of a cargo load of precious metals, stolen from the
Chicago area and ended up in various locations within Los Angeles
County
I liked your latest blog post
Quick
toughts on chips and see you are a business leader in accessibility,
Doritos®, and Jekyll blogging software. I thought we should connect. I
would like to inform you of an exciting opportunity.
I scraped or stole your email address from some list that you never
signed up for, but would you like help growing your company’s sales? I
can do the same impersonal, unsolicited, scumbag sales shit I’m doing to
you right now but on behalf of your company.
I generated this with AI, so it took me literally no time or effort but
I sent it anyways. The federal crime I just committed is utterly
offensive and every time I send this to you under a different fake
business name you instantly delete it, but some might also call it
“innovative”. I can provide this service for your company. Reach new
customers today by deploying large scale AI-driven spam operations.
I clearly have no ethics, but you should enter a business relationship
with me, a guy who found your email on the internet.
You are now signed up for a no-opt-out email drip campaign to send you
automated replies every day for the next week to get you to reply. Reply
and start a conversation with your harasser if you’d like it to stop.
Also, would you like to have my boss on your podcast? He’s a B2B Growth
Saas Fortune Trope 500 Under 500 Startups Entreprenuer and has a red
Porsche. There’s almost no trace of this guy on the internet but you
should absolutely have him on your super niche web development podcast.
I think he’d be a great fit for your audience.
What do you say? Are you ready to increase the size of your revenue?
<p>Medical recordkeeping was originally a way to chart a patient’s course of illness and support clinicians in finding the best course. Now, electronic health records have disrupted the foundation of the therapeutic relationship. What happened?</p>
Toyota
was the most searched auto brand in 2023, but Tesla still dominates EV
queries
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
2023 was yet another pivotal year for EVs as the segment began to expand
beyond early adopters and into the early majority. What should come as
no surprise to most people is that American automaker Tesla dominated
Google Trends search data for EVs last year. Still, gas and hybrid
specialist Toyota
remained the most searched auto brand, not by any specific state.
Kia
is delaying its entry-level EV4 electric sedan until next year
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
Although we expected to see two new entry-level Kia EVs roll out this
year, it looks like it will only be one. According to local media
reports, Kia is delaying its
EV4 electric sedan
until 2025
X
hiring 100 content cops in bid to tame Wild West of online safety
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-30, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Maybe those Twitter cuts ran too deep, huh?
Not long after it emerged that X, formerly Twitter, cut 1 in 3 Trust and
Safety employees after Elon Musk’s takeover in October 2022, the social
media platform now claims it’s ready to hire 100 full-time content
moderators at a new office in Austin, Texas.…
Nikola
hydrogen FCEV semi completes 400 mile trip – is it enough?
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
The port cartage and drayage specialists at Coyote Container
successfully completed a 400-mile delivery in a Nikola Tre semi truck
powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.
ACEPC
WizBox AI is a Meteor Lake mini PC with Intel Core Ultra 7 155H
date: 2024-01-29, from: Liliputing
Mini PC maker ACEPC has unveiled its first computer powered by an Intel
Meteor Lake processor. The upcoming ACEPC WizBox AI features an Intel
Core Ultra 7 155H processor with 16 CPU cores, 22 threads, Intel Arc
integrated graphics, and a neural processing unit for
hardware-accelerated AI. ACEPEC will announce pricing and detailed specs
on […]
Washington — Schools in the United States are not being spared from a
dramatic rise in hate crimes that has swept across the country.
A new report released Monday from the Federal Bureau of Investigation
finds that 10% of all hate crimes in the U.S. in 2022 took place at
schools, making them the country’s third most common location for hate
crimes.
Only homes (27%) and highways, roads or alleys (16%) saw more hate
crime offenses.
The report found that the number of reported hate crimes at schools —
from preschool through university — has risen steadily since 2020, when
officials recorded 500 hate crimes at school. In 2021, the number of
school-based offenses rose to 896 before hitting a high of more than
1,300 in 2022.
Those increases track with what FBI officials have described as a
worrisome rise in hate crimes overall, with the latest data showing a
record 11,643 incidents in 2022, surpassing the previous record of
almost 11,000 incidents in 2021.
Monday’s report is the first of its kind issued by the FBI, and
officials say it is not clear yet whether they will issue additional
reports on school-based hate crimes in the future.
“The goal is to draw attention to the data and to the occurrences of
hate crimes at schools giving possibly others the opportunity to
respond,” an FBI official told reporters Monday, briefing on the
condition of anonymity under ground rules established by the bureau.
“[This is] not a situation here where the bureau is looking to take
immediate action on this,” the official added. “But by providing the
information, we think that it enables our law enforcement partners to do
so.”
The report, which looked at data from the five-year period covering
2018 to 2022, found the most common hate crime offense was intimidation,
followed by vandalism and assault.
The most common hate crimes were anti-Black crimes (12.6%), followed
by anti-Jewish crimes (5.6%) and anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or
Transgender crimes (2.6%).
Anti-Muslim hate crimes were 0.5% of the total.
The FBI report also found that hate crimes in schools were more
frequent in October, November and December, with nearly a third of
school-based hate crimes taking place during those months.
Overall, the report said that more than 30% of children who were
victims of hate crimes over the five-year period were victimized at
school. Almost 36% of juvenile hate crime offenders committed the crimes
in school.
Almost two-thirds of the reported hate crimes took place in
preschools, elementary schools and high schools, according to the FBI
data.
As a kind of pendant to my previous post, I comment to you this by
Adam Roberts, which I thought of as I was writing: When I was a kid I
memorised — don’t laugh — the Bene Gesserit ‘Litany Against Fear’, and
used to repeat it quietly to myself when I was in a […]
Journalists
are burned out. Some newsrooms are fighting back.
date: 2024-01-29, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
On March 17, 2020 — one day after North Carolina public schools shut
down in the early stages of COVID-19 — Rupen Fofaria got a call from his
boss. Fofaria, then a reporter at the nonprofit newsroom EducationNC,
had spent the past year covering equity and differences within North
Carolina’s education system. Now, as schools…
Japan’s lander
wakes up, takes blurry snap of Moon
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Winter Night is coming
Japan’s Moon lander has woken up on the lunar surface and begun
transmitting data back to controllers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration
Agency (JAXA.)…
There’s a really extraordinary moment in George Eliot’s The Mill on
the Floss, a moment that says something profound about what we might
call the ecology of reading in the age of print. First, some background:
Mr. Tulliver – the father of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, the two central
characters in this novel – embarks […]
NYC
Volunteers Set Up Health Care for Ukrainian Refugees
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
For Ukrainians who fled the war and came to the United States,
getting access to the health care system remains one of the biggest
challenges. To help refugees in New York, a group of volunteers
organized a health fair where Ukrainians can receive the medical care
they need. Iryna Solomko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera:
Pavlo Terekhov
Some buy now, pay later platforms are testing out a new model:
subscription plans. For these companies, it’s another guaranteed revenue
stream and maybe a way to lock in loyal customers. But can they work
when paying later is the whole point? Plus, we’ll examine what
Evergrande’s liquidation means for the world’s second largest economy.
And squeamish listeners beware: We’ll hear how France is grappling with
its recent bedbug outbreak.
Iowa
Museum Plans to Tear Down Acclaimed Land Art Installation
date: 2024-01-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Known as the country’s first urban wetland project, “Greenwood Pond”
has been declared “no longer salvageable” due to financial constraints
and structural decay
If
Your Privacy Is in the Hands of Others Alone, You Don’t Have Any
date: 2024-01-29, from: Doc Searls (at Harvard), New Old Blog
In Patreon: Blocking platforms from sharing user video data is
unconstitutional, Ashley Belanger of Ars Technica reports that Patreon,
the widely used and much-trusted monetization platform for creative
folk, opposes the nearly absent personal privacy protections provided by
a law you probably haven’t heard of until now: the Video Privacy
Protection Act, or VPPA. Patreon […]
Amazon
calls off $1.7 billion iRobot buy, blames regulators
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Retailer steps back from Roomba-maker and 350 staff will have to step
back from a job
Amazon’s $1.7 billion bid to buy iRobot is off, and while Jeff Bezos’s
business faces a termination fee, almost a third of the vacuum cleaner
maker’s staff face termination of an altogether different nature.…
Hyundai
IONIQ 5 is becoming a top seller off the lot as dealers prep for EV
growth
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
Hyundai dealerships are modernizing as the brand looks to build upon its
growth in the EV market this year. Hyundai’s
IONIQ 5 is
already a top seller at some dealers. With new electric models rolling
out, like the three-row IONIQ 7 SUV, Hyundai has the “whole gamut
covered.”
Grocery
giant Loblaw doubles electric semi fleet, has 25 Tesla Semis on
order
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
Canadian grocery chain Loblaw announced that its doubled the size of its
fleet of zero-emission semi trucks by deploying 10 new, battery-electric
Freightliner eCascadia Class 8 trucks in Vancouver.
This article will discuss securing your phone after you’ve rooted it
and installed your preferred os (it will not discuss how to root your
phone or change the OS). Re-securing your phone requires the
installation of a custom AVB key, which not all phones support, so I’ll
only be discussing Google Pixel phones (which support […]
Axiom
Space Tests Lunar Spacesuit at NASA’s Johnson Space Center
date: 2024-01-29, from: NASA breaking news
As part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency is working to land
astronauts on the lunar surface during Artemis III, laying the
groundwork for a long-term human presence at the Moon for the benefit of
all. When the Artemis astronauts take their first steps near the South
Pole of the Moon, they will be wearing a […]
NASA’s
Webb Depicts Staggering Structure in 19 Nearby Spiral Galaxies
date: 2024-01-29, from: NASA breaking news
It’s oh-so-easy to be absolutely mesmerized by these spiral galaxies.
Follow their clearly defined arms, which are brimming with stars, to
their centers, where there may be old star clusters and – sometimes –
active supermassive black holes. Only NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope
can deliver highly detailed scenes of nearby galaxies in a combination
[…]
NASA
Marks Halfway Point for Artemis Moon Rocket Engine Certification
Series
date: 2024-01-29, from: NASA breaking news
NASA completed the sixth of 12 scheduled RS-25 engine certification
tests in a critical series for future flights of the agency’s SLS (Space
Launch System) rocket as engineers conducted a full-duration hot fire
Jan. 27 at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
The current series builds on previous hot fire testing conducted […]
A
note to people who make feeds, software that generates feeds, readers of
feeds and everyone else. FeedLand is
here as a way for me to get new ideas into the
feediverse. I’d like people to hear
me. It would have been nice if it were possible to help without spending
all this time making FeedLand, but that’s the way it goes. I’m not
patenting any of it, and it’s all open source. At some point, the
service, which I’m partnering with Automattic with on, will be a
for-profit venture, but not yet. And my main purpose is not the money,
it’s the ideas, the progress.
Disinformation
often gets blamed for swaying elections, but the research isn’t so
clear
date: 2024-01-29, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
Many countries face general elections this year. Political
campaigning will include misleading and even false information. Just
days ago, it was reported that a robocall impersonating U.S. president
Joe Biden had told recipients not to vote in the presidential primary.
But can disinformation significantly influence voting? There are two
typical styles of election campaigning. One…
DEA
nabs $150M from dark web drug lord based… in Coventry
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Plus: Dodgy ex-US official also sentenced for software and database
theft in big day for the courts
A dark web drug kingpin has handed more than $150 million in
cryptocurrency to US authorities and pleaded guilty to selling hundreds
of kilograms of drugs over the internet.…
BTW, these days the Dead philosophy, to me, is best expressed in
Ripple. It’s
about our best
intentions
and how powerless we are to live up to them. But what the F, let’s sing
about it! 😄
We were talking about music. All I do is create small jingles for my
podcast but every now and then I wonder about music theory. A while ago
I had saved Learn music
theory in half an hour by Andrew Huang to get back to it. But all I
had done about it was think to myself: Pick a scale, like this one, B
Major looks nice, OK, so full full half full full full half, that’s
these keys, OK, let me doodle around on these … beep beep boop boop …
here we go. Or maybe do the other one, full full full half full full
half … biep biep boup boup … all right! 🥳
But then I wonder: what would my next step be? Some days I look at the
circle of fifth and wonder if that’s hogwash. Non-European music doesn’t
need it! But then again, they also use something. There are
rules because people figured out what generally “works”. Well, on the
other hand there are books about many things and they are neither a
replacement for spending ten thousand hours practising and the rules
they espouse are often just there to get you started and then they are
immediately broken.
All I know when I look at a typical drum machine or tracker setup with
8⁄8 or similar I immediately want to do a
9⁄8
Karsilama or something like that. My wife’s oriental dancing and all
the Turkish, Arab, Iranian and Maghreb music we listened to must have
left an impression… Or confused the hell out of me, depending on your
perspective. Or mine.
Anyway, writing all of this and I’m still not making music. What next, I
wonder. Perhaps playing C Major and playing a bunch of notes it shares
with another scale and then continuing with that scale is cool. Or maybe
not. I don’t know. Or just stay in that scale and do some drum machine
and patterns below that!
That Synth Seeker video had a link to a
Key Cheat Sheet
Index. The effect is similar to picking scales in Garage Band or
Animoog: limiting the keys I use in order to stay in that scale. Works
for me!
All this listening and writing makes me realize that it’s Sunday, late
at night, I should go to bed, and then I’ll be working and playing
role-playing games and war-games every evening until the next week-end
comes around. Whaaat!
I must find time between the things I do to do the other things.
date: 2024-01-29, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
Facebook
is good for surfacing old stuff, like this picture from the 1990s,
me and Dave Jacobs at a
Potrero Hill
restaurant, looking much younger, before all the wear and tear.
The Daves (Jacobs and Winer) at a
Potrero Hill
restaurant in the 90s.
We had already been friends for a few years then. By total coincidence
we were both offered writing gigs at the then-new
Wired,
Dave as the Fetish columnist, where he wrote about all the latest tech
gadgetry, which was a perfect assignment for him, because Dave is one of
the most tech-literate people you’ll ever meet. Also an avid bike rider,
Deadhead, and later a receiver of donated kidneys, and a pioneer of the
technology for matching kidney donors with recipients. He has saved a
lot of lives with his software. And he’s still with us, against all
odds.
I was offered a column to basically write whatever I wanted to write
about, although by default I was supposed to write about the world wide
web, which was then as new as ChatGPT is today and every bit as
exciting. You can find our respective columns somewhere I hope on the
web.
Just chatted with him last night during the
Niners
game. The only football team I’ve ever loved, from back in the
Joe Montana
days.
A woman will spend a little more than 11 years in federal prison for
possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and having a
firearm after being convicted of a felony.
GDOE:
Public school special education revamp in progress
date: 2024-01-29, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Department of Education’s special education program is
undergoing a revamp, according to the division’s assistant
superintendent, who told The Guam Daily Post they are infusing new
energy into the program.
GDOE
students to take practice test ahead of Smarter Balance
date: 2024-01-29, from: Guam Daily Post
Guam Department of Education students in grades three through 11 will
have the opportunity to take a practice test before being gauged for
proficiency using the new summative assessment tool.
New
hospital, medical complex: Options unclear with bills’ failure
date: 2024-01-29, from: Guam Daily Post
With both bills to advance health care on the island through the
selection of a site to build a medical complex and new hospital failing
on the session floor, it’s unclear what options are left and how elected
leaders will…
Governor
says more information needed to decide on nuclear ban
date: 2024-01-29, from: Guam Daily Post
Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said she wouldn’t want to completely shut Guam
out of any energy options without thoroughly understanding how that
energy works, and she will have to obtain more information before
deciding whether she would veto a measure…
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'
The awesomest part is that they don’t go in their own venvs or dockers
or chroots or their own li’l boring & redundant worlds. Instead it’s
all according to traditional Debian philosophy, all part of the same
file system with no redundancy.
California
cops shot in 2022 ambush were not verbally warned by dispatcher that
suspect had gun, was on PCP
date: 2024-01-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A 911 caller informed police about the dangers posed by Justin
Flores, but a veteran dispatcher failed to alert responding officers
over their radios. Instead, she typed it into their patrol car
consoles.
GPS
interference now a major flight safety concern for airline industry
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
You’re wrong to think that jammin’ was a thing of the past
Europe’s aviation safety body is working with the airline industry to
counter a danger posed by interference with GPS signals - now seen as a
growing threat to the safety of air travel.…
this project needs a name and a domain. After many years of playing
with YAML in k8s, I’ve returned to using CFEngine (at work). The last
config management software before that was Puppet. An issue I see with
all modern config management tooling is the lack of monitoring and the
impossibility to cleanly roll back. In k8s it works better, but that’s
only for pods running in k8s (which are stateless), not the underlying
machines.
Tesla
is defending Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet all the way to the Fifth
Circuit
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
Tesla is taking up a fight to defend Elon Musk’s tweet that threatened
to remove employee stock options if they decide to unionize all the way
to the Fifth Circuit court of appeal.
Current conditions: Warm temperatures in the
Pacific Northwest and Central Plains could set daily records • Jet
stream to dump “extended” rain on California • It’ll hit nearly 60
degrees today in Kansas City, whose Chiefs are headed to the Super Bowl
for the fourth time in five years to face the San Francisco 49ers.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Earnings calls continue — and with them, EV insights
Earnings season continues this week with 106 S&P 500 companies on
deck
to
report to investors in the next five days. Upcoming calls with
automakers in particular could offer additional insight into the
purported
“slowing” of the electric vehicle market. Here is where things currently
stand:
General Motors reports Tuesday. In December, the
company halted sales of its 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV over issues with
software and charging, and it postponed a $4 billion electric truck
plant in Michigan last year as well. GM says it sold
19,469
EVs in Q4, down slightly from the quarter before.
Ford reports next week. The company has significantly
reduced production of its
F-150
Lightning.
Polestar’s Q4 results won’t be released until the end of
February, but the Volvo-owned brand “cut about 15% of its
global workforce [last week] in response to what it described as
‘challenging market conditions’ and lower volume expectations in 2025,”
The Wall Street Journalreports.
Last week, Tesla projected “notably slower” growth for
the year ahead. The company “is clearly trying to figure out what to do
next,”
wroteHeatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin.
EU climate chief warns against ‘false narrative’ that climate action
and business interests are at odds
The European Union’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, said that the
energy transition will mean a “heavy change” for industries on the
continent but warned against the “false narrative” that climate action
comes at the cost of business and innovation, The Financial
Timesreported
Monday. Hoekstra’s comments came ahead of an intended proposal by
Brussels that the EU cut emissions by 90% of 1990 levels by 2040.
While the aggressive proposition would need to be agreed upon by EU
governments before becoming law, environmental regulations have already
rankled farmers in Germany, Poland, Romania, Belgium, and France — where
farmers
even threatened to put Paris
“under
siege” on Monday — while right-wing politicians have attacked green
policies and industrialists have blamed “red tape” for holding up
innovation. “We need to stand on two legs: one leg is climate action,
the other leg is the just transition, competitiveness, and a thriving
business community, because both are needed,” Hoekstra said.
Food sustainability activists chuck soup at the Mona Lisa
On Sunday, a pair of activists
threw
soup at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre museum in Paris — although
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, which has
seen
this kind of thing before and resides safely behind fortified glass,
was not damaged.
83eACTION EN COURS - PARIS janvier. 10h00 citoyennes engag0e9es avec la
nouvelle campagne Riposte Alimentaire ont asperg0e9 de soupe le tableau
01cLa Joconde01d mondialement connu, expos0e9 au Mus0e9e du Louvre.
[1]#RiposteAlimentaire #A22Network #Joconde #Louvre
— (@)
The demonstrators identified themselves as belonging to Riposte
Alimentaire, which The Washington Postdescribes
as a “food security protest group” under the umbrella of the A22
Network, which also includes the climate groups Just Stop Oil and Last
Generation. “Farmers are squeezed by the pressures of mass distribution,
going so far as to make them sell at a loss,” Riposte Alimentaire said
in French, according to the Post. “Our agricultural and food
system also has extremely worrying environmental consequences.”
Get Heatmap AM in your inbox every morning:
Chicago faces uphill battle to ban gas from new construction
Last week, Chicago Mayor Mayor Brandon introduced an ordinance that
would ban natural gas for cooking and heating in most new construction.
“This is a critical first step for [Chicago] to take towards a planned
transition away from fossil fuels,” Leslie Perkins, the chief of staff
and policy director for the city’s Committee on Environmental Protection
and Energy,
toldUtility Drive at the time. However, the ordinance faces an
uphill battle, The Chicago Tribune argued in
a
Sunday editorial. “Better to wait and see what the statewide policy
is on the future of natural gas,” the authors wrote, stressing examples
like Berkeley, California, which has been unable to enforce its version
of a gas ban after a federal appeals court ruled the city doesn’t have
the authority. Additionally, “much of the power keeping lights on in
Chicagoland comes from nuclear energy (which doesn’t emit carbon) and,
ironically enough, gas (which does),” the op-ed authors pointed out.
“It’s not economically feasible to build new nuclear plants at present,
so any increased electricity demand will be met mostly by burning gas.”
Maui County identifies 100th and final Lahaina wildfire victim
Over the weekend, Maui police identified the 100th victim of the August
8 Lahaina wildfire as Lydia Coloma, 70. She was also the last
unidentified victim and was ID’ed using “the context of the location
where the remains were found,” rather than by DNA or other methods,
The Associated Pressreports.
Coloma is one of
nine
members of her family who died in the wildfire, as well as the first
victim to be identified since November 11. Police said three other
people still remain unaccounted for, down from more than 1,000 in the
immediate aftermath of the fire.
THE KICKER
“What lies for the future for the Osage? Energy is the front end of
our business. The other part of it is the environmental stewardship of
this reservation.” —Everett Waller, chairman of the Osage Minerals
Council, who also plays Paul Red Eagle in Killers of the Flower
Moon. A federal judge has
sided
with the Osage Nation against Italian utility Enel, which has been
ordered to remove 84 wind turbines from tribal land found in violation
of the Osage mineral estate.
Consumer spending ticked up in December, and more people are swiping
their credit cards. Part of the reason folks are more comfortable
putting it on plastic is confidence in the overall job market. But
delinquency rates have been climbing too. We’ll hear what economists
make of these trends. Also: United Airlines in talks with Airbus and
ripple effects of liquidation orders for property giant Evergrande.
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
40 years on, it’s still widely misunderstood
Apple launched the original 128 kB Macintosh around 40 years ago, and in
so doing changed the computer industry, in ways that a lot of people
still don’t fully understand.…
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-30, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Microsoft is
reporting
that a Russian intelligence agency—the same one responsible for
SolarWinds—accessed the email system of the company’s executives.
Beginning in late November 2023, the threat actor used a password spray
attack to compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account and
gain a foothold, and then used the account’s permissions to access a
very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including
members of our senior leadership team and employees in our
cybersecurity, legal, and other functions, and exfiltrated some emails
and attached documents. The investigation indicates they were initially
targeting email accounts for information related to Midnight Blizzard
itself. …
Once
Upon a Click: Librarian’s Fairy Tale Journey with the Internet
Archive
date: 2024-01-29, from: Internet Archive Blog
Once upon a time, Liz Gotauco fell in love with fairy tales. That is,
making videos while retelling them with some quirky twists. By day,
Gotauco is a full-time public […]
From the BBC World Service: Evergrande was once China’s biggest
property developer. Now, a judge in Hong Kong has ordered the
liquidation of the debt-laden real estate giant, but Evergrande says
it’ll continue on China’s mainland. And French farmers take their fight
over red tape and environmental policies to Paris. Plus, we hear how
that city is tackling the problem of bedbugs ahead of the Summer
Olympics.
Cruise
being investigated over car crash that dragged victim along the
road
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Plus: George Carlin’s family suing creators who used AI to rip off his
comedy, and more
AI in brief The US Department of Justice and
Securities Exchange Commission are both launching investigations into
the Cruise accident that hit a woman and dragged her for six meters (20
feet) under the wheels of its driverless car.…
Does everything actually suck right now? Or is it just the end of
January?
It can be difficult to tell. We’re officially in the thick of what
Americans consider to be the
worst
time of year, when complaining about the weather is an acceptable
salutation and feeling “blah” is the basic condition of being alive.
Even setting aside seasonal affective disorder — a condition linked to
limited
daylight, and thus not
directly
affected by climate change —
studies
have shown that people have a lower quality diet in the winter, and
body weight usually reaches its peak this time of year. Physical
activity, which is also important for mental health, dips as the weather
gets worse, and research has even shown that people with Alzheimer’s
disease experience more severe symptoms when the planet is tilted away
from the sun.
Some have taken these winter blues as an opportunity to question the
basic premise that climate change is bad. “The chief benefits of global
warming” include “fewer winter deaths” and lower heating bills, Matt
Ridley
argued
in The Spectator in 2013. Former President Donald Trump even
has
a quasi-annual tradition of tweeting something like “Wouldn’t be
bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right
now!” during cold snaps this time of year.
Winter is, in fact, warming
faster
than any other season in the United States, with some parts of the
country on track to lose over a month of freezing days as soon as 2050.
Even if you do believe — correctly — that climate change is a global
catastrophe, unless you’re
a
skier or snowboarder, this might sound like a good thing. So, as
sacrilegious as it feels to ask, could a warmer planet make us
healthier in the wintertime?
When I asked Leslie Davenport, a climate psychology educator at the
California Institute of Integral Studies, if she expected milder winters
to impact people psychologically, she answered immediately. “Oh, one
hundred percent!,” she told me. That doesn’t mean she thinks the impact
will be positive. She said she has heard people “who are a little more
on the climate denial end of things” make comments like “this is great,
it used to be so cold and now I can go golfing,” she told me, but “I
can’t honestly call that an upside.”
Far more often, Davenport said she hears from people experiencing a
sense of “unsettling” as they notice winter isn’t as cold or as snowy as
they remember it being. Some might even express a feeling of
“solastalgia,” a neologism that describes the sense of displacement or
nostalgia that arises when a place changes environmentally. “Whether
it’s the loss of snow, or areas that are drier or hotter or wetter, it
is like, ‘Well, this is not the town I grew up in or the place I chose
to move to because it has changed so much,’” Davenport said.
While there might be an abstract appeal to the Los Angelesification of
winter nationwide, it would be a mistake to count on climate change
making the season “better.” Quite the opposite, actually — warmer
winters could make winter much worse, especially for those
living in midlatitude cities like New York, London, or Amsterdam. “I
have observed, in my travels and my research and in talking to people,
that it is often much easier and more pleasant to cope with winter
weather that is slightly below freezing consistently than weather that
is slightly above freezing consistently,” Kari Leibowitz, a health
psychologist who is working on a book about
winter
mindsets, told me.
Cold temperatures can actually improve our lives in several ways,
Leibowitz argued. For one thing, snowfall “opens up a whole bunch of
winter opportunities” like sledding, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, and all
those winter sports that get people out of the house. That helps combat
some of the bluesiness that otherwise comes from moping around indoors
when it’s too gray and rainy to do anything active. Frozen lakes offer
opportunities for skating and hockey, plus “there’s also a lot of beauty
and intrigue in ice — you know, icicles and frozen rainstorms,”
Leibowitz went on.
Snow, meanwhile, “reflects the light, so it makes the darkness of winter
feel much, much brighter,” Leibowitz said. “And most people think it’s
really beautiful — it’s clean and fresh and it smells good.”
Of course, winter weather can be dangerous, too, but “places that are
colder and have really frozen winters have good infrastructure for
dealing with that, and houses tend to be better insulated and heated
more efficiently,” Leibowitz said. Bad winter weather can also give us
much-needed
permission
to rest.
While there are certain places further in the south, such as Atlanta,
where winter might genuinely become more pleasant as the planet warms,
“there are far more places where the end of winter is just going to mean
places are dark and wet,” without the upsides that come with the snow
and freezing temperatures, Leibowitz stressed.
Michael Varnum, the head of the Culture and Ecology Laboratory at
Arizona State University and a specialist in
seasonal
psychology, did find one positive. “Nobody likes to feel down, or to
look at their waistline and see it’s grown,” he told me. “So
potentially, there could be some upsides there.”
Naturally, much of how you feel about winter will depend on the climate
where you live. In general, though, “we are somewhat more insulated from
the changes in temperature that come with the seasons than we were, say,
10,000 years ago or even a couple hundred years ago,” Varnum said.
Feelings of climate anxiety and distress tend to be highest in
Indigenous communities in or near the Arctic, where the cold weather is
a part of cultural identity and inheritance. Likewise, Davenport told
me, in “places where there tends to be a lot of snow” like Japan or
Finland, “there’s talk about things like ‘winter grief,’” where a milder
winter makes it so that “certain rituals or holidays that have been
planned in the past can’t happen anymore or as consistently.”
Many Americans, too,
lose
a sense of themselves when winter gets milder. “It’s what a lot of
us love about living here: our winters,” Erich Osterberg, a Dartmouth
climate scientist,
told
The New Hampshire Bulletin in 2022. “It’s more than changes
to the climate,” he added, “it’s changes to our livelihood and our
culture.” I encountered similar comments from Minnesotans when I was
looking into how an unseasonably dry winter is imperiling this year’s
cross country ski season: “Spiritually, this is terrible,” Claire
Wilson, the executive director of Minneapolis’ Loppet Foundation,
recently
told
the Star Tribune.
Winter doesn’t have to be dreaded, Leibowitz said — much of one’s
enjoyment of the season comes down to
mindset.
But it does seem to matter that winter is actually, well,
wintery, too. Whether that’s a question of our evolutionary
seasonal biology (winter appears to be an important trigger for
the
human reproductive cycle, for one thing), or a matter of our
cultural practices, or something as simple as snow being more fun than
rain, it’s hard to make the case that warming winters will leave us
better off.
“If you want me to find the psychological upside of anything, I could
maybe do it,” Leibowitz confessed. She added, though, that “a lot of
people think, ‘I hate winter, I hate the cold, I would be happy if it
was warmer all year round.’ But people underestimate how much there is
to be lost in losing winter.”
US
to use AI to track the impact of offshore wind on endangered whales
date: 2024-01-29, from: Electrek Feed
Two US environmental agencies say they will start using AI to better
monitor the impact of offshore wind farms on marine animals,
particularly endangered North American right whales, of which there are
only about 360 left in the world.
Biden
says US ‘shall respond’ after drone strike by Iran-backed group kills 3
US troops in Jordan
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>COLUMBIA, S.C. — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the U.S. “shall respond” after three American troops were killed and dozens more were injured in an overnight drone strike in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. Biden blamed Iran-backed militias for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes by such groups against American forces across the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.</p>
Most
Americans feel they pay too much in taxes, AP-NORC poll finds
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — A majority of taxpayers feel they pay too much in taxes, with many saying that they receive a poor value in return, according to a new poll from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.</p>
<p>An Orchidland woman is recovering — and seeking answers — after a hit-and-run incident involving her and her 4-year-old daughter earlier this month.</p>
Proposed
Kona Vistas project to go before Land Use Commission
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A proposed Kona development that has spent decades in planning and is vehemently opposed by neighboring communities will be in front of the state Land Use Commission on Feb. 7 to address questions related to the project.</p>
Mahomes,
Chiefs knock off top-seeded Ravens to return to Super Bowl. Niners rally
past Lions
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>BALTIMORE (AP) — Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce were at their magnificent best in the first half, and Kansas City’s defense was superb against Lamar Jackson and Baltimore, helping the Chiefs reach the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years with a 17-10 victory over the Ravens in the AFC championship game Sunday.</p>
<p>The Kamehameha Schools - Hawai‘i boys varsity basketball team secured its No. 1 spot in BIIF Division I — emerging victorious, 49-46, from a scrappy and fast-paced showdown against home standing Hilo High on Saturday night.</p>
<p>KAILUA-KONA — The final high school swim meet of the 2024 winter season took place at the Central Pacific Bank/Big Island Interscholastic Federation (BIIF) Swimming Championships on Saturday at the Kona Community Aquatic Center, drawing a crowd from all over the island. Trial runs additionally took place Friday in the same pool. The Hawaii High School Athletic Association (HHSAA) Swim Meets will take place tentatively in Maui. (Conor Langs/West Hawaii Today)</p>
<p>KAILUA-KONA — The Big Island Interscholastic Federation (BIIF) wrestling season reached its midway point Saturday in Kealakehe High School’s gymnasium — hosting all island schools in the weekly boys-and-girls meet. This weekend was additionally the first meet on the west side of the island, drawing a large crowd to watch the young stars compete.</p>
House
GOP releases impeachment articles in bid to oust Homeland Security’s
Mayorkas over the border
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Sunday released two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as they vowed to swiftly push forward with election-year efforts to oust him over what they call his failure to manage the U.S.-Mexico border. The rare step against a Cabinet member drew outrage from Democrats and the agency as a politically motivated stunt lacking the constitutional basis to remove Mayorkas from office.</p>
Israel
notes ‘significant gaps’ after cease-fire talks with US, Qatar, Egypt
but says constructive
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israel said “significant gaps” remain after cease-fire talks Sunday with the United States, Qatar and Egypt but called them constructive and said they would continue in the week ahead, a tentative sign of progress on a potential agreement that could see Israel pause military operations against Hamas in exchange for the release of remaining hostages.</p>
French
farmers aim to put Paris ‘under siege’ in tractor protest. Activists
hurl soup at ‘Mona Lisa’
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PARIS — France’s interior ministry on Sunday ordered a large deployment of security forces around Paris as angry farmers threatened to head toward the capital, hours after climate activists hurled soup at the glass protecting the “Mona Lisa” painting at the Louvre Museum.</p>
Biden
is trying to balance Gaza protests and free speech rights as
demonstrators disrupt his events
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>MANASSAS, Va. — 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.</p>
Ex-Prime
Minister Alexander Stubb wins first round of Finland’s presidential vote
to set up a runoff
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>HELSINKI — Former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb won the first round of Finland’s presidential election Sunday and will face runner-up ex-Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto in a runoff next month.</p>
Apprenticeships
can help workers in a dynamic economy
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>After graduating from high school in Vernal, Utah, Kray Haslem spent seven years gaining the licenses and experience he needed to become a commercial airline pilot. In 2019, Kray was working as a flight instructor to gain flight hours and advance his career. One day, he was on a practice flight with a student when shortly after takeoff, the engine failed and the plane crashed.</p>
North
Korea says leader Kim supervised tests of cruise missiles designed to be
fired from submarines
date: 2024-01-29, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised test firings of new cruise missiles designed to be launched from submarines and also reviewed efforts to build a nuclear-powered submarine while reiterating his goal of building a nuclear-armed navy to counter what he portrays as growing external threats, state media said Monday.</p>
That
runaway datacenter power grab is the best news for net zero this
century
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
We’ve been working on the solution for 70 years. It’s there if we want
it
Opinion Datacenter power is a shocking business. The
latest report from the International Energy Agency makes some
hair-raising predictions, such as Irish datacenter electricity usage
making up a third of that country’s total juice budget by 2026.…
Checks totaling about $3.5 million will be going out to more than 50
businesses as part of the first batch of aid under the Local Employers
Assistance Program Supplemental Grant II, according to Guam Economic
Development Authority CEO and Administrator…
Pluralistic:
I assure you, an AI didn’t write a terrible “George Carlin” routine (29
Jan 2024)
date: 2024-01-29, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links I assure you, an AI didn’t write a terrible “George
Carlin” routine: The Mechanical Turk would like to have a word with all
of us. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history:
2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications,
upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading I
assure you, an AI didn’t write a terrible “George Carlin” routine
(permalink) On Hallowe’en 1974, Ronald Clark O’Bryan murdered his son
with poisoned candy. He needed the insurance money, and he knew that
Halloween poisonings were rampant, so he figured he’d get away with it.
He was wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Clark_O%27Bryan The
stories of Hallowe’en poisonings were just that – stories. No one was
poisoning kids on Hallowe’en – except this monstrous murderer, who
mistook rampant scare stories for truth and assumed (incorrectly) that
his murder would blend in with the crowd. Last week, the dudes behind
the “comedy” podcast Dudesy released a “George Carlin” comedy special
that they claimed had been created, holus bolus, by an AI trained on the
comedian’s routines. This was a lie. After the Carlin estate sued, the
dudes admitted that they had written the (remarkably unfunny) “comedy”
special:
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/george-carlins-heirs-sue-comedy-podcast-over-ai-generated-impression/
As I’ve written, we’re nowhere near the point where an AI can do your
job, but we’re well past the point where your boss can be suckered into
firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week
AI systems can do some remarkable party tricks, but there’s a huge
difference between producing a plausible sentence and a good one. After
the initial rush of astonishment, the stench of botshit becomes
unmistakable:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy
Some of this botshit comes from people who are sold a bill of goods:
they’re convinced that they can make a George Carlin special without any
human intervention and when the bot fails, they manufacture their own
botshit, assuming they must be bad at prompting the AI. This is an old
technology story: I had a friend who was contracted to livestream a
Canadian awards show in the earliest days of the web. They booked in
multiple ISDN lines from Bell Canada and set up an impressive Mbone
encoding station on the wings of the stage. Only one problem: the ISDNs
flaked (this was a common problem with ISDNs!). There was no way to
livecast the show. Nevertheless, my friend’s boss’s ordered him to go on
pretending to livestream the show. They made a big deal of it, with all
kinds of cool visualizers showing the progress of this futuristic
marvel, which the cameras frequently lingered on, accompanied by
overheated narration from the show’s hosts. The weirdest part? The next
day, my friend – and many others – heard from satisfied viewers who
boasted about how amazing it had been to watch this show on their
computers, rather than their TVs. Remember: there had been no stream.
These people had just assumed that the problem was on their end – that
they had failed to correctly install and configure the multiple browser
plugins required. Not wanting to admit their technical incompetence,
they instead boasted about how great the show had been. It was the
Emperor’s New Livestream. Perhaps that’s what happened to the Dudesy
bros. But there’s another possibility: maybe they were captured by their
own imaginations. In “Genesis,” an essay in the 2007 collection The
Creationists, EL Doctorow (no relation) describes how the ancient
Babylonians were so poleaxed by the strange wonder of the story they
made up about the origin of the universe that they assumed that it must
be true. They themselves weren’t nearly imaginative enough to have come
up with this super-cool tale, so God must have put it in their minds:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/29/gedankenexperimentwahn/#high-on-your-own-supply
That seems to have been what happened to the Air Force colonel who
falsely claimed that a “rogue AI-powered drone” had spontaneously
evolved the strategy of killing its operator as a way of clearing the
obstacle to its main objective, which was killing the enemy:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/ayyyyyy-eyeeeee/ This never happened.
It was – in the chagrined colonel’s words – a “thought experiment.” In
other words, this guy – who is the USAF’s Chief of AI Test and
Operations – was so excited about his own made up story that he forgot
it wasn’t true and told a whole conference-room full of people that it
had actually happened. Maybe that’s what happened with the George
Carlinbot 3000: the Dudesy dudes fell in love with their own vision for
a fully automated luxury Carlinbot and forgot that they had made it up,
so they just cheated, assuming they would eventually be able to make a
fully operational Battle Carlinbot. That’s basically the Theranos story:
a teenaged “entrepreneur” was convinced that she was just about to
produce a seemingly impossible, revolutionary diagnostic machine, so she
faked its results, abetted by investors, customers and others who wanted
to believe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos The thing about
stories of AI miracles is that they are peddled by both AI’s boosters
and its critics. For boosters, the value of these tall tales is obvious:
if normies can be convinced that AI is capable of performing miracles,
they’ll invest in it. They’ll even integrate it into their product
offerings and then quietly hire legions of humans to pick up the botshit
it leaves behind. These abettors can be relied upon to keep the defects
in these products a secret, because they’ll assume that they’ve
committed an operator error. After all, everyone knows that AI can do
anything, so if it’s not performing for them, the problem must exist
between the keyboard and the chair. But this would only take AI so far.
It’s one thing to hear implausible stories of AI’s triumph from the
people invested in it – but what about when AI’s critics repeat those
stories? If your boss thinks an AI can do your job, and AI critics are
all running around with their hair on fire, shouting about the coming AI
jobpocalypse, then maybe the AI really can do your job?
https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/ There’s a
name for this kind of criticism: “criti-hype,” coined by Lee Vinsel, who
points to many reasons for its persistence, including the fact that it
constitutes an “academic business-model”:
https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5
That’s four reasons for AI hype: I. to win investors and customers; II.
to cover customers’ and users’ embarrassment when the AI doesn’t
perform; III. AI dreamers so high on their own supply that they can’t
tell truth from fantasy; IV. A business-model for doomsayers who form an
unholy alliance with AI companies by parroting their silliest hype in
warning form. But there’s a fifth motivation for criti-hype: to simplify
otherwise tedious and complex situations. As Jamie Zawinski writes, this
is the motivation behind the obvious lie that the “autonomous cars” on
the streets of San Francisco have no driver:
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/driverless-cars-always-have-a-driver/
GM’s Cruise division was forced to shutter its SF operations after one
of its “self-driving” cars dragged an injured pedestrian for 20 feet:
https://www.wired.com/story/cruise-robotaxi-self-driving-permit-revoked-california/
One of the widely discussed revelations in the wake of the incident was
that Cruise employed 1.5 skilled technical remote overseers for every
one of its “self-driving” cars. In other words, they had replaced a
single low-waged cab driver with 1.5 higher-paid remote operators. As
Zawinski writes, SFPD is well aware that there’s a human being (or more
than one human being) responsible for every one of these cars – someone
who is formally at fault when the cars injure people or damage property.
Nevertheless, SFPD and SFMTA maintain that these cars can’t be cited for
moving violations because “no one is driving them.” But figuring out who
which person is responsible for a moving violation is “complicated and
annoying to deal with,” so the fiction persists. (Zawinski notes that
even when these people are held responsible, they’re a “moral crumple
zone” for the company that decided to enroll whole cities in
nonconsensual murderbot experiments.) Automation hype has always
involved hidden humans. The most famous of these was the “mechanical
Turk” hoax: a supposed chess-playing robot that was just a puppet
operated by a concealed human operator wedged awkwardly into its
carapace. This pattern repeats itself through the ages. Thomas Jefferson
“replaced his slaves” with dumbwaiters – but of course, dumbwaiters
don’t replace slaves, they hide slaves:
https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/behind-the-dumbwaiter/ The modern
Mechanical Turk – a division of Amazon that employs low-waged
“clickworkers,” many of them overseas – modernizes the dumbwaiter by
hiding low-waged workforces behind a veneer of automation. The MTurk is
an abstract “cloud” of human intelligence (the tasks MTurks perform are
called “HITs,” which stands for “Human Intelligence Tasks”). This is
such a truism that techies in India joke that “AI” stands for “absent
Indians.” Or, to use Jathan Sadowski’s wonderful term: “Potemkin AI”:
https://reallifemag.com/potemkin-ai/ This Potemkin AI is everywhere you
look. When Tesla unveiled its humanoid robot Optimus, they made a big
flashy show of it, promising a $20,000 automaton was just on the
horizon. They failed to mention that Optimus was just a person in a
robot suit:
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/elon-musk-tesla-robot-optimus-ai
Likewise with the famous demo of a “full self-driving” Tesla, which
turned out to be a canned fake:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-self-driving-was-staged-engineer-testifies-2023-01-17/
The most shocking and terrifying and enraging AI demos keep turning out
to be “Just A Guy” (in Molly White’s excellent parlance):
https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1751670561606971895 And yet, we
keep falling for it. It’s no wonder, really: criti-hype rewards so many
different people in so many different ways that it truly offers
something for everyone. (Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; Ross Breadmore, CC
BY 2.0; modified) Hey look at this (permalink) Artifice, Ruse &
Subterfuge: The Expert at the Card Table
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTVpY3ZPoIk (h/t Jonathan Steigman) This
day in history (permalink) #20yrsago First corporate sponsorship for an
MMORPG guild
https://web.archive.org/web/20040426073811/https://www.warcry.com/scripts/columns/view_sectionalt.phtml?site=15&id=108&colid=1675
#20yrsago More non-evil social network ideas
https://web.archive.org/web/20040217043710/http://www.ambiguous.org/archive.php3/2004/01/30#quinn2004130.1
#20yrsago When spam-filters attack
https://web.archive.org/web/20040529003653/https://www.oblomovka.com/entries/2004/01/30#1075490400
#20yrsago Mobile interface myths
https://web.archive.org/web/20040205050015/https://www.acm.org/chapters/chi-sqrd/meetings/20040310.html
#20yrsago Totalitarian trusted computing
https://web.archive.org/web/20040205084716/http://costik.com/weblog/2004_01_01_blogchive.html#107547544736650899
#20yrsago Your customers don’t want DRM, part MMMCCXI
https://www.wired.com/2004/01/stores-nix-disposable-flicks/ #20yrsago
Jason Schultz on American Blind versus Google
https://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/ #20yrsago BugMeNot: circumvent
annoying registration https://bugmenot.com #20yrsago Hundreds of BBCers
protest director’s resignation
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3442825.stm #20yrsago Marxist
fairy tales
https://web.archive.org/web/20040420002251/http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Audiopage.html
#15yrsago Bruce Sterling on our global psychosis, ca. 2009
https://web.archive.org/web/20090201010959/http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2009/01/2009_will_be_a_year_of_panic.php
#15yrsago Digital Britain report proposes to save Britain’s future by
destroying the Internet
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/digital-britain-leaving-consumers-out-of-the-picture/
#15yrsago UK fingerprints foreign six-year-old children at the border
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jan/29/eu-idcards
#10yrsago Not just Environment and Health: Canadian government attacks
libraries from 12 ministries
https://web.archive.org/web/20140303074337/www.desmog.ca/2014/01/27/loss-librarians-devastating-science-and-knowledge-canada
#10yrsago Republican Congressman threatens to kill reporter after State
of the Union
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/01/29/1273288/-GOP-Congressman-Threatens-to-Kill-Report-After-SOTU
#10yrsago Network Solutions not sure if it will opt random customers
into $1,850 “domain protection” plan
https://www.techdirt.com/2014/01/28/network-solutions-tries-to-auto-enroll-users-into-its-1850year-domain-protection-plan/
#10yrsago Writers Guild of America tells US government that copyright
shouldn’t trump free expression
https://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-writers-warn-against-draconian-anti-piracy-measures-140127/
#10yrsago Top lawyer finds GCHQ spying is illegal & UK spies who
help US drone strike may be accessories to murder
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/28/gchq-mass-surveillance-spying-law-lawyer
#10yrsago Extorted out of a one-character Twitter ID by a hacker who
seized control of Godaddy domains https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-24eb09e026dd
#10yrsago Rob Ford sued for jailhouse beating of his ex-brother-in-law
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/brother-in-law-abused-in-jail-to-keep-quiet-about-rob-fords-drug-use-lawsuit-alleges/article16590910/
#10yrsago Finally, a legal challenge to US warrantless wiretapping that
beats the Catch-22
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/01/in-rare-move-terrorism-suspect-challenges-core-of-warrentless-snooping-law/
#10yrsago Detailed timeline of the Bletchley Park mess
https://freelance.halfacree.co.uk/2014/01/disharmony-at-bletchley-park/
#10yrsago Key 3D printing patent expired yesterday
https://3dprint.com/387/laser-sintering-3d-printing-may-now-take-off-with-a-very-important-patent-expiring-today/
#10yrsago NSA phone-records spying is totally, utterly illegal
https://www.techdirt.com/2014/01/28/almost-everything-about-bulk-collection-phone-data-is-illegal/
#10yrsago North Carolina’s Lake Norman Regional Medical Center charges
patient $81,000 for $750 worth of snakebite medicine
https://www.christianpost.com/news/hospital-charges-snake-bitten-man-81k-for-anti-venom-available-online-for-750-after-18-hour-stay.html
#5yrsago American prisoners coerced or tricked into providing
voice-prints for use in eternal, secret, unchecked surveillance
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/prison-voice-prints-databases-securus/
#5yrsago After $4.1 billion subsidy, Foxconn cancels plan to build
Wisconsin “factory,” now proposing a small R&D facility
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18203442/foxconn-wisconsin-lcd-factory-over-jobs-louis-woo
#5yrsago Facebook cancels its all-spying, secret “research” program,
Apple cancels Facebook’s developer account
https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2019/1/30/18203349/facebook-research-app-apple-shutdown
#5yrsago Blackmailers use false copyright claims to shut down victims’
Youtube accounts, offer to lift them in exchange for Bitcoin
https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-strikes-now-being-used-as-scammers-extortion-tool/
#5yrsago Conducting “evil” computer research, in the name of good
https://chi4evil.wordpress.com #5yrsago Discarded smart lightbulbs
reveal your wifi passwords, stored in the clear
https://limitedresults.com/2019/01/pwn-the-lifx-mini-white/ #5yrsago
Project Atlas: Facebook has been secretly paying Iphone users to install
an all-surveilling “VPN” app
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/ #5yrsago
Undercover who targeted Citizen Lab over Israeli cyber-arms dealer is an
ex-Israeli spook linked to black ops firm used by Harvey Weinstein
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/black-cube-nso-citizen-lab-intelligence.html
#5yrsago Major vulnerability in 5G means that anyone with $500 worth of
gear can spy on a wide area’s mobile activity
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/5g-protocol-may-still-be-vulnerable-imsi-catchers
#5yrsago Citing terms of service and “bad actors,” Facebook locks out
tools that catalog ads and ad targeting
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-blocks-ad-transparency-tools
#5yrsago A 70% tax on income over $10m is designed to correct
inequality, not raise revenue
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/28/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-70-percent-tax-rich-isnt-about-revenue-its-about
#5yrsago Words, but not deeds: the Democrats as climate-deniers
https://jacobin.com/2019/01/climate-change-2020-democrats-green-new-deal
#5yrsago The EU’s plan for algorithmic copyright filters is looking more
and more unlikely
https://memex.craphound.com/2019/01/29/the-eus-plan-for-algorithmic-copyright-filters-is-looking-more-and-more-unlikely/
#1yrago “Conversational” AI Is Really Bad At Conversations
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/29/conversational-ai-is-really-bad-at-conversations/
#1yrago The real scandal is overclassification
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/30/i-come-to-a-land-downunder/#but-id-have-to-kill-you
Colophon (permalink) Today’s top sources: Currently writing: A Little
Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING Picks and Shovels, a
Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING
TOR BOOKS JAN 2025 The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about
the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024 Vigilant,
Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON
TOR.COM Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests.
FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Latest podcast: What kind of bubble is AI?
https://craphound.com/news/2024/01/21/what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/
Upcoming appearances: 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,
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gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla
The problem of large numbers of asylum seekers trying to cross the
Channel in small boats is one, I confess, that I have avoided thinking
about too much — and I therefore understand few of the subtleties
involved. So I was particularly taken by this BBC piece, which follows
one 14-year-old boy, Obada, who died
Continue
Reading
date: 2024-01-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition.
Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the
Classifieds.
One
person’s shortcut was another’s long road to panic
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Clever techie thought of everything – except someone else’s stupidity
Who, Me? Why hello, dear reader – fancy seeing you
here again on a Monday – the slot we The Register reserves for
a fresh installment of Who, Me? in which Register readers share
their tales of tech tribulations.…
ICANN
proposes creating .INTERNAL domain to do the same job as
192.168.x.x
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
The plan is to keep the world at bay by never recording it in the DNS
root – like many already do with a subdomain for an intranet
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has
proposed creating a new top-level domain (TLD) and never allowing it to
be delegated in the global domain name system (DNS) root.…
Eyeing
China, US may require clouds to report when foreign actors rent kit to
build AI models
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
What’s the point of hardware export bans if foreign entities can access
what they want on the cloud?
US-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) operators could soon be
required to strengthen know-your-customer (KYC) procedures in order to
prevent foreign actors renting the infrastructure needed to train AI
models.…
date: 2024-01-29, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Today—last night U.S. time—three military personnel were killed and
34 more wounded in a drone attack on the living quarters at a U.S. base
in Jordan, near the Iraq-Syria border. U.S. troops are stationed there
to enable them to cross into Syria to help fight the Islamic State.
There have been almost-daily drone and missile strikes on U.S. forces in
Iraq and Syria since the October 7 attack on Israel by Iran-backed
Hamas. The U.S. has blamed Iran-backed militant groups for the attack,
and while no one has officially claimed responsibility yet, three
officials from such groups have said an Iran-backed militia in Iraq is
responsible.
Tencent
explores a future where HPC, quantum, cloud and edge have converged
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
And it will all come together in one big, happy, hybrid innovation
engine
Chinese tech giant Tencent has predicted that high-performance computing
(HPC), quantum computing, cloud computing and edge computing will soon
merge.…
Linus
Torvalds flames Google kernel contributor over filesystem
suggestion
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Kernel 6.8-rc2 debuts after very robust discussion about ‘inodes’
Linus Torvalds has dished up one of his most strongly worded Linux
kernel mailing list posts in years, lashing a contributor from Google
for his suggestions regarding filesystems.…
Illinois
Election Officials to Consider Striking Trump’s Name off Primary
Ballot
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
CHICAGO — Former President Donald Trump should be removed from
Illinois’ primary ballot, but the decision should be left to the courts,
a retired judge recommended Sunday to the state’s election board,
arguing that it was clear Trump engaged in insurrection in the Jan. 6,
2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Illinois State Board of Elections is expected to consider the
recommendation Tuesday. Attorneys for Trump and citizens seeking to keep
the Republican former president off the ballot presented their arguments
Friday before the hearing officer, Clark Erickson. The retired longtime
Kankakee County judge is a Republican.
The Illinois effort to keep Trump off the March ballot is similar to
those filed in several other states. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to
hear arguments next month in a historic Colorado Supreme Court ruling to
remove Trump from that state’s ballot. The case presents the high court
with its first look at a provision of the 14th Amendment barring some
people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office.
Erickson’s 21-page recommendation concluded that a “preponderance of
the evidence” presented proves that Trump engaged in insurrection.
But he said the election board can’t engage in the “significant and
sophisticated constitutional analysis” required to remove Trump’s name
before the March 19 primary.
“All in all, attempting to resolve a constitutional issue within the
expedited schedule of an election board hearing is somewhat akin to
scheduling a two-minute round between heavyweight boxers in a telephone
booth,” he wrote.
Still, Erickson noted that even if the board disagrees with his
reasoning, Trump’s name should be removed from the Illinois primary
ballot.
The election board is split evenly between four Democrats and four
Republicans.
Free Speech for People, which is leading the Illinois ballot effort,
praised the recommendation from the Republican retired judge as
“significant” but argued that Illinois law allows the board to make the
ballot decision.
“We expect that the board and ultimately Illinois courts will uphold
Judge Erickson’s thoughtful analysis of why Trump is disqualified from
office, but — with the greatest respect — correct him on why Illinois
law authorizes that ruling,” Ron Fein, legal director for the group,
wrote in a Sunday statement.
Trump’s campaign did not immediately return a message left
Sunday.
Tesla
hacks make big bank at Pwn2Own’s first automotive-focused event
date: 2024-01-29, updated: 2024-01-29, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
ALSO: SEC admits to X account negligence; New macOS malware family
appears; and some critical vulns
Infosec in brief Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative
(ZDI) held its first-ever automotive-focused Pwn2Own event in Tokyo last
week, and awarded over $1.3 million to the discoverers of 49
vehicle-related zero day vulnerabilities.…
Election
Countdown, 282 Days to Go: The “States’ Rights” Era Returns.
date: 2024-01-29, from: James Fallows, Substack
In 2000, the Supreme Court told Florida to stop counting votes.
Florida obeyed. In 2024, the Court tells Texas to stop disobeying US
Border Patrol policies at the border. Texas says, Make us.
date: 2024-01-29, from: John Naughton’s online diary
All that remains… … of a groyne on a beach in North Norfolk. Quote of
the Day “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology now has almost eight
times as many nonfaculty employees as faculty employees. In the
University of California system, …
Continue
reading →
House
Republicans Release Impeachment Articles Against Homeland Security
Secretary Mayorkas
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
Washington — House Republicans on Sunday released two articles of
impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as
they vowed to swiftly push forward with election-year efforts to oust
him over what they call his failure to manage the U.S.-Mexico border.
The rare step against a Cabinet member drew outrage from Democrats and
the agency as a politically motivated stunt lacking the constitutional
basis to remove Mayorkas from office.
Republicans contend Mayorkas is guilty of “high crimes and
misdemeanors” that amount to a “willful and systemic refusal to comply
with the law” on immigration and a “breach of the public trust.”
Impeachment, they say, is “Congress’s only viable option.”
“Alejandro N. Mayorkas willfully and systemically refused to comply
with the immigration laws, failed to control the border to the detriment
of national security, compromised public safety, and violated the rule
of law and separation of powers in the Constitution, to the manifest
injury of the people of the United States,” the impeachment resolution
says.
Only once in American history has a Cabinet secretary been impeached:
William Belknap, President Ulysses Grant’s war secretary, in 1876, over
kickbacks in government contracts. Going after an official for a policy
dispute, in this instance over the claim that Mayorkas is not upholding
immigration laws, is unprecedented.
Ever since taking control of the House in 2023, Republicans have
pushed to impeach Mayorkas. Sunday’s announcement comes as their other
impeachment drive — to impeach Democratic President Joe Biden in
relation to his son Hunter’s business dealings — has struggled to
advance.
But Republicans have moved with rapid speed against Mayorkas after a
series of hearings in recent weeks. It all comes at a time when border
security and immigration are key issues in the 2024 campaign and as
Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential
nomination, is promising to launch the “largest deportation operation”
in U.S. history if he returns to the White House.
The Republican-controlled House Homeland Security Committee is set to
vote Tuesday on the articles of impeachment, aiming to send them to the
full House for consideration. Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has said
the House will move forward as soon as possible with a vote after
that.
Passage requires only a House majority. The Senate would hold a
trial, and a two-thirds vote is required for conviction, an exceedingly
unlikely outcome in the Democratic-run Senate.
The Republican push also comes at a curious time for Mayorkas.
Even as the House is taking steps to try to remove him from office,
Mayorkas has been engaged in arduous negotiations with senators seeking
to reach a bipartisan deal on border policy. He has won praise from
senators for his engagement in the process.
Democrats have lambasted the impeachment proceedings, calling them a
waste of time when lawmakers should be working together to solve the
problems. They also say Republicans are part of the problems at the
border, with Republicans attacking Mayorkas even as they have failed to
give his department the tools it needs to manage the situation.
“They don’t want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it.
That’s why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions
and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the
Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary
Mayorkas,” the department said in a statement Sunday.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House committee, said
the Republican resolution did not have “a shred of evidence of high
crimes or misdemeanors — the Constitutional standard for
impeachment.”
The two articles mark the culmination of a roughly yearlong
examination by Republicans of the secretary’s handling of the border and
what they describe as a crisis of the administration’s own making.
Republicans contend that the administration and Mayorkas specifically
either got rid of policies in place under Trump that had controlled
migration or enacted policies of their own that encouraged migrants from
around the world to come to the U.S. illegally via the southern border.
They also accused Mayorkas of lying to Congress, pointing to comments
about the border being secure or about vetting of Afghans airlifted to
the U.S.
They cite growing numbers of migrants who have at times overwhelmed
the capacity of Customs and Border Protection authorities to care for
and process them. Arrests for illegal crossings topped 2 million in each
of the U.S. government’s past two budget years. In December, arrests for
illegal border crossings from Mexico reached an all-time high since
figures have been released. The backlog of people in immigration court
has grown by 1 million over the past budget year.
In the articles, Republicans argue that Mayorkas is deliberately
violating immigration laws passed by Congress, such as those requiring
detention of migrants, and that through his policies, a crisis has
arisen at the border. They accuse him of releasing migrants without
effective ways to make sure they show up for court or are removed from
the country. They cited an Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo
written by Mayorkas that sets priorities for whom the agency should
target for enforcement proceedings as proof that he is letting people
stay in the country who don’t have the right to do so.
They also attacked the administration’s use of the humanitarian
parole authority, which allows the DHS secretary to admit certain
migrants into the country. Republicans said the Biden administration has
essentially created a mass parole program that bypasses Congress. They
cited cities such as New York that have struggled with high numbers of
migrants, taxing housing and education systems, as proof of the
financial costs immigration is taking.
Democrats, as well as Mayorkas, have argued that it’s not the
administration’s policies that are causing people to attempt to migrate
to America but that the movement is part of a global mass migration of
people fleeing wars, economic instability and political repression.
Revelers
Pack Tampa, Florida, Waterfront for Gasparilla Pirate Fest
date: 2024-01-29, from: VOA News USA
Tampa, Florida — Revelers clad in pirate finery packed Tampa’s
waterfront this weekend as a flotilla of boats arrived for the city’s
annual Gasparilla Pirate Fest.
Led by Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, the invading pirates docked to
make a final demand for the key to the city. Once ashore, the
festivities celebrating their annual invasion included a Saturday
afternoon parade through downtown and live music and bead throwing that
lasted well into the night.
A fixture nearly every year since 1904, the Gasparilla Pirate Fest is
named for the mythical pirate Jose Gaspar. There’s not much evidence he
actually existed, but according to legend he plundered ships and
captured hostages in the Gulf of Mexico from the 1780s until around
1821.
The colorful account of his supposed life first surfaced in the early
1900s in an advertising brochure for the Gasparilla Inn, which was
located south of Tampa in Boca Grande at the end of a rail line and in
need of an exciting promotion to lure in guests.
Called the “Last of the Buccaneers,” Gaspar’s memory lives on in the
name of Tampa Bay’s NFL team.
Charlatans
spreading misleading beginner advice are the evolutionary crabs of
youtube content creators
date: 2024-01-29, from: Marginallia log
You have a hobby you’ve been into for a decade or more. You like
talking about your hobby, and your friends and family, after listening
to these things for as long as you’ve been into them, maybe aren’t as
excited to always hear about it as you are about discussing them, so in
an act of compassion you create a youtube channel where you can
monologue about your passion instead.
Look
at the new release of dotConnect for PostgreSQL with .NET 8 and EF Core
8 Support
date: 2024-01-29, from: PostgreSQL News
Devart announced a new release of dotConnect for PostgreSQL.
Devart, a recognized vendor of world-class data connectivity solutions
for various data connection technologies and frameworks, released a new
version of dotConnect for PostgreSQL.
The significant improvements in this release:
.NET 8 and EF Core 8 Support.
Support for Visual Studio 2022 version 17.9 Preview.
Added new property “Do Not Generate OnConfiguring Method” to enhance the
improve the flexibility of EF Core.
To see the latest features update visit:
https://www.devart.com/dotconnect/postgresql/revision_history.html
To download a new product - visit:
https://www.devart.com/dotconnect/postgresql/download.html
dotConnect for PostgreSQL is a high-performance ORM enabled data
provider for PostgreSQL that builds on ADO.NET technology to present a
complete solution for developing PostgreSQL-based database applications.
It introduces new approaches for designing application architecture,
boosts productivity, and facilitates the development of database
applications.
About Devart
Devart is one of the leading developers of database tools and
administration software, ALM solutions, data providers for various
database servers, data integration, and backup solutions. The company
also implements Web and Mobile development projects. For additional
information about Devart, visit https://www.devart.com/.
pgEdge
Redefines Distributed PostgreSQL with the Launch of pgEdge Cloud
Developer Edition
date: 2024-01-29, from: PostgreSQL News
First serverless distributed Postgres managed cloud service delivers low
latency and high availability in three minutes or less
Alexandria, Virginia – January 24, 2024 — pgEdge, Inc., the leading
company dedicated to distributed Postgres, today announced the launch of
pgEdge Cloud Developer Edition, making it easy for developers to deploy
and access distributed Postgres databases for low latency and high
availability. pgEdge Cloud is the first fully distributed database as a
service (DBaaS) optimized for the network edge and based completely on
the widely adopted open-source PostgreSQL database. pgEdge Cloud
Developer is a generous free tier for developers to rapidly and easily
experience the advantages of distributed Postgres.
pgEdge Cloud addresses the growing demand for low-latency and “always
on” applications that need to be dispersed across multiple cloud
regions. As a fully managed distributed Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS),
pgEdge Cloud empowers developers and database architects with an
intuitive user interface for creation, management and monitoring of
distributed database clusters running across multiple cloud regions.
By putting database nodes closer to global users, pgEdge Cloud can
dramatically reduce latency and application response times, particularly
page loads for database intensive applications. Additionally, having
multiple replicated database nodes across the network ensures high
levels of availability, since when a node fails or is not reachable
traffic automatically routes to the nearest still available node.
pgEdge Cloud is especially well suited for use with edge development
platforms such as Cloudflare Workers, Vercel and Fastly. The ability to
place database nodes in multiple regions around the global network,
together with automated and seamless nearest-node routing, allow
developers to deploy very low latency applications that eliminate slow
round trips to a single centrally located database. pgEdge Cloud
Developer Edition includes built-in integration for Cloudflare Workers,
and support for Vercel and Fastly will be available in coming weeks. An
example demonstrating pgEdge Cloud’s ease of integration with Cloudflare
is https://github.com/pgEdge/cloudflare-worker-template. Additionally, a
demo application running against a distributed version of the well-known
“Northwind Traders” database, and implemented with Cloudflare Workers
and pgEdge Cloud, is at: https://northwind.pgedge.com/.
Key features of pgEdge Cloud Developer Edition include:
Instant Deployment: Developers can now deploy a globally distributed
PostgreSQL serverless database in just a minute, streamlining the
database setup process and accelerating development.
Predefined multi-region clusters: Creation and deployment of pgEdge
distributed databases is simplified via prebuilt global clusters.
Developers can select from a set of predefined multi-region clusters
that span the continental US, US and Europe, or US, Europe and Asia.
Multi-Master (Active-Active) Architecture: Each database node can handle
both read and write traffic for low latency and high availability,
utilizing an eventually consistent multi-master architecture with built
in conflict resolution and reporting.
Latency-based DNS Routing: Geo-proximity routing ensures that users are
connected to the nearest pgEdge node that is up and running.
Generous Free Tier: Available for prototyping, application development
and evaluation of pgEdge capabilities with up to 12GB of storage across
three nodes.
Management and Monitoring: Eliminates the need for manual infrastructure
configuration and management while providing automated backups, security
against misconfiguration, and continuous monitoring via a clean and easy
to use web dashboard.
“pgEdge Cloud Developer Edition marks a significant leap in our mission
to make it easy for developers to build and deploy highly distributed
database applications across the global network,” said Phillip Merrick,
Co-founder and CEO at pgEdge. “The innovative features of the pgEdge
Cloud fully managed service, from multi-region, multi-master support to
its intuitive user interface, empower developers to easily create and
manage distributed PostgreSQL databases.”
Availability
pgEdge Cloud Developer Edition is available today in preview. Users
requiring more resources or capabilities beyond what is offered in the
Developer Edition free tier can upgrade to either pgEdge Cloud Team
Edition (coming in H1 2024), or pgEdge Cloud Enterprise Edition.
Experience pgEdge Cloud Developer Edition by signing up at
www.pgedge.com/get-started/cloud. To learn more visit www.pgedge.com or
join us for an exclusive webinar “Getting to the Low Latency, High
Availability Goodness of Distributed Postgres in 3 Minutes or Less” on
Wednesday January 31st at 1pm ET https://hubs.la/Q02gBnsh0. The first
500 users to sign up for pgEdge Cloud Developer Edition will be eligible
for an exclusive launch t-shirt. (Restrictions apply. Offer available in
US only.)
About pgEdge:
pgEdge, the leading company dedicated to distributed Postgres, has made
its mission to make it easy for developers to build and deploy highly
distributed database applications across the global network. Founded by
industry veterans who have championed enterprise usage of the PostgreSQL
database for several decades and helped run the world’s largest managed
database cloud services, pgEdge is headquartered in Northern Virginia.
The founders have previously founded and/or led successful companies
such as webMethods (NASDAQ: WEBM), EnterpriseDB (acquired by Bain
Capital), SparkPost (acquired by MessageBird), OpenSCG (acquired by AWS)
and Fugue (acquired by Snyk). Investors in pgEdge include Sands Capital
Ventures, Grotech Ventures and Sand Hill East.
Yesterday
I sent a
Carlos
Gauna
A
note to people who make feeds, software that generates feeds, readers of
feeds and everyone else. 
