News gathered 2024-02-20

(date: 2024-02-20 09:56:57)

Sam Bankman-Fried poses with gangsters in 1st prison photo: He’s ‘a good guy’ and no ‘rat’ like Tekashi 6ix9ine

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

A former inmate at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center hailed the disgraced FTX mogul as a fellow ‘gangster’ but said he’s pretty ‘strange.’

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/sam-bankman-fried-poses-with-gangsters-in-1st-prison-photo-hes-a-good-guy-and-no-rat-like-tekashi-6ix9ine/ Save to Pocket

Microsoft Publisher books its retirement party for 2026

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Venerable desktop publisher not going to get a Copilot any time soon

Microsoft is confirming plans to deprecate its Publisher application in 2026.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/microsoft_publisher_eol/ Save to Pocket

Cool New Music: Waxahatchee, “Right Back to It” and “Bored”

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/02/cool-new-music-waxahatchee-right-back-to-it-and-bored Save to Pocket

City Resolves Camp Scott Lawsuit Against the County

date: 2024-02-20, from: City of Santa Clarita

CITY RESOLVES CAMP SCOTT LAWSUIT AGAINST THE COUNTY On February 16, 2024, the City of Santa Clarita (City) filed a stipulation with the County of Los Angeles (County) to resolve the lawsuit against the County regarding Camp Scott, mutually agreeing that the County will comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review prior to […]

The post City Resolves Camp Scott Lawsuit Against the County appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.

https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/02/20/city-resolves-camp-scott-lawsuit-against-the-county/ Save to Pocket

MNT Pocket Reform mini-laptop should begin shipping by late March (open hardware)

date: 2024-02-20, from: Liliputing

The MNT Pocket Reform is a small laptop computer with a 7 inch display, a modular keyboard with RGB backlighting, and a modular design that allows you to swap out the processor or other key components. First unveiled nearly two years ago, it went up for pre-order through a crowdfunding campaign in 2023, and after […]

The post MNT Pocket Reform mini-laptop should begin shipping by late March (open hardware) appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/mnt-pocket-reform-mini-laptop-should-begin-shipping-by-late-march-open-hardware/ Save to Pocket

SF Giants’ Jung Hoo Lee shows off ‘quick hands’ in first live batting practice of spring

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

Facing the 6-foot-11 Sean Hjelle, Jung Hoo Lee took a couple hacks and broke his bat, creating a souvenir for the pitcher.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/sf-giants-jung-hoo-lee-shows-off-quick-hands-in-first-live-batting-practice-of-spring/ Save to Pocket

After nearly four years to the day, suspect arrested in 2020 Oakland homicide

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

The killing of 37-year-old Charles King Jr. remained unsolved for years, until police say they caught a major break in the investigation.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/after-nearly-four-years-to-the-day-suspect-arrested-in-2020-oakland-homicide/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I don’t like Twitter/X – it’s stupid, it already had a perfectly good name. It is what it is. I use Twitter, I don’t imagine stopping, certainly not as some kind of demonstration. But it isn’t X or Twitter/X. It’s just stupid old fucked up Twitter, only now it’s fucked for a different reason. I might go for Twitter/F as in Twitter is Fucked thank you very much. And have a nice day. 😄

http://scripting.com/2024/02/20.html#a172729 Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

I think it's wrong to say Mastodon is a Twitter rival. It's not what it is. It's something different.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/20/spam-attack-on-twitter-x-rival-mastodon-highlights-fediverse-vulnerabilities/ Save to Pocket

Noise Pop: 8 great Bay Area acts to catch during the 2024 festival

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

Tommy Guerrero, Bodysync, Suzanne Ciani among the many talented Bay Area acts set to perform at Noise Pop 2024 in San Francisco.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/noise-pop-8-great-bay-area-acts-to-catch-during-the-2024-festival/ Save to Pocket

Tesla fights back against Oklahoma politicians trying to shut down its stores

date: 2024-02-20, from: Electrek Feed

Tesla is asking its fans for help fighting back against Oklahoma politicians trying to shut down its stores in the state.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/tesla-fights-back-against-oklahoma-politicians-shut-down-stores/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

I was writing a story about sizing ski boots and asked ChatGPT to make an illustration for the story for me.

http://scripting.com/2024/02/20/152934.html Save to Pocket

NASA Astronaut Available for Interviews Prior to Space Station Mission

date: 2024-02-20, from: NASA breaking news

NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson is available in limited opportunities to discuss her mission beginning at 8 a.m. EST on Monday, Feb. 26. The interviews will take place ahead of Dyson launching to the International Space Station in March. The virtual interviews will stream live on NASA+, NASA Television, and the agency’s website. Learn how […]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-astronaut-available-for-interviews-prior-to-space-station-mission/ Save to Pocket

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/02/0044009-birds-have-been-lying-abo Save to Pocket

Visit a Sonoma cidery’s new tasting barn to learn about modern farming

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

Ethic Cider in Sebastopol has a new cider barn and tasting room where you can learn about earth-friendly regenerative agriculture.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/visit-a-sonoma-ciderys-new-tasting-barn-to-learn-about-modern-farming/ Save to Pocket

7 scrumptious new Bay Area brunch spots from Walnut Creek to Los Gatos

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

These seven new hot spots in Walnut Creek, San Jose, Daly City and beyond cater to your every mimosa-sipping, brunch-savoring need with creative, innovative dishes. Think Southern-meets-Thai fried chicken and waffles, slow-smoked Burnt Ends Hash, linguica Benedict and pineapple-kissed brunch cocktails.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/7-scrumptious-new-bay-area-brunch-spots-from-walnut-creek-to-los-gatos/ Save to Pocket

Acer Swift Go 14 and Swift Edge 16 laptops get a Ryzen 8040 update

date: 2024-02-20, from: Liliputing

Acer is refreshing two of its thin and light laptops with new models powered by AMD’s Ryzen 8040 processors featuring RDNA 3 integrated graphics and Ryzen AI features. The new Acer Swift Go 14 (SG140-63/T) sells for $700 and up and supports up to a 14 inch, 2.8K OLED, 90 Hz display and Ryzen 9 8945HS […]

The post Acer Swift Go 14 and Swift Edge 16 laptops get a Ryzen 8040 update appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/acer-swift-go-14-and-swift-edge-16-laptops-get-a-ryzen-8040-update/ Save to Pocket

MariaDB receives offer to go private more than year after disastrous IPO

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

$37.3M bid significantly down from SPAC flotation valued at $672M

MariaDB has confirmed a possible offer of $37.3 million from private equity company K1 Investment Management to take the recently troubled database company private.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/mariadb_plc_private_offer/ Save to Pocket

Unleash Your Inner Hooligan With the Limited Edition Indian FTR x RSD

date: 2024-02-20, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

It takes everything you love about the FTR R Carbon, adds Roland Sands race-inspired bling, and tasty aftermarket parts.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/709018/indian-ftr-roland-sands-limited-edition/ Save to Pocket

I Do Solemnly Swear – Records Relating to Presidents in the National Register of Historic Places

date: 2024-02-20, from: National Archives, Text Message blog

Mount Rushmore

https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2024/02/20/i-do-solemnly-swear-records-relating-to-presidents-in-the-national-register-of-historic-places/ Save to Pocket

Oakland teen charged in San Leandro fatal hit-and-run

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

Majesta Mack, 19, was charged with killing a woman who was crossing the street, driving under the influence, driving without a valid license, and fleeing the scene of a crash.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/oakland-teen-charged-in-san-leandro-fatal-hit-and-run/ Save to Pocket

Mortality surged for renters facing eviction during the Covid-19 pandemic, study finds

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

Housing instability carries deadly risks, and these vulnerabilities were exacerbated for many during the Covid-19 pandemic.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/mortality-surged-for-renters-facing-eviction-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-study-finds/ Save to Pocket

NASA Leader Casey Swails Learns About Wildfire Work at NASA Ames

date: 2024-02-20, from: NASA breaking news

NASA Deputy Associate Administrator Casey Swails views a demonstration on screen in the Airspace Operations Laboratory at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Researchers presented the diverse, long-running efforts in aeronautics at Ames that have helped lay the foundation for agency work related to wildfire response. These include a project to help integrate […]

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-leader-casey-swails-learns-about-wildfire-work-at-nasa-ames/ Save to Pocket

5G is ‘ now’ eating cable’s lunch

date: 2024-02-20, from: Om Malik blog

It is not uncommon to hear the question: what is 5G really good for? After all, it doesn’t change the current applications, it doesn’t change our mobile experience too much from the more advanced version of LTE mobile broadband that is widely available around the world. So, again, what is 5G good for? How about …

https://om.co/2024/02/20/5g-is-now-eating-cables-lunch/ Save to Pocket

Hyundai will introduce the IONIQ 7 in June, its first three-row electric SUV

date: 2024-02-20, from: Electrek Feed

Another electric three-row electric SUV is set to hit the market. Hyundai’s highly-anticipated IONIQ 7 will make its debut at the Busan Motor Show in June. Here’s what we know about the electric SUV so far.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/hyundai-ioniq-7-debut-june-first-three-row-electric-suv/ Save to Pocket

The Family-Sized Hole in the Electric Car Market

date: 2024-02-20, from: Heatmap News

The exemplar of the American “family car” is an ever-changing thing. Mid-century land yachts gave way to wood-paneled Griswold family station wagons. The SUV craze of the 1990s established vehicles like the forest green Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer I grew up in as the de facto kid-haulers, especially for parents who wouldn’t be caught dead in a minivan. Today’s suburb-dominating soccer-practice crossovers are their spiritual descendants.

Now, though, the question of which car is right for a family has a new wrinkle: Should we get an electric vehicle? Unfortunately, the answer for most people who survey the auto landscape appears to be, “not yet,” a fact that has contributed to the current feeling of EV limbo.

The right family car depends upon your family. My Tesla Model 3 happily accommodates a newborn, a dog, and a stroller that lives in the trunk. For most Americans, though, the family car has come to mean something much larger than my ride: a tall, spacious, affordable, safe, and reliable crossover with lots of room for endless kid gear and clutter. Three rows are a must for those with a flock of kids.

Therein lies the trouble with today’s EV fleet. Check online conversations between parents about the available options and it becomes clear that perhaps no available electric fits the bill perfectly. The top-selling Tesla Model Y is a crossover, but not a huge one, and the available choices like it, the Volkswagen ID.4, and the Ford Mustang Mach-E are going to cost you more than $40,000, not counting EV tax breaks. Truly spacious EVs like the Rivian R1S and Tesla Model X have prices that soar to $70,000 or more. Well-regarded electrics such as the Hyundai Ioniq5 and 6 can’t match the cargo space of your neighbors’ combustion crossover. (Ioniq5 has 27 cubic ft. in the back and the Model Y about 30, versus 37.5 for the typical Toyota RAV4 and nearly 40 for the Honda CR-V.) The parental consensus in many of those Reddit threads? The best electric family ride is the Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid minivan, which delivers 32 electric miles before it reverts to gas.

A new slate of EVs is just starting to fill in this obvious hole. The forthcoming Chevy Equinox EV, in addition to carrying the name of a top-selling familiar, safe family car, is supposed to start at a more reasonable $35,000. Kia used a Super Bowl ad to show off the EV9, one of the first giant three-row family crossovers to go full EV, and Hyundai’s Ioniq7 will soon follow. The ID.Buzz, an update to the classic VW bus, brings an all-electric minivan to the market. When it comes down to a car-buying decision, though, the dealer lots of America are still wanting for a simple mom-and-dad-mobile to compete with the $30,000 starting price of the Honda CR-V.

This gap helps to explain some of the gloom around electric vehicle sales in 2024. Nearly all the car companies have some kind of true EV on the market by now, but most of those entrants require buyers to navigate the confusing, fluid EV tax breaks in order for them to be competitive with gasoline counterparts. For EVs to make the leap from the early adoption to the mass adoption state, we need a truly cheap car like what Tesla and Ford are reportedly developing for entry-level carbuyers, yes (though, to Detroit’s chagrin, it just might come from China.) But we also need family-sized EVs that compete on price with the well-known suburban warriors.

Here’s the bright side. The EV space may be in a “gap year,” but electric vehicles will soon become big and cheap enough to take their place as the family car. They will be great at it, and families will get to experience the ways that electric driving is better.

Now that EVs come with battery ranges around 300 miles, a person can drive down the highway for several hours without stopping to charge. In other words, the kid’s need for a bathroom, not the need to charge, will be the primary motivator behind pit stops.

An EV’s ability to use its battery power for applications other than driving is tailor-made for the family. While picking up a kid — and waiting for them to come get in the car already — one can run the air conditioner indefinitely and watch Netflix on the big center screen without running a gasoline engine and polluting the neighborhood. Child can’t sleep in the tent on their first camping trip? Sleep in the car all night with Camp Mode on.

Any errand avoided is a gift from the gods, which is why so many parents now rely on online shopping for durable goods and apps like Instacart to deliver the groceries. For those who can charge at home or at work, EV ownership negates the extra stop at the gas station on the way home, the one where the little ones ask, over and over, whether they can get some junk food from the convenience store. The absence of oil changes is pretty great, too. And the first time you use the car’s battery to keep the house lights on during a blackout, you’ll feel like you really earned that World’s Greatest Dad (or Mom) coffee mug.

Don’t believe the doom, then. Unless you’re buying a vehicle right now, your next family car probably is going to be an EV.

https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/best-ev-family-tesla-model-y-kia-ev9 Save to Pocket

NASA’s New Horizons Detects Dusty Hints of Extended Kuiper Belt

date: 2024-02-20, from: NASA breaking news

New observations from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft hint that the Kuiper Belt – the vast, distant outer zone of our solar system populated by hundreds of thousands of icy, rocky planetary building blocks – might stretch much farther out than we thought. Speeding through the outer edges of the Kuiper Belt, almost 60 times farther […]

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/new-horizons/nasas-new-horizons-detects-dusty-hints-of-extended-kuiper-belt/ Save to Pocket

Pretty good little crossword joke……

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/02/0044012-pretty-good-little-crossw Save to Pocket

California retail crime ringleader, members charged after estimated $8 million worth of beauty products confiscated

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that charges have been filed against the ringleader of an organized retail crime scheme that spanned 21 California counties, including Santa Clara.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/retail-crime-ringleader-members-charged-after-estimated-8-million-worth-of-beauty-products-confiscated/ Save to Pocket

Bay Area woman missing since 1992 ID’ed through cold case DNA comparison

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

Skeletal remains found in a creek bed off of Pine Flat Road near Healdsburg more than 30 years ago have now been identified as Robin Fay Hedrick, a Vallejo woman that was last seen alive in 1992, due to a DNA laboratory comparison done by the California Department of Justice.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/vallejo-woman-missing-since-1992-ided-through-cold-case-dna-comparison/ Save to Pocket

Dealers Are Having a Bad Time With the EV Tax Credit

date: 2024-02-20, from: Inside EVs News

Plus, CATL looks to qualify for the EV tax credit too, and Fisker gets new NHTSA probe.

https://insideevs.com/news/709347/dealers-ev-tax-credit-cm/ Save to Pocket

Marin video game maker to lay off 86 employees

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

The employees work for Activision Blizzard developer Toys for Bob, known for titles such as “Crash Bandicoot,” “Spyro” and “Skylanders.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/novato-video-game-maker-to-lay-off-86-employees/ Save to Pocket

An exciting and easy mountaintop hike in Marin County

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

The East Peak of Mount Tamalpais has always been Marin’s calling card. We look up to it throughout much of Marin and the North Bay Area. The Verna Dunshee Trail allows you to look down on those areas, rather than up. The trail circles East Peak in an easy .7 miles and offers a commanding […]

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/marin-hike-an-exciting-and-easy-mountaintop-hike/ Save to Pocket

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From Trump-Allied Lawyers Over 2020 Election Lawsuit

date: 2024-02-20, from: VOA News USA

Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from Sidney Powell and other lawyers allied with former President Donald Trump over $150,000 in sanctions they were ordered to pay for abusing the court system with a sham lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results in Michigan.

The justices did not comment in leaving in place the sanctions against seven lawyers who were part of the lawsuit filed on behalf of six Republican voters after Joe Biden’s 154,000-vote victory over Trump in the state.

Among the lawyers is L. Lin Wood, whose name was on the lawsuit. Wood has insisted he had no role other than to tell Powell he would be available if she needed a seasoned litigator.

The money is owed to the state and Detroit, for their costs in defending the lawsuit. The sanctions initially totaled $175,000, but a federal appeals court reduced them by about $25,000.

In October, Powell pleaded guilty to state criminal charges in Georgia over her efforts to overturn Trump’s loss in the state. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.

Powell gained notoriety for saying in November 2020 that she would “release the Kraken,” invoking a mythical sea monster when talking about a lawsuit she planned to file to challenge the results of the presidential election.

https://www.voanews.com/a/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-from-trump-allied-lawyers-over-2020-election-lawsuit-in-michigan/7495061.html Save to Pocket

The Rivian R2 SUV Is Going To Europe

date: 2024-02-20, from: Inside EVs News

It won’t be Rivian’s first EV that goes to the Old Continent, though.

https://insideevs.com/news/709288/rivian-r2-suv-ev-europe/ Save to Pocket

High school baseball preview 2024: Rankings, players to watch, more

date: 2024-02-20, from: San Jose Mercury News

Bay Area News Group high school baseball preview: De La Salle, undefeated in the postseason since 2016, is again the team to beat. But Valley Christian, San Ramon Valley, Archbishop Mitty, Clayton Valley, Los Gatos and others are primed for a good spring.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/20/high-school-baseball-preview-2024-rankings-players-to-watch-more/ Save to Pocket

Cops turn LockBit ransomware gang’s countdown timers against them

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Authorities dismantle cybercrime royalty by making mockery of their leak site

In seizing and dismantling LockBit’s infrastructure, Western authorities are now making a mockery of the ransomware criminals by promising a long, drawn-out disclosure of its secrets.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/nca_lockbit_takedown/ Save to Pocket

Why electric bikes actually give more exercise than pedal bikes

date: 2024-02-20, from: Electrek Feed

Believe it or not, electric bikes offer more exercise than pedal bikes on average. That fact might sound strange (and has been known to let the steam out of some fitness riders’ lycra outfits), but the science is clear. Now let’s talk about the “how” and “why”.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/why-electric-bikes-give-more-exercise/ Save to Pocket

Coast begins deliveries of its Model 1 solar electric trailer and its quality is undeniable

date: 2024-02-20, from: Electrek Feed

Coast, the future-focused sub-brand of trailer manufacturer Aero Build, has begun deliveries of the Model 1 – a solar electric travel trailer that Founder and CEO Brian Fuente put his heart and soul into to not only modernize a stale recreation segment but do so in a manner that is optimized and affordable without any compromise on quality. Fuente walked us through the Coast Model 1 and shared his insight on the trailer, the company’s design approach, and its future in electric campers.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/coast-begins-deliveries-model-1-solar-electric-trailer/ Save to Pocket

Background on that Capital One-Discover deal

date: 2024-02-20, from: Marketplace Morning Report

Once upon a time, Sears department stores were everywhere. A subsidiary of Sears launched the Discover card in 1986. It wasn’t unusual for department stores to offer their own credits cards, but the Discover card was accepted by other merchants. Today, we’ll hear a brief primer on the history that predated the recently announced Capital One-Discover purchase. Plus, China slashes mortgage rates, and northeastern Spain faces tough water restrictions.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/background-on-that-capital-one-discover-deal Save to Pocket

Blackened Vesuvius Scroll Read for First Time in 2000 Years

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/02/blackened-vesuvius-scroll-read-for-first-time-in-2000-years Save to Pocket

New Tesla Model 3 Performance refresh spotted with new seats

date: 2024-02-20, from: Electrek Feed

The highly anticipated new Tesla Model 3 Performance with the ‘Highland’ refresh has been spotted with new sports seats in the wild.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/tesla-model-3-performance-refresh-spotted-new-seats/ Save to Pocket

Ski boot sizing

date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News

One thing that’s great about ChatGPT is they can help you make a decision in an area you lack expertise and where there is no human you can ask for help making the decision. It’s making this human smarter, and it’s hard to see the downside of that.

Here’s an example. I’m trying to decide whether I should get size 11 rental ski boots or size 11.5. The person behind the counter at the rental place isn’t capable of having a long conversation about this, where I get to ask two follow-up questions.

Instead they would say sorry, what size did you say you wanted sir?

The kid isn’t thinking about the old dude. 😄

http://scripting.com/2024/02/20/152934.html?title=skiBootSizing Save to Pocket

Inside Scientists’ Life-Saving Prediction of the Iceland Eruption

date: 2024-02-20, from: Quanta Magazine

The Reykjanes Peninsula has entered a new volcanic era. Innovative efforts to map and monitor the subterranean magma are saving lives.

The post Inside Scientists’ Life-Saving Prediction of the Iceland Eruption first appeared on Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/inside-scientists-life-saving-prediction-of-the-iceland-eruption-20240220/ Save to Pocket

Artemis II Mission Manager Matthew Ramsey

date: 2024-02-20, from: NASA breaking news

Matthew Ramsey is keenly aware of the responsibility he shoulders to ensure the agency’s missions to the Moon are safe and successful. As the mission manager for Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed mission under Artemis, Ramsey is charged with helping to define the requirements and priorities for the missions and certifying that the hardware and […]

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/artemis-ii-mission-manager-matthew-ramsey/ Save to Pocket

The World’s Oldest Wild Platypus Shocks Scientists at 24 Years of Age

date: 2024-02-20, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The animal was tagged in 2000, when it was estimated to be about one year old, and re-discovered alive in the wild last year

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-worlds-oldest-wild-platypus-shocks-scientists-at-24-years-of-age-180983805/ Save to Pocket

Ford Mustang Mach-E Becomes Vastly Better Deal, Starts Under $40,000 [Update]

date: 2024-02-20, from: Inside EVs News

Zero percent financing too, if you qualify.

https://insideevs.com/news/709384/2023-ford-mustang-mach-e-price-reduction/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Why The New York Times might win its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/why-the-new-york-times-might-win-its-copyright-lawsuit-against-openai/ Save to Pocket

Wyze admits 13,000 users could have viewed strangers’ camera feeds

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Customers report feeling violated following the security snafu

Smart home security camera slinger Wyze is telling customers that a cybersecurity “incident” allowed thousands of users to see other people’s camera feeds.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/wyze_admits_13000_users_allowed_feed_access/ Save to Pocket

John Oliver has offered Clarence Thomas a $2 million tour bus &…

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/02/0044010-john-oliver-has-offered-c Save to Pocket

These 3 major automakers may team up to save themselves, build cheap EVs

date: 2024-02-20, from: Electrek Feed

Plan A isn’t working, so it’s time for Plan B. Three major legacy automakers are considering a creative approach to staying in the game amid fierce competition from Tesla and Chinese rivals – all in an effort to make cheap EVs, and a whole lot of them.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/these-3-major-automakers-may-team-up-to-save-themselves-build-cheap-evs/ Save to Pocket

Volvo XC40 and C40 Recharge EVs revived as EX40 and EC40 with new upgrades

date: 2024-02-20, from: Electrek Feed

Volvo is dropping the “Recharge” on its XC40 and C40 all-electric models to streamline its portfolio as it moves toward an EV-only future. The Volvo XC40 and C40 Recharge have been revived as the EX40 and EC40 with a new optional performance upgrade and special Black Edition.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/volvo-xc40-c40-recharge-evs-revived-as-ex40-ec40/ Save to Pocket

Beware Forged Phishing Messages from TidBITS Talk

date: 2024-02-20, from: TidBITS blog

Several TidBITS readers have alerted us to phishing messages that purport to be from TidBITS Talk. They’re not, of course, and should be marked as spam, but they serve as a warning for why it’s essential pay attention to email.

https://tidbits.com/2024/02/20/beware-forged-phishing-messages-from-tidbits-talk/ Save to Pocket

Ford slashes prices of 2023 Mustang Mach-E and adds huge incentives for F-150 Lightning

date: 2024-02-20, from: Electrek Feed

Less than 24 hours after lowering prices of its 2023 Mustang Mach-E models in Canada, Ford Motor Company has followed suit in the US, reducing MSRPs of all trims to adapt to slower EV demand. Lease programs offer additional discounts in the US, making the Mach-E more affordable than ever. Additionally, Ford has added new incentives for the F-150 Lightning.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/ford-slashes-prices-2023-mustang-mach-e-incentives-for-f-150-lightning/ Save to Pocket

Helldivers 2 Is So Popular Players Are Squatting Servers

date: 2024-02-20, from: 404 Media Group

I admit it: I’m logging in at 9am to just to secure a spot for later in the evening.

https://www.404media.co/helldivers-2-is-so-popular-players-are-squatting-servers/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Millions of us see the problem. What are we going to do about it??

https://www.threads.net/@owillis1977/post/C3kifNArGDl Save to Pocket

GlobalFoundries scores $1.5B in Uncle Sam’s semiconductor subsidy bonanza

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Meanwhile, Intel looks set to bag more than $10B

GlobalFoundries is pocketing $1.5 billion in CHIPS and Science Act funding from the US government to ensure continued supply of the chips it makes for the automotive, communications, and defense industries.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/globalfoundries_chips_act_funding/ Save to Pocket

Jonathan Kraut | The Christmas Shoplifting Seasons Expand to Year-Round

date: 2024-02-20, from: The Signal

In 2022 there were 6,585 shoplifting incidents reported by the Los Angeles Police Department. In 2023 there were 11,945 reports of shoplifting in L.A. Flash mob and organized retail theft dramatically increased last year as well. The recently available LAPD report on shoplifting and retail theft is not a surprise. With an increase of shoplifting […]

The post Jonathan Kraut | The Christmas Shoplifting Seasons Expand to Year-Round appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/02/jonathan-kraut-the-christmas-shoplifting-seasons-expand-to-year-round/ Save to Pocket

Diane Zimmerman | The Case for Hatami

date: 2024-02-20, from: The Signal

In my opinion, George Gascón meets none of the criteria as to job description for district attorney in any dictionary found on the internet or here, in my home. The National District Attorneys Association has a lengthy description. Here are a couple of paragraphs: “The role of the prosecutor (district attorney) is crucial to maintaining […]

The post Diane Zimmerman | The Case for Hatami appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/02/diane-zimmerman-the-case-for-hatami/ Save to Pocket

The global cost of cars: “We find that, since their invention, cars…

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/02/0044008-the-global-cost-of-cars Save to Pocket

Diane Duarte Babko | Much at Stake in 2024 Election

date: 2024-02-20, from: The Signal

(On March 5), we will be voting to select a representative to Congress from our community. There is so much at stake in this election. We will decide if our representative to Congress will support further obstacles to women when they make decisions about their own bodies. We will decide if our country will continue […]

The post Diane Duarte Babko | Much at Stake in 2024 Election appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/02/diane-duarte-babko-much-at-stake-in-2024-election/ Save to Pocket

Dell XPS 2024 laptops are now available for $1300 and up

date: 2024-02-20, from: Liliputing

The Dell XPS line of laptops are thin and light portable computers known for their sleek designs and premium features. And the new 2024 lineup fits the bill in a lot of ways, with Intel Meteor Lake-H processors, optional support for discrete graphics on models with larger screens, and optional support for OLED displays and/or […]

The post Dell XPS 2024 laptops are now available for $1300 and up appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/dell-xps-2024-laptops-are-now-available-for-1300-and-up/ Save to Pocket

Fake Funeral Live Stream Scams Are All Over Facebook

date: 2024-02-20, from: 404 Media Group

Scammers are copying genuine funeral service announcements, making their own Facebook accounts, then directing vulnerable victims to a fake livestream page. “It causes panic on the day where you shouldn’t be thinking of that,” one impacted person said.

https://www.404media.co/fake-funeral-live-stream-scams-are-all-over-facebook/ Save to Pocket

Meet the Arc Sport – an electric wake boat with twice the torque and advanced software

date: 2024-02-20, from: Electrek Feed

Young and budding electric boat developer, Arc Boat Company, has just unveiled its second model – a mass-market electric wake boat called the Arc Sport. With a massive battery and no shortage of horsepower, Arc sees its latest all-electric marine product as a springboard into a segment in desperate need of modernization and intends to do so by offering “unprecedented performance.”

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/arc-sport-electric-wake-boat-twice-the-torque-advanced-software/ Save to Pocket

Volvo Renames The XC40 Recharge and C40 Recharge To EX40 And EC40

date: 2024-02-20, from: Inside EVs News

Now, all the EVs in the Swedish automaker’s portfolio start with the letter E.

https://insideevs.com/news/709294/volvo-xc40-recharge-c40-recharge-renamed/ Save to Pocket

New Jidi Electric Motorcycle Charges Up Mobility In Africa

date: 2024-02-20, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

This looks seriously cool.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/709271/tailg-kofa-jidi-electric-motorcycle-africa/ Save to Pocket

Target’s Undiscountable Items in Early 2024

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: One Foot Tsunami

https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/02/20/targets-undiscountable-items-in-early-2024/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

Surely there must be people inside the NYT that find this as exhausting as we do. How can we set up a receptacle for leaks from inside the NYT and WP so we can get the truth about who’s selling us out to Trump and Putin inside those supposedly great public-serving news orgs?

http://scripting.com/2024/02/20.html#a133056 Save to Pocket

Neuralink patient masters mind-mouse maneuvers – if Musk is to be believed

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Brain-computer interface trial continues to display troubling lack of transparency

Founder Elon Musk has announced that the first human to receive a Neuralink brain-computer interface has fully recovered and can control a computer mouse pointer with their thoughts.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/neuralink_patient_mouse_mind/ Save to Pocket

Pluralistic: Pluralistic is four; The Bezzle excerpt (Part III) (20 Feb 2024)

date: 2024-02-20, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog

Today’s links Pluralistic is four: Reflections on four years of Memex Method, Phase II. The Bezzle excerpt (Part III): In which Steve Soul lawyers up. 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 Pluralistic is four (permalink) Four years ago, I started pluralistic.net, my post-Boing Boing, solo blog project: an ad-free, tracker-free site that anyone can republish, commercially or noncommercially. It’s been a wild four years, featuring over 1,150 editions, many consisting of multiple articles: https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/ As a project, Pluralistic has been a roaring success. I’ve published multiple, significant “breakout” articles that popularized obscure, important, highly technical ideas, most notably “adversarial interoperability”: http://pluralistic.net/tag/adversarial-interoperability “End-to-end” as a remedy for multiple internet ripoffs, including as a superior alternative to link-taxes as a means of saving the news industry from Big Tech predation: https://pluralistic.net/tag/e2e/ and, of course, “enshittification”: https://pluralistic.net/tag/enshittification/ These are emblematic of the sorts of ideas that I’ve spent the past 20+ years trying to popularize in tech-policy debates dominated by technologically illiterate policy ideas (“abolish Section 230!”) and politically illiterate technical ideas (so many to choose from, but let’s just say “cryptocurrency”). They require that the reader come along for a lot of cross-disciplinary analysis that often gets deep into the weeds. These are some of the hardest ideas to convey, but nuanced proposals and critiques that work on both political and technical axes are the best hope we have of successfully weathering the polycrisis. Blogging has always been a part of this project. For nearly 20 years, I posted nearly every day on Boing Boing – 53,906 posts in all! – taking note of everything that seemed important. Keeping a “writer’s notebook” in public imposes an unbeatable rigor, since you can’t slack off and leave notes so brief and cryptic that they neither lodge in your subconscious nor form a record clear enough to refer to in future. By contrast, keeping public notes produces both a subconscious, supersaturated solution of fragmentary ideas that rattle around, periodically cohering into nucleii that crystallize into full-blown ideas for stories, novels, essays, speeches and nonfiction books. What’s more, those ripened ideas are supported by a searchable database of everything I’ve thought about the subject, often annotated by readers and other writers who’ve commented on the posts. I call this “The Memex Method”: https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/ Pluralistic marks a new phase in my deployment of the Memex Method. With 50K+ notes in a database, I’ve gradually turned Pluralistic into a forum for far more synthetic, longer-form work that pulls on threads from decades of research into nothing in particular and everything that seemed important. Pluralistic is also an experiment in retaining control over my destiny – but not my work. Rather than hitching my ability to reach an audience through a platform that can be enshittified at the whim of a mercurial, infantile billionaire or their venal, callous shareholders, Pluralistic is published web-first, on a site I control, and then syndicated to every platform that matters to me. It’s a process called POSSE (Post Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere): https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/#hfbd I want to spread the ideas I fight for, so I post them everywhere, and license them Creative Commons Attribution-Only, encouraging others to repost them. Lots of small sites do this, but so do large ones. Notably, Wired picked up my first breakout piece on enshittification and republished it under the CC terms: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ This was a really interesting process. On the one hand, I didn’t get paid for this feature, which did really well for Wired. On the other hand, nearly 30 years of writing for Wired makes me doubtful that I could have gotten this piece out in the form it emerged, without substantially toning down (or, if you prefer, neutering) the rhetoric that made that piece more persuasive. A commissioning editor from one of the largest newspapers in the world got in touch with me after it came out and said they wished they’d published it – but also that they knew they couldn’t possibly have done so. By publishing the story first on my blog, proving its audience, and establishing its canonical form, I was able to get it amplified by a service with a much bigger platform than me, without having to compromise on the form. That republication gave me the much-maligned “exposure” – but it also carried the message to places it wouldn’t have reached on its own. I don’t write – have never written – solely as an income source. As both an artist and an activist, connecting with audiences has always been co-equal in my mind with earning my living. That’s why I don’t do a lot of film-writing: it pays well, but most of it never sees the light of day. It’s also why I stopped writing for ad agencies: it paid well, but it didn’t matter to me or my audience. To mangle Dr Johnson: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote solely for money.” The open nature of this blog, with its many open syndication channels, creates multidirectional pathways for evaluating and refining my attempts at making my ideas understood and my art land. My posts often circle back to points I made earlier, incorporating useful feedback from readers and colleagues, sure, but also anticipating and rebutting those areas where critics have convinced others in various forums. Vanity searching is unjustly maligned: I learn a ton about how to make by work better by lurking in Reddit comments, Hacker News, Twitter, Slashdot, Metafilter and other forums. I also take a sneaky pleasure in knowing that the persistent trolls who reliably pop up to grind their weird axes about me (sometimes referencing blog posts I made decades ago) have taught me how to neutralize them in advance, and it’s delightful to see them try their same old lines, only to have other commentators point out that my latest piece makes it absolutely undeniable how wrong they are. Living well is the best revenge, indeed. Four years. I’ve been writing Pluralistic for four years. During that time, I’ve published eight books – and beyond any doubt, Pluralistic helped me get those books into readers’ hands. But far more importantly, during that time, I’ve written nine books – and contracted for a tenth – as the Memex Method paid off again and again. I don’t know how long I’ll do Pluralistic for, but I don’t foresee stopping any time soon. What’s more, no matter what happens to Pluralistic, I can’t ever see giving up on the Memex Method, keeping notes in public and making them work for me. The Bezzle excerpt (Part III) (permalink) This week, I’m serializing part of chapter 14 from my new novel The Bezzle, which is out in stores TODAY (!!!): https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle The Bezzle is a Martin Hench novel, the followup to last year’s Red Team Blues – though each book in the series is designed to be read in any order, and to stand alone (RTB just came out in paperback): https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues Hench is a two-fisted, high-tech forensic accountant whose career spans 40 years of busting high-tech scams, from the earliest days of the PC to the white-hot center of the cryptocurrency bubble. Each book revolves around a single, central scam (in The Bezzle, it’s the unbelievably slimy prison-tech industry): https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve But each book also features lots of subplots that unpick different kinds of fraud. In this serialized excerpt, we get to watch Marty unwind a music royalty theft scheme, the kind of thing that Rebecca Giblin and I pulled apart in our 2022 book, Chokepoint Capitalism (also now in paperback!): https://chokepointcapitalism.com/ Today’s installment gets into one of the major tactics of any semi-respectable scam – simply ignoring the victim in the hope that they’ll get tired and go away. Any of us who’ve been ripped off by a big company can surely relate. I’m leaving on my tour for this one tomorrow, starting with a gig in Salt Lake City at Weller Bookworks (Feb 21) at 630PM: https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm From there, it’s on to LA (with Adam Conover), Seattle (with Neal Stephenson) and many, many more cities – maybe one near you! https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour Here’s part one of the serial: https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease And part two: https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#copyright-termination And now, onto part three! * * * Stefon cooked Jamal another dinner and Jamal wrote another letter, this one more forceful, and addressed to Gounder by name. Two weeks later, Jamal wrote another letter without needing dinner because “that motherfucker went to Harvard fucking law”—Jamal had looked him up in the ALA directory—“and he knows you can’t make legal problems go away just by ignoring them. Time for that piece of shit to put on his big-boy pants and be a goddamned lawyer.” The one thing Jamal wouldn’t do was file a lawsuit. “You need a lawyer for that,” he said. “I mean, I can help you with the paperwork, but a paralegal can’t file the suit. And you shouldn’t file your own suit, either. Those guys’ll just hire some blow-dried asshole from a big law firm and they’ll crush you like a cockroach.” “Well, shit,” Stefon said. But it all made sense. Anyone doing business with Chuy Flores would do business like Chuy Flores—that is, crooked as hell. “What you need is a contingency lawyer,” Jamal said. “Someone who’ll take the job for a piece of the action.” Which is how Stefon ended up being represented by Benny Caetani II, son of Benedetto Caetani, who graduated at the top of his Yale class, won a string of spectacular class-action suits, then got disbarred after someone leaked calls where he admitted moving money from one client trust account into another to cover a shortfall. No one seriously thought that Benedetto was stealing anyone’s money—he’d had receivables due within a week that let him make the trust account whole—but he was also clearly guilty. Equally, no one seriously believed that the high-powered surveillance that led to Benedetto’s downfall was random. Benedetto had transferred more than a hundred million dollars from the balance sheets of America’s largest, dirtiest corporations— poison-peddling pharma giants, toxic-waste-dumping chemical companies, a global chain of botox parlors with some very loose syringes indeed—and they were gunning for him. Officially, Benedetto was out of the lawyer game. Unofficially, he was the brains behind Benny, and the two of them ran a squeaky-clean shop, making sure that everything that an actual lawyer had to do, Benny did—while Benedetto did everything else. Father and son got along well and they were a hell of a team. When Benedetto called me in to audit Inglewood Jams’ books, I jumped at the opportunity. They were a delight to work for. “They played tough,” Benedetto said, as his minions arranged the bankers’ boxes on the steel kitchen shelves he’d had installed on the long walls of the storefront he’d rented for me to work out of for the month. “At first. Told me they didn’t owe Stefon a dime, and that they’d rather bankrupt themselves in court than pay some broken-down, washed-up disco king anything. Told me his problem was with Chuy, not Inglewood Jams.” “Well, to be fair, that Chuy guy sounds like a class-A piece of shit.” “A broke piece of shit. Guy’s got a million-dollar nose and an empty bank account.” “So you had to go after Inglewood Jams.” Benedetto twirled around in his Aeron chair. He’d sent over a pair of them, asking if I needed more, because he had a storage locker full of them that he’d gotten as part of a settlement with a broke Santa Monica crowdsourcing company that stiffed its workers when it folded. “I did. I went after them. That Gounder lawyer tried to bluff, then when that didn’t work, he tried to dodge service. Which was such a kindergarten move. Plus he was no good at it. Caught him outside the rub-and-tug parlor he went to every Friday after work. Handed him the papers. Wore a bodycam. Didn’t mention his wife. Didn’t have to.” “You think he settled because he didn’t want his wife to find out he was getting hand jobs at a massage parlor?” “No, he held out awhile after that. But I could see it preying on him, every time I was face-to-face with him. Eventually, he musta told his bosses that they were gonna lose, and so they offered a settlement. It was trash. I laughed in his face. He tossed out some better offers, but none of them even in the ballpark of what we would get in court. Finally, I told him to get serious or send his court suit out to the dry cleaner’s. That’s when he offered to make Stefon whole and pay me a little for my trouble on top of things.” I suppressed a snort. I was sure that a little on top amounted to some real folding money. “Even then he tried to pull a fast one, told me he’d calculate Stefon’s royalties and send a check the next week. I was like, ’Hold up, there is no way you’re going to be able to make an honest accounting for Stefon’s royalties in a week. The dude’s samples are in hundreds of songs. The mere fact that you claimed that you could come up with a fair amount in a week tells me you were planning to pull a lowball number out of your ass and pass it off as the audited total, so tell you what, I’m gonna get the best forensic accountant in the state of California to come down here to LA and crawl all over your papers, and you are going to send him everything he needs to do it, or we’re going to court, motherfucker.” “And he agreed?” “Hell no. He refused. We went to a preliminary hearing. Judge turned out to be a classic soul fan. It didn’t go well for Gounder or Inglewood. The next day, he was back in my office, and now, well, here we are.” Hey look at this (permalink) Manulife reversed its pharmacy deal with Loblaw’s Shoppers Drug Mart – so what? https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-manulife-reversed-its-pharmacy-deal-with-loblaws-shoppers-drug-mart-so/ (h/t Regs to Riches) Are We Transitioning From Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom? https://jacobin.com/2024/02/yanis-varoufakis-techno-feudalism-capitalism-interview/ Every Time We Meet for Ice Cream Your Whole F*cking Face Explodes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orfDpGNh_kc (h/t Nelson Minar) This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago GreyTuesday: mass mirroring of the Grey Album https://web.archive.org/web/20040220061627/http://www.greytuesday.org/ #15yrsago Terry Pratchett gets a knighthood https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7896865.stm #15yrsago Irish cops finally “catch” Prawo Jazdy https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171.stm?lss #10yrsago Ukraine security forces torch #euromaidan’s IT tent, kill journalist, beat tech protester to near-death https://web.archive.org/web/20140302031342/http://it-namet.com.ua/news/zayava-it-spilnoti-shodo-podij-19-lyutogo #10yrsago Survivors of the Florida School for Boys return to the site of legal kidnapping, torture and murder of children https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/returning-to-dozier-florida-school-for-boys/ #10yrsago XKCD’s brilliant explanation of Fermi Estimation https://what-if.xkcd.com/84/ #10yrsago NH legislator introduces bill to stop small-town cops from buying tanks https://www.techdirt.com/2014/02/18/new-hampshire-state-legislator-hopes-to-push-back-against-police-militarization-with-new-bill/ #10yrsago Detailed analysis of Syria’s network censorship with logs from Blue Coat’s surveillance boxes https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.3401.pdf #5yrsago Scientists finally explain why microwaved grapes emit glorious bursts of plasma https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818350116 #5yrsago “We take your privacy and security seriously” is the “thoughts and prayers” of data-breaches https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/we-take-your-privacy-and-security-seriously/ #5yrsago Study suggests that Flat Eartherism spread via Youtube https://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2018/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/21432 #5yrsago Publisher of Alabama newspaper calls for the Klan to ride on DC with “hemp ropes” https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/02/18/alabama-newspaper-ku-klux-klan-to-night-ride-again-linden-democrat-reporter-goodloe-sutton/2910436002/ #5yrsago Ontario parliamentarian calls for Right to Repair legislation https://mobilesyrup.com/2019/02/18/ontario-mpp-right-repair/ #5yrsago EU Commission calls opponents of Copyright Directive a “mob,” as thousands take to the streets for the #Artikel13Demo https://torrentfreak.com/eu-commission-deletes-article-13-post-because-mob-understood-it-incorrectly-190218/N #1yrago Twiddler https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/ #1yrago Pluralistic is three https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three 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: How I Got Scammed (https://craphound.com/news/2024/02/18/how-i-got-scammed/) Upcoming appearances: The Bezzle at Weller Book Works (Salt Lake City), Feb 21 https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm The Bezzle at Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego), Feb 22 https://www.mystgalaxy.com/22224Doctorow The Bezzle at Vroman’s (Pasadena), Feb 24 https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Cory-Doctorow-discusses-The-Bezzle The Bezzle at Third Place Books (Seattle), Feb 26 https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/cory-doctorow The Bezzle at Powell’s (Portland) Feb 27: https://www.powells.com/book/the-bezzle-martin-hench-2-9781250865878/1-2 The Bezzle at Changing Hands (Phoenix), Feb 29: https://www.changinghands.com/event/february2024/cory-doctorow Tucson Festival of Books, Mar 9/10 https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?id=676 Enshittification: How the Internet Went Bad and How to Get it Back (virtual), Mar 26 https://libcal.library.ubc.ca/event/3781006 Wondercon Anaheim, Mar 29-31 https://www.comic-con.org/wc/ The Bezzle at Anderson’s Books (Chicago), Apr 17 https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1 Torino Biennale Tecnologia (Apr 19-21) https://www.turismotorino.org/en/experiences/events/biennale-tecnologia Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Winnipeg), May 2 https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337?aff=oddtdtcreator Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival (May 5-11) https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/ Media Ecology Association keynote (Amherst, NY), Jun 6-9 https://media-ecology.org/convention American Association of Law Libraries keynote (Chicago), Jul 21 https://www.aallnet.org/conference/agenda/keynote-speaker/ Recent appearances: From privacy to paper jams, a look at printer problems https://www.ctpublic.org/show/the-colin-mcenroe-show/2024-02-15/from-privacy-to-paper-jams-a-look-at-printer-problems Big Story Podcast https://thebigstorypodcast.ca/2024/02/13/a-story-about-how-anyone-yes-even-you-can-get-scammed/ Why Taylor Left Tiktok (Today, Explained) https://open.spotify.com/episode/62R2sJ6cEUOitIDPBdmwpy Latest books: The Bezzle: a sequel to “Red Team Blues,” about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/). “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: Picks and Shovels: a sequel to “Red Team Blues,” about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025 Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025 This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic “When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/ Save to Pocket

Strategies for an Accelerating Future

date: 2024-02-20, from: One Useful Thing

Four questions to ask your organization.

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/strategies-for-an-accelerating-future Save to Pocket

Raising Children In LA Is Expensive. Here’s How A Bigger Child Tax Credit Would Help

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The LAist

If the U.S. Senate passes a bill to expand the Child Tax Credit, more than 2 million children in California could benefit.

https://laist.com/news/education/los-angeles-raising-children-expensive-expanded-child-tax-credit Save to Pocket

Rain Continues To Soak Southern California, With Severe Weather Expected Tuesday Night

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The LAist

Most of L.A. County is currently under a flood watch through Wednesday, with spots of severe weather, including thunderstorms, expected through Tuesday night.

https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/los-angeles-rain-storm-february-continues-tuesday Save to Pocket

Will Huntington Beach Residents Have To Show ID To Vote In Future Elections?

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The LAist

State officials say ID requirements at polls violate state law and unfairly target people of color. Huntington Beach is moving forward anyway.

https://laist.com/news/politics/will-huntington-beach-residents-have-to-show-id-to-vote-in-future-elections Save to Pocket

Beast Taqueria Brings out the Beauty

date: 2024-02-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Fusing Mexican favorites with American comfort food and Santa Barbara beer.

The post Beast Taqueria Brings out the Beauty appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/02/20/beast-taqueria-brings-out-the-beauty/ Save to Pocket

These 3,000-Year-Old Treasures Were Forged From Meteoritic Iron

date: 2024-02-20, from: Smithsonian Magazine

New research reveals that two Bronze Age artifacts from the Treasure of Villena contain iron from a meteor that hit a million years ago

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-famous-spanish-treasure-actually-contains-metal-from-space-180983788/ Save to Pocket

This New Interactive Tool Can Help Inform Climate Policy

date: 2024-02-20, from: Heatmap News

Current conditions: A tropical storm has formed in the South Atlantic for the first time in three years • Ongoing wildfires in Chile forced residents to evacuate • It’s 51 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy in London where a pod of dolphins was spotted in the River Thames.

THE TOP FIVE

Hawaii considers charging tourists to enter

Hawaii may introduce a $25 tourist fee this spring to help protect the state from wildfires. Hawaii’s Democratic governor, Josh Green, told The Wall Street Journal the fee would bring in close to $70 million annually, and that the money would pay for things like fire breaks, disaster prevention and insurance, and establishing a state fire marshal. “It’s a very small price to pay to preserve paradise,” Green said. Hawaii is still recovering from the deadly Lahaina wildfires that struck Maui last year. The tourist fee would follow a larger trend of visitors being asked to help contribute to climate resilience efforts in high-risk destinations across the world.

Copernicus launches new interactive climate tool

Here’s one for the climate data nerds: The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) – a key resource for global climate data – today unveiled a cool new interactive tool. The Interactive Climate Atlas lets users explore very detailed changes in climate on a regional level, and peer into the future with climate projections based on different warming scenarios. The tool is a “gamechanger” for policymakers, the group said. It’s also just really fascinating (and/or terrifying) to play around with. It takes a little bit of getting used to, though, so good idea to read the user guide before you dive in.

Spatial precipitation changesC3S Interactive Climate Atlas

EU industry CEOs fret over energy shift

A bunch of European industrial business leaders are worried their firms are losing their competitive edge in the energy transition, and they want the EU to do something about it. About 70 CEOs from major European companies are petitioning the EU to introduce a “European Industrial Deal” that would reduce energy costs, boost funding for clean tech, cut red tape, and limit companies’ reporting obligations. “The group says Europe risks losing out to China and the U.S. in the race to supply the technologies needed to roll out renewables and slash industrial emissions,” reported Bloomberg. Ursula von der Leyen will join the group in Antwerp today in a bid to garner support as she launches her bid for a second term as European Commission president.

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Major car part manufacturer slashing jobs

A French company that manufactures parts for about half the world’s cars is cutting 10,000 jobs as the global shift to electric vehicles changes the automotive landscape, reported The Wall Street Journal. Forvia provides exhaust systems as well as interiors for carmakers including Ford, Tesla, Stellantis, and Volkswagen. The cuts, which will happen over the next five years, come as the company strives to stay competitive as new policies in the EU favor electric vehicles, and Chinese carmakers like BYD look to expand. Automotive suppliers “have made hefty investments in the shift to electric, and now they are seeing their markets being hit due to slower uptake than expected,” wrote Jennifer Mossalgue at Electrek.

Culture wars target lab-grown meat

Florida is one of a handful of states trying to ban lab-grown meat, seen by some as a potential way to help cut the greenhouse gas emissions of the meat and dairy industries. A new bill in the state legislature would make it a misdemeanor to sell or manufacture lab-grown meat (which is made from animal cells), and anyone caught doing so would be fined $1,000. “The development of lab-grown meat has been drawn into America’s culture wars, like other ventures aimed at disrupting traditional food production,” explained The New York Times. The irony is that “it likely will be years before lab-grown meat is a staple on dinner plates in America, if it happens at all.”

THE KICKER

“Luxury is better when it’s quiet and doesn’t smell like diesel exhaust.” –Electrek’s Jo Borrás on why some ski resorts are rolling out electric equipment

https://heatmap.news/climate/copernicus-climate-too Save to Pocket

One less credit card company, one more giant bank. Maybe.

date: 2024-02-20, from: Marketplace Morning Report

Capital One says it’s reached an all-stock deal to take over Discover Financial Services. The acquisition would create a stronger rival to Visa and Mastercard, but it’s far from a done deal and is likely to face heavy scrutiny from regulators. Also on the show: why the average age of Americans farmer is on the rise, and what the producer price index can reveal about inflationary trends.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/one-less-credit-card-company-one-more-giant-bank-maybe Save to Pocket

Euro shoppers popping more and more premium phones in the basket

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Apple ousts Samsung as the people’s choice in Q4, and the words ‘refresh’ and ‘cycle’ are whispered for 2024

Apple topped the European smartphone marketplace in Q4 as local shoppers opted to buy premium priced handsets.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/euro_phones_figures_canalys/ Save to Pocket

China unveils its first domestically produced passenger jet

date: 2024-02-20, from: Marketplace Morning Report

From the BBC World Service: China’s C919 jetliner is being showcased at the Singapore Airshow. Its Beijing-backed manufacturer is hoping the plane will be a challenger to Airbus’ A320 and Boeing’s 737 Max. Then, doctors in South Korea are striking in protest at plans to train more physicians. And in Spain, the northeastern region of Catalonia has been suffering a record-breaking drought, and a state of emergency has been declared.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/china-unveils-its-first-domestically-produced-passenger-jet Save to Pocket

Russian Court Says US Reporter to Remain in Detention

date: 2024-02-20, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/russian-court-says-us-reporter-to-remain-in-detention-/7494776.html Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Measles erupts in Florida school where 11% of kids are unvaccinated.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/measles-erupts-in-florida-school-where-11-of-kids-are-unvaccinated/ Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Trump ranked last by historians, Biden 14th.

https://www.axios.com/2024/02/19/presidents-survey-trump-ranks-last-biden-14th Save to Pocket

The Cost of Courage

date: 2024-02-20, from: Dan Rather’s Steady

Courage is the moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty, according to Merriam-Webster. It comes from the Latin cor, meaning heart. My father instilled in me a respect for the word and the ideal when I was very ill as a young child.

https://steady.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-courage Save to Pocket

Microsoft Is Spying on Users of Its AI Tools

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-19, from: Bruce Schneier blog

Microsoft announced that it caught Chinese, Russian, and Iranian hackers using its AI tools—presumably coding tools—to improve their hacking abilities.

From their report:

In collaboration with OpenAI, we are sharing threat intelligence showing detected state affiliated adversaries—tracked as Forest Blizzard, Emerald Sleet, Crimson Sandstorm, Charcoal Typhoon, and Salmon Typhoon—using LLMs to augment cyberoperations.

The only way Microsoft or OpenAI would know this would be to spy on chatbot sessions. I’m sure the terms of service—if I bothered to read them—gives them that permission. And of course it’s no surprise that Microsoft and OpenAI (and, presumably, everyone else) are spying on our usage of AI, but this confirms it…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/microsoft-is-spying-on-users-of-its-ai-tools.html Save to Pocket

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-02-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Easy/lazy tech journalism.

https://seths.blog/2024/02/easy-lazy-tech-journalism/ Save to Pocket

Memory box displays a photo of whoever scans their fingerprint

date: 2024-02-20, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)

Mike Buss built a memory box for his son’s birthday. It might look like a plain old wooden box to put keepsakes in, but all the magic happens inside the lid.

The post Memory box displays a photo of whoever scans their fingerprint appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/memory-box-displays-a-photo-of-whoever-scans-their-fingerprint/ Save to Pocket

Europe’s datacenter dilemma is that hyperscalers are hogging them all

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Space scarcity and soaring build costs send rent through the roof

Demand for datacenter space in Europe outstripped supply in 2023, with hyperscalers snapping up much of the available capacity and construction of new facilities hampered by difficulties in sourcing sufficient power and acquiring available land.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/europe_datacenter_space/ Save to Pocket

Why Artificial General Intelligence Lies Beyond Deep Learning

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: RAND blog

Achieving artificial general intelligence might require diverging from predictive deductions to enhancing an inductive “what if…?” capacity when prediction is not feasible.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/02/why-artificial-general-intelligence-lies-beyond-deep.html Save to Pocket

Insider steals 79,000 email addresses at work to promote own business

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

After saying they’re very sorry, they escape with a slap on the wrist

A former council staff member in the district where William Shakespeare was born ransacked databases filled with residents’ information to help drum up new business for their outside venture.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/insider_steals_79000_email_addresses/ Save to Pocket

Preview edition of Microsoft OS/2 2.0 surfaces on eBay

date: 2024-02-20, updated: 2024-02-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Discounted from $2,600 down to just $650. What a bargain!

A version of OS/2 2.0 from Microsoft, not IBM, just surfaced on eBay. This pre-release version came out after Windows 3.0.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/microsoft_os2_2_0_beta/ Save to Pocket