News gathered 2024-03-04
(date: 2024-03-04 08:36:31)
La réduction stratégique des risques au-delà des puces
date: 2024-03-07, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Pulver, Tobias Schepers, Névine
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/662527 Save to Pocket
Strategisches De-Risking jenseits von Chip
date: 2024-03-07, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Pulver, Tobias Schepers, Névine
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/662826 Save to Pocket
Topological Matter by Inverse Design
date: 2024-03-05, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Bösch, Cyrill
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/649929 Save to Pocket
March 3, 2024
date: 2024-03-04, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-3-2024-537 Save to Pocket
AI’s Newest Advance: Realistic High-Definition Video From a Few Words
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
The latest innovation in artificial intelligence is photo-realistic video created from just a few words. Deana Mitchell has the story.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ai-s-newest-advance-realistic-high-definition-video-from-a-few-words/7513008.html Save to Pocket
Police arrest juvenile suspected of shooting at California cop
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
The alleged shooter was taken into custody after a multi-hour search.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/police-say-juvenile-shot-at-anaheim-officer-no-one-was-struck-by-the-gunfire/ Save to Pocket
Sinead O’Connor’s Estate Tells Trump: ‘Stop Playing Her Music at Rallies’
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
LONDON — The estate of Sinead O’Connor asked Donald Trump Monday not to play her music at campaign rallies, saying the late singer considered the former president a “biblical devil.”
Trump has played O’Connor’s biggest hit, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” at events as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination.
In a joint statement, O’Connor’s estate and her record label, Chrysalis, demanded Trump “desist from using her music immediately.”
It said the Irish singer, who died last year aged 56, “lived by a fierce moral code defined by honesty, kindness, fairness and decency towards her fellow human beings.”
“It was with outrage therefore that we learned that Donald Trump has been using her iconic performance of Nothing Compares 2 U at his political rallies,” the statement said.
“It is no exaggeration to say that Sinead would have been disgusted, hurt and insulted to have her work misrepresented in this way by someone who she herself referred to as a ‘biblical devil.’ As the guardians of her legacy, we demand that Donald Trump and his associates desist from using her music immediately.”
Fiery and outspoken, O’Connor was a critic of the Roman Catholic Church well before
allegations of sexual abuse were widely reported, and she was open about her mental health struggles.
She was found unresponsive at her London home in July and pronounced dead at the scene. A coroner ruled that she died of natural causes.
O’Connor joins a growing list of artists who have objected to Trump using their songs, including Rihanna, Neil Young, Linkin Park, the late Tom Petty and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7513024.html Save to Pocket
How Jane Austen Changed Fiction Forever
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/03/how-jane-austen-changed-fiction-forever Save to Pocket
Beverly Hills Hotel Valet Driver Crashed This Tesla Cybertruck: Report
date: 2024-03-04, from: Inside EVs News
The front wheel was ripped right off the truck.
https://insideevs.com/news/711068/valet-driver-crash-tesla-cybertruck/ Save to Pocket
2024-03-04 Israel and Palestine
date: 2024-03-04, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-03-04 Israel and Palestine
If you’re wondering how Israel is going to come back after all this, I suspect you already forgot how it managed to come back after 2006. I’m not sure how that makes me feel. On the one hand, I have completely checked out. The people in charge are utter villains. The settlements, the cutting down of trees, the terrorizing, the things one reads in the news if one cares to look are in a vague but emotionally crushing and morally grinding way similar to how the territory of the US was built on rape, murder, land grab, death marches and reservations. On the other hand, I think we cannot let that hold us back from seeking a better future. We must not stare at the bloody entrails left behind on this road to war. Yes, the news is grim. We must look past it, however. What comes after that? Where will we be in forty years? In twenty years? In five years? In two years? Next year? How will it be better than this?
“The disparity in conditions in the north and south is clear evidence that aid restrictions in the north are costing lives. UNICEF and WFP malnutrition screenings in the north in January found that nearly 16 per cent - or 1 in 6 children under 2 years of age - are acutely malnourished. Similar screenings conducted in the south in Rafah, where aid has been more available, found 5 per cent of children under 2 years are acutely malnourished.” – Statement by Adele Khodr, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa
And if you think a solution is impossible, then take heart. The world has managed to come back from two World Wars and countless other brutal wars. Peace is possible. People are not inherently evil. Most people want peace. Those in power and the people surrounding them and supporting them often don’t want peace, however. And once the slaughter starts, it’s hard to stop. Peace is hard.
Often the people arguing for war just can’t imagine peace because of this detail or that detail. And the details are hard to get right, for sure. But they are not impossible. Imagination is required. How else are people going to make plans for after the war? The war will end one day. And those who survived will be following plans that somebody imagined. It is important to imagine a happy, prosperous future and then to make plans of how to get there.
I remember how I was a German speaking kid in Portugal in the eighties and sometimes I’d be greeted by an angry “Heil Hitler!” from kids my age. And Portugal wasn’t even in the war! But all the killing takes generations to forgive and forget. The longer it takes us to get to peace, the longer it will take to forgive. And once there is peace, we must not squander it. We need to work for it. We need to keep aiming for that happy, prosperous future and stick to plans that go there. Don’t follow leaders without a clear plan. If they don’t have one, they don’t care or they’re unwilling to listen. There are many people with plans for peace. It’s just that the road is hard. And yet, that is the road we have.
- Stop the killing.
- Respect human rights.
- Implement justice.
Yes, it’s hard. But the alternative isn’t looking good. And we know how to do this. We have negotiated countless peace treaties. We have found solutions to thorny issues all over the world. This is not an impossible task.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-03-04-israel Save to Pocket
NASA’s satellite pit stop project runs out of gas
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
OSAM-1 – expensive, late, difficult, and no longer what the market needs?
NASA has finally pulled the plug on its ambitious mission to refuel and service working satellites via its OSAM-1 demonstrator.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/nasa_osam1_satellite_servicing/ Save to Pocket
Sunflower sea stars are critically endangered, but can humans help the species rebound?
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
A group of aquarists and marine scientists were able to successfully lab reproduce sunflower sea stars, a species nearly wiped to extinction.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/sunflower-sea-stars-are-critically-endangered-but-can-humans-help-the-species-rebound/ Save to Pocket
StoreDot says sub-freezing temps are no problem for its ultrafast charging EV batteries
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
StoreDot, makers of ultrafast Tesla-like 4680 cells, says its battery cells can charge up to 80% of their full capacity in a sub-freezing temperature of 14F (-10C) when charged at standard speed.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/04/storedot-sub-freezing-temps-ultrafast-charging-ev-batteries/ Save to Pocket
Ex-Trump Org. executive Allen Weisselberg pleads guilty to perjury
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
Former Trump Organization CFO was charged on Monday with five counts of perjury relating to testimony he gave during the civil fraud trial of former President Donald Trump regarding the size of the Trump Tower triplex apartment and dealings he had with an insurer.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/ex-trump-org-executive-allen-weisselberg-pleads-guilty-to-perjury/ Save to Pocket
NASA’s Juno Mission Measures Oxygen Production at Europa
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
The ice-covered Jovian moon generates 1,000 tons of oxygen every 24 hours – enough to keep a million humans breathing for a day. Scientists with NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter have calculated the rate of oxygen being produced at the Jovian moon Europa to be substantially less than most previous studies. Published on March 4 […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/juno/nasas-juno-mission-measures-oxygen-production-at-europa/ Save to Pocket
How writers’ and actors’ strikes shape what we watch
date: 2024-03-04, from: Marketplace Morning Report
In its recent quarterly results, Paramount said it would continue several cost-cutting experiments it began in response to last year’s months-long strikes. That’s something it seems every media company is trying to do these days. What will it likely look like? More reality TV, foreign programming and live sports. Also on the show: unpacking what’s included in the the latest government spending bills and explaining the European Union’s $2 billion Apple fine.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/how-writers-and-actors-strikes-shape-what-we-watch Save to Pocket
Jill On Money: Stock market milestones
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
Your investments may or may not track the path of stock indexes, depending on your specific allocation
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/jill-on-money-stock-market-milestones/ Save to Pocket
Facebook will stop subsidizing Australian news. Will tax dollars have to replace it?
date: 2024-03-04, from: Nieman Journalism Lab
When we speak of media freedom, we generally mean it in terms of freedom from unnecessary legal restrictions, so journalists and their sources are not threatened with prosecution for exposing the misdeeds of governments. But Thursday’s announcement by Meta (Facebook’s parent company) that it will stop paying for Australian news content poses a different kind…
https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/03/facebook-will-stop-subsidizing-australian-news-will-tax-dollars-have-to-replace-it/ Save to Pocket
The Minimal Phone hits Indiegogo for $350 and up (E Ink phone with a QWERTY keyboard)
date: 2024-03-04, from: Liliputing
The Minimal Phone is an Android phone with a screen that bucks almost every trend in the modern smartphone space. Instead of a big screen with vibrant colors and a high refresh rate it has a small black and white E Ink display positioned above a physical keyboard, making the phone look a bit like a modern […]
The post The Minimal Phone hits Indiegogo for $350 and up (E Ink phone with a QWERTY keyboard) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/the-minimal-phone-hits-indiegogo-for-350-and-up-e-ink-phone-with-a-qwerty-keyboard/ Save to Pocket
Pac-12 MBB power ratings: Washington State beats expectations like no team has done before
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Cougars have set a conference record for largest margin between preseason projection and final record, beating expectations by at least eight positions.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/pac-12-mbb-power-ratings-washington-state-beats-expectations-like-no-team-has-done-before/ Save to Pocket
Tesla in talks for a factory in Thailand, report says
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
Tesla is in talks with Thailand’s government to build a factory in the country, according to government officials.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/04/tesla-in-talks-factory-thailand-report/ Save to Pocket
A remembrance of legendary film scholar David Bordwell, who died recently at…
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/03/0044101-a-remembrance-of-legendar Save to Pocket
The Doombrush
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/03/04/the-doombrush/ Save to Pocket
North Dakota Republicans will caucus on Monday. Here is what to expect
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
The state’s caucus chair said if Haley upsets Trump, it could affect contests on Super Tuesday.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/north-dakota-republicans-will-caucus-on-the-eve-of-super-tuesday-here-is-what-to-expect/ Save to Pocket
Google-backed EV charging startup Gravity Mobility opens fastest public chargers in the US
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
Gravity Mobility, a New York-based startup specializing in EV infrastructure, has opened a new public charging station being touted as the fastest in the US. With the ability to replenish up to 200 miles of range in a mere five minutes of charging, Gravity Mobility’s advanced technology will help get drivers back on roads more quickly, bringing the segment closer to time parity with traditional gas station visits.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/04/google-ev-charging-startup-gravity-mobility-fastest-public-chargers-in-us/ Save to Pocket
Blackness in the Fediverse: A Conversation with Marcia X
date: 2024-03-04, from: Care
<p>A conversation about the #PlayVicious Mastodon instance.</p>https://logicmag.io/policy/blackness-in-the-fediverse-a-conversation-with-marcia-x Save to Pocket
EU takes a bite out of Apple with $2B in-app purchase fine
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cupertino blames Spotify, says Commission is just giving preference to another European company
Apple’s anti-steering provisions that prevent music streaming apps from directing users outside the App Store for paid services were smacked down in the European Union today and earned the iGiant a fine of more than €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/eu_apple_fine/ Save to Pocket
Read: Supreme Court’s opinion keeping Trump on Colorado ballot
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Supreme Court ruled former President Trump should appear on the ballot in Colorado in a decision that follows months of debate over whether the frontrunner for the GOP nomination violated the “insurrectionist clause” included in the 14th Amendment.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/read-supreme-courts-opinion-keeping-trump-on-colorado-ballot/ Save to Pocket
Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts
date: 2024-03-04, from: Quanta Magazine
By mapping the largest structures in the universe in X-rays, cosmologists have found striking agreement with their standard theoretical model of how the universe evolves.The post Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/fresh-x-rays-reveal-a-universe-as-clumpy-as-cosmology-predicts-20240304/ Save to Pocket
Trump Wins Colorado Ballot Disqualification Case at US Supreme Court
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-wins-colorado-ballot-disqualification-case-at-us-supreme-court-/7512933.html Save to Pocket
Supreme Court keeps Donald Trump on Colorado ballot, rejecting 14th Amendment push
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
The opinion is a massive victory for Trump, vanquishing one of the many legal threats that have both plagued and animated his campaign against President Joe Biden.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/supreme-court-keeps-donald-trump-on-colorado-ballot-rejecting-14th-amendment-push/ Save to Pocket
The Insane Tesla Cybertrax Demolishes Snow And Ice
date: 2024-03-04, from: Inside EVs News
This monster was even built with some support from Tesla. Watch how it was made.
https://insideevs.com/news/711050/insane-tesla-cybertrax-snow-tracks/ Save to Pocket
Webb Unlocks Secrets of One of the Most Distant Galaxies Ever Seen
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
Looking deeply into space and time, two teams using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have studied the exceptionally luminous galaxy GN-z11, which existed when our 13.8 billion-year-old universe was only about 430 million years old. Initially detected with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, this galaxy — one of the youngest and most distant ever observed — […]
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/webb-unlocks-secrets-of-one-of-the-most-distant-galaxies-ever-seen/ Save to Pocket
Ellison-backed med tech startup Project Ronin closes doors
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Built on OCI, the cancer-focused analytics company struggled to find sufficient paying customers, one report claimed
A Larry Ellison-backed startup focused on bringing data analytics to the study and treatment of cancer has reportedly closed.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/ellisonback_med_tech_startup_project/ Save to Pocket
Class of 2015
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Glenn Research Center Hall of Fame 2015 Induction Class The inaugural class of the NASA Glenn Research Center’s Hall of Fame was inducted to celebrate the 100th anniversary of NASA’s predecessor organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). All nine of the inductees were employed during the center’s NACA period from 1941 to […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/glenn/glenn-history/class-of-2015/ Save to Pocket
Class of 2016
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Glenn Research Center Hall of Fame 2016 Induction Class NASA Glenn Research Center inducted its second class into its Hall of Fame as part of a year-long celebration of the center’s 75th anniversary. Again, the honorees emerged from a variety of fields, from center directors, to groundbreaking researchers, computer analysts, and education. The induction […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/glenn/class-of-2016/ Save to Pocket
Class of 2021
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Glenn Research Center Hall of Fame 2021 Induction Class A third class of the NASA Glenn Hall of Fame was selected as part of the observance of the center’s 80th Anniversary. The 10 inductees represent Glenn’s broad competencies and mission support functions. This class is the first to emerge from Glenn’s recent history, and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/glenn/glenn-history/class-of-2021/ Save to Pocket
Pending Launch Will Signal Start of Historic NASA Stennis Mission
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
For NASA’s Stennis Space Center, anticipation is high for the scheduled launch today, Monday, March 4, of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will mark the initial step in the Center’s first-ever in-space mission. The launch window is 5:05 to 5:59 p.m. EST, with liftoff currently targeted for 5:05 pm EST. The SpaceX Transporter 10 […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/pending-launch-will-signal-start-of-historic-nasa-stennis-mission/ Save to Pocket
Denisovan humans were first discovered in 2010 but DNA gathered since then…
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/03/0044098-denisovan-humans-were-fir Save to Pocket
What Does Nissan Get If It Rides To Fisker’s Rescue?
date: 2024-03-04, from: Inside EVs News
Plus, we look at how and why China cranks out so many cars, and the new big electric Hyundai may get a name change.
https://insideevs.com/news/711020/fisker-nissan-critical-materials/ Save to Pocket
JCB announces new, electric drive scissor lift for indoor operations
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
JCB has redesigned its S1932 electric drive scissor lifts with an eye towards making it easier to put to work, and easier to get to work, too.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/04/jcb-announces-new-electric-drive-scissor-lift-for-indoor-operations/ Save to Pocket
Hyundai IONIQ 7 will go by IONIQ 9 as the brand’s first three-row electric SUV
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
The first three-row electric SUV from Hyundai will be named the IONIQ 9. Hyundai plans to change the name of the electric SUV from IONIQ 7 to IONIQ 9 as it looks to build off Kia’s success with the EV9.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/04/hyundai-ioniq-9-first-three-row-electric-suv/ Save to Pocket
Apple hit with $2 billion fine over music app abuses
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
The EU’s investigation was sparked by a complaint from Spotify, which claimed it was forced to ramp up the price of its monthly subscriptions to cover costs associated with Apple’s alleged stranglehold on how the App Store operates.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/apple-hit-with-1-8-billion-eu-fine-over-music-app-abuses/ Save to Pocket
Wish You Were Here: Costa Rica beach, zipline and jungle adventures
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
A Walnut Creek couple’s Central American adventures included jungle tours, waterfall hikes and more.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/04/wish-you-were-here-costa-rica-beach-zipline-and-jungle-adventures/ Save to Pocket
Ransomware ban backers insist thugs must be cut off from payday
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Increasingly clear number of permanent solutions is narrowing
Global law enforcement authorities’ attempts to shutter the LockBit ransomware crew have sparked a fresh call for a ban on ransomware payments to perpetrators.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/experts_echo_calls_for_ransomware/ Save to Pocket
NASA Names Winners in Lunar Gateway Packing and Storing Challenge
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
By Brayden McBee Humans living in space have confronted the challenge of maximizing the physical space available to them. As NASA works to return astronauts to the Moon with its Artemis campaign and chart a new era of deep space exploration with Gateway, humanity’s first space station in lunar orbit, being organized and space-efficient is […]
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/stmd-prizes-challenges-crowdsourcing-program/center-of-excellence-for-collaborative-innovation-coeci/coeci-news/winners-lunar-gateway-packing-storing-challenge/ Save to Pocket
Bonnie McBride
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
Citation Sanford Gordon and Bonnie McBride worked side by side to develop one of the most important and widely used computer programs in the aerospace industry, and they continued to improve the program for decades until their deaths. Now known as Chemical Equilibrium with Applications (CEA), the program is still used worldwide. Applications include assigned […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/glenn/glenn-history/bonnie-mcbride/ Save to Pocket
Bobby Sanders
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
Citation Bobby W. Sanders was a widely recognized national technical authority in high-speed inlet technology. He conducted research on all aspects of military and commercial aircraft engine inlets, including conceptual definition, complete design, and testing for military and commercial applications. He conceived, managed, and guided the technical implementation of the center’s inlet research for subsonic […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/glenn/glenn-history/bobby-sanders/ Save to Pocket
Raymond Sharp
date: 2024-03-04, from: NASA breaking news
Citation Edward Raymond Sharp, known as “Ray,” was the center’s director for its first 20 years. Sharp expedited the wartime construction of the laboratory; empowered the research staff with the freedom and tools to succeed; and inspired fierce commitment and loyalty among the staff. Employees, management, local officials, and visitors were all drawn to Sharp’s […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/glenn/glenn-history/raymond-sharp/ Save to Pocket
The Supreme Court Must Be Stopped. “I think of the Supreme Court…
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/03/0044100-the-supreme-court-must-be Save to Pocket
Micron New York mega fab faces an environmental exam
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
At least the US Army is thinking about the frogs in those 226 acres of wetland
Micron’s proposed “mega fab” semiconductor plant in New York State is to be scrutinized by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which is tasked with preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) on the project.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/micron_fab_environmental_scrutiny/ Save to Pocket
John Kerry’s Next Move
date: 2024-03-04, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: California’s Sierra Nevada range is expecting another snowstorm • Dangerous smog has settled on Vietnam’s capital of Hanoi • Drought-stricken Sicily has declared a state of emergency.
THE TOP FIVE
- John Kerry nears last day as climate envoy
This week marks the end of an era in climate diplomacy: John Kerry, the first special presidential envoy for climate, is leaving government. On Wednesday he’ll hand the reins to White House senior advisor John Podesta, though Kerry plans to stay involved in the global fight against climate change on a less formal level. “The reason that I’ve decided to transition from this job is not because we’re finished,” he told the Financial Times. “But as U.S. envoy, I’m presently responsible for the U.S. position, for what we’re doing here. If I’m out there as a citizen, I’m able to work with whoever I choose to work with in order to help accelerate this [transition away from fossil fuels].” Specifically, he plans to focus on securing more funding for the energy transition, having expressed frustration about paltry commitments from the U.S. toward climate funds.
- Scientists connect the dots between Texas fire and climate change
Texas’ Smokehouse Creek fire continued to burn over the weekend, and attempts to bring it under control were hampered by warm temperatures and strong winds. It has so far burned more than 1 million acres and is the largest fire in the state’s history. Two people are known to have died in the blaze. On top of the threat to human life is the danger posed to the millions of cattle that graze in the Texas Panhandle. The fire has scorched grassland and left farmers without food or water for their herds.
A
scorched utility pole in
TexasScott
Olson/Getty Images
According to Climate Central, a nonprofit that researches the effects of climate change, the record winter heat the Panhandle endured on the day the fire ignited was made at least three times more likely due to human-caused climate change. “The more climate changes, the more these risks grow: including the risk of winter heatwaves and wildfire,” said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy and professor at Texas Tech.
- BYD slashes price of best-selling EV
Chinese carmaker BYD released a new version of its best-selling EV today at a price that’s nearly 12% lower than the final sale price of its predecessor, according to Reuters. In China, the new Yuan Plus crossover (known overseas as the Atto 3) will cost 119,800 yuan, or about $16,644. “That price puts the compact SUV at around the same price as [internal combustion engine] rivals including the Honda XR-V, the Buick Envision Plus, and the Volkswagen T-Cross,” Jennifer Mossalgue noted at Electrek. Last week Stella Li, CEO of BYD Americas, said the company wasn’t interested in entering the U.S. market, but major price cuts by the world’s biggest seller of EVs will ripple through the global market, and the Biden administration knows it: Last week President Biden announced an investigation into security threats posed by Chinese EVs, a sign that “the backlash to Chinese EVs has begun in earnest in the U.S.,” wrote Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer.
- BlackRock pivots from ESG to ‘transition investing’
ESG is out. “Transition investing” is in. A new Wall Street Journal report explains how BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is carefully continuing a climate investing strategy while simultaneously attempting to sidestep ESG backlash. The company has stopped trying to change how companies behave, talking about social issues, or fussing over criteria for responsible investing. Instead it’s betting on clean-energy infrastructure projects that will speed the transition away from fossil fuels, a strategy it calls “transition investing.” ESG was too vague, sources said, and failed to outpace the market or prove good for the planet. Meanwhile, private renewable-energy and broad energy-sector investment funds have raised nearly $500 billion over the last five years “and dwarfed the amount raised for traditional fossil-fuel funds,” the Journal reported. “The mega infrastructure projects are the new ESG,” said Peter McKillop, a former spokesman at BlackRock. “Energy-transition infrastructure — Wall Street loves this because it’s real.”
- MethaneSAT scheduled for launch today
A satellite that will monitor methane leaks from space is set to hitch a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base this afternoon. MethaneSAT was developed by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to detect methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is released in large quantities from power plants and factories. The washing-machine-sized craft will orbit Earth 15 times each day and observe 80% to 90% of global oil and gas infrastructure using a high-resolution infrared sensor. It can see how much methane is leaking, where it’s coming from, and whether a leak is getting better (or worse) over time. The team will analyze the data using cloud computing and Google-developed AI technology, and then release the findings to the public, with the hopes of fostering greater accountability from the offenders. But, “there’s no guarantee that this information leads to a change in behavior,” Drew Shindell, an earth-science professor at Duke University, told The New York Times. You can watch the launch here.
THE KICKER
Not a single traffic death incident has been reported in Hoboken, New Jersey, since 2017, which is roughly when the city began removing parking spaces near intersections.
https://heatmap.news/politics/john-kerry-byd-yuan-plus Save to Pocket
New electric scooter to come with XXXXXL seat, but not likely headed to America
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
A new electric scooter from Ather is boasting what it claims to be an XXXXXL seat, though don’t get too excited for the extra comfort just yet. To experience it, you’ll need to book a ticket to India.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/04/new-electric-scooter-to-come-with-xxxxxl-seat-but-not-likely-headed-to-america/ Save to Pocket
Firstgreen battery swap electric skid steer promises 24 hour job sites
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
Heavy equipment upstart Firstgreen was the first construction OEM to show off battery swap technology when it debuted its electric skid steer two years ago. Now, they’re in production – and the company says they can a job site running 24/7.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/04/firstgreen-battery-swap-electric-skid-steer-promises-24-hour-job-sites/ Save to Pocket
Pluralistic: The real problem with anonymity (04 Mar 2024)
date: 2024-03-04, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links The real problem with anonymity: The banal anonymity of evil. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Podcasts, events and more. Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ‘em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ‘em. Colophon: All the rest. The real problem with anonymity (permalink) According to “the greater internet fuckwad theory,” the ills of the internet can be traced to anonymity: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory This isn’t merely wrong, it’s dangerously wrong. The idea that forcing people to identify themselves online will improve discourse is demonstrably untrue. Facebook famously adopted its “real names” policy because Mark Zuckerberg claimed to believe that “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity”: https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html In service to this claimed belief, Zuckerberg kicked off the “nym wars,” turning himself into the sole arbiter of what each person’s true name was, with predictably tragicomic consequences: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ Facebook is, famously, one of the internet’s most polluted reservoirs of toxic interpersonal conduct. That’s not despite the fact that people have to use their “real” names to participate there, but because of it. After all, the people who are most vulnerable to bullying and harassment are the ones who choose pseudonyms or anonymity so that they can speak freely. Forcing people to use their “real names” means that the most powerful bullies speak with impunity, and their victims are faced with the choice of retreat or being targeted offline. This can be a matter of life and death. Cambodian dictator Hun Sen uses Facebook’s real names policy to force dissidents to unmask themselves, which exposes them to arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing. For members of the Cambodian diaspora, the choice is to unmask themselves or expose their family back home to retaliation: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/facebook-cambodia-democracy Some of the biggest internet fuckwads I’ve ever met – and I’ve met some big ones! – were utterly unashamed about using their real names. Some of the nicest people I know online have never told me their offline names. Greater internet fuckwad theory is just plain wrong. But that doesn’t mean that anonymity is totally harmless. There is a category of person who reliably uses a certain, specific kind of anonymity to do vicious things that inflicts serious harm on whole swathes of people: corporate bullies. Take Tinyletter. Tinyletter is a beloved newsletter app that was created to help people who just wanted to talk to others, without a thought to going viral or getting rich. It was sold to Mailchimp, which was sold to Intuit, who killed it: https://www.theverge.com/24085737/tinyletter-mailchimp-shut-down-email-newsletters Tinyletter was a perfect little gem of a service. It cost almost nothing to run, and made an enormous number of peoples’ lives better every day. Shutting it down was an act of corporate depravity but some faceless Intuit manager who woke up one day and said “Fuck all those people. Just fuck them.” No one knows who that person was. That person will never have to look those people in the eyes – those people whose lives were made poorer for that Intuit executive’s indifference. That person is the greater fuckwad, and that fuckwaddery depends on their anonymity. Or take Pixsy, a corporate shakedown outfit that helps copyleft trolls trick people into making tiny errors in Creative Commons attributions and then intimidates them into handing over thousands of dollars: https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/ Copyleft trolling is an absolutely depraved practice, a petty grift practiced by greedy fuckwads who are completely indifferent to the harm they cause – even if it means bankrupting volunteer-run nonprofits for a buck: https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/ Pixsy claims that it is proud of its work “defending artists’ rights,” but when I named the personnel who signed their names to these profoundly unethical legal threats, Pixsy CEO Kain Jones threatened to sue me: https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/ The expectation of corporate anonymity runs deep and the press is surprisingly complicit. I once spent weeks working on an investigative story about a multinational corporation’s practices. I spent hours on the phone with the company’s VP of communications, over the course of many calls. When we were done, they said, “Now, of course, you can’t name me in the article. All of that has to be attributed to ‘a spokesperson.’” I was baffled. Nothing this person said was a secret. They weren’t blowing the whistle. They weren’t leaking secrets. They were a corporate official, telling me the official corporate line. But they wouldn’t sign their name to it. I wrote an article about for the Guardian. It was the only Guardian column any of my editors there ever rejected, in more than a decade of writing for them: https://memex.craphound.com/2012/05/14/anodyne-anonymity/ Given the press’s deference to this anodyne anonymity, it’s no wonder that official spokespeople expect this kind of anonymity. I routinely receive emails from corporate spokespeople disputing my characterization of their employer’s conduct, but insisting that I not attribute their dubious – and often blatantly false – statements to them by name. These are the greater corporate fuckwads, who commit their sins from behind a veil of anonymity. That brand of bloodless viciousness, depravity and fraud absolutely depends on anonymity. Mark Zuckerberg claimed that “multiple identities” enabled bad behavior – as though it was somehow healthy for people to relate to their bosses, lovers, parents, toddlers and barbers in exactly the same way. Zuckerberg’s motivation was utterly transparent: having “multiple identities” doesn’t mean you “lack integrity” – it just makes it harder to target you for ads. But Zuckerberg couldn’t enshittify Facebook on his own. For that, he relies on a legion of anonymous Facebook managers. Some of these people undoubtably speak up for Facebook users’ interests when their colleagues propose putting them in harm’s way for the sake of some arbitrary KPI. But the ones who are making those mean little decisions? They absolutely rely on anonymity to do their dirty work. Hey look at this (permalink) Flipper Zero’s Co-Founder Says the Hacking Tool Is All About Exposing Big Tech’s Shoddy Security https://gizmodo.com/flipper-zeros-co-founder-says-the-hacking-tool-is-all-a-1851279603 Mastodon for Apple II (][+, //c, IIe, and IIgs) https://www.colino.net/wordpress/en/mastodon-for-apple-ii/ (h/t Nelson Minar) This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago The Orkut Song https://web.archive.org/web/20050910045938/http://sims.berkeley.edu/~dmb/orkut/orkutworld.mp3 #15yrsago Doctors force patients to sign gag orders forbidding online reviews https://www.montereyherald.com/2009/03/04/doctors-using-patient-waivers-to-curb-negative-online-reviews/ #10yrsago Edward Snowden to speak at SXSW https://schedule.sxsw.com/2014/events/event_IAP27783 #10yrsago Delhi police lost password for complaints portal in 2006, haven’t checked it since https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/vigilance-complaints-pile-up-as-delhi-police-doesnt-know-password/ #5yrsago London councils plan to slash benefit payments with an “anti-fraud” system known to have a 20% failure rate https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-face-incorrect-benefit-cuts-from-automated-fraud-detector-11651031 #5yrsago History is made: petition opposing the EU’s #Article13 internet censorship plan draws more signatures than any petition in human history https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet #5yrsago The People’s Republic of Walmart: how late-stage capitalism gives way to early-stage fully automated luxury communism https://memex.craphound.com/2019/03/05/the-peoples-republic-of-walmart-how-late-stage-capitalism-gives-way-to-early-stage-fully-automated-luxury-communism/ #5yrsago BATHDOOM: A Doom level based on a terrible bathroom remodel https://twitter.com/dietinghippo/status/1102153605899927556 #1yrago They’re still trying to ban cryptography https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/ Upcoming appearances (permalink) 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 (permalink) Is Social Media Becoming a Bit Shit? (The Briefing) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPlpMd1KEw Radioactive (KCRL) https://krcl.org/blog/grist-investigates-doctorow-seed/ The enshittification of music (Music Ally) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh20fD3XXbg Latest books (permalink) 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 (permalink) 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 Colophon (permalink) Today’s top sources: Waxy (https://waxy.org/). 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 Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Latest podcast: The Majority of Censorship is Self-Censorship https://craphound.com/news/2024/02/25/the-majority-of-censorship-is-self-censorship/ 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/2024/03/04/greater-corporate-fuckward-theory/ Save to Pocket
Cruise’s valuation halved after its driverless car hit and dragged a woman
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Google CEO admits company got it wrong when it built ‘too-woke’ AI, and more
AI in brief Cruise, the self-driving biz backed by General Motors, had its valuation slashed by more than half since one of its cars crashed and dragged a woman down a street.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/cruises_valuation_halved_after_its/ Save to Pocket
Captain’s log: the irreducible weirdness of prompting AIs
date: 2024-03-04, from: One Useful Thing
Also, we have a prompt library!
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/captains-log-the-irreducible-weirdness Save to Pocket
Apple Fined Nearly $2 Billion by European Union Over Music Streaming Competition
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
London — The European Union leveled its first antitrust penalty against Apple on Monday, fining the U.S. tech giant nearly $2 billion for breaking the bloc’s competition laws by unfairly favoring its own music streaming service over rivals.
Apple banned app developers from “fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services outside of the app,” said the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm and top antitrust enforcer.
“This is illegal, and it has impacted millions of European consumers,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, said at a news conference.
Apple behaved this way for almost a decade, which meant many users paid “significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions,” the commission said.
The 1.8 billion-euro fine follows a long-running investigation triggered by a complaint from Swedish streaming service Spotify five years ago.
The EU has led global efforts to crack down on Big Tech companies, including a series of multbillion-dollar fines for Google and charging Meta with distorting the online classified ad market. The commission also has opened a separate antitrust investigation into Apple’s mobile payments service.
Apple hit back at both the commission and Spotify, saying it would appeal the penalty.
“The decision was reached despite the Commission’s failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast,” the company said in a statement.
It said Spotify stood to benefit from the decision, asserting that the Swedish streaming service that holds a 56% share of Europe’s music streaming market and doesn’t pay Apple for using its App Store met 65 times with the commission over eight years.
“Ironically, in the name of competition, today’s decision just cements the dominant position of a successful European company that is the digital music market’s runaway leader,” Apple said.
The commission’s investigation initially centered on two concerns. One was the iPhone maker’s practice of forcing app developers that are selling digital content to use its in-house payment system, which charges a 30% commission on all subscriptions.
But the EU later dropped that to focus on how Apple prevents app makers from telling their users about cheaper ways to pay for subscriptions that don’t involve going through an app.
The investigation found that Apple banned streaming services from telling users about how much subscription offers cost outside of their apps, including links in their apps to pay for alternative subscriptions or even emailing users to tell them about different pricing options.
The fine comes the same week that new EU rules are set to kick in that are aimed at preventing tech companies from dominating digital markets.
The Digital Markets Act, due to take effect Thursday, imposes a set of do’s and don’ts on “gatekeeper” companies including Apple, Meta, Google parent Alphabet, and TikTok parent ByteDance — under threat of hefty fines.
The DMA’s provisions are designed to prevent tech giants from the sort of behavior that’s at the heart of the Apple investigation. Apple has already revealed how it will comply, including allowing iPhone users in Europe to use app stores other than its own and enabling developers to offer alternative payment systems.
The commission also has opened a separate antitrust investigation into Apple’s mobile payments service, and the company has promised to open up its tap-and-go mobile payment system to rivals in order to resolve it.
https://www.voanews.com/a/apple-fined-nearly-2-billion-by-european-union-over-music-streaming-competition-/7512722.html Save to Pocket
Tesla China-Made EV Wholesale Sales Decreased 19% In February 2024
date: 2024-03-04, from: Inside EVs News
The 2024 Chinese New Year holiday seems to be the main cause.
https://insideevs.com/news/710994/tesla-mic-ev-wholesale-sales-february2024/ Save to Pocket
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-03-04, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
The CDC recommends developers to write all new code in C and C++ in a strong rebuke to field experts.
It also dropped the requirement to use -fno-stack-protector on code exposed to the network for government and defense contractors to maximize America’s computational power.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112037510613613894 Save to Pocket
Explainer: What Is Super Tuesday?
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
More states will hold primaries on Tuesday, March 5, than on any other day in this election cycle.
https://www.voanews.com/a/explainer-what-is-super-tuesday-/7512699.html Save to Pocket
NixBSD: unofficial NixOS fork with a FreeBSD kernel
date: 2024-03-04, from: OS News
NixBSD is an attempt to make a reproducible and declarable BSD, based on NixOS. Although theoretically much of this work could be copied to build other BSDs, all work thus far has been focused on building a FreeBSD distribution. ↫ NixBSD Github page It was only a matter of time before someone would try and build this.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138700/nixbsd-unofficial-nixos-fork-with-a-freebsd-kernel/ Save to Pocket
Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk’s mega pay package
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Criminal,’ says CEO
Lawyers representing shareholders who quashed Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla compensation package have submitted a request for nearly $6 billion in the electric car maker’s stock as their fee.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/musk_tesla_pay_fee/ Save to Pocket
What to make of New York Community Bank’s “material weaknesses”
date: 2024-03-04, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Regional lender New York Community Bancorp has already had a rocky year so far and recently replaced its CEO following revelations of “material weaknesses.” NYCB acquired nearly $40 billion in assets last year from the failing Signature Bank, and that rapid growth can make it hard for internal controls to keep up. Also, a federal judge in Alabama struck down an anti-money-laundering law. And interest rates aren’t included in inflation calculations. What gives?
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/what-to-make-of-new-york-community-banks-material-weaknesses Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-04, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Journos seem to think Americans can't understand the basics of world politics, but somehow we understand the rules and history of the NBA, NFL and MLB. The functioning of politics isn't really any more complicated.
http://scripting.com/2024/03/03/180553.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-04, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
There’s a lot of history here. Google Reader insisted posts must have titles, and at the same time twitter said posts may not have titles, so they could never interop. Truth is some ideas are so simple a title is inconceivable.
https://chriscoyier.net/2024/03/03/11148/ Save to Pocket
LLM Prompt Injection Worm
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-01, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Researchers have demonstrated a worm that spreads through prompt injection. Details:
In one instance, the researchers, acting as attackers, wrote an email including the adversarial text prompt, which “poisons” the database of an email assistant using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), a way for LLMs to pull in extra data from outside its system. When the email is retrieved by the RAG, in response to a user query, and is sent to GPT-4 or Gemini Pro to create an answer, it “jailbreaks the GenAI service” and ultimately steals data from the emails, Nassi says. “The generated response containing the sensitive user data later infects new hosts when it is used to reply to an email sent to a new client and then stored in the database of the new client,” Nassi says…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/03/llm-prompt-injection-worm.html Save to Pocket
Can becoming a “book town” help rural communities?
date: 2024-03-04, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Wigtown, a remote town in Scotland, has turned its fortunes around by building a thriving literary sector. Can other towns see success by taking a leaf out of Wigtown’s book? Plus, the National People’s Congress gets underway tomorrow in Beijing, and getting China’s economy back on track is at the top of the agenda.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/wigtown-scotland-book-town-rural-communities Save to Pocket
Ruggedized phone group takes the Bullitt, calls in PWC as administrative receiver
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Website 404ing, calls to switchboard go dead, ‘sad reflection’ of how tough it is to make money in smartphones
UK-based ruggedized phone maker Bullitt Group has called in PWC as administrative receivers after its management team seemingly failed to pull off a proposed restructure.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/bullitt_group_calls_in_pwc/ Save to Pocket
Renault 5 already has 50K orders on its waitlist
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
French automaker Renault is hoping it has a winner on its hands with the upcoming Renault 5 BEV, which the company says already has 50,000 orders on the waitlist just a few days after its debut at the Geneva Motor Show.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/04/renault-5-already-has-50k-orders-on-its-waitlist/ Save to Pocket
People’s CDC COVID-19 Weather Report
date: 2024-03-04, from: Peoples CDC blog
This is the @PeoplesCDC weekly update for March 4, 2024! This Weather Report from the People’s CDC sheds light on the ongoing COVID situation in the US.
https://peoplescdc.org/2024/03/04/peoples-cdc-covid-19-weather-report-69/ Save to Pocket
Vice President Harris to Host Israeli War Cabinet Member After Calling for Gaza Cease-Fire
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/vice-president-harris-to-host-israeli-war-cabinet-member-after-calling-for-gaza-cease-fire/7512668.html Save to Pocket
Synopsys unleashes Ethernet on steroids with 1.6T blueprint to turbocharge AI training
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Design aims to sate the bandwidth hunger of next-gen networks
Semiconductor design outfit Synopsys is targeting datacenter customers with a 1.6 terabit (1.6T) Ethernet blueprint intended to enable chips for demanding AI networking applications.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/synopsys_16t_ethernet/ Save to Pocket
A Carbon Tax Is Back on the Table
date: 2024-03-04, from: Heatmap News
Climate policy has been all over the place lately thanks to pressure from interest groups, pre-election jitters, and the plausibility of a re-elected President Donald Trump laying waste to existing climate policy.
But further in the future, beyond the ups and downs of electoral politics, there’s a policy cataclysm coming that, some hope, could create an opening for that long sought, always denied dream of climate policy: the carbon tax.
Let’s back up. There are two things happening that might free up this policy space, one domestic, and the other overseas. At the end of 2025, much of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, otherwise known as the Trump tax cuts, will expire, including several provisions that many in Congress will want to extend, including lower income tax rates, a higher standard deduction and personal exemption, and an expanded child tax credit.
At the same time, much of the revenue that helped pay for those tax cuts — such as limitations on deductions for mortgage interest and state and local taxes — will also expire.
Measures that reduce taxes tend to be popular and those that raise them tend not to be, and that’s as true with the Trump tax cuts as with anything. (Since basically the day the TCJA passed, there’s been intense bipartisan opposition to the limitation on deductions for state and local taxes, for example.) That they’re expiring all at the same time will create a policy free for all.
And just as the Trump tax cuts expire, the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism will come into full effect in January 2026, complementing its existing cap-and-trade and carbon pricing system. Essentially, CBAM is a tariff on imports from countries that don’t price carbon the same way the EU does, and it’s designed to prevent what’s known as “leakage,” where producers in countries with a carbon price simply offshore emissions-intensive production to countries that don’t. (It also helps make sure those products from other countries aren’t able to undercut domestic producers on price, a facet of the policy some have pooh-poohed as protectionist.)
Starting last year, EU trading partners had to begin reporting the carbon content of some emissions-intensive exports in preparations for payments starting in 2026. One of those trading partners is the United States, which exports some $351 billion worth of goods to the EU, second only to Canada.
Bills that would just address the carbon price gap have been proposed several times in the current Congress, including by climate stalwart and Democrat from Vermont, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, plus some Republicans who think America should get an advantage over China for having a less carbon-intensive manufacturing sector.
This all creates a kind of celestial alignment in favor of a policy that has been rejected so many times (RIP the 2009 cap-and-trade bill and Bill Clinton’s BTU Tax) — or at least that’s what its advocates hope. Based on the history of carbon taxation and related polices, you might be pessimistic. But we haven’t seen a year like 2025.
“If you think about carbon price relative to raising people’s income
taxes, when you put it in the whole fiscal conversation that’s going to
happen in 2025, it’s going to look more attractive,” Catherine Wolfram,
a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and former Treasury
official in the Biden administration, told me. Wolfram was also one of
the authors of a paper released last week by the Brookings Institution’s
Hamilton Project
mapping
out how various climate policies could emerge from the witch’s brew
of TCJA expiring and carbon tariffs would actually effect U.S.
emissions.
The paper concluded that of the seven 2025 climate policy options they considered — including doing nothing to the IRA and enacting planned new emissions rules, doing nothing to the IRA with no new emissions rules, repealing the IRA, expanding the IRA tax credits for clean electricity, instituting a carbon fee starting at $15 a ton, instituting a clean electricity standard that would mandate a certain portion of electricity be produced from non-carbon-emitting sources with fees for noncompliance, and a carbon fee along with repealing some parts of the IRA — the carbon fee and the clean electricity standard would bring emissions down by the most, just missing the stated 2030 target.
And that’s just U.S. emissions. Wolfram said that if the U.S. were to institute a carbon fee, it would be a major step towards a worldwide carbon price, as countries would want to avoid paying fees to both the U.S. and Europe for pollution-intensive exports. “The more countries that get in this game,” Wolfram said, “the more powerful that policy can be.”
Whitehouse spoke at a Brookings event last week, saying, “We’ll find out a lot when people start getting tariffed through the European Union CBAM,” and that even Republicans were “pricing curious” due to the specter of carbon tariffs. “The forces are converging on making that work,” he added about the idea of finally getting a carbon price of our own.
Wolfram is also — cautiously — optimistic. “We haven’t tried since 2009. That’s 15 years ago,” she said. “The climate continues to change, and it’s changed pretty dramatically in the last 15 years. I don’t think we should have too many conclusions about what’s possible.”
https://heatmap.news/economy/carbon-tax-2025 Save to Pocket
BYD slashes price on its best-selling SUV to $16K to compete with gas cars
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
After recently reducing prices of its refreshed Han and Tang models, Build Your Dreams (BYD) just launched a new version of its top-selling EV Yuan Plus – known as the Atto 3 in overseas markets – to $16,644 in China, making it one of the lowest-priced EVs out there.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/04/byd-slashes-price-on-its-best-selling-suv-to-16k-to-compete-with-gas-cars/ Save to Pocket
Tiny Core Linux 15 stuffs modern computing in a nutshell
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Updated with kernel 6.6, latest GCC and glibc, still under 25 MB
Tiny Core Linux shows that a fully functional, GUI-driven Linux distro can be smaller than Windows 95 and still be modern and useful.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/tiny_core_linux_15/ Save to Pocket
In Hawaii, coral is the foundation of life. What happened to it after the Lahaina wildfire?
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Abraham “Snake” Ah Hee rides waves when the surf’s up and dives for octopus and shells when the water is calm. The lifelong Lahaina, Hawaii, resident spends so much time in the ocean that his wife jokes he needs to wet his gills.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/hawaii-news/in-hawaii-coral-is-the-foundation-of-life-what-happened-to-it-after-the-lahaina-wildfire/ Save to Pocket
Key Northern California highway closed as snow continues to fall in the blizzard-hit Sierra Nevada
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>TRUCKEE, Calif. — A major highway was closed and ski resorts were shut down Sunday as the effects of a powerful blizzard continued to cause problems across the Sierra Nevada, and forecasters warned that more heavy snow was on the way for Northern California.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/nation-world-news/key-northern-california-highway-closed-as-snow-continues-to-fall-in-the-blizzard-hit-sierra-nevada/ Save to Pocket
Super Tuesday’s dominance highlights how presidential selection process can exclude many US voters
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — As an independent, Christian Miller can’t vote in Pennsylvania’s closed presidential primary in April. He said it wouldn’t matter even if he could.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/nation-world-news/super-tuesdays-dominance-highlights-how-presidential-selection-process-can-exclude-many-us-voters/ Save to Pocket
A Supreme Court decision could come today in a case about barring Trump from the 2024 ballot
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — A Supreme Court decision could come as soon as today in the case about whether former President Donald Trump can be kicked off the ballot over his efforts to undo his defeat in the 2020 election.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/nation-world-news/a-supreme-court-decision-could-come-today-in-a-case-about-barring-trump-from-the-2024-ballot/ Save to Pocket
Rival of Netanyahu visits US, signaling wider cracks in Israel’s wartime leadership
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>TEL AVIV, Israel — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked a top Cabinet minister arriving in Washington on Sunday for talks with U.S. officials, according to an Israeli official, signaling widening cracks within the country’s leadership nearly five months into its war with Hamas.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/nation-world-news/rival-of-netanyahu-visits-us-signaling-wider-cracks-in-israels-wartime-leadership/ Save to Pocket
Congressional leaders come out with 6 spending bills in a drive to avoid a partial shutdown
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders on Sunday came out with a package of six bills setting full-year spending levels for some federal agencies, a step forward in a long overdue funding process beset by sharp political divisions between the two parties as well as infighting among House Republicans.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/nation-world-news/congressional-leaders-come-out-with-6-spending-bills-in-a-drive-to-avoid-a-partial-shutdown/ Save to Pocket
Nikki Haley wins the District of Columbia’s Republican primary and gets her first 2024 victory
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary in the District of Columbia, notching her first victory of the 2024 campaign.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/nation-world-news/nikki-haley-wins-the-district-of-columbias-republican-primary-and-gets-her-first-2024-victory/ Save to Pocket
Obituaries for March 4
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Hisao “Bob” Fujita, 90, of Glenwood, died Feb. 17 at home. Born in Waikapu, Maui, he was retired from Hussmann Sheetmetal in Los Angeles and a U.S. Army Korean War veteran. Private services held. No flowers or koden (monetary gifts). Survived by siblings, Michi Yoshizu, Takeko Arakawa, Harry Fujita, Yone Higa and Gary Fujita; children, Victoria Angel, Howard (Darlene) Yoshida and Frank Yoshida; 10 grandchildren; great-grandchildren. Arrangements by Dodo Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/obituaries/obituaries-for-march-4-12/ Save to Pocket
Kamala Harris leads Bloody Sunday memorial as marchers’ voices ring out for voting rights
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>SELMA, Ala. — Vice President Kamala Harris told thousands gathered for the 59th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday attacks on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, that fundamental freedoms, including the right to vote, are under attack in America even today.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/nation-world-news/kamala-harris-leads-bloody-sunday-memorial-as-marchers-voices-ring-out-for-voting-rights/ Save to Pocket
Fedro’s walk-off homer and O’Brien’s pitching gem power Vulcans to twinbill sweep of Biola
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>In just his second game of collegiate action, freshman Mark Fedro stepped up big to deliver a walk-off home run as the UH-Hilo Baseball team charged back for a 7-6 victory over Biola before taking down the Eagles again, 2-1, for the doubleheader sweep Friday evening in Pacific West Conference play at Francis Wong Stadium.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/sports/fedros-walk-off-homer-and-obriens-pitching-gem-power-vulcans-to-twinbill-sweep-of-biola/ Save to Pocket
BIIF baseball: Ka‘u and KSH move to 2-0
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Saturday saw early season Big Island Interscholastic Federation (BIIF) baseball continue, as two games were held on the isle’s leeward side.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/sports/biif-baseball-kau-and-ksh-move-to-2-0/ Save to Pocket
Surfers from Brazil and Australia win final Olympic qualifier in warm and windy Puerto Rico
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>ARECIBO, Puerto Rico — Top surfers Gabriel Medina of Brazil and Sally Fitzgibbons of Australia won the final qualifier for the upcoming Olympics on Sunday following nine days in which scores of competitors faced volatile weather and painful sea urchin spines.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/sports/surfers-from-brazil-and-australia-win-final-olympic-qualifier-in-warm-and-windy-puerto-rico/ Save to Pocket
Iowa’s Caitlin Clark breaks Pete Maravich’s NCAA Division I scoring record
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Caitlin Clark stood alone at the free-throw line on Sunday and made the foul shots that put her atop the all-time NCAA Division I scoring chart.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/sports/iowas-caitlin-clark-breaks-pete-maravichs-ncaa-division-i-scoring-record/ Save to Pocket
Don’t buy Putin’s bluff. The West can outspend him
date: 2024-03-04, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Vladimir Putin wants the world to believe that Russia’s economy is doing fine, and that he has the wherewithal to prosecute the war in Ukraine indefinitely.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/04/opinion/dont-buy-putins-bluff-the-west-can-outspend-him/ Save to Pocket
The federal bureau of trolling hits LockBit, but the joke’s on us
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
When you can’t lock ’em up, lock ’em out
Opinion The best cop shows excel at mind games: who’s tricking whom, who really wins, and what price they pay. A twist of humor adds to the drama and keeps us hooked. It’s rare enough in real life, far less so in the grim meat grinder of cybersecurity, yet sometimes it happens. It’s happening right now.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/opinion/ Save to Pocket
Oingerang, Camacho defend MTB national titles
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
Dry trails and challenging elevation changes created the backdrop for the 2024 Guam Cycling Federation MTB/XCO National Championship on Sunday at Channel 10 in Piti.
https://www.postguam.com/sports/local/oingerang-camacho-defend-mtb-national-titles/article_e7415558-d9b4-11ee-9bfe-6bf1603259df.html Save to Pocket
Athletes climb to new heights in national scaling competition
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
A first for the island, the Guam National Federation of Sport Climbing held a national ranking tournament Saturday at the Guam Sport Climbing Center in Dededo.
https://www.postguam.com/sports/local/athletes-climb-to-new-heights-in-national-scaling-competition/article_9da96920-d9ab-11ee-92e9-c3cfc2bf80ad.html Save to Pocket
Candidates begin filing ahead of primary
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Election Commission began accepting candidate packets Feb. 26, and the first few filings have already come in. Only two candidates had filed packets for senatorial positions before the weekend – incumbent Sens. Roy Quinata and Joe San Agustin.…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/candidates-begin-filing-ahead-of-primary/article_deeb432e-d9c2-11ee-8dfb-8734a80ba0f6.html Save to Pocket
Governor waives response to AG SCOTUS petition on abortion ban
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
Legal counsel for the governor has chosen not to submit a response to the writ of certiorari petition filed by the attorney general regarding last year’s Supreme Court of Guam decision on the island’s old abortion ban, unless requested by…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/governor-waives-response-to-ag-scotus-petition-on-abortion-ban/article_fa44d462-d9ce-11ee-b03b-6328b229a29c.html Save to Pocket
Humåtak reenactment draws crowd
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
Humåtak bustled with activity as villagers and visitors celebrated Mes CHamoru with the reenactment a couple of days ahead of Ferdinand Magellan’s historic March 6, 1521, landing.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/hum-tak-reenactment-draws-crowd/article_9fbb8da8-d9db-11ee-bc9f-cf8ded5f83c4.html Save to Pocket
Renovations finally begin on historic Humåtak school site
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
Renovations to F.Q. Sanchez Elementary School in Humåtak have commenced, nearly two years after it was designated as one of the nation’s 11 most endangered historic places.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/renovations-finally-begin-on-historic-hum-tak-school-site/article_c457ea38-d9d8-11ee-97e3-e7637e66f5e2.html Save to Pocket
A 2nd suspect is charged in the alleged rape of 12-year-old girl
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
A second man was charged in connection to raping a then-12-year-old girl in 2023.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/a-2nd-suspect-is-charged-in-the-alleged-rape-of-12-year-old-girl/article_244fcb12-d9b7-11ee-a592-67c23ee86853.html Save to Pocket
‘Knew his day would come’: Man accused of raping girl
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
A man was accused of raping a minor several times over the past five years.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/knew-his-day-would-come-man-accused-of-raping-girl/article_0391f4bc-d9bd-11ee-88f8-1718bca01677.html Save to Pocket
Man, 65, guilty of sexually assaulting girls
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
The Office of the Attorney General will be seeking a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a man found guilty of several counts of criminal sexual conduct.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-65-guilty-of-sexually-assaulting-girls/article_02174884-d9c8-11ee-8f38-abef5188f7f5.html Save to Pocket
Parent to GDOE: ‘How do we get champions for these kids?’
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
There is segregation occurring in Guam Department of Education schools, according to a parent who says she experienced the negative impact it’s had on her once studious and athletic son.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/parent-to-gdoe-how-do-we-get-champions-for-these-kids/article_16be90d4-d8fc-11ee-b7e5-b791e1ca7ed1.html Save to Pocket
THEA500 Mini keyboard | #MagPiMonday
date: 2024-03-04, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
THEA500 Mini console is something to write home about if you’re an Amiga fan – until you realise you can’t use its keys to do so.
The post THEA500 Mini keyboard | #MagPiMonday appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/thea500-mini-keyboard-magpimonday/ Save to Pocket
Escaping Trump’s revenge
date: 2024-03-04, from: Robert Reich on Substack
A horrible question is being asked
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/escaping-trumps-revenge Save to Pocket
PeerJ Awards Winners at ASBHM 2024
date: 2024-03-04, from: PeerJ blog
Australasian Society of Behavioural Health and Medicine Annual Conference 2024 (ASBHM2024): ASBHM2024, held in Adelaide, South Australia, from February 7th to 9th, brought leading clinicians and researchers together to showcase innovative research in health psychology and behavioural medicine. Keynote speakers, including Professor Molly Byrne, Associate Professor Amanda Rebar, and Professor Deborah Turnbull, delivered insights on […]
https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284888908/peerj-awards-winners-at-asbhm-2024/ Save to Pocket
Classifieds – March 4, 2024
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.
The post Classifieds – March 4, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/classifieds-march-04-2024/ Save to Pocket
Health system network turned out to be a house of cards – Cisco cards, that is
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Pride came before a fall for techie who thought he knew it all
who, me? Welcome once again, gentle reader, for that cushion into the working week that we like to call Who, Me? in which readers like your good selves entertain us with tales of times technology did not go quite right.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/who_me/ Save to Pocket
US Recognizing ‘International Women of Courage’
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-recognizing-international-women-of-courage-/7512577.html Save to Pocket
Today in SCV History (March 4)
date: 2024-03-04, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1940 – NYC premiere of “The Marines Fly High” starring Lucille Ball, filmed in Placerita Canyon [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-march-4/ Save to Pocket
Men’s volleyball left in (B)ruins after losses
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Trojans dropped three straight sets to UCLA in front of a historic crowd.
The post Men’s volleyball left in (B)ruins after losses appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/mens-volleyball-left-in-bruins-after-losses/ Save to Pocket
Faye Webster gives a mediocre glimpse into mid-20s life
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The artist lost her creative touch with this album.
The post Faye Webster gives a mediocre glimpse into mid-20s life appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/faye-webster-gives-a-mediocre-glimpse-into-mid-20s-life/ Save to Pocket
No, East Coasters, LA can handle rain. At least, it once could
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
SoCal and the East Coast handle rain differently, but it’s not just the infrastructure.
The post No, East Coasters, LA can handle rain. At least, it once could appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/no-east-coasters-la-can-handle-rain-at-least-it-once-could/ Save to Pocket
Women’s swim and dive impresses in last Pac-12 Championship
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
USC stole second place away from Stanford in dramatic fashion to finish Pac-12 play.
The post Women’s swim and dive impresses in last Pac-12 Championship appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/womens-swim-and-dive-impresses-in-last-pac-12-championship/ Save to Pocket
Affordable internet services to expire in April
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Affordable Connectivity Program supported 35% of households in South Central.
The post Affordable internet services to expire in April appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/affordable-internet-services-expire-in-april/ Save to Pocket
Still best friends, just not anxiously attached
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Learning how to maintain long-distance friendships is a challenge.
The post Still best friends, just not anxiously attached appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/still-best-friends-just-not-anxiously-attached/ Save to Pocket
Sophomores show pop music prowess
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The second-year popular music cohort impressed Carson Soundstage Friday.
The post Sophomores show pop music prowess appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/sophomores-show-pop-music-prowess/ Save to Pocket
Study finds partisan divide over teaching sensitive topics
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
USC researchers found that more Democrats supported lessons on gender and race than Republicans.
The post Study finds partisan divide over teaching sensitive topics appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/study-finds-partisan-divide-over-teaching-sensitive-topics/ Save to Pocket
‘Austin to Boston’ takes me to a better place
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
A tour documentary reminds me that music is the perfect companion for transport.
The post ‘Austin to Boston’ takes me to a better place appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/austin-to-boston-takes-me-to-a-better-place/ Save to Pocket
The doping debate
date: 2024-03-04, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Doping in sports is more than just a technical violation.
The post The doping debate appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/04/the-doping-debate/ Save to Pocket
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program struggles to get off the drawing board
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The tech just isn’t ready and clunky collab with ESA isn’t helping, auditor finds
NASA’s Office of Inspector General, the agency’s auditor, has found that the Mars Sample Return Program is struggling to get off the drawing board, never mind the launchpad.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/mars_sample_return_audit_warnings/ Save to Pocket
India demands beta AIs secure government permission before going public
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Not compulsory for now, but IT minister says that’s coming after Google’s Gemini said the quiet part out loud
India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued an advisory last Friday stipulating AI technology still in development acquire government permission prior to release to the Indian public.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/india_ai_permission/ Save to Pocket
March 3, 2024
date: 2024-03-04, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
This week seems likely to be packed with news. Today, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke about the crisis in the Middle East with strong words for both Hamas and Israel, calling for a ceasefire of at least six weeks, the return of hostages, and increased aid to the Palestinians. Such a deal is on the table. According to the U.S., Israel has agreed to it, and negotiators are waiting for a response from Hamas leaders.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-3-2024 Save to Pocket
Ear Cuffs
date: 2024-03-04, from: Jessica Smith’s blog
For a while now, I’ve been enamoured with a certain style of ear jewellery demonstrated here by Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor:
<a href="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/jodie-whittaker1.jpg" class="glightbox" data-gallery="ear-cuffs"
style="aspect-ratio: 3 / 4;"><img
sizes="(min-width: 715px) 320px, (min-width: 435px) 45vw, 50vw"
srcset="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/jodie-whittaker1_hu2d818969ff1871cf523b4ffdb36bd86f_179978_320x0_resize_q85_box.jpg 320w, https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/jodie-whittaker1_hu2d818969ff1871cf523b4ffdb36bd86f_179978_440x0_resize_q85_box.jpg 440w, https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/jodie-whittaker1.jpg 600w"
src="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/jodie-whittaker1.jpg"
alt="Crop of a BBC publicity image, showing Jodie Whittaker in 3/4 profile view. The focus of the shot is her earring: there's an earlobe stud of two hands shaking, and a little silver chain running from that to an ear cuff in the shape of a bunch of stars at the top of her ear."
loading="lazy" class="u-photo u-featured"></a>
<a href="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/jodie-whittaker2.jpg" class="glightbox" data-gallery="ear-cuffs"
style="aspect-ratio: 3 / 4;"><img
sizes="(min-width: 715px) 320px, (min-width: 435px) 45vw, 50vw"
srcset="
/2024/03/ear-cuffs/jodie-whittaker2.jpg 270w"
src="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/jodie-whittaker2.jpg"
alt="A screenshot from a Doctor Who episode, showing Jodie Whittaker facing the camera, with her hair tucked behind her left ear, allowing the ear stud on that ear to come to prominence."
loading="lazy" class="u-photo"></a>Basically, jewellery that spans the whole height of the ear! I love it. I never looked into it too seriously for myself, because I presumed jewellery like this required multiple piercings, and currently I have zero piercings (not out of any opposition to them, I’ve just never gone out of my way to do the research that’d be required to get any). However, yesterday I decided to finally look it up.
I discovered that this whole-ear-spanning jewellery is a variety of ear cuff, and that actually, ear cuffs don’t necessarily require any piercings at all! (Although Jodie Whittaker’s specific ear cuff does require a piercing through the earlobe.) The idea is that they sit tight around the ear, being shaped to closely hug the contours. They could hardly be more perfect for me!
So, I’ve been browsing Etsy and found that this seller , in particular, has quite the range of beautiful (and inexpensive) whole-ear-spanning ear cuffs. Like, how can you go past pieces like this:
<a href="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs1.jpg" class="glightbox" data-gallery="ear-cuffs"
style="aspect-ratio: 3 / 4;"><img
sizes="(min-width: 715px) 217px, (min-width: 435px) 30vw, 33.3333vw"
srcset="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs1_hu1fee2cfadce105b3808667eff5efae49_196783_320x0_resize_q85_box.jpg 320w, https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs1_hu1fee2cfadce105b3808667eff5efae49_196783_440x0_resize_q85_box.jpg 440w, https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs1.jpg 600w"
src="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs1.jpg"
alt="An ear cuff with turquoise beads and silver-coloured wire, in an elegant design evocative of feathers"
loading="lazy" class="u-photo"></a>
<a href="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs2.jpg" class="glightbox" data-gallery="ear-cuffs"
style="aspect-ratio: 3 / 4;"><img
sizes="(min-width: 715px) 217px, (min-width: 435px) 30vw, 33.3333vw"
srcset="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs2_hub6dfe711cdc4651dbef5c480d6137466_180268_320x0_resize_q85_box.jpg 320w, https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs2_hub6dfe711cdc4651dbef5c480d6137466_180268_440x0_resize_q85_box.jpg 440w, https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs2.jpg 600w"
src="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs2.jpg"
alt="An ear cuff with silver wire and dark blue/purple beads, this time with an extension of the earring dangling below"
loading="lazy" class="u-photo"></a>
<a href="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs3.jpg" class="glightbox" data-gallery="ear-cuffs"
style="aspect-ratio: 3 / 4;"><img
sizes="(min-width: 715px) 217px, (min-width: 435px) 30vw, 33.3333vw"
srcset="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs3_huc09fb6901a4cc8cbf0f7d24309d2e066_172149_320x0_resize_q85_box.jpg 320w, https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs3_huc09fb6901a4cc8cbf0f7d24309d2e066_172149_440x0_resize_q85_box.jpg 440w, https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs3.jpg 600w"
src="https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs/ear-cuffs3.jpg"
alt="An art nouveau-like ear cuff with copper-coloured wire and dark blue beads"
loading="lazy" class="u-photo"></a>(Note: this post is not an ad; having not even ordered anything yet, I can’t even really vouch for this seller at all. This is just a post of enthusiasm for ear jewellery.) Basically, I think this style would suit me well because, as you can see from my photo on this site’s front page, I tend to tuck the hair on the left side of my head behind my ear at all times (somewhat like Jodie Whittaker does as the Doctor, in fact). I’ve always been a bit self-conscious about this habit because the ear is a bit flattened compared to a “normal ear”, and when I was a little kid my mum used to chastise me for “exposing” it to people, as if my very ear were obscene or something. I was certainly never allowed to get my ears pierced, because that would only “draw attention to [my] deformity”. I mean, I thought she was full of shit even at the time, but after getting scolded so much I can’t help but be hyperaware of it, either. As an adult, of course, I feel she had completely the wrong end of it. For a start, you shouldn’t feel ashamed of your natural body in the first place. But secondly, if you really want to do something, the way to go is attention-grabbing accessories, so what sticks in people’s mind is how cool your sense of style is. No one’s going to give a fuck about a mildly flattened ear when there’s an awesome ear cuff wrapped around it. Nobody.
Given the tightness of our budget lately, it’s hard not to feel a little guilty about spending on something inessential like jewellery… but Vivian doesn’t share the same reservations about spending, and it’s unfair if I’m the only one making sacrifices. I still want to mull it over a bit – narrow it down to one design to buy initially, and see how it goes – but overall I think these look cool. I want them!
https://www.jayeless.net/2024/03/ear-cuffs.html Save to Pocket
French cloud Scaleway starts renting Alibaba’s RISC-V SoC
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
€15.99/month server offered with Ubuntu or Debian, and a zero percent Service Level Agreement
French cloud provider Scaleway has fired up an instance type powered by a RISC-V system-on-chip (SoC), developed by Chinese tech giant Alibaba’s T-Head offshoot.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/scaleway_risc_v_server_alibaba/ Save to Pocket
Hyundai Ioniq 5 refresh details – OTA updates, bigger battery, and a rear wiper!
date: 2024-03-04, from: Electrek Feed
Hyundai has updated its Korean website with details about the expected refresh of its popular Ioniq 5 EV, with only minor changes from the original design but a lot of new features on the inside.
https://electrek.co/2024/03/03/hyundai-ioniq-5-refresh-details-ota-updates-bigger-battery-and-a-rear-wiper/ Save to Pocket
Bill to Fund US Government Includes Money to Counter China in Pacific
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — U.S. congressional negotiators released a bill Sunday that would fund key parts of the government through the rest of the fiscal year, which began in October 2023.
Among provisions in the appropriations package are critical funds to counter China in the Pacific as part of an agreement signed last year called the Compacts of Free Association, or COFA.
Under the compacts, Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands will receive $7 billion in economic aid over 20 years. In exchange, Washington will provide for their defense and can deny China access to their territorial waters, a maritime area larger than the continental United States.
The United States has had similar agreements in effect with Micronesia and the Marshalls since 1986 and with Palau since 1994. Citizens from these nations are allowed to travel, live and work in the United States as nonimmigrants.
Congresswoman Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, who represents the U.S. territory of American Samoa, told VOA on Sunday that House Speaker Mike Johnson reached her early Saturday morning to deliver the news.
Radewagen said she then called the presidents of the three Pacific allies to share the details.
“The COFA agreements send a clear message of U.S. commitment to the Pacific region and take a much-needed international strong stand for the ideals of democracy and freedom,” she told VOA in an email.
Senator Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat who has long supported the full funding of the agreement, issued a statement Sunday night.
“As we work to counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific, these agreements are extremely important for our national security and that of our allies, and also for the tens of thousands of COFA citizens who live, work and pay taxes in the U.S.,” she said.
The move comes after 26 senators, including Senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and John Barrasso, a Republican, urged Senate leadership to include the language that had previously been dropped from a Senate security spending bill on Feb. 12.
“Failure to act on COFA opens the door to more corrupting influence and funding by the PRC in the region,” wrote the senators, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
Pacific Island leaders remain cautious.
President Hilda Heine of the Marshall Islands spoke to a Remembrance Day for victims and survivors of nuclear testing on March 1, the 70th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear test on Bikini Atoll.
“Our nation has been a steadfast ally of the United States, but that should not be taken for granted,” she told the audience, according to the news site Islands Business.
Palau President Surangel Whipps, Jr. told VOA:
“We are heartened that the leaders of both houses of Congress and the White House have reached a consensus on the legislation slated for action this week. We thank our friends in both parties for their continued support and partnership.”
U.S. lawmakers face another threat of a partial shutdown if they fail to act by midnight Friday.
House Speaker Johnson has said he will bring the compromise bill to the floor for a full house vote on Wednesday.
https://www.voanews.com/a/bill-to-fund-us-government-includes-money-to-counter-china-in-pacific/7512521.html Save to Pocket
Nikki Haley Wins District of Columbia’s Republican Primary, Gets Her First 2024 Victory
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/nikki-haley-wins-district-of-columbia-s-republican-primary-gets-her-first-2024-victory/7512519.html Save to Pocket
Fedora 38 (finally)
date: 2024-03-04, from: Jirka’s blog
My Blackbird stopped to run X yesterday. The problem was the full disk. It was easy to solve but when I was cleaning unnecessary files I also have decided to finally do the update (I was running the Fedora 36 ppc64le till yesteday!).
http://jirka.1-2-8.net/20240304-0440_Fedora_38_finally Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-03-04, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
This is how parents sent email to their kids at summer camp in 1968.
http://scripting.com/2024/03/03.html#a033107 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-03-04, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
If the Democrats had a sense of the moment they’d run the campaign on a plan to regain control of the House and keep the Senate and White House so we can pass a law that legalizes abortion in the whole country. Give people a positive reason to elect a governing majority. Think powerfully.
http://scripting.com/2024/03/03.html#a032519 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-04, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Why ‘Fetal Personhood’ Is Roiling the Right.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/magazine/fetal-personhood-alabama-ivf.html?unlocked_article_code=1.aE0.iCmk.-d08TgPtVzx9&smid=url-share Save to Pocket
LockBit’s contested claim of fresh ransom payment suggests it’s been well hobbled
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
ALSO: CISA warns Ivanti vuln mitigations might not work, SAML hijack doesn’t need ADFS, and crit vulns
Infosec in brief The infamous LockBit ransomware gang has been busy in the ten days since an international law enforcement operation took down many of its systems. But despite its posturing, the gang might have suffered more than it’s letting on.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/in_brief/ Save to Pocket
The 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Gets A Bigger Battery, More Buttons, Rear Wiper
date: 2024-03-04, from: Inside EVs News
Everyone’s favorite Giugiaro-cyberpunk electric SUV gets some upgrades we’re very excited about.
https://insideevs.com/news/710930/2025-hyundai-ioniq-5-updates/ Save to Pocket
Nikki Haley wins the District of Columbia’s Republican primary and gets her first 2024 victory
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
Her victory Sunday at least temporarily halts Trump’s sweep of the GOP voting contests.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/nikki-haley-wins-the-district-of-columbias-republican-primary-and-gets-her-first-2024-victory/ Save to Pocket
Review | Sarah Jarosz Busts Out of Bluegrass and Broadens Her Reach
date: 2024-03-04, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
An evening at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre shows off her voice and versatility.
The post Review | Sarah Jarosz Busts Out of Bluegrass and Broadens Her Reach appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/03/03/review-sarah-jarosz-busts-out-of-bluegrass-and-broadens-her-reach/ Save to Pocket
JP Sears sharp in A’s win, appears on track to start Opening Night
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
A’s left-hander struck out seven in three innings in Sunday’s 5-2 spring training win over the Texas Rangers.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/jp-sears-sharp-in-as-win-appears-on-track-to-start-opening-night/ Save to Pocket
Photos: Stranded Bay Area travelers make the best of the Tahoe blizzard as Interstate 80 remains closed
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
Persistent snow and winds are keeping Interstate 80 shut through the Sierra Nevada mountains and its reopening time unclear.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/photos-stranded-bay-area-travelers-make-the-best-of-the-tahoe-blizzard-as-interstate-80-remains-closed/ Save to Pocket
Thousands march in Bay Area rally against intensifying antisemitism
date: 2024-03-04, from: San Jose Mercury News
The march came as fighting in Gaza has intensified in recent days.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/thousands-march-in-bay-area-rally-against-intensifying-antisemitism/ Save to Pocket
Take the Lecture over the Whiner
date: 2024-03-04, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
I loves me my Angry Poodle, but I have to take exception to the recent comparison of Whiner-in-Chief Andy Caldwell and County Supervisor Das Williams.
The post Take the Lecture over the Whiner appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/03/03/take-the-lecture-over-the-whiner/ Save to Pocket
Ahead of Super Tuesday, US elections face existential and homegrown threats
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Misinformation is rife, AI makes it easier to create, and 42 percent of the planet’s inhabitants get to vote this year
Feature Two US intelligence bigwigs last week issued stark warnings about foreign threats to American election integrity and security – and the nation’s ability to counter these adversaries.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/super_tuesday_election_security/ Save to Pocket
Netanyahu Rival Visits US, Signals Wider Cracks in Israel’s Wartime Leadership
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
Tel Aviv, Israel — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked a top Cabinet minister arriving in Washington on Sunday for talks with U.S. officials, according to an Israeli official, signaling widening cracks within the country’s leadership nearly five months into its war with Hamas.
The trip by Benny Gantz, a centrist political rival who joined Netanyahu’s wartime Cabinet following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, comes as friction between the U.S. and Netanyahu is rising over how to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and what the postwar plan for the enclave should look like.
An official from Netanyahu’s far-right Likud party said Gantz’s trip was planned without authorization from the Israeli leader. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Netanyahu had a “tough talk” with Gantz and told him the country has “just one prime minister.”
Gantz is scheduled to meet Monday with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Tuesday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to his National Unity Party. A second Israeli official speaking on the condition of anonymity said Gantz’s visit is intended to strengthen ties with the U.S., bolster support for Israel’s war and push for the release of Israeli hostages.
In Egypt, talks were underway to broker a cease-fire before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins next week.
Israel did not send a delegation because it is waiting for answers from Hamas on two questions, according to a third Israeli government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Israeli media reported that the government is waiting to learn which hostages are alive and how many Palestinian prisoners Hamas seeks in exchange for each.
All three Israeli officials spoke anonymously because they weren’t authorized to discuss the disputes with the media.
The U.S. began airdrops of aid into Gaza on Saturday, after dozens of Palestinians rushing to grab food from an Israel-organized convoy were killed last week. The airdrops circumvented an aid delivery system hobbled by Israeli restrictions, logistical issues and fighting in Gaza. Aid officials say airdrops are far less effective than deliveries by truck.
U.S. priorities in the region have increasingly been hampered by Netanyahu’s Cabinet, which is dominated by ultranationalists. Gantz’s more moderate party at times acts as a counterweight.
Netanyahu’s popularity has dropped since the war broke out, according to most opinion polls. Many Israelis hold him responsible for failing to stop the Oct. 7 cross-border terror attack by Hamas, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 people as hostages into Gaza, including women, children and older adults, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. Around 80% of the population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, and U.N. agencies say hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.
Israelis critical of Netanyahu say his decision-making has been tainted by political considerations, a charge he denies. The criticism is particularly focused on plans for postwar Gaza. Netanyahu wants Israel to maintain open-ended security control over Gaza, with Palestinians running civilian affairs.
The U.S. wants to see progress on the creation of a Palestinian state, envisioning a revamped Palestinian leadership running Gaza with an eye toward eventual statehood.
That vision is opposed by Netanyahu and the hard-liners in his government. Another top Cabinet official from Gantz’s party has questioned the handling of the war and the strategy for freeing the hostages.
Netanyahu’s government, Israel’s most conservative and religious ever, has also been rattled by a court-ordered deadline for a new bill to broaden military enlistment of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Many of them are exempt from military service so they can pursue religious studies. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7, and the military is looking to fill its ranks.
Gantz has remained vague about his view of Palestinian statehood. Polls show he would earn enough support to become prime minister if a vote were held today.
A visit to the U.S., if met with progress on the hostage front, could further boost Gantz’s support.
Israel and Hamas are negotiating over a possible new cease-fire and hostage release deal. Vice President Harris said Sunday it is now up to Hamas to agree to it. “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate cease-fire for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table,” Harris said.
Israelis, deeply traumatized by Hamas’ attack, have broadly backed the war effort as an act of self-defense, even as global opposition to the fighting has increased.
But a growing number are expressing their dismay with Netanyahu. Some 10,000 people protested late Saturday to call for early elections, according to Israeli media. Such protests have grown in recent weeks but remain much smaller than last year’s demonstrations against the government’s judicial overhaul plan.
If the political rifts grow and Gantz quits the government, the floodgates will open to broader protests by a public that was already unhappy with the government when Hamas struck, said Reuven Hazan, a professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
At least 12 people were killed, including five women and two children, in an Israeli strike Sunday that hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to an Associated Press journalist at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. And two Israeli strikes southwest of Deir al-Balah killed at least five people and destroyed an aid truck, according to witnesses and staff at the hospital.
Amid concerns about the wider regional conflict, White House senior adviser Amos Hochstein was going to Lebanon on Monday to meet officials, according to an administration official who was not authorized to comment. White House officials want Lebanese and Israeli officials to prevent tensions along their border from worsening.
https://www.voanews.com/a/netanyahu-rival-visits-us-signals-wider-cracks-in-israel-s-wartime-leadership/7512475.html Save to Pocket
Congressional Leaders Come Out With 6 Spending Bills in Drive to Avoid Partial Shutdown
date: 2024-03-04, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Congressional leaders on Sunday came out with a package of six bills setting full-year spending levels for some federal agencies, a step forward in a long overdue funding process beset by sharp political divisions between the two parties as well as infighting among House Republicans.
The release of the text of legislation over the weekend was designed to meet the House’s rule to give lawmakers at least 72 hours to study a bill before voting. And it’s a promising sign that lawmakers will avoid a partial shutdown that would kick in at 12:01 a.m. Saturday for those agencies covered under the bill, such as Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation, Justice and others.
Congressional leaders hope to complete votes on the package this week and continue negotiations on the remaining six annual spending bills to pass them before a March 22 deadline. The price tag for the package out Sunday comes to about $460 billion, representing less than 30% of the discretionary spending Congress looks to approve for this year. The package still being negotiated includes defense spending.
House Speaker Mike Johnson highlighted some key policy and spending wins for conservatives, even as many of his Republican colleagues consider the changes inadequate. Some House Republicans had hoped the prospect of a shutdown could leverage more concessions from Democrats.
Overall, this year’s spending bills would keep non-defense spending relatively flat with last year’s bill, despite the rise in inflation, and some $70 billion less than what President Joe Biden originally sought.
“House Republicans secured key conservative policy victories, rejected left-wing proposals, and imposed sharp cuts to agencies and programs critical to President Biden’s agenda,” Johnson said in a prepared statement.
Earlier this year, Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced an agreement on the top-line spending levels for this year’s discretionary spending, which comes to more than $1.6 trillion. But that agreement didn’t address potential policy mandates placed within the bills. That’s where negotiations have focused in recent weeks.
Democrats staved off most of the policy riders that House Republicans sought to include. For example, they beat back an effort to reverse the FDA’s decision that allows the abortion pill mifepristone to be sold in retail pharmacies, instead of only in hospitals, clinics and medical offices. Democrats also said the bill would fully fund a nutrition program for low-income women, infants and children known as WIC, providing about $7 billion for the program, a $1 billion increase from the previous year.
“Throughout the negotiations, Democrats fought hard to protect against cuts to housing and nutrition programs and keep out harmful provisions that would further restrict access to women’s health or roll back the progress we’ve made to fight climate change,” Schumer, said in support of the legislation.
House Republicans were able to achieve some policy wins, however. One provision, for example, will prevent the sale of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.
Another provision strengthens gun rights for certain veterans. Under current law, the VA must send a beneficiary’s name to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System whenever a fiduciary is appointed to help manage someone’s benefits. This year’s spending package prohibits the VA from transmitting that information unless a relevant judicial authority rules that the beneficiary is a danger to himself or herself, or others.
Still, some of the more conservative members of the House Republicans have been critical of the spending bills, and many voted against the short-term extension Congress passed last week that avoided a shutdown and allowed negotiations to continue.
“We all promised we wouldn’t do this crap when we got up here,” Rep. Eric Burlison, a Republican, said as the short-term extension was debated. “The American people have demanded responsible spending and border security for years, but we fail them. When will we heed the calls of our constituents to rein in the wasteful spending, secure the borders, and defeat the bureaucracy targeting them?”
The short-term extension last week was the fourth in recent months. The vote to approve it was 320-99, but House Republicans were divided, with 113 in support and 97 against. The Senate approved the extension, 77-13.
The votes being teed up on spending bills come five months after the budget year began.
https://www.voanews.com/a/congressional-leaders-come-out-with-6-spending-bills-in-drive-to-avoid-partial-shutdown/7512471.html Save to Pocket
Linus Torvalds declares Linux 6.8 is probably back on track for a regular release cycle
date: 2024-03-04, updated: 2024-03-04, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Previously pondered the need for an extra release candidate
Linus Torvalds has decided Linux 6.8 will in all likelihood debut next week.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/linux_6_8_rc_7/ Save to Pocket
Monday 4 March, 2024
date: 2024-03-04, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Democracy? Quote of the Day I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity. Tom Lehrer Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton ! I Never Will Marry Link Long Read of the Day … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/monday-4-march-2024/39199/ Save to Pocket
pg_ivm 1.8 released
date: 2024-03-04, from: PostgreSQL News
IVM Development Group is pleased to announce the release of pg_ivm 1.8.
Changes since the v1.7 release include:
Bug fixes
-
Consider tuple duplicity in maintenance of EXISTS views (Yugo Nagata)
Previously, the duplicity of row was not considered and only one tuple was inserted even when duplicated tuples are generated as a result of inserting a tuple into a table in an EXISTS subquery.
-
Fix checking for expressions containing an EXISTS subquery (Takuma Hoshiai, Yugo Nagata)
EXISTS subquery is currently allowed only directly under WHERE clause or in AND expression that is directly under WHERE. However, the check was insufficient previously so that views using expressions other than AND containing an EXISTS subquery could be created without an error and it caused incorrect maintenance results.
-
Check if PgIvmImmvRelationId is invalid before open it (Colin Zhao)
Fix an error that occurs at dropping tables that occurs when pg_ivm is installed by shared_preload_libraries without executing CREATE EXTENSION command.
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Fix an error raised when dropping pg_ivm extension (Yugo Nagata)
Previously, DROP EXTENSION pg_ivm failed due to the failure of opening the index on the pg_ivm_immv catalog table, because the index had been already dropped at that time.
About pg_ivm
pg_ivm is an extension module that provides Incremental View Maintenance (IVM) feature.
Incremental View Maintenance (IVM) is a way to make materialized views up-to-date in which only incremental changes are computed and applied on views rather than recomputing. pg_ivm provides a kind of immediate maintenance, in which materialized views are updated immediately after a base table is modified.
Source repository: https://github.com/sraoss/pg_ivm
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pg_ivm-18-released-2818/ Save to Pocket
PgBouncer 1.22.1 released
date: 2024-03-04, from: PostgreSQL News
PgBouncer 1.22.1 has been released. This release fixes issues caused by
some clients using COPY FROM STDIN queries. Such queries
could introduce memory leaks, performance regressions and prepared
statement misbehavior.
See https://www.pgbouncer.org/2024/03/pgbouncer-1-22-1 for more information, the detailed changelog, and download links.
PgBouncer is a lightweight connection pooler for PostgreSQL.
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgbouncer-1221-released-2819/ Save to Pocket
Target in GPD manhunt arrested
date: 2024-03-04, from: Guam Daily Post
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/target-in-gpd-manhunt-arrested/article_3f130efc-d9ba-11ee-9f86-47c8f921be4f.html Save to Pocket
Sharks center to miss game vs. Minnesota Wild with illness
date: 2024-03-03, from: San Jose Mercury News
The San Jose Sharks will be without center William Eklund on Sunday when they play the Minnesota Wild at Xcel Energy Center
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/san-jose-sharks-center-to-miss-game-vs-minnesota-wild-with-illness/ Save to Pocket
Indian tech minister vows to stop Google removing local apps from Play Store
date: 2024-03-03, updated: 2024-03-03, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
PLUS: APNIC director general to step down; Hong Kong’s odd cloud survey; Rent-a-friend online in China; and more
Asia In Brief India’s minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, has vowed to prevent Google removing Indian apps from its Play Store.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/03/asia_pacific_tech_news_roundup/ Save to Pocket
Pushing AppleTalk Across the Internet
date: 2024-03-03, from: Biosrhythm blog
Seasoned Apple Macintosh pros have likely experienced the joy (and sadness) of using a large AppleTalk network. You know, the kind where the Chooser suddenly shows a Zone menu at the bottom left where there used to be none? When you first see it, it’s a shock– like you’ve suddenly unlocked a secret power up […]
https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2767 Save to Pocket
Tesla Model 3 Owner Says New 2024 Highland Model 3 Isn’t Worth The Upgrade
date: 2024-03-03, from: Inside EVs News
If you already own an older Model 3, then the new one just isn’t enough of an upgrade for some potential buyers.
https://insideevs.com/news/710880/tesla-model-3-highland-upgrade/ Save to Pocket
Well, I finally folded…
date: 2024-03-03, from: Status-Q blog
I’ve wanted an e-bike for ages, ever since I first tried one many, many years ago, but most of my normal cycling destinations are close enough that I didn’t really feel I had an excuse to buy one. But then we started to think that folding bikes would also be useful when campervanning, and so Continue Reading
https://statusq.org/archives/2024/03/03/11972/ Save to Pocket
Hundreds of inmates flee after armed gangs storm Haiti’s main prison, leaving bodies behind
date: 2024-03-03, from: San Jose Mercury News
Hundreds of inmates have fled Haiti’s main prison after armed gangs stormed the facility overnight in an overnight explosion of violence that engulfed much of the capital. At least five people are dead. The jailbreak marks a new low in Haiti’s downward spiral of violence. It comes as gangs assert greater control in the capital, Port-au-Prince, while Prime Minister Ariel Henry is abroad trying to salvage support for a United Nations-backed security force. Authorities have yet to provide an account of what happened. The leader of a nonprofit that works in the prison says fewer than 100 of the nearly 4,000 inmates remain behind bars. Family members have rushed to check on loved ones.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/hundreds-of-inmates-flee-after-armed-gangs-storm-haitis-main-prison-leaving-bodies-behind/ Save to Pocket
Congressional leaders come out with 6 spending bills in a drive to avoid a partial shutdown
date: 2024-03-03, from: San Jose Mercury News
Congressional leaders have come out with a package of six bills setting full-year spending levels for some federal agencies. The move Sunday is a step forward in a long overdue funding process beset by sharp political divisions between the two parties as well as infighting among House Republicans. The release of the text of legislation over the weekend is designed to meet the House’s rule to give lawmakers at least 72 hours to study the bill before voting on it. And it’s a promising sign that lawmakers will avoid a partial shutdown that would kick in at 12:01 a.m. Saturday for those agencies covered under the bill.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/congressional-leaders-come-out-with-6-spending-bills-in-a-drive-to-avoid-a-partial-shutdown/ Save to Pocket
Warriors blown off the floor by Celtics on national TV
date: 2024-03-03, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Boston Celtics ran the Warriors off the court in the first half at TD Garden Sunday.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/warriors-put-back-in-their-place-as-historic-first-half-fuels-boston/ Save to Pocket
March 2, 2024
date: 2024-03-03, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-2-2024-392 Save to Pocket
March 1, 2024
date: 2024-03-03, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-1-2024-8c7 Save to Pocket
Iowa’s Clark Becomes NCAA Division-I All-Time Leading Scorer for Men’s and Women’s Basketball
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/iowa-clark-becomes-ncaa-division-i-all-time-leading-scorer-for-men-and-women-basketball/7512111.html Save to Pocket
Project Linus creates 300 blankets at ‘Make a Blanket Day’
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
Community volunteers and Project Linus members anticipated creating and delivering hundreds of blankets at their biannual “Make a Blanket Day” on Saturday in the College of the Canyons East Gymnasium. Dozens of volunteers and Project Linus members cut, sewed, and created 55-inch x 45-inch handmade blankets with different designs to give to ill and traumatized […]
The post <strong>Project Linus creates 300 blankets at ‘Make a Blanket Day’</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/project-linus-creates-300-blankets-at-make-a-blanket-day/ Save to Pocket
‘Dune: Part Two’ Brings Spice Power to Box Office With $81.5 Million North American Debut
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/dune-part-two-brings-spice-power-to-box-office-with-81-5-million-north-american-debut/7512096.html Save to Pocket
Supermium: up-to-date Chromium for Windows XP, Vista, and 7
date: 2024-03-03, from: OS News
Modern browsers don’t really support older versions of Windows anymore, so anyone running Windows XP, 2003, Vista, and even Windows 7 and 8 are losing access to secure and capable browsers. While running those older versions of Windows on production machines isn’t exactly advised, they’re still great fun as retrocomputing platforms and to keep older Windows games accessible using period-correct hardware. As such, there’s some awesome news: there is now a fully up-to-date variant of Chromium for these older versions of Windows called Supermium. It tracks current Chromium, supports extensions, sandboxing, Aero Glass, Google Sync, and even Widevine on Windows 7 and higher. Micheal MJD just published a video showing Supermium in action in case you’re curious. You’ll need at least Windows XP SP3 and an Intel Pentium 4 with SSE2 in order to run it, and Windows 2000 support is in the works, too.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138697/supermium-up-to-date-chromium-for-windows-xp-vista-and-7/ Save to Pocket
Brock Faber or Connor Bedard for Calder Trophy? Sharks’ Quinn compares the two
date: 2024-03-03, from: San Jose Mercury News
San Jose Sharks coach David Quinn has been impressed by the rookie season that Minnesota Wild defenseman Brock Faber has had
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/brock-faber-or-connor-bedard-for-calder-trophy-sharks-quinn-compares-the-two/ Save to Pocket
Supreme Court Decision Expected Soon in Colorado’s Trump 2024 Ballot Case
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
Washington — A Supreme Court decision could come as soon as Monday in the case about whether former President Donald Trump can be kicked off the ballot over his efforts to undo his defeat in the 2020 election.
Trump is challenging a groundbreaking decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that said he is disqualified from being president again and ineligible for the state’s primary, which is Tuesday.
The resolution of the case Monday, a day before Super Tuesday contests in 16 states, would remove uncertainty about whether votes for Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, will ultimately count. Both sides had requested fast work by the court, which heard arguments less than a month ago, on Feb. 8,
The Colorado court was the first to invoke a post-Civil War constitutional provision aimed at preventing those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. Trump also has since been barred from primary ballot in Illinois and Maine, though both decisions, along with Colorado’s, are on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case.
The Supreme Court has until now never ruled on the provision, Section 3 of the 14th amendment.
The court indicated Sunday there will be at least one case decided Monday, adhering to its custom of not saying which one. But it also departed from its usual practice in some respects, heightening the expectation that it’s the Trump ballot case that will be handed down.
Except for when the end of the term nears in late June, the court almost always issues decisions on days when the justices are scheduled to take the bench. But the next scheduled court day isn’t until March 15. And apart from during the coronavirus pandemic when the court was closed, the justices almost always read summaries of their opinions in the courtroom. They won’t be there Monday.
Any opinions will post on the court’s website beginning just after 10 a.m. EST Monday.
Separately, the justices last week agreed to hear arguments in late April over whether Trump can be criminally prosecuted on election interference charges, including his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The court’s decision to step into the politically charged case, also with little in the way of precedent to guide it, calls into question whether Trump will stand trial before the November election.
The former president faces 91 criminal charges in four prosecutions. Of those, the only one with a trial date that seems poised to hold is his state case in New York, where he’s charged with falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn actor. That case is set for trial on March 25, and the judge has signaled his determination to press ahead.
https://www.voanews.com/a/supreme-court-decision-expected-soon-in-colorado-s-trump-2024-ballot-case/7512083.html Save to Pocket
2024-02-19 Hippeastrum season
date: 2024-03-03, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-02-19 Hippeastrum season
It’s the season!
So beautiful! My new wallpaper for the phone:
The best home office:
More pictures:
#Pictures #Hippeastrum #Plants
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-02-19-hippeastrum Save to Pocket
Redox gets massive performance boost
date: 2024-03-03, from: OS News
Redox has published the summary of development covering February, and there’s quite a few interesting leaps forward this month. First and foremost, the operating system got a major file read/write speed boost by implementing records in RedoxFS. The migration to UNIX-format paths is ongoing, Boxedwine is currently being ported, and more and more programs are getting ported, including complex applications like Audacity, Celestia, KiCad and Neothesia. There’s a lot more this month, so be sure to read the whole report.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138695/redox-gets-massive-performance-boost/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Rogue Editors Started a Competing Wikipedia That’s Only About Roads.
https://gizmodo.com/competing-wikipedia-editors-only-about-roads-aaroads-1851298769 Save to Pocket
2024-03-02 Spring
date: 2024-03-03, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-03-02 Spring
Kleines Schneeglöckchen, Galanthus nivalis
Dalmatiner Krokus, Crocus tommasinianus
Mauer-Drehzahnmoos, Tortula muralis, maybe?
Persischer Ehrenpreis, Veronica persica
Scharbockskraut, Ficaria verna
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-03-02-spring Save to Pocket
US Hospital, Ukrainian Charity Help Kids With Cancer Find Treatment During War
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put many of the nation’s most at-risk patients in even greater danger, especially young cancer patients. But a Ukrainian charity working with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the U.S. is helping some Ukrainian kids receive care around the world. Iryna Shynkarenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Viacheslav Filiushkin.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-hospital-ukrainian-charity-help-kids-with-cancer-find-treatment-during-war/7512066.html Save to Pocket
The Irony and the Agony of Elon Musk’s Lawsuit against OpenAI
date: 2024-03-03, from: Gary Marcus blog
Agony first. The agony starts with the fact that Elon Musk has a point; OpenAI, Altman and Brockman have changed their mission since he gave them his money, his time and his reputation. Here’s what they told that State of the California in 2015: THIRD: This Corporation shall be a nonprofit corporation organized exclusively for charitable and/or educational purposes within the meaning of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the corresponding provision of any future United States Internal Revenue law. The specific purpose of this corporation is to provide funding for research, development and distribution of technology related to artificial intelligence. The resulting technology will benefit the public and the corporation will seek to open source technology for the public benefit when applicable. The corporation is not organized for the private gain of any person.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-irony-and-the-agony-of-elon-musks Save to Pocket
Storm passes over SCV, more rain expected Wednesday
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
The Santa Clarita Valley has exited the storm that’s been coating the area with rain over the past several days, according to the National Weather Service. “It’s pretty much wrapped up in terms of precipitation,” said NWS meteorologist Rose Schoenfeld. “After the front, we are expecting some winds, although the Santa Clarita Valley area will […]
The post Storm passes over SCV, more rain expected Wednesday appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/storm-passes-over-scv-more-rain-expected-wednesday/ Save to Pocket
Giving Is Good
date: 2024-03-03, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
When you give to organizations that support women and girls, you contribute to solving the root problems of gender equity, social impact, and increased well-being.
The post Giving Is Good appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/03/03/giving-is-good/ Save to Pocket
Tapestry: What About?
date: 2024-03-03, from: furbo.org
On Mastodon, Alex Chaffee points out some of Tapestry’s shortcomings. These are all valid concerns and I’ll deal them individually here (rather than with a long toot thread). iOS-only Building for iOS first is a strategic choice. There is a lot of work to do here, and many new concepts that need to be designed […]
https://furbo.org/2024/03/03/tapestry-what-about/ Save to Pocket
Vice President Harris Leads Bloody Sunday March, Says Fight for Voting Rights Goes On
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
SELMA, Alabama — Vice President Kamala Harris told thousands gathered for the 59th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday attacks on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, that fundamental freedoms, including the right to vote, are under attack in America even today.
Harris joined those gathered at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where voting rights activists were beaten back by law enforcement officers in 1965. The vice president praised the marchers’ bravery for engaging in a defining moment of the civil rights struggle.
“Today, we know our fight for freedom is not over, because in this moment we are witnessing a full on attack on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms, starting with the freedom that unlocks all others, the freedom to vote,” Harris said.
She criticized attempts to restrict voting, including limits on absentee voting and early voting, and said the nation is again at a crossroad.
“What kind of country do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a country of freedom, liberty and justice? Or a country of injustice, hate and fear?” Harris asked, encouraging people to answer with their vote.
She paid tribute to the civil rights marchers who walked across the bridge in 1965 knowing they would face certain violence in seeking “a future that was more equal, more just and more free.”
Decisions by the Supreme Court and lower courts since 2006 have weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was passed in the wake of the police attacks in Selma. The demonstrators were beaten by officers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965, as they tried to march across Alabama to support voting rights.
Harris drew parallels between those who worked to stifle the Civil Rights Movement and “extremists” she said are trying to enact restrictions on voting, education and reproductive care.
She said other fundamental freedoms under attack include “the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body,” a reference to state abortion bans. She also stressed the Biden administration’s support for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza to “get the hostages out and a significant amount of aid in.”
Under a blazing blue sky, Harris then led the crowd across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the march that concludes the annual commemoration. Thousands followed, sometimes singing hymns and anthems of the Civil Rights Movement including, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round.”
Earlier Sunday, Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke at a Selma church service marking the anniversary of the attack by Alabama law officers on civil rights demonstrators. He said recent court decisions and certain state legislation have endangered voting rights in much of the nation.
“Since those (court) decisions, there has been a dramatic increase in legislative measures that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect representatives of their choice,” Garland told worshippers at Selma’s Tabernacle Baptist Church, the site of one of the first mass meetings of the voting rights movement.
“Those measures include practices and procedures that make voting more difficult; redistricting maps that disadvantage minorities; and changes in voting administration that diminish the authority of locally elected or nonpartisan election administrators,” he said. “Such measures threaten the foundation of our system of government.”
The march and Garland’s speech were among dozens of events during the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee, which began Thursday and culminated Sunday.
The commemoration is a frequent stop for Democratic politicians paying homage to the voting rights movement. Some in the crowd gathered to see Harris speak about the upcoming November election and what appears to be a looming rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Khadidah Stone, 27, part of a crowd gathered at the bridge Sunday in light rain before the march, said she sees the work of today’s activists as an extension of those who were attacked in Selma in 1965. Stone works for the voter engagement group Alabama Forward and was a plaintiff in the Voting Rights case against the state that led to creating a second Alabama congressional district with a substantial number of Black voters. Voters will cast their first ballots in that district on Tuesday.
“We have to continue to fight, because they (voting rights) are under attack,” Stone said.
Nita Hill wore a hat saying “Good Trouble,” a phrase associated with the late Rep. John Lewis, who was beaten on the bridge during Bloody Sunday. Hill, 70, said it is important for Biden supporters to vote in November.
“I believe Trump is trying to take us back,” said Hill, a retired university payroll specialist.
Decades ago, images of the violence that at the bridge stunned Americans, which helped galvanize support for passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law struck down barriers prohibiting Black people from voting.
U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat of South Carolina who is leading a pilgrimage to Selma, said he is seeking to “remind people that we are celebrating an event that started this country on a better road toward a more perfect union,” but the right to vote is still not guaranteed.
Clyburn sees Selma as the nexus of the 1960s movement for voting rights, at a time when there currently are efforts to scale back those rights.
“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 became a reality in August of 1965 because of what happened on March 7th of 1965,” Clyburn said.
“We are at an inflection point in this country,” he added. “And hopefully this year’s march will allow people to take stock of where we are.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-attorney-general-says-voting-rights-are-under-attack/7512062.html Save to Pocket
Voucher expansion leads to more students, waitlists and classes for some religious schools
date: 2024-03-03, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Miami Archdiocese’s superintendent of schools says Catholic education is increasingly in demand in South Florida, now that all K-12 students regardless of income are allowed to use taxpayer-funded programs to pay for private school tuition.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/03/voucher-expansion-leads-to-more-students-waitlists-and-classes-for-some-religious-schools/ Save to Pocket
Iranian Activist Among Recipients of 2024 International Women of Courage Awards
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/iranian-activist-among-recipients-of-2024-international-women-of-courage-awards/7512052.html Save to Pocket
How Biden can save tens of thousands of lives (and help save his presidency)
date: 2024-03-03, from: Robert Reich on Substack
What he must tell the Israeli people
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/biden-must-take-the-lead-on-israel Save to Pocket
US Presidential Hopefuls Pull No Punches Ahead of Super Tuesday
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
U.S. Voters in more than a dozen states head to the polls on Tuesday to choose their party’s presidential nominee. Over the weekend, all candidates ramped up their criticism of their challengers and spelled out their priorities to voters. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the details.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-presidential-hopefuls-pull-no-punches-ahead-of-super-tuesday/7512045.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
What Biden Is Thinking About the 2024 Election.
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/what-biden-is-thinking-about-the-2024-election Save to Pocket
15 US States Voting in Presidential Primaries on Tuesday
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-states-voting-in-presidential-primaries-on-tuesday/7512023.html Save to Pocket
Rancho Pico and Rio Norte junior highs named 2024 California Distinguished Schools
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
The William S. Hart Union High School District announced Rancho Pico Junior High School and Rio Norte Junior High School as 2024 California Distinguished Schools. “This recognition underscores the exceptional commitment to educational excellence and innovative practices demonstrated by both schools,” said a news release from the William S. Hart Union High School District. The […]
The post <strong>Rancho Pico and Rio Norte junior highs named 2024 California Distinguished Schools</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/rancho-pico-and-rio-norte-junior-highs-named-2024-california-distinguished-schools/ Save to Pocket
It’s Boat Show Time
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
Looking for ways to escape wintertime blues? Experience the boat life in the middle of winter and start planning for warmer days ahead. Beginning in January, boat shows across the country offer the hottest deals around with special pricing and incentives on new boat models and marine accessories — a major draw for the estimated […]
The post It’s Boat Show Time appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/its-boat-show-time/ Save to Pocket
Biden is a fine president
date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
I found myself responding at length to my longtime friend and proto-blogger Jeff Jarvis, so instead of posting a thread of chained messages, I just made it a blog post.
The thing about Gaza is that there’s the rest of the world, and they’re watching to see how we deal with Israel, given that Netanyahu has been such an asshole to the US. He’s a freaking MAGA.
So the president has to gradually increase the pressure on Israel, but he has to be mindful that there already is a shitload of pressure all around, more pressure is the last thing we need. A lot more people will die if it spirals out of control. But Biden is increasing the pressure. The images of the air food drops into Gaza from US planes is exactly the right way to proceed for the US. It shows that there’s another path, compassion and help.
Being president of the United States is a complicated thing IOW. But they’re doing it the only way we can, given who we are.
Jeff, I know you know this. This would be the adult discussion, which we never have. Journos seem to think Americans can’t understand the basics of world politics, but somehow we understand the rules and history of the NBA, NFL and MLB. The functioning of politics isn’t really any more complicated.
http://scripting.com/2024/03/03/180553.html?title=bidenIsAFinePresident Save to Pocket
One Story One City
date: 2024-03-03, from: City of Santa Clarita
One Story One City By City Manager Ken Striplin Personally, and professionally, I have always been committed to a life of learning and a huge part of that is reading. Whether you are exploring a new book to expand your knowledge, learn a new skill or to simply let your imagination travel to a new […]
The post One Story One City appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/03/03/one-story-one-city-2/ Save to Pocket
The First Gold Was Discovered in Placerita on Mar. 9, 1842
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
Sutter’s Mill wasn’t until Jan. 24, 1848. On the grounds of Placerita Canyon Natural Area and Nature Center is one of the Santa Clarita Valley’s most historic sites, the Oak of the Golden Dream. This ancient gnarled coast live oak, which may be over 500 years old, is considered the site of the first documented […]
The post The First Gold Was Discovered in Placerita on Mar. 9, 1842 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/the-first-gold-was-discovered-in-placerita-on-mar-9-1842/ Save to Pocket
Saving Money on Heating and Air Conditioning
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
HVAC systems not only enhance home comfort but, when operating efficiently, can also contribute to cost savings. As colder temperatures is sweeping the country, many homeowners are wondering how to best use their HVAC system to avoid costly heating bills. Similarly, these tips apply to warmer temperatures and savings on cooling bills. Here are five […]
The post Saving Money on Heating and Air Conditioning appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/saving-money-on-heating-and-air-conditioning/ Save to Pocket
Pluralistic: The Cory Doctorow Humble Bundle (03 Mar 2024)
date: 2024-03-03, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links The Cory Doctorow Humble Bundle: Name your price, get ebooks, back EFF! Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Podcasts, events and more. Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ‘em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ‘em. Colophon: All the rest. The Cory Doctorow Humble Bundle (permalink) It’s been 21 years and 29 days since Tor Books published my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. In the years since, Tor has published every one of my novels, sending me around the USA and Canada to talk about them. Now, they’ve teamed up with Humble Bundle to sell 18 of my ebooks on a name-your-price basis, with part of the proceeds going to benefit EFF: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/cory-doctorow-novel-collection-tor-books-books I’ve been associated with EFF even longer than I’ve been published by Tor! My first novel came out while I was working EFF’s first-ever booth at CES. I split my time between the booth and my motel room, where I paid $0.25/call to dial up to Earthlink’s local number and manage the launch-day publicity. Over the years, I’ve benefited immensely from Tor’s editorial and publicity departments, working with brilliant publishing people like Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Patty Garcia, Dot Lin, Laura Etzkorn, Elena Stokes, Sarah Reidy, Lucille Rettino, and of course, Tor founder Tom Doherty. But I like to think that it was a two-way street. Tor and I have come a long way together on ebooks: most visibly, they allowed me to publish several novels under Creative Commons licenses (my first book was the first ever CC book, coming out just weeks after the licenses themselves launched). As my editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden said at the time, “Ebooks have the worst hours-in-meeting-to-dollars-in-revenue ratio of anything in my publishing career. Why not?” https://craphound.com/down/download/ Just as important – but less visible – was Tor’s willingness to let me insist that all my books be published without DRM, meaning that anything you buy on say, Amazon, can be moved to any reader program if you decide to start getting your ebooks elsewhere. This worked so well that in 2012, Tor became the first major publisher in the world to ban DRM on all its ebooks, flying me, John Scalzi and Charlie Stross to New York City to announce it this at a big, splashy event at Book Expo America: https://web.archive.org/web/20130512022634/https://tor.com/blogs/2012/06/tor-books-announces-e-book-store-doctorow-scalzi-a-stross-talk-drm-free Tor’s unique status as the sole major DRM-free publisher in the world was well timed! That same year, I curated the very first Humble Ebook Bundle, which was very top-heavy with Tor titles, and raised more than $1,000,000 for the writers, publishers and charities associated with it: https://web.archive.org/web/20121017215636/http://www.humblebundle.com/ That opened the floodgates to a series of Humble Bundles, tempting other major publishers to dabble with DRM-free, including Simon and Schuster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-I5QyAfglU And Harpercollins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHMLfeCrCrE Now, 12 years after that inaugural Humble Ebook Bundle, I find myself honored by being the subject of a bundle of my own (it helps that I’ve written a hell of a lot of books in the intervening years). Included in the bundle are (nearly) all of my Tor novels and novellas: The Lost Cause; “The Canadian Miracle” (a Lost Cause story); Red Team Blues; Radicalized; Walkaway; “Party Discipline” (a Walkaway story); Pirate Cinema; Rapture of the Nerds (with Charlie Stross); For The Win; Makers; Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town; Eastern Standard Tribe, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Little Brother, Homeland, Attack Surface, and “Lawful Interception” (a Little Brother story). (The sole exclusion is The Bezzle, which came out two weeks ago and is already a USA Today national bestseller!) https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle Also included in the bundle is Poesy the Monster Slayer, my 2020 picture book for the littlies: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627/poesythemonsterslayer All these books are delivered as DRM-free epub files. The Bundle runs for the next three weeks, and the minimum buy-in is $18 – that’s just $1/book (full retail value is $187). Of course, you can name a higher price, and, as with all Humble Bundles, you can adjust the final split to share out the money between me, EFF, and the Humble folks. Hey look at this (permalink) Price fixing by algorithm is still price fixing https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing Do Not Reply https://donotreply.cards/ (h/t Waxy) Diary of an Abomination https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/diary-of-an-abomination (h/t Kottke) This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago Database copyright: a stupid idea whose time hasn’t come https://www.wired.com/2004/03/hands-off-that-fact-is-mine/ #20yrsago How piracy repeatedly saved the entertainment industry https://www.wired.com/2004/03/lessig-2/ #20yrsago Eisner ousted from Disney’s Board https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/business/defied-in-vote-disney-leader-loses-one-post.html #20yrsago Worm-writers insulting each other in source-code comments https://web.archive.org/web/20040619024113/http://www.vnunet.com/news/1153225 #20yrsago Lego Pantone values https://memex.craphound.com/2004/03/04/lego-pantone-values/ #20yrsago Mojo Nixon retiring https://web.archive.org/web/20040402054153/http://www.mojonixon.com/ #20yrsago Jay-Z construction set http://www.jayzconstructionset.com #20yrsago Anthropomorphic Mars Rover LiveJournal https://opportunitygrrl.livejournal.com #15yrsago Child in wet bathing suit made to stand in -5F weather because school policy forbade her from waiting in teacher’s car https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/teen-teachers-made-me-stand-outside-in-wet-bathing-suit-barefoot/ #15yrsago Christian salt, a wingnut alternative to Kosher salt https://web.archive.org/web/20090302152904/http://www.examiner.com/a-1873794~Christian_salt_seller_hopes_to_shake_up_market.html #15yrsago Cult of Done Manifesto: a name for my disease https://medium.com/@bre/the-cult-of-done-manifesto-724ca1c2ff13 #15yrsago EFF launches “Surveillance Self Defense” — comprehensive guide to blocking govt snooping https://ssd.eff.org #15yrsago In Praise of the Sales Force: the stuff a publisher does for an author that the Internet can’t replace https://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/03/cory-doctorow-in-praise-of-sales-force.html #15yrsago Manchester man arrested for alleged sewer-grate photography, held as a terrorist https://pinacnews.com/index.php/2009/03/10/uk-police-arrest-man-for-photography-even-though-he-didnt-take-photos/ #10yrsago Full NHS hospital records uploaded to Google servers, “infinitely worse” story to come https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/03/nhs-england-patient-data-google-servers #10yrsago Cold Equations and Moral Hazard: science fiction considered harmful to the future https://locusmag.com/2014/03/cory-doctorow-cold-equations-and-moral-hazard/ #10yrsago Data-compression with playing cards https://www.timwarriner.com/carddata/index.html #10yrsago David Cameron’s porn-filter advisor arrested for possession of images of sexual abuse of children https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/senior-tory-adviser-patrick-rock-arrested-on-child-pornography-allegations-9166837.html #10yrsago Free download of danah boyd’s must-read book “It’s Complicated” https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/03/03/its-complicated-open-access.html #10yrsago Podcast: Cold Equations and Moral Hazard https://ia800202.us.archive.org/17/items/CoryDoctorowPodcast267ColdEquationsAndMoralHazard/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_267_Cold_Equations_and_Moral_Hazard.mp3 #10yrsago Guy who “fixed” women’s computers spied through their webcams https://www.wired.co.uk/article/cyber-voyeur #10yrsago Barrett Brown legal motion: linking is protected by the First Amendment https://web.archive.org/web/20140307111151/http://freebarrettbrown.org/right-to-link/ #5yrsago Fox News was always partisan, but now it is rudderless and “anti-democratic” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house #5yrsago How the patent office’s lax standards gave Elizabeth Holmes the BS patents she needed to defraud investors and patients https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/theranos-how-a-broken-patent-system-sustained-its-decade-long-deception/ #5yrsago Open dataset of 1.78b links from the public web, 2016-2019 https://blog.gdeltproject.org/who-links-to-whom-the-30m-edge-gkg-outlink-domain-graph-april-2016-to-jan-2019/ #5yrsago Automated reception kiosks are a security dumpster fire https://securityintelligence.com/stranger-danger-x-force-red-finds-19-vulnerabilities-in-visitor-management-systems/ #5yrsago Alias: a smart-speaker “parasite” that blocks your speaker’s sensors until you activate it https://web.archive.org/web/20190321085518/https://bjoernkarmann.dk/project_alias #5yrsago Financialization is wearing out its welcome https://www.ft.com/content/a9f13afc-3c3d-11e9-b856-5404d3811663 #5yrsago German data privacy commissioner says Article 13 inevitably leads to filters, which inevitably lead to internet “oligopoly” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/german-data-privacy-commissioner-says-article-13-inevitably-leads-filters-which #5yrsago Tim Maughan’s Infinite Detail: a debut sf novel about counterculture, resistance, and the post-internet apocalypse https://memex.craphound.com/2019/03/04/tim-maughans-infinite-detail-a-debut-sf-novel-about-counterculture-resistance-and-the-post-internet-apocalypse/ #5yrsago Terra Nullius: Grifters, settler colonialism and “intellectual property” https://locusmag.com/2019/03/cory-doctorow-terra-nullius/ #5yrsago Leaked memo suggests that Google has not really canceled its censored, spying Chinese search tool https://theintercept.com/2019/03/04/google-ongoing-project-dragonfly/ #5yrsago Record label censors copyright lawyers’ site by falsely claiming it infringes copyright https://torrentfreak.com/record-label-targets-copyright-experts-with-bogus-takedown-request/ #5yrsago Google says it won’t remove Saudi government app that lets men track and monitor their wives and domestic employees https://www.businessinsider.com/absher-google-refuses-to-remove-saudi-govt-app-that-tracks-women-2019-3 #5yrsago The FAIR Act will end forced arbitration for employment, consumer, antitrust and civil rights disputes https://thinkprogress.org/lawmakers-declare-war-on-the-biggest-civil-rights-problem-youve-probably-never-heard-of-eaf3b5459034/ #1yrago Solving the Moderator’s Trilemma with Federation https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/04/pick-all-three/#agonism Upcoming appearances (permalink) Tucson Festival of Books, Mar 9/10 https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?id=676 San Francisco Public Library, Mar 13 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 (permalink) Is Social Media Becoming a Bit Shit? (The Briefing) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPlpMd1KEw Radioactive (KCRL) https://krcl.org/blog/grist-investigates-doctorow-seed/ The enshittification of music (Music Ally) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh20fD3XXbg Latest books (permalink) 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 (permalink) 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 Colophon (permalink) Today’s top sources: Currently writing: A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025 The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024 Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Latest podcast: The Majority of Censorship is Self-Censorship https://craphound.com/news/2024/02/25/the-majority-of-censorship-is-self-censorship/ 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/2024/03/03/humbly-bundled/ Save to Pocket
Europe: Plug-In Car Sales Increased About 25% In January 2024
date: 2024-03-03, from: Inside EVs News
The segment expands despite cuts in EV incentives in some markets.
https://insideevs.com/news/710887/europe-plugin-car-sales-january2024/ Save to Pocket
Brembo Sets Up Shop In Thailand To Better Serve Massive Asian Market
date: 2024-03-03, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
Bringing more bikes to a quick and confident stop.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/710019/brembo-thailand-factory-2025/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Sarah Sherman is incredible, like a Gilda Radner or John Belushi, she becomes the character she’s playing, but she’s still herself.
http://scripting.com/2024/03/03.html#a161102 Save to Pocket
Tesla Model Y Prices Return To Previous Level In March
date: 2024-03-03, from: Inside EVs News
Elon Musk explains that the price changes aim to mitigate the seasonality of car buying.
https://insideevs.com/news/710883/tesla-modely-prices-returns-2024march1/ Save to Pocket
The Curious About Everything Newsletter #36
date: 2024-03-03, from: Curious about everything blog
The many interesting things I read in February 2024
https://jodiettenberg.substack.com/p/thirty-six Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
"Outside of X, the public isn’t reading the right. And as a result, X now shapes the right as much as even Fox News." #surprising
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/opinion/musk-x-maga-trump.html Save to Pocket
Yes on Measure A on March 5
date: 2024-03-03, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Santa Barbara Public Library Foundation supports charter amendment — Measure A2024 — featured on the March 5 ballot.
The post Yes on Measure A on March 5 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/03/03/yes-on-measure-a-on-march-5/ Save to Pocket
LEVER WEEKLY: “Schools Need To Pay Their Fair Share”
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Lever News
From Ivy League tax dodges to Elon Musk’s cushy new court system, here’s all the news from The Lever this week.
https://www.levernews.com/lever-weekly-schools-need-to-pay-their-fair-share/ Save to Pocket
Sherco 300 SEF Hamish MacDonald Is A Race-Replica Enduro For Mere Mortals
date: 2024-03-03, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
Race-bred inside and out.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/710372/sherco-300-sef-hamish-macdonald-race-replica/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
How to use ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini AI tools.
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/03/chatgpt-copilot-gemini-ai-beginners-guide-tools Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Ralph Nader Looks Ahead, at Age 90. What He Sees Is Not What You'd Expect.
https://fallows.substack.com/p/ralph-nader-looks-ahead-at-age-90?publication_id=403884&post_id=142191000&isFreemail=true&r=u7a0&triedRedirect=true Save to Pocket
Non-bike bike gear review: A legit ‘one weird trick’ to warmer winter cycling
date: 2024-03-03, from: Electrek Feed
Thanks to electric bikes, more people than ever before are discovering the joys of car-free living. Many others find that they can at least leave their car in the garage more often, using an e-bike instead for many of their around-the-town trips and errands. But when the weather is cold, e-bikes can sometimes feel less enticing. For anyone who has dreaded the rude awakening of cold air in your face, I think I might have found a trick that can help: swapping a typical bike helmet for .
https://electrek.co/2024/03/03/non-bike-bike-gear-review-a-legit-one-weird-trick-to-warmer-winter-cycling/ Save to Pocket
David Hegg | Truth or Consequences?
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
By David Hegg Every day, as I drive down the hill from home to the busy avenue that takes me to my study at Grace Baptist Church, I come to a four-way stop. You know, an intersection where all four lanes converge at right angles due to the presence of four STOP signs. When I […]
The post David Hegg | Truth or Consequences? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/david-hegg-truth-or-consequences/ Save to Pocket
Arthur Saginian | Fear and Other F-Words
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
Stephen Maseda (letters, Jan. 3) took nine paragraphs to say what I said in just two sentences (Jan. 13), but there is one fallacy in Mr. Maseda’s argument. Although religions don’t use “force” to control their followers (at least not anymore) they do use another “F-word,” and that is “fear.” Still, one is always “free” […]
The post Arthur Saginian | Fear and Other F-Words appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/arthur-saginian-fear-and-other-f-words/ Save to Pocket
Jim Blumel | Clean up the Disaster
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
Americans deserve to know who is running the executive branch of our country. We surely know who is not. Joe Biden is not capable, physically or mentally. Those who control Biden and the administration are determined to “fundamentally transform America,” which is the leftist promise going back to the 2008 presidential campaign. It’s the same […]
The post Jim Blumel | Clean up the Disaster appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/jim-blumel-clean-up-the-disaster/ Save to Pocket
Designing A USB-C Upgrade PCB For The MX Ergo Mouse
date: 2024-03-03, from: Tilde.news
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/02/designing-a-usb-c-upgrade-pcb-for-the-mx-ergo-mouse/ Save to Pocket
US military aircraft airdrop thousands of meals into Gaza in emergency humanitarian aid operation
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — U.S. military C-130 cargo planes dropped food in pallets over Gaza on Saturday in the opening stage of an emergency humanitarian assistance authorized by President Joe Biden after more than 100 Palestinians who had surged to pull goods off an aid convoy were killed during a chaotic encounter with Israeli troops.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/nation-world-news/us-military-aircraft-airdrop-thousands-of-meals-into-gaza-in-emergency-humanitarian-aid-operation/ Save to Pocket
Oregon may revive penalties for drug possession. What will the change do?
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Oregon is poised to step back from its first-in-the-nation drug decriminalization law with a new measure approved by the state Senate that would reinstate criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of some drugs.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/nation-world-news/oregon-may-revive-penalties-for-drug-possession-what-will-the-change-do/ Save to Pocket
US says Israel has agreed to the framework for a Gaza cease-fire. Hamas must now decide
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israel has essentially endorsed a framework of a proposed Gaza cease-fire and hostage release deal, and it is now up to Hamas to agree to it, a senior U.S. administration official said Saturday, a day before talks to reach an agreement were to resume in Egypt.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/nation-world-news/us-says-israel-has-agreed-to-the-framework-for-a-gaza-cease-fire-hamas-must-now-decide/ Save to Pocket
Peace, music and memories: As the 1960s fade, historians scramble to capture Woodstock’s voices
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>BETHEL, N.Y. — Woodstock didn’t even happen in Woodstock.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/nation-world-news/peace-music-and-memories-as-the-1960s-fade-historians-scramble-to-capture-woodstocks-voices/ Save to Pocket
Puna groundwater study sought: It would try to determine whether PGV has an impact
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The impacts of Puna Geothermal Venture on Puna’s groundwater could be the subject of a nearly $500,000 federal study being proposed by a Hawaii County Council member.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/hawaii-news/puna-groundwater-study-sought-it-would-try-to-determine-whether-pgv-has-an-impact/ Save to Pocket
Odysseus mission deemed mostly a success
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The first successful American moon mission in 50 years went dark Thursday after a rough landing a week earlier, but Big Island astronomers say the space flight was largely successful.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/hawaii-news/odysseus-mission-deemed-mostly-a-success/ Save to Pocket
Navalny’s mother brings flowers to his grave a day after thousands attended his funeral in Moscow
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Lyudmila Navalnaya and Alla Abrosimova, the mother and mother-in-law of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were among mourners who brought flowers to his grave in Moscow on Saturday, a day after thousands turned his funeral into one of the largest recent displays of dissent.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/nation-world-news/navalnys-mother-brings-flowers-to-his-grave-a-day-after-thousands-attended-his-funeral-in-moscow/ Save to Pocket
Should court storming by fans in college basketball be banned?
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>When Wake Forest University’s Demon Deacons defeated Duke University’s Blue Devils on Saturday, Wake Forest students stormed the court, celebrating their team’s victory over a much-maligned in-state rival. Duke player Kyle Filipowski got injured during the exuberant on-court celebration and chaos, which prompted calls to end court storming, with an eye on protecting the players.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/opinion/should-court-storming-by-fans-in-college-basketball-be-banned/ Save to Pocket
More delays? Supreme Court was wrong to put off Trump immunity decision
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it will consider Donald Trump’s claim that as a former president he enjoys immunity from prosecution for alleged crimes connected to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. By taking the case and scheduling oral argument for the week of April 22, the court has further complicated the timeline for a Trump trial, which a district judge originally scheduled for March 4.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/opinion/more-delays-supreme-court-was-wrong-to-put-off-trump-immunity-decision/ Save to Pocket
Oil spill, fertilizer leak from sinking of cargo ship highlight risks to Red Sea from Houthi attacks
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>MIAMI — A vibrant fishing industry, some of the world’s largest coral reefs, desalination plants supplying millions with drinking water. They’re all at risk from large amounts of fertilizer and oil spilled into the Red Sea by the sinking of a cargo ship attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/nation-world-news/oil-spill-fertilizer-leak-from-sinking-of-cargo-ship-highlight-risks-to-red-sea-from-houthi-attacks/ Save to Pocket
Where will you be for the April 8 total solar eclipse? There’s still time to grab a spot
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — Where will you be watching the April 8 total solar eclipse? There are just a few weeks left to pick your spot to see the skies darken along a strip of North America, whether by land, sea or air.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/nation-world-news/where-will-you-be-for-the-april-8-total-solar-eclipse-theres-still-time-to-grab-a-spot/ Save to Pocket
A massive blizzard howls in the Sierra Nevada. High winds and heavy snow close roads and ski resorts
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>TRUCKEE, Calif. — A powerful blizzard that a meteorologist termed “as bad as it gets” howled in the Sierra Nevada mountains, closing a long stretch of Interstate 80 in Northern California, forcing ski resorts to shut down, and leaving tens of thousands of homes without power.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/nation-world-news/a-massive-blizzard-howls-in-the-sierra-nevada-high-winds-and-heavy-snow-close-roads-and-ski-resorts/ Save to Pocket
Trump escalates his immigration rhetoric with baseless claim about Biden trying to overthrow the US
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>GREENSBORO, North Carolina — Former President Donald Trump on Saturday further escalated his immigration rhetoric and baselessly accused President Joe Biden of waging a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America” as he campaigned ahead of Super Tuesday’s primaries.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/nation-world-news/trump-escalates-his-immigration-rhetoric-with-baseless-claim-about-biden-trying-to-overthrow-the-us/ Save to Pocket
Obituaries for March 3
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>George Keoki Hanohano Sr., 87, of Hilo died Jan. 13 at Hilo Medical Center. Born in Hilo, he was a retired Hawaii County police officer, retired Securitas airport police officer and member of Island Praise Ministry. Visitation 9-11 a.m. Saturday (March 9) at Dodo Mortuary Chapel. Funeral service at 11 a.m. Cremation to follow. Casual attire. Survived by sons, George (Trudy) Hanohano Jr., Donovan Hanohano, Charles (Lurae) Hanohano, Joseph Hanohano and John (Haunani) Hanohano of Hilo; daughters, Georgiana “Peaches” Kopper, Donna Hanohano, Charlee Ann (Elswood) Noeau and Kuuipo (Kevin) Lyman of Hilo; brothers, Charles Hanohano of Hilo and Henry (Bunches) Hanohano of Honolulu; brothers-in-law, Lawrence Poai and George Poai of Hilo, Dennis (Ellen) Poai of Kona; sisters-in-law, Mabel Iopa, Sybil (Jim) Evans and Cathy Ann (John) Simmons of Hilo; 24 grandchildren, 54 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren; cousins, nieces and nephews. Arrangements by Dodo Mortuary.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/obituaries/obituaries-for-march-3-13/ Save to Pocket
Volcano Watch: Kilauea intrusion was a textbook example of dike propagation
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>From Jan. 31 to Feb. 3, a magma intrusion into Kilauea’s flank, southwest of the summit caldera, was the focus of attention at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO).</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/community/volcano-watch-kilauea-intrusion-was-a-textbook-example-of-dike-propagation/ Save to Pocket
KS-Hawai‘i volleyball tournament concludes; HBA wins gold and Waipahu wins silver
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Kamehameha Schools - Hawai‘i’s annual boys volleyball tournament concluded on Saturday, ending two long days of action.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/sports/ks-hawaii-volleyball-tournament-concludes-hba-wins-gold-and-waipahu-wins-silver/ Save to Pocket
Vulcans sweep Sharks
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>UH-Hilo’s basketball teams ended their regular season with a senior night sweep, both defeating Hawaii Pacific on Saturday afternoon at Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/sports/vulcans-sweep-sharks/ Save to Pocket
UH-Hilo’s Bercan shoots seven-under final round to charge to No. 3 finish
date: 2024-03-03, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>BORREGO SPRINGS, Calif. – UH-Hilo golfer Dylan Bercan charged up the leader board after shooting seven-under in the final round for a No. 3 finish — leading the Vulcans’ men’s golf team to a fifth-place finish at CSU San Bernardino’s Battle In The Desert this week at the Rams Hill Golf Club.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/03/03/sports/uh-hilos-bercan-shoots-seven-under-final-round-to-charge-to-no-3-finish/ Save to Pocket
MIA: An Alternate Strategy for Gaza
date: 2024-03-03, updated: 2024-03-03, from: RAND blog
The international community cannot dictate a solution to Israel-Hamas war by fiat. If the international community wants Israel to change strategies in Gaza, then it should offer a viable alternative strategy to Israel’s announced goal of destroying Hamas in the strip. And right now, that alternate strategy simply does not exist.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/03/mia-an-alternate-strategy-for-gaza.html Save to Pocket
IndieWeb Carnival: Roundup
date: 2024-03-03, from: Manu - I write blog
February has come to an end and with it also ended my experience hosting the 9th edition of the IndieWeb Carnival. To be honest with you, I didn’t know what to expect going into this. Foreverliketh.is—who was the host for the month of January—emailed me one day asking me if I wanted to host one of the upcoming months because the carnival was running short on hosts and I obviously accepted.
His month on the topic of Positive Internalization saw 13 people contributing and so I said to myself “If 10 to 15 people decide to participate in February I’ll consider that a win”.
Well, looks like we got there. I have 44 links in front of me so this is going to be quite the roundup but before we jump into that let me first say thank you to all the people who decided to take the time to participate. You’re all a bunch of awesome people. Also, the Carnival continues and this month’s topic is going to be Accessibility in the Small Web. Look forward to reading your posts there. Now it’s time to dive into the submissions.
Quick overview
As I said before, I have 44 links in front of me. One person contributed 2 posts, 43 of those posts were written specifically for this month’s carnival and 1 was submitted not by its author but by someone else. They thought it was a quality entry and they were right so I decided to include it.
The roundup
It’s 7.42 am, I have my cup of tea in front of me, and it’s time to review all these entries.
On Digital Relationships: Once Upon A Time, I Was A Voxer
There’s no way for me to write up my time as a Voxer both online and off in any way that’s comprehensive or even likely especially coherent. Between the memory deficiencies and the flood of alcohol with occasional marijuana digressions, there’s just not enough to form a full picture. While I appear on the incest map, there are versions that link me to people with whom I did not have a saliva or semen connection. The community was a jumbled mess but there’s also a lot of myth wrapped up in it all. I won’t deny I at least had more than my fair share of crushes, including a photographer who I didn’t actually know very well, although we got along fine, and whose later and far too soon funeral to this day I regret missing. (People still remember you, K.)
I love that this was the first post I received. I am a sucker for stories. I just love them. I love learning about people’s previous lives, about their adventures, about the way they got where they are now. I also love when the physical and the digital intersect and learning about the origin of the name Bix was such a treat.
Digital relationships
Understanding that the generalisability of any study can be questioned, it is worth reflecting that the IndieWeb—made up in large part of text-heavy websites—can help foster meaningful digital relationships, strengthen social support and feelings of satisfaction associated with these relationships. And because a key, if indirect, result of the IndieWeb movement is to promote a balance of creation and consumption, it is all the more powerful a tool to employ in strengthening digital relationships of humans through the web.
VH post was the starting point for so many interesting deep dives and I’m going to write at least a few posts thanks to this. I loved the parallelism between the IndieWeb and the physical interactions.
On digital relationships: I miss my gaming buddies
By James
Looking back, all this happened in a flash. At the time, it felt like aeons.
I loved this entry focused on gaming because I personally have so many great memories that are related to that. The hours spent with three weirdos—you know who you are—playing co-op games on the PS4 during the pandemic days will stay with me forever. So many laughs, and so many great moments.
Digital Relationships
We’re still dating. I mean… I married her, but we still date too.
Jamie’s post made me smile because it’s such a lovely story. One I can relate to all too well. I might tell my story at some point. Maybe.
The four phases
In the first era, technology was here to catalogue us.
In the second, it was here to empower us.
In the third, it was here to observe us.
In the fourth, it is here to replace us.
I’m wondering what the fifth phase is going to look like. This is the type of post I love to read. Full of interesting information and thought-provoking.
Digital Relationships
It’s a struggle to slow the cadence of the web and our daily social interactions; to avoid becoming over-stimulated the second we wake up in the morning. And it’s for this reason I find myself gravitating towards natural activities of the past—without a screen. Albeit with a slightly different landscape and a more focused mindset.
This is something I’m also experiencing. And it’s paradoxical in a way. I retreated from social media years ago to hide in my digital corner and do my own things. I spend more time outside, walking, enjoying nature, and listening to birds. And yet what’s left of my online life is a lot more meaningful.
Digital Relationships
By Steve Ledlow
How a family sits around a table in public all staring at their phones carrying on relationships digitally with everyone other than those sitting in close physical proximity is a tip of the societal scale that disturbs me. How others begin, navigate and end romantic relationships exclusively with digital mechanics confuses me. The fact that our world seems to be trending toward more technology that replaces the relationship with more digital depresses me.
The large-scale implications of technology are something that worries me a lot. It’s one of those topics I find myself returning over and over again. Another topic I need to explore more on this site.
The Technology Mediated Relationships
By Sara Jakša
And people are trying to solve this for themselves. Which is why there are so many different online spaces and different ways of communication online. But that also means, that there is no way to have one way to communicate with everybody.
I couldn’t help to ask myself if that’s necessarily a bad thing. Do we actually need a way to communicate with everybody? Maybe we want some friction in the system. Maybe the fact that not everyone is willing to use emails is why emails are still the best way to have one-to-one interactions online.
Oh the People You’ll Meet: A Visual Timeline of Human Connections
It’s not bad to know many people. The value of a substantial social network is quite high. But having just one close person to go to when you’re feeling down… how many average relationships is that worth? Who feels deep happiness for you when something good happens in your life? Who can you make beautiful memories with?
I couldn’t agree more. Like everything in life, what matters is to find a good balance. You want plenty of interactions to keep your mind stimulated and your points of view challenged and the digital world is perfect for that. But you also want at least a couple of close IRL relationships.
People & Content #5: Networking
By Matt Stein
My favorite of these networked-but-not-online spectacles were the LAN parties we’d have in high school.
LAN PARTIES! Those were dope. I still remember playing UT99 with a bunch of people at an improvised LAN party in a garden. And there was pizza. UT99 and pizza. What more can you ask from life? I should probably look into setting up a server to play UT99 with people. Could be fun.
Digital Relationships Offer Real Hope
By Barry Hess
I try to imagine what my life would look like if I was stuck with only the relationships geographically close to me. I have those relationships as well, and I treasure them, but they simply cannot offer the diversity of thought, background, and experience that digital relationships allow. I’m so incredibly thankful to live in an era where I can have the best of both worlds.
The global nature of the web is an underappreciated quality. Like, can we just stop for a second and appreciate the fact that I’m typing this while sitting in Italy and you’re reading this somewhere else on the globe? It’s fucking amazing.
9.12 am: time for a break. Can’t believe I’m only a quarter of the way through this roundup post.
9.37 am: I’m back!
On Influencers and Parasocial Relationships
So yeah The early Internet gave us opportunities for interpersonal relationships. The modern Internet gives us parasocial relationships.
I love Devastatia’s website. It’s absolutely everything mine isn’t and I love that. I also loved her post because it touches on another topic I plan to write about at some point. Parasocial relationships are fascinating and disturbing.
A Kafkaesque digital relationship with ourselves
Leaving the corporate web is not enough. Refusing to follow influencers with their incessant broadcasting of self-promotion is not enough. Repopulate an RSS reader with brilliant blogs from newfound like-minded people is not enough. Homepages dressed as business cards are everywhere, convinced as we are that presenting ourselves as a product is the only way to go.
I wrote about personal branding back in 2017 and my opinion on the topic hasn’t changed. Reading Simone’s post made me want to rewrite my About page though.
The evolution of online BFFs
By Karen
Some of my good friends I still haven’t met! We only communicate online in assorted ways. We text, we send each other memes and voice messages and emails. I count them as some of my very best friends and they have been there for me in some of my darkest moments.
This is one of those things that people can’t fully understand until they try for themselves. It’s incredible how much you can connect with others via the digital space.
Anonymous, asynchronous friendships
Others, I’ve gotten to know in real life. And it’s a wonderful sensation when you meet someone for the first time in a pub and the usual “getting to know a stranger” feeling isn’t there at all. We would continue the discussions we’ve had for years without a hitch.
It really is incredible how normal it feels when you finally meet someone in person. Probably 2 hours after having met Rob in person we were wandering the woods chasing howls as if that’s the most normal thing to do with someone you only just met. But it was perfectly normal because we were friends. And we still are.
Far but close
But it all starts on the internet, on the old independent web, where there’s no algorithm and no digital gods telling us what we can and can’t see. It all starts there but it all continues somewhere else. It continues in our hearts. Because it doesn’t matter what channel or app we use to communicate, as long as we have the will. Because whatever app we use, a friend will be on the other side. We can enjoy whatever platform we have while it exists, and we can move on when it ceases to exist. It doesn’t matter if the platform stays or not, what matters is that friends will be there, friends will stay.
I love this. And I love mail! I keep thinking that maybe I should set up a PO Box and start connecting at an even slower pace. Maybe after I moved and I finally have a home I’m gonna do just that.
One Degree of Kevin Bacon - Digital Relationships in the 21st Century
By Andrei
Even if these persons are remote, they still mean the world to us, we still care about them, we love them and they are our friends.
This is another aspect I love about true relationships. They flow. They change, they evolve, they move from digital to physical but they still mean something, no matter the circumstances.
Zero Degrees of Kevin Bacon - Digital Relationships Addendum
By Andrei
In the end, looking back at all the time we spent, I realized I just enjoyed your company, but I actually never knew you at all.
Thank you for writing this Andrei. It felt oddly therapeutic reading this story.
On digital relationship
Belonging and connecting are battles between in-person and screen time. I struggle to balance digital and in-person interaction; as I push myself to live in the present, connecting with someone digitally lets me sometimes feel I’m not since I’m somewhere else with my mind.
I think this is something we as a society have to confront at some point. Especially with younger generations growing up so connected. The struggle is real and it is a struggle. And we have to do something about it.
A neighborhood blog
By Yaidel
In a neighborhood everyone knows who is the fool, who is the one who talks a lot, who is the one who always tells lies, the honest one, the teacher, the doctor, the veterinarian, the one who steals, etc. But not on the Internet.
This is why I try to be as honest with myself as possible on my site. I don’t try to perform, don’t try to create a persona. I try to be who I am, following my interests, and not trying to be distracted by anything else.
I ♥︎ Plain Digital Text
By Aleem Shaun
In a world bombarded by advertising, algorithms and apps that encourage us to scroll forever, plain text reminds me there’s more to life than the trappings of digital excess.
I’m with you. I fucking love plain text. I’m writing this post in markdown, my to-do lists are just markdown. Text is powerful.
Writing As a Relationship
By C Jackdaw
I believe that co-writing is an excellent practice for long-term relationship partners. It can keep things fresh and exciting, allowing you to literally fall in love all over again with someone you’ve been married to for ten years. More than once I’ve seen something we’re writing reflect back to me something I’ve been thinking about but not been able to solve on my own; solving the problem on the page is a relief.
This was such a fascinating read into something I never even thought it was a thing that people do. And this is why I love the web. It allows me to discover all sorts of interesting things.
10.42 am: Halfway through the list. Can I just say that I loved going through the posts a second time? You’re all so nice and cool and interesting. What an enjoyable experience this is.
Communicating online and building relationships
While lots of people seem to be able to build connections through large chats, for me forums just allowed me think a bit more about what the person I was talking to actually meant.
I still think forums are underappreciated and I also still think I should set up one at some point. Also, thank you for sharing that bash.org exchange because it was hilarious.
Digital excuses
I’m not going to apologize, though, because this is my indie blog and my indie post and my indie state of mind. I’m a boomer, but I intend to take full advantage of the modern whining trend.
You do you sir! Jokes aside, tech is a blessing and a curse. Especially when it becomes unmanageable. And sometimes I think the only solution to tech problems is more tech. Which is silly but it’s a silly world the one we live in.
A Love Letter to my Laptop
As I’m writing this, I can’t help but think maybe this relationship is strange. Maybe I have too much dependence on my devices and that I shouldn’t rely on technology so much. I shouldn’t be so materialistic or be so attached. But when you spend that much time during some of your most profound years with any one thing, living or otherwise, it is bound to become sentimental.
It’s odd how we can feel an attachment to objects but it’s something I can absolutely relate to. I don’t own many things but there are a bunch I care about and I’d feel really sad if I were to lose them. Also, this post made me want to go back to working on a laptop, something I’m missing these days.
Digital tools may create life long relationships
By Anton Sten
I think people are keen on comparing digital relations to physical relations, but I don’t think they are easily comparable. They are the same, but different.
I think sometimes we lack words to describe these things. I keep saying things like “Digital” or “IRL” but those don’t fully capture the spirit of the things I’m trying to communicate. We need a better vocabulary for the digital world.
11.12 am: life is calling, have to stop now. But don’t worry, I’ll be back.
8.51 am: it’s a new day, time to finish writing this roundup.
Digital Relationships; or, How I Met My Wife and Why I Might Not Try That Again
I am careful to remember that you too are just a voice in the dark. We have never spoken. We have never shared a meal together. We have never shaken hands or embraced. We have never stood side by side against a common enemy with our actual and only lives at stake. As tempting as it is to forget the body when online, we are not daemons or spirits without bodies. We are human beings, embodied and earthbound, and any bonds we forge should take that into account.
I love Matthew’s post. As I said to him, his story reminds me of mine in a way. Again, maybe I’ll write about it one day.
Digital relationships with our past
The unguided nature of the app allows people to reflect on these experiences, instead of providing them with a ready-made interpretation or a written text to read or skip. Left alone, immersed in these soundscapes, we are forced to reflect on our emotions triggered by sound and visual elements, thus building a unique relationship with the past and with the archaeological site.
I very much enjoyed this entry because it tackles a completely different type of digital relationship, one I never spent time thinking about. I’m now so intrigued by the concept of digital archeology.
On digital relationship
By Bacardi55
Some people think it is impossible to have meaningful exchanges / relationships with other without seeing each other, but I disagree. It is even sometime better to talk to people you don’t see, some topics are easier that way. Yes written communication are more complex because some information can not be shared (body language, tone - in particular irony and sarcasm, …), but that doesn’t prevent people to find a way to interact that works for them and create true companionship, friendship or more.
I think that sometimes not having access to non-verbal communication can be a good thing. You’re forced to focus on the actual message because that’s all you have.
Stories of digital relationships
By Mick
And none of this would’ve ever happened, if I hadn’t trusted that the “virtual” people beyond the screen can be even realer than the “real” ones.
Trusting the people on the other side of the screen can be challenging. Because, sadly, the web—and the world in general—is full of dickheads. But I can tell you from experience that it’s also full of kind people.
Digital Relationship Reminiscenc
By Basil
All good things come to an end. People moved on as the platform struggled with some technology changes and my online life once again reverted to the mainstream social networks, meaning news consumption on Twitter and sharing posts with real world contacts via Facebook and WhatsApp.
This is one of the sad truths about the web in general and why I also think personal sites are the best way to stay online: platforms come and go. The only place you can count on still being there in 10 or 15 years is the one you control.
Digital relationships
The rules of engagement changed. Where our digital playgrounds once were about hanging out and shooting the shit with friends, they now became something else. People started optimising. Optimising what? Everything. What they said, how they said it and when they said it. All in an effort to gain more friends. We still called them friends at that point. But the veil quickly fell away and the term followers eventually took the place of friends. And rightly so, because you can’t optimise for friendship.
The fact that people managed to build careers out of being active on social platforms is one of the big tragedies of the modern web.
Websites as a catalyst for personal relationships
On the dominating platforms of today, nobody will ever be a citizen, not even a customer. We’re only good enough to be a user. But outside of the walled gardens, there are still ample opportunities. We can form relationships, participate in debate, cultivate a corner of and shape the digital medium. All these verbs - nota bene - have in common that they are active.
That’s why I always encourage people to write publicly but to also email others and create connections. The open web requires effort but it will also reward you for doing so.
The Downside of Digital Relationships
The internet may connect us to the whole world, but I think that the convenience is making us disconnect from each other in the offline world.
Digital relationships can be a trap and it’s absolutely vital to have a good balance. Like almost everything in life, we need balance. And it’s important to always keep that in mind.
Seven Year Itch
In the end, that’s the beauty of digital relationships. You can borrow someone’s partner without harming their relationship.
This was such a hilarious way to close a post.
Crying Out
What I am slowly coming to realize is that there is a mismatch in pace between my conceptions of real life vs. internet. Everything online seems to be moving at incredible speeds
That’s one of the reasons why spending more and more time cultivating my online corner. The web is just too vast and moves at such a stupid speed that you end up always feeling left behind.
The Internet’s Tower of Babel
In the early days of the internet, these protocols were established. Email or the web itself were created upon open protocols for everyone to make use of. A shared language on the internet was born.
It’s amazing that the fundamentals of the web are still there, still allowing us to run our websites and still allowing us to interact via email.
Software Is Built Online
What is wild to me, is how many of these projects are managed on a volunteer basis. While some people are fortunate to be paid to work on open source software, most projects are primarily one person spending their free evenings trying to understand the questions people submit and make the project better for everyone.
It’s incredible how much of the web is the result of a relatively small number of people spending their free time working on projects for the simple fact that they care about this platform.
Virtual Intimacy and Emotional Bonds
Many of us desire a form of intimacy and emotional bond from those important to us. Oftentimes the only way to get these is through a virtual medium. We want to foster deep emotional connections with the absence of physical proximity.
The ability to connect through distance is one of technology’s best qualities. And it was painfully obvious during the COVID days.
Rebuilding Digital Relationships
By Al Abut
Now, it’s like a good chunk of the world took an intensive course on online communication in the last 4+ years and decided that well what do you know? Those geeks were on to something.
Funny how things change. It’s also interesting how remote work can open the doors to a lot more possibilities in life. You no longer have to live in the same place—or close—where your workplace is.
Digital Relationships
By Microbyte
on large social media, everything is drowned out, compacted, an endless stream, which, even without technical limits causes more compactness, which causes more abstractions. Meanwhile, forums tend to lend themselves to more long-form communications. And to compound on that previous point, on social media a true conversation is nearly impossible, always getting drowned out.
That’s why I left social media long ago. I found it more performative than social.
The Neon God
We converse as phantoms, the diluted remnants of intimacy’s essence, and yet still, somehow, retain the gall to call that a “relationship”.
This was such a wild read but it reminded me the time I decided to watch Serial Experiments Lain back in the early 2000s. I Should probably rewatch that anime.
digital life
I wish you were closer. But I’m glad that we’re here.
This is how I feel about the majority of my online interactions. Sometimes I wish I was closer to those people but at the same time I’m glad I have the opportunity to interact with them,
Email Is a Good Fence
By Lawrence
The fence of email offers the perfect hedge between peace and a nearly frictionless, noisy, text messaging environment.
This was submitted by Nutchanon Wetchasit and the post was not written for the Carnival but I loved the fence metaphor and that’s why I decided to include it. And you also might not be surprised to know that I agree with the content of the post. Because you all know that I love emails.
10.34 am: we got to the end! Thank you all again for taking the time to write and submit content for the Carnival. Running it was a blast and I loved reading all your entries. I look forward to reading your entries for this month’s carnival!
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/5EGWc9ceBwynto77 Save to Pocket
Geckos take basketball title from Bulldogs
date: 2024-03-03, from: Guam Daily Post
More than a decade had passed since George Washington High School won a boys basketball championship, but that all changed Saturday night.
https://www.postguam.com/sports/local/geckos-take-basketball-title-from-bulldogs/article_3310dbd8-d88f-11ee-9a0b-2f93e865242e.html Save to Pocket
Dededo Pool opens after 4 years
date: 2024-03-03, from: Guam Daily Post
Escape the heat and take a dip in the Dededo Pool, now reopened with free admission until the end of April.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/dededo-pool-opens-after-4-years/article_3c88c836-d832-11ee-b51c-cf7a451f2e7c.html Save to Pocket
Board to pursue action against unlicensed chiropractic services
date: 2024-03-03, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Board of Allied Health Examiners is going to pursue legal action against Le Balance, a spa, for allegedly performing chiropractic services illegally.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/board-to-pursue-action-against-unlicensed-chiropractic-services/article_391cda1a-d90f-11ee-bc74-5b575f127071.html Save to Pocket
Couple indicted on murder charges
date: 2024-03-03, from: Guam Daily Post
A grand jury indictment has been handed down against the two suspects accused in last month’s fatal shooting of Sumittra Lairopi.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/couple-indicted-on-murder-charges/article_e591c5b6-d839-11ee-9b8c-db7a8e3570c4.html Save to Pocket
3 men, 16-year-old boy charged with sexually assaulting female minors
date: 2024-03-03, from: Guam Daily Post
Three men and a 16-year-old boy charged as an adult were accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl and a 13-year-old girl.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/3-men-16-year-old-boy-charged-with-sexually-assaulting-female-minors/article_56c08774-d79d-11ee-b1c0-f73759e0eadc.html Save to Pocket
CCU pauses decision on GWA plan, seeks rate hike reduction
date: 2024-03-03, from: Guam Daily Post
The Consolidated Commission on Utilities has temporarily held off on deciding on the next five-year financial plan and capital improvement program for the Guam Waterworks Authority, with one commissioner wanting to know if the utility can tone down proposed rate…
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/ccu-pauses-decision-on-gwa-plan-seeks-rate-hike-reduction/article_584bb71e-d557-11ee-8a05-8bed739615e9.html Save to Pocket
Father is accused of slapping, stomping on 9-month-old son
date: 2024-03-03, from: Guam Daily Post
A man stands accused of assaulting his 9-month-old son.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/father-is-accused-of-slapping-stomping-on-9-month-old-son/article_33b29e18-d79b-11ee-b606-27f0aeb11fbe.html Save to Pocket
Sunday caption contest: Will they promptly decide about Trump’s immunity?
date: 2024-03-03, from: Robert Reich on Substack
And last week’s winner
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-caption-contest-21d Save to Pocket
Today in SCV History (March 3)
date: 2024-03-03, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1882 – George Campton’s Newhall general store explodes [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-march-3/ Save to Pocket
Climate Change Costs US Ski Industry Billions, Study Says
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
DENVER, Colorado — U.S. ski areas lost $5 billion from 2000 to 2019 as a result of human-caused climate change and could lose around $1 billion annually in the 2050s depending on how much emissions are reduced, a new study found.
People “may not care about the loss of the species halfway around the world, or a flood that’s happening in some other part of the world. But sport is often something people care about,” said Daniel Scott, a scientist at the University of Waterloo and study co-author. “And they can see some of these changes happening.”
Warm weather has upended winter recreation across North America and Europe this year, canceling a 402-kilometer dog sled race in Maine, opening golf courses in Minnesota, and requiring snow saved from the previous year to run a ski race in Austria. A warm, dry El Niño weather pattern coupled with global warming is to blame, scientists say, and has put the threat to winter on center stage.
“It’s a now problem, not a future-looking problem,” said Auden Schendler, senior vice-president of sustainability at Aspen One, a ski and hospitality company that helped fund the study, published in Current Issues in Tourism.
It models what average ski seasons would have looked like from 2000 to 2019 in the four major U.S. markets — the Northeast, Midwest, Rocky Mountain and Pacific West — without climate change. Its baseline comparison is ski seasons from 1960 to 1979 — a period when most ski areas were operating and before significant trends of human-caused warming began. It found the average modeled season between 2000 and 2019 was shorter by 5.5 to 7.1 days, even with snowmaking to make up for less natural snow.
Under an optimistic emissions reduction scenario, the future of the U.S. ski industry would see seasons shortened by 14 to 33 days in the 2050s, even with snowmaking. A high-emissions scenario would nearly double the days lost.
Countries meeting for annual climate talks agreed in December that the world needs to be “transitioning away” from the fossil fuels that are heating the planet to dangerous levels, but set no concrete targets for doing so. Earth last year had its hottest year on record, and monthly records have continued this year.
“The future of the ski industry, if that’s something you care about, is really in our hands and it will play out over the next 10 to 15 years in terms of the policies and actions that we take to reduce emissions,” Scott said.
The researchers calculated economic losses based on increased operating costs for snowmaking along with lost skier revenue. Scott called the estimates “probably somewhat conservative,” noting that they don’t include such things as the loss of money that skiers spend on goods and services in winter sport communities.
The researchers said they undertook the study in part to fill a void in good data about how much climate change was costing the ski industry. They also suggested such data would be needed if the industry pursued lawsuits against fossil fuel producers, citing as a precedent ongoing litigation by several Colorado communities that are suing oil companies ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy for the cost of adapting to the impacts of climate change.
The researchers wrote that snowmaking is “no longer able to completely offset ongoing climate changes” and said “the era of peak ski seasons has likely passed in most U.S. markets.”
David Robinson, a Rutgers University researcher and the New Jersey state climatologist, made the same point as he called the study interesting and solid.
“It’s not going to stop snowing,” said Robinson, who wasn’t involved in the work. But “things such as snowmaking are only going to be able to go so far where it’s being done now” as the planet continues to warm.
Julienne Stroeve, a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who also wasn’t involved in the work, said the study doesn’t address how skiers and snowboarders might respond to declining quality of the snow that does fall. She wondered whether skier behavior will change if poor snow conditions become more frequent.
That change in skier behavior is known as substitutability, Scott said. If skiing isn’t an option or doesn’t provide good snow conditions, will people travel to another ski area? Turn to mountain biking? Scott said he would like to find out.
“That’s another one of those things we’d love to know more about, because then you could improve the modeling,” he said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/climate-change-cost-us-ski-industry-billions-study-says/7509384.html Save to Pocket
Climate Change, Cost and Competition for Water Drive Tribal Settlement
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — A Native American tribe with one of the largest outstanding claims to water in the Colorado River basin is closing in on a settlement with more than a dozen parties, putting it on a path to piping water to tens of thousands of tribal members in Arizona who still live without it.
Negotiating terms outlined late Wednesday include water rights not only for the Navajo Nation but the neighboring Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes in the northeastern corner of the state. The water would come from a mix of sources: the Colorado River that serves seven western states, the Little Colorado River, and aquifers and washes on tribal lands.
The agreement is decades in the making and would allow the tribes to avoid further litigation and court proceedings, which have been costly. Navajo officials said they expect to finalize the terms in the coming days.
From there, it must be approved by the tribe’s governing bodies, the state of Arizona, the other parties and by Congress.
“We have the right Congress, we have the right president, and it’s very hopeful,” Navajo President Buu Nygren told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “Because next year might be a whole different ballgame. It’s going to be very uncertain.”
The proposal comes as Native American tribes, states in the Colorado River basin and Mexico are working on a long-term plan to share a diminishing water source that has served 40 million people. Tribes, including the Navajo Nation, were left out of a landmark 1922 treaty that divided the water in the basin among seven states.
The Navajo Nation has long argued that states treat the tribe as an afterthought. Any settlement reached would be separate from that long-term plan and stand on its own.
About one-third of the homes on the Navajo Nation do not have running water. Infrastructure projects outlined by the Navajo Nation include a $1.7 billion pipeline to deliver water from Lake Powell to tribal communities. The caveat being that there is no guarantee that Congress will provide the funding.
Both the Navajo and Hopi tribes are seeking the ability to lease water and to store it in existing or new reservoirs and impoundments.
“Some of our families that still live within those communities still have to haul water to cook their food, to make lemonade in the summer for their kids, to make ice, all little simple things to make your daily life easy and convenient,” Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley said.
On Wednesday, the Navajo Nation cited climate change, cost, competition for water and the coronavirus pandemic as reasons to move toward a settlement. Arizona, in turn, would benefit by having certainty over the amount of water that is available to non-tribal users. The state has had to cut its use of Colorado River water in recent years because of drought and demand.
Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, said Wednesday that while progress is being made on a settlement with the Navajo Nation, the agreement isn’t complete.
Sarah Langley, a spokeswoman for Flagstaff, the largest city that is a party to the settlement, said it is hopeful the negotiations are productive.
Arizona — situated in the Colorado River’s Lower Basin with California, Nevada and Mexico — is unique in that it also has an allocation in the Upper Basin. Under the settlement terms, Navajo and Hopi would get about 47,000 acre-feet in the Upper Basin — nearly the entire amount that was set aside for use at the Navajo Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant on the Navajo reservation that shut down in late 2019.
The proposal also includes about 9,500 acre-feet per year of lower-priority water from the Lower Basin for both tribes. An acre-foot of water is roughly enough to serve two to three U.S. households annually.
While the specific terms for the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe remain under discussion, Congress could be asked to establish a small reservation for the tribe whose ancestral land lies in Utah and Arizona. The tribe’s president, Robbin Preston Jr., didn’t immediately respond to emailed questions from the AP.
The Hopi Tribe’s general counsel, Fred Lomayesva, declined to comment.
The Navajo Nation, whose 27,000 square-mile (70,000 square-kilometer) reservation also stretches into New Mexico and Utah, already has settled its claims to the Colorado River basin there.
The Navajo and Hopi tribes came close to reaching a pact with Arizona to settle water rights in 2012. Both tribes rejected federal legislation that accompanied it, and the tentative deal fell through. It also wasn’t broadly supported by Navajos and Hopis who saw negotiations as secretive, leading to a loose effort to recall then-Navajo President Ben Shelly and then-Hopi Chairman LeRoy Shingoitewa.
Recently, the Navajo Nation Water Rights Commission has been holding public hearings across the reservation to ensure tribal members are aware of what is involved in a settlement and why the tribe pursued it, tribal officials said.
“We have a united front to our chapters, our schools and even our small businesses, families,” Curley said. “It’s inclusive of everyone. Everybody should be able to know what the terms are.”
The federal government in recent years has poured money into tribal water rights settlements. The U.S. Supreme Court also ruled the government does not have a treaty duty to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajo Nation, complicating the tribe’s fight for water.
https://www.voanews.com/a/climate-change-cost-and-competition-for-water-drive-settlement-over-tribal-rights-to-colorado-river/7508228.html Save to Pocket
Number of Abortions in US Remains Steady, Report Finds
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/number-of-abortions-in-us-remains-steady-report-finds/7506284.html Save to Pocket
Blizzard Closes Roads, Ski Resorts in Sierra Nevadas
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
TRUCKEE, California — A powerful blizzard that a meteorologist termed “as bad as it gets” howled in the Sierra Nevada mountains, closing a long stretch of Interstate 80 in Northern California, forcing ski resorts to shut down, and leaving thousands of homes without power.
More than 3 meters of snow was expected at higher elevations, National Weather Service meteorologist William Churchill said Saturday, creating a “life-threatening concern” for residents near Lake Tahoe and blocking travel on the key east-west freeway.
“It’s a blizzard,” said Dubravka Tomasin, a resident of Truckee, California, for more than a decade. “It’s pretty harrowing.”
Kyle Frankland, a veteran snow-plow driver, said several parts of his rig broke as he cleared wet snow underneath piles of powder.
“I’ve been in Truckee 44 years. This is a pretty good storm,” Frankland said. “It’s not record-breaking by any means, but it’s a good storm.”
Churchill said snow totals by late Sunday would range from 1.5 to 3.6 meters, with the highest accumulations at elevations above 1,500 meters. Lower elevations were inundated with heavy rain.
He called the storm an “extreme blizzard for the Sierra Nevada, in particular, as well as other portions of Nevada and even extending into Utah and portions of western Colorado.” But he said he didn’t expect records to be broken.
“It’s certainly just about as bad as it gets in terms of the snow totals and the winds,” Churchill said. “It doesn’t get much worse than that.”
A second, weaker storm was forecast to bring an additional .3 to .6 meters of snow in the region between Monday and Wednesday next week, according to the National Weather Service office in Sacramento.
Near Lake Tahoe, Thomas Petkanas, a bartender at Alibi Ale Works in Incline Village, Nevada, said about 1 meter of snow had fallen by midday Saturday. He said patrons shook off snow as they arrived at the brewpub and restaurant.
“It’s snowing pretty hard out there, really windy, and power is out to about half the town,” Petkanas said by telephone. “We’re one of the few spots open today.”
Adele Attix said her husband spent the morning clearing their driveway while she worried about whether she would be able to open her consignment clothing store in Truckee. She said Saturdays are usually the busiest day of the week.
“I’d say more than anything, just knowing if we’re going to open or not has probably caused the most amount of stress,” Attix said. “I figured I’d come down here and check out the shop.”
Earlier, the weather service warned that blowing snow was creating “extremely dangerous to impossible” driving conditions, with wind gusts in the high mountains at more than 160 kph.
Avalanche danger was “high to extreme” in backcountry areas through Sunday evening throughout the central Sierra and greater Lake Tahoe area, the weather service said.
California authorities on Friday shut down 160 kilometers of I-80, the main route between Reno and Sacramento, because of “spin outs, high winds, and low visibility.” There was no estimate when the freeway would reopen from the California-Nevada border west of Reno to near Emigrant Gap, California.
Travel was treacherous east of the Sierra, where CalTrans also cited “multiple spin outs and collisions” and “whiteout conditions,” as it closed 145 kilometers of U.S. 395 from near Bishop in the Owens Valley to Bridgeport, north of Mono Lake.
Pacific Gas & Electric reported about 7,468 California homes and businesses without power at 5:56 p.m. NV Energy reported power outages for about 1,500 customers in parts of northern Nevada, including Incline Village and Reno.
In southern Nevada the weather service issued a warning Saturday for high winds gusting to 145 kph. NV Energy reported almost 29,000 customers without power in and around Las Vegas on Saturday, but by that evening the number had been reduced to about 16,000.
A tornado Friday afternoon in Madera County, California, damaged an elementary school, said Andy Bollenbacher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford.
Some ski resorts shut down Friday and were digging out Saturday with an eye toward reopening Sunday.
Palisades Tahoe, the largest resort on the north end of Tahoe and site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, closed all chairlifts Saturday because of snow, wind and low visibility.
Other areas closed Saturday included Sugar Bowl, Boreal and Sierra. Heavenly Mountain Resort planned to open late with limited operations.
The storm began barreling into the region Thursday. A blizzard warning through Sunday morning covers a 480-kilometer stretch of the mountains.
Some ski lovers raced up to the mountains ahead of the storm.
Daniel Lavely, an avid skier who works at a Reno-area home/construction supply store, was not one of them. He said Friday that he wouldn’t have considered making the hour-drive to ski on his season pass at a Tahoe resort because of the gale-force winds.
But most of his customers Friday seemed to think the storm wouldn’t be as bad as predicted, he said.
“I had one person ask me for a shovel,” Lavely said. “Nobody asked me about a snowblower, which we sold out the last storm about two weeks ago.”
Meteorologists predicted as much as 3 meters of snow was possible in the mountains around Lake Tahoe by the weekend, with 0.9 to 1.8 meters in the communities on the lake’s shores and more than 30 centimeters possible in the valleys on the Sierra’s eastern front, including Reno.
Yosemite National Park closed Friday. Officials said it would remain closed through at least noon Sunday.
https://www.voanews.com/a/blizzard-closes-roads-ski-resorts-in-sierra-nevadas-/7511680.html Save to Pocket
March 2, 2024
date: 2024-03-03, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
On February 25, 1901, financier J. P. Morgan’s men filed the paperwork to incorporate a new iron and steel trust, and over the weekend, businessmen waited to see what was coming. Five days later, on March 2, the announcement came: J. P. Morgan was overseeing the combination of companies that produced two thirds of the nation’s steel into the United States Steel Corporation. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion, which at the time was almost three times more than the federal government’s annual budget.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-2-2024 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Aren’t you sick of this bullshit yet? It’s not a freaking race! Stop being idiots. Please.
https://jabberwocking.com/biden-and-trump-are-in-a-dead-heat/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The big deal with ChatGPT is that it’s a huge improvement over search. Instead of hunting for clues to the info you need, you can ask the question you have and get an answer. It has encyclopedic knowledge of all the development environments I use. And it knows how to put the pieces together. I don’t care how it does it, it’s a much higher level tool than search. Like the difference between a calculator and a computer.
http://scripting.com/2024/03/02.html#a031318 Save to Pocket
The One Billion Row Challenge in Go: from 1m45s to 4s in nine solutions
date: 2024-03-03, from: Ben Hoyt, Technical Writing
How I solved the One Billion Row Challenge (1BRC) in Go nine times, from a simple unoptimised version that takes 1 minute 45 seconds, to an optimised and parallelised version that takes 4 seconds.
https://benhoyt.com/writings/go-1brc/ Save to Pocket
SpaceX Preparing to Launch New Crew to ISS
date: 2024-03-03, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/weather-delays-spacex-launch-taking-us-russians-to-iss-/7511665.html Save to Pocket
An Apple district manager’s Macintosh Portable in 1989-91 (featuring GEIS AppleLink and a look at System 7.0 alpha)
date: 2024-03-03, from: Old Vintage Computer Research
A few months ago I introduced you to one of the more notable Apple pre-production units in my collection, a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it’s not merely notable for what it is than what it has on it: a beta version of System 6.0.6 (the doomed release that Apple pulled due to bugs), Apple sales databases, two online services — the maligned Mac Prodigy client, along with classic AppleLink as used by Apple staff — and two presentations, one on Apple’s current Macintosh line and one on the upcoming System 7. Now that I’ve got the infamous Conner hard drive it came with safely copied over, it’s time to explore its contents some more.
We’ll start with this Macintosh Portable itself and Apple’s sales channel applications, moving from there to a brief presentation of Apple’s Macintosh product line as Apple’s own marketing staff would have presented it, at a distinct point in the company’s history.
After that, we’ll also look at the upcoming System 7.0 circa 1989-90 and a couple very different views of the operating system during its alpha phase.
Finally, after a brief glance at Mac Prodigy, we’ll explore a little taste of AppleLink in its classic incarnation on General Electric’s Mark III network — and spoof it enough to actually get it to log in.
I know of a couple other Macintosh Portable prototypes out there in collector’s hands, though if you’ve got a Mac Portable yourself of any age, they all hail from that unpleasant turn-of-the-decade era where virtually all period Apple hardware will require new capacitors (everything in this one has been completely replaced). The Portable was not officially released until September 1989 simultaneously with the Macintosh IIci, where the base 1MB/floppy configuration started at $5799, or $6499 with one of those loathsome Conner hard disks (approximately $14,400 and $16,150 respectively in 2024 dollars). That puts this serial-less unit’s manufacture likely somewhere around spring ’89.
In architectural terms Apple described the Portable as an evolved Macintosh SE. Though high performance and with some innovative features, the Portable’s biggest drawbacks — literally — were its size and its heavy lead-acid battery, and it sold barely a fifth of what it was expected to. Apple cancelled it in October 1991.
Naturally, being a pre-production prototype it’s also not a backlit model — that of course came later — but the 640x400 screen remains excellent, an early example of an active matrix LCD that Apple boasted had an individual transistor for every pixel and one of the best displays on any portable machine from the period. (Sometime in the near future I’ll dig out my Data General One, a fine example of the opposite extreme.) It has an Androda 7MB expansion card to give it 8MB of RAM, just shy of the 9MB maximum it was capable of addressing, though no card sold for the Portable back in the day could achieve this and even the 9MB RAM cap is problematic. This is possibly due to the lowest motherboard 1MB being shared between ROM and RAM (ROM overlays it at reset to allow the machine to start even with RAM in a non-deterministic state), as well as at least one ROM bug that makes heavily expanded units sluggish when exiting sleep. On the Portable, which is all about being able to sleep on demand, the phenomenon becomes most obnoxious with “large” amounts of RAM like this.
We’ll switch at this point to screengrabs instead of photos. Neither are ideal for our purposes, but although the Portable does have an external video-out port, that port don’t hunt. Despite being a DE-15 VGA-style connector instead of the expected classic Mac DA-15, you’ll actually damage it plugging in a VGA display; the lines it exposes are more or less the same as the LCD drive lines and require conversion. No presentation module came with this unit and despite Apple’s promises and various rumours, there is no clear evidence any such adapter was ever produced for sale by anyone. We can’t get every snapshot since the old Shift-Command-3 salute only runs when apps yield to the system, but it’s better than trying to hover over the screen with my Pixel 7 Pro. (System 6 takes screenshots in MacPaint 576x720 format, which I have obviously reformatted and rotated.)
6.0.6 had two major problems, one where AppleTalk was sometimes not detected when present due to a bug in Gestalt, causing connectivity issues with servers and printers, and another with timing problems between the LC and IIsi and the ADB Apple Keyboard II, where the keyboard would intermittently freeze up until the mouse was moved. However, neither of those problems have manifested on this Portable so far, and 6.0.6 additionally fixed issues with the Portable’s modem and reading 800K floppy disks, so you really should run at least 6.0.7 or 6.0.8 (it originally shipped with 6.0.4, also the same as the IIci).
That said, I’m not exactly certain where “work” in fact was located. Interestingly, one application on the hard disk suggests Cleveland, Ohio, of all places,
… but this might just be who held the site license, and when we get to AppleLink there’s good evidence that the unit spent most of its time in Silicon Valley. I know the prior user was an Apple district manager from other credentials on the disk and a little bit of Googling. For obvious reasons I won’t show those.
Other relics persist on the hard disk. For example, the HyperCard stacks introducing users to the Macintosh Portable are also still here, though they seem to be slightly earlier versions than what got shipped with production models and have different wording, and the Tour of the Macintosh Portable app isn’t present. This unit may have predated it.
The Inside the Macintosh Portable stack has a brief advertising animation before moving to this comprehensive map.
I picked two grabs out of it for example’s sake, including the active matrix display (again, as you saw, it’s really good especially for 1989) and its CMOS 68HC000 CPU, which was designed by Hitachi and introduced jointly with Motorola in 1985. Besides reducing power consumption from 1.35W down to about 300mW, it ran at 16MHz in the Portable compared to its usual Mac speed of around 8MHz (and the part could run as high as 20MHz). Despite the Portable’s substantial development delays it was nevertheless one of the earliest computers to use it, along with the original PowerBook 100 which in nearly every respect is a miniaturized Portable.
The other HyperCard stack on the disk, again slightly different from the production machines’ release, is the Product Sampler.
There were a lot of products advertised. Spoiler alert: the Portable’s underwhelming market performance mostly sealed their fates.
For example, this (and a similar image in the Inside stack) are the only pictures I could find of the video adapter. I don’t know if this is a mockup or a prototype. There are a couple switches along with a Mac DA-15 monitor jack and an RCA jack, presumably for composite output. This device doesn’t seem related at all to the separate and duly sold Apple Presentation System which was made by Focus and rebadged by Apple.
One other gotcha with the Portable, besides the weight, the huge lead acid battery wired in series and (nowadays) the capacitor issue, was its prodigious need for sleep. If you check the box to Stay awake when plugged in …
… a verbose dialogue box warns you not to leave it on for more than 24 hours at a stretch or the display will start to act strangely, not unlike teenagers and college students. Fortunately, as with them, this effect appears to have been temporary.
That said, it’s the work stuff that we’re here for. This machine unsurprisingly has a full complement of office applications, including Aldus PageMaker and Aldus Persuasion (pre-Adobe), MacWrite II, MacDraw, HyperCard, and early versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Works.
But what also caught my eye going through the applications folder was a suite named POS•IM. The name alone implies this is a point-of-sale system, divided into applications for accounts receivable, inventory and sales. I won’t show any real customer records here and I don’t know how widely deployed this was within the Apple sales channel at that time, but it probably wouldn’t have been installed at all if there weren’t some expectation it would be used.
The apps were produced by a Utah company called AnaMatrix. I can’t find much information on this company and the suite appears to have been its only product. In MacUser February 1990, it listed for $2500 single-user and $4000 multiuser (in 2024 about $5800 and $9300 respectively), though it was called “POS/IM” with a slash instead of the interpunct. This installation is the single-user standalone release, starting here with the accounts receivable application.
We’ll use this record “Bill Jones” since it’s almost certainly an example (for one thing, that street address doesn’t exist in the real Riverton, UT, and the zip code 87444 isn’t currently valid). Each record tied back to an invoice.
The items in those invoices were enumerated in the Inventory•Analyzer application.
The inventory application tracked nearly every single SKU Apple manufactured or sold at that time, even T-shirts and pens, though I think at least one of these is phony.
This is what I suspect is the phony entry, for an XL Apple T-shirt in blue, made by “Ned the Knitter” and sold for $17.95. The reason I suspect this is a demo row is because this exact item appears in AnaMatrix’s few promotional screenshots of the time, like this one in that same issue of MacUser:
So go ahead and have an Apple Pen instead ($10).
Or an “SE/20” [sic], obviously meaning an SE/30 (M5086/A), retailing at $3798.
Or get out your wallet and spring for the big one. The most expensive unit I could find in the Apple price list was this Macintosh II with a 40MB hard disk for $5498 (M7003/A); in 2024 that would be nearly $15,000. This also suggests the price list here wasn’t particularly current since it didn’t include the IIx (September 1988), but it does have the SE (March 1987, with the II), dating it likely to the same year.
The actual invoices themselves were in the third application, Sales•Point. Parenthetically, a separate menu option for “Transfer” allowed you to jump between the three apps in the suite if you didn’t have enough memory to run them simultaneously in MultiFinder, or didn’t use MultiFinder at all (which would give you all the machine’s available RAM minus the operating system, as these about boxes show).
Here’s that invoice “Bill Jones” bought: an ImageWriter II (A9M0320, $595) and a Macintosh SE with an Extended Keyboard (M5085/A, $2998); the other SE SKU would be for the smaller Apple Keyboard.
That covers billing, inventory and sales, so how about advertising? For this next part we’re going to spend some time with its copy of Aldus Persuasion 1.0. Interestingly, PowerPoint beat Persuasion to the Macintosh by about a year (1987 vs 1988), but Persuasion was for a time considered the superior product due to its interface, graphing capabilities and popular outline mode.
Two Aldus Persuasion 1.0 presentations stand out in particular (this is the copy which I’ve mounted on my Mystic Colour Classic for reasons I’ll relate in a moment), both of which were official Apple marketing material at the time. The first is Apple’s then-current product line, and the second is an early glimpse at the upcoming System 7. Neither file was apparently Apple-internal or confidential and both seem to have been regularly presented to potential customers and users.
The Macintosh Product Overview slides have a collective creation and modification date of October 8, 1989, consistent with the 1989 copyright the presentation displays. However, its actual origination can be no later than March 1989 due to the models that it completely lacks.
No unreleased or upcoming computers are demonstrated or referenced in this presentation, dividing the existing models simply into two small “Compact” and “Modular” families. This appears to have been the manifestation of Macintosh manager Jean-Louis Gassée’s “high-right” goal which tried to sell high-margin, high-performance machines at the expense of the “low-left” budget market. Unfortunately for Apple, the strategy permitted cheaper XT-class PCs to proliferate in Apple’s relative absence while failing to compete effectively with Unix workstations at the top. In December 1989 Apple’s stock tanked 20 percent after a dismal holiday sales season and Gassée departed a month later, but this presentation doesn’t reflect the subsequent product shakeup that birthed the deliberately low-end Mac Classic and LC.
The long-running Macintosh Plus was still in Apple’s sales list but got one measly slide, strongly suggesting it was on its way out. The 2MB and 4MB versions were also completely absent from the presentation so as not to compete with the SE. Instead, the presenter talked up the SE and especially the SE/30, putting them head to head and otherwise ignoring the Plus completely. “Memory Management” refers to the Motorola 68851 MMU, available as an option for the 68020 (but not the 68000), which was built-in to the SE/30’s 68030 and also slightly faster. The SE/30 came out in January 1989, so the presentation can’t be any older than that.
The Modular family, however, only lists two members: the II and the IIx. This is where the maximum late date of March 1989 comes in, being when the IIcx was first introduced, the first three-slot II and the next one in the series. Since it doesn’t appear here, the presentation can’t be any (or at least much) later than the IIcx’s formal introduction.
The Macintosh Product Overview slideshow was entirely 1-bit black and white, so I rendered it out to PICTs from the Portable itself for the most authentic result. However, the System 7 presentation has colour elements and the Portable doesn’t support Color QuickDraw. For this section we’ll go back to the Color Classic to render this slide deck, which I’ve tweaked slightly due to minor differences in font rendering. (I’m not sure how this particular presentation would have even displayed properly on the Portable.)
This presentation has a modification and creation date of February 3, 1991. Recall that around March 1988 Apple technical staff made the first cut of what was planned for System 7 as Blue, with the remainder becoming Pink (and later Taligent) and Red. This particular presentation is oriented around Blue’s modest goals (“System 6, corrected,” as Wikipedia puts it) and doesn’t even mention Pink. However, the presentation shows a few more primitive or speculative features than what emerged with System 7.0 in May 1991, one technology in particular (we’ll discuss) can’t have appeared under that name any later than May 1990, and several 1990 models don’t appear in the support matrix, putting an upper bound of around March 1990 on when the deck could have been made or updated. The presentation itself carries a 1989 copyright on the final slide.
Individual Finder windows also appeared differently: the window title bar is fatter and the detail row is slightly skewed down, not vertically centred. There are also different icons, including a schematic of the desktop for the Finder instead of the stylised compact Mac icon used in System 6 and (with revisions) 7.0, and the Startup Items folder is just called the Startup Folder with what looks like a placeholder graphic. As with the final release, the System file remains a suitcase.
System 7 was additionally the début of TrueType, Apple’s outline font technology and still the dominant font format on most PCs and Macs (especially given that OpenType is more or less a superset), but the actual name TrueType appears nowhere in this presentation, nor do its known codenames Royal and Bass. That doesn’t mean Apple wasn’t proud of it. Indeed, it was such a big advance over font handling in System 6 that TrueType was subsequently backported to it, and Apple granted a license to Microsoft for free to ensure TrueType’s success. Ironically this was one of the slides I had to tweak on the Color Classic because the font size of the blurb on the right came out too large.
System 7 also made MultiFinder mandatory. This screenshot cannot be contemporary with the Finder screenshot above because the small icon for the Finder is still System 6’s; that makes this screenshot almost certainly older, which also explains why the MultiFinder application list is still in the Apple menu. On the other hand, no desk accessories are shown in the Apple menu either like one would expect with System 6 MultiFinder, so this is probably truly an early System 7 build assuming it’s also not a mockup shot.
Newly introduced was a varied class of technologies related to message passing between applications, which is foundational for higher-level features like scripting and embedding. Apple subsumed these various features under the umbrella of the Inter-Application Communications Architecture, or the IAC. These messages could be passed between applications on the local machine or over a network, using AppleTalk as the transport. Today we call those messages Apple events, and the fundamental technology remains part of modern macOS today.
The Edition Manager ended up being complicated for developers and obnoxious for users. Since publication occurred at the section level, compliant applications had to define what sections existed in a document, and for those sections that were published write their contents (termed editions) to an escrow-like repository called an edition container. On the user end, this felt like doing a special “cut and paste” from a source into a client document to create a new section and link it. When the Edition Manager saw updates happen, it would fire off Apple events to signal subscribers to read that data from the edition container into their own sections; conversely, when the Edition Manager saw a subscriber try to read or scroll a section, it would fire off other Apple events to publishers to remind them to update.
None of this work was automatically done by the individual applications, though, so it wasn’t unusual for publishers to fail to update their editions or subscribers to fail to retrieve them, or sometimes for the link to just break completely. I personally remember screaming at CricketGraph in 1996 trying to get charts in my undergraduate cognitive science paper within Microsoft Word to actually show anything, but to this day I still have no idea whose fault that was (except that it wasn’t mine, dammit). Since the feature was rickety even in those applications that tried to support it and the level of developer headache was high, it ended up little used, and when OpenDoc eclipsed P&S and then fizzled itself, the Edition Manager was “edited out” (heh heh) of Rhapsody and never implemented for Carbon.
But the part of the IAC that allowed applications to send events to other applications and manipulate them became a lasting feature. This is the basic functionality that AppleScript still uses, which is pretty much all about sending events to apps, and was the basis for the Program-to-Program Communications Toolbox (PPC Toolbox, unrelated to PowerPC, which didn’t exist at this point) that underlaid program linking in System 7 as well. Program linking, in this case, specifically refers to allowing programs on remote Macs to send events to programs on yours. This was how you could remotely manipulate server programs running on other Macs, and was ported to AIX for the Apple Network Server so that “symbiotic applications” could use the ANS for backend processing: the ANS looked like just another remote Mac you could send events to via AppleTalk, which the application on the local Mac could task with jobs and then asynchronously display their results. In Mac OS 9 TCP/IP became a supported transport for network Apple events and this capability remains part of modern macOS as well.
As both a practical demonstration and a sellable product, the company’s first CL/1-based package, appropriately called Mac-to-VAX, allowed Mac applications to remotely access databases, files and applications on a DEC VAX server. Released in January 1988, CL/1 could use AppleTalk, DECnet, X.25, IBM 3270 and Apple’s implementation of IBM APPC/LU6.2 as transports. Apple was immediately attracted to the technology, seeing it as both advantageous for the Mac and as a possible standard they could control, and acquired the company in March as a subsidiary (its first acquisition of another technology company, as it happens).
The name CL/1 didn’t last very long after the merger and the last reference I can find to it in industry sources is around May 1990 when its new name, Data Access Language (DAL), started appearing. Apple also scotched Network Innovations’ originally planned ports to PC in 1990, determining to make DAL at least initially an Apple-exclusive technology. That said, while this slide implies Apple intended to include some portion of DAL-née-CL/1 with System 7, only the Data Access Manager (DAM) API became a built-in part of the operating system; the extension(s) implementing DAL proper for a given platform seem to have been a separate install and aren’t on any of my System 7 disk sets. This is important to distinguish because the DAM just moves prefabricated DAL queries and replies back and forth and doesn’t implement DAL itself.
Unfortunately for Apple, development for all these server permutations was expensive, reflected in very high prices for the adapter component, and the adapters also tended to incur performance problems largely from the overhead of translating and running DAL queries which were difficult to cache. While the concept of shared query documents in the Data Access Manager was at least in part intended to reduce this impact, few client applications ended up having much DAL code in common. Although EveryWare’s ButlerSQL tried to rectify the translation issue by using DAL as its native language, the most notable of the few that attempted to do so, it ran on the classic Mac OS and its performance was instead limited by Mac OS’s poor multitasking and throughput. (Apple was well aware of this problem.) Developers also complained about DAL’s lack of BLOB and cross-platform support, neither of which Apple did much to address. Apple did license DAL to Blyth Software to develop a Windows client but it got little traction or interest.
Meanwhile, ODBC grew dominant both due to DAL’s technical stagnation and ODBC’s greater throughput, especially as network bandwidth was dramatically increasing. Apple licensed DAL to Independence Technologies (ITI) in February 1994, who intended to release DAL 2.0 supporting blobs and to take over Windows development, while Apple maintained control of DAM in Mac OS. ITI got bought itself in 1995 by BEA Systems and sold again to UniPrise in 1996, but the promised update never emerged before UniPrise went out of business in 1998. The Data Access Manager, like the Edition Manager, faded from disuse and was never ported to Rhapsody or Carbon, and ODBC became the primary database access method even in the classic Mac OS. However, the TCP port used by DAL — port 172 — remains as cl/1 in /etc/services to this day.
The other piece enabling us to more precisely date this presentation is its model support list: the latest models shown are the Macintosh IIci and the Portable itself, which both came out in September 1989. The next model in the chronology would have been the IIfx in March 1990, which doesn’t appear here, so the presentation can’t be later than that. Notice that the original Macintosh 128K, 512K and 512Ke are listed as “supported” — but only if you effectively make them into Macintosh Pluses first.
So let’s say we’re out in the field with these presentations, doing our thing, selling our wares, hyping our master. How did we call back to the mothership?
These screenshots were done on the Mystic Color Classic in anticipation of being able to render out some of its STAGE.DAT contents, but there appears to be much less interest and support in the Prodigy retro-community for the Mac client, and I wasn’t able to get anything recognizeable out of it. (The different endianness may be only one of many reasons why.) The low interest is somewhat understandable since the Mac client wasn’t used much, and the Prodigy interface wasn’t very Mac-like nor very popular with Macintosh users. Since it doesn’t look like this person used it much either, we won’t do anything further with it in this article.
AppleLink was a client-server service for Apple employees and dealers, and later developers, established in 1985 running over the General Electric Information Services (GEIS) nationwide Mark III network. (It is distinct from the later consumer-oriented but technically unrelated AppleLink Personal Edition, which later turned into America Online; we’ll talk more about that and eWorld, AppleLink’s intended successor, at the end.)
AppleLink’s front-end was a fat GUI client to show remote resources as folders and files, and send and receive both public (i.e., bulletin-board) and private messages. This screenshot of a typical session in System 7 is from Apple Confidential.
The front end allows you to work offline, which is handy since of course there’s no AppleLink server to connect to anymore, along with an extensive built-in help library to reference regardless of connection status. Unfortunately relatively few tasks could be completed without a network connection.
There wasn’t any mail in the outbasket (darn), but we can fake some, and you could write messages for transmission later. There was no other mail on the system I could find.
The Portable was ostensibly transported into space for the purposes of Development Test Objective (DTO) 1208, Space Station Cursor Control Device Evaluation II and Advanced Applications, which tested the in-flight ergonomics of the Portable’s onboard trackball, a 2-inch external ADB trackball, an ADB optical mouse and a modified aircraft control stick with a thumb ball hat. While most of the Space Shuttle laptops were PCs such as ThinkPads (with the notable exception of the SPARC-based Solbourne PILOT), the Portable was selected for this objective because it had a larger variety of commercially available input devices. The Portable was also used to record data from the Lower Body Negative Pressure experiment (LBNP, DSO 478), in which the astronauts evaluated use of the LBNP unit for drawing body fluids down to their legs to reverse counterflow under weightlessness, as well as shuttle flight path tracking using a custom application called MacSPoC (“SPoC” being short for “Shuttle Portable Computer”) and acting as an alarm clock and scheduler. This latter function was assisted by a Seiko WristMac “databank” watch which downloaded reminders from the Portable to its 2K memory.
It’s not clear whose idea the “space E-mail” was, but it was publicized by Apple as early as July 1991 as a means for astronauts to communicate with family and exchange files and data. The Earthbound side was GEIS’s regular packet-switched network (more about that in a moment) fed into a ROLM telephone switch, terminating in a data linkup to a ground-based Mac Portable via the printer port at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Apple wrote a “forwarder” which took those packets and sent them back out through the modem port to an actual modem whose signal was then digitized, bounced off a commercial satellite to the White Sands (New Mexico) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, and finally sent to a TDRSS satellite geosynchronous with Shuttle Atlantis. On the Shuttle side, the spacecraft received the signal as digital data and fed it as an analogue signal into an onboard modem connected to the Mac Portable. The same convoluted process in reverse handled injecting packets from the spacebound Mac Portable back into the GEIS network. From the point of view of the Mark III, this was just another packet-switched remote node, albeit one with an incredible amount of latency. Latency wasn’t something that the stock AppleLink client handled well, however, so a modified version of AppleLink 6.0.2 went up with the Portable that had been tweaked to tolerate transmission delays.
The connection took several tries but Adamson and Lucid were able to successfully sent the first E-mail from space on August 9, to shuttle communicator Marcia Ivins at the JSC. The exact message contents vary between sources, but in general the message read, in its entirety,
Hello Earth ! Greetings from the STS-43 Crew. This is the first AppleLink from space. Having a GREAT time, wish you were here,… send cry[o], and [R]CS! Have a nice day…… Haste la vista, baby,… we’ll be back!
where “cry” or “cryo” refers to cryogenics (in this case, liquid oxygen for breathing), and “CS” or “RCS” refers to the Reaction Control System, i.e., fuel for thruster manoeuvres. The shuttle was able to receive E-mail as well but this address was kept secret from the public (and various obvious honeypots also set up) to prevent the astronauts from being deluged.
That brings us to attempting to log in ourselves, and for that we should talk briefly about the backend this time. GEIS’ roots extend to the 1962 Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS), a proposal by Dartmouth College professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz to develop a free, open timesharing system for students. Kemeny and Kurtz established a partnership with General Electric in 1963 and got funding from the National Science Foundation to deploy a 1961 GE-225 mainframe for processing, a 20-bit system with a typical eight kilowords of core memory, paired with an 18-bit GE DATANET-30 (“DN-30”) connected via DMA functioning as a terminal server. The DN-30 was itself a full general purpose computer but in this application it was fully dedicated to the task of scheduling jobs on the mainframe and servicing terminals, of which it could support up to 128. This double-system concept was considered unusual and even wasteful for the time, but by the autumn of 1964 the system was operating twenty terminals serving hundreds of users and upgraded seamlessly to a larger GE-235 with triple the memory speed. This first incarnation of DTSS was the system Kemeny and Kurtz developed BASIC on in 1963.
At the same time GE had developed a new 36-bit mainframe architecture supporting up to four CPUs and as much as 4MW of memory as a way to reduce their own dependence on IBM. The GE 600 series started with the GE-635 in 1963 (the above picture is a GE-645, a larger version with hardware support for Multics and virtual memory) which ran GE’s GECOS “GE Comprehensive Operating Supervisor” batch processing system. By 1967 DTSS had been ported to the GE-635/DN-30 and GE adopted it as their “Mark II” network, retroactively dubbing their original GE-265 implementation as “Mark I.” By 1968 GE controlled somewhere between a third and forty percent of the timesharing market, serving tens of thousands of users, and the timesharing unit became its own division in 1969.
In 1970 GE decided to exit the computing hardware business and offloaded the GE 600 series to Honeywell, who renamed it the Honeywell 6000 family. The Honeywell 6000s still used the same basic architecture and still ran GECOS, merely renaming it to GCOS (“General Comprehensive Operating System”), and GE started using their hardware instead. However, GE retained their profitable timesharing service, now transitioning to Honeywell hardware, developing a means for Mark II systems to submit batch jobs to GCOS in a seamless and nearly interactive fashion. This became the Mark III network in 1972.
GE’s dominance of commercial timesharing grew even stronger in the 1970s with its high availability, facilitated by specialized clustering hardware allowing users to be spread over up to six mainframes and have the same view of the Mark II machines’ filesystem, and three redundant international data centers equally accessible from anywhere in the world. GE also evolved their remote access operations into a packet-switched, telephone-accessible extended X.25 international network that was included with their services. In 1979 GE spun off their services division into the joint venture GEISCO (GE Information Services Company) with Honeywell but bought back Honeywell’s portion in 1982, later renaming it to General Electric Information Services (GEIS). By the mid-1980s the Mark III network had local access numbers in over 750 cities and 31 countries, handling as many as five thousand simultaneous users. GE eventually added other network types such as IBM SNA and by the 1990s had four worldwide networks running on the same backbone.
Apple approached GEISCO in 1984, making a key requirement to use the Macintosh’s graphical interface instead of the text-based terminal access GEISCO currently afforded users. For this GE engineers developed a GCOS backend called EF3 (“Error-Free”) which the Macintosh client would act as an asynchronous interface for, and Apple contracted with Central Coast Software to write the front end, who developed it in Pascal. To encourage dealer adoption Apple subsidized the network somewhat by giving them a free hour of connect time per month and $15 an hour (in 2024 about $43) thereafter, though this rate was higher outside the United States. Unlike services such as The Source, Apple’s service didn’t run on leftover after-hours capacity and dealers were unlikely to connect when their shops were closed, so the rate didn’t vary on the time of day. The first release and availability of the new AppleLink network was in fall 1985.
We know our Apple district manager used this because their credentials are in the dialogue box (which I’ve suppressed). I haven’t suppressed the rest, though, because they’re germane to understanding how the Mark III network operated. And where we can learn the most about it is from a much more famous online service that used it too: GEnie.
The new GEnie service launched in October 1985 with both 300bps and 1200bps access. Criticially, although GEnie did have on-peak and off-peak rates at a startling differential (launching at $35/hr prime-time 8am-6pm on weekdays but $5/hr otherwise, or in 2024 dollars about $100/hr and $14/hr respectively), GEnie undercut CompuServe by not charging a premium for 1200 baud connections, offsetting any additional cost from higher speed users against its excess unused computing time. Eventually 2400bps access was added as well, also at the same “flat” rates.
ATDT5551234 CONNECT 1200 HHH U#=
Signons to the Mark III network were of the general form XXX#####, X being a letter and # a number. The signons for creating a GEnie account (credit card required) often literally started with X, such as XJM11878 or XTX99437 — these were real signons that were in use at various times. It was then followed by a comma and the password, which was frequently GENIE or some such for the signup logins. If the login was accepted, they would proceed to the main menu, which in 1986 looked like this (from the manual):
U#=XXX12345,PASSWORD
** Thank you for choosing GEnie **
The Consumer Information Service
from General Electric
Copyright (C), 1986
GEnie Logon at: 21:41 EST on: 861106
Last Access at: 18:39 EST on: 861109
* NEW: X-10 Powerhouse RoundTable *
Type "XTEN" to access.
No letters waiting.
GEnie TOP Page 1
General Electric Information Services
1. What's New on GEnie
2. GE Mail and GEnie Editor's Desk
3. News and References
4. GEnie LiveWire CB Simulator
5. National Real-Time Conference
6. RoundTables: User Groups & Clubs
7. Shop N' Swap Shopping Services
8. Travel Services
9. GEnie Game Room
10. User Settings & Information
11. Logoff
Enter #, <P>revious, or <H>elp?
The menus provided a guided way to access GEnie services, but under the hood everything was organized into numerical pages using the ubiquitous MOVE (M for short) command. The main “top” menu was always on page 1. While less-opaque word mnemonics also existed for many services (printed at the top centre, so the top menu’s mnemonic was TOP), if you knew the number for a particular area or application, you could jump straight to it. Many users used GEnie exclusively for games such as Kesmai’s Air Warrior and Simutronics’ GemStone, which offered massively multiplayer experiences decades before modern MMOs, and had scripts in their terminal programs or clients to check messages and then start their favourite game immediately. (Like GEnie’s competitors, popular services like these often had surcharges, which could sometimes be sizeable.) GemStone III, for example, was 1335, E-mail was on 200, and the LiveWire “CB Simulator” chat system was on 400.
In fact, the login sequence itself could even facilitate doing so immediately upon signon, saving valuable connect time. If you logged in as, say, XTX12345,password,625;1 — remember this format, it will be relevant later — which followed the login and password with another comma, the page number, a semicolon, and an item number, this would immediately move to page 625 (this was the Commodore 8-bit “Flagship” RoundTable, GEnie jargon for a bulletin board) and select option 1 from its menu (in this case showing you a list of categories). The Commodore 8-bit community was especially concentrated on GEnie during its final years after the shutdown of QuantumLink in 1993, featuring a large filebase and roundtable roster, and login scripts like this one for DesTerm 128 relied precisely on this capability (warning: PETSCII). On the Apple side, a separate GEnie roundtable for Macintosh users existed outside of AppleLink on page 605. Fortunately for user-to-user communication services like these, most of the system used friendlier alias names for accounts and generally relegated the network login to authentication and billing.
As for the signon, we can see a Mark III login of the standard format in this window, here called the “System number.” Knowing what we know about GEnie, that means the signon to access (at least this instance of) AppleLink was NJL37300 and the password was Apple (note the comma between them), but this clearly couldn’t be an individual user’s identifier. The AppleLink ID is populated (I’ve only censored it), so it must transmit it somehow.
The way we find out is by looking at AppleLink’s CCL scripts. CCL stands for Communications Control Language, a simple domain-specific scripting language that originated with the AppleLink client as a means of adding and adjusting connection methods without having to constantly update the main application. They work essentially by emitting strings, or, for control flow, branching on a matched string to a specified numeric label, along with a small set of register variables and special keywords to manipulate the serial port. CCL outlasted its original purpose: an updated form became the modem scripting language for Apple Remote Access, was updated again for Mac OS X through 10.4 Tiger to remove its dependency on string resources, and was updated a final time in 10.5 Leopard to support strings in property lists. While most people no longer use modems and Macs haven’t included them in years, the infrastructure remains supported in modern macOS for things like external USB modems and serial ports, and you can still find your Mac’s available CCLs in /Library/Modem Scripts.
It will be easiest for us to spoof AppleLink by pretending to be a regular Hayes-compatible modem, and AppleLink has a CCL for that called USAModem.CCL. Happily, these scripts are regular MacRoman and readable with a text editor. Here are some extracts.
-LABEL 1 DsplyMsg Signalling the modem... MatchStr 1 2 OK MatchStr 2 45 CARRIER Xmit ATS0=0E0X4V1\13 Wait 180 IncVar 1 IfVar 1 3 47 Jump 1
The string “Signalling the modem” emitted by the keyword DsplyMsg is the current connection status, and is displayed within the connection dialogue box like so:
-LABEL 2 DsplyPic 1 SetVar 1 0 ! -LABEL 3 DsplyMsg Dialing ~FONE... MatchStr 1 48 CARRIER MatchStr 2 4 CON MatchStr 3 4 ECT MatchStr 4 5 BUSY Pause 30 Xmit ATD~TONE~FONE\13 Wait 400 DsplyMsg Waiting for connection... Wait 1800 DsplyMsg No connection. Trying again... IncVar 1 IfVar 1 3 49 JSR 20 Pause 60 Flush Jump 3
(Comment lines start with !, or could be appended with whitespace after a valid statement.) The DsplyPic keyword lights up one of the icons in the connection dialogue, in this case the first one, and then the next string is shown, which interpolates the built-in variable FONE to show the user the telephone number:
-LABEL 4 MatchStr 2 30 U# DsplyMsg Requesting network attention... DsplyPic 2 Wait 50 ChrDelay 50 Xmit HH ChrDelay 2 Wait 300 IncVar 2 IfVar 2 3 51 DsplyMsg The network is not responding. Trying again... JSR 20 Pause 60 Flush DsplyPic 0 Jump 1
!============================================================================== ! Network Connect Sequence ! ! DO NOT CHANGE THE INFORMATION IN THIS SECTION. ! DOING SO WILL PREVENT THE PROPER COMPLETION OF THE CONNECTION. !============================================================================== ! -LABEL 30 -- Box 3 (Establishing connection) DsplyMsg Connection established. DsplyPic 3 SetTries 0 -- for REENTER MatchStr 1 36 SYSTEM REA MatchStr 2 59 BAD VERSION MatchStr 3 53 VALIDATION FAU MatchStr 4 57 OUT OF MatchStr 5 56 INVALID QUIKCOMM MatchStr 6 54 VICE INTERRUPTED MatchStr 7 54 STEM UNAVAIL MatchStr 8 50 NO CARRIER MatchStr 9 60 FATAL MatchStr 10 54 STEM IS UNAVAIL MatchStr 11 37 REENTER DsplyMsg Logging on... Xmit ~CODE,~USER,!~USER,~PASS;~VERS;MAC;EFX;~DATE\13 DsplyPic 4 DsplyMsg Requesting access... SetVar 1 0
-LABEL 36 -- Boxes 5 and 6 (entering system) DsplyPic 5 DsplyMsg Access granted. EFX_ON Turn on Mac error protocol DsplyPic 6 DsplyMsg Waiting for AppleLink Services... ChrDelay 0 Exit 0 We're in
This starts the client’s EFX handler and then exits back into the application with return code 0, indicating success. The failure labels all return with -1.
Now that we know what the connection script is looking for, we can type the responses it’s expecting back to it. To avoid any potential conflicts with the internal modem, I’ll configure AppleLink to communicate via the printer port to a null modem connected with my Raptor Talos II. (Impressively, this client version supports up to 19.2kbps, which would have been quite something in 1991. Those speeds may have been intended for direct serial connections.) You’ll note the script is explicitly terminating everything it sends with a carriage return, so for display purposes we’ll have picocom translate those to line feeds. Again, bold is what I typed back.
% picocom -q -c --imap crcrlf -b 1200 /dev/ttyUSB0 ATS0=0E0X4V1 OK ATDT3628350 CONNECT HHU#NJL37300,Apple,censore.d,!censore.d,password;5.1.1;MAC;EFX;BH900813 SYSTEM READY
I’m not sure why the exact same user string is sent twice except with an exclamation point, but the rest includes the client version and presumably an encoded date of revision instead of today’s date. This seems to be everything the mainframe would need to fire up EFX and start communicating with the client.
Indeed, all of the preceding screenshots were generated with that very sequence, demonstrating the client will accept our responses. But unfortunately I don’t know anything about EFX, so we can’t currently fake anything further. I don’t see any activity on the serial port despite this message and we inevitably time out.
That then gives us this message …
Let’s finish the AppleLink story before we close. By the end of 1985 AppleLink was a roaring success, at least in user terms, handling over 4,000 calls a day. This demonstrated to GE the concept could have some utility to other corporations besides Apple, and in December 1985 GE decided to use the same technology as AppleLink in their own product, Businesstalk. Businesstalk was envisioned for any company with a large dealer network, not just computer companies, many of which would have been battling the same problems and expenses. The client was also Mac-specific and built with the same codebase, at least initially, but GEISCO’s charges were heftier at $35/hr prime time and $18/hr off, presumably with the assumption that (like Apple) interested companies would partially subsidize the rate. To GE’s dismay few seemed interested, so in February 1986 GE relaunched Businesstalk as Dealertalk, using the same Mac client but instead at an introductory price of $9900 that included a site license, 15 days of training and 100 hours of free connect time. The price was intended to stoke interest since GE threatened it would rise to $20,000 after July 31. It was similarly unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, although allegedly saving them more than they spent, Apple was chafing under the substantial amount of money they paid GE to keep AppleLink operational. As more dealers and developers joined the system, the more expensive it got (Apple Confidential cited a ballpark fee of $30 million annually), and GE was unwilling to renegotiate. It even got bad enough that Apple later sold CD-ROMs with AppleLink content on them as a cheaper “offline” version to dampen interest.
In 1987 Apple approached Steve Case, then running Quantum Computer Services and the very successful QuantumLink online service for the Commodore 64, to develop a cheaper alternative to which AppleLink content could eventually be transferred. AppleLink Personal Edition ran atop Quantum’s Stratus-based platform via Telenet and débuted first on the Apple II in May 1988, but Apple and Quantum squabbled over the future direction of the service and users complained about missing features that the “real” AppleLink had. (In addition, some of GE’s code and protocols were allegedly used without permission, further souring the relationship.) Apple eventually paid off Quantum to get out of the contract and the Mac version as such was never released. Instead, Quantum used that money to finish the Mac client without the Apple branding but using the same underlying infrastructure, and in 1991 that client became part of Quantum’s new America Online.
Although Apple had managed to cut AppleLink costs somewhat in the meantime, continued high expenditures eventually caused the company to open a new request for proposals, and in 1992 they went back to Quantum again which was now also called America Online. In return for Apple paying AOL royalties, Apple would receive a stake in the company and layer an AppleLink replacement on top of AOL’s infrastructure that would additionally be offered to consumers. Due to Apple corporate turmoil the new online service, christened eWorld, didn’t launch until June 1994 and ended up directly competing with other new and established ones like AOL itself, Delphi, CompuServe, Prodigy and, yes, GEnie. Apple had priced its hourly rates high to temper demand, but that ended up working too well, and they failed to even include it consistently with new Macs they sold. Apple eventually forced the issue by moving employees from AppleLink to eWorld to beef up traffic and, after Gil Amelio cancelled eWorld in March 1996, started migrating to Web-based intranet alternatives rather than move people back. AppleLink was finally shut down on March 31, 1997.
As it happens, a similar process happened with GEIS. In April 1992 GE announced plans for BusinessTalk 2000, a repackaging of the service adding a Windows client to its Mac and DOS support, X.400 and X.500 message exchange, more online databases for access, and single seats starting as low as $279 (the site license increased to $30,000). By then, however, the growing Internet had started to erode customer interest in proprietary network products, especially GEIS’ core Electronic Data Interchange services. GEnie, though still successful, suffered from a lack of expansion because it was only ever intended to use up excess computing capacity and GEIS’ weakening revenue couldn’t justify additional hardware. GEIS sold it off in 1996 as other clients started moving away from GE’s proprietary services to Web-based alternatives (the screenshot above of the historical GEIS website comes from this remembrance). Both GEnie (under new owners Yovelle and later telecom IDT) and the Mark III network eventually succumbed to Y2K, as the GCOS version in use didn’t handle it and it would have been too costly to move them to new platforms, and both shut down in December 1999. The majority of GEIS was reorganized as GXS (GE Global Exchange Services) in 2000, spun off in 2002, and subsequently bought out by OpenText in 2014.
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Rezones and Upzones
date: 2024-03-03, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
I’m writing to respectfully correct some misstatements in a letter criticizing my recently published Voice on Goleta’s housing element and the next steps in permit review.
The post Rezones and Upzones appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
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@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-03, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump allies plot abortion crackdown for second term.
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’What We Carry‘
date: 2024-03-03, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
A Reason To Smile
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Hart District Film Festival draws diverse lineup
date: 2024-03-03, from: The Signal
The second annual student-led Hart District Film Festival, organized by Valencia High School junior Cameron Gezerseh and other film enthusiasts, drew a large turnout and a diverse lineup of short films created by local students on Friday night at the Valencia High Theater. The Hart District Film Festival drew in a crowd of supportive parents […]
The post <strong>Hart District Film Festival draws diverse lineup</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/hart-district-film-festival-draws-diverse-lineup/ Save to Pocket
The Backstory of Janna Ireland’s ‘True Story Index’
date: 2024-03-03, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Two Santa Barbara institutions — SBMA and MCASB — collaborate on exhibition and artist talk.
The post The Backstory of Janna Ireland’s ‘True Story Index’ appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/03/02/the-backstory-of-janna-irelands-true-story-index/ Save to Pocket
Full Circle Weekly News 355
date: 2024-03-03, from: Full Circle Magazine
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WebKit adds support for the Skia library for rendering 2D graphics:
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Kubuntu has announced a competition to create a logo and branding elements:
Credits
- Host: @bardictriad, @zaivala
- Bumper: Canonical
- Theme Music: From The Dust - Stardust
- https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
- CC BY 4.0
https://fullcirclemagazine.org/podcasts/podcast-355/ Save to Pocket