News gathered 2024-04-01
(date: 2024-04-01 08:48:08)
The 10 most spectacular castles around the world include a California treasure
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
The List: Tripadvisor’s recent fairy-tale-inspiring list of castles includes a chateau in France, castles in the United Kingdom and Japan and a California gem.
TSMC boss says one-trillion transistor GPU is possible by early 2030s
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Timing predictions aside, multi-chip designs with 3D stacking will be the path forward
3D chiplets will be the key to building the world’s first one-trillion transistor GPU, says TSMC chairman Mark Liu and chief scientist H.-S. Philip Wong.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/01/tsmc_one_trillion_transistor/
Tesla gives rare update on Tesla Semi electric truck program
date: 2024-04-01, from: Electrek Feed
A Tesla engineer has given a rare update on the Tesla Semi electric truck program amid new EPA rules that should give it a boost.
https://electrek.co/2024/04/01/tesla-semi-rare-update-electric-truck-program/
Pedestrian killed in Oakland hit-and-run involving two cars
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
Police are trying to identify a man killed in an Oakland hit-and-run Monday morning.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/01/pedestrian-killed-in-oakland-hit-and-run-involving-two-cars/
Radxa Rock 5C single-board computers with RK358x chips and PCIe 2.1 sell for $30 and up
date: 2024-04-01, from: Liliputing
The Radxa ROCK 5C is a credit card-sized single-board computer with a Rockchip RK3588S2 processor, support for up to 32GB of LPDDR4x memory, and plenty of I/O options including a PCIe 2.1 interface, Gigabit Ethernet, and support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4. It’s up for pre-order for $50 and up and begins shipping April 10th. […]
The post Radxa Rock 5C single-board computers with RK358x chips and PCIe 2.1 sell for $30 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
Whether you’re using a fancy camera or a smartphone, here’s how to take great eclipse photos
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
The upcoming April 8 total eclipse will likely be the one of the most photographed events of the year, with almost 32 million people in the United States alone living in the path of totality.
Chevrolet Silverado EV 3WT Driven Until It Died. It Didn’t Meet Its Advertised Range
date: 2024-04-01, from: Inside EVs News
The Silverado EV 3WT has a smaller, 20-module battery pack compared to the 4WT model.
https://insideevs.com/news/714478/chevrolet-silverado-ev-3wt-range-test-70-mph/
Jill On Money: Financial cleanup — What to keep and what to shred
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
Some documents can go after a month; others should stay with you forever
Milky Way Embroidery
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/04/milky-way-embroidery
The Editor’s Note on Kate Middleton Cancer Announcement Video Doesn’t Mean It’s Fake
date: 2024-04-01, from: 404 Media Group
The Getty Images “handout” disclaimer on the video of the Princess of Wales’ video statement about her cancer diagnosis is pretty common, actually—and not proof of a conspiracy.
https://www.404media.co/getty-editors-note-kate-middleton-cancer-diagnosis-video/
Aptera to showcase solar EV tech in the UAE as it preps its first production-intent builds [Video]
date: 2024-04-01, from: Electrek Feed
Aptera Motors has just delivered its first solar EV to a customer. April fools! Yes, it is now April, which means we get another video update from Aptera. This month’s progress update recaps a recent visit to France, details an upcoming trip to the United Arab Emirates, and talks about the status of Aptera’s first production-intent solar EV builds. Watch the video in full below.
A deep dive into email deliverability in 2024
date: 2024-04-01, from: OS News
On October 3, 2023, Google and Yahoo announced upcoming email security standards to prevent spam, phishing and malware attempts. Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail) is also enforcing these policies. With the big 3 Email Service Providers (ESP) in agreement, expect widespread adoption soon. Today’s threats are more complex than ever and more ESPs will begin tightening the reigns. Failure to comply with these guidelines will result in emails being blocked beginning April 2024. In this article, we’re going to cover these guidelines and explain what senders must do in order to achieve and maintain compliance. ↫ XOMedia Some of these changes – most of them impact bulk senders and spammers – should’ve been implemented ages ago, but seeing them being pushed by the three major email providers, who all happened to be owned, of course, by massive corporations, does raise quite a few red flags. Instinctively, this makes me worried about ulterior motives, especially since running your own email server is already fraught with issues due to the nebulous ways Gmail treats emails coming from small servers. With the rising interest in self-hosting and things like Mastodon, I hope we’re also going to see a resurgence in hosting your own e-mail. I really don’t like that all my email is going through Gmail – it’s what OSNews uses – but I don’t feel like dealing with all the delivery issues people who try self-hosting email lament about. With a possible renewed wave of interest in it, we might be able to make the process easier and more reliable.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139103/a-deep-dive-into-email-deliverability-in-2024/
Nearly 3M people hit in Harvard Pilgrim healthcare data theft
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Also, TheMoon botnet back for EoL SOHO routers, Sellafield to be prosecuted for ‘infosec failures’, plus critical vulns
Infosec in brief Nearly a year on from the discovery of a massive data theft at healthcare biz Harvard Pilgrim, and the number of victims has now risen to nearly 2.9 million people in all US states.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/01/in_brief_security/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-01, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
After a couple of tests, the fix below is implemented here. For some reason I wasn’t subscribed to my own feed, which accounted for the fact that updates from this blog weren’t getting into the blogroll. That troubles me, I have to try to piece together how that happened. In the meantime it’s nice to have the instant updating working again. I didn’t know that I had missed it, but I did.
http://scripting.com/2024/04/01.html#a144511
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-04-01, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Elixir to help me stitch ideas together:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112196476841672872
Citizen Scientists Invited to Collect Data for NASA During Eclipse
date: 2024-04-01, from: NASA breaking news
On April 8, 2024, as the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, thousands of amateur citizen scientists will measure air temperatures and snap pictures of clouds. The data they collect will aid researchers who are investigating how the Sun influences climates in different environments. Among those citizen scientists are the fifth- and sixth-grade students […]
MINISFORUM UM890 WE is a water-cooled mini PC with Ryzen 9 8945HS
date: 2024-04-01, from: Liliputing
Mini PC maker MINISFORUM has unveiled its first water-cooled computer… for some reason. The MINISFORUM AtomMan UM890 WE packs an advanced cooling system that combines a heat sink, 120mm fan, and liquid cooling to keep the hardware running at optimal temperatures. What’s a bit confusing is why you’d need that much cooling power. The system is powered […]
The post MINISFORUM UM890 WE is a water-cooled mini PC with Ryzen 9 8945HS appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/minisforum-um890-we-is-a-water-cooled-mini-pc-with-ryzen-9-8945hs/
Has legislation to stop surprise medical bills worked?
date: 2024-04-01, from: Marketplace Morning Report
We’ve been taking a close look on this program at the burdens of medical debt. Back in 2020, Congress passed the so-called “No Surprises Act” to protect patients from unexpected big bills for out-of-network medical care — and turns out, its wider impact on health care spending has yielded mixed results. But first on the show, California’s new $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast food goes into effect today. We’ll unpack reactions.
Tesla increases Model Y prices, but for how long?
date: 2024-04-01, from: Electrek Feed
Tesla has increased Model Y prices on all trims of its best-selling electric SUV. The question is: for how long?
https://electrek.co/2024/04/01/tesla-increases-model-y-prices-but-for-how-long/
Son of A’s, SF Giants legend Vida Blue thriving as Bay Area high school softball coach
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
San Francisco Bay Area softball: Derrick Blue, son of Vida Blue, is thriving as an East Bay softball coach
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-01, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I
introduced a bug in the blogroll code where it was ignoring instant
updates. Probably the sexiest feature in the whole thing. The bug was
introduced on March 21, so it’s been there a while. You have to
hard-reload the page to get the new version. So, when I post this on
Scripting News, it should move to
the top of the list immediately. So a good use-case is to leave
Scripting News open with the blogroll visible and every once in a while
you may find something interesting to read. I like having it there, but
of course, it’s my baby, so that’s understandable. :-)
http://scripting.com/2024/04/01.html#a143025
Sneak preview of GPT-5!
date: 2024-04-01, from: Gary Marcus blog
Mind blown.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/sneak-preview-of-gpt-5
Magic Security Dust
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Adam Shostack is selling magic security dust.
It’s about time someone is commercializing this essential technology.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/04/magic-security-dust.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
This might be the first victimless April fool joke I’ve ever seen.
https://twitter.com/LynnBeighley/status/1774770571911290981
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-01, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I tried listening to one of Kara Swisher’s interviews for her new book. The interviewer was someone I respect, Brian Lehrer at WNYC. But he has an old and imho unfair view that CraigsList and Facebook are responsible for the demise of local news. I was surprised when he said as much near the start of the interview. Then Swisher went into an obviously very well rehearsed schpiel that confirmed that he was absolutely right and the tech gods weren’t fooling anyone. OK that was my limit, I switched to another podcast. She’s got a great business model. Tell the press what they want to hear and you will get good press, pretty much guaranteed.
http://scripting.com/2024/04/01.html#a141219
I’ve been reading about this xz Utils exploit and it sounds absolutely…
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/04/0044298-ive-been-reading-about-th
Microsoft to separate Teams and Office globally amid antitrust scrutiny
date: 2024-04-01, from: OS News
Microsoft will sell its chat and video app Teams separately from its Office product globally, the U.S. tech giant said on Monday, six months after it unbundled the two products in Europe in a bid to avert a possible EU antitrust fine. The European Commission has been investigating Microsoft’s tying of Office and Teams since a 2020 complaint by Salesforce-owned competing workspace messaging app Slack. ↫ Foo Yun Chee at Reuters I honestly misread this as Microsoft selling Teams off, which would’ve been far bigger news. Unbundling Teams from Office globally is just Microsoft applying its recent European Union policy to the rest of the world. All we need now is Microsoft to stop trying to make Teams for families and friends happen, because nobody will ever want to use Teams for anything, let alone personal use.
The Car Repair Apocalypse Could Soon Be Upon Us
date: 2024-04-01, from: 404 Media Group
The widespread availability of independent car repair needs to be protected from software-based DRM.
https://www.404media.co/the-car-repair-apocalypse-could-soon-be-upon-us/
The hearts of the Super Nintendo
date: 2024-04-01, from: OS News
Every computer has at least one heart which beats the cadence to all the other chips. The CloCK output pin is connected to a copper line which spreads to most components, into their CLK input pin. If you are mostly a software person like me, you may have never noticed it but all kinds of processors have a CLK input pin. From CPUs (Motorola 68000, Intel Pentium, MOS 6502), to custom graphic chips (Midway’s DMA2, Capcom CPS-A/CPS-B, Sega’s Genesis VDP) to audio chips (Yamaha 2151, OKI msm6295), they all have one. ↫ Fabien Sanglard I’ve watched enough Adrian Black that I already knew all of this, and I’m assuming so did many of you. But hey, I’ll never pass up the opportunity to link to the insides of the Super Nintendo.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139099/the-hearts-of-the-super-nintendo/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-01, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
In the meantime, today, we need a resistance movement that reporters can report on. A new women’s march for reproductive health would be a great place to start. I’m not giving up on journalism yet, just knowing they need to see a resistance to report on it. That means big marches, streets filled with Americans, who will sound angry and determined when inteviewed by reporters. And spokespersons who can be interviewed by Maddow and Blitzer.
http://scripting.com/2024/04/01.html#a140331
Russian court extends detention of jailed American RFE/RL journalist
date: 2024-04-01, from: VOA News USA
How Much Does A Rivian Cost? R1T, R1S, R2, R3, R3X
date: 2024-04-01, from: Inside EVs News
Let’s take a look at pricing for each of Rivian’s current and upcoming models.
https://insideevs.com/news/714141/rivian-r1t-r1s-r2-r3-r3x-cost-price/
BYD Q1 EV sales top 300,000, but is it enough to maintain a lead over Tesla ?
date: 2024-04-01, from: Electrek Feed
China’s leading electric car maker, BYD, recorded over 300,000 EV sales in Q1 2024, up 13% over last year. Is it enough to maintain its lead over Tesla?
https://electrek.co/2024/04/01/byd-q1-ev-sales-rise-but-enough-keep-lead-over-tesla/
Merging Fields, Mathematicians Go the Distance on Old Problem
date: 2024-04-01, from: Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians have illuminated what sets of points can look like if the distances between them are all whole numbers.The post Merging Fields, Mathematicians Go the Distance on Old Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Disillusioned with life in the US, a California woman moved to Mexico 7 years ago. Here’s how it completely changed her life
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
Her love affair with Mexico began at a young age, and Marjorie Skouras’ passion for the country only grew with the passing of time.
Elon Musk, Wokeness, and the Myth of Meritocracy
date: 2024-04-01, from: Literate Machine
Video Version | Audio Version Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of racism and antisemitism. When I was a kid, long before the 2008 film made him a household name, Iron Man was my favorite superhero. I liked him because he didn’t get powers because he was an alien like Superman, wasn’t given them byhttps://literatemachine.com/2024/04/01/elon-musk-wokeness-and-the-myth-of-meritocracy/
In these 22 states, you need a six-figure income to afford a typical home, analysis finds
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
People buying on the West Coast and in the Northeast need the highest household incomes to afford a typical home. The top 5 places are: California (where an income of $197,051 is needed); Hawaii ($185,829); DC ($167,871); Massachusetts ($162,471); and Washington ($156,814).
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-01, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Started a new outline for the month of April, with March safely archived on GitHub. If you want to read the month in outline form, click this link and it will open read-only in Drummer. That’s a pretty good approximation of how I edit it, except I use the desktop version of Drummer that writes files to the local Mac filesystem as well as to the cloud.
http://scripting.com/2024/04/01.html#a133204
TasteFood: A springtime Meyer lemon salsa gives any dish gourmet glamour
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
Add some zest to your meal with this fast and easy recipe for Meyer Lemon Salsa.
Wish You Were Here: A Pleasant Hill couple’s Hadrian’s Wall trek
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
Whatever your mileage on this ancient Roman trek in northern England, add more for exploring the charming villages along the way.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/01/wish-you-were-here-hadrians-wall/
People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities — Until They Live in…
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/04/0044232-people-hate-the-idea-of
Quinn’s Lighthouse returns: Oakland’s 40-year institution is now Vietnamese
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
After closing in January, the historic waterfront restaurant is back under new ownership with Vietnamese crepes and banh mi.
Saratoga cat hasn’t been to the vet in 10 years, but is that a good thing?
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
A longtime cat owner wonders why other pet parents take their animals to the vet so often.
Travel Troubleshooter: United Airlines canceled my flight, so why can’t I get a refund?
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
When United Airlines cancels the last leg of Andy Wilson’s flight to Iceland, he must buy a new ticket. The airline blames a “desynchronization,” but will it cover his extra costs?
Is Tesla about to unveil the Model 3 Ludicrous/Plaid?
date: 2024-04-01, from: Electrek Feed
Photos of a Tesla Model 3 under wraps have the internet speculating on whether an unveiling of the anticipated Ludicrous/Plaid upgrade to the Model 3 Performance is imminent.
https://electrek.co/2024/04/01/is-tesla-about-to-unveil-the-model-3-ludicrous-plaid/
Ex-White House CIO tells The Reg: TikTok ban may be diplomatic disaster
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Theresa Payton on why US needs a national privacy law
Interview Congress is mulling legislation that will require TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance to cut ties with the video-sharing mega-app, or the social network will be banned in the USA.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/01/tiktok_ban_white_house/
Here’s What We Think About MotoGP’s Merger With F1
date: 2024-04-01, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
Formula One owner Liberty Media has bought MotoGP from Dorna. But what could that mean for fans?
https://www.rideapart.com/news/714265/motogp-f1-liberty-media-dorna-purchase/
Here Comes the ‘Green Bank’
date: 2024-04-01, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: April is off to a stormy start across the U.S., with severe weather expected from Texas to Pennsylvania • “Red flag” fire warnings were issued throughout the Great Plains over the weekend • Extreme drought continues to destroy crops in southern Africa.
THE TOP FIVE
- “Green bank” grants are likely coming soon
The Environmental Protection Agency is poised to announce which nonprofit groups will receive $20 billion in grants aimed at spurring private investments in clean technology projects, according to E&E News. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a $27 billion program created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is intended to function as a “green bank” that provides affordable financing to initiatives addressing climate change. Two to three grants under the program’s $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund will go to clean financing “hubs” that can distribute the money to deserving projects and lenders. Another two to seven grants from the $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator will direct funding and technical assistance to nonprofits already serving disadvantaged communities.
- Contamination fears in Baltimore
Environmental experts are concerned that the ongoing removal of wreckage from Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge could cause oil or other hazardous materials to spill into the Patapsco River. Authorities have deployed nearly a mile’s worth of protective and absorbent barriers into the water, the Associated Press reports, though a U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson said Friday that “no immediate threat to the environment” had been identified. The cargo ship that struck the bridge was carrying at least 56 containers with hazardous materials, 14 of which were destroyed. A breach of the ship’s hull at any point during the cleanup process could leak fuel oil into the water, but at present, the hull looks to be intact.
- Vermont could be the first state to pass a climate superfund bill
The Vermont Senate approved amendments on Friday to a bill that would seek compensation from fossil fuel companies for the impacts of climate change, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reports. Vermont’s climate superfund bill — one of several to have been introduced in state legislatures in recent years — would authorize the state to determine the cost it has borne from the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels over the past three decades and then ask responsible parties to pay up. (Vermont plans to focus its efforts on the world’s biggest emitters.) Modeled after federal Superfund law that keeps companies on the hook for cleaning up contamination, Vermont’s bill and others like it face an uncertain future and inevitable legal challenges.
- Study: Climate change is making heat waves sluggish
Heat waves are moving slower, traveling farther, and lasting longer, a new study found. Scientists have known for a long time that climate change is exacerbating heat waves, but the new study, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, determined that heat waves’ movement has slowed by 20% since 1979 — a decline of about 5 miles per day each decade. They’ve also gotten longer and more frequent. Wei Zhang, a climate scientist at Utah State University and one of the study’s authors, is particularly concerned about the effects of prolonged heat waves on urban areas. “If those heat waves last in the city for much longer than before, that would cause a very dangerous situation,” Zhang told The New York Times.
- Republican attorneys general take aim at Biden’s LNG moratorium
Sixteen Republican-led states asked a federal court late last week to block the Biden administration’s suspension of approvals for new liquefied natural gas export terminals. The U.S. Department of Energy paused its review of new LNG projects in January amid mounting pressure from environmental groups. The motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on Thursday evening, argues that Louisiana and 15 other states will be harmed by the pause.
THE KICKER
800,000: The number of fish estimated to have been killed when liquid nitrogen fertilizer leaked into Iowa’s East Nishnabotna River in early March.
https://heatmap.news/climate/here-comes-the-green-bank
Solar eclipse: How much will you be able to see in the Bay Area?
date: 2024-04-01, from: San Jose Mercury News
The “Super Bowl of astronomical events” won’t come around again for 20 years in the contiguous U.S.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/01/solar-eclipse-how-much-will-you-be-able-to-see-in-california/
Nissan And Mitsubishi Team Up For U.S.-Spec Electric Pickup Truck
date: 2024-04-01, from: Inside EVs News
The deal will also result in a Nissan-badged plug-in hybrid, as well as an all-electric Mitsubishi.
https://insideevs.com/news/714510/nissan-mitsubishi-electric-pickup-phev/
KTM and Husqvarna Will Extend Your Warranty If You Start Going to the Dealership
date: 2024-04-01, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
I hate dealerships, but I do love longer warranties. So…
https://www.rideapart.com/news/714250/ktm-husqvarna-extended-warranty-offer/
At Least It Was Well-Fed
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/04/01/the-worlds-most-pampered-hat-bobble/
China’s largest carmaker to cut thousands of jobs at its joint ventures with GM and Volkswagen
date: 2024-04-01, from: Electrek Feed
Amid an intense price war and lost market share to BYD and Tesla, China’s state-owned automaker SAIC Motor is reportedly making drastic job cuts this year at its joint ventures with General Motors and Volkswagen and at its EV unit – with mass layoffs a rare move for a China-owned company.
AT&T admits massive 70m+ mid-March data dump is real, but claims it’s years old
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Time to update that password - and four-digit account pin, which was also among the pilfered records
That rumored AT&T dark web customer data dump from mid-March has been confirmed, and it’s a whopper: A total of more than 73 million current and former customers are included in the cache, AT&T confirmed over the weekend.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/01/att_admits_massive_70m_midmarch/
Ukraine, Gaza and trade talks on agenda as Blinken heads to Europe
date: 2024-04-01, from: VOA News USA
The public school enrollment conundrum
date: 2024-04-01, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Funding for public schools partially depends on the number of students enrolled. But some public school districts are considering closing and consolidating schools due to enrollment declines that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new Cato Institute survey. We hear more. We’ll also learn more about agriculture’s impact on Colorado River basin levels and an anti-redlining law that’s currently on hold.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/the-public-school-enrollment-conundrum
One epic giveaway: How 600 free electric bikes changed 600 lives
date: 2024-04-01, from: Electrek Feed
I’ve long championed the amazing benefits of electric bicycles in providing transportation autonomy to those who can’t afford a personal car and the massive expenses that come along with car ownership. A $1,000 e-bike can be the difference between a one-hour walk to work and a seven-minute ride to work. Now leading US e-bike maker Lectric Ebikes and the popular YouTuber Mr. Beast have teamed up to magnify the impact of a free e-bike 600 times.
https://electrek.co/2024/04/01/one-epic-giveaway-how-600-free-electric-bikes-changed-600-lives/
The chocolate price spike: what’s happening to global cocoa production?
date: 2024-04-01, from: Hannah Richie at Substack
Bad weather and disease outbreaks are hitting cocoa production in West Africa.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/cocoa-prices
China could be on the road to economic recovery
date: 2024-04-01, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: China may be showing signs of an economic recovery, with factory output slightly up for the first time in six months — an indicator that the country’s pandemic-induced slowdown may be starting to ease. Plus, in Germany, people can smoke cannabis in public starting today. Then, Turkey’s main opposition party has claimed big election victories in major cities; high inflation and general economic weakness may partially be behind the wins.
Microsoft consolidates Power BI licenses in line with Fabric platform
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Guess what? Some users should look out for expensive surprises
Microsoft has consolidated its licensing terms for Power BI with its Fabric data platform, leaving some users facing steep price hikes according to one analyst.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/01/microsoft_power_bi_licenses/
Xiaomi EV buyers will have to wait up to seven months for the SU7
date: 2024-04-01, from: Electrek Feed
Orders for Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi’s brand-new SU7 have been pouring in – with Xiaomi announcing that within 27 minutes of the company accepting orders for the new all-electric sedan, it had already received more than 50,000 orders. Today Xiaomi has alerted potential buyers of a seven-month waiting time before getting the car. Apple, read it and weep.
https://electrek.co/2024/04/01/xiaomi-ev-buyers-will-have-to-wait-up-to-seven-months-for-the-su7/
against the factory of unreason
date: 2024-04-01, from: Ayjay blog
Dear readers, I have returned! — and I say unto you, it might be interesting to read my reflections on my students’ reading ability in conjunction with Emma Green’s report on classical Christian education. The report is a curious one. She clearly strives to be fair, and acknowledges that the supporters of classical education are […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/against-the-factory-of-unreason/
Changes to telephone and broadband services – WROCC meeting, 3rd April
date: 2024-04-01, from: RiscOS Story
The Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) will next meet on Wednesday, 3rd April, and the subject of the meeting – with Chris Hughes taking the podium – are the changes that are coming for the UK’s telephone and broadband services. Taking place online over Zoom, the meeting will commence at 7:45pm, and is free for anyone to join – the only thing you’ll need are the access details, which you should have if you’ve attended other recent meetings, otherwise they are available on request. Although the meeting is open…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/telephone-broadband-changes-wrocc-3rd-april/
The Coal Was Destined for India. Now It’s Polluting the Air in Baltimore.
date: 2024-04-01, from: Heatmap News
For those living near the Port of Baltimore, the transportation and storage of coal on its way from mines in the Appalachian Mountains to far-flung foreign kilns is “a mundane but ever-present imposition,” Chloe Ahmann, a Cornell University anthropologist, told me. Ahmann once worked as an elementary school teacher in Curtis Bay, a residential neighborhood adjacent to the working port, and wrote a book on the area’s post-industrial present.
“There are stories going back generation,” she said. “Coal dust covering
everything in the neighborhood — bicycles, porches, windowsill. People
wipe coal dust off their windows as a daily ritual.”
With the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and subsequent
shutdown of the port, that coal now has nowhere to go for the
foreseeable future. Baltimoreans don’t want it, but its intended
recipients thousands of miles away in India most certainly
do.
“The top recipient of U.S. steam coal shipped from
Baltimore by far over the past five years has been India, where the
brick manufacturing industry has been a major customer,” the U.S. Energy
Information Administration said in a
report
on the impacts of the bridge disaster. In January alone, the Port of
Baltimore exported almost a million tons of coal to India, up almost
three-fold from January of last year,
according
to Argus, a commodity data provider. In total, 17 million tons of
thermal coal — the type used in power plants and brick kilns — left the
U.S. via Baltimore in 2023, S&P Global
found
by analyzing Census Bureau data.
India is the world’s
second
largest consumer of coal after China, and coal accounts for over 70%
of India’s emissions from burning fuel, according to the International
Energy Agency. (In contrast,
coal
accounts for a fifth of the United States’ emissions from
combustion.) About a quarter of India’s emissions come from
industry, much of which uses coal in its processes, including
steelmaking, and cement and, yes, brick manufacturing.
Brickmaking in India is often done on small scales by local producers, but even so, its energy consumption is “comparable to the organized construction industries such as cement and steel,” according to research published in Nature India. Many of those bricks are used to build homes, part and parcel of the country’s astounding economic growth. Along with its steel and cement industries, brickmaking has transformed India — whose inflation-adjusted per capita GDP of around $1,800 in 1990 would have made it one of the world’s poorest countries today — into the third-largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world.
The same brick industry that produces the literal building blocks of India’s homebuilding sector is also responsible for immensely damaging particulate pollution. The combination of coal and biomass used to fire brick kilns is responsible for around 75 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions — comparable to the total emissions of Washington State, Arizona, or the 2021 California wildfires — and 100,000 tons of black carbon emissions, according to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.
Air pollution in South Asia is one of the largest public health problems
in the world. India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh all ranked in the
bottom
10 of 180 countries for air quality, according to the Yale
University Environmental Performance Index. In 2019, air pollution was
estimated to account for
around
1.7 million premature deaths in India. “Brick kilns, involving the
burning of low-grade coal, are one of the major sectors that contribute
to air pollution in South Asia,” a
World
Bank report said, with the brick industry making up over 90% of
particulate emissions in some South Asian cities and 15% of the most
dangerous small particulate emissions in Delhi.
In a story that will be familiar to much of industrial and post-industrial America, these industrial processes are both an important economic engine and an obvious detriment to health locally and are contributing to the climatic changes that are already having devastating effects in South Asia. Efforts to regulate the brick industry have already run into complaints that efficiency requirements will be too expensive for cash-strapped businesses and will result in lower employment in the sector.
In the vertiginous world of globalized capitalism, different regions using the same resource — the Appalachian coal mines, the Baltimore port, and the Indian brick manufacturers — can all at the same time be at different stages of industrialization and post-industrialization, with differing attitudes toward the coal that powers and pollutes them. In South Baltimore, the people living with the dust from the coal pier no longer sees any positive relationship between industrial activity and their own well-being, Ahmann told me.
The Baltimore and Ohio railroad, which has been part of the rail conglomerate CSX since 1980, began construction in 1827 and has long shipped coal from West Virginia and other Appalachian states to the East Coast. Baltimore’s Curtis Bay neighborhood, where Ahmann lived, is adjacent to a coal pier operated by CSX. “It’s an iconic local scene, right by a local playground, stone throw from several elementary schools and homes,” Ahmann said, making the neighborhood both “heavily industrialized and very much a lived-in place.”
While the Maryland government trumpets direct and indirect employment at the port of around 15,000 people, that’s about half the number that worked there in 1970.
“It’s no longer the case that industry is a major employer in South Baltimore,” Ahmann said. “It’s not like it was 40 years ago, when everybody knew somebody whose livelihood was attached to industrial production in this place.” Instead, people in the area “cobble together lives from low-wage service jobs,” she said. Overall, manufacturing employment in Maryland has been roughly cut in half since 1990.
In late 2021, a CSX coal facility in Curtis Bay exploded, damaging nearby homes and spreading tremors for miles. Following the blast, a coalition of community groups and the Maryland Department of the Environment investigated particulate pollution in Curtis Bay and found coal dust “present throughout the community,” with coal dust coming from the terminal itself, as well as train and truck traffic.
“We should not have open air coal piers period, and certainly not in a residential area behind a playground,” Ahmann said.
Among the many fears locals are nursing as the Key Bridge lies in ruins is that the coal will simply pile up at the port as long as it remains blocked. “These piles are going to grow every day,” Ahmann told me, describing it as “stark visual evidence of the untenability of this situation.”
https://heatmap.news/economy/baltimore-bridge-india-coal
White House to welcome kids for Easter egg roll
date: 2024-04-01, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/white-house-to-welcome-kids-for-easter-egg-roll/7551528.html
You break it, you … run away and hope somebody else fixes it
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Enthusiastic young tech decided to simplify the mainframe, with unexpected results
Who, Me? Well hello again, dear reader, and welcome once more to Who, Me? – in which Register readers unburden themselves with confessions of tech mistakes long past. It’s very cathartic, you know.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/01/who_me/
Trump’s 5-Step Fascist Plan
date: 2024-04-01, from: Robert Reich on Substack
He’s already laid each step out
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/trumps-5-step-fascist-plan
Making crochet cacti
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: Julia Evans
https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/04/01/making-crochet-cacti/
Classifieds – April 1, 2024
date: 2024-04-01, 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 – April 1, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/classifieds-april-1-2024/
Today in SCV History (April 1)
date: 2024-04-01, from: SCV New (TV Station)
2004 – Last day in Sacramento for California State Sen. Pete Knight, who succumbs one month later to a sudden onset of leukemia. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-april-1/
Ensemble Theatre Co. Announces Upcoming Season
date: 2024-04-01, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
“Legends and Legacies” is the theme for Santa Barbara’s professional theater in the heart of the Arts District.
The post Ensemble Theatre Co. Announces Upcoming Season appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/04/01/ensemble-theatre-co-announces-upcoming-season/
‘COWBOY CARTER’ redefines genre
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Beyoncé’s latest album tributes country music and other genres as an avenue to celebrate her accomplishments and those dear to her heart.
The post ‘COWBOY CARTER’ redefines genre appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/cowboy-carter-redefines-what-genre-means/
Moving to the ‘gears’ all night long
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Black Student Assembly hosted 2024 Gearfest.
The post Moving to the ‘gears’ all night long appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/moving-to-the-gears-all-night-long/
USC is not equipped for earthquakes
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Classrooms need safe desks and chairs that will protect students in an earthquake.
The post USC is not equipped for earthquakes appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/usc-is-not-equipped-for-earthquakes/
Women’s basketball survives against Baylor, advances to Elite Eight
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Sweet 16 thriller went down to the wire at Moda Center in Portland, Oregon.
The post Women’s basketball survives against Baylor, advances to Elite Eight appeared first on Daily Trojan.
Awkward phases are a necessary part of growing up
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Social media is causing tweens to skip their ‘awkward phase,’ and this prevents them from discovering themselves.
The post Awkward phases are a necessary part of growing up appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/awkward-phases-are-a-necessary-part-of-growing-up/
Hugo Miller dances his way into Trojan history
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The first man on the Trojan Dance Force wants to move others to join the art form.
The post Hugo Miller dances his way into Trojan history appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/hugo-miller-dances-his-way-into-trojan-history/
New bill could impact USC legacy admissions
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
USC admitted the largest number of legacy and donor-connected students among private California universities in 2022.
The post New bill could impact USC legacy admissions appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/new-bill-could-impact-usc-legacy-admissions/
Women’s basketball to duke out UConn in Elite Eight
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Both teams had narrow wins in their respective Sweet 16 games and will compete for the Final Four in Portland, Oregon.
The post Women’s basketball to duke out UConn in Elite Eight appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/womens-basketball-to-duke-out-uconn-in-elite-eight/
USC’s Nikkei hosts 17th annual culture night
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
“Mangekyō: Kaleidoscope” highlights the diversity of Japanese culture and art.
The post USC’s Nikkei hosts 17th annual culture night appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/uscs-nikkei-hosts-17th-annual-culture-night/
Disappointing skid continues for men’s tennis
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
USC was unable to get back into the win column against rival UCLA in home match.
The post Disappointing skid continues for men’s tennis appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/disappointing-skid-continues-for-mens-tennis/
The global appeal of soccer
date: 2024-04-01, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Soccer captivates millions with its power to unite across cultures and generations.
The post The global appeal of soccer appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/01/the-global-appeal-of-soccer/
Pay per scroll
date: 2024-04-01, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>7.40 am. I’m sitting on a rock. Birds are chirping. Annoying rain coming down the gray sky. The rock I’m sitting on is wet. That’s also annoying. I’m sitting here, watching my dog walking up and down, destroying all the sticks that are lying on the ground. It’s a chilled morning.</p>Anyway, I’m sitting here, typing this on my phone. I have my phone with me. I shouldn’t. I should have a book with me. But it’s raining. And books don’t go along well with rain.
Books are interesting objects. The entire consumption process of a book is interesting, especially when compared to websites. There’s no equivalent of the web for books. There’s no place where an infinite supply of books is available to you at virtually no cost. Reading a book involves some decision-making and, more often than not, some financial investment.
Sure, some of you are probably saying that libraries are the equivalent of the web for books but that’s not the same thing. And don’t get me wrong, libraries are great!
Reflecting on books made me think about what the web would look like if it was some sort of pay-per-scroll platform. Not a place where virtually everything is free but a place where everything has to be purchased in order to be consumed. Which sites would I be willing to pay for? I’m going to ignore the obvious answers because I’m sure almost everyone would have sites like Wikipedia or YouTube. Those are boring answers. Aggregators such as Hacker News or Reddit would also not be something I’d be interested in paying for because the actual content lives somewhere else. So I’d be paying just for the commentary.
In my case, I’d probably pay for two types of websites: either personal sites of people that do things I enjoy or that have interesting takes on the world or sites that collect content coming from a diverse group of people (LessWrong is a good example).
Would I be happy if the web was some sort of à la carte menu rather than a free buffet? I’d say no. Still, thinking about this made me realize—once again—that my media diet is something that I have to always keep in mind. It also reminded me that I’m not reading enough books!
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https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/1sYvCjdE8qvE2Isu
March 31, 2024
date: 2024-04-01, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden issued an executive order instructing the National Park Service to “highlight important figures and chapters in women’s history.” “Women and girls of all backgrounds have shaped our country’s history, from the ongoing fight for justice and equality to cutting-edge scientific advancements and artistic achievements,” the announcement read. “Yet these contributions have often been overlooked. We must do more to recognize the role of women and girls in America’s story, including through the Federal Government’s recognition and interpretation of historic and cultural sites.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-31-2024
After bridge collapse, Maryland governor urges Congress to pass funding for rebuild
date: 2024-04-01, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — With efforts underway to clean up thousands of tons of steel debris from the collapsed bridge in Baltimore’s harbor, Maryland Governor Wes Moore on Sunday urged Republicans to work with Democrats to approve the
federal funding needed for rebuilding the bridge and to get the port economy back on its feet.
Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed early on Tuesday morning, killing six road workers, when a container ship nearly the size of the Eiffel Tower lost power and crashed into a support pylon. Much of the span crashed into the Patapsco River, blocking the Port of Baltimore’s shipping channel.
The Biden administration released $60 million in initial emergency aid on Thursday to assist in cleaning up the bridge debris and reopening the port, which is the largest in the U.S. for “roll-on, roll-off” vehicle imports and exports of farm and construction equipment. The port has been closed since Tuesday, leaving in limbo the jobs of some 15,000 people who rely on its daily operations.
Federal officials have told Maryland lawmakers the final cost of rebuilding the bridge could soar to at least $2 billion, Roll Call reported, citing a source familiar with the
Discussions.
Democratic President Joe Biden has pledged that the federal government will cover the cost, but that will depend on passage of legislation authorizing the funds by both the Republican-led House of Representatives and Democratic-led Senate. The divided
Congress has been repeatedly riven by partisan battles over funding, with hardline Republicans often at odds even with members of their own party.
Moore, a Democrat, said Republicans should be willing to approve the funding for the sake of not just the city of Baltimore, but for the national economy.
“The reason that we need people to move in a bipartisan basis … is not because we need you to do Maryland a favor,” Moore told CNN on Sunday. “We need to make sure that we’re actually moving quickly to get the American economy going again, because the Port of Baltimore is instrumental in our larger economic growth.”
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg expressed optimism on Sunday that Congress would approve the funds necessary for the cleanup and rebuild, noting that the divided legislative body had passed Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure package in 2021.
“If there’s anything left in this country that is more bipartisan than infrastructure, it should be emergency response.
This is both, and I hope that Congress will be willing if and when we turn to them,” Buttigieg told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Biden was expected to visit the bridge collapse site this week.
An enormous crane began cutting up portions of the collapsed bridge to prepare them for removal on Saturday, which officials said was the first step of what will be a long and complicated cleanup. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said on Sunday that a 180-metric ton (200-ton) piece of the bridge had been removed and officials were working to determine the best strategy for pulling the ship off the wreckage.
Later Sunday officials said they were preparing to establish an alternate route for “commercially essential vessels,” although few additional details were released and the timing of the alternate route’s opening wasn’t made clear.
In a statement, coordinator Capt. David O’Connell said that the alternate would “support the flow of marine traffic into Baltimore.” Video released by responders showed Coast Guard officials dropping buoys into the water near the site of the collision.
The wreckage and hazardous weather conditions have made it impossible for divers to continue searching for the four remaining bodies of the deceased construction workers in recent days, Moore said.
Moore and other officials have declined to give an estimated timeline for the reopening of the port and the rebuilding of the bridge.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Nine years ago I pleaded with Facebook to support Markdown.
What the Proposed National Association of REALTORS® Settlement Means For You
date: 2024-04-01, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
By Michele Allyn2024 PresidentSanta Barbara Association of Realtors As an experienced real estate agent with decades of service in our
The post What the Proposed National Association of REALTORS® Settlement Means For You appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I still want an EZ-Pass for news.
http://scripting.com/2020/06/23/115824.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
How the Atlantic Went From Broke to Profitable in Three Years.
Daily EV Recap: Lamborghini’s electric future
date: 2024-04-01, from: Electrek Feed
Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from Electrek. Quick Charge is now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn and…
https://electrek.co/2024/03/31/daily-ev-recap-lamborghinis-electric-future/
Why Corporations Fail to Protect Our Data
date: 2024-04-01, from: Om Malik blog
Almost nine years ago, when both T-Mobile and Experian were hacked, I wrote an article for The New Yorker. I argued that the companies wouldn’t learn anything from the mess created by these data and privacy breaches. As a result, we, the citizens, are now simply Data Piñatas. Consumers have become data piñatas – hacked, tracked and abused by everyone from hackers, governments, and worse of them all, …
https://om.co/2024/03/31/why-corporations-fail-to-protect-our-data/
Volvo EX30 Versus Its $45,000 Competitors: EX30 Exudes Quality Inside And Out
date: 2024-04-01, from: Inside EVs News
The new Volvo EX30 is a great entry into the compact crossover market. But how does it compare with its $45,000 competition?
https://insideevs.com/news/714450/volvo-ex30-crossover-uk-competition/
Expectation Vs Reality: Installing A $3,000 Tesla Cybertruck Basecamp Tent
date: 2024-04-01, from: Inside EVs News
YouTuber Brandon William provides an excellent video on setting up and taking down the Tesla Cybertruck Basecamp accessory.
https://insideevs.com/news/714445/cybertruck-tent-basecamp-3000-dollars/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-04-01, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Where are the Palestinian supporting accounts on this server?
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112193106494015567
Ross Anderson
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Ross Anderson unexpectedly passed away Thursday night in, I believe, his home in Cambridge.
I can’t remember when I first met Ross. Of course it was before 2008, when we created the Security and Human Behavior workshop. It was well before 2001, when we created the Workshop on Economics and Information Security. (Okay, he created both—I helped.) It was before 1998, when we wrote about the problems with key escrow systems. I was one of the people he brought to the Newton Institute, at Cambridge University, for the six-month cryptography residency program he ran (I mistakenly didn’t stay the whole time)—that was in 1996…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/03/ross-anderson.html
Obsessions vs Hobbies
date: 2024-04-01, from: Om Malik blog
hobby: a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation obsession: a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling Sunday is my day for hobbies. I am either editing photos and putting together a collection to share, or engaging with another hobby of mine: fountain pens. At the start of …
https://om.co/2024/03/31/obsessions-vs-hobbies/
Apply before June 1st 2024
date: 2024-04-01, updated: 2024-04-01, from: nlnet feed
https://nlnet.nl/news/2024/20240401-call.html
Key factors to enhance efficacy of 3D digital environments for transformative landscape and urban planning
date: 2024-04-01, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne; Fagerholm, Nora
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/649176
Post-earthquake structural damage assessment and damage state evaluation for RC structures with experimental validation
date: 2024-04-01, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Zhang, Hanqing; Reuland, Yves; Shan, Jiazeng; Chatzi, Eleni
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/659625
Monday 1 April, 2024
date: 2024-03-31, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Whitegate As regular readers will know, I am trying to re-learn the art of black-and-white photography, after years and years of working in colour. B&W requires one to ‘see’ things differently — to look for structure, contrast, subtle changes in … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/monday-1-april-2024/39303/
Traffic moving on California highway after lane collapsed during storm
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
2024-03-31 Went for a walk and saw some flowers
date: 2024-03-31, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-03-31 Went for a walk and saw some flowers
(Plant identification via Flora Incognita and a flimsy botanical background.)
Wiesen-Schaumkraut (Artengruppe)
Cardamine pratensis agg.
Löwenzahn
Taraxacum
Knolliger Hahnenfuß
Ranunculus bulbosus
Vogel-Kirsche
Prunus avium
(both)
Schlehe (Artengruppe)
Prunus spinosa agg.
Some sort of cherry?
I’m guessing apple?
2024-03-31. Bonus Pasque flower (Küchenschelle) for @GwenfarsGarden, who posted some pictures of these beautiful fuzzy flowers on fedi. These come with sleeping bees inside! 😍
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-03-31-flowers
Kia recalls 427,000 Telluride SUVs, could roll away while parked
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
New York — Kia is recalling more than 427,000 of its Telluride SUVs due to a defect that may cause the cars to roll away while they’re parked.
According to documents published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the intermediate shaft and right front driveshaft of certain 2020-2024 Tellurides may not be fully engaged. Over time, this can lead to “unintended vehicle movement” while the cars are in park — increasing potential crash risks.
Kia America decided to recall all 2020-2023 model year and select 2024 model year Tellurides earlier this month, NHTSA documents show. At the time, no injuries or crashes were reported.
Improper assembly is suspected to be the cause of the shaft engagement problem — with the recall covering 2020-2024 Tellurides that were manufactured between Jan. 9, 2019, and Oct. 19, 2023. Kia America estimates that 1% have the defect.
To remedy this issue, recall documents say, dealers will update the affected cars’ electronic parking brake software and replace any damaged intermediate shafts for free. Owners who already incurred repair expenses will also be reimbursed.
In the meantime, drivers of the impacted Tellurides are instructed to manually engage the emergency brake before exiting the vehicle. Drivers can also confirm if their specific vehicle is included in this recall and find more information using the NHTSA site and/or Kia’s recall lookup platform.
Owner notification letters are otherwise set to be mailed out on May 15, with dealer notification beginning a few days prior.
The Associated Press reached out to Irvine, California-based Kia America for further comment Sunday. No comment was received.
1985: Making TEXT ADVENTURE Games
date: 2024-03-31, from: Tilde.news
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXAubRZ-qjw
Trump readies for fundraiser, Biden to visit Baltimore after bridge collapse
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
With a fundraising event to be held in Florida, Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump is gearing up to close the existing cash gap he has with the reelection bid of his political rival, President Joe Biden. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias asked several U.S. voters how they see the fundraising race.
Gmail revolutionized email 20 years ago
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
San Francisco — Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin loved pulling pranks, so they began rolling out outlandish ideas every April Fool’s Day not long after starting their company more than a quarter century ago. One year, Google posted a job opening for a Copernicus research center on the moon. Another year, the company said it planned to roll out a “scratch and sniff” feature on its search engine.
The jokes were consistently over-the-top, and people learned to laugh them off as another example of Google mischief. That’s why Page and Brin decided to unveil something no one would believe was possible 20 years ago on April Fool’s Day.
It was Gmail, a free service boasting 1 gigabyte of storage per account, an amount that sounds almost pedestrian in an age of 1-terabyte iPhones. But it sounded like a preposterous amount of email capacity back then, enough to store about 13,500 emails before running out of space compared to just 30 to 60 emails in the then-leading webmail services run by Yahoo and Microsoft. That translated into 250 to 500 times more email storage space.
Besides the quantum leap in storage, Gmail also came equipped with Google’s search technology so users could quickly retrieve a tidbit from an old email, photo or other personal information stored on the service. It also automatically threaded together a string of communications about the same topic, so everything flowed together as if it was a single conversation.
“The original pitch we put together was all about the three ‘S’s’ — storage, search and speed,” said former Google executive Marissa Mayer, who helped design Gmail and other company products before later becoming Yahoo’s CEO.
It was such a mind-bending concept that shortly after The Associated Press published a story about Gmail late on the afternoon of April Fool’s 2004, readers began calling and emailing to inform the news agency it had been duped by Google’s pranksters.
“That was part of the charm, making a product that people won’t believe is real. It kind of changed people’s perceptions about the kinds of applications that were possible within a web browser,” former Google engineer Paul Buchheit recalled during a recent AP interview about his efforts to build Gmail.
It took three years to do as part of a project called “Caribou” — a reference to a running gag in the Dilbert comic strip. “There was something sort of absurd about the name Caribou, it just made make me laugh,” said Buchheit, the 23rd employee hired at a company that now employs more than 180,000 people.
The AP knew Google wasn’t joking about Gmail because an AP reporter had been abruptly asked to come down from San Francisco to the company’s Mountain View, California, headquarters to see something that would make the trip worthwhile.
After arriving at a still-developing corporate campus that would soon blossom into what became known as the “Googleplex,” the AP reporter was ushered into a small office where Page was wearing an impish grin while sitting in front of his laptop computer.
Page, then just 31 years old, proceeded to show off Gmail’s sleekly designed inbox and demonstrated how quickly it operated within Microsoft’s now-retired Explorer web browser. And he pointed out there was no delete button featured in the main control window because it wouldn’t be necessary, given Gmail had so much storage and could be so easily searched. “I think people are really going to like this,” Page predicted.
As with so many other things, Page was right. Gmail now has an estimated 1.8 billion active accounts — each one now offering 15 gigabytes of free storage bundled with Google Photos and Google Drive. Even though that’s 15 times more storage than Gmail initially offered, it’s still not enough for many users who rarely see the need to purge their accounts, just as Google hoped.
The digital hoarding of email, photos and other content is why Google, Apple and other companies now make money from selling additional storage capacity in their data centers. (In Google’s case, it charges anywhere from $30 annually for 200 gigabytes of storage to $250 annually for 5 terabytes of storage). Gmail’s existence is also why other free email services and the internal email accounts that employees use on their jobs offer far more storage than was fathomed 20 years ago.
“We were trying to shift the way people had been thinking because people were working in this model of storage scarcity for so long that deleting became a default action,” Buchheit said.
Gmail was a game changer in several other ways while becoming the first building block in the expansion of Google’s internet empire beyond its still-dominant search engine.
After Gmail came Google Maps and Google Docs with word processing and spreadsheet applications. Then came the acquisition of video site YouTube, followed by the introduction of the Chrome browser and the Android operating system that powers most of the world’s smartphones. With Gmail’s explicitly stated intention to scan the content of emails to get a better understanding of users’ interests, Google also left little doubt that digital surveillance in pursuit of selling more ads would be part of its expanding ambitions.
Although it immediately generated a buzz, Gmail started out with a limited scope because Google initially only had enough computing capacity to support a small audience of users.
But that scarcity created an air of exclusivity around Gmail that drove feverish demand for elusive invitations to sign up. At one point, invitations to open a Gmail account were selling for $250 apiece on eBay. “It became a bit like a social currency, where people would go, ‘Hey, I got a Gmail invite, you want one?’” Buchheit said.
Although signing up for Gmail became increasingly easier as more of Google’s network of massive data centers came online, the company didn’t begin accepting all comers to the email service until it opened the floodgates as a Valentine’s Day present to the world in 2007.
https://www.voanews.com/a/gmail-revolutionized-email-20-years-ago/7551013.html
The end of the necktie?
date: 2024-03-31, from: Robert Reich on Substack
I hope so.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-necktie
USC hosts lecture on fate of Armenian language
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The lecture marks an early start to USC’s first-ever celebration of Armenian History Month.
The post USC hosts lecture on fate of Armenian language appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/03/31/usc-hosts-lecture-on-fate-of-armenian-language/
Rain or shine, Easter Eggstravaganza succeeds despite inclement weather
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Signal
Despite the inclement weather moving the 33rd annual city of Santa Clarita egg hunt indoors, families and community members were looking forward to an egg-citing day at the Canyon Country Community Center on Saturday for the Easter Eggstravaganza. Two thousand children and their families began showing up at the Canyon Country Community Center half an […]
The post <strong>Rain or shine, Easter Eggstravaganza succeeds despite inclement weather </strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Scottish Ai: Mini Teachmeet
date: 2024-03-31, from: John’s World Wide Wall Display
My class joined in the ‘ AI Wonderland: Unleash Creativity with Make it hAPPen (P4-P7)’ webinar on Monday. It was a useful introduction for their age group on a topic we had not explored in class. In Teams I noticed this TeachMeet too. I finally signed up for it on Wednesday. Given it started at […]
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/scottish-ai-mini-teachmeet/
CHP investigating big rig crash
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Signal
The California Highway Patrol Newhall office is investigating the circumstances that led to a big rig semi-truck crashing into a section of K-rail, a concrete temporary divider, on the southbound Interstate 5 at the Calgrove Boulevard off-ramp minutes before 10:30 p.m. Saturday. CHP officers received reports of a big rig semi-truck over the railing at […]
The post CHP investigating big rig crash appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/chp-investigating-big-rig-crash/
libmui: Classic MacOS & GS/OS widget library for linux (and other?)
date: 2024-03-31, from: Tilde.news
https://github.com/buserror/libmui
‘Godzilla x Kong’ roars to $80 million box office debut
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
Los Angeles — The Godzilla-King Kong combo stomped on expectations as “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” roared to an $80 million opening on 3,861 North American screens, according to Sunday studio estimates.
The monster mash-up from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures starring Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry brought the second-highest opening in what has been a robust year, falling just short of the $81.5 million debut of “Dune: Part 2.” Projections had put the opening weekend of “Godzilla x Kong: Frozen Empire” at closer to $50 million.
Last week’s No. 1 at the box office, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” was second with $15.7 million for a two-week total of $73.4 million.
“Dune: Part Two” stayed strong in its fifth week, falling in the third spot with an $11.1 million take and a domestic total of $252.4 million.
The last matchup of the two monsters from Warner Bros. and Legendary, 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong,” had a much smaller opening weekend of $48.5 million, but that was a huge number for a film slowed by the coronavirus pandemic and released simultaneously on HBO Max.
The newer film had the second biggest opening of the studios’ broader MonsterVerse franchise. “Godzilla” brought in $93.2 million in 2014.
Estimated ticket sales are for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters,
according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” $80 million.
“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” $15.7 million.
“Dune: Part Two,” $11.1 million.
“Kung Fu Panda 4,” $10.2. million.
“Immaculate,” $3.3 million.
“Arthur the King,” $2.4 million.
“Late Night With the Devil,” $2.2 million.
“Tillu Square,” $1.8 million.
“Crew,” $1.5 million.
“Imaginary,” $1.4 million.
https://www.voanews.com/a/godzilla-x-kong-roars-to-80-million-box-office-debut/7550955.html
SCV gets break from rainy weather
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Signal
Santa Clarita Valley residents will be getting a brief break from stormy weather for the next few days as the current storm system moves past the area, according to the National Weather Service. “Most areas in lower elevations got 1 to 3 inches of rainfall with amounts of 3 to 6 inches over the higher […]
The post SCV gets break from rainy weather appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/scv-gets-break-from-rainy-weather/
Unlock the Benefits of Recreation and Outdoor Exploration
date: 2024-03-31, from: City of Santa Clarita
Unlock the Benefits of Recreation and Outdoor Exploration By City Manager Ken Striplin “I really believe that, as human beings, we have an innate need to explore, to see what’s around the corner.” – Jimmy Chin Over the past few months, Santa Clarita has received plenty of rain, making our hillsides green and replenishing our […]
The post Unlock the Benefits of Recreation and Outdoor Exploration appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/03/31/unlock-the-benefits-of-recreation-and-outdoor-exploration/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-31, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Tens of thousands of Israeli protesters call for Netanyahu’s removal.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/31/israeli-protesters-call-benjamin-netanyahu-removal
When Will the GenAI Bubble Burst?
date: 2024-03-31, from: Gary Marcus blog
Why and how it could happen in the next 12 months.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/when-will-the-genai-bubble-burst
2024-03-31 iPhone and iPad apps I use
date: 2024-03-31, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-03-31 iPhone and iPad apps I use
Slowly recovering from the cold, I hope. I feel like I can write again.
I really hate the feeling when I am looking for an app to do something and I can’t find a site that isn’t about the top 10 something or other. And then, by chance, somebody mentions a good app on fedi and it’s great. I guess I want to bring recommendation pages back.
I expect to be adding to this page.
Switzerland
Now, there are some apps that are only interesting if you’re in Switzerland:
SBB Mobile is for the train tables and for buying tickets online. Basically a must-have if you don’t have a car.
Swisstopo is for the Swiss maps, my the Swiss Federal Office of Topography. ❤️
SwitzerlandMobility is useful because it has the same official maps plus it interfaces with the Swiss Tourism site so all the big hiking tours have descriptions and pictures.
SWIplus is the alternative to visiting the swissinfo site. No real benefit. News for the Swiss abroad, or conversely, for the foreigners staring back.
SRF News is the alternative to visiting the SRF News site. No real benefit, either. News
CH info is the alternative to visiting the CH Info site. No real benefit, again. Learn the absolute basics about Switzerland’s political system, administration and judicial authorities – i.e., the Federal Administration.
VoteInfo is the alternative to reading all the news about all the elections, votes, referendums and initiatives, all in one place. Pretty interesting every handful of months.
Travel
OsmAnd Maps Travel & Navigate is the Open Street Map (OSM) app that lets me download maps for offline use. Extremely useful for travelling abroad since Switzerland is not in the European Union and therefore roaming is extremely expensive for us and for foreigners in Switzerland… we need to be part of the European Union roaming regulations. The user interface is complex with different sets of settings depending on what you want to use the app for, and so it can be endlessly confusing at first. My wife hates it. Just be prepared for that.
PeakFinder is an app to identify mountain peaks. The older men here in Switzerland prides themselves in knowing all the peaks and the app is my only way of keeping up.
Audio
iCatcher! is my podcast app. A user interface that’s easy to understand and it removes many ads. Great stuff! ❤️
Doppler MP3 & FLAC Player is a music player for offline use. ❤️
Stylophone is a client for a Music Player Daemon (MPD) server running somewhere on your home network, connected to some speakers. Before this app I used MaximumMPD. ❤️
Animoog is the synthesizer that got me spending a lot of time before going to bed doodling. So entrancing! ❤️
Animoog Z is the follow-up app for the one above, but I haven’t used it as much.
Minimoog Model D Synthesizer is the emulation of a popular synthesizer and it is the one that made me buy actual Moog synthesizer hardware, later. ❤️
AudioKit Synth One is a synthesizer that doesn’t emulate anything. The people behind this one have a whole range of related apps that I own but don’t actually use that much: Retro Piano, Bass 808, 909 Drums, King of FM. I think my main issue is that they’re either too simple or too complicated for my use.
GarageBand is great for the World instruments to doodle before going to bed: Pipa, Erhu, Koto and Guzheng. My favourite is the Erhu. I don’t use any of the gazillion other features.
iVCS3 is an emulator of the VCS3, machine created in 1969 by Peter Zinovieff’s EMS company. Apparently it was the first portable commercially available synthesizer. You can use the original manual to learn how to use it! ❤️
PixiTracker is a tracker that’s intuitive to use: edit patterns, arrange patterns into songs, load different sounds, it all works like a charm, and it looks charming. ❤️
Photos
I used to be all about those weird retro cameras. I should have listened to the few that kept saying that people like me would regret this one day.
These days I just use the regular camera and sometimes I increase exposure or increase contrast and some cropping and that’s it.
Biology
Flora Incognita uses artificial intelligence to identify plants. I love it and take a ton of pictures with it. ❤️
Merlin Bird ID uses artificial intelligence to identify birds by song. I love it and use it a lot when out and about. ❤️
Words
iA Writer is the offline text editor I use when I need one. I rarely do, though.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-03-31-iphone-apps
March 30, 2024
date: 2024-03-31, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-30-2024-318
Fish Reef Project Drops ‘Sea Caves’ into Ocean Waters off Goleta Coast
date: 2024-03-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Wednesday’s deployment marked the official beginning of the Santa Barbara–based nonprofit’s five-year Goleta Kelp Reef Restoration Project.
The post Fish Reef Project Drops ‘Sea Caves’ into Ocean Waters off Goleta Coast appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Wind Tunnel Tests Tesla’s Cybertruck Drag Coefficient Claims
date: 2024-03-31, from: Inside EVs News
Tesla’s official drag coefficient of 0.34 is right in line with competitors. But can this result be confirmed by independent testing?
https://insideevs.com/news/714423/tesla-cybertruck-aerodynamics-cd-wind/
California’s Wonderful Wildflower Trails
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Signal
A combination of several atmospheric rivers and Hurricane Hilary made 2023 one of the wettest winters in California’s recorded history receiving 141% of its average annual rainfall. With the rain comes an expectation of a spring superbloom of wildflowers. Widespread superblooms do not occur annually, they are a rare phenomenon that usually happen only once […]
The post California’s Wonderful Wildflower Trails appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/californias-wonderful-wildflower-trails/
Spring Into Fun
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Signal
Spring has arrived in Southern California with spring gardening and spring cleaning keeping everyone hopping. But spring in southern California is also the perfect time to get out and enjoy the delights that spring has to offer from annual food and wine festivals to entertainment and more. Enjoy nature as spring also awakens butterflies and […]
The post Spring Into Fun appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/spring-into-fun/
What is a Solar Eclipse?
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Signal
By Joe Rao The Old Farmer’s Almanac Experience the awe-inspiring beauty of a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 — a date worth marking on your calendar. Better yet, consider planning a vacation around this celestial phenomenon. For optimal viewing conditions, our recommendation is to head to the Southwest, where the likelihood of clear […]
The post What is a Solar Eclipse? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/what-is-a-solar-eclipse/
Rust developers at Google are twice as productive as C++ teams
date: 2024-03-31, updated: 2024-03-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Code shines up nicely in production, says Chocolate Factory’s Bergstrom
Echoing the past two years of Rust evangelism and C/C++ ennui, Google reports that Rust shines in production, to the point that its developers are twice as productive using the language compared to C++.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/31/rust_google_c/
County to Distribute Narcan to All Isla Vista Residents Prior to Deltopia
date: 2024-03-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Supervisor Laura Capps’s office announces initiative to reach every household in Isla Vista.
The post County to Distribute Narcan to All Isla Vista Residents Prior to Deltopia appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Baltimore bridge being cut up after ship collision
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
Baltimore, Maryland — The crumpled Baltimore bridge was being cut up in preparation for its removal, Maryland’s governor said Sunday, promising “progress” was being made after it was destroyed by an out-of-control ship.
Demolition crews using blow torches sliced through the top part of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed when the Dali cargo vessel lost power and struck it on Tuesday, killing six people.
“Progress is beginning to happen despite the fact that it’s an incredibly complicated situation,” said Maryland Governor Wes Moore, adding that weather conditions and debris in the water meant divers were unable to assist with the recovery operation.
“We now do have cranes, the Chesapeake 1,000, which has a capacity of lifting a thousand pounds,” Moore told CNN on Sunday.
“[Workers have] begun to cut up the remnants of the bridge that we can then prepare for removal.”
Video footage shared Saturday by the Unified Command — the overall response team that includes the U.S. Coast Guard — showed sparks flying as crews suspended in cages cut through an upper section of the steel structure.
The Unified Command said the wreckage will lifted away and processed at a Baltimore shipping site before being taken to a disposal site.
Moore said the recovery would be a “long road,” adding: “This is a very complex operation, but movement is happening.”
The difficult conditions have hampered efforts to recover the bodies of the six road workers — all Latino immigrants — who died when the bridge collapsed, with just two bodies recovered so far.
Shipping in and out of Baltimore — one of the United States’ busiest ports — has been halted, with the waterway impassable due to the sprawling wreckage.
Moore told MSNBC on Sunday that his priorities were recovering the victims’ bodies before reopening the channel.
“It’s impacting the nation’s economy. It’s the largest port for new cars, heavy trucks, agricultural equipment. It’s impacting people all over the country,” he said.
The ship veered towards the bridge due to power trouble, with the pilot issuing a Mayday call that allowed some road traffic to be stopped just before the collision at 1:30am after which the structure collapsed in seconds.
“It takes a lot to make sure that it can be dismantled safely, to make sure that the vessel stays where it is supposed to be and doesn’t swing out into the channel,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told “Face the Nation” on CBS.
https://www.voanews.com/a/baltimore-bridge-being-cut-up-after-ship-collision-/7550818.html
New Rules For Deltopia 2024: What to Know Before Partying in Isla Vista
date: 2024-03-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office announced new measures in response to the festival’s rowdy past.
The post New Rules For Deltopia 2024: What to Know Before Partying in Isla Vista appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
2025 Polestar 4 Specs And Pricing Overview
date: 2024-03-31, from: Inside EVs News
The electric SUV coupe will arrive in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2024.
https://insideevs.com/news/714381/2025-polestar4-specs-pricing-overview/
A Memo to OpenAI: You Are Not the Protagonists
date: 2024-03-31, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
Bury their new Voice Engine program in an unmarked grave
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/a-memo-to-openai-you-are-not-the
Open source is about more than just code
date: 2024-03-31, from: OS News
As some of the dust around the xz backdoor is slowly starting to settle, we’ve been getting a pretty clear picture of what, exactly, happened, and it’s not pretty. This is a story of the sole maintainer of a crucial building block of the open source stack having mental health issues, which at least partly contributes to a lack of interest in maintaining xz. It seems a coordinated campaign – consensus seems to point to a state actor – is then started to infiltrate xz, with the goal of inserting a backdoor into the project. Evan Boehs has done the legwork of diving into the mailing lists and commit logs of various projects and the people involved, and it almost reads like the nerd version of a spy novel. It involves seemingly fake users and accounts violently pressuring the original xz maintainer to add a second maintainer; a second maintainer who mysteriously seems to appear at around the same time, like a saviour. This second maintainer manages to gain the original maintainer’s trust, and within months, this mysterious newcomer more or less takes over as the new maintainer. As the new maintainer, this person starts adding the malicious code in question. Sockpuppet accounts show up to add code to oss-fuzz to try and make sure the backdoor won’t be detected. Once all the code is in place for the backdoor to function, more fake accounts show up to push for the compromised versions of xz to be included in Debian, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and possibly others. Roughly at this point, the backdoor is discovered entirely by chance because Andres Freund noticed his SSH logins felt a fraction of a second slower, and he wanted to know why. What seems to have happened here is a bad actor – again, most likely a state actor – finding and targeting a vulnerable maintainer, who, through clever social engineering on both a personal level as well as the project level, gained control over a crucial but unexciting building block of the open source stack. Once enough control and trust was gained, the bad actor added a backdoor to do… Well, something. It seems nobody really knows yet what the ultimate goal was, but we can all make some educated guesses and none of them are any good. When we think of vulnerabilities in computer software, we tend to focus on bugs and mistakes that unintentionally create the conditions wherein someone with malicious intent can do, well, malicious things. We don’t often consider the possibility of maintainers being malicious, secretly adding backdoors for all kinds of nefarious purposes. The problem the xz backdoor highlights is that while we have quite a few ways to prevent, discover, mitigate, and fix unintentional security holes, we seem to have pretty much nothing in place to prevent intentional backdoors placed by trusted maintainers. And this is a real problem. There are so many utterly crucial but deeply boring building blocks all over the open source stacks pretty much the entire computing world makes use of that it has become a meme, spearheaded by xkcd’s classic comic. The weakness in many of these types of projects is not the code, but the people maintaining that code, most likely through no fault of their own. There are so many things life can throw at you that would make you susceptible to social engineering – money problems, health problems, mental health issues, burnout, relationship problems, god knows what else – and the open source community has nothing in place to help maintainers of obscure but crucial pieces of infrastructure deal with problems like these. That’s why I’m suggesting the idea of setting up a foundation – or whatever legal entity makes sense – that is dedicated to helping maintainers who face the kinds of problems like the maintainer of xz did. A place where a maintainer who is dealing with problems outside of the code repository can go to for help, advice, maybe even financial and health assistance if needed. Even if all this foundation offers to someone is a person to talk to in confidence, it might mean the difference between burning out completely, or recovering at least enough to then possibly find other ways to improve one’s situation. If someone is burnt-out or has a mental health crisis, they could contact the foundation, tell their story, and say, hey, I need a few months to recover and deal with my problems, can we put out a call among already trusted members of the open source community to step in for me for a while? Keep the ship steady as she goes without rocking it until I get back or we find someone to take over permanently? This way, the wider community will also know the regular, trusted maintainer is stepping down for a while, and that any new commits should be treated with extra care, solving the problem of some unknown maintainer of an obscure but important package suffering in obscurity, the only hints found in the low-volume mailing list well after something goes wrong. The financial responsibility for such a safety net should undoubtedly be borne by the long list of ultra-rich megacorporations who profit off the backs of these people toiling away in obscurity. The financial burden for something like this would be pocket change to the likes of Google, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and so on, but could make a contribution to open source far greater than any code dump. Governments could probably be involved too, but that will most likely open up a whole can of worms, so I’m not sure if that would be a good idea. I’m not proposing this be some sort of glorified ATM where people can go to get some free money whenever they feel like it. The goal should be to help people who form crucial cogs in the delicate machinery of computing to live healthy, sustainable lives so their code and contributions to the community don’t get compromised. This
https://www.osnews.com/story/139070/open-source-is-about-more-than-just-code/
Servo: tables, WOFF2, and more
date: 2024-03-31, from: OS News
This month, after surpassing our legacy layout engine in the CSS test suites, we’re proud to share that Servo has surpassed legacy in the whole suite of Web Platform Tests as well! ↫ Servo blog Another months, another detailed progress report from Servo, the Rust browser engine once started by Mozilla. There’s a lot of interesting reading here for web developers.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139090/servo-tables-woff2-and-more/
Redox: significant performance and correctness improvements to the kernel
date: 2024-03-31, from: OS News
This year, there have been numerous improvements both to the kernel’s correctness, as well as raw performance. The signal and TLB shootdown MRs have significantly improved kernel memory integrity and possibly eliminated many hard-to-debug and nontrivial heisenbugs. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of work to be done optimizing and fixing bugs in relibc, in order to improve compatibility with ported applications, and most importantly of all, getting closer to a self-hosted Redox. ↫ Jacob Lorentzon (4lDO2) I love how much of the focus for Redox seems to be on the lower levels of the operating system, because it’s something many projects tend to kind of forget to highlight, to spend more time on new icons or whatever. These in-depth Redox articles are always informative, and have me very excited about Redox’ future. Obviously, Redox is on the list of operating systems I need to write a proper article about. I’m not sure if there’s enough for a full review or if it’ll be more of a short look – we’ll see when we get there.
Windows 11 may get a highly requested Start menu redesign, here is how to try it
date: 2024-03-31, from: OS News
In October 2023, we published a recap of the top 10 features Windows 11 users want for the redesigned Start menu. Number 6 was the ability to switch from list view to grid view in the “All Apps” list, which received over 1,500 upvotes in the Feedback Hub. Six months later, Microsoft finally appears to be ready to give users what they want. PhantomOfEarth, the ever-giving source of hidden stuff in Windows 11 preview builds, discovered that Windows 11 build 22635.3420 lets you change from list to grid view in the “All Apps” section. Like other unannounced features, this one requires a bit of tinkering using the ViVeTool app until Microsoft makes it official. ↫ Taras Buria I’m still baffled Microsoft consistently manages to mess up something as once-iconic and impactful like the Start menu. It seems like Microsoft just can’t leave it well enough alone, even though it kind of already nailed it in Windows 95 – just give us that, but with a modern search function, and we’re all going to be happy. That’s it. We don’t want or need more.
David Hegg | Celebrating the Empty Tomb
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Signal
For nearly 2,000 years, Christians have celebrated the emptiness of a tomb outside the old city of Jerusalem. Whether you know it as Easter or Resurrection Sunday, on that day, around the world, churches are full, restaurants are humming, children are gobbling down sugar, and the fashion world declares we can finally wear pastels. Sadly, […]
The post David Hegg | Celebrating the Empty Tomb appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/david-hegg-celebrating-the-empty-tomb/
New $20 minimum wage for California fast food workers starts Monday
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Most fast food workers in California will be paid at least $20 an hour beginning Monday when a new law is scheduled to kick in giving more financial security to an historically low-paying profession while threatening to raise prices in a state already known for its high cost of living.
Democrats in the state Legislature passed the law last year in part as an acknowledgement that many of the more than 500,000 people who work in fast food restaurants are not teenagers earning some spending money, but adults working to support their families.
That includes immigrants like Ingrid Vilorio, who said she started working at a McDonald’s shortly after arriving in the United States in 2019. Fast food was her full-time job until last year. Now, she works about eight hours per week at a Jack in the Box while working other jobs.
“The $20 raise is great. I wish this would have come sooner,” Vilorio said through a translator. “Because I would not have been looking for so many other jobs in different places.”
The law was supported by the trade association representing fast food franchise owners. But since it passed, many franchise owners have bemoaned the impact the law is having on them, especially during California’s slowing economy.
Alex Johnson owns 10 Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Cinnabon restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. He said sales have slowed in 2024, prompting him to lay off his office staff and rely on his parents to help with payroll and human resources.
Increasing his employees’ wages will cost Johnson about $470,000 each year. He will have to raise prices anywhere from 5% to 15% at his stores, and is no longer hiring or seeking to open new locations in California, he said.
“I try to do right by my employees. I pay them as much as I can. But this law is really hitting our operations hard,” Johnson said.
“I have to consider selling and even closing my business,” he said. “The profit margin has become too slim when you factor in all the other expenses that are also going up.”
Over the past decade, California has doubled its minimum wage for most workers to $16 per hour. A big concern over that time was whether the increase would cause some workers to lose their jobs as employers’ expenses increased.
Instead, data showed wages went up and employment did not fall, said Michael Reich, a labor economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
“I was surprised at how little, or how difficult it was to find disemployment effects. If anything, we find positive employment effects,” Reich said.
Plus, Reich said while the statewide minimum wage is $16 per hour, many of the state’s larger cities have their own minimum wage laws setting the rate higher than that. For many fast food restaurants, this means the jump to $20 per hour will be smaller.
The law reflected a carefully crafted compromise between the fast food industry and labor unions, which had been fighting over wages, benefits and legal liabilities for close to two years. The law originated during private negotiations between unions and the industry, including the unusual step of signing confidentiality agreements.
The law applies to restaurants offering limited or no table service and which are part of a national chain with at least 60 establishments nationwide. Restaurants operating inside a grocery establishment are exempt, as are restaurants producing and selling bread as a stand-alone menu item.
At first, it appeared the bread exemption applied to Panera Bread restaurants. Bloomberg News reported the change would benefit Greg Flynn, a wealthy campaign donor to Newsom. But the Newsom administration said the wage increase law does apply to Panera Bread because the restaurant does not make dough on-site. Also, Flynn has announced he would pay his workers at least $20 per hour.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7550717.html
Dr. Gene Dorio | Enhancing Camaraderie
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Signal
Recently, I have had a hip problem and walk with a cane. When I go shopping, to the post office, and even to the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center, people open the door or allow me to go in first. What a great, caring community we live in! The nation is politically divided, yet kindness, […]
The post Dr. Gene Dorio | Enhancing Camaraderie appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/03/dr-gene-dorio-enhancing-camaraderie/
Revolutionizing rider safety: The protective jacket every e-biker should consider
date: 2024-03-31, from: Electrek Feed
If you’ve followed my writing or videos, you’ll know I’m a “life on two-wheels” kind of guy. If there’s an electric motorcycle, e-bike, scooter, or anything else remotely rideable out there, I’ve probably thrown a leg over it at least once. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to learn how each type of vehicle comes with its own unique personality and enjoyment, but also its own risk profile. And without the benefit of 5,000 pounds of murderous steel around us, out of necessity we motorcycle riders become masters of balancing risk.
But could the perceived risk of different types of rides, such as e-motorcycles versus e-bikes, cloud our judgment on personal protection? I think it might, at least for me. And so I’ve been on a hunt for the right gear to fix that.
LEVER WEEKLY: Cargo-Ship Catastrophes And Secret Police Slush Funds
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Lever News
From illegal activity at the shipping giant behind the Baltimore disaster to dark-money donations funding police weaponry, here’s all the news from The Lever this week.
https://www.levernews.com/lever-weekly-cargo-ship-catastrophes-and-secret-police-slush-funds/
Norah Jones
date: 2024-03-31, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
A Reason To Smile
https://steady.substack.com/p/norah-jones
Why Microsoft’s Copilot will only kinda run locally on AI PCs for now
date: 2024-03-31, updated: 2024-03-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Redmond’s strategy for blending cloud and client is finally taking shape
Comment Microsoft’s definition of what does and doesn’t constitute an AI PC is taking shape. With the latest version of Windows, a dedicated Copilot key, and an NPU capable of at least 40 trillion operations per second, you’ll soon be able to run Microsoft Copilot locally, ish, on your machine.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/31/microsoft_copilot_hardware/
Polaris Is Recalling Some 2022-2023 Snowmobiles Due To Potential Fuel Leak
date: 2024-03-31, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
The issue is related to MY 2022-2023 snowmobiles equipped with Patriot BOOST engines.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/714387/polaris-snowmobile-fuel-leak-recall/
Why I write
date: 2024-03-31, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>The other day I was asked why I have a blog, why I write. Hard questions to answer. I don’t really know why I’m doing all this. I know why I started back in 2017. But the reason why I started is long gone at this point. I started the blog as some sort of public accountability tool and it’s now everything but that. I don’t write to be accountable. I probably should.</p>The more I write on this site, the more I realize that what I’m trying to do is to connect. I’m trying to connect with others—with you—but I’m also trying to help others connect with each other. And, in a weird way, I’m also trying to connect with myself.
It’s why I find it so enjoyable to share other people’s projects on this site. It’s why I’m happy to remind you that March is almost over and if you haven’t already you should write something for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival. It’s also why I’m finding most of the current web so annoying and distasteful. The endless self-promotion, the attempt to grow a persona, the lack of authenticity. Everything becomes transactional and something is lost in the process.
I’m a nobody. I’m just a random person with a website like countless others out there. There’s nothing special about what I’m doing here and that’s how it should be. Sharing what we find interesting shouldn’t be some special activity. Being kind to one another should be the norm. We’re social creatures. Connecting with others is a great way to grow and improve as human beings. This is probably why I’m writing. To become a better me.
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https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/EMdQMyHxCynwUzZ2
XZ Utils backdoor
date: 2024-03-31, from: Tilde.news
https://tukaani.org/xz-backdoor/
2024-03-27 Convert text file to PDF
date: 2024-03-31, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-03-27 Convert text file to PDF
I just couldn’t find a good way to turn a text file into a PDF. Within
Emacs, ps-print-buffer is hard to configure and my two
specific problems were the following:
- everything is turned into Latin-1 so I cannot use the EN dash;
- the line length was set too short so that I couldn’t print lines longer than 80 characters even though there was plenty of space left.
I wasted some time trying to write something in Bash, turned to Perl and wasted some more time trying to figure out why the encodings were all wrong except when the encodings were OK but Perl gave me a warning for every multi-byte character. So frustrating.
The solution ended up not being decoding and encoding the bytes in the
Perl script but to use the –encoding option for
weasyprint. In this case, it wasn’t Perl’s fault, it was my
fear of Perl’s encoding issues that led my down endless variations of
binmode, :utf8, decode_utf8 and
encode_utf8. But I think I have it, now.
This is what I ended up with:
-
use
weasyprint; -
wrap it all in a
pretag.
I created a script called to-pdf with the following:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use Modern::Perl;
use File::Basename;
if (@ARGV == 0) {
die "Usage: to-pdf file.txt ...\n";
}
for (@ARGV) {
open(my $text, "<", $_) or die "Cannot read $_\n";
my ($name, $path, $suffix) = fileparse($_, ".txt");
open(my $html, "|-") || exec "weasyprint", "--encoding", "utf-8", "-", "$path$name.pdf";
print $html <<'BEG';
<!DOCTYPE html>
<body>
<pre style="font-family: Iosevka; font-size: 10pt">
BEG
for (<$text>) { print $html $_ }; # copy text
print $html <<'END';
</pre>
</body>
END
}
#Administration #Printing #PDF
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-03-27-to-pdf
Sunday caption contest: Good or rotten?
date: 2024-03-31, from: Robert Reich on Substack
And last week’s winner
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-caption-contest-good-or-rotten
Storm Impacts Areas of Montecito
date: 2024-03-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
CHP and CalTrans close Highway 101 in both directions Saturday night due to flooding.
The post Storm Impacts Areas of Montecito appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/03/31/storm-impacts-areas-of-montecito/
Warhol portrait of Mao goes missing, college seeks return, ‘no questions asked’
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
Washington/Los Angeles — A California college is seeking the return, “no questions asked,” of an iconic image of Chinese Communist Party founder Mao Zedong created by famed American artist Andy Warhol.
Two weeks ago, Orange Coast College discovered that one of Warhol’s signed silkscreen prints of Mao was missing from its vault. The portrait has an estimated value of $50,000.
Doug Bennett, executive director for college advancement at Orange Coast College, told VOA’s Mandarin Service that the print was purchased by a person close to the school from a gallery in Laguna Beach, California, in 1974 and donated to the school anonymously in September 2020.
But now, even before it was put on display, it’s gone missing.
Bennett said he hopes someone just took the print by mistake, adding that the college wouldn’t ask questions if it was returned.
“Someone perhaps took it and put it in their office or put it in their home and thought it was OK to do. Or maybe it was misplaced, but I don’t think it was like a ring of art thieves that stole it,” he said.
Warhol made the portraits of Mao in the 1970s after U.S. President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China.
“When it [the portrait of Mao] first came out in the 1970s, it was very controversial, still maybe to some people,” Bennett said.
From 1972-73, Warhol used the image of Mao from the Little Red Book, widely circulated in China, as a template to create 199 richly colored Mao silkscreen works in five series.
The school immediately launched an internal investigation after discovering the print was missing on March 13. A week later, a report was made to the Costa Mesa Police Department in Orange County, where the school is located. The police are investigating.
“It’s a high priority for the police department, and two detectives are assigned to the case and are working on it,” Bennett said.
The Costa Mesa Police Department told VOA the investigation is ongoing but did not provide any new details.
Police and the school are appealing for anyone with information to come forward.
Warhol, who is known as the godfather of the pop art movement, began using ubiquitous objects such as Campbell’s soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles as subjects for his creations in the 1960s, kicking off the movement.
A summary of the Mao portraits by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York says this about the series: “As interpreted by Warhol, these works, with their repeated image painted in flamboyant colors and with expressionistic marks, may suggest a parallel between political propaganda and capitalist advertising.”
In 1982, Warhol visited China and took a photo in front of the portrait of Mao in Tiananmen Square. Five years later, Warhol died.
In 2013, Warhol’s works toured China, but the Mao series was forced to be withdrawn. At the time, Chinese state media claimed that the Mao in the works “far exceeded the officially acceptable image.”
However, the Mao series has become one of Warhol’s most sought-after celebrity portraits by collectors. According to data from Sotheby’s auction house, in 2015, a Mao painting was sold for $47.5 million. In 2017, another painting of Mao was sold for $12.7 million.
Venezuelans increasingly stuck in Mexico, lowering illegal crossings to US
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
MEXICO CITY — Venezuelan migrants often have a quick answer when asked to name the most difficult stretch of their eight-country journey to the U.S. border, and it’s not the dayslong jungle trek through Colombia and Panama with its venomous vipers, giant spiders and scorpions. It’s Mexico.
“In the jungle, you have to prepare for animals. In Mexico, you have to prepare for humans,” Daniel Ventura, 37, said after three days walking through the Darien Gap and four months waiting in Mexico to enter the U.S. legally using the government’s online appointment system, called CBP One. He and his family of six were headed to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where he has a relative.
Mexico’s crackdown on immigration in recent months — at the urging of the Biden administration — has hit Venezuelans especially hard. The development highlights how much the U.S. depends on Mexico to control migration, which has reached unprecedented levels and is a top issue for voters as President Joe Biden seeks reelection.
Arrests of migrants for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped so this year after a record high in December. The biggest decline was among Venezuelans, whose arrests plummeted to 3,184 in February and 4,422 in January from 49,717 in December.
While two months do not make a trend and illegal crossings remain high by historical standards, Mexico’s strategy to keep migrants closer to its border with Guatemala than the U.S. is at least temporary relief for the Biden administration.
Large numbers of Venezuelans began reaching the U.S. in 2021, first by flying to Mexico and then on foot and by bus after Mexico imposed visa restrictions. In September, Venezuelans briefly replaced Mexicans as the largest nationality crossing the border.
Mexico’s efforts have included forcing migrants from trains, flying and busing them to the southern part of the country, and flying some home to Venezuela.
Last week, Mexico said it would give about $110 a month for six months to each Venezuelan it deports, hoping they won’t come back. Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador extended the offer Tuesday to Ecuadorians and Colombians.
“If you support people in their places of origin, the migratory flow reduces considerably, but that requires resources and that is what the United States government has not wanted to do,” said López Obrador, who is barred by term limits from running in June elections.
Migrants say they must pay corrupt officials at Mexico’s frequent government checkpoints to avoid being sent back to southern cities. Each setback is costly and frustrating.
“In the end, it is a business because wherever you get to, they want to take the last of what you have,” said Yessica Gutierrez, 30, who left Venezuela in January in a group of 15 family members that includes young children. They avoided some checkpoints by hiking through brush.
The group is now waiting in Mexico City to get an appointment so they can legally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. To use the CBP One app, applicants must be in central or northern Mexico. So Gutierrez’s group sleeps in two donated tents across the street from a migrant shelter and check the app daily.
More than 500,000 migrants have used the app to enter the U.S. at land crossings with Mexico since its introduction in January 2023. They can stay in the U.S. for two years under a presidential authority called parole, which entitles them to work.
“I would rather cross the jungle 10 times than pass through Mexico once,” said Jose Alberto Uzcategui, who left a construction job in the Venezuelan city of Trujillo with his wife and sons, ages 5 and 7, in a family group of 11. They are biding time in Mexico City until they have enough money for a phone so they can use CBP One.
Venezuelans account for the vast majority of 73,166 migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in January and February, which is on pace to pass last year’s record of more than 500,000, according to the Panamanian government, suggesting Venezuelans are still fleeing a country that has lost more than 7 million people amid political turmoil and economic decline. Mexican authorities stopped Venezuelan migrants more than 56,000 times in February, about twice as much as the previous two months, according to government figures.
“The underlying question here is: Where are the Venezuelans? They’re in Mexico, but where are they?” said Stephanie Brewer, who covers Mexico for the Washington Office on Latin America, a group that monitors human rights abuses.
Mexico deported only about 429 Venezuelans during the first two months of 2024, meaning nearly all are waiting in Mexico.
Many fear that venturing north of Mexico City will get them fleeced or returned to southern Mexico. The U.S. admits 1,450 people a day through CBP One with appointments that are granted two weeks out.
Even if they evade Mexican authorities, migrants feel threatened by gangs who kidnap, extort and commit other violent crimes.
“You have to go town by town because the cartels need to put food on their plates,” said Maria Victoria Colmenares, 27, who waited seven months in Mexico City for a CBP One appointment, supporting her family by working as a waitress while her husband worked at a car wash.
“It’s worth the wait because it brings a reward,” said Colmenares, who took a taxi from the Tijuana airport to the border crossing with San Diego, hours before her Tuesday appointment.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has touted his own efforts to explain the recent reduction in illegal crossings in his state, where at least 95% of Border Patrol arrests of Venezuelans occur. Those have included installing razor wire, putting a floating barrier in the Rio Grande and making plans to build a new base for members of the National Guard.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has mostly credited Mexico for the drop in border arrests.
Some Venezuelans still come north despite the perils.
Marbelis Torrealba, 35, arrived in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, with her sister and niece this week, carrying ashes of her daughter who drowned in a boat that capsized in Nicaragua. She said they were robbed by Mexican officials and gangs and returned several times to southern Mexico.
A shelter arranged for them to enter the U.S. legally on emergency humanitarian grounds, but she was prepared to cross illegally.
“I already experienced the worst: Seeing your child die in front of you and not being able to do anything.”
Today in SCV History (March 31)
date: 2024-03-31, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1870 – George Gleason and partners apply for patent on gold lode in Soledad Canyon. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-march-31/
Refurb weekend: Data General/One (and the worst LCD in the world)
date: 2024-03-31, from: Old Vintage Computer Research
I mentioned earlier that while I prefer specializing in non-x86 laptops, that doesn’t mean I don’t collect interesting or unusual x86 laptops, like the Brother GeoBook NB-60 (I finally tracked down a mostly working NB-80C, the top of the line model, which will be the subject of a future restoration). However, this one is a unit I’ve had since about 1998 when they were getting rid of it at the University I worked for, and in many ways a landmark PC laptop since it was the first battery-capable system with a full 80x25 or CGA 640x200 LCD — though with a notorious deficiency: more on that shortly — and also came with a terminal and text editor in ROM. This is the 1984 Data General/One.
Ah, what the heck. I finally got a round tuit. That makes it time for … another Refurb Weekend.
Instead, the 1983 Gavilan SC is usually regarded as the first true DOS PC laptop. Its 66x8 (400x64) LCD was detailed enough to support a rudimentary GUI using its touch pad as well as MS-DOS 2.11, it came with an internal 3.5” floppy (the GRiD did not), and the LCD and battery-backed RAM storage were light enough to finally run the entire system on batteries. Still, it was quite expensive and its small display size limited its utility, a problem not fully addressed by the 1983 Visual Commuter, which had a full 80 column LCD but in its first iteration only 16 lines of text. Both machines, catering to the traveling professional, included 300 baud modems and ROM-based terminal software.
Meanwhile, the era of the personal computer generally spelled trouble for minicomputer makers not named IBM, and Data General was no exception. While the new 32-bit MV series (the subject of the classic The Soul of a New Machine) was their first unqualified success in years, the expense of its development combined with cheaper microcomputers eroding their mainstay 16-bit sales made it impossible to launch another large technical undertaking. To preserve cashflow, smaller projects thus became the order of the day, and one of these was to develop a microcomputer of DG’s own that could nevertheless still provide market support for their larger systems. Mindful of Digital’s own disastrous attempts like the DEC Rainbow in 1982, DG decided to take on the portable segment where there were relatively few competitors and they could stand out more easily.
Designed cooperatively by DG and its Japanese subsidiary Nippon Data General, the DG-1 hit most of its marks. Not least of its innovations was its size and weight (less than 14” by 12” or about 35cm by 30cm, three inches thick and around ten pounds or five kilos) as well as the 720K 3.5” floppy drives and custom full-size monochrome LCD panel, both manufactured by Epson. The built-in modem option and internal communications program made it a portable option for existing customers who needed a Dasher terminal on the road (and emphasized that Data General hardware was preferred) and it was at least as DOS-compatible as most other non-IBM PCs were at the time (provided you stuck to BIOS calls, that is).
While early users raved about its portability and power (Peter Norton himself wrote approvingly in PC Magazine that one could “use it as your one and only PC”), even its boosters found the LCD’s legibility notoriously poor, especially as it wasn’t backlit and the earliest models did not have an adjustable screen tilt. A potentially greater concern was that most DOS software still came on 5.25” floppies at the time, for which the DG-1 required a separate wall-powered unit connected to the expansion port. Data General addressed the first problem in less than six months with an updated display that could lock in multiple angles using a higher-contrast “reverse” polarizer and removing the lens. Customers agreed it was an improvement — as you’ll see it could hardly have been worse — and it was sold new for the same MSRP, but existing customers had to pay $350 for the upgrade despite Data General’s claims the upgrade was sold at a loss. As less than 10,000 had been sold to that point, the market damage was lessened. This updated first generation system is what we’ll be working with here.
In those days PCs weren’t yet (entirely) commodities, and Data General was determined to make the DG-1 a distinctive upmarket product. The DG-1 official carrying case was a sharp plush job designed by Pierre Cardin with an embroidered Data General logo and internal compartments for the power supplies (yes, plural) and wall and phone cords. Even the open-cell foam was higher quality, not the rubbishy stuff you find today sloughing off into tarry filth over other items of the era. Unified branding covered the packaging, the display lid, the bag tag, …
… and even the official Data General/One license plate, of similar concept to the more famous Digital UNIX one. (I have this one plus the later Compaq UNIX plate after the DEC buyout.)
The styling extended to the side panels and the twin floppy drives (there was never an internal hard disk option for this particular iteration).
Three keys are unique to the DG-1: a Cmd (Command) key, used for specific key combinations by the ROM, plus a Spcl (Special) key and a blank (!) key that are unexplained by the manual or the tutorial and don’t seem to do anything in the U.S. layout. I suspect these key positions are used by the keyboard layouts for other languages and later iterations of the DG/One employed it as another type of Alt key. In another nice touch, an outcropping on the display bezel will automatically flip the power switch to off when you close the lid.
I mentioned power supplies (plural): in early models, the charger for the battery was a separate unit and connected to a separate port. Even in this updated model where the power supply for battery and main power is now one unit, it still requires a separate cable to the battery charge port. I don’t have the battery, so I don’t have either the original sidecar supply or the cable, but I also don’t have leaky NiCd guts all over the inside of the machine either.
Below that is the expansion port, but I don’t have anything that connects to it. While I know the external 5.25” drive exists (model 2233), I’ve never seen the 2235 expansion chassis, though I have seen a smaller 2234 “dock expander” that also connects here. This expander is thumbscrewed onto the back over the rear ports using the two standoffs near the bottom. Although it replicates the printer and power ports, it blocks the RS-232 and modem ports in lieu of a 37-pin floppy disk connector and two external monitor ports (DE-9 and BNC, presumably CGA and composite). Since the whole concept with the DG-1 was portable communications, this particular option didn’t seem especially well thought-out.
On the underside of the unit are the labels. These upgraded units have a hastily pasted-on model sticker over the original model designation which varied based on the factory options. This machine has, near as I can tell, the maximum available internal configuration: 512K of RAM (128K base and three additional 128K RAM cards), a second floppy disk drive and an internal 1200bps modem. I always found the handwritten serial number on this machine’s lower label to be interesting. On modem-equipped machines an additional FCC sticker was supposed to be in the lower right well of the embossed plastic label, but this unit doesn’t have one for some reason.
Oh yeah: the screen. Let me preface this paragraph by saying that our machine’s LCD here has degenerated further and we’re going to compensate, but despite the significant engineering resources put into its fabrication, even at its best and even at the time everyone agreed it was bad. InfoWorld in 1985 called it “godawful” and “a better mirror than [a] display,” and even Peter Norton admitted its readability “isn’t too good.” PC Magazine 7/86 retrospectively theorized that achieving sufficient contrast and visibility wasn’t feasible at the time with such a large panel, adding, “The exchange ‘Why don’t you turn it on? / It is on’ is no joke. It happened in our offices.” There isn’t an ideal tilt position for the display owing to its limited viewing angles, but you can get a sense of the original contrast level with the first couple lines of text.
At this point in photography the floppy eject buttons chose to come off again, so we’ll start the refurb there. The buttons attach with two prongs, a long one and short one, and it looks like the long ones (on the left in this picture) just plain snapped off. We need to make sure that whatever fix we implement lets us still remove the eject buttons to get into the case, so I chose to go with Velcro here: I cut some Velcro loop material to the proper size and punched holes in it where the button prongs would have fit, then made a little roll of Velcro hooks to go next to the intact short prong to act as a replacement long prong.
Pressed in firmly, this is enough to let the small prong engage with its receptacle and then hold it there with the Velcro, but the eject button can still be popped off if necessary. As a nice consequence, every press on the eject button will keep the grip maintained. Having done, let’s take them off again for the floppy drive swap and to replace the CMOS battery, since we’ll need to disassemble the machine to do those tasks.
We turn the unit over, slip off the back cover by freeing its tabs through the holes in its track, and then remove the exposed screws. Despite the appearance of only two types of screws, there are actually five: six of one type on the left which hold in the floppy drives, three in the front of another type that holds down the keyboard, one each of a thicker screw used to hold the main assembly in, and then a smaller and sharper one.
Now turn the unit back over and remove the side panel covering the floppy drive(s) and the corresponding panel on the left side of the machine with a spudger (they’re held in with tabs). To make a rigid “sandwich,” Data General decided to hold the unit together with metal snaps, three on each side. These pop out by wedging a small blade or metal spatula into the depressions next to them. Be careful, they’re in tight! When putting them back on at the end, make sure not to get one in the floppy drive like I did or you’ll have to get the drive back out again to sweep it free.
As with all laptops, there are invariably ribbon cables connecting the two halves. While the DG-1 has two ribbon cable connectors, only one of them actually has a ribbon cable in it which goes to the display. Open the battery compartment with your paper clip, disconnect and remove the battery (duh) if present, and then through the hole at the bottom gently lift the top of the occupied connector and slip out the display ribbon cable.
With the top off we can see the A: drive (closest to the keyboard) and next to it towards the back a stack of two other cards we’ll have to remove to get to the B: drive. These are all connected with Molex ribbon cables. The power board and DC-DC converter is on the backside perpendicular to the mainboard with the power switch and battery connectors wired to it. The other main landmark is a silver box marked with “UPGRADE MEMORY CARDS SHOULD BE ADDED IN ORDER FROM THE TOP DOWN.”
That silver box has three little connectors for the RAM expansion cards, 128K each (model 2252). They are completely populated in this maximally expanded machine and the box can be pulled off the mainboard (we won’t do that this time around) if they need to be swapped. Under the box and not shown here is a Mitsubishi M5M82C37, a CMOS second-source version of the Intel 8237 four-channel DMA controller. The base 128K of RAM is on the underside of the mainboard, so with the three cards we have our 512K.
Both chips are socketed and of course the EPROM could be erased and rewritten, which yields potential for fun upgrades like hacking the built-in software. I did think about replacing the 80C88 with the more performant pin-compatible NEC V20, but I’m not sure how well the chip would run downclocked to “just” 4MHz (the datasheet gives the lowest speed as 5MHz) nor on a battery, and even if it doesn’t utterly blow the machine up we may need to make some adjustments to the ROM for timing-sensitive routines. A project for another day.
The little metal boxes here sheathe crystals. Next to the 4658 is a 3.579545MHz oscillator, likely for composite NTSC colourburst (another reason to theorize the 4658 contains the video circuit), and beside the 82C59A are 11.9808MHz and 10MHz oscillators. The 10MHz is most likely divided down to generate the CPU and system clocks, while the 11.9808MHz crystal is probably the clock for the 4658, assuming it is indeed an MCS-51 (most instructions take about twelve clock cycles).
We now turn our attention to that stack of cards in the upper right on top of the B: drive. The top one is held in by two screws and a pin header to the card under it.
This card is the optional model 2750 1200bps modem card, another 8051-based device (an Oki 80C51 on a 7.3754MHz crystal). The 5-pin DIN connector is electrically a regular telephone modular jack and the same wires are present. The modem responds to the standard Hayes AT command set of the time and has a license for the Hayes escape sequence. If you send it an ATI0 command, it will return the PCB type and revision, in this case 120.
Under that is the I/O board, our first stop. The CMOS settings battery is here, a CR2025, and as expected it is completely dead. We’ll replace that when we put this back together. The other main chips on top are an NEC μPD765AC (D765AC), which is the floppy drive controller, and an Epson SED9420C variable-frequency oscillator (VFO) data separator with MFM sync field detection, loop filter switching and timer functions. Interestingly, its datasheet only mentions use with 8” and 5.25” drives, but Epson chose to use it here as well. Along the back are the two serial ports (modem and printer), protected by three Tokin D-05N data line filters.
But what drives those serial ports? We’ll have to get the card out to know. We remove the standoffs on the rear ports securing the card to the case (the standoffs on the card can be left alone) and wiggle the ports through their holes, then pull the card off the pin headers.
Our drives are now finally exposed and we’ve already removed their screws, so now we can just free them and lift them out.
Both drives are Epson SMD-100s. Their interface and power connectors are also ribbons and can be pushed off with a nylon spudger.
Unfortunately, these disk drives are not commonly found anymore, which is why we’re just going to switch them for the time being. The SMD-110 is a close relative that should directly substitute and it may be possible to replace them with even later SMD drives, but you’d also have to account for the eject buttons and disk slots with the later slimline versions.
Lifting out the other drive. A small outcropping in both bays acts as an alignment pin and fits into a hole on the underside.
Now, that screen. While never good I think it’s obvious this is worse than it ought to be, and the mottled contrast suggested a degenerating LCD polarizer. Most twisted nematic LCDs have a 45-degree polarizer and this is widely available as cling film but we can’t assume that here because of the custom Epson display. I ended up buying a couple Chinamazon sheets with a 0-degree line to test it. Both were smaller than the LCD, which is roughly 8.5” by 6.75”, but it was an easy way to find out what I was actually dealing with. Also, by trying the film, we shouldn’t be doing anything to the screen we can’t undo later. Before opening the case I tried it out:
It’s still pretty bad, but it’s definitely better, and it’s definitely also at 45 degrees. Since we have the film, I went ahead and taped the sheets together to do a quick install.
Doing cuts on the paper cutter.
Checking the fit against the bezel.
Now properly cut to size, I removed the backing and stuck it on the screen, then peeled off the front.
Here it is without the bezel. The bezel is actually only held on by a lip at the bottom and two snaps at the top. It came out a little more bubblicious than I’d like because this particular screen had a bit of a hard life with little bits embedded in it I could not clean off (and rubbing it made alarming shimmers in the LCD, so I didn’t feel much like going at it with something slightly more abrasive). As a result, even with a couple tries and squeegeeing all the way, the little embedded bits leave bubbles and those aren’t going away. It’s like trying to apply a PDA screen protector but five times bigger and ten times worse.
I thought about some alternatives. The most obvious is to apply a larger sheet of film and/or buy a 45 degree polarized sheet of sufficient dimension since we’ve established this is otherwise a TN panel. On the other hand, while that should eliminate the join line, any adhesive film will still run into the same problems with the surface that this one did.
The other thought is to get a new clear acrylic plate cut to size and put the film on that, and then put the plate in front of the screen. (There are polarized acrylic sheets also, but the quotes I was getting were substantially more expensive than just regular acrylic and polarizing film together.) The ~4mm bevel depth gives space for such a plate to sink into, well within typical stock thicknesses here in the United States, and unless I really mess up there should be no bubbles. However, since the edges of the screen are tapered, something would have to keep it in place or it will slip down (and out). Since we’re still working with polymers, I suppose I could try transparent aluminum later. All that said, none of these alternatives would yield significantly better contrast — if at all — so for the purposes of this article let’s go with what we have.
Let’s take a tour!
The internal 32K ROM contains a simple terminal program, text editor, setup utility and basic diagnostics. It is entered either by turning on the machine with no disks to boot from, or pressing Ctrl-Alt-Cmd in DOS. It is not a built-in TSR or some such: the only way back to DOS is through a restart.
How does it write to disk without DOS? Simple: it doesn’t. If you turn off the machine, it’s gone. Transmit it, print it or lose it.
The Terminal program can emulate either a Data General Dasher D2 (“DGC Terminal”) or a Lear-Siegler ADM3A (“Std Terminal”). We had multiple ADM3A clones on campus at the time, so I’m quite sure it was used in that capacity. It can either use the internal modem or an external modem or null modem at up to 9600bps. There is no hardware flow control, but XON/XOFF is supported with the “OFC Mode” (Output Flow of Control). You can send a document in the Notebook buffer, or you can receive data into the Notebook, to which it is appended. You can switch into and out of the Notebook and Terminal without dropping the connection.
The diagnostics mode is not too useful because it only tests memory and attached disk drives, without any other confidence testing, and all the tests are destructive (you’ll lose contents of memory, contents of any scratch disks used for testing, etc.). If there is bad memory, the test will report a value x:yyy:z where x is (0) onboard RAM or (1-3) one of the expansion cards, yyy is the chip number in decimal, and z is whether it was (0) a read/write error or (1) an addressing error.
Last but not least is setup. Now that we have the battery replaced, we can actually save our settings. The defaults are generally appropriate but notice that the number of disk drives is not automatically detected: you need to tell the machine you have two or three drives, as appropriate. This allows you to have only one drive but connect the external 5.25” drive, for example, which is also a valid two-drive configuration. We’ll select two disk drives, commit the settings, and boot from the DOS floppy.
I don’t have the original Data General disks, just copies. The first disk contains Data General’s customized version of MS-DOS 2.11 on a single bootable 720K floppy. Notice that we start off with only 464K of RAM despite 512K in the machine because 48K is used for vampire video (so a basic 128K system would only have 80K available). The use of MS-DOS 2.11 is particularly interesting because support for 720K 3.5” floppies didn’t officially exist in MS-DOS until the OEM release of 3.2.
Besides the general tools of the period — but notice no on-disk BASIC — there are a few DG-specific utilities. The PRN_SET.EXE utilities set the printer character set in use and VDISK.COM provides a RAM disk driver (DEVICE=VDISK.COM xxx where xxx is the number of kilobytes, minimum 16K). This drive appears as D: and you can have multiple ones (E:, F:, etc.), but I found it much less useful with a two-drive system. I’m not sure what GRAPHICS.COM does; it only has a DG string in it and a small amount of code, and is not documented in the user’s guide.
The second disk contains the tutorial. We’ll boot up from this disk and spend a little time there.
Starting up. It also has a bootable MS-DOS 2.11.
The title screen. Despite some reports claiming 640x256 resolution, the hi-res screen is 640x200, just like regular CGA hi-res.
The main menu. The program alternates between graphics and text mode as appropriate. Although there are some inconsistencies suggesting work by separate authors at various times, it’s easy to follow, and if you don’t have the manual it provides at least the basics.
It also assumes relatively little of the user, though this baseline knowledge requirement does wander a bit.
I mentioned there is software contrast adjustment, though I would call it optimistic at best. The Cmd-PageDown combination lightens the screen and Cmd-PageUp darkens it (the “Try it now !” is blinking, so just ignore it and focus on the rest of the text). The text does indeed darken with higher contrast settings, but the rest of the screen darkens somewhat too, so the actual incremental improvement is small. I’ve chosen to go a little light here so the bubbles in the polarizer film are less in my face.
Part of the introductory text.
Communications is strongly emphasized. After all, this was the machine that would make you love to dial into your big Data General AOS/VS host again. Right? Right??
I’m not sure if the disk pack got updated for the 1200bps modem, but this answer is definitely wrong.
CONNECT
TELENET
617 18C
Terminal=D1
@C 60942
609 42 CONNECTED
WHAT SERVICE PLEASE????
DJNS
ENTER PASSWORD
@@@@@@@@
DOW JONES NEWS/RETRIEVAL
COPYRIGHT (C) 1984
DOW JONES & COMPANY, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ENTER QUERY
//CQ
ENTER QUERY
DGN
STOCK BID ASKED
CLOSE OPEN HIGH LOW LAST VOL(100's)
DGN 40 48½ 49½ 47½ 48½ 967
DISC
Recall that Telenet addresses more or less resembled North American Numbering Plan area codes, so the local concentrator answering here was a node in area code 617, then the eastern half of Data General’s home state of Massachusetts. Terminal code D1 is a dumb terminal equivalent. The prompt WHAT SERVICE PLEASE???? was not an exaggeration: others have documented this string on several nodes in area code 609, which was then southern New Jersey. These were apparently large timesharing minis that handled multiple services but I don’t know who operated them. //CQ, DGN and DISC were Dow Jones commands for “current quote,” Data General’s stock ticker symbol, and to disconnect.
MS-DOS 2.11 basically works and particularly for Ones with small RAM ceilings may well be the best choice, but it lacks the creature comforts of later DOSes. With sufficient memory it should be possible to run at least MS-DOS 6.x and possibly even 7.x in a basic sense, but at the time I first played with it Caldera had just made DR-DOS 7.02 free for non-commercial use and I ended up using it instead. DR-DOS booted pretty well for the simple tasks I used it for until the front drive started complaining about files on the extreme periphery of the disk and at that point it went back in the Pierre Cardin bag. Let’s get out the USB floppy and see what other alternatives we have.
The most obvious choice today would be FreeDOS, but aside from it wanting a hard disk to install to, that didn’t end up working out so well for other reasons. Although over the years FreeDOS has intermittently come in unofficial one-disk variations, most of them unmaintained, nearly none of these could fit on a 720K floppy. However, one notable exception was ODIN, which specifically advertised a 720K floppy version that packed a fair bit of the disk with UPX. ODIN has long since disappeared from the Web but you can still get the last 0.6 release from the Wayback Machine in a version that was advertised as compatible with the 8086. Maybe it was, but not with the DG-1:
More recently was Svarog86, the precursor to today’s SvarDOS. I would have used that except I didn’t find an obvious 720K one-disk version whereas Svarog86 did indeed offer one. These use newer FreeDOS kernels than ODIN and both Svarog86 and SvarDOS prominently advertise their 8086 compatibility, which should work just dandy on the 8088 as well. Unfortunately, it blew up even more explosively when you touched a key.
But DR-DOS isn’t bothered by any of this, probably because it sticks to BIOS calls and doesn’t assume anything about the hardware. So I decided to tune up the disk I had by removing a few unnecessary things like HIMEM.SYS (doesn’t work on the DG) and SERNO.EXE (irrelevant) and TASKMGR.INI (hahaha). I had already added a simple editor (the Manx port of vi as used in Aztec C) and my own basic paging utility MOO.EXE that I had written a couple years earlier in Turbo Pascal, and with the extra space I added GWBASICA.EXE from TK Chia’s rebuild of GW-BASIC using Microsoft’s MIT-licensed source.
Indeed, DR-DOS runs very well on the Data General/One and pretty much everything works like it should.
If you’re looking for bootable floppies for your own classic Data General/One, you can download the original MS-DOS 2.11 floppies (both the boot disk and the tutorial disk) from the Internet Archive as 720K images. As for my enriched DR-DOS floppy, I think I’m on okay ground offering it for download given the various pieces’ prevailing licensing but under these conditions:
- Caldera DR-DOS 7.02 is licensed for personal non-commercial use only.
- GWBASICA is under the MIT license.
- Manx vi (“Z”), as a component of Aztec C, is only authorized “for now-obsolete platforms for educational purposes by researchers and enthusiasts … your use must be Fair as it applies to Manx’s Copyright on these compilers.” [sic]
-
As the sole author and sole copyright holder of MOO.EXE,
effective immediately I hereby irrevocably end its licensing as
shareware, placing it under the
Floodgap Free Software
License and making it freely distributable subject to those terms.
Sorry, the source code disappeared decades ago along with a lot of my
other Turbo Pascal stuff; only the binary remains. At some point I’ll
get around to monkeypatching the strings to reflect this change.
While I think about what I’ll do for the screen next time this comes out of the bag, let’s finish our story, as we always must. While this updated release mitigated the display’s issues, it did not end complaints about it, and more advanced (and more readable) LCD panels of similar dimensions started appearing on competitors’ systems. By July 1986 PC Magazine had dropped it from its regular roundup of DOS laptops because “[t]he combination of low contrast and high price proved all but fatal to the DG/One and it’s no longer a factor in today’s market.”
Data General apparently took feedback like this to heart. In October 1985 it slashed prices by hundreds of dollars while developing the next iteration. Waiting until IBM had fired its next bolt with the 5140 IBM PC Convertible in April 1986, DG introduced the Data General/One Model Two in May with a higher contrast LCD and two new SKUs using an ELD instead, one of which even had a 10MB hard disk and a full 640K of RAM. However, the ELD required so much power it reduced runtime to just one or two hours and the CPU was still the same 4MHz 80C88.
In May 1987 Data General upgraded the Model Two into the Model 2T. The CPU was bumped to the full XT speed of 4.77MHz (or could run turbo at 7.16MHz if you wanted), two expansion slots were in-chassis, and it came in both backlit supertwist LCD and ELD variants each with the 10MB hard disk option. The ELD version could not run on battery power, but the LCD version could, with advanced power management features that even could control current to individual laptop components. Despite complaints about the persistently non-standard keyboard, reviewers nevertheless heartily approved. “Finally,” raved PC Magazine in July, “a modern laptop out of Data General!” In October 1987 InfoWorld lauded its performance and EMS capability and called the 2T “well-thought-out” and “a very good value.” The Model 2T was adopted internally at Data General as the “Pharaoh” testing and diagnostics rig using a large attached sidecar module, and it was also rebadged as the Allen-Bradley T45 Portable Programming Terminal. In February 1988 DG added a new backlit blue LCD and a 2400bps modem option.
These bright spots notwithstanding, the size and design of the DG/One even in its more advanced iterations were no longer popular with the market, and it was quietly discontinued around 1991. In fact, its replacement had already arrived two years earlier: the five-pound 1989 Data General Walkabout, which had its own built-in modem and ROM-resident terminal and text editor, plus a phone book, dialer and alarm scheduler and ran on AA batteries or Ni-Cad. Unfortunately, buyers weren’t interested in a portable terminal either, and an attempt to expand it into a 386 laptop with the Walkabout/SX (also rebadged as the Allen-Bradley T47) and successors failed to sell due to weight, price and ergonomics. Data General cancelled the line in 1993, and with its only major remaining success in storage systems, DG was bought out by competitor EMC in 1999 and quickly dismantled — in the process selling its venerable dg.com domain name to Dollar General. DG’s remaining IP now rests with Dell, who bought EMC as a subsidiary in 2016.
https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/03/refurb-weekend-data-generalone-and.html
March 30, 2024
date: 2024-03-31, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
On Tuesday morning, on his social media outlet, former president Trump encouraged his supporters to buy a “God Bless The USA” Bible for $59.99. The Bible is my “favorite book,” he said in a promotional video, and said he owns “many.” This Bible includes the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance. It also includes the chorus of country music singer Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA,” likely because it is a retread of a 2021 Bible Greenwood pushed to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of 9-11.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-30-2024
A Kinematically Coupled, Nanometer-Resolution Piezo Focus Stage
date: 2024-03-31, from: Bunnie’s Studio Blog
This post is part of a series about giving users a tangible reason to trust their hardware through my IRIS (Infra-Red, in-situ) technique for the non-destructive inspection of chips. Previously, I discussed the process of designing the IRIS light source in some detail, as well as my methodology for learning new things. This post will […]
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=7066
US Powerball jackpot jumps to $975 million
date: 2024-03-31, from: VOA News USA
DES MOINES, Iowa — The Powerball jackpot climbed to an estimated $975 million after no one matched the six numbers drawn Saturday night, continuing a nearly three-month stretch without a big winner.
The winning numbers drawn were: 12, 13, 33, 50, 52 and the red Powerball 23.
No one has won Powerball’s top prize since New Year’s Day when a ticket in Michigan hit for $842.4 million, bringing the number of consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner to 38. That winless streak nears the record of 41 consecutive drawings, set twice in 2022 and 2021.
The $975 million prize is for a sole winner who chooses an annuity paid over 30 years. A winner opting for cash would be paid $471.7 million. The prizes would be subject to federal taxes, and many states also tax lottery winnings.
As the prizes grow, the drawings attract more ticket sales and the jackpots subsequently become harder to hit. The game’s long odds for Saturday’s drawing were 1 in 292.2 million.
Powerball is played in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-powerball-jackpot-jumps-to-975-million-/7550548.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-31, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I thought it might be useful to watch a NOVA documentary about AI, but it was just the usual very very old scare story, when the truth of what's happening today is much weirder. It's one thing to imagine the future, another to live it. Too bad they didn't accept the challenge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sB12gk9ESA
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-31, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Kara Swisher tells other reporters what they want to hear about tech.
https://www.wnyc.org/story/kara-swishers-tech-love-story/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-31, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Anatomy of a Fall on Hulu is really good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_a_Fall
A dream resource
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Financial aid applications are important—but so are free tamales. Students gathered in the Dream Resource Center (DRC) this Wednesday to eat tamales and receive help
The post A dream resource appeared first on .
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-03-31, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
There aren’t two sides to facts.
Maptwin: an 80s-era automotive navigation computer
date: 2024-03-31, from: OS News
A couple of years ago, I imported a Japanese-market 4×4 van into the US; a 1996 Mitsubishi Delica. Based on the maps I found in the seat pocket and other clues, it seems to have spent its life at some city dweller’s cabin in the mountains around Fukushima, and only driven occasionally. Despite being over 25 years old, it only had 77,000 km on the odometer. The van had some interesting old tech installed in it: what appears to be a radar detector labeled “Super Eagle ✔️30” and a Panasonic-brand electronic toll collection device that you can insert a smart card into. One particularly noteworthy accessory that was available in mid-90s Delicas was a built-in karaoke machine for the rear passengers. Sadly, mine didn’t have that feature. But the most interesting accessory installed in the van was the Avco Maptwin Inter, which I immediately identified as some kind of electronic navigation aid, about which there is very little information available on the English-language internet. When I first saw the Maptwin, I had thought it might be some kind of proto-GPS that displayed latitude/longitude coordinates that you could look up on a paper map. Alas, it’s not that cool. It was not connected to any kind of antenna, and the electronics inside seem inadequate for the reception of a GPS signal. The Maptwin was, however, wired into an RPM counter that was attached between the transmission and the speedometer cable, presumably to delivery extremely accurate and convenient display of how many kilometers have been traveled since the display was last reset. What I’ve been able to learn is that the Maptwin is computer that was mostly used for rally race navigation, precursor to devices still available from manufacturers like Terra Trip. Now, the Mitsubishi Delica is about the best 4×4 minivan you can get, but it’s extremely slow and unwieldy at speed, so it would be pretty terrible for rally racing. My best guess is that the owner used this device as a navigation aid for overland exploration, as the name “Maptwin” implies, to augment the utility of a paper map. On the other hand, I found an article that indicates that some kinds of rallies were not high speed affairs, but rather accuracy-based navigation puzzles of sorts, so who knows? The Maptwin wasn’t working when I got the van, and I don’t know if it’s actually broken or just needs to be wired up correctly. If any OSNews readers have any additional information about any of the devices I’ve mentioned, please enlighten us in the comments. If anyone would like to try to get the Maptwin working and report back, please let me know.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139077/maptwin-an-80s-era-automotive-navigation-computer/
Watkins leads women’s basketball to Elite Eight after nail-biting win over Baylor
date: 2024-03-31, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The star freshman scored a game-high 30 points to beat the Bears.
The post Watkins leads women’s basketball to Elite Eight after nail-biting win over Baylor appeared first on Daily Trojan.
The Talk Show: ‘You’ve Never Seen Email Like This Before’
date: 2024-03-31, updated: 2024-03-31, from: Daring Fireball