News gathered 2024-04-12

(date: 2024-04-12 17:29:35)

Physical modelling of unreinforced masonry walls using a sand-based 3D printer

date: 2024-04-15, from: ETH Zurich, recently added

Del Giudice, Lorenzo; Katsamakas, Antonios; Liu, Bowen; Sarhosis, Vasilis; Vassiliou, Michalis F.

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/661336

April 16: Planning Commission to Discuss Town Center Specific Plan

date: 2024-04-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Santa Clarita Planning Commission will hold its regular meeting Tuesday, April 16, at 6 p.m. in City Council Chambers at City Hall, 23920 Valencia Blvd. 1st Floor, Santa Clarita, CA

https://scvnews.com/april-16-planning-commission-to-discuss-town-center-specific-plan/

date: 2024-04-13, from: San Jose Mercury News

Plan by Mountain View tech giant comes amid battle against a state bill that would make it pay fees to news publishers for content.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/google-to-stop-showing-links-to-california-news-reports/

Decentralized Systems Aren’t

date: 2024-04-13, from: David Rosenthal’s blog

Below the fold is the text of a talk I gave to Berkeley’s Information Systems Seminar exploring the history of attempts to build decentralized systems and why so many of them end up centralized.

As usual, you don’t need to take notes. The text of my talk with links to the sources will go up at blog.dshr.org after this seminar.

Why Decentralize?

Tweets by language
This is a map of the location of tweets in Europe, colored by language. It vividly shows the contrast between a centralized society and more decentralized ones. I hope we can agree as to which one we’d prefer to live in.

The platonic ideal of a decentralized system has many advantages over a centralized one performing the same functions:
  1. It can be more resilient to failures and attacks.
  2. It can resist acquisition and the consequent enshittification.
  3. It can scale better.
  4. It has the economic advantage that it is hard to compare the total system cost with the benefits it provides because the cost is diffused across many independent budgets.

Why Not Decentralize?

But history shows that this platonic ideal is unachieveable because systems decentralization isn’t binary and systems that aim to be at the decentralized end of the spectrum suffer four major problems:
  1. Their advantages come with significant additional monetary and operational costs.
  2. Their user experience is worse, being more complex, slower and less predictable.
  3. They are in practice only as decentralized as the least decentralized layer in the stack.
  4. They exhibit emergent behaviors that drive centralization.

What Does “Decentralization” Mean?

Source
In Gini Coefficients Of Cryptocurrencies I discussed various ways to measure decentralization. Because decentralization applies at each layer of a system’s stack, it is necessary to measure each of the subsystem individually. In 2017’s Quantifying Decentralization Srinivasan and Lee identified a set of subsystems for public blockchains, and measured them using their proposed “Nakamoto Coefficient”:
The Nakamoto coefficient is the number of units in a subsystem you need to control 51% of that subsystem.
Subsystem Bitcoin Ethereum
Mining 5 3
Client 1 1
Developer 5 2
Exchange 5 5
Node 3 4
Owner 456 72
Their table of the contemporary Nakamoto coefficients for Bitcoin and Ethereum makes the case that they were only minimally decentralized.

Blockchains exemplify a more rigorous way to assess decentralization; to ask whether a node can join the network autonomously, or whether it must obtain permission to join. If the system is “permissioned” it cannot be decentralized, it is centralized around the permission-granting authority. Truly decentralized systems must be “permissionless”. My title is wrong; the talk is mostly about permissionless systems, not about the permssioned systems that claim to be decentralized but clearly aren’t.

TCP/IP

IBM Cabling System
The world has been on a decades-long series of experiments trying to build successful decentralized systems marked almost entirely by failure. Forty years ago I played a small part in one of the first of these experiments. I was working at Carnegie-Mellon’s Information Technology Center on the Andrew Project, one of three pioneering efforts in campus networking. The others were at Brown and MIT. It was generously funded by IBM, who were covering the campus with the massively over-engineered “IBM Cabling System”. They really wanted these wires to carry IBM’s Token Ring network supporting IBM’s System Network Architecture (SNA). SNA was competing with the telco’s X.25 and DARPA’s IP stack for the future of networking, and it wasn’t clear which would win. But the three campus projects were adamant that their networks would run IP, largely because it was non-proprietary and far less centralized.

Domain Name System

Source
It is true that TCP/IP now dominates the bottom layers of the stack, but the common complaint is that the systems layered on it are excessively centralized. DNS is centralized around the root servers and IANA’s (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) management of top-level DNS domains and the global IP and AS spaces. They are the Internet’s permission-granting authority. To scale, they have delegated management of sub-spaces to others, but the fundamental centralization remains. The Web is so centralized around the tech giants that there is an entire decentralized web movement. E-mail is increasingly centralized around a few major providers making life for those like me who run their own e-mail servers more and more difficult.

The basis of TCP/IP is the end-to-end principle, that to the extent possible network nodes communicate directly with each other, not relying on functions in the infrastructure. So why the need for root servers and IANA? It is because nodes need some way to find each other, and the list of root servers’ IP addresses provides a key into the hierarchical structure of DNS.

This illustrates the important point that a system is only as decentralized as the least decentralized layer in its stack.

LOCKSS

Fifteen years on from CMU when Vicky Reich and I started the LOCKSS program we needed a highly resilient system to preserve library materials, so the advantages of decentralization loomed large. In particular, we realized that:
Our idea was to build a permissionless peer-to-peer system in which libraries would hold copies of their subscription content and model the paper inter-library loan and copy system to repair any loss or damage to them. To detect loss or damage the nodes would vote on the hash of the content. We needed to defend against a “Sybil attack”, in which a bad guy wishing to change some content would create enough nodes under his control to win the votes on it. Our initial attempts at designing a protocol were flawed, but we eventually won a “Best Paper” award at the 2003 SOSP conference for a protocol that used proof-of-work (PoW) as a way of making running a node expensive enough to deter Sybil attacks. An honest library need only run one node, the bad guy had to run more than the total of the honest libraries, so would pay many times the per-library cost.

Why LOCKSS Centralized

Although the LOCKSS technology was designed and implemented to be permissionless, there were a number of reasons why it turned out much less decentralized than we hoped:

Gossip Protocols

If LOCKSS was to be permissionless there could be no equivalent of DNS, so how did a new node find other nodes to vote with?

A gossip protocol or epidemic protocol is a procedure or process of computer peer-to-peer communication that is based on the way epidemics spread. Some distributed systems use peer-to-peer gossip to ensure that data is disseminated to all members of a group. Some ad-hoc networks have no central registry and the only way to spread common data is to rely on each member to pass it along to their neighbors.
Wikipedia

Suppose you have a decentralized network with thousands of nodes that can join and leave whenever they want, and you want to send a message to all the current nodes. This might be because they are maintaining a shared state, or to ask a question that a subset might be able to answer. You don’t want to enumerate the nodes, because it would be costly in time and network traffic, and because the answer might be out-of-date by the time you got it. And even if you did sending messages individually to the thousands of nodes would be expensive. This is what IP multicast was for, but it doesn’t work well in practice. So you build multicast on top of IP using a Gossip protocol.

Each node knows a few other nodes. The first time it receives a message it forwards it to them, along with the names of some of the nodes it knows. As the alternate name of “epidemic protocol” suggests, this is a remarkably effective mechanism. All that a new node needs in order to join is for the network to publish a few “bootstrap nodes”, similar to the way an Internet node accesses DNS by having the set of root servers wired in. But this bootstrap mechanism is inevitably centralized.

The LOCKSS nodes used a gossip protocol to communicate, so in theory all a library needed to join in was to know another library running a node. In the world of academic libraries this didn’t seem like a problem. It turned out that the bootstrap node all the libraries knew was Stanford, the place they got the software and the support. So just like DNS, the root identity was effectively wired-in.

Bitcoin

The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they’ll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers.
Satoshi Nakamoto

Fast forward another ten years and Satoshi Nakamoto published Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, a ledger implemented as a chain of blocks containing transactions. Like LOCKSS, the system needed a Sybil-proof way to achieve consensus, in his case on the set of transactions in the next block to be added to the chain. Unlike LOCKSS, where nodes voted in single-phase elections, Nakamoto implemented a three-phase selection mechanism:
  1. One node is selected from the network using Proof-of-Work. It is the first node to guess a nonce that made the hash of the block have the required number of leading zeros.
  2. The selected node proposes the content of the next block via the gossip network.
  3. The “longest chain rule”, Nakamoto’s most important contribution, ensures that the network achieves consensus on the block proposed by the selected node.

Increasing Returns to Scale

Source
More than a decade earlier, W. Brian Arthur had published Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy explaining how the very strong economies of scale inherent to technology markets led to them being monopolized. Consider a new market opened up by a technological development. Several startups enter, for random reasons one gets bigger then the others, economies of scale make it more profitable and network effects make it more attractive to new customers, so this feedback loop drives it to out-compete the others.

The application to the Bitcoin network starts with this observation. The whole point of the Bitcoin protocol is to make running a miner, a node in the network, costly. The security of the system depends upon making an attack more costly to mount than it would gain. Miners need to defray the costs the system imposes in terms of power, hardware, bandwidth, staff and so on. Thus the protocol rewards miners with newly minted Bitcoin for winning the race for the next block.

Bitcoin Economics

Nakamoto’s vision of the network was of many nodes of roughly equal power,“one CPU one vote”. This has two scaling problems:
Mining Pools 02/27/23
The result was the formation of mining pools, allowing miners to contribute their power to a single huge node and trade their small chance of an infrequent large reward for a frequent flow of a small share of the node’s rewards. But economies of scale applied even below the level of pools. A miner who could fill a warehouse with mining rigs or who was able to steal electricity would have much lower costs than a smaller miner. Thus they would not merely get more of the pool’s block rewards, but they would keep more of them as profit. The success of this idea led to GHash.io’s single node controlling the Bitcoin network with over 51% of the mining power. Most of it was from warehouses full of mining rigs.

The block rewards inflate the currency, currently by about $100M/day. This plus fees that can reach $23M/day, is the cost to run a system that currently processes 400K transactions/day, or over $250 per transaction plus up to $57 per transaction in fees. Lets talk about the excess costs of decentralization!

Like most permissionless networks, Bitcoin nodes communicate using a gossip protocol. So just like LOCKSS boxes, they need to know one or more bootstrap nodes in order to join the network, just like DNS and LOCKSS.
In Bitcoin Core, the canonical Bitcoin implementation, these bootstrap nodes are hard-coded as trusted DNS servers maintained by the core developers.
Haseeb Qureshi, Bitcoin’s P2P Network
There are also fall-back nodes in case of DNS failure encoded in chainparamsseeds.h: 
/**
 * List of fixed seed nodes for the bitcoin network
 * AUTOGENERATED by contrib/seeds/generate-seeds.py
 *
 * Each line contains a BIP155 serialized (networkID, addr, port) tuple.
 */

Economies of Scale in Peer-to-Peer Networks

Source
Fast forward another five years. Vicky Reich and I were driving North in my RX-7 for a long weekend at the Mendocino Hotel. On US101 before the driving got interesting on CA128 I was thinking about the recent period during which the GHash.io mining pool controlled 51% of Bitcoin’s mining power.

I suddenly realized that this centralization wasn’t something about Bitcoin, or LOCKSS for that matter. It was an inevitable result of economic forces generic to all peer-to-peer systems. So I spent much of the weekend sitting in one of the hotel’s luxurious houses writing Economies of Scale in Peer-to-Peer Networks.

My insight was that the need to make an attack expensive wasn’t something about Bitcoin, any permissionless peer-to-peer network would have the same need. In each case the lack of a root of trust meant that security was linear in cost, not exponential as with, for example, systems using encryption based upon a certificate authority. Thus any successful decentralized peer-to-peer network would need to reimburse nodes for the costs they incurred. How can the nodes’ costs be reimbursed?:
There is no central authority capable of collecting funds from users and distributing them to the miners in proportion to these efforts. Thus miners’ reimbursement must be generated organically by the blockchain itself; a permissionless blockchain needs a cryptocurrency to be secure.
And thus any successful permissionless network would be subject to the centralizing force of economies of scale.

Cryptocurrencies

ETH miners 11/2/20
There have been many attempts to create alternatives to Bitcoin, but of the current total “market cap” of around $2.5T Bitcoin and Ethereum represent $1.75T or 70%. The top 10 “decentralized” coins represent $1.92T, or 77%, so you can see that the coin market is dominated by just two coins. Adding in the top 5 coins that don’t even claim to be decentralized gets you to 87% of the total “market cap”.

The fact that the coins ranked 3, 6 and 7 by “market cap” don’t even claim to be decentralized shows that decentralization is irrelevant to cryptocurrency users. Numbers 3 and 7 are stablecoins with a combined “market cap” of $134B. The largest stablecoin that claims to be decentralized is DAI, ranked at 24 with a “market cap” of $5B. Launching a new currency by claiming better, more decentralized technology than Bitcoin or Ethereum is pointless, as examples such as Chia, now ranked #182, demonstrate. Users care about liquidity, not about technology.

The holders of coins show a similar concentration, the Gini Coefficients Of Cryptocurrencies are extreme.

Ethereum’s Merge

ETH Stakes 05/22/23
Ethereum made a praiseworthy effort to reduce their environmental impact by switching from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake and, in an impressive feat of software engineering, managed a smooth transition. The transition to Proof-of-Stake did in fact greatly reduce the Ethereum network’s power consumption. Some fraction of the previous mining power was redirected to mine other Proof-of-Work coins, so the effect on the power consumption of cryptocurrencies as a whole was less significant. But it didn’t reduce centralization, as the contrast between the before and after pie-charts shows.

Ethereum Validators

Time in proof-of-stake Ethereum is divided into slots (12 seconds) and epochs (32 slots). One validator is randomly selected to be a block proposer in every slot. This validator is responsible for creating a new block and sending it out to other nodes on the network. Also in every slot, a committee of validators is randomly chosen, whose votes are used to determine the validity of the block being proposed. Dividing the validator set up into committees is important for keeping the network load manageable. Committees divide up the validator set so that every active validator attests in every epoch, but not in every slot.
PROOF-OF-STAKE (POS)
Ethereum’s consensus mechanism is vastly more complex than Bitcoin’s, but it shares the same three-phase structure. In essence, this is how it works. To take part, a node must stake, or escrow, more than a minimum amount of the cryptocurrency,then:
  1. A “smart contract” uses a pseudo-random algorithm to select one node and a “committee” of other nodes with probabilities based on the nodes’ stakes.
  2. The one node proposes the content of the next block.
  3. The “committee” of other validator nodes vote to approve the block, leading to consensus.
Just as Bitcoin and LOCKSS share Proof-of-Work, Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake and LOCKSS share another technique, voting by a random subset of the electorate. In LOCKSS the goal of this randomization was not just “keeping the network load manageable”, but also making life hard for the bad guy. To avoid detection, the bad guy needed to vote only in polls where he controlled a large majority of the random subset of the nodes. This was something it was hard for him to know. I’m not clear whether the same thing applies to Ethereum.

Like Bitcoin, the nodes taking part in consensus gain a block reward currently running at $2.75M/day and fees running about $26M/day. This is the cost to run a distributed computer 1/5000 as powerful as a Raspberry Pi.

Validator Centralization

The prospect of a US approval of Ether exchange-traded funds threatens to exacerbate the Ethereum ecosystem’s concentration problem by keeping staked tokens in the hands of a few providers, S&P Global warns.
…
Coinbase Global Inc. is already the second-largest validator … controlling about 14% of staked Ether. The top provider, Lido, controls 31.7% of the staked tokens,
…
US institutions issuing Ether-staking ETFs are more likely to pick an institutional digital asset custodian, such as Coinbase, while side-stepping decentralized protocols such as Lido. That represents a growing concentration risk if Coinbase takes a significant share of staked ether, the analysts wrote.

Coinbase is already a staking provider for three of the four largest ether-staking ETFs outside the US, they wrote. For the recently approved Bitcoin ETF, Coinbase was the most popular choice of crypto custodian by issuers. The company safekeeps about 90% of the roughly $37 billion in Bitcoin ETF assets, chief executive officer Brian Armstrong said
Yueqi Yang, Ether ETF Applications Spur S&P Warning on Concentration Risks
A system in which those with lots of money make lots more money but those with a little money pay those with a lot, and which has large economies of scale, might be expected to suffer centralization. As the pie-chart shows, this is what happened. In particular, exchanges hold large amounts of Ethereum on behalf of their customers, and they naturally stake it to earn income. The top two validators, the Lido pool and the Coinbase exchange, have 46.1% of the stake, and the top five have 56.7%.

Producer Centralization

Producers 03/18/24
The concentration is worse for block producers. The chart shows the top producer is generating 47.4% of the blocks and gaining 56.6% of the rewards.

Olga Kharif and Isabelle Lee report that these concentrations are a major focus of the SEC’s consideration of Ethereum spot ETFs:
In its solicitations for public comments on the proposed spot Ether ETFs, the SEC asked, “Are there particular features related to ether and its ecosystem, including its proof of stake consensus mechanism and concentration of control or influence by a few individuals or entities, that raise unique concerns about ether’s susceptibility to fraud and manipulation?”

Software Centralization

Source
There is an even bigger problem for Ethereum. The software that validators run is close to a monoculture. Two of the minor players have recently suffered bugs that took them off-line, as Sam Kessler reports in Bug That Took Down 8% of Ethereum’s Validators Sparks Worries About Even Bigger Outage:
A bug in Ethereum’s Nethermind client software – used by validators of the blockchain to interact with the network – knocked out a chunk of the chain’s key operators on Sunday.
…
Nethermind powers around 8% of the validators that operate Ethereum, and this weekend’s bug was critical enough to pull those validators offline. … the Nethermind incident followed a similar outage earlier in January that impacted Besu, the client software behind around 5% of Ethereum’s validators.
…
Around 85% of Ethereum’s validators are currently powered by Geth, and the recent outages to smaller execution clients have renewed concerns that Geth’s dominant market position could pose grave consequences if there were ever issues with its programming.
…
Cygaar cited data from the website execution-diversity.info noting that popular crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Binance and Kraken all rely on Geth to run their staking services. “Users who are staked in protocols that run Geth would lose their ETH” in the event of a critical issue,” Cygaar wrote.
The fundamental problem is that most layers in the software stack are highly concentrated, starting with the three operating systems. Network effects and economies of sclae apply at every layer. Remember “no-one ever gets fired for buying IBM”? At the Ethereum layer, it is “no-one ever gets fired using Geth” because, if there was ever a big problem with Geth, the blame would be so widely shared.

The Decentralized Web

One mystery was why venture capitalists like Andreesen Horwitz, normally so insistent on establishing wildly profitable monopolies, were so keen on the idea of a Web 3 implemented as “decentralized apps” (dApps) running on blockchains like Ethereum. Moxie Marlinspike revealed the reason:
companies have emerged that sell API access to an ethereum node they run as a service, along with providing analytics, enhanced APIs they’ve built on top of the default ethereum APIs, and access to historical transactions. Which sounds… familiar. At this point, there are basically two companies. Almost all dApps use either Infura or Alchemy in order to interact with the blockchain. In fact, even when you connect a wallet like MetaMask to a dApp, and the dApp interacts with the blockchain via your wallet, MetaMask is just making calls to Infura!
Providing a viable user experience when interacting with blockchains is a market with economies of scale and network effects, so it has centralized.

It Isn’t About The Technology

What is the centralization that decentralized Web advocates are reacting against? Clearly, it is the domination of the Web by the FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) and a few other large companies such as the cable oligopoly.

These companies came to dominate the Web for economic not technological reasons. The Web, like other technology markets, has very large increasing returns to scale (network effects, duh!). These companies build centralized systems using technology that isn’t inherently centralized but which has increasing returns to scale. It is the increasing returns to scale that drive the centralization.

Source
The four FANG companies last year had a combined free cash flow of $159.7B. I know of no decentralized Web effort that has a viable business model. This isn’t surprising, since they are focused on developing technology not a business model. This means they pose no threat to the FANG. Consider that, despite Elon Musk’s attempts to make it unusable and the availability of federated alternatives such as Mastodon, Twitter retains the vast bulk of its user base. But as I explained in Competition-proofing, if they ever did pose a threat, in the current state of anti-trust the FANGs would just buy them. In 2018 I wrote in It Isn’t About The Technology:
If a decentralized Web doesn’t achieve mass participation, nothing has really changed. If it does, someone will have figured out how to leverage antitrust to enable it. And someone will have designed a technical infrastructure that fit with and built on that discovery, not a technical infrastructure designed to scratch the itches of technologists.
I think this is still the situation.

BitTorrent

Seven years ago I wrote:
Unless decentralized technologies specifically address the issue of how to avoid increasing returns to scale they will not, of themselves, fix this economic problem. Their increasing returns to scale will drive layering centralized businesses on top of decentralized infrastructure, replicating the problem we face now, just on different infrastructure.
Source
The only way that has worked in practice to avoid increasing returns to scale is not to reimburse nodes for their costs, but to require them to be run as a public service. The example we have of avoiding centralization in this way is Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent, it is the exception that proves the rule. The network doesn’t reward nodes for hosting content, but many sites find it a convenient way to distribute content. The network doesn’t need consensus, thus despite being permissionless it isn’t vulnerable to a Sybil attack. Users have to trust that the tracker correctly describes its content, so there are other possible attacks. But if we look at the content layer, it is still centralized. The vast majority of the content is at a few large sites like The Pirate Bay.

Blockchains

In 2022 DARPA funded a large team from the Trail of Bits cybersecurity company to publish a report entitled Are Blockchains Decentralized? which conformed to Betteridge’s Law by concluding “No”:
Every widely used blockchain has a privileged set of entities that can modify the semantics of the blockchain to potentially change past transactions.
The “privileged set of entities” must at least include the developers and maintainers of the software, because:
The challenge with using a blockchain is that one has to either (a) accept its immutability and trust that its programmers did not introduce a bug, or (b) permit upgradeable contracts or off-chain code that share the same trust issues as a centralized approach.
Source
The gossip network underlying Bitcoin has centralized in two ways. First:
A dense, possibly non-scale-free, subnetwork of Bitcoin nodes appears to be largely responsible for reaching consensus and communicating with miners—the vast majority of nodes do not meaningfully contribute to the health of the network.
And second:
Of all Bitcoin traffic, 60% traverses just three ISPs.
Source
Trail of Bits found remarkable vulnerabilities to internal or external supply chain attacks because:
The Ethereum ecosystem has a significant amount of code reuse: 90% of recently deployed Ethereum smart contracts are at least 56% similar to each other.
The risk isn’t confined to individual ecosystems, it is generic to the entire cryptosphere because, as the chart shows, the code reuse spans across blockchains to such an extent that Ethereum’s Geth shares 90% of its code with Bitcoin Core.

Decentralized Finance

Source
I mentioned Moxie Marlinspike’s My first impressions of web3 showing that dApps all used Infura or Alchemy. Many of them implement “decentralized finance” (DeFi), and much research shows this layer has centralized. Prof. Hilary Allen’s DeFi: Shadow Banking 2.0? concludes:
TL;DR: DeFi is neither decentralized, nor very good finance, so regulators should have no qualms about clamping down on it to protect the stability of our financial system and broader economy.
DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion by Sirio Aramonte, Wenqian Huang and Andreas Schrimpf of the Bank for International Settlements similarly conclude:
While the main vision of DeFi’s proponents is intermediation without centralised entities, we argue that some form of centralisation is inevitable. As such, there is a “decentralisation illusion”. First and foremost, centralised governance is needed to take strategic and operational decisions. In addition, some features in DeFi, notably the consensus mechanism, favour a concentration of power.
Protocol Revenue Market
  $M Share %
Lido 304 55.2
Uniswap V3 55 10.0
Maker DAO 48 8.7
AAVE V3 24 4.4
Top 4   78.2
Venus 18 3.3
GMX 14 2.5
Rari Fuse 14 2.5
Rocket Pool 14 2.5
Pancake Swap AMM V3 13 2.4
Compound V2 13 2.4
Morpho Aave V2 10 1.8
Goldfinch 9 1.6
Aura Finance 8 1.5
Yearn Finance 7 1.3
Stargate 5 0.9
Total 551  
Muyao Shen writes in DeFi Is Becoming Less Competitive a Year After FTX’s Collapse Battered Crypto that:
Based on the [Herfindahl-Hirschman Index], the most competition exists between decentralized finance exchanges, with the top four venues holding about 54% of total market share. Other categories including decentralized derivatives exchanges, DeFi lenders, and liquid staking, are much less competitive. For example, the top four liquid staking projects hold about 90% of total market share in that category,
Based on data on 180 days of revenue of DeFI projects from Shen’s article, I compiled this table, showing that the top project, Lido, had 55% of the revenue, the top two had 2/3, and the top four projects had 78%. This is clearly a highly concentrated market, typical of cryptocurrency markets in general.

Federation

Source
The alternative to decentralization that is currently popular, especially in social media, is federation. Instead of forming a single system, federation allows many centralized subsystems to interoperate. Examples include BlueSky, Threads and Mastodon. Federation does offer significant advantages, including the opportunity for competition in the policies offered, and the ability for users to migrate to services they find more congenial.

How attractive are these advantages? The first bar chart shows worldwide web traffic to social media sites. Every single one of these sites is centralized, even the barely visible ones like Nextdoor. Note that Meta owns 3 of the top 4, with about 5 times the traffic of Twitter.

Source
The second bar chart shows monthly active users (MAUs) on mobile devices in the US. This one does have two barely visible systems that are intended eventually to be federated, Threads and Bluesky. Despite the opportunity provided by Elon Musk, the federated competitors have had minimal impact:
That leaves Mastodon with a total of 1.8 million monthly active users at present, an increase of 5% month-over-month and 10,000 servers, up 12%
In terms of monthly active users, Twitter claims 528M, Threads claims 130M, Bluesky claims 5.2M and Mastodon claims 1.8M. Note that the only federate-able one with significant market share is owned by the company that owns 3 of the top 4 centralized systems. Facebook claims 3,000M MAU, Instagram claims 2,000M MAU, and WhatsApp claims 2,000 MAU. Thus Threads is about 3% of Facebook alone, so not significant in Meta’s overall business. It may be early days yet, but federated social media have a long way to go before they have significant market share.

Summary

Radia Perlman’s answer to the question of what exactly you get in return for the decentralization provided by the enormous resource cost of blockchain technologies is:
a ledger agreed upon by consensus of thousands of anonymous entities, none of which can be held responsible or be shut down by some malevolent government
This is what the blockchain advocates want you to think, but as Vitalik Buterin, inventor of Ethereum pointed out in The Meaning of Decentralization:
In the case of blockchain protocols, the mathematical and economic reasoning behind the safety of the consensus often relies crucially on the uncoordinated choice model, or the assumption that the game consists of many small actors that make decisions independently. If any one actor gets more than 1/3 of the mining power in a proof of work system, they can gain outsized profits by selfish-mining. However, can we really say that the uncoordinated choice model is realistic when 90% of the Bitcoin network’s mining power is well-coordinated enough to show up together at the same conference?
As we have seen, in practice it just isn’t true that “the game consists of many small actors that make decisions independently” or “thousands of anonymous entities”. Even if you could prove that there were “thousands of anonymous entities”, there would be no way to prove that they were making “decisions independently”. One of the advantages of decentralization that Buterin claims is:
it is much harder for participants in decentralized systems to collude to act in ways that benefit them at the expense of other participants, whereas the leaderships of corporations and governments collude in ways that benefit themselves but harm less well-coordinated citizens, customers, employees and the general public all the time.
But this is only the case if in fact “the game consists of many small actors that make decisions independently” and they are “anonymous entities” so that it is hard for the leader of a conspiracy to find conspirators to recruit via off-chain communication. Alas, the last part isn’t true for blockchains like Ethereum that support “smart contracts”, as Philip Daian et al’s On-Chain Vote Buying and the Rise of Dark DAOs shows that “smart contracts” also provide for untraceable on-chain collusion in which the parties are mutually pseudonymous.

Questions

If we want the advantages of permissionless, decentralized systems in the real world, we need answers to these questions:

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/decentralized-systems-arent.html

With House speaker at his side, Trump suggests Ukraine aid should be loan

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

washington — An inexperienced House speaker facing a brewing intraparty rebellion as he seeks bipartisan compromise to push through defense funding for Ukraine and Israel got a boost on Friday from the presumptive Republican party presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

“He’s doing a really good job under very tough circumstances,” Trump, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, said at the start of a news conference with House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Trump suggested Republicans push for making additional U.S. military aid to Ukraine “in the form of a loan rather than a gift.”

Johnson, a Republican congressman from the state of Louisiana who has been House speaker since October, made no statement about the aid. But Trump’s stance is likely to hold sway over many House Republicans.

Johnson, according to Republican Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, has been negotiating with the White House about a package that would deviate from the Senate’s $95 billion foreign security legislation.

The most contentious elements involve aid for Ukraine, locked in a defensive war against Russia, and for Israel, which has been on the offensive in Gaza against Hamas.

Johnson’s job in jeopardy

Johnson, relatively unknown on the national stage when he emerged as a compromise candidate among Republicans to become House speaker, finds his job in jeopardy. Republicans are bitterly divided on further U.S. military aid for Ukraine.

“I’m not giving Ukraine any money, never have, never will,” responded Representative Troy Nehls to a question from VOA’s Ukrainian Service on Thursday. “Can anybody tell me what the strategy is for Ukraine?”

Nehls — who is among the Republican lawmakers who falsely assert the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” in favor of President Joe Biden — predicted if Trump is again elected president in November, Russian forces “will be out of Ukraine by April 1st.”

Another Republican in the House, Keith Self of the state of Texas, wants any support for Ukraine tied to increased funding for security at the U.S. Southern border with Mexico.

Self told VOA that while Kyiv awaits further aid from Washington, it should turn to European countries for help.

“I think Europe is starting to realize that they need to take care of their own backyard,” said Self, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

If Johnson is seen as acceding to the desires of Democrats, it would likely expand the number of Republican lawmakers dissatisfied with his leadership.

Johnson is compelled to work with the Democrats on major legislation because his party retains a thin majority in the House.

Democrats disagree about Israel

The Democratic Party leader in the House, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New Jersey, has suggested Democrats will help Johnson retain his position if the speaker helps push over the finish line the national security package sent by the Senate, where Democrats enjoy a majority, to the Republican-controlled House chamber.

The Democrats face their own disagreement over the bill, with some opposing sending offensive weaponry from the United States to Israel while it engages in its campaign in Gaza that, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry, has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians.

“I’m looking at the possibility of a Ukraine-only [funding] bill” to avoid further delays, Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from the state of Washington who is chair of the left-wing congressional progressive caucus, told VOA’s Ukrainian Service.

Not aiding Ukraine “is malpractice on our part,” according to Representative Madeleine Dean, who termed the hesitation among some lawmakers in both parties “literally un-American” and appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I can’t tell you how strongly I feel about it, how upset and angry I am,” the Pennsylvania Democrat added as she became emotional on the steps of the Capitol.

The task of reaching consensus in the House rests primarily on the shoulders of Johnson, a hard-right litigator who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election. The Trump loyalist is the least experienced speaker in nearly a century and a half.

Johnson’s visit on Friday to Trump’s Florida resort home was seen as an attempt by the weakened House speaker to be shored up by the former president. Trump’s backing has been pivotal for top Republicans to stay in their positions or gain them.

His lack of support for the previously elected House speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California, and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel led to exits from their respective leadership jobs.

https://www.voanews.com/a/with-house-speaker-at-his-side-trump-suggests-ukraine-aid-should-be-loan-/7568213.html

Harris blames Trump for abortion ban in Arizona

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

tucson, arizona — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday blamed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for the loss of abortion rights in Arizona, three days after a court there upheld a 160-year-old ban on the procedure. 

Arizona’s conservative Supreme Court sent a shock wave through one of 2024’s most competitive election states, which could swing the presidential race and determine control of the Senate. 

Strategists in both parties said the ruling, which outlaws nearly all abortions, would push even Republican-leaning moderates toward Democrats, while also animating young voters and voters of color. 

“We all must understand who is to blame: former President Donald Trump did this,” Harris said before an audience that included reproductive health patients and providers in Tucson. “A second Trump term would be even worse … . If Donald Trump gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban.” 

Trump, set to face President Joe Biden again in November’s election, has distanced himself from the Arizona ruling. On Wednesday, he said the court had gone too far in reviving a near-total abortion ban, even while defending the Supreme Court decision that permitted states to restrict abortion. 

“President Trump could not have been more clear. These are decisions for people of each state to make,” said Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson. 

Biden beat Trump in Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes out of 3.3 million ballots cast in 2020, the Democrat’s narrowest margin of victory in any state. 

Democrats think their opposition to restrictions on reproductive rights can help them secure another victory in the border state, where voters had been more focused on cost-of-living issues and immigration. 

Biden has tasked Harris, a former prosecutor and senator, with leading the administration’s reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning abortion rights and with reaching core liberal voters undecided on a second, four-year term for the president. 

The Supreme Court’s decision overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was powered by a conservative majority that Trump installed. 

Harris visited Phoenix, Arizona’s capital, just last month to talk about abortion rights as part of a “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour that has taken her to 20 states and included a visit to a Minnesota health clinic that offers abortion services. 

U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat running for a U.S. Senate seat in the Western state, criticized his Republican opponent Kari Lake for previously backing the abortion ban even though Lake disavowed the court ruling to reinstate it. 

Gallego traveled with Harris from Washington to Tucson and was set to hold another event on the topic in Phoenix later on Friday. 

“We don’t want this to be our brand. Arizona’s a state that’s got a booming economy,” Gallego told reporters aboard Air Force Two. “Now we look like this state that is relegating our women back to the 1860 laws?” 

The Biden campaign has aired an advertisement in Arizona in which a Texas woman tearfully describes almost dying after she was denied an abortion following a miscarriage. Across a black screen, the words “Donald Trump did this” flash as her sobs continue in the background. 

Asked at the White House on Wednesday what he would say to the people of Arizona, Biden replied, “Elect me.” 

Biden ran on legalizing abortion, but Democrats did not deliver him such a bill when they controlled Congress by slim margins from 2021 to 2023.

https://www.voanews.com/a/harris-blames-trump-for-abortion-ban-in-arizona-/7568229.html

Eleanor Coppola dies at 87; director and author was matriarch of filmmaking family

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

She documented several of husband Francis Ford Coppola’s movies, including 1991’s “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/eleanor-coppola-matriarch-of-a-filmmaking-family-dies-at-87/

Santa Clarita Opens 38th Park, Skyline Ranch Park

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Hundreds of residents joined the Santa Clarita City Council and dignitaries on Saturday, Aprl 6, for the grand opening of the city’s newest amenity, Skyline Ranch Park. Marking the 38th park in the community, the 10.5-acre park offers activities for everyone

https://scvnews.com/santa-clarita-opens-38th-park-skyline-ranch-park/

No matter how season ends, Golden State Warriors made a step in the right direction

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

The Warriors end the regular season with two home games: tonight against the New Orleans Pelicans and Sunday afternoon against the Utah Jazz before heading into the Play-In Tournament.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/no-matter-how-season-ends-golden-state-warriors-made-a-step-in-the-right-direction/

Letters: Utility tax | Mitigation leader | Recovering from Trump | Colleges are thieves | Judgment a travesty | Tactics aren’t fatal

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for April 14, 2024

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/letters-1682/

Intel preps export-friendly lower-power Gaudi 3 AI chips for China

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Beijing will be thrilled by this nerfed silicon

Intel is set to launch two China-exclusive models of its Gaudi 3 AI accelerator, and they’ll be substantially crippled to fit in with US sanctions.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/intel_paudi_3_china/

Castaic school district, landfill working on air quality mitigation 

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

The Castaic Union School District is working with Chiquita Canyon Landfill to ensure that school sites are equipped to handle the odors that have been emanating around the Val Verde and Castaic areas.  According to district Superintendent Bob Brauneisen, the landfill has paid for improved carbon HVAC filter and air purifiers in each classroom. He […]

The post <strong>Castaic school district, landfill working on air quality mitigation</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/castaic-school-district-landfill-working-on-air-quality-mitigation/

With money put up for recount request, Congressional District 16 race is officially back on

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

The recount will start Monday morning.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/with-money-put-up-for-recount-request-congressional-district-16-race-is-officially-back-on/

They told a Fremont woman they’d just won the lottery and needed her help. A few minutes later she was $20,000 poorer

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

A car full of people convinced a woman to go in their car to withdraw $20,000 in cash.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/they-told-a-fremont-woman-theyd-just-won-the-lottery-and-needed-her-help-a-few-minutes-later-she-was-20000-poorer/

San Ramon’s Firehouse 37 restaurant to close April 14

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

After 12 years in San Ramon, Firehouse 37 is set to close its doors this Sunday, April 14.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/san-ramons-firehouse-37-to-close-april-14/

SUSD Seeks Applicants for Asset Management Advisory Committee

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Saugus Union School District is seeking qualified, interested individuals to serve on the district’s Asset Management Advisory Committee

https://scvnews.com/susd-seeks-applicants-for-asset-management-advisory-committee/

Judge orders Ohtani’s ex-interpreter to get gambling addiction treatment

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge Friday ordered the former longtime interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani released on $25,000 bond and mandated he undergo gambling addiction treatment.

Ippei Mizuhara exploited his personal and professional relationship with Ohtani to plunder $16 million from the Major League Baseball player’s bank account for years, prosecutors said, at times impersonating Ohtani to bankers so he could cover his bets and debts.

Mizuhara only spoke to answer the judge’s questions, saying “yes” when she asked if he understood several parts of the case and his bond conditions.

Mizuhara, wearing a dark suit and a white collared shirt, entered the courtroom with his ankles shackled, but was not handcuffed. The judge approved his attorney’s request to remove the shackles.

Other bond conditions stipulate that Mizuhara cannot gamble, either electronically or in person, or go inside any gambling establishments, or associate with any known bookmakers.

Mizuhara turned himself in Friday ahead of his initial court appearance. He is charged with one count of bank fraud and faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors said there was no evidence that Ohtani was involved in or aware of Mizuhara’s gambling, and authorities said Ohtani was cooperating with investigators.

Mizuhara was not asked to enter a plea during Friday’s brief court appearance in downtown Los Angeles. A criminal complaint filed Thursday detailed the alleged scheme through evidence that included text messages, financial records and recordings of phone calls.

While Mizuhara’s winning bets totaled over $142 million, which he deposited in his own bank account and not Ohtani’s, his losing bets were around $183 million — a net loss of nearly $41 million.

In a message to his illegal bookmaker on March 20, the day the Los Angeles Times and ESPN broke the news of the federal investigation, Mizuhara wrote: “Technically I did steal from him. It’s all over for me.”

Major League Baseball opened its own investigation after the controversy surfaced, and the Dodgers immediately fired Mizuhara.

https://www.voanews.com/a/judge-orders-ex-interpreter-for-ohtani-to-get-gambling-addiction-treatment-/7568162.html

Letters: Emulate ex-workers | AI’s promise | No panacea | Total ban | Gaza blockade | Raising profile

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

Mercury News Letters to the Editor for April 14, 2024

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/letters-1681/

Invasive mosquitoes were spotted in East San Jose. Here’s how you can stop the dangerous pests.

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

After a disease-carrying mosquito species was discovered in San Jose, officials are calling on residents to eliminate standing water to stop the spread of the dangerous pest.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/invasive-mosquitoes-were-spotted-in-east-san-jose-heres-how-you-can-stop-the-dangerous-pests/

Racheal Kundananji set the world record for a transfer fee for a women’s soccer player; Sunday, she’ll make her first Bay FC start

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

On Sunday night at PayPal Park, the next chapter of the club’s history begins.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/racheal-kundananji-set-the-world-record-for-a-transfer-fee-for-a-womens-soccer-player-sunday-shell-make-her-first-bay-fc-start/

Microsoft Is Testing Ads in the Windows 11 Start Menu

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/12/24128640/microsoft-windows-11-start-menu-ads-app-recommendations

Zero-day exploited right now in Palo Alto Networks’ GlobalProtect gateways

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Out of the PAN-OS and into the firewall, a Python backdoor this way comes

Palo Alto Networks on Friday issued a critical alert for an under-attack vulnerability in the PAN-OS software used in its firewall-slash-VPN products.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/palo_alto_pan_flaw/

Tesla slashes Full Self-Driving monthly subscription to $99

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

Tesla has decided to slash its Full Self-Driving monthly subscription price in half to now $99 a month.

This comes after Elon Musk said Tesla would keep increasing Full Self-Driving prices as the system gets better.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/tesla-slashes-full-self-driving-monthly-subscription/

Microsoft tests ads in the Start menu

date: 2024-04-12, from: OS News

Building on top of recent improvements like grouping recently installed apps and showing your frequently used apps, we are now trying out recommendations to help you discover great apps from the Microsoft Store under Recommended on the Start menu. This will appear only for Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel in the U.S. and will not apply to commercial devices (devices managed by organizations). This can be turned off by going to Settings > Personalization > Start and turning off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more”. As a reminder, we regularly try out new experiences and concepts that may never get released with Windows Insiders to get feedback. Should you see this experience on the Start menu, let us know what you think. We are beginning to roll this out to a small set of Insiders in the Beta Channel at first. ↫ Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc The Start menu, August 24, 1995 – April 12, 2024. You made it almost 30 years, buddy.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139276/microsoft-tests-ads-in-the-start-menu/

Rhiannon’s Return, with Blues-Soul Hat On

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Ever-versatile, award-winning American treasure Rhiannon Giddens returns to town, ushering her blues-soul persona and band into the Arlington Theatre.

The post Rhiannon’s Return, with Blues-Soul Hat On appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/12/rhiannons-return-with-blues-soul-hat-on/

Young Artists, Between Phases

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

This year’s Westmont College Senior Art Exhibition, ‘In Between Moments,’ fills the Ridley-Tree Museum of Art with original concepts and creations.

The post Young Artists, Between Phases appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/12/young-artists-between-phases/

The City of Santa Clarita Opens 38th Park

date: 2024-04-12, from: City of Santa Clarita

Welcome to Skyline Ranch Park! This past weekend, hundreds of residents joined Santa Clarita City Council and dignitaries for the grand opening of the City’s newest amenity – Skyline Ranch Park! Marking the 38th park in the community, the 10.5-acre park offers activities for everyone! “When the City incorporated in December of 1987, we inherited […]

The post The City of Santa Clarita Opens 38th Park appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.

https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/04/12/the-city-of-santa-clarita-opens-38th-park/

May 2: Desert Dreams, An Evening of Dance and Music

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Take a magic carpet ride through the enchanting countries of the Middle East to experience an eclectic combination of music and dance from Egypt, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Emirates and more. Desert Dreams, An Evening of Dance and Music will appear on stage at The MAIN in Old Town Newhall Thursday, May 2 at 8 p.m

https://scvnews.com/may-2-desert-dreams-an-evening-of-dance-and-music/

This Week in the IndieWeb

date: 2024-04-12, from: This week in Indie Web

April 5-12, 2024

Recent Events

From events.indieweb.org/archive:

Homebrew Website Club - Pacific

Homebrew Website Club Europe/London

Join us online in Zoom for demos of personal sites, recent breakthroughs, discussions about the independent web, and meet IndieWeb community members! Homebrew Website club is for all levels and areas of IndieWeb interest, whether curious, creative, a coder, or all the above.

Homebrew Website Club - Nuremberg/Germany

HWC Nuremberg is a in-person meeting for everybody who is interested in setting up a personal website and talk about web-related issues.

Bonus Online Homebrew Website Club - Writing Edition


Upcoming Events

From events.indieweb.org:

Homebrew Website Club - Pacific


Homebrew Website Club Edinburgh

Homebrew Website Club - Nuremberg/Germany

HWC Nuremberg is a in-person meeting for everybody who is interested in setting up a personal website and talk about web-related issues.

IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf 2024
-

IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf 2024 is scheduled for 2024-05-11…12, the weekend before btconf Düsseldorf 2024, at The City Library on Saturday, and Organizers are looking for local suggestions for a Sunday venue!

What We’re Reading

From news.indieweb.org:

Tracy’s site is great and has so much good content. It’s cool to hear how it’s changed over the years.
by manuelmoreale.com on
Writing a web-first resumé
by werd.io/profile/benwerd on
Partial credit for CSS Naked Day
by seirdy.one on
homebrew website club
by jamesg.blog on
My wander page
by jamesg.blog on
indiebookclub version 0.1.2 launched
by indiebookclub.biz on
MDN’s AI Help and lucid lies
by seirdy.one on

Top New Wiki Pages

From IndieWeb Wiki: New Pages:

Flarum

Flarum is open source forum software used to run IndieWebForum.

Created by gRegor on Friday and edited 1 more time

roach motel

roach motel is a metaphor for a silo that accepts data but does not allow exporting to other platforms based on a US insect trap advertisement campaign “roaches check in, but they don’t check out”.

Created by [aciccarello] on Tuesday and edited 1 more time

New Event Notes

From IndieWeb Wiki: New Pages:

Homebrew Website Club Europe/London: 2024-04-10

Bonus Online Homebrew Website Club - Writing Edition: 2024-04-08

Homebrew Website Club - Nuremberg/Germany: 2024-04-10

Homebrew Website Club - Pacific: 2024-04-10

Top Edited Wiki Pages

From IndieWeb Wiki: Recent Changes:

https://indieweb.org/this-week/2024-04-12.html

Photos: SCAA’s Spring Fever

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

The Santa Clarita Artists Association featured three local artists: Lynda Frautnick, Zony Gordon, and Gloria Cassidy for the Spring Fever Art Exhibition on Saturday at the 6th Street Gallery in Old Town Newhall. The original artworks were comprised of watercolor, mixed media, acrylic, and collage art styles. 

The post Photos: SCAA’s Spring Fever appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/photos-scaas-spring-fever/

Chamber announces 15th annual State of the County

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

News release   The Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce announced the 15th Annual State of the County will be held on June 6 at 11:30 a.m. at The Hyatt Regency Valencia.   L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger will provide the community with an exclusive update on the key issues impacting the SCV, from business […]

The post Chamber announces 15th annual State of the County appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/chamber-announces-15th-annual-state-of-the-county/

Barger Recognizes Dark Sky LA County for Preserving Dark Skies

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Los Angeles County Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger successfully introduced a motion during this week’s Board of Supervisors meeting to recognize a newly established non-profit organization, DarkSky LA County, for their local work to preserve natural darkness and diminish the impact of artificial light locally.

https://scvnews.com/barger-recognizes-dark-sky-la-county-for-preserving-dark-skies/

Photos: Liquid Botanicals

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

The Santa Clarita Artists Association member Qiana Tarlow debuted her first solo art show at the Vernon Gallery at the Canyon Theater Guild in Old Town Newhall on Saturday with more than 30 original paintings in her Spring themed series titled, “Liquid Botanicals” a watercolor art exhibition. 

The post Photos: Liquid Botanicals appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/photos-liquid-botanicals/

South Coast Chamber of Commerce Offers Hope for Future Workforce Housing

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

New employer-sponsored housing consortium may be the answer for Santa Barbara County’s “missing middle.”

The post South Coast Chamber of Commerce Offers Hope for Future Workforce Housing appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/12/south-coast-chamber-of-commerce-offers-hope-for-future-workforce-housing/

🪤 #196 - It’s A Trap!

date: 2024-04-12, from: Interesting, a blog on writing

“The trap isn’t a trap if you know the trap is trying to trap you. It’s a face-off.” -Peter Quill

https://inneresting.substack.com/p/196-its-a-trap

US: China strengthens Russian war machine with surging equipment sales

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

WASHINGTON — China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine, according to a U.S. assessment.

Two senior Biden administration officials, who discussed the sensitive findings Friday on the condition of anonymity, said that in 2023 about 90% of Russia’s microelectronics came from China. Russia has used those to make missiles, tanks and aircraft. Nearly 70% of Russia’s approximately $900 million in machine tool imports in the last quarter of 2023 came from China.

Chinese and Russian entities have also been working to jointly produce unmanned aerial vehicles inside Russia, and Chinese companies are likely providing Russia with the nitrocellulose used in the manufacture of ammunition, the officials said. China-based companies Wuhan Global Sensor Technology Company, Wuhan Tongsheng Technology Company and Hikvision are providing optical components for use in Russian tanks and armored vehicles.

The officials said that Russia has received military optics for use in tanks and armored vehicles manufactured by Chinese firms iRay Technology and North China Research Institute of Electro-Optics, and that China has been providing Russia with UAV engines and turbojet engines for cruise missiles.

Russia’s semiconductor imports from China jumped from $200 million in 2021 to over $500 million in 2022, according to Russian customs data analyzed by the Free Russia Foundation, a group that advocates for civil society development.

Beijing is also working with Russia to improve its satellite and other space-based capabilities for use in Ukraine, a development the officials say could in the longer term increase the threat Russia poses across Europe. The officials, citing downgraded intelligence findings, said the U.S. has also determined that China is providing imagery to Russia for its war on Ukraine.

The officials discussed the findings as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to China this month for talks. Blinken is scheduled to travel next week to the Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Capri, Italy, where he’s expected to raise concerns about China’s growing indirect support for Russia as Moscow revamps its military and looks to consolidate recent gains in Ukraine.

U.S. President Joe Biden has previously raised concerns directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping about Beijing indirectly supporting Russia’s war effort.

While China has not provided direct lethal military support for Russia, it has backed it diplomatically in blaming the West for provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the war and refrained from calling it an invasion in deference to the Kremlin.

China has repeatedly said it isn’t providing Russia with arms or military assistance, although it has maintained robust economic connections with Moscow, alongside India and other countries, amid sanctions from Washington and its allies.

“The normal trade between China and Russia should not be interfered or restricted,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Washington. “We urge the U.S. side to refrain from disparaging and scapegoating the normal relationship between China and Russia.”

Xi met in Beijing on Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who heaped praise on Xi’s leadership.

Russia’s growing economic and diplomatic isolation has made it increasingly reliant on China, its former rival for leadership of the Communist bloc during the Cold War.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who returned to Washington this week from a visit to Beijing, said she warned Chinese officials that the Biden administration was prepared to sanction Chinese banks, companies and Beijing’s leadership if they assist Russia’s armed forces with its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Biden issued an executive order in December giving Yellen the authority to sanction financial institutions that aided Russia’s military-industrial complex.

“We continue to be concerned about the role that any firms, including those in the PRC, are playing in Russia’s military procurement,” Yellen told reporters, using the initials for the People’s Republic of China. “I stressed that companies, including those in the PRC, must not provide material support for Russia’s war and that they will face significant consequences if they do. And I reinforced that any banks that facilitate significant transactions that channel military or dual-use goods to Russia’s defense industrial base expose themselves to the risk of U.S. sanctions.”

The United States has frequently downgraded and unveiled intelligence findings about Russia’s plans and operations over the course of the war with Ukraine, which has been fought for more than two years.

Such efforts have been focused on highlighting plans for Russian misinformation operations or to throw attention on Moscow’s difficulties in prosecuting its war against Ukraine as well as its coordination with Iran and North Korea to supply it with badly needed weaponry. Blinken last year spotlighted intelligence that showed China was considering providing arms and ammunition to Russia.

The White House believes that the public airing of the intelligence findings has led China, at least for now, to hold off on directly arming Russia. China’s economy has also been slow to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinese officials could be sensitive to reaction from European capitals, which have maintained closer ties to Beijing even as the U.S.-China relationship has become more complicated.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-china-strengthens-russian-war-machine-with-surging-equipment-sales/7568119.html

Taking On the Short-Term Rental Problem in Santa Barbara

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Short-term rental enforcement program finds 1,147 illegal vacation rentals still operating in the city, with 151 cases in its first year.

The post Taking On the Short-Term Rental Problem in Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/12/taking-on-the-short-term-rental-problem-in-santa-barbara/

@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-04-12, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)

The one thing I am dreading about Godot/iPad is setting up the CI on Xcode Cloud.

Those devices are powered by modded raspberry pis running MacOS.

I am thinking that one hack might be to use GitHub CI + custom runners that SSH into my Studio to do the heavy lifting, and then use those binaries as the input to Xcode Cloud.

https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112260334321425886

Meet The Students Running For You!

date: 2024-04-12, from: CI View (CSCI Student Paper)

By Ashley Tolteca and Allen Monge

http://civiewnews.com/broadcasting/interviewing-your-asi-present-and-vice-president-candidates-for-student-government/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=interviewing-your-asi-present-and-vice-president-candidates-for-student-government

Mideast tensions loom ahead of Biden meeting with Iraqi PM al-Sudani

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

washington — President Joe Biden is set to welcome Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on Monday, with the threat of a Gaza war spillover looming in the background. Security officials are on guard against expected Iranian retaliation for an attack on its consulate in Damascus earlier this month. 

On Friday, Iran-backed group Hezbollah launched a barrage of rockets and drones from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. While Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged frequent cross-border fire, the timing of the attacks may trigger a significant escalation of the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, another Iran proxy.  

Washington has been pressing Baghdad and other partners in the region to urge Iran to show restraint following the killing of seven Iranian military officers in an April 1 strike attributed to Israel. Tehran has made it clear that it will respond.  

Biden on Friday warned Iran against any attack, saying the United States is “devoted to the defense of Israel.” 

A potential escalation will be front of mind for Biden and al-Sudani, who are keen to prevent Israel’s war from spreading into Syria and Lebanon. 

In the earlier months of the Gaza war, Iran-backed groups such as Kataib Hezbollah repeatedly targeted American troops in the region, including in an attack on a U.S. base in Jordan near the border of Iraq and Syria in January that killed three American soldiers and wounded more than 40 others.  

Under pressure from Baghdad, shortly after the attack, Kataib Hezbollah announced it was suspending all its military operations against American troops. 

The suspension of hostilities from Kataib Hezbollah and other anti-U.S. groups was a condition placed by the U.S. for the Iraqi prime minister’s visit, said Sajad Jiyad, a fellow from the Century Foundation think tank.  

Troop withdrawal 

A top goal in Washington for al-Sudani is progress toward an agreement on U.S. troop withdrawal from his country before a potential change in U.S. administration after the November election. 

There are approximately 2,500 U.S. troops still deployed in Iraq, part of the global coalition formed in 2014 to defeat the Islamic State terror group, mostly focusing on counterterrorism roles.

On Monday, a U.S.-Iraq military committee launched in January met to hash out a troop withdrawal timeline. 

Biden administration officials have declined to provide details. However, in a background briefing to reporters Thursday, a State Department official said the U.S. has been “very satisfied” with its partnership with the Iraqi Security Forces and has seen “steady improvements” in their capabilities. 

Energy independence 

Biden and al-Sudani will also discuss “ongoing Iraqi financial reforms to promote economic development and progress towards Iraq’s energy independence and modernization,” the White House said in a statement announcing the visit.

Washington wants Iraq to wean itself off Iranian energy despite routinely providing sanctions waivers to allow Baghdad to continue importing electricity from Iran.

The State Department official said Iraqi reliance on Iranian electricity has “significantly decreased,” citing an Iraq-Jordan electricity project and ongoing talks for more electricity lines between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. 

Baghdad is also set to ask Washington to ease restrictions on the flow of revenue from Iraq’s oil sales.  

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the funds have been held in an Iraqi government account at the U.S. Federal Reserve System and distributed upon Baghdad’s request. Since late 2022, Washington has restricted its transfers to prevent money laundering benefiting Iran and Syria. 

Baghdad will highlight its efforts on that front, focusing on “reform in the financial system, especially in the bank system,” Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein told VOA in a recent interview. 

New phase of strategic partnership 

Al-Sudani said he aims for a new phase of strategic partnership that “supports the sovereignty and independence of Iraq without forgoing fruitful cooperation between Baghdad and Washington.” 

“Our discussions will emphasize the continued importance of our economic relationship, cooperation on combating money laundering and terrorist financing, and using political and diplomatic tools to defuse regional tensions,” the Iraqi prime minister wrote in a Foreign Affairs article ahead of his visit. 

“The fight against terrorism will continue to be a central topic for both of our governments.” 

The leaders are also set to discuss cooperation on oil and gas, Hussein said. “We are talking about American companies coming there and helping the Iraqis in these fields, as well as health, agriculture, high education.” 

The State Department official confirmed that Biden would also raise the case of journalist Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli-Russian citizen kidnapped in Iraq in 2023 by Kataib Hezbollah.

Jeff Seldin, Hero Rahim and Farhad Pouladi contributed to this report.

https://www.voanews.com/a/mideast-tensions-loom-ahead-of-biden-meeting-with-iraqi-pm-al-sudani-/7568115.html

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

The History of WordPress from 2003 - 2024.

https://thegww.com/the-history-of-wordpress-from-2003-2024/

Photos: Spectacular Sondheim!

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

The Santa Clarita United Methodist Church held its “Spectacular Sondheim!” A musical revue showcase featuring the voice students of Joshua Went, music director of the church, on Sunday to celebrate the music by composer and lyricist Stephan Sondheim.

The post Photos: Spectacular Sondheim! appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/photos-spectacular-sondheim/

Friday Squid Blogging: The Awfulness of Squid Fishing Boats

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-05, from: Bruce Schneier blog

It’s a pretty awful story.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Read my blog posting guidelines here.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/04/friday-squid-blogging-the-awfulness-of-squid-fishing-boats.html

EPA Sets First Federal Limits on Dangerous ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water

date: 2024-04-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Public water systems will have to test water and reduce levels of six types of PFAS if they aren’t in compliance with the new rule

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/epa-sets-first-federal-limits-on-dangerous-forever-chemicals-in-drinking-water-180984135/

Ford Mustang Mach-E Had BlueCruise On During Fatal Texas Crash, Investigators Say

date: 2024-04-12, from: Inside EVs News

This is the first of the two ongoing investigations into Ford’s BlueCruise driving assistance system.

https://insideevs.com/news/715922/ford-mustang-mach-e-bluecruise-ntsb-investigation/

May 16: VIA Workforce Development Conference

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Valley Industry Association of Santa Clarita is set to ignite innovation and transformation with its VIA Workforce Development Conference 2024 at the Hyatt Regency Valencia on Thursday, May 16.

https://scvnews.com/may-16-via-workforce-development-conference-2024/

SCV Water sends letter about contamination concerns for landfill 

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

  The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency sent a letter Wednesday to the L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board to request testing of Chiquita Canyon Landfill’s leachate for the presence of contaminants that have plagued the local supply for years — per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.  The chemical was detected five years ago in […]

The post <strong>SCV Water sends letter about contamination concerns for landfill</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/scv-water-sends-letter-about-contamination-concerns-for-landfill/

The Big, Flaming Problem With the EPA’s New PFAS Rules

date: 2024-04-12, from: Heatmap News



Hindsight is 20-20, but boy have we had a lot of bad ideas.

We laid lead pipes to transport our drinking water. We let our kids play in clouds of DDT. We textured our ceilings with asbestos fibers. And until this week, nothing prevented municipalities across the country from allowing cancer-causing chemicals into the water that flows from the kitchen sinks of nearly half of Americans.

On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would tolerate only exceptionally low levels of six perfluoroalkyls and polyfluoroalkyls — a group collectively known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals” — in U.S. drinking water. The chemicals, which are used for everything from waterproofing raincoats to making stain-resistant rugs, have been linked to severe health problems such as kidney, testicular, prostate, and colorectal cancers, of which diagnoses have been on the rise. An estimated 98% of us have traces of PFAS in our bodies, which often got there in the first place because of something we drank.

Environmental groups were quick to applaud the decision, calling it “overdue” and a “huge victory.” But despite being a huge step toward improving public health, the EPA’s action does not stop PFAS from entering America’s groundwater in the first place. One of the most pernicious sources is also one of the most useful: firefighting foam.

“Aqueous film forming foam,” or AFFF (“A-triple-F”), is highly effective at putting out oil and gasoline fires, which is why commercial airports, refineries, the military, and large ships keep it ready to hand. “When you take a shower, the soap and the shampoo you use spreads out the water into a foam — it suds,” David Trueba, the CEO of Revive Environmental, a company that has developed a method of breaking down PFAS that meets the EPA’s standards, told me. “AFFF does the same thing, but it prevents oxygen from getting to a grease or an oil fire. The PFAS molecules do an excellent job of creating bubbles and foam.”

The specific PFAS chemicals used in the foam are perfluorooctanesulfonic acid or perluorooctanoic acid, both newly restricted under the EPA’s drinking water guidance — but again, nothing prevents companies from continuing to manufacture them. The somewhat limited and specific uses of AFFF might make it seem like a threat mainly to firefighters and aviation professionals, rather than the general public. But in fact, the foam is one of the primary ways PFAS gets into drinking water because it is “directly applied to the environment when conducting training and responding to fires,” Shalene Thomas, the senior emerging contaminants program manager at Battelle, Revive Environmental’s parent company, told me. To add insult to injury, airports are required to test their foam annually, for safety reasons.

Even with the EPA’s new regulations, Thomas said, “until these releases are fully delineated, sources removed, and treatment installed, the risk of exposure from drinking water remains.”

Airports, municipal fire departments, and the military are all moving away from using AFFF to fight liquid fires, but that leaves an estimated 10 to 15 million gallons of the foam in the United States alone, which will have to be carefully processed to neutralize their danger, lest they end up in landfills where they might, of course, leech into the groundwater. Their persistence in the environment is a side effect of the strong bonds that make PFAS so effective — and what makes industry so reluctant to give them up — but it’s also what makes them incredibly difficult to abate. “If you’re playing Red Rover, normal molecules look like you and I — we can lock arms, and they can break through,” Trueba explained. But with PFAS, “We’re playing against The Rock and John Cena. That’s how strong the bond is.”

This conundrum has led some water utilities to complain about costs from a problem they say is not of their own making and is often prohibitively expensive to address. Large water utilities that serve populations of more than 10,000 people may only have a budget of $10 million for everything they do. “Having a $3 to $5 million bogey put on top of that” to treat water for PFAS, as directed by the EPA — “that’s where the comments usually come from,” Trueba said. While the Biden administration allotted an additional $1 billion in its drinking water plan on top of the nearly $4 billion set aside to address PFAS and other contaminants in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, $5 billion is still “going to go not very far,” Trueba said. For example, Washington state’s public water utilities alone have said they’d need $1.6 billion for their initial PFAS cleanup.

John Rumpler, the clean water director at Environment America, is less tolerant of complaints from utilities. “For the public water utilities to be sitting there playing the victim and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, the EPA is imposing all these terrible costs on us’ — what do we tell our kids? Do something to help yourself,” he told me. “The part of the problem that utilities can clearly control is to shut off the tap on those industrial wastewater sources that are sending their PFAS to you.” State officials can also set pretreatment standards for industrial dischargers so PFAS are removed before they ever end up in waste sewage plants.

So far, this is how action against AFFF has come about — from individual state lawsuits and takeback programs. Back in 2018, the city of Stewart, Florida, sued chemical manufacturer 3M over the firefighting foam that had contaminated its water table, a suit that was eventually joined by 4,000 cities around the country. The eventual settlement totaled more than $10 billion and sparked the race to create technologies like Revive’s PFAS Annihilator, which uses intense heat and pressure to break the molecule’s stubborn chemical bonds. Other users of AFFF started to look closer at the foam, too; the Pentagon plans to phase out its use this year after an investigation by the Defense Department, and a spokeswoman for the National Fire Protection Association pointed me toward the organization’s ongoing workshops aimed at mitigating health risks to its members from fire-suppressing foams.

If these efforts keep up, it’s possible that in the future PFAS will become another bad idea we disbelievingly shake our heads at when we remember how things used to be. “Our parents and our grandparents seem to have pans and rugs from before these chemicals, so I’m pretty sure that we can do without them,” Rumpler pointed out.

But until chemical manufacturers stop making substances like AFFF, the EPA has only really given the faucet one good turn toward the off position. It still continues to drip.

https://heatmap.news/climate/pfas-drinking-water-fire-foam

No Photoshop needed!

date: 2024-04-12, from: Status-Q blog

I was, unfortunately, beheaded today, while visiting Teylers Museum in Haarlem.  This was a trifle inconvenient, but I still managed to smile about it.  This is straight out of the iPhone camera, with no image manipulation. I look a slightly funny colour not because of embarrassment at my recent decapitation, because I got rather too Continue Reading

https://statusq.org/archives/2024/04/12/12003/

Want to Learn More About Student Elections and ASI? Check Out This Infographic For Everything You Need!

date: 2024-04-12, from: CI View (CSCI Student Paper)

By Hilda Lopez

http://civiewnews.com/news/why-you-should-vote-and-how-to-do-it/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-you-should-vote-and-how-to-do-it

Japanese-Language Translator Charged in Complaint with Illegally Transferring More Than $16 Million from Baseball Player’s Account

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

 LOS ANGELES – A Japanese-language translator was charged today via federal criminal complaint with unlawfully transferring more than $16 million from

The post Japanese-Language Translator Charged in Complaint with Illegally Transferring More Than $16 Million from Baseball Player’s Account appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/12/japanese-language-translator-charged-in-complaint-with-illegally-transferring-more-than-16-million-from-baseball-players-account/

New Plans Afoot at Ty Warner’s Sandpiper Golf Club and Barnsdall-Rio Grande Gas Station in Goleta

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

The historic building may become a “quick stop” café, while renewal of the golf course could delete and add areas of sensitive habitat.

The post New Plans Afoot at Ty Warner’s Sandpiper Golf Club and Barnsdall-Rio Grande Gas Station in Goleta appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/12/new-plans-afoot-at-ty-warners-sandpiper-golf-club-and-barnsdall-rio-gas-station-in-goleta/

Superhuman AGI is not nigh

date: 2024-04-12, from: Gary Marcus blog

Why Elon was probably wise not to take the bet

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/superhuman-agi-is-not-nigh

Joanna Stern’s Humane AI Pin (Mini) Review

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Daring Fireball

https://twitter.com/joannastern/status/1778469290988994741

Google One VPN axed for everyone but Pixel loyalists … for now

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Another one bytes the dust

In an incredibly rare move, Google is killing off one of its online services – this time, VPN for Google One.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/vpn_google_shuttered/

Proudly Second Best!

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/proudly-second-best

Cherlynn Low’s Humane AI Pin Review for Engadget

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.engadget.com/the-humane-ai-pin-is-the-solution-to-none-of-technologys-problems-120002469.html

Kia is paying dealers to sell EVs – that could mean deals for buyers

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

Kia is paying its dealers up to $1,500 in flat payments for each EV sold in April, so buyers, there may be good prices to be had.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/kia-is-paying-dealers-to-sell-evs-that-could-mean-deals-for-buyers/

Hezbollah launches rockets, drones into Israel as US warns Iran

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

Washington — U.S. President Joe Biden delivered a stern, one-word warning to Iran on Friday as the world braced for Tehran to exact revenge for a deadly Israeli airstrike on its embassy compound in Damascus, Syria.

“Don’t,” Biden said to reporters following a speech on domestic policy at an event in New York City.

“We are devoted to the defense of Israel,” the president said in response to questions from reporters. “We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel, and Iran will not succeed.”

Biden’s comments followed similar expressions of support from top U.S. defense and diplomatic officials over the past several days and come as the U.S. military takes steps to ensure growing hostilities between Israel and Iran do not engulf the Middle East in a wider war.

“We are moving additional assets to the region to bolster regional deterrence efforts and increase protection for U.S. forces,” a U.S. defense official told VOA Friday. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, declined to share additional details.

Even as U.S. officials warned Iran against seeking revenge, a key Iranian proxy sprang into action.

Lebanese Hezbollah late Friday fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces said it detected about 40 rockets crossing from Lebanon into Israel, some of which were intercepted by air defense systems.

The IDF also said it was able to intercept two explosive drones that Hezbollah militants had used to target Israel earlier Friday.

It is unclear whether the rocket and drone attacks by Hezbollah were part of an effort by Iran to retaliate for the Israeli strike on Iran’s diplomatic compound earlier this month, which killed three senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, including General Ali Reza Zahdi, who led Iran’s elite Quds force.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Wednesday that Israel “must be punished and will be punished” for the April 1 attack, days after one of his advisers said Israeli embassies are “no longer safe.”

U.S. diplomatic officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have been reaching out to counterparts in Turkey, China and Saudi Arabia, urging them to make clear to Tehran “that escalation is not in anyone’s interest,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Thursday.

But the U.S. push for de-escalation has been accompanied by expressions of strong support for Israel in the face of potential Iranian aggression.

“We are in constant communication with our Israeli counterparts about making sure that they can defend themselves,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters early Friday, describing Iran’s threat to retaliate as “very credible.”

“We take our commitment to helping Israel with their self-defense very seriously,” Kirby said. “It is an ironclad commitment.”

During a call Thursday with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also offered Washington’s backing to Israel.

“Secretary Austin assured Minister Gallant that Israel could count on full U.S. support to defend Israel against Iranian attacks,” according to a Pentagon readout of the conversation.

The U.S. statements and the movement of additional resources to deter Iranian aggression, however, have done little so far to ease growing concerns.

“We are very worried about potential escalation in a situation that seems to be escalating on a daily basis,” said United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

“Our message, which has been sent publicly and privately, is to avoid any escalation and work toward de-escalation of the tensions,” Dujarric told reporters Friday.

VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara and Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

https://www.voanews.com/a/hezbollah-launches-rockets-drones-into-israel-as-us-warns-iran/7568018.html

Tesla Driver Protects Cyclist From Wolf In Romania

date: 2024-04-12, from: Inside EVs News

Riding your bike alone on a mountain pass in the deep Carpathian mountains can have its perils.

https://insideevs.com/news/715899/tesla-cyclist-wolf-romania/

Stranded on a Remote Pacific Island, Three Men Spelled ‘HELP’ With Palm Fronds and Got Rescued

date: 2024-04-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The experienced sailors lived on coconut meat and well water for more than a week, after their boat became damaged

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stranded-on-a-remote-pacific-island-three-men-spelled-help-with-palm-fronds-and-got-rescued-180984151/

@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-04-12, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)

What specific thing this week reminded you that we are living in the evil universe?

https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/112259956243195255

Employee Quietly Sneaks His Own Painting Onto the Walls of a German Museum

date: 2024-04-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine

After discovering the stunt, the ​​Pinakothek der Moderne fired the staffer and reported the crime to the police

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/museum-employee-illicitly-hangs-his-own-painting-in-munichs-pinakothek-der-moderne-180984136/

Ingrid Garner to Present “Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany”

date: 2024-04-12, from: City of Santa Clarita

Ingrid Garner to Present “Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany”A Profound Odyssey of Survival at The MAIN Join Ingrid Garner is bringing her grandmother’s captivating memoir to the stage this April with “Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany.” Garner’s internationally acclaimed production sheds light on children in wartime, delivering a powerful […]

The post Ingrid Garner to Present “Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany” appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.

https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/04/12/ingrid-garner-to-present-eleanors-story-an-american-girl-in-hitlers-germany/

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Trump tells Arizona Legislature to act after GOP blocks bills to repeal 1864 abortion ban.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4590617-trump-tells-arizona-legislature-to-act-after-gop-blocks-bills-repeal-1864-abortion-ban/?email=066c0990fa413d52c3842f29a42abb22ffa00eae&emaila=02c3337a6605235631b8cab2e023d54e&emailb=e0d37ab6f97ed06914f0e75a1ebed673001a81f7f84978ff9209f3e23f7ba5d3

Podcast: Tesla Robotaxi unveiling, Cybertruck battery pack, new Mustang Mach-E, and more

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

On the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss the announced Tesla Robotaxi unveiling, Cybertruck battery pack teardown, new and updated Mustang Mach-E, and more.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/podcast-tesla-robotaxi-unveiling-cybertruck-battery-pack-new-mustang-mach-e/

Apple’s failure to duck UK antitrust probe could bring £785M windfall for devs

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

That 30% app tax may turn out to be a hefty liability

Apple’s attempt to get the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to toss a lawsuit over its 30 percent App Store tax has failed, meaning the iMaker could eventually be forced to fork over £785 million ($980 million) in compensation to developers.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/apple_competition_app_store_uk/

Tesla Cybertruck Fast Charging Improvements Coming This Quarter

date: 2024-04-12, from: Inside EVs News

The model is promised to replenish up to 154 miles of range in 15 minutes.

https://insideevs.com/news/715870/tesla-cybertruck-fast-charging-improvements/

April 24: University Center at COC to Host Open House

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook University Center at College of the Canyons will host an in-person Open House event from 4-7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 24 to preview academic programs offered by partner institutions, including University of La Verne and National University and showcase the facility’s rental spaces.

https://scvnews.com/april-24-university-center-at-coc-to-host-open-house/

EVs are taking over the rest of the world much faster than the US

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

Electric vehicles are taking over the rest of the world much faster than the United States.

The faster we adopt EVs, the more benefits we get from them.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/evs-are-taking-over-the-rest-world-much-faster-us/

Green’s Dictionary of Slang

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Daring Fireball

https://greensdictofslang.com/

@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-04-12, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)

So I was quite happy with some UI to connect signals on the iPad, when I thought "Miguel, let us try this without the hardware keyboard".

Now I need to go back to the drawing board.

Thinking I can stash the "search" on the navigation bar.

It is a replacement for the UI on the 3rd screenshot:

https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112259843614276394

April 29: US Frontline Collective Golf Classic

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The US Frontline Collective Golf Classic will be held Monday, April 29 at the Sand Canyon Country Club. Noon shotgun start.

https://scvnews.com/april-29-us-frontline-collective-golf-classic/

Starting in 1978, a high school science teacher told his students that…

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044389-starting-in-1978-a-high

Jaden Smith feeds kids in need at KICKit World festival

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

The first annual KICKit World festival took place in Inglewood, California on April 6, 2024. The event featured a variety of activities and panels, including live performances and masterclasses hosted…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180553/multimedia/watch/jaden-smith-feeds-kids-in-need-at-kickit-world-festival/

The April 8 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA

date: 2024-04-12, from: NASA breaking news

On April 8, 2024, the Moon’s shadow swept across North America, treating millions to a breathtaking view of a total solar eclipse. As the Moon passed in front of the Sun, it revealed the Sun’s wispy white outer atmosphere — the corona. Pictures of total solar eclipses are beautiful — they capture a moment happening […]

https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/april-8-total-solar-eclipse-through-the-eyes-of-nasa/

Telek: A rising water polo superstar, proud of her Hungarian roots, and driven by a passion for victory

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

In collegiate water polo, Dorottya Telek, a junior, has been creating ripples everywhere she plays. Her exceptional talent and unwavering determination have distinguished her as a critical player for CSUN’s…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180318/sports/telek-a-rising-water-polo-superstar-proud-of-her-hungarian-roots-and-driven-by-a-passion-for-victory/

CSUN lecturer continues to encourage social change around the world

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

Her journey first began as a little girl. For CSUN lecturer Denice Labertew, advocacy for social change has always been a part of her life. “My mom always said I…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180193/news/csun-lecturer-continues-to-encourage-social-change-around-the-world/

Honda’s Ohio-Based EV Hub Is Due To Open In 2025

date: 2024-04-12, from: Inside EVs News

Three of Honda’s internal combustion car manufacturing plants are being significantly reconfigured to support its EV plans.

https://insideevs.com/news/715940/honda-ohio-ev-hub-2025/

Watch What Happens When You Take A Honda Gold Wing Ice Fishing

date: 2024-04-12, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

Sketch City, population: You.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/715809/honda-goldwing-ice-fishing-mattspears/

A 605 MW PV plant in Germany is now Europe’s largest solar farm

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

A 605 megawatt (MW) project in Germany has claimed the title of Europe’s largest solar farm, bumping a PV plant in Spain out of the top spot.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/germany-europe-largest-solar-farm/

Swift for C++ Practitioners

date: 2024-04-12, from: Michael Tsai

Doug Gregor: I’ve started a blog series aimed at C++ programmers who are interested in learning #SwiftLang. It teaches the breadth of the Swift language, but anchored in the features and idioms of C++. So if you know your Rule Of Fives and your SFINAEs and think you might be interested in Swift, I’d love […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/04/12/swift-for-c-practitioners/

Effects of the DMA’s Browser Choice Requirement

date: 2024-04-12, from: Michael Tsai

Ashley Belanger: Smaller web browsers are gaining traction in the European Union after the Digital Markets Act (DMA) started requiring designated gatekeepers like Google and Apple to make it easier to switch default web browsers on devices.[…]Reuters collected data from six companies, confirming that, when presented with a choice screen, many EU users will swap […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/04/12/effects-of-the-dmas-browser-choice-requirement/

“Don’t Let Me Go” and iCloud Storage Tiers

date: 2024-04-12, from: Michael Tsai

John Gruber: The gist of the commercial is that you shouldn’t worry about deleting photos to free up storage, because modern iPhones have plenty of space. […] But this commercial made me want to yell at my TV each time it came on: “The problem is iCloud storage, not on-device storage!” The free tier of […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/04/12/dont-let-me-go-and-icloud-storage-tiers/

Grindr’s Plan to Squeeze Its Users

date: 2024-04-12, from: Michael Tsai

Zoë Schiffer: Since its initial public offering in 2022, Grindr has been on a rocky road financially. Its stock has fallen 70 percent since its SPAC. After hitting an IPO-high of $71.51, it currently sits at $10.13. Last summer, employees announced plans to unionize, amid industry layoffs and worries that the company was losing its […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/04/12/grindrs-plan-to-squeeze-its-users/

Automobili Pininfarina’s one-of-a-kind Battista Reversario hyper GT goes 0-60 mph in 1.79 sec [Video]

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

All-electric supercar specialist Automobili Pininfarina is at it again with a new one-of-a-kind iteration of its Battista hyper GT. The boutique Italian automaker has unveiled the Battista Reversario – a new bespoke commission that builds off the ultra-rare Battista Anniversario – one of the most expensive EVs on the planet. Check out both bespoke Battistas in the video below.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/automobili-pininfarina-one-of-a-kind-battista-reversario-hyper-gt-video/

Canyon softball evens series with West Ranch

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

Canyon junior pitcher Jessica Carr was asked to turn up the heat in Tuesday’s Foothill League road battle with West Ranch.  After a solid performance in round one with the Wildcats, Carr pitched a gem and rattled the West Ranch offense in Canyon’s 7-3 win.  Carr allowed just five hits in a complete-game win powered […]

The post <strong>Canyon softball evens series with West Ranch</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/canyon-softball-evens-series-with-west-ranch/

SCV alums light up COC and LA Mission baseball

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

Over 30 Santa Clarita Valley alumni took the field last week in the College of the Canyons baseball home matchup with the LA Mission Eagles.  Twenty-nine former Foothill League stars faced off with high school teammates as the two junior college squads battled in the second of a three-game series matchup.  The Cougars (16-15) swept […]

The post <strong>SCV alums light up COC and LA Mission baseball</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/scv-alums-light-up-coc-and-la-mission-baseball/

Daily Deals (4-12-2024)

date: 2024-04-12, from: Liliputing

Best Buy is running a 3-day sale on a wide range of products including laptops, tablets, phones, headphones, TVs, and appliances. Some of the best laptop deals in the sale are for HP Envy and Spectre notebooks… but it turns out HP is also running its own Spring Sale this weekend, with deals on select […]

The post Daily Deals (4-12-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-4-12-2024/

Microsoft’s Hard-Sell Pitch to Windows 10 Users With PCs Ineligible for Windows 11

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/11/24127497/microsoft-windows-10-upgrade-prompt-windows-11

Harbinger Motors says its EVs will beat diesel trucks in price by end of year

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

Harbinger Motors, a startup building medium-duty electric commercial vehicle chassis, has just opened its manufacturing facility in Garden Grove, CA, with an aim to deliver the first upfront cost-competitive medium duty EVs by the end of this year.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/harbinger-motors-says-its-evs-will-beat-diesel-trucks-in-price-by-end-of-year/

45 Years Ago: Space Shuttle Enterprise Arrives at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

date: 2024-04-12, from: NASA breaking news

Enterprise, the first space shuttle orbiter that NASA built, arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on April 10, 1979. Although not space worthy, as a pathfinder Enterprise carried out tasks critical to ensuring the success of the space shuttle program. During its four-month stay at KSC, Enterprise validated procedures for the assembly […]

https://www.nasa.gov/history/45-years-ago-space-shuttle-enterprise-arrives-at-nasas-kennedy-space-center/

Adobe will fork over cash for clips to train text-to-video AI

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Not touching copyrighted material with a barge pole

Adobe is building its own AI model capable of transforming text into video and, unlike other companies, will actually pay creators of the material used to train it.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/adobe_buying_videos_ai/

Arts Center in Gaza Destroyed in Israeli Hospital Siege

date: 2024-04-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Shababeek for Contemporary Art was the last established visual arts center still standing in the enclave

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/arts-center-in-gaza-destroyed-180984142/

Pfizer’s Massive Tax Dodge

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Lever News

The pharma giant previously received billions in federal funding and raked in huge profits, but owes nothing in 2023 income taxes thanks to legal loopholes and Trump-era tax cuts.

https://www.levernews.com/pfizers-massive-tax-dodge/

7,000 Pages of New State Climate Plans, in 1 Helpful Chart

date: 2024-04-12, from: Heatmap News



Late last year, I wrote about an overlooked but potentially transformative program in the Inflation Reduction Act called the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants. Administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, it offered all 50 states, plus D.C. and Puerto Rico, an initial $3 million each for climate policy planning, spurring many states to develop emissions-cutting strategies for the first time. Later, cities and states will be able to apply for competitive grants from a $4.6 billion fund to implement elements of their plans.

States that accepted the planning money — i.e. all of them except Iowa, South Dakota, Florida, Wyoming, and Kentucky — agreed to submit an inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions and a list of actions they would prioritize to the EPA by March 1. All together, the plans ran to nearly 7,000 pages, which are now available on the EPA’s website for anyone to peruse. While I haven’t yet had a chance to read through them all myself, a new high-level analysis of the plans by the nonprofits Evergreen Collaborative, RMI, and Climate XChange shows where most states said they would focus their efforts.

The groups counted the number of “priority measures” listed in each plan and tracked the source of greenhouse gases each measure would address. By far the most prominent climate problem states want to tackle, with 186 measures across the plans, is transportation. As transportation is now the largest source of U.S. emissions, and states have a lot of influence over the biggest drivers of vehicle emissions, this is a good sign.

For example, Texas said that in the near term, it could build electric vehicle chargers and hydrogen fueling stations, introduce lower-emissions support equipment at its airports, and use more sustainable jet fuel. In the longer term, out to 2050, it could expand programs to deploy zero-emissions medium- and heavy-duty trucks and decarbonize its ports. West Virginia said it would try to reduce vehicle miles traveled, a measure of how much people drive, by implementing programs to get people on bikes and increasing transit options.

Every single plan included measures to reduce emissions from buildings, with some focused on basic energy efficiency upgrades and others that mention switching from fossil fuel heating to electric heat pumps. The biggest gap the analysis identified concerned industrial emissions, which only 27 of the plans included measures to address. About a quarter of U.S. climate pollution comes from industry, much of which is considered “hard to abate” — although, solutions are emerging.

Some states that had yet to develop comprehensive climate plans, like Texas, listed dozens of broad measures. Others that were further along listed just a handful of specific ones. New York, for example, included just nine priority actions that it wanted to use the forthcoming implementation grants for.

Another theme that emerged was a lack of regulatory measures in the plans, which focused more on incentives and voluntary action. That may be due to the wealth of federal funding to create “carrots” versus sticks, or because the states interpreted the planning grant as an opportunity to focus on “shovel-ready” projects that will make them better candidates for the competitive implementation grants.

Though there’s no requirement to implement these plans, the prospect of additional funding from the EPA to carry them out means that many of the measures could actually happen. The states participating are home to 90% of the U.S. population, and the same fraction of U.S. emissions. Applications for implementation grants were due April 1.

https://heatmap.news/sparks/state-climate-plans-chart

The Ocean Touches Everything: Celebrate Earth Day with NASA

date: 2024-04-12, from: NASA breaking news

On Earth Day, Learn How NASA Investigates the Blue in Our Blue Planet This Earth Day, join us in person and online to learn how NASA studies the ocean from space. Explore the complex connections between sea, air, land, and climate through a mix of in-person and virtual activities, talks, and trivia. For nearly five […]

https://www.nasa.gov/earth/earth-day/the-ocean-touches-everything-celebrate-earth-day-with-nasa/

April 27-28: Triump Foundation 11th Annual Wheelchair Sports Festival

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Triumph Foundation’s 11th Annual Wheelchair Sports Festival will be held on Saturday and Sunday, April 27-28 at the Santa Clarita Sports Complex Gymnasium. Triumph Foundation hosts this free event to introduce wheelchair sports to people that are newly injured, Veterans, children and others with disabilities

https://scvnews.com/april-27-28-triump-foundation-11th-annual-wheelchair-sports-festival/

Liam Neeson is starring in a Naked Gun reboot? Why? Is it…

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044385-liam-neeson-is-starring-i

US House passes controversial surveillance bill on 4th attempt

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted to reauthorize a controversial surveillance program Friday, in a major step toward keeping a key element of the United States’ foreign intelligence-gathering operation in place.

The House passed a bill reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in a 273-147 vote. The FISA bill now moves to the Senate, which is expected to give it bipartisan approval. Without congressional action, the program will expire on April 19.

Approval came after the duration of the bill was changed to two years from a previous version of five years, as some Republicans had sought.

FISA has attracted criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who argue it violates Americans’ constitutional right to privacy. The bill was blocked three times in the past five months by House Republicans bucking their party.

 

The White House, intelligence chiefs and top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee have warned of potentially catastrophic effects of not reauthorizing the program, which was first created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The reauthorization was thwarted earlier this week when House Republicans refused to support the bill House Speaker Mike Johnson had put forward, which fell short of the changes they wanted.  

“We will go blind on April 19” without the program, Representative Mike Turner, the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters Wednesday.

Although the right to privacy is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the data of foreign nationals gathered by the program often includes communications with Americans and can be mined by domestic law enforcement bodies such as the FBI without a warrant.  

That has alarmed both hardline Republicans and far-left Democrats. Recent revelations that the FBI used this power to hunt for information about Black Lives Matter protesters, congressional campaign donors and U.S. lawmakers have raised further doubts about the program’s integrity.

A key issue has been an amendment which would require domestic law enforcement agencies to obtain warrants before searching the database. Executive branch officials argue that such a change would undermine the program’s utility for agencies such as the FBI.

The amendment barely failed in a 212-212 vote ahead of the vote on the bill’s final passage.

https://www.voanews.com/a/house-rejects-adding-warrant-requirement-to-us-spy-program-/7567836.html

Here’s How Much Range This Tesla Model S Has After 450,000 Miles

date: 2024-04-12, from: Inside EVs News

It’s a 2017 Model S 90D that was used as a taxi.

https://insideevs.com/news/715909/tesla-model-s-450k-miles-range/

April 11, 2024

date: 2024-04-12, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-11-2024-cbe

President Biden continues group diplomacy strategy

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

U.S. President Joe Biden this week welcomed the prime minister of Japan and the president of the Philippines to the White House to discuss security in the Indo-Pacific region. VOA Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti compares Biden’s security policies with those of his 2024 presidential opponent Donald Trump.

https://www.voanews.com/a/president-biden-continues-group-diplomacy-strategy/7567774.html

Save $600 on Vanpowers e-bikes from $999, Greenworks electric riding mower $1,000 off, and more

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

Today’s green deals are coming in hot – with all of them seeing new or return all-time lows to help you shake off the winter cobwebs and jump full-force into the warmth of spring. Headlining today’s offers is Vanpowers’ Earth Day sale that is taking up to $600 off a selection of e-bikes starting from $999. It is joined by the Greenworks 60V 42-inch Cordless Electric CrossoverZ Zero-Turn Riding Mower with four 8.0Ah batteries hitting a new $3,797 low, as well as a 1-day sale on the GoTrax XR PRO Commuting Electric Scooter for $350. Plus, you’ll find all of the other day’s other best Green Deals below.

Head below for other New Green Deals we’ve found today and, of course, Electrek’s best EV buying and leasing deals. Also, check out the new Electrek Tesla Shop for the best deals on Tesla accessories.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/vanpowers-e-bikes-greenworks-60v-crossoverz-riding-mower-and-more/

April 27: COC Foundation 3 on 3 Basketball Tournament

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The College of the Canyons Foundation will host its Second Annual 3 on 3 Basketball Tournament on Saturday, April 27 in the Valencia Campus West PE (WPEK) building.

https://scvnews.com/april-27-coc-foundation-3-on-3-basketball-tournament/

The First Space Shuttle

date: 2024-04-12, from: NASA breaking news

In this image from April 12, 1981, the first space shuttle, STS-1, launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with NASA astronauts John W. Young, commander, and Robert L. Crippen, pilot, aboard. STS-1 was meant to demonstrate a safe launch into orbit and a safe return of the orbiter and crew, as well as […]

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/the-first-space-shuttle/

The first production body of Aptera’s solar EV has arrived at its San Diego headquarters

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

Aptera Motors is touting its latest milestone en route to solar EV production later this year. The first production body of its flagship vehicle has made its way over from Italy to Aptera’s headquarters in San Diego, enabling the team to finalize its design ahead of production-intent builds.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/first-production-body-aptera-solar-ev-san-diego-headquarters/

CRY HAVOC!

date: 2024-04-12, from: Howard Jacobson blog

I’m not sure why I’ve written these thoughts on chaos. I think what’s prompted it is an exchange in that supremely intelligent film The Anatomy of a Fall in the course of which the heroine, accused of murdering her husband, makes this spirited defence of marital havoc to the prosecuting counsel - ‘I don’t know you, and you come here with your notes and explain to me who Samuel was, and what we were going through… But what you say is not reality. There are times when a couple is

https://jacobsonh.substack.com/p/cry-havoc

Mount Etna Volcano Blowing Perfect Smoke Rings

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/mount-etna-volcano-blowing-perfect-smoke-rings

Fiery fatal crash leaves 1 dead in Stevenson Ranch

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

California Highway Patrol officers are investigating a fiery fatal single-car crash that occurred shortly after midnight Friday morning on The Old Road.  The 39-year-old driver, a Castaic resident whose identity is being withheld pending the notification of his next of kin, was driving his Subaru northbound on The Old Road, south of Constitution Avenue, when […]

The post Fiery fatal crash leaves 1 dead in Stevenson Ranch appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/fiery-fatal-crash-leaves-1-dead-in-castaic/

AnberDeck mod turns Anbernic RG353V game system into a handheld Linux terminal

date: 2024-04-12, from: Liliputing

The Anbernic RG353V/S is a handheld game system with a 3.5 inch, 640 x 480 pixel display, a 1.8 GHz Rockchip RK3566 quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 processor, and support for dual-booting Android and Linux-based operating systems. So while it’s made for gaming and has a Game Boy-inspired design, with game controllers below the screen, the handheld can […]

The post AnberDeck mod turns Anbernic RG353V game system into a handheld Linux terminal appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/anberdeck-mod-turns-anbernic-rg353v-game-system-into-a-handheld-linux-terminal/

The Royal Family Is Opening Balmoral Castle to the Public For the First Time in History

date: 2024-04-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The special interior tours of the royal family’s Scottish retreat sold out in less than a day

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/royal-family-opening-balmoral-castle-to-the-public-first-time-in-history-180984130/

NASA Invites Media to Mars Sample Return Update

date: 2024-04-12, from: NASA breaking news

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT, Monday, April 15, to discuss the agency’s response to a Mars Sample Return Independent Review Board report from September 2023, including next steps for the program. The teleconference will livestream at: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv Mars Sample Return has been a major long-term goal of international planetary exploration […]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-invites-media-to-mars-sample-return-update/

Brahma Blotter: March 25 to April 7, 2024

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)

No crimes were reported between March 25 and April 7, 2024. The crime log is made publicly available at the Pierce College Sheriff’s Office.

The post Brahma Blotter: March 25 to April 7, 2024 appeared first on .

https://theroundupnews.com/2024/04/12/brahma-blotter-march-25-to-april-7-2024/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=brahma-blotter-march-25-to-april-7-2024

Mercedes-AMG 1,000+ HP Electric Super-SUV Reportedly Coming In 2026

date: 2024-04-12, from: Inside EVs News

It will be aimed at the Lotus Eletre and the upcoming seven-seater Porsche K1.

https://insideevs.com/news/715863/mercedes-amg-ev-suv-1000-hp-2026-report/

Behind the Blog: Serious Science and Hanging Out With Hackers

date: 2024-04-12, from: 404 Media Group

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss big science and hanging out with hackers.

https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-serious-science-hanging-with-hackers/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

My wpidentity package now has storage.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/12.html#a165119

Mathematician Who Shed Light on Randomness in Algorithms Wins Top Prize in Computing

date: 2024-04-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Avi Wigderson earned the 2023 Turing Award for wide-ranging work in theoretical computer science

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mathematician-who-shed-light-on-randomness-in-algorithms-wins-top-prize-in-computing-180984132/

Why don’t we have solar eclipses every month? Because we don’t deserve…

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044381-why-dont-we-have-solar

OpenBSD 7.5 locks down with improved disk encryption support and syscall limitations

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

The most secure Unix-like OS to date?

The OpenBSD project’s 56th release is arguably the most secure Unix-like OS to date.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/openbsd_75_disk_encryption/

Interview at People and Blogs

date: 2024-04-12, from: Tracy Durnell Blog

Thanks to Manu for including me in the People & Blogs interview series! It’s been interesting to read all the different stories and perspectives bloggers have. I’ve discovered a bunch of new blogs to follow through both the interviewees and their recommendations.

https://tracydurnell.com/2024/04/12/interview-at-people-and-blogs/

Swarms of drones can be managed by a single person

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

The U.S. military says large groups of drones and ground robots can be managed by just one person without added stress to the operator. As VOA’s Julie Taboh reports, the technologies may be beneficial for civilian uses, too. VOA footage by Adam Greenbaum.

https://www.voanews.com/a/swarms-of-drones-can-be-managed-by-a-single-person/7567634.html

A new RK3588 processor module lets you upgrade the MNT Reform laptop (modular, open hardware)

date: 2024-04-12, from: Liliputing

The MNT Reform is an unusual laptop that features a modular, repairable, and upgradeable design and an emphasis on open source hardware and software. When the laptop first began shipping in 2021 it came with an NXP i.MX8M series quad-core processor. But since the processor, memory, and storage are on a removable module, over time MNT […]

The post A new RK3588 processor module lets you upgrade the MNT Reform laptop (modular, open hardware) appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/a-new-rk3588-processor-module-lets-you-upgrade-the-mnt-reform-laptop-modular-open-hardware/

This Week on The Analog Antiquarian

date: 2024-04-12, from: Digital Antiquarian

The Voyage of Magellan, Part 4: The Expedition

https://www.filfre.net/2024/04/this-week-on-the-analog-antiquarian/

ON the Beat | Dance-Static Messages from Mali

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara’s Campbell Hall show turned Sunday night into a Saturday night-like feast, with dancing allowed.

The post ON the Beat | Dance-Static Messages from Mali appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/12/on-the-beat-dance-static-messages-from-mali/

Porsche Taycan Sales Cut In Half In Q1 2024, New Version Is Coming In April

date: 2024-04-12, from: Inside EVs News

This year, the company will launch the new 2025 Taycan and the all-new all-electric Macan.

https://insideevs.com/news/715844/porsche-taycan-sales-q1-2024/

CATL unveils Tesla Megapack competitor, claims zero degradation and more capacity

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

CATL has unveiled Tener, a new large scale energy storage system to compete with Tesla Megapack.

The system has almost twice the energy capacity of the Megapack, and CATL claims zero degradation after 5 years.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/catl-unveils-tesla-megapack-competitor-claims-zero-degradation-tener/

Jamelle Bouie on the inappropriate use of the presumed intent of the…

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044384-jamelle-bouie-on-the-inap

Invasion of the Mannikins

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Introduced birds take a toll on native species — free Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History event on May 2.

The post Invasion of the Mannikins appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/12/invasion-of-the-mannikins/

Amazon search results now less self-centered, boffin says

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Self-preferencing pushback in Europe and US seems to have had some effect

Amazon’s search results have become less likely to favor the company’s own products, according to research from a University of Minnesota economist.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/amazon_search_self_preferencing/

Swashbuckling Operatic Finale

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Opera Santa Barbara’s season leaps into the contemporary, accessible world of ‘Zorro,’ at the Lobero Theatre.

The post Swashbuckling Operatic Finale appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/12/swashbuckling-operatic-finale/

Two juveniles arrested in connection with Fremont carjacking

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

The incident happened on April 2 at an apartment complex on Stevenson Boulevard.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/two-juveniles-arrested-in-connection-with-fremont-carjacking/

MINISFORUM UM690 Pro is a Ryzen 9 6900HX mini PC for $349 and up

date: 2024-04-12, from: Liliputing

The MINISFORUM UM690 Pro is a small and relatively affordable desktop computer with an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX mobile processor. While that chip is nearly two years old, it’s still a pretty powerful processor for anyone that doesn’t need a shiny new Ryzen 7040 or 8040 series chip with an NPU for hardware-accelerated AI features. MINISFORUM’s little […]

The post MINISFORUM UM690 Pro is a Ryzen 9 6900HX mini PC for $349 and up appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/minisforum-um690-pro-is-a-ryzen-9-6900hx-mini-pc-for-349-and-up/

More April showers set to fall on Bay Area during weekend

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

Temperatures are expected to drop by at least 10 degrees through the region

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/more-april-showers-set-to-fall-on-bay-area-during-weekend/

Russian military trainers arrive in Niger as relations with US deteriorate

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

DAKAR, Senegal — State television in Niger broadcast footage on Thursday of Russian military trainers arriving in the country aboard a plane equipped with military supplies to boost its air defenses amid deteriorating relations between Niger and the United States. 

Two Russian trainers were filmed in front of the plane wearing military uniforms, caps and face coverings. The plane arrived Wednesday night, the report said. 

“We are here to train the Nigerian army to use the military equipment that is here,” one of the Russian trainers said in French in the broadcast. “We are here to develop military cooperation between Russia and Niger.” 

Until recently, Washington considered Niger a key partner and ally in a region swept by attempted coups in recent years. 

A U.S. airbase was established as the heart of Niger’s counterinsurgency operations in the sub-Saharan region known as the Sahel. Since 2012, the region has been gripped by a worsening insurgency fought by groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. 

The U.S. invested heavily in training Niger’s forces to beat back the insurgency that has ravaged the country and its neighbors, but last summer, some of those elite U.S.-trained forces took part in a coup that ousted the elected president. 

U.S. relations with Niger took a further downturn last month when the junta announced on state television the flights from its airbase were illegal and that it no longer recognized the American military presence in the country. The junta criticized the U.S. for trying to force it to choose between partners, warning them against cooperating with Russia and Iran. 

Niamey has yet to order American troops out, U.S. officials have said. 

The broadcast said the arrival of Russian trainers followed a call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country’s military leaders in March. Niger’s military leaders are seeking to diversify their partnerships and achieve greater sovereignty, the broadcast said.

https://www.voanews.com/a/russian-military-trainers-arrive-in-niger-as-relations-with-us-deteriorate/7567478.html

Q&A: Pandemic baking, gardening lead to an East Bay tea business

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

With new tea trailer, ‘Hen and Drake Modern Tearoom’ can bring their specialty teas and pastries to customers’ homes, parks, wineries and more.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/qa-pandemic-baking-gardening-lead-to-tea-business/

Tesla Model Y Long Range RWD With 372 Miles Of WLTP Range Goes On Sale In Europe

date: 2024-04-12, from: Inside EVs News

Not all European countries get the new trim, though.

https://insideevs.com/news/715898/tesla-model-y-long-range-rwd-europe-range-price/

Watch Alpinestars’ New Tech-Air 7X Airbag Jacket Deploy in Slow Motion

date: 2024-04-12, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

It deploys faster than a blink of an eye.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/715903/alpine-stars-tech-air-7x-airbag-deployed-in-slow-motion/

Biden plans to expand national monuments in Northern and Southern California originally designated by Obama

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

Biden will expand the perimeters of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument by about 110,000 acres and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument by about 13,000 acres.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/biden-plans-to-expand-national-monuments-in-bay-area-and-southern-california-originally-designated-by-obama/

Volkswagen, Land Rover, among those paying millions in fines for missing CO2 targets

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

European automakers including Volkswagen and Jaguar Land Rover had to pay $552 million in fines for missing CO2 emission targets in 2020, the first year new regulations were put in place, according to a new report.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/volkswagen-land-rover-among-those-paying-millions-in-fines-for-missing-co2-targets/

Do not use Kagi

date: 2024-04-12, from: OS News

For quite a while now, you might have noticed various people recommending a search engine called “Kagi”. From random people on the internet, to prominent bloggers like John Gruber and David Pierce, they’ve all been pushing this seemingly new search engine as a paid-for alternative to Google that respects your privacy. Over the past few months to a year, though, more and more cracks started to appear in Kagi’s image, and I’ve been meaning to assemble those cracks and tie a bow on them. Well, it turns out I don’t have to, because lori (I’m not aware of their full name, so I’ll stick to lori) already did it for me in a blog post titled “Why I lost faith in Kagi“. Even though I knew all of these stories, and even though I was intending to list them in more or less the same way, it’s still damning to see it all laid out so well (both the story itself, as well as the lovely, accessible, approachable, and simple HTML, but that’s neither here nor there). Lori’s summary hits on all the pain points (but you should really read the whole thing): Between the absolute blase attitude towards privacy, the 100% dedication to AI being the future of search, and the completely misguided use of the company’s limited funds, I honestly can’t see Kagi as something I could ever recommend to people. Is the search good? I mean…it’s not really much better than any other search, it heavily leverages Bing like DDG and the other indie search platforms do, the only real killer feature it has to me is the ability to block domains from your results, which I can currently only do in other search engines via a user script that doesn’t help me on mobile. But what good is filtering out all of the AI generated spamblogs on a search platform that wants to spit more AI generated bullshit at me directly? Sure I can turn it off, but who’s to say that they won’t start using my data to fuel their own LLM? They already have an extremely skewed idea of what counts as PII or not. They could easily see using people’s searches as being “anonymized” and decide they’re fine to use, because their primary business isn’t search, it’s AI. ↫ lori at lori’s blog The examples underpinning all these pain points are just baffling, like how the company was originally an “AI” company, made a search engine that charges people for Bing results, and now is going full mask-off with countless terrible, non-working, privacy-invasive “AI” tools. Or that thing where the company spent one third of their funding round of $670,000 on starting a T-shirt company in Germany (Kagi is US-based) to print 20,000 free T-shirts for their users that don’t even advertise Kagi. Or that thing where they claimed they “forgot” to pay sales tax for two years and had to raise prices to pay their back taxes. And I can just keep on going. To make matters worse, after publication of the blog post, Kagi’s CEO started harassing lori over email, and despite lori stating repeatedly they wanted him to stop emailing them, he just kept on going. Never a good look. The worst part of it, though, is the lack of understanding about what privacy means, while telling their users they are super serious about it. Add to that the CEO’s “trust me, bro” attitude, their deals with the shady and homophobic crypto company Brave, and many other things, and the conclusion is that, no, your data is not safe at Kagi at all, and with their primary business being “AI” and not search, you know exactly what that means. Do not use Kagi.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139270/do-not-use-kagi/

Amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa Skills, disappointing dozens

date: 2024-04-12, from: OS News

There was a time when it thought that Alexa would yield a robust ecosystem of apps, or Alexa Skills, that would make the voice assistant an integral part of users’ lives. Amazon envisioned tens of thousands of software developers building valued abilities for Alexa that would grow the voice assistant’s popularity—and help Amazon make some money. But about seven years after launching a rewards program to encourage developers to build Skills, Alexa’s most preferred abilities are the basic ones, like checking the weather. And on June 30, Amazon will stop giving out the monthly Amazon Web Services credits that have made it free for third-party developers to build and host Alexa Skills. The company also recently told devs that its Alexa Developer Rewards program was ending, virtually disincentivizing third-party devs to build for Alexa. ↫ Scharon Harding at Ars Technica I’ve never used Alexa – Amazon doesn’t really have a footprint in either The Netherlands or Sweden, so I never really had to care – but I always thought the Skills were the reason it was so loved. It seemingly makes no sense to me to start killing off this feature, but then, I’m assuming Amazon has the data to back up the fact people aren’t using them. It sucks, I guess? Can someone who uses Alexa fill in the blanks for me here?

https://www.osnews.com/story/139273/amazon-virtually-kills-efforts-to-develop-alexa-skills-disappointing-dozens/

20 Minutes of Charles Schulz Drawing Peanuts Comics

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/20-minutes-of-charles-schulz-drawing-peanuts-comics

Microsoft breach allowed Russian spies to steal emails from US government

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Affected federal agencies must comb through mails, reset API keys and passwords

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warns that Russian spies who gained access to Microsoft’s email system were able to steal sensitive data, including authentication details and that immediate remedial action is required by affected agencies.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/microsoft_cisa_order/

Man fatally shot in Oakland

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

The killing is the 21st homicide investigated by Oakland police this year.  Last year at this time police had investigated  27 homicides in the city.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/man-fatally-shot-in-oakland-4/

Some Personal News

date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Karpf’s blog

“Why the Future Never Arrives” has a publisher!

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/some-personal-news

American goes missing in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine, police say

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

MOSCOW — Russell Bentley, an American who fought against Ukrainian forces, is missing in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, police there said Friday, adding that a search was underway.

Bentley went missing on April 8, according to police. The online news outlet Mash said he had disappeared after a district in the city of Donetsk was shelled by Ukrainian forces.

Mash cited his wife as saying he had gone to see if anyone needed help but had not returned. She was quoted as saying she had found his car with his baseball cap in it along with his smashed mobile phone and a pair of glasses.

Bentley, 64, is a self-declared supporter of Russian-backed forces in Ukraine.

He joined pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and used the military call-sign “Texas,” the Russian state news agency RIA reported.

It said Bentley had later swapped his gun for journalism and had worked with the Sputnik news agency, another state-owned entity, and obtained Russian citizenship.

Russian state media have described Bentley as a war correspondent.

In 2022, Rolling Stone magazine ran an interview with Bentley titled “The Bizarre Story of How a Hardcore Texas Leftist Became a Front-line Putin propagandist.”

https://www.voanews.com/a/american-goes-missing-in-russian-controlled-eastern-ukraine-police-say/7567377.html

OpenAI Training Bot Crawls ‘World’s Lamest Content Farm’ 3 Million Times in One Day

date: 2024-04-12, from: 404 Media Group

“If you were wondering what they’re using to train GPT-5, well, now you know.”

https://www.404media.co/openai-training-bot-crawls-worlds-lamest-content-farm-3-million-times-in-one-day/

Why the unemployment gap for Black and white workers persists

date: 2024-04-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report

The unemployment gap between Black and white workers has consistently been around 2 to 1 ever since the government started disaggregating the data more than five decades ago. While the Black unemployment rate is relatively low historically, the gap remains. We’ll discuss the institutional reasons why and how best to tackle the issue. Also on today’s program: the return of standardized testing and a preview of Senate hearings centered on Boeing’s manufacturing and safety practices.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/why-the-unemployment-gap-for-black-and-white-workers-persists

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I really want to see Civil War. Gets an amazing review in NYT.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/12.html#a140815

Photographing the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse (results)

date: 2024-04-12, from: Jeff Geerling blog

Photographing the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse (results)

        <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>The path of totality for the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse ran right through my backyard, and it was my first experience <a href="https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2017/photographing-2017-total-solar-eclipse">photographing totality</a>. <em>Total</em> solar eclipses, when the moon completely covers the sun, are rare. After this year's eclipse, the lower 48 United States will see a brief bit of totality up around Montana in 2044, and a major event across the US <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2045-august-12">in 2045</a>—and I'll be near retirement!</p>

2024 Total Solar Eclipse composite photo by Jeff Geerling
See the full-size image of the eclipse composite on Flickr.

The above photograph is a composite image of all the stages of the 2024 eclipse. I took the pictures in the midst of a few thousand people scattered Fruitland, Missouri, during the April 8, 2024 Total Solar Eclipse. 

  <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/photographing-2024-total-solar-eclipse-results

Article Spotlight: The dinosaurs that weren’t: osteohistology supports giant ichthyosaur affinity of enigmatic large bone segments from the European Rhaetian

date: 2024-04-12, from: PeerJ blog

https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284889105/article-spotlight-the-dinosaurs-that-werent-osteohistology-supports-giant-ichthyosaur-affinity-of-enigmatic-large-bone-segments-from-the-european-rhaetian/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

In some ways the look of Ripley resembles Poor Things, another eclectic and lovely to look at presentation.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/12.html#a140338

Friday preps spotlight: Longtime Pioneer basketball coach leaving for college job

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

Joe Berticevich to lead De Anza College program. Pinewood basketball coach Doc Scheppler pumped about trip to Masters. Granada has a new football coach. Pittsburg, Heritage set for baseball clash.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/friday-preps-spotlight-longtime-pioneer-basketball-coach-leaving-for-college-job/

How Do Machines ‘Grok’ Data?

date: 2024-04-12, from: Quanta Magazine

By apparently overtraining them, researchers have seen neural networks discover novel solutions to problems.

The post How Do Machines ‘Grok’ Data? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-do-machines-grok-data-20240412/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I just finished Ripley on Netflix, an 8-part miniseries remake of The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I remember, probably incorrectly, as a light-hearted story. There was very little to laugh about in this new version, but omg it is such a beautifully presented story. Even if you hated the plot you’d have to watch it just to see the art. And if you’re Italian or love Italy, you have to watch it. Anyway now that I know all the twists and how it ends, I’m going to have to watch it again, but I might wait to recover from the experience. It is, at times, hard to watch. But oh so goooood.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/12.html#a135629

Wealthy Californian’s favorite vintage Ferrari mechanic charged with theft, fraud

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

Callaway was boosted in recent years by such influential automotive commentators as Matt Farah and Jay Leno, who featured him on his popular car-themed show. Now, some of California’s most affluent Italian-car enthusiasts are scrambling to pick up the pieces of vehicles they had entrusted to him.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/vintage-ferrari-owners-favorite-mechanic-charged-with-theft-fraud/

Moira Donegan: “OJ Simpson died the comfortable death in old age that…

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044382-moira-donegan-oj-simpson-

How to Watch the Brilliant Lyrid Meteor Shower This Month

date: 2024-04-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Fiery streaks will illuminate the night sky from April 15-29, with the spectacle’s peak occurring from April 21-22

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-to-watch-the-brilliant-lyrid-meteor-shower-this-month-180984131/

McDonald’s plan to offset California minimum wage hike? Bring bagels back

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

California’s historic wage hike for fast-food workers drove McDonald’s Corp. to unusual lengths to help franchisees overcome rising costs.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/mcdonalds-plan-to-offset-california-wage-hike-bring-bagels-back/

Narayan’s Malgudi

date: 2024-04-12, from: Ayjay blog

In his newsletter today, my buddy Austin Kleon mentions in passing the Hindu concept of the ashramas or stages of life, which is funny because I’ve just been thinking about a novel based on those stages: The Guide, by R. K. Narayan.  Narayan was a great, great genius, and maybe the best comic novelist since […]

https://blog.ayjay.org/narayans-malgudi/

China gave BYD $3.7 billion to ‘win’ the EV race

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

China has been heavily subsidizing its green tech sectors, but homegrown EV company BYD is a favorite child of the bunch, receiving subsidies to the tune of “at least” $3.7 billion, according to a new German study.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/china-gave-byd-an-incredible-3-7-billion-to-win-the-ev-race/

Tech Today: Folding NASA Experience into an Origami Toolkit

date: 2024-04-12, from: NASA breaking news

Math for designing lasers becomes artist’s key to creating complex crease patterns

https://www.nasa.gov/general/tech-today-folding-nasa-experience-into-an-origami-toolkit/

Overturned trailer truck creates commute havoc on I-880

date: 2024-04-12, from: San Jose Mercury News

A big rig trailer truck overturned early Friday on a South Bay freeway, the second straight day that an overturned truck has turned the commute in that area into a mess.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/overturned-trailer-truck-creates-commute-havoc-on-i-880/

Microsoft gives Hyper-V ceilings a Herculean hike

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Windows Server 2025 will let you run a VM with 2,048 vCPUs, 240 TB RAM, and 68 network adapters

Microsoft has announced new scalability ceilings for its Hyper-V hypervisor.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/hyperv_maximums_windows_server_2005/

Tracing COVID via Sewer Pipes

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: One Foot Tsunami

https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/04/12/tracing-covid-via-sewer-pipes/

This “overexposed” photo of the total eclipse by Randy Olson is just…

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044379-this-overexposed-photo-of

Lessons from a First Time EV Owner

date: 2024-04-12, from: Heatmap News



For the first time in my life I now own a car, and it’s electric.

It took me a few weeks to narrow down my choices to a Hyundai Kona or a Ford Mustang Mach E. After much agonizing comparison, I went with the Kona. While I liked the Mach E’s sporty performance, longer range, and sizable front trunk, ultimately the Kona’s cheaper price, lighter materials, heat pump, and numerous mechanical buttons clinched the deal. After trading in a clapped out 2011 Subaru Impreza, the out-the-door sticker price for the Kona was a bit over $31,000 (though we opted to lease).

Owning and driving an EV has been an instructive experience. I’ve long been a vocal proponent of going electric, but I was honestly surprised by the learning curve. As the automotive journalist Edward Neidermeyer continually points out, an EV simply is not a perfect drop-in replacement for an internal combustion car. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it work, even for long trips, even in fairly bedraggled parts of the country like northeastern Pennsylvania, where I live, and even with a modest battery and range.

First, the buying experience. The nearest Kona for sale I could find was a 70-mile drive away from Wilkes-Barre to Easton, and the dealership let me take it home so my wife could check it out. This led to the first of several comical lessons. The car had only about a 60 percent charge when I left the dealership, and drained down to 33 percent when I got back home. So before going back to sign the lease papers, it would need a top-up.

I searched on Google Maps for chargers and blithely set out to fill up. It turns out Rust Belt cities like the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area are not exactly bursting with EV charging infrastructure. The first one I found was a free employee charger at a charter school. Out of curiosity I plugged it in. It did in fact work — and if I had been willing to sit there stealing 6 kilowatts of power for 10 hours, I could have gotten up to 100 percent. This seemed less than ideal. I then tried another charger around the corner at a used dealership. This one had a credit card reader but it did not work.

Scrolling through Google some more, I discovered that if you poke around in the menus it actually tells you the supposed speed of each charger (rated as slow, fast, very fast, or ultra fast). A 10-minute drive across the river was a non-Tesla fast charger at a Chevy dealership, though irritatingly I had to download an app and connect my Apple pay to make it work instead of just tapping my credit card.

Then I learned that the temperature of the battery matters a great deal. When I first plugged in, the charger delivered a measly 28 kilowatts. But then as the battery warmed up, that nearly doubled to 49 kilowatts (as compared to the Kona’s claimed maximum rate of 100 kilowatts). That isn’t particularly fast — but it also demonstrated another lesson, which is that there are advantages to a smaller battery, at just 65 kilowatt-hours. That fairly pitiful charging speed, topping out at less than a seventh of the maximum at modern stations, was still enough to get me from 28 percent to 75 percent in about 35 minutes. If I had been driving a Hummer EV, it would have been more like two hours.

That lesson was underlined charging at home. My house was built in the 1940s and has no outdoor outlets whatsoever, but in the pinch, I could string an extension cord out the window to use the included level 1 charger … to deliver a pathetic 600 watts, or less than the power supply on my gaming PC. Yet this was still enough to add 10-12 percent of charge per day, or about 30 miles, which is more than we drive on average. If I’d gone with the Mach E, it would be more like 20 miles, thanks to its bigger battery.

I learned a more serious lesson the next day going down to sign the paperwork. My wife had to come with me to the dealership, since she owned the Subaru, and therefore my 2-month-old son had to come along as well. With a 75 percent charge, I figured we’d be fine to make it there and back. When we got to the dealership, the car still had 48 percent — surely more than enough to make it back given my prior trip, right?

But then we had to sit at the dealership for three hours thanks to some incomprehensible financing dispute going on in a back room. By the time we finished, moved the car around several times, and grabbed some food on the way out, it was only about 42 percent by the time we got going. As we headed up Route 33, the Kona’s computer informed us we’d arrive with about 35 miles of range to spare. Since it was already well past the boy’s bedtime and I really, really didn’t want to hunt around in the cold for a charger that might or might not work, I decided to risk it.

But by this point it was well past dark, and the temperature was dropping into the low 40s. Meanwhile, what with wife and baby in the back seat, I had to run the heater much more than I had the first time, when I had left the cabin heater low and just used the seat warmer.

It turns out heating and driving uphill sucks battery power. As the temperature fell further into the low 30s, and the Kona zipped up the long grades at Wind Gap and Tannersville, I watched with increasing alarm as the buffer mileage dropped to 30, then 25, then 20. I told myself I would stop to charge if it got below 10 miles of buffer, but it finally stabilized around 15 miles in the Poconos.

It was a genuine case of range anxiety, no question about it, and my wife was ready to strangle me. But there was one last surprise as we crested the ridge and headed down into the Wyoming Valley. On that long downslope, I alternated between coasting and turning up the regenerative braking around corners, which got back another 14 miles of range. We pulled up with 15 percent battery and 29 miles to spare — not so far off the original estimate after all!

This need for planning is the major difference between electric and gas, at least given the current state of America’s charging infrastructure. With a gas car you can assume that range will not change much depending on the weather, that you can run your tank nearly empty with the sole penalty being another few seconds of standing at the pump, and that even the tiniest settlement is virtually guaranteed to have a gas station.

But on an EV trip of any distance you want to charge early and often, and that means some careful route planning. A theoretical 270 mile range means you have more like 160-220 miles you can realistically use, depending significantly on the temperature, wind, number of passengers, and so on. But unless you are in an exceptionally cold and/or depopulated area, it’s not that big of a deal. Just find some charging stations on the route, ideally with good reviews, and stop every hour or two for 20-30 minutes of charging, or less if your car can take mega voltage like the Ioniq 5. (There are several chargers in East Stroudsburg I could have used, for instance.)

You can’t cannonball to cut the trip time down to the absolute minimum, but you also get a chance to stretch out regularly and cut your risk of deep vein thrombosis. Meanwhile, if you can charge at home, your cost of fuel goes down dramatically. I now spend maybe $3 on a week’s worth of driving electricity.

So yes, there are some tradeoffs that come with the EV lifestyle. But even for an EV with a modest battery, driving in the cold mountains of impoverished Appalachia, they are not remotely insurmountable — and everything will only get easier from here on out. More chargers are being built all the time, and soon Tesla’s network will open up to all. You don’t need a 500-mile range battery, or to carry a backup generator around. It just takes a change in mindset.

https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/driving-ev-for-first-time

How a Money Laundering Crew Allegedly Moved Millions Through FanDuel

date: 2024-04-12, from: 404 Media Group

While sports betting has opened up for fans around the country, it has also introduced a greater attack surface for money laundering.

https://www.404media.co/how-a-money-laundering-crew-allegedly-moved-millions-through-fanduel/

My Fantastic Voyage at Quanta Magazine

date: 2024-04-12, from: Quanta Magazine

Founding editor-in-chief Thomas Lin looks back at a decade of Quanta journalism and forward to what’s next for the magazine.

The post My Fantastic Voyage at Quanta Magazine first appeared on Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/my-fantastic-voyage-at-quanta-magazine-20240412/

Polestar EV Sales Are Down 40% Again In Q1 2024

date: 2024-04-12, from: Inside EVs News

The company increased Polestar 4 deliveries in China, but the Polestar 2 was down 50% year-over-year.

https://insideevs.com/news/715772/polestar-ev-sales-2024-q1/

Is The Dayang TMV 450 Timo Just Another Copycat V-Twin Cruiser?

date: 2024-04-12, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

Squint hard enough, and you just might think you’re looking at a Harley.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/715391/dayang-tmv-450-timo-chinese-cruiser/

The UN’s climate chief says governments, business leaders and development banks have…

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044378-the-uns-climate-chief-say

IT biz trials gadget deliveries by drone to sidestep traffic and emissions

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a hard drive!

A UK IT maintenance outfit is testing out drones to deliver equipment to customers, claiming this will help with sustainability measures of all things.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/it_biz_trials_drone/

Italy says that it’s illegal for Alfa Romeo to call its new EV the Milano

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed


What’s an Alfa Romeo without a cool Italian-sounding name? The Stellantis-owned company is naming its first BEV after the famous city of Milan, but the Italian government is now playing hardball by saying that’s illegal since the car will be built in Poland. If it’s not made in Italy, it can’t sound Italian.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/italy-says-that-its-illegal-for-alfa-romeo-to-call-its-new-ev-the-milano/

You Can Help Migrating Fish Traverse a Dutch Canal By Ringing This Digital ‘Doorbell’

date: 2024-04-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The live stream from the Netherlands, which lets viewers notify a boat lock operator when fish need to be let through, has become a popular pastime for people around the world

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/you-can-help-migrating-fish-traverse-a-dutch-canal-by-ringing-this-digital-doorbell-180984140/

The Biden Administration Surpassed its Clean Energy Permitting Goal

date: 2024-04-12, from: Heatmap News



Current conditions: Devastating flood waters are still rising near the Russia-Kazakhstan border • Severe drought in the Colombian capital of Bogota triggered water rationing measures • Coachella attendees are advised to pack a parka this weekend.

THE TOP FIVE

  1. A quick roundup of environmental news from the Biden administration

The last 24 hours saw a flurry of announcements from the White House on environmental initiatives. Here is a quick summary:

  1. Major cities set to install lamppost EV chargers

New York City startup Voltpost unveiled its new commercial lamppost EV charger yesterday, which could go a long way toward improving the lives of city-dwelling EV owners. The devices are retrofitted onto existing lampposts, and can be installed in under two hours for a “fraction of the cost with no construction, trenching or extensive permitting processes,” the company said in a press release. Voltpost chargers can come with either two or four charging ports and there’s an app that lets users see and reserve chargers and pay for electricity used. The company said it’s working on projects in major metropolitan areas including New York, Chicago, and Detroit. Here’s a picture of a Voltpost in NYC:

Voltpost

  1. Report says carbon capture won’t save coal-based steel

A new analysis on the future of sustainable steelmaking finds “key technologies for transforming the global steel industry will be commercially available this decade.” The report, from nonprofit Agora Industry, is optimistic about the expansion potential for direct reduced iron-based steelmaking (DRI), which can be done with hydrogen, but doesn’t have good things to say about carbon capture and storage (CCS). It says retrofitting blast furnaces with CCS is risky because “it leaves high residual emissions, requires significant CO2 transport and storage infrastructure, needs to take high upstream methane emissions from coal mines into account and will become less and less commercially attractive as hydrogen costs decline and CO2 prices rise.”

As Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported recently, the steel industry contributes about 8% of global energy-related emissions, and experts are unimpressed with the sector’s carbon capture plans overall. One industry insider called a recent carbon capture initiative from one of America’s biggest steelmakers “deeply unserious.”

  1. Kentucky governor vetoes bill that would make it harder to shutter fossil fuel power plants

The governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear (D), vetoed a Republican-backed bill that would have slowed down the process of closing fossil fuel plants in the state. S.B. 349 would have required all coal-, gas-, and oil-fired plant closure requests to be put to a new 18-member commission at least one year before filing an official request with the state’s utility regulator. The bill’s primary sponsor, Republican Sen. Robby Mills, told the Kentucky Lantern the goal was to make sure “we’re not losing capacity too soon.” As E&E News reported, GOP lawmakers say they will override the veto with a majority vote. In 2022, nearly 70% of Kentucky’s utility-scale electricity generation was coal-fired, according to the Energy Information Administration.

  1. Dengue cases spike in Puerto Rico

A public health emergency has been declared in Puerto Rico, where dengue cases are spiking. Nearly 550 cases of the mosquito-borne illness have been recorded in the territory so far this year, marking a 140% year-over-year increase, Grist reported. Dengue is on the rise across large parts of the world in part because of climate change. “Warmer winters, hotter summers, and particularly milder springs and falls are allowing these mosquitoes to move into new areas and higher elevations that have historically been too harsh for their survival,” Grist explained. This week Peru’s government announced that dengue-related deaths have more than tripled in the country. Dengue is often asymptomatic but can cause severe illness and death in some people, with infants and pregnant women being more vulnerable.

THE KICKER

U.S. coffee boutique Bluestone Lane will start selling “beanless coffee” made from roasted upcycled ingredients including date seeds, sunflower, and caffeine from tea. Its makers say the blend has “everything you expect from your cup — minus the planet impact.”

Atomo Coffee


https://heatmap.news/politics/biden-clean-energy-permit-goal

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Many Patients Don’t Survive End-Stage Poverty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/opinion/doctor-safety-net-hospital.html

UK county council misses deadline for £7.3M RISE with SAP system launch

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Gloucestershire reluctant to set new date in S/4HANA migration saga

The UK’s Gloucestershire County Council has failed to introduce its new £7.3 million ($9.3 million) cloud-based SAP system in time for the new financial year, as its director of finance promised back in January.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/gloucestershire_sap_launch_delay/

Workers are getting a smaller slice of the pie

date: 2024-04-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report

Next month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will tell us how much of the income generated by workers’ toil actually went to them in Q1. That stat is called labor share of national income — and it’s shrinking. Plus, a government committee that scrutinizes deals between foreign companies and American firms may be getting more power. And 14 states are opting out of a summer EBT program that would help families buy groceries.

Wanna learn more about labor share of income and see Marketplace reporter Nancy Marshall Genzer get a pie in the face? Check out the Marketplace TikTok feed.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/workers-are-getting-a-smaller-slice-of-the-pie

Smuggling Gold by Disguising it as Machine Parts

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Bruce Schneier blog

Someone got caught trying to smuggle 322 pounds of gold (that’s about 1/4 of a cubic foot) out of Hong Kong. It was disguised as machine parts:

On March 27, customs officials x-rayed two air compressors and discovered that they contained gold that had been “concealed in the integral parts” of the compressors. Those gold parts had also been painted silver to match the other components in an attempt to throw customs off the trail.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/04/smuggling-gold-by-disguising-it-as-machine-parts.html

Hubble Spots a Galaxy Hidden in a Dark Cloud

date: 2024-04-12, from: NASA breaking news

The subject of this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the spiral galaxy IC 4633, located 100 million light-years away from us in the constellation Apus. IC 4633 is a galaxy rich in star-forming activity and also hosts an active galactic nucleus at its core. From our point of view, the galaxy […]

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-spots-a-galaxy-hidden-in-a-dark-cloud/

How we built JSR

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Deno blog

A modern JavaScript registry needs to be fast, reliable, and be as simple as possible for end users. Here’s how we built JSR.

https://deno.com/blog/how-we-built-jsr

P&B: Tracy Durnell

date: 2024-04-12, from: Manu - I write blog

            <p>This is the 33rd edition of <em>People and Blogs</em>, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Tracy Durnell and her blog, <a href="https://tracydurnell.com">tracydurnell.com</a></p>

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Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

I’m a writer and graphic designer in the Seattle area. I can’t get enough writing; on top of blogging, I also write speculative fiction. I love reading, mostly fiction, and use my website as an alternative to Goodreads to write reviews and track reads. Over the past several years, I’ve added more and more things to my site: listens, playlists, recipes, follows, accountability tracking, big questions.

I work in sustainability, previously in local government and now as a consultant. My background is in ecology; I thought I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, but after one field season studying lizards in the Los Angeles suburbs, I realized the itinerant research biologist lifestyle was not for me.

Now I stay connected to nature through my wildlife garden. My yard backs up to a greenbelt, so on top of ripping out our lawn and planting native plants, we also restored the natural area adjacent. (I ran a blog devoted to Pacific Northwest nature for ten years!)

This probably makes it sound like I blog a lot about the environment, but I get enough of that in my work life, so not much actually! I’ll keep notes from webinars and bookmark articles related to work on my website since they’re related to learning, but I try to preserve my blog as a non-work thinking space for me to play.

What's the story behind your blog?

I started my current blog at tracydurnell.com when I encountered the idea of a digital garden* in 2021. The concept appealed to me for its looseness and built-in acceptance of incompleteness and imperfection. On my previous blog, Cascadia Inspired, I’d locked myself into a narrow pool of topics that no longer matched my life, and felt constrained. Releasing myself upon a boundless format with lower expectations unleashed a deluge of thoughts I hadn’t realized had no outlet before (or that I hadn’t really given myself space to think).

*(Having learned more about digital gardens, the blog itself is more of a commonplace book, but I feel it’s fine to trick our brains however we need to to grant ourselves permission to create. Some people write in all lowercase, I tell myself my blog is a garden.)

I’d had a handmade HTML portfolio site parked on the domain for years because I felt obliged to have one, but it was a huge pain to update without a content management system. Letting go of that was a great relief in itself, and then reinless blogging was joyfully liberating. (Ironically, this means that one of the last things I now rely on a third party site to host is my design portfolio 😂)

That switch from professional portfolio to blog is why I’ve done so little to personalize the design of my website: I used the base theme from the year I launched the blog and tweaked the colors slightly, but otherwise only add CSS to solve specific layout or display issues. For too long, I’d been paralyzed by the need to design and code a fully customized site that “represented me as a designer,” so I decided to completely release myself from that burden and use the absolute simplest design option. I chose to not care whether people judge me for using a generic template because the purpose of the site is the information on it, not its aesthetics. As long as the styling works to convey the info I want, I’m happy to leave the default. (This prioritization is a design decision in itself, which I suppose represents my practicality when it comes to design 🤷‍♀️)

I first started blogging twenty years ago, when I went to college, to share what I was doing with my family. In that initial blogging phase, I focused on writing about “mini adventures” I took – but after college I found I didn’t do enough to warrant writing about because I was too exhausted after work. I half-heartedly tried some commentary style blogging, but it didn’t stick.

In 2012, missing that creative outlet, I started writing at Cascadia Inspired as a way to connect more deeply with Washington nature and explore creative processes. I hoped that having the site would prompt me to go on more hikes, which worked for a while, then became an albatross.

When I started blogging at TracyDurnell.com, I then faced the conundrum of what writing belonged on which blog. More and more, I shifted my writing over to the new site. Now that I was letting myself write about anything, I wanted to. Finally, I put the Cascadia Inspired blog on hiatus last fall.

Since going freelance, I’ve also been posting weeknotes to help me recognize the progress I’m making on long term projects and keep myself honest about how much I can do in a week. My website is a toolbox in itself: a tool for thinking, a place for storing information, a non-corporate means of tracking my intake, a method of self-kindness and personal growth, an outlet for reflection. It’s endlessly adaptable and expandable to my needs. Part of the fun is that it’s always evolving.

As an adult, I learned my grandpa had been a letterpress printer, as had his mother; it tickles me that I have wound up in design and (digital) publishing too.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

Most of my blogging is reactive, prompted by something I’ve read. (I’ve written about choosing between ideas for posts.) I especially enjoy finding connections between pieces and seeing whether pairing articles reveals something more than either alone; Tom Critchlow described this, or something like it, as digital bricolage.

Because lots of my blogging is interspersed with online reading, it happens where I read… which is primarily on my phone. I blog most often in my phone’s browser window, which is not ergonomic. For pieces over a certain length and complexity, I do try to move to my desktop, where I still write directly in the browser. (I’ve written at length about my process for crafting long blog posts – tl;dr many (too many) rounds of revisions.)

I’ve been paying attention to what I admire on other blogs, and one of my goals this year is to write more self-prompted articles. Right now I’m experimenting with writing a longer piece in Scrivener, the writing software I use for fiction. Switching to Scrivener for fiction writing made a massive difference, helping me organize my thoughts better, so I’m curious how it will affect blogging. I’ve also read a couple books specifically for this article – a fun return to purpose-driven research, which I’ve rarely had cause for since college. We’ll see whether it comes together or I’ve gathered too much material and overwhelmed myself!

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

Ideas aren’t a limiting factor for me; I can be creative anywhere, but the question for me is whether I can work in a space. Physical comfort is the most important aspect of a work space for me: decent ergonomics, enough light, not too loud, not too cold. I find not having enough space to spread out to be limiting – I prefer to have enough room for both my computer and a notebook for brainstorming on paper.

Before the pandemic, I used to work in coffee shops regularly as a commitment device, but it was never that productive because I’d get distracted by friends or noise, be crammed into small tables with my laptop perched precariously, or feel anxious whether I’d bought enough food and drinks. Now I much prefer working at my wide desk with a large monitor and ergonomic keyboard.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

My webhosting is through HostGator, and my domain registrar is NameCheap. I’m on shared hosting, which is sufficient to host all of my websites.

I self-host WordPress as my content management system with these plugins. I use the IndieWeb plugin to enable Webmentions, so I can send and receive comments from other websites.

I also have a notes blog on a subdomain, powered by micro.blog, which is federated.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

While I’ve run most of my sites on WordPress since 2012, if I was starting today I might explore other options. There’s a lot that’s great about WordPress, but I find the block structure poorly suited to blogging; fortunately, I can use a plugin to restore the classic editor (for now).

I’ve chosen to blog under my real name for a number of reasons, but I also can see the value and freedom in anonymity. There are some subjects I’d like to write about that are too personally revealing. (When I first blogged, I wrote openly about some things I now keep private; were the times simpler or was I more naive?)

From a content perspective, I’d try to be more social with my website earlier. Discovering the IndieWeb and meeting other people who think keeping websites is rad has totally enlivened my blogging. I feel much more connected to the online community than I ever did during my first decade and a half of blogging.

Back in the day I followed mostly big name bloggers and topic-focused blogs, which fostered more parasocial relationships between writer and audience; now I follow a lot of other ‘normal people’ with personal websites who are sharing their ponderings and slices of life. It’s easier for me to engage in a bloggy conversation with people who feel like peers, and fun to join in with what I see others writing about. (How much do our follows reveal our interests versus shape them?)

Financial question since the web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

Webhosting costs me about $200 a year, and my domain about $15. (Of course, like many people with websites, I have way too many domains so they add up 😉) I begrudgingly subscribe to Google Drive, where I have automatic website backups stored, for $20 a year. Micro.blog is another $5 a month. As a hobby, I consider blogging reasonably affordable at about $25 a month.

I don’t mind other people monetizing their blogs, especially with affiliate links, membership programs, and donations. It totally makes sense for people who need more expensive hosting than I can get away with – but I also think it’s fine for people to charge for their work even if they don’t “need the money” – creators shouldn’t be ashamed for earning money from their work. The only aspect that troubles me is when content is paywalled, which then removes it from the open web, but I understand that people need to make money and people come first.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

Blog recommendations:

It’d be interesting to hear from Reimena Yee, a comic artist who has a fun website and interesting blog. I’d also love to hear from Erin Kissane, and if we’re going big, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen!

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

I’d encourage anyone who wants to meet other bloggers and website makers to check out an IndieWeb online event like Homebrew Website Club, which is held regularly in European and North American timezones. It’s not just for technical folks!

This was the 33rd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Tracy. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.

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Get Your Kids On Two Wheels With Beta’s E-Kinder Race E-Bikes

date: 2024-04-12, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

The E-Kinder Race comes in three sizes for youngsters.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/715393/beta-ekinder-race-kids-ebikes/

John Boston | A Most Happy and Horrific April 5, 1970

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

Hey Dear R.P.P. (Roger Palmer Pal) …  When we chat about that April 5, I hardly know what to say. A contrite “thank you” isn’t remotely enough. Historians call that day in 1970, “The Newhall Incident.” Four of your California Highway Patrol colleagues were murdered here in Santa Clarita. That night? I was driving aimlessly […]

The post John Boston | A Most Happy and Horrific April 5, 1970 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/john-boston-a-most-happy-and-horrific-april-5-1970/

Chinese victims of a bitcoin scam believe the U.K. government has their money

date: 2024-04-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report

From the BBC World Service: Thousands of victims of a huge investment scam believe police in London have nearly $4 billion worth of bitcoin that belongs to them and want the British government to give it back. Then, The European Central bank held interest rates steady but gave strong hints about future rate cuts. Plus, we hear about padel, one of the world’s fastest growing sports, and its Olympic ambitions

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/chinese-victims-of-a-bitcoin-scam-believe-the-u-k-government-has-their-money

Dr. Gene Dorio | A Tribute to Dr. Cocco

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

Dr. John Cocco, a veteran and founding physician of Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, passed away on March 4, 2024. He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, the site of the beginning of the American Revolution, Paul Revere’s ride, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond, and the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott. In and […]

The post Dr. Gene Dorio | A Tribute to Dr. Cocco appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/dr-gene-dorio-a-tribute-to-dr-cocco/

Rob Kerchner | A Green Policy Backfire

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

Another green policy backfire: After 10 years, California’s 2014 plastic bag tax has increased the weight of plastic bags in California landfills by almost 30%.  Since bag taxes were enacted, plastic bags have been made thicker to qualify as being “reusable.” But consumers discard them anyway. So Californians are being taxed to create more plastic […]

The post Rob Kerchner | A Green Policy Backfire appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/rob-kerchner-a-green-policy-backfire/

GCC 14 dropping IA64 support is final nail in the coffin for Itanium architecture

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Linux kernel cut it loose, now leading FOSS compiler lands depth-charge on Itanic

GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 14 should appear any month now, and when it does, it will no longer build binaries for IA64 – or Itanic, as The Reg dubbed it.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/gcc_14_sinks_itanic/

Discord is nuking Nintendo Switch emulator devs and their entire servers

date: 2024-04-12, from: OS News

Discord has shut down the Discord servers for the Nintendo Switch emulators Suyu and Sudachi and has completely disabled their lead developers’ accounts — and the company isn’t answering our questions about why it went that far. Both Suyu and Sudachi began as forks of Yuzu, the emulator that Nintendo sued out of existence on March 4th. ↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge This is exactly what people were worried about when Nintendo and Yuzu settled for millions of dollars. Even though it’s a settlement and not a court ruling, and even tough the code to Yuzu is entirely unaffected by the settlement and freely shareable and usable by anyone, and even though emulators are legal – the chilling effect this settlement is having is absolutely undeniable. Here we have Discord going far beyond its own official policy, without even giving the affected parties any recourse. It’s absolutely wild, and highlights just how dangerous it is to rely on Discord for, well, anything. I wish that for once, we’d actually see a case related to console emulation go to court in either the EU or the US, to make it even clearer that yes, unless you distribute copyrighted code like game ROMs or console firmware, emulators are entirely legal and without any risk. You know, a recent court ruling we could point to to dissuade bullies like Nintendo from threatening innocent developers and ruining their lives because of entirely legal activities. And let me reiterate: don’t use Discord as for anything other than basic chat. This platform ain’t got your back.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139267/discord-is-nuking-nintendo-switch-emulator-devs-and-their-entire-servers/

DwarfFS: a read-only compression file system

date: 2024-04-12, from: OS News

DwarFS is a read-only file system with a focus on achieving very high compression ratios in particular for very redundant data. DwarFS also doesn’t compromise on speed and for my use cases I’ve found it to be on par with or perform better than SquashFS. For my primary use case, DwarFS compression is an order of magnitude better than SquashFS compression, it’s 6 times faster to build the file system, it’s typically faster to access files on DwarFS and it uses less CPU resources. ↫ DwarfFS GitHub page DwarfFS supports both Linux, macOS, and Windows, but macOS and Windows support is experimental at this point. It seems to have higher compression ratios at faster speeds than various alternatives, so if you have a use case for compression file systems – give DwarfFS a look.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139265/dwarffs-a-read-only-compression-file-system/

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

Reporters don’t own the facts they report. That is when they actually report facts.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/11/an-only-slightly-modest-proposal-if-ai-companies-want-more-content-they-should-fund-reporters-and-lots-of-them/

Linux Foundation is leading fight against fauxpen source

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Shifts its transmission from vendor neutral into open source gear

Opinion  Since its founding, the Linux Foundation has been a vendor-neutral supporter of Linux and open source software. Now, though, it’s actively promoting such open source projects as OpenTofu and Valkey.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/linux_foundation_opinion/

FemFest organizers reflect on March concert cancellation

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Staff spoke on the process of setting up the event and the process of looking forward.

The post FemFest organizers reflect on March concert cancellation appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/femfest-organizers-reflect-on-march-concert-cancellation/

Rally for inclusive desks launched by graduate students

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

A social work student led the protest after her letter to the editor went unnoticed.

The post Rally for inclusive desks launched by graduate students appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/rally-for-inclusive-desks-launched-by-graduate-students/

Jane Fonda champions climate activism

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Climate experts spoke with faculty at Annenberg Hall about political engagement.

The post Jane Fonda champions climate activism appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/jane-fonda-champions-climate-activism/

Falta simpatía para los inmigrantes

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

La tragedia del colapso de un puente en Maryland es un llamado al cambio.

The post Falta simpatía para los inmigrantes appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/falta-simpatia-para-los-inmigrantes/

[ESP/ENG] Coachella contrapone la economía con la realidad local

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

La gente local de Coachella tiene sentimientos mixtos sobre el festival de música.

The post [ESP/ENG] Coachella contrapone la economía con la realidad local appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/coachella-contrapone-la-economia-con-la-realidad-local/

How to understand next week’s Trump criminal felony trial

date: 2024-04-12, from: Robert Reich on Substack

Trump wants you to think that all he did was try to cover up a sexual affair. Wrong.

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/dont-call-it-the-hush-money-case

Shakira factura con su nuevo álbum

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

El doceavo álbum de la colombiana desnuda un viaje de desamor y soltería.

The post Shakira factura con su nuevo álbum appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/shakira-factura-con-su-nuevo-album/

La salsa y el reggaetón se apoderan de Bovard

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Break On 2 puso la danza latinoamericana en alto en su reciente presentación.

The post La salsa y el reggaetón se apoderan de Bovard appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/la-salsa-y-el-reggaeton-se-apoderan-de-bovard/

Latino Students in Medicine prepara su primera conferencia

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

El evento ofrecerá recursos para los estudiantes interesados en la medicina.

The post Latino Students in Medicine prepara su primera conferencia appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/latino-students-in-medicine-prepara-su-primera-conferencia/

Classifieds – April 12, 2024

date: 2024-04-12, 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 12, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/classifieds-april-12-2024/

Support contract required techie to lounge around in a $5,000/night hotel room

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

And be paid danger money while he did it

On Call  Welcome once again to On-Call, The Register’s weekly wander through readers’ recollections of being asked to perform tech support under all sorts of strange circumstances, most of them difficult. But not always.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/on_call/

Profesoras crean primera guía de lenguaje neutro

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

El libro explica el uso del lenguaje inclusivo en español y su enseñanza.

The post Profesoras crean primera guía de lenguaje neutro appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/profesoras-crean-primera-guia-de-lenguaje-neutro/

Today in SCV History (April 12)

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

1738 – Fr. Francisco Garcés born in Spain; came through SCV in 1776, found Tataviam fighting with Coastal Chumash, observed Santa Clara River flowing by night and dry by day despite the season being spring. [story

https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-april-12/

Cambios en el Latine Student Assembly: Una conversación con sus nuevas directoras

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

La organización acaba de elegir nuevas directoras ejecutivas para el entrante año escolar 2024-25.

The post Cambios en el Latine Student Assembly: Una conversación con sus nuevas directoras appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/cambios-en-el-latine-student-assembly-una-conversacion-con-sus-nuevas-directoras/

Carson Pickett is an inspiration on and off the pitch

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The Racing Louisville defender is inspiring athletes and kids with limb differences.

The post Carson Pickett is an inspiration on and off the pitch appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/carson-pickett-is-an-inspiration-on-and-off-the-pitch/

Welcome to the league: WNBA mock draft 2024

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The following players are best suited to transition from the NCAA to the pros.

The post Welcome to the league: WNBA mock draft 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/wnba-mock-draft-2024/

In a sea full of Nathans, who am I?

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

My name is common, but it means more than I give it credit for.

The post In a sea full of Nathans, who am I? appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/in-a-sea-full-of-nathans-who-am-i/

‘La Traviata’ toasts its way to greatness

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The iconic Verdi masterpiece recently opened at the Los Angeles Opera.

The post ‘La Traviata’ toasts its way to greatness appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/la-traviata-toasts-its-way-to-greatness/

Breaking free from monotonous student life

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Exploring opportunities and new possibilities helps make student life more interesting.

The post Breaking free from monotonous student life appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/breaking-free-from-monotonous-student-life/

Housing headaches continue off-campus

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Some students say they can’t find reliable resources and affordable housing options.

The post Housing headaches continue off-campus appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/off-campus-housing-struggles-reemerge/

Studying abroad will change the course of your life

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Taking the chance to cross the pond was the best decision I’ve ever made.

The post Studying abroad will change the course of your life appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/12/studying-abroad-will-change-the-course-of-your-life/

Meet Michael Omotosho and his Mindful Droid robot

date: 2024-04-12, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)

Sometimes data isn’t enough. Sometimes we need a little robot that tells us what to do!

The post Meet Michael Omotosho and his Mindful Droid robot appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/meet-michael-omotosho-and-his-mindful-droid-robot/

British watchdog has ‘real concerns’ about the staggering love-in between cloud giants and AI upstarts

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Billions in investment? Yeeeah, right – looks more like ensuring only select few developers thrive

The UK’s competition watchdog sniffed around the AI industry with a bit more interest than usual on Thursday at an antitrust event in the US.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/uk_cma_ai_cloud/

Webcurios 12/04/24

date: 2024-04-12, from: Web Curios blog

Reading Time: 35 minutes I went on an open-top bus tour through London last weekend, and, honestly, it was FCUKING GREAT and you should all do one. That’s it, that’s basically all I’ve got for you this week, just a general sense of unbridled enthusiasm for taking a bus around some tourist attractions – seriously though, it is ACE…

Continue reading →

https://webcurios.co.uk/webcurios-12-04-24/

April 11, 2024

date: 2024-04-12, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog

When Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida addressed a joint meeting of Congress today, he tried to remind lawmakers of who Americans are. “The U.S. shaped the international order in the postwar world through economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power,” he reminded them. “It championed freedom and democracy. It encouraged the stability and prosperity of nations, including Japan. And, when necessary, it made noble sacrifices to fulfill its commitment to a better world.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-11-2024

O.J. Simpson dies after battle with cancer

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The controversial former Trojan running back passed away at age 76.

The post O.J. Simpson dies after battle with cancer appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/o-j-simpson-dies-after-battle-with-cancer/

French issue alerte rouge after local governments knocked offline by cyber attack

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Embarrassing, as its officials are in the US to discuss Olympics cyber threats

Several French municipal governments’ services have been knocked offline following a “large-scale cyber attack” on their shared servers.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/french_municipalities_cyberattack/

20 years later, Abu Ghraib detainees get their day in US court

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Twenty years ago this month, photos of abused prisoners and smiling U.S. soldiers guarding them at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison were released, shocking the world.

Now, three survivors of Abu Ghraib will finally get their day in U.S. court against the military contractor they hold responsible for their mistreatment.

The trial is scheduled to begin Monday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, and it will be the first time that Abu Ghraib survivors are able to bring their claims of torture to a U.S. jury, said Baher Azmy, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs.

The defendant in the civil suit, CACI, supplied the interrogators who worked at the prison. The Virginia-based contractor denies any wrongdoing and has emphasized throughout 16 years of litigation that its employees are not alleged to have inflicted any abuse on any of the plaintiffs in the case.

The plaintiffs, though, seek to hold CACI responsible for setting the conditions that resulted in the torture they endured, citing evidence in government investigations that CACI contractors instructed military police to “soften up” detainees for their interrogations.

Retired Army Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led an investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal, is among those expected to testify. His inquiry concluded that at least one CACI interrogator should be held accountable for instructing military police to set conditions that amounted to physical abuse.

There is little dispute that the abuse was horrific. The photos released in 2004 showed naked prisoners stacked into pyramids or dragged by leashes. Some photos had a soldier smiling and giving a thumbs up while posing next to a corpse, or detainees being threatened with dogs, or hooded and attached to electrical wires.

The plaintiffs cannot be clearly identified in any of the infamous images, but their descriptions of mistreatment are unnerving.

Suhail Al Shimari has described sexual assaults and beatings during his two months at the prison. He was also electrically shocked and dragged around the prison by a rope tied around his neck. Former Al-Jazeera reporter Salah Al-Ejaili said he was subjected to stress positions that caused him to vomit black liquid. He was also deprived of sleep, forced to wear women’s underwear and threatened with dogs.

CACI, though, has said the U.S. military is the institution that bears responsibility for setting the conditions at Abu Ghraib and that its employees weren’t in a position to be giving orders to soldiers. In court papers, lawyers for the contractor group have said the “entire case is nothing more than an attempt to impose liability on CACI PT because its personnel worked in a war zone prison with a climate of activity that reeks of something foul. The law, however, does not recognize guilt by association with Abu Ghraib.”

The case has bounced through the courts since 2008, and CACI has tried roughly 20 times to have it tossed out of court. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 ultimately turned back CACI’s appeal efforts and sent the case back to district court for trial.

In one of CACI’s appeal arguments, the company contended that the U.S. enjoys sovereign immunity against the torture claims, and that CACI enjoys derivative immunity as a contractor doing the government’s bidding. But U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, in a first-of-its kind ruling, determined that the U.S. government can’t claim immunity when it comes to allegations that violate established international norms, like torturing prisoners, so CACI as a result can’t claim any derivative immunity.

Jurors next week are also expected to hear testimony from some of the soldiers who were convicted in military court of directly inflicting the abuse. Ivan Frederick, a former staff sergeant who was sentenced to more than eight years of confinement after a court-martial conviction on charges including assault, indecent acts and dereliction of duty, has provided deposition testimony that is expected to be played for the jury because he has refused to attend the trial voluntarily. The two sides have differed on whether his testimony establishes that soldiers were working under the direction of CACI interrogators.

The U.S. government may present a wild card in the trial, which is scheduled to last two weeks. Both the plaintiffs and CACI have complained that their cases have been hampered by government assertions that some evidence, if made public, would divulge state secrets that would harm national security.

Government lawyers will be at the trial ready to object if witnesses stray into territory they deem to be a state secret, they said at a pretrial hearing April 5.

Judge Brinkema, who has overseen complex national security cases many times, warned the government that if it asserts such a privilege at trial, “it better be a genuine state secret.”

Jason Lynch, a government lawyer, assured her, “We’re trying to stay out of the way as much as we possibly can.”

Of the three plaintiffs, only Al-Ejaili, who now lives in Sweden, is expected to testify in person. The other two will testify remotely from Iraq. Brinkema has ruled that the reasons they were sent to Abu Ghraib are irrelevant and won’t be given to jurors. All three were released after periods of detention ranging from two months to a year without ever being charged with a crime, according to court papers.

“Even if they were terrorists, it doesn’t excuse the conduct that’s alleged here,” she said at the April 5 hearing.

https://www.voanews.com/a/years-later-abu-ghraib-detainees-get-their-day-in-us-court-/7567050.html

Apple stops warning of ‘state-sponsored’ attacks, now alerts about ‘mercenary spyware’

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Report claims India’s government, which is accused of using Pegasus at home, was displeased

Apple has made a significant change to the wording of its threat notifications, opting not to attribute attacks to a specific source or perpetrator, but categorizing them broadly as “mercenary spyware.”…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/apple_mercenary_spyware/

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

OpenAI makes ChatGPT ‘more direct, less verbose.’

https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/11/openai-makes-chatgpt-more-direct-less-verbose/

VMware’s end-user compute products probably have a new brand: Omnissa

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

As the rest of Virtizilla’s users face a pause in support and education services due to apparent SAP-to-Oracle migration

VMware’s end user compute products appear likely to be rebranded as Omnissa after being sold off.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/vmware_omnissa_support_pause/

The Verge’s Review Scale

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.theverge.com/pages/how-we-rate

Full Belly Files | Diet Drugs vs. Wine?

date: 2024-04-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Spring break report next week; why weight loss drugs may be hurting wine sales; plus, events to come and stories you may have missed.

The post Full Belly Files | Diet Drugs vs. Wine? appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/full-belly-files-diet-drugs-vs-wine/

Tesla unveils new Sport Seats to absorb Model S Plaid’s insane power

date: 2024-04-12, from: Electrek Feed

Tesla has unveiled new Sport Seats for the Model S Plaid to absorb the electric supercar’s insane power better.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/tesla-sport-seats-better-absorb-model-s-plaid-power/

Biden, leaders of Japan, Philippines discuss Beijing’s aggression in South China Sea

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

President Joe Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Thursday, aiming to send a clear message to Beijing that it must stop behaving aggressively against its South China Sea neighbors. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.

https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-leaders-of-japan-philippines-discuss-beijing-s-aggression-in-south-china-sea-/7567001.html

David Pierce Reviews Humane’s AI Pin: ‘Nope. Nuh-Uh. No Way.’

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.theverge.com/24126502/humane-ai-pin-review

Americans have just a few days left to pay their income taxes

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/americans-have-just-a-few-days-left-to-pay-their-income-taxes/7566983.html

Strength through sobriety: SCV man sets rock climbing record 

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

It was a dark moment in Brian Witmer’s life.  Originally from Colorado, Witmer and his girlfriend moved to Southern California nearly two years ago. Shortly after, his girlfriend kicked him out of their residence and told him to get sober, providing no ultimatum.  “It wasn’t like, you know, ‘Get help and we’ll see what happens,’” […]

The post <strong>Strength through sobriety: SCV man sets rock climbing record</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/strength-through-sobriety-scv-man-sets-rock-climbing-record/

Analysts: US military aid to allies would give US defense industry needed boost

date: 2024-04-12, from: VOA News USA

As the Biden administration and the US Senate look to the US House to take up a bill for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, experts say U.S. allies are not the only ones in need of the funding boost. As VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports, some say the US defense industry desperately needs the boost as well. Camera: Mary Cielak

https://www.voanews.com/a/analysts-us-military-aid-to-allies-would-give-us-defense-industry-needed-boost-/7566973.html

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

‘Civil War’ Review: We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us. Again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/movies/civil-war-review.html?unlocked_article_code=1.j00.0dgt.ypcBLXWqMNLX&smid=url-share

SCV Sheriff’s Station runners earn their ‘mugs’ at Baker to Vegas relay 

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

Members of the Santa Clarita Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station got “mugged” last month for their efforts in the annual Baker to Vegas relay race.  That’s the term that Deputy David Swigart used in reference to the SCV Sheriff’s Station’s team finishing 14th out of 36 teams in the Invitational Mixed division. The team ran the […]

The post <strong>SCV Sheriff’s Station runners earn their ‘mugs’ at Baker to Vegas relay</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/scv-sheriffs-station-runners-earn-their-mugs-at-baker-to-vegas-relay/

Daily EV Recap: China looks to export EVs by the hundreds of thousands

date: 2024-04-12, 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/2024/04/11/daily-ev-recap-china-looks-to-export-evs-by-the-hundreds-of-thousands/

OpenAI CEO wants UAE into his plan for a global AI cabal

date: 2024-04-12, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Asking for emir few billion bucks to pay for lots of fabs, datacenters, and nuclear power plants

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s latest stop on his AI emperor roadshow was in the United Arab Emirates, where he floated the idea of a global consortium of governments and private interests to fund, power, and supply the artificial intelligence industry.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/openai_ai_consortium_uae/

OpenBSD is a cozy operating system

date: 2024-04-12, from: OS News

With the recent release of OpenBSD 7.5, I decided to run through my personal OpenBSD “installer” for laptop/desktop devices. The project is built off of the dwm tiling window manager and only installs a few basic packages. The last time I updated it was with the release of 7.3, so it’s been due for an minor rework. While making these minor changes, I remembered how incredibly easy the entire install process for OpenBSD is and how cozy the entire operating system feels. All the core systems just work out the box. Yes, you need to “patch” in WiFi with a firmware update, so you’ll need an Ethernet connection during the initial setup. Yes, the default desktop environment is not intuitive or ideal for newcomers. But the positives heavily outweigh the negatives (in my opinion). ↫ Bradley Taunt OpenBSD has a very dedicated community, and I’ve noticed they tend to be very helpful and friendly. It’s making me curious about trying it out, and both this article and the helpful posts it links to will be a great way to start.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139263/openbsd-is-a-cozy-operating-system/

Jason Gibbs | Explore the World at Celebrate!

date: 2024-04-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Have you ever wanted to journey to another country to experience an array of new and unique cultures and customs

https://scvnews.com/jason-gibbs-explore-the-world-at-celebrate/

Android 15 Beta 1 is here, but details are still under wraps

date: 2024-04-12, from: OS News

After two months of developer previews, Google has finally released Android 15 Beta 1. While the beta usually offers more user-facing changes, Google is still pretty light on details with this build, giving us only a few more details on what we can expect. Instead, the company is pointing to Google I/O for more details, which will take place on May 14 this year, basically confirming that this is when we will get the second beta with more features. ↫ Manuel Vonau There’s very little of interest in this beta, so unless you’re really into Android development, I’d wait out installing any betas until after Google I/O.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139261/android-15-beta-1-is-here-but-details-are-still-under-wraps/

Sister Cities to host ‘Superheroes Unite Zumbathon’ 

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

The city of Santa Clarita Sister Cities and International Programs has organized “Superheroes Unite Zumbathon” to raise money for their “Dollars for Desks” campaign on Saturday from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Centre, 20880 Centre Pointe Parkway.  The campaign is meant to “provide desks to students from Sariaya, Santa Clarita’s sister city in the […]

The post Sister Cities to host ‘Superheroes Unite Zumbathon’  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/sister-cities-to-host-superheroes-unite-zumbathon/

Wilk’s bill aimed at reducing animal shelter overcrowding passes first committee

date: 2024-04-12, from: The Signal

News release  Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, announced his bill to help reduce overcrowding at animal shelters across the state, by expanding access to low and no-cost spay/neuter services, was approved in the Senate Education Committee.  “The severe shortage of veterinarians available to perform spay and neuter services has created an overcrowding crisis at our […]

The post Wilk’s bill aimed at reducing animal shelter overcrowding passes first committee appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/wilks-bill-aimed-at-reducing-animal-shelter-overcrowding-passes-first-committee/

@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-04-12, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)

Some days I have good hacking days, other days I have to use NSItemProvider

https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112255304185889875

Greenmask v0.1.7 Release

date: 2024-04-12, from: PostgreSQL News

Greenmask v0.1.7 Release

PostgreSQL Dump and Obfuscation Tool

This release introduces a new Greenmask command, improvements, bug fixes, and documentation updates.

Greenmask Overview

Key Features

Greenmask is ideally suited for:

Release Notes

v0.1.7

New features
Improvements
Fixes

v0.1.2 - v0.1.6

Useful Links

Change log greenmask.io

Explore detailed Documentation

Access the Latest Release on GitHub

Contact us for support at Email Support

https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/greenmask-v017-release-2825/

pgtt v3.2 has been released

date: 2024-04-12, from: PostgreSQL News

Hanoi, Vietnam - April 12th, 2024

PostgreSQL Global Temporary Tables

pgtt is a PostgreSQL extension to create, manage and use DB2 or Oracle-style Global Temporary Tables. Once created the use is just like with the other RDBMS.

pgtt v3.2 has been released, this is a maintenance release to fix issues reported by users since latest release and add compatibility with future PG 17.

Complete list of changes is available here

Links & Credits

pgtt is an open project. Any contribution to build a better tool is welcome. You just have to send your ideas, features requests or patches using the GitHub tools or directly to gilles@darold.net.

Links :

About pgtt

Docs & Download at https://github.com/darold/pgtt/

https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgtt-v32-has-been-released-2840/

Eclipses Should Be Celebrations of Science, Not Pseudoscience

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a60428945/how-solar-eclipse-will-affect-zodiac/

Larson Lifts Mustangs to Victory at Spring Invitational

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

With a birdie on the final hole, Jonathan Larson won the The Master’s University Spring Invitational and lifted The Master’s men’s team to an 11-stroke victory at the Crystalaire Country Club in Llano, Calif. Tuesday

https://scvnews.com/larson-lifts-mustangs-to-victory-at-spring-invitational/

Space Force boss warns ‘the US will lose’ without help from Musk and Bezos

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

China, Russia have muscled up, and whoever wins up there wins down here

The commander of the US Space Force (USSF) has warned that America risks losing its dominant position in space, and therefore on Earth too.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/space_force_us_industry/

Mattel Makes New Version of Scrabble for Dum-Dums

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/09/business/scrabble-together-game-scli-intl-gbr/index.html

Campus eclipsed by rare solar phenomenon

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

The last time a total eclipse was visible in the U.S. was in 2017, nearly seven years ago, but for Southern California, it’s been over 100 years. Eric Collins, CSUN…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180422/news/campus-eclipsed-by-rare-solar-phenomenon/

Explore the World at Celebrate!

date: 2024-04-11, from: City of Santa Clarita

Explore the World at Celebrate! By Councilmember Jason Gibbs Have you ever wanted to journey to another country to experience an array of new and unique cultures and customs? Well, you can do that and more by simply traveling to the Canyon Country Community Center (18410 Sierra Highway) for the anticipated return of the Celebrate […]

The post Explore the World at Celebrate! appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.

https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/04/11/explore-the-world-at-celebrate/

Will Trump’s Major Flip Be a Flop?

date: 2024-04-11, from: Dan Rather’s Steady

A massive policy change is easy when you have no convictions

https://steady.substack.com/p/will-trumps-major-flip-be-a-flop

Bill Allowing California Poll Workers to Sue Over Intimidation Advances

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — A bill that would allow California poll workers and voters to sue over election intimidation is advancing through the Legislature after a Wednesday vote

https://scvnews.com/bill-allowing-california-poll-workers-to-sue-over-intimidation-advances/

Friday 12 April, 2024

date: 2024-04-11, from: John Naughton’s online diary

The Public House The OED says that “pub” is an abbreviation of ‘Public House’ or inn. This legendary institution has been around since 1754, so it was likely to have been called a ‘public house’ for quite a while. (The … Continue reading →

https://memex.naughtons.org/friday-12-april-2024/39349/

Indiana aspires to become next great tech center

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

indianapolis, indiana — Semiconductors, or microchips, are critical to almost everything electronic used in the modern world. In 1990, the United States produced about 40% of the world’s semiconductors. As manufacturing migrated to Asia, U.S. production fell to about 12%.

“During COVID, we got a wake-up call. It was like [a] Sputnik moment,” explained Mark Lundstrom, an engineer who has worked with microchips much of his life.

The 2020 global coronavirus pandemic slowed production in Asia, creating a ripple through the global supply chain and leading to shortages of everything from phones to vehicles. Lundstrom said increasing U.S. reliance on foreign chip manufacturers exposed a major weakness.

“We know that AI is going to transform society in the next several years, it requires extremely powerful chips. The most powerful leading-edge chips.”

Today, Lundstrom is the Chief Semiconductor Officer for Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, a leader in cutting-edge semiconductor development, which has new importance amid the emerging field of artificial intelligence.

“If we fall behind in AI, the consequences are enormous for the defense of our country, for our economic future,” Lundstrom told VOA.

Amid the buzz of activity in a laboratory on Purdue’s campus, visitors can get a vision of what the future might look like in microchip technology.

“The key metrics of the performance of the chips actually are the size of the transistors, the devices, which is the building block of the computer chips,” said Zhihong Chen, director of Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center, where engineers work around the clock to push microchip technology into the future.

“We are talking about a few atoms in each silicon transistor these days. And this is what this whole facility is about,” Chen said. “We are trying to make the next generation transistors better devices than current technologies. More powerful and more energy-efficient computer chips of the future.”

Not just RVs anymore

Because of Purdue’s efforts, along with those on other university campuses in the state, Indiana believes it’s an attractive location for manufacturers looking to build new microchip facilities.

“Purdue University alone, a top four-ranked engineering school, offers more engineers every year than the next top three,” said Eric Holcomb, Indiana’s Republican governor. “When you have access to that kind of talent, when you have access to the cost of doing business in the state of Indiana, that’s why people are increasingly saying, Indiana.”

Holcomb is in the final year of his eight-year tenure in the state’s top position. He wants to transform Indiana beyond the recreational vehicle, or “RV capital” of the country.

“We produce about plus-80% of all the RV production in North America in one state,” he told VOA. “We are not just living up to our reputation as being the number one manufacturing state per capita in America, but we are increasingly embracing the future of mobility in America.”

Holcomb is spearheading an effort to make Indiana the next great technology center as the U.S. ramps up investment in domestic microchip development and manufacturing. “If we want to compete globally, we have to get smarter and healthier and more equipped, and we have to continue to invest in our quality of place,” Holcomb told VOA in an interview.

His vision is shared by other lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Todd Young of Indiana, who co-sponsored the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which commits more than $50 billion in federal funding for domestic microchip development.

‘We are committed’

Indiana is now home to one of 31 designated U.S. technology and innovation hubs, helping it qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in grants designed to attract technology-driven businesses.

“The signal that it sends to the rest of the world [is] that we are in it, we are committed, and we are focused,” said Holcomb. “We understand that economic development, economic security and national security complement one another.”

Indiana’s efforts are paying off.

In April, South Korean microchip manufacturer SK Hynix announced it was planning to build a $4 billion facility near Purdue University that would produce next-generation, high-bandwidth memory, or HBM chips, critical for artificial intelligence applications.

The facility, slated to start operating in 2028, could create more than 1,000 new jobs. While U.S. chip manufacturer SkyWater also plans to invest nearly $2 billion in Indiana’s new LEAP Innovation District near Purdue, the state recently lost bidding to host chipmaker Intel, which selected Ohio for two new factories.

“Companies tend to like to go to locations where there is already that infrastructure, where that supply chain is in place,” Purdue’s Lundstrom said. “That’s a challenge for us, because this is a new industry for us. So, we have a chicken-and- egg problem that we have to address, and we are beginning to address that.”

Lundstrom said the CHIPS and Science Act and the federal money that comes with it are helping Indiana ramp up to compete with other U.S. locations already known for microchip development, such as Silicon Valley in California and Arizona.

What could help Indiana gain an edge is its natural resources — plenty of land and water, and regular weather patterns, all crucial for the sensitive processes needed to manufacture microchips at large manufacturing centers.

https://www.voanews.com/a/7566533.html

My 1988 driver’s license

date: 2024-04-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News

Found this in my desk drawer today. Amazing the things you carry with you over the ages. I lived in an apartment building on top of a hill in the middle of a golf course, smack in the heart of Silicon Valley, if it actually had a heart, and that’s debatable. All the Sand Hill Road VCs were on the other side of the hill. And one exit south on 280 was Xerox PARC, and where NeXT had its startup offices.

My 1988 driver’s license.

This was the place where I started development of what became Frontier. I always wanted to do a great system level scripting thing, based on what I learned from Unix and what I loved about the graphic user interface.

It became a lot bigger than I anticipated. In the beginning it was meant to be a replacement for the Macintosh Finder, with an outliner for a file system browser, and of course a fantastic scripting ability, of the OS and of scriptable apps. I wish Apple had supported this effort but I didn’t understand at the time that they couldn’t. They weren’t set up to let anyone but Bill and Andy make great products, even if their products weren’t all that great, imho of course. You have to live with the mythology you create.

A lot of people got their first programming experience with Hypercard. I would have loved if more of them get their first experience with Frontier. Even better would have been if our products worked together, but that wasn’t in the cards either.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/11/223201.html?title=my1988DriversLicense

Biden, Marcos announce infrastructure plans to counter Chinese projects

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

washington — Months after Manila withdrew from China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects, Washington announced a set of infrastructure projects in the Philippines, the first under an initiative to accelerate investments in partner countries in the Indo-Pacific.

The infrastructure projects, known as PGI Luzon corridor, were announced by U.S. President Joe Biden as he hosted Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House on Thursday. 

“It means more jobs for people across the entire region,” Biden said. “It means more investment in sectors critical to our future clean energy, ports, railroads, agriculture and much more.” 

Marcos is seen as much closer to Washington than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte. Last year, he skipped a BRI summit in Beijing that marked the 10th anniversary of China’s $1 trillion international infrastructure-building program.

“We seek to identify ways of growing our economies and making them more resilient, climate-proofing our cities and our societies, sustaining our development progress,” he said at the trilateral summit. 

PGI is an initialism for Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, an initiative that offers grants, federal financing and private sector investment to partner countries. It was launched in 2021 by the U.S. and G7 partners under the title “Build Back Better World” and billed as an alternative to China’s BRI.

PGI Luzon corridor

PGI Luzon corridor is the first project of its kind in the Indo-Pacific and will “connect Subic Bay, Clark, Manila and Batangas in the Philippines to accelerate coordinated investments in high-impact infrastructure projects, including ports, rail, clean energy, semiconductors, supply chains and other forms of connectivity in the Philippines,” a senior administration official said during a briefing on Wednesday. The official asked for anonymity in speaking to reporters.

The official did not provide more details on the project but noted “it will take some time” to secure investments. She highlighted a recent U.S. trade and investment mission to the Philippines that announced “more than $1 billion” in combined investments to promote the Philippines’ innovation economy, clean energy transition and supply chain resilience.

Rebecca Ray, senior researcher with the Global China Initiative at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, said that PGI Luzon corridor could lead to “healthy competition among major sources of lending and investment globally.”

Those lending sources now recognize that developing countries “need support in overcoming hard infrastructure bottlenecks for industrialization,” she told VOA.

The U.S. and Japan will also provide funding for technology in the Philippines that will improve wireless communication throughout the region, the official said.

In addition, the official said, the Development Finance Corporation, a U.S. development bank that partners with the private sector, will open its first regional office in the Philippines.

If the U.S. can sustain its focus and investments, PGI will be quite beneficial to the Philippines, said Derek Grossman, a senior analyst at the Rand Corporation, an American global policy research group.

“That said, we have seen numerous funding battles to get funds passed through Congress on these types of programs,” he told VOA. “And thus, this essential part is hardly guaranteed.”

Manila out of BRI

As ties with Beijing become increasingly strained over territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Manila announced in November that it has given up on Chinese funding for three major transportation projects, expressing confidence in securing financial backing elsewhere.

Even so, Chinese investment in the Philippines does not appear to be waning, Ray said, citing Chinese firm Yadea’s 2023 announcement of a $1 billion investment in e-motorcycle manufacturing, the second-largest investment in the Philippines for the year.

The Biden administration said it mobilized billions of dollars of U.S. private sector investments in the Indo-Pacific, including from Vena Energy, a company developing 2.4GW of renewable-energy projects in the Philippines.

https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-marcos-announce-infrastructure-plans-to-counter-chinese-projects/7566530.html

Automattic Acquires Beeper, Will Merge With Texts

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-12, from: Daring Fireball

https://blog.beeper.com/2024/04/09/beeper-is-joining-automattic/

Seafaring Scientists Take the ‘Pulse of the Ocean’ off Santa Barbara Coast

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations program gathers data to assess the health of the ocean and how it is changing.

The post Seafaring Scientists Take the ‘Pulse of the Ocean’ off Santa Barbara Coast appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/seafaring-scientists-take-the-pulse-of-the-ocean-off-santa-barbara-coast/

Free, Online “Fearless Femme Summit” Starts April 29, Aims to Help Women in STEM Boost Their Careers

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

SANTA BARBARA, California – For women working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers, the world can be a lonely place. Only 30

The post Free, Online “Fearless Femme Summit” Starts April 29, Aims to Help Women in STEM Boost Their Careers appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/free-online-fearless-femme-summit-starts-april-29-aims-to-help-women-in-stem-boost-their-careers/

Get Ready to Touch A Truck: Family Fun Day in Solvang!

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Solvang, California – April 11, 2024 – Get ready for an exciting day of family fun and exploration at the

The post Get Ready to Touch A Truck: Family Fun Day in Solvang! appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/get-ready-to-touch-a-truck-family-fun-day-in-solvang/

Where there’s a will, there’s Huawei to develop one’s own chipmaking kit

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Export restrictions and sanctions working well, we see

A sprawling industrial complex being built by Huawei near Shanghai will be used to research and develop chipmaking equipment to help the tech giant overcome restrictions imposed on it by the US, local sources are reportedly saying.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/huawei_developing_chipmaking_equipment/

The Lever Announces New Hires In Big Expansion

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Lever News

What started as a two-person newsletter has grown into a powerhouse newsroom.

https://www.levernews.com/the-lever-announces-new-hires-in-big-expansion/

Democracy declines for 20th consecutive year, advocacy group says

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/democracy-declines-for-20th-consecutive-year-advocacy-group-says/7566508.html

How Russia’s disinformation campaign seeps into US views

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

Washington — On a near daily basis, Scott Cullinane talks with members of Congress about Russia’s war in Ukraine. As a lobbyist for the nonprofit Razom, part of his job is to convince them of Ukraine’s need for greater U.S. support to survive.

But as lawmakers debated a $95 billion package that includes about $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, Cullinane noticed an increase in narratives alleging Ukrainian corruption. What stood out is that these were the same talking points promoted by Russian disinformation.

So, when The Washington Post published an investigation into an extensive and coordinated Russian campaign to influence U.S. public opinion to deny Ukraine the aid, Cullinane says he was not surprised.

“This problem has been festering and growing for years,” he told VOA. “I believe that Russia’s best chance for victory is not on the battlefield, but through information operations targeted on Western capitals, including Washington.”

The Post investigation is based on more than 100 documents collected by a European intelligence service.

The files exposed a Kremlin-linked campaign in which “political strategists and trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions,” the Post reported.

Social media

One of the main methods for spreading such disinformation is social media, according to Roman Osadchuk, a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and an expert on propaganda and influence campaigns.

“The process begins with a Russian publication on a small website or social media account. This is then picked up by a small Russian Telegram channel, which is subsequently shared by a larger channel with more subscribers,” Osadchuk said.

From there, someone will translate the content into English and share it, for example, on X.

“This is how Russian disinformation can quickly spread within the English-speaking X community,” Osadchuk said.

In an article published April 8, The Washington Post cited Microsoft and the social media intelligence company Graphika as saying that some articles created within this operation could have been first published on sites known as doppelgangers.

Osadchuk told VOA that these are deceptive replicas of legitimate media websites. They feature fake articles and are often taken down, only to be replaced by clones with slightly different web addresses.

“Nobody would know about these sites’ existence unless they are promoted on social media platforms. However, as soon as they detect them, social media block them. So, Russians quickly replace banned sites with their clones,” he said.

Worldwide effect

In interviews with U.S. media, two influential Republicans said they believe the propaganda has influenced their base and some of their colleagues.

“It is absolutely true. We see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner said in an interview with CNN.

In an interview with the U.S. news website Puck, Michael McCaul, head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “Russian propaganda has made its way into the U.S., unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”

Serhiy Kudelia, a political scientist at Baylor University, says the Kremlin messaging is effective because it plays on existing fears.

He says the disinformation seeks to reinforce already held beliefs such as the wastefulness of aid to Ukraine, or fuels existing anger and energizes opposition to sending assistance.

“When such alignment occurs, it is easier to push through disinformation and invented news stories that would be accepted as credible by a large number of people, including members of Congress, since they reinforce their prior beliefs,” Kudelia said.

“Once fabricated stories enter mainstream public debates, they become almost impossible to debunk or separate truth from lies,” he said.

The disinformation campaign is similar to ones seen in Europe. Both seek to decrease support for Ukraine, undermine public trust in their institutions and polarize society, says Jakub Kalenský, a senior analyst at Helsinki-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats.

Kalenský, who is deputy director of the center’s Hybrid Influence team, believes the Kremlin’s disinformation activities have a significant effect on politics worldwide.

“This is why Russia employs thousands of people for this activity. This is why they spend billions every year, because they see it works,” he said.

But Olga Belogolova, director of the Emerging Technologies Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, says that it is hard to know how effective these propaganda efforts are.

“Russian influence operations are not necessarily always designed to get people to believe anything in particular, but to get them to believe nothing at all,” she told VOA. Belogolova added that claims of the efforts being successful in swaying opinion “is not only irresponsible, it’s dangerous.”

Countermeasures needed

Last month, the U.S. Treasury Department issued sanctions on two people and two companies that it says are connected to a “foreign malign influence campaign.” They include Moscow-based Social Design Agency, its founder Ilya Gambashidze, Russia-based Group Structura LLC and its CEO Nikolai Tupikin.

The Social Design Agency and Gambashidze are believed to be involved in the campaign described in the Post article on April 8.

Kalenský advises governments on countering disinformation and says its success requires countermeasures.

These include strengthening detection and documentation of Russian disinformation campaigns, increasing awareness and resilience of audiences to the propaganda efforts, and preventing the aggressor from exploiting weaknesses of social media and societies.

“Finally, we need to impose higher costs on the information aggressors. So far, they are almost unopposed in conducting their aggression,” Kalenský said.

For Cullinane, the Russian disinformation campaign makes his job harder. He says the debate about the role the U.S. should play in the world appears to be shifting and invoking pre-World War II isolationism.

But he remains resolute. Part of his work is finding what resonates most with each lawmaker.

“Some offices focus very much on the human rights situation in Ukraine. Many members are very moved by the plight of religious communities in occupied territories of Ukraine and the persecution they face at the hands of the Russian military,” Cullinane said. “Other offices are very intrigued by the military reform and the military innovation brought about by an active war in Ukraine.”

The national security spending bill is currently awaiting approval in the House.

This story originated in VOA’s Ukraine Service.

https://www.voanews.com/a/how-russia-s-disinformation-campaign-seeps-into-us-views-/7566503.html

Cougars Survive Slugfest Against AVC 14-12

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

College of the Canyons moved its win streak to four games after taking down visiting Antelope Valley College by a 14-12 final score in a back-and-forth game at Mike Gillespie Field on Tuesday

https://scvnews.com/cougars-survive-slugfest-against-avc-14-12/

Aquiles Montoya named head coach of women’s volleyball

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

Athletics Director Shawn Chin-Farrell announced that Aquiles Montoya will be named the head coach of the women’s volleyball team. The decision comes after former head coach John Price retired following…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180417/sports/aquiles-montoya-named-head-coach-of-womens-volleyball/

Wexler’s Perfect Pastrami and More Comes to Santa Barbara Public Market

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

The long-awaited deli is finally here, featuring Isla Vista’s Yetz’s Bagels and S.B. specials that name-check Oprah and Prince Harry.

The post Wexler’s Perfect Pastrami and More Comes to Santa Barbara Public Market appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/wexlers-perfect-pastrami-and-more-comes-to-santa-barbara-public-market/

The US just beat its goal to permit 25 GW of clean energy by 2025

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

The US Department of the Interior has now permitted more than 25 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy projects – surpassing its original 25 GW by 2025 goal.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/the-us-just-beat-its-goal-to-permit-25-gw-of-clean-energy-by-2025/

A Solution

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Recycling is a problem with no solution.

The post A Solution appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/a-solution/

April 16: SCV Water Public Hearing on Mandatory Recycled Water Ordinance

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency regular board meeting will be held Tuesday, April 16, at 6 p.m

https://scvnews.com/april-16-scv-water-public-hearing-on-mandatory-recycled-water-ordinance/

Viral Videos I Missed: Is This Available? (Attorney General)

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/viral-videos-i-missed-is-this-available-attorney-general

GenAI will be bigger than the cloud or the internet, Amazon CEO hopes

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

And Andy Jassy will happily take your money along the way

It’s safe to say Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is pretty jazzed about generative AI’s potential to drive profits.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/genai_amazon_internet/

BMW Group Electric Car Sales Increased By 28% In Q1 2024

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

The company celebrates one million fully electric car sales.

https://insideevs.com/news/715681/bmw-group-electric-car-sales-2024q1/

UCSB Surfrider Battalion Honors U.S. and Filipino POWs With Competitive Finish at Bataan Memorial Death March

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

The team achieves a competitive finish in the marathon-length race.

The post UCSB Surfrider Battalion Honors U.S. and Filipino POWs With Competitive Finish at Bataan Memorial Death March appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/ucsb-surfrider-battalion-honors-u-s-and-filipino-pows-with-competitive-finish-at-bataan-memorial-death-march/

Archaeologists Were Looking for a Medieval Hermitage. They Found a ‘Monumental’ Prehistoric Henge

date: 2024-04-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The site in eastern England may have served as a sacred space for groups across thousands of years

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-find-evidence-of-colossal-prehistoric-henge-in-england-180984123/

GNU Hurd ported to AArch64, and more Hurd news

date: 2024-04-11, from: OS News

Hurd, the kernel that is supposed to form the basis of the GNU operating system, is perpetually a research project that doesn’t get anywhere close to being a replacement for Linux, but that doesn’t mean the project doesn’t make progress and has a place in the world of operating systems. Their most recent major improvement has been porting GNU Hurd to AArch64, spearheaded by Hurd developer Sergey Bugaev. Since then, however, I have been (some may say, relentlessly) working on filling in the missing piece, namely porting GNU Mach (with important help & contributions by Luca D.). I am happy to report that we now have an experimental port of GNU Mach that builds and works on AArch64! While that may sound impressive, note that various things about it are in an extremely basic, proof-of-concept state rather than being seriously production-ready; and also that Mach is a small kernel (indeed, a microkernel), and it was designed from the start (back in the 80s) to be portable, so most of the “buisness logic” functionality (virtual memory, IPC, tasks/threads/scheduler) is explicitly arch-independent. Despite the scary “WIP proof-of-concept” status, there is enough functionality in Mach to run userland code, handle exceptions and syscalls, interact with the MMU to implement all the expected virtual memory semantics, schedule/switch tasks and threads, and so on. Moreover, all of GNU Mach’s userspace self-tests pass! ↫ Sergey Bugaev On top of all this, glibc works on the AArch64 port, and several important Hurd servers work as well, namely ext2fs, exec, startup, auth, and proc, as a do a number of basic UNIX programs. This is an exceptional effort, and highlights that while people tend to make fun of Hurd, it’s got some real talent working on it that bring the platform forward. While we may not see any widely usable release any time soon, every bit of progress helps and is welcome. Speaking of progress, the progress report for GNU Hurd covering the first quarter of 2024 has also been published, and it lists a number of other improvements and fixes made aside from the AArch64 port. For instance, the console will now use xkbcommon instead of X11 for handling keyboard layouts, which reduced code complexity a lot and improved keyboard layout coverage, to boot. The port of GDB to the 64 bit version of Hurd is also progressing, and SMP has seen a ton of fixes too. Another awesome bit of news comes from, once again, Sergey Bugaev, as he announced a new Hurd distribution based on Alpine Linux. Work on this project has only recently begun, but he’s already had some success and about 299 Alpine packages are available. His reasons for starting this new project is that while Debian GNU/Hurd is a great base to work from for Hurd users and developers, Debian is also a bit strict and arcane in its packaging requirements, which might make sense for Debian GNU/Linux, but is annoying to work with when you’re trying to get a lot of low-level work done. For now, there’s no name yet, and he’s asking for help from the Hurd community for name ideas, hosting, and so on. That’s a lot of GNU Hurd progress this quarter, and that’s good news.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139255/gnu-hurd-ported-to-aarch64-and-more-hurd-news/

Is Hart a Barrier to CalCare?

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Like a J.K. Rowling spinoff no one asked for, our beloved assemblymember, Gregg Hart, has become a barrier to CalCare — the Medicare-for-All bill making its way through the California Legislature.

The post Is Hart a Barrier to CalCare? appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/is-hart-a-barrier-to-calcare/

Altitude Chamber Gets Upgrade for Artemis II, Spacecraft Testing Begins

date: 2024-04-11, from: NASA breaking news

Before the Orion spacecraft is stacked atop NASA’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket ahead of the Artemis II mission, engineers will put it through a series of rigorous tests to ensure it is ready for lunar flight. In preparation for testing, teams at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida have made significant upgrades […]

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/kennedy/altitude-chamber-gets-upgrade-for-artemis-ii-spacecraft-testing-begins/

April 18: SCV Water Public Outreach, Legislation Committee Meeting

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency’s Public Outreach and Legislation Committee is holding an in-person meeting Thursday, April 18, at 5:30 p.m

https://scvnews.com/april-18-scv-water-public-outreach-legislation-committee-meeting-2/

Celebrated Photographer Estevan Oriol to Speak at CSUN

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Offering a look into Los Angeles through his eyes, photographer and director Estevan Oriol will talk about his journey as an artist and his photography during a visit next week to California State University, Northridge. 

https://scvnews.com/celebrated-photographer-estevan-oriol-to-speak-at-csun/

Media Get Close-Up of NASA’s Jupiter-Bound Europa Clipper

date: 2024-04-11, from: NASA breaking news

Excitement is mounting as the largest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission gets readied for an October launch. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are running final tests and preparing the agency’s Europa Clipper spacecraft for the next leg of its journey: launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in […]

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/media-get-close-up-of-nasas-jupiter-bound-europa-clipper/

Used Genuine Apple Parts and Parts Pairing

date: 2024-04-11, from: Michael Tsai

Apple (MacRumors): Today Apple announced an upcoming enhancement to existing repair processes that will enable customers and independent repair providers to utilize used Apple parts in repairs. […] And in order to simplify the repair process, customers and service providers will no longer need to provide a device’s serial number when ordering parts from the […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/04/11/used-genuine-apple-parts-and-parts-pairing/

Apple Alerts Users to Mercenary Spyware Attacks

date: 2024-04-11, from: Michael Tsai

Manish Singh (via Hacker News, MacRumors, Reddit): Apple sent threat notifications to iPhone users in 92 countries on Wednesday, warning them that they may have been targeted by mercenary spyware attacks.[…]Apple previously described the attackers as “state-sponsored” but has replaced all such references with “mercenary spyware attacks.” Apple: Apple threat notifications are designed to inform […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/04/11/apple-alerts-users-to-mercenary-spyware-attacks/

Humane Ai Pin Reviews

date: 2024-04-11, from: Michael Tsai

David Pierce (Hacker News): The AI Pin is an interesting idea that is so thoroughly unfinished and so totally broken in so many unacceptable ways that I can’t think of anyone to whom I’d recommend spending the $699 for the device and the $24 monthly subscription. AI Pin and its AI OS, Cosmos, are about […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/04/11/humane-ai-pin-reviews/

Automattic Acquires Beeper

date: 2024-04-11, from: Michael Tsai

Eric Migicovsky (tweet, Hacker News, MacRumors): I’m excited to announce that Beeper has been acquired by Automattic. This acquisition marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter as we continue our mission to create the best chat app on earth. […] Given the state of the messaging landscape today, we believe there is a huge […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/04/11/automattic-acquires-beeper/

Take a Letter Maria, the Live Audience Music Video

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/take-a-letter-maria-live-audience-music-video

Apple to allow some iPhones to be repaired with used parts

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

‘A strategy of half-promises and unnecessarily complicated hedges’

The right to repair movement just scored a major win with Apple’s announcement that it plans to begin supporting iPhone repairs with used parts this fall. …

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/apple_iphone_repair/

HMD brings bigger batteries, new chips and USB-C charging to its Nokia 6310, 5310, and 230 dumbphones

date: 2024-04-11, from: Liliputing

In a world filled with smartphones, dumb phones may be having a (tiny) moment. Some folks are turning to them as distraction-free communication devices that don’t immerse you in a sea of apps and websites. And others may have never jumped on the smartphone bandwagon in the first place. While there are a handful of […]

The post HMD brings bigger batteries, new chips and USB-C charging to its Nokia 6310, 5310, and 230 dumbphones appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/hmd-brings-bigger-batteries-new-chips-and-usb-c-charging-to-its-nokia-6310-5310-and-230-dumbphones/

How Green Groups Are Prepping for Trump Redux

date: 2024-04-11, from: Heatmap News



A new Trump administration’s climate agenda will be much the same as the old one.

Project 2025, the 920-page instruction manual for an incoming Republican administration from the conservative Heritage Foundation, calls for eliminating the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, its Loan Programs Office, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) — and so did its 2017 equivalent. Every Trump budget included cuts to these programs. The Trump administration rewrote emissions standards, attempted to prevent states from enforcing more stringent guidance, and reduced the social cost of carbon. Project 2025 outlines most of these same changes and more.

Environmental and climate-focused groups played a key role in fighting those climate policies last time around. Along with state attorneys general, these groups filed lawsuits against regulatory changes and worked with business groups to build support for federal action on climate. The game plan, say people working for some of those same climate advocacy groups today, would be much the same for round two.

At the same time, though, the political questions have grown more complex, even for programs once considered ideologically neutral. If Republicans control one or both houses of Congress, in addition to the White House, how will climate advocates convince Republican lawmakers even to preserve existing law, let alone continue advancing a decarbonization agenda?

After talking with four different climate-focused groups — the Sierra Club, Evergreen Action, Third Way, and the Energy Futures Initiative Foundation, each of which has a different approach to clean energy advocacy — I was left with four takeaways for how they’ll attempt to handle a second Trump administration.

  1. Planning for a second Trump administration means, in part, staying focused on the present

No organization I contacted provided a specific plan for a second Trump administration. But Sierra Club, Evergreen, and Third Way all said they’re working on dual tracks, charting a course to continue supporting the Biden administration’s climate policy both now, as the administration scrambles to finalize regulations, and under a potential second term from either Biden or Trump.

“There’s certainly planning going on amongst enviros, as there always is around these times, of what the next four years could look like,” both for a Biden and for a Trump presidency, Patrick Drupp, Sierra Club’s director of climate policy, told me. “We should be prepared that every single thing we liked and praised in [the Biden] administration would come under fire” in the event of a Trump victory, he added.

A second Trump administration would, for instance, almost certainly attempt to scale back new rules on soot pollution, mercury and air toxics standards at power plants, and the recently tightened limits on tailpipe emissions, Drupp said — effectively “anything at EPA.”

Drupp’s team is working to game out what policies and rollbacks might come first. If and when they happen, the Sierra Club will swing into action to explain “what it means when you roll back these regulations,” he said. “They have important real-life consequences for folks.” Sierra Cub also has a whole legal team separate from Drupp’s policy shop, and he said his colleagues would very likely sue to block efforts like these, as well.

Evergreen will make its case against Trump — i.e. “explain why bad ideas are bad,” as Craig Segall, vice president at Evergreen Action, a climate policy and advocacy offshoot of Jay Inslee’s 2020 presidential campaign, put it to me.

“This is an election that matters on geologic timescales,” Segall said. “It’s our job to put forward that case — and also to talk about how the Biden administration and the states can and should do better in a second term.” Segall pointed to Michigan’s new clean energy standard as an example of aggressive state policy that would be difficult for a Trump administration to undermine. And he highlighted Georgia as a state less ideologically interested in climate change but still benefiting from clean power investment.

  1. The IRA is not Obamacare

Then there’s the Inflation Reduction Act. Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Energy lists repealing IRA as its first specific policy goal. While the IRA has helped drive the largest buildout of clean energy in American history, as of 2023, most Americans hadn’t heard of it, according to a Heatmap poll.

Without the IRA, growth in renewables would continue, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Third Way’s senior director of domestic policy for climate and energy, told me. But it wouldn’t continue at the same pace, putting the U.S. behind on emissions reductions targets and limiting its ability to keep up in a global competition to manufacture clean energy technology.

The IRA’s success — and survival — could depend on the extent to which Republican lawmakers are willing to quietly embrace it, as Emily Pontecorvo pointed out last summer. With significant investments flowing to the Republican-led Battery Belt states, one line of argument would posit that red state politicians have incentives to protect economic activity in their district.

Members of Congress might be enthusiastic about budget cuts in the abstract, but when those budget cuts come to their districts, those members lose interest, argued David Ellis, a senior vice president of policy and outreach at the Energy Futures Initiative Foundation. Given how much the uptake of IRA’s tax credits has outpaced initial projections, Ellis described it as among the most immediately impactful pieces of legislation passed in recent memory. That will make it “very hard to undo,” he said.

There are reasons to think that line of reasoning might not hold up — a University of Texas at Austin study showed that Texas state senators with renewable energy investment in their districts were no more likely to support pro-renewables policy than senators without. Republicans will likely try to overturn the IRA regardless of the political implications, Drupp said. “How long did it take before Republicans stopped trying to overturn Obamacare?” he said. “I think it’s similar.”

It took until 2017, seven years after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, for that legislation to achieve majority approval in tracking polls. That uptick in sentiment came as Congress very nearly repealed the law, before a handful of Republican senators famously squashed those efforts.

But the ACA wasn’t just popular because Republicans were trying to repeal it. Its approval ratings also came from the fact that Americans were feeling the impact of the law, Sarah Kliff and Dylan Scott argued for Vox in 2017.

The analogy between the IRA and the ACA is imperfect, Fitzpatrick said. Still, it underscores the basic political principle at play. If more Americans can understand the benefits the IRA offers them, they’ll be more hesitant to overturn it.

“For that comparison to hold, the average American person, family, business owner has to be able to see a real impact on the things they care most about,” Fitzpatrick said. If Americans can understand the pocketbook and energy reliability impacts of the IRA in addition to its impact on climate, that could put it off-limits.

Third Way is trying to emphasize to Democrats that they, in turn, need to emphasize the benefits of the IRA when they talk to voters. “We also need to make sure that advocates, people who are influential in communities across the country, understand not just that this isn’t just a lefty priority,” Fiztpatrick said, noting Third Way’s work with educational organizations aimed at grassroots audiences. “This isn’t just about climate change. There are benefits that are reaching them in their communities.”

Along with labor groups, business will also prove to be another key constituency in any fight over the IRA, Segall told me. IRA repeal is “clearly a high priority” for some conservative lawmakers — but “there are now billion-dollar industries that are correctly reckoning they have to decarbonize to stay competitive,” he said. Nissan and General Motors, for instance, told the Financial Times that the end of the IRA might spell trouble for their American electric vehicle businesses.

  1. Some things are in Congress’s hands

The president cannot unilaterally eliminate either a department or a Congressionally authorized office within a department. But Congress can.

Republicans controlled at least one house of Congress for all four years of the Trump administration, and yet proposed cuts to EERE, ARPA-E, and other climate-focused offices in the Department of Energy never came to fruition. In 2017, six Senate Republicans — including Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Sen. Lamar Alexander, then chair of the Senate appropriations subcommittee for DOE — wrote a letter to express their support for the programs.

“Energy investment across the board came out of the first Trump administration, if not unscathed, certainly less damaged than other parts of the government,” Ellis said.

Next time around, Project 2025 calls for eliminating the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, its Office of State and Community Energy Programs, ARPA-E, the Office of Grid Deployment, and its loan program, and EERE. But just because things didn’t go according to plan last time doesn’t mean those programs are safe.

Ellis told me that Congressional Republicans are now much more beholden to the Trump platform than they were in 2017. “The early signs are not good that a Republican Congress would do anything to restrain Donald Trump, given the fact that they’re falling in lockstep behind him,” he said. That leaves the offices that have served as incubators and provided funding for nascent clean energy technologies and projects more vulnerable than before.

Sen. Alexander retired in 2021. The new ranking Republican on the subcommittee that handles DOE appropriations is Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, who has criticized the Biden administration’s energy policy but has not called loudly for cuts.

Fitzpatrick said he’s hopeful that a bipartisan group of lawmakers will step in to prevent anything drastic — but he noted that could be more challenging given what he described as the “ideological bent” Trump has projected onto research and development funding for energy, which had previously enjoyed consistent bipartisan support. One example: The Energy Act of 2020, which Ellis described as a “smorgasboard of bipartisan energy innovation efforts,” which passed under Trump.

Third Way, he noted, will look to educate a wide range of policymakers — key appropriators included — on the benefits of various DOE programs.

Even if Congress holds budgets relatively stable, a Trump DOE will have bureaucratic levers to pull to slow the work, both Fitzpatrick and Drupp said. That could mean allowing workforce attrition, sitting on reports, gumming up the process of offshore wind approvals, rubber-stamping new fossil fuel infrastructure, failing to conduct research directed by appropriations, or slowing the pace of loans.

A Trump administration could also wipe out hallmark Biden policies by executive order, such as the Justice40 initiative to bring 40% of the benefits of federal climate and clean energy investments to disadvantaged communities, Ellis added. (Project 2025 does not call for its elimination, but calls it an “innocuous”-sounding program that runs the risk of politicizing energy.)

  1. Green groups will have to share the load

Project 2025 lays out a long list of changes for the Environmental Protection Agency: Pausing any research contract worth over $100,000, closing the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, preventing California from enforcing emissions restrictions on greenhouse gasses, and making it easier for the agency to approve pesticides.

Many more regulations — surrounding ozone and particulate pollution, mercury and air toxin pollution, heavy duty truck emission standards — could be rolled back or changed, said Drupp.

“It becomes hard when everything you love and care about is under attack,” he told me. “How do you prioritize that?” Collaboration will prove critical, Drupp noted — different organizations will attempt to figure out how best to allocate their resources.

During the first Trump administration, the “big greens,” community groups, and dozens of states filed lawsuits that helped stifle regulatory changes, Segall pointed out. The length of the regulatory process will extend the time horizon of any possible regulatory change. Although the Trump administration announced its intent to repeal the Clean Power Plan in 2017, it failed to unveil a new plan before 2019. That plan, in turn, remained tied up in court until one day before Joe Biden’s inauguration.

https://heatmap.news/politics/trump-green-groups-fight

North America just got a new recycled Li-ion battery materials plant

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

Green Li-ion has launched a commercial-scale plant to process unsorted battery waste, or “black mass,” from used lithium-ion batteries.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/north-america-just-got-its-first-recycled-li-ion-battery-materials-plant/

Why Are Some People Left-Handed? Scientists Identify Rare Genetic Variants That May Be Linked to the Trait

date: 2024-04-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The variants are present in fewer than 1 percent of people, but they were 2.7 times more likely to appear in lefties than in righties

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-are-some-people-left-handed-scientists-identify-rare-genetic-variants-that-may-be-linked-to-the-trait-180984091/

Trump says Arizona abortion ban goes too far

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

Reproductive rights are again at the forefront of the U.S. presidential campaign, as Republican candidate Donald Trump distances himself from an Arizona Supreme Court decision to ban most abortions in the state. VOA’s Scott Stearns has the story.

https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-says-arizona-abortion-ban-goes-too-far/7566298.html

Indiana aspires to become next great tech hub

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

The Midwestern state of Indiana aspires to become the next great technology center as the United States ramps up investment in domestic microchip development and manufacturing. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Indianapolis. Videographer: Kane Farabaugh, Adam Greenbaum

https://www.voanews.com/a/indiana-aspires-to-become-next-great-tech-hub-/7566336.html

Intel fuels Huawei’s AI PC ambitions with Meteor Lake CPUs in MateBook X Pro

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

But for how much longer?

Intel’s Meteor Lake-based Core Ultra CPUs will power Huawei’s newest MateBook X Pro, the company’s first AI PC.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/intel_huawei_meteor_lake/

What Will Australia’s Approach to Net Assessment Be?

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: RAND blog

Australia’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review is very clear: Australia must change the way it plans for and acquires defense capabilities. Doing so will require a net assessment to examine the various factors that may contribute to or detract from the country’s military capabilities.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/04/what-will-australias-approach-to-net-assessment-be.html

Mediation Between Santa Barbara Unified and Teachers Association Ends Without Resolution

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

The threat of a teachers’ strike still looms as the parties proceed to the fact-finding stage of state-mandated impasse process.

The post Mediation Between Santa Barbara Unified and Teachers Association Ends Without Resolution appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/mediation-between-santa-barbara-unified-and-teachers-association-ends-without-resolution/

Is Google’s AI Actually Discovering ‘Millions of New Materials?’

date: 2024-04-11, from: 404 Media Group

“In the DeepMind paper there are many examples of predicted materials that are clearly nonsensical.”

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

This Is What Being in Your Twenties Was Like in 18th-Century London

date: 2024-04-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine

A newly restored collection of letters describes a 27-year-old’s office job, social life and financial concerns beginning in 1719

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-is-what-being-in-your-twenties-was-like-in-18th-century-london-180984124/

GM’s Cruise Resumes Robotaxi Testing But Without The Robotaxi Tech Enabled

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

The autonomous vehicle company deployed a small fleet of Chevrolet Bolt EVs in Phoenix, Arizona.

https://insideevs.com/news/715763/cruise-robotaxi-resumes-testing-phoenix/

Changes to the 2024-2025 FAFSA form cause complications for CSUN students

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

Jemima Uriostegui, a CSUN junior, was finally able to speak to a representative after months of unsuccessful attempts to get through to the Federal Student Aid office when she was…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180348/news/changes-to-the-2024-2025-fafsa-form-cause-complications-for-csun-students/

What’s Happening Now That Might Only Make Sense in 1,200 Years?

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/whats-happening-now-that-might-only-make-sense-in-1200-years

CSUN’s Planetarium hosts a stellar show

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

The Donald E. Bianchi Planetarium reopened its doors in February for the first time since closing its doors due to the pandemic in 2020. Located next to Citrus Hall, the…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180257/arts-entertainment/csuns-planetarium-hosts-a-stellar-show/

Resilient and proud: Challenges facing minorities in the CSU school system

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

Despite being the largest public university system in the United States and having one of the highest populations of Latinx students, Latinx faculty remain underrepresented in the California State University…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180187/news/resilient-and-proud-challenges-facing-minority-in-the-csu-school-system/

Here’s What To Do If You’re Riding a Motorcycle During an Earthquake

date: 2024-04-11, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

The recent earthquake in Taiwan got us wondering what you should actually do. So we called a few experts.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/715008/motorcycle-earthquake-riding-what-to-do-how-to/

NASA’s PACE Data on Ocean, Atmosphere, Climate Now Available

date: 2024-04-11, from: NASA breaking news

NASA is now publicly distributing science-quality data from its newest Earth-observing satellite, providing first-of-their-kind measurements of ocean health, air quality, and the effects of a changing climate. The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite was launched on Feb. 8, and has been put through several weeks of in-orbit testing of the spacecraft and instruments to ensure […]

https://www.nasa.gov/earth/nasas-pace-data-on-ocean-atmosphere-climate-now-available/

April 17: SCV Chamber After Hours Mixer

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

Join the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce Wednesday, April 17, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., for an unforgettable evening of networking and fun at Sand Canyon Country Club, located in the picturesque foothills of the Angeles National Forest

https://scvnews.com/april-17-scv-chamber-after-hours-mixer/

Next Vision, or Vision Next? What we really thought about Google and Intel’s AI events

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

We sat through these conferences so you didn’t have to

Kettle  This week kicked off with two conferences, Intel Vision and Google Cloud Next, that as you can imagine had artificial intelligence at the heart of them.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/next_vision_kettle/

Aston Martin Delays First EV, Will Sell PHEVs Into The 2030s

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

This means power for future plug-in Astons will come from a combination of AMG V8 and its own V12 engines aided by electric motors.

https://insideevs.com/news/715800/aston-martin-delays-first-ev/

Medieval English Coins Were Made With Melted Byzantine Silver

date: 2024-04-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Researchers have solved the mystery of the silver coin boom that took place around 660 C.E.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-the-mysterious-source-of-europes-silver-coin-boom-byzantine-treasure-180984127/

Tiny and Rare, a Blind Mole That ‘Swims’ Through Desert Sand Is Spotted in Australia

date: 2024-04-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine

Typically seen just five to ten times per decade, the elusive species has now been found for the second time in six months

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tiny-and-rare-a-blind-mole-that-swims-through-desert-sand-is-spotted-in-australia-180984138/

Freakout Day on the internet

date: 2024-04-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News

I have a suggestion for an internet holiday.

Call it Freakout Day.

Works like this.

When you think of a pronouncement you’d like to make, write it in your favorite “tiny little text box”, but before you send it, add the word “freaking” between every word in the punchline.

Like so –

The Arizona court decision won’t just have an effect on the politics of Arizona. It will have effect on the politics of the entire freaking United freaking States of freaking America.

Really impresses people. 😀

http://scripting.com/2024/04/11/182025.html?title=freakoutDayOnTheInternet

Humane AI pins review confirm what we already expected: it’s useless trash

date: 2024-04-11, from: OS News

I didn’t want to spend too much time on this thing, but I feel like we can all use a good laugh at a stupid product hyped only by the tech media. The Verge reviewed the Humane AI pin, and entirely predictably, it’s a complete and utter trashfire. But until all of that happens, and until the whole AI universe gets better, faster, and more functional, the AI Pin isn’t going to feel remotely close to being done. It’s a beta test, a prototype, a proof of concept that maybe someday there might be a killer device that does all of these things. I know with absolute certainty that the AI Pin is not that device. It’s not worth $700, or $24 a month, or all the time and energy and frustration that using it requires. It’s an exciting idea and an infuriating product.  AI gadgets might one day be great. But this isn’t that day, and the AI Pin isn’t that product. I’ll take my phone back now, thanks. ↫ David Pierce at The Verge It takes dozens of seconds to reply to any query, the battery is severely lacking, the answers you get are mostly wrong or useless, sending text messages is effectively broken, and tons of promised features don’t work because they’re not implemented. In another video review, MrMobile also shows the device overheating all the time, a problem that’s common to all of the devices. I don’t think trashfire is harsh enough to describe this junk.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139253/humane-ai-pins-review-confirm-what-we-already-expected-its-useless-trash/

Issue 8 – March 2024

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

Letter from the Editor: Issue 8 Volume 64 Yesterday’s News: Comfort in Gaming Technology: AI vs. Jobs Power in Numbers: Leading in Innovations and Layoffs Competing and Team Building Gaming…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180381/print-editions/issue-8-march-2024/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

The Arizona court decision won’t just have an effect on the politics of Arizona. It will have effect on the politics of the entire freaking United freaking states of freaking America.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/11.html#a181708

It’s National Card & Letter Writing Month (🎉), and Metafilter just drew…

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044377-april-is-national-letter-

Wilk’s Animal Shelter Overcrowding Bill Clears First Hurdle

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

California State Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, announced Thursday his bill to help reduce overcrowding at animal shelters across the state, by expanding access to low and no-cost spay/neuter services, was approved in the Senate Education Committee

https://scvnews.com/wilks-animal-shelter-overcrowding-bill-clears-first-hurdle/

Japanese PM to US lawmakers: US does not have to confront global challenges alone

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

Washington — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told U.S. lawmakers Thursday the United States does not have to confront serious global challenges alone, saying Tokyo is upgrading its military capabilities to support its ally.

In a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, Kishida urged the U.S. to continue its role upholding the international order and addressed skepticism among some Republican lawmakers about continuing aid to Ukraine. 

“The leadership of the United States is indispensable. Without U.S. support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow?” Kishida asked during his speech. 

Japan has provided $12 billion in aid to Ukraine, including anti-drone detection systems. Kishida also hosted a conference for Ukraine’s economic growth. 

U.S. lawmakers in support of aid to Ukraine have suggested a failure to confront Russia will send a message to China that it can expand its own ambitions in Taiwan. 

“Across the region, America’s closest regional allies like Australia and South Korea understand the PRC (People’s Republic of China) poses the greatest long-term strategic threat to a free and open Indo-Pacific. But they also understand that what happens in Europe or the Middle East in the near term matters an awful lot to Asia,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement following Kishida’s address. 

A $96 billion supplemental security package providing aid to Ukraine and Indo-Pacific countries confronting Chinese aggression, passed the Democratic-majority Senate but has been stalled for months in the House of Representatives, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans. 

Kishida’s plea to U.S. lawmakers comes as part of a three-day state visit to Washington. On Wednesday, Kishida met with President Joe Biden and announced a number of new defense partnerships between the two countries. 

The decades-long alliance between the U.S. and Japan is widely seen as key to countering Chinese aggression. Kishida acknowledged the partnership with the U.S. and broader regional alliances Thursday. 

“Without the presence of the United States, how long before the Indo-Pacific would face even harsher realities?” Kishida said in his address. “Our alliance serves as a force multiplier and together with these like-minded countries, we are working to realize a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he said.

https://www.voanews.com/a/japanese-pm-to-us-lawmakers-us-does-not-have-to-confront-global-challenges-alone/7566195.html

Porsche Taycan U.S. Sales Weakened In Q1 Ahead Of 2025MY Launch

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

Porsche hints at “great demand” for the all-electric Macan.

https://insideevs.com/news/715667/porsche-taycan-us-sales-2024q1/

ChatGPT-3.5, Claude 3 kick pixelated butt in Street Fighter III tournament for LLMs

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

But don’t expect them to compete with human pros anytime soon

Large language models (LLMs) can now be put to the test in the retro arcade video game Street Fighter III, and so far it seems some are better than others.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/chatgpt_claude_street_fighter_3/

Assemble the Bodyguard of Lies: Strengthening U.S. Military Deception Capabilities

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: RAND blog

Few aspects of warfare are as valuable as efforts to deceive adversaries. The U.S. military inevitably will face rivals who use deception to their advantage, so it should once again hone its own subterfuge skills—from the lowest levels, to gain a tactical edge, to the highest, to achieve strategic surprise.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/04/assemble-the-bodyguard-of-lies-strengthening-us-military.html

RadExpand 5 folding e-bike with extra battery now $1,299 ($2,098 value), Electric Bike Co. bundles from $1,899, and more

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

Today’s green deals are here to get you off the couch and back outdoors now that spring has officially arrived, headlined by Rad Power’s flash sale that is taking $300 off the RadExpand 5 Folding e-bike and includes a free extra battery, all for $1,299. It is joined by a collection of discounted e-bike bundles from Electric Bike Co. that includes a free anti-theft alarm starting from $1,899, as well as the EGO Power+ 21-inch 56V Cordless Electric Self-Propelled Lawn Mower that just hit a new $419 low. Plus, you’ll find all of the other day’s other best Green Deals below.

Head below for other New Green Deals we’ve found today and, of course, Electrek’s best EV buying and leasing deals. Also, check out the new Electrek Tesla Shop for the best deals on Tesla accessories.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/radexpand-5-electric-bike-co-bundles-more/

So it begins: Microsoft starts showing full-screen ads about the end of Windows 10 support

date: 2024-04-11, from: OS News

We are about 18 months away from the end of mainstream Windows 10 support, but Microsoft thinks it is time to start nagging warning Windows 10 users about the inevitable. Users on Reddit report spotting a new full-screen ad with a notification that Windows 10 is about to reach its end of life in October 2025, even though it is still getting new features (there are even rumors about Microsoft re-opening the Windows Insider Program for Windows 10). ↫ Taras Buria at Neowin I mean, I have a long history of crying foul over Windows being adware now, but I don’t think warning users that their operating system is losing support and that they should upgrade to a new version really constitutes an ad. Sure, technically it does, but I think we can all agree that such a warning is useful and informative.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139251/so-it-begins-microsoft-starts-showing-full-screen-ads-about-the-end-of-windows-10-support/

Formula E again delays debut of 600kW mid-race charging

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

Formula E had been planning to debut its new “Attack Charge” mid-race charging system at this weekend’s race in Misano, Italy, but the system has again been delayed until some race in the future.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/formula-e-again-delays-debut-of-600kw-mid-race-charging/

Diary Comics, Dec. 6-8

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/diary-comics-dec-6-8

One of the World’s Oldest Surviving Books Is for Sale

date: 2024-04-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The rare early Christian text was written in a monastery in Egypt between 250 and 350 C.E.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/an-ancient-egyptian-bookone-of-the-worlds-oldestmay-sell-for-38-million-180984111/

SIROTA’S SIGNALS: Ted Cruz Is A Corruption Cartoon

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Lever News

Plus, JPMorgan screams the quiet part about health care, Larry Hogan feels the heat from The Lever, and SCOTUS gets even more corporate.

https://www.levernews.com/sirotas-signals-ted-cruz-is-a-corruption-cartoon/

Daily Deals (4-11-2024)

date: 2024-04-11, from: Liliputing

Amazon’s Fallout TV show based on the iconic video game is out now. And Amazon Gaming is celebrating by giving away Fallout 76 free to Prime members. You’ll need a Microsoft Account to take advantage of the deal, since what Amazon is really providing is a code to unlock a free copy of the gaming […]

The post Daily Deals (4-11-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-4-11-2024/

Corne V3

date: 2024-04-11, from: mrusme blog

A build log and brief review of the Corne V3, as well as the Kunai case.

https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/corne-v3/

NASA Invites Media to Switzerland Artemis Accords Signing Ceremony

date: 2024-04-11, from: NASA breaking news

NASA will welcome Switzerland as the 37th country to sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Monday, April 15 at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will host Swiss Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin, Minister for Economic Affairs, Education & Research, along with other officials from Switzerland and […]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-invites-media-to-switzerland-artemis-accords-signing-ceremony/

Part 3 – Babylon.js 7.0: One incredible community

date: 2024-04-11, from: Windows Developer Blog

Babylon.js is powered and supported by one of the most incredible open source communities in the world. Over 500 people from across the globe have contributed to making it one of the most powerful, beautiful, simple, and open web rendering engines ou

The post Part 3 – Babylon.js 7.0: One incredible community appeared first on Windows Developer Blog.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2024/04/11/part-3-babylon-js-7-0-one-incredible-community/

US, Japan announce joint AI research projects funded by Nvidia, Microsoft, others

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Not that $110M will go very far, mind

The Japanese and US governments have announced new academic AI partnerships that are getting a $110 million cash infusion from Nvidia, Microsoft, and a group of Japanese firms.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/us_japan_announce_joint_ai/

The Alfa Romeo Milano Is A Small Crossover With Up To 254 Miles Of WLTP EV Range

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

It sits on the same platform as the Jeep Avenger.

https://insideevs.com/news/715724/alfa-romeo-milano-ev-official-specs-details-range/

This lamppost EV charger just went commercial in the US

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

EV charging company Voltpost’s “first-of-a-kind” lamppost EV charger is now commercially available in major US metro areas.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/lamppost-ev-charger-just-went-commercial-in-us-cities/

Russia’s Disinformation Campaign About the Moscow Terror Attack May Be Working

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: RAND blog

As far-fetched as it may seem to those in the West, the Kremlin’s claim that the recent terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall was orchestrated by Ukraine and Western powers may be convincing to many Russians. For the U.S. to address and combat these claims, it is important to understand how they are framed amid broadly propagated themes, and how these could influence their potential appeal to large swaths of the Russian public.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/04/russias-disinformation-campaign-about-the-moscow-terror.html

Watch This Dirt Bike Fly Through Four Seasons In One Stunning Lap

date: 2024-04-11, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

This magic cinematic experience brought to you by one talented rider, multiple drones, and at least one gleeful video editor.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/715684/carson-brown-four-seasons-video/

Physicist Peter Higgs, Who Prompted a Decades-Long Search for a Tiny Particle, Dies at 94

date: 2024-04-11, from: Smithsonian Magazine

The Nobel Prize winner predicted the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle that scientists successfully discovered in 2012, explaining how particles get their mass and underlying a key theory of the universe

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/physicist-peter-higgs-who-prompted-a-decades-long-search-for-a-tiny-particle-dies-at-94-180984128/

Updated article on grap

date: 2024-04-11, from: ldbeth Lisp/Music Programmer blog

I found some other issue with Faber’s grap and how to work around with the Unix one.

https://ldbeth.sdf.org/articles/grap.html

Tesla releases more details on Powerwall 3, confirms cheaper stack coming

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

Tesla has released more details about Powerwall 3, its new generation home energy storage system, and there’s some more good news.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/tesla-details-powerwall-3-cheaper-stack/

Apple Announces Half Measure to Make iPhones More Repairable Immediately After Law Banned Its Repair Practices

date: 2024-04-11, from: 404 Media Group

Apple will partially ease its “parts pairing” policy on the same day Colorado is considering a right-to-repair bill that would ban parts pairing, and weeks after Oregon banned the practice.

https://www.404media.co/apple-announces-half-measure-to-make-iphones-more-repairable-immediately-after-law-banned-its-repair-practices/

Sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the RiscPC with ROUGOL

date: 2024-04-11, from: RiscOS Story

It seems like only ten years ago that the RiscPC turned twenty years old, and there was an article posted here to commemorate the event, and we even had cake and celebrated at that year’s Wakefield Show – and that’s because it was only ten years ago! If you move forward ten years from that, you of course reach thirty, so it’s worth remembering the machine once again. However, the thirtieth anniversary of the computer’s launch – on 15th April – just happens to fall on the same day that…

https://www.riscository.com/2024/sing-happy-birthday-to-the-riscpc-with-rougol/

2024 Ford F-150 Lightning Prices Slashed By Up To $5,500

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

The company also introduced a $1,500 conquest bonus for Tesla owners.

https://insideevs.com/news/715715/2024-ford-f150-lightning-prices-cut-5500usd/

What Are the Odds?

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/what-are-the-odds

Dozens Of Tesla Model 3s And Model Ys Just Landed In Chile

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

Tesla is entering South America to take on Chinese automakers and potentially revive sales.

https://insideevs.com/news/715805/tesla-enters-chile-with-model-3-model-y/

Apple Plugs Apple Watch Ultra 2 Usage in Long-Distance Relay Race

date: 2024-04-11, from: TidBITS blog

Apple has posted an account of a team using the Apple Watch Ultra 2 (and iPhone 15 Pro Max) during The Speed Project, an unofficial, unsanctioned relay race from Santa Monica to Las Vegas. Adam Engst wonders how well the technology really worked.

“Design is a funny word. Some people thnk design means how it looks. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to grok what it's really all about.”

https://tidbits.com/2024/04/11/apple-plugs-apple-watch-ultra-2-usage-in-long-distance-relay-race/

Hexen 1.07 released

date: 2024-04-11, from: RiscOS Story

If you attended the Southwest Show back in February, you’ll know that there was a new release of Hexen from R-Comp, which saw some significant updates over the older version – amongst other things meaning it can now be run on more modern RISC OS computer systems. It seems that the programmer responsible for the updated port of the game, Gerph, has been continuing to improve it, because there is now a new version available – 1.07 – which R-Comp’s Andrew Rawnsley says is a major update. Described as the…

https://www.riscository.com/2024/hexen-1-07-released/

Humane Ai Pin review roundup: The future isn’t here yet

date: 2024-04-11, from: Liliputing

The history of personal computing has been marked by the introduction of a few major leaps. First came the desktop computer, then the laptop, and then the smartphone (and tablet). But while each of those devices has gotten better over time, it’s been nearly two decades since we’ve seen any product launches with as far-reaching […]

The post Humane Ai Pin review roundup: The future isn’t here yet appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/humane-ai-pin-review-roundup-the-future-isnt-here-yet/

Dell shaves months off lead times for GPU-powered AI servers

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

TSMC turns advanced packaging production knob to 11

Dell lead times for computers with GPUs like Nvidia’s H100 have come down to eight to 12 weeks, a significant reduction from nearly 40 weeks late last year.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/dell_ai_server_lead_times/

It works! Three men stranded on a tiny Pacific island for more…

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044376-it-works-three-men-strand

Santa Clarita Residents Invited to Pre-Register to Volunteer at the 2024 Neighborhood Cleanup on April 27

date: 2024-04-11, from: City of Santa Clarita

SANTA CLARITA RESIDENTS INVITED TO PRE-REGISTER TO VOLUNTEER AT THE 2024 NEIGHBORHOOD CLEANUP ON APRIL 27 Registered Participants Pick–Up Free Supplies to Improve the Community City of Santa Clarita residents are invited to register for the Neighborhood Cleanup (NCU) taking place on Saturday, April 27, 2024, and join the City in removing litter from their […]

The post Santa Clarita Residents Invited to Pre-Register to Volunteer at the 2024 Neighborhood Cleanup on April 27 appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.

https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/04/11/santa-clarita-residents-invited-to-pre-register-to-volunteer-at-the-2024-neighborhood-cleanup-on-april-27/

FBI fears ‘coordinated attack’ on US homeland

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

Washington — A surge of confidence by supporters of the Islamic State terror group — reflected in a series of online threats against Europe combined with its deadly attack on a concert hall in Russia — is giving security officials in the United States cause for concern.

National security and law enforcement officials have long been worried about small groups or individuals drawing inspiration from terror plots around the world to conduct attacks in the U.S. But FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers Thursday that something more worrisome may be in the works.

“Now increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia concert hall a couple weeks ago,” Wray warned lawmakers, using an acronym for the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate. 

Just days ago, police agencies across Europe boosted security after media outlets linked to Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS, posted calls to attack stadiums hosting Champions League soccer matches this week in Madrid, London and Paris.

The FBI warning also signals a potential shift in U.S. thinking about the possible reach of IS and its Afghan affiliate, which claimed responsibility for the March 22 attack on the Crocus City concert hall outside Moscow. The attack killed 145 people.

Following the incident, the Department of Homeland Security said it had no specific or credible intelligence to suggest IS had the ability to threaten the United States.

And multiple U.S. military and intelligence officials have said that while IS has ambitions to carry out attacks, there have been no indications IS or any of its global affiliates has the capability to reach into the U.S. homeland.

The terror group is “struggling in many ways to mount a major capability that is relevant to the United States,” said National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid recently. She spoke during an appearance on the In the Room podcast with terrorism analyst Peter Bergen.

Other warnings have focused on the threat to U.S. targets outside the United States.

“ISIS-Khorasan retains the capability and will to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad in as little as six months and with little to no warning,” General Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, told a Senate committee hearing last month.

For now, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is urging Americans to be wary.

“The U.S. continues to be in a heightened threat environment,” a DHS spokesperson told VOA Wednesday in response to questions about the IS threats to various European venues.

“DHS continues to work with our partners to evaluate the threat environment, provide updates to the American public, and protect our homeland,” the spokesperson added. “We urge the public to stay vigilant and to promptly report suspicious activity to their local law enforcement.”

https://www.voanews.com/a/fbi-fears-coordinated-attack-on-us-homeland/7565964.html

OJ Simpson Dies From Cancer at 76

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Daring Fireball

https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2024-04-11/oj-simpson-dead

Partial totality, full community gathering

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)

A large, steady stream of students, faculty, staff and local residents eagerly accepted pairs of eclipse glasses handed out by members of the Los Angeles

The post Partial totality, full community gathering appeared first on .

https://theroundupnews.com/2024/04/11/partial-totality-full-community-gathering/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=partial-totality-full-community-gathering

April 10, 2024

date: 2024-04-11, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-10-2024

O.J. Simpson, football star turned celebrity murder defendant, dies at 76

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

Washington — O.J. Simpson, the American football star and actor who was acquitted in a sensational 1995 trial of murdering his former wife but was found responsible for her death in a civil lawsuit and was later imprisoned for armed robbery and kidnapping, has died at the age of 76.

Simpson, cleared by a Los Angeles jury in what the U.S. media called “the trial of the century,” had died on Wednesday after a battle with cancer, his family posted on social media on Thursday.

Simpson avoided prison when he was found not guilty in the 1994 stabbing deaths of former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. Simpson later served nine years in a Nevada prison after being convicted in 2008 on 12 counts of armed robbery and kidnapping two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel.

Nicknamed “The Juice,” Simpson was one of the best and most popular athletes of the late 1960s and 1970s. He overcame childhood infirmity to become an electrifying running back at the University of Southern California and won the Heisman Trophy as college football’s top player. After a record-setting career in the NFL with the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Simpson parlayed his football stardom into a career as a sportscaster, advertising pitchman and Hollywood actor in films including the “Naked Gun” series.

All that changed after Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman were found fatally slashed in a bloody scene outside her Los Angeles home on June 12, 1994.

Simpson quickly emerged as a suspect. He was ordered to surrender to police but five days after the killings, he fled in his white Ford Bronco with a former teammate - carrying his passport and a disguise. A slow-speed chase through the Los Angeles area ended at Simpson’s mansion and he was later charged in the murders.

What ensued was one of the most notorious trials in 20th century America and a media circus. It had everything: a rich celebrity defendant; a Black man accused of killing his white former wife out of jealousy; a woman slain after divorcing a man who had beaten her; a “dream team” of pricy and charismatic defense lawyers; and a huge gaffe by prosecutors.

Simpson, who at the outset of the case declared himself “absolutely 100 percent not guilty,” waved at the jurors and mouthed the words “thank you” after the predominately Black panel of 10 women and two men acquitted him on Oct. 3, 1995.

Prosecutors argued that Simpson killed Nicole in a jealous fury, and they presented extensive blood, hair and fiber tests linking Simpson to the murders. The defense countered that the celebrity defendant was framed by racist white police.

The trial transfixed America. In the White House, President Bill Clinton left the Oval Office and watched the verdict on his secretary’s TV. Many Black Americans celebrated his acquittal, seeing Simpson as the victim of bigoted police. Many white Americans were appalled by his exoneration.

Simpson’s legal team included prominent criminal defense lawyers Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz and F. Lee Bailey, who often out-maneuvered the prosecution. Prosecutors committed a memorable blunder when they directed Simpson to try on a pair of blood-stained gloves found at the murder scene, confident they would fit perfectly and show he was the killer.

In a highly theatrical demonstration, Simpson struggled to put on the gloves and indicated to the jury they did not fit.

Delivering the trial’s most famous words, Cochran referred to the gloves in closing arguments to jurors with a rhyme: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Dershowitz later called the prosecution decision to ask Simpson to try on the gloves “the greatest legal blunder of the 20th century.”

“What this verdict tells you is how fame and money can buy the best defense, can take a case of overwhelming incriminating physical evidence and transform it into a case riddled with reasonable doubt,” Peter Arenella, a UCLA law professor, told the New York Times after the verdict.

“A predominantly African-American jury was more susceptible to claims of police incompetence and corruption and more willing to impose a higher burden of proof than normally required for proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Arenella said.

After his acquittal, Simpson said that “I will pursue as my primary goal in life the killer or killers who slayed Nicole and Mr. Goldman… They are out there somewhere… I would not, could not and did not kill anyone.”

The Goldman and Brown families subsequently pursued a wrongful death lawsuit against Simpson in civil court. In 1997, a predominately white jury in Santa Monica, California, found Simpson liable for the two deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages.

“We finally have justice for Ron and Nicole,” Fred Goldman, Ron Goldman’s father, said after the verdict.

Simpson’s “dream team” did not represent him in the civil trial in which the burden of proof was lower than in a criminal trial - a “preponderance of the evidence” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” New evidence also hurt Simpson, including photographs of him wearing the type of shoes that had left bloody footprints at the murder scene.

After the civil case, some of Simpson’s belongings, including memorabilia from his football days, were taken and auctioned off to help pay the damages he owed.

On Oct. 3, 2008, exactly 13 years after his acquittal in the murder trial, he was convicted by a Las Vegas jury on charges including kidnapping and armed robbery. These stemmed from a 2007 incident at a casino hotel in which Simpson and five men, at least two carrying guns, stole sports memorabilia worth thousands of dollars from two dealers.

Simpson said he was just trying to recover his own property but was sentenced to up to 33 years in prison.

“I didn’t want to hurt anybody,” Simpson, donning a blue prison jumpsuit with shackles on his legs and wrists, said at his sentencing. “I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.”

Simpson was released on parole in 2017 and moved into a gated community in Las Vegas. He was granted early release from parole in 2021 due to good behavior at age 74.  

His life saga was recounted in the Oscar-winning 2016 documentary “O.J.: Made in America” as well as various TV dramatizations.

Orenthal James Simpson was born in San Francisco on July 9, 1947. He contracted rickets at age 2 and was forced to wear leg braces until he was 5 but recovered so thoroughly that he became one of the most celebrated football players of all time.

During nine seasons for the Buffalo Bills and two for the San Francisco 49ers, Simpson became one of the greatest ball carriers in NFL history. In 1973, he became the first NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season. He retired in 1979.

Simpson also became an advertising pitchman, best known for years of TV commercials for Hertz rental cars. As an actor, he appeared in movies including “The Towering Inferno” (1974), “Capricorn One” (1977) and the “The Naked Gun” cop spoof films in 1988, 1991 and 1994, playing a witless police detective.

Simpson married his first wife, Marguerite, in 1967 and they had three children, including one who drowned in the family’s swimming pool at age 2 in 1979, the year the couple divorced.

Simpson met future wife Nicole Brown when she was a 17-year-old waitress and he was still married to Marguerite. Simpson and Brown married in 1985 and had two children. She later called police after incidents in which he struck her. Simpson pleaded no contest to spousal abuse charges in 1989.

https://www.voanews.com/a/o-j-simpson-football-star-turned-celebrity-murder-defendant-dies-at-76/7565971.html

Tesla Model X Beats Cybertruck In Towing Range Test

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

Even though the Cybertruck has more range and higher towing capacity than the Model X, the Model X towed a trailer the longest distance.

https://insideevs.com/news/715760/tesla-model-x-beats-cybertruck-towing/

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Announces 3 Personnel Appointments

date: 2024-04-11, from: NASA breaking news

The staff changes tap into a deep well of talent and experience across JPL as the laboratory looks to the future. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is pleased to announce three key staff appointments, naming Keyur Patel the associate director for Flight Projects and Mission Success, Howard Eisen chief engineer, and Todd Gaier director for Astronomy […]

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/nasas-jet-propulsion-laboratory-announces-3-personnel-appointments/

How to Be a Climate Activist Even Though You’re Too Shy to…

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044368-how-to-be-a-climate

ZTE Axon 60 Ultra is a dual-satellite phone with support for satellite voice calls and text messaging

date: 2024-04-11, from: Liliputing

Over the past year or two we’ve seen a handful of companies integrate satellite connectivity into smartphones, but it’s typically used for sending messages in an emergency situation where you might be out of range of terrestrial networks. The new ZTE Axon 60 Ultra, meanwhile supports real-time voice calls as well as two-way texting over […]

The post ZTE Axon 60 Ultra is a dual-satellite phone with support for satellite voice calls and text messaging appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/zte-axon-60-ultra-is-a-dual-satellite-phone-with-support-for-satellite-voice-calls-and-text-messaging/

Prototype even faster with the Gradio UI for Figma component library

date: 2024-04-11, from: Mozilla Developer Network blog

In the fast-paced world of generative AI, staying ahead means moving swiftly and smartly. That’s why we’ve embraced Gradio, the low-code prototyping toolkit from Hugging Face, as our go-to for bringing new ideas to life.

The post Prototype even faster with the Gradio UI for Figma component library appeared first on Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2024/04/prototype-even-faster-with-the-gradio-ui-for-figma-component-library/

Biden hosts Japanese, Philippine leaders to discuss China’s aggression

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

Washington — U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House on Thursday, aiming to send China a clear message that it must halt its aggressive behavior in the South China Sea.

“United States defense commitments to Japan and to the Philippines are ironclad,” Biden said at the trilateral summit.

There has been rising tension between Manila and Beijing. In recent weeks, Chinese Coast Guard ships have taken provocative actions to block resupply missions for Philippine soldiers stationed on the Second Thomas Shoal, who guard Manila’s sovereignty claims over the Spratly Islands.

“Facing the complex challenges of our time requires concerted efforts on everyone’s part, a dedication to a common purpose and an unwavering commitment to the rules-based international order,” Marcos said, couching his words in diplomatic terms often used to target Beijing.

“Multilayered cooperation between allies and like-minded countries is essential if we are to maintain and bolster a free and open international order based on the rule of law,” Kishida reiterated.

Chinese intimidation known as “gray zone tactics” falls dangerously close to triggering a 1951 mutual defense treaty between Washington and Manila. Biden underscored U.S. commitment to the pact.

“Any attack on Philippine aircraft, vessels or armed forces in the South China Sea will invoke our mutual defense treaty,” he said.

The leaders announced new deterrence measures, including on maritime defense, alongside investments in infrastructure projects in the Philippines and collaboration on global humanitarian assistance efforts.

This is Marcos’ second time at the Biden White House, following his visit in May last year. He is seen as much more closely aligned with Washington than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.

The Marcos government essentially doubled American access to Philippine bases earlier this year, announcing four new military bases on top of the five existing locations. Manila is also negotiating with Japan for a reciprocal access arrangement to allow Japanese forces on Philippine soil.

Similar situations

Kishida ’s country faces similar Chinese gray zone tactics around disputed islands in the East China Sea, called Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan. In a joint address to the U.S. Congress earlier Thursday, he warned of risks from the rise of China and pledged to do more to share defense responsibilities.

Key to the leaders’ discussions Thursday is working toward a shared understanding of what constitutes gray zone attacks and the treaty’s enforcement threshold.

“We continue to coordinate very closely the question of China’s so-called gray zone tactics, its coercive tactics, and what the implications of those might be,” a senior administration official said in response to VOA’s question during a briefing Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S.-Philippines treaty extends to “armed attacks on Philippines Armed Forces, public vessels or aircraft,” the official underscored. “That includes its Coast Guard, and that includes anywhere in the South China Sea.”

Washington has been increasingly concerned about China’s actions. While in the region last year, Vice President Kamala Harris stopped by Palawan island in the Philippines, just 330 kilometers east of the disputed Spratly Islands , in a rebuke to Beijing.

Blurring lines of attacks

China’s gray zone tactics have blurred the lines of what are traditionally seen as armed attacks by using force that may not be intentionally lethal, such as military grade lasers, acoustic devices, high-pressure water cannons or simply ramming into ships, said Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The problem is that these things are only nonlethal in a statistical sense,” Poling told VOA. “But if you do it enough, you will kill somebody.”

Manila and Washington would then need to determine whether to invoke mutual defense under the treaty, he added.

Both sides are realizing that “China has blurred the lines so much with its Coast Guard and militias,” he added, saying, “We can’t treat China the way we treat normal armed actors, that China intentionally hides its military force behind civilians, and that we need to be more flexible in our responses.”

Discussions are ongoing under the Maritime Security Framework signed by the U.S. and the Philippines in 2022. Known also as “Guardian of the Sea,” or “Bantay Dagat” in Tagalog, the agreement aims to improve regional maritime domain awareness and confront maritime challenges together.

Last year, the U.S. and Philippine secretaries of defense established guidelines reaffirming that “an armed attack in the Pacific, including anywhere in the South China Sea, on either of their public vessels, aircraft or armed forces — which includes their Coast Guards — would invoke mutual defense commitments under Articles IV and V of the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.”

However, there is no clear shared definition of gray zone tactics, which are challenging to incorporate into mutual defense treaties, said Shihoko Goto, director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the Wilson Center.

She told VOA there is greater focus on enhancing cyber defense and other nonkinetic capabilities for deterrence purposes. The summit will clarify established norms of conduct for protecting territorial boundaries, she added.

Dialogue with Beijing

Ahead of their trilateral summit with Marcos, Biden hosted Kishida for meetings and a state dinner Wednesday.

The pair insist on fostering dialogue with Beijing, even as the U.S. and Japan ramp up defense ties.

In their latest phone conversation in April, Biden said he discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping the “best way to reduce the chances of miscalculation and misunderstanding.”

The U.S. alliance with Japan is “purely defensive,” Biden said during a joint news conference Wednesday. “It’s not aimed at any one nation or a threat to the region.”

Speaking through an interpreter Wednesday, Kishida said he and Biden “agreed that our two countries will continue to respond to challenges concerning China through close coordination.”

They announced initiatives to enhance bilateral defense ties and maritime cooperation in the South China Sea, as well as joint air missile and defense systems between the U.S., Japan and Australia.

Beijing said it opposes “cobbling together exclusive groupings and stoking bloc confrontation in the region.”

“Such practices - patching up small blocs, stirring up confrontation under the excuse of cooperation, upholding peace and order in name but flexing military muscle and stoking chaos in nature - do not meet the trend for peace and development and run counter to the regional countries’ shared aspiration for stability and development,” Liu Pengyu, a Chinese Embassy spokesperson in the U.S., said in a statement to VOA.

The U.S.-Japan-Philippines trilateral is the first gathering of its kind, part of Biden’s strategy to stitch together existing bilateral alliances into these “minilaterals” to amplify U.S. influence in Asia. Last year, he hosted a similar meeting with Japan and South Korea to deal with the threat from North Korea.

https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-hosts-japanese-philippine-leaders-to-discuss-china-aggression/7565922.html

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

A piece I wrote about Doc in 2022 entitled Doc Quixote.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/11.html#a150314

Mercedes-Benz U.S. EV Sales Surprisingly Decreased In Q1 2024

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

Both the EQB and EQS families were down, while the EQE family more than doubled.

https://insideevs.com/news/715657/mercedes-us-ev-sales-2024q1/

96% of US hospital websites share visitor info with Meta, Google, data brokers

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Could have been worse – last time researchers checked it was 98.6%

Hospitals – despite being places where people implicitly expect to have their personal details kept private – frequently use tracking technologies on their websites to share user information with Google, Meta, data brokers, and other third parties, according to research published today.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/hospital_website_data_sharing/

Ducati’s “Fisica In Moto” Summer School Is Any Bike Kid’s Dream Come True

date: 2024-04-11, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

I would’ve lost my mind as a kid.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/715390/ducati-summer-school-fisica-in-moto/

State of the 1980’s Art

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: One Foot Tsunami

https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/04/11/state-of-the-1980s-art/

Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life

date: 2024-04-11, from: Quanta Magazine

New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other intrigues, suggesting that viruses make sense only as members of a community.

The post Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/viruses-finally-reveal-their-complex-social-life-20240411/

Electric cars are saving Americans billions — even people who don’t drive them

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

A new study shows that drivers of electric cars are saving everyone billions of dollars on their monthly electricity bills — even the people who don’t drive EVs!

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/electric-cars-are-saving-americans-billions-even-people-who-dont-drive-them/

Tesla launches new Long Range rear-wheel-drive Model Y in Europe

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

Tesla has launched a new trim of the Model Y in some European countries: a new Long Range rear-wheel-drive Model Y.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/tesla-launches-long-range-rear-wheel-drive-model-y-europe/

I’m the Draft List at This Brewery and No, You Can’t Have…

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044369-im-the-draft-list-at

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

In an email to Doc this morning: “The web is such a huge total mess. CSS is a junk pile of reinventing that learned nothing from the ideas it was reinventing. The only reason we put up with this is the freedom we got from it. But that’s been gone for a long time. I have a feeling we’re wasting our golden years overlooking that we’re trying to get creative work done in a corporate crime scene. We won, only to have our victory enshrined by a bunch of corpy wiseasses and nazis.” Doc is a very literate and quote-worthy writer, and we bring out the best from each other. So next time you see Doc thank him for me, for the creativity. We’re making the best of a bad situation. It’s even worse than it appears and I’m old enough to know better.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/11.html#a144842

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

So this ticking time bomb was sitting there all the time the journalists were talking about how Biden is too old to win the election with Trump. Biden was never the issue, the issue was the freaking Supreme freaking Court.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/11.html#a144805

NASA’s TESS Temporarily Pauses Science Observations

date: 2024-04-11, from: NASA breaking news

NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) entered into safe mode April 8, temporarily interrupting science observations. The team is investigating the root cause of the safe mode, which occurred during scheduled engineering activities. The satellite itself remains in good health. The team will continue investigating the issue and is in the process of returning TESS […]

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/tess/nasas-tess-temporarily-pauses-science-observations/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-04-11, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I was closing tabs this morning and came across this sweet little test app I did when I was working on tabs. I wish there were a practical use for something like this.

http://scripting.com/2024/04/11.html#a143824

Unpacking the extent of this year’s FAFSA mess

date: 2024-04-11, from: Marketplace Morning Report

On Wednesday, Republicans, Democrats and college officials took to Capitol Hill to vent about the Education Department’s botched rollout of a newer, simplified FAFSA form. That’s the form high school students fill out and send to colleges to determine financial aid offers — and it’s affected millions of students. We’ll also discuss fresh wholesale inflation figures and get a sneak peak at the latest season of Marketplace’s “Million Bazillion” podcast, which tackles kids’ biggest money questions.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/unpacking-the-extent-of-this-years-fafsa-mess

Once Highway 1 stabilized at Rocky Creek, traffic can return to Big Sur

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

Work on the slip-out which occurred March 30 includes Caltrans’ conducting vital geotech assessments which have allowed the convoys and implementing a traffic management system for the corridor including signage advising of the closures on Highway 1.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/once-highway-1-stabilized-at-rocky-creek-traffic-can-return-to-big-sur/

What Are China’s Long-Term Antarctic Ambitions?

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: RAND blog

The recent opening of China’s Qinling base, its third permanent Antarctic station, has worried some Australian and American observers. What are China’s long-term ambitions? And how should Australia and its allies and partners respond?

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/04/what-are-chinas-long-term-antarctic-ambitions.html

Instagram Will Automatically Blur Nudes in Direct Messages

date: 2024-04-11, from: 404 Media Group

This will also apply to end-to-end encrypted messages, because the processing is done on device, according to Meta.

https://www.404media.co/instagram-will-automatically-blur-nudes-in-direct-messages/

The Pyramids of Giza, Shrouded in Mist

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/the-pyramids-of-giza-shrouded-in-mist

Is California still the world’s 5th largest economy?

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

Fast-growth India could surpass the state’s GDP in 2024.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/is-california-still-the-worlds-5th-largest-economy/

Saratoga cancels Blossom Festival due to inclement weather

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

Event may be rescheduled.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/saratoga-cancels-blossom-festival-due-to-inclement-weather/

Purdue, Cummins partner on in-road, in-motion charging for electric semi trucks

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

Indiana’s Department of Transportation is teaming up with Purdue University and legendary equipment brand Cummins to test in-road, in-motion charging for electric vehicles.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/purdue-cummins-partner-on-in-road-in-motion-charging-for-electric-semi-trucks/

How Netlify used Deno Subhosting to build a successful edge functions product

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Deno blog

Learn why Netlify chose Deno Subhosting over building their own solution with AWS Lambda to offer a successful edge functions product within weeks.

https://deno.com/blog/netlify-subhosting

UC Berkeley dean who defends free speech laments antisemitic attack

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley’s School of Law and an ardent supporter of free speech, rebuked a group of students for staging a pro-Palestinian protest at his home as the fallout from Israel’s war in Gaza continues to roil US campuses.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/uc-berkeley-dean-who-defends-free-speech-laments-antisemitic-attack/

NASA’s SERT II: ‘A Genuine Space Success Story’

date: 2024-04-11, from: NASA breaking news

“A genuine space success story,” is how Experiments Manager William Kerslake described NASA’s second Space Electric Rocket Test (SERT II), the first long-duration operation of ion thrusters in space. SERT II provided researchers with data for years beyond its expected lifetime and was a rare example of an entire mission – including the launch, propulsion […]

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/glenn/nasas-sert-ii-a-genuine-space-success-story/

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Complainants smack back after hardware giant moves to dismiss lawsuit

HP “sought to take advantage of customers’ sunk costs,” printer owners claimed this week in a class action lawsuit against the hardware giant.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/hp_inc_ink_filing/

Capricious social media algorithms are modern-day Greek gods: “Oh my crops failed…

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044373-capricious-social-media-a

‘Robust’ US has helped improve global economic outlook, IMF chief says

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

Washington — Strong growth in the United States has helped to lift the outlook for the world economy, but more needs to be done to stem a slide in productivity, the head of the IMF said Thursday. 

“Global growth is marginally stronger on account of robust activity in the United States and in many emerging markets economies,” International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters in prepared remarks. 

The U.S. economy grew by 2.5 percent last year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department, far outstripping most other advanced economies. 

“Robust household consumption and business investment, and an easing of supply chain problems helped,” Georgieva added. “And inflation is going down, somewhat faster than previously expected.” 

She spoke just a few days before the IMF-World Bank spring meetings of world financial leaders in Washington, one of two such gatherings hosted each year by the international financial institutions. 

Her remarks suggest the IMF now expects the world economy to grow faster than it predicted in January, when it forecast global growth to rise by 3.1 percent in 2024, and 3.2 percent in 2025. 

“It is tempting to breathe a sigh of relief. We have avoided a global recession and a period of stagflation — as some had predicted,” Georgieva said. “But there are still plenty of things to worry about.” 

Among the challenges, Georgieva mentioned rising geopolitical tension, which, she said, is increasing the risks of fragmentation of the global economy. 

She also highlighted the challenges of growing public debt and a “broad-based slowdown in productivity.” 

Because of this, the IMF expects growth to remain at just above 3 percent over the medium term — below its historical average. 

To help the global economy to heal and fix the productivity challenge, Georgieva laid out a series of steps to bring global inflation and public debt back down to sustainable levels, and also called for steps to eliminate “constraints to economic activity” and boost productivity. 

“In short, if there is a market failure that is being addressed — such as accelerating innovation to address the existential threat of climate change — there is a case for government intervention, including through industrial policy,” she said. 

“If there is no market failure, there is a need for caution,” she added.

https://www.voanews.com/a/robust-us-has-helped-improve-global-economic-outlook-imf-chief-says-/7565802.html

Dollar stores are shutting down across America. They did this to themselves

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

Years of strategic mistakes and underinvestment have plagued Family Dollar and 99 Cents Only, retail analysts say. Both brands were acquired by other companies and faltered under their new owners.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/dollar-stores-are-shutting-down-across-america-they-did-this-to-themselves/

7 terrific Bay Area things to do this weekend, April 12-14

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

Got your weekend plans? Here are some cool ideas from one of the best movies of 2024 to great shows and concerts and more fabulous French fries.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/7-terrific-bay-area-things-to-do-this-weekend-april-12-14/

Big rig overturns on connector to I-880, commute a mess

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

Nobody was reported to be injured in the crash, which happened on the northbound Interstate 238 connector to southbound Interstate 880.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/big-rig-overturns-on-connector-to-i-880-commute-a-mess/

“Men who say they are pro-life and want to reduce or eliminate…

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: Jason Kittke’s blog

https://kottke.org/24/04/0044370-men-who-say-they-are

Can Information Escape a Black Hole?

date: 2024-04-11, from: Quanta Magazine

Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions. The theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind speaks with co-host Janna Levin about the black hole information paradox and how it has propelled modern physics.

The post Can Information Escape a Black Hole? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/can-information-escape-a-black-hole-20240411/

Juanita Fitzgerald | Stop Pretending Saugus Doesn’t Exist

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

I have been following the stories on the sale of Santa Clarita Elementary School, its closing and all of the meetings and committees to be formed. I have lived in Saugus for a long time (53 years) and I remember the rumored misdeeds of the sale of Saugus Elementary School years ago. I hope this […]

The post Juanita Fitzgerald | Stop Pretending Saugus Doesn’t Exist appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/juanita-fitzgerald-stop-pretending-saugus-doesnt-exist/

How Hackers Can Hijack 2FA Calls with Sneaky Call Forwarding

date: 2024-04-11, from: 404 Media Group

In a crude but potentially effective attack, a hacker sends a malicious link which quickly sets up call forwarding for a target’s phone number. The result is the interception of 2FA calls, including for Gmail.

https://www.404media.co/how-hackers-can-hijack-2fa-calls-with-sneaky-call-forwarding/

Fiat North America’s Future Models Will Come Into View On July 11

date: 2024-04-11, from: Inside EVs News

Fiat’s North American head, Aamir Ahmed says that we’ll have a better idea of upcoming Fiat North America’s next models very soon.

https://insideevs.com/news/715652/fiat-new-models-soon-july/

Michael Douglas has a knack for unforgettable roles — here are 7 of the best

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

From ‘Streets of San Francisco’ to ‘Fatal Attraction’ and ‘Wall Street’ – here’s where to see the actor’s famed screen performances.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/michael-douglas-has-a-knack-for-unforgettable-roles-here-are-7-of-the-best/

FAFSA nightmare holds Bay Area universities hostage as college acceptance deadline nears

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

“I have not seen numbers this low in years – even during the pandemic we had higher numbers of applicants,” says one Cal State East Bay official. “It’s not looking good right now, all across the universities.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/fafsa-delays-impact-bay-area-universities-as-college-acceptance-deadline-approaches/

The 2024 Honda CB125R Gets A TFT Display And Four New Colors

date: 2024-04-11, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

Euro 5+ emissions compliance also comes standard on the updated bike.

https://www.rideapart.com/news/715169/2024-honda-cb125r-updates-euro5plus/

Steve Petzold | Board President Oversteps

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

The following is a copy of a letter sent to Linda Storli, president of the governing board of the William S. Hart Union High School District.  I am deeply concerned about your continuing disregard for board policy while executing your privilege as a board member and president. Your (letter) to The Signal on April 6 […]

The post Steve Petzold | Board President Oversteps appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/steve-petzold-board-president-oversteps/

Jim Blumel | Hyperfocused on Abortion

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

It is a very sad commentary on today’s Democrat party that their No. 1 issue in this presidential campaign is abortion. Here is a major political party, a once-great institution that was home to leaders such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, and now it has sunk to such a disgraceful low.  Democrats […]

The post Jim Blumel | Hyperfocused on Abortion appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/jim-blumel-hyperfocused-on-abortion/

Shawnta M. Ball Turns Obstacles into Opportunities in Goddard’s Education Office

date: 2024-04-11, from: NASA breaking news

When it comes to transforming obstacles into opportunities, it’s all about a “grow where you’re planted” mentality, says Shawnta M. Ball, a program support specialist in Goddard’s education office. Name: Shawnta M. Ball Title: Program Support Specialist Formal Job Classification: Administrative Support Assistant Organization: Office of STEM Engagement (OSTEM, Code 160) How would you describe […]

https://www.nasa.gov/people-of-nasa/goddard-people/shawnta-ball-turns-obstacles-into-opportunities-in-goddards-education-office/

AWS must pay $525M to cloud storage patent holder, says jury

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Computing giant will appeal ruling, which found infringement was not ‘willful’

Updated  A jury has ordered Amazon Web Services to pay $525 million for infringing distributed data storage patents in a case brought by a technology outfit called Kove IO.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/aws_lawsuit_kove_io/

Tara VanDerveer built Stanford basketball up so it can withstand her departure

date: 2024-04-11, from: San Jose Mercury News

Things will be different around Maples Pavilion without Tara VanDerveer, but don’t expect the winning ways to end

https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/11/tara-vanderveer-stanford-retirement-kate-paye-future/

PumpkinOS carves out a FOSS PalmOS-compatible runtime environment

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

And rePalm may yet bring real PalmOS to new hardware … even the Raspberry Pi

PumpkinOS is a somewhat usable runtime environment that can run some Palm apps on top of Windows or Linux, without using or needing real PalmOS.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/pumpkin_os_foss_palmos/

Canada’s 2023 Wildfire Season Was Horrible. This Year’s Could Be Worse.

date: 2024-04-11, from: Heatmap News



Current conditions: A searing heatwave in Thailand means even nighttime temperatures won’t go below 86 degrees Fahrenheit for all of April • The streets of New Orleans flooded yesterday • Severe weather in Georgia delayed the start of The Masters golf tournament.

THE TOP FIVE

  1. Canada expects another ‘catastrophic’ wildfire season

Canada is preparing for this year’s wildfire season to be “catastrophic,” following a warm and dry winter. “The temperature trends are very concerning,” said Harjit Sajjan, the country’s minister for emergency preparedness. “With the heat and dryness across the country we can expect that the wildfire season will start sooner and end later and potentially be more explosive.” Last year’s wildfire season was the worst ever: More than 37 million acres burned, 230,000 people were evacuated, and wildfire smoke drifted across large parts of the U.S.

  1. Panama plans alternative cargo route as drought hits Panama Canal

Panama will create a new “special customs jurisdiction” to serve as a “dry” transport alternative to the Panama Canal. The canal serves as a key shipping channel between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and typically moves about $270 billion worth of cargo every year, but has had to limit its capacity due to severe drought in the region. Yesterday Panama unveiled plans for the Multimodal Dry Canal project, which will use existing infrastructure like roadways, railways, and ports to move cargo and relieve the shipping bottleneck. As AFP pointed out, Panama’s neighbors, including Mexico and Honduras, have seen opportunity in the canal’s plight and proposed transport alternatives.

  1. AI data centers expected to drive huge growth in U.S. power demand

America’s utility companies think data centers will cause electricity demand to surge, Reuters reported. Nine out of 10 of the country’s top utilities said the centers, which power technologies like generative AI, are a main driver of customer growth. Power use from data centers is expected to triple globally this year, according to Morgan Stanley research. The question is whether utility companies can keep up. Growing electricity demand will “stress utility company balance sheets as capital spending escalates to upgrade the infrastructure and integrate renewable energy resources,” Morningstar analysts said recently. This week the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the country’s power consumption was expected to grow to record highs in the next two years, and that renewables would make up 24% of the energy mix in 2024, up 3% from last year.

  1. Musk eyes India expansion for Tesla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk yesterday teased an upcoming trip to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BBC reported the meeting is scheduled for the end of April in New Delhi. Two sources told Reuters Musk plans to announce a factory in the country and major investment. Earlier this week Musk posted on X that “India should have electric cars like every other country has electric cars. It’s a natural progression to provide Tesla electric vehicles in India.” EVs make up about 2% of sales in India but the government wants to grow that to 30% by 2030. Tesla’s potential push into the country comes as EV growth slows in the U.S. and Tesla is struggling to meet expectations on sales and deliveries.

  1. UN climate chief calls for ‘quantum leap’ in climate finance

The United Nations climate chief yesterday urged the leaders of G20 nations to abandon “business as usual” and take “bold climate action” before it’s too late. “For those who say that climate change is only one of many priorities, like ending poverty, ending hunger, ending pandemics, or improving education, I simply say this: none of these crucial tasks … will be possible unless we get the climate crisis under control,” Simon Stiell, who heads up the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told a crowd in London. He called for a “quantum leap” in climate finance commitments at this year’s COP29. “Sidelining climate isn’t a solution to a crisis that will decimate every G20 economy and has already started to hurt,” he said. Stiell finished the speech by urging “people everywhere” to raise their voices for climate action.

THE KICKER

Last month, Texas generated more electricity from solar than from coal for the first time ever.

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis

https://heatmap.news/climate/canada-wildfire-season-panama-canal

Meta trials a new feature to protect teens

date: 2024-04-11, from: Marketplace Morning Report

Meta’s latest answer to protecting kids on Instagram is automatically blurring images that may contain nudity. The company says it will test this on the platform’s direct messaging feature. We’ll parse the details. Plus, the FCC is requiring large internet providers to post “broadband nutrition labels” that provide a snapshot of charges and performance data. Will they impact consumers’ internet diet? And a recent survey finds that CEOs are feeling pretty optimistic.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/meta-trials-a-new-feature-to-protect-teens

This little “firewall appliance” is a mini PC with Intel N100 and 6 x 2 5 GbE LAN ports

date: 2024-04-11, from: Liliputing

A few years ago we wrote about a “Firewall Micro Appliance” that was basically a small, fanless computer that combined a 10-watt Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core processor with six 2.5 GbE LAN ports. Now it looks like Chinese PC makers have updated the design with new models sporting 6-watt Intel N100 chips and DDR5 memory. […]

The post This little “firewall appliance” is a mini PC with Intel N100 and 6 x 2 5 GbE LAN ports appeared first on Liliputing.

https://liliputing.com/this-little-firewall-appliance-is-a-mini-pc-with-intel-n100-and-6-x-2-5-gbe-lan-ports/

China sanctions 2 US defense companies and says they support arms sales to Taiwan

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

Beijing — China on Thursday announced rare sanctions against two U.S. defense companies over what it said is their support for arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy Beijing claims as its own territory to be recovered by force if necessary.

The announcement freezes the assets of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems held within China. It also bars the companies’ management from entering the country. 

Filings show General Dynamics operates a half-dozen Gulfstream and jet aviation services operations in China, which remains heavily reliant on foreign aerospace technology even as it attempts to build its own presence in the field. 

The company helps make the Abrams tank being purchased by Taiwan to replace outdated armor intended to deter or resist an invasion from China. 

General Atomics produces the Predator and Reaper drones used by the U.S. military. Chinese authorities did not go into details on the company’s alleged involvement with supplying arms to Taiwan. 

Beijing has long threatened such sanctions, but has rarely issued them as its economy reels from the COVID-19 pandemic, high unemployment and a sharp decline in foreign investment. 

“The continued U.S. arms sales to China’s Taiwan region seriously violate the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, interfere in China’s internal affairs, and undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It insists that the mainland and the island to which Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces fled amid civil war in 1949 remain part of a single Chinese nation. 

Sanctions were leveled under Beijing’s recently enacted Law of the People’s Republic of China on Countering Foreign Sanctions. 

General Dynamics fully owned entities are registered in Hong Kong, the southern Chinese semi-autonomous city over which Beijing has steadily been increasing its political and economic control to the point that it faces no vocal opposition and has seen its critics silenced, imprisoned or forced into exile. 

Despite their lack of formal diplomatic ties — a concession Washington made to Beijing when they established relations in 1979 — the U.S. remains Taiwan’s most important source of diplomatic support and supplier of military hardware from fighter jets to air defense systems. 

Taiwan has also been investing heavily in its own defense industry, producing sophisticated missiles and submarines. 

China had 14 warplanes and six navy ships operating around Taiwan on Wednesday and Thursday, with six of the aircraft crossing into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone — a tactic to test Taiwan’s defenses, wear down its capabilities and intimidate the population. 

So far, that has had little effect, with the vast majority of the island’s 23 million people opposing political unification with China.

https://www.voanews.com/a/china-sanctions-2-us-defense-companies-and-says-they-support-arms-sales-to-taiwan/7565670.html

A death sentence for one of the biggest bank frauds in history

date: 2024-04-11, from: Marketplace Morning Report

From the BBC World Service: A Vietnamese court sentenced property developer Truong My Lan to death after she was convicted of taking $44 billion from one of Vietnam’s largest banks. Also, South Korea’s liberal opposition party won in a landslide majority in the country’s general election. And paralympian Stef Reid is asking sportswear companies who use amputee athletes in their marketing why it’s not possible to buy single shoes.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/a-death-sentence-for-one-of-the-biggest-bank-frauds-in-history

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Agreement on consent and compensation has failed to materialize

UK lawmakers have slammed the government for its lack of action in protecting copyright holders against the infringement of their intellectual property by developers of artificial intelligence technologies.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/mp_committee_ai_copyright/

China is exporting so many EVs that it needs more ships – a lot more

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

Chinese automakers are looking to export electric vehicles by the hundreds of thousands around the globe, but they need a lot more car-carrying vessels to make that happen. Demand is so high that the country is on track to amass what will be the world’s fourth-largest fleet in a few short years, with new trade routes being created especially for Chinese cars.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/china-is-exporting-so-many-evs-that-it-needs-more-ships-a-lot-more/

Backdoor in XZ Utils That Almost Happened

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-10, from: Bruce Schneier blog

Last week, the internet dodged a major nation-state attack that would have had catastrophic cybersecurity repercussions worldwide. It’s a catastrophe that didn’t happen, so it won’t get much attention—but it should. There’s an important moral to the story of the attack and its discovery: The security of the global internet depends on countless obscure pieces of software written and maintained by even more obscure unpaid, distractible, and sometimes vulnerable volunteers. It’s an untenable situation, and one that is being exploited by malicious actors. Yet precious little is being done to remedy it…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/04/backdoor-in-xz-utils-that-almost-happened.html

We Should Bring back Iconic Dash Designs in the TFT Era

date: 2024-04-11, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News

Most OEMs love to pay homage to their histories, as they should. Why not bring TFTs into the mix?

https://www.rideapart.com/news/715673/retro-motorcycle-dash-design-tft/

Celebrating the community: Arno & Timo

date: 2024-04-11, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)

We love hearing from members of the community and sharing the stories of amazing young people, volunteers, and educators who are using their passion for technology to create positive change in the world around them. In our latest story, we’re heading to Alkmaar, the Netherlands, to meet Arno and Timo, CoderDojo enthusiasts who have transitioned…

The post Celebrating the community: Arno & Timo appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-the-community-arno-timo/

Fancy building a replacement for Post Office’s disastrous Horizon system?

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

£75 million in the offing in government tender

The Post Office, the UK government-owned retail organization for post and banking, has kicked off procurement to help build the system replacing Horizon, the disastrous EPOS and back office system at the heart of one of the country’s greatest miscarriages of justice.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/uk_post_office_epos_procurement/

DIY in-car entertainment display

date: 2024-04-11, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)

You don’t need a swanky vehicle to get the in-car entertainment screen experience. You build a DIY system with Raspberry Pi instead.

The post DIY in-car entertainment display appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/diy-in-car-entertainment-display/

@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-04-11, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)

So this ticking time bomb was sitting there all the time the journalists were talking about how Biden is too old to win the election with Trump. Biden was never the issue, the issue was the freaking supreme freaking court.

https://bsky.app/profile/washingtonpost.com/post/3kpsfk3vtau2w

Is Renewable Energy Too Cheap to Be Profitable?

date: 2024-04-11, from: Heatmap News



When I was an analyst at the U.S. Treasury, my team’s work centered around promising private investors that we would make it easier for them to invest in renewable energy projects across the Global South. I kept hearing that our job was ultimately to make these projects “bankable.” As the logic went, “there is a sizeable universe of good projects that fall just below many private investors’ desired rate of return,” and therefore lowering the risks of investing in these “good projects” would put them within reach of private investors’ return expectations. To make decarbonization possible, we had to make decarbonization profitable.

This claim cuts straight through Brett Christophers’ latest book, The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet, which argues that the cost of developing and generating renewable energy is not what will determine the speed or scale of its uptake. It might finally be cheaper to build solar panels and wind farms than a coal or gas plant, that’s for sure. But given the structure of our energy markets today, it does not follow that assets that are cheap to build are necessarily profitable enough to provide adequate returns to investors.

My old colleagues might have already been aware of this fact, but as Christophers highlights, it’s certainly not intuitive, even to many analysts. Nor are its implications: Decarbonization won’t happen if it’s not profitable enough ― and it’s not profitable enough.

Christophers is a professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University in its “department of human geography,” whose research focuses on how capitalism and the modern financial system shape our lives; in this book, that also includes our energy systems. To make his case, he highlights the vicious feedback loop affecting renewables endemic to today’s energy markets. Government support to build renewable energy drives down its marginal cost, but because there’s now more renewable energy available at any given moment, the falling costs cut into developers’ expected returns, requiring more government support to keep investors and developers interested in the sector.

Combine this dynamic with technical features endemic to renewable energy generation, including its intermittency, and the result is a wholesale electricity market with perennially unstable prices. This volatility throttles the expected returns on any investment in renewable energy. No matter how cheap it is to build renewable energy, private investors and developers won’t decarbonize our globe at the speed or scale we deserve ― not under these financial conditions, at least.

Christophers leans on two theoretical guideposts here. First, Andreas Malm, whose assessment of how the profit motive, not relative costs, drove Britain’s first energy transition from water-wheels to coal and steam is an unmistakable conceptual parallel to today’s transition. Second, Karl Polanyi, whose theory of “fictitious commodities” — referring to land, labor, and money, each of which the state and society must painstakingly regulate into fungible market-friendly products ― Christophers aptly applies to electricity and the artificial markets created around it.

But rather than hew to theory to justify why the energy system needs to be socialized to achieve decarbonization ― which is definitely true, by the way; the profit motive is supremely unhelpful here ― Christophers embraces a holistic understanding of the economy as a set of financial relationships, supply chains, planned markets, and legal institutions connecting various public and private entities with different motives.

That means interviewing investors, who tell him things like: “Low returns and volatility don’t go. No bank in the world will take power price risk at low returns.” Christophers also produces a detailed and data-rich breakdown of the interlocking global energy crises in 2021 and 2022, jumping between Texas, China, India, Australia, and across Europe, to make a larger point about energy markets. These crises were “not taken to be evidence of the failings of markets, or even a reason to question their role as the pre-eminent mechanism of coordination to the state’s electricity sector,” he writes; “the market was regarded as the very means to manage the crisis.” But the markets aren’t working. Something has to give.

He ends the book with a call for socialized power, inspired by the Green New Deal and New York’s Build Public Renewables Act, championed by the state’s democratic socialists on the explicit grounds that, because delivering on the state’s emissions targets is not profitable enough for the private sector to do alone, the public sector must get the job done. With the force of the whole book’s arguments and evidence behind it, this policy prescription hardly appears radical.

How to Intervene in an Energy Market

Public developers can accept lower profitability thresholds, and public finance institutions can provide debt on more forgiving terms; under the public aegis, rates of return and costs of capital become policy choices. Christophers admits in his introduction that he is more focused on unearthing the fragile relationships among actors across the renewable energy industry than on describing the ways a New York-inspired socialized power sector could function. Given how much there is to unearth, it’s a reasonable choice, but it leaves readers without a working heuristic for the different ways states can intervene in the business of energy.

Here’s my attempt: Energy must be financed, generated, distributed, and consumed. Government intervention in favor of decarbonization looks distinct at each step.

Governments can provide consumption support by shielding ratepayers from the higher electricity bills that come from potential utility investments into renewable energy procurement and decarbonization-related grid management, backstopping utility investments through a demand guarantee. Consumption support is equitable, but it’s also indirect and incomplete — it might provide a utility with more financial breathing room to procure or develop renewables, but if renewables are not available to procure on the grid or are not easy to develop, this demand guarantee likely just pads the utility’s bottom line.

Governments can provide distribution support by encouraging utilities to purchase renewable energy. Distribution support most often takes the form of regulatory nudges: In the United States, mandates like Renewable Portfolio Standards force utilities to increase their clean energy procurement, guaranteeing purchase demand for clean electricity and Renewable Energy Certificates, which companies might buy to clean up their own energy portfolios.

These demand-guarantee interventions have helped speed up renewable energy development nationwide, but with limits. In particular, utility power purchase agreements don’t provide developers with adequate price stability because utilities fix the quantity of energy they purchase rather than the price; corporate PPAs, meanwhile, cannot be relied on at scale because there aren’t enough large creditworthy corporations like Google and Amazon willing to commit to buying energy from new projects at a fixed price. For these reasons and more, supporting utilities’ efforts to decarbonize will not call forth adequate renewable energy generation sources into existence.

Generation support is what most governments already do. Whether through feed-in tariffs, production tax credits, or contracts for difference, generation support entails propping up generators’ profitability, ensuring that the sale price of their energy is never too low. Christophers explains why this mechanism — that is, a revenue guarantee rather than a demand guarantee — is deeply necessary: Renewable energy sources and the energy markets they’re plugged into are both structurally volatile, so, no matter how much energy they generate, they never generate all that much profit. Withdrawing generation support would be, in no uncertain terms, a death knell for renewables development.

And, finally, financing support targets renewable energy sources as capital-intensive assets requiring huge amounts of upfront debt. Whether through the investment tax credit, viability gap funding, concessional financing, or other forms of cost-share plans, financing support is another form of direct price support for generation companies; by lowering a project’s cost of capital, it helps lower its developer’s threshold for project profitability, meaning that generators pay less debt service and keep more of their revenues. High interest rates have lately forced up the cost of debt for renewable energy projects to unsustainable levels, far above private developers’ prospective rates of return. Financing support is a must-have these days ― and it’s all the more necessary across the Global South, where the costs of capital are far higher.

None of this is to say that socializing generation and finance solves every problem ― as far as the United States is concerned, non-financial barriers abound, such as regulations and interconnection queues ― but within the existing structure of energy markets, public ownership does solve a lot.

What does direct government intervention into energy consumption and distribution look like? Public ownership of local distribution utilities is a start. Unlike private utility companies, they don’t need to promise ten percent returns to shareholders, and can use the financial breathing room that comes from lower profitability thresholds to tamp down rate hikes and, perhaps more importantly, rate volatility. Public utilities will not drive decarbonization, but they could potentially help advance transmission reform and better integrate distributed energy resources into the grid.

Christophers all but argues that the best thing governments can do for all four support categories is to redesign energy markets. Beyond simply incentivizing the deployment of clean firm and battery technologies to complement renewables, policymakers’ biggest task is to build an energy system where volatile wholesale energy prices ― which even publicly owned renewable energy developers will have to face for the foreseeable future ― are not the reason that a project fails to get built. That would be a policy failure, and we don’t have time for those.

https://heatmap.news/economy/decarbonization-wont-pay-at-least-not-on-its-own

Global taxi software vendor exposes details of nearly 300K across UK and Ireland

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

High-profile individuals including MPs said to be caught up in leak

Exclusive  Taxi software biz iCabbi recently fixed an issue that exposed the personal information of nearly 300,000 individuals via an unprotected database.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/icabbi_database_exposure/

China’s Chery to set up shop in Europe

date: 2024-04-11, from: Electrek Feed

Chinese automaker Chery is planning to make cars in Spain, where the EV market is at just 12%, half that of Portugal and France. This would be Chery’s first manufacturing site in Europe.

more…

https://electrek.co/2024/04/11/chinas-chery-to-set-up-shop-in-europe/

Money, money, money

date: 2024-04-11, from: Enlightenment Economics

Money has always seemed mysterious to me, and so I’ve always carefully avoided monetary economics as too difficult (which makes it ironic that when I returned from my US PhD programme to a job in the UK Treasury in 1985 … Continue reading →

http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2024/04/money-money-money-2/

Digital Realty ditches diesel for salad dressing in US to cut datacenter emissions

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Hydrotreated vegetable oil to power bit barns stateside after successful Euro trial

Datacenter operator Digital Realty is replacing diesel with hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) at sites in the US in a bid to reduce carbon dioxide emissions following a successful trial in Europe.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/digital_realty_datacenter_biofuel/

Jason Gibbs | Explore the World at Celebrate!

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

Have you ever wanted to journey to another country to experience an array of new and unique cultures and customs? Well, you can do that and more by simply traveling to the Canyon Country Community Center (18410 Sierra Highway) for the anticipated return of the Celebrate event series.   From 6 to 9 p.m. on […]

The post Jason Gibbs | Explore the World at Celebrate! appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/jason-gibbs-explore-the-world-at-celebrate/

Why I draw

date: 2024-04-11, from: Robert Reich on Substack

Drawings and ideas flow together

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-i-draw

Classifieds – April 11, 2024

date: 2024-04-11, 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 11, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/classifieds-april-11-2024/

Boffins deem Google DeepMind’s material discoveries rather shallow

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Web titan rejects criticisms, insists AI-found compounds are legit

AI on its own may not be as useful for discovering new materials as Google’s DeepMind team has suggested.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/google_deepmind_material_study/

The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

Superblooms have enchanted us over the years.

The post The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/11/the-flowers-that-bloom-in-the-spring/

Today in SCV History (April 11)

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

1987 – Ramona Chapel and Red Schoolhouse relocated to Santa Clarita History Center in Hart Park. [story

https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-april-11/

The greatest guitarist you don’t know

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Kirk Hammett hid his heritage for decades because of rock’s racism.

The post The greatest guitarist you don’t know appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/the-greatest-guitarist-you-dont-know/

Showcase features Armenian culture

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The event included performances of Armenian art, poetry, dance and song.

The post Showcase features Armenian culture appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/armenian-students-celebrate-armenian-heritage-month/

Health fair raises sexual assault awareness

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

SAAMLAND, facilitated by Student Health, included poems, music and stickers.

The post Health fair raises sexual assault awareness appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/saamland-sexual-assault-awareness/

Beyond theory: liberal arts and ethics

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Consider morals and ethics when extending academic knowledge to your career.

The post Beyond theory: liberal arts and ethics appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/applying-liberal-arts-knowledge-to-the-real-world-is-an-ethical-challenge/

Women’s golf shines at Augusta event

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The Trojans excelled during the fifth Annual Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

The post Women’s golf shines at Augusta event appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/womens-golf-shines-at-augusta-event/

Commencement speakers for more schools revealed

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

The speakers include actors, entrepreneurs and a CEO, all with school connections.

The post Commencement speakers for more schools revealed appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/2024-satellite-commencement/

Celebrate Armenian History Month with these musicians

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Michel Legrand and Bei Ru lead this crop of talented artists to honor this April.

The post Celebrate Armenian History Month with these musicians appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/celebrate-armenian-history-month-with-these-musicians/

Baseball aims to extend winning streak with Oregon series

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

USC moved back to a .500 record following a weekday win over No. 12 UC Irvine.

The post Baseball aims to extend winning streak with Oregon series appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/baseball-aims-to-extend-winning-streak-with-oregon-series/

It doesn’t take a college education to hate the Electoral College

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)

Between swing states and diluted voting power, the Electoral College makes our presidential elections less equitable.

The post It doesn’t take a college education to hate the Electoral College appeared first on Daily Trojan.

https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/11/it-doesnt-take-a-college-education-to-hate-the-electoral-college/

Netherlands arm of KPMG fined $25M for cheating in exams

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Staff followed US lead and shared answers after move to online testing

KPMG Accountants NV, the Netherlands-based arm of the global professional services firm, has been fined $25 million (€23 million, £20 million) by America’s Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) for failing to prevent its financial auditors from cheating on exams.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/kpmg_netherlands_cheating/

April 10, 2024 (Wednesday)

date: 2024-04-11, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog

Prime minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and his wife, Yuko Kishida, are in Washington, D.C., tonight at a state dinner hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden. The dinner is part of a state visit, the fifth for this administration. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have worked to strengthen ties to countries in the Indo-Pacific to weaken the influence of China in the region, and Japan is the key nation in that partnership. “We celebrate the flourishing friendship between the United States and Japan,” Dr. Biden said Tuesday. “Our nations are partners in building a world where we choose creation over destruction, peace over bloodshed, and democracy over autocracy.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-10-2024-wednesday

Samsung strikes trouble as unions threaten walkouts, regulator swoops

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Oh great – another potential kink in the silicon supply chain

Samsung Electronics has struck trouble at home, potentially threatening the supply of semiconductors and smartphones.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/samsung_strike_retail_sanctions/

Scientists struggle to protect infant corals from hungry fish

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — South Florida researchers trying to prevent predatory fish from devouring laboratory-grown coral are grasping at biodegradable straws in an effort to restore what some call the rainforest of the sea.

Scientists around the world have been working for years to address the decline of coral reef populations. Just last summer, reef rescue groups in South Florida and the Florida Keys were trying to save coral from rising ocean temperatures. Besides working to keep existing coral alive, researchers have also been growing new coral in labs and then placing them in the ocean.

But protecting the underwater ecosystem that maintains more than 25% of all marine species is not easy. Even more challenging is making sure that coral grown in a laboratory and placed into the ocean doesn’t become expensive fish food.

Marine researcher Kyle Pisano said one problem is that predators like parrot fish attempt to bite and destroy the newly transplanted coral in areas like South Florida, leaving them with less than a 40% survival rate. With projects calling for thousands of coral to be planted over the next year and tens of thousands of coral to be planted over the next decade, the losses add up when coral pieces can cost more than $100 each.

Pisano and his partner, Kirk Dotson, have developed the Coral Fort, claiming the small biodegradable cage that’s made in part with drinking straws boosts the survival rate of transplanted coral to over 90%.

“Parrot fish on the reef really, really enjoy biting a newly transplanted coral,” Pisano said. “They treat it kind of like popcorn.”

Fortunately the fish eventually lose interest in the coral as it matures, but scientists need to protect the coral in the meantime. Stainless steel and PVC pipe barriers have been set up around transplanted coral in the past, but those barriers needed to be cleaned of algae growth and eventually removed.

Pisano had the idea of creating a protective barrier that would eventually dissolve, eliminating the need to maintain or remove it. He began conducting offshore experiments with biodegradable coral cages as part of a master’s degree program at Nova Southeastern University. He used a substance called polyhydroxyalkanoate, a biopolymer derived from the fermentation of canola oil. PHA biodegrades in ocean, leaving only water and carbon dioxide. His findings were published last year.

The coral cage consists of a limestone disc surrounded by eight vertical phade brand drinking straws, made by Atlanta-based WinCup Inc. The device doesn’t have a top, Pisano said, because the juvenile coral needs sunlight and the parrot fish don’t generally want to position themselves facing downward to eat.

Dotson, a retired aerospace engineer, met Pisano through his professor at Nova Southeastern, and the two formed Reef Fortify Inc. to further develop and market the patent-pending Coral Fort. The first batch of cages were priced at $12 each, but Pisano and Dotson believe that could change as production scales up.

Early prototypes of the cage made from phade’s standard drinking straws were able to protect the coral for about two months before dissolving in the ocean, but that wasn’t quite long enough to outlast the interest of parrot fish. When Pisano and Dotson reached out to phade for help, the company assured them that it could make virtually any custom shape from its biodegradable PHA material.

“But it’s turning out that the boba straws, straight out of the box, work just fine,” Dotson said.

Boba straws are wider and thicker than normal drinking straws. They’re used for a tea-based drink that includes tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup. For Pisano and Dotson, that extra thickness means the straws last just long enough to protect the growing coral before harmlessly disappearing.

Reef Fortify is hoping to work with reef restoration projects all over the world. The Coral Forts already already being used by researchers at Nova Southeastern and the University of Miami, as well as Hawaii’s Division of Aquatic Resources.

Rich Karp, a coral researcher at the University of Miami, said they’ve been using the Coral Forts for about a month. He pointed out that doing any work underwater takes a great deal of time and effort, so having a protective cage that dissolves when it’s no longer needed basically cuts their work in half.

“Simply caging corals and then removing the cages later, that’s two times the amount of work, two times the amount of bottom time,” Karp said. “And it’s not really scalable.”

Experts say coral reefs are a significant part of the oceanic ecosystem. They occupy less than 1% of the ocean worldwide but provide food and shelter to nearly 25 percent of sea life. Coral reefs also help to protect humans and their homes along the coastline from storm surges during hurricanes.

https://www.voanews.com/a/scientists-struggle-to-protect-infant-corals-from-hungry-fish-/7565519.html

Google plunks down $1 billion for extra Japan-US submarine cable

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Adds Hawaii stopover for another planned link

Google announced on Wednesday it will invest $1 billion in two submarine cables to create new routes between the US and Japan.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/google_japan_cables/

Cars for the ages

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)

Grandparents, parents, kids, grandkids—most all generations find their way to Supercar Sunday at Pierce College.  Sunday’s event in Lot 7 was Ferrari Day sponsored by

The post Cars for the ages appeared first on .

https://theroundupnews.com/2024/04/10/cars-for-the-ages/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cars-for-the-ages

Daily EV Recap: Gigafactory India might be in the works

date: 2024-04-11, 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/2024/04/10/daily-ev-recap-gigafactory-india-might-be-in-the-works/

Granada Grandeur, Celebrating 100 Years

date: 2024-04-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News

The mighty milestone Centennial Festival Weekend includes the Santa Barbara debut of the ambitious Pacific Jazz Orchestra.

The post Granada Grandeur, Celebrating 100 Years appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

https://www.independent.com/2024/04/10/granada-grandeur-celebrating-100-years/

US destroys 11 Houthi drones

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-destroys-11-houthi-drones-/7565500.html

Pierce students win at National Hillel Basketball Tournament

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)

A group of Pierce College students beating out teams from the University of Texas and UCLA at a collegiate basketball tournament? Yes, it happened.  Brahmas

The post Pierce students win at National Hillel Basketball Tournament appeared first on .

https://theroundupnews.com/2024/04/10/pierce-students-win-at-national-hillel-basketball-tournament/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pierce-students-win-at-national-hillel-basketball-tournament

Multiple CSUN organizations come together to hold vigil for Palestine

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)

As the conflict in the Middle East continues, a vigil for Palestine was held Wednesday, April 3 in front of the University Library Lawn. The vigil was held on the…

https://sundial.csun.edu/180352/news/multiple-csun-organizations-come-together-to-hold-vigil-for-palestine/

West Ranch golf takes second league match

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

The Foothill League race heated up on Tuesday after boys’ golf met for their second match of the season.  West Ranch brought home the win with 402 strokes on the day at the Oaks Club at Valencia and was led by Tyler Sonnenberg and Kai Willen with 76 strokes (+4).  While nearly every golfer’s stroke […]

The post <strong>West Ranch golf takes second league match</strong>  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/west-ranch-golf-takes-second-league-match/

US ‘considering’ end to Assange prosecution bid

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Cryptic Biden hint came ahead of April 16 deadline for next step in extradition case

The Biden Administration is contemplating Australia’s request to end its bid to prosecute WikiLeaker-in-Chief Julian Assange, an Australian citizen.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/biden_considering_end_to_assange_case/

Lately

date: 2024-04-11, from: Rachel Kwon blog

I’ve been a little less online lately, but not to worry, I have just been living my life :) Several weeks ago, I gave notice at work and left. Some people in my life were surprised, because it was a good job at a good company, I generally enjoyed it, I got to work with wonderful people, and I was paid money to do it. The younger version of me who hadn’t yet figured out a career direction would be curious (and more than a little skeptical) about why I would quit such an objectively good job.

https://kwon.nyc/notes/lately/

Call for Art and Upcoming Arts Exhibitions

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The city of Santa Clarita hosting several art exhibits, as well as seeking artists for an upcoming gallery

https://scvnews.com/call-for-art-and-upcoming-arts-exhibitions/

Biden, Kishida bolster defense ties in Japanese PM’s official US visit

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

The United States and Japan celebrated their decades-long alliance Wednesday night as President Joe Biden hosts Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House for a state dinner. The Japanese leader’s visit marks a significant strengthening in defense and technology ties. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.

https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-kishida-bolster-defense-ties-in-japanese-pm-s-official-us-visit-/7565463.html

Fire: One person transported via helicopter after motorcycle injury 

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

A person was transported from Saugus on Wednesday afternoon to a hospital via a helicopter following a reported motorcycle injury, according to Los Angeles County Fire Department officials.  The initial report to the Fire Department came at 5:11 p.m. for an injury sustained while riding a motorcycle near the intersection of Avocado Place and White […]

The post Fire: One person transported via helicopter after motorcycle injury  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/fire-one-person-transported-via-helicopter-after-motorcycle-injury/

COVID Isolation Expert Sign On Letter

date: 2024-04-11, from: Peoples CDC blog

This is an open letter to the Director of The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was written by volunteers with The People’s CDC, a CDC watchdog and public health advocacy and health justice group. We’re asking medical, public health, and scientific professionals (defined broadly as having credentials and/or professional/technical experience in related fields)… Continue reading COVID Isolation Expert Sign On Letter

https://peoplescdc.org/2024/04/10/covid-isolation-expert-sign-on-letter/

Man charged in alleged pool cue assault, shooting of elderly man 

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

An Agua Dulce man appeared in a Lancaster courthouse Wednesday to answer to five charges in connection with the shooting of a 79-year-old neighbor after an assault with a pool cue, according to a criminal complaint.  The five-count complaint accuses Alejandro “Alex” Rodriguez, 36, of shooting his neighbor after an alleged attack that happened near […]

The post Man charged in alleged pool cue assault, shooting of elderly man  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/man-charged-in-alleged-pool-cue-assault-shooting-of-elderly-man/

India’s Uber clone Ola Cabs hails ride out of the international market

date: 2024-04-11, updated: 2024-04-11, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)

Australian drivers given two days’ notice, UK and New Zealand services also shuttered

Indian ride-sharing outfit Ola Cabs is shuttering operations in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK as the company shifts focus to its domestic business.…

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/ola_exits_international_markets/

Forecast calls for another weekend of rain  

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

Those making plans for the great outdoors Friday through Sunday might be disappointed to learn that the Santa Clarita Valley is, in fact, once again receiving rain that’s making an appearance just in time for the weekend.  The SCV could get up to about an inch in the lower altitudes and 1 to 2 inches […]

The post Forecast calls for another weekend of rain   appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/forecast-calls-for-another-weekend-of-rain/

Deputies arrest 2 after investigation, fight with deputy 

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies arrested a man and a woman after investigating a report of a possible burglary in Newhall.  “The call came in as a possible burglary to vehicle,” according to Sgt. Joanna Warren of the SCV Sheriff’s Station, which was reported shortly after noon in the 23500 block of Lyons Avenue.  […]

The post Deputies arrest 2 after investigation, fight with deputy  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/deputies-arrest-2-after-investigation-fight-with-deputy/

At least 3 shot during Eid al-Fitr celebration in US

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

https://www.voanews.com/a/at-least-3-shot-during-eid-al-fitr-celebration-in-us/7565426.html

Ocean Water Warning for April 10

date: 2024-04-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health cautions residents who are planning to visit the below Los Angeles County beaches to avoid swimming, surfing, and playing in ocean waters

https://scvnews.com/ocean-water-warning-for-april-10/

One person transported following medical emergency on McBean Parkway

date: 2024-04-11, from: The Signal

One person was transported to the hospital following a medical emergency that occurred near the intersection of McBean Parkway and Magic Mountain Parkway on Wednesday afternoon, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.  “We got a dispatch time of 3:59 p.m. and an on-scene time of 4:07 p.m.,” said Fire Department spokesman Geovanni Sanchez. […]

The post One person transported following medical emergency on McBean Parkway appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

https://signalscv.com/2024/04/one-person-transported-following-medical-emergency-on-mcbean-parkway/

New York appeals court rejects Donald Trump’s third request to delay Monday’s hush money trial

date: 2024-04-11, from: VOA News USA

NEW YORK — Donald Trump is now 0 for 3 in last-minute attempts to get a New York appeals court to delay his looming hush money criminal trial. An appeals court judge Wednesday swiftly rejected the latest salvo from the former president’s lawyers, who argued he should be on the campaign trail rather than “in a courtroom defending himself” starting next week.

Trump’s lawyers had asked the state’s mid-level appeals court to halt the case indefinitely while they fight to remove the trial judge and challenge several of his pretrial rulings, which they argue have seriously hindered the presumptive Republican nominee’s defense.

Justice Ellen Gesmer’s ruling, after a third straight day of emergency hearings on Trump’s delay requests, was yet another loss for Trump, who has tried repeatedly to get the trial postponed. Barring further court action, the ruling clears the way for jury selection to begin next Monday.

“We’re here for this stay because there are restrictions in place that cannot operate in a constitutional way in a trial environment,” Trump lawyer Emil Bove argued at the hearing, which was held in a court basement lobby because the regular courtroom was in use.

“It’s an incredibly important trial. It’s a historic, unprecedented proceeding,” Bove said, adding: “This can only be done once, and it must be done right.”

Trump’s hush-money case is the first of his four criminal indictments slated to go to trial and would be the first criminal trial ever of a former president.

Adding to a litany of complaints registered this week with the appeals court, Bove argued that trial Judge Juan Merchan “exceeded his authority” in refusing to postpone the case until the Supreme Court rules on an immunity claim Trump raised in another of his criminal cases. Trump’s lawyers argue some evidence in the hush-money case could be excluded if the Supreme Court rules in his favor.

Merchan last week declared that request untimely, ruling that Trump’s lawyers had “myriad opportunities” to raise the immunity issue before they finally did so in March, well after a deadline for pretrial motions had passed.

Steven Wu, the appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, echoed that sentiment at Wednesday’s emergency hearing. He argued that Trump’s lawyers had months to raise immunity and other issues and should not be rewarded with a delay at the eleventh hour.

“Staying the trial at this point would be incredibly disruptive,” Wu said. “The court, the people, witnesses have made extraordinary efforts to make sure this trial can take place on Monday.”

“There’s a powerful public interest to ensure this criminal trial goes forward,” he added.

Gesmer presided over the emergency hearing from an armchair, facing a hodgepodge of wooden seats, a collapsable table and a restroom.

Trump is accused of falsifying his company’s records to hide the nature of payments to his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who helped Trump bury negative stories during his 2016 campaign. Cohen’s activities included paying porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. His lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

Trump already struck out twice this week with the appeals court. One appeals court judge Monday rejected his bid to delay the trial while he seeks to move it out of Manhattan. A different judge on Tuesday denied a request, framed as part of a lawsuit against Merchan, that the trial be delayed while Trump fights a gag order imposed on him in recent weeks.

Trump’s lawyers had asked Merchan last month to adjourn the New York trial indefinitely until Trump’s immunity claim in his Washington, D.C., election interference case is resolved.

Trump contends he is immune from prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. His lawyers have not raised that as a defense in the hush-money case, but they argued that some evidence — including Trump’s social media posts about former lawyer Cohen — is from his time as president and should be excluded from the trial because of his immunity protections.

The Supreme Court is to hear arguments in that matter on April 25.

“This is a situation where a judge has exceeded his authority under circumstances with very, very serious federalism implications,” Bove argued at Wednesday’s emergency hearing.

Trump’s lawyers also renewed their argument that Merchan should step aside from the case. They’ve accused him of bias and a conflict of interest, citing his daughter’s work as the head of a firm whose clients have included President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats.

Trump’s lawyers filed a formal recusal request with Merchan last week. The judge rejected a similar request in August and has not ruled on Trump’s pending request. The judge has also yet to rule on another defense delay request, which claims that Trump won’t get a fair trial because of “prejudicial media coverage.”

“Their recusal arguments are completely meritless,” Wu argued.

Trump’s lawyers also took issue with a protocol Merchan put in place last month to manage a flood of last-minute court filings. And they revisited their complaints — aired at an emergency hearing Tuesday — about the gag order Merchan imposed on Trump last month that bars him from making public comments about witnesses, jurors and others regarding their connections to the case.

Trump’s ability to campaign “is something that’s protected under the First Amendment, for President Trump and the American people,” Bove argued.

https://www.voanews.com/a/new-york-appeals-court-rejects-donald-trump-s-third-request-to-delay-monday-s-hush-money-trial/7565421.html

2024 Steering Committee Strategic Planning Meeting Recap

date: 2024-04-11, from: The United States Research Software Engineer Association

In February, the Steering Committee continued the tradition of yearly strategic planning meetings. Like last year, we focused on the direction and areas of focus for US-RSE over the next 3-5 years. We started by reflecting on the highlights and successes of the past year, including the receipt of the…

https://us-rse.org/2024-04-11-sc-planning/