News gathered 2024-05-17
(date: 2024-05-17 10:36:03)
Toyota preps first electric pickup, the Hilux BEV, following BYD Shark PHEV truck launch
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
Following the launch of BYD’s first pickup, the Shark PHEV, Toyota is testing an all-electric Hilux BEV model. Toyota is preparing to produce its first electric pickup in Thailand by the end of next year.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/17/toyota-preps-first-electric-pickup-following-byd-shark-launch/
Sale closed in Palo Alto: $4.5 million for a three-bedroom home
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
A 1,973-square-foot house built in 1930 has changed hands. The property located in the 2300 block of Ramona Street in Palo Alto was sold on April 30, 2024, for $4,527,000, or $2,294 per square foot.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I was really angry when the NYT fired Donald McNeil, who had done so much to keep us informed about Covid. If that's what the NYT isn't going to do, going forward, I'm all for it.
Ex-Trump lawyer Eastman pleads not guilty to Arizona election crimes
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Eastman is the first defendant charged in the Arizona case to appear in court and the others are scheduled to follow suit in the coming weeks.
Sharon Stone and Liam Neeson’s support for Kevin Spacey may not erase ‘creepy’ film persona
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
As one Spacey ally admitted, the public may be predisposed to believing his accusers because he built his career on playing ‘sleazy’ or ‘sinister’ characters, including his Academy Award-winning role in ‘American Beauty’
Highway 1 to Big Sur opens to around-the-clock travel as slide repair advances
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The reopening came eight days ahead of schedule and just in time for summer travel.
Book Review | ‘Come & Get It’ by Kiley Reid
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Our review gets swept away by the power of a campus tale set in Arkansas.
The post Book Review | ‘Come & Get It’ by Kiley Reid appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/17/book-review-come-get-it-by-kiley-reid/
May 18: Cornhole Tourney Benefiting Samuel Dixon Health Center
date: 2024-05-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Samuel Dixon Family Health Center is excited to host its second annual Cornhole Tournament Saturday, May 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Lucky Luke Brewery
https://scvnews.com/may-18-cornhole-tourney-benefiting-samuel-dixon-health-center/
Pint-Sized VinFast VF3 EV Lands Record Orders Despite Measly 130-Mile Range
date: 2024-05-17, from: Inside EVs News
That’s on the NEDC procedure, which is one of the most lenient of all testing methods.
https://insideevs.com/news/720071/vinfast-vf3-specs-orders/
Olvera Street’s Beloved Stuffed Donkey Is Facing Eviction
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The LAist
A death in the owner’s family has caused a problem with the contract. But the prospect of the street without La Carreta is causing public concern, prompting the L.A. City Council to step in.
https://laist.com/news/la-history/olvera-street-eviction-donkey-carreta-stand-richard-hernandez
Share Openly: A simple icon for a new social sharing service
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">A lovely blog post by Jon Hicks on his process for creating the ShareOpenly icon. Characteristically, lots of care and attention went into this.
I’m really glad you get to see the open hand icons, which we eventually decided against, but feel really warm and human.
Jon’s amazing, lovely to work with, and has a really impressive body of work. I’m grateful he was able to contribute such an important part of this personal project. #Technology
<p>[<a href="https://hicks.design/journal/share-openly">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://hicks.design/journal/share-openly
Field To Close and Playground to Re-Open for Next Phase of Splash Pad Construction at Jonny D. Wallis Neighborhood Park
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
GOLETA, CA, May 17, 2024 –The next phase of construction for the Splash Pad at Jonny D. Wallis Neighborhood Park (170 S.
The post Field To Close and Playground to Re-Open for Next Phase of Splash Pad Construction at Jonny D. Wallis Neighborhood Park appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
After blaming his 2020 loss on mail balloting, Donald Trump tries to make GOP voters believe it’s OK now
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The push is a striking change for a party that amplified dark rumors about mail ballots, but it is also seen as a necessary course correction for an election this year.
New Startup Finds 12,000 Lost Pets, Now They’re Live in Santa Barbara
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
So far, 4369 Americans have reported a missing pet to the platform, of which 2487 have already been found. Based
The post New Startup Finds 12,000 Lost Pets, Now They’re Live in Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Google’s ‘Gemini’ AI Tells Motorcyclists Not to Wear Safety Gear
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
Even AI is susceptible to being a squid.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/720080/google-gemini-ai-motorcycle-safety-gear/
Interstate 680 to partially close this weekend for repairs
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
A second closure is planned for the weekend of May 31 to repave deteriorating lanes.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/17/interstate-680-to-partially-close-this-weekend-for-repairs/
East Camino Cielo Prescribed Burn This Week
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
WHAT: Burn plots of 2-5 acres of previously cut brush and excess surface fuels. WHEN: May 16-17, if conditions are
The post East Camino Cielo Prescribed Burn This Week appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/17/east-camino-cielo-prescribed-burn-this-week/
Funding for Popular California Park Access ProgramEliminated in State Budget
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SACRAMENTO, CA – California State Parks Foundation today responded to Governor Newsom’s revised 2024-2025 budget and raised concern about the elimination
The post Funding for Popular California Park Access ProgramEliminated in State Budget appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Why Do Humans Sing? Traditional Music in 55 Languages Reveals Patterns and Telling Similarities
date: 2024-05-17, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In a global study, scientists recorded themselves singing and playing music from their own cultures to examine the evolution of song
Reminder: Join Us For An Electric Cars And Coffee In Boston This Sunday!
date: 2024-05-17, from: Inside EVs News
Join me and Tom Moloughney at the Natick Mall Cars and Coffee on Sunday, May 19, before chatting EV stuff at Lucid’s Boston Seaport store.
https://insideevs.com/news/720108/boston-lucid-reminder-event/
SBCAS Reconocido Por Innovaciones en Bienestar de Animales y Apoyo Comunitario
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) – Los Servicios para Animales del Condado de Santa Bárbara (SBCAS, por sus siglas en inglés) anuncian
The post SBCAS Reconocido Por Innovaciones en Bienestar de Animales y Apoyo Comunitario appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
May 16, 2024
date: 2024-05-17, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-16-2024-9bd
How elaborate deepfake scam duped finance worker into paying out $25 million
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The employee attended a video call with people he recognized as the chief financial officer and other corporate officers – but who turned out to be deepfake creations.
Rosalind Franklin rover gets another shot at Mars after string of bad luck
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Could 2030 bring touchdown at last?
NASA and ESA have signed an agreement to finally send the long-delayed ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover to the Red Planet.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/nasa_esa_exomars/
LASD Seeking Help Locating At-Risk, Missing Agua Dulce Teen
date: 2024-05-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Palmdale Detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are asking for the public’s help locating at-risk, missing juvenile, Brianna Covert
https://scvnews.com/lasd-seeking-help-locating-at-risk-missing-agua-dulce-teen/
Israeli army finds bodies of 3 hostages in Gaza killed at Oct. 7 music festival
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Israeli military says it found the bodies of three Israeli hostages in Gaza, including German-Israeli Shani Louk.
Santa Barbara County Animal Services Recognized for Innovations in Animal Welfare and Community Support
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) – Santa Barbara County Animal Services (SBCAS) proudly announces the receipt of a $200,000 grant to establish
The post Santa Barbara County Animal Services Recognized for Innovations in Animal Welfare and Community Support appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
El Aeropuerto de Santa Bárbara y UC Santa Barbara Athletics se unen
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – 16 de mayo de 2024 El Aeropuerto de Santa Bárbara (SBA) se enorgullece de anunciar la
The post El Aeropuerto de Santa Bárbara y UC Santa Barbara Athletics se unen appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Santa Barbara Airport and UC Santa Barbara Athletics is Skybound
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – May 16, 2024 Santa Barbara Airport (SBA) is proud to announce the new Advertising & Community
The post Santa Barbara Airport and UC Santa Barbara Athletics is Skybound appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture present Sun, Surf and Cinema, FREE Summer Films at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse Sunken Garden
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture present the FREE outdoor summer film
The post UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture present Sun, Surf and Cinema, FREE Summer Films at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse Sunken Garden appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
At 69, Gayle King Is the Cover Star of Sport Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/style/gayle-king-sports-illustrated-swimsuit.html
Porsche Macan EV Production Has Officially Started In Leipzig
date: 2024-05-17, from: Inside EVs News
The manufacturer invested $650 million to expand the plant and get it ready for electric Macan production.
https://insideevs.com/news/720070/porsche-macan-ev-production-start/
CFMOTO’s MT-X Could Hit North American Shores This Year
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
An affordable middleweight adventure bike based on one of the best in the business. Now, who would want that?
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719939/cfmoto-mtx-fall-launch/
NIO’s new low-cost Onvo L60 EV could boost sales to +20,000 per month
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
The first model of NIO’s new low-cost Onvo brand, the L60 electric SUV, could lead to a sales surge, according to at least one analyst. Aimed at Tesla’s best-selling Model Y, the NIO Onvo L60 could boost sales to over 20,000 per month as an even more affordable ($30K) option.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/17/nios-new-low-cost-onvo-l60-ev-boost-sales-20k-month/
Multi-vehicle wreck on I-580 in Oakland kills one
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The crash happened at the Grand Avenue exit on eastbound I-580.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/17/multi-vehicle-wreck-on-i-580-in-oakland-kills-one/
This handheld gaming PC with an Intel Lunar Lake processor could debut at Computex in June
date: 2024-05-17, from: Liliputing
Most of the handheld gaming PCs that have shipped in the last few years have been powered by AMD processors thanks to the lead that company has taken over Intel when it comes to the performance and power efficiency of its mobile chips… especially when it comes to graphics performance. But with Intel touting recent […]
The post This handheld gaming PC with an Intel Lunar Lake processor could debut at Computex in June appeared first on Liliputing.
Hugging Face to make $10M worth of old Nvidia GPUs freely available to AI devs
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
You get a GPU, you get a GPU, everyone gets a ZeroGPU!
Open source AI champion Hugging Face is making $10 million in GPU compute available to the public in a bid to ease the financial burden of model development faced by smaller dev teams.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/hugging_face_nvidia_zerogpu/
Australia’s richest person objects to her portrait in museum. Here’s what it looks like.
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
“Some people might not like it, other people might find it funny,” the artist said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/17/australias-richest-person-objects-to-her-portrait-in-museum/
Behind the Blog: Screwed-Up Telecoms and Tech Sermons
date: 2024-05-17, 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 screwed-up telecom systems, tech exec sermons, and TikTok trends.
https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-screwed-up-telecoms-and-tech-sermons/
Beelink SEi14 Meteor Lake mini PC is now available
date: 2024-05-17, from: Liliputing
Chinese mini PC maker is launching its first model with an Intel Meteor Lake processor. the Beelink SEI14 is a 135 x 135 x 45mm (5.3″ x 5.3″ x 1.8″) computer with an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor with Intel Arc graphics. It’s the latest in the company’s SEI line of mini PCs, and […]
The post Beelink SEi14 Meteor Lake mini PC is now available appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/beelink-sei14-is-a-meteor-lake-mini-pc/
A new Ani DiFranco album is something to celebrate
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
I’ve been following Ani DiFranco for decades. I’ve seen her play live around twenty times: she always brings a kind of joyful, progressive energy that leaves me motivated and buzzing.
She has a new album out, and it feels like a return to visceral, honest form. It’s not quite the acoustic punk from the late nineties / early aughts — seriously, go check out Living in Clip, Not a Pretty Girl or Dilate — and it goes to some really experimental places, but I’m into it. This time, rather than making it on her own, she’s worked with producer BJ Burton, who’s also worked with Bon Iver and Taylor Swift.
We need progressive, momentum-bringing, energetic music more than ever. Ani delivers. And even the name of the album itself — Unprecedented Sh!t — feels very apt for the era.
From the liner notes:
The title Unprecedented Sh!t is not only representative of how much of a sonic departure the 11-track album is from Ani’s other work, but also a political and social commentary on the current state of the world. “We find ourselves in unprecedented times in many ways, faced with unprecedented challenges. So, our responses to them and our discourse around them, need to rise to that level.”
Amen.
https://werd.io/2024/a-new-ani-difranco-album-is-something-to-celebrate
Interviewed: my creative process
date: 2024-05-17, from: Om Malik blog
I write with a 100 year old pen and ink made by a company that is almost 300 years old. There is something gratifying about the technology perfected in the past, allowing me to dream about the future. I have enjoyed reading Manuel Moreale for quite a while now. When I saw his email pop up, I was …
https://om.co/2024/05/17/interview-my-blogging-process/
World No. 1 PGA golfer arrested outside event
date: 2024-05-17, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/world-no-1-pga-golfer-arrested-outside-event/7616291.html
How ESPN’s Jeff Darlington landed at the center of the Scottie Scheffler arrest story
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
By Eva Rothenberg | CNN New York — ESPN journalist Jeff Darlington witnessed the arrest of World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler Friday morning before the second round of the PGA Championship in Louisville, Kentucky, thrusting the reporter into the middle of one of the strangest sports stories in recent memory. Darlington and Scheffler had […]
Bay Area and California add jobs in April — but the gains are puny
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
East Bay leads Bay Area in April, South Bay is flat, San Francisco area loses jobs.
Baidu Considers Using Tesla’s Robotaxi Tech In China
date: 2024-05-17, from: Inside EVs News
China’s Google may explore using tech from Tesla’s upcoming robotaxi product in its own service offerings.
https://insideevs.com/news/720085/tesla-baidu-robotaxi-partnership-opportunities/
Caltech Protests for Palestine
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
On Monday, April 29th, there were two on campus demonstrations for Palestine.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/caltech-protests-for-palestine/
Note on the Faculty Petition
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
In the previous issue of the Tech, we published a private letter that ~150 professors wrote to President Rosenbaum…
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/editorial-faculty-petition/
We Have, and Are Trying, To Do Better: A Response and Update to the SAT/ACT Article
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
On Friday, April 26th, a Tech article was released that took the undergraduate population by storm.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/sat-act-article-response/
‘Risk’ Single Review: Gracie Abrams is Back
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
Los Angeles native singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams released “Risk” on May 1, over a year since she last had new music.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/risk-review-gracie-abrams/
Art and Photography Spotlight
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
From top to bottom, left to right: “Sunset Road” by Audrey Wong, “Cliffside Forest” by Juan Luchsinger, “GDBG” by Sophie Gershaft, Albert Huang, and Toby Thomassen, and “Galaxy” by Sylvia Wang.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/art-and-photo-spotlight/
Auditions for Earth Data / The Musical
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
Be a part of the full production this fall!
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/musical-audition/
Blacker Hosts Gravity Falls-Themed Interhovse
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
…or Blinterhouse 2024: Gravity Falls.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/blinterhouse/
Changes to Caltech’s Free Speech and Expression Policy Explained
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
On April 26th, an email from President Rosenbaum and Provost Tirrell announced an update to Caltech’s Free Speech and Expression Policy in response to ongoing protests over Gaza occurring in many campuses nationwide, including our neighboring UCLA.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/free-speech-changes/
Come on, OSE isn’t the bad guy
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
Constantly shit talking OSE lowers morale more than OSE ever could.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/letter-ose/
Have You Ever Wanted to Ride a Miniature Train? Here is Your Chance.
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
You can still enjoy the trains today in Griffith or on the Disneyland Railroad in the theme parks!
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/miniature-train/
Life with a Brain Implant: Interview with clinical trial subject James Johnson
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
In the field of Neurotechnology, there is a lot of work being done to use brain machine interfaces to help people with motor disabilities regain lost abilities. When reading Professor Andersen’s papers as a high schooler, I remember thinking: this is the kind of research that can help a lot of people.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/life-with-brain-implant/
New IHC Committee Chairs and ASCIT BoD
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
Election results are here!
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/new-ihc-and-ascit/
Quantum Hype and the End of Half-Decent Writing in Media
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
The frustration with the overuse and misapplication of the term “quantum” in contemporary media . . . is palpable.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/quantum-hype/
Songs to Beat the Arcade Racing Game High Score To
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
I guess I should start with a formal apology. I tried. I really did! But despite my best efforts to not cave into the demons telling me to go down the EDM/techno/house rabbit hole, here we are.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/songs-for-arcade/
Student Affairs Division Reorganized; New Dean of Student Experience
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
Last Monday, President Rosenbaum announced a reorganization of the Student Affairs division. The changes were recommended in the final report from a Visiting Committee on Student Affairs…
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/student-affairs-reorganization/
The Avery Greenhouse Effect
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
The stressors of this Institution go beyond the mental. Caltech-hired landscapers have been criticized for spraying carcinogenic herbicides around graduate student housing…
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/avery-greenhouse/
The California Tech Sponsored Workout
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
As your friendly neighborhood former Dabney Athman, I have a great passion for trying to get people to go to the gym. As part of these efforts, I would like to give you a nice example workout.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/tech-sponsored-workout/
The Joys of Living Off Campus
date: 2024-05-17, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
Nearly every aspect of my housing experience has been significantly improved by living off campus, and I would recommend it to everyone who is feeling even the tiniest ounce of frustration with Caltech Housing.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/05/17/off-campus-joys/
Glitz, glamor and economics at the 2024 upfronts
date: 2024-05-17, from: Marketplace Morning Report
This week, media giants have been gathering in New York City for the upfronts, where networks and streaming platforms try to court ad buyers by previewing shows for the seasons ahead. We’ll take the pulse of ad spending as streaming continues to outshine traditional broadcast television. And we’ll also hear about China’s property sector prop-up and priorities for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau now that its future is no longer in jeopardy.
Marketplace is currently tracking behind target for this budget year — that means listeners like you can make a critical difference by investing in our journalism today.
The first electric school bus fleet in the US will also power Oakland homes
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Battery-powered school buses in Oakland are expected to cut emissions and supply enough electricity to the grid for at least 300 homes.
Bear fatally shot after ‘havoc’ in Sierra Nevada community
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The sheriff’s office said it had been “inundated” with reports of bears “creating havoc and endangering local residents.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/17/bear-fatally-shot-after-havoc-in-sierra-nevada-community/
NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week
date: 2024-05-17, from: Associated Press, World News
Social media users shared a range of false claims this week. Here are the facts: Milwaukee’s director of elections was not removed from her position for vote rigging in the 2020 presidential election.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-misinformation-elections-1715b8d0a9a65d7bd4a383b934881f09
Ford Pleads To Suppliers: ‘Help Us Make EVs Affordable’
date: 2024-05-17, from: Inside EVs News
We also discuss GM’s settlement with Bolt EV owners and how Tesla’s AI plans hinge on data from China.
https://insideevs.com/news/720079/ford-asks-for-supplier-support-to-make-evs-affordable/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Knicks epic fart has become famous. It could get kind of interesting on the court at tonight's game.
https://www.google.com/search?q=knicks+epic+fart
UK competition cops say Microsoft’s stake in Mistral is not a merger
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Watchdog drops official probe but IT giant’s deal with Inflection AI and Amazon’s with Anthropic still in play
Britain’s competition watchdog does not think Microsoft’s investment in Mistral AI constitutes a merger situation – just weeks after calling for industry views on the agreement.…
Honda debuts hydrogen-powered Class 8 fuel cell Semi truck concept
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
Honda is debuting a hydrogen semi truck concept at this year’s Advanced Clean Transportation Expo, an annual expo focusing on clean medium and heavy duty vehicles, next week in Las Vegas.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/17/honda-debuts-hydrogen-powered-class-8-fuel-cell-semi-truck-concept/
Apple, SpaceX, Microsoft return-to-office mandates drove senior talent away
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“Taken together, our findings imply that return to office mandates can imply significant human capital costs in terms of output, productivity, innovation, and competitiveness for the companies that implement them.”
There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of value in being in the same physical room together; I’m writing this on the day after a work summit that brought my team together from across the country, and I’m still buzzing from the energy. But I think anyone in tech that proposes a full-time return to office policy needs to rethink.
It comes down to this: “it’s easier to manage a team that’s happy”. People want their lives and contexts to be respected; everyone’s relationship with their employers has been reset over the last few years. This goes hand in hand with the resurgence of unions, too: the contract between workers and employers is being renegotiated, and particularly for parents and carers, but really for everyone, working from home yields a kind of freedom that’s hard to replace. And asking people to come back reads as a lack of trust and autonomy that erodes relationships and decimates morale. #Business
<p>[<a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/05/rto-mandates-led-to-pronounced-exodus-of-senior-workers-at-top-tech-firms/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>Volkswagen to go solo on affordable EVs after ending talks with Renault
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
Volkswagen has ended talks with Renault to launch an affordable EV, according to sources. However, a low-cost Volkswagen electric car is still in the plans.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/17/volkswagen-solo-affordable-evs-ends-talks-renault/
Tesla plans a data center for self-driving in China, report says
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
Tesla is reportedly in the early stages of planning to build a data center to train its self-driving AI in China.l
https://electrek.co/2024/05/17/tesla-plans-data-center-self-driving-in-china-report-says/
He Seeks Mystery Magnetic Fields With His Quantum Compass
date: 2024-05-17, from: Quanta Magazine
Alex Sushkov is updating an old technology with new quantum tricks in hopes of sensing the magnetic influence of dark matter.The post He Seeks Mystery Magnetic Fields With His Quantum Compass first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/he-seeks-mystery-magnetic-fields-with-his-quantum-compass-20240517/
2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV Is The EPA Range King For Ultium Cars
date: 2024-05-17, from: Inside EVs News
The RS RWD version uses an estimated 2.7 miles/kWh and the EPA range is 324 miles.
https://insideevs.com/news/719996/chevrolet-blazer-ev-epa-range-consumption/
Car Companies Are Energy Companies Now
date: 2024-05-17, from: Heatmap News
It was my first truck-powered cocktail party.
General Motors had gathered journalists at a Beverly Hills mansion last week for a vehicle-to-home show and tell. GM’s engineers outfitted the garage with all the components needed for an electric vehicle’s battery to back up the house’s power supply. Then they tripped the circuit breaker to cut off the home from grid power and let the plugged-in Chevy Silverado electric pickup run the home’s lights and other electrical systems for the remainder of the gathering.
V2H tech, as it’s known, will be available in the top-of-the-line Silverado EV First-Edition RST that will begin deliveries in the middle of this year, making the Chevy competitive with its natural rival, the electric Ford F-150 Lightning. The Ford, released just two years ago, was one of the first American EVs to use bidirectional charging to let the vehicle battery to power the home. Soon, though, V2H may be commonplace: GM promises to put it not just in all its new electric trucks, but also in all the new EVs it’s building on the new Ultium platform by 2026, which may force other automakers to follow suit.
These moves aren’t just about a new feature to highlight in truck commercials. In the EV age, car companies have to become energy companies, too.
GM has spun off a whole new group, GM Energy, just to handle all the ways its electric Chevrolets and Cadillacs will interface with the integrated home. In its simplest guise, V2H, the system requires several boxes mounted to the wall in the garage. There’s a “dark start” battery to make sure the backup system has enough juice to get going again in case of power outage; and there’s an inverter to turn the DC electricity from a truck battery into AC for the house. The GM’s PowerShift charger refills the EV battery, but also allows energy to flow both ways.
That’s just the beginning. GM Energy is also introducing stackable PowerBank batteries a person could keep in their basement or garage. The company will add the ability to integrate solar panels into the system later in 2024, according to Chief Revenue Officer Aseem Kapur.
With these new pieces in place, energy can move around a person’s home in any direction. On a very sunny day, excess solar energy could be routed to the house’s battery stack — just as, at the scale of the utility grid, excess power from solar farms is stashed away in batteries during the afternoon to provide energy at night. The home’s battery stack could be used to back up the power supply in case of outage (just in case your Silverado isn’t plugged in at the time).
And the next stage is coming soon. Kapur said that by 2026, GM’s Ultium EVs will be equipped with vehicle-to-grid — V2G — capability. Today, some residents with home energy storage are using their stashed kilowatt-hours to participate in a virtual power plant; they engage in energy arbitrage by storing electricity when it’s cheap and selling it back to the grid when it’s expensive, making money in the process. V2G represents one step further. EVs that can talk to the grid could help to prevent blackouts and let their drivers engage in energy arbitrage using the battery in their pickup truck while it’s parked in the driveway. (For what it’s worth, Kapur told me the charging and discharging cycles from doing this are much easier on the EV’s battery life than the herky-jerky, stop-and-start nature of driving.)
It turns out that electrification is a multi-pronged revolution in the car business. First came the cars. As Heatmap has reported, Tesla’s enormous lead in selling EVs has eroded as the big companies’ electric offerings have improved and Musk became distracted with Twitter, Cybertrucks, and robotaxis.
The energy business marks another way the old-fashioned car companies are finally catching up to Elon Musk. Tesla for years has sold its own solar panels and Powerwall home batteries. It set up a virtual power plant in Texas to allow its solar and battery customers to make money on the energy markets. Suddenly, Detroit is moving into that space.
GM Energy’s home-of-the-future system will be sold as an added feature for people who buy an EV like the Silverado and want to back up their home electricity, but anybody — Chevy driver or no — could buy into the interconnected residential energy system. Ford’s Home Integration System performs the same function. At CES in January, Kia demonstrated an entire connected home to evangelize the potential of V2H and V2G. It won’t be long before all the major automakers have a similar solution on offer.
Of course, the home is just one part of the new energy ecosystem. In the days of gasoline, the oil companies controlled refueling and filled the country with Chevron and Texaco stations on every corner. But in the electric age, the carmakers are trying to exert more control on that market. Tesla appeared to grab the early lead in fast-charging stations, then it convinced the other automakers — GM and Ford included — to adopt its plug standard in their EVs so their customers could take advantage of Tesla’s charging network.
But with recent mass layoffs to Tesla’s Supercharger team, that advantage is in doubt. Musk may have opened the door for the other carmakers to swoop in. GM was among seven automakers that, earlier this year, pledged to build out 30,000 new fast-charging stations of their own by the decade’s end. As car companies continue to build out their energy businesses, they’ll keep creeping up on Tesla’s territory there. Then Musk really better hope that the robotaxi pans out.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/gm-ultium-v2h
Bohdan Troschynsky pushed to project branch bohdan at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
Bohdan Troschynsky (b096d563) at 17 May 15:44
A new visual component implements and the processing the toolbar pa…
… and 1 more commit
Biden, Trump talk tough about tariffs on Chinese goods
date: 2024-05-17, from: VOA News USA
This week, President Joe Biden drastically increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, steel and aluminum products, and semiconductors. The move follows his administration’s review of former President Donald Trump’s trade policies toward China. White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at how the two presidential candidates differ in their approach.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-trump-talk-tough-about-tariffs-on-chinese-goods/7616183.html
Polestar Depends On China For Now. It Wants ‘More Clarity’ On What EV Tariffs Mean
date: 2024-05-17, from: Inside EVs News
The brand is “currently evaluating” 100% EV tariff increases from the Biden Administration, including the impact on Polestar 2 prices.
https://insideevs.com/news/720054/polestar-clarity-us-tariffs-says/
Underwater datacenters could sink to sound wave sabotage
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ensure there are no sperm whales in the area
Underwater datacenters have yet to take off in any meaningful way, but it seems they could prove vulnerable to attack using sound waves, according to researchers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/underwater_datacenters_sound_waves/
Kosovar’s sculptures transform roof of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art
date: 2024-05-17, from: VOA News USA
Gigantic metal sculptures made by Kosovo-born artist Petrit Halilaj adorn the rooftop of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in an ode to a childhood affected by war. Garentina Kraja has the story. Camera: Vladimir Badikov
California man stabs home invasion robber with culprit’s own pocket knife, police say
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
A Pasadena man fought back against an armed home invasion robber, got the culprit’s pocket knife and stabbed him on Wednesday night, May 15, authorities said.
Review: Guadagnino’s “Challengers:” Serving up steamy drama
date: 2024-05-17, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Zendaya’s newest film “Challengers” has finally been released after a delay from September 15, 2023, to April 26, 2024. The question is whether this film is a trophy-winning champion or…
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez: ‘Everything is a fight’ as he reluctantly tries couples therapy to save marriage
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Affleck and Lopez aren’t ready to ‘throw in the towel’ just yet, one report says, though another says they’ve been locked in a battle of egos since rekindling their romance three years ago.
California mother charged in beating of 5-week-old son that left infant with 16 broken bones
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The extent of the injuries was discovered by doctors on May 13 when the infant was taken to a hospital after his left arm was not moving, officials said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/17/santa-ana-mother-charged-in-beating-of-5-week-old-son/
Here Is What Axon’s Bodycam Report Writing AI Looks Like
date: 2024-05-17, from: 404 Media Group
Axon has been inviting police departments to webinars about the new AI-based product, which will automatically generate police reports based on bodycam audio, according to emails obtained by 404 Media.
https://www.404media.co/here-is-what-axons-bodycam-report-writing-ai-looks-like-draft-one/
John Boston | For Xmas? Get Me a Dog Toting a Flame Thrower
date: 2024-05-17, from: The Signal
Oh I’ve died and, save for $9,420 plus tax, gone to heaven. A pal recently sent me a link noting that they now are selling a Flame-Throwing Robot Dog. Besides […]
The post John Boston | For Xmas? Get Me a Dog Toting a Flame Thrower appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/john-boston-for-xmas-get-me-a-dog-toting-a-flame-thrower/
San Mateo County to launch mental health ‘CARE Court’ to bring homeless people off street
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The initiative is part of a broader overhaul of California’s mental health system.
Biden Keeps Passing Smart Climate Policies
date: 2024-05-17, from: Distilled Earth blog
This year, the Biden administration has passed multiple policies that will cut billions of tons of carbon emissions
https://www.distilled.earth/p/biden-keeps-passing-smart-climate
Richard LaMotte | A Runaround and a Tax
date: 2024-05-17, from: The Signal
I’m wondering if anyone else has had this problem. The state of California sent me a tax bill on $700 that they claim they sent me on a “California” card. […]
The post Richard LaMotte | A Runaround and a Tax appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/richard-lamotte-a-runaround-and-a-tax/
Diane Zimmerman | Trump Girl’s Pitch for New California
date: 2024-05-17, from: The Signal
Trump girl report: Just when Lois Eisenberg, Thomas Oatway and the esteemed Gary Horton thought they were rid of me.Great news for everyone who has taken their blinders off and […]
The post Diane Zimmerman | Trump Girl’s Pitch for New California appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/diane-zimmerman-trump-girls-pitch-for-new-california/
2024 Chevrolet Equinox EV Deliveries Finally Underway
date: 2024-05-17, from: Inside EVs News
The cheapest electric Equinox starts at $43,295 but an even more affordable version is coming later this year.
https://insideevs.com/news/720051/2024-chevrolet-equinox-ev-delivery/
This year’s Pikes Peak Hill Climb will see its first all-electric pace car: The Acura ZDX Type S
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
The Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is just over a month away, and we’ve learned that the pace car will be all-electric for the first time ever. The Acura ZDX Type S will lead the annual 12.42-mile climb up Pikes Peak as the automaker continues its tradition in the pace position but with an all-electric spin this year.
Why a ‘frozen’ distribution Linux kernel isn’t the safest choice for security
date: 2024-05-17, from: OS News
It’s a compelling story and on the surface makes a lot of sense. Carefully curated software patches applied to a known Linux kernel, frozen at a specific release, would obviously seem to be preferable to the random walk of an upstream open source Linux project. But is it true? Is there data to support this ? After a lot of hard work and data analysis by my CIQ kernel engineering colleagues Ronnie Sahlberg and Jonathan Maple, we finally have an answer to this question. It’s no. The data shows that “frozen” vendor Linux kernels, created by branching off a release point and then using a team of engineers to select specific patches to back-port to that branch, are buggier than the upstream “stable” Linux kernel created by Greg Kroah-Hartman. ↫ Jeremy Allison at CIQ I mean, it kind of makes sense. The full whitepaper is available, too.
Five games to circle on 49ers’ path to 14-3 mark, Super Bowl encore
date: 2024-05-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
For the 49ers to post, say, a 14-3 record en route to a Super Bowl encore, they must overcome the usual suspects from Kansas City, Dallas and Detroit, plus more.
REV’IT! and Zero Join Forces For “Electric Motorcycle Riding Gear”
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
The collection follows Zero’s urban-chic aesthetic.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719835/revit-zero-electric-motorcycle-apparel/
Wheel-E Podcast: Ride1Up Tour, e-bike tariffs, Eli Zero, Pedego Moto & more
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
This week on Electrek’s Wheel-E podcast, we discuss the most popular news stories from the world of electric bikes and other nontraditional electric vehicles. This time, that includes new e-bike battery regulations in China, 100% tariffs on EVs (and potentially e-bikes), a tour of Ride1Up’s e-bike factory, Pedego Moto review, Eli Zero electric microcar coming to the US, and more.
Today’s episode is sponsored by Momentum, a new brand of lifestyle e-bikes from Giant Group designed to deliver a full range of innovative electric, hybrid and city bikes with premium features, long assist ranges and sensor technologies that offer natural riding experiences that are both energy saving and fun.
NASA Around the World: Interns Teach Virtual Lessons in Kenya
date: 2024-05-17, from: NASA breaking news
Video Credit: NASA/Dennis Brown, TechLit Africa When it comes to inspiring the next generation, NASA interns know no bounds. Interns at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland taught students 7,600 miles away in Mogotio, Kenya, but thanks to technology, they didn’t travel a single mile. Collaborating with TechLit Africa — a non-profit organization that teaches […]
Apple geofences third-party browser engine work for EU devices
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Rival coders must have Europe-based staff to build and test non-WebKit surfing
Exclusive Apple’s grudging accommodation of European law – allowing third-party browser engines on its mobile devices – apparently comes with a restriction that makes it difficult to develop and support third-party browser engines for the region.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/apple_browser_eu/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Evan Williams has started a new social network called Maven. Unfortunately the only story about it I could find is behind a paywall.
https://www.threads.net/@mattnavarra/post/C7BqQDeI_jr
Jane Goodall, AI Skeptic
date: 2024-05-17, from: Gary Marcus blog
Your loyal correspondent goes gaga for Goodall
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/jane-goodall-ai-skeptic
Bangladesh To Begin Enforcing ‘No Helmet, No Fuel’ Policy Nationwide
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
Nearly 30 percent of all the road deaths in the country in 2023 were riders.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719823/bangladesh-helmet-law-enforcement-2024/
Thousands More Teslas Are Piling Up In Parking Lots
date: 2024-05-17, from: Inside EVs News
Tesla’s growing inventory can sometimes even be seen from space, via satellite images. So what’s the problem?
https://insideevs.com/news/720018/thousands-unsold-tesla-evs-parking-lots/
What pro-Palestinian campus protests look like across Europe
date: 2024-05-17, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Pro-Palestinian protests have disrupted campus life at colleges and universities in the United States in response to Israel’s intense bombardments on Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Similar demonstrations have taken place in Europe too, where protesters are demanding their schools divest from Israeli-linked companies. Plus, Americans are going into debt to pay for groceries, and results from an United Auto Workers’ union vote at an Alabama plant are expected today.
Marketplace is currently tracking behind target for this budget year — that means listeners like you can make a critical difference by investing in our journalism today.
Sols 4186-4188: Almost there…
date: 2024-05-17, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning day: Wednesday, May 15, 2024 The rover planning engineers yet again did a great job navigating through the large bedrock blocks that litter the terrain in front of us. We are getting ever closer to being able to cross the Gediz Vallis channel and associated deposits, a feature we identified long before landing […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4186-4188-almost-there/
First LockBit, now BreachForums: Are cops winning the war or just a few battles?
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
TLDR: Peace in our time is really really hard
Interview On Wednesday the FBI and international cops celebrated yet another cybercrime takedown – of ransomware brokerage site BreachForums – just a week after doxing and imposing sanctions on the LockBit ransomware crew’s kingpin, and two months after compromising the gang’s website.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/cops_crime_winning/
What To Know About Biden’s Coal Lease Crackdown
date: 2024-05-17, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Rain and cool temperatures are stalling wildfires in an oil-producing region of Canada • A record-setting May heat wave in Florida will linger through the weekend • It is 77 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Rome today, where the Vatican climate conference will come to a close.
THE TOP FIVE
- Severe storms in Houston kill 4
At least four people were killed in Houston last night when severe storms tore through Texas. Wind speeds reached 100 mph, shattering skyscraper windows, destroying trees, and littering downtown Houston with debris. “Downtown is a mess. It’s dangerous,” said Houston Mayor John Whitmire. Outside Houston, winds toppled powerline towers. At one point 1 million customers were without power across the state, and many schools are closed today. The storm front moved into Louisiana this morning, prompting flash flood warnings in New Orleans.
- Biden administration plans to end new coal leases in Powder River
Basin
The Biden administration yesterday unveiled a proposal that would end new coal leases in the nation’s largest coal-producing region. Nearly half the coal in the U.S. comes from the Powder River Basin, which spans 13 million acres across Montana and Wyoming. But production has been declining in recent years, “a not surprising development as coal-fired power plants retire,” noted E&E News. The new proposal from the Bureau of Land Management would allow mining to continue under existing leases until 2041 in Wyoming and 2060 in Montana. The proposal is subject to a 30-day public protest period before it becomes final.
Responses to the move fell along fairly predictable lines: Environmentalists applauded it; Republican politicians and mining groups slammed it. The proposal comes on the heels of the EPA’s new air pollution rules that will force existing coal-fired plants to cut their pollution by 90% in coming years, or close up shop.
The government estimates that ending coal leasing on federal land would cut greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 293 million tons of carbon dioxide every year.
- IEA calls for more investment in critical minerals to meet growing
demand
The International Energy Agency is warning of a looming shortage of critical minerals and metals needed for the energy transition and calling for an increase in investment. The IEA’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2024 finds that prices for these materials dropped sharply last year to pre-pandemic levels as supply grew faster than demand. This was especially true for battery-pack materials like lithium, which saw a 75% drop in price.
IEA
The lower prices, while good for customers’ wallets, have stalled investment at a time when demand for these materials is skyrocketing. “Today’s combined market size of key energy transition minerals is set to more than double to $770 billion by 2040 in a pathway to net zero emissions by mid-century,” the report said. With that projection in mind, the IEA concluded that lithium supplies will meet only 50% of demand requirements by 2035; copper supplies will satisfy just 70% of demand.
The report calls for boosting efforts to recycle and reuse, and innovate, along with about $800 billion in mining investment by 2040. Interestingly, the report suggests that recycled critical metals could reduce new supply requirements by up to 30% for copper and cobalt, and 15% for lithium and nickel by 2040.
- Data centers send Microsoft’s emissions soaring
In case you missed it: Microsoft released its annual sustainability report this week, and the news wasn’t great! The tech giant’s emissions have risen by nearly a third since 2020, in large part because of newly built, energy intensive data centers for AI and cloud computing operations. Lest we forget, back in 2020 the company set a goal of being “carbon negative” by 2030. “Microsoft’s predicament is one of the first concrete examples of how the pursuit of AI is colliding with efforts to cut emissions,” wrote Akshat Rathi and Dina Bass at Bloomberg. Microsoft plans to ramp up its spending on building out data centers even more this year and next.
- Revolution Wind project installs first turbine foundation
One small but positive update on a U.S. renewables project: Construction has begun on Rhode Island and Connecticut’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm, with “steel in the water” and the project’s first turbine foundation installed. Ørsted and Eversource’s Revolution Wind project will generate 400 megawatts of clean power for Rhode Island and 304 MW for Connecticut, enough to power more than 350,000 homes. The project is expected to be up and running in 2025.
THE KICKER
America this week exceeded five million solar installations. Getting there took 50 years, but reaching the 10 million mark is expected to take just six years.
https://heatmap.news/climate/biden-new-coal-lease-ban
What Will It Take For Israel To End Its War?
date: 2024-05-17, from: The Lever News
Pulitzer Prize winner Nathan Thrall details life in the Gaza Strip and West Bank since Oct. 7 and explores what’s motivating Benjamin Netanyahu.
https://www.levernews.com/what-will-it-take-for-israel-to-end-its-war/
Is LiveWire Building an Old Harley-Davidson E-Bike Concept?
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
Might help the brand’s bottom line.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719829/livewire-harley-davidson-e-bicycle-ebike-concept/
Hubble Views Cosmic Dust Lanes
date: 2024-05-17, from: NASA breaking news
Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a nearly edge-on view of the lenticular galaxy NGC 4753. Lenticular galaxies have an elliptical shape and ill-defined spiral arms. This image is the object’s sharpest view to date, showcasing Hubble’s incredible resolving power and ability to reveal complex dust structures. NGC 4753 […]
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-views-cosmic-dust-lanes/
Harley-Davidson Just Patented Fake Brakes For Electric Motorcycles
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
As well as a simulated clutch.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
An 'epic fart' helped get Knicks ready for Game 5 rout of Pacers.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/16/sports/an-epic-fart-helped-get-knicks-ready-for-game-5-rout-of-pacers/
P&B: Om Malik
date: 2024-05-17, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>This is the 38th edition of <em>People and Blogs</em>, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Om Malik and his blog, <a href="https://om.co">om.co</a></p>Om is a writer, photographer, investor, and many other things. His blog goes back decades and there are apparently almost 900 pages worth of archive you can scroll through on his site so if you like his content you’ll have plenty to read. If you’re a reader of this site go check Om’s post titled “Write like a human” and you’ll quickly understand why I’m a fan of him.
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Let’s start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?
My name is Om. I grew up in Delhi, India. After attending university and starting off as a journalist in India, I became fascinated with technology and the emergence of the Internet. I eventually immigrated to the United States. Media was part of my worldview, and I knew very early on as a teenager that I wanted to be a writer. The rest of the journey is in pursuit of that one truth about myself. Since then, I have added “camera” to my tool belt — I try to write with my photos as well.
What’s the story behind your blog?
Being so early to the network, it made me realize the importance of publishing to the new network. IT didn’t matter what tools you were using — people still get caught up in the whole idea of tools — when writing to the network (whether with words, visuals or voice) is the main thing.
I was writing on the internet even before we had blogs. I used to publish personal stuff on the web in a hardcoded (hand written) html and post it to my minuscule home page on Pipeline, a local ISP in North East United States. Eventually I joined Forbes.com, which was one of the earliest mainstream media outlets to establish a dedicated web team and website.
I used to have a newsletter - dotcomwala- that I would send to a few hundred people and I shared a lot of “news” I would pick up from my works as a reporter. It didn’t pass the rigor of a mainstream media website, so it was my lightweight take on news, even though I had confirmed it with a one or two people, just not three people a mainstream news outlets expected you to have. Eventually the newsletter gave way to a website - GigaOm — and in late 2001 it became pretty obvious that the idea of “technology magazines” covering technology on a weekly or monthly cadence was a dumb idea. Tech moved so fast, and the print world so slow.
I decided to basically turn my website into a blog — first with Blogger, then with Moveable Type, because it allowed me to have comments and community. In a way, my evolution as a writer happened as the network matured and gave us an opportunity to put the power of the network to work.
My initial focus was core technology— which is what I liked intuitively. It was always a bit more skewed in favor of startups, because I have always liked upstarts with long odds. We in tech at that time were all upstarts. Over the years I have become more explanatory in my writing and do more analysis than just plain news. That transition was a result of personal growth, more experience and ability to be very confident in being able to articulate myself without needing editors.
I would say my grounding in core technology and lessons learned as a Forbes reporter allow me to understand the downstream impacts of technology, and at the same time allowed me to think about the possibilities of what new chips, new photonic gear or new storage could make possible.
For me, blogging is my perfect form of writing and expression. As a reporter I respect the facts, and as an essayist I can make correlations. Blogging gives me the voice, the platform and freedom to be a tad casual, should the topic require so.
What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?
My creative process is pretty uncreative really. I am constantly reporting. I am always reading. I am always making notes — either mentally or on paper. I keep a common place notebook — I take notes, write down thoughts and basically leave myself messages. I write with a 100 year old pen and ink made by a company that is almost 300 years old. There is something gratifying about the technology perfected in the past, allowing me to dream about the future.
I often get ideas for a blog post, and when that happens I start writing. I use my phone to draft a post. I use the phone to dictate a document. And then I run it through some kind of tool to check grammar. I use Lex for writing and editing — this is AI powered and smarter version of Google Docs. I use Sudowrite for my creative writing which I almost never share.
I have had editors and collaborators in the past, but now I use a lot of ai tools to fill out the procedural aspect of the writing and editing. I still have half-a-dozen people (including former editors) who I share my ideas and longer pieces to get second and often third opinion. I find that as I have grown older, I want to be more measured (and less bombastic) in my approach.
Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?
I am not too picky about where I work — I write in cafes, airports, planes, back seat of a cab, or I will just stop on the side of the road if the words come to me. During the pandemic I converted a spare room into my office, but it is mostly for my other creative practice — photos and photo editing. I have a Mac Studio with a big monitor for editing images. I occasionally use it for writing and zoom calls. But, when it comes to computers, I write on an iPad with a keyboard.
However, most of my writing including blog posts start in a notebook. I buy fountain pen friendly notebooks from Japan. I have a bunch of fountain pens, though my favorite is a 100-year old pen. It is too fragile to travel, so I have a couple of others, like a Lamy AiOn which takes cartridges and is made out of metal that I can taken when I have to travel overseas. I have a couple of others that are almost always in my bag — either with blue or another blue ink.
A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?
This is fairly easy. I was on Moveable Type, but I was an early convert to open source, and was an early switcher to WordPress. I think I was in the initial batch of users even before they officially launched the alpha. I have been on WordPress since then. It is hosted on Pressable. It is fairly simple WP installation. I use some plugins, such as Postmark for my newsletter. There are some others for photo galleries and categories, but mostly whatever comes with WP and with the official Jetpack plugins.
Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?
So, this is a tough question for me. When I started my blog, it was a personal blog. GigaOM, eventually became a company, and my personal blog ended its existence. A few years later, I started my current blog, On My Om (Om.co) to really revive all my non-professional writing, and musings since I couldn’t publish those on GigaOM, which had become a collaborative publication and was more polished than my casual scribbles. When GigaOM shutdown in 2015, I started publishing more “tech” related writing on Om.co, and since then I have been writing there.
The name, On My Om, is a reflection on the reality — this is just me, and no-one else writing. It is much more like my old blog, as it allows me to be quirky about things that I care about. I recently restructured the blog to reflect the new reality of my writing — for instance, I separated essay and interviews into their own categories. I have a daily blog. And I created two categories — one for my photography and one for my other obsessions such as fountain pens and inks.
As to using a different platform, I have toyed with the idea, but I don’t because I am so familiar with WordPress. Plus, I am friends with Matt Mullenweg and he does good tech support, when I run into a problem. No seriously, though I like what Ghost is doing. I think WP could learn a lot from them in how to seamlessly go between email publishing and blog publishing. On email front, I love what Buttondown.Email is doing. I highly recommend them over Substack or any other large entity because they are independent.
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?
I don’t monetize my blog. I don’t look at stats. I don’t care about traffic. I don’t want to put any ads on my blog — and the reason is that through the luck of the draw and my good fortune, I have been able to make a decent living and can afford to spend a few hundred bucks a year on my blog. For me, Om.co is my homestead on the web, where people come to either get to know me better, learn about things I have learned about, or generally be part of my community. I am on the other end of the whole blog cycle. Almost like I have come a full circle. I had started Gigaom as a means of expression at that time, and then it became a business, and well, here I am again.
As for supporting others — I have subscriptions to about half a dozen newsletters (not tech), and a whole bunch of small and indie publications. I love supporting the small media, but don’t have time for establishment media outlets. I don’t much care for some of the larger blogs as well. And same goes for the larger YouTubers and podcasts. You need to catch them early — that’s when they really are pure and hustling to serve the reader.
Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?
I don’t know if I have a must read blog any more — there are many, that I love. If you were to twist my arm, I would say Arun Venkatesan has a low key blog at Arun.is. I like his “design” centric approach and intentionality. I also love Last Word On Nothing, a really great group blog by bunch of science writers. It is fantastic.
Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?
Well, this is a good one. I love a photography-focused podcast, Photo Work. I am also in love with The Slowdown Podcast. I highly recommend using Readwise as a replacement for Pocket. It is very good. And my current favorite desktop tool is MacWhisper — it is basically transcription on the desktop and not having to share all your audio with others. I love creating voice memos and using it to transcribe, and then ideating with it on Lex or one of the other AI-enhanced editing tools.
This was the 38th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Om. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
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This Map Lets You See How School Segregation Has Changed in Your Hometown
date: 2024-05-17, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The new interactive tool accompanies a study of school enrollment data, which shows that segregation has worsened in recent decades
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/school-segregation-interactive-map-180984360/
China’s government props up property sector
date: 2024-05-17, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: The Chinese government says it will buy up millions of unsold homes across the country in a major intervention in the property market. The move come as the sector’s continuing slump threatens the whole economy. Also on today’s program: Students across Europe are demanding their universities cut financial and institutional ties with Israel, and Sir Paul McCartney becomes the first billionaire British musician.
Marketplace is currently tracking behind target for this budget year — that means listeners like you can make a critical difference by investing in our journalism today.
Jay Kamat / rmsbolt - A supercharged godbolt embedded in Emacs
date: 2024-05-17, from: Tilde.news
http://gitlab.com/jgkamat/rmsbolt
Taiwan’s foreign minister says China and Russia are supporting each other’s ‘expansionism’
date: 2024-05-17, from: Associated Press, World News
Russia and China helped each other expand their territorial reach, and democracies must push back against authoritarian states that threaten their rights and sovereignty, Taiwan’s outgoing foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
https://apnews.com/article/joseph-wu-taiwan-interview-russia-china-492fbd5e896ae3231de5f3fbf3c93012
AWS to pump billions into sovereign cloud for Germany
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It’ll own the datacenters, but keep data and employees local
AWS is to invest €7.8 billion in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud in Germany and make the first AWS Region in the State of Brandenburg available to all customers by the end of 2025.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/aws_sovereign_cloud_germany/
America’s Entire Energy Story in a Single Oregon Canyon
date: 2024-05-17, from: Heatmap News
On a stormy May evening in 1882, approximately 10 gigawatts of electricity split from the sky above southeastern Oregon and struck a cattleman named Hiram Leslie as he approached his camp on the Owyhee River.
Leslie’s horse died instantly; Leslie did not. Legend has it the pioneer survived for six days after the lightning strike — his brain pulsing and visible through his cleaved-open skull — only to finally expire in his bed back in the boomtown of Silver City, Idaho. Dugout Gulch, an 8-mile canyon near the ranchers’ camp that contains some of the most jaw-dropping scenery in all of Oregon state, was renamed in Leslie’s honor. One can’t help but wonder, though, whether the decision to rechristen also came from some nervous sense of deference to the land.
Today, Silver City is a ghost town, and Leslie’s grisly demise is relegated to a single sentence on a Bureau of Land Management sign lining the way down to a boat ramp that passing F-150s don’t bother braking to read. But the tremendous power and possibility of the Owyhee watershed has never been less in dispute — or, perhaps, more in jeopardy.
The Owyhee (pronounced “oh-why-hee,” an old spelling of “Hawaii” in honor of more doomed explorers) is a 7 million-acre ecoregion that runs through Oregon’s southeasternmost county, Malheur, though it spreads as far east as Idaho and as far south as Nevada. On Google Maps, it looks like a big blank space; the core of the Canyonlands is crossed by just three paved roads. In fact, it’s the largest undeveloped region left in the Lower 48. On a resource management map, the area reveals itself to be a complicated patchwork of BLM, tribal, state, Forest Service, and privately owned lands, as well as a smattering of quasi-protected “Wilderness Study Areas” and “Land with Wilderness Characteristics” that exist at the whims of Congress. The region contains many of the materials and geographic features necessary for the clean energy transition, making one of the most pristine regions in the state also potentially one of its most productive.
But it can’t be both.
In person, it’s easy to see why the area has excited developers. Towering river canyons inspire dreams of pumped storage hydropower. There has been talk of constructing a second geothermal plant in the area, and uranium mining has intermittently returned to the conversation. Gold and silver claims stud the hillsides, a testament to the presence of metals that, amongst other things, are used for making electric vehicle circuit boards and solar panels. Draw a line through the region’s gentler northern sagelands and you’ve plotted the proposed, much-needed Boardman-to-Hemingway transmission route to bring hydropower from Washington state to Boise, one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. And just outside the Owyhee watershed, to the west, is the upper edge of the McDermitt Caldera, a shockingly remote volcanic depression where there is said to be enough concentrated lithium to build 40 million electric vehicles.
Even Leslie Gulch, with its weekend crowds from Boise and recent Instagram Reels virality, is “quietly open to mining,” Ryan Houston, the Bend-based executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, told me when I met him in the Canyonlands last month.
Courtesy
of the Oregon Natural Desert Association.
Amid all this frenzy, Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, local Shoshone-Paiute tribal leaders, and a large coalition of regional and national conservation groups are working to close off 1.1 million acres of the most ecologically important land to the development nipping at its edges. Their hope is that Congress will designate four “units” in Malheur County, including the upper and lower Owyhee, as a single federally protected wilderness area — a pipe dream, given the partisan dysfunction of the current House of Representatives. The more realistic alternative is for President Biden to swoop in with the Antiquities Act and make it a new national monument.
Such an action would be in keeping with Biden’s 30x30 executive order to conserve 30% of U.S. land and water by 2030. It could also be perceived as clipping the wings of the kinds of clean energy projects his administration has proudly touted and funded.
Potential land-use conflicts like these are part of why conservation goals and the current green building movement are often portrayed as incompatible, or at least in tension. But “conservation and clean energy build-out aren’t necessarily opposing forces,” Veronica Ung-Kono, an attorney and clean energy transmission policy specialist at the National Wilderness Federation, told me. “They’re just forces that have to figure out how to interact with each other in a way that makes sense.”
No one is more aware of this than the campaigners I spoke with in Oregon. “For us as an organization, something we’re pushing ourselves on is, ‘How do we say yes to where solar and wind should be?’ Rather than just, ‘No, not there, not there, not there,’” Houston, the organizer at ONDA, which is helping to manage the monument campaign, said by way of example. Later, he told me that by setting aside 1.1 million acres for an Owyhee Monument, the conservationists essentially say that the remaining 75% of the local BLM district is open for all other possible uses.
“We’re not closing off vast swaths of the high desert to renewable energy,” he said. “What we’re doing is protecting the best of the best, so we can focus on other types of development — like renewable energy or off-road-vehicle play areas — in places where it’s most appropriate.”
To better understand the land-use issues in Malheur County, I traveled to Boise last month to attend what’s called a lek, when sage grouse gather to perform their mating rituals. The visit was organized by the NWF, which is supporting the monument push with ONDA. On the appointed day, I left my airport hotel at 3:30 a.m., crossed the state line on a two-lane highway during what I later learned was the height of mule deer migration season, and followed a poorly marked gravel road literally off the map on my phone (which, for good measure, had no reception).
It was so dark in the Owyhee that I felt more like I was rattling across the bottom of the ocean than an actual terrestrial landscape. I repeatedly mistook the full moon for oncoming headlights whenever it briefly appeared from behind the hills, and at random intervals, my car would drop into shallow streams I didn’t see coming until I was already in them. As I approached Succor Creek Campground, the designated meeting spot, I became aware that I was being hemmed in by canyon walls — perceptible only as a blackness even blacker than that of the night sky. When I finally spotted the headlamp of Aaron Kindle, NWF’s director of sporting advocacy, my overriding sense of the Owyhee Canyonlands was that they were bumpy.
Needless to say, I had absolutely no idea at the time that I had driven directly beneath what might one day become the Boardman-to-Hemingway transmission line.
The B2H, as it’s known, would be a nearly 300-mile, 500-kilovolt interstate line to send hydroelectric power generated in Washington State down to Boise. The project has become a textbook example of the permitting woes facing transmission projects in America, however. “By the time we build this, B2H is not only going to be old enough to vote, it’s going to be old enough to go to a bar and have a drink,” Adam Richins, the senior vice president and chief operating officer of Idaho Power, the electric utility that serves southern Idaho and eastern Oregon, told me.
Richins likes to joke, but the B2H’s halting progress makes him weary. More than 18 years of environmental reviews, permitting revisions, archeological and cultural studies, siting headaches, and landowner protests have plagued the planning and implementation of the transmission line, which Idaho Power owns jointly with another northwest utility, PacifiCorp. (Set to break ground this fall, B2H recently stalled again due to a scandal involving an affiliated consulting firm’s work on an unrelated project.) Originally conceived as a way to help Idaho Power meet its clean-energy goals during the summer and winter peaks that follow the region’s agricultural calendar, “I will say now that if we don’t get some of these transmission lines permitted on time, it’s possible we’re going to have to look at other resources such as natural gas,” Richins said.
Though some early plans for the B2H would have seen it cut straight through the boundaries of a future Owyhee monument, the current proposal keeps the transmission path safely outside the existing Wilderness Study Areas that surround Lake Owyhee, the reservoir at the center of what could become the “Lower Owyhee Unit.” (Somewhat confusingly, the Owyhee River flows north into the Snake River, meaning its “upper” watershed is actually to the south.)
That’s not a coincidence. The monument proposal almost entirely consists of parcels pre-designated as Lands with Wilderness Characteristics and Wilderness Study Areas, both of which are managed by the BLM and exist in a kind of limbo until Congress decides what to do with them. “If you’re a developer of solar, wind, pump storage, whatever, you’re not going to put your project in an area that’s in a quasi-protected status because that makes it extremely hard to develop,” Houston said. In other words, it’s not that the monument boundaries were drawn to avoid projects like the B2H; they were drawn to “protect the most important areas, and the most important areas have been in this quasi-slash-temporary protected status for a long time.”
Still, the transmission lines wouldn’t be entirely out of sight. The planned B2H route crosses close to the scenic northern mouth of the Owyhee Canyon before it makes its southeast turn toward Succor Creek and the Idaho border, where I’d driven across its path. More to the point, any future monument designation would mean that if permitting reform actually happens and America begins a transmission-building boom, power lines connecting the various substations of the Northwest would have to go around it, requiring diversions of 50 miles or more. Richins told me that as far as Idaho Power goes, though, “I haven’t seen anything [in the monument proposal] that has made me overly concerned.”
So far, Biden’s team hasn’t given any indication of its thinking about an Owyhee Monument, even as it has picked up the pace on conservation efforts elsewhere. Eight other national monument campaigns are also competing for attention from a friendly administration that is by no means guaranteed to remain in office next year; these include efforts to conserve California’s Chuckwalla, which would create a contiguous wildlife corridor between Joshua Tree National Park and the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, and Colorado’s Dolores Canyons, which have both ecological and Indigenous cultural importance. “We have shared with [the administration] our binder of support and all of our petition signatures — we’ve got like 50,000 petition signatures, and hundreds and hundreds of letters — and they have said, ‘Thank you, the Owyhee is on our radar, we’ve known about it for a long time, we are tracking it, we are following it,’” said Houston.
There were rumors in the conservation community before Biden expanded two California monuments just a couple of weeks ago, meaning Owyhee organizers might get a tip-off if or when the administration makes up its mind. But November draws closer every day, and the grapevine has stayed silent. Still, after previously thwarted attempts to protect the Owyhee in 2016, 2019, and 2022, organizers think they’ve negotiated a workable compromise: The monument proposal as it currently stands is less than half the size of an earlier, more contiguous 2.5-million-acre proposal Houston and other conservationists preferred. But it also means that much more land is available for green development.
Even some of the more controversial renewable energy projects in the area have been able to move forward. On the lone stretch of shoreline on Lake Owyhee that doesn’t fall within the monument proposal, Utah-based developers are exploring the construction of a pumped storage hydropower facility. Proponents say the technology is a solution for the intermittency concerns of solar and wind since the facilities pump water from a lower reservoir to a higher one during off-peak hours, then release the water to spin turbines and generate electricity during times of high demand — effectively, a kind of massive hydroelectric battery.
Pumped storage projects require very particular geographic conditions, namely steep slopes of 1,000 feet or more, to give the water enough gravitational potential energy to work. “You have to choose your sites carefully — there are bad places to propose doing pumped storage and there are great places,” Matthew Shapiro, the CEO of rPlus Hydro, the company behind the exploration project, told me.
Lake Owyhee, with its high plateaus, is one of 11 promising sites across the country rPlus Hydro has picked out. “We were looking at a site with about 1,600 feet of vertical drop and a very large existing lower reservoir, meaning we would only have to build an upper,” Shapiro said. The proximity to the existing Midpoint-Hemingway-Summer Line and the future Boardman-Hemingway line is also appealing since it would mean rPlus Hydro would only have to build a short transmission line from the site.
There are environmental concerns about pumped storage, including its possible effect on trout below the Owyhee Dam (which, despite being a Hoover Dam prototype when it was built in 1932, does not produce hydroelectricity but instead stores water for the local irrigation district). While there might be petitions, protests, and siting issues yet, rPlus Hydro’s pumped storage project will “do whatever it does entirely independent” of the Owyhee monument protection efforts, Houston said.
Other strange alliances abound. The local ranching community, for one, is largely on board with the Owyhee Monument proposal — a minor miracle given that this corner of Oregon is also home to the wildlife refuge that was infamously occupied for 41 days by the Bundy brothers in 2016. The current monument proposal intentionally excludes any lands that would have overflowed into the more combative neighboring jurisdiction, where conservation efforts might have ignited a national-headline-making backlash.
“We don’t want the ranchers to be so pissed off that the first thing they do is go to the Trump administration” to appeal for a reversal, Houston said. The Owyhee monument is designed, in other words, to fly under the radar, lest it become another political tennis ball ricocheting between presidents like Bears Ears.
It’s designed to fly under the radar when it comes to clean energy projects, too. Houston and others were adamant that they don’t oppose the projects encircling the core conservation area — climate change, after all, is one of the biggest threats to the Owyhee, which is one of the fastest warming places in the entire county. Still, it was clear in conversations that the proposals are also spurring some of their urgency. “It’s about protecting what you have left,” is how Kindle, the NWF advocate I met at the Succor Creek Campground, put it to me.
More to the point, Houston told me that the lithium mining abutting what would become the Owyhee Monument’s westernmost unit, Oregon Canyon Mountains, is “a reminder of what can happen” if conservationists don’t act fast enough.
“You can see he is missing like four tail feathers. That one must be a fighter — and got his ass kicked.” Skyler Vold, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife employee with the delightful title of “sage-grouse conservation coordinator,” stepped aside from the scope so I could check out the avian incarnation of Rocky Balboa.
The light was finally coming up over the Owyhee, but it was still so cold that my toes were starting to numb in my boots. That wasn’t what had my attention, though: At one point, Vold counted nearly two dozen sage grouse, all thumping away in the low point between two hills where they’d gathered for the lek. Kindle also spotted a lone elk on a faraway hillside, and we later heard the call of a sandhill crane, but the funny little birds with their spiky agave-leaf tails had us all enraptured.
No single creature better encapsulates the land-use fights in the West than the sage grouse. In 2018, the Trump administration stripped the birds of protections in order to open 9 million acres of the McDermitt Caldera to drilling and mining — mainly for lithium. While the Biden administration is considering new protections for sage grouse, of which there are only about 800,000 left and for whom the caldera is prime habitat, it has also dumped money into building up a domestic lithium supply chain. Sourcing lithium at home, however, will likely require access to McDermitt’s deposits.
Much of the caldera is located in Nevada, but the top rim bumps up into Oregon. It’s in this northernmost crescent that the Australian company Jindalee is considering opening its lithium mine. While the team told me it is still many years (and many environmental reviews) away from actually breaking ground, Jindalee’s executives also stressed that they see themselves as a critical player in America’s clean energy future if or when they do so.
“There’s a huge elephant in the room, which is: Where’s this lithium supply going to come from?” Ian Rodger, the Jindalee Lithium CEO, told me. The answer so far has been mainly from China, where lithium is “processed under really different social and environmental standards,” he said. “Our aspiration for the [Oregon] project is to develop it in the most responsible way.”
Simon Jowitt, an economic geologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, told me Rodger’s argument has a lot of merit. Social and environmental conditions are indeed “a lot better here than they would be in other countries,” he said, meaning that if we don’t extract the metals and minerals we’re going to use anyway locally, “then what we’re doing is we’re shipping problems away elsewhere.” There is ongoing discussion and division in the local Paiute and Shoshone Tribe about the economic and environmental pros and cons of mining near their community, as well.
The fact remains, however, that “as a human race, we need these metals and minerals if we want to do something meaningful about climate change mitigation,” Jowitt added. That requires stomaching a potentially sizeable physical footprint, especially in the case of lithium mining.
“If we are all going to go to electric vehicles by 2050,” Jowitt said, then that’s great — but policymakers and the public also “need to realize that there’s a mineral cost of this.”
Conservationists are quick to point out that mining laws in the U.S. — which have barely changed since Hiriam Leslie’s time — are stacked so in favor of the claimants that there is often no chance to get a word in edgewise. “Mining sure as heck trumps a funny chicken that goes ‘womp womp,’” is how Houston put it — a fair description of the sage grouse mating ritual. In the strange game of land-use rock-paper-scissors, mining also trumps cattle, which is why some local ranchers have approached the Protect the Owyhee organizers to unite against the miners. (There are slight differences in protections depending on whether the Owyhee is made a wilderness area by Congress or a monument by Biden; the latter option can’t be as prescriptive about flexible grazing operations for ranchers, which is why, on the whole, the ranching community strongly prefers a legislative route.)
Most of the would-be monument is outside the McDermitt Caldera, but the fear isn’t so much that any one transmission project or hydro facility or lithium mine would “ruin” the Owyhee. “Everyone says, ‘Well, why do you have to protect it? Is there a threat?’” Houston said. “There are potential threats; people have been talking about different things like interstate highways or transmission or new mines. If we wait until those threats are real, then we’ve got a conflict, and then everyone’s going to say, ‘Well, why didn’t you protect it before?’”
Ironically, some fear that a formal monument designation will draw attention from the crowds that are loving to death other popular parks across the West. Standing in Leslie Gulch, where the red blades of rhyolite rock strongly resemble plates on the back of an enormous Stegosaurus, I sympathized with the impulse to gatekeep the landscape; driving from one remarkable site to the next, we’d barely seen another car all day. That’s changing regardless of whether the Owyhee is signposted as a destination in name or not: Chris Geroro, a local fly fisher who’s been guiding on the Owyhee River for 16 years, said he’s gone from “being the only person on the river to being one of the people on the river.”
The landscape certainly leaves an impression. “You go over this hill and then all of a sudden, boom! You’re in this amazing canyon,” he told me, describing the reaction of his out-of-town clients when they visit. “I just watch their jaws drop and the surprise of ‘Where did this come from? This is an hour outside of Boise?’” Those people then go home and post pictures, and more people understandably want to visit. A monument could help address the currently mostly unmanaged recreation.
But if Biden declines to move forward on protecting the Owyhee and an indifferent or actively hostile administration takes office in January, then the Oregon Natural Desert Association will have to switch strategies. Houston told me his team is already considering alternative approaches like pursuing a wilderness designation through the legislative branch. If, in a worst-case scenario, Trump decides to go after the land in the Owyhee, ONDA is prepared to go to court.
As we were leaving Leslie Gulch, Houston told me that he studied to be an evolutionary biologist. “What evolutionary biology is all about is understanding how species evolve based on what they have at that moment. They go forward with what they’ve got,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing in conservation — we’re going forward with what we’ve got.”
When it finally came time for me to return to Boise, I retraced the route I’d taken that morning into Succor Creek. The light was fading, but there was still enough for me to make out the hoodoo rock towers and the rolling sagebrush hills that I’d missed in the dark on my way into the canyon. To my surprise, enormous high-tension transmission towers also came into view; I’d driven beneath them hours before without even realizing it. Now, the silver power lines — future companions of the B2H — looked gossamer in the setting sun.
I parked to take a photo, and when I got out of the car, I felt a staticky tingle, like how a storm might excite the hairs on your arm. It was probably just a Placebo effect of standing under transmission lines and having spent the day thinking about electricity. But at that moment, I would have believed it was the passing ghost of an old cattleman glaring in my direction or perhaps the presence of something yet to come, something buzzing with potential, slung over my head.
I returned to my car and continued on to the highway. Soon, houses and small towns started to reappear, and I followed their lights through the dark back to Boise.
https://heatmap.news/economy/owyhee-canyonlands-monument-biden
Aviary: A New NASA Software Platform for Aircraft Modelling
date: 2024-05-17, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has created a new digital modelling tool for aeronautical engineers to innovate new aircraft designs, building on decades of experience using highly advanced computer code for aviation. Using this tool, researchers can create simulations of conceptual aircraft featuring never-flown technology and receive detailed data about how it would work. Named “Aviary” for enclosures where […]
https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/aviary-software-overview/
Toshiba to shed 4,000 jobs as part of revitalization plan
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Over-50s to get early retirement offer
Toshiba says it will cut up to 4,000 jobs within Japan, a number that accounts for six percent of the company’s national workforce, by offering early retirement packages.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/toshiba_to_shed_4000_jobs/
Raspberry Pi Pico W taught this car to avoid objects
date: 2024-05-17, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
An obstacle-avoiding robot car might sound like one of the trickier Raspberry Pi builds you can attempt, but Karam Haddad makes it look easy peasy
The post Raspberry Pi Pico W taught this car to avoid objects appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-w-taught-this-car-to-avoid-objects/
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-05-17, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
I’m really curious what my dad would have thought about the student protests for Palestine. He was at Kent State when the shootings happened. He was in a class with John Filo, who took the famous photo of Mary Ann Vecchio. But the last few years of his life he was slipping further and further into Fox News’ black hole. I like to blame it on the disease; it was killing his brain piece-by-piece after all. I can’t be sure, though.
Still, imagining this man with his collection of Kent State documents and histories in our basement growing up now being faced with students protesting genocide. The right-wing is seething and police are being brought in to break up the protests. The rhetoric is so familiar, it must have been able to trigger something in him, right? I would have liked the opportunity to have that talk.
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/112455524857393685
curl, Tor, dot onion and SOCKS
date: 2024-05-17, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
You can of course use curl to access hosts through Tor. (I know you know Tor so I am not going to explain it here.) SOCKS The typical way to access Tor is via a SOCKS5 proxy and curl has supported that since some time during 2002. Like this: curl –socks5-hostname localhost:5432 https://example.com or curl … Continue reading curl, Tor, dot onion and SOCKS
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/05/17/curl-tor-dot-onion-and-socks/
Lords of May-hem: Seven signs it is Oracle’s year end
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
How to handle sales pressure and licensing ‘negotiations’ to make sure it plays to your advantage
Feature You might be able to tell what time of year it is by the blossom on the trees or bluebells in the woods. But for Oracle customers stuck in an office somewhere, there is another way of knowing that it’s May without consulting a calendar.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/oracle_year_end_feature/
When an old, dear friend passes
date: 2024-05-17, from: Robert Reich on Substack
In appreciation
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/when-an-old-dear-friend-passes
Computer sprinkled with exotic chemicals produced super-problems, not super-powers
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The machine was so dead, hospital staff treated it like a corpse
On Call The Register knows that tech support people are heroes. That’s why each Friday we offer a new installment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column featuring your stories of dutifully and selflessly taking on the endless and thankless challenge that is tech support.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/on_call/
FLTK 1.4.x Weekly Snapshot (master)
date: 2024-05-17, from: Fast Light Tool Kit
A new weekly snapshot of FLTK 1.4.x (master) is now available
https://www.fltk.org/articles.php?L1922
Today in SCV History (May 17)
date: 2024-05-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1993 – Dale Poe, 61, developer of Stevenson Ranch, dies in car crash. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-may-17/
Tesla Model 3 Performance price hiked $1k again, under a month after release
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
The refreshed Model 3 Performance was released on April 23, but less than a month after release it’s having its price hiked again, for a second time.
Putin says Russia wants a buffer zone in Ukraine’s Kharkiv but has no plans to capture the city
date: 2024-05-17, from: Associated Press, World News
Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow’s offensive on Ukraine’s Kharkiv aims to create a buffer zone but that there are no plans to capture the city.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-news-5-17-2024-ce31e2e73cbb8dd59aa73baa6cd87d68
Webcurios 17/05/24
date: 2024-05-17, from: Web Curios blog
Reading Time: 38 minutes Do you ever get the feeling, maybe, that you perhaps don’t quite have the same…checks and balances as other people? That perhaps your moral compass is somewhat askew? I ask only as a I did a thing this week which involved standing up in front of people and talking about Things I Did In The…https://webcurios.co.uk/webcurios-17-05-24/
Severe storms kill at least 4 in Texas, knock out power to 900,000
date: 2024-05-17, from: VOA News USA
HOUSTON — Fast-moving thunderstorms pummeled southeastern Texas on Thursday for the second time this month, killing at least four people, blowing out windows in high-rise buildings, downing trees and knocking out power to more than 900,000 homes and businesses in the Houston area.
Officials urged residents to keep off roads, as many were impassable and traffic lights were expected to be out for much of the night.
“Stay at home tonight. Do not go to work tomorrow, unless you’re an essential worker. Stay home, take care of your children,” Houston Mayor John Whitmire said in an evening briefing. “Our first responders will be working around the clock.”
The mayor said four people died during the severe weather. At least two of the deaths were caused by falling trees, and another happened when a crane blew over in strong winds, officials said.
Streets were flooded, and trees and power lines were down across the region. Whitmire said wind speeds reached 160 kph, “with some twisters.” He said the powerful gusts were reminiscent of 2008’s Hurricane Ike, which pounded the city.
Hundreds of windows were shattered at downtown hotels and office buildings, with glass littering the streets below, and the state was sending Department of Public Safety officers to secure the area.
“Downtown is a mess,” Whitmire said.
There was a backlog of 911 calls that first responders were working through, he added.
At Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros, the retractable roof was closed due to the storm. But the wind was so powerful it still blew rain into the stadium. Puddles formed on the outfield warning track, but the game against the Oakland Athletics still was played.
The Houston Independent School District canceled classes Friday for some 400,000 students at all its 274 campuses.
The storm system moved through swiftly, but flood watches and warnings remained for Houston and areas to the east. The ferocious storms moved into neighboring Louisiana and left more than 215,000 customers without power.
Flights were briefly grounded at Houston’s two major airports. Sustained winds topping 96 kph were recorded at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
About 900,000 customers were without electricity in and around Harris County, which contains Houston, according to poweroutage.us. The county is home to more than 4.7 million people.
The problems extended to the city’s suburbs, with emergency officials in neighboring Montgomery County describing the damage to transmission lines as “catastrophic” and warning that power could be impacted for several days.
Heavy storms slammed the region during the first week of May, leading to numerous high-water rescues, including some from the rooftops of flooded homes.
https://www.voanews.com/a/deadly-texas-storms/7615841.html
Hart district officially lays off 24 teachers
date: 2024-05-17, from: The Signal
The William S. Hart Union High School District governing board officially approved the layoffs of 24 teachers who will no longer be employed by the district at the end of […]
The post Hart district officially lays off 24 teachers appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/hart-district-officially-lays-off-24-teachers/
May 16, 2024
date: 2024-05-17, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Seventy years ago, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. That landmark decision declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Brown v. Board was a turning point in American history.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-16-2024
Deputies seek help finding teen missing from Agua Dulce
date: 2024-05-17, from: The Signal
News release Palmdale detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are asking for the public’s help locating an at-risk missing juvenile, Brianna Covert. She is a 17-year-old girl who […]
The post Deputies seek help finding teen missing from Agua Dulce appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/deputies-seek-help-finding-teen-missing-from-agua-dulce/
US arrests American and Ukrainian in North Korea-linked IT infiltration scheme
date: 2024-05-17, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — U.S. prosecutors on Thursday announced the arrests of an American woman and a Ukrainian man they say helped North Korea-linked IT workers posing as Americans to obtain remote-work jobs at hundreds of U.S. companies.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said the elaborate scheme, aimed at generating revenue for North Korea in contravention of international sanctions, involved the infiltration of more than 300 U.S. firms, including Fortune 500 companies and banks, and the theft of the identities of more than 60 Americans.
A DoJ statement said the overseas IT workers also attempted to gain employment and access to information at two U.S. government agencies, although these efforts were “generally unsuccessful.”
An earlier State Department statement said the scheme had generated at least $6.8 million for North Korea. It said the North Koreans involved were linked to North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department, which oversees development of the country’s ballistic missiles, weapons production, and research and development programs.
An indictment filed in federal court in Washington last week and unsealed on Thursday said charges had been filed against Christina Marie Chapman, 49, of Litchfield Park, Arizona; Ukrainian Oleksandr Didenko, 27, of Kyiv; and three other foreign nationals.
A Justice Department statement said Chapman was arrested on Wednesday, while Didenko was arrested on May 7 by Polish authorities at the request of the United States, which is seeking his extradition.
The State Department announced a reward of up to $5 million for information related to Chapman’s alleged co-conspirators, who used the aliases Jiho Han, Haoran Xu and Chunji Jin, and another unindicted individual using the aliases Zhonghua and Venechor S.
Court records did not list lawyers for those arrested and it was not immediately clear whether they had legal representation.
The head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Nicole Argentieri, said the alleged crimes “benefited the North Korean government, giving it a revenue stream and, in some instances, proprietary information stolen by the co-conspirators.”
The charges “should be a wakeup call for American companies and government agencies that employ remote IT workers,” she said in the statement.
It said the scheme “defrauded U.S. companies across myriad industries, including multiple well-known Fortune 500 companies, U.S. banks, and other financial service providers.”
The DoJ said Didenko was accused of creating fake accounts at U.S. IT job search platforms, selling them to overseas IT workers, some of whom he believed were North Korean. It said overseas IT workers using Didenko’s services were also working with Chapman.
Didenko’s online domain, upworksell.com, was seized Thursday by the Justice Department, the statement said.
The DOJ statement said the FBI executed search warrants for U.S.-based “laptop farms” - residences that hosted multiple laptops for overseas IT workers.
It said that through these farms, including one Chapman hosted from her home, U.S.-based facilitators logged onto U.S. company computer networks and allowed the overseas IT workers to remotely access the laptops, using U.S. IP addresses to make it appear they were in the United States.
The statement said search warrants for four U.S. residences associated with laptop farms controlled by Didenko were issued in the Southern District of California, the Eastern District of Tennessee, and Eastern District of Virginia, and executed between May 8 and May 10.
North Korea is under U.N. sanctions aimed at cutting funding for its missile and nuclear weapons programs and experts say it has sought to generate income illicitly, including through IT workers.
Confidential research by a now-disbanded U.N. sanctions monitoring panel seen by Reuters on Tuesday showed they had been investigating 97 suspected North Korean cyberattacks on cryptocurrency companies between 2017 and 2024, valued at some $3.6 billion.
The U.N. sanctions monitors were disbanded at the end of April after Russia vetoed renewal of their mandate.
A research report from a Washington think tank in April said North Korean animators may have helped create popular television cartoons for big Western firms despite international sanctions.
Microsoft offers China-based engineers an option to relocate
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Office could be decimated with around 800 offers reportedly made
Microsoft is said to have offered up to 800 China-based employees the chance to relocate to the US, Australia, New Zealand, or Ireland.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/microsoft_china_staff_relocate/
China sets goal for local carmakers to get a quarter of their chips domestically by 2025
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Yet another technological self-sufficiency target for China
The Chinese government says the country’s car manufacturers should aim for a quarter of their chips to be sourced from China-based foundries by 2025.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/china_sets_goal_for_local/
Pressure grows for Netanyahu to make postwar plans for Gaza
date: 2024-05-17, from: VOA News USA
white house — International and domestic pressure is mounting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to establish a strategic endgame for the Israel-Hamas war that would tie Israeli military gains to a political solution for the Palestinian enclave.
In his harshest public rebuke yet to Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant gave televised remarks Wednesday, urging the prime minister to make “tough decisions” on postwar Gaza at whatever political cost. Gallant warned Israelis that inaction will erode war gains and put the nation’s long-term security at stake.
Gallant criticized Netanyahu for his lack of postwar plans to replace Hamas rule.
“Since October, I have been raising this issue consistently in the Cabinet and have received no response,” he said.
Gallant’s comments echoed earlier remarks by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who told reporters Monday that Israel had yet to “connect their military operations” to a political plan on who will govern the Palestinian territory once fighting ends.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the message Wednesday, saying Israel needs a “clear and concrete plan” for the future of Gaza to avoid a power vacuum that could become filled by chaos.
Gallant ruled out any form of Israeli governance of postwar Gaza, saying that the territory should be led by “Palestinian entities” with international support, a position that has been long supported by the Biden administration.
The administration would not confirm it coordinated Gallant’s statements with those of its top officials.
“I’m not going to speak to timing. I’m not going to give an analysis on it,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response to VOA’s question during her briefing on Thursday.
“We’ve made our point,” she added, underscoring ongoing conversations with the Israeli government.
A senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters said the administration shares Gallant’s concern that Israel has not developed any plans for holding and governing territory that the Israel Defense Forces have cleared, thereby allowing Hamas to regenerate in those areas.
“Our objective is to see Hamas defeated,” the official said in a statement sent to VOA.
Netanyahu focuses on destroying Hamas
Netanyahu maintains that postwar planning is impossible without first destroying Hamas.
While his government and Washington agree that Hamas cannot continue to run Gaza, they differ on who should be in charge after the war that began with the militant group’s October 7 cross-border attack on Israel.
“We do not support and will not support an Israeli occupation,” Blinken reiterated Wednesday.
Gallant’s statement reflects comments by other current and former Israeli officials and frustration of a war-weary Israeli public, said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine at the International Crisis Group.
“It’s not surprising. It’s not new,” she told VOA. “But I think it’s reaching an inflection point for certain people in the government, because the hostage deal and cease-fire is at an impasse because decisions are not being made about how much longer this war is going to go.”
Netanyahu told reporters Thursday he is planning to summon his defense minister for “a conversation” following Gallant’s public criticism.
Chances of cease-fire faint
Meanwhile, prospects for a cease-fire deal appear dim since talks in Cairo broke down earlier this month.
“Any efforts or agreement must secure a permanent cease-fire, a comprehensive pullout from all of the Gaza Strip, a real prisoner swap deal, the return of the displaced, reconstruction and lifting the blockade,” Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said Wednesday.
Israel has so far refused to provide any commitment to end its military campaign in Gaza. So fundamentally, the strategic endgames of the warring parties are “almost as far as possible from each other,” said Nimrod Goren, senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute.
The mediators — the United States, Egypt and Qatar — don’t see any way forward at the moment, Goren told VOA, even as reaching a cease-fire deal “becomes more urgent, not only because of Gaza, but because of Lebanon.”
Cross-border bombardments between Israel and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed group, have escalated since Israel’s campaign in Gaza, displacing tens of thousands of people along Israel’s border with Lebanon.
While a comprehensive and permanent truce may be out of reach at this point, there is yet hope to accomplish the first phase of the cease-fire deal that is currently structured under three phases, Goren said.
Put simply, that means a six-week pause in fighting, a swap of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails, and an increase in humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza.
However, a longer-term cease-fire has not appeared viable since negotiations began.
“There’s just been mutually exclusive demands,” Zonszein said. “Hamas wants an end to the war and full withdrawal of [Israeli] troops, and Israel’s not willing to do that.”
Israel also wants Hamas completely dismantled and its leaders killed, while Haniyeh declared Wednesday that he would reject any proposal that excludes the group’s role in postwar Gaza.
US still seeks 2-state solution
As bleak as immediate prospects may appear, the Biden administration is keeping its eye on the long-term political horizon: the two-state solution — the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Sullivan is traveling to Saudi Arabia this weekend to further talks on securing a major agreement that would see Riyadh establishing diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv, a key element to achieving the two-state solution.
Normalization with the leading Sunni kingdom would likely lead to diplomatic recognition of Israel from other Arab countries and Muslim-majority countries in other parts of the world.
At the same time, Sullivan is set to urge Israel to refrain from an all-out ground invasion of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. Washington believes a wider operation in Rafah would threaten a normalization deal with the Saudis.
“Israel’s long-term security depends on being integrated into the region and enjoying normal relations with the Arab states, including Saudi Arabia,” Sullivan said Monday.
He said he will be meeting with Israeli officials “in a matter of days” and signaled that the U.S. expects Israel will not move into Rafah until then.
Last week, the IDF launched what it calls a “targeted operation” in eastern Rafah, even as the Biden administration announced it is pausing the shipment of 3,500 massive-sized bombs for fear that Israel might use it in the densely populated city.
Natasha Mozgovaya contributed to this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/pressure-mounts-on-netanyahu-on-gaza-postwar-plans/7615778.html
Lawmakers debate US role in Israel-Hamas war
date: 2024-05-17, from: VOA News USA
The Republican-majority U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would force President Joe Biden to send arms to Israel to aid its fight against Hamas. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports from Capitol Hill.
https://www.voanews.com/a/lawmakers-debate-us-role-in-israel-hamas-war-/7615774.html
How OpenAI Stole Google’s Thunder
date: 2024-05-17, from: Om Malik blog
OpenAI strategically overshadowed Google’s AI ambitions that it announced at I/O. In doing so, it showed the contrasting approaches to the AI race and Google’s challenges when it comes to public perception.
https://om.co/2024/05/16/how-openai-stole-googles-thunder/
Baidu’s robotaxi division to wheel into profit next year
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Expansion set for Wuhan. Chances this will go smoothly?
Chinese tech giant Baidu expects its robotaxi unit, Apollo Go, to be profitable next year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/apollo_go_profitable/
US, Niger discuss US troop withdrawal
date: 2024-05-17, from: VOA News USA
US and Nigerien leaders continued high-level talks Friday on plans to withdraw all American military forces from the country, a US military official told VOA. Our Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has more on how the withdrawal affects the counterterror mission in the region.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-niger-conclude-high-level-talks-on-us-troop-withdrawal/7615415.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Supreme Court Justice Alito’s House Displayed a ‘Stop the Steal’ Flag After Jan. 6.
Daimler Trucks to invest $40 million in Portland engineering center
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
Daimler Truck North America (DTNA) announced plans to invest more than $40 million in a new electric vehicle engineering facility at its Swan Island headquarters in Portland.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/daimler-trucks-to-invest-40-million-in-portland-engineering-center/
Santa Clarita Summer Library Reading Program Seeks Volunteers
date: 2024-05-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The annual Summer Reading Program is back at the Santa Clarita Public Library. This year’s theme is “Read, Renew, Repeat.” During the seven-week summer program, residents are encouraged to read a variety of books and/or participate in crafts or activities
https://scvnews.com/santa-clarita-summer-library-reading-program-seeks-volunteers/
Schiavo’s Legislation Moves Forward, Bills Advance to Assembly Floor
date: 2024-05-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
California State Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, representing the 40th Assembly District which includes the Santa Clarita Valley, has announced six out of her nine bills that were placed on the Assembly Appropriations Committee suspense file have advanced to the Assembly floor.
https://scvnews.com/schiavos-legislation-moves-forward-bills-advance-to-assembly-floor/
UC Academic Workers Authorize Strike as UC Santa Barbara Encampment Enters Third Week
date: 2024-05-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Workers Union vows to stand with students in solidarity with Gaza in push for divestment; UC President’s Office calls the strike “illegal.”
The post UC Academic Workers Authorize Strike as UC Santa Barbara Encampment Enters Third Week appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
State of the terminal
date: 2024-05-17, from: OS News
It’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve begun to dig deep into the inner workings of how terminal emulators, and the applications that run inside of them, really work. I’ve learned that there is a lot of innovation and creative problem solving happening in this space, even though the underlying technology is over half a century old. I’ve also found that many people who use terminal based tools (including shells like Bash and editors like Vim) know very little about terminals themselves, or some of the modern features and capabilities they can support. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the problems that terminal based applications have historically had to deal with (and what the modern solutions are) as well as some features that modern terminal emulators support that you may not be aware of. ↫ Gregory Anders I don’t use the terminal much – usually just to update my systems – but on occasion I’ve had to really sit down and explore them more than usual, especially now that my workstation runs OpenBSD, and the depth and breadth of features, options, and clever tricks they possess is amazing. Over the past half century they’ve accumulated a lot of features along the way, and even though its unlikely to ever be for me, I can somewhat begin to appreciate why some people just tile a bunch of terminals on their screens and do all their computing that way. I grew up with MS-DOS and Windows 3.x and later, so I’m just too attached to my mouse and pretty icons to switch to a terminal lifestyle, but over the years I’ve seen some pretty amazing terminal applications, from Mastodon clients to complex mail applications and web browsers, and you can be sure none of them steal your data or show you ads. Maybe the terminal people are right after all.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139712/state-of-the-terminal/
Lilbits: Winamp is going open source, Sony Xperia 1 VI launched, Hackbat is like a DIY Flipper Zero, and AAEON Nezha is an Intel N97 single-board PC
date: 2024-05-17, from: Liliputing
Winamp was one of the most popular music players for Windows PCs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But things went downhill after AOL acquired the company and wound up largely abandoning it for years. Then a company called Radionomy bought Winamp (and the associated Shoutcast streaming service) in 2014, eventually changed its name […]
The post Lilbits: Winamp is going open source, Sony Xperia 1 VI launched, Hackbat is like a DIY Flipper Zero, and AAEON Nezha is an Intel N97 single-board PC appeared first on Liliputing.
$39,199 Bobcat zero turn electric lawnmower is ready for summer
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
Bobcat revealed a new, commercialized version of its battery-powered ZT6000e zero-turn electric lawnmower that promises up to eight hours of continuous runtime.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/39199-bobcat-zero-turn-electric-lawnmower-is-ready-for-summer/
Issue 10 – May 2024
date: 2024-05-17, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Letter from the Editor Staff Highlight Statistics of sentiments: How Asian Americans feel Liberating collectively: Committed to Uplifting Intersectionality Media Querencia – Cantando – Matador Marquee Persistent protection: The inventor…
https://sundial.csun.edu/182059/print-editions/issue-10-may-2024/
Pedego Moto puts the ‘fun’ in functional transportation
date: 2024-05-17, from: Electrek Feed
Pedego announced a slew of big new bikes this month, and we got to try out our favorite, the Pedego Moto. This brawny, two-person, class 2/3 beast leaves its competitors in the dust in so many ways. As Micah would say, “Let’s check it out…”
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/pedego-moto-puts-the-fun-in-functional-transportation/
Cutting up shoes to measure their footprint
date: 2024-05-17, from: Max Halford Blog
Our mission at Carbonfact is to measure the environmental impact of clothes. This involves a lot of steps. The main one is to determine what materials a product is made of, along with each material’s mass. This is straightforward for most clothes like jumpers and pants. These are typically made of a single fabric, such as cotton or polyester. The mass of each material is roughly the same as the product’s mass.
https://maxhalford.github.io/blog/cutting-up-shoes/
UC Santa Barbara Production of ‘Indecent’ Charts the History of an Incendiary Drama
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Play is deeply rooted in Jewish culture and political upheaval.
The post UC Santa Barbara Production of ‘Indecent’ Charts the History of an Incendiary Drama appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Wildlife Photographer Ian Shive Brings Faraway Experiences Back Home
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The award-winning Santa Ynez filmmaker and photographer highlights two decades of his work and a new project in his own backyard.
The post Wildlife Photographer Ian Shive Brings Faraway Experiences Back Home appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Tesla must face fraud suit for claiming its cars could fully drive themselves.
Crims abusing Microsoft Quick Assist to deploy Black Basta ransomware
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Spoiler alert: it’s not really IT support controlling your device
A cybercrime gang has been abusing Microsoft’s Quick Assist application in social engineering attacks that ultimately allow the crew to infect victims with Black Basta ransomware.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/microsoft_quick_assist_crime/
Frinj Coffee Declares Bankruptcy to Restructure
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The pioneering Santa Barbara coffee growing and roasting company files for Chapter 11 and is also being sued by investor-employee.
The post Frinj Coffee Declares Bankruptcy to Restructure appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/16/frinj-coffee-declares-bankruptcy-to-restructure/
Persistent protection: The inventor of the N95 mask
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
The N95 respirator mask is one of the best, most readily available methods of protecting against airborne illnesses, and its Taiwanese American inventor, Peter Tsai, has been a dedicated engineer…
https://sundial.csun.edu/181703/print-editions/persistent-protection-the-inventor-of-the-n95-mask/
Protesters disrupt Google conference over Israel AI contract
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
Protesters disrupted Google’s annual conference this week over the tech giant’s deal providing artificial intelligence and other services to the Israeli government. Matt Dibble reports from Mountain View, California. Camera: Matt Dibble.
https://www.voanews.com/a/protesters-disrupt-google-conference-over-israel-ai-contract/7615385.html
An off-grid solar tracker powers this EV charging station
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has installed an off-grid solar tracker EV charging station for its employees.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/an-off-grid-solar-tracker-powers-this-ev-charging-station/
Virtual Boy: the bizarre rise and quick fall of Nintendo’s enigmatic red console
date: 2024-05-16, from: OS News
Nearly 30 years after the launch of the Virtual Boy, not much is publicly known about how, exactly, Nintendo came to be interested in developing what would ultimately become its ill-fated console. Was Nintendo committed to VR as a future for video games and looking for technological solutions that made business sense? Or was the Virtual Boy primarily the result of Nintendo going “off script” and seizing a unique, and possibly risky, opportunity that presented itself? The answer is probably a little bit of both. As it turns out, the Virtual Boy was not an anomaly in Nintendo’s history with video game platforms. Rather, it was the result of a deliberate strategy that was consistent with Nintendo’s way of doing things and informed by its lead creator Gunpei Yokoi’s design philosophy. ↫ Benj Edwards and Jose Zagal at Ars Technica I’ve never used a Virtual Boy, and in fact, I’ve never even seen one in real life. It was mythical object when I was not even a teenager yet, something we read about in gaming magazines in The Netherlands. We didn’t really know what it was or how it worked, and it wasn’t until much later, in the early YouTube age, that I got to see what using one was actually like in the countless YouTube videos made about the device. It seems it caused quite a few headaches, was cumbersome to use, had very few games, and those that were sold ended up collecting dust pretty quickly. In that sense, it seems not a lot has changed over the past thirty years.
Winamp to “open up” its source code
date: 2024-05-16, from: OS News
Winamp has announced that on 24 September 2024, the application’s source code will be open to developers worldwide. Winamp will open up its code for the player used on Windows, enabling the entire community to participate in its development. This is an invitation to global collaboration, where developers worldwide can contribute their expertise, ideas, and passion to help this iconic software evolve. ↫ Winamp press release Nice, I guess, but twenty years to late to be of any relevance. At least it’ll be great for software preservation. But what’s up with the odd language used in the press release, and the weirdly specific date that’s month from now? They really seem to want to avoid the term “open source”, which makes me think this is going to be one of those cases where they hope the community will work for them for free without actually using a real open source license. You know, those schemes that always – no exception – fail.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139715/winamp-to-open-up-its-source-code/
Garcia applauds House passage of bipartisan Israel bill
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Signal
News release Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, voted in favor of H.R. 8369, the Israel Security Assistance Support Act, which passed the House on a bipartisan basis Thursday. This […]
The post Garcia applauds House passage of bipartisan Israel bill appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/garcia-applauds-house-passage-of-bipartisan-israel-bill/
NASA Earns Best Place to Work in Government for 12 Straight Years
date: 2024-05-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA was named Thursday as the 2023 Best Place to Work in the Federal Government – large agency – for the 12th year in a row by the Partnership for Public Service. The title serves as a reflection of employee satisfaction with the workplace and functioning of the overall agency as NASA explores the unknown […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-earns-best-place-to-work-in-government-for-12-straight-years/
AT&T formalizes deal for space-based cellular service on unmodified mobiles
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
AST still only has a single test satellite in orbit, so don’t hold your breath
Not to be outdone by Starlink and T-Mobile, AT&T and AST SpaceMobile have finalized a deal to eventually bring a space-based connectivity option to AT&T, too. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/att_ast_satellite_calls/
Public Health Confirms Measles Case in Los Angeles County
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has been notified of one case of measles in a non-Los Angeles County resident who traveled to Los Angeles International airport while infectious on May
https://scvnews.com/public-health-confirms-measles-case-in-los-angeles-county/
Pedal to the metal: Santa Clarita hosts annual Bike to Work Challange
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Signal
Leah Becker usually commutes to work by car, but on Thursday morning her routine was a bit different. Becker borrowed a friend’s bike and met with a group at Valencia […]
The post Pedal to the metal: Santa Clarita hosts annual Bike to Work Challange appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/pedal-to-the-metal-santa-clarita-hosts-annual-bike-to-work-challange/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Kia is testing an electric pickup in the US.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/kia-testing-electric-pickup-in-us-video/
Oklahoma saddles up bill of rights for crypto wranglers and miners
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Bitcoin cowboys now have guaranteed freedoms
Oklahoma’s governor has signed a bill into law defining legal rights for one of the most marginalized groups in the US – cryptocurrency holders.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/oklahoma_crypto_bill_of_rights/
Celebrate Series: South Korea
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Signal
K-pop, rhythmic drum sounds and colorful Hanboks were among the many things people could see at the Canyon Country Community Center last week for the second installment of the city […]
The post Celebrate Series: South Korea appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/celebrate-series-south-korea/
Air Force instructor pilot dies after ejection seat activates during ground operations
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Signal
By Aldgra Fredly Contributing Writer An instructor pilot in the U.S. Air Force died from injuries sustained after the ejection seat of his plane activated during ground operations at Sheppard Air […]
The post Air Force instructor pilot dies after ejection seat activates during ground operations appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Age of AI Ambiguity.
https://om.co/2024/05/16/the-age-of-ai-ambiguity/
Ushers Needed for Mission Opera’s ‘Merry Widow: Madonna’
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Mission Opera is looking for volunteers for front of the house at the performances of the “Merry Widow: Madonna” June 6-
https://scvnews.com/ushers-needed-for-mission-operas-merry-widow-madonna/
Is There a Somewhere Over the Rainbow for Santa Barbara?
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Economist confab concludes you can’t get there from here. Really?
The post Is There a Somewhere Over the Rainbow for Santa Barbara? appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/16/is-there-a-somewhere-over-the-rainbow-for-santa-barbara/
June 4: Old West Masonic Lodge #813 Dinner Meeting
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Old West Masonic Lodge #813 19310 Avenue of The Oaks, Newhall, CA 91321 will host dinner and meeting for those interested in learning about freemasonry and the history of the lodge
https://scvnews.com/june-4-old-west-masonic-lodge-813-dinner-meeting/
A New Leonardo da Vinci Biopic Is Coming to the Big Screen
date: 2024-05-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The film will be an adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s biography of the Renaissance painter, scientist and inventor
Slovak prime minister shot, in life-threatening condition
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Signal
By Jack Phillips Contributing Writer Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, was shot Wednesday following a government meeting, according to his office. A reporter with TASR said that several shots were fired […]
The post Slovak prime minister shot, in life-threatening condition appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/slovak-prime-minister-shot-in-life-threatening-condition/
The Forged Apple Employee Badge
date: 2024-05-16, from: Cobel Sasser’s blog
Here’s a quick and cautionary tale. This eBay auction, spotted by Eric Vitiello, immediately caught my eye: Wow. Someone was selling Apple Employee #10’s employee badge?! What an incredible piece of Apple history! Sure, it’s not Steve Jobs’ badge (despite the auction title), but there are only so many of these in the world — especially […]
https://cabel.com/2024/05/16/the-forged-apple-employee-badge/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-16, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Another milestone achieved!
Godot on iPad debugging, both Godot and the target game can now run simultaneously and be interacted with:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112452843492787711
Gas Utility Misadventures in Neighborhood Electrification
date: 2024-05-16, from: Heatmap News
Natural gas utilities spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on pipelines and related infrastructure — costs they typically recoup from ratepayers over the course of decades. In the eyes of clean energy advocates, these investments are not only imprudent, but also a missed opportunity. If a utility needs to replace a section of old pipeline at risk of leaking, for example, it could instead pay to electrify all of the homes on that line and retire the pipeline altogether — sometimes for less than the cost of replacement.
Utilities in climate-leading states like New York and California, under the direction of their regulators, have started to give this a shot, asking homeowners one by one if they want to electrify. The results to date are not especially promising — mainly because any one building owner can simply reply “no thanks.” The problem is that, legally, utilities don’t really have any other option.
All states have anti-discrimination laws that require utilities to provide service to anyone who requests it, known as the “obligation to serve.” Utilities have long exploited these statutes to justify spending on gas infrastructure — but now that they are pursuing alternatives to that increased spending, the same provisions are holding them up. To avoid investing in a section of the gas system that requires expensive maintenance, for example, a utility would need to get 100% of the customers served by that section off gas. It only takes one customer with an attachment to their gas stove to derail a whole project.
As long as it’s illegal to take away someone’s gas stove, there won’t be any way to plan an orderly transition off gas. And that’s a problem because the scattershot, incentives-based transition that’s happening now — where early adopters are grabbing subsidies for heat pumps and induction stoves — is a recipe for vast inequity.
“If random homes are being taken off the gas system, the entire gas infrastructure continues to need to stay in place, and it needs to be paid for and maintained and reinvested in,” Nicole Abene, the senior New York legislative and regulatory manager for the Building Decarbonization Coalition, told me. “What you’re doing is leaving the people remaining on the gas system to pay for the entire system.”
A report published in early May by National Grid, which operates both gas and electric companies in New York and Massachusetts, and the clean energy nonprofit RMI, chronicles how poorly efforts to implement “non-pipeline alternatives,” where utilities try to electrify homes instead of further investing in the gas system, have gone. It says that in one case, National Grid offered to pay the full cost of installing geothermal heating systems for 19 customers in rural upstate New York in order to avoid performing system upgrades. Just five showed interest, and only three moved forward with the installations. In another case, the company contacted nearly 400 New York customers by phone about the potential to electrify their homes in order for the company to avoid replacing leak-prone pipes. Only 149 responded, and just 18 expressed interest.
PG&E, in California, has seen slightly more success. Between 2019 and 2021, it approached 124 customers to negotiate agreements to disconnect their gas and convert them to electrified heating and cooking so that the company could decommission sections of the system. After spending more than $3 million on outreach, it got 68, or 55% of the customers to sign contracts. It has since signed up at least 37 more building owners for the program and decommissioned 22 miles of pipeline as a result.
I asked Mike Henchen, a principal on the carbon-free buildings team at RMI and one of the authors of the report, why we should trust any of this data. It doesn’t seem like there’s much incentive for the utilities to try that hard, I said. They could simply mail out a pamphlet, and then come back to regulators and say, “Well, we asked and they didn’t respond.”
Henchen had a few thoughts on this. For one, these companies have all made public commitments to decarbonization and showed at least some support for reducing gas consumption to help achieve state climate goals. “They’ve got to back that up and show that they’re serious,” he said. “I think it’s also true that within these companies, real humans are being tasked at their job to go do these projects. Those people, regardless of what the utility business model is, want to see success from their efforts.” Plus, regulators are also stepping up their oversight.
In New York, utilities have to report back to regulators on their efforts, providing a window into how aggressively they have conducted outreach. Last year, Con Edison, which also provides gas and electric service in the state, pursued 65 projects to avoid replacing risky gas infrastructure like leak-prone pipes through electrification. Public filings say that the company first tried mailing brochures to the buildings that explained the benefits of electrification, along with a letter explaining how the program would work if they opted in and including the program manager’s business card. Then Con Edison sent emails to the building owners once a month for three months. It also met in person with customers, though it did not say how many. After reaching out to the owners of the more than 150 buildings that would be affected, only five agreed to cooperate.
The filings also outlined why customers declined to participate, with the number one reason being that they had either recently installed a new gas stove or simply preferred gas cooking. Other concerns raised included worries about higher electric bills and vulnerability to power outages.
Henchen said that utilities are only just getting started learning how to sell electrification to customers, and there’s a lot of ideas about how to improve, including working with community partners and engaging with local contractors.
But outreach is just one piece of the puzzle. The bigger obstacle is the law. The exhaustingly named “Strategic Pathways and Analytics for Tactical Decommissioning of Portions of Gas Infrastructure in Northern California” report, written by several California-based energy research firms, notes that despite PG&E’s more than 100 successful conversions, each project has been relatively small and low-impact. That’s because the company has not been able to convince clusters of customers larger than five at a time to convert.
Lawmakers have started to act. In March, Washington State passed a law amending its statute, allowing gas companies to meet their obligation to serve by providing “thermal energy” through a network of geothermal heating systems.
Massachusetts legislators are considering a bill that would change the official definition of a “gas company,” adding that it can be a corporation organized for the purpose of selling “utility-scale non-emitting renewable thermal energy.” The bill would also change the obligation to serve to be inclusive of that definition.
In New York, where the current statute calls gas, among other energy sources, “necessary for the preservation of the health and general welfare,” a bill called the HEAT Act would strike the word “gas” altogether and allow utilities to discontinue service as long as a replacement plan has been approved by the utility commission. California is also considering similar legislation.
New York’s HEAT bill cleared the State Senate earlier this year. The Assembly refused to include the proposal in the state budget, but could still bring it to the floor before the legislative session closes in early June. Though neither Con Edison nor National Grid has come out swinging publicly for the bill, both companies have expressed support for many of the policies in it, including ending the obligation to serve. In the new report with RMI, National Grid concedes that changing the statute is necessary — and that not doing so threatens to balloon costs for customers.
“Utilities’ obligation to connect new gas customers upon request will require the construction of new gas infrastructure regardless of whether the expansion is economically viable,” it says. “This policy challenge requires designing a new process to enable projects driven by community needs or system economics rather than individual customer opt-in.”
In other words, without changes, these laws that were designed to prevent inequality could end up exacerbating it.
https://heatmap.news/lifestyle/natural-gas-obligation-to-serve
Datacenters looking to renewables, nuclear, and gas, in quest for more power
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Bit barns might end up adding to the grid’s capacity
Even before the AI revolution (or bubble) took off in 2023, datacenters already used a decent amount of electricity. And the industry’s increasing appetite for machine learning will require even more power.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/datacenter_power_demands/
Electric Car Charger Vandalism Continues To Surge Nationwide
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
Criminals are targeting Tesla Superchargers and other charging infrastructure in Texas, California, Minnesota and around the world.
https://insideevs.com/news/719834/tesla-supercharger-copper-cables-vandalized/
New immigration court plan aims to speed removal of some new migrants
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is creating a new process aimed at cutting the time it takes to decide the fates of newly arrived migrants in immigration courts from years to roughly six months at a time when immigration is increasingly a concern among voters.
Under the initiative announced Thursday, single adult migrants who have just entered the country and are going to five specific cities would have their cases overseen by a select group of judges with the aim of having them decided within 180 days.
That would mark a vastly quicker turnaround time than most cases in the country’s overburdened immigration system, which can average four years from beginning to end. And by deciding the cases faster, authorities can more quickly remove people who don’t qualify to stay.
But it’s unclear how many migrants would go through this new docket, raising questions about how effective it will be. The details were laid out by senior administration officials during a call with reporters Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with guidelines set by the administration.
The new docket will be in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. The officials said those cities were chosen because judges there had some availability to hear the cases and because they were big destination cities for migrants.
Right now, when migrants arrive, particularly families, they are almost always released legally into the country, where they wait out their asylum court dates in a process that takes years.
Detractors say this essentially serves as an impetus for migrants to come because they know they’ll be able to stay in America and often work while they’re here. The longer they’re in the United States and have established families or community ties, the more opposition there is to eventually send them back to their home country.
The goal of quickly processing migrants who have just arrived is that by swiftly sending new arrivals back who don’t qualify to stay, it sends a message to other people thinking of migrating north that they can’t count on living in America for years while their case plays out in court.
A record 3 million cases right now are clogging the nation’s immigration court. There are roughly 600 judges. The plan announced Thursday would not include money for more judges.
A bipartisan border agreement endorsed by President Joe Biden earlier this year offered funding for 100 new immigration judges and aides. But Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, urged fellow Republicans to kill the deal, and it quickly died.
The administration has tried for years to move more new arrivals to the front of the line for asylum decisions, hoping to deport those whose claims are denied within months instead of years. The Obama and Trump administrations also tried to accelerate the process, going back to 2014. In 2022, the Biden administration introduced a plan to have asylum officers, not immigration judges, decide a limited number of family claims in nine cities.
June 1: Santa Clarita Master Chorale Presents ‘Seasons of Song’
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Master Chorale, under the direction of Musical Director Allan Robert Petker, will present “Seasons of Song” on Saturday, June 1 at 7 p.m.
https://scvnews.com/june-1-santa-clarita-master-chorale-presents-seasons-of-song/
Volvo doubles down on data with telematics and carbon footprint reporting
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
Volvo Construction Equipment (CE) is putting data at the heart of its decarbonization efforts as it invests in advanced telematics and beefs up its carbon footprint reporting.
May 21-22: Registration for City Seasons Summer Programs Begins
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Online registration will begin May 21-22 for classes offered by the city of Santa Clarita Parks and Recreation Department
https://scvnews.com/may-21-22-registration-for-city-seasons-summer-programs-begins/
Google gives in to Hong Kong, blocks fake national anthem on YouTube
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Disappointed’ by court’s decision, video platform owner is complying, considering appeal
Google has complied with a May 8th order from a Hong Kong court to ban the pro-democracy protest song often mistaken for a national anthem, “Glory to Hong Kong,” by blocking 32 videos on YouTube.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/google_blocks_hongkong_anthem/
Variety Names CalArts a 2024 ‘Film School Titan’
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Entertainment trade publication Variety recently released its 2024 ranking of the top film schools in North America, with California Institute of the Arts named a “Film School Titan.” The “Titan” designation places CalArts among the top five film schools on the continent
https://scvnews.com/variety-names-calarts-a-2024-film-school-titan/
Meet Andy Vawer at ROUGOL – 20th May
date: 2024-05-16, from: RiscOS Story
The RISC OS Developments programmer behind Pinboard2, the Wi-Fi drivers, and more Since its inception, with the original aim of producing a web browser, there have been a lot of good news coming out of RISC OS Developments Ltd (ROD) – from the browser itself, Iris (albeit still in testing and not yet ready for public release), taking on ownership of the operating system and releasing it under a truly open licence, and much more, including development of additional software. Some of that other software – such as Pinboard2, a…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/rougol-20th-may-andy-vawer/
The X Window System and the curse of NumLock
date: 2024-05-16, from: OS News
Ordinary modifiers are normally straightforward, in that they are additional keys that are held down as you type the main key. Control, Shift, and Alt all work this way (by default). However, some modifiers are ‘sticky’, where you tap their key once to turn them on and then tap their key again to turn them off. The obvious example of this is Caps Lock (unless you turn its effects off, remapping its physical key to be, say, another Ctrl key). Another example, one that many X users have historically wound up quietly cursing, is NumLock. Why people wind up cursing NumLock, and why I have a program to control its state, is because of how X programs (such as window managers) often do their key and mouse button bindings. ↫ Chris Siebenmann I always have an applet in my KDE panel that shows me if I have any sticky modifiers enabled without realising it. On some of my keyboards, this isn’t always easily noticable, especially when you’re focused on what’s happening on your display. A little icon that only shows up when a sticky modifier is engaged solves this problem, as it immediately stands out in your peripheral vision.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139713/the-x-window-system-and-the-curse-of-numlock/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Albert Wenger: "We urgently need a 'proof of humanity' system that really scales, is truly decentralized and fully open source."
https://twitter.com/albertwenger/status/1790719673354318325
Action Sports Legend Travis Pastrana Is Trying To Rebuild His Body Through Stem Cells
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
After years of injuries, something had to change for the former stunt rider.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719969/travis-pastrana-stem-cells-motorcylist/
Some Dinosaurs Evolved to Be Warm-Blooded 180 Million Years Ago, Study Suggests
date: 2024-05-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers studied the geographic distribution of dinosaurs to draw conclusions about whether they could regulate their internal temperatures
Tesla Model 3 Spied Testing With No Mirrors, Unusual Camera Placement
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
Is this a robotaxi mule, or is Tesla planning to swap mirrors for cameras and screens in future production cars?
https://insideevs.com/news/719948/tesla-robotaxi-cameras-mule-spied/
Russia sees ‘window of opportunity’ as Ukrainian forces await US weapons
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
LONDON — Russian forces are expanding their attacks on Ukrainian border settlements close to the northeastern city of Kharkiv, opening up a new front in the war, as Kyiv struggles to hold off a renewed Russian offensive.
Speaking Thursday on a visit to Kharkiv, where he held a meeting with senior military leaders, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the situation remained “extremely difficult” and that his forces were strengthening their presence in the region.
With U.S. and European weapons finally due to arrive on the front lines in the coming weeks, can Ukraine hold back Moscow’s invading troops?
Kharkiv offensive
Mobile units of Russian troops are attempting to capture Ukrainian villages including Vovchansk and Lyptsi, which lies 30 kilometers north of Kharkiv.
Ukraine has fired missiles from the border region into Russia, including deadly strikes on the Russian city of Belgorod. Moscow wants to stop the attacks, said defense analyst Patrick Bury of Britain’s Bath University.
“There’s multiple reasons, I think, why Russia would try something here: obviously to create a buffer zone, but also to test the defenses and see what’s going on. But the way (Russian forces) are set up — and the amount of troops that they have, maybe 30,000 to 40,000, not that much armor, attacking in small groups of infantry — it doesn’t really suggest that they’re trying to sort of encircle Kharkiv or anything like that,” Bury told VOA.
Russian advance
Kyiv said Thursday its defensive moves had slowed the speed of Moscow’s advance. Russian attacks are likely to continue, said analyst Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Russia’s aim is not to achieve a grand breakthrough, but rather to convince Ukraine that it can keep up an inexorable advance, kilometer by kilometer, along the front,” Watling wrote in an email to VOA.
“Having stretched the Ukrainians out, the contours of the Russian summer offensive are easy to discern. First, there will be the push against Kharkiv. Ukraine must commit troops to defend its second largest city and given the size of the Russian group of forces in the area, this will draw in reserves of critical material, from air defenses to artillery.”
“Second, Russia will apply pressure on the other end of the line, initially threatening to reverse Ukraine’s gains from its 2023 offensive, and secondly putting at risk the city of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine should be able to blunt this attack, but this will require the commitment of reserve units,” Watling added.
Western weapons
Ukrainian forces are still waiting for the bulk of the weapons deliveries under the United States’ $60 billion aid package that was finally passed last month, after a six-month delay.
“The United States aid is crucial, so the unfortunate pause in the delivery of arms had a significant impact on the situation at the front and this is what we are seeing now,” said Ukrainian lawmaker Serhii Rakhmanin, a member of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security.
Ukraine says Russian jets and missiles are easily able to attack their positions, before infantry move in. Kyiv has repeatedly asked for more air defense systems, especially U.S.-made Patriot missiles. Germany has agreed to supply two Patriot batteries to Ukraine, and it’s reported that the U.S. is also working on supplying another unit.
The weapons will start to arrive in the coming weeks, analyst Patrick Bury said.
“The U.S. has pre-positioned stocks of stuff in Germany, for example, and also has strategic airlift so it can move stuff quickly over (from the US) should it need to,” he said.
“But it will take some time to be producing the number of shells that Ukraine needs at the moment, and they’re outgunned at about at least five or six to one at the moment by Russian shells,” he added.
Mobilization
Last month, Ukraine passed a mobilization bill to address a shortage of personnel. RUSI’s Watling said Russia had amassed a force of 510,000 troops.
“This means that Russia has established significant numerical superiority over the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” he said.
The next three months will be crucial for Ukraine, according to lawmaker Rakhmanin.
“The Russians currently have a window of opportunity. The power of Ukrainian Armed Forces has decreased, and Russians feel it. They have amassed quite a sufficient amount of resources — weapons, ammunition, manpower and now they are trying to use up a maximum of their reserves. They are trying to spread our forces thin across the entire front line,” Rakhmanin told Reuters Wednesday.
Bleak outlook
Can Ukraine and its Western allies turn the tide of the war?
“The chances of them taking back significant territory now in the medium term seem to be slipping away,” said analyst Bury. “Unless there’s some sort of step change in Western support — a large force-generation package and a long-term strategy for what success looks like — none of which at the moment are forthcoming, then I think Ukraine stays on the defensive and holds what it has,” he said.
RUSI’s Watling agrees: “The outlook in Ukraine is bleak. However, if Ukraine’s allies engage now to replenish Ukrainian munitions stockpiles, help to establish a robust training pipeline, and make the industrial investments to sustain the effort, then Russia’s summer offensive can be blunted, and Ukraine will receive the breathing space it needs to regain the initiative.”
US reveals proposal to loosen restrictions on marijuana
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-reveals-proposal-to-loosen-marijuana-restrictions/7615206.html
Safari 17.5
date: 2024-05-16, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/safari-17-5/
Old Hollywood glamour sizzles at National Portrait Gallery exhibit
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
He captured the most famous faces in 1930s and early ’40s cinema — Garbo, Crawford, Bogart and Gable. Now the work of George Hurrell, one of Hollywood’s greatest portrait photographers, is on display at Washington’s National Portrait Gallery. For VOA News, Cristina Caicedo Smit has the story. Videographer: Hakim Shammo; Video editor: Cristina Caicedo Smit
You Can Get $9,000 Off A Kia EV6 Right Now
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
All EV6s qualify for $7,500 off, but you can also get a stackable $1,500 discount on select models in inventory.
https://insideevs.com/news/719960/kia-ev6-may-2024/
Tesla self-driving claims parked in court
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Judge gives green light to lawsuit over autonomous ambitions
Tesla is facing a lawsuit over claims made about its self-driving technology after a US judge rejected the company’s motion to dismiss the case.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/tesla_selfdriving_lawsuit/
The British Royals’ Huge Staff Once Included Exotic Cat Wranglers, Rat Killers and Toilet Attendants
date: 2024-05-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new exhibition in London offers an inside look at the lives of the workers who served the monarchy between 1660 and 1830
Honda plots $65 billion investment to build seven new EVs as it looks for a comeback
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
Honda is done standing by while rivals like Tesla and BYD steal market share. To stay competitive, Honda is doubling its investment in EVs to $65 billion (10 trillion yen) through 2030. The plans include slashing costs and launching seven new electric models.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/honda-plots-huge-65-billion-investment-build-seven-new-evs/
Problems With App Store Bundles
date: 2024-05-16, from: Michael Tsai
Jeff Johnson: The first thing I tried was to create yet another new Mac App Store bundle that included Link Unshortener, StopTheMadness, and StopTheMadness Pro. It took a number of days for Apple to review and approve the bundle, just like with the upgrade bundles, as I complained about in the previous blog post. At […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/16/problems-with-app-store-bundles/
Web-Only Apple Music Features
date: 2024-05-16, from: Michael Tsai
Apple: Apple Music today announced the release of its 100 Best Albums of all time, a celebratory list of the greatest records ever made, crafted by Apple Music’s team of experts alongside a select group of artists, including Maren Morris, Pharrell Williams, J Balvin, Charli XCX, Mark Hoppus, Honey Dijon, and Nia Archives, as well […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/16/web-only-apple-music-features/
Emoji History: The Missing Years
date: 2024-05-16, from: Michael Tsai
Matt Sephton (tweet): During my research into vintage Japanese drawing software, I came across some devices that had built in sketch or handwritten memo functions. I bought a couple of them to see if they did anything cool or interesting. These sorts of devices are pre-internet, so there’s not much about them online, and they […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/16/emoji-history-the-missing-years/
Delta’s 10-Year Journey to the Top of the App Store
date: 2024-05-16, from: Michael Tsai
David Pierce: On this episode of The Vergecast, Testut joins the show to tell us the full Delta story. He describes his early attempts at building emulators, the first time he almost made it onto the App Store, the process of building the alternative app store AltStore, what it was like to watch regulators around […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/16/deltas-10-year-journey-to-the-top-of-the-app-store/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Dan Rather interviews Ringo Starr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqqpcWKOgEY
Matador Marquee: Asian American films
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
May is special due not only to April showers bringing May flowers, but also due to it being Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Asian Americans have a rich…
https://sundial.csun.edu/181644/print-editions/print-stories/matador-marquee-asian-american-films/
Russia sees ‘window of opportunity’ as Ukrainian forces await US weapons
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
Russian forces are expanding their attacks on Ukrainian border settlements close to the northeastern city of Kharkiv, opening up a new front in the war. With U.S. and European weapons finally due to arrive on the front lines in the coming weeks following delays, can Ukraine hold back Moscow’s invading troops? Henry Ridgwell has more
NASA, European Space Agency Unite to Land Europe’s Rover on Mars
date: 2024-05-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) announced Thursday they signed an agreement to expand NASA’s work on the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover, an ESA-led mission launching in 2028 that will search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet. With this memorandum of understanding, the NASA Launch Services Program will procure a U.S. commercial […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-european-space-agency-unite-to-land-europes-rover-on-mars/
Orcas Sink 50-Foot Yacht Off the Coast of Morocco
date: 2024-05-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The vessel’s two passengers were evacuated onto an oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar. The incident marks the fifth vessel the mammals have sunk in recent years
Rhode Island & Connecticut’s 704 MW Revolution Wind achieves first ‘steel in the water’
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
The 704-megawatt (M) Revolution Wind, Rhode Island and Connecticut’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm, just hit a major milestone.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/rhode-island-connecticut-revolution-wind/
US Supreme Court rejects bid to gut consumer protection bureau
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the funding mechanism for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is constitutional, fending off a conservative attack on the agency.
The vote in the nation’s high court was 7-2, with four conservative justices siding with the three liberals and two conservatives dissenting.
The CFPB was created by Congress in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and serves as a watchdog over a variety of consumer issues ranging from mortgages to credit cards to student loans.
The plaintiffs in the case — payday lending groups — had argued that the funding structure for the agency was unconstitutional.
The CFPB receives its funding, currently around $600 million a year, from the U.S. Federal Reserve instead of through annual appropriations from Congress.
The case ended up in the Supreme Court after conservative judges on a lower court ruled the funding mechanism violated the appropriations clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the power of the purse to Congress.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion, disagreed.
“Under the Appropriations Clause, an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes,” Thomas said. “The statute that provides the bureau’s funding meets these requirements. We therefore conclude that the bureau’s funding mechanism does not violate the Appropriations Clause.”
President Joe Biden welcomed the court’s ruling, calling it an “unmistakable win for American consumers” and an agency that has “worked to protect consumers from abusive practices by lenders, servicers and special interests.”
“In the face of years of attacks from extreme Republicans and special interests, the Court made clear that the CFPB’s funding authority is constitutional and that its strong record of consumer protection will not be undone,” Biden said in a statement.
The CFPB case was one of three the court heard during its current term that challenge the regulatory authority of federal agencies when it comes to banking, business, industry or the environment.
One of the other cases stems from a requirement that herring fishermen in New England provide space onboard their vessels for observers from the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS.
Several fishing companies complained that they are being effectively forced to pay for the federal observers who are monitoring their operations.
A split appellate court ruled that the NMFS program was authorized under a 1984 Supreme Court ruling known as the “Chevron Doctrine” that says courts should defer to government agencies’ interpretation of ambiguous federal laws.
The other case on the docket would curtail the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission to adjudicate violations of federal securities laws.
The Supreme Court will issue its rulings in those cases by the end of June.
The conservative-majority court has previously ruled that the government’s key environmental agency cannot issue broad limits on greenhouse gases, sharply curtailing powers of the Biden administration to battle climate change.
Opera sings sweetly with native version for Windows on Arm
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Browser ditches x64 blues for a snappier tune
Opera has become the latest Chromium browser for Windows on Arm, fueling industry talk about Microsoft’s plans for the neglected operating system.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/opera_native_windows_arm/
The Meteor with Needle Bill
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
It’s been a good spring for hummingbirds.
The post The Meteor with Needle Bill appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/16/the-meteor-with-needle-bill/
May 17: Copper Hill Drive Road Construction
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita has issued a traffic alert for construction along Copper Hill Drive starting Friday, May
https://scvnews.com/may-17-copper-hill-drive-road-construction/
Save $600 on Rad Power e-bikes and bundles from $999, Hover-1 Instinct e-bike, Greenworks combo, and more
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
Headlining today’s Green Deals is a two-week Rad Power Memorial Day sale that is taking up to $600 off three e-bikes, while also offering free extra battery promos as well – starting with the RadRover 6 Plus High-Step Fat-Tire e-bike at $999. It is joined by a rare discount on the all-black Hover-1 Instinct Electric Bike, as well as the multi-color model, all starting from $715. And to round out the main deals, the Greenworks 48V 21-inch Cordless Self-Propelled Lawn Mower, 24V 320 CFM Leaf Blower, and a 24V 12-inch String Trimmer with two 5.0Ah batteries has fallen to $488. Plus, all the other hangover Green Deals that are still alive and well.
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.
The Hub and Heart of Goleta
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Good times in the Goodland: Girsh Park turns 25.
The post The Hub and Heart of Goleta appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/16/the-hub-and-heart-of-goleta/
How NASA Tracked the Most Intense Solar Storm in Decades
date: 2024-05-16, from: NASA breaking news
May 2024 has already proven to be a particularly stormy month for our Sun. During the first full week of May, a barrage of large solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) launched clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields toward Earth, creating the strongest solar storm to reach Earth in two decades — and […]
Plug-In Car Sales In Germany Increased 8% In April 2024
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
All-electric car sales were flat, while plug-in hybrids rebounded.
https://insideevs.com/news/719822/plugin-car-sales-germany-april2024/
Dell latest to enjoy speculative soar as AI bubble builds
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Now that traders are drinking the Kool-AI-d, companies can either fuel the hype or face the consequences
Comment Dell’s share price surged sharply on Wednesday as market analysts telegraphed their confidence in the OEM’s ability to capitalize on the AI market.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/dell_shares_soar/
The Future of Army Watercraft—What Are the Takeaways from the Voyage to Gaza?
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: RAND blog
The future of the U.S. Army watercraft program hinges on making sound, informed decisions based on a comprehensive understanding of its strategic relevance and potential. As the Army navigates these uncharted waters, it should ensure it’s steering the program in the right direction.
SIROTA’S SIGNALS: A Belated Admission About Bank Bailouts
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Lever News
Plus, a suicide crisis in college sports, and a graph that shows today’s legacy of the financial crisis.
https://www.levernews.com/sirotas-signals-a-belated-admission-about-bank-bailouts/
FY2024 TEAM II NOFO Announcement
date: 2024-05-16, from: NASA breaking news
Next Gen STEM’s Teams Engaging Affiliated Museums and Informal Institutions (TEAM II) program is pleased to announce an upcoming FY2024 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) that will expand the current program from a two-tier to a three-tier system by adding a mid-level funding tier. The NOFO is expected to be released in the third quarter […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/fy2024-team-ii-nofo-announcement/
San Marcos High School Entrepreneurship Academy Dominates Competition
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The San Marcos High School Entrepreneurship Academy (SMEA) triumphed in a Shark Tank-style competition, showcasing exceptional talent and innovation. Students
The post San Marcos High School Entrepreneurship Academy Dominates Competition appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Chevy Equinox EV deliveries kick-off with $35,000 model coming soon
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
If you’ve been waiting for the all-electric Chevy Equinox, you may be in luck. Chevy officially began Equinox EV deliveries as customers received their first electric SUVs.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/chevy-equinox-ev-deliveries-kick-off-35k-model-coming-soon/
Jeanette Gant Takes the Helm of Carpinteria Parks, Recreation, and Community Service Department
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Carpinteria, CA, May 15, 2024 – The City of Carpinteria proudly announces the appointment of Jeanet Gant as its new Parks,
The post Jeanette Gant Takes the Helm of Carpinteria Parks, Recreation, and Community Service Department appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Traffic Alert: Project Connect Utility Relocation Work Happening Now
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Project Connect construction continues. Utility relocation work is happening now and will be on-going for several weeks. Heavy traffic impacts
The post Traffic Alert: Project Connect Utility Relocation Work Happening Now appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Hernán López scores in second straight game for Earthquakes, but San Jose win streak snapped in Portland
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Quakes (3-9-1) had won three in a row to move out of last place in the 14-team Western Conference, but fell back to the bottom of the standings with the loss.
Make your Pi4 and Pinebook Pro Quake
date: 2024-05-16, from: RiscOS Story
If you’re a fan of video games in general, and first person shooters in particular, another title in that genre has been given a little attention by R-Comp – this time it’s Quake. The update builds on the 2018 release of the game, which brought boosted performance to the game when run on more modern CPUs, adding support for floating point abilities of the processors, and profiles to take advantage of the higher resolution screens, and so on. The new version builds on that, with updated profiles for higher resolutions…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/quake-update-pi4-pinebook-pro/
StreetFix poll on linguistic nomenclature
date: 2024-05-16, from: RiscOS Story
Kevin Wells is adding multi-language support to his StreetFix application, which can be used to report and check up on local issues, such as potholes, broken bollards, street lights not working, and so on. To that end, he’s running a poll on whether the choice for the language name should be in English, or specified in the language in question – for example, should Swedish be identified as that, making it obvious for English speakers, or should it be Svenska, to make it clearer to Swedish speakers? The poll was…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/streetfix-poll-language-names/
ChargePoint debuts the fiercely powerful Megawatt Charging System for electric trucks
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
ChargePoint’s (NYSE: CHPT) new Megawatt Charging System for commercial electric trucks is capable of dispensing enough energy to power around 1,000 homes.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/chargepoint-megawatt-charging-system/
Tesla’s Viral Cybertruck Vs. Porsche 911 Drag Race Was Totally Misleading
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
Tesla showed the Cybertruck beating a Porsche 911 in a drag race while towing a 911 itself. MotorTrend recreated the viral video.
https://insideevs.com/news/719959/tesla-cybertruck-porsche-911-towing/
All Oakland Ballers games will air on Bay Area radio
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Play-by-play voice Tyler Peterson will travel to the Ballers’ road games.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/16/oakland-ballers-announce-radio-broadcast-partnership/
Columbia University faculty pass vote of no confidence in President Shafik after pro-Palestinian protests
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ballots were open for a week on a highly critical resolution alleging Shafik made unilateral decisions that put students and staff in harm’s way.
SCV Residents Celebrate Holy Cross Trauma Center 40th Anniversary
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
For 40 years, Providence Holy Cross Medical Center’s trauma center in Mission Hills has been serving a wide swath of northern Los Angeles County, including the Santa Clarita Valley, treating victims of gun violence, freak accidents, hiking, biking and horseback mishaps and the 2008 Chatsworth Metrolink collision.
https://scvnews.com/scv-residents-celebrate-holy-cross-trauma-center-40th-anniversary/
Secondary cockpit barriers likely coming to all commercial planes: ‘Prevent 9/11 from ever happening again’
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Secondary cockpit barriers likely coming to all commercial planes: ‘Prevent 9/11 from ever happening again’
Tesla must face false advertising claims it misled buyers about Autopilot
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Tesla has been accused of overstating that cars would have ‘hardware needed for full self-driving capability.’
It’s Time for Dodger Baseball!
date: 2024-05-16, from: City of Santa Clarita
By Councilmember Jason Gibbs “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” – Yogi Berra April has always been one of my favorite months because year after year, it’s the sign that baseball is officially back. As a longtime Dodger fan, I have fond memories of piling into […]
The post It’s Time for Dodger Baseball! appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/05/16/its-time-for-dodger-baseball/
Wiley shuts 19 scholarly journals amid AI paper mill problems
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Fake science challenges academic publishing
US publishing house Wiley this week discontinued 19 scientific journals overseen by its Hindawi subsidiary, the center of a long-running scholarly publishing scandal.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/wiley_journals_ai/
Santa Clara County DA, public defender forewarn trouble from proposed budget cuts
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
The South Bay’s top prosecutor and chief public defender object to staffing cuts meant to help close the county’s $251 million deficit.
June 3: Friends of Santa Clarita Library Silent Book Auction
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Friends of Santa Clarita Public Library are having a silent Book Auction beginning at 9a.m. on Monday, June 3, and ending at 10 a.m. on Monday, June 10.
https://scvnews.com/june-3-friends-of-santa-clarita-library-silent-book-auction/
Watch Tesla Model Y Performance Drag Race A Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
It’s the battle of the sporty battery-powered crossovers.
https://insideevs.com/news/719910/tesla-model-s-performance-vs-hyundai-ioniq-5-n-drag-race-video/
CalArts Graduates Class of 2024
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The sunny spring day of Friday, May 10 saw a burst of sculptural flora sprouting on the stage of Graduation Courtyard at California Institute of the Arts. Designed around a botanical theme, the 2024 CalArts graduation heralded a celebration of growth and new beginnings for this year’s graduating class, many of whom began their CalArts journey during the pandemic.
https://scvnews.com/calarts-graduates-class-of-2024/
Daily Deals (5-16-2024)
date: 2024-05-16, from: Liliputing
The Epic Games Store is giving away Dragon Age: Inquisition for free this week. And if you’re looking for something to play it on, Lenovo is selling a 3.85 pound gaming laptop with a 14 inch, 2.8K OLED display, a Ryzen 7 7840HS processor and NVIDIA RTX 4060 graphics for $1015. Meanwhile, if mobile gaming […]
The post Daily Deals (5-16-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-5-16-2024/
Biden’s upcoming graduation speech roils Morehouse College, a center of Black politics and culture
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
President Joe Biden will have his most direct engagement with college students since the start of the Israel-Hamas war when he speaks at Morehouse College’s commencement.
The Commission on Presidential Debates faces an uncertain future after Biden and Trump bypassed it
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s whirlwind agreement to meet for two presidential debates has upended the way the forums have been organized for nearly four decades.
June 9: Acton Community Presbyterian Church Celebrates 100 Years
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
A commemorative ceremony will be held Sunday, June 9, at 1 p.m. to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Acton Community Presbyterian Church and the rededication of this historic church following fire damage last fall. All are welcome.
https://scvnews.com/june-9-acton-community-presbyterian-church-celebrates-100-years/
Scriptnotes, Episode 638: Lawyer Scenes, Transcript
date: 2024-05-16, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August. Craig Mazin: Oh. Oh. My name is Craig Mazin. John: And you’re listening to Episode 638 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, you can’t […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 638: Lawyer Scenes, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-638-lawyer-scenes-transcript
Now armed with AI, America’s adversaries will try to influence election, security officials warn
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Top U.S. security officials say America’s foreign adversaries will again seek to influence the upcoming U.S. elections.
I visited Ride1Up’s e-bike factory to find the secret behind good quality, low-cost e-bikes
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
I’ve been riding Ride1Up e-bikes since just about their first model. Over the many years since I first threw a leg over that bike, I’ve watched the company roll out an ever-increasing lineup of diverse e-bikes that all shared one common trend: great bang for your buck.
So when I was recently touring Asia to visit micromobility factories for a peek behind the curtain, I knew Ride1Up’s factory would be high on my list. They invited me out to join the company’s founder, Kevin Dugger, on a tour of the factory so I could see just how Ride1Up goes about ensuring they can keep the quality high and the prices low.
Amazon’s latest ‘flex’ VMs promise savings for your burstiest apps
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Sustained workloads need not apply
Updated Amazon Web Services added another set of cost-optimized instances to its EC2 lineup on Tuesday, aimed at customers whose workloads aren’t pegging the CPU 100 percent of the time.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/aws_flex_instances/
How Western Nuclear Inaction Could Embolden the Kremlin
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: RAND blog
The Kremlin might be emboldened by the weak pushback from the United States and NATO against its heightened nuclear saber-rattling, increasing nuclear dangers. NATO allies might explore more effective ways to reduce these risks.
Harrison Butker’s controversial speech: NFL distances itself from kicker’s divisive statements
date: 2024-05-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
He told the graduating women: “I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”
Pier for Gaza aid in place, US military says
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
PENTAGON — The U.S. military says a temporary pier is now anchored to the shore of Gaza, the final step in completing a sea route to distribute aid to 2 million Palestinians affected by the Israel-Hamas war.
“This morning, just a few hours ago, the pier was successfully affixed to the beach in Gaza. In the coming days, we will commence the delivery of aid,” U.S. Vice Admiral Brad Cooper told reporters Thursday.
Cooper said about 500 tons of humanitarian assistance have been loaded onto ships, with thousands of tons more ready to be added to the distribution queue once that aid is distributed.
“We are focused on flooding the zone with humanitarian assistance … to complement the provision of aid through land routes, which we know is the most efficient and effective pathway to move the necessary volume of assistance,” he said.
The new maritime corridor has several parts, with aid first undergoing inspection and security checks in Cyprus. Loads are then being taken to a U.S.-built floating platform off the Gaza coast and transferred onto trucks, with smaller boats taking the trucks to the newly anchored pier that juts out several hundred meters from the Gaza coastline.
Distribution
Each boat can transfer between five and 15 trucks to shore. Once fully operational, the pier will be able to provide about 150 truckloads of aid to Gaza per day, according to U.S. officials.
The United Nations will be in charge of receiving shipments and coordinating distribution on the ground. The arrangement is part of an effort to boost what humanitarian organizations say is a vastly insufficient amount of aid for Palestinian civilians.
“The American corridor is absolutely essential to helping meet this gap in need to address the shelter, the food, the health, malnutrition and clean water sanitation needs,” said Sonali Korde, assistant to the administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
United Nations spokesman Farhan Haq reiterated on Thursday that the maritime corridor is not the best solution.
“Getting aid to people in need into and across Gaza cannot and should not depend on a floating dock far from where needs are most acute. Land routes are the most viable, effective and efficient aid delivery method, which is why we need all crossing points to be opened,” Haq said.
Korde said the international community must continue to work on pushing more aid through all routes into Gaza.
“We’re at a point in time when this is all hands on deck. We can’t spare any effort,” she told reporters.
Haq also raised fears Thursday that without fuel on the ground in Gaza, aid workers will not be able to distribute the humanitarian assistance coming from the pier. Korde, however, told reporters that USAID expects to “have the fuel necessary” for the operation.
Aid has been slow to get into Gaza due to long backups of vehicles at Israeli inspection points. The United States and other nations have air dropped food into Gaza 38 times in recent months, but each air drop via military accounts for only about one to three truckloads of food, a U.S. official told VOA.
Aid organizations have said several hundred truckloads of food are needed in Gaza each day.
The pier’s completion was delayed for several days due to rough seas.
Security
Security for the approximately 1,000 U.S. forces building the pier and aid organizations distributing the supplies has been the paramount concern for the Pentagon since the plan’s conception, according to Cooper.
“This is a 100% humanitarian mission, and any attack on those working on it is an attack on aid for the people of Gaza,” said Cooper.
Security forces have conducted rehearsals in preparation for the commencement of operations and will continue to assess and reassess security, Cooper said.
Israel Defense Forces have dedicated a brigade of troops, along with ships and air assets, to help ensure force protection. IDF engineers prepared the beach for the temporary pier and secured it to the beach.
Israel attacked Hamas in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 terror attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and saw hundreds more taken hostage.
In the nearly seven months since the attack, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to Gazan health officials.
https://www.voanews.com/a/pier-for-gaza-aid-in-place-us-military-says/7614875.html
Carbon Copy Cloner 7.0
date: 2024-05-16, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/carbon-copy-cloner-7-0/
1Password 8.10.32
date: 2024-05-16, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/1password-8-10-32/
BBEdit 15.1
date: 2024-05-16, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/bbedit-15-1/
ACEMAGIC M2A mini PC features Intel Core Alder Lake-H processor, NVIDIA RTX 30 series graphics and a sci-fi inspired design
date: 2024-05-16, from: Liliputing
The ACEMAGIC M2A Starship is a compact desktop computer with the power of a high-performance gaming laptop from a few years ago. It supports up to a 45-watt Intel Core i9-12900H 14-core, 20-thread processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080M graphics featuring 16GB of GDDR6 memory. It’s also a weird looking little computer that looks more like a gaming […]
The post ACEMAGIC M2A mini PC features Intel Core Alder Lake-H processor, NVIDIA RTX 30 series graphics and a sci-fi inspired design appeared first on Liliputing.
Microsoft App Assure helps Opera build Arm-optimized browser
date: 2024-05-16, from: Windows Developer Blog
The Microsoft App Assure team helps app developers around the world to ensure their users have top-notch experience on all Microsoft platforms. Today, I want to highlight one of our many successful engagements: the new Opera Browser for Arm-based Win
The post Microsoft App Assure helps Opera build Arm-optimized browser appeared first on Windows Developer Blog.
NASA Recognizes 5 Early Career Planetary Scientists
date: 2024-05-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has selected five early-career scientists for its 2023 Planetary Science Early Career Award (ECA) based on their demonstrated leadership, involvement in the planetary science community, and potential for future impact. The ECA program supports exceptional early-career scientists who play a meaningful role in the planetary science community to pursue professional development in areas relevant […]
https://science.nasa.gov/directorates/smd/nasa-recognizes-5-early-career-planetary-scientists/
EU probes Meta over its provisions for protecting children
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Has social media biz done enough to comply with Digital Services Act? Maybe not
The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether Meta, the provider of Facebook and Instagram, may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to the protection of minors.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/eu_investigates_meta_over_its/
Ford asks suppliers to cut EV costs in an all-win-or-lose push for profitability
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
Ford is putting “everything on the table” to keep up with Tesla and fast-rising Chinese EV makers like BYD. In a new memo, Ford asked suppliers to cut EV costs after its Model e unit continued to bleed billions in Q1.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/ford-asks-suppliers-cut-ev-costs-all-win-or-lose-push/
Ford asks suppliers for ideas to cut EV costs in an all-win-or-lose push for profitability
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
Ford is putting “everything on the table” to keep up with Tesla and fast-rising Chinese EV makers like BYD. In a new memo, Ford asked suppliers about ideas to cut EV costs after its Model e unit continued to bleed billions in Q1.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/ford-asks-suppliers-ideas-cut-ev-costs-all-win-lose-push/
Tesla spotted testing prototype with new camera setup
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
Tesla has been spotted testing a Model 3 prototype with what appears to be a new camera setup. Is Tesla preparing a new vision rig for its next vehicles?
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/tesla-spotted-testing-prototype-new-camera-setup/
How Republicans Engineered a Fake Meat Controversy
date: 2024-05-16, from: Heatmap News
At a triumphant bill-signing earlier this month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sounded less like the leader of the nation’s third largest state and more like the host of a QAnon podcast. “Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” he said. DeSantis was there to trumpet a new state law that outlaws the sale of lab-grown meat, also known as cultivated meat.
One might reasonably ask why DeSantis and his Republican allies care about lab-grown meat at all. The technology — in which cells from animals are fed with nutrients and grown until they eventually produce something resembling a cut of actual meat — is still in the experimental stage, and it could be decades before companies are able to produce it on an industrial scale, if ever. So why bother outlawing it?
But DeSantis is not alone. Legislators in Alabama, apparently satisfied that they have solved all the state’s other problems, rushed to pass a similar law, which Gov. Kay Ivey signed on May 7. Similar measures have also been introduced in Arizona, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. And it isn’t just Republicans; a few Democrats looking to fortify their carnivorous bona fides have also attacked cultivated meat. Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senator John Fetterman applauded DeSantis’ action, saying he “would never serve that slop to my kids,” and Montana Democrat Sen. Jon Tester — who lost three fingers in a meat grinder as a boy — introduced a bill to ban cultivated meat from school lunches.
So far, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has not weighed in on lab-grown meat. But given his taste for outré conspiracy theories and niche culture war issues, no one would be surprised if he began railing against it in his rallies and on Truth Social.
This is fundamentally a fake issue: Not only is there no place you can buy lab-grown meat in Florida or Alabama, there’s no place you can buy it anywhere in the country. Last year the Department of Agriculture gave approval for lab-grown chicken to be sold, and not long after it was featured as a special menu item at the upscale restaurants Bar Crenn in San Francisco and José Andrés’ China Chilcano in Washington (reviews were mixed but mostly positive). But those experiments have ended, and it could be a while before it’s available again even in a restaurant. The technological challenges in recreating both the taste and texture of meat have proven greater than many anticipated; the problem may not be insurmountable, but it hasn’t been surmounted yet, at least not at scale.
But it’s just the kind of issue Republicans (and Democrats in swing states) love, one that casts them as the defenders of the honest, traditional, and manly, while mainstream Democrats are supposedly the advocates of weird and vaguely effeminate ideas. Why would you let some egghead scientist make you a steak? Real men want to know that their meat was killed in the most unpleasant circumstances possible.
Then there’s the climate angle: While Republicans may not exactly be pro-climate change in their rhetoric (policy choices are another matter), they are eagerly anti-anti-climate change, in the same way they’re anti-anti-racism. Just as they wage the culture war by opposing efforts to undo racism, they can do the same by opposing efforts to address climate change, shifting the conversation from the real problem onto the supposedly oppressive efforts to solve it.
And solving climate change is one of the rationales for cultivated meat that has helped attract venture capital to the startups trying to make it a reality. Global demand for meat has risen steadily for decades, and will continue to grow as incomes increase (generally speaking, the wealthier a country is, the more meat its citizens consume). In 2022, humans slaughtered 300 million cows, 1.5 billion pigs, and an incredible 75 billion chickens. Advocates of lab-grown meat sell it as a way to mitigate both that almost unfathomable carnage, with all its attendant animal suffering, and the enormous climate effects of meat production.
And unlike plant-based meat substitutes, lab-grown meat would satisfy the human desire to consume genuine animal flesh. There’s almost certainly a limit on how many people will want to eat Impossible Burgers and “Chick-n” tenders, no matter how good they taste. But since cultivated meat is still meat, advocates say any carnivore should be happy to bite into a lab-grown steak — which is why it’s so important for certain politicians to convince them that doing so would make them some kind of hippie.
I’d submit that politicians like DeSantis don’t actually care whether anyone sells or eats a cultivated pork loin. The point is to convince people that they are under siege from the powerful forces of wokeness, who want to steal your gustatory freedom after they confiscate your guns and force your children to change genders.
The invocation of bug-eating is a key tell. When DeSantis tells people that “the global elite” wants to force you to eat bugs, he’s referencing a conspiracy theory that the average person may not have heard of but is widespread on the right. Bill Gates and other leftist puppetmasters, the theory goes, have a plan to enslave us all and force us to eat bugs for our protein.
One of the benefits of associating bug-eating with a different food you want to discredit is that it produces feelings of disgust, which social psychologists have long known are more powerful for conservatives than for liberals. As Tucker Carlson once said, “Eating insects is repulsive and un-American. And of course, therefore, in the eyes of the left, it must be awesome.”
Here’s the counterpoint, thought: One might also think that this is an issue of basic liberty. Cultivated meat might or might not become widely consumed as an alternate food source, but if it does, as long as it’s safe you should be able to eat it if you want to (and the same ought to go for bugs). We can say with a fair bit of confidence that there will still be old-fashioned lamb chops and roast chickens available for all of our lifetimes.
But as an opportunity to create another front in the culture war and remind voters that politics is all about identity, it’s too good for Republicans in Florida and Alabama, and maybe other states to come, to pass up. If there’s a woke hippie conspiracy afoot to rob you of your testosterone and make you slave to the global elite, they want voters to know they’ll be on it. Even if it’s imaginary.
https://heatmap.news/politics/republicans-lab-grown-meat
The Tesla Cybertruck Beat The Rivian R1T In U.S. Registrations
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
The Ford F-150 Lightning was still the top pick in March, though.
https://insideevs.com/news/719919/tesla-cybertruck-beat-rivian-r1t-registration-march/
May 15, 2024
date: 2024-05-16, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-15-2024-dbe
Microsoft PC Manager app bizarrely suggests Bing as a Windows fix-all
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Bug or feature?
Users looking for Windows repair tips via the Microsoft PC Manager app may be recommended to switch Edge’s default search engine back to Bing.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/microsoft_pc_manager_bing/
There’s a good chance your bank is funding fossil fuels
date: 2024-05-16, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Since the Paris Climate Agreement, banks together have funneled trillion into fossil fuel companies, according to the 15th Banking on Climate Chaos report. Last year, JPMorgan Chase was the No. 1 fossil fuel financier in the world. Some of the other top investors? Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. We’ll discuss. Then, the Federal Trade Commission is trying to crack down on fabricated reviews. Problem is, fake reviews are a global industry.
Marketplace is currently tracking behind target for this budget year — that means listeners like you can make a critical difference by investing in our journalism today.
Kia EV9-Like Electric Pickup Truck Spotted Testing In The U.S.
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
Kia’s all-electric Honda Ridgeline rival could land stateside in 2026. And no, it’s not the Tasman.
https://insideevs.com/news/719860/kia-ev9-pickup-prototype-spotted-us/
De-Googled Android operating system /e/OS V2 brings Android Auto support, UI and privacy enhancements
date: 2024-05-16, from: Liliputing
The /e/OS Foundation has been offering a de-Googled version of Android since 2018, with an emphasis on privacy and security. Now developers have introduced the biggest update in years. Among other things, /e/OS 2.0 brings support for Android Auto, an updated launcher app with support for live wallpapers and app notifications on icons, and other […]
The post De-Googled Android operating system /e/OS V2 brings Android Auto support, UI and privacy enhancements appeared first on Liliputing.
Republican voters urged to chip away at Democrats’ mail-in voting advantage
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
U.S. voters have several ways to cast their ballots in a presidential election, including by mail. Many Democrats have embraced mail-in voting, and now Republicans are being urged by party leaders, including former President Donald Trump, to use all voting options in the 2024 general election. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the details. Salome Ramirez and Yeny Garcia of VOA’s Spanish Service contributed.
Stifling Beijing in cyberspace is now British intelligence’s number-one mission
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Annual conference of cyber intel unit shows UK’s alarm over China blaring louder than ever
CyberUK Regular attendees of CYBERUK, the annual conference hosted by British intelligence unit the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), will know that in addition to the expected conference panels, there is usually an interwoven theme to proceedings.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/the_uks_alarm_over_china/
How Makers of Nonconsensual AI Porn Make a Living on Patreon
date: 2024-05-16, from: 404 Media Group
Accounts that present as benign on Patreon are advertising thousands of nonconsensual AI porn images on Telegram.
https://www.404media.co/how-makers-of-nonconsensual-ai-porn-make-a-living-on-patreon/
See Great Wall’s Crazy 8-Cylinder Motorcycle Engine In All Its Glory
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
The massive touring bike is set for launch in China very soon.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719833/great-wall-souo-8cylinder-tourer-launching-soon/
Charles III Unveiled His First Official Portrait as King. Is It Too Red?
date: 2024-05-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Artist Jonathan Yeo’s nontraditional approach to royal portraiture has drawn mixed reactions
Honda Details $65 Billion Plan To Become An EV Powerhouse
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
“EVs are the most effective solution,” Honda says in a major strategy shift. Can the Japanese automaker deliver?
https://insideevs.com/news/719899/honda-cm-ev-plans/
Is A Royal Enfield Classic 650 Twin In Our Future?
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
Trademarks aren’t guarantees, but they certainly indicate interest from the manufacturers that file them.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719813/royal-enfield-classic-650-twin/
Open Source Initiative tries to define Open Source AI
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Meanwhile, the creator of Open Source Definition argues the real problem is unauthorized copying
The Open Source Initiative – the non-profit overseeing the Open Source Definition, which lays out the requirements for software licenses – is taking its effort to define Open Source AI to the wisdom of the crowds.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/open_source_initiative_ai/
Students Across US to Hear from NASA Astronaut Aboard Space Station
date: 2024-05-16, from: NASA breaking news
Students of a volunteer service organization will have the opportunity next week to hear from NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will stream live at 11:40 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 21, on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. Media interested in covering the event must RSVP […]
Google Releases A.I. That Can Predict How the Human Body’s Molecules Behave, Boosting Drug Discovery Research
date: 2024-05-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Called AlphaFold 3, the latest update of the software models the interactions of proteins with DNA, RNA and other molecules for the first time
Computer Scientists Invent an Efficient New Way to Count
date: 2024-05-16, from: Quanta Magazine
By making use of randomness, a team has created a simple algorithm for estimating large numbers of distinct objects in a stream of data.The post Computer Scientists Invent an Efficient New Way to Count first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-invent-an-efficient-new-way-to-count-20240516/
VinFast (VFS) secures nearly 30K pre-orders for new $10,000 VF 3 in under three days
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
In under 66 hours after launching its new low-cost electric SUV, VinFast’s VF 3 racked up nearly 30,000 pre-orders. Starting under $10,000 (235 million VND), the VinFast VF 3 is already creating a buzz. Following the special price promo, the VF 3 will cost around $20,000.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/16/vinfast-vfs-secures-nearly-30k-pre-orders-new-10000-vf-3/
Why Biden’s Chinese EV Tariffs May Succeed Where Trump’s Failed, For Now
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
The only way it may fail is if U.S. consumers and automakers turn away from the electric car revolution.
https://insideevs.com/news/719821/biden-vs-trump-chinese-car-tariffs/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
If you subscribe to my feed you should also subscribe to Ben Werdmuller. I'm interested in every one of his posts, so I guess you would be too.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I now have a "gravatar" that's consistent with the favicon for all my sites.
https://gravatar.com/scripting
Nvidia chief Huang given 60% pay increase amid AI hysteria
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
After a smashing fiscal ’24, we’re surprised he didn’t get more
Nvidia’s chief Jenson Huang received a 60 percent pay bump in the corporation’s fiscal 2024 on the back of a massive rally in the share price based on demand for AI, and triple digit growth percentages for revenue and operating profit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/nvidia_chief_huang_gets_60/
AYN Odin 2 Mini handheld game console with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 coming soon for $329 and up
date: 2024-05-16, from: Liliputing
The AYN Odin 2 Mini is an upcoming handheld game console from the makers of the AYN Odin and Loki line of devices. The name suggests that this Android-powered game console is a smaller version of the Odin 2 that launched last summer, and it does have many of the same specs, while sporting a […]
The post AYN Odin 2 Mini handheld game console with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 coming soon for $329 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/ayn-odin-2-mini-handheld-game-console-coming-soon/
Google’s broken link to the web
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“A quarter-century into its existence, a company that once proudly served as an entry point to a web that it nourished with traffic and advertising revenue has begun to abstract that all away into an input for its large language models.”
This has the potential to be a disaster for the web and everyone who depends on it: for journalism, for bloggers, for communities, for every voice that couldn’t be heard without an open, egalitarian platform.
The answer for all of those stakeholders has to be depending on forging real, direct relationships with real people. It doesn’t scale; it doesn’t fit well with a unidirectional broadcast model for publishing; it’s now how most people who make content think about what they do. But it’s how all of them are going to survive and continue to find each other.
I’ve been urging publishers to stop using the word “audience” and to replace it with “community”, and to think about what verb might replace “publish” in a multi-directional web that is more about relationships than it is reaching mass eyeballs.
Of course, it might go in a direction we haven’t predicted. We’ll find out very soon; the only real certainty is that things are changing, and the bedrock that many people have depended on for two decades is shifting. #Technology
<p>[<a href="https://www.platformer.news/google-io-ai-search-sundar-pichai/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://www.platformer.news/google-io-ai-search-sundar-pichai/
Aptera to close crowdfunding and begin Solar EV production with the help of a private financial group
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
Solar EV startup Aptera Motors announced it is leaving its “crowdfunding nest” of sorts, putting a bookend on three years of its Regulation A offering to pursue private funding. The startup shared a deadline for public investors while it engages in discussions with private financial group US Capital to help (finally) get its solar EVs into scaled production.
Nio’s Onvo L60 Has Its Sights Set On The Tesla Model Y
date: 2024-05-16, from: Inside EVs News
Onvo is a brand new Nio sub-brand, and the L60 electric coupe-like crossover is its first model.
https://insideevs.com/news/719895/nio-onvo-l60-revealed/
Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">This is great news for Mozilla, for everyone who uses the internet, and for everyone who cares about ethics, privacy, and human rights.
We need a well-functioning Mozilla more than ever - and that much-needed presence has been absent for years.
The spirit in the following quote gives me a lot of hope - I think this is how all technology should be built, and how all technologists should approach their work, but it’s rarely true:
“After all, the technology we have now was once just someone’s imagination. We can dream, build, and demand technology that serves all of us, not just the powerful few.”
I hope - and believe - that she can make it happen. #Technology
<p>[<a href="https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/mozilla-foundation-welcomes-nabiha-syed-as-executive-director/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>Accounts Payable
date: 2024-05-16, from: NASA breaking news
Vendor Payment NASA is committed to expedient and accurate payment of invoices. Any questions or inquiries should be addressed to the Contracting Officer designated on your award or to the NSSC Customer Contact Center. NSSC Customer Contact Center telephone: 1-877-677-2123 (1-877-NSSC123) Fax: 1-866-779-6772 (1-866-779-NSSC) Vouchers and invoices are to be submitted in the Treasury’s Invoice Processing Platform […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/nssc/accounts-payable/
Aleph Alpha enlists Cerebras waferscale supers to train AI for German military
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Also demonstrates success accelerating molecular dynamics
Even as world leaders raise alarm bells about the impact of AI in war, waferscale startup Cerebras is joining forces with Aleph Alpha to develop sovereign models for the German armed forces.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/cerebras_german_military_llms/
White House blocks release of Biden’s special counsel interview audio
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
Washington — President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege over audio of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur that’s at the center a Republican effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, the Justice Department told lawmakers on Thursday.
It comes as the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and the Judiciary Committee are each expected to hold a hearing to recommend that the full House refer Garland to the Justice Department for the contempt charges over the department’s refusal to hand over the audio.
Garland advised Biden in a letter on Thursday that the audio falls within the scope of executive privilege. Garland told the Democratic president that the “committee’s needs are plainly insufficient to outweigh the deleterious effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future.”
Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte urged lawmakers not to proceed with the contempt effort to avoid “unnecessary and unwarranted conflict.”
“It is the longstanding position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the president’s claim of executive privilege cannot be held in contempt of Congress,” Uriarte wrote.
White House Counsel Ed Siskel wrote in a separate, scathing letter to Congress on Thursday that lawmakers’ effort to obtain the recording was absent any legitimate purpose and lays bare their likely goal — “to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”
The White House memo is a tacit admission that there are moments from the interview it fears portray Biden in a negative light in an election year — and that could be exacerbated by the release, or selective release, of the audio.
The transcript of the Hur interview showed Biden struggling to recall some dates and occasionally confusing some details — something longtime aides says he’s done for years in both public and private — but otherwise showing deep recall in other areas. Biden and his aides are particularly sensitive to questions about his age. At 81, he’s the oldest ever president, and he’s seeking another four year term.
Hur found some evidence that Biden had willfully retained classified information and disclosed it to a ghostwriter but concluded that it was insufficient for criminal charges.
Man Reunited With His Late Father’s Harley-Davidson After 12 Years
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
This story has all the ups and downs of a movie and will serve as a pick-me-up for any motorcyclist with a heart.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719799/man-reunited-with-fathers-harley/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-16, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Friends, I signed this letter, I encourage others to read and sign:
https://techforfreedomandjustice.github.io/tech-open-letter/
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112450893869324621
Cyber Official Speaks Out, Reveals Mobile Network Attacks in U.S.
date: 2024-05-16, from: 404 Media Group
A CISA official breaks with the government narrative and tells the FCC that SS7 and similar networks and protocols have been used to track people in the U.S. in recent years.
https://www.404media.co/cyber-official-speaks-out-reveals-mobile-network-attacks-in-u-s/
SBCC Foundation Hosts Spring Forward Gala
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Funds raised enable low-income students to pursue studies.
The post SBCC Foundation Hosts Spring Forward Gala appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/16/sbcc-foundation-hosts-spring-forward-gala/
A Former NPR Host’s New Podcast Series About Layoffs, More Detail on KQED, and a Freelance Isn’t Free Panel We All Need to Watch
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Squeeze
PLUS: An Update on The Squeeze
https://thisisthesqueeze.substack.com/p/a-former-npr-hosts-new-podcast-series
Microsoft’s carbon emissions up nearly 30% thanks to AI
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Company will require certain suppliers to run on 100% carbon-free electricity … by 2030
Microsoft has increased carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 30 percent since 2020, making its goal of becoming carbon-negative by 2030 even more difficult, and it looks like AI is to blame.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/microsoft_co2_emissions/
This Custom Yamaha Scrambler Is Perfection
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
Masterfully crafted from the ground up to both look and perform the part.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719703/purpose-built-moto-yamaha-xt500-scrambler-vmx/
Florida’s New Climate Change Law Is About Much More Than Words
date: 2024-05-16, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Areas surrounding Milan, Italy, are flooded after intense rainfall • Chile is preparing for its most severe cold snap in 70 years • East Texas could see “nightmare” flash flooding today and tomorrow.
THE TOP FIVE
- Biden expands solar tariffs to include bifacial modules
The Biden administration is expanding existing solar panel tariffs to include the popular two-sided (or bifacial) modules used in many utility-scale solar installations. The solar manufacturing industry and elected representatives in states that have seen large solar manufacturing investments have been pushing to end the tariffs exclusion. With this move, the Biden administration is decisively intervening in the solar industry’s raging feud on the side of the adolescent-but-quickly-maturing domestic solar manufacturing industry, wrote Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. Bifacial modules are estimated to account for over 90% of U.S. module imports. That amounted to some $4.3 billion of incoming orders in the first six months of last year. Developers who have contracts to buy bifacial panels that will be shipped within 90 days will still be able to import them without duties, and the tariffs also allow a quota of solar cells, which are later assembled into modules, to be imported without charges.
- Florida erases climate change from state law
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis yesterday signed legislation that will result in most references to climate change being removed from state law. While the scrubbing of climate change is leading most headlines, the law does a few other important things, too:
- It nixes requirements for state government to prioritize climate change when writing energy policy.
- It removes language that gave state officials the authority to set goals for renewable energy.
- It bans offshore wind turbines in state waters.
- It repeals state grant programs that encourage energy conservation and renewable energy.
- It deletes requirements for state agencies to use environmentally-friendly products and fuel-efficient vehicles.
- It prevents municipalities from dictating which fuels can be used in appliances like gas stoves.
- It waters down regulation of gas pipelines and boosts expansion of gas.
Florida is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, from deadly heat waves to stronger and more frequent storms and sea level rise. And most Floridians support state action to tackle the issue. The law will come into effect on July 1.
- The North American grid is ready for a ‘normal’ summer
The North American electric grid has “adequate anticipated resources for normal summer peak load and conditions,” the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said yesterday. The nonprofit reliability organizaton’s chief executive officer Jim Robb said there are “fewer areas at risk than last year, but significant concerns remain at the system’s ability to perform under extreme conditions.” The report lays out summer reliability risks by region, including nuclear plant outages in Ontario, Canada, less-than-expected wind power generation in the middle of the U.S., and a heat wave affecting western states and Mexico.
Meanwhile, Texas’s main grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), warned that the state could face an electricity emergency this weekend, with power demand expected to creep up toward max supply levels starting Friday night and stretching into Saturday night.
- IEA lowers annual oil demand growth forecast
The International Energy Agency has lowered its forecast for oil demand growth for 2024. In its May report, the agency projects oil demand will grow by 1.1 million barrels per day (BPD), down 140,000 BPD from April’s report. “Poor industrial activity and another mild winter have sapped gasoil consumption this year,” the agency said. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) released its own monthly report on Tuesday, projecting that oil demand will rise by 2.25 million BPD in 2024. “The gap between the IEA and OPEC is now even wider than it was earlier this year,” Reuters said.
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- Study: Climate change exacerbates brain diseases
A new study found that extreme heat from climate change is making certain conditions involving the brain and the nervous system worse, including Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and even migraines and strokes. “Many of the components of the brain are, in fact, working close to the top of their temperature ranges, meaning that small increases in temperature or humidity may mean they stop working so well together,” the authors, from University College London, explained. “When those environmental conditions move rapidly into unaccustomed ranges, as is happening with extreme temperatures and humidity related to climate change, our brain struggles to regulate our temperature and begins to malfunction.” The authors note that 20% of the excess deaths that resulted from the 2003 European heat wave were among people with neurological conditions.
THE KICKER
Massachusetts is launching a $10 million Climate Careers Fund that will provide no-interest loans to help people pay for training in climate-related jobs from heating and cooling to electric vehicle mechanics.
https://heatmap.news/climate/florida-desantis-climate-change-law
Samsung takes bite out of Apple over its mega marketing misstep
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘We would never crush creativity,’ says South Korea megacorp
If Apple thought it could forget about last week’s marketing disaster — which saw the tech giant roundly slated for appearing to crush human creativity in the name of computing progress — it was wrong.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/samsung_takes_a_bite_out/
Indoor ATV Ice Racing on a Hockey Rink Looks Insane
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
It’s flat track mixed with hockey.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719801/indoor-atv-ice-racing-hockey-rink/
Royal Enfield Needs to Bring The Continental GT Cup To the States
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
The grassroots level racing series hopes to showcase the amateur talent of India’s racers.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719690/2024-royal-enfield-continental-gt-cup-announcement/
BepiColombo power struggle could leave probe short of Mercury’s orbit
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
ESA/JAXA mission running on reduced thrust as engineers work to resolve the issue
Updated Thruster problems with BepiColombo, the joint ESA and JAXA mission to Mercury, could cause headaches for managers plotting the spacecraft’s trajectory and insertion into Mercury’s orbit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/bepicolombo_thruster_problems/
When inflation goes down, stocks go up
date: 2024-05-16, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Stock traders on Wall Street were feeling bullish on Wednesday. All three major stock indexes in the U.S. rose to record highs on the back of yesterday’s inflation report. The consumer price index report, which showed inflation cooling, made traders optimistic about the prospect of an interest rate cut. Then, we’ll delve into the staggering costs of inequities in mental health care and hear how Americans are feeling about tariffs on Chinese goods.
Marketplace is currently tracking behind target for this budget year — that means listeners like you can make a critical difference by investing in our journalism today.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/when-inflation-goes-down-stocks-go-up
Put Rescuezilla 2.5 on a bootable key – before you need it
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Sort of a FOSS Norton Ghost, now updated to Ubuntu 24.04 base
A fresh release of Rescuezilla, a free Ubuntu-based rescue disk for imaging the drives of a sickly computer, is available.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/rescuezilla_2_5/
NASA’s New Super-Alloy Could Transform Everything
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
The high-heat alloy is said to last 2,500 times longer than other nickel-base alloys.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719689/nasa-grx810-super-alloy/
Tax helpline callers left on hold for nearly eight centuries
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
HMRC forgot to tell Brits about its digital support channels
Appalling service levels at Britain’s tax collector meant customers phoning in with inquiries were collectively left on hold for 798 years in fiscal 2023.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/hmrc_telephone_support/
Putin and Xi’s display of unity
date: 2024-05-16, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: China’s leader Xi Jinping rolled out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin. With both countries facing trading restrictions, more business is being done between the two. We’ll discuss. Also on the program: Can you really trust online consumer reviews? Regulators want to bring in new rules to tackle fakes.
Marketplace is currently tracking behind target for this budget year — that means listeners like you can make a critical difference by investing in our journalism today.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/putin-and-xis-display-of-unity
Forget feet and inches, latest UK units of measurement are thinking bigger
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Testing wind turbine blades the size of three rusty angel wingspans
Reg Standards Bureau The UK has announced new units of measurement as part of pronouncements on wind turbines by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/uk_measurement_silliness/
NCSC CTO: Broken market must be fixed to usher in new tech
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It may take ten years but vendors must be held accountable for the vulnerabilities they introduce
CYBERUK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) CTO Ollie Whitehouse kicked off day two of Britain’s cyber watchdog’s annual shindig, CYBERUK, with a tirade about the tech market, pulling it apart to demonstrate why he believes it’s at fault for many of the security problems the industry is facing today. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/ncsc_cto_broken_market_must/
Rebranding Climate Change
date: 2024-05-16, from: Status-Q blog
As I look out of the window at yet another rainy day, it occurs to me that we missed an opportunity to get climate change taken seriously. Here in Britain, ‘global warming’ often sounds rather nice. An opportunity to improve domestic vineyards, perhaps, and make wines here like the Romans used to do. Or to Continue Reading
https://statusq.org/archives/2024/05/16/12067/
Introducing classroom management to the Code Editor
date: 2024-05-16, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
I’m excited to announce that we’re developing a new set of Code Editor features to help school teachers run text-based coding lessons with their students. New Code Editor features for teaching Last year we released our free Code Editor and made it available as an open source project. Right now we’re developing a new set…
The post Introducing classroom management to the Code Editor appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/code-editor-classroom-management/
Biden Takes a Side in the Solar Industry’s Family Feud
date: 2024-05-16, from: Heatmap News
The Biden administration continued its campaign to support domestic green energy manufacturing via trade policy on Thursday, this time by expanding existing solar panel tariffs to include the popular two-sided modules used in many utility-scale solar installations.
With this move, the Biden administration is decisively intervening in the solar industry’s raging feud on the side of the adolescent-but-quickly-maturing (thanks, in part, to generous government support) domestic solar manufacturing industry. On the other side is the more established solar development, installation, and financing industry, which tends to support the widespread availability of cheaper solar components, even if they come from China or Chinese-owned companies in Southeast Asia.
These particular solar modules, known as bifacial modules, are estimated to account for over 90% of U.S. module imports. That amounted to some $4.3 billion of incoming orders in the first six months of last year, according to a report by the International Trade Commission, an almost three-fold increase from the first six months of the year prior.
Tariffs on solar modules were first imposed by the Trump administration in 2018 and later extended in 2022, with the levy rate falling to around 14% from the initial 30%.
Domestic and global solar supply chains are under threat from “unfair and non-market practices,” as well as “Chinese solar panel overcapacity,” National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said on a call with reporters — hence the expanded tariffs.
The solar manufacturing industry and elected representatives in states that have seen large solar manufacturing investments have been pushing to end the exclusion. Georgia Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, for instance, wrote a letter to President Biden in March calling for the bifacial exemption to be removed, arguing that “the elimination of the exemption for bifacial panels would strengthen the United States’ and Georgia’s economy, protect U.S. national security, and serve the nation’s long-term economic and energy security interests.”
The Korean solar company Qcells is planning to invest more than $2 billion in solar manufacturing in Georgia. The American solar manufacturer First Solar has long campaigned for bifacial modules to be included in the tariffs.
White House climate advisor John Podesta cited the International Trade
Commission report during the briefing with reporters to demonstrate that
an increase in bifacial imports had occurred while
imports
of other types of modules had fallen. “The findings … made clear
that the bifacial exemption was likely being abused, and that that
tariff exemption was no longer appropriate,” Podesta said.
The
White House is not completely deaf to the preferences of the other side
of the solar industry, however.
Developers who have contracts
to buy bifacial panels that will be shipped within 90 days will still be
able to import them without duties, Podesta said, “to avoid undue
disruptions to the industry.”
The tariffs also allow a quota of solar cells, which are later assembled into modules, to be imported without charges. Zaidi said that “raising … the tariff rate quota to facilitate the availability of solar cells for manufacturers here in the United States will be necessary to make sure we’re sprinting into the acceleration that’s necessary to grow the U.S. manufacturing capacity.”
The solar lobby had been asking for at least an increase in the tariff rate quota. While they weren’t able to win the war over tariffs, they’re still getting something.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/solar-module-tariff-china
HR expert says biz leaders scared RTO mandates lead to staff attrition
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
So why not drop the policy? Productivity bias or productivity paranoia perhaps
Evidence is mounting that tech companies’ policies demanding staff return to the office are only serving to drive out the talent that became accustomed to remote work.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/hr_say_biz_leaders_scared_rto/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Jing Jing was famous in the early blogosphere as house of spicy noodles.
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/jing-jing-gourmet-palo-alto-closure-19459757.php
TSMC says no damage to its Arizona facilities after incident
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
TAIPAI, TAIWAN — Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC said Thursday there was no damage to its facilities after an incident at its Arizona factory construction site where
a waste disposal truck driver was transported to a hospital.
Firefighters responded to a reported explosion Wednesday afternoon at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plant in Phoenix, the Arizona Republic reported, citing the local fire department.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker whose clients include Apple and Nvidia, said in a statement none of its employees or onsite construction workers had reported any related injuries.
“This is an active investigation with no additional details that can be shared at this time,” it added.
TSMC’s Taipei-listed shares pared earlier gains after the news and were last up around 0.8% on Thursday morning. TSMC last month agreed to expand its planned investment by $25 billion to $65 billion and to add a third Arizona plant by 2030.
The company will produce the world’s most advanced 2 nanometer technology at its second Arizona facility expected to begin production in 2028.
https://www.voanews.com/a/tsmc-says-no-damage-to-its-arizona-facilities-after-incident/7614362.html
The loathsomeness of Trump world
date: 2024-05-16, from: Robert Reich on Substack
The backstory of the trial
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-loathsomeness-of-trump-world
This vintage radio streams music with Raspberry Pi Zero W
date: 2024-05-16, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
A 1938 Emerson clock radio was the inspiration for this 3D printed Raspberry Pi-powered music streaming device.
The post This vintage radio streams music with Raspberry Pi Zero W appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/this-vintage-radio-streams-music-with-raspberry-pi-zero-w/
Jason Gibbs | It’s Time for Dodger Baseball!
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Signal
“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” – Yogi Berra April has always been one of my favorite months because year after […]
The post Jason Gibbs | It’s Time for Dodger Baseball! appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/jason-gibbs-its-time-for-dodger-baseball/
Women’s tennis ends season with loss in Big West quarterfinals
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
CSUN women’s tennis had high hopes for the tournament as the second-place team in the Big West. But after they pushed most of their matches to three sets, they couldn’t…
Today in SCV History (May 16)
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1938 – Brand-new Lockheed transport plane crashes in Agua Dulce; all 9 perish including 2 infants. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-may-16/
Take a stroll through the US president’s backyard
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
General public gets to visit White House grounds in spring and fall
Santa Barbara’s Grand Arlington Hotel
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Arlington Hotel was built in 1876, rebuilt in 1809, and perished in 1925.
The post Santa Barbara’s Grand Arlington Hotel appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/15/santa-barbaras-grand-arlington-hotel/
Trinity Gardens Tour
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Three acres nestled in the Santa Barbara foothills.
The post Trinity Gardens Tour appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/15/trinity-gardens-tour/
Farm Tour Gold at Wanderment Farms
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Farm Tour Gold at Wanderment Farms The Redfern’s Organic, Regenerative Showcase Sits in the Cliffs Above Carpinteria By Matt Kettmann
The post Farm Tour Gold at Wanderment Farms appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/15/farm-tour-gold-at-wanderment-farms/
Santa Barbara’s Annual Ode to Julia Child
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Here’s a rundown of Taste of Santa Barbara’s weekend of delicious to-dos.
The post Santa Barbara’s Annual Ode to Julia Child appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/15/santa-barbaras-annual-ode-to-julia-child/
The TOSB Soirée
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The “signature event” brings together some of the best chefs in the region.
The post The TOSB Soirée appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/15/the-tosb-soiree/
Big G’s Barbecue Fuses American, Mexican, and Guatemalan Cuisines
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Gabriel and Misha De Loera’s homegrown Santa Barbara catering company.
The post Big G’s Barbecue Fuses American, Mexican, and Guatemalan Cuisines appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Momma’s Soul Food Fusion Invents Soulshi Rolls
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara’s Chef Guidance Moon is combining Southern comforts with
Japanese
techniques.
The post Momma’s Soul Food Fusion Invents Soulshi Rolls appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/15/mommas-soul-food-fusion-invents-soulshi-rolls/
Chasing Wine Dreams and Embracing Curiosity with Trippers & Askers
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The poetic spirit behind Hayden Felice and Andrew Fitzgerald’s Santa Barbara County wine brand.
The post Chasing Wine Dreams and Embracing Curiosity with Trippers & Askers appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Winemaker Dusty Nabor’s Powerful Pursuit of Every Passion
date: 2024-05-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Why this steel pipe professional is crafting Santa Barbara County wines in a Camarillo warehouse.
The post Winemaker Dusty Nabor’s Powerful Pursuit of Every Passion appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/15/winemaker-dusty-nabors-powerful-pursuit-of-every-passion/
In a milestone, the US exceeds 5 million solar installations
date: 2024-05-16, from: Electrek Feed
The US has now officially surpassed 5 million solar installations, a significant landmark in its shift toward clean energy, according to data released by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/15/us-exceeds-5-million-solar-installations/
May 15, 2024
date: 2024-05-16, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
All three of the nation’s major stock indexes hit record highs today after the latest data showed inflation cooling. Standard and Poor’s 500, more commonly known as the S&P 500, measures the stock performance of 500 of the largest companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges. Today it was up 61 points, or 1.2%. The Nasdaq Composite is weighted toward companies in the information technology sector. Today it was up 231 points, or 1.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, often just called the Dow, measures 30 prominent companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges. Today it was up 350 points, or 0.9%. The Dow ended the day at 39,908, approaching 40,000.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-15-2024
Spreading their wings: CSUN holds its annual DREAM UndocuGraduation
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Hosted by the DREAM — Dreamers, Resources, Empowerment, Advocacy and Mentorship — Center, the annual UndocuGraduation celebrates the accomplishments of undocumented and mixed-status students. The DREAM Center provides various opportunities…
Apple on track for quarter of all iPhones to be made in India by 2028
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
IT minister boasts of tech titan building network of local vendors
Apple is expected to have a quarter of all iPhones made in India by 2028, according to the country’s IT minister.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/apple_iphones_india/
US working to get trapped American doctors out of Gaza, White House says
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
US, Niger delegation meet to discuss US forces withdrawal
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
Pentagon — After nearly a two-week delay, U.S. and Nigerien officials are holding high-level follow-on meetings to coordinate the withdrawal of American troops from the country.
Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and Lieutenant General Dagvin Anderson, joint staff director for joint force development, are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Niamey with members of Niger’s new government, known as the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland, or CNSP, two U.S. officials told VOA.
The CNSP posted on the social platform X Wednesday that Maier and Anderson met Wednesday with Lieutenant General Salifou Mody, one of the military coup members who was named minister of national defense.
The CNSP noted that the meeting comes two months after Niger denounced its military basing agreements with the United States and aims to “ensure that this withdrawal takes place in the best possible conditions, guaranteeing order, security and compliance with set deadlines.”
There are about 900 U.S. military personnel in Niger, including active duty, civilians and contractors, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity ahead of the conclusion of the talks. Most of the U.S. military personnel have stayed in the country past their deployment’s planned end dates, as details for their withdrawal are ironed out.
“We’re still in a bit of a holding pattern,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said last week.
Counterterrorism in ‘disarray’
The U.S. has had two military bases — Air Base 101 in Niamey and Air Base 201 in Agadez —to monitor terror groups in the region. Officials say most U.S. forces are based in the latter, which cost the U.S. $110 million to build, and began drone operations in 2019.
Niger’s natural resources have increased its importance to global powers, and Niger’s location had provided the U.S. with the ability to conduct counterterror operations throughout much of West Africa.
“We’re in a different position now, and we’re going to continue to consult with the Nigeriens in terms of the orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces. We’re going to continue to stay engaged with the partners in the region when it comes to terrorism and countering the terrorist threat,” Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder told reporters on Tuesday.
Countries in the region, including Niger, Mali, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, have seen an expansive rise in jihadist movements.
According to the Global Terrorism Index, an annual report covering terrorist incidents worldwide, more than half of the deaths caused by terrorism last year were in the Sahel.
Niger’s neighbor, Burkina Faso, suffered the worst, with 1,907 fatalities from terrorism in 2023.
“These are some of the most dangerous areas in the world,” Bill Roggio, editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, told VOA. “These countries are in dire threat of being overrun by jihadist groups.”
Now, Niger’s coup has put the West’s ability to monitor terrorists like the Islamic State and al-Qaida in the Sahel in “complete disarray,” according to Roggio.
The United States’ intelligence-gathering capacity was limited before, “but we’re approaching the point where intelligence-gathering is practically at zero,” he said.
A U.S. defense official told VOA that “basically every flight,” even intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drone flights, must be approved by the junta.
“The beginning of April is when things started getting slower,” the official told VOA. The junta began delaying and canceling the types of U.S. military flights that had been quickly approved before then.
Carla Martinez Machain, a political science professor at the University of Buffalo, believes the Pentagon will try to negotiate with Chad for a more significant American troop presence, as the U.S. struggles to find allies in what she called the “coup belt” — a reference to the recent coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
However, most U.S. forces have temporarily left from Chad for Germany in recent weeks, a move the Pentagon called a “temporary step” as part of an ongoing review of its security cooperation with Chad, which would resume after the country’s May 6 presidential election.
Only a small group of service members remain in Chad as part of a multinational task force, officials tell VOA.
“Niger was somewhat of a rarity in the sense that it had one of the few democratically elected governments in the region, and also a democratically elected government that was friendly to the U.S. and willing to host a U.S. military presence,” Martinez Machain told VOA. “And so, finding a replacement for that for a military base is going to be somewhat difficult.”
Unless the U.S. can find another base to use in West Africa, counterterror drones will likely have to spend most of their fuel supply flying thousands of kilometers from U.S. bases in Italy or Djibouti, severely limiting their time over the targets and their ability to gather intelligence.
“The beauty of having drones based in Niger was that they were in the thick of the fight. They were in the middle of where jihadist groups are operating. So, once you launch the drones, they’re in the midst of it, and all of the flight time being used can be used to gather information,” Roggio said.
Resupply concerns
Amid the negotiations and flight cancellations, U.S. troops in Niger began raising concerns about their supply chain. Service members in Niamey told the office of Representative Matt Gaetz that blood for the blood bank, hygiene supplies, malaria pills and other medications were running low.
A U.S. defense official acknowledged to VOA that “they were concerned about medication levels.” The official also said that troops in Niamey had gone through April without a resupply flight but had received food and water supplies through ground-based transportation.
A flight with medical supplies finally went from Agadez to Niamey last week, the defense official told VOA.
Coup forced withdrawal
Tensions between the U.S. and Niger began in 2023 when Niger’s military junta removed the democratically elected president from power.
After months of delay, the Biden administration formally declared in October that the military takeover in Niger was a coup, a determination that prevented Niger from receiving a significant amount of U.S. military and foreign assistance.
In March, after tense meetings between U.S. representatives and the CNSP, the junta called the U.S. military presence “illegal” and announced it was ending an agreement that allowed American forces to be based in the country.
During that meeting, the U.S. and Niger fundamentally disagreed about Niger’s desire to supply Iran with uranium and work more closely with Russian military forces.
“They [Niger] saw this as kind of an imperialistic move, and this was seen negatively and was part of the reason why the U.S. was told to leave the country,” Martinez Machain said.
Russia has made significant military inroads across the African continent, Martinez Machain added, because human rights violators are able to obtain military training, assistance and defense systems “without the conditions that the U.S. would attach them.”
“Especially for nondemocratic countries, this can seem very appealing,” she said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-niger-delegation-meet-to-discuss-us-forces-withdrawal/7614227.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Why Biden Wanted to Debate Trump Early.
https://politicalwire.com/2024/05/15/why-biden-wanted-to-debate-trump-early/
Fewer US overdose deaths reported last year, but experts still cautious
date: 2024-05-16, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — The number of fatal overdoses in the U.S. fell last year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data posted Wednesday.
Agency officials noted that the data is provisional and could change after more analysis, and that they still expect a drop when the final counts are in. It would be only the second annual decline since the current national drug death epidemic began more than three decades ago.
Experts reacted cautiously. One described the decline as relatively small and said it should be thought of as part of a leveling off rather than a decrease. Another noted that the last time a decline occurred — in 2018 — drug deaths shot up in the years that followed.
“Any decline is encouraging,” said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends. “But I think it’s certainly premature to celebrate or to draw any large-scale conclusions about where we may be headed long term with this crisis.”
It’s also too soon to know what spurred the decline, Marshall and other experts said. Explanations could include shifts in the drug supply, expansion of overdose prevention and addiction treatment, and the grim possibility that the epidemic has killed so many that now there are basically fewer people to kill.
CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry called the dip “heartening news” and praised efforts to reduce the tally, but she noted that “there are still families and friends losing their loved ones to drug overdoses at staggering numbers.”
About 107,500 people died of overdoses in the U.S. last year, including American citizens and noncitizens who were in the country at the time they died, the CDC estimated. That’s down 3% from 2022, when there were an estimated 111,000 such deaths, the agency said.
The drug overdose epidemic, which has killed more than 1 million people since 1999, has had many ripple effects. For example, a study published last week in JAMA Psychiatry estimated that more than 321,000 U.S. children lost a parent to a fatal drug overdose from 2011 to 2021.
“These children need support” and are at a higher risk of mental health and drug use disorders themselves, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped lead the study. “It’s not just a loss of a person. It’s also the implications that loss has for the family left behind.”
Prescription painkillers once drove the nation’s overdose epidemic, but they were supplanted years ago by heroin and more recently by illegal fentanyl. The dangerously powerful opioid was developed to treat intense pain from ailments such as cancer but has increasingly been mixed with other drugs in the illicit drug supply.
For years, fentanyl was frequently injected, but increasingly it’s being smoked or mixed into counterfeit pills.
A study published last week found that law enforcement seizures of pills containing fentanyl are rising dramatically, jumping from 44 million in 2022 to more than 115 million last year.
It’s possible that the seizures indicate that the overall supply of fentanyl-laced pills is growing fast, not necessarily that police are whittling down the illicit drug supply, said one of the paper’s authors, Dr. Daniel Ciccarone of the University of California, San Francisco.
He noted that the decline in overdoses was not uniform. All but two of the states in the eastern half of the U.S. saw declines, but most Western states saw increases. Alaska, Washington and Oregon each saw 27% increases.
The reason? Many Eastern states have been dealing with fentanyl for about a decade, while it’s reached Western states more recently, Ciccarone said.
Nevertheless, some researchers say there are reasons to be optimistic. It’s possible that smoking fentanyl is not as lethal as injecting it, but scientists are still exploring that question.
Meanwhile, more money is becoming available to treat addiction and prevent overdoses, through government funding and legal settlements with drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies, Ciccarone noted.
“My hope is 2023 is the beginning of a turning point,” he said.
Ocean Water Warning For May 15
date: 2024-05-16, 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-may-15/
Bowman celebrates poets and artists
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Signal
One by one, students mustered the courage and came up to the podium at Bowman High School to read aloud a poem from “The Redemption of You” — a collection of […]
The post Bowman celebrates poets and artists appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/bowman-celebrates-poets-and-artists/
May 29: Celebrate API Heritage Month With Santa Clarita Chamber of Commerce
date: 2024-05-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Chamber of Commerce is Celebrating Asian Pacific Islander Heritage at Board & Brush later this month.
https://scvnews.com/may-29-celebrate-api-heritage-month-with-santa-clarita-chamber-of-commerce/
Restored historic truck makes appearance at Placerita Canyon open house
date: 2024-05-16, from: The Signal
Rusted, but good as new, Frank Walker’s restored 1935 Ford V-8 made its debut during the Placerita Canyon Nature Center open house on Saturday. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. […]
The post Restored historic truck makes appearance at Placerita Canyon open house appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Qualcomm details Linux on Snapdragon X Elite, and it’s looking surprisingly good
date: 2024-05-16, from: OS News
With Qualcomm and Microsoft about to flood the market with devices using the new Snapdragon X Elite, those of us who don’t want to use Windows felt a bit uneasy – what’s Linux support going to look like for this new generation of ARM devices? Well, it seems Qualcomm’s been busy, and they’ve published a blog post detailing their work on Linux support for the X Elite. It’s been our priority not only to support Linux on our premium-tier SoCs, but to support it pronto. In fact, within one or two days of publicly announcing each generation of Snapdragon 8, we’ve posted the initial patchset for Linux kernel support. Snapdragon X Elite was no exception: we announced on October 23 of last year and posted the patchset the next day. That was the result of a lot of pre-announcement work to get everything up and running on Linux and Debian. ↫ Qualcomm’s developer blog In the blog post, the company details exactly which X Elite features have already been merged into mainline with Linux 6.8 and 6.9, as well as which features will be merged into mainline in Linux 6.10 and 6.11, and to be quite frank – it’s looking really solid, especially considering this is Qualcomm we’re talking about. Over the coming six months, they’re going to focus on getting end-to-end hardware video decoding working, including in Firefox and Chrome, as well as various CPU and GPU optimisations, adding the required firmware to the linux-firmware package, and providing access to easy installers. All in all, it’s looking like the X Elite will be exceptionally well supported by Linux before the year’s over. The blog post also details the boot path for Linux on the X Elite, and that, too, is looking good. It’s using a standard UEFI boot process, and supports GRUB and systemd-boot out of the box. Linux boots up using devicetrees, though, and apparently, there’s a known problem with using those that Qualcomm and the community are working on. We’re working closely with upstream communities on an open problem with the UEFI-based BIOS while booting with devicetrees. The problem is that, when you have more than one devicetree blob (DTB) packed into the firmware package flashed on the device, there is no standard way of selecting a devicetree to pass on to the kernel. OEMs commonly put multiple DTBs into the firmware package so it will support devices with slightly different SKUs, so we’re keen to solve this problem. ↫ Qualcomm’s developer blog I am pleasantly surprised by the openness and straightforwardness Qualcomm is showing the Linux community here, and I really hope this is a sign of how the company will keep supporting its laptop and possibly desktop-oriented SoCs from here on out. It seems like next year we will finally be getting competitive ARM laptops that can run Linux in a fully supported fashion.
Experiment in Java native calls
date: 2024-05-16, from: Marginallia log
I’ve experimentally replaced some of the Java implementations of quicksort and binary search with calls to C++ code, and saw huge benefits for the sorting code but the same or worse performance for binary search. The Marginalia Search engine is mainly written in Java, which is language that is good at many things, but not particularly pleasant to work with when it comes to low level systems programming. Unfortunately, a part of building an internet search engine involves database-adjacent low level programming.
https://www.marginalia.nu/log/a_106_native_calls/
Metadata Matching 101: What Is It and Why Do We Need It? (cross-post)
date: 2024-05-16, from: ROR Research ID Blog
ROR Curation Lead Adam Buttrick has been working with Crossref Head of Strategic Initiatives Dominika Tkaczyk to explore improvements in automatic metadata matching strategies that can result in better metadata for everyone.
https://ror.org/blog/2024-05-16-metadata-matching-101-cross-post/
Metadata matching 101: what is it and why do we need it?
date: 2024-05-16, from: Crossref Blog
At Crossref and ROR, we develop and run processes that match metadata at scale, creating relationships between millions of entities in the scholarly record. Over the last few years, we’ve spent a lot of time diving into details about metadata matching strategies, evaluation, and integration. It is quite possibly our favourite thing to talk and write about! But sometimes it is good to step back and look at the problem from a wider perspective. In this blog, the first one in a series about metadata matching, we will cover the very basics of matching: what it is, how we do it, and why we devote so much effort to this problem.
What is metadata matching?
Would you be able to find the DOI for the work referenced in this citation?
Everitt, W. N., & Kalf, H. (2007). The Bessel differential equation and the Hankel transform. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 208(1), 3–19.
We bet you could! You might begin, for example, by pasting the whole citation, or only the title, into a search engine of your choice. This would probably return multiple results, which you would quickly skim. Then you might click on the links for a few of the top results, those that look promising. Some of the websites you visit might contain a DOI. Perhaps you would briefly compare the metadata provided on the website against what you see in the citation. If most of this information matches (see what we did there?), you would conclude that the DOI from that website is, in fact, the DOI for the cited paper.
Well done! You just performed metadata matching, specifically, bibliographic reference matching. Matching in general can be defined as the task or process of finding an identifier for an item based on its structured or unstructured “description” (in this case: finding a DOI of a cited article based on a citation string).
But matching doesn’t have to just be about citations and DOIs. There are many other instances of matching we can think of, for example:
- finding the ROR ID for an organisation based on an affiliation string,
- finding the ORCID ID for a researcher based on the person’s name and affiliation,
- finding the ROR ID for a funder based on the acknowledgements section of a research paper,
- finding the grant DOI based on an award number and a funder name.
Matching doesn’t have to be done manually. It is possible to develop fully automated strategies for metadata matching and employ them at scale. It is also possible to use a hybrid approach, where automated strategies assist users by providing suggestions.
Developing automated matching strategies is not a trivial task, and if we want to do it right, it takes a great deal of time and effort. This brings us to our next question: is it worth it?
Why do we need matching?
In short, metadata matching gives us a more complete picture of the research nexus by discovering missing relationships between various entities within and throughout the scholarly record:
These relationships are very powerful. They provide important context for any entity, whether it is a research output, a funder, a research institution, or an author. Imagine for a moment the scholarly record without any such relationships, where all bibliographic references, affiliations (institution names and addresses), and funding information (funder names and grant titles) are provided as unstructured strings only. In such a world, how would you calculate the number of times a particular research paper was cited? How would you get a list of research outputs supported by a specific funder? It would be incredibly challenging to navigate, summarise, and describe research activities, especially considering the scale. Thankfully, these and many other questions can be answered thanks to metadata matching that discovers relationships between entities in the scholarly record.
There are two primary ways we can use metadata matching in our workflows: as semi-automated tools that help users look up the appropriate identifiers or as fully automated processes that enrich the metadata in various scholarly databases.
The first approach is quite similar to the example we described at the beginning. If you are submitting scholarly metadata, for example of a new article to be published, you can use metadata matching to look up identifiers for the various entities and include these identifiers in the submission. For example, with the help of metadata matching, instead of submitting citation strings, you could provide the DOIs for works cited in the paper and instead of the name and address of your organisation, you could provide its ROR ID. To make this easier for people, metadata submission systems and applications sometimes integrate metadata matching tools into user interfaces.
The second approach allows large, existing sources of scholarly metadata to be enriched with identifiers in a fully automated way. For example, we can match affiliation strings to ROR IDs using a combination of machine learning models and ROR’s default matching service, effectively adding more relationships between people and organisations. We can also compare journal articles and preprints metadata in the Crossref database by calculating similarity scores for titles, authors, and years of publication to match them with each other and provide more relationships between preprints and journal articles. This automated enrichment can be done at any point in time, even after research outputs have been formally published.
There are fundamental differences between these two approaches. The first is done under the supervision of a user, and for the second, the matching strategy makes all the decisions autonomously. As a result, the first approach will typically (although not always) result in better quality matches. By contrast, the second approach is much faster, generally less expensive, and scales to even very large data sources.
In the end, no matter what approach is used, the goal is to achieve a more complete accounting of the relationships between entities in the scholarly record.
This blog is the first one in a series about metadata matching. In the coming weeks, we will cover more detail about the product features related to metadata matching, explain why metadata matching is not a trivial problem, and share how we can develop, assess, compare, and choose matching strategies. Stay tuned!
https://www.crossref.org/blog/metadata-matching-101-what-is-it-and-why-do-we-need-it/