News gathered 2024-05-20
(date: 2024-05-20 19:32:48)
Juvenile driver hits, kills pedestrian in Gilroy
date: 2024-05-21, from: San Jose Mercury News
The fatal collision happened early Sunday morning near St. Louise Regional Hospital.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/20/juvenile-driver-hits-kills-pedestrian-in-gilroy/
Is this the interior of Tesla’s upcoming ‘Robotaxi’?
date: 2024-05-21, from: Electrek Feed
Tesla has released a new video that includes some footage of a previously unseen vehicle interior. Could it be an early concept of the interior of the Robotaxi?
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/tesla-robotaxi-interior-leak/
Michigan town fails to block Chinese EV factory
date: 2024-05-21, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/michigan-town-fails-to-block-chinese-ev-factory/7620452.html
Taiwan’s new president wants to upgrade from ‘silicon island’ to ‘AI island’
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Drone island too – in part to keep China at bay, and to keep TSMC’s sweet silicon flowing
Taiwan’s recently elected president, Lai Ching-te, has used his inaugural address to call for the island state to upgrade to an AI nation.…
Biden, Trump clash over gun rights
date: 2024-05-21, from: VOA News USA
Guns have divided American voters, with nearly equal numbers taking opposite sides in the gun safety debate, according to Pew Research polling. U.S. presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump also have opposing views on guns and gun control. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns reports.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-trump-clash-over-gun-rights-/7620446.html
The Spring Bird Vortex
date: 2024-05-21, from: Margaret Atwood’s substack
Through the magic doorway to Birdland
https://margaretatwood.substack.com/p/the-spring-bird-vortex
Trump unlikely to testify as his trial nears end
date: 2024-05-21, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-unlikely-to-testify-as-his-trial-nears-the-end-/7620433.html
Moorpark district looking to protest CIF title game dispute
date: 2024-05-21, from: The Signal
The final inning of Friday night’s CIF Southern Section Division 2 baseball championship, in which Hart High School was declared the winner after a controversial call by the umpire crew, […]
The post Moorpark district looking to protest CIF title game dispute appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/moorpark-district-seeking-protest-cif-title-game-dispute/
Intel, AMD take a back seat as Qualcomm takes center stage in Microsoft’s AI PC push
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Windows set for ML-powered always-watching-you Recall feature
Build Microsoft isn’t waiting around for Intel and AMD to get their neural processing units (NPUs) up to snuff and is pushing its AI PC agenda forward with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus system-on-chips (SoCs).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/21/qualcomm_windows_microsoft/
COC to hold screening and discussion of ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’
date: 2024-05-21, from: The Signal
A screening and discussion of the controversially titled film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” hosted by the College of the Canyons philosophy department, is meant to spark a discussion […]
The post COC to hold screening and discussion of ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/coc-to-hold-screening-and-discussion-of-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline/
US officials warn cyberattacks on water systems are increasing
date: 2024-05-21, from: San Jose Mercury News
EPA did not say how many cyber incidents have occurred in recent years, and the number of attacks known to be successful so far is few. The agency has issued nearly 100 enforcement actions since 2020 regarding risk assessments and emergency response, but said that’s a small snapshot of the threats water systems face.
Toddler bookworm triumph
date: 2024-05-21, from: The Signal
Luca McFarlin completed a huge milestone for a 2-year-old toddler. With the help of his family, McFarlin read 1,000 books and became the sixth child to accomplish the 1,000 Books […]
The post Toddler bookworm triumph appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/toddler-bookworm-triumph/
Crews battle two-alarm fire at Tesla plant in Fremont
date: 2024-05-21, from: San Jose Mercury News
The blaze was reported just before 5 p.m. Monday at the plant on Fremont Boulevard.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/20/crews-battling-two-alarm-fire-at-tesla-facility-in-fremont/
Haiti’s main airport reopens 3 months after gang violence closed it
date: 2024-05-21, from: San Jose Mercury News
The U.S. government had evacuated hundreds of citizens by helicopter out of a hilly neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, as did nonprofit organizations, as gangs laid siege to parts of the capital.
SCV deputies take part in memorial run
date: 2024-05-21, from: The Signal
A nearly 50-year-old tradition ran through the Santa Clarita Valley on Saturday to honor law enforcement officers who “sacrificed their lives in the performance of their duties,” according to the […]
The post SCV deputies take part in memorial run appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/scv-deputies-take-part-in-memorial-run/
Dark web drug site founder to appear in New York court
date: 2024-05-21, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/dark-web-drug-site-founder-to-appear-in-new-york-court/7620397.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-21, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Scarlett Johansson says lawyers got OpenAI to shut down "Her" voice.
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/20/scarlet-johansson-openai-chatgpt-sam-altman
Head of US deposit insurance agency to step down
date: 2024-05-21, from: VOA News USA
new york — The White House said Monday that the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation would step down, a departure that will follow the release this month of a damning report about the agency’s toxic workplace culture.
The White House said Martin Gruenberg would step down once a successor was appointed and that President Joe Biden would name a replacement “soon.” The announcement came after the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee earlier Monday called for Gruenberg’s removal.
Biden expects the FDIC “to reflect the values of decency and integrity and to protect the rights and dignity of all employees,” deputy press secretary Sam Michel said in a statement.
The FDIC is one of several U.S. banking system regulators. The Great Depression-era agency is best known for running the nation’s deposit insurance program, which insures Americans’ deposits up to $250,000 in case their banks fail.
Before Monday, no Democrats had called for Gruenberg’s ouster, although several came very close to doing so. But Senator Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, who is facing a tough reelection campaign, issued a statement Monday calling for Gruenberg to step down, saying his leadership at the FDIC could no longer be trusted.
Gruenberg was grilled for two days last week on Capitol Hill in hearings largely focused on the FDIC’s workplace culture and the failures disclosed in the report prepared by an outside law firm.
“After chairing last week’s hearing, reviewing the independent report and receiving further outreach from FDIC employees … , I am left with one conclusion: There must be fundamental changes at the FDIC,” Brown said in a statement.
Republicans have been calling for Gruenberg’s ouster for some time and criticized the White House for not calling for his immediate departure.
Gruenberg has held various leadership positions at the FDIC for nearly 20 years, and this was his second full term as FDIC chair. His long tenure at the agency made him largely responsible for the agency’s toxic work environment, according to the report outlining the problems at the agency.
The report released last Tuesday by law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton cites incidents of stalking, harassment, homophobia and other violations of employment regulations, based on more than 500 complaints from employees.
Among the complaints: a woman said she was stalked by a coworker and continually harassed even after complaining about his behavior; a field office supervisor referred to gay men as “little girls”; and a female field examiner described receiving a picture of an FDIC senior examiner’s private parts.
https://www.voanews.com/a/head-of-us-deposit-insurance-agency-to-step-down/7620393.html
Human Rights Watch Raises $900,000
date: 2024-05-21, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Head of international nonprofit addresses guests.
The post Human Rights Watch Raises $900,000 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/20/human-rights-watch-raises-900000/
Bridge to Home celebrates new shelter
date: 2024-05-21, from: The Signal
For many gathered off Drayton Street in Newhall at Monday’s ribbon-cutting for the city’s first-ever permanent homeless shelter, it was a full-circle moment. More than a handful of people could […]
The post Bridge to Home celebrates new shelter appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/bridge-to-home-celebrates-new-shelter/
Pentagon vows to keep resupplying Ukraine with weapons
date: 2024-05-21, from: San Jose Mercury News
The U.S. announced no new aid packages Monday, even as Ukrainian forces continue to complain that weapons are just trickling into the country after being stalled for months due to congressional gridlock over funding. Pentagon officials have said that weapons pre-positioned in Europe began moving into Ukraine soon after the aid funding was approved in late April.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/20/pentagon-vows-to-keep-resupplying-ukraine-with-weapons/
Larry Bensky, the signature voice of KPFA news radio, dead at 87
date: 2024-05-20, from: San Jose Mercury News
From a San Francisco phone booth, Bensky broadcast a live narrative of the historic “White Night” riots, sparked by the lenient sentencing of Dan White for the assassinations of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
TMU Students Get Talking with Podcasting Course
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
When Dr. Bob Dickson first began teaching Podcast Studio at The Master’s University, the podcasting format had already taken to the skies and was planting its flag in the media atmosphere
https://scvnews.com/tmu-students-get-talking-with-podcasting-course/
Peninsula man arrested in connection with coastside arson
date: 2024-05-20, from: San Jose Mercury News
The fire caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage over the weekend in Princeton-by-the-Sea.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/20/peninsula-man-arrested-in-connection-with-coastside-arson/
Why is ICC seeking arrest warrants for Hamas, Israeli leaders?
date: 2024-05-20, from: San Jose Mercury News
Karim Khan said that he believes Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders — Yehia Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/20/why-is-icc-seeking-arrest-warrants-for-hamas-israeli-leaders/
Xeon Phi support removed in GCC 15 compiler
date: 2024-05-20, from: OS News
Last week I wrote about Intel aiming to remove Xeon Phi support in GCC 15 with the products being end-of-life and deprecated in GCC 14. While some openly wondered whether the open-source community would allow it given the Xeon Phi accelerators were available to buy just a few years ago and at some very low prices going back years so some potentially finding use still out of them especially during this AI boom (and still readily available to buy used for around ~$50 USD), today the Intel Xeon Phi support was indeed removed. ↫ Michael Larabel Xeon Phi PCIe cards are incredibly cheap on eBay, and every now and then my mouse hovers over the buy button – but I always realise just in time that the cards have become quite difficult to use, since support for them, already sparse to begin with, is only getting worse by the day. Support for them was already removed in Linux 5.10, and now GCC is pulling he plug too, so the only option is to keep using old kernels, or pass the card on to a VM running an older Linux kernel version, which is a lot of headache for what is essentially a weird toy for nerds at this point. GCC 15 will also, sadly, remove support for Itanium, which, as I’ve said before, is a huge disgrace and a grave mistake. Itanium is the future, and will stomp all over crappy architectures like x86 and ARM. With this deprecation, GCC relegates itself to the dustbin of history.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139752/xeon-phi-support-removed-in-gcc-15-compiler/
Letters: Revisit vote | Academic failure | Airport names | Let’s disagree | Trump’s criminality | ‘Shadow speaker’
date: 2024-05-20, from: San Jose Mercury News
East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for May 21, 2024
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/20/letters-1728/
Teenage Rising Star Set to Graduate from CSUN
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
While most teenagers are navigating their way through high school, 15-year-old actor Tate Birchmore is preparing to walk the California State University, Northridge commencement stage.
https://scvnews.com/teenage-rising-star-set-to-graduate-from-csun/
FDIC chief set to step down after report detailing toxic workplace
date: 2024-05-20, from: San Jose Mercury News
The White House said Martin Gruenberg will step down once a successor is appointed and that President Joe Biden will name a replacement “soon.” The announcement came after the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee earlier Monday called for Gruenberg’s removal.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-20, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Write VisionOS shaders like a civilized person:
https://github.com/praeclarum/ShaderGraphCoder
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112475987895143055
Modernizing the AntennaPod code structure
date: 2024-05-20, from: OS News
AntennaPod has been around for a long time – the first bit of code was published in 2011. Since then, the app has grown massively and had several main developers. The beauty of open-source is that so many people can contribute and make a great app together. But sometimes having many people work on a project can lead to different ways of thinking about how to structure the project. Because of this, AntennaPod gradually grew to have a number of weird code constructs. Our latest release, version 3.4, fixes this. ↫ ByteHamster The AntennaPod team had an incredible task ahead of itself, and while it took them a few years, they pulled it off. The code structure graphs from before and after the code restructuring illustrate better than words ever could what they achieved. Thy changed 10000 lines of source code in 62 pull requests for this restructuring alone, while still adding new major features in the meantime. Pretty incredible.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139750/modernizing-the-antennapod-code-structure/
Cougars Conclude Track & Field Season at State Championship Meet
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
College of the Canyons wrapped the 2024 season by seeing three Cougars compete during day two action of the 3C2A Track & Field State Championships hosted by Saddleback College
https://scvnews.com/cougars-conclude-track-field-season-at-state-championship-meet/
OpenSSF sings a Siren song to steer developers away from buggy FOSS
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
New infosec intelligence service aims to spread the word about recently discovered vulns in free code
Securing open source software may soon become a little bit easier thanks to a new vulnerability info-sharing effort initiated by the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/openssf_siren_warning/
Ken Striplin | Nurturing Greenery, Cultivating Community
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Whether you’re exploring the trails in our vast open spaces, enjoying time in any of our 38 parks or simply driving through the community, Santa Clarita stands out from the rest
https://scvnews.com/ken-striplin-nurturing-greenery-cultivating-community/
Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1649 will Pay Tribute to Those Who Died Serving at Free Memorial Day Ceremony
date: 2024-05-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA, May 20, 2024 – The Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation (PCVF) and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1649
The post Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1649 will Pay Tribute to Those Who Died Serving at Free Memorial Day Ceremony appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump choosing not to testify in his own defense should be a banner headline.
Report: Historic 2023 water year delivered big boost to California groundwater
date: 2024-05-20, from: The Signal
News release The California Department of Water Resources has released the latest Semi-Annual Groundwater Conditions report, and the data show that California achieved 4.1 million acre-feet of managed groundwater recharge […]
The post Report: Historic 2023 water year delivered big boost to California groundwater appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Sols 4188-4190: Aurora Watch on Mars
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Friday, May 17, 2024 During the night of May 10, Earth experienced a fantastic display of aurorae (Northern and Southern Lights) which extended all the way to tropical latitudes, courtesy of the strongest geomagnetic storm since 2003. The enormous solar active region 3664, which produced the X-class flares and powerful coronal mass […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4188-4190-aurora-watch-on-mars/
Letters: Deafening opposition | Go further | Wasteful paper | Adding RFK | No Trump return | Costa Rica’s example
date: 2024-05-20, from: San Jose Mercury News
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for May 21, 2024
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/20/letters-1727/
Reunión comunitaria para discutir las próximas mejoras en el parque Douglas Family Preserve
date: 2024-05-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – 20 de mayo de 2024 El Departamento de Parques y Recreación de la Ciudad de Santa
The post Reunión comunitaria para discutir las próximas mejoras en el parque Douglas Family Preserve appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Community Meeting to Discuss Upcoming Improvements at Douglas Family Preserve
date: 2024-05-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – May 20, 2024 The City of Santa Barbara Parks and Recreation Department will host a public
The post Community Meeting to Discuss Upcoming Improvements at Douglas Family Preserve appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara Awards $12,000 Grant to Meals on Wheels Program in Santa Ynez Valley
date: 2024-05-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA – The Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara has awarded a $12,000 grant to the Santa Ynez Valley
The post Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara Awards $12,000 Grant to Meals on Wheels Program in Santa Ynez Valley appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
May 21: Saugus Union School District Regular Meeting
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The regular meeting of the Saugus Union School District Governing Board will take place Tuesday, May 21, with closed session beginning at 5:30 p.m., followed immediately by public session at 6:30 p.m
https://scvnews.com/may-21-saugus-union-school-district-regular-meeting/
Storms, Politics, And Activism: The History Of The Santa Monica Pier
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The LAist
The Santa Monica Pier started off as a sewage line over a century ago and has since transformed into an amusement park, event center, and tourist destination.
https://laist.com/news/la-history/storms-politics-and-activism-the-history-of-the-santa-monica-pier
Luretík Olive Oil Aims to Challenge Italy’s Finest
date: 2024-05-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Elise Magistro crafts award-winning oils from her family’s Santa Ynez Valley orchard.
The post Luretík Olive Oil Aims to Challenge Italy’s Finest appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/20/luretik-olive-oil-aims-to-challenge-italys-finest/
COC Fire Technology Students Awarded Edison Scholarships
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Twenty-one College of the Canyons fire technology students have received $1,000 scholarships from Edison International to cover tuition, books and school-related fees.
https://scvnews.com/coc-fire-technology-students-awarded-edison-scholarships-2/
Julian Assange can appeal extradition to the US, London High Court rules
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-21, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Let me go, Brandon
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can appeal his extradition to the US from the UK, the High Court of England and Wales ruled Monday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/julian_assange_appeal_extradition/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-20, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Beowulf cluster of iPad Pros.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112475636985580483
Brad Meza Named New Hart High Baseball Coach
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Hart High School is proud to announce Brad Meza as the new varsity head baseball coach for its program
https://scvnews.com/brad-meza-named-new-hart-high-baseball-coach/
What Somms Are Saying About Santa Barbara Wine Country
date: 2024-05-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Sommeliers from around the globe gathered at the second annual CMS Women’s Symposium in Santa Ynez.
The post What Somms Are Saying About Santa Barbara Wine Country appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/20/what-somms-are-saying-about-santa-barbara-wine-country/
FBI Arrests Man For Generating AI Child Sexual Abuse Imagery
date: 2024-05-20, from: 404 Media Group
He allegedly used Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image generative AI model, to create “thousands of realistic images of prepubescent minors,” prosecutors said.
https://www.404media.co/fbi-arrests-man-for-generating-ai-child-sexual-abuse-imagery/
Slack AI Privacy Principles Generate Confusion and Consternation
date: 2024-05-20, from: TidBITS blog
After a section of a Slack document laying out its privacy principles surrounding AI was taken out of context on social media, controversy ensued. Adam Engst attempts to calm the waters, with help from ChatGPT.
https://tidbits.com/2024/05/20/slack-ai-privacy-principles-generate-confusion-and-consternation/
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 are the company’s first Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X chips
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
Lenovo is bringing Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite processors to its consumer and business laptop lineup. The new Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 9 is a notebook with a 14.5 inch, 2944 x 1840 pixel 90 Hz OLED touchscreen display and an ultrathin body that measures just 0.5 inches thick, while the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen […]
The post Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 are the company’s first Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X chips appeared first on Liliputing.
iOS 17.5.1 and iPadOS 17.5.1 Fix Photo Reappearance Bug
date: 2024-05-20, from: TidBITS blog
Apple has released new versions of iOS and iPadOS in response to bug reports that iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 caused deleted photos to reappear and show blank images.
https://tidbits.com/2024/05/20/ios-17-5-1-and-ipados-17-5-1-fix-photo-reappearance-bug/
Honors all around at Hart district
date: 2024-05-20, from: The Signal
Last week’s William S. Hart Union High School District governing board meeting saw teachers, administrators and classified employees from across the district be honored in a retirement ceremony. The district also […]
The post Honors all around at Hart district appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/honors-all-around-at-hart-district/
Microsoft gives Windows new compiler, kernel, scheduler, and x86 translation layer on ARM
date: 2024-05-20, from: OS News
Microsoft’s developer conference Build is taking place this week, so there’s been some major Windows news and announcements, and for once – we’re not talking about more ads in your operating system, or even “AI” shoehorned into, I don’t know, Phone Dialer or Windows Fax and Scan. First and foremost, Windows is going to get a new compiler, kernel, and scheduler, but despite such massive low-level changes, the marketing version number won’t jump from 11 to 12. Of course, we all know the marketing version number has nothing to do with the actual Windows NT version number, which currently sits at 10. The Windows NT version number, meanwhile, is actually also meaningless, since it magically jumps around left and right too, going from 6.2 to 10 between Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, where it has stayed ever since. “We really focused on modernizing this update of Windows 11,” said Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Windows and Devices Pavan Davuluri at a technical briefing on Microsoft’s campus in mid-April. “We engineered this update of Windows 11 with a real focus on AI inference and taking advantage of the Arm64 instruction set at every layer of the operating system stack. For us, what this meant really was building a new compiler in Windows. We built a new kernel in Windows on top of that compiler. We now have new schedulers in the operating system that take advantage of these new SoC architecture.” ↫ Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica The focus is clearly on ARM here, which coincides with the launch of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite, a new SoC that finally seems to truly make ARM laptops that aren’t from Apple a real, competitive thing – so much so that Qualcomm is even breaking with tradition and taking Linux support very seriously for this new chip. Microsoft also unveiled the name for its new x86 translation layer for Windows on ARM: Prism. Microsoft told Ars Technica that Prism is as fast as Apple’s Rosetta 2, which is interesting because Apple’s M series chips contain special silicon to speed up the translation process, making me wonder if Qualcomm has done the same, or is just brute-forcing it. Performance like this means the apps customers love work great. Microsoft has partnered closely with developers across the globe to optimize their applications for this processor. In addition, the powerful new Prism emulation engine delivers a 2x performance boost compared to Surface Pro 9 with 5G. On the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, powered by Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors, experiences like Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365 and Chrome will feel snappy, quick and responsive. ↫ Pete Kyriacou on the Windows blog The new Windows on ARM machines using the Snapdragon X Elite will be marketed under the new Copilot+ brand name, which brings with it some requirements, the biggest of which is the neural processing unit: it must be capable of at least 40 trillion operations per second. At the time of writing, the only Windows-capable processor that can boast such numbers is, of course, the new Snapdragon X Elite. AMD and Intel need not apply. They simply cannot match this. Microsoft tied a bow on all this stuff by unveiling the new Surface Pro and new Surface Laptop, both powered by the new Snapdragon SoCs. You can preorder them today, but they won’t be available until 18 June.
Mercedes-Benz just opened more DC fast chargers at Buc-ee’s in Texas
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging just opened more DC fast chargers at Buc-ee’s stores in the Dallas-Forth Worth area.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/mercedes-benz-dc-fast-chargers-buc-ees-in-dallas-fort-worth/
Adorable Rodents on the Highveld Beat
date: 2024-05-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Giant kangaroo rats are the eco-gardeners of California’s grasslands.
The post Adorable Rodents on the Highveld Beat appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/20/adorable-rodents-on-the-highveld-beat-2/
FDA gives Neuralink ‘a second shot’ at human brain chip
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A case of ‘keep digging deeper’ actually being the right move for Elon, potentially
America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reportedly approved Neuralink to implant an updated brain chip in a second human patient. The Elon Musk startup also hopes to perform ten tryouts by the end of the year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/neuralink_brain_fda/
Aurorasaurus Roars During Historic Solar Storm
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
The largest geomagnetic storm in 21 years lit up the sky last weekend, and NASA’s volunteers were ready. Between May 10th and 12th 2024, NASA’s Aurorasaurus project received an unprecedented number of reports from around the world. It also helped eager aurora chasers get a better view.
This Polish Museum Received a Mysterious Package in the Mail—With Missing 17th-Century Tiles Inside
date: 2024-05-20, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The ceramic tiles, which vanished during World War II, once adorned a Baroque bathing pavilion in Warsaw
Polestar (PSNY) stock faces potential Nasdaq de-listing after failing to file its annual report
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
Another EV stock may be removed from the Nasdaq exchange. After failing to file its annual report, Polestar (PSNY) received a notice from the Nasdaq as the company faces a possible de-listing.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/polestar-psny-stock-faces-potential-nasdaq-de-listing/
Hart announces Brad Meza as new baseball coach
date: 2024-05-20, from: The Signal
Hart baseball will remain in familiar hands following longtime coach Jim Ozella’s retirement. The school announced Ozella’s replacement, Brad Meza, on Monday in a press release, three days after the […]
The post Hart announces Brad Meza as new baseball coach appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/hart-announces-brad-meza-as-new-baseball-coach/
US agency warns of increasing cyberattacks on water systems
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
washington — Cyberattacks against U.S. water utilities are becoming more frequent and more severe, the Environmental Protection Agency warned Monday as it issued an enforcement alert urging water systems to take immediate protective action.
About 70% of utilities inspected by federal officials over the last year violated standards meant to prevent breaches or other intrusions, the agency said. Officials urged even small water systems to improve protections against hacks. Recent cyberattacks by groups affiliated with Russia and Iran have targeted smaller communities.
Some water systems are falling short in basic ways, the alert said, including failure to change default passwords or cut off system access to former employees. Because water utilities often rely on computer software to operate treatment plants and distribution systems, protecting information technology and process controls is crucial, the EPA said.
Possible impacts of cyberattacks include interruptions to water treatment and storage; damage to pumps and valves; and alteration of chemical levels to hazardous amounts, the agency said.
“In many cases, systems are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, which is to have completed a risk assessment of their vulnerabilities that includes cybersecurity and to make sure that plan is available and informing the way they do business,” said EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe.
Attempts by private groups or individuals to get into a water provider’s network and take down or deface websites aren’t new. More recently, however, attackers have targeted utilities’ operations.
Geopolitical rivals
Recent attacks are not just by private entities. Some recent hacks of water utilities are linked to geopolitical rivals and could lead to the disruption of the supply of safe water to homes and businesses.
McCabe named China, Russia and Iran as the countries that are “actively seeking the capability to disable U.S. critical infrastructure, including water and wastewater.”
Late last year, an Iranian-linked group called “Cyber Av3ngers” targeted multiple organizations including a small Pennsylvania town’s water provider, forcing it to switch from a remote pump to manual operations. They were going after an Israeli-made device used by the utility in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas.
Earlier this year, a Russian-linked “hacktivist” tried to disrupt operations at several Texas utilities.
A cyber group linked to China and known as Volt Typhoon has compromised information technology of multiple critical infrastructure systems, including drinking water, in the United States and its territories, U.S. officials said. Cybersecurity experts believe the China-aligned group is positioning itself for potential cyberattacks in the event of armed conflict or rising geopolitical tensions.
“By working behind the scenes with these hacktivist groups, now these [nation states] have plausible deniability and they can let these groups carry out destructive attacks. And that to me is a game changer,” said Dawn Cappelli, a cybersecurity expert with the risk management firm Dragos Inc.
The world’s cyberpowers are believed to have been infiltrating rivals’ critical infrastructure for years, planting malware that could be triggered to disrupt basic services.
The enforcement alert is meant to emphasize the seriousness of cyberthreats and inform utilities the EPA will continue its inspections and pursue civil or criminal penalties if they find serious problems.
“We want to make sure that we get the word out to people that, ‘Hey, we are finding a lot of problems here,’” McCabe said.
Broader federal effort
Preventing attacks against water providers is part of the Biden administration’s broader effort to combat threats against critical infrastructure. In February, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to protect U.S. ports. Health care systems have been attacked. The White House has pushed electric utilities to increase their defenses, too. EPA Administrator Michael Regan and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan have asked states to come up with a plan to combat cyberattacks on drinking water systems.
“Drinking water and wastewater systems are an attractive target for cyberattacks because they are a lifeline critical infrastructure sector but often lack the resources and technical capacity to adopt rigorous cybersecurity practices,’’ Regan and Sullivan wrote in a March 18 letter to all 50 U.S. governors.
Some of the fixes are straightforward, McCabe said. Water providers, for example, shouldn’t use default passwords. They need to develop a risk assessment plan that addresses cybersecurity and set up backup systems. The EPA says it will train water utilities that need help for free. Larger utilities usually have more resources and the expertise to defend against attacks.
“In an ideal world … we would like everybody to have a baseline level of cybersecurity and be able to confirm that they have that,” said Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators. “But that’s a long ways away.”
Some barriers are foundational. The water sector is highly fragmented. There are roughly 50,000 community water providers, most of which serve small towns. Modest staffing and anemic budgets in many places make it hard enough to maintain the basics — providing clean water and keeping up with the latest regulations.
“Certainly, cybersecurity is part of that, but that’s never been their primary expertise. So, now you’re asking a water utility to develop this whole new sort of department” to handle cyberthreats, said Amy Hardberger, a water expert at Texas Tech University.
States, industry groups object
The EPA has faced setbacks. States periodically review the performance of water providers. In March 2023, the EPA instructed states to add cybersecurity evaluations to those reviews. If they found problems, the state was supposed to force improvements.
But Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa, joined by the American Water Works Association and another water industry group, challenged the instructions in court on the ground that EPA didn’t have the authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act. After a court setback, the EPA withdrew its requirements but urged states to take voluntary actions anyway.
The Safe Drinking Water Act requires certain water providers to develop plans for some threats and certify they’ve done so. But its power is limited.
“There’s just no authority for [cybersecurity] in the law,” said Roberson.
Kevin Morley, manager of federal relations with the American Water Works Association, said some water utilities have components that are connected to the internet — a common but significant vulnerability. Overhauling those systems can be a significant and costly job. And without substantial federal funding, water systems struggle to find resources.
The industry group has published guidance for utilities and advocates for establishing a new organization of cybersecurity and water experts that would develop new policies and enforce them, in partnership with the EPA.
“Let’s bring everybody along in a reasonable manner,” Morley said, adding that small and large utilities have different needs and resources.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-agency-warns-of-increasing-cyberattacks-on-water-systems/7619972.html
Asus brings Snapdragon X chips to is Vivobook S 15 OLED line of semi-premium laptops
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The Asus Vivobook laptop family sits in a weird space. Up until a few years ago these were lower-cost alternatives to the premium thin-and-light Asus Zenbook lineup. But Asus keeps adding premium features like OLED displays to select Vivobook models, and now the company has announced that it’s first Copilot+ PC will be the Asus Vivobook S […]
The post Asus brings Snapdragon X chips to is Vivobook S 15 OLED line of semi-premium laptops appeared first on Liliputing.
Toyota announces nationwide dealer rollout of Tern Class 8 electric semi
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
Launched as a joint venture between Toyota Group and Tier 1 supplier Hexagon Purus, the new Tern brand of heavy duty electric trucks announced Hino Trucks as its exclusive US distributor.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Kingsley Uyi Idehen, working with ChatGPT, has a simple feed reader, using my blog's feed as an example.
https://chatgpt.com/share/cd865a2a-665c-4111-90cf-271d670688cd
National Charity League Honors 22 Graduating High School Seniors
date: 2024-05-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The annual Senior Recognition Event for the Santa Barbara National Charity League (NCL) was held on April 21 at a
The post National Charity League Honors 22 Graduating High School Seniors appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Moms Demand Action Invites Community To Wear Orange
date: 2024-05-20, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA – On Saturday, June 8 from 9 am – 12 pm, the Santa Barbara Chapter of Moms Demand
The post Moms Demand Action Invites Community To Wear Orange appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/20/moms-demand-action-invites-community-to-wear-orange-2/
Microsoft launches 11th-gen Surface Pro for $1000 and up (Snapdragon X Copilot+ PCs with an OLED display option)
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The new Microsoft Surface Pro is up for pre-order for $1000 and up, and it’s expected to be available beginning June 18, 2024. Microsoft is positioning the 11th-gen Surface Pro as the first to be a Copilot+ PC with an integrated NPU capable of delivering next-gen AI capabilities. But the new tablet also stands out as […]
The post Microsoft launches 11th-gen Surface Pro for $1000 and up (Snapdragon X Copilot+ PCs with an OLED display option) appeared first on Liliputing.
FastScripts 3.3.2
date: 2024-05-20, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/fastscripts-3-3-2/
Little Snitch 5.7.6
date: 2024-05-20, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/little-snitch-5-7-6/
Audio Hijack 4.4.1
date: 2024-05-20, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/audio-hijack-4-4-1/
US 2024 election: What to expect in Kentucky’s primaries
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
washington — All of Donald Trump’s top opponents for the Republican nomination for president dropped out of the race weeks ago, but the whole gang will be back together on Kentucky’s primary ballot Tuesday.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie all suspended their campaigns after Kentucky finalized its ballot in January, as did pastor Ryan Binkley.
Trump has easily won nearly every Republican contest so far, but Haley has won a significant number of votes in several recent primaries, including Maryland (20%) and Nebraska (18%) this week.
President Joe Biden’s opponents in Kentucky are author Marianne Williamson and U.S. Representative Dean Phillips. Democrats can also vote for “uncommitted,” which has attracted protest votes in other states.
Kentucky voters will also decide six primaries for the U.S. House. One race to watch is the 4th Congressional District Republican primary. Representative Thomas Massie, who backed DeSantis’ presidential bid and co-sponsored a motion to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson, is facing a challenge from Eric Deters, a staunch Trump supporter. However, Deters hadn’t reported raising any money as of the latest filing deadline and placed fourth in the 2023 gubernatorial primary.
Here’s a look at what to expect on Tuesday.
Primary day
Kentucky will hold presidential primaries and will also choose nominees for the U.S. House, the state legislature and the state Senate. Polls will close locally at 6 p.m. across the state. However, Kentucky is nearly cut in half by time zones; most of it falls in the Eastern time zone, while 41 counties in the western part of the state are on Central time.
Who gets to vote
Kentucky has a closed primary system, which means that only voters registered with a political party may participate in that party’s primary. Democrats may not vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters may not participate in either primary.
Delegate allocation rules
Kentucky Republicans allocate their 46 delegates proportionally to any candidate who receives more than 15% of the vote, meaning any of Trump’s opponents could qualify for delegates. They could also splinter the anti-Trump vote, increasing Trump’s chances of being the only candidate to receive 15% of the vote and therefore the only candidate to receive any delegates.
Kentucky’s 53 pledged Democratic delegates are allocated according to the national party’s standard rules. Twelve at-large delegates are allocated in proportion to the statewide vote, as are six PLEO delegates, or “party leaders and elected officials.” The state’s six congressional districts have a combined 35 delegates at stake, which are allocated in proportion to the vote results in each district. Candidates must receive at least 15% of the statewide vote to qualify for any statewide delegates, and 15% of the vote in a congressional district to qualify for delegates in that district.
Decision notes
While Republican state parties that hold primaries this late in the cycle tend to embrace a winner-takes-all system for delegate allocation, Kentucky Republicans are dividing their delegates proportionally among candidates who receive at least 15% of the vote.
For signs that a candidate not named Trump could reach that 15% threshold, look to suburban areas like Louisville and Lexington. Those areas — Jefferson and Fayette counties — are also the biggest sources of GOP votes in the state.
In the 2020 presidential primary, “uncommitted” and Trump were the only two options on the Republican ballot. Statewide, “uncommitted” received 13% of the vote in the GOP primary. In Jefferson County, however, “uncommitted” received 23%.
In the 4th Congressional District — which runs along the Ohio River, sharing its northern boundary with Indiana and Ohio — the United Democracy Project, a group that has criticized Massie for his record on Israel, had spent $328,672 on the race as of last Tuesday. However, those ads have not supported an alternative candidate.
The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.
Kentucky mandates a recount if the top candidate wins by less than 0.5 percentage point. However, that recount rule does not apply to the presidential race. Candidates can ask for a recanvass of the vote, which entails retabulating the vote totals, if the margin is less than 1 percentage point. However, to request a recount, in which each ballot is hand-counted, a court must approve and prescribe the procedure.
What do turnout and the advance vote look like?
As of March 31, there were 3,487,292 registered voters in Kentucky. Of those voters, 43% were Democrats and 46% were Republicans.
In 2022, 17% of voters cast their ballots before Election Day.
How long does vote-counting usually take?
In the 2023 primary election, the AP first reported results at 6:03 p.m. Eastern time, or three minutes after the first polls closed. The election night tabulation ended at 9:56 p.m. with about 98% of total votes counted.
Are we there yet?
As of Tuesday, there will be 168 days until the November general election.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-2024-election-what-to-expect-in-kentucky-s-primaries-/7619922.html
Gasoline Prices Could Be Pretty Low This Summer — Except for One Thing
date: 2024-05-20, from: Heatmap News
The American oil refining business is a national colossus, with almost 130 facilities taking in some 16 million barrels of crude oil per day and turning it into nearly 10 million barrels of gasoline and 5 million barrels of diesel. And unlike some past years, inventories are looking pretty good heading into this summer. While they’re lower than the five-year average, gasoline supplies are still higher than where they were a year ago, and refineries are a ways away from running at their peak capacity. According to the forecasters at GasBuddy, we’re looking at relatively mild summertime prices of around $3.50 to $3.60 per gallon.
The one wild card: weather. About half of America’s refining capacity sits on the Gulf Coast, putting America’s fuel production squarely in the target zone of what could be an especially active hurricane season.
“If you recall 2022, inventories were tight and [refinery] utilization was tight,” explained Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis. Gas prices peaked in June of 2022 at slightly over $5 per gallon, according to data the Energy Information Administration’s data, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent crude oil prices soaring to more $120 a barrel. “Our head is holding above water now,” he said, because demand is low. “We’re in a much better position going into the start of the summer compared to two years ago.”
Oil prices have largely stayed steady so far this year other than a brief spike in early April, despite continued attacks on shipping by Houthi rebels in Yemen and the ongoing threat of a spiraling regional conflict in the Middle East. The top gas price last month was around $3.67 a gallon, whereas GasBuddy’s range of possible prices for the summer months average closer to $3.60. All things considered, De Haan told me, “we got a little bit of breathing room.”
Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to clients last week that gasoline stockpiles “remain close to the 5-year average level and are not drawing as strongly as usual for this time of year,” which puts downward pressure on prices. U.S. demand is hovering below 9 million barrels these days, which is right about the average demand in 2023, indicating that some consumer weakness may be responsible for relatively mild gas prices.
Weaker-than-expected demand for gasoline would be consistent with other signs of the American consumer being slightly less spendy in recent months. Overall retail sales in April were basically flat from the month before, according to Census Bureau data, and came in lower than economists’ expectations. Sales at gasoline stations were down 0.8% in the first four months of this year compared to the first four months of 2023, despite overall spending going up 3.5% from the same period a year ago.
What can be good for drivers may not be so great for investors and the gasoline complex at large. “It’s undeniable to say that there’s some trouble in gasoline land,” Rory Johnston, a commodities analyst and author of Commodity Context, told me. “In terms of whether it’s supply or demand more broadly, as always, it’s a bit of both.”
Whatever the cause, it will mean less profit for refiners, especially compared to the record outperformance they’ve seen in recent years.
“Gasoline prices and refining margins have come under pressure,” Reuters reported last week, meaning that refineries are making a bit less than before on the difference between crude oil and gasoline prices. Inventories are also being run down more slowly than is normal for the pre-summer season, the report said, “indicating supplies are plentiful, and undermining the bullish case for the fuel.”
And yet if it’s destructive enough, just one hurricane could upend that
entire narrative. When Hurricane Harvey parked its torrential rains over
Houston in 2017, it took a
big
chunk of the U.S. refinery complex offline, pushing gas prices up
$0.36 in just two weeks.
While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has yet to release its official hurricane forecast for the year, The Weather Company has predicted that the 2024 season “could be one of the most active on record.” If those hurricanes hit the wrong parts of the Gulf Coast, the expected mild summer for America’s internal combustion-dependent drivers may be blown away.
https://heatmap.news/economy/gas-prices-summer-hurricanes
It Took More Than 4 Days to Put Out This Battery Fire
date: 2024-05-20, from: Heatmap News
A fire at a battery storage site in San Diego County appears to have been extinguished after burning on and off for multiple days and nights.
“There is no visible smoke or active fire at the scene,” Cal Fire, the state fire protection agency, said in an update Monday morning.
The fire started sometime Wednesday at the Gateway Energy Storage facility, a 250 megawatt battery electric storage system in Otay Mesa, which is immediately adjacent both to the eastern border of San Diego and to the northern border of Mexico and near the Richard J. Donovan state prison facility.
Firefighters first succeeded in putting out the blaze on Thursday, “but a flare-up later that night brought firefighters back to the scene,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Firefighters continued working on the flames all weekend. As late as Sunday, there were 40 firefighters at the scene, according to Union-Tribune reporters.
Gateway’s owner and operator is LS Power, which has not responded to a request for comment as of publication time. LS Power operates several battery electric storage facilities in both California and New York. Gateway went into operation in 2020, as did many battery storage projects in California. Its purpose is to charge when energy is cheap or when there’s plentiful solar power so that it can deliver that excess energy back to the grid at times of high demand.
Fires have been a recurring problem for the battery electric storage industry, which may be one reason why, according to Heatmap polling, it is the form of carbon-free power least popular with the general public. Firefighters need specific training to deal with battery fires, and “thermal runaway” — i.e. one cell overheating and igniting leading to another cell doing so and so on — can mean that fires last for several days at very high temperatures.
On Saturday, Cal Fire reported that “lithium batteries continue to experience thermal runaway,” and that the fire had “burned through part of the roof.” As of now, fire personnel are “on standby in case additional batteries undergo thermal runaway.”
https://heatmap.news/sparks/california-battery-fire
Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 — Sat 24th & Sun 25th August, Hebden Bridge, UK
date: 2024-05-20, from: Tilde.news
Pew: Quarter of web pages vanished in past decade
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Luckily we have the Wayback Machine
The web is melting away like so many glaciers these days.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/webpages_vanish_decade/
Volvo EX30 RWD Noticeably More Efficient Than AWD In Video Range Test
date: 2024-05-20, from: Inside EVs News
Buyers can count on a longer driving range of roughly one-tenth when sticking with a single-motor version.
https://insideevs.com/news/720293/volvo-ex30-rwd-range-test-bjorn/
NASA Selects BAE Systems to Develop Ocean Color Instrument for NOAA
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has selected BAE Systems (formerly known as Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation) of Boulder, Colorado, to develop an instrument to analyze ocean data as part of NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellite program. This cost-plus-award-fee contract is valued at approximately $450 million. It includes […]
Ivan Boesky, stock trader convicted in insider trading scandal, dies at 87
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
Microsoft’s 7th-gen Surface Laptop is a Copilot+ PC with “up to 22 hours” of battery life
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
Microsoft is taking pre-orders for its new 7th-gen Surface Laptop. Prices start at $1000 for a model with a 13.8 inch display or $1300 for models with a 15 inch screen. But it’s not just the bigger screen that drives up the price. The smaller model is available with a choice of Qualcomm Snapdragon X […]
The post Microsoft’s 7th-gen Surface Laptop is a Copilot+ PC with “up to 22 hours” of battery life appeared first on Liliputing.
This $100,000 off-road EV sports car with Jaguar influence is now available to order
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
With influence from the designer behind the Aston Martin Vanquish and Jaguar I-Pace, the Callum Skye is a fierce-looking off-road EV sports car. The latest Ian Callum creation is now available to order.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/this-100000-off-road-ev-sports-car-is-now-available-to-order/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Cheez-It Opened the Cheez-In Diner in Woodstock, New York.
https://www.foodandwine.com/cheez-it-cheez-in-diner-woodstock-new-york-8650808
Italy Seizes Fiat Topolino EVs Over Use Of Tiny Italian Flag Emblem
date: 2024-05-20, from: Inside EVs News
Italy’s strict laws prohibiting the branding of non-Italian made goods, and this tiny sticker held up more than 130 cars at port.
https://insideevs.com/news/720276/italy-seizes-fiat-topolino-flag/
May 22: COC Board, Foundation Joint Business Meeting
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Community College District Board of Trustees, along with the COC Foundation Board of Directors, will hold a joint business meeting Wednesday, May 22, beginning at 5 p.m
https://scvnews.com/may-22-coc-board-foundation-joint-business-meeting/
Mushroom Hunters Stumble Upon Mysterious Stone Sculpture in Thai Forest
date: 2024-05-20, from: Smithsonian Magazine
While the artwork’s age is still unknown, some think it depicts the mother of the Buddha
A moment of daily practice
date: 2024-05-20, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>I have a longer post to write about meditation and my relationships with the practice. For now, I’ll just say I’m glad to be sitting here again.</p>
<hr>
<p>Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.</p>
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https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/8sov4eI3H11KCMwX
55 Years Ago: Two Months Until the Moon Landing
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
The march to the first Moon landing took a giant leap forward in May 1969 with the successful completion of Apollo 10, essentially a dress rehearsal for the landing mission. During their eight-day flight, the all-veteran Apollo 10 crew of Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, and Eugene A. Cernan rehearsed nearly every aspect of […]
https://www.nasa.gov/history/55-years-ago-two-months-until-the-moon-landing/
NASA, Sierra Space Deliver Dream Chaser to Florida for Launch Preparation
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
As part of NASA’s efforts to expand commercial resupply in low Earth orbit, Sierra Space’s uncrewed spaceplane arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of its first flight to the International Space Station. The Dream Chaser spaceplane, named Tenacity, arrived at Kennedy on May 18 inside a climate-controlled transportation container from NASA’s Neil Armstrong […]
Astronaut Exercise
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
Science in Space: May 2024 Future missions to the Moon and Mars must address many challenges, including preventing loss of bone and muscle tissue in astronauts. Research on the International Space Station is helping to address this challenge. Without Earth’s gravity, both bone and muscle atrophy, or become smaller and weaker. Early on, scientists realized […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/astronaut-exercise/
Intel’s Lunar Lake chips coming to Windows Copilot+ PCs in Q3, 2024
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The first PCs to support Microsoft’s new Copilot+ experience may all be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series processors. But Microsoft announced that it’s also partnering with Intel and AMD. And now we know when to expect some of the first Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs. Intel says it will release its Lunar Lake processor lineup during […]
The post Intel’s Lunar Lake chips coming to Windows Copilot+ PCs in Q3, 2024 appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/intels-lunar-lake-chips-coming-to-windows-copilot-pcs-in-q3-2024/
Ed Dwight, the First Black Astronaut Candidate in the U.S., Finally Travels to Space at 90 Years Old
date: 2024-05-20, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The former Air Force pilot trained to become an astronaut in the 1960s but was never selected by NASA. On a Blue Origin flight Sunday, he became the oldest person to go to space
Renault is putting its Level 4 autonomous shuttle into production
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
Renault doesn’t think fully autonomous vehicle have a place in the private vehicle market – but pulic transit? That’s a different story, and Renault is partnering with WeRide to put this Level 4 autonomous shuttle bus into production.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/renault-is-putting-its-level-4-autonomous-shuttle-into-production/
iOS 17.5.1 and iPadOS 17.5.1
date: 2024-05-20, from: Michael Tsai
Juli Clover (no release notes, no security, no developer): According to Apple’s release notes, the updates include a fix for an issue that could cause images to reappear in the Photos library even after being deleted. Mysk: MarketplaceKit updated in iOS 17.5.1. Now it returns a consistent client ID per device, but the ID is […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/20/ios-17-5-1-and-ipados-17-5-1/
Safari Hover Link Preview Keyboard Shortcut
date: 2024-05-20, from: Michael Tsai
Jeff Johnson (Mastodon): Pressing control-command-d (⌃⌘D) while hovering over a link in Safari opens a popup window containing a preview of the linked web page, just like pressing and holding down a link in Safari on iOS.Apple does say that you can preview a link in a webpage in Safari on Mac with a Force […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/20/safari-hover-link-preview-keyboard-shortcut/
Swift FormatStyle Issues
date: 2024-05-20, from: Michael Tsai
Wade Tregaskis: They’re terser than using their otherwise more powerful cousins the Formatters, as they support a “fluent” style of property-based access, which tends to read more naturally and usually avoids having to define variables to hold the formatter.[…]They almost always break Xcode’s auto-complete, which is a problem since their syntax is non-trivial and unintuitive.They’re […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/20/swift-formatstyle-issues/
Sutskever and Leike Out at OpenAI
date: 2024-05-20, from: Michael Tsai
Sigal Samuel (tweet): For months, OpenAI has been losing employees who care deeply about making sure AI is safe. Now, the company is positively hemorrhaging them. Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike announced their departures from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, on Tuesday. They were the leaders of the company’s superalignment team — the team tasked […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/20/sutskever-and-leike-out-at-openai/
iOS 17.5 Resurfacing Deleted Photos
date: 2024-05-20, from: Michael Tsai
Juli Clover: A Reddit user wiped an iPad following Apple’s guidelines in September of 2023 before selling it off to a friend. That friend updated the iPad to iPadOS 17.5 this week, and began seeing the Reddit user’s old photos reappearing in the Photos app. That would be very concerning because it would imply that […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/20/ios-17-5-resurfacing-deleted-photos/
EVs now beat rail as the largest electricity consumer in the US transport sector
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
Light-duty EVs in the US used more electricity than rail systems for the first time in 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/evs-rail-largest-electricity-consumer-us-transport-sector/
Hart District Special Meeting to Discuss Superintendent Search Process
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The William S. Hart Union High School District Governing Board will hold a special meeting Tuesday, May 21, at 1 p.m. to discuss the process for its superintendent search.
https://scvnews.com/hart-district-special-meeting-to-discuss-superintendent-search-process/
‘The Apprentice,’ about a young Donald Trump, premieres in Cannes
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
CANNES, France — While Donald Trump’s hush money trial entered its sixth week in New York, an origin story for the Republican presidential candidate premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, unveiling a scathing portrait of the former president in the 1980s.
“The Apprentice,” directed by the Iranian Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, stars Sebastian Stan as Trump. The central relationship of the movie is between Trump and Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the defense attorney who was chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s Senate investigations.
Cohn is depicted as a longtime mentor to Trump, coaching him in the ruthlessness of New York City politics and business. Early on, Cohn aided the Trump Organization when it was being sued by the federal government for racial discrimination in housing.
“The Apprentice,” which is labeled as inspired by true events, portrays Trump’s dealings with Cohn as a Faustian bargain that guided his rise as a businessman and, later, as a politician. Stan’s Trump is initially a more naive real-estate striver, soon transformed by Cohn’s education.
The film notably contains a scene depicting Trump raping his wife, Ivana Trump (played by Maria Bakalova). In Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, she stated that Trump raped her. Trump denied the allegation and Ivana Trump later said she didn’t mean it literally, but rather that she had felt violated.
That scene and others make “The Apprentice” a potentially explosive big-screen drama in the midst of the U.S. presidential election. The film is for sale in Cannes, so it doesn’t yet have a release date.
Variety on Monday reported alleged behind-the-scenes drama surrounding “The Apprentice.” Citing anonymous sources, the trade publication reported that billionaire Dan Snyder, the former owner of the Washington Commanders and an investor in “The Apprentice,” has pressured the filmmakers to edit the film over its portrayal of Trump. Snyder previously donated to Trump’s presidential campaign.
Neither representatives for the film nor Snyder could immediately be reached for comment.
In the press notes for the film, Abbasi, whose previous film “Holy Spider” depicts a female journalist investigating a serial killer in Iran, said he didn’t set out to make “a History Channel episode.”
“This is not a biopic of Donald Trump,” said Abbasi. “We’re not interested in every detail of his life going from A to Z. We’re interested in telling a very specific story through his relationship with Roy and Roy’s relationship with him.”
Regardless of its political impact, “The Apprentice” is likely to be much discussed as a potential awards contender. The film, shot in a gritty 1980’s aesthetic, returns Strong to a New York landscape of money and power a year following the conclusion of HBO’s “Succession.” Strong, who’s currently performing on Broadway in “An Enemy of the People,” didn’t attend the Cannes premiere Monday.
“The Apprentice” is playing in competition in Cannes, making it eligible for the festival’s top award, the Palme d’Or. At Cannes, filmmakers and casts hold press conferences the day after a movie’s premiere. “The Apprentice” press conference will be Tuesday.
https://www.voanews.com/a/the-apprentice-about-a-young-donald-trump-premieres-in-cannes/7619739.html
Save $390 on Anker’s SOLIX C1000 power station at $609 low, WORX tools 38% off, Jackery units up to $2,000 off, more
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
Kicking off this week’s Green Deals are three chances to save during current Memorial Day sales events – on Amazon and beyond. Headlining the lineup is the Anker SOLIX C1000 Portable Power Station that just fell to a new $609 low for a limited-time. It is joined by a collection of discounted WORX garden and lawncare equipment that is seeing up to 38% off discounts, starting from $65, as well as all the discounts happening during Jackery’s Memorial Day offers – up to $2,000 off! 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.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/ankers-solix-c1000-power-station-worx-tools-jackery-units-more/
May 19, 2024
date: 2024-05-20, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-19-2024-ab6
Hm! Boeing union just ran whistleblower rights training
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Staff decibel level is high - and not just from all those jet engines
A union representing Boeing employees held a training session last week on whistleblower protection rights, suggesting the troubled jetmaker’s problems may be far from over. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/boeing_whistleblower_training/
Has the Mystery of the ‘Mona Lisa’ Background Been Solved?
date: 2024-05-20, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Ann Pizzorusso, a geologist and art historian, says she’s identified the location in the background of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mona-lisa-background-mystery-180984377/
Samsung introduces Galaxy Book4 Edge 14 and 16 inch laptops with Snapdragon X
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
Samsung’s new Galaxy Book4 Edge line of laptops are premium thin and light notebooks with 3K AMOLED displays and Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors. The new Galaxy Book4 Edge comes with a choice of 14 or 16 inch display options. The smaller model ships standard with a 12-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 processor, while the larger version […]
The post Samsung introduces Galaxy Book4 Edge 14 and 16 inch laptops with Snapdragon X appeared first on Liliputing.
HP OmniBook X 14 inch and EliteBook Ultra G1q laptops with Snapdragon X Elite coming in June
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
HP says its new AI PCs with Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips are a whole “new class of next-generation AI PCs.” So the company developed a new AI Helix logo to slap on computers with high-performance NPUs for on-device AI processing. And the company has also stepped outside of the naming scheme it’s been using in […]
The post HP OmniBook X 14 inch and EliteBook Ultra G1q laptops with Snapdragon X Elite coming in June appeared first on Liliputing.
Acer Swift 14 with Snapdragon X coming in July for $1100 and up
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The new Acer Swift 14 AI (SF14-11) is Acer’s first laptop sporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor for all-day battery life, competitive CPU and graphics performance, and an integrated NPU capable of 45 TOPS of AI performance. Acer says the thin and light Windows 11 laptop will be available in several configurations, including models with Snapdragon […]
The post Acer Swift 14 with Snapdragon X coming in July for $1100 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/acer-swift-14-with-snapdragon-x-coming-in-july-for-1100-and-up/
Dell Inspiron 14 Plus with Snapdragon X Plus is up for pre-order for $1099 and up
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
Dell’s Inspiron-branded laptops tend to be budget or mid-range devices that offer decent bang for the buck when it comes to the processor, memory, and storage, but which lack some of the premium materials or thin and light designs you’ll find in the company’s higher-priced XPS notebooks. The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus is sort of a […]
The post Dell Inspiron 14 Plus with Snapdragon X Plus is up for pre-order for $1099 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
Dell XPS 13 with Snapdragon X Elite is available for pre-order for $1299 and up
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The Dell XPS 13 laptop is a premium thin and light notebook that’s been around for more than a decade. This year Dell updated the XPS 13 with a major redesign that’s controversial, to say the least. But it looks like the company is sticking with the new design, because the company’s first XPS 13 […]
The post Dell XPS 13 with Snapdragon X Elite is available for pre-order for $1299 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
2024 Toyota bZ4X EPA Range And Energy Consumption: How Does It Compare To Tesla Model Y?
date: 2024-05-20, from: Inside EVs News
The numbers highlight the efficiency and battery capacity gap between the two EVs.
https://insideevs.com/news/720261/2024-toyota-bz4x-epa-range-energy-consumption/
Johnson Celebrates AA and NHPI Heritage Month: Anima Patil-Sabale
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
Anima Patil-Sabale has been shooting for the stars since she was a little girl growing up in India. Inspired by books about the Apollo-era space program, Patil-Sabale decided she would be an astronaut one day. For the first step on her journey to space, Patil-Sabale hoped to become a fighter pilot, but India did not […]
Toyota to launch a Prius-like bZ3C electric crossover, but you can’t have it
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
To keep up with surging BYD, Tesla, and other EV makers, Toyota is launching a new all-electric crossover. The Toyota bZ3C looks like the new Prius, but the electric SUV crossover won’t be available in the US.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/toyota-launch-prius-like-bz3c-electric-suv-but-you-cant-have-it/
Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PC platform for AI-enhanced Windows PCs, starting with models powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The first Windows PCs with Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips are on the way, and Microsoft says they’ll be the first in a new line of Copilot+ PCs capable of supporting a next-gen version of Windows 11 with several major new features. The first models go up for pre-order today for $999 and up, and should be […]
The post Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PC platform for AI-enhanced Windows PCs, starting with models powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips appeared first on Liliputing.
XPeng rolls out AI-powered OS with 2K pure vision ADAS, CEO promises L4 autonomous driving by 2025
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
XPeng Motors is rolling out cutting-edge AI technology that it hopes will transform the automotive industry from “electrification to smartification.” The Chinese EV automaker held an AI Day event earlier today, detailing the impressive capabilities of XOS 5.1.0, “AI Tianji,” which it hailed as “the industry’s first AI-powered in-car OS.”
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/xpeng-rolls-out-ai-powered-os-neural-network-2k-pure-vision-ev/
Google takes shots at Microsoft for shoddy security record with enterprise apps
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-21, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Also, feds who switch to Google Workspace for 3 years get an extra year for free
Updated Google has taken a victory lap in the wake of high-profile intrusions into Microsoft’s systems, and says businesses should ditch Exchange and OneDrive for Gmail and Google Drive.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/google_takes_shots_at_microsoft/
Readying Apollo 10 for Launch
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
The Apollo 10 spacecraft stands, illuminated by launch pad spotlights, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in this photo from May 4, 1969. It launched on May 18, 1969, with astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, Eugene A. Cernan, and John W. Young aboard. The Apollo 10 mission encompassed all aspects of an actual crewed lunar landing, […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/readying-apollo-10-for-launch/
Road (Enthusiast) Rage?
date: 2024-05-20, from: Status-Q blog
Many years ago, we discovered that audiobooks are a wonderful way to make long journeys seem shorter, and seldom does a motorway junction go by without it being accompanied by a snatch of, say, Jules Verne, PG Wodehouse, Arthur Ransome, Neville Shute or Patrick O’Brian. Aside: This is one reason why I’m delighted with Continue Reading
https://statusq.org/archives/2024/05/20/12073/
Bob Dylan Traded This Painting in Exchange for an Astrology Reading
date: 2024-05-20, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The musician created the artwork in the 1960s while recovering from a motorcycle accident in Woodstock, New York
Tech Today: From Spacesuits to Racing Suits
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
For spacewalks to even be possible, spacesuits need insulation and temperature controls to withstand temperature swings between 250 and minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit. This extreme environment made NASA innovators look beyond everyday materials to find something unique to keep explorers comfortable and safe. In the 1980s, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston entered into a […]
WikiLeaks’ Assange can appeal US extradition on freedom of speech grounds
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
The U.S. government’s attempts to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain on charges of espionage took another legal twist Monday, as judges ruled that he must be given the right to a full appeal against the order — based on freedom of speech. Henry Ridgwell has more from London.
Watch a Blue-Green Comet Illuminate Skies Over Spain and Portugal
date: 2024-05-20, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The colorful fireball mesmerized onlookers—and its unexpected appearance surprised astronomers who are hoping to better predict when space rocks enter Earth’s atmosphere
Notes on Post-Pandemic Business Travel
date: 2024-05-20, from: TidBITS blog
Adam Engst took his first business trip in four years and discovered that some things have changed. He took advantage of packing and flight tracking apps, got free Wi-Fi on several flights, discovered that USB Type-A to USB-C cables are essential, learned that TSA PreCheck is easier to get, and ran across his second App Clip ever.
https://tidbits.com/2024/05/20/notes-on-post-pandemic-business-travel/
Oh Sonos! App update borks users’ favorite features and worse
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Blind customers complain they’ve been forgotten in rollout of latest UI
Sonos has alienated chunks of its customer base after releasing a revamped app for its music boxes that strips users of often-used features, including making it nearly “impossible” for the vision impaired.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/sonos_app_update_borks_users/
Chinese EV Companies Are Falling Behind On Their Bills
date: 2024-05-20, from: Inside EVs News
Nio took nearly 300 days to clear its dues in 2023, compared to 197 days in 2021.
https://insideevs.com/news/720304/chinese-ev-brands-fall-behind-supplier-payments/
NASA Study Provides New Look at Orbital Debris, Potential Solutions
date: 2024-05-20, from: NASA breaking news
New data analysis indicates that NASA and its partners could have more cost-effective methods for dealing with the growing issue of orbital debris than previously thought. A new report from NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy provides agency leadership with new insight about how to measure the risks presented by orbital debris. “Growing activity […]
Ten Productions Filming in Santa Clarita
date: 2024-05-20, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita’s Film Office has released the list of 10 productions currently filming in the Santa Clarita Valley for the week of Monday, May 20 - Sunday, May
https://scvnews.com/ten-productions-filming-in-santa-clarita/
ONEXPLAYER X1 Mini is a small(er) Ryzen 7 8840U gaming tablet with an 8.8 inch display and detachable controllers
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The ONEXPLAYER X1 Mini is an upcoming handheld gaming PC with an 8.8 inch display featuring a 144 Hz refresh rate, and AMD Ryzen 7 8840U processor with Radeon 780M integrated graphics, and a pair of detachable controllers that let you quickly switch between using the computer as a handheld or a tablet. While an 8.8 […]
The post ONEXPLAYER X1 Mini is a small(er) Ryzen 7 8840U gaming tablet with an 8.8 inch display and detachable controllers appeared first on Liliputing.
GM says EV hurdles are ‘not an issue now’ as new models roll out
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
GM had its fair share of EV hurdles last year, leading to disappointing sales. However, CEO Mary Barra says those bottlenecks are a thing of the past as new models like the Chevy Equinox, Blazer, and Silverado EVs hit the market.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/gm-ev-hurdles-not-an-issue-now-new-models-roll-out/
Can I phone a friend? How cops circumvent face recognition bans
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Just ask a pal in a neighboring town with laxer restrictions
Updated Police in multiple major US cities have figured out a trick to circumvent bans on facial recognition technology. Just ask a friend in a city without any such restrictions to do it for you.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/cops_circumvent_facial_recognition/
Rivian Recalls Some R1S And R1T EVs Because It Forgot A Label
date: 2024-05-20, from: Inside EVs News
It’s a very important label, of course.
https://insideevs.com/news/720278/rivian-r1s-r1t-recall-airbag-label/
MINISFORUM V3 tablet w/Ryzen 7 8840U launches for $1199
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The MINISFORUM V3 is a Windows tablet with a 14 inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel, 165 Hz display, an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U processor, and what MINISFORUM calls a “3-in-1” design. That’s because it comes with a keyboard that allows you to use the tablet like a laptop and because it also has supports video input, […]
The post MINISFORUM V3 tablet w/Ryzen 7 8840U launches for $1199 appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/minisforum-v3-tablet-w-ryzen-7-8840u-launches-for-1199/
As clicks dry up for news sites, could Apple News be a lifeline?
date: 2024-05-20, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“The free version of Apple News is one of the biggest news platforms in the world. It’s the most widely used news application in the United States, the U.K., Canada, and Australia, and boasted over 125 million monthly users in 2020.”
And publications are becoming dependent on it.
I agree strongly with the journalist’s view at the bottom of this piece:
“It incentivizes users to subscribe to Apple News+ rather than to publications directly, likely cannibalizing some potential revenue. It’s driving editorial decisions, meaning publishers are once again changing their content strategy to placate a platform. And of course the company could wake up one day and decide, like Facebook, that it no longer really wants to be in the news business, leaving news publishers stranded.”
Newsrooms - say it with me - need to establish direct, first-party connections with their audiences. Anything else gives a third party too much supplier power over their businesses and presents an existential risk. Apple News is useful right now, but at its heart the dynamics that drive it are no different to Facebook or Twitter. There’s nothing to say it’s here for good, and there’s nothing smart about letting Apple own your relationship with your readers. #Media
<p>[<a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/05/19/2024/as-clicks-dry-up-for-news-sites-could-apples-news-app-be-a-lifeline">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>Asus ExpertCenter PN65 mini PC with Intel Meteor Lake now available
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The Asus ExpertCenter PN65 is a small desktop computer with support for up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H Meteor Lake processor, up to 96GB of DDR5 memory, and up to three storage devices. First unveiled in January, the computer is now available for purchase from the Asus website for $759 and up. The starting […]
The post Asus ExpertCenter PN65 mini PC with Intel Meteor Lake now available appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/asus-expertcenter-pn65-mini-pc-with-intel-meteor-lake-now-available/
The IndieWeb’s next stage?
date: 2024-05-20, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“I want the IndieWeb to be a viable alternative to social media, gradually widening the audience beyond tech-savvy folks by making the tools easier to use and more reliable.”
This is what we were trying for with Known: something that felt social but was fully under the user’s control. We had installers at third-party hosts; we had our own managed service; we had the open source code for people who wanted to use that directly.
The fediverse adds a missing piece here: Known suffered immensely from a blank page and no reader view when you logged in for the first time. Now we can build platforms that immediately connect people to a much wider social network that is outside of monolithic corporate control but also makes it (relatively) easy to find the people you care about.
A combination between the fediverse and indieweb is almost inevitable. This is what Ghost appears to be building today, for example, with its new integrated fediverse reader tool. WordPress may also be headed in that direction. And there will be many others.
A huge +1, also, to the idea that we can “manifest momentum by speaking aloud your dreams and letting others share them with you”. This is how community-building works.
And, for the record, I’m all-in. #Technology
<p>[<a href="https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/17/indieweb-next-stage/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/17/indieweb-next-stage/
MINISFORUM AtomMan X7 TI now available for pre-order (Mini PC with Core Ultra 9 185H and a 4 inch touchscreen display)
date: 2024-05-20, from: Liliputing
The MINISFORUM AtomMan X7 Ti is one of the first mini PCs with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H Meteor Lake processor featuring Intel Arc integrated graphics. But that’s just one of the things that makes this little computer unusual. First announced earlier this month, the AtomMan X7 Ti also features an OCuLink connector for external […]
The post MINISFORUM AtomMan X7 TI now available for pre-order (Mini PC with Core Ultra 9 185H and a 4 inch touchscreen display) appeared first on Liliputing.
Another week, another leak for Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
This bird isn’t going to space for a while
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule will spend a little longer on Earth than planned following the discovery of a leak in one of the spacecraft’s reaction control thrusters.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/starliner_launch_delayed_again/
Elon Musk confirms his threat: give me 25% of Tesla or you don’t get AI and robotics
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
Elon Musk appears to confirmed and even clarify what can be seen as a threat to Tesla shareholders: give me 25% of the company or I won’t build AI and robotic products at the company, after making clear that the company is worthless without those.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/elon-musk-confirms-threat-give-me-25-of-tesla-or-no-ai-robotics/
Red Lobster’s woes go beyond just bottomless shrimp
date: 2024-05-20, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The popular Red Lobster restaurant seafood chain has officially filed for bankruptcy protection. The eatery has struggled with high labor costs, expensive leases and a popular promotion that ate into profits. Today, we’ll trace back Red Lobster’s struggles. Then, the final results of major New York auction house sales show the art world is struggling to overcome a recession. And later: What’s it like living in a multigenerational residential community?
It’s your last chance to double your impact during our May fundraiser — the Investors Challenge Fund is matching donations up to $25,000 today! Give right now!
The Chevrolet Camaro Could Return As A $34,995 Pony EV: GM President
date: 2024-05-20, from: Inside EVs News
The Camaro EV will have four doors and a non-crossover shape if GM President Mark Reuss has his way.
https://insideevs.com/news/720226/chevrolet-camaro-ev-sedan-price/
Supreme Court rejects appeal from Canadian man once held at Guantanamo
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by a Canadian-born former Guantanamo detainee who was seeking to wipe away his war crimes convictions, including for killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.
Omar Khadr had waived his right to appeal when he pleaded guilty in 2010 to charges that included murder. But his lawyers argued that a subsequent ruling by the federal appeals court in Washington called into question whether Khadr could have been charged with the crimes in the first place.
A divided three-judge panel ruled that, despite the appellate ruling, Khadr gave up his right to appeal.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson did not take part in the Supreme Court’s consideration of Khadr’s appeal because both had dealt with the case while they served as appeals court judges. Jackson explained her recusal from Monday’s order; Kavanaugh did not.
Khadr had been sentenced to eight years in prison plus the time he already had spent in custody, including several years at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But he was released in May 2015 pending his appeal of the guilty plea.
A Canadian judge ruled in 2019 that his war crimes sentence had expired.
Khadr was 15 when he was captured by U.S. troops following a firefight at a suspected al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of an American special forces medic, U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer. Khadr, who was suspected of throwing the grenade that killed Speer, was taken to Guantanamo and ultimately charged with war crimes by a military commission.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7619408.html
AI might be coming for your job, but Sam Altman can’t go on dinner dates anymore
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
As OpenAI’s safety culture comes under scrutiny, CEO bemoans his lack of privacy
Spare a thought for poor Sam Altman. Amid the ongoing drama that is OpenAI, with high-profile departures and regulators worrying about safety, the CEO is complaining that his fame put an end to impromptu dining in his own city.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/openai_safety_culture/
AI Needs Enormous Computing Power. Could Light-Based Chips Help?
date: 2024-05-20, from: Quanta Magazine
Optical neural networks, which use photons instead of electrons, have advantages over traditional systems. They also face major obstacles.The post AI Needs Enormous Computing Power. Could Light-Based Chips Help? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Volvo reveals $28,000 EX30 starting price in China as low-cost BYD rival
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
The cheapest Volvo EV so far was officially launched in China over the weekend. Volvo launched the EX30 in China with a low starting price of $27,800 (200,800 yuan) as the automaker takes on BYD head-on in its home market.
https://electrek.co/2024/05/20/volvo-reveals-28000-ex30-starting-price-china-rival-byd/
GM CEO Says Electric Car Issues Are ‘Absolutely’ In The Past
date: 2024-05-20, from: Inside EVs News
We’ll see, won’t we? Plus, Kia also ups its hybrid and plug-in hybrid models, and we look at what went wrong with Mercedes’ EV push.
https://insideevs.com/news/720296/critical-materials-barra-software-gm/
Ship that caused deadly Baltimore bridge collapse has been refloated, moving back to port
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
Baltimore — The container ship that caused the deadly collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was refloated at high tide Monday and began slowly moving back to port, guided by several tugboats.
Removing the Dali from the wreckage marked a significant step in ongoing cleanup and recovery efforts. Nearly two months have passed since the ship lost power and crashed into one of the bridge’s supporting columns, killing six construction workers and halting most maritime traffic through Baltimore’s busy port.
The vessel appeared to start moving shortly after 6 a.m. It started and stopped a few times before slowly and steadily backing away from the collapse site, where it had been grounded since the March 26 disaster.
Pieces of the bridge’s steel trusses still protruded from its damaged bow, which remained covered in mangled concrete from the collapsed roadway.
With the hulking cargo ship finally removed from the mouth of Baltimore’s harbor, a newly opened void appeared in the city’s skyline. The altered waterscape also highlighted the progress made on the cleanup effort; crews have already removed hundreds of tons of mangled steel that once were visible jutting up from the water’s surface.
The bodies of all six construction workers have been recovered from the underwater wreckage in recent weeks. All the victims were Latino immigrants who came to the U.S. for job opportunities. They were filling potholes on an overnight shift when the bridge was destroyed.
Officials said the Dali would move at about 1 mph on the roughly 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) trip back to port, a fraction of the speed it was traveling when it lost power and brought down the bridge.
The ship is expected to remain in the port for a several weeks and undergo temporary repairs before being moved to a shipyard for more substantial repairs. It will return to the same marine terminal it occupied before beginning its ill-fated voyage.
Crews began preparing the ship to be refloated about 18 hours before it started moving Monday morning. That process included releasing anchors and pumping out over 1 million gallons of water that were keeping the ship grounded and stable during complex cleanup operations. Crews conducted a controlled demolition on May 13 to break down the largest remaining span of the collapsed bridge, which was draped across the Dali’s bow.
Dive teams also completed inspections of the site to confirm there were no obstructions that would hinder the voyage.
The Dali experienced two electrical blackouts about 10 hours before leaving the Port of Baltimore on its way to Sri Lanka, according to a preliminary report released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board. In response to those issues, the crew made changes to the ship’s electrical configuration, switching to a transformer and breaker system that had previously been out of use for several months, the report says.
The Dali experienced two more blackouts as it was approaching the Key Bridge, causing it to lose propulsion and drift off course at the exact wrong moment.
The two tugboats that helped guide the Dali out of the port had peeled off after it entered the main shipping channel. That was normal protocol, according to the report, but when the power went out, the tugs were too far away to help avert disaster.
The FBI has also launched a criminal investigation into the circumstances leading up to the crash.
The ship’s crew members haven’t been allowed to leave the vessel since the disaster. Officials said they’ve been busy maintaining the ship and assisting investigators. Of the crew members, 20 are from India and one is Sri Lankan. Officials have said they will be able to disembark once the Dali is docked in Baltimore.
Officials plan to reopen the port’s 50-foot (15-meter) deep draft channel by the end of May. Until then, crews have established a temporary channel that’s slightly shallower.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7619350.html
Tesla releases update to remove steering wheel nag, shuts down sunglasses loophole
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
Tesla has started pushing its new Full Self-Driving (FSD) v12.4 update, and it confirmed the removal of the “steering wheel nag”, but it improved camera-based driver monitoring, including shutting down the sunglasses loophole.
No, You Shouldn’t Ride a Scooter With Your Child While Texting
date: 2024-05-20, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
For the love of all that is good, take extra care when riding with youngsters.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/720203/reckless-scooter-rider-with-child-barcelona/
Nonconsensual AI Porn Maker Accidentally Leaks His Customers’ Emails
date: 2024-05-20, from: 404 Media Group
A Patreon account that sold nonconsensual AI-generated porn has exposed a list of customer emails to 404 Media.
https://www.404media.co/nonconsensual-ai-porn-maker-accidentally-leaks-his-customers-emails/
Michael Cohen says he stole $60,000 from Trump company
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-s-criminal-trial-is-nearing-the-end-/7619330.html
Researchers call out QNAP for dragging its heels on patch development
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
WatchTowr publishes report claiming vendor failed to issue fixes after four months
Infosec boffins say they were forced to go public after QNAP failed to fix various vulnerabilities that were reported to it months ago.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/qnap_watchtowr/
Tesla Celebrates 3,000,000th Electric Car Produced In Fremont
date: 2024-05-20, from: Inside EVs News
The factory has an installed annual vehicle capacity of over 650,000 EVs.
https://insideevs.com/news/720213/tesla-3000000th-ev-produced-fremont/
AI Chatbot Credited With Preventing Suicide. Should It Be?
date: 2024-05-20, from: 404 Media Group
A recent Stanford study found that some people credit Replika for saving their lives. But chatbots can be unpredictable, and users have also blamed the chatbot app for throwing them into mental crises.
https://www.404media.co/replika-suicide-prevention-loneliness-study/
Ruto on first state visit by Kenyan leader to US in two decades
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
Nairobi — Kenyan President William Ruto meets his US counterpart Joe Biden in Washington this week, with the crisis in Haiti and efforts to build trade ties likely to top the agenda.
Billed as “historic” by Ruto’s office, it is the first state visit by a Kenyan president to the United States in two decades and the first by an African leader since 2008.
Thursday’s Biden-Ruto talks will focus on trade and security partnerships including Kenya’s pledge to lead a UN-backed multinational mission seeking to restore order in Haiti, which has been wracked by gang-fueled anarchy.
Kenya has offered to send 1,000 personnel, along with forces pledged by several other countries, although the United States and other major nations have ruled out putting their own forces on the ground.
A first batch of Kenyan police is expected to make the 12,000-kilometre (7,500-mile) journey to the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince this week, security sources told AFP, despite a fresh court challenge in Nairobi against the deployment.
Ruto has defended the undertaking as a “mission for humanity” in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation, which has suffered from poverty, political instability and natural disasters for decades.
But a new lawsuit filed last week is seeking to hold Ruto’s government in contempt for “blatantly” ignoring a January court order prohibiting the deployment as unconstitutional and illegal.
Funding could also prove a stumbling block for the mission, analysts say.
The United States is the largest backer of the force, pledging more than $300 million since the Haiti crisis intensified several years ago but other countries have been slow to offer support.
Ruto will demand “the US do more to rally financial support for the UN basket fund,” said Meron Elias, East and Southern Africa analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“Kenya also wants the US to commit greater backing to stemming the flow of arms into Haiti, including from US ports in Florida,” she said.
Trade deal
Ruto begins his visit on Monday in Atlanta, Georgia where he will visit the Carter Presidential Library and Museum, among other engagements.
“His remarks here will underline the importance of democracies working collaboratively to tackle global challenges,” State House spokesman Hussein Mohamed said.
On Tuesday, he is due to visit studios owned by entertainment mogul Tyler Perry, who has championed greater diversity in Hollywood to “explore opportunities within the creative economy.”
Ruto will meet a Congressional delegation on Wednesday and call for the extension of a free trade agreement — the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) — which eliminates import tariffs on goods from eligible African nations.
The pact expires in 2025, prompting African leaders to seek clarity on future arrangements.
Most of Kenya’s imports are from China — also one of its biggest bilateral creditors — and Washington has been keen to eat into Beijing’s clout in the region.
The East African nation began talks with the United States on a free trade agreement in 2020 but nothing has been signed.
In 2022, the United States exported goods worth $604 million to Kenya while imports totaled $875 million, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.
Kenyan Trade Minister Rebecca Miano said there were “very big opportunities” for investment in the country.
“We have prepared more than 30 bankable projects worth over $20.5 billion to interest American investors and the Kenyan diaspora,” she told local media last week.
‘Extremely disappointed’
A request for Ruto to address a joint session of Congress fell through after House Speaker Mike Johnson of the Republican Party declined to extend an invitation.
Lawmakers from Biden’s Democratic Party last week accused Johnson of disrespecting Africa, saying they were “extremely disappointed” by the decision.
The last African leader to address Congress was Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the continent’s first female elected head of state, in 2006.
The visit “feels a bit like a fig leaf” for Africa, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said, as it comes after Biden broke a promise to visit Africa last year.
Kenyan historian Macharia Munene also cautioned that Nairobi’s future relationship with Washington would hinge on the outcome of the November US presidential election.
Ruto is currently “America’s blue-eyed boy” and is “hobnobbing” with Biden, a situation that could change if Donald Trump wins the presidency again, he said in an opinion piece for The Standard newspaper.
DoJ, ByteDance ask court: Hurry up and rule on TikTok ban already
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Forced selloff case will likely be appealed again … see you in (Supreme) court
The US Department of Justice and Bytedance spent a rare moment unified on Friday when the duo asked for a fast-tracked court schedule for the Chinese short video apps divest or ban case.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/doj_and_bytedance_ask_court/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-20, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Godot can blend your game with a binary payload to create a playable game for various platforms.
For iOS, this generates an Xcode project that you need to compile on a Mac.
I think this would suck for an iPad user. Wondering just how painful it would be to do the entire signing dance and integrate into AppStore Connect to publish apps directly from the iPad.
Anyone familiar with any apps trying to do this?
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112473573829542417
Red Hat middleware takes a back seat in strategic shuffle
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Less middleware plus more AI equals … fewer people?
Exclusive Red Hat is slowing or stopping development of some of its middleware software, a situation which could result in some staff layoffs.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/red_hat_prunes_middleware/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-20, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Missed opportunities in the last six months:
Dune-themed avatar
Fallout-themed avatar
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112473519947835477
General Motors’ Plug-In Hybrids Are Coming Back To The U.S. In 2027
date: 2024-05-20, from: Inside EVs News
Almost 20 years after the Chevrolet Volt went into development, GM will bring back hybrid cars with a plug. Will Americans buy them?
https://insideevs.com/news/720220/gm-plug-in-hybrids-us/
How Worried Should We Be About Hail?
date: 2024-05-20, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Flooding killed nearly 100 people in Afghanistan over the weekend • Streets turned into rivers in southern Germany after heavy rain • It’s 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Delhi today, and the rest of the week will be hotter.
THE TOP FIVE
- Hail damage is making insurers nervous
Hail damage accounted for between 50% and 80% of the $64 billion in insured storm costs worldwide last year, according to international reinsurance firm Swiss Re. As storms become more frequent and more severe due to climate change, insurers are beginning to factor hail into their risk assessments on policies, Bloomberg reported. Such a move could result in higher rates for policyholders. Other customers could lose insurance altogether. Some insurers are “nervous to touch big solar farms” because of the incredible damage hail can do to solar panels. One insurer has started testing the durability of various panels by pummeling them with “industrially produced hail” and seeing how well they hold up.
- Mercedes workers in Alabama reject unionization push
Mercedes-Benz workers at a plant in Alabama voted last week against joining the United Auto Workers union. Just 2,045 workers out of about 5,000 voted in favor of unionizing, marking what Reuters called a “stinging loss” for the UAW, which has been pushing hard to expand membership across southern states after its contract deals with the Big Three in 2023. UAW also has its eyes on Tesla as a target for unionization. Last month the UAW found victory at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee, where 73% of workers voted to unionize. But the results in Alabama are “a big setback,” explained NPR. Mercedes ran an aggressive anti-union campaign to convince workers to vote no, and Alabama politicians “framed the union vote as a threat to the state’s economic success.”
- Study: Heat waves are triggering asthma attacks in kids
A new study suggests extreme heat is leading to more hospital visits for children who have asthma. The researchers had access to hospital admission data for young asthma patients within the University of California, San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospitals. They looked at whether the children who were admitted lived in an area that was experiencing a heat wave when they got sick, and found that “daytime heat waves were significantly associated with 19% higher odds of children’s asthma hospital visits, and longer duration of heat waves doubled the odds of hospital visits.” More than 4.5 million children have the lung condition in the U.S.
- Public charging infrastructure isn’t keeping pace with EV growth
A report from The Washington Post confirms what many drivers of electric vehicles probably already know: Public charging infrastructure in the U.S. isn’t growing fast enough. For every public charging point in the country, there are more than 20 EVs. Compare that to 2016, when there were seven EVs for each charging point, and it becomes clear charger installations aren’t matching growing demand. “As Americans purchase more and more EVs, public chargers will be essential to support long road trips, help apartment-dwellers go electric and alleviate overnight pressure on electricity grids,” the Post reported. President Biden has a goal of installing half a million charging stations by 2030 and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $5 billion for states to kickstart that effort, but as of March, only seven stations had been built in four states as a result of the program.
- First Solar becomes world’s most valuable solar company
First Solar recently became the world’s most valuable solar company, Bloomberg reported. This is the first time in six years a U.S. firm has claimed the position over Chinese rivals. Stock gains on Friday helped the company overtake Sungrow Power Supply, which saw its shares fall at the same time. First Solar is the biggest U.S. manufacturer of solar panels. While its valuation is up, and U.S. solar firms will get a boost from higher tariffs on Chinese clean tech goods, “by most other metrics, including the vital one of being able to produce enough clean energy to fight climate change, First Solar still has a way to go to catch up with its Chinese counterparts,” Bloomberg said.
THE KICKER
“The chances of politicians acting swiftly are probably better than they have been in the past. Not because of new scientific findings, but because solar, wind, and batteries have become so cheap so fast that the amount of pain involved in the transition to clean energy is far less than it would have been a decade ago. We could actually do this.” –Bill McKibben on remaining optimistic, even as the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius seems further out of reach.
https://heatmap.news/climate/hail-storm-damage-insurance
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-20, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
A speck of slightly not terrible news, after seven months of horrors:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112473439600691975
KDE Plasma 6 comes to OpenBSD
date: 2024-05-20, from: OS News
Last year marked a significant milestone for both myself and the OpenBSD desktop community, as we successfully ported KDE Plasma 5 and all dependencies to OpenBSD. With the release of OpenBSD 7.5 on April 5, 2024, KDE Plasma in version 5.27.10 has become a part of our lovely operating system. This success is the result of years of development work and commitment to achieving this goal. KDE launched version 6 of its Plasma desktop environment on February 28, 2024, bringing numerous updates and features as well as the major switch to Qt6. I am immensely proud that the OpenBSD team has managed to prepare for this major update so swiftly. All necessary components have been committed to our CVS tree, and the packages will soon be available. ↫ Rafael Sadowski Excellent news for OpenBSD users who don’t wish to be using GNOME, Xfce, or one of the smaller build-it-yourself desktop environments. My dual-Xeon workstation, which I switched over from Fedora KDE to OpenBSD, runs Xfce, because I feel a smaller desktop environment is a more natural fit for OpenBSD, but I’m very happy to know that I have KDE to fall back on in case Xfce turns out not to be a good fit for me in the long term. I’ll give the OpenBSD developers an other experts in that community some more time to iron out any wrinkles, and then I’ll probably give it a go to see just how well KDE will be integrated with the OpenBSD base system.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139742/kde-plasma-6-comes-to-openbsd/
Windows Server 2025 to ship with DTrace by default
date: 2024-05-20, from: OS News
Windows Server 2025 comes equipped with dtrace as a native tool. DTrace is a command-line utility that enables users to monitor and troubleshoot their system’s performance in real-time. DTrace allows users to dynamically instrument both the kernel and user-space code without any need to modify the code itself. This versatile tool supports a range of data collection and analysis techniques, such as aggregations, histograms, and tracing of user-level events. To learn more, see DTrace for command line help and DTrace on Windows for additional capabilities. ↫ What’s new in Windows Server 2025 DTrace was originally developed by Sun as part of Solaris, but eventually made its way to other operating systems as Sun collapsed in on itself and Oracle gave it the final push. DTrace is available for the various surviving Solars-based operating systems, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, macOS, and QNX, and Microsoft ported DTrace from FreeBSD to Windows back in 2018. With Windows Server 2025, DTrace will be shipped out of the box.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139740/windows-server-2025-to-ship-with-dtrace-by-default/
Really? A sarcasm detector? Wow. You shouldn’t have
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Computers learning to spot sass – what could go wrong?
Researchers from the University of Groningen’s Speech Technology Lab say they have created a multimodal algorithm that can detect sarcasm in speech.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/sarcasm_detector/
Arctic Cat Recalls Two UTV Models Due to Fire Hazard
date: 2024-05-20, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
A fuel leak around the filler neck on the Prowler Pro and Tracker poses a fire hazard.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719975/textron-prowler-pro-tracker-recall/
Wikileaks’ Assange can appeal US extradition on freedom of speech grounds
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
London — The United States government’s attempts to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from Britain on charges of espionage took another legal twist Monday, as a British court ruled he must be given the right to a full appeal against the order on freedom of speech grounds.
The hearing at London’s High Court on Monday was the last legal hope for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to halt his imminent extradition to the United States.
Two of the three judges ruled that a full appeal hearing must be held into whether the 52-year-old Australian citizen would be able to rely on the U.S. First Amendment right to free speech, in an American court.
“This is good news because it means that the Julian Assange case can now proceed to a hearing that will substantively consider the freedom of expression arguments,” said Simon Crowther, a legal adviser at Amnesty International.
Assange’s lawyers successfully argued that U.S. government assurances that he could “seek to rely” on those First Amendment rights were inadequate. A new appeal process could take months or years.
Barry Pollack, a member of Assange’s legal team, described the ruling as a significant milestone. “The High Court is going to hear the vitally important issues of whether someone should be extradited to the United States for having published truthful, newsworthy information.”
“The United States should never have brought this case. It is utterly inconsistent with First Amendment values and all that the United States says that it believes. And I hope the United States will take a hard look at this decision and maybe reconsider whether they want [to] pursue this fundamentally flawed case,” Pollack said at a news conference following the ruling Monday.
Assange was not in court Monday due to ill health. His wife, Stella Assange, said it was the correct ruling.
“As a family, we are relieved. But how long can this go on? The United States should read the situation and drop this case now. Now is the moment to do it. Just abandon this shameful attack on journalists, on the press and the public that has been going on for 14 years. This case is shameful, and it is taking an enormous toll on Julian. He is under enormous pressure. He has been in Belmarsh Prison for over five years,” she told hundreds of supporters outside the court.
U.S. prosecutors have filed 18 charges against Assange, relating to allegations of hacking and theft of classified material. They did not immediately comment on Monday’s court ruling.
In 2010, WikiLeaks published thousands of stolen diplomatic cables relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which Assange said exposed abuses by the United States military. The U.S. government argues his actions went beyond journalism by soliciting, stealing and indiscriminately publishing classified government documents that endangered innocent lives.
The case sets a vital precedent, said Amnesty’s Simon Crowther. “What Julian Assange is being prosecuted for is something journalists do all the time: they receive classified material that exposes war crimes or alleged war crimes, or crimes against humanity, serious human rights violations. And when it’s in the public interest, they publish those documents,” Crowther told VOA.
Assange has spent the past five years in London’s Belmarsh high security jail.
Prior to that, he sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for seven years after Swedish prosecutors charged him with two counts of rape, which he denied. The charges were later dropped. Assange was jailed for breaching his bail conditions. The U.S. Justice Department first formally requested his extradition in 2019.
In the coming months, Assange will have the right to bring a new appeal before the British courts, where he will argue that the U.S. judicial system would deny him his right to free speech.
HMRC must grow ‘intelligent client’ function to sort out post-Brexit tech issues – watchdog
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Already delayed, IBM and Deloitte’s ‘Single Trade Window’ presents SaaSy challenge’s to tax collector
The UK’s public spending watchdog is warning that the nation’s tax collector needs be become an “intelligent client” in its handling of tech service providers contracted to create a “single trade window” for post-Brexit border arrangements already beset with delays.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/hmrc_must_grow_intelligent_client/
The latest in the tense back-and-forth between the U.S. and China
date: 2024-05-20, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The Chinese government is putting sanctions on three U.S. defense companies. The move came as Taiwan swore in its new president, who called on China to stop trying to intimidate the country, and includes the latest economic restrictions between the U.S. and China as both countries move to protect domestic industries. Plus, health care providers continue to reel from a February cyberattack, and analysts worry about the adverse effects of Google’s AI-powered search results.
It’s your last chance to double your impact during our May fundraiser — the Investors Challenge Fund is matching donations up to $25,000 today! Give right now!
Jason Momoa’s Harley-Davidson ‘On The Roam’ Collection Just Got Bigger
date: 2024-05-20, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
More colorways, more cool gear.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/720128/jason-momoa-harley-davidson-on-the-roam-apparel/
Bajaj’s CNG Bike Is Coming Much Sooner Than Expected
date: 2024-05-20, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
The Bruzer 125 is set to take India’s roads by storm on June 18, 2024.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719981/bajaj-cng-bruzer-125-coming-june-2024/
Russian theater director and playwright go on trial over a play authorities say justifies terrorism
date: 2024-05-20, from: Associated Press, World News
A Russian court has started the trial of a theater director and a playwright facing charges of justifying terrorism over a play they staged, the latest step in the unrelenting crackdown on dissent in Russia that has reached unprecedented levels during Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Taiwan has a new president. What will it mean for the economy?
date: 2024-05-20, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Taiwan’s new leader, William Lai, has called for China to stop threatening the island, with tensions between the two keenly watched from abroad. But the economy remains a major issue for Taiwan residents. We’ll hear more. Also on the program: Brazil counts the costs of major, devastating flooding activity. Then, people in the Italian city of Latina talk about the impact of inflation and immigration.
It’s your last chance to double your impact during our May fundraiser — the Investors Challenge Fund is matching donations up to $25,000 today! Give right now!
Slack tweaks its principles in response to user outrage at AI slurping
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Several people are typing. And something might be learning…
Salesforce division Slack has responded to criticism by users outraged that its privacy principles allowed the messaging service to slurp customer data for AI training unless specifically told not to, claiming the data never leaves the platform and isn’t used to train “third party” models.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/slack_ts_and_cs_update/
There’s a big problem with McLaren’s ‘World’s most powerful trail-legal’ electric mountain bike
date: 2024-05-20, from: Electrek Feed
McLaren, better known for its high-performance sports cars, has just announced a series of new electric bikes, including what the company calls the “World’s most powerful trail-legal” electric mountain bike.
British Library’s candid ransomware comms driven by ‘emotional intelligence’
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It quickly realized ‘dry’ progress updates weren’t cutting it
CyberUK Emotional intelligence was at the heart of the British Library’s widely hailed response to its October ransomware attack, according to CEO Roly Keating.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/the_british_library_owes_lauded/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Knicks 'gave everything they had,' come up short in Game 7.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/40182515/injuries-too-much-overcome-knicks-game-7-loss-pacers
Biden’s Catch-22 in Ukraine
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: RAND blog
If Ukraine is to regain the momentum it has lost in its fight against Russia, it will need to go on the offensive—and that involves some degree of escalation risk.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/05/bidens-catch-22-in-ukraine.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-20, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Yes Apple is a soul crushing tech monopoly. And some group inside Apple did something creative that inspired debate and for some revulsion, and in the name of uniformity in artistic expression, the creativity was crushed. And Steve Jobs would’ve loved it, btw, imho.
So you’ve built the best tablet, Apple. Show us why it matters
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Has Cupertino been trolling us all along?
Opinion Apple! What the hell were you smoking? How can a market leader worth $2.9 trillion make such a massive marketing mistake as the advert for the latest iPad?…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/opinion_column_apple_ad/
What do Americans really know about Trump and Biden?
date: 2024-05-20, from: Robert Reich on Substack
Why Biden’s good news isn’t getting through, and what Biden should do about it
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-do-americans-really-know-about
It’s MagPi Monday!
date: 2024-05-20, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Every Monday we ask the question: have you made something with a Raspberry Pi over the weekend?
The post It’s MagPi Monday! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/its-magpi-monday/
Techie invented bits of the box he was fixing, still botched the job
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
This is why all-nighters are a bad idea
Who, me? Greetings and salutations, dear readers, and welcome to the sunny spot on the interwebs we like to call Who, Me? in which Reg readers share their tales of tech tasks gone awry.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/who_me/
Chinese telco gear may become verboten on German networks
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Industry reportedly pressuring digital ministry not to cut the cord
Germany may soon remove Huawei and ZTE equipment from its 5G networks, according to media reports.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/huawei_germany_ban/
Google Cloud shows it can break things for lots of customers – not just one at a time
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Deleted about 40 networks that services needed, causing late Friday fun
In the week after its astounding deletion of Australian pension fund UniSuper’s entire account, you might think Google Cloud would be on its very best behavior.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/google_cloud_network_outage/
May 19, 2024
date: 2024-05-20, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Delivering the commencement address to the graduating seniors at Morehouse College today, President Joe Biden addressed the nation. After thanking the mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and all the people who helped the graduates get to the chairs in front of the stage, Biden recalled Morehouse’s history. The school was founded in 1867 by civil rights leader Reverend William Jefferson White with the help of two other Baptist ministers, the Reverend Richard C. Coulter and the Reverend Edmund Turney, to educate formerly enslaved men. They believed “education would be the great equalizer from slavery to freedom,” Biden said, and they created an institution that would make the term “Morehouse man” continue to stand as a symbol of excellence 157 years later.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-19-2024
11 hurt in mass shooting in Savannah, Georgia
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
SAVANNAH, Ga. — An argument between two women led to a gunfight that left 11 people hurt in a busy tourist area of Savannah, Georgia, late Saturday, one of five weekend shootings in the city, two of which were fatal, authorities said.
Two people were injured in separate shootings Friday. Two more shootings Saturday resulted in two deaths. Then came the gunfire just before midnight Saturday near Savannah’s Ellis Square.
The shooting broke out as two women argued in an area business, according to Police Chief Lenny Gunther, who didn’t name the establishment.
“One shot rang out. That triggered other individuals to shoot,” he said. “We had multiple individuals discharge their weapons to shoot at each other, which resulted in multiple people getting shot.”
Ten of the 11 injured were hit by gunfire. Authorities did not say what caused the 11th injury. Victims were treated at the scene and “several” were taken to a hospital, police said. None of the injuries appeared life threatening.
Mayor Van Johnson said a proliferation of guns was a factor in the shootings and that reasonable gun control laws are needed. He also stressed the need for gun owners to keep their weapons from being stolen and for people carrying guns to know how and when to use them.
“We have to insist on smart gun laws,” Johnson said at a Sunday news conference. “And then, on the other end, we have to insist that people act responsibly with those weapons.”
The mass shooting happened a week ahead of the tourist-heavy Memorial Day weekend. Gunther sought to assure people that police staffing will be sufficient to keep the public safe.
Ellis Square is in Savannah’s historic district, an area popular among tourists and locals. It was developed in 2010 and is known for a large fountain and a life-sized statue of songwriter Johnny Mercer.
The first two of Savannah’s weekend shootings happened Friday. Each of those resulted in a non-life-threatening injury and an arrest. On Saturday, police answering a call about a home invasion found a dead juvenile at the home. Initial reports are that shots were fired after a resident confronted an armed intruder.
Still another shooting was reported at a Savannah intersection Saturday night that left one man dead and a juvenile injured.
https://www.voanews.com/a/hurt-in-mass-shooting-in-savannah-georgia/7618930.html
Gender-inclusive restroom in Maple Hall a “huge step in the right direction” for CSUN students
date: 2024-05-20, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Maple Hall opened its doors on March 25 for classes previously held in Sierra Hall, with one of the features of the new building being a multi-stall, gender-inclusive restroom on…
Nissan infosec in the spotlight again after breach affecting more than 50K US employees
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
PLUS: Connected automakers put on notice; Cisco Talos develops macOS fuzzing technique; Last week’s critical vulns
Infosec in brief Nissan has admitted to another data loss – this time involving the theft of personal information belonging to more than 50,000 Nissan employees.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/in_brief_security/
ShareOpenly is now on Tedium
date: 2024-05-20, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
I adore the way ShareOpenly has been added to Tedium:
You can see it for yourself on all its posts, including this great one about the decline of the ball mouse. Its founder, Ernie Smith, told me: “figured I had to have fun with it”.
https://werd.io/2024/shareopenly-is-now-on-tedium
Colorado clinic provides Ukrainian refugees with care in own language
date: 2024-05-20, from: VOA News USA
Almost half a million Ukrainian immigrants have moved to the U.S. since the start of Russia’s invasion, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Two of the biggest challenges they face are finding health care and a job. In one small Colorado city, a local clinic owner, herself a Ukrainian immigrant, is helping out as much as she can. Svitlana Prystinska has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
China’s top rideshare boss vacates her role
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
PLUS: Grab’s fintech profits surges; TSMC exec gets ASML sticker shock; US and China talk about AI, and more.
ASIA IN BRIEF Jean Qing Liu, the president of China’s top rideshare biz DiDi (and daughter of Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi) on Sunday “informed the Company and its board of directors her wish to resign from her current position as a director and president, with a view to focusing on the company’s talent and organization, development of supporting functions and social responsibility work.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/asia_tech_news_roundup/
pg_dumpbinary v2.17 released
date: 2024-05-20, from: PostgreSQL News
Grenoble, France - Mai 20, 2024
pg_dumpbinary
pg_dumpbinary dumps a PostgreSQL database to a binary
format. The resulting dump must be restored using
pg_restorebinary, which is provided.
This release adds two new options to command pg_restorebinary:
-
Add option
-C, –createto pg_restorebinary to create the database before restoring into it. Like with pg_restore you must provide a database to connect using the-doption. -
Add
–dump-createto print to stdout the create and alter database statements.
pg_dumpbinary is useful when:
-
You have bytea that can not be exported by
pg_dumpbecause the total size of the escape/hex output exceeds 1Gb. -
You have custom type that stores
\0internally in bytea but data are exported by pg_dump as char/varchar/text. In this case pg_dump truncates all data after the first\0, resulting in data loss. - Other cases where a binary output format is useful.
In these kinds of cases pg_dumpbinary helps by dumping the
PostgreSQL database in a binary format. In all other cases the
pg_dump/pg_restore commands distributed with PostgreSQL are preferred.
See the documentation for a more complete description of available features.
Links & Credits
pg_dumpbinary is an Open Source project from LzLabs GmbH. Contributions and ideas are welcome. Send your ideas, features requests, or patches using GitHub’s tools.
Links :
- Documentation: https://github.com/lzlabs/pg_dumpbinary/blob/master/README.md
- Download: https://github.com/lzlabs/pg_dumpbinary/releases/
- Support: use GitHub report tool at https://github.com/lzlabs/pg_dumpbinary/pg_dumpbinary/issues
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pg_dumpbinary-v217-released-2862/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Despite being defeated, the Knicks received a standing ovation in the game’s final seconds — a token of appreciation from a loyal fanbase that enjoyed one of the most memorable playoff runs in team history.
https://www.amny.com/sports/shorthanded-knicks-outpaced-pacers-game-7-loss/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Jalen Brunson breaks hand as Pacers dump Knicks out of NBA playoffs in Game 7.
California Disneyland character, parade performers vote to join labor union
date: 2024-05-19, from: VOA News USA
Anaheim, California — Disneyland performers who help bring Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and other beloved characters to life at the Southern California resort chose to unionize following a three-day vote culminating Saturday.
The Actors’ Equity Association labor union said in a statement Saturday that cast members for the parades and characters departments at Disney’s theme parks near Los Angeles voted by a wide margin for the union to become the bargaining agent for the group of roughly 1,700 workers.
An association website tracking the balloting among cast members indicated passage by 78.7% (953 votes) in favor and 21.3% (258 votes) opposed.
“They say that Disneyland is ‘the place where dreams come true,’ and for the Disney Cast Members who have worked to organize a union, their dream came true today,” Actors’ Equity Association President Kate Shindle said in a statement Saturday night.
Shindle called the workers the “front lines” of the Disneyland guest experience. The association and cast members will discuss improvements to health and safety, wages, benefits, working conditions and job security before meeting with Walt Disney Company representatives about negotiating the staff priorities into a contract, she said.
The union already represents theatrical performers at Disney’s Florida parks.
Barring any election challenges, the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board will certify the results within a week, the association said.
The NLRB did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking confirmation or additional information about the vote.
The election took place on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday in Anaheim, California, after workers earlier this year filed cards to form the unit called “Magic United.”
Parade and character workers who promoted unionizing said they love helping to create a magical experience at Disneyland but grew concerned when they were asked to resume hugging visitors after returning to work during the coronavirus pandemic. They said they also suffer injuries from complex costumes and erratic schedules.
Most of the more than 35,000 workers at the Disneyland Resort, including cleaning crews, pyrotechnic specialists and security staff, are already in labor unions. The resort includes Disneyland, the Walt Disney Co.’s oldest theme park, Disney California Adventure and the shopping and entertainment district Downtown Disney in Anaheim.
In recent years, Disney has faced allegations of not paying its Southern California workers, who face exorbitant housing costs and often commute long distances or cram into small homes, a livable wage. Parade performers and character actors earn a base pay of $24.15 an hour, up from $20 before January, with premiums for different roles.
Union membership has been on a decadeslong decline in the United States, but organizations have seen growing public support in recent years during high-profile contract negotiations involving Hollywood studios and Las Vegas hotels. The NLRB, which protects workers’ right to organize, reported more than 2,500 filings for union representation during the 2023 fiscal year, which was the highest number in eight years.
The effort to organize character and parade performers in California came more than 40 years after those who play Mickey, Goofy and Donald Duck in Florida were organized by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union traditionally known to represent transportation workers.
At that time, the Florida performers complained about filthy costumes and abuse from guests, including children who would kick the shins of Disney villains such as Captain Hook.
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-05-19, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
Unpopular opinion, perhaps?
If your sport is won or lost on a last second wild action and luck then that’s not a win. If a game is that close that a coin flip determined it then you tied. I don’t care about the number at the end.
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/112470132660270576
John Krasinski’s ‘IF’ hits box office nerve with $35 million debut
date: 2024-05-19, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/john-krasinski-if-hits-box-office-nerve-with-35-million-debut/7618511.html
Power expected to be restored for most affected by deadly Houston storm
date: 2024-05-19, from: VOA News USA
Houston, Texas — Houston area residents affected by deadly storms last week received some good news as officials said power had been restored Sunday to a majority of the hundreds of thousands who had been left in the dark and without air conditioning amid hot and humid weather.
The widespread destruction of Thursday’s storms left at least seven dead and brought much of Houston to a standstill. Thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds tore through the city, reducing businesses and other structures to piles of debris, uprooting trees and shattering glass from downtown skyscrapers. A tornado also touched down near the northwest Houston suburb of Cypress.
By Sunday evening, 88% of customers in the Houston area had their power restored, said Paul Lock, a spokesperson for CenterPoint Energy.
“We expect everyone to be back on by end of business Wednesday,” Lock said.
More than 289,000 homes and businesses in Texas remained without electricity Sunday evening, mostly in the Houston area. More than 3,900 customers remained without power in Louisiana, which had also been hit by strong winds and a suspected tornado.
CenterPoint Energy said 2,000 employees and more than 5,000 contractors were working in the Houston area to restore power.
“We understand the higher temperatures we are experiencing across Houston and surrounding communities make getting the lights and air conditioning back on even more important,” Lynnae Wilson, CenterPoint’s senior vice president of electric business, said in a statement.
At one of five cooling centers for people still without power in their homes, residents took shelter from the heat at a community center in the Cloverleaf neighborhood and wondered when their power would come back.
Carolina Sierra and her 6-year-old son, Derek, enjoyed the air conditioning for a couple of hours Sunday. She said they have been without electricity since the storm hit Thursday, and their home has been stifling.
Derek passed the time coloring a picture of a dragon while his mother charged her cellphone and a portable lamp they planned to use Sunday night if the power was still not restored. Sierra said she gives her son multiple baths to try to keep him cool but he tosses and turns at night and struggles to sleep.
“We are desperate,” Sierra said. “We hardly sleep at night because of the heat.”
Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia stood outside the center Sunday, helping load water and ice onto vehicles while offering words of encouragement to residents still waiting for power to be restored.
“We are seeing a bit of the recovery come through,” Garcia said. “But we can’t see enough of it fast enough.”
Disaster assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and loans from the Small Business Administration were on the way, said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the county where Houston is located. The federal assistance, which can help pay for temporary housing and repairs, will help residents affected by last week’s storms as well as by flooding from heavy rainfall in late April and early May in parts of Houston, Harris County and several counties north of Houston.
Mayor John Whitmire said a six-block area in downtown Houston would be closed Monday to allow crews to continue repairs after various high-rise buildings had their windows blown out.
Residents broke into cheers as lights and air conditioning kicked on at the eight-story Houston Heights Tower, a senior housing facility, Sunday morning. The nearly 200 residents had been living on emergency power since Thursday evening, with generators providing enough electricity to run just one of the building’s elevators and a handful of fans in the community room, leaving apartments in darkness.
Volunteers and city workers had been ensuring residents received a steady supply of water, food and essentials like toilet paper.
“It just goes to show you how people come together,” resident Joseph Torregrossa said, choking back tears.
The National Weather Service said in a post on the social platform X that residents should expect “sunny, hot and increasingly humid days” in the Houston area. Highs of about 32 Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) were expected this week, with heat indexes likely approaching 39 Celsius (102 F) by midweek.
With the temperature at 33 Celsius Sunday afternoon, Lisa Reed sat in a folding chair outside her home in the Cloverleaf neighborhood because she was still without electricity. A volunteer crew had just cut up a large tree in her front yard that had come crashing down on two vehicles in her driveway and stacked the wood neatly in two large piles.
Reed said no home on her street — where branches and other debris were piled along the sidewalk — escaped damage from last week’s storms.
“It’s nothing I can do,” said Reed, a fifth-grade teacher. “Take it all in stride. I’m a firm believer that God will work it all out.”
Houston area school districts canceled classes for more than 400,000 students Friday. The Houston Independent School District, the state’s largest, said 215 of its 274 campuses would be open Monday. Two other large school districts in the Houston area — Cypress-Fairbanks and Spring Branch — planned to be closed.
A day in the life of an esports gamer
date: 2024-05-19, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
It’s 7 a.m. and it’s the day of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Tournament at Long Beach State University. After the hour-long drive filled with traffic and getting lost at…
https://sundial.csun.edu/182101/arts-entertainment/a-day-in-the-life-of-an-esports-gamer/
China launches anti-dumping probe into EU, US, Japan, Taiwan plastics
date: 2024-05-19, from: VOA News USA
Beijing — China’s commerce ministry on Sunday launched an anti-dumping probe into POM copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, imported from the European Union, United States, Japan and Taiwan.
The plastics can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc and have various applications including in auto parts, electronics, and medical equipment, the ministry said in a statement.
The investigation should be completed in a year but could be extended for six months, it said.
The European Commission, which oversees EU trade policy, said it would carefully study the contents of the investigation before deciding on any next steps.
“We expect China to ensure that this investigation is fully in line with all relevant WTO (World Trade Organization) rules and obligations,” a spokesperson said.
China’s plastics probe comes amid a broader trade row with the United States and Europe.
The United States on Tuesday unveiled steep tariff increases on Chinese electric vehicles, or EVs, computer chips, medical products and other imports.
On Friday, the European Union launched a trade investigation into Chinese tinplate steel, the latest in a string of EU trade and subsidy probes into Chinese exports.
Most notably, the European Commission launched a probe last September to decide whether to impose punitive tariffs on cheaper Chinese EVs that it suspects of benefiting from state subsidies.
Beijing argues the recent focus by the United States and Europe on the risks to other economies from China’s excess capacity is misguided.
Chinese officials say the criticism understates innovation by Chinese companies in key industries and overstates the importance of state support in driving their growth.
Pro-Palestinian protesters set up a new encampment at Philadelphia’s Drexel University
date: 2024-05-19, from: VOA News USA
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — Pro-Palestinian protesters set up a new encampment at Drexel University in Philadelphia over the weekend, prompting a lockdown of school buildings, a day after authorities thwarted an attempted occupation of a school building at the neighboring University of Pennsylvania campus.
After several hundred demonstrators marched from Philadelphia’s City Hall to west Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon, Drexel said in a statement that about 75 protesters began to set up an encampment on the Korman Quad on the campus. About a dozen tents remained Sunday, blocked off by barricades and monitored by police officers. No arrests were reported.
Drexel President John Fry said in a message Saturday night that the encampment “raises understandable concerns about ensuring everyone’s safety,” citing what he called “many well-documented instances of hateful speech and intimidating behavior at other campus demonstrations.” University buildings were “open only to those with clearance from Drexel’s Public Safety,” he said.
Authorities at Drexel, which has about 22,000 students, were monitoring the demonstration to ensure it was peaceful and didn’t disrupt normal operations, and that “participants and passersby will behave respectfully toward one another,” Fry said.
“We will be prepared to respond quickly to any disruptive or threatening behavior by anyone,” Fry said, vowing not to tolerate property destruction, “harassment or intimidation” of students or staff or threatening behavior of any kind, including “explicitly racist, antisemitic, or Islamophobic” speech. Anyone not part of the Drexel community would not be allowed “to trespass into our buildings and student residences,” he said.
On Friday night, members of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine had announced an action at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fisher-Bennett Hall, urging supporters to bring “flags, pots, pans, noise-makers, megaphones” and other items.
The university said campus police, supported by city police, removed the demonstrators Friday night, arresting 19 people, including six University of Pennsylvania students. The university’s division of public safety said officials found “lock-picking tools and homemade metal shields,” and exit doors secured with zip ties and barbed wire, windows covered with newspaper and cardboard and entrances blocked.
Authorities said seven people arrested would face felony charges, including one accused of having assaulted an officer, while a dozen were issued citations for failing to disperse and follow police commands.
The attempted occupation of the building came a week after city and campus police broke up a two-week encampment on the campus, arresting 33 people, nine of whom were students and two dozen of whom had “no Penn affiliation,” according to university officials.
On Sunday, dozens of George Washington University graduates walked out of commencement ceremonies, disrupting university President Ellen Granberg’s speech, in protest over the ongoing siege of Gaza and last week’s clearing of an on-campus protest encampment that involved police use of pepper spray and dozens of arrests.
The ceremony, at the base of the Washington Monument, started peacefully with fewer than 100 protesters demonstrating across the street in front of the Museum of African American History and Culture. But as Granberg began speaking, at least 70 students among the graduates started chanting and raising signs and Palestinian flags. The students then noisily walked out as Granberg spoke, crossing the street to a rapturous response from the protesters.
Students and others have set up tent encampments on campuses around the country to protest the Israel-Hamas war, pressing colleges to cut financial ties with Israel. Tensions over the war have been high on campuses since the fall but demonstrations spread quickly following an April 18 police crackdown on an encampment at Columbia University.
Nearly 3,000 people have been arrested on U.S. campuses over the past month. As summer break approaches, there have been fewer new arrests and campuses have been calmer. Still, colleges have been vigilant for disruptions to commencement ceremonies.
President Joe Biden told the graduating class at Morehouse College on Sunday, which included some students wearing keffiyeh scarves around their shoulders on top of their black graduation robes, that he heard their voices of protest and that scenes from the conflict in Gaza have been heartbreaking. Biden said given what he called a “humanitarian crisis” there, he had called for “an immediate cease-fire” and return of hostages taken by Hamas.
The latest Israel-Hamas war began when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking an additional 250 hostage. Palestinian militants still hold about 100 captives, while Israel’s military offensive has left more than 35,000 people in Gaza dead, according to the territory’s health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Rivian R1T Owner Reflects On His First Two Years With The Truck
date: 2024-05-19, from: Inside EVs News
He also takes some time to compare the truck with his previous vehicle, a 2020 Tesla Model Y.
https://insideevs.com/news/720141/rivian-r1t-ownership-experience-truck/
Kia Global EV Retail Sales Surged In April 2024
date: 2024-05-19, from: Inside EVs News
The company sold more than 17,000 EVs, which represent almost 7% of the brand’s total volume.
https://insideevs.com/news/720163/kia-global-ev-sales-april2024/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Three Laws of Robotics. I realize a lot of people may not know of these laws. Probably would be a good idea to get buy-in from the major vendors.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Open the pod bay doors HAL.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy4EfdnMZ5g
A moment with a choice
date: 2024-05-19, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>Sometimes life presents you with a choice. Or does it? There’s a lesson to be learned here. Maybe not all decisions are important and sometimes what matters is to keep moving forward.</p>
<hr>
<p>Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.</p>
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https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/TiNxHcmUC12R2VMH
Among AI infrastructure hopefuls, Qualcomm has become an unlikely ally
date: 2024-05-19, updated: 2024-05-19, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The enemy of my enemy is my best friend
Analysis With its newly formed partnership with Arm server processor designer Ampere Computing, Qualcomm is slowly establishing itself as AI infrastructure startups’ best friend.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/19/ai_ampere_qualcomm/
The Lunacy of Artemis
date: 2024-05-19, from: Idlewords blog
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on authoritarianism and democracy. They declined to publish my submission, which I am sharing here instead.
A little over 51 years ago, a rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying three astronauts and a space car. After a three day journey to the moon, two of the astronauts climbed into a spindly lander and made the short trip down to the surface, where for another three days they collected rocks and did donuts in the space car. Then they climbed back into the lander, rejoined their colleague in orbit, and departed for Earth. Their capsule splashed down in the South Pacific on December 19, 1972. This mission, Apollo 17, would be the last time human beings ventured beyond low Earth orbit.
If you believe NASA, late in 2026 Americans will walk on the moon again. That proposed mission is called Artemis 3, and its lunar segment looks a lot like Apollo 17 without the space car. Two astronauts will land on the moon, collect rocks, take selfies, and about a week after landing rejoin their orbiting colleagues to go back to Earth.
But where Apollo 17 launched on a single rocket and cost $3.3 billion (in 2023 dollars), the first Artemis landing involves a dozen or two heavy rocket launches and costs so much that NASA refuses to give a figure (one veteran of NASA budgeting estimates it at $7-10 billion).[1] The single-use lander for the mission will be the heaviest spacecraft ever flown, and yet the mission’s scientific return—a small box of rocks—is less than what came home on Apollo 17. And the whole plan hinges on technologies that haven’t been invented yet becoming reliable and practical within the next eighteen months.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to wonder what’s going on here. If we can put a man on the moon, then why can’t we just go do it again? The moon hasn’t changed since the 1960’s, while every technology we used to get there has seen staggering advances. It took NASA eight years to go from nothing to a moon landing at the dawn of the Space Age. But today, twenty years and $93 billion after the space agency announced our return to the moon, the goal seems as far out of reach as ever.[2]
Articles about Artemis often give the program’s tangled backstory. But I want to talk about Artemis as a technical design, because there’s just so much to drink in. While NASA is no stranger to complex mission architectures, Artemis goes beyond complex to the just plain incoherent. None of the puzzle pieces seem to come from the same box. Half the program requires breakthrough technologies that make the other half unnecessary. The rocket and spacecraft NASA spent two decades building can’t even reach the moon. And for reasons no one understands, there’s a new space station in the mix.
In the past, whatever oddball project NASA came up with, we at least knew they could build the hardware. But Artemis calls the agency’s competence as an engineering organization into question. For the first time since the early 1960’s, it’s unclear whether the US space agency is even capable of putting astronauts on the Moon.
In this essay I make a lot of comparisons to Project Apollo. This is not because I think other mission architectures are inferior, but because the early success of that program sets such a useful baseline. At the dawn of the Space Age, using rudimentary technology, American astronauts landed on the moon six times in seven attempts. The moon landings were NASA’s greatest achievement and should set a floor for what a modern mission, flying modern hardware, might achieve.
Advocates for Artemis insist that the program is more than Apollo 2.0. But as we’ll see, Artemis can’t even measure up to Apollo 1.0. It costs more, does less, flies less frequently, and exposes crews to risks that the steely-eyed missile men of the Apollo era found unacceptable. It’s as if Ford in 2024 released a new model car that was slower, more accident-prone, and ten times more expensive than the Model T.
When a next-generation lunar program can’t meet the cost, performance, or safety standards set three generations earlier, something has gone seriously awry.
The jewel of Artemis is a big orange rocket with a flavorless name, the Space Launch System (SLS). SLS looks like someone started building a Space Shuttle and ran out of legos for the orbiter. There is the familiar orange tank, a big white pair of solid rocket boosters, but then the rocket just peters out in a 1960’s style stack of cones and cylinders.
The best way to think of SLS is as a balding guy with a mullet: there are fireworks down below that are meant to distract you from a sad situation up top. In the case of the rocket, those fireworks are a first stage with more thrust than the Saturn V, enough thrust that the boosted core stage can nearly put itself into orbit. But on top of this monster sits a second stage so anemic that even its name (the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage) is a kind of apology. For eight minutes SLS roars into the sky on a pillar of fire. And then, like a cork popping out of a bottle, the tiny ICPS emerges and drifts vaguely moonwards on a wisp of flame.
With this design, the minds behind SLS achieved a first in space flight, creating a rocket that is at the same time more powerful and less capable than the Saturn V. While the 1960’s giant could send 49 metric tons to the Moon, SLS only manages 27 tons—not enough to fly an Apollo-style landing, not enough to even put a crew in orbit around the Moon without a lander. The best SLS can do is slingshot the Orion spacecraft once around the moon and back, a mission that will fly under the name Artemis 2.
NASA wants to replace ICPS with an ‘Exploration Upper Stage’ (the project has been held up, among other things, by a near-billion dollar cost overrun on a launch pad). But even that upgrade won’t give SLS the power of the Saturn V. For whatever reason, NASA designed its first heavy launcher in forty years to be unable to fly the simple, proven architecture of the Apollo missions.
Of course, plenty of rockets go on to enjoy rewarding, productive careers without being as powerful as the Saturn V. And if SLS rockets were piling up at the Michoud Assembly Facility like cordwood, or if NASA were willing to let its astronauts fly commercial, it would be a simple matter to split Artemis missions across multiple launches.
But NASA insists that astronauts fly SLS. And SLS is a “one and done” rocket, artisanally hand-crafted by a workforce that likes to get home before traffic gets bad. The rocket can only launch once every two years at a cost of about four billion dollars[3]—about twice what it would cost to light the rocket’s weight in dollar bills on fire[4].
Early on, SLS designers made the catastrophic decision to reuse Shuttle hardware, which is like using Fabergé eggs to save money on an omelette. The SLS core stage recycles Space Shuttle main engines, actual veterans of old Shuttle flights called out of retirement for one last job. Refurbishing a single such engine to work on SLS costs NASA $40 million, or a bit more than SpaceX spends on all 33 engines on its Superheavy booster.[5] And though the Shuttle engines are designed to be fully reusable (the main reason they’re so expensive), every SLS launch throws four of them away. Once all the junkyards are picked clean, NASA will pay Aerojet Rocketdyne to restart production of the classic engine at a cool unit cost of $145 million[6].
The story is no better with the solid rocket boosters, the other piece of Shuttle hardware SLS reuses. Originally a stopgap measure introduced to save the Shuttle budget, these heavy rockets now attach themselves like barnacles to every new NASA launcher design. To no one’s surprise, retrofitting a bunch of heavy steel casings left over from Shuttle days has saved the program nothing. Each SLS booster is now projected to cost $266 million, or about twice the launch cost of a Falcon Heavy.[7] Just replacing the asbestos lining in the boosters with a greener material, a project budgeted at $4.4M, has now cost NASA a quarter of a billion dollars. And once the leftover segments run out seven rockets from now, SLS will need a brand new booster design, opening up fertile new vistas of overspending.
Costs on SLS have reached the point where private industry is now able to develop, test, and launch an entire rocket program for less than NASA spends on a single engine[8]. Flying SLS is like owning a classic car—everything is hand built, the components cost a fortune, and when you finally get the thing out of the shop, you find yourself constantly overtaken by younger rivals.
But the cost of SLS to NASA goes beyond money. The agency has committed to an antiquated frankenrocket just as the space industry is entering a period of unprecedented innovation. While other space programs get to romp and play with technologies like reusable stages and exotic alloys, NASA is stuck for years wasting a massive, skilled workforce on a dead-end design.
The SLS program’s slow pace also affects safety. Back in the Shuttle era, NASA managers argued that it took three to four launches a year to keep workers proficient enough to build and launch the vehicles safely. A boutique approach where workers hand-craft one rocket every two years means having to re-learn processes and procedures with every launch.
It also leaves no room in Artemis for test flights. The program simply assumes success, flying all its important ‘firsts’ with astronauts on board. When there are unanticipated failures, like the extensive heat shield spalling and near burn-through observed in Artemis 1,[9] the agency has no way to test a proposed fix without a multi-year delay to the program. So they end up using indirect means to convince themselves that a new design is safe to fly, a process ripe for error and self-delusion.
Orion, the capsule that launches on top of SLS, is a relaxed-fit reimagining of the Apollo command module suitable for today’s larger astronaut. It boasts modern computers, half again as much volume as the 1960’s design, and a few creature comforts (like not having to poop in a baggie) that would have pleased the Apollo pioneers.
The capsule’s official name is the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle, but finding even a single purpose for Orion has greatly challenged NASA. For twenty years the spacecraft has mostly sat on the ground, chewing through a $1.2 billion annual budget. In 2014, the first Orion flew a brief test flight. Eight short years later, Orion launched again, carrying a crew of instrumented mannequins around the Moon on Artemis 1. In 2025 the capsule (by then old enough to drink) is supposed to fly human passengers on Artemis 2.
Orion goes to space attached to a basket of amenities called the European Service Module. The ESM provides Orion with solar panels, breathing gas, batteries, and a small rocket that is the capsule’s principal means of propulsion. But because the ESM was never designed to go to the moon, it carries very little propellant—far too little to get the hefty capsule in and out of lunar orbit.[10]
And Orion is hefty. Originally designed to hold six astronauts, the capsule was never resized when the crew requirement shrank to four. Like an empty nester’s minivan, Orion now hauls around a bunch of mass and volume that it doesn’t need. Even with all the savings that come from replacing Apollo-era avionics, the capsule weighs almost twice as much as the Apollo Command Module.
This extra mass has knock-on effects across the entire Artemis design. Since a large capsule needs a large abort rocket, SLS has to haul Orion’s massive Launch Abort System—seven tons of dead weight—nearly all the way into orbit. And reinforcing the capsule so that abort system won’t shake the astronauts into jelly means making it heavier, which puts more demand on the parachutes and heat shield,[11] and around and around we go.
Size comparison of the Apollo command and service module (left) and Orion + European Service Module (right)
What’s particularly frustrating is that Orion and ESM together have nearly the same mass as the Apollo command and service modules, which had no trouble reaching the Moon. The difference is all in the proportions. Where Apollo was built like a roadster, with a small crew compartment bolted onto an oversized engine, Orion is the Dodge Journey of spacecraft—a chunky, underpowered six-seater that advertises to the world that you’re terrible at managing money.
The fact that neither its rocket or spaceship can get to the Moon creates difficulties for NASA’s lunar program. So, like an aging crooner transposing old hits into an easier key, the agency has worked to find a ‘lunar-adjacent’ destination that its hardware can get to.
Their solution is a bit of celestial arcana called Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit, or NRHO. A spacecraft in this orbit circles the moon every 6.5 days, passing 1,000 kilometers above the lunar north pole at closest approach, then drifting out about 70,000 kilometers (a fifth of the Earth/Moon distance) at its furthest point. Getting to NRHO from Earth requires significantly less energy than entering a useful lunar orbit, putting it just within reach for SLS and Orion.[12]
To hear NASA tell it, NRHO is so full of advantages that it’s a wonder we stay on Earth. Spacecraft in the orbit always have a sightline to Earth and never pass through its shadow. The orbit is relatively stable, so a spacecraft can loiter there for months using only ion thrusters. And the deep space environment is the perfect place to practice going to Mars.
But NRHO is terrible for getting to the moon. The orbit is like one of those European budget airports that leaves you out in a field somewhere, requiring an expensive taxi. In Artemis, this taxi takes the form of a whole other spaceship—the lunar lander—which launches without a crew a month or two before Orion and is supposed to be waiting in NRHO when the capsule arrives.
Once these two spacecraft dock together, two astronauts climb into the lander from Orion and begin a day-long descent to the lunar surface. The other two astronauts wait for them in NRHO, playing hearts and quietly absorbing radiation.
Apollo landings also divided the crew between lander and orbiter. But those missions kept the command module in a low lunar orbit that brought it over the landing site every two hours. This proximity between orbiter and lander had enormous implications for safety. At any point in the surface mission, the astronauts on the moon could climb into the ascent rocket, hit the big red button, and be back sipping Tang with the command module pilot by bedtime. The short orbital period also gave the combined crew a dozen opportunities a day to return directly to Earth. [13]
Sitting in NRHO makes abort scenarios much harder. Depending on when in the mission it happens, a stricken lander might need three or more days to catch up with the orbiting Orion. In the worst case, the crew might find themselves stuck on the lunar surface for hours after an abort is called, forced to wait for Orion to reach a more favorable point in its orbit. And once everyone is back on Orion, more days might pass before the crew can depart for Earth. These long and variable abort times significantly increase risk to the crew, making many scenarios that were survivable on Apollo (like Apollo 13!) lethal on Artemis. [14]
The abort issue is just one example of NRHO making missions slower. NASA likes to boast that Orion can stay in space far longer than Apollo, but this is like bragging that you’re in the best shape of your life after the bank repossessed your car. It’s an oddly positive spin to put on bad life choices. The reason Orion needs all that endurance is because transit times from Earth to NRHO are long, and the crew has to waste additional time in NRHO waiting for orbits to line up. The Artemis 3 mission, for example, will spend 24 days in transit, compared to just 6 days on Apollo 11.
NRHO even dictates how long astronauts stay on the Moon—surface time has to be a multiple of the 6.5 day orbital period. This lack of flexibility means that even early flag-and-footprints missions like Artemis 3 have to spend at least a week on the moon, a constraint that adds considerable risk to the initial landing. [15]
In spaceflight, brevity is safety. There’s no better way to protect astronauts from the risks of solar storms, mechanical failure, and other mishaps than by minimizing slack time in space. Moreover, a safe architecture should allow for a rapid return to Earth at any point in the mission. There’s no question astronauts on the first Artemis missions would be better off with Orion in low lunar orbit. The decision to stage from NRHO is an excellent example of NASA designing its lunar program in the wrong direction—letting deficiencies in the hardware dictate the level of mission risk.

Early diagram of Gateway. Note that the segment marked ‘human lander system’ now dwarfs the space station.
I suppose at some point we have to talk about Gateway. Gateway is a small modular space station that NASA wants to build in NRHO. It has been showing up across various missions like a bad smell since before 2012.
Early in the Artemis program, NASA described Gateway as a kind of celestial truck stop, a safe place for the lander to park and for the crew to grab a cup of coffee on their way to the moon. But when it became clear that Gateway would not be ready in time for Artemis 3, NASA re-evaluated. Reasoning that two spacecraft could meet up in NRHO just as easily as three, the agency gave permission for the first moon landing to proceed without a space station.
Despite this open admission that Gateway is unnecessary, building the space station remains the core activity of the Artemis program. The three missions that follow that first landing are devoted chiefly to Gateway assembly. In fact, initial plans for Artemis 4 left out a lunar landing entirely, as if it were an inconvenience to the real work being done up in orbit.
This is a remarkable situation. It’s like if you hired someone to redo your kitchen and they started building a boat in your driveway. Sure, the boat gives the builders a place to relax, lets them practice tricky plumbing and finishing work, and is a safe place to store their tools. But all those arguments will fail to satisfy. You still want to know what building a boat has to do with kitchen repair, and why you’re the one footing the bill.
NASA has struggled to lay out a technical rationale for Gateway. The space station adds both cost and complexity to Artemis, a program not particularly lacking in either. Requiring moon-bound astronauts to stop at Gateway also makes missions riskier (by adding docking operations) while imposing a big propellant tax. Aerospace engineer and pundit Robert Zubrin has aptly called the station a tollbooth in space.
Even Gateway defenders struggle to hype up the station. A common argument is that Gateway may not ideal for any one thing, but is good for a whole lot of things. But that is the same line of thinking that got us SLS and Orion, both vehicles designed before anyone knew what to do with them. The truth is that all-purpose designs don’t exist in human space flight. The best you can do is build a spacecraft that is equally bad at everything.
But to search for technical grounds is to misunderstand the purpose of Gateway. The station is not being built to shelter astronauts in the harsh environment of space, but to protect Artemis in the harsh environment of Congress. NASA needs Gateway to navigate an uncertain political landscape in the 2030’s. Without a station, Artemis will just be a series of infrequent multibillion dollar moon landings, a red cape waved in the face of the Office of Management and Budget. Gateway armors Artemis by bringing in international partners, each of whom contributes expensive hardware. As NASA learned building the International Space Station, this combination of sunk costs and international entanglement is a powerful talisman against program death.
Gateway also solves some other problems for NASA. It gives SLS a destination to fly to, stimulates private industry (by handing out public money to supply Gateway), creates a job for the astronaut corps, and guarantees the continuity of human space flight once the ISS becomes uninhabitable sometime in the 2030’s. [16]
That last goal may sound odd if you don’t see human space flight as an end in itself. But NASA is a faith-based organization, dedicated to the principle that taxpayers should always keep an American or two in orbit. it’s a little bit as if the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration insisted on keeping bathyscapes full of sailors at the bottom of the sea, irrespective of cost or merit, and kneecapped programs that might threaten the continuous human benthic presence. You can’t argue with faith.
From a bureaucrat’s perspective, Gateway is NASA’s ticket back to a golden era in the early 2000’s when the Space Station and Space Shuttle formed an uncancellable whole, each program justifying the existence of the other. Recreating this dynamic with Gateway and SLS/Orion would mean predictable budgets and program stability for NASA well into the 2050’s.
But Artemis was supposed to take us back to a different golden age, the golden age of Apollo. And so there’s an unresolved tension in the program between building Gateway and doing interesting things on the moon. With Artemis missions two or more years apart, it’s inevitable that Gateway assembly will push aspirational projects like a surface habitat or pressurized rover out into the 2040’s. But those same projects are on the critical path to Mars, where NASA still insists we’re going in the late 2030’s. The situation is awkward.
So that is the story of Gateway—unloved, ineradicable, and as we’ll see, likely to become the sole legacy of the Artemis program.

The lunar lander is the most technically ambitious part of Artemis. Where SLS, Orion, and Gateway are mostly a compilation of NASA’s greatest hits, the lander requires breakthrough technologies with the potential to revolutionize space travel.
Of course, you can’t just call it a lander. In Artemis speak, this spacecraft is the Human Landing System, or HLS. NASA has delegated its design to two private companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX. SpaceX is responsible for landing astronauts on Artemis 3 and 4, while Blue Origin is on the hook for Artemis 5 (notionally scheduled for 2030). After that, the agency will take competitive bids for subsequent missions.
The SpaceX HLS design is based on their experimental Starship spacecraft, an enormous rocket that takes off on and lands on its tail, like 1950’s sci-fi. There is a strong “emperor’s new clothes” vibe to this design. On the one hand, it is the brainchild of brilliant SpaceX engineers and passed NASA technical review. On the other hand, the lander seems to go out of its way to create problems for itself to solve with technology.
An early SpaceX rendering of the Human Landing System, with the Apollo Lunar Module added for scale.
To start with the obvious, HLS looks more likely to tip over than the last two spacecraft to land on the moon, which tipped over. It is a fifteen story tower that must land on its ass in terrible lighting conditions, on rubble of unknown composition, over a light-second from Earth. The crew are left suspended so high above the surface that they need a folding space elevator (not the cool kind) to get down. And yet in the end this single-use lander carries less payload (both up and down) than the tiny Lunar Module on Apollo 17. Using Starship to land two astronauts on the moon is like delivering a pizza with an aircraft carrier.
Amusingly, the sheer size of the SpaceX design leaves it with little room for cargo. The spacecraft arrives on the Moon laden with something like 200 tons of cryogenic propellant,[14] and like a fat man leaving an armchair, it needs every drop of that energy to get its bulk back off the surface. Nor does it help matters that all this cryogenic propellant has to cook for a week in direct sunlight.
Other, less daring lander designs reduce their appetite for propellant by using a detachable landing stage. This arrangement also shields the ascent rocket from hypervelocity debris that gets kicked up during landing. But HLS is a one-piece rocket; the same engines that get sandblasted on their way down to the moon must relight without fail a week later.
Given this fact, it’s remarkable that NASA’s contract with SpaceX doesn’t require them to demonstrate a lunar takeoff. All SpaceX has to do to satisfy NASA requirements is land an HLS prototype on the Moon. Questions about ascent can then presumably wait until the actual mission, when we all find out together with the crew whether HLS can take off again.[15]
This fearlessness in design is part of a pattern with Starship HLS. Problems that other landers avoid in the design phase are solved with engineering. And it’s kind of understandable why SpaceX does it this way. Starship is meant to fly to Mars, a much bigger challenge than landing two people on the Moon. If the basic Starship design can’t handle a lunar landing, it would throw the company’s whole Mars plan into question. SpaceX is committed to making Starship work, which is different from making the best possible lunar lander.
Less obvious is why NASA tolerates all this complexity in the most hazardous phase of its first moon mission. Why land a rocket the size of a building packed with moving parts? It’s hard to look at the HLS design and not think back to other times when a room full of smart NASA people talked themselves into taking major risks because the alternative was not getting to fly at all.
It’s instructive to compare the HLS approach to the design philosophy on Apollo. Engineers on that progam were motivated by terror; no one wanted to make the mistake that would leave astronauts stranded on the moon. The weapon they used to knock down risk was simplicity. The Lunar Module was a small metal box with a wide stance, built low enough so that the astronauts only needed to climb down a short ladder. The bottom half of the LM was a descent stage that completely covered the ascent rocket (a design that showed its value on Apollo 15, when one of the descent engines got smushed by a rock). And that ascent rocket, the most important piece of hardware in the lander, was a caveman design intentionally made so primitive that it would struggle to find ways to fail.
On Artemis, it’s the other way around: the more hazardous the mission phase, the more complex the hardware. It’s hard to look at all this lunar machinery and feel reassured, especially when NASA’s own Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel estimates that the Orion/SLS portion of a moon mission alone (not including anything to do with HLS) already has a 1:75 chance of killing the crew.
Since NASA’s biggest rocket struggles to get Orion into distant lunar orbit, and HLS weighs fifty times as much as Orion, the curious reader might wonder how the unmanned lander is supposed to get up there.
NASA’s answer is, very sensibly, “not our problem”. They are paying Blue Origin and SpaceX the big bucks to figure this out on their own. And as a practical matter, the only way to put such a massive spacecraft into NRHO is to first refuel it in low Earth orbit.
Like a lot of space technology, orbital refueling sounds simple, has never been attempted, and can’t be adequately simulated on Earth.[18] The crux of the problem is that liquid and gas phases in microgravity jumble up into a three-dimensional mess, so that even measuring the quantity of propellant in a tank becomes difficult. To make matters harder, Starship uses cryogenic propellants that boil at temperatures about a hundred degrees colder than the plumbing they need to move through. Imagine trying to pour water from a thermos into a red-hot skillet while falling off a cliff and you get some idea of the difficulties.
To get refueling working, SpaceX will first have to demonstrate propellant transfer between rockets as a proof of concept, and then get the process working reliably and efficiently at a scale of hundreds of tons. (These are two distinct challenges). Once they can routinely move liquid oxygen and methane from Starship A to Starship B, they’ll be ready to set up the infrastructure they need to launch HLS.
The plan for getting HLS to the moon looks like this: a few months before the landing date, SpaceX will launch a special variant of their Starship rocket configured to serve as a propellant depot. Then they’ll start launching Starships one by one to fill it up. Each Starship arrives in low Earth orbit with some residual propellant; it will need to dock with the depot rocket and transfer over this remnant fuel. Once the depot is full, SpaceX will launch HLS, have it fill its tanks at the depot rocket, and send it up to NRHO in advance of Orion. When Orion arrives, HLS will hopefully have enough propellant left on board to take on astronauts and make a single round trip from NRHO to the lunar surface.
Getting this plan to work requires solving a second engineering problem, how to keep cryogenic propellants cold in space. Low earth orbit is a toasty place, and without special measures, the cryogenic propellants Starship uses will quickly vent off into space. The problem is easy to solve in deep space (use a sunshade), but becomes tricky in low Earth orbit, where a warm rock covers a third of the sky. (Boil-off is also a big issue for HLS on the moon.)
It’s not clear how many Starship launches it will take to refuel HLS. Elon Musk has said four launches might be enough; NASA Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator Lakiesha Hawkins says the number is in the “high teens”. Last week, SpaceX’s Kathy Lueders gave a figure of fifteen launches.
The real number is unknown and will come down to four factors:
- How much propellant a Starship can carry to low Earth orbit.
- What fraction of that can be usably pumped out of the rocket.
- How quickly cryogenic propellant boils away from the orbiting depot.
- How rapidly SpaceX can launch Starships.
SpaceX probably knows the answer to (1), but isn’t talking. Data for (2) and (3) will have to wait for flight tests that are planned for 2025. And obviously a lot is riding on (4), also called launch cadence.
The record for heavy rocket launch cadence belongs to Saturn V, which launched three times during a four month period in 1968. Second place belongs to the Space Shuttle, which flew nine times in the calendar year before the Challenger disaster. In third place is Falcon Heavy, which flew six times in a 13 month period beginning in November 2022.
For the refueling plan to work, Starship will have to break this record by a factor of ten, launching every six days or so across multiple launch facilities. [1] The refueling program can tolerate a few launch failures, as long as none of them damages a launch pad.
There’s no company better prepared to meet this challenge than SpaceX. Their Falcon 9 rocket has shattered records for both reliability and cadence, and now launches about once every three days. But it took SpaceX ten years to get from the first orbital Falcon 9 flight to a weekly cadence, and Starship is vastly bigger and more complicated than the Falcon 9. [20]
Working backwards from the official schedule allows us to appreciate the time pressure facing SpaceX. To make the official Artemis landing date, SpaceX has to land an unmanned HLS prototype on the moon in early 2026. That means tanker flights to fill an orbiting depot would start in late 2025. This doesn’t leave a lot of time for the company to invent orbital refueling, get it working at scale, make it efficient, deal with boil-off, get Starship launching reliably, begin recovering booster stages,[21] set up additional launch facilities, achieve a weekly cadence, and at the same time design and test all the other systems that need to go into HLS.
Lest anyone think I’m picking on SpaceX, the development schedule for Blue Origin’s 2029 lander is even more fantastical. That design requires pumping tons of liquid hydrogen between spacecraft in lunar orbit, a challenge perhaps an order of magnitude harder than what SpaceX is attempting. Liquid hydrogen is bulky, boils near absolute zero, and is infamous for its ability to leak through anything (the Shuttle program couldn’t get a handle on hydrogen leaks on Earth even after a hundred some launches). And the rocket Blue Origin needs to test all this technology has never left the ground.
The upshot is that NASA has put a pair of last-minute long-shot technology development programs between itself and the moon. Particularly striking is the contrast between the ambition of the HLS designs and the extreme conservatism and glacial pace of SLS/Orion. The same organization that spent 23 years and 20 billion dollars building the world’s most vanilla spacecraft demands that SpaceX darken the sky with Starships within four years of signing the initial HLS contract. While thrilling for SpaceX fans, this is pretty unserious behavior from the nation’s space agency, which had several decades’ warning that going to the moon would require a lander.
All this to say, it’s universally understood that there won’t be a moon landing in 2026. At some point NASA will have to officially slip the schedule, as it did in 2021, 2023, and at the start of this year. If this accelerating pattern of delays continues, by year’s end we might reach a state of continuous postponement, a kind of scheduling singularity where the landing date for Artemis 3 recedes smoothly and continuously into the future.
Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine a manned lunar landing before 2030, if the Artemis program survives that long.
I want to stress that there’s nothing wrong with NASA making big bets on technology. Quite the contrary, the audacious HLS contracts may be the healthiest thing about Artemis. Visionaries at NASA identified a futuristic new energy source (space billionaire egos) and found a way to tap it on a fixed-cost basis. If SpaceX or Blue Origin figure out how to make cryogenic refueling practical, it will mean a big step forward for space exploration, exactly the thing NASA should be encouraging. And if the technology doesn’t pan out, we’ll have found that out mostly by spending Musk’s and Bezos’s money.
The real problem with Artemis is that it doesn’t think through the consequences of its own success. A working infrastructure for orbital refueling would make SLS and Orion superfluous. Instead of waiting two years to go up on a $4 billion rocket, crews and cargo could launch every weekend on cheap commercial rockets, refueling in low Earth orbit on their way to the Moon. A similar logic holds for Gateway. Why assemble a space station out of habitrail pieces out in lunar orbit, like an animal, when you can build one on Earth and launch it in one piece? Better yet, just spraypaint “GATEWAY” on the side of the nearest Starship, send it out to NRHO, and save NASA and its international partners billions. Having a working gas station in low Earth orbit fundamentally changes what is possible, in a way the SLS/Orion arm of Artemis doesn’t seem to recognize.
Conversely, if SpaceX and Blue Origin can’t make cryogenic refueling work, then NASA has no plan B for landing on the moon. All the Artemis program will be able to do is assemble Gateway. Promising taxpayers the moon only to deliver ISS Jr. does not broadcast a message of national greatness, and is unlikely to get Congress excited about going to Mars. The hurtful comparisons between American dynamism in the 1960’s and whatever it is we have now will practically write themselves.
What NASA is doing is like an office worker blowing half their salary on lottery tickets while putting the other half in a pension fund. If the lottery money comes through, then there was really no need for the pension fund. But without the lottery win, there’s not enough money in the pension account to retire on. The two strategies don’t make sense together.
There’s a ‘realist’ school of space flight that concedes all this but asks us to look at the bigger picture. We’re never going to have the perfect space program, the argument goes, but the important thing is forward progress. And Artemis is the first program in years to survive a presidential transition and have a shot at getting us beyond low Earth orbit. With Artemis still funded, and Starship making rapid progress, at some point we’ll finally see American astronauts back on the moon.
But this argument has two flaws. The first is that it feeds a cycle of dysfunction at NASA that is rapidly making it impossible for us to go anywhere. Holding human space flight to a different standard than NASA’s science missions has been a disaster for space exploration. Right now the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (the entity responsible for manned space flight) couldn’t build a toaster for less than a billion dollars. Incompetence, self-dealing, and mismanagement that end careers on the science side of NASA are not just tolerated but rewarded on the human space flight side. Before we let the agency build out its third white elephant project in forty years, it’s worth reflecting on what we’re getting in return for half our exploration budget.
The second, more serious flaw in the “realist” approach is that it enables a culture of institutional mendacity that must ultimately be fatal at an engineering organization. We’ve reached a point where NASA lies constantly, to both itself and to the public. It lies about schedules and capabilities. It lies about the costs and the benefits of its human spaceflight program. And above all, it lies about risk. All the institutional pathologies identified in the Rogers Report and the Columbia Accident Investigation Board are alive and well in Artemis—groupthink, management bloat, intense pressure to meet impossible deadlines, and a willingness to manufacture engineering rationales to justify flying unsafe hardware.
Do we really have to wait for another tragedy, and another beautifully produced Presidential Commission report, to see that Artemis is broken?
[1] Without NASA’s help, it’s hard to put a dollar figure on a mission without making somewhat arbitrary decisions about what to include and exclude. The $7-10 billion estimate comes from a Bush-era official in the Office of Management and Budget commenting on the NASA Spaceflight Forum
And that $7.2B assumes Artemis III stays on schedule. Based on the FY24 budget request, each additional year between Artemis II and Artemis III adds another $3.5B to $4.0B in Common Exploration to Artemis III. If Artemis III goes off in 2027, then it will be $10.8B total. If 2028, then $14.3B.
In other words, it’s hard to break out an actual cost while the launch dates for both Artemis II and III keep slipping.
NASA’s own Inspector General estimates the cost of just the SLS/Orion portion of a moon landing at $4.1 billion.
[2] The first US suborbital flight, Friendship 7, launched on May 15, 1961. Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon eight years and two months later, on July 21, 1969. President Bush announced the goal of returning to the Moon in a January 2004 speech, setting the target date for the first landing “as early as 2015”, and no later than 2020.
[3] NASA refuses to track the per-launch cost of SLS, so it’s easy to get into nerdfights. Since the main cost driver on SLS is the gigantic workforce employed on the project, something like two or three times the headcount of SpaceX, the cost per launch depends a lot on cadence. If you assume a yearly launch rate (the official line), then the rocket costs $2.1 billion a launch. If like me you think one launch every two years is optimistic, the cost climbs up into the $4-5 billion range.
[4] The SLS weighs 2,600 metric tons fully fueled, and conveniently enough a dollar bill weighs about 1 gram.
[5] SpaceX does not disclose the cost, but it’s widely assumed the Raptor engine used on Superheavy costs $1 million.
[6] The $145 million figure comes from dividing the contract cost by the number of engines, caveman style. Others have reached a figure of $100 million for the unit cost of these engines. The important point is not who is right but the fact that NASA is paying vastly more than anyone else for engines of this class.
[7] $250M is the figure you get by dividing the $3.2 billion Booster Production and Operations contract to Northrop Grumman by the number of boosters (12) in the contract. Source: Office of the Inspector General. For cost overruns replacing asbestos, see the OIG report on NASA’s Management of the Space Launch System Booster and Engine Contracts. The Department of Defense paid <a href”https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2023/12/otv-7/“>$130 million for a Falcon Heavy launch in 2023.
[8] Rocket Lab developed, tested, and flew its Electron rocket for a total program cost of $100 million.
[9] In particular, the separation bolts embedded in the Orion heat shield were built based on a flawed thermal model, and need to be redesigned to safely fly a crew. From the OIG report:
Separation bolt melt beyond the thermal barrier during reentry can expose the vehicle to hot gas ingestion behind the heat shield, exceeding Orion’s structural limits and resulting in the breakup of the vehicle and loss of crew. Post-flight inspections determined there was a discrepancy in the thermal model used to predict the bolts’ performance pre-flight. Current predictions using the correct information suggest the bolt melt exceeds the design capability of Orion.
The current plan is to work around these problems on Artemis 2, and then redesign the components for Artemis 3. That means astronauts have to fly at least twice with an untested heat shield design.
[10] Orion/ESM has a delta V budget of 1340 m/s. Getting into and out of an equatorial low lunar orbit takes about 1800 m/s, more for a polar orbit. (See source.)
[11] It takes about 900 m/s of total delta V to get in and out of NHRO, comfortably within Orion/ESM’s 1340 m/s budget. (See source.)
[12] In Carrying the Fire, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins recalls carrying a small notebook covering 18 lunar rendezvous scenarios he might be called on to fly in various contingencies. If the Lunar Module could get itself off the surface, there was probably a way to dock with it.
For those too young to remember, Tang is a powdered orange drink closely associated with the American space program.
[13] For a detailed (if somewhat cryptic) discussion of possible Artemis abort modes to NRHO, see HLS NRHO to Lunar Surface and Back Mission Design, NASA 2022.
[14] This is my own speculative guess; the answer is very sensitive to the dry weight of HLS and the boil-off rate of its cryogenic propellants. Delta V from the lunar surface to NRHO is 2,610 m/sec. Assuming HLS weighs 120 tons unfueled, it would need about 150 metric tons of propellant to get into NRHO from the lunar surface. Adding safety margin, fuel for docking operations, and allowing for a week of boiloff gets me to about 200 tons.
[15] The main safety issue is the difficult thermal environment at the landing site, where the Sun sits just above the horizon, heating half the lander. If it weren’t for the NRHO constraint, it’s very unlikely Artemis 3 would spend more than a day or two on the lunar surface.
[16] The ISS program has been repeatedly extended, but the station is coming up against physical limiting factors (like metal fatigue) that will soon make it too dangerous to use.
[17] Recent comments by NASA suggest SpaceX has voluntarily added an ascent phase to its landing demo, ending a pretty untenable situation. However, there’s still no requirement that the unmanned landing/ascent demo be performed using the same lander design that will fly on the actual mission, another oddity in the HLS contract.
[18] To be precise, I’m talking about moving bulk propellant between rockets in orbit. There are resupply flights to the International Space Station that deliver about 850 kilograms of non-cryogenic propellant to boost the station in its orbit, and there have been small-scale experiments in refueling satellites. But no one has attempted refueling a flown rocket stage in space, cryogenic or otherwise.
Both SpaceX’s <a href=“https://youtu.be/vOg49BVhU40?si=6q8R2qvkmEDPGy0V&t=2381”“>Kathy Lueders and NASA confirm Starship needs to launch from multiple sites. Here’s an excerpt from the minutes of the NASA Advisory Council Human Exploration and Operations Committee meeting on November 17 and 20, 2023:
Mr. [Wayne] Hale asked where Artemis III will launch from. [Assistant Deputy AA for Moon to Mars Lakiesha] Hawkins said that launch pads will be used in Florida and potentially Texas. The missions will need quite a number of tankers; in order to meet the schedule, there will need to be a rapid succession of launches of fuel, requiring more than one site for launches on a 6-day rotation schedule, and multiples of launches.
[20] Falcon 9 first flew in June of 2010 and achieved a weekly launch cadence over a span of six launches starting in November 2020.
[21] Recovering Superheavy stages is not a NASA requirement for HLS, but it’s a huge cost driver for SpaceX given the number of launches involved.
https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm
My GDC ’24 Talk: The Playdate Story
date: 2024-05-19, from: Cobel Sasser’s blog
In January, I was invited to GDC, the Game Developers Conference, to give a talk about Playdate. That talk — “The Playdate Story: What Was it Like to Make Handheld Video Game System Hardware?” — has been made available free for all to view. Now, it’s been 10 years since my last talk at XOXO here […]
https://cabel.com/2024/05/19/my-gdc-24-talk-the-playdate-story/
Hyundai Kona Electric Long Range 75 MPH Efficiency And Range Test
date: 2024-05-19, from: Inside EVs News
How does the new Kona Electric fair in efficiency with extended highway driving? And how does it compare to the Volvo EX30?
https://insideevs.com/news/720134/hyundai-kona-long-range-test/
Arctic Cat Recalls Even More Snowmobile Models
date: 2024-05-19, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
The snowmobile manufacturer has issued a further recall on its products.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/720123/arctic-cat-snowmobile-recall-catalyst/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I want a simple Hello World app for ChatGPT in the browser, or Node.js. So I asked ChatGPT to write it for me.
https://chatgpt.com/share/33a46755-f464-43be-9664-d26b754326d0
LEVER WEEKLY: They’re Coming For Your Home
date: 2024-05-19, from: The Lever News
Corporate landlords are buying up homes and terrorizing tenants with junk fees and negligent maintenance, and other news from The Lever this week.
https://www.levernews.com/lever-weekly-theyre-coming-for-your-home/
MotoGP Sets A New Attendance Record At Le Mans
date: 2024-05-19, from: Ride Apart, Electric Motorcycle News
Nearly 300,000 fans from across the globe flocked to Le Mans during the 2024 French Grand Prix.
https://www.rideapart.com/news/719994/motogp-lemans-attendance-record-2024/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
What we know (and don’t know) about Ozempic.
https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area/24158976/ozempic-drug-weight-loss-diabetes-risks
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Link Rot and Digital Decay on Government, News and Other Webpages.
https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
This Year's Google I/O Was the Most Boring Ever.
https://gizmodo.com/google-io-boring-gemini-ai-1851485806
Ukraine, Russia exchange drone attacks while Russia continues its push in the east
date: 2024-05-19, from: Associated Press, World News
At least 11 people were reported killed in attacks in Ukraine’s war-ravaged northeast on Sunday, as Russia pushed ahead with its renewed offensive.
Sunday caption: What?
date: 2024-05-19, from: Robert Reich on Substack
And last week’s winner
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-caption-what
2024 NBA playoffs mark the beginning of a new era for the league
date: 2024-05-19, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
It’s official, the NBA has entered a new era. The stars and teams who dominated the 2010s are no longer on top. The Golden State Warriors have had their dynasty…
May 18, 2024
date: 2024-05-19, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Spent a lovely day today with family and let the world turn without me. Handing tonight’s letter over to my friend Peter with a photograph of his heralding the summer that is just over the horizon. I’ll be back at it tomorrow. [Image, “Moon, Hardwood,” by Peter Ralston]
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-18-2024
Full Circle Weekly News 366
date: 2024-05-19, from: Full Circle Magazine
Credits
- Host: @bardictriad, @zaivala
- Bumper: Canonical
- Theme Music: From The Dust - Stardust
- https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
- CC BY 4.0
https://fullcirclemagazine.org/podcasts/podcast-366/
PGDay Israel 2024: Call for Papers is Now Open!
date: 2024-05-19, from: PostgreSQL News
PGDay Israel 2024 takes place in Tel Aviv, Israel, on October 20.
Our Call for Papers is now open.
We are accepting proposals for talks in English and Hebrew. Each session will last 40 minutes, and may be on any topic related to PostgreSQL.
Submission deadline is June, 30, 2024.
Selected speakers will be notified by July, 31, 2024.
To submit your proposal(s) please write an email to info@pgday.org.il.
Each proposal must include the following information:
-
Title
-
Abstract, including notes for the committee, if any
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Presentation language (English/Hebrew)
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Speaker(s) name(s) and affiliation(s)
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A short profile of each speaker
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Other conferences (past or future) to which the same proposal has been submitted
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Resources required for the presentation (internet access, video, audio, etc.)
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Additional requirements, if any
If you need assistance with funding to be able to attend, please contact us separately before the submission deadline.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at info@pgday.org.il.
We look forward to seeing you in Tel Aviv in October!
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgday-israel-2024-call-for-papers-is-now-open-2857/
Pgpool-II 4.5.2, 4.4.7, 4.3.10, 4.2.17 and 4.1.20 released.
date: 2024-05-19, from: PostgreSQL News
What is Pgpool-II?
Pgpool-II is a tool to add useful features to PostgreSQL, including:
- connection pooling
- load balancing
- automatic failover and more.
Minor releases
Pgpool Global Development Group is pleased to announce the availability of following versions of Pgpool-II:
- 4.5.2
- 4.4.7
- 4.3.10
- 4.2.17
- 4.1.20
Please take a look at release notes.
You can download the source code and RPMs.
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgpool-ii-452-447-4310-4217-and-4120-released-2859/
25. Borg backups
date: 2024-05-19, from: Blair’s Science Desk
I haven’t posted here in a while! Today, I thought I’d get back in the habit by posting my Borg backup script. Borg is a command-line backup app written in Python. It’s blazing fast and features great de-duplication. To get started with Borg, follow the installation instructions here. Then, initialize a backup with this command: borg init /path/to/backup Here’s my backup script. First we make a backup of my /home directory:
https://sciencedesk.economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/05/borg-backups/