News gathered 2024-05-30
(date: 2024-05-30 11:03:09)
Clues from bird flu’s ground zero on dairy farms in the Texas panhandle
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Why did it take so long to recognize the virus on high-tech farms in the world’s richest country?
Ahead of Aaron Judge’s first Oracle Park visit, fans lament SF Giants’ free-agency miss
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Fans are excited about the Giants’ hot streak over the last two weeks, but they recalled the team’s
Case continued for Saugus woman charged in fentanyl OD
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Signal
A 25-year-old Saugus woman who has pleaded not guilty to two charges connected to the death of an 18-year-old Santa Clarita Valley resident is due back in court in July, […]
The post Case continued for Saugus woman charged in fentanyl OD appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/case-continued-for-saugus-woman-charged-in-fentanyl-od/
FDA urged to relax decades-old tissue donation restrictions for gay and bisexual men
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Restrictions on men who have had sex with another man have been reduced for donations of organs and blood. But restrictions on donated tissue remain in place.
‘Eric’ review: Cumberbatch stars in limited drama series that packs in too much
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
The six-episode Netflix series has dirty cops, corrupt politicians, greedy businessmen and child sex traffickers.
College Brief for May 30
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Signal
2 local students named to University of Mississippi chancellor’s honor roll The University of Mississippi announced that students named to the fall 2023 honor roll lists, including chancellor’s honor roll, […]
The post College Brief for May 30 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/college-brief-for-may-30/
Escaped inmate captured in San Jose one day after jumping over jail’s barbed wire fence
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
The inmate was located with his girlfriend, who was also taken into custody for aiding in his escape, authorities said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/30/escaped-inmate-captured/
In Memoriam Malcolm Ian Peters 1956–2024
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
To many, he was Ian, but to his babies, he was Papa and, to his mom, Pooh. Ian was born
The post In Memoriam Malcolm Ian Peters <br> 1956–2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/30/in-memoriam-malcolm-ian-peters-1956-2024/
US sanctions two Central African Republic companies linked to Russian Wagner Group
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
June 17: Artist Annette Power Free Demo at Barnes & Noble
date: 2024-05-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Join the Santa Clarita Artists Association Monday, June 17, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at Barnes and Noble Valencia for its monthly meeting, where it will feature Annette Power
https://scvnews.com/june-17-artist-annette-power-free-demo-at-barnes-noble/
CDC Confirms Second Human H5 Bird Flu Case in Michigan; Third Case Tied to Dairy Outbreak Risk to General Public Remains Low
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
May 30, 2024 – A second human case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5) virus infection has been identified in the state
The post CDC Confirms Second Human H5 Bird Flu Case in Michigan; Third Case Tied to Dairy Outbreak Risk to General Public Remains Low appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Unarmed Minuteman III Test Launch to Showcase Readiness of U.S. Nuclear Force’s Safe, Effective Deterrent
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Microsoft Word – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – UNARMED MINUTEMAN III TEST LAUNCH TO SHOWCASE READINESS OF U.S. NUCLEAR FORCES SAFE
The post Unarmed Minuteman III Test Launch to Showcase Readiness of U.S. Nuclear Force’s Safe, Effective Deterrent appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Sale closed in Emeryville: $1.6 million for a five-bedroom home
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
The spacious historic property located in the 800 block of 57th Street in Emeryville was sold on April 16, 2024 for $1,613,500, or $683 per square foot. The house, built in 1912, has an interior space of 2,361 square feet.
New twist: Mitty beaten by ineligible team in this week’s NorCal softball playoffs
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Whitney-Rocklin won’t play in Thursday’s NorCal Division I semifinals. But neither will Mitty.
Big San Jose medical offices project reaches key approval milestone
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
A project to develop new medical offices in San Jose near Good Samaritan Hospital has reached a key city approval milestone.
‘Couples Therapy’: The least cynical reality show on TV. This time there’s a throuple.
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Season 4 as absorbing as ever, not because of the couples but because of the show’s therapist.
We took in Utah’s ‘Mighty 5’ national parks in one epic campervan trip
date: 2024-05-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Arches National Park is home to more than 2,000 arches.
Hundreds of South Coast Student Mathletes Go Head-to-Head at 2024 Math Superbowl
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, CA – The brightest math minds on the South Coast squared off at the 39th annual Math Superbowl
The post Hundreds of South Coast Student Mathletes Go Head-to-Head at 2024 Math Superbowl appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Windows 11 24H2 might call time on that old NAS under the stairs
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Avoidance of evil intent means required SMB signing and no more guest fallback
Microsoft’s Ned Pyle has issued a warning to Windows 11 24H2 users. Security has been tightened up, so attempting to access some third-party Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices or a USB drive plugged into certain routers might fail.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/windows_11_24h2_security_tweaks/
The Moon and Amaey Shah
date: 2024-05-30, from: NASA breaking news
Sometimes a story about a NASA volunteer just grabs your heart and won’t let go. NASA Scientist Dr. Brian Day shared with us the incredible story of what first ignited his passion for involving the public in his scientific research. It’s a story about a boy named Amaey Shah. “Through the NASA Speakers Bureau, I was paired […]
https://science.nasa.gov/get-involved/citizen-science/the-moon-and-amaey-shah/
Webb Spots a Starburst
date: 2024-05-30, from: NASA breaking news
The James Webb Space Telescope observed “starburst” galaxy NGC 4449, seen in this image released on May 29, 2024. Starbursts are intense periods of star formation usually concentrated at a galaxy’s core, but NGC 4449’s activity is much more widespread — likely due to past interactions with its galactic neighbors. Astronomers can study this galaxy […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/webb-spots-a-starburst/
‘Are We Dating the Same Guy’ Guy Imprisoned for Tax Fraud
date: 2024-05-30, from: 404 Media Group
After suing 27 women and multiple platforms because people he’d dated warned others not to date him, he filed a class action lawsuit against them. Now, he’s headed to federal prison.
https://www.404media.co/are-we-dating-the-same-guy-nikko-dambrosio-tax-fraud/
Project Connect Utility Work Continues on Hollister Avenue
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
WhenMay 29 – 31, 20246 a.m. – 5 p.m.Schedule is subject to change due to weather or other unforeseen circumstances.
The post Project Connect Utility Work Continues on Hollister Avenue appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/30/project-connect-utility-work-continues-on-hollister-avenue/
SBCAS se une CalAnimals y la ASPCA Para el Día Inaugural de Adopta una Mascota en California
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
(SANTA BÁRBARA, Calif.) – Los Servicios para Animales del Condado de Santa Bárbara se enorgullecen en anunciar su participación en
The post SBCAS se une CalAnimals y la ASPCA Para el Día Inaugural de Adopta una Mascota en California appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Evercade Alpha is a miniature arcade cabinet that plays retro gaming cartridges
date: 2024-05-30, from: Liliputing
There’s no shortage of products marketed toward the retro gaming crowd these days, but most of them take a wink wink, nudge nudge approach toward piracy by expecting users to bring their own video game ROMS. But Evercade has taken a different approach by offering a series of game consoles designed to run fully licensed […]
The post Evercade Alpha is a miniature arcade cabinet that plays retro gaming cartridges appeared first on Liliputing.
Pakistan, India to face off in US in T20 Cricket World Cup
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
In June, the United States and the West Indies are co-hosting the International Cricket Council Men’s T20 World Cup. Despite its overseas popularity, cricket remains largely unknown in America. VOA’s Muhammad Atif has more.
https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-india-to-face-off-in-us-in-t20-cricket-world-cup/7636182.html
SBCAS Joins Forces With CalAnimals and the ASPCA for Inaugural California Adopt-a-Pet Day
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) – Santa Barbara County Animal Services is proud to announce its participation in the first ever California
The post SBCAS Joins Forces With CalAnimals and the ASPCA for Inaugural California Adopt-a-Pet Day appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Mayor Cameron Smyth | Summer Nights at SENSES, Celebrate
date: 2024-05-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
School is out for summer and it is time to enjoy the long sunny days and warm nights
https://scvnews.com/mayor-cameron-smyth-summer-nights-at-senses-celebrate/
El embalse de Vic Trace recibirá un diseño actualizado y resistente
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – 29 de mayo de 2024 En un paso significativo para garantizar un sistema de suministro de
The post El embalse de Vic Trace recibirá un diseño actualizado y resistente appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Vic Trace Reservoir to Receive Updated, Resilient Design
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – May 29, 2024 The City of Santa Barbara has awarded contracts for the environmental and design
The post Vic Trace Reservoir to Receive Updated, Resilient Design appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/30/vic-trace-reservoir-to-receive-updated-resilient-design/
US Supreme Court boosts NRA in free speech fight with New York official
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court gave a boost on Thursday to the National Rifle Association in its free speech dispute with a New York state official it accused of coercing banks and insurers to avoid doing business with the influential gun rights advocacy group.
The justices, in a 9-0 decision authored by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, threw out a lower court’s ruling that dismissed the NRA’s 2018 lawsuit against Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services. The NRA has claimed that Vullo unlawfully retaliated against it following a mass shooting in which 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
At issue in the dispute is whether Vullo had wielded her regulatory power to coerce New York financial institutions into cutting ties with the NRA in violation of protections under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment against government restrictions on free speech.
“Ultimately, the critical takeaway is that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from wielding their power selectively to punish or suppress speech, directly or, as alleged here, through private intermediaries,” Sotomayor wrote.
The case will now return to the lower courts for further analysis of the NRA’s allegations under the standard articulated in the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Vullo called upon banks and insurers to consider the “reputational risks” of doing business with gun rights groups following the February 2018 Parkland shootings. In the aftermath of the Parkland rampage by a 19-year-old former student armed with an AR-15 rifle, NRA officials lashed out at gun control advocates, arguing that Democratic elites were politicizing the shootings to erode gun rights.
Vullo later fined Lloyd’s of London and two other insurers more than $13 million for offering an NRA-endorsed product called “Carry Guard” that Vullo’s office found was in violation of New York insurance law. The product provided liability coverage for policyholders who caused injuries from gunfire, even in cases involving the wrongful use of a firearm.
The insurers agreed to stop selling NRA-endorsed products that New York considered illegal.
The NRA’s lawsuit, seeking unspecified monetary damages, accused Vullo of unlawfully retaliating against the group for its constitutionally protected gun rights advocacy by targeting it with an “implicit censorship regime.” Its suit alleged that New York’s “blacklisting” campaign sought to deprive the NRA of basic financial services and threatened its advocacy work.
The case did not involve the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in March.
The NRA is the largest and most powerful gun rights organization in the United States and has been instrumental in thwarting Democratic-backed gun restrictions in the U.S. Congress. The nonprofit group is organized under the laws of New York state, with its main offices in Virginia.
A federal judge in 2021 dismissed all of the NRA’s claims apart from two free speech counts against Vullo. The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 said those also should have been dismissed, prompting the NRA’s Supreme Court appeal.
The NRA found an unlikely ally in the case in President Joe Biden’s administration. Even though Biden has called gun violence a national embarrassment, his administration had urged the justices to let the NRA pursue its lawsuit.
The administration argued that a lower court should determine whether Vullo’s actions crossed the line between permissible criticism of the NRA and coercion aimed at suppressing a disfavored viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment protections.
The case was the latest to come before the Supreme Court involving the NRA, a group closely aligned with Republicans that has opposed gun control measures and backed pivotal lawsuits that have widened U.S. gun rights.
Americans remain deeply divided over how to address firearms violence including mass shootings even as the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has taken an expansive view of gun rights.
Vullo was sued in both her official and personal capacities. But the 2nd Circuit found that Vullo would be protected from suit under the legal defense of qualified immunity that shields officials from civil litigation in certain circumstances.
The Supreme Court by the end of June is expected to issue rulings in two gun rights cases. One involves a challenge to the legality of a federal ban on “bump stock” devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns. The other involves a challenge to the legality of a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns.
COC men’s golf wins 11th state title
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Signal
To College of the Canyons mens’ golf coach Gary Peterson, winning the program’s 11th state championship this season was expected. COC dominated opponents this season, overcoming pressure time and time […]
The post COC men’s golf wins 11th state title appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/coc-mens-golf-wins-11th-state-title/
Disturbing and misleading efforts to defame Helen Toner through misdirection
date: 2024-05-30, from: Gary Marcus blog
OpenAI’s new board just made its loyalties clear. We should all be worried/
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/disturbing-and-misleading-efforts
Ramses II’s Long-Lost Sarcophagus Has Finally Been Identified
date: 2024-05-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
An Egyptologist recently concluded that a fragment of an overlooked granite coffin bears the great pharaoh’s name
NASA Welcomes Peru as 41st Artemis Accords Signatory
date: 2024-05-30, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson welcomed Peru as the newest nation to sign the Artemis Accords Thursday during a ceremony with the U.S. State Department at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Peru joins 40 other countries in a commitment to advancing principles for the safe, transparent, and responsible exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond. “NASA is […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-welcomes-peru-as-41st-artemis-accords-signatory/
Travel
date: 2024-05-30, from: NASA breaking news
The NSSC provides travel reimbursement services for all authorized Agency travel including: domestic, foreign, local, ETDY, and Change of Station (COS). References Federal Travel Regulations (FTR) Traveler Extended TDY and Taxes Domestic Per Diem Rates Foreign Per Diem Rates Change of Station NSSC Travel now has another way that a transferee Traveler may submit his […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/nssc/travel/
Twin NASA Satellites Ready to Help Gauge Earth’s Energy Balance
date: 2024-05-30, from: NASA breaking news
Information from the PREFIRE mission will illuminate how clouds and water vapor in the Arctic and Antarctic influence the amount of heat the poles radiate into space. A pair of new shoebox-size NASA satellites will help unravel an atmospheric mystery that’s bedeviled scientists for years: how the behavior of clouds and water vapor at Earth’s […]
European Space Agency’s Vega-C rocket a step closer to returning to flight
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Latest nozzle redesign means a late 2024 launch is on the cards
The European Space Agency (ESA) is getting closer to returning its Vega-C rocket to flight following a successful test by the prime contractor, Avio, at its Italian test facility.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/esas_vegac_gets_closer_to/
All Eyes on Rafah’s Virality Creates Market for AI Spam About Palestine
date: 2024-05-30, from: 404 Media Group
AI images and AI spam variations of ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ are now flooding Facebook and Instagram.
https://www.404media.co/all-eyes-on-rafah-brings-facebooks-ai-spam-to-war/
Salesforce expects lowest quarterly growth in two decades
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Allure of AI fails to inspire customers to increase software spending with CRM giant
Salesforce has disappointed investors by posting revenue below expectation and forecasting sales for the next quarter at the lowest level of growth for more than two decades.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/salesforce_results/
On drilling and climate policies, Biden, Trump couldn’t be more different
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
US presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump have very different views on the production of fossil fuels and the need to transition to clean energy to fight climate change. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at where each candidate stands and the agendas they’ll champion if re-elected.
V.A. Uses a Suicide Prevention Algorithm To Decide Who Gets Extra Help. It Favors White Men.
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Markup blog
An AI program designed to prevent suicide among U.S. military veterans prioritizes White men and ignores survivors of sexual violence
Specter of Mass Shootings Casts Pall over State Street Parades
date: 2024-05-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Will cars, bikes, and a bowling alley save Santa Barbara’s downtown?
The post Specter of Mass Shootings Casts Pall over State Street Parades appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Today is a crucial deadline for Boeing
date: 2024-05-30, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Thursday marks the end of the 90-day period the FAA gave Boeing to come up with a plan to improve its safety and quality-control practices, something prompted by a fuselage panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight in January. Boeing has already announced a number of changes since then. What more do we expect to learn today? Also on the program: the number of wholesale goods sitting on shelves a dramatic decline in foreclosures.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/today-is-a-crucial-deadline-for-boeing
From laundries to almond boneless chicken, Chinese Americans make mark in Detroit
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
The Midwestern U.S. city of Detroit is known as the home of American automakers. What’s less known are the contributions of the Chinese residents in the city’s history. Some of them did the laundry of the autoworkers and others even cooked up what’s become a local favorite. VOA’s Chris Casquejo has more on Detroit’s two Chinatowns and what happened to them. Videographer and video editor: Yu Chen
L.A. County Rent Relief Deadline Approaching
date: 2024-05-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
As the June 4 deadline approaches, the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs urges all qualified landlords to seize this final opportunity to apply for the LA County Rent Relief Program
https://scvnews.com/l-a-county-rent-relief-deadline-approaching/
Summary of the 2023 GRACE Follow-On Science Team Meeting
date: 2024-05-30, from: NASA breaking news
Felix Landerer, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, felix.w.landerer@jpl.nasa.gov Introduction In October 2023, the annual gathering of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow-On [G-FO] Science Team took place in Boulder, CO, hosted at University Corporation for Atmospheric Research’s (UCAR) Center Green campus. The event had 70 in-person participant and an additional 52 online participants […]
https://science.nasa.gov/uncategorized/summary-of-the-2023-grace-follow-on-science-team-meeting/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-30, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
“Erik Prince, the founder of the military contractor Blackwater and younger brother of Betsy DeVos, invited around 650 of his contacts to join a secret, private group chat. And now it has leaked.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/182008/erik-prince-secret-global-group-chat-off-leash
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112530448287276253
California constructing largest bridge for wildlife in the world
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
In early May, the state of California announced the estimated opening of what will be the world’s largest bridge for animals. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, just outside of Los Angeles, will offer wildlife safe passage across a ten-lane highway. Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Vazgen Varzhabetian.
Cybercriminals raid BBC pension database, steal records of over 25,000 people
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
This just in: We lost your personal info, but here’s 2 years’ worth of Experian
The BBC has emailed more than 25,000 current and former employees on one of its pension schemes after an unauthorized party broke into a database and stole their personal data.…
US sanctions Ugandan officials over graft, rights abuse claims
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
Nairobi — The United States said on Thursday it was imposing sanctions on five senior Ugandan officials over accusations of involvement in corruption or human rights abuses.
Ugandan parliament speaker Anita Among was one of four officials the US State Department said would face travel bans because of “significant corruption”, following similar action by Britain last month.
Mary Goretti Kitutu and Agnes Nandutu – previously ministers responsible for Uganda’s isolated and impoverished border region of Karamoja – and former state minister for finance Amos Lugolobi were also named.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement the three had “misused public resources and diverted materials from Uganda’s neediest communities”.
“All four officials abused their public positions for their personal benefit at the expense of Ugandans,” he added.
In addition, Peter Elwelu, former deputy chief of the Ugandan Peoples’ Defense Forces (UPDF), has been sanctioned “due to his involvement in gross violations of human rights”, he said.
While commanding defense forces, Elwelu was involved in extrajudicial killings committed by UPDF members, Miller said, without giving further information.
“As a result of these actions, the designated Ugandan officials are generally ineligible for entry into the United States.”
Miller said Washington is also planning to impose visa restrictions on multiple other Ugandan officials for “undermining the democratic process and repressing members of marginalized or vulnerable populations in Uganda”.
In April, the British government imposed travel bans and asset freezes on Among, Kitutu and Nandutu over claims of corruption.
At the time the Ugandan parliament said the sanctions on Among were based on a “false premise” and imposed because of her stance on the East African country’s controversial anti-gay legislation adopted last year.
Kitutu and Nandutu are accused of stealing roofing materials destined for the poor under a government-funded project and redirecting them to politicians and their families.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-sanctions-ugandan-officials-over-graft-rights-abuse-claims/7634913.html
Colorado schools adapting to influx of immigrant students
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
The Rocky Mountain state of Colorado is spending $24 million this year to help schools adapt to an influx of immigrant students. Reporter Svitlana Prystynska visited a school in Denver to find out how educators and students are adjusting. Camera: Volodymyr Petruniv
https://www.voanews.com/a/colorado-schools-adapting-to-influx-of-immigrant-students/7634882.html
New Mexicans downwind of nuclear test await compensation
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
Survivors of radiation exposure in New Mexico are urging Congress to expand a soon-expiring law that compensates Americans who were exposed to radiation by federal nuclear tests. Gustavo Martínez Contreras has our story from Albuquerque. (Camera: Gustavo Martínez Contreras; Produced by: Bakhtiyar Zamanov)
https://www.voanews.com/a/new-mexicans-downwind-of-nuclear-test-await-compensation/7634874.html
Jurors at Trump hush money trial deliberating for second day
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/jurors-at-trump-hush-money-trial-deliberating-for-second-day/7634861.html
IT worker sued over ‘vengeful’ cyber harassment of policeman who issued a jaywalking ticket
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
His hospital employer is also being sued for not stepping in sooner
In an ongoing civil lawsuit, an IT worker is accused of launching a “destructive cyber campaign of hate and revenge” against a police officer and his family after being issued with a ticket for jaywalking.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/it_worker_defamation_lawsuit_police/
What It’s Like Finding Your Nonconsensual AI Clone Online
date: 2024-05-30, from: 404 Media Group
Ali Diamond captured the exact moment she found out someone had posted an AI model of her to Civitai without her consent.
https://www.404media.co/what-its-like-finding-your-nonconsensual-ai-clone-online/
Exxon Triumphs Over Activists
date: 2024-05-30, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: More than 400,000 households are currently without power in storm-battered Texas and the southern Plains • Southeast Louisiana tied a century-old temperature record on Memorial Day, recording a high of 98 degrees Fahrenheit in Baton Rouge • India may have broken its own heat record with a preliminary reading of about 126 degrees Fahrenheit near New Delhi.
THE TOP FIVE
- Exxon board members clinch reelection
ExxonMobil Chairman Darren Woods and Lead Director Joseph Hooley easily won reelection at the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday, neutralizing a threatened shareholder uprising over its climate policies. Several major pension funds said ahead of the meeting that they would vote to remove most of Exxon’s board after the company sued activist shareholders pushing for stronger emissions reduction targets. Though most of its petrochemical peers have similar targets, the company argued that the activists’ true goal was to “interfere with ExxonMobil’s business and to promote their own interests over those of ExxonMobil’s shareholders.”
The resistance effort “amounted to a test of whether top fund firms would rally to defend the small shareholders whose resolutions have put topics like the environment and workforce diversity at the center of many corporate annual meetings,” Reuters said. “Wednesday’s results suggested the answer was no.” All 12 of Exxon’s director nominees received between 87% and 98% support at the meeting, the company reported. The activists, meanwhile, withdrew their proposal in February, but Exxon is still pursuing the matter in court.
- EV charging companies hire former Tesla employees
The U.S. electric vehicle sector is snapping up Tesla employees who were laid off when the company gutted its charging team last month. Atlanta-based charging provider EnviroSpark Energy Solutions has hired a dozen of them, E&E News reported, while other charging companies have landed high-profile hires let go by Tesla or are in talks to do so. “It does present an awesome opportunity for other charging operators like us to fill in the gap,” David Jankowsky, CEO of Francis Energy, told E&E News. There is still some trepidation, however, over how Tesla’s tribulations could affect the broader industry’s future. Despite its poor recent performance, Tesla still dominates the U.S. EV market, so a dip in consumer confidence could have negative ripple effects on EV uptake.
- Rich countries meet $100 billion aid target two years late
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development announced Wednesday that the world’s rich countries had met their goal of delivering $100 billion in annual climate finance to poorer countries in 2022 — two years after their self-imposed deadline, the group said. The 2020 target was first set at the 2009 United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, and the delay in meeting it had strained recent climate talks. Developed countries came up with $115.9 billion in climate finance in 2022, OECD data shows, an increase of 30% from 2021. That’s the biggest year-on-year jump so far. “Exceeding this annual commitment materially by more than 15% is an important and symbolic achievement which goes some way towards making up for the two-year delay, which should help build trust,” OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said in a statement.
Climate advocates warned, however, that achieving this aim is not an end point in itself. Transitioning to clean energy and adapting to new climate realities are both expensive processes. “While domestic finance, strong policies and private finance are important, for these countries, international public finance needs to play a lynchpin role,” Melanie Robinson, global climate, economics and finance director at the World Resources Institute, said in a statement. Discussions about setting a new climate finance goal will be a centerpiece of COP29 in Azerbaijan.
- An IRA rebate roll-out
New York will be the first state to launch home energy rebates created by the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration announced Thursday. The initial phase of New York’s $158 million rebate program will be aimed at single-family homes and multifamily properties with up to four units, while later phases will expand to larger buildings and retailers. It will provide up to $14,000 per housing unit for upgrades such as better insulation, heat pumps, and heat pump water heaters. A separate, $159 million IRA home efficiency rebate program is expected to follow. Massachusetts, Michigan and Rhode Island have all applied for the funding to establish their own home energy rebate programs under the IRA — a process that’s turned out to be messier than some had hoped, according to Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo.
- Study: Extra-hot days are on the rise
The average American experienced 20 more extra-hot days over the past year than would have been expected without climate change, a new scientific analysis found. Globally, the average person experienced 26 more extra-hot days due to climate change, while in a few countries, that number exceeded 120, according to the report by Climate Central, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and World Weather Attribution. The researchers considered temperatures abnormal when they exceeded 90% of a location’s daily readings recorded between 1991 and 2020. Americans experienced 39 such days in total over the last 12 months. Almost 80% of the world’s population experienced 31 or more.
Manila
residents swelter during a May heat wave.
Ezra
Acayan/Getty Images
THE KICKER
The National Weather Service issued its first-ever warning for hail the size of a DVD — that is, a diameter of approximately 5 inches — in northern Texas on Tuesday.
https://heatmap.news/climate/exxon-annual-meeting
Help identify these obscure operating systems and vendors
date: 2024-05-30, from: OS News
Over on the GNU config-patches mailing list, Zack Weinberg is looking for help identifying a number of ancient operating systems and vendors. These are probably all either vendor or OS names from the late 1980s or early 1990s. Can anyone help me fill out the following list of things that ought to appear in testsuite/config-sub.data, if I knew what to put in place of the question marks? ???-pc533 ???-pc533-??????-sim ???-sim-??????-ultra ???-ultra-??????-unicom ???-unicom-??????-acis ???-???-aos???-triton ???-???-sysv3???-oss ???-???-sysv3???-storm-chaos ???-???-??? ↫ Zack Weinberg One of them has already been identified – “storm-chaos” turns out to have been added to binutils and/or maybe GCC in 2000, and after some digging around, John Marshall found what it’s referring to: chaos, a hobby operating system for x86 written in C. It has a long history, and after a period of inactivity came back in 2015 with a new website. Some new releases followed, with the last one being version 0.3.0 in 2019. It’s been silence since then. The others are still up for grabs to be discovered. There is some talk that the pc533 one might be a misspelling of pc532, which would refer to the “NS32K-based PC532 board running NetBSD”. This is an incredibly obscure complete system built around the NS32532, of which only around 150 were built in the early ’90s. However, Weinberg is hesitant to accept this theory without more information, since there is already code to handle the pc532, and he wants to be sure before making any changes. If there is one place on the internet outside of the GNU mailing lists that might be able to help Weinberg, it’s the OSNews audience. We have so many older people reading OSNews who have been working or otherwise active in this field for many decades, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these cryptic names make some bells ring for some of you. If one of you does e-mail a reply, be sure to mention this article – organic marketing to help keep us going!
https://www.osnews.com/story/139830/help-identify-these-osbscure-operating-systems-and-vendors/
How can an economy even begin to recover from something like this?
date: 2024-05-30, from: Marketplace Morning Report
In the months since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, Palestine’s economy has been radically altered. Today, we hear about the conflict’s impact on the West Bank, Palestinian tax revenue and what recovery from such destruction and devastation in Gaza could potentially look like. Plus, the rise in artificial intelligence requires lots of data computing centers to power that AI. And all those data centers use lots of electricity.
Blinken assails Russian misinformation after hinting US may allow Ukraine to strike inside Russia
date: 2024-05-30, from: Associated Press, World News
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is assailing Russian attempts to sow discord in democracies with misinformation after hinting the U.S. may allow Ukraine to use American-supplied munitions to strike inside Russia.
https://apnews.com/article/czechia-ukraine-russia-nato-blinken-441c9624d95f8193e99cf08effced44f
Spacetop G1 is a $1900 laptop that uses a pair of Augmented Reality glasses as a display
date: 2024-05-30, from: Liliputing
Mobile computing presents some unique challenges: laptops with big displays (or multiple screens) give you plenty of space for apps and games, but often at the cost of battery life and portability. Meanwhile laptops with thin and light designs, small screens, and/or long battery life address those challenges, but don’t give you a lot of […]
The post Spacetop G1 is a $1900 laptop that uses a pair of Augmented Reality glasses as a display appeared first on Liliputing.
Promising results for osteoarthritis treatments tested in space
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
More work needed to translate ISS success into something that can be used on Earth
Boffins have used conditions aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to try out treatments for posttraumatic osteoarthritis.…
Ukraine’s army chief says Russia is augmenting its troops presence in the Kharkiv region
date: 2024-05-30, from: Associated Press, World News
Ukraine’s air force says that Russia has conducted an array of aerial attacks on Ukraine with cruise missiles, drones and ballistic missiles.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-kharkiv-attacks-5023c3e67af30fc95b954a6f044112dc
Keeping Up with the Collinses
date: 2024-05-30, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
The dreary end of the Pronatalist “movement.”
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/keeping-up-with-the-collinses
Lisa Storaker | Undervalued Educators
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Signal
I am writing an open letter to our state representatives and our local school board members. It is difficult to write this letter as I am fuming with the feeling […]
The post Lisa Storaker | Undervalued Educators appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/lisa-storaker-undervalued-educators/
Jim Crowley | Back Up That Claim
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Signal
Mr. Rob Kerchner (letters, May 26) needs to provide a link to where he claims the New England Journal of Medicine’s latest study indicated the COVID-19 vaccine shows no benefit […]
The post Jim Crowley | Back Up That Claim appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/jim-crowley-back-up-that-claim/
IBM spin-off Kyndryl accused of discriminating on basis of age, race, disability
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Five current and former employees file formal charges with US employment watchdog
Exclusive Kyndryl, the IT services firm spun out of IBM, has been accused by multiple employees within its CISO Defense security group of discrimination on the basis of age, race, and disability, in both internal complaints and formal charges filed with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/kyndryl_accused_of_discriminating/
Volcano erupts near Iceland’s capital
date: 2024-05-30, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Iceland is once again witnessing the raw power of nature as a volcano erupts about 30 miles southwest of Reykjavik, impacting trade.Then, more than two years into the war with Russia, Ukraine is auctioning off the Hotel Ukraina. The proceeds will go toward the war effort. Also: a conversation with one of Latin America’s only female leaders, Laura Chinchilla, the president of Costa Rica.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/volcano-erupts-near-icelands-capital
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-30, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Fresh baked, new InputMap UI for Godot on iPad:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112529629910700025
Cat TV | The MagPi #142
date: 2024-05-30, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Prolific maker Becky Stern chose a Raspberry Pi display to entertain her favourite feline. Rosie Hattersley wholeheartedly approves.
The post Cat TV | The MagPi #142 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/cat-tv-the-magpi-142/
Pretty much all of the headaches affecting MSPs are due to cybersecurity
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
More cybercrime means more problems and understaffed teams stretched to the limit
Managed Service Partners (MSPs) say cybersecurity dwarfs all other main concerns about staying competitive in today’s market.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/msps_security_nightmare/
The Clubs Conference is coming back
date: 2024-05-30, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
Following the huge success of last year’s Clubs Conference, we are delighted to announce that we will be hosting the second-ever Clubs Conference on Saturday 30 November and Sunday 1 December 2024 in Cambridge, UK. The event will be a weekend of learning and connecting for volunteers and educators involved in Code Club, CoderDojo, and…
The post The Clubs Conference is coming back appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/the-clubs-conference-is-coming-back/
AI future: Nvidia boffin hopes ‘everything that moves will eventually be autonomous’
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Welcome to the ‘agentic’ era
Video The GenAI Summit 2024 opened at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, and the people, who came to hear about artificial intelligence, had made a mess of things.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/nvidia_ai_conference/
Deno 1.44: Private npm registries, improved Node.js compat, and performance boosts
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: Deno blog
Deno 1.44 adds support for private npm registries, gRPC connections, improved Node.js compat with initial Next.js support, and significant performance improvements.
Cameron Smyth | Enjoy the Warm Summer Nights at Senses and Celebrate!
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Signal
School is out for summer and it is time to enjoy the long sunny days and warm nights. With June right around the corner, get ready to join your friends […]
The post Cameron Smyth | Enjoy the Warm Summer Nights at Senses and Celebrate! appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/cameron-smyth-enjoy-the-warm-summer-nights-at-senses-and-celebrate/
Blame the SSD price hike on enterprise demand for AI servers
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Samsung, SK, Kioxia and others make bank, booking double digit bounces in Q1 revenue
NAND flash industry revenue is surfing a growth wave thanks to demand for solid state drives (SSDs) in AI servers, meaning increased prices for buyers as OEMs rush to stockpile components.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/blame_those_rising_ssd_prices/
Enjoy the Warm Summer Nights at SENSES and Celebrate!
date: 2024-05-30, from: City of Santa Clarita
By Mayor Cameron Smyth School is out for summer and it is time to enjoy the long sunny days and warm nights. With June right around the corner, get ready to join your friends and family for two of the City’s most popular outdoor events. We are in the middle of the line-up for both […]
The post Enjoy the Warm Summer Nights at SENSES and Celebrate! appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/05/30/enjoy-the-warm-summer-nights-at-senses-and-celebrate/
Securing AI Model Weights: Q&A with Sella Nevo
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: RAND blog
Considering the transformative potential and immense commercial value of artificial intelligence systems, it’s becoming more and more important to safeguard AI from bad actors. But what does that look like in practice? And where should you even begin?
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/05/securing-ai-model-weights-qa-with-sella-nevo.html
Arm is so, so over this AI accelerator unit craze
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
As it offers 3nm shake-and-bake Cortex-X925, A725 processor designs for phones, PCs
Analysis Arm this week announced the availability of new top-end CPU and GPU designs ready made for system-on-chips for laptops, smartphones, and similar personal electronics. These cores are expected to power next-gen Android phones, at least, by late 2024.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/arm_cortex_x925_ai_cores/
Meet The New Kingpin
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Lever News
With the rise of Bowlero, private equity has come for bowling — will your neighborhood alley ever be the same?
https://www.levernews.com/meet-the-new-kingpin/
Today in SCV History (May 30)
date: 2024-05-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
2013 – Powerhouse Fire breaks out in San Francisquito Canyon; will destroy 30 homes and 28 outbuildings. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-may-30/
AI and the English language
date: 2024-05-30, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>I was going through my morning routine of checking emails and various forums and chats, when I stumbled on <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@eleventy/112526068812208213">this post on mastodon</a>.</p>Not going to comment on the stupidity of the suggestion itself but it got me wondering if the fact that most of the web is English-based is going to be both a blessing and a curse for these AI. There is just so much nonsense written in English online, maybe a lot more as a % compared to the other languages.
I very much look forward to reading some studies done by someone smarter than me in the future. It’s a fascinating topic.
<hr>
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https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/0f8WD4qADIdYukSc
Lenovo claims Dell has run off the VxRails and can’t sell hyperconverged VMware
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Big Mike’s server shack offered a cryptic response. PLUS: Nutanix results
Lenovo has claimed that Dell’s breakup with VMware by Broadcom goes deep – so deep that Virtzilla’s ex-owner is currently unable to sell jointly engineered systems.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/dell_vmware_vxrail_nutanix_q3/
Indian stock exchange finally encrypting all messages to traders
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Requests for pricing will soon be encrypted, after implementation deadline was extended
India’s Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) has told market participants they need to adopt encryption – which, shockingly, isn’t already implemented – for certain messages sent to its trading platforms when using its Enhanced Trading Interface (ETI).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/bse_eti_encryption/
US official, Chinese counterpart holds talks amid effort to avert unintended conflict
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
STATE DEPARTMENT — Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Kurt Campbell is hosting China’s Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu in Washington on Thursday. The talks are aimed at maintaining open communication channels to prevent miscalculations and unintended conflicts, especially during times of tension.
Following two hours of face-to-face discussions, officials from the United States and the People’s Republic of China will have a working lunch at the State Department. Later in the afternoon, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer will continue discussions with Ma.
The visit by Ma Zhaoxu follows U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Shanghai and Beijing in April. Officials said it builds on U.S.’s intensive diplomacy with the PRC to responsibly manage competition in the relationship, even in areas where the two countries disagree.
“As we continue to take actions to protect our interests and values and those of our allies and partners, we are also using face-to-face diplomacy with the PRC to clearly and directly communicate our positions and intentions, and make progress on bilateral, regional, and global issues that matter to the American people and the world,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA.
A spokesperson from PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Ma will also “interact and communicate with representatives from various sectors in the U.S.” during his visit to the U.S. from May 30 to June 2.
While in Beijing last month, Blinken voiced “serious concern” regarding China’s support for Russia’s defense industry, warning Chinese leaders that Washington could impose sanctions over the matter.
China has defended its approach to Russia, saying it is only engaged in normal economic exchanges with a major trading partner.
Wednesday, Campbell renewed the U.S. warnings. He said Chinese support was helping to revitalize Russia’s military capabilities, including long-range missiles, artillery, drones and battlefield tracking.
During his visit to Brussels, the State Department’s second-highest diplomat emphasized the urgent need for European and NATO countries “to send a collective message of concern to China about its actions, which we view are destabilizing in the heart of Europe.”
The latest U.S.-China talks occur just days after China conducted a large-scale, two-day military exercise involving 111 aircraft and 46 naval vessels around Taiwan. Washington has strongly urged Beijing to exercise restraint and has reaffirmed the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert met virtually with PRC’s Director-General for Boundary and Ocean Affairs Hong Liang on May 23. During this meeting, Lambert expressed profound concerns regarding People’s Liberation Army joint military drills in the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan.
Malaysia stakes claim to become semiconductor superpower by luring $100B investment from … somewhere
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Suggests itself as the place to do high-end manufacturing without upsetting anyone
Malaysia intends to court RM500 billion ($107 billion) worth of semiconductor industry investment, according to prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/malaysia_semiconductor_plan/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Microsoft and Google are putting AI chat into all their apps everywhere you can enter text, which imho is as pointless as embedding web browsers in all of the Office apps in 1994. ChatGPT is the Netscape of this generation. Compete with that, create the best environment for the kind of work we do there. That’s the game, from a UI standpoint.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Stan Krute inspires with his ChatGPT renderings.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10163683434705744&set=a.111183540743
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Doc Searls coaxes art out of ChatGPT.
https://doc.searls.com/2024/05/29/a-fun-ai-fail/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
"You may think our art is awful, but for me it's been a revelation."
https://bsky.app/profile/scripting.com/post/3ktnpsw4f722w
Samsung workers treated for exposure to radiation in South Korea
date: 2024-05-30, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Workplace safety org identifies 26 hazards in the chipmaking process
Two workers at a Samsung Electronics chip plant in South Korea have been treated for exposure to radiation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/samsung_giheung_radiation_exposure/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
2018: How journalism is like the Mets.
http://scripting.com/2018/06/24/181734.html
First Ukrainian pilots graduate from F-16 training in US
date: 2024-05-30, from: VOA News USA
the Pentagon — The first Ukrainian pilots have completed F-16 fighter jet training at a military base in Arizona, with others soon to follow this summer.
“The first batch has graduated, and other Ukrainian pilots are finishing their training here by the end of August,” Arizona National Guard spokesperson Capt. Erin Hannigan told VOA.
The graduates include a handful of Ukrainian pilots who had trained at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, according to a U.S. official who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity because of security sensitivities.
Out of an abundance of caution for the pilots’ safety, officials declined to provide an exact number of how many had graduated or the number of those who remain in F-16 training.
The 162nd Wing at Morris is considered the Air National Guard’s premier F-16 training unit and houses the Air Force’s only school dedicated to training pilots from more than 20 countries on the fighter.
Kyiv pleaded for Western aircraft when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of their country in February 2022. In August 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden approved a plan for Western allies to send F-16s to Ukraine once pilot training was complete.
Last August, Ukraine was gaining momentum in the conflict against Russia, but that was before a monthslong delay by Congress to approve new military assistance for Kyiv.
Since then, Ukrainian officials reported that troops were forced to ration supplies as ammunition ran low. Analysts say Russia has capitalized on Kyiv’s disadvantage to make gains on the battlefield.
Last month, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said his country’s promised jets would be delivered to Kyiv by the end of the year.
https://www.voanews.com/a/first-ukrainian-pilots-graduate-from-f-16-training-in-us/7634529.html
Hart’s Class of 2024 is encouraged to find the way
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Signal
Finding the way: Regardless of the journey every student from Hart High School’s Class of 2024 individually embarks upon, it is evident that they will look back at their time […]
The post Hart’s Class of 2024 is encouraged to find the way appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/harts-class-of-2024-is-encouraged-to-find-the-way/
Chiquita Canyon hosting in-person sessions to provide help for relief fund Friday, Saturday
date: 2024-05-30, from: The Signal
Chiquita Canyon Landfill officials announced community meetings for Friday and Saturday intended to give information about its relief program, which was the source of much discussion at the recent Community […]
The post Chiquita Canyon hosting in-person sessions to provide help for relief fund Friday, Saturday appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Chinese national cuffed on charges of running ‘likely the world’s largest botnet ever’
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
DoJ says 911 S5 crew earned $100M from 19 million PCs pwned by fake VPNs
US authorities have arrested the alleged administrator of what FBI director Christopher Wray has described as “likely the world’s largest botnet ever,” comprising 19 million compromised Windows machines used by its operators to reap millions of dollars over the last decade.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/911s5_botnet_arrest/
June 22: Hoedown for Hope Benefits Circle of Hope
date: 2024-05-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Get ready to dust off those cowboy boots for an evening of fundraising at the Circle of Hope Cancer Wellness Center’s Hoedown For Hope
https://scvnews.com/june-22-hoedown-for-hope-benefits-circle-of-hope/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
'The chatbot has transformed my life.'
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7223v5d8lgo
Kara Swisher, Sam Altman, and the OpenAI Board
date: 2024-05-29, from: Gary Marcus blog
Helen Toner finally explains what the board was thinking
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/kara-swisher-sam-altman-and-the-openai
Spaceflight affects tumor-bearing fruit fly hosts and their parasites
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
How does spaceflight affect tumor-bearing fruit fly hosts and their parasites? Background: Like humans, fruit flies (a model organism for spaceflight research) also exhibit immune system dysfunction in space. Despite decades of studies on fruit flies and wasps, little was known about how their immune systems interact with natural parasites in space. Drosophila parasitoid wasps modify blood cell […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/spaceflight-affects-tumor-bearing-fruit-fly-hosts-and-their-parasites/
All Lanes Closed on Portion of Copper Hill Drive 8:30 p.m.-5:30 a.m. Thru June 1
date: 2024-05-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita advises motorists that now through Saturday June 1, there will be a full road closure on Copper Hill Drive between Avenida Rancho Tesoro and McBean Parkway from 8:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m.
https://scvnews.com/all-lanes-closed-on-copper-hill-drive-830-p-m-530-a-m-thru-june-1/
Miscreants claim they’ve snatched 560M people’s info from Ticketmaster
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
All that data allegedly going for a song on revived BreachForums
Ticketmaster is believed to have had its IT breached by cybercriminals who claim to have stolen 1.3TB of data on 560 million of the corporation’s customers – and are now selling all that info for $500,000.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/breachforums_ticketmaster_data/
TinyAgent: Function Calling at the Edge
date: 2024-05-29, from: Berkley Artificial Intellegence Research Blog
The ability of LLMs to execute commands through plain language (e.g. English) has enabled agentic systems that can complete a user query by orchestrating the right set of tools (e.g. ToolFormer, Gorilla). This, along with the recent multi-modal efforts such as the GPT-4o or Gemini-1.5 model, has expanded the realm of possibilities with AI agents. While this is quite exciting, the large model size and computational requirements of these models often requires their inference to be performed on the cloud. This can create several challenges for their widespread adoption. First and foremost, uploading data such as video, audio, or text documents to a third party vendor on the cloud, can result in privacy issues. Second, this requires cloud/Wi-Fi connectivity which is not always possible. For instance, a robot deployed in the real world may not always have a stable connection. Besides that, latency could also be an issue as uploading large amounts of data to the cloud and waiting for the response could slow down response time, resulting in unacceptable time-to-solution. These challenges could be solved if we deploy the LLM models locally at the edge.
However, current LLMs like GPT-4o or Gemini-1.5 are too large for local deployment. One contributing factor is that a lot of the model size ends up memorizing general information about the world into its parametric memory which may not be necessary for a specialized downstream application. For instance, if you ask a general factual question from these models like a historical event or well-known figures, they can produce the results using their parametric memory, even without having additional context in their prompt. However, it seems like this implicit memorization of training data into the parametric memory is correlated with “emergent” phenomena in LLMs such as in-context learning and complex reasoning, which has been the driving force behind scaling the model size.
However, this leads to an intriguing research question:
Can a smaller language model with significantly less parametric memory emulate such emergent ability of these larger language models?
Achieving this would significantly reduce the computational footprint of agentic systems and thus enable efficient and privacy-preserving edge deployment. Our study demonstrates that this is feasible for small language models through training with specialized, high-quality data that does not require recalling generic world knowledge.
Such a system could particularly be useful for semantic systems where the AI agent’s role is to understand the user query in natural language and, instead of responding with a ChatGPT-type question answer response, orchestrate the right set of tools and APIs to accomplish the user’s command. For example, in a Siri-like application, a user may ask a language model to create a calendar invite with particular attendees. If a predefined script for creating calendar items already exists, the LLM simply needs to learn how to invoke this script with the correct input arguments (such as attendees’ email addresses, event title, and time). This process does not require recalling/memorization of world knowledge from sources like Wikipedia, but rather requires reasoning and learning to call the right functions and to correctly orchestrate them.
Our goal is to develop Small Language Models (SLM) that are capable of complex reasoning that could be deployed securely and privately at the edge. Here we will discuss the research directions that we are pursuing to that end. First, we discuss how we can enable small open-source models to perform accurate function calling, which is a key component of agentic systems. It turns out that off-the-shelf small models have very low function calling capabilities. We discuss how we address this by systematically curating high-quality data for function calling, using a specialized Mac assistant agent as our driving application. We then show that fine-tuning the model on this high quality curated dataset, can enable SLMs to even exceed GPT-4-Turbo’s function calling performance. We then show that this could be further improved and made efficient through a new Tool RAG method. Finally, we show how the final models could be deployed efficiently at the edge with real time responses.
Demo of TinyAgent-1B along with Whisper-v3 running locally
deployed locally on a Macbook M3 Pro. The framework is open sourced and
available at
https://github.com/SqueezeAILab/TinyAgent
Teaching LLMs to do Function Calling
Figure 1: Overview of the LLMCompiler Function Calling
Planner. The Planner understands the user query and generates a sequence
of tasks with their inter-dependencies. These tasks are then dispatched
by the LLMCompiler framework to accomplish the user command. In this
example, Task $1 and $2 are fetched together to retrieve the email
addresses of Sid and Lutfi independently. After each task is performed,
the results are forwarded to Task $3 which creates the calendar event.
Before executing Task $3, LLMCompiler replaces the placeholder variables
(e.g., the variable $1 and $2 in Task $3) with actual values.
As mentioned above, our main interest is applications where the AI agent translates the user query into a sequence of function calls to complete the tasks. In such applications, the model doesn’t need to write the function definition itself since the functions (or APIs) are mostly pre-defined and already available. Therefore, what the model needs to do is to determine (i) which functions to call, (ii) the corresponding input arguments, and (iii) the right order of calling these functions (i.e. function orchestration) based on the required interdependency across the function calls.
The first question is to find an effective way to equip SLMs to perform function calling. Large models such as GPT-4 are able to perform function calling, but how can this be achieved with open source models? LLMCompiler is a recent framework from our group that enables this by instructing the LLM to output a function calling plan that includes the set of functions that it needs to call along with the input arguments and their dependencies (see the example in Figure 1). Once this function calling plan is generated, we can parse it and call each function based on the dependencies.
The critical part here is to teach the model to create this function calling plan with the right syntax and dependency. The original LLMCompiler paper only considered large models, such as LLaMA-2 70B, which have complex reasoning capabilities to create the plan when provided with sufficient instructions in their prompts. However, can smaller models be prompted the same way to output the correct function calling plan? Unfortunately, our experiments showed that off-the-shelf small models such as TinyLLaMA-1.1B (or even the larger Wizard-2-7B model) are not able to output the correct plans. The errors ranged from problems such as using the wrong set of functions, hallucinated names, wrong dependencies, inconsistent syntax, etc.
This is rather expected because these small models have been trained on generic datasets and primarily targeted to achieve good accuracy on general benchmarks which mostly test the model’s world knowledge and general reasoning or basic instruction following capability. To address this, we explored if fine-tuning these models on a high-quality dataset specially curated for function calling and planning can improve the accuracy of these small language models for a targeted task, potentially outperforming larger models. Next, we first discuss how we generated such a dataset, and then discuss the fine tuning approach.
Dataset Generation
Figure 2: TinyAgent is an assistant that can interact with
various MacOS applications to assist the user. The commands can be given
to it through either text through a spotlight input, or through voice.
As a driving application, we consider a local agentic system for Apple’s Macbook that solves user’s day-to-day tasks, as shown in Figure 2. Particularly, the agent is equipped with 16 different functions that can interact with different applications on Mac, which includes:
- Email: Compose a new email or reply to/forward emails
- Contacts: Retrieve phone numbers or email addresses from the contacts database
- SMS: Send text messages to contact(s)
- Calendar: Create calendar events with details such as title, time, attendees, etc.
- Notes: Create, open, or append content to notes in various folders
- Reminder: Set reminders for various activities and tasks
- File management: Open, read, or summarize documents in various file paths
- Zoom meetings: Schedule and organize Zoom meetings
Predefined Apple scripts exist for each of these functions/tools, and all that the model needs to do is to take advantage of the predefined APIs and determine the right function calling plan to accomplish a given task, such as in Figure 1. But as discussed previously, we need some data for evaluating and training small language models since their off-the-shelf function calling capability is subpar.
Creating handcrafted data with diverse function calling plans is both challenging and not scalable. However, we can curate synthetic data using an LLM like GPT-4-Turbo. Such an approach is becoming a common method where a capable LLM is instructed to generate data similar to a given set of sample examples or templates (see LLM2LLM and Self-Instruct). In our work, we used a similar approach, but instead of providing the LLM with generic user queries as templates, we provide it with various sets of functions and instruct it to generate realistic user queries that require those functions to accomplish the task, along with the associated function calling plan and input arguments, like the example shown in Figure 1. To verify the validity of the generated data, we incorporated sanity checks on the function calling plan to make sure that they form a feasible graph, and that the function names and input argument types are correct. With this approach, we created 80K training data, 1K validation data, and 1K testing data, with a total cost of only ~$500.
Fine-tuning for Improved Function Calling Reasoning
Figure 3: Graph Isomorphism Success Rate. The model scores a
success rate of 1 only if the DAG of its generated plan is isomorphic to
the DAG of the ground truth plan; and 0 otherwise. In above example, for
the top case, although the order of the get_email_address calls are
different from the ground truth plan (the ground truth plan gets the
email address of Lutfi before Sid, and the generated plan gets the email
address of Sid before Lutfi), since the two DAGs are isomorphic to each
other, the plan gets 1 success rate. For the bottom case, since the
predicted DAG contains a wrong node, corresponding to a wrong function
call, the plan gets 0 success rate.
With our dataset in place, we can now proceed to fine-tune off-the-shelf SLMs to enhance their function calling capability. We started with two base small models: TinyLlama-1.1B (instruct-32k version) and Wizard-2-7B. For fine-tuning these models, we first need to define a metric to evaluate their performance. Our objective is for these models to accurately generate the right plan, which involves not only selecting the right set of functions, but also correctly orchestrating them in the right order. Therefore, we define a success rate metric that assigns 1 if both criteria are met, and 0 otherwise. Checking whether the model has selected the right set function calls is straightforward. To additionally ensure that the orchestration of these functions is correct, we construct a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) of the function calls based on the dependencies, as shown in Figure 3, where each node represents a function call and a directed edge from node A to B represents their interdependency (i.e. function B can only be executed after the execution of function A). Then we compare if this DAG is identical to that of the ground truth plan to verify the accuracy of the dependencies.
After defining our evaluation metric, we applied LoRA to fine-tune the models for 3 epochs using a learning rate of 7e-5 over the 80K training examples, and selected the best checkpoint based on validation performance. For fine-tuning, our prompt included not only the descriptions of the ground truth functions (i.e. functions used in the ground truth plan) but also other irrelevant functions as negative samples. We found the negative samples to be particularly effective for teaching the model how to select appropriate tools for a given query, hence improving the post-training performance. Furthermore, we also include several in-context examples demonstrating how queries are translated into a function calling plans. These in-context examples are selected through a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) process based on the user query from the data in the training dataset.
Using the above settings, we fine-tuned TinyLlama-1.1B/Wizard-2-7B models. After fine-tuning, the 1.1B model improved the success rate from 12.71% to 78.89%, and the 7B model performance improved from 41.25% to 83.09%, which is ~4% higher than GPT-4-Turbo.
Efficient Inference with Tool RAG
Figure 4: Efficient Tool Selection Based on User Input. Not
all user inputs require all available tools; hence, it is imperative to
select the right set of tools to minimize the prompt size and increase
performance. In this case, the LLM only needs the functions that get
email addresses and create a calendar event in its prompt to accomplish
its task.
Our primary goal is to be able to deploy the TinyAgent model locally on a Macbook, which has limited computational and memory resources available as compared to the GPUs that closed-source models like GPT are deployed on. To achieve efficient performance with low latency we need to ensure that not only the model size is small, but that the input prompt is as concise as possible. The latter is an important contributor to latency and computational resource consumption due to the quadratic complexity of attention on sequence length.
The fine-tuned TinyAgent model discussed previously was fine-tuned with the description of all available tools in its prompt. However, this is pretty inefficient. We can significantly reduce the prompt size by only including the description of relevant tools based on the user query. For instance, consider the example shown in Figure 4 above, where the user is asking to create a calendar invite with two people. In this case, the LLM only needs the functions that get email addresses and create a calendar event in its prompt.
To take advantage of this observation, we need to determine which functions are required to accomplish the user’s command, which we refer to as Tool RAG given its similarity with how Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) works. However, there is an important subtlety. If we use a basic RAG method where we compute the embedding of the user query and use that to retrieve the relevant tools, we get very low performance. This is because completing a user’s query often requires using several auxiliary tools which may be missed with a simple RAG method if the embedding of the auxiliary tool is not similar to the user query. For instance, the example shown in Figure 4 requires calling get_email_address function even though the user query is just asking about creating a calendar invitation.
This can be addressed by treating the problem as a classification of which tools are needed. To that end, we fine-tuned a DeBERTa-v3-small model on the training data to perform a 16-way classification as shown in Figure 5. The user query is given as an input to this model, and then we pass the CLS token at the end through a simple fully connected layer of size 768x16 to transform it into a 16 dimensional vector (which is the total size of our tools). The output of this layer is passed through a sigmoid layer to produce the probability of selecting each tool. During inference, we select the tools that have probably higher than 50%, and if so, we include their description in the prompt. On average we noticed that only 3.97 tools are retrieved with a recall of 0.998, whereas the basic RAG requires using the top 6 tools to achieve a tool recall of 0.968.
Figure 5: Overview of our Tool RAG scheme. We formulate tool
retrieval as a multi-label classification problem. The user query is
given as input to the fine-tuned DeBERTa-v3-small model, which outputs a
16-dimensional vector indicating tool probabilities. Tools with
probabilities higher than 50% are selected, averaging 3.97 tools per
query compared to 6 tools in basic RAG.
We evaluated the model performance after incorporating Tool RAG. The results are shown in Table 1 below, where we report the performance of the simple RAG system along with the fine-tuned DeBERTa approach. As one can see, the DeBERTa based Tool RAG method achieves almost perfect recall performance, improves the baseline accuracy, while reducing the prompt size by ~2x tokens.
Table 1: Comparison of TinyAgent performance with DeBERTa to Basic RAG and no RAG settings.
| Tool RAG Method | Tool Recall | Prompt Size (Tokens) | TinyAgent 1.1B Success Rate (%) | TinyAgent 7B Success Rate (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No RAG (all tools in the prompt) | 1 | 2762 | 78.89 | 83.09 |
| Basic RAG | 0.949 (top 3) | 1674 | 74.88 | 78.50 |
| Fine-tuned DeBERTa-v3-small (Ours) | 0.998 (tools with >50% prob) | 1397 | 80.06 | 84.95 |
Fast Edge Deployment with Quantization
Deploying models at the edge, such as on consumer MacBooks, can still be challenging even for small models of O(1B) parameters, since loading the model parameters can consume a large portion of the available memory. A solution to these issues is quantization, which allows us to store the model at a reduced bit precision. Quantization not only reduces the storage requirements and model footprint, but also cuts down the time and resources needed to load model weights into memory, thereby reducing the overall inference latency as well (see this for more information on quantization).
For more efficient deployment of the models, we quantized the models into 4-bit with a group size of 32, which is supported by the llama.cpp framework with quantization aware training. As shown in Table 2, the 4-bit models result in 30% better latency, along with a 4x reduction in the model size. We also notice slight accuracy improvement which is due to the additional fine-tuning with simulated quantization.
Table 2: Latency, size, and success rate of TinyAgent models before and after quantization. Latency is the end-to-end latency of the function calling planner, including the prompt processing time and generation.
| Model | Weight Precision | Latency (seconds) | Model Size (GB) | Success Rate (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-3.5 | Unknown | 3.2 | Unknown | 65.04 |
| GPT-4-Turbo | Unknown | 3.9 | Unknown | 79.08 |
| TinyAgent-1.1B | 16 | 3.9 | 2.2 | 80.06 |
| TinyAgent-1.1B | 4 | 2.9 | 0.68 | 80.35 |
| TinyAgent-7B | 16 | 19.5 | 14.5 | 84.95 |
| TinyAgent-7B | 4 | 13.1 | 4.37 | 85.14 |
Putting it all together
Below is the demo of the final TinyAgent-1.1B model deployed on a Macbook Pro M3 which you can actually download and install on your Mac and test as well. It not only runs all of the model inference locally on your computer, but it also allows you to provide commands through audio. We process the audio locally as well using the Whisper-v3 model from OpenAI deployed locally using the whisper.cpp framework. The greatest surprise for us was that the accuracy of the 1.1B model exceeds that of GPT-4-Turbo, and is markedly fast while deployed locally and privately on device.
To summarize, we introduced TinyAgent and showed that it is indeed possible to train a small language model and use it to power a semantic system that processes user queries. In particular, we considered a Siri-like assistant for Mac as a driving application. The key components for enabling it is to (i) teach off-the-shelf SLMs to perform function calling through LLMCompiler framework, (ii) curate high quality function calling data for the task at hand, (iii) fine-tune the off-the-shelf model on the generated data, and (iv) enable efficient deployment by optimizing the prompt size through only retrieving the necessary tools based on the user query through a method called ToolRAG, as well as quantized model deployment to reduce inference resource consumption. After these steps, our final models achieved 80.06% and 84.95% for the TinyAgent1.1.B and 7B models which exceed GPT-4-Turbo’s success rate of 79.08% on this task.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Apple for sponsoring BAIR lab. We also thank Sunjin Choi for his insights in energy cost associated with local and cloud deployment. Our conclusions do not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of our sponsors, and no official endorsement should be inferred.
http://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2024/05/29/tiny-agent/
US Treasury promises to tighten sanctions on Russia
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-treasury-promises-to-tighten-sanctions-on-russia/7634156.html
Google is killing off the messaging service inside Google Maps
date: 2024-05-29, from: OS News
Google is killing off a messaging service! This one is the odd “Google Business Messaging” service—basically an instant messaging client that is built into Google Maps. If you looked up a participating business in Google Maps or Google Search on a phone, the main row of buttons in the place card would read something like “Call,” “Chat,” “Directions,” and “Website.” That “Chat” button is the service we’re talking about. It would launch a full messaging interface inside the Google Maps app, and businesses were expected to use it for customer service purposes. Google’s deeply dysfunctional messaging strategy might lead people to joke about a theoretical “Google Maps Messaging” service, but it already exists and has existed for years, and now it’s being shut down. ↫ Ron Amadeo at Ars Technica When it comes to Google, it’s often hard to distinguish meme from reality.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139828/google-is-killing-off-the-messaging-service-inside-google-maps/
June 13-Sept. 11: ‘Character Stengths’ Art Exhibit in Canyon Country
date: 2024-05-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita presents “Character Strengths,” an art exhibition by Deitra Charles. This collection of expressive paintings explores themes of family, community and peace. It will be on display from June 13 to Sept. 11, at the Canyon Country Community Center Gallery, 18410 Sierra Highway, Santa Clarita, CA 91351.
https://scvnews.com/june-13-sept-11-character-stengths-art-exhibit-in-canyon-country/
US presidential campaigns surround Trump trial
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
Jurors are deliberating in a criminal case against U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. He is charged with falsifying financial records to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Campaigning continued outside the New York courthouse. VOA’s Scott Stearns reports. Camera: Michael Eckels.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-presidential-campaigns-surround-trump-trial-/7634136.html
June 1-8: OperaFest LA Performances to Include SCV’s Mission Opera
date: 2024-05-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
From June 1–8, a consortium of some of Los Angeles County’s most prominent opera companies, including Mission Opera in the Santa Clarita Valley, along with OPERA America, presents OperaFest LA, a week-long performance festival running concurrently with the 2024 Opera Conference and World Opera Forum in downtown Los Angeles.
https://scvnews.com/june-1-8-operafest-la-performances-to-include-scvs-mission-opera/
On secret flights, US volunteer pilots transport trafficking victims to safety
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
Time is the one of the most important factors in saving people who have been sexually trafficked. Swiftly relocating them away from harm is key to survival. VOA Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti has this exclusive story about a couple of American pilots and their secret missions to get victims to safety.
Vox Media and The Atlantic sign content deals with OpenAI
date: 2024-05-29, from: OS News
Speaking of The Verge, its parent company Vox Media, along with The Atlantic, have signed a deal with OpenAI. Two more media companies have signed licensing agreements with OpenAI, allowing their content to be used to train its AI models and be shared inside of ChatGPT. The Atlantic and Vox Media — The Verge’s parent company — both announced deals with OpenAI on Wednesday. ↫ Emilia David at The Verge In the case of Vox Media, the deal was made and announced without informing their staff, which obviously doesn’t sit well with especially Vox’ writers. By making deals like this, upper management gets to double-dip on the fruits of their workers’ labour – first, the published content generates ad revenues, and second, OpenAI pays them to use said content for training and other purposes. And once the “AI” gets good enough, more and more of the writers will be fired, leaving only a skeleton crew of lower-paid workers to clean up the “AI” output. With this deal, the writing is on the wall for every journalist at Vox Media – you’re currently contributing to your own obsolescence, and your bosses are getting paid for it. As far as I know, OSNews’ owner, David, has not yet been contacted by OpenAI. Regardless, I’ll sell the past 20-odd years of my terrible takes for 69 million euros, after deducting Swedish taxes. And since OpenAI is run by billionaires: taxes are this thing where normal people pay a portion of their income to the government in return for various government services. It’s wild, I know.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139825/vox-media-and-the-atlantic-sign-content-deals-with-openai/
US boosts Moldova’s resilience against Russia’s destabilization attempts
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
On a visit to Moldova Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced an additional $135 million in aid to help the eastern European republic fight Russian disinformation and strengthen its energy resilience. Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
The Swiss Army Knife of Clean Energy Tax Credits Goes Into Effect Next Year
date: 2024-05-29, from: Heatmap News
Before and for the first year or so after the Inflation Reduction Act, clean energy in the United States was largely developed under the aegis of two tax credits: the Production Tax Credit, which primarily useful for wind power, and the Investment Tax Credit, which is primarily used for solar power. (The actual eligibility for each tax credit for each technology has changed various times over the years, but that’s the gist.)
Starting in 2025, however, and lasting (absent any change in the law)
through at least 2032, that tax credit regime will be made “technology
neutral.” Goodbye, existing credits with their limited applicability.
Hello, new tax credits that apply to “any clean energy facility that
achieves net-zero greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a
release
issued Wednesday by the Treasury Department.
“For too long, the
U.S. solar and wind markets have been hampered by uncertainty due to the
on-again-off-again nature of key tax credits,” Treasury Secretary Janet
Yellen said on a call with reporters. “Periods of indecision and the
credits being repeatedly allowed to elect to lapse made it too difficult
for companies to plan and invest in clean energy projects.”
About that “at least”: The tax credits only start to phase out when Treasury determines that electricity-related greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced 75% from their 2022 levels or in 2032, whichever comes later, making this the rare tax code provision with an outcome-based timeline.
In preparation for the new Clean Electricity Production Credit and Clean Electricity Investment Credit, a.k.a. sections 45Y and 48E of the U.S. tax code, to go into effect, Treasury proposed guidance outlining what would qualify for the tax credits and soliciting comments on forms of power generation whose true carbon abatement potentials are more in doubt. The notice and subsequent publication in the Federal Register kicks off a 60-day public comment period, after which Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service will write the final rules.
The new list of eligible technologies includes “hydropower, marine and hydrokinetic, nuclear fission and fusion, geothermal,” along with “certain types of waste energy recovery property” as among the technologies that will be “categorically” eligible for the new tax credits. The point here isn’t to create more exclusivity, but rather to “provide clarity and certainty to developers,” Treasury said in the release. Yellen added that, “for the first time, these incentives are tied explicitly to electricity generation with zero emissions instead of specific technologies.”
What this announcement does not clarify, however, is what to do about energy sources that involve combustion, such as biomass or harnessing methane emitted from landfills. Here is where the Treasury Department is asking for help from outside — many of the questions included in the proposed rulemaking are devoted to figuring out exactly how these forms of energy might or might not be made zero-emission.
Many environmental groups are skeptical of any combustion-based energy sources, and Treasury said that generation methods which “rely on combustion or gasification to produce electricity” will have to “undergo a lifecycle greenhouse gas analysis to demonstrate net-zero emissions.”
https://heatmap.news/sparks/clean-electricity-tax-credit
The Marshall Star for May 29, 2024
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
More to Marshall: Center Leadership Provides Updates During Spring All-Hands Meeting By Wayne Smith NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will celebrate its 65th birthday next summer, and while there are plans to honor the center’s rich history, there is also More to Marshall ahead. That was part of the message Center Director Joseph Pelfrey delivered […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/the-marshall-star-for-may-29-2024/
Bette Nash, Longest-Serving Flight Attendant in the World, Dies at 88
date: 2024-05-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Nash became a flight attendant in 1957 and never stopped working
Crows Can ‘Count’ Up to Four Like Human Toddlers, Study Suggests
date: 2024-05-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Three carrion crows engaged in a simplified version of counting when prompted, and the birds showed signs of planning out their responses
What Will It Take To Defeat Ticketmaster?
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Lever News
Would breaking up the Live Nation monopoly really improve an inequitable music industry?
https://www.levernews.com/what-will-it-take-to-defeat-ticketmaster/
ConocoPhillips buying Marathon Oil for $17.1 billion in all-stock deal
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
Multi-day DDoS storm batters Internet Archive
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Think this is bad? See what Big Media wants to do to us, warns founder
Updated The Internet Archive has been under a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack since Sunday, and is trying to keep services going.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/ddos_internet_archive/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-29, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
In Part 8 of my ongoing blog post series on bringing Godot to the iPad, I discuss the code editing and debugging experience:
https://blog.la-terminal.net/xogot-code-editing/
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112526207975027994
Blinken pledges US support for Moldova amid rising Russian threats
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
State Department — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Moldova, pledging $135 million to enhance energy security and counter Russian disinformation during his visit to Chisinau.
During Wednesday’s visit, Blinken announced that up to $85 million in USAID funding will subsidize equipment to strengthen Moldova’s national power grid and facilitate greater electricity trade with Romania, Ukraine, and the broader European market. He also unveiled additional aid for Moldova, a pro-Western country facing renewed threats from Russia.
“Today, I’m announcing that we’ll be working with our Congress to provide an additional $50 million to further advance these efforts from reforming the energy and agricultural sectors to pushing back and further against disinformation,” said Blinken during a joint press conference with Moldova President Maia Sandu.
“That in turn will bolster the ability of Moldova to resist Russian interference, to hold free and fair elections to continue down the path to the European Union and Western integration to create more economic opportunity,” he said.
Watch related report by Veronica Balderas Iglesias:
Blinken’s trip comes amid concerns over Russia’s military presence in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region. Moldova has accused Russia of waging a hybrid war through election interference and disinformation campaigns aimed at toppling the government and hindering its EU aspirations. Russia denies these accusations.
Sandu welcomed Blinken’s second visit in two years as “a strong sign of support.”
“Through unity and with the support of our partners, we will stand by our people and move forward,” Sandu said during the press conference.
She also expressed gratitude for U.S. support to both Moldova and Ukraine. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, the Biden administration has directed billions of dollars in weapons assistance to Ukraine, which Sandu said “also makes Moldova safer and more resilient.”
Historically, Moldova’s heavy reliance on outside energy resources has made the country vulnerable to external disruptions and price fluctuations, delaying its progress toward sustainable economic development. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has further exacerbated Moldova’s energy challenges by driving up electricity and gas prices and creating sector instability.
Since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States has provided Moldova with $774 million in assistance, including $300 million through USAID, to support energy security.
NATO, Ukraine
After Chisinau, Blinken is heading to Prague for NATO foreign ministers’ meetings, where “a substantial show of support for Ukraine” is expected, according to U.S. officials.
On Wednesday, Blinken said the U.S. is working hard to deliver more air defenses to Ukraine as it defends itself against intensifying Russian attacks.
But Blinken, along with other officials from the Biden administration, said Washington does not encourage or enable the use of U.S.-supplied weapons to strike inside Russia.
“Ukraine has to make its own decisions about the best way to effectively defend itself,” Blinken said. ’’We’re going to make sure that it has the equipment it needs.”
This week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged the alliance’s members to lift some of the restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons, potentially enabling their use for strikes directly on Russian soil.
“The right to self-defense includes hitting legitimate targets outside Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said Monday at a NATO meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria.
The United States will host a NATO summit in Washington from July 9 to July 11.
Blinken said there will be “very strong deliverables” in terms of Ukraine’s further integration with the Atlantic alliance.
Thirty-two countries have either completed or will soon complete bilateral security agreements with Ukraine.
NASA Goddard, Maryland Sign Memo to Boost State’s Aerospace Sector
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
To foster growth in Maryland’s aerospace industry, the state’s Department of Commerce signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NASA at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Wednesday, May 28, 2024. The agreement commits the two organizations to develop the state’s aerospace economy, particularly in the area surrounding Goddard’s main Greenbelt campus, as well […]
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Used Teslas are getting very cheap.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/used-teslas-are-getting-very-cheap-but-buying-one-can-be-risky/
June 7: Artist Reception for ‘Celebrating Diversity’ Exhibit it City Hall
date: 2024-05-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita announces the opening of its latest art exhibition, “Celebrating Diversity,” at the First Floor Gallery within Santa Clarita’s City Hall. This showcase will run from June 6 through Sept. 18, 2024, with a special reception event planned for Friday, June 7, from 6-8 p.m
https://scvnews.com/june-7-artist-reception-for-celebrating-diversity-exhibit-it-city-hall/
Technical writing is not a dead-end job, it’s a landing pad
date: 2024-05-29, from: Blog by Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti
With the job market getting tougher by the day, there’s a rising belief among tech writers that their role is “too niche” and a “dead-end job”. I think that’s the wrong way of looking at our profession — at any profession. Let me cast aside that dark veil of pessimism and offer an alternative viewpoint, that of tech writing as a platform to other professions, one that lets you move laterally with just a bit of curiosity and courage.
https://passo.uno/posts/technical-writing-is-not-a-dead-end-job/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
How can we tell if ChatGPT is intelligent?
http://scripting.com/2024/05/29.html#a194217
BREAKING: Amber Miller to step down as dean of Dornsife
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Miller will leave the University to become president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
The post BREAKING: Amber Miller to step down as dean of Dornsife appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/breaking-amber-miller-to-step-down-as-dean-of-dornsife/
25 Years Ago: STS-96 Resupplies the Space Station
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
On May 27, 1999, the second space station assembly and logistics mission began. The main goals of STS-96, designated as the 2A.1 mission in the overall assembly sequence, included resupplying and repairing the fledgling orbital facility, consisting of the Zarya and Node 1 modules assembled during STS-88 in December 1998. The multinational seven-member crew transferred […]
https://www.nasa.gov/history/25-years-ago-sts-96-resupplies-the-space-station/
Watch Man Park His Car On Zoom While Appearing Before a Judge For Suspended License Trial
date: 2024-05-29, from: 404 Media Group
“Actually, I’m pulling into my doctor’s office, actually, so, just give me one second. I’m parking right now,” the defendant said.
https://www.404media.co/zoom-driving-suspended-license-trial-michigan/
AI chip sales predicted to jump by a third this year – then cool off
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Gartner gives us a ray of hope amid ongoing hype and pressure to buy more hardware
Gartner is predicting a 33 percent rise in revenue generated by AI chip sales in 2024 versus 2023.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/ai_processor_revenue_gartner/
Microsoft’s ‘Auto Super Resolution’ DLSS competitor isn’t exclusive to Qualcomm
date: 2024-05-29, from: OS News
When you launch a game on a Snapdragon on a Windows laptop, you might get an AI frame rate boost from Microsoft’s mysterious Auto Super Resolution (Auto SR) feature. But while Microsoft hasn’t fully explained how the feature works, The Verge can now confirm it’s not Qualcomm technology, not exclusive to Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X chips, and not exclusive to specific games, either. ↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge These resolution enhancer technologies from NVIDIA, AMD, and apparently Microsoft are another great use of what we today call “AI” technologies. Of course, I wish we didn’t have to deal with several proprietary offerings but instead enjoyed several open source versions and possibly a standard to work off of, but give it some time, and we may still get there. Like I’ve said before – there’s nothing inherently wrong with “AI” technologies, as long as they’re used in ways that make sense, run locally, and most importantly, aren’t based on the wholesale theft of artists’ and programmers’ works. Unsurprisingly, the tech bros at companies like OpenAI don’t really understand the concept of “consent”, and until they do, their offerings should be deemed illegal.
Annual LASD Click It or Ticket Enforcement Campaign
date: 2024-05-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sergeant Michael Lennig reminds drivers to always buckle up and secure children in the right car seats when visiting friends and family
https://scvnews.com/annual-lasd-click-it-or-ticket-enforcement-campaign/
Cricket making historic US debut in World Cup
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/cricket-making-historic-us-debut-in-world-cup/7633931.html
De-Stress Slime Time Event
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
The post De-Stress Slime Time Event appeared first on .
Groundbreaking Research Shows Ancient Egyptians Were Conducting Cancer Surgery Over 4,000 Years Ago
date: 2024-05-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
By putting an ancient skull under the microscope, scientists are proving that cancer research is about 1,000 years older than previously thought
Two big computer vision papers boost prospect of safer self-driving vehicles
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
New chip and camera technology bring closer potential of hands-free road time
Like nuclear fusion and jet-packs, the self-driving car is a long-promised technology that has stalled for years - yet armed with research, boffins think they have created potential improvements.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/computer_vision_nature_self_driving/
Appreciating teachers year-round
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Being a professor can often be a thankless job. Students sometimes see certain classes as more of a roadblock to reaching their goal of graduation
The post Appreciating teachers year-round appeared first on .
More field trips to improve student success
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Pierce College is doing well with having established partnerships with four-year universities, but it can expand to ensure better transfer rates and student success. Field
The post More field trips to improve student success appeared first on .
Alito rejects calls to quit US Supreme Court cases on Trump and Jan. 6 because of flag controversies
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from Supreme Court cases involving former President Donald Trump and Jan. 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.
In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito said his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down U.S. flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.
Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.
“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.
The court is considering two major cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether Trump has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.
Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.
The New York Times reported that an inverted American flag was seen at Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, less than two weeks after the attack on the Capitol. The paper also reported that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was flown outside of the justice’s beach home in New Jersey last summer. Both flags were carried by rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in January 2021 echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
Alito said he was unaware that the upside-down flag was flying above his house until it was called to his attention. “As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused,” he wrote in nearly identical letters to Democrats in the House and Senate.
FCK
date: 2024-05-29, from: Om Malik blog
When I woke up this morning, the temperature in my part of San Francisco was 53 degrees Fahrenheit. At the same time, the temperature in Delhi was 53 degrees Celsius. If anyone tells you that climate change is a hoax, show them the temperature records for the past four decades. When I was a teenager, 40 degrees Celsius was high during the summers, though we …
Hungary’s foreign minister visits Belarus despite EU sanctions, talks about expanding ties
date: 2024-05-29, from: Associated Press, World News
Hungary’s top diplomat has visited Belarus for talks on expanding ties despite the European Union’s sanctions against the country.
Activist investor pressures Texas Instruments to stop spending cash on fabs
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Thinking about tripling capacity by 2030? Start thinking about our returns…
Notorious tech investment firm Elliott Management has penned a letter to Texas Instruments urging the company to change course on its aggressive plan to boost manufacturing capacity.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/elliott_letter_texas_instruments/
App Store Apps Can Be Translocated
date: 2024-05-29, from: Michael Tsai
Howard Oakley: This article demonstrates that the last of those isn’t necessarily true, and what happens when an App Store app ends up being translocated. The combination of an App Store app with a quarantine xattr is a particular problem for users, as those apps are installed direct to their intended final destination, and their […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/29/app-store-apps-can-be-translocated/
CloudKit Throttles and Debugging
date: 2024-05-29, from: Michael Tsai
TN3162: The CloudKit infrastructure is shared by all apps and services. The resources are finite, and so high utilization from one app can negatively affect others. To avoid this kind of impact and optimize the overall experience, CloudKit implements a number of limits and controls on incoming traffic, which are known as throttles.CloudKit can enforce […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/29/cloudkit-throttles-and-debugging/
Can Anyone But a Tech Giant Build the Next Big Thing?
date: 2024-05-29, from: Michael Tsai
Jason Snell (Mastodon): I’m sad about the Ai Pin because it—and a similar AI hardware product, the Rabbit R1—shows just how much potential innovation is strangled by the presence of enormously powerful tech companies, most notably the Android-iPhone duopoly. […] The problem is that I’m dismissing the Ai Pin and looking forward to the Apple […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/29/can-anyone-but-a-tech-giant-build-the-next-big-thing/
Little Snitch 6.0
date: 2024-05-29, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/little-snitch-6-0/
How a Natural Gas-Powered Bitcoin Miner Became a Darling of Climate Tech
date: 2024-05-29, from: Heatmap News
Categorizing Crusoe Energy is not easy. The startup is a Bitcoin miner and data center operator. It’s a “high-performance” and “carbon-negative” cloud platform provider. It’s a darling of the clean tech world that’s raised nearly $750 million in funding. The company has historically powered its operations with natural gas, but its overall business model actually reduces emissions. Confused yet?
Here are the basics. The company was founded in 2018 to address the problem of natural gas flaring. Natural gas is a byproduct of oil extraction, and if oil field operators have no economical use case for the gas or are unable to transfer it elsewhere, it’s often simply burned. If you, like me, have spent time sourcing stock images of air pollution, you’ve probably seen the pictures of giant flames coming out of tall smokestacks near oil pump jacks and other drilling infrastructure. That’s what flaring natural gas looks like, and it is indeed terrible for the environment. That’s largely because the process fails to fully combust methane, which is the primary component of natural gas and 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
That’s where Crusoe comes in. The company’s co-founder, president, and chief operating officer, Cully Cavness was working in the oil and gas industry when he realized that stranded natural gas could be harnessed to power Bitcoin-mining data centers if they were sited directly next to the oil field infrastructure. Burning natural gas for electricity production fully combusts methane, producing CO2 as a byproduct. Still bad, you might say! But it’s definitely not as bad as methane leaking into the atmosphere via flaring, the status quo where Crusoe operates.
So regardless of what one might think of the utility of Bitcoin mining overall, “if you were to delete what we’re doing you would just have a big ball of fire and that would be worse,” Cavness told me.
Plus, it’s dirt cheap. “It is the lowest cost way to generate power that we’ve ever seen,” Cavness said, though he wouldn’t disclose exactly how much Crusoe pays the oil companies for their natural gas. “This is truly a waste product. I mean, there is no value being ascribed to it.”
According to Crusoe’s most recent ESG report, for every ton of CO2 equivalent that the company produced in 2022, it reduced over 1.6 tons through avoided methane emissions. And the opportunity for growth is enormous. “There is a huge amount of flared gas around the world,” Cavness said. “If you captured it all, it would power like two thirds of all of Europe’s electricity and it would power the entire data center industry many times over.”
Of course, in an ideal world, flared gas wouldn’t even be an option. There have been some state level-efforts to ban “routine flaring” in Colorado, New Mexico, and Alaska, but enforcement has often fallen short. “Nothing about flaring should be routine,” Deborah Gordon, a methane expert at the think tank RMI, told me. “It should be an emergency piece of equipment. It’s there to handle a burst of gas that would otherwise present a safety problem to the people on the ground.”
But in the places where Crusoe operates, Cavness said flare gas is available 98% to 99% of the time. Today, the company has about 30 sites located throughout all the major oil fields in the U.S., plus one facility in Argentina.
Gordon views circumstances like this, where gas is being perpetually flared, as “opportunities to decommission” oil wells. But given sheer demand, that may not be an economically or politically feasible solution in the short term. Last year was a record-setting one for oil production, as the U.S. pumped more than any country had in history.
So given that oil isn’t going to disappear overnight, this particular fossil-fuel powered Bitcoin miner has been wildly successful with climate-focused investors. Two years ago, Crusoe closed its $350 million Series C round, led by clean tech investor G2 Venture Partners with participation by existing climate tech venture firms Lowercarbon Capital and MCJ Collective, among others.
“It’s not just the lowest hash rate for Bitcoin mining, or the cheapest cost of compute. It’s also the greenest and when those two things are true, you’ve got an amazing business on your hands,” Clay Dumas, a partner at Lowercarbon Capital, told me. He views shutting down oil fields that flare natural gas as simply “not tractable” given today’s energy environment.
But now Crusoe is shifting its focus on multiple fronts. Cavness told me the company never planned to build its long-term business solely around Bitcoin mining, though historically nearly all of its revenue has come from the famously volatile world of cryptocurrencies. His co-founder, Chase Lochmiller, has a masters in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence and has long understood AI’s energy demands.
“And so since way before ChatGPT, we’d had a view that GPU computing was going to be actually the bigger opportunity and the bigger driver of data center power demand. And if we could align that with wasted energy sources and other curtailed energy sources, it could be a really effective approach to reduce costs and also reduce emissions,” Cavness told me.
Last year the company expanded its Crusoe Cloud service, which is essentially its version of Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. It works like this: Crusoe builds the data centers (or co-locates with existing facilities), buys the GPU servers, and operates a software layer on top of it all. Then, companies looking to train AI models or synthesize large datasets pay to access Crusoe Cloud over the internet, remotely spinning up Crusoe’s GPU clusters to do the hard lifting.
Last month, Cavness said that the majority of the company’s revenue came from its AI data centers, outpacing Bitcoin revenue for the first time. If all goes according to plan, AI will comprise more than 75% of the company’s revenue by year’s end. “You couldn’t really have timed the launch of a cloud business focused on generative AI much better than they did,” Dumas told me.
Then, as the world (potentially and eventually) moves away from oil, Crusoe is also shifting its focus towards stranded renewable assets. That means sourcing power from areas where there’s excess wind, solar, hydropower, or geothermal on the grid, which leads to curtailment or negative pricing for these resources. “So that’s how we think about operating on the other side of the energy transition,” Cavness told me. This business model, he said, creates an incentive for renewable operators to build even more capacity, since they know they’ll have customers for their excess energy.
Of course, Crusoe isn’t the only company and data centers aren’t the only industry looking to access the cheap power that standed renewables can supply. Excess clean energy could be used to make green hydrogen, provide heating and cooling for buildings, operate direct air capture facilities, or power microgrids. If renewables are used to mine speculative cryptocurrencies, many would likely argue there are worthier opportunities.
But high compute data centers — whether they’re mining Bitcoin or training AI models — do have one major advantage. “You can talk about highest use from a CO2 avoidance standpoint. But generally, the market is going to treat highest use as the greatest willingness to pay,” Dumas told me. “At this particular moment, it’s hard for me to imagine any application that has a higher willingness to pay, and that is more deployable than data centers.”
Crusoe wouldn’t reveal what portion of its operations run on renewables vs. natural gas. The company’s current focus is expanding its Crusoe Cloud service in Iceland, partnering with an existing data center that’s powered by the country’s abundant hydropower and geothermal energy. Crusoe also says it’s working to develop domestic behind-the-meter wind and solar projects, which would be separate from the main grid and directly supply their data centers with power, though none have been formally announced yet.
Ultimately though, whether Crusoe uses renewables or flare gas, whether it mines Bitcoin or trains AI models, investors have decided that it’s undeniably better than business as usual. “You can complain all you want about the carbon emissions of Bitcoin and compute, but they’re not going anywhere except for up,” Dumas told me, saying it’s incumbent upon us to bring this new computational power to market as cleanly as possible. “And that’s really what Crusoe’s in a position to do.”
https://heatmap.news/technology/bitcoin-mining-ai-crusoe
Students need a sign
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Walking down the Pierce College Mall or through the Bookstore and cafe, students may not notice the marquee and television screens are either outdated or
The post Students need a sign appeared first on .
India’s capital breaks heat record, officials impose water rationing
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
One study found that heat waves have killed more than 24,000 people in the country since 1992. The increase in heat events in coming years could threaten India’s development, and risk reversing its progress on poverty alleviation, health and economic growth, the study said.
Parallels Desktop 19.4
date: 2024-05-29, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/parallels-desktop-19-3-2/
Analysis: Trump griped about trial but did not use holiday to hit multiple swing states
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Trump has complained for weeks that he cannot hit the campaign trail because he is stuck in a courtroom. But he opted against using a holiday weekend break to visit multiple battleground states.
Pixelmator Pro 3.6
date: 2024-05-29, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/pixelmator-pro-3-6/
Learning Self Defense
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Pierce College is a big campus. With 426 acres, it’s difficult to keep its students safe all the time. According to the Title IX page
The post Learning Self Defense appeared first on .
Mellel 6.0.4
date: 2024-05-29, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/mellel-6-0-4/
Trump’s hush money trial verdict could come this week. Here’s what each outcome could mean for the election
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Here’s what we’re watching for in the three scenarios that could play out.
In a first, Cuba’s private business owners will be able to use US banks, Treasury says
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
The embargo imposed on Cuba in the 1960s cut the island off from the U.S. banking system. Currently, Cubans visiting the U.S. can open a bank account here, but they cannot access their money once they return to the island.
Framework’s modular laptops (and mainboards) now come with Meteor Lake-H options
date: 2024-05-29, from: Liliputing
The Framework Laptop 13 is a modular, repairable, and upgradeable laptop that first debuted in 2021 with 11th-gen Intel Core processor. But Framework has launched several upgrades since then, allowing customers to either buy a new laptop with a faster Intel or AMD processor or purchase a new mainboard to upgrade the processor in their existing […]
The post Framework’s modular laptops (and mainboards) now come with Meteor Lake-H options appeared first on Liliputing.
Millie Bobby Brown marries Jon Bon Jovi’s son Jake
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
“It was a very small family wedding, and the bride looked gorgeous, and Jake is happy as can be,” the groom’s father said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/29/millie-bobby-brown-marries-jon-bon-jovis-son-jake/
Family Members Infected With Parasitic Worms After Eating Undercooked Bear Meat at Reunion
date: 2024-05-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Six people developed symptoms of roundworm infection after consuming grilled black bear meat and vegetables in July 2022, and all have since recovered
What to watch: ‘Violent Nature’ more than lives up to its name
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A wronged father becomes a ruthless killer with a weird costume in imaginative slasher film.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/29/what-to-watch-violent-nature-more-than-lives-up-to-its-name/
Condominium in Palo Alto sells for $2.3 million
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A condominium located in the 900 block of Cowper Street in Palo Alto has new owners. The 1,700-square-foot property, built in 1984, was sold on May 15, 2024, for $2,298,000, or $1,352 per square foot.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/29/condominium-in-palo-alto-sells-for-2-3-million/
US optimistic a deal to lessen threats of future pandemics is in sight
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
Geneva — Despite the failure of negotiators to reach a pandemic accord ahead of this week’s World Health Assembly, a senior U.S. official remains optimistic that an agreement to lessen the threats of global killer disease outbreaks is in sight.
“We think the elements of a good deal are already on the table and that is why we feel optimistic because those are pretty good deals. It is just a matter now of fine-tuning it to make sure everybody says we are ready to sign on the dotted line,” Xavier Becerra, U.S. secretary of health and human services, told journalists at a briefing in Geneva Wednesday.
While disappointing, Becerra indicated that it was not surprising that an accord was not reached after two-and-a-half years of negotiations.
“Negotiations go on forever,” he said. “I think we have to put this in perspective. You do not build a nation overnight. You do not build an Empire State Building overnight. It takes a long time. Name me a major international achievement that came overnight.
“I think there is clear consensus that we cannot let the status quo be upon us if another pandemic comes,” he said.
His view reflects that of World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who, in his opening remarks at the World Health Assembly on Monday, assured delegates that the negotiations were on track and were not a failure.
“Of course, we all wish that we had been able to reach a consensus on the agreement in time for this health assembly and cross the finish line,” he said. “But I remain confident that you still will—because where there is a will, there is a way.”
WHO says 7,010,681 people have died from the COVID-19 outbreak as of April 13 and that a total of 704,753,890 cases have been confirmed in 229 countries and territories.
Becerra noted that threats against global health have an outsized influence on broader global political and economic interests.
“There is no stability without health. There is no security without health. Our nations cannot be strong unless they are healthy.
“Getting out of COVID is our main health priority,” Becerra said, noting that U.S. President Joe Biden was committed to achieving a pandemic treaty.
“When the president came in, we were experiencing two or three 9/11s every day in America in terms of loss of life. That is where we started. Today, we are walking around without masks. We are treating COVID the way we treat the flu,” he said, indicating that now is not the time to become complacent.
“I think we realize that another pandemic could be upon us. I mean, we are dealing with avian flu in the U.S. right now. We do not know how long it is going to be before we get another type of COVID kind of tragedy. We do not want to wait,” he said.
Sticking points to a pandemic treaty include disagreements over sharing information about pathogens that cause pandemics, a formula for global sharing of vaccines and medicine during international health emergencies, and financing to set up surveillance systems.
The WHO says that member states have agreed to continue to work during the World Health Assembly “to develop the world’s first pandemic accord” to prevent a repeat of the “global health, economic and social impacts” of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We really have an incredible opportunity this week,” Loyce Pace, assistant secretary for global affairs at HHS, said.
“We have spent so long trying to come together and finding compromise and consensus. I think we talk about what is left to do, but I do not know if we talk enough about what has been done toward reaching an agreement.”
“So, whatever happens this week, we need some deliverable, if only to keep this momentum on towards any other work that should continue. We shouldn’t be leaving Geneva and go home without an accord, not after all that has been done,” Pace said.
Secretary Becerra agrees, saying that he does not think there are substantive disagreements about the essential elements of a pandemic treaty.
“It is more how they are packaged, how they are defined. People generally agree with what we have to do in order to be ready to take on any pandemic that may come across our path,” Becerra said.
“I am the son of immigrants. Optimism is in my DNA and so, I believe we are going to get this done because it would be tragic, especially given how far we have come and not get it done.
“We have to be ready,” he said. “Who knows what is coming around the corner. Something is going to broadside us. We just have to be ready.”
Verizon invests $100 million in wireless connectivity from space
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Verizon and AT&T are both investing heavily with AST SpaceMobile in a bid to challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/29/ast-spacemobile-shares-surge-on-100-million-verizon-deal/
Elon Musk: 1; Yann LeCun: 1; Humanity: 0
date: 2024-05-29, from: Gary Marcus blog
In case you haven’t heard, there‘s a brawl happening over at X, Musk vs LeCun. For days I tried to resist commenting, but so many people (friends, reporters, etc) keep asking me for my opinion I have decided to oblige. The first thing that I will tell you is that each of those not so-gentle men scored some points; neither kept things above the belt.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/elon-musk-1-yann-lecun-1-humanity
Multipage Version
date: 2024-05-29, from: Chris Coyier blog
Super cool zine from Mat. Me, I like HTML, and I wanted to do
something with a little texture to it. So I asked a bunch of people way
more talented than I am if they were down to contribute to a zine about
heading elements—h1 and company, here with us for as long
as […]
https://chriscoyier.net/2024/05/29/multipage-version/
Biden, Harris to launch Black voter outreach effort amid signs of diminished support
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris head to the battleground state of Pennsylvania as they step up their reelection pitch to Black voters.
ConocoPhillips buying Marathon Oil for $17.1 billion
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Crude prices have jumped more than 12% this year, and the cost for a barrel rose above $80 this week.
In Memoriam: Dr. Richard S. Stolarski [1941–2024]
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
Renowned ozone scientist Dr. Richard “Rich” Stolarski died on February 22, 2024, at age 82 from the complications of prostate cancer. Rich was born at Fort Lewis, WA on November 22, 1941. After short stays in Kansas and Hawaii, Rich’s family settled in Tacoma, WA. He attended Stadium High School for three years and Wilson […]
https://science.nasa.gov/uncategorized/in-memoriam-dr-richard-s-stolarski-1941-2024/
Last-Mile Broadband Program Notice of Preparation for Environmental Impact Report
date: 2024-05-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, Calif – The Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG) is preparing an Environmental Impact Report for the
The post Last-Mile Broadband Program Notice of Preparation for Environmental Impact Report appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Daily Deals (5-29-2024)
date: 2024-05-29, from: Liliputing
The ACEMAGIC M2A Starship is a gaming PC that looks more like a wireless router than a typical PC. But with support for up to an Intel Core i9-12900H processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series mobile graphics, it has the guts of a pretty decent gaming laptop from a year or two ago. When […]
The post Daily Deals (5-29-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-5-29-2024/
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and AlmaLinux 8.10 released as end of the RHEL 8 line looms
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Some derivatives haven’t got there yet, but it’s time to get a move on…
Two notable North American Linux distributors have emitted the last release in their 8.x series – although other vendors have yet to catch up with that cycle.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/rhel_and_alma_8_10/
The Children of Pompeii Saw Gladiators Fight to the Death—and They Drew Graffiti About It
date: 2024-05-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers recently discovered bloodshed-themed stick-figure sketches in a cluster of houses in the doomed ancient city
Robot Sets New Rubik’s Cube Speed Record, Completing the Puzzle in 0.305 Seconds
date: 2024-05-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A team of Mitsubishi engineers harnessed high-speed motors and an A.I. algorithm to eclipse the previous record, set six years ago
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-05-29, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I find myself using the FreeForm, the MacOS built-in app more and more for simple collages, annotations and drawings.
Very pleased with it, and the sharing across my devices is a plus.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112525342607987772
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Carmelo Anthony reveals unknown part of Linsanity.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/24/sports/carmelo-anthony-reveals-unknown-part-of-linsanity/
Sept. 6: Cocktails on the Roof to Benefit WiSH Education Foundation
date: 2024-05-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The WiSH Education Foundation has announced that Cocktails on the Roof returns to Hello Subaru of Valencia on Saturday, Sept. 6.
https://scvnews.com/sept-6-cocktails-on-the-roof-to-benefit-wish-foundation/
Bearblog is fun
date: 2024-05-29, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>If you’re into blogging and the blogging world, chances are you might have heard about <a href="https://bearblog.dev">bearblog.dev</a>. And if you’re a reader of this blog you might have also <a href="https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-herman-martinus">read the interview with Herman</a>, Bearblog’s creator.</p>I never used Bearblog, mainly because I’m happy with my setup and I have no reason to look for another blog solution.
That said, a few weeks back I started toying with the idea of porting the design of this site over to Bear, just for fun. And to my surprise, creating a bear version of my site was surprisingly simple.
Which is why I’m happy to release a V0.1 of this experiment. The demo site I’m using it’s currently up at css.bearblog.dev. This is a very quick and dirty version. There’s some leftover code in there but it should mostly work.
Quick note: I might use that test site in the future to code other themes so depending on when you’re reading this post, the live preview might not actually show the correct theme.
To install it just head over to the “Themes” section in your dashboard, delete everything inside the “Edit theme CSS” section and paste in the code of my theme. Hit “Publish” and you’re done.
I’m sure there will be bugs because there are always bugs. If you need help with anything send me an email. The theme is free, if you want to contribute the best way to do it is to become a member of my “One a Month” club.
<hr>
<p>Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.</p>
<p><a href="mailto:hello@manuelmoreale.com">Email me</a> ::
<a href="https://manuelmoreale.com/guestbook">Sign my guestbook</a> ::
<a href="https://ko-fi.com/manuelmoreale">Support for 1$/month</a> ::
<a href="https://manuelmoreale.com/supporters">See my awesome supporters</a> ::
<a href="https://buttondown.email/peopleandblogs">Subscribe to People and Blogs</a></p>
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/L1Syqdy6Ggph2Yw5
Massachusetts’ ‘Bad Breath Rapist’ arrested in East Bay following nearly 17 years on run
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Authorities in 2023 had offered up to $10,000 for information leading to the man’s arrest.
Man shot at Oakland motel earlier this month dies
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A man shot May 20 at an Oakland motel died Saturday, police said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/29/man-shot-at-oakland-motel-earlier-this-month-dies/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Julia Evans' git cheat sheet.
https://wizardzines.com/git-cheat-sheet.pdf
Physicists Puzzle Over Emergence of Strange Electron Aggregates
date: 2024-05-29, from: Quanta Magazine
Electrons have been seen uniting into entities with fractions of electric charge, this time without a magnetic field coaxing them into it.The post Physicists Puzzle Over Emergence of Strange Electron Aggregates first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Jury faces choices in Trump trial
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/jury-faces-choices-in-trump-trial/7633598.html
Colorado governor signs ‘best in the world’ right-to-repair law
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
But the repairability war isn’t over, says iFixit’s Kyle Wiens
A right to repair rule just signed into law in Colorado is earning praise from advocates for making the area one of the best jurisdictions for electronics tinkerers and DIYers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/colorado_governor_signs_best_in/
Review: Avril Lavigne kicks off 2024 Shoreline season in uncomplicated fashion
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Avril Lavigne showcases the hits, as well as her lasting influence and connection with fans, during compelling concert in Mountain View.
Joyful Observations From Xochitl Gonzalez
date: 2024-05-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures talk explores Latinx culture and the importance of having a voice.
The post Joyful Observations From Xochitl Gonzalez appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/29/joyful-observations-from-xochitl-gonzalez/
Piecing together a beautiful life
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Five years ago, an ambitious young adult immigrated to the United States from Uganda to meet the father he never knew. Pierce College student Jacob
The post Piecing together a beautiful life appeared first on .
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupt Chevron shareholder meeting
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
The protesters argued that Chevron corporation supplies Israel with light and power for their attacks in Gaza.
La ciudad de Goleta lanza la campaña Old Town Goleta está abierto al público
date: 2024-05-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
GOLETA, CA- 28 de Mayo, 2024 – La ciudad de Goleta se complace en anunciar el lanzamiento desu campaña Old
The post La ciudad de Goleta lanza la campaña Old Town Goleta está abierto al público appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Dare to bare: California spot makes list of world’s best nude beaches
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
2024 is already shaping up to be another banner year for nudity around the world with a nude cruise and nude beach weddings on the horizon.
Summary of the Fifty-Second U.S.–Japan ASTER Science Team Meeting
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
Michael Abrams, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, mjabrams@jpl.nasa.gov Yasushi Yamaguchi, Nagoya University/Japan Science and Technology Agency, yasushi@nagoya-u.jp Introduction The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Science Team (ST) organized a three-day workshop that took place September 11–13, 2023, at the offices of Japan Space Systems (JSS) in Tokyo. Over 40 people from […]
Get ready for some eligible bachelors
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
After coming to the United States in 2003 and enrolling at Pasadena City College, a young man from Indonesia didn’t yet know what career path
The post Get ready for some eligible bachelors appeared first on .
City of Goleta Launches Old Town Open for Business Campaign
date: 2024-05-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
GOLETA, CA- May 28, 2024 – The City of Goleta is pleased to announce the launch of its Old Town Open for
The post City of Goleta Launches Old Town Open for Business Campaign appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/29/city-of-goleta-launches-old-town-open-for-business-campaign/
ADATA and ZOTAC are launching handheld gaming PCs at Computex next week (Asus ROG Ally too)
date: 2024-05-29, from: Liliputing
At least two more companies are planning to enter the handheld gaming PC space. Zotac and ADATA have both announced plans to introduce handhelds at the Computex trade show next week. The ZOTAC GAMING ZONE handheld will have a 7 inch AMOLED display and an AMD RYzen processor, while the ADATA XPG NIA will be one of […]
The post ADATA and ZOTAC are launching handheld gaming PCs at Computex next week (Asus ROG Ally too) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/adata-and-zotac-are-launching-handheld-gaming-pcs-at-computex-next-week/
Come for the books, stay for the tour
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Blink and you just might miss the Child Development Center to the right of Lot 7 at Pierce College. Because the Center’s existence may not
The post Come for the books, stay for the tour appeared first on .
Ex-OpenAI board member accuses Sam Altman of ‘outright lying’
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Claims she and other members ‘learned about ChatGPT on Twitter’
OpenAI’s board was only aware that ChatGPT had been launched after reading about it on Twitter, according to a former board member.…
Google Laid Off Workers That Help Investigators During School Shootings and Kidnappings
date: 2024-05-29, from: 404 Media Group
A third of the team responsible for handling Google’s data requests was laid off, a union representing workers said, raising concerns about how the company will manage its users’ data security.
https://www.404media.co/google-legal-investigations-team-layoffs/
NASA Lucy Images Reveal Asteroid Dinkinesh to be Surprisingly Complex
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
Images from the November 2023 flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft show a trough on Dinkinesh where a large piece — about a quarter of the asteroid — suddenly shifted, a ridge, and a separate contact binary satellite (now known as Selam). Scientists say this complicated structure shows that Dinkinesh and Selam have […]
Skydiver certified students to conduct tandem jumps after losing his qualifications to do so
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Authorities said the man lost his ability to certify skydivers in 2015 but continued to do so, leading to the deaths of two people.
Venus Might Still Have Active Volcanoes, as Recent Lava Flows Suggest ‘Ongoing’ Eruptions
date: 2024-05-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Astronomers have again discovered evidence of recent volcanic activity on Earth’s sister planet in data from the 1990s
Dance concert springs into motion
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Pierce College presented the 2024 Spring Dance Concert “In Motion,” featuring performances by Pierce dance students and guest performers of CHAMPS High School of the
The post Dance concert springs into motion appeared first on .
ARM’s next-gen CPU and GPU cores are faster, more efficient
date: 2024-05-29, from: Liliputing
ARM is launching a new line of CPU and GPU technologies… as well as a new option for customers to purchase a complete solution that implements all of those features in one package. The new ARM Compute Subsystems for Client (or CSS for Client) bundles the latest Cortex-X and A-series CPU cores with Immortalis graphics […]
The post ARM’s next-gen CPU and GPU cores are faster, more efficient appeared first on Liliputing.
US capital to welcome pandas from China
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-capital-to-welcome-pandas-from-china/7633472.html
Jury starts deliberating Trump hush money criminal case
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/jury-to-start-deliberating-trump-hush-money-criminal-case/7633468.html
Veterans Club event helps students de-stress ahead of final exams
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
The Pierce College Veterans Club hosted a De-Stress Event on May 22 in the LLC Courtyard, where students participated in different activities a week before
The post Veterans Club event helps students de-stress ahead of final exams appeared first on .
Asus ROG Ally X handheld gaming PC will have an 80 Wh battery, 24GB of RAM, and a 1TB M.2 2280 SSD
date: 2024-05-29, from: Liliputing
The next handheld gaming PC from Asus is coming soon, but don’t call it a next-gen Asus ROG Ally. That’s because the upcoming Asus ROG Ally X will have the same 7 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel, 120 Hz display with a variable refresh rate and the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor as the […]
The post Asus ROG Ally X handheld gaming PC will have an 80 Wh battery, 24GB of RAM, and a 1TB M.2 2280 SSD appeared first on Liliputing.
NASA Stennis Helps Family Build a Generational Legacy
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
For Lee English Jr., the sound of a ringing phone probably sounds a lot like the roar of a rocket engine test at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. During the 1970s, when 9-year-old English Jr. picked up the ringing phone, someone from the south Mississippi test site might say, “Tell your […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/stennis/a-generational-legacy/
East Bay city updates its commercial cannabis rules, fines
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Each plant over the six-plant limit allowed by the state will be subject to spearate fines in unlicensed commercial cannabis grows.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/29/east-bay-city-updates-its-commercial-cannabis-rules-fines/
Ready, set, decorate
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Graduation decorations packed the walls where the Dream Resource Center (DRC) held an end-of-year celebration in the Library and Learning Crossroads last Wednesday. The event
The post Ready, set, decorate appeared first on .
Fugitive dubbed “Bad Breath Rapist” captured in East Bay after 16 years on the run
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Massachusetts State Police have offered a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to Tuen Kit Lee’s arrest and appeared multiple times on the television show “America’s Most Wanted” to discuss the case.
GPD Duo is a dual-screen laptop with two 13.3 inch OLED displays that unfold vertically
date: 2024-05-29, from: Liliputing
The GPD DUO is an upcoming laptop with a 35-watt processor, a 13.3 inch OLED display, and a second 13.3 inch OLED display that can be extended upward to give you more screen space when you need it. Thanks to a tri-fold design with two hinges (including a 360 degree hinge for the upper display), you can […]
The post GPD Duo is a dual-screen laptop with two 13.3 inch OLED displays that unfold vertically appeared first on Liliputing.
Sols 4199-4201: Driving Through a Puzzle
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Tuesday, May 28, 2024 For the last several months, Curiosity has been steadily climbing through the bedrock layers of the upper sulfate unit. While each stop had its own collection of bedrock blocks tilting one way or another, you could imagine putting each scene back together into one coherent package of layers, […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4199-4201-driving-through-a-puzzle/
Tech Today: Measuring the Buzz, Hum, and Rattle
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
NASA-supported wireless microphone array quickly, cheaply, and accurately maps noise from aircraft, animals, and more.
Shootout in Oakland leaves one dead, one wounded and arrested
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Police have not yet released the names of the 25-year-old man killed or the 25-year-old man later arrested.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/29/shootout-in-oakland-leaves-one-dead-one-wounded-and-arrested/
Beating drums, building community
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
As the Los Angeles Taiko Collective performed their drum set, the sounds of each hit echoed across the LLC Courtyard, attracting more and more people
The post Beating drums, building community appeared first on .
Neuralink wants 3 more quadriplegic patients for its brain control interface trial
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Sign up for your turn with the R1 robot if you qualify
Elon Musk’s Neuralink is recruiting another three subjects for its brain implant study.…
Ordering up the FOODTURE
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
A Jetsonian food option has been cooked up on Pierce that prepares hot food in just a few minutes. The FOODTURE hot food vending machine—located
The post Ordering up the FOODTURE appeared first on .
Caller reports excessively loud speakers at Los Gatos Jack in the Box
date: 2024-05-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Second noise complaint this month about fast food drive-through.
News Briefs – May 29, 2024
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Powwow at Pierce: Pierce College will be hosting its first Powwow at the Equestrian Center on June 22, 2024. The event opens with Gourd Dancing
The post News Briefs – May 29, 2024 appeared first on .
Time to herd Brahmas into the spotlight
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Pierce College should highlight achievements and success stories from students. Recognizing student achievement can help motivate others to excel. “Highlighting student achievement is clearly a
The post Time to herd Brahmas into the spotlight appeared first on .
Streetbeat: What are your summer plans?
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
“I play the marimba, so I’m going to be getting some lessons from one of the people that I play with. I’m going
The post Streetbeat: What are your summer plans? appeared first on .
Students urge for a smoke-free campus at Pierce College Council meeting
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
During the last two Pierce College Council meetings, students have voiced their concerns over Pierce College not being a 100% smoke-free campus. Student athlete and
The post Students urge for a smoke-free campus at Pierce College Council meeting appeared first on .
AI smartphones must balance promise against hype and privacy concerns
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Color us shocked: 66% of Apple users said they wouldn’t switch for any reason
A coming wave of AI-capable smartphones may let vendors distinguish their devices via unique features and user experience, but it also poses challenges for privacy and potential user disillusion if there is too much hype.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/canalys_on_ai_smartphones/
Brahma Blotter: May 20-26, 2024
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
No crimes were reported between May 20-26, 2024. The crime log is made publicly available at the Pierce College Sheriff’s Office. No se reportaron crímenes
The post Brahma Blotter: May 20-26, 2024 appeared first on .
NASA to Measure Moonquakes With Help From InSight Mars Mission
date: 2024-05-29, from: NASA breaking news
The technology behind the two seismometers that make up NASA’s Farside Seismic Suite was used to detect more than a thousand Red Planet quakes. The most sensitive instrument ever built to measure quakes and meteor strikes on other worlds is getting closer to its journey to the mysterious far side of the Moon. It’s one […]
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
A Stretchtext Vocabulary.
https://vocab.methodandstructure.com/stretchtext#
Brokerages need to pick up the pace
date: 2024-05-29, from: Marketplace Morning Report
When you buy a stock, your brokerage has to go out and buy it for you. It sometimes doesn’t happen immediately and can take up to two days. As part of a push to reduce risk in the stock market, a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule says it needs to happen faster. Plus, why consumers are feeling better than expected and how pricey child care is holding back women in the workforce.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/brokerages-need-to-pick-up-the-pace
Why RISC-V must get its messaging right on open standard vs open source
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It’s the difference between export limits on specific chips – and a problematic blanket ban
Feature The possibility of America placing sanctions on RISC-V has increased the pressure on RV’s governing body and its partners to get their messaging right about what this technology really is.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/riscv_messsaging_struggle/
Why RISC-V must get its messaging right on open standard vs open source
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It’s the difference between export limits on specific chips – and a problematic blanket ban
Feature The possibility of America placing sanctions on RISC-V has increased the pressure on RV’s governing body and its partners to get their messaging right about what this technology really is.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/riscos_messsaging_struggle/
Podcast: Google Somehow Got Even More Shit
date: 2024-05-29, from: 404 Media Group
Google’s AI snippets, a Google researcher says AI is now a leading vector for disinformation, and why AI images are not a victimless crime.
https://www.404media.co/podcast-google-somehow-got-even-worse-404-media-week-40/
North Korea building cash reserves using ransomware, video games
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Microsoft says Kim’s hermit nation is pivoting to latest tools as it evolves in cyberspace
A brand-new cybercrime group that Microsoft ties to North Korea is tricking targets using fake job opportunities to launch malware and ransomware, all for financial gain.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/north_korea_using_ransomware_and/
The Monopoly Case Against Ticketmaster, Explained
date: 2024-05-29, from: 404 Media Group
The antitrust suit against Live Nation is not about ticket scalping or ticket sales. It’s about total domination over the entire concert industry.
https://www.404media.co/the-monopoly-case-against-ticketmaster-explained/
Evidence mounts that Venus has multiple active volcanoes
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Data from 1990s adds to previous modelling to show lava-spewers widespread on second planet from Sun
New research on data collected in the 1990s shows that on Venus, volcanoes are likely to be both more active and widespread than scientists previously understood.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/evidence_mounts_that_venus_has/
Brazil’s Displacement Fears
date: 2024-05-29, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: More storms and possible tornadoes are forecast to hit Texas and the Plains, where millions of people are still without power • Cyclone Remal, the first tropical storm of the season, killed at least 23 people in India and Bangladesh • Brazilian authorities are investigating up to 800 suspected cases of waterborne illness following unprecedented flooding over the past month.
THE TOP FIVE
- Biden administration invests in carbon removal
The Department of Energy on Tuesday gave $1.2 million to companies competing for a chance to sell carbon removal credits to the federal government. These 24 semifinalists, which were each awarded $50,000, include nine direct air capture projects, seven biomass projects, five enhanced rock weathering projects, and three marine-based projects. Up to 10 of them will be offered federal contracts amounting to $30 million. “The Department of Energy hopes that by selecting 24 companies that have been vetted by government scientists, it’s sending a signal to the private sector that there are at least some projects that are legitimate,” Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo writes, referencing struggles in the broader carbon credits marketplace.
- Brazil floods leave some permanently displaced
Weeks of deadly flooding in Brazil displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Many of them now are — or will become — climate refugees. Residents of the cities devastated by the floodwaters are now rethinking how to live alongside the increasingly unpredictable rains. As climate refugees, they join the survivors of other climate disasters in recent years and the millions more who are expected to follow in their footsteps over the coming decades. “Brazil is not going to be a one-off,” Andrew Harper, a senior official at the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, told The Washington Post. “What we are seeing is the start of something that will become more frequent and more extreme and lead to more people left vulnerable, with no choice but to move to a safer location.”
- New satellite will study clouds and climate
SpaceX launched the EarthCARE (Earth Cloud, Aerosol, and Radiation Explorer) satellite, a joint project between the European Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, on Tuesday in a mission that will study the impact that clouds have on the climate. The satellite, which has been 20 years in the making, will use four instruments, including radar and imaging systems, to measure clouds’ altitude, structure, and movement. The mission will take place at a relatively low orbit and is expected to last at least three years. Researchers hope the data it collects will lead to improvements both in long-term climate modeling and short-term weather forecasting.
- Supreme Court to hear San Francisco’s case against the EPA
The Supreme Court will hear a lawsuit brought by the city and county of San Francisco against EPA Clean Water Act discharge regulations. Lawyers representing San Francisco argued in their petition that the federal regulations — which prohibit violations “of any applicable water quality standard” rather than setting numerical pollution limits — are too vague. “These prohibitions effectively tell permit holders nothing more than not to cause ‘too much’ pollution,” the petition said. The EPA argued in response that the requirements are meant to keep permits in line with regional and state discharge standards. “Those standards, in turn, establish specific limits to which petitioner’s discharges must conform,” the EPA’s brief said. In recent years, the conservative Supreme Court has ruled against the EPA in high-profile cases.
- Poll: Voters favor climate accountability
Almost two-thirds of U.S. voters want oil companies to ”be held legally accountable for their contributions to climate change,” The Guardian reported Tuesday. A poll conducted by consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen and progressive polling firm Data for Progress found that 62% of voters — including 84% of Democrats, 59% of independents and 40% of Republicans — supported the idea. Asked about their stance on “criminal charges being filed against oil and gas companies to hold them accountable for deaths caused by their contributions to climate change,” 49% expressed support and 38% said they were opposed. A growing number of states, counties, and cities are suing major oil companies for climate damages. “These national findings show these cases may be able to earn popular support, particularly in blue jurisdictions,” Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist at Data for Progress, told The Guardian.
THE KICKER
A five-bedroom house in Rodanthe, North Carolina, has become the sixth house along its stretch of seashore to fall into the ocean in the past four years as coastal erosion increasingly threatens homes built near the water.
https://heatmap.news/climate/brazils-displacement-fears
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The gift of a three-month sabbatical.
https://zeldman.com/2024/05/28/the-gift-of-a-three-month-sabbatical/
After A Challenging School Year, LGBTQ+ Educators Share Their Experiences
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The LAist
Protests, flag bans, and book restrictions tested teachers’ ability to create a safe space for students to learn.
Felix Oliver Friedrich pushed to project branch main at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
Felix Oliver Friedrich (47db7be5) at 29 May 13:40
Merge branch 'fixes' into 'main'
… and 1 more commit
U.S. child care is expensive — and not working for most families
date: 2024-05-29, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Despite cooling inflation, many Americans still say higher prices make it difficult to make ends meet. That’s especially the case for parents. The cost of child care has far outpaced overall inflation for the past few decades, to the point that it’s affecting the labor force. We discuss. But first: Tensions between Exxon-Mobil and some of its shareholders may well boil over this morning when the company holds its annual shareholder meeting.
France’s Macron urges a green light for Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia with Western weapons
date: 2024-05-29, from: Associated Press, World News
France’s president has joined the head of NATO in pushing for a policy shift that could change the complexion of the Ukraine war: allowing Kyiv to strike military bases inside Russia with sophisticated long-range weapons provided by its Western partners.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-macron-weapons-e308755a31716ee0123b441bb9b548b0
LLMs can write and answer quizzes – but aren’t quite ready to disrupt trivia night
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Feed AutoQuizzer a URL and it will use LLaMa-3 to make a decent multiple-choice test
A developer has put large language models (LLMs) to the test, literally, by creating AutoQuizzer – a tool that creates quizzes from text on web pages.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/autoquizzer_llm_quiz_generation/
Can a huge mining industry merger make it to the finish line?
date: 2024-05-29, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Australian mining giant BHP wants to buy rival Anglo American, but it’s had two bids turned down and was recently denied an extension for takeover talks. Then, the union representing Samsung Electronics in South Korea has threatened to go on strike over demands for higher wages. And South Africa heads to the polls and the leading ANC party may lose its parliamentary majority.
Miniature Fabergé Animals That Enchanted the Romanovs and Other Royals Are Up for Sale
date: 2024-05-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Crafted around 1900, the charismatic carvings were inspired by Japanese decorative pendants
The Allegheny Arsenal Explosion and the Creation of Public Memory
date: 2024-05-29, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
Today’s post was developed from a former exhibit titled ”Allegheny Arsenal Explosion and the Creation of Public Memory.” The exhibit was initially displayed at the National Archives at Philadelphia and was then featured online as a digital exhibit. In collaboration with the National Archives Web Division, the National Archives at Philadelphia has reformatted the content … Continue reading The Allegheny Arsenal Explosion and the Creation of Public Memory
Gary Horton | COC: The Most Pragmatic College on Planet Earth
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Signal
A disclosure: I am co-chair of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. I’ve been a member of the COC Foundation for about two years. I was a member of […]
The post Gary Horton | COC: The Most Pragmatic College on Planet Earth appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/gary-horton-coc-the-most-pragmatic-college-on-planet-earth/
Make an AI device to tell you bedtime stories
date: 2024-05-29, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Stefano Mazzocchi built Fably, a low-cost AI bedtime storytelling device, to tell his daughter creative and entertaining stories.
The post Make an AI device to tell you bedtime stories appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/make-an-ai-device-to-tell-you-bedtime-stories/
Sergey Durmanov pushed to project branch fixes at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
Sergey Durmanov (4d765fa9) at 29 May 12:32
fixed port type
… and 5 more commits
Fancy climbing the peaks of Alpine Linux? 3.20 is out
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tiny, powerful, uncluttered: not easy, but a lot to like
Alpine Linux 3.20.0 is out, with initial support for a whole new CPU architecture: RISC-V.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/alpine_linux_320_released/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-05-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
This is America’s ruling class.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/us/justice-alito-neighbors-stop-steal-flag.html
Sergey Durmanov pushed new project branch fixes at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
Sergey Durmanov (4871f64c) at 29 May 12:03
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/commits/fixes
Dortmund seals sponsorship deal with arms manufacturer ahead of Champions League final
date: 2024-05-29, from: Associated Press, World News
Borussia Dortmund has signed a new sponsorship deal with German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall and will display the defense company’s logo ahead of facing Real Madrid in the Champions League final.
Using AI in science can add to reproducibility woes, say boffins
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Royal Society warns black box models, a lack of documentation, and limited access to computing hamper efforts to understand results
Using AI in science promises to add to problems in reproducing important results, the UK’s highly prestigious Royal Society has warned.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/using_ai_in_science_can/
Paul McGuire | The State of the Prostate
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Signal
The following letter is presented as a satirical take on current gender issues. Lobby, California hospital, 5 a.m. A middle-aged man is seated at an intake window, an older female […]
The post Paul McGuire | The State of the Prostate appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/paul-mcguire-the-state-of-the-prostate/
The Savvy Senior | Financial and Legal Resources for Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Signal
Dear Savvy Senior, Are there any programs that you can refer me to that financially help grandparents who are raising their grandkids? I’m raising two of my grandchildren and could […]
The post The Savvy Senior | Financial and Legal Resources for Grandparents Raising Grandchildren appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
The Reg builds official Lego Artemis and Milky Way sets
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Raking a talon through piles of plastic parts in search of holiday fun
Hands-On Lego has added plastic brick representations of NASA’s Space Launch System and the Milky Way Galaxy to its range. We had a go at building both to see if they merit a holiday investment.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/legos_artemis_and_milky_way/
Vietnamese EV maker VinFast considers delaying $4B US plant, source says
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
US Treasury official visits Ukraine to discuss sanctions on Moscow and seizing Russian assets
date: 2024-05-29, from: Associated Press, World News
A senior U.S. Treasury official has meet with Ukrainian officials in Kyiv to discuss U.S. financial support, enforcing sanctions on Russia and using frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s benefit in the war with Moscow.
https://apnews.com/article/treasury-russia-ukraine-war-sanctions-4dd7ed8df8d7b403eef46206320a5dbb
Turbo9: a pipelined 6809 microprocessor IP
date: 2024-05-29, from: OS News
The Turbo9 is a pipelined microprocessor IP written in Verilog that executes a superset of the Motorola 6809 instruction set. It is a new modern microarchitecture with 16-bit internal datapaths that balances high performance vs small area / low power. The Turbo9R with a 16-bit memory interface achieves 0.69 DMIPS/MHz which is 3.8 times faster than Motorola’s original 8-bit MC6809 implementation. It is an active graduate research project at the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Florida. ↫ Turbo9 GitHub page The Turbo9 is aimed at SoC sub-blocks and small mixed-signal ASIC, so it’s definitely not intended to be some sort of general purpose CPU. The reason for opting for the 6809 instead of, say, RISC-V or ARM, is that the 6809 enables a far smaller footprint due to being 16bit, which is all the target market really needs from the Turbo9. The current version of the Turbo9 is thoroughly verified and is capable of running C code. However, we still consider this version v0.9 because we are missing a few items. All the 6809 instructions and addressing modes have been implemented and tested except SYNC and CWAI. The signed versions of the Turbo9’s 16-bit divide and multiply need to be completed. Interrupts are partially implemented including SWI and Reset. ↫ Turbo9 GitHub page This is the kind of riveting content you’ll only really find on OSNews.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139818/turbo9-a-pipelined-6809-microprocessor-ip/
Classifieds – May 29, 2024
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.
The post Classifieds – May 29, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/classifieds-may-29-2024/
MIT professor hoses down predictions AI will put a rocket under the economy
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It’s easier to foresee growing inequality than surging growth
Artificial intelligence may not do much to boost productivity – and could end up widening the income gap between owners of capital and workers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/ai_gdp_inequality/
Today in SCV History (May 29)
date: 2024-05-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1987 – Director John Landis acquitted of charges in deaths of Vic Morrow and two child actors on Valencia “Twilight Zone Movie” set. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-may-29/
New album ‘Model’ sees Wallows in full bloom
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The indie pop band comes into their own with their third studio album.
The post New album ‘Model’ sees Wallows in full bloom appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/new-album-model-sees-wallows-in-full-bloom/
USC athletes are ready to shine at the 2024 Olympics
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Anticipation increases for former and current Trojans ahead of the Olympic Games.
The post USC athletes are ready to shine at the 2024 Olympics appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/usc-athletes-are-ready-to-shine-at-the-2024-olympics/
Student Health services will be available throughout summer
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Students can opt in to the Summer Health Fee if they are not in summer classes.
The post Student Health services will be available throughout summer appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/student-health-services-will-be-available-throughout-summer/
To the class of 2028, here’s my advice
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
This new chapter at USC won’t be easy, but you can influence your experience.
The post To the class of 2028, here’s my advice appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/advice-for-the-class-of-2028/
USC admin needs to reconsider their governing structure
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The University must review its own management system with checks and balances.
The post USC admin needs to reconsider their governing structure appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/usc-admin-needs-to-reconsider-their-governing-structure/
Women’s golf reaches semifinals, falls to Stanford
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
An impressive performance during stroke play earned USC the fourth overall seed.
The post Women’s golf reaches semifinals, falls to Stanford appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/womens-golf-reaches-semifinals-falls-to-stanford/
Jewish students discuss incidents of antisemitism, harassment on campus
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Some students said they no longer felt safe on campus during end-of-year protests.
The post Jewish students discuss incidents of antisemitism, harassment on campus appeared first on Daily Trojan.
Stuffed bagels are my latest go-to brunch bangers
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Calic Bagel serves sandwiches and baked bagels galore.
The post Stuffed bagels are my latest go-to brunch bangers appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/stuffed-bagels-are-my-latest-go-to-brunch-bangers/
USC baseball will be back
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Trojans won nine of their final 10 games to close out the season.
The post USC baseball will be back appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/05/29/usc-baseball-will-be-back/
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries bets big on small turbines for datacenters
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Another endorsement for the theory that on-prem power generation trumps tapping the grid
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – Earth’s largest source of electricity-generating gas turbines – has tied its future growth to surging demand for datacenters spurred by adoption of AI and new semiconductor plants.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/mhi_datacenter_generator_strategy/
Fears of war lead to hard conversations about NATO in Sweden’s schools
date: 2024-05-29, from: Associated Press, World News
The abrupt end to the Scandinavian country’s 200 years of neutrality following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has worried many.
Tencent, Microsoft link app stores in China
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Intel joins in with plans for better PC-Android integration
Tencent and Microsoft have struck a deal that will see the Chinese gaming giant’s Android wares available on the Microsoft Store, and playable on Windows PCs.…
Man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Signal
Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station officials said an ex-boyfriend who showed up to his ex-girlfriend’s house with a firearm and fired shots over the weekend has been arrested on suspicion […]
The post Man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/man-arrested-on-suspicion-of-attempted-murder/
Melinda French Gates to donate $1 billion to support women’s rights
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
With no resolution to Ukraine, Gaza wars, Biden focuses on domestic priorities
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
With five months until the November election and no diplomatic solution in sight for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, President Joe Biden, who in 2020 ran on a campaign to end “forever wars,” is shifting voters’ attention away from American entanglements abroad by focusing on domestic priorities. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
Washington support for Israel firm after ‘heartbreaking’ Rafah camp airstrike
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
The White House described an Israeli airstrike on a refugee camp in Rafah as “heartbreaking,” but it made no move to limit military assistance to Israel or shift its policy supporting the country’s right to conduct operations in Gaza. Anita Powell reports from the White House.
China shows off machine-gun-toting robot dog and its AI-powered puppy
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Training exercises test suitability for both reconnaissance and lethal kinetic action
China has shown off a pair of robot dogs – one of them toting a machine gun and the other powered by AI.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/china_miiltary_robot_dogs/
Can we at least agree that killing is wrong?
date: 2024-05-29, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
I don’t think it’s possible to morally support the ongoing bombardment of Gaza, but that’s too weak a statement. What’s happening there seems to be — based on what I’ve read through the news, what I’ve seen in video, the stories that have been sent back to us — an atrocity. The latest story, from Rafah, is of an airstrike on a civilian evacuation zone where displaced families were sheltering in tents:
Images showed the area engulfed in flames as screaming Palestinians fled for safety, with some video shared on social media showing disturbing images, including severely burned corpses and a man holding what appeared to be the headless body of a small child.
There’s nothing flippant to say about this. This isn’t sports, where you root for a team. It’s not a theoretical debate: certainly not for the families who have no way to escape, kettled as they are into a small strip of land under constant military bombardment.
The bombardment on Gaza is disproportionate and indefensible. Thirteen thousand children alone have been killed. A quarter of surviving children have acute malnutrition. There’s nowhere for them to go, and nowhere for them to get the care they need. In the face of these conditions, there must be a ceasefire. Obviously there must be a ceasefire.
Making statements like this is fraught. It sometimes seems like we’re being asked to fall into weird ideological lines that have little to do with the humanity of the people involved. Following the events of October 7, I unfollowed multiple progressive Instagram accounts that not only described the attack and kidnappings as the necessary work of de-colonization, but applauded the action. It’s clear to me that Palestine has been annexed, its land illegally settled, and its people made to suffer at the hands of increasingly-conservative Israeli policy. Protest and resistance are inevitable and justifiable. Regardless, I can’t support the killing and kidnapping of civilians, let alone accept cheerleading for it. Not ever.
By the same token, I see some people online call for an end to the state of Israel. What would that entail, exactly? Assuming it was a desirable goal, how might one go about achieving that? Dismantling it would involve unthinkable bloodshed.
Some people talk about how Hamas is the local government, and how the people there voted for them, so they deserve what’s happening to them. That it’s okay to bomb hospitals because Hamas is hiding out in them — regardless of international law related to protecting the lives of human shields.
The history, today’s political issues, and the road to a solution are far more complicated than can be conveyed by memes and soundbites. I have no solutions to the problems in this region or how to get to a lasting peace.
But some things are not complicated at all.
Don’t kill. Don’t subjugate. Don’t dehumanize. Don’t reduce lives, in all their complexity and beauty, to points and sides.
The core of this issue right now is — or should be — concern for human life. Everyone, regardless of nationality or political affiliation, should be appalled when children burn to death or are decapitated (whether they’re in an evacuation zone or not). The ruining of cities should never yield applause.
The protests on university campuses are the latest in a long line of campus anti-war protests, and I’m strongly in favor of them. Except, because of course this is true, there are people there who conflate the protest over policy with protests of anyone who is Israeli, or even anyone who is a Jew. I’ve personally heard stories of at least one person being spat on, not because of any rhetoric they were espousing, but simply because of who they were.
This all has the potential to escalate. I worry that it will. This is all already so horrific.
These are human beings. The Palestinian people are human beings. The Israeli people are human beings. Arabs are human beings. Jews are human beings. They are not their leaders; they are not their circumstances. They all - like all people - deserve to live, and live well. The death of any human being is never something to celebrate or to praise as a strategy. It’s all just endless tragedy.
Stop the killing. Find another way.
https://werd.io/2024/can-we-at-least-agree-that-killing-is-wrong
Google’s in-house docs about search ranking leak online, sparking SEO frenzy
date: 2024-05-29, updated: 2024-05-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
GitHub trove details API features that ‘contradict’ Big G’s public statements about how its engine works
Updated A trove of documents that appear to describe how Google ranks search results has appeared online, likely as the result of accidental publication by an in-house bot.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/internal_google_search_documents/
Riding the Ups & Downs of a Life & Death Diagnosis
date: 2024-05-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Thomas Johansen has been living a drama of life and death since 2012 when he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. He
The post Riding the Ups & Downs of a Life & Death Diagnosis appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/05/28/riding-the-ups-downs-of-a-life-death-diagnosis/
From COC to the University of Cambridge
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Signal
News release When Nicole Brooks leafed through the College of the Canyons fall 2022 class schedule, a British literature course caught her eye. The course sounded like just what the […]
The post From COC to the University of Cambridge appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/from-coc-to-the-university-of-cambridge/
With no end in sight for Ukraine, Gaza wars, Biden focuses on domestic priorities
date: 2024-05-29, from: VOA News USA
City earns five CAPIO awards for communications and outreach
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Signal
News release The city of Santa Clarita’s communications division was recently recognized by the California Association of Public Information Officials for its outreach efforts and impactful campaigns across special events, […]
The post City earns five CAPIO awards for communications and outreach appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/city-earns-five-capio-awards-for-communications-and-outreach/
SCV boys’ volleyball season roundup
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Signal
The high school boys’ volleyball season officially wrapped up last weekend, concluding the longest local season ever. West Ranch took down Valencia in the Division 4 title match, while also […]
The post SCV boys’ volleyball season roundup appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/scv-boys-volleyball-season-roundup/
Garcia announces congressional art winners
date: 2024-05-29, from: The Signal
News release Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, announced that Alex Coons, a sophomore at Vasquez High School from Acton, has been selected as the winner of the 2024 Congressional Art […]
The post Garcia announces congressional art winners appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/05/garcia-announces-congressional-art-winners/
Media Malpractice
date: 2024-05-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Santa Barbara community is ill served by the Pravda-like coverage of the re-opening of State Street.
The post Media Malpractice appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.