News gathered 2024-06-25
(date: 2024-06-25 08:25:56)
Code for Model-Free Nonlinear Feedback Optimization
date: 2024-07-01, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
He, Zhiyu
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/646002
Microsoft charged with EU antitrust violations for bundling Teams
date: 2024-06-25, from: OS News
The European Commission has informed Microsoft of its preliminary view that Microsoft has breached EU antitrust rules by tying its communication and collaboration product Teams to its popular productivity applications included in its suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365. ↫ Tom Warren at The Verge Chalk this one up in the unsurprising column, too. Teams has infested Office, and merely by being bundled it’s become a major competitor to Slack, even though everyone who has to use it seems to absolutely despise Teams with a shared passion rivaling only Americans’ disgust for US Congress. On a mildly related note, I’m working with a friend to set up a Matrix server specifically for OSNews users, so we can have a self-hosted, secure, and encrypted space to hang out, continue conversations beyond the shelf life of a news item, suggest interesting stories, point out spelling mistakes, and so on. It’ll be invite-only at first, with preference given to Patreons, active commenters, and other people I trust. We intend to federate, so if everything goes according to plan, you can use your existing Matrix username and account. I’ll keep y’all posted.
Hillary Rodham Clinton brings new book tour to Bay Area this fall
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
Here’s how to get tickets to see Hilary Rodham Clinton as she brings her new book tour to Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.
NASA-IBM Collaboration Develops INDUS Large Language Models for Advanced Science Research
date: 2024-06-25, from: NASA breaking news
By Derek Koehl Collaborations with private, non-federal partners through Space Act Agreements are a key component in the work done by NASA’s Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team (IMPACT). A collaboration with International Business Machines (IBM) has produced INDUS, a comprehensive suite of large language models (LLMs) tailored for the domains of Earth science, biological […]
https://science.nasa.gov/open-science/ai-language-model-science-research/
‘No Bot is Themselves Anymore:’ Character.ai Users Report Sudden Personality Changes to Chatbots
date: 2024-06-25, from: 404 Media Group
The company denied making “major changes,” but users report noticeable differences in the quality of their chatbot conversations.
https://www.404media.co/character-ai-chatbot-changes-filters-roleplay/
More lightning expected throughout Bay Area, though weather forecasters said it won’t be as frequent
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
The heaviest lightning activity Tuesday is expected to be in the Sacramento Valley, according to the National Weather Service.
AP to launch sister organization to fundraise for state, local news
date: 2024-06-25, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
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<p>[<a href="https://www.ap.org/media-center/press-releases/2024/ap-to-launch-sister-organization-to-fundraise-for-state-local-news/">Link</a>]</p>
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</div>https://werd.io/2024/ap-to-launch-sister-organization-to-fundraise-for-state-local
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Assange is free—but his case will have a chilling impact.
The latest snag in the attempt to ease student loans
date: 2024-06-25, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Parts of President Joe Biden’s student loan repayment plan — which widens eligibility for income-based loan repayment — are on hold after federal judges in Kansas and Missouri issued rulings yesterday in lawsuits brought by a group of Republican attorneys general. We dig in. We also delve into stock market volatility and the future of the cruise industry. And later: a look at how reality TV came to be.
US surgeon general declares gun violence an urgent public health crisis
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
Gun violence in the United States is an urgent public health crisis that demands the “collective commitment of the nation” to stop it, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy says in a new advisory.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Pastor’s Admitted Child Sex Abuse Roils Hotbed of Christian Nationalism.
https://www.texasobserver.org/pastor-texas-gop-christian-nationalism-sex-abuse/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
"Wordpress has had that feature for years." I respond in a reply.
https://mastodon.social/@dusoft@fosstodon.org/112677699202587720
Andrew Tanenbaum honored for pioneering MINIX, the OS hiding in a lot of computers
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Software System Award recognises his contributions to education
Andy Tanenbaum, creator of MINIX, has been recognized for his code, seminal textbooks, and wider educational influence over much of the modern FOSS world.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/tanenbaum_minix_award/
Kurtenbach: Why I’m not worried about the Warriors losing Klay Thompson (and other Dubs thoughts)
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
Klay Thompson picked a bad year to hit the open market.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Eternal Truth of Markdown.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-eternal-truth-of-markdown/
Shigella outbreak grows with cases in homeless encampments along Guadalupe River
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
The public health department advises people to avoid using the river.
California Apple Manufacturing Facility Has 19 ‘Potential Violations’ of EPA Regulations
date: 2024-06-25, from: 404 Media Group
A new report by the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that Apple also miscalculated the effectiveness of its hazardous compound air filters.
Los Gatos Rowing Club claims three national championships in Florida
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Los Gatos Rowing Club saw 59 athletes compete in 14 events at the USRowing Youth National Championships, and placed 12 crews in the top eight in the country.
Juveniles reportedly throwing ice, soda at passersby in Los Gatos
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
Victim had hot coffee thrown on him in separate incident.
Man assaulted, robbed outside Campbell bar
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
Victim didn’t desire prosecution; just wanted wallet back.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/25/man-assaulted-robbed-outside-campbell-bar/
“Christian privilege” in Colorado mountain town’s amphitheater fuels church-and-state storm
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
Town leaders’ refusal to reconsider a longstanding practice of letting a Christian church use the Dillon Amphitheater for Sunday prayers has hurled the town into a national storm over worship in public facilities.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/25/dillon-amphitheater-church-state-religion/
2024 US Capitol Christmas tree to come from Alaska
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-capitol-christmas-tree-to-come-from-alaska/7669356.html
Los Gatos gears up for town council election this fall with two open seats
date: 2024-06-25, from: San Jose Mercury News
Incumbents Ristow, Hudes both running for re-election.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I just learned that there's a limit to how much memory ChatGPT will allocate to your account. Instead of forcing me to delete memory, let me buy more.
https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8590148-memory-faq#h_d8d6baa665
CISA says crooks used Ivanti bugs to snoop around high-risk chemical facilities
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Crafty crims broke in but encryption stopped any nastiness
US cybersecurity agency CISA is urging high-risk chemical facilities to secure their online accounts after someone broke into its Chemical Security Assessment Tool (CSAT) portal.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/cisa_ivanti_chemical_facilities/
Some polite words regarding the British General Election on July 4
date: 2024-06-25, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
On July 4th I’ll be on the beautiful Oregon coast, and I plan to have a bottle of champagne handy. Not so much because of the American Independence Day — although there’s nothing wrong with celebrating that, and I’m sure I will — but because of the British election happening on the same day.
It’s been a long fourteen years of the worst government imaginable: a Conservative Party that brought about the formidable economic and social own-goal of Brexit, an intellectual blunderbuss to the foot followed by several subsequent very practical blunderbusses to the crotch, followed by a succession of the most ineffectual, rotten-souled Prime Ministers in British history, one of whom famously had less staying power than a literal salad. It was brought into being by a coalition aided by Nick Clegg (who has since made a career of putting a shiny face on terrible things), and then pitifully trumped along in a meandering path fueled by middling opposition, middle-England small-island nationalism, and the distant, smarmy memory of Tony Blair and the Iraq War. (Here I mean lowercase T trump, which means fart, rather than uppercase T Trump, which means Trump.)
I’m not particularly excited about Keir Starmer’s Labour. It seems to be a sort of 21st century riff on John Major’s Conservative Party of the mid-nineties, presumably in an effort to reach old-school Conservative voters who are sick of the Asda own-brand lunacy of the modern incarnation of their party, knowing that actual left-wing voters have nowhere else to turn. So this isn’t me hoping for major change from him; I expect very little to actually happen. But I am absolutely psyched for the Tories to have their well-heeled posteriors handed to them and their nannies with a fork and knife, finally. It’s been a long time coming.
If it sounds like it’s personal: yes, it’s personal. I’m a European citizen who grew up in the UK and left for the US to look after a parent, assuming I’d just go back afterwards. It didn’t even occur to me that David Cameron would hold a ham-fisted referendum on European membership, and it didn’t seem to occur to him that he’d lose it and the country would vote to leave. (Ham-fisted, of course, is the way he likes it.) I took it very personally; I still take it very personally; if this post feels like I’m being unusually effluviant, please know that I am holding myself back.
I’m under no illusions of any major change, even outside of Keir Starmer’s Primark blandness. All these runts will get cushy jobs as chairmen of boards and minty after-dinner speakers. Britain is effed to infinity, and there’s only so much play you can even have within that framework, particularly considering that nobody seems to want to shift the Overton window even slightly leftwards. Heaven forbid you protect the poor and vulnerable and strive to build an inclusive society within a lasting peace. Still, the catharsis of seeing those cordyceps zombie-suits roundly voted away from the nominal seat of power, even if their ilk will continue to be the effective ruling class for evermore, will give me some superficial glee. So, champagne.
Oh, and I’m excited to see Nigel Farage get his, too.
Now, back to technology and stuff.
https://werd.io/2024/some-polite-words-about-the-british-general-election-on-july
Unpacking US campaign spending
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
Elections in the United States are some of the most expensive in the world. In 2020, more than $16 billion was spent on U.S. presidential and congressional races. 2024 election costs are likely to be higher. How do campaigns help finance these elections? Fundraising.
https://www.voanews.com/a/unpacking-us-campaign-spending/7669347.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
This election is between a convicted criminal out for revenge and a president who delivers results for the American people.
I Paid $365.63 to Replace 404 Media With AI
date: 2024-06-25, from: 404 Media Group
Paying a freelancer on Fiverr to create a plagiarizing ChatGPT-powered news site revealed an industry of middlemen and services trying to game Google Search.
https://www.404media.co/i-paid-365-63-to-replace-404-media-with-ai/
VMware by Broadcom makes its stack easier to live with, as promised
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Compute, storage, and networking virtualization brought together – with live ESXi patching
VMware by Broadcom has previewed an update to its flagship Cloud Foundation and vSphere Foundation bundles that appear to deliver on past promises to make the virty giant’s wares easier to acquire and operate.…
Researcher Infects His Own Meta Quest VR Headset With Ransomware
date: 2024-06-25, from: 404 Media Group
A cybersecurity researcher set out to prove whether Meta’s virtual reality headset is susceptible to a certain flavor of ransomware.
https://www.404media.co/researcher-infects-his-own-meta-quest-vr-headset-with-ransomware/
Raspberry Pi Connect: remote shell access and support for older devices
date: 2024-06-25, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Today’s beta release of Raspberry Pi Connect includes remote shell access and support for all Raspberry Pi computers, whether they’re running Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit or 64-bit. This includes Raspberry Pi OS Lite as well as versions of Raspberry Pi OS with the desktop.
The post Raspberry Pi Connect: remote shell access and support for older devices appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
EU accuses Microsoft of antitrust violations for bundling Teams with O365
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Statement of Objections sent to Redmond HQ following probe that began July 2023
Microsoft broke the European Union’s antitrust regulations by “tying” collaboration tool Teams to its dominant online Office productivity suite, according to preliminary findings from an investigation begun in July 2023.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/ec_microsoft_teams_bundling/
Pilar Schiavo | When I Put a Pedophile Behind Bars
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
I am a survivor of sexual abuse. It’s not a story I’ve told before — reliving it brings back terrible memories, as any survivor knows. But I will simply not […]
The post Pilar Schiavo | When I Put a Pedophile Behind Bars appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/pilar-schiavo-when-i-put-a-pedophile-behind-bars/
Fires, Floods, and Federal Court
date: 2024-06-25, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Deadly flooding in parts of the Midwest is forecast to worsen Tuesday before rivers crest midweek • Northern China remains in drought as the southern province of Guangdong suffers flooding, landslides, and mudslides • Western India braces for heavy rains.
THE TOP FIVE
- SCOTUS takes on NEPA
The U.S. Supreme Court is due to close out its latest session this week (although decisions could stretch into July), and court- and climate-watchers are expecting it to issue a death blow to a legal precedent called the Chevron deference, which gave federal agencies wide latitude to interpret their mandates where the law was vague. More than 19,000 federal court decisions rest on Chevron as a binding precedent, according to the Center for American Progress, and ending it would add to the already hefty legal burden of defending climate regulations.
But wait, there’s more! On Monday, the court agreed to take up a case that could determine whether federal agencies can consider a project’s indirect emissions when evaluating its environmental impacts. The case concerns a proposed railway that would transport oil in northeast Utah, which had its approval from the Surface Transportation Board thrown out by a federal appeals court last year. The appeals court ruled that the agency’s environmental review failed to assess how the railway would affect future oil development, along with several other environmental considerations. A group of Utah counties say those impacts are beyond the agency’s obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act.
A decision by the Supreme Court, which is expected to hear arguments in the fall, has the potential to apply not only to railways but also to many other projects regulated by the federal government, including pipelines and shipping ports.
- Midwest floods leave path of destruction
A railroad bridge connecting Sioux City, Iowa, and North Sioux City, South Dakota, collapsed late Sunday amid flooding in the Midwest that also put a Minnesota dam in “imminent failure condition,” officials said.
The bridge, owned by BNSF Railway, spanned the Big Sioux River, where the water was about 45 feet high as of Monday morning — surpassing the previous record by more than 7 feet.
Minnesota’s Rapidan Dam on the Blue Earth River suffered a “partial failure” on Monday after water breached the west side of the dam and washed away an Xcel Energy substation. The Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook that it doesn’t know whether the dam will hold but that “there are no current plans for a mass evacuation.”
3. A California utility bets big on enhanced geothermal
The enhanced geothermal startup Fervo, which uses techniques borrowed from fracking oil and gas to access heat below the earth’s surface to generate electricity, said today that it had signed the “world’s largest” geothermal power purchase agreements. The two deals with Southern California Edison, a California utility, add up to 320 megawatts from the company’s Utah site. California utilities are mandated by the state energy regulator to buy 1,000 megawatts of non-weather-dependent power with no greenhouse gas emissions, for which geothermal fits the bill. The power will start flowing, Fervo said, by 2026 and will be fully up and running by 2028.
- Study: Extreme wildfires are multiplying
Extreme wildfires have doubled in intensity and frequency over the past two decades due to climate change, according to a new study. The research, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, used satellite data to measure the occurrence of particularly powerful wildfires between 2003 and 2023. It found that such extreme events increased 2.2-fold during that period, with six of the past seven years ranking among the worst.
The changes aren’t uniform across biomes: Temperate conifer forests and boreal forests, both of which are prevalent in North America, are among the hardest hit. A report released last fall by Democrats on the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee showed the staggering cost of the fires to the United States. Accounting for damage to timber stocks and watersheds, smoke damage, lost income, and diminished real estate value on top of the property and insurance costs, the report found that fires cost the U.S. as much as $893 billion per year.
Senate
Joint Economic Committee Democrats
- Coal plants’ reliability is diminishing
Coal plants are becoming less dependable as they age, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said in its 2024 State of Reliability report. Coal plants’ weighted equivalent forced outage rate — defined as as “the probability that a group of units will not meet their generating requirements because of forced outages or forced derates,” with more weight given to larger generating units — was about 12% in 2023, compared with an average of 10% between 2014 and 2022, Jack Norris, a performance analysis engineer with NERC, told reporters. Norris said most other generation sources “have remained within a percentile over the same period,” while coal’s outage rates have been on the rise, Utility Dive reported. Rising maintenance needs and pressure to accommodate variable energy sources are also “having a negative impact on these units’ reliability,” Norris said.
THE KICKER
Germany will likely stop using coal before 2038 “just due to the economic viability,” the country’s climate envoy said Monday.
https://heatmap.news/climate/supreme-court-chevron-fervo-california
The economics — and moral complications — of reality TV
date: 2024-06-25, from: Marketplace Morning Report
When it comes to reality TV, don’t give too much credit to the “reality” part. Yet despite its heavy editing and construction, reality TV has sometimes shaped the wider culture. In this episode, we talk about the economic calculus that led to a genre so many people love to watch, love to hate or both. But first: Nvidia shares enter correction territory.
Ron Perry | Pay Attention, California Drivers
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
Pay attention, people. California Senate Bill 961: This may sound good at first but there are too many reasons why we should all be concerned — the first and foremost […]
The post Ron Perry | Pay Attention, California Drivers appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/ron-perry-pay-attention-california-drivers/
Brian Richards | Never Forget!
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
Of all the insidious lies told about President Donald Trump, one of the worst ones was the “fine people on both sides” lie. I’m loath to cite Snopes because their […]
The post Brian Richards | Never Forget! appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/brian-richards-never-forget/
UK and US cops band together to tackle Qilin’s ransomware shakedowns
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Attacking the NHS is a very bad move
UK and US cops have reportedly joined forces to find and fight Qilin, the ransomware gang wreaking havoc on the global healthcare industry.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/nca_fbi_qilin_ransomware/
California’s statewide minimum wage is on the November ballot. Here’s what voters need to know
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The LAist
The proposal would raise the minimum wage from the current $16 an hour to $18. Yearly increases from there would be tied to the consumer price index.
https://laist.com/news/politics/california-state-minimum-wage-initiative-general-election-2024
Rob Kerchner | The Long-Term Impacts
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
I’ve often marveled about how the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan saved my father’s life, along with the lives of a million of his fellow American soldiers, plus 10 […]
The post Rob Kerchner | The Long-Term Impacts appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/rob-kerchner-the-long-term-impacts/
Dan Walters | Democrats Win Big in State Supremes’ Ruling
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
The century-long and often tortured history of California making law through ballot measures took a new turn Thursday when the state Supreme Court blocked an initiative that would have made […]
The post Dan Walters | Democrats Win Big in State Supremes’ Ruling appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/dan-walters-democrats-win-big-in-state-supremes-ruling/
Sudan’s food economy is in a dire situation
date: 2024-06-25, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: After 14 months of a civil war, a severe humanitarian and economic crisis is unfolding in Sudan. Grain shipments from Ukraine have ceased, humanitarian aid faces significant blockades and the country faces the largest displacement of children worldwide. We’ll hear more about the conflict and its impact. We’ll also learn more about the role of tax policy in the upcoming U.K. election and a land dispute involving Catholic nuns in Spain.
Trump says he knows who his running mate will be
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
By Janice Hisle, Joseph Lord Contributing Writers Former President Donald Trump says he knows who he’s likely to choose as his running mate. During a campaign stop in Philadelphia on Saturday, […]
The post Trump says he knows who his running mate will be appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/trump-says-he-knows-who-his-running-mate-will-be/
Gateway: Up Close in Stunning Detail
date: 2024-06-25, from: NASA breaking news
Witness Gateway in stunning detail with this video that brings the future of lunar exploration to life.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/gateway/gateway-up-close-in-stunning-detail/
On-prem AI has arrived – the solution to cloudy problems no one really has
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Which isn’t to say Nvidia and hyperscalers will win, says analyst Steve Brazier, as regulators circle
HPE discover Walking the floor at HPE’s Discover show in Las Vegas last week, this vulture was left with the distinct impression that HPE and its partners believe that the age of turnkey on-prem enterprise-level AI has arrived.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/nvidia_hpe_ai/
Create anytime, anywhere with OctoStudio
date: 2024-06-25, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
Today our friends Mitch Resnick and Natalie Rusk from MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten group tell you about OctoStudio, their free mobile app for children to create with code. Find their companion article for teachers in the upcoming issue of Hello World magazine, out for free on Monday 1 July. When people see our new OctoStudio coding…
The post Create anytime, anywhere with OctoStudio appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/octostudio-app/
Intel investor sues over Foundry flop, seeks to reforge corporate governance
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Lawsuit demands big changes and a little transparency in reporting
Intel executives have been hit by a shareholder derivative lawsuit from an investor alleging that they and others were misled regarding the financial performance of the company’s foundry business.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/intel_foundry_investor_lawsuit/
GenAI dominates the narrative in ERP, but what is it good for?
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Low-code and report production vie for early use cases, but risks remain
With vendors obsessed with adding generative AI to everything, does it really have a place in ERP software? It’s very early days, say analysts at Forrester.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/genai_erp_forrester/
Valuing the future
date: 2024-06-25, from: Enlightenment Economics
Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology by Liliana Doganova is an interesting read. I don’t entirely agree with its perspective, which is that the concept of discounted cash flow or net present value is inherently damaging to … Continue reading
http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2024/06/valuing-the-future/
Ubuntu 24.10 will default NVIDIA users to Wayland
date: 2024-06-25, from: OS News
The transition to Wayland is nearing completion for most desktop Linux users. The most popular desktop Linux distribution in the world, Ubuntu, has made the call and is switching its NVIDIA users over to Wayland by default in the upcoming release of Ubuntu 24.10. The proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver has been the hold-out on Ubuntu in sticking to the GNOME X.Org session out-of-the-box rather than Wayland as has been the default for the past several releases when using other GPUs/drivers. But for Ubuntu 24.10, the plan is to cross that threshold for NVIDIA now that their official driver has much better Wayland support and has matured into great shape. Particularly with the upcoming NVIDIA R555 driver reaching stable very soon, the Wayland support is in great shape with features like explicit sync ready to use. ↫ Michael Larabel This is great news for the Linux desktop, as having such a popular Linux distribution defaulting the users of the most popular graphics card brand to X.org created a major holdout. None of this obviously means that Wayland is perfect or that all use cases are covered – accessibility is an important use case where tooling simply hasn’t been optimised yet for Wayland, but work is underway – and for those of us who prefer X.org for a variety of reasons, there are still countless distributions offering it as a fallback or as the default option.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140061/ubuntu-24-10-will-default-nvidia-users-to-wayland/
Humanity’s satellite habit could end up choking Earth’s ozone layer
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Just when you think we’ve solved chlorofluorocarbons
Large numbers of low Earth orbit satellites such as those operated by Starlink could pose a threat to the planet’s ozone layer once they re-enter the atmosphere, according to recent research.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/satellite_reentry_ozone/
Microsoft puts repair front and center
date: 2024-06-25, from: OS News
It seems the success of the Framework laptops, as well the community’s relentless focus on demanding repairable devices and he ensuing legislation, are starting to have an impact. It wasn’t that long ago that Microsoft’s Surface devices were effectively impossible to repair, but with the brand new Snapdragon X Elite and Pro devices, the company has made an impressive U-turn, according to iFixIt. Both the new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro are exceptionally easy to repair, and take cues from Framework’s hardware. Microsoft’s journey from the unrepairable Surface Laptop to the highly repairable devices on our teardown table should drive home the importance of designing for repair. The ability to create a repairable Surface was always there but the impetus to design for repairable was missing. I’ll take that as a sign that Right to Repair advocacy and legislation has begun to bear fruit. ↫ Shahram Mokhtari The new Surface devices contain several affordances to make opening them up and repairing them easier. They take cues from Framework in that inside screws and components are clearly labeled to indicate what type they are and which parts they’re holding in place, and there’s a QR code that leads to online repair guides, which were available right away, instead of having to wait months to forever for those to become accessible. The components are also not layered; in other words,you don’t need to remove six components just to get to the SSD, or whatever – some laptops require you to take out the entire mainboard just to get access to the fans to clean them, which is bananas. Microsoft technically doesn’t have to do any of this, so it’s definitely praiseworthy that their hardware department is going the extra kilometre to make this happen. The fact that even the Surface Pro, a tablet, can be reasonably opened up and repaired is especially welcome, since tablets are notoriously difficult to impossible to repair.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140059/microsoft-puts-repair-front-and-center/
South Korean lithium battery plant takes at least 23 lives
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
National Fire Agency responds with inspection of 213 battery-related workplaces
A fire at a lithium battery manufacturing plant in Hwaseong, South Korea on Monday killed at least 23 people and injured eight others.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/aricell_plant_fire/
Ooredoo to splash Nvidia GPUs across the Middle East
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Qatari telco reckons deal will give it an 18–24 month lead in region
Amid US restrictions curbing the export of certain high-end AI accelerators to much of the Middle East, Silicon Valley’s Nvidia has reached an agreement to furnish Qatari telecom Ooredoo’s datacenters with “thousands” of GPUs.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/ooredoo_nvidia_gpus/
Today in SCV History (June 25)
date: 2024-06-25, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1859 – Outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez escapes from prison while serving sentence for grand larceny in SCV area; recaptured in August and sent to San Quentin. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-june-25/
US and allies clash with Tehran, Moscow at UN Security Council
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
UNITED NATIONS — The United States and its key European allies clashed with Iran and Russia over Tehran’s expanding nuclear program, with the U.S. vowing “to use all means necessary to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran” in a U.N. Security Council meeting Monday.
The U.S., France, Britain and Germany accused Iran of escalating its nuclear activities far beyond limits it agreed to in a 2015 deal aimed at preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, and of failing to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran and Russia accused the U.S. and its allies of continuing to apply economic sanctions that were supposed to be lifted under the deal and insisted that Tehran’s nuclear program remains under constant oversight by the IAEA.
The clashes came at a semi-annual meeting on implementation of the nuclear deal between Iran and six major countries — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Under the accord, Tehran agreed to limit enrichment of uranium to levels necessary for the peaceful use of nuclear power in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Then-President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018. Trump said he would negotiate a stronger deal, but that didn’t happen.
The council meeting followed an IAEA report in late May that Iran has more than 142 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60% purity, a technical step away from weapons-grade level of 90%. The IAEA said this was an increase of over 20 kilograms from February.
The IAEA also reported on June 13 that its inspectors verified that Iran has started up new cascades of advanced centrifuges more quickly enrich uranium and planned to install more.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the council that the IAEA reports “show that Iran is determined to expand its nuclear program in ways that have no credible civilian purpose.”
Wood said the U.S. is prepared to use all means to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, but said it remains “fully committed to resolving international concerns surrounding Iran’s nuclear program through diplomacy.”
The three Western countries that remain in the JCPOA — France, Germany and the United Kingdom — issued a joint statement after the council meeting also leaving the door open for diplomatic efforts “that ensure Iran never develops a nuclear weapon.”
They said Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is now 30 times the JCPOA limit and stressed that Iran committed not to install or operate any centrifuges for enrichment under the JCPOA.
Their joint statement also noted that “Iranian officials have issued statements about its capacity to assemble a nuclear weapon.”
Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani blamed “the unilateral and unlawful U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA” and the failure of the three European parties to the deal “to honor their commitments,” saying it is “crystal clear” they are responsible for the current non-functioning of the agreement.
In the face of U.S. and European sanctions, he said, Iran has the right to halt its commitments under the JCPOA.
Iravani reiterated Iran’s rejection of nuclear weapons, and insisted its nuclear activities including enrichment are “for peaceful purposes” and are subject to “robust verification and monitoring” by the IAEA.
The Iranian ambassador strongly endorsed the JCPOA, calling it a hard-won diplomatic achievement “that effectively averted an undue crisis.”
“It remains the best option, has no alternative, and its revival is indeed in the interest of all of its participants,” he said. “Our remedial measures are reversible if all sanctions are lifted fully and verifiably.”
But France, Germany and the UK said some of Iran’s nuclear advances are irreversible.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said U.S. promises “to abandon the policy of maximum pressure on Tehran and to return to the nuclear deal remained empty words.”
He accused some other JCPOA parties, which he didn’t name, of “doing everything possible to continuously rock the boat, jettisoning opportunities for the implementation of the nuclear deal.”
Nebenzia urged the European parties to the agreement and the United States to return to the negotiating table in Vienna and “demonstrate their commitment to the objective of restoration of the nuclear deal.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, the coordinator of the JCPOA, said the compromise text he put forward two years ago for the U.S. to return to the JCPOA and for Iran to resume full implementation of the agreement remains on the table.
Airbn-bye: Barcelona bans short-term apartment rentals for tourists
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Spanish sublet shock solution to housing crisis
Tourists in the Spanish city of Barcelona will have fewer lodging options come 2028, as the city has decided to evict operators of short-term apartment rentals. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/airbnb_barcelona_ban/
A look at Julian Assange and how the long-jailed WikiLeaks founder is now on the verge of freedom
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — News that the U.S. Justice Department has reached a plea deal that will lead to freedom for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange brings a stunning culmination to a long-running saga of international intrigue that spanned multiple continents. Its central character is a quixotic internet publisher with a profound disdain for government secrets.
A look at Assange, the case and the latest developments:
Who is Julian Assange?
An Australian editor and publisher, he is best known for having founded the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, which gained massive attention — and notoriety — for the 2010 release of almost half a million documents relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His activism made him a cause célèbre among press freedom advocates who said his work in exposing U.S. military misconduct in foreign countries made his activities indistinguishable from what traditional journalists are expected to do as part of their jobs.
But those same actions put him in the crosshairs of American prosecutors, who released an indictment in 2019 that accused Assange — holed up at the time in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London — of conspiring with an Army private to illegally obtain and publish sensitive government records.
“Julian Assange is no journalist,” John Demers, the then-top Justice Department national security official, said at the time. “No responsible actor, journalist or otherwise, would purposely publish the names of individuals he or she knew to be confidential human sources in war zones, exposing them to the gravest of dangers.”
What is he accused of?
The Trump administration’s Justice Department accused Assange of directing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
The charges relate to WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents, with prosecutors accusing Assange of helping Manning steal classified diplomatic cables that they say endangered national security and of conspiring together to crack a Defense Department password.
Reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq published by Assange included the names of Afghans and Iraqis who provided information to American and coalition forces, prosecutors said, while the diplomatic cables he released exposed journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates and dissidents in repressive countries.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses for leaking classified government and military documents to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, allowing her release after about seven years behind bars.
Why wasn’t he already in U.S. custody?
Assange has spent the last five years in a British high-security prison, fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. and winning favorable court rulings that have delayed any transfer across the Atlantic.
He was evicted in April 2019 from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had sought refuge seven years earlier amid an investigation by Swedish authorities into claims of sexual misconduct that he has long denied and that was later dropped. The South American nation revoked the political asylum following the charges by the U.S. government.
Despite his arrest and imprisonment by British authorities, extradition efforts by the U.S. had stalled prior to the plea deal.
A U.K. judge in 2021 rejected the U.S. extradition request in 2021 on the grounds that Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. Higher courts overturned that decision after getting assurances from the U.S. about his treatment. The British government signed an extradition order in June 2022.
Then, last month, two High Court judges ruled that Assange can mount a new appeal based on arguments about whether he will receive free-speech protections or be at a disadvantage because he is not a U.S. citizen. The date of the hearing has yet to be determined.
What will the deal require?
Assange will have to plead guilty to a felony charge under the Espionage Act of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States, according to a Justice Department letter filed in federal court.
Rather than face the prospect of prison time in the U.S., he is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing. Those proceedings are scheduled for Wednesday morning, local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Northern Mariana Islands.
The hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental U.S. and the court’s proximity to Australia.
On Monday evening, he left a British prison ahead of a court hearing expected to result in his release.
Is this case connected to the 2016 election?
It’s not, but beyond his interactions with Manning, Assange is well-known for the role WikiLeaks played in the 2016 presidential election, when it released a massive tranche of Democratic emails that federal prosecutors say were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives.
The goal, officials have said, was to harm the electoral effort of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and boost her Republican challenger Donald Trump, who famously said during the campaign: “WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks.”
Assange was not charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. But the investigation nonetheless painted an unflattering role of WikiLeaks in advancing what prosecutors say was a brazen campaign of Russian election interference.
Assange denied in a Fox News interview that aired in January 2017 that Russians were the source of the hacked emails, though those denials are challenged by a 2018 indictment by Mueller of 12 Russian military intelligence officers.
Alibaba Cloud unleashes thousands of Chinese AI models to the world
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Like Bedrock or Azure OpenAI Studio – but with the added fun of geopolitical risk
Alibaba Cloud has created an English language version of Modelscope, its models-as-service offering.…
The Northern Mariana Touchdown
date: 2024-06-25, from: Tedium feed
After years in a British prison, Julian Assange is going back to Australia—minus a short layover in one of the world’s most remote places. As day trips go, it’s fascinating.
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16724146/julian-assange-northern-mariana-islands-unusual-trip
SDA MFA programs to be tuition-free
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The two SDA MFA programs will become tuition-free in the 2024-25 academic year.
The post SDA MFA programs to be tuition-free appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/24/sda-mfa-programs-to-be-tuition-free/
Santa Barbara Leaders Reflect on Two-Year Anniversary of ‘Roe v. Wade’ Reversal
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Congressmember Salud Carbajal and Supervisor Laura Capps rally with Planned Parenthood at County Courthouse on Monday.
The post Santa Barbara Leaders Reflect on Two-Year Anniversary of ‘Roe v. Wade’ Reversal appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Florida Panthers win NHL’s Stanley Cup championship
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/florida-panthers-win-nhl-s-stanley-cup-championship/7669041.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
How to run macOs 10.14 High Sierra on Mac M1 arm silicon.
Boeing’s Old Friend Inside Biden’s Justice Department
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Lever News
The Justice Department is packed with corporate lawyers who previously worked for the companies they are now charged with prosecuting.
https://www.levernews.com/boeings-old-friend-inside-bidens-justice-department/
Saugus Swap Meet continuing at least through July
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
The Saugus Swap Meet is continuing until at least the end of July, according to Doug Bonelli, who owns the land that hosts the twice-weekly market. Responding to numerous rumors […]
The post Saugus Swap Meet continuing at least through July appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/saugus-swap-meet-continuing-at-least-through-july/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange strikes plea deal with U.S.
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/24/julian-assange-plea-deal-us-wikileaks
2 years after Roe overturned, abortion decision reverberates
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/years-after-roe-overturned-abortion-decision-reverberates/7668980.html
Post Fire containment up to 90%, all evacuation warnings lifted
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
All evacuation warnings related to the Post Fire have been lifted and containment is at 90% as of Monday, according to the L.A. County Fire Department’s incident update. The fire’s […]
The post Post Fire containment up to 90%, all evacuation warnings lifted appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/post-fire-containment-up-to-90-all-evacuation-warnings-lifted/
Law enforcement is spying on thousands of Americans’ mail, records show
date: 2024-06-25, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Drew Harwell at the Washington Post]
“Postal inspectors say they fulfill [requests from law enforcement to share information from letters and packages] only when mail monitoring can help find a fugitive or investigate a crime. But a decade’s worth of records, provided exclusively to The Washington Post in response to a congressional probe, show Postal Service officials have received more than 60,000 requests from federal agents and police officers since 2015, and that they rarely say no.”
I wish this was surprising. Something similar seems to have gone on in every trusted facet of American life: from cell phone providers to online library platforms to license plate readers on the roads. It’s all part of an Overton window shift into pervasive surveillance that has been ongoing for decades.
Senator Ron Wyden is right to be blunt:
“These new statistics show that thousands of Americans are subjected to warrantless surveillance each year, and that the Postal Inspection Service rubber stamps practically all of the requests they receive.”
We shouldn’t accept it. And yet, by and large, we do.
<p>[<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/24/post-office-mail-surveillance-law-enforcement/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/law-enforcement-is-spying-on-thousands-of-americans-mail-records
Saugus school district contracts, budget up for approval
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
The governing board of the Saugus Union School District is scheduled Tuesday to approve the respective tentative agreements between the district and its teachers and classified employees. The tentative agreements […]
The post Saugus school district contracts, budget up for approval appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/saugus-school-district-contracts-budget-up-for-approval/
Julian Assange to go free in guilty plea deal with US
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
WikiLeaks boss already out of Blighty and, if all goes to plan, ultimately off to home in Australia
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been freed from prison in the UK after agreeing to plead guilty to just one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, brought against him by the United States. Uncle Sam previously filed more than a dozen counts.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/julian_assange_freed_plea_deal/
CIF-SS Commissioner Mike West | Year in Review
date: 2024-06-25, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The 2023-2024 school year has come to a close and along with it a very successful year of high school athletics
https://scvnews.com/cif-ss-commissioner-mike-west-year-in-review/
WikiLeaks founder Assange to plead guilty in deal with US, be freed from prison
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
washington — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will free him from prison and resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents, according to court papers filed late Monday.
Assange is scheduled to appear in the federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, the Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.
The guilty plea, which a judge must approve, abruptly ends a criminal case of international intrigue and the U.S. government’s yearslong pursuit of a publisher whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause celebre among many press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. Investigators, by contrast, have repeatedly asserted that his actions broke laws meant to protect sensitive information and put the country’s national security at risk.
He is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing, which is scheduled for Wednesday morning, local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Northern Mariana Islands. The hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental U.S., and because of the court’s proximity to Australia.
Assange’s U.S. attorney, Barry Pollack, did not immediately return messages seeking comment Monday.
The deal ensures that Assange will admit guilt while also sparing him from any additional prison time. He had spent years hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London after Swedish authorities sought his arrest on rape allegations before he was locked up in the United Kingdom.
Prosecutors have agreed to a sentence of the five years Assange has already spent in a high-security British prison while fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face charges, a process that has played out in a series of hearings in London. Last month, he won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free-speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.
Assange has been heralded by many around the world as a hero who brought to light military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
But his reputation was also tarnished by rape allegations, which he has denied.
The Justice Department’s indictment unsealed in 2019 accused Assange of encouraging and helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published in 2010. Prosecutors had accused Assange of damaging national security by publishing documents that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.
The case was lambasted by press advocates and Assange supporters. Federal prosecutors defended it as targeting conduct that went way beyond that of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents. It was brought even though the Obama administration Justice Department had passed on prosecuting him years earlier.
The plea agreement comes months after President Joe Biden said he was considering a request from Australia to drop the U.S. push to prosecute Assange.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses for leaking classified government and military documents to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, allowing her release after about seven behind bars.
Assange made headlines in 2016 after his website published Democratic emails that prosecutors say were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives. He was never charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, but the inquiry laid bare in stark detail the role that the hacking operation played in interfering in that year’s election on behalf of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Justice Department officials mulled charges for Assange following the documents’ 2010 publication, but were unsure a case would hold up in court and were concerned it could be hard to justify prosecuting him for acts similar to those of a conventional journalist.
The posture changed in the Trump administration, however, with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 calling Assange’s arrest a priority.
Assange’s family and supporters have said his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles, which includes seven years spent inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Assange took refuge there in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country. British police arrested him after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019, and then he was jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy.
Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange has remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison during the extradition battle with the U.S.
https://www.voanews.com/a/wikileaks-founder-assange-to-plead-guilty-in-deal-with-us-/7668959.html
Infrastructure Repair Work to Take Place Over Summer
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
GOLETA, CA, June 21, 2024 – Work is about to begin to repair City infrastructure damaged in the February 2024 storm. The
The post Infrastructure Repair Work to Take Place Over Summer appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/24/infrastructure-repair-work-to-take-place-over-summer/
June 27: Castaic Union Expected to Adopt 2024-2025 Budget
date: 2024-06-25, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Castaic Union School District Governing Board will hold its regular meeting Thursday, June 27, at 6 p.m
https://scvnews.com/june-27-castaic-union-expected-to-adopt-2024-2025-budget/
US expected to announce $150M in new military aid for Ukraine
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
Pentagon — The U.S. is expected to announce a new military aid package for Ukraine valued at up to $150 million as soon as Tuesday, two U.S. officials tell VOA.
The package is being provided to Kyiv under the presidential drawdown authority (PDA), which pulls weapons, ammunition and equipment from U.S. military stockpiles to fulfill Ukraine’s short-term needs.
One of the officials — who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the package ahead of its planned announcement — said the latest round of aid would include munitions for HIMARS and other critical munitions. It does not include cluster munitions, according to the official.
Asked whether the aid package includes long-range missiles known as ATACMS, the official replied, “For operational security reasons, we aren’t going into further details.”
ATACMS have a range of up to 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) and nearly double the striking distance of Ukraine’s missiles.
When asked by VOA on June 12 if the United States had provided Ukraine with more ATACMS since mid-March, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General C.Q. Brown said, “We’re working through the ATACMS piece, and we continue to provide that capability through our PDAs.”
Russia has accused Ukraine of using some of the U.S.-provided ATACMS in deadly strikes this week inside Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.
Russia summoned the U.S. ambassador in Moscow on Monday to protest the use of the missiles.
This week’s aid package for Kyiv will dip into the $61 billion in Ukraine funding signed into law by President Joe Biden in April.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-expected-to-announce-150m-in-new-military-aid-for-ukraine/7668956.html
Estado Actual: Gripe Avar H5N1
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
(SANTA BÁRBARA, Calif.) – El Departamento de Salud Pública de Santa Bárbara continúa monitoreando de cerca la situación en desarrollo
The post Estado Actual: Gripe Avar H5N1 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/24/estado-actual-gripe-avar-h5n1/
City cuts ribbon for new parkway in Newhall
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
Celebrating a connection decades in the making by some counts, Santa Clarita officials loaded up on the city’s trolley and took the inaugural cruise up Needham Ranch Parkway after cutting […]
The post City cuts ribbon for new parkway in Newhall appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/city-cuts-ribbon-for-new-parkway-in-newhall/
America’s best chance for nationwide privacy law could do more harm than good
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Congress has effectively gutted it as part of a backroom deal’
Analysis Introduced in April, the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) was - in the words of its drafters - “the best opportunity we’ve had in decades to establish a national data privacy and security standard that gives people the right to control their personal information.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/american_privacy_rights_actsa/
The key bit of the code that was biting me in net/http
date: 2024-06-25, from: Ze Iaso’s blog
A clip from a longer stream VOD where I explain how MIME parsing works in Go’s net/http package
https://xeiaso.net/videos/2024/how-mime-parsing-works/
Writing MIME, RSS, and existential suffering
date: 2024-06-25, from: Ze Iaso’s blog
https://xeiaso.net/vods/2024/mime-rss/
H5N1 Bird Flu: Current Status
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) – The Santa Barbara Public Health department continues to closely monitor the developing avian influenza H5N1 situation.
The post H5N1 Bird Flu: Current Status appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/24/h5n1-bird-flu-current-status/
New Low for UCSB
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
I had the privilege of attending my daughter’s graduation from UC Santa Barbara, a ceremony that reached a low well beneath the stature of a publicly supported university.
The post New Low for UCSB appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/24/new-low-for-ucsb/
The Blue Owl and Rooted Santa Barbara County Presents “Give a Hoot” Benefit on July 1, 2024
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA – June 21, 2024 – The Blue Owl and Rooted Santa Barbara County have linked arms to
The post The Blue Owl and Rooted Santa Barbara County Presents “Give a Hoot” Benefit on July 1, 2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
June 25: Saugus Union School District Regular Board Meeting
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The regular meeting of the Saugus Union School District Governing Board will take place Tuesday, June 25, with closed session beginning at 5 p.m., followed immediately by public session at 6:40 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Education Center, located at 24930 Avenue Stanford in Santa Clarita. The Board is scheduled to approve…
Postdoctoral scholars vote 93% in favor of forming union
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The vote to form the USC Researchers and Fellows United-United Auto Workers had a 200-15 margin of victory.
The post Postdoctoral scholars vote 93% in favor of forming union appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/24/postdoctoral-scholars-vote-93-in-favor-of-forming-union/
Girls Inc. of Carpinteria Celebrates Successful Inaugural Year of ¡Listos! Smart & Ready Program and Announces Expansion Plans
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
CARPINTERIA, CA (June 24, 2024) – Girls Inc. of Carpinteria is excited to announce the remarkable success of its pilot
The post Girls Inc. of Carpinteria Celebrates Successful Inaugural Year of ¡Listos! Smart & Ready Program and Announces Expansion Plans appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
July 26-28: LEAP Children’s Museum Hosting Pop-Up Event
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
A new nonprofit initiative in Santa Clarita is laying the foundation for a groundbreaking Children’s Museum
https://scvnews.com/july-26-28-leap-childrens-museum-hosting-pop-up-event/
Apple Says It Won’t Ship Apple Intelligence for EU Users in 2024
date: 2024-06-24, from: TidBITS blog
Apple has said the Digital Markets Act’s interoperability requirements will prevent it from shipping Apple Intelligence, iPhone Mirroring, and SharePlay Screen Sharing for EU users in 2024.
https://tidbits.com/2024/06/24/apple-says-it-wont-ship-apple-intelligence-for-eu-users-in-2024/
Major Crimes seeking bank-robbery suspect
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Signal
The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s Major Crimes Bureau is investigating a report of a bank robbery Friday at the California Bank & Trust in Acton, according to Palmdale Sheriff’s Station […]
The post Major Crimes seeking bank-robbery suspect appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/major-crimes-seeking-bank-robbery-suspect/
Highway 154 Remains Closed to Through Traffic Between Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez Valley for Foreseeable Future
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Caltrans is adding supports under the road to shore it up after cracks developed across all traffic lanes on June 21.
The post Highway 154 Remains Closed to Through Traffic Between Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez Valley for Foreseeable Future appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Full Closure of State Route 192 in Santa Barbara Scheduled for July 1-2
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Two-day closure along Mountain Drive needed to complete the paving work for a drainage system installation project, Caltrans says.
The post Full Closure of State Route 192 in Santa Barbara Scheduled for July 1-2 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
San Jose Museum of Art exhibit looks at Mexican American life
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Christina Fernandez’s thought-provoking art reflects the politics and culture of her Mexican American family.
Letters: Teaching English | Solar firm win | Sideshow space | Indoctrinating students | Not pro-life | Project 2025
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for June 25, 2024
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/24/letters-1773/
Windows 11 is now automatically enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission
date: 2024-06-24, from: OS News
Microsoft has made OneDrive slightly more annoying for Windows 11 users. Quietly and without any announcement, the company changed Windows 11’s initial setup so that it could turn on the automatic folder backup without asking for it. Now, those setting up a new Windows computer the way Microsoft wants them to (in other words, connected to the internet and signed into a Microsoft account) will get to their desktops with OneDrive already syncing stuff from folders like Desktop Pictures, Documents, Music, and Videos. Depending on how much is stored there, you might end up with a desktop and other folders filled to the brim with shortcuts to various stuff right after finishing a clean Windows installation. ↫ Taras Buria at NeoWin Just further confirmation that Windows 11 is not ready for the desktop.
Rain, lightning over Bay Area not likely to last
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
“Stay weather aware. When the thunder roars, go indoors!” the forecast advised residents.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/24/rain-lightning-over-bay-area-not-likely-to-last/
SCV Senior Center Announces $5.1M Cut to Nutrition Budget
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The SCV Senior Center was recently informed that their Nutrition Budget - “Meals for Seniors” for Fiscal Year starting July 1, 2024, will be cut by $5.1 million dollars.
https://scvnews.com/scv-senior-center-announces-5-1m-cut-to-nutrition-budget/
What you need to know about the California budget deal
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Signal
By Alexei Koseff CalMatters Writer California will make widespread cuts to state government operations, prisons, housing programs and health care workforce development in order to maintain its social safety net as […]
The post What you need to know about the California budget deal appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-california-budget-deal/
LA County Board of Supervisors approves $45.6 billion budget
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The LAist
The budget allocates new funding for alternatives to incarceration, mental health care, and support for people experiencing homelessness.
https://laist.com/news/politics/la-county-board-of-supervisors-approve-45-6-billion-budget
Pinot Pours and More at Taste of Sta. Rita Hills
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Michael and Marlene Robinson take over Los Olivos tasting room and wine club.
The post Pinot Pours and More at Taste of Sta. Rita Hills appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/24/pinot-pours-and-more-at-taste-of-sta-rita-hills/
VTA light rail derailment forces Capitol Station closure, bus bridge
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ten people had boarded at the Capitol Station and were traveling north when the train derailed near Capitol Expressway and Highway 87.
US, South Korea, Japan condemn North Korea-Russia military pact
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Signal
By Aldgra Fredly Contributing Writer The United States, South Korea and Japan on Sunday condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the military cooperation between North Korea and Russia after the leaders […]
The post US, South Korea, Japan condemn North Korea-Russia military pact appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/us-south-korea-japan-condemn-north-korea-russia-military-pact/
Wildlife mystery: Why are gray whales swimming into San Francisco Bay in increasing numbers?
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Popular species faces risks from collisions with big ships, as researchers look for clues
US moves Brunei, Sudan to blacklist on human trafficking report
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
Scriptnotes, Episode 643: Agents and Managers 101, Transcript
date: 2024-06-24, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you are listening to Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, agents and managers. How do you obtain them? How do you work with them? […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 643: Agents and Managers 101, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-643-agents-and-managers-101-transcript
Scriptnotes, Episode 642: It’s Brutal Out Here, Transcript
date: 2024-06-24, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hey, this is John. Heads up that today’s episode has just a little bit of swearing in it. Hello and welcome. My name is John August. Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin. John: You’re listening to Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 642: It’s Brutal Out Here, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-642-its-brutal-out-here-transcript
Trump attorney takes aim at funding of classified documents prosecution
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
FORT PIERCE, Florida — An attorney for Donald Trump told a federal judge on Monday that the criminal prosecution against the former president on charges he mishandled classified documents was unlawfully funded, as they made another attempt to get the charges thrown out of court.
Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that the funding mechanism for their office has been upheld in past cases, as they sought to work through a thicket of legal challenges that have delayed the trial indefinitely.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges that he illegally held on to sensitive national security papers after leaving office in 2021 and that he obstructed government efforts to retrieve them. The criminal case is one of four Trump has been facing as he seeks to unseat Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 5 election.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, set hearings on Friday and Monday in her Florida courtroom for Trump’s lawyers to argue several motions making claims similar to those that have been rejected in other cases. On Friday, Trump attorneys urged her to find U.S. special counsel Jack Smith has too much independence - even though Trump has repeatedly blasted him as a puppet of Biden.
On Monday, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the U.S. Justice Department should not be allowed to use a fund Congress set aside in the 1970s for independent politically sensitive investigations to pay for the documents probe.
“More oversight from Congress is required for the extraordinary things that are going on in these prosecutions,” Bove said. Some Republicans in the House of Representatives have called for defunding Smith’s office.
Special counsels have been appointed in Democratic- and Republican-led administrations alike to ensure an attorney can independently investigate and, if warranted, prosecute a case without any appearance of political influence.
U.S. prosecutor James Pearce told Cannon that the funding had been upheld in previous court cases that challenged other special prosecutors - including David Weiss, who recently won a criminal conviction of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
Pearce said the Justice Department would fund Smith’s office out of its regular budget if Cannon ruled that it cannot rely on the 1970s law.
Cannon has allowed a flurry of motions by Trump’s legal team and has ruled in favor of the Republican presidential candidate on previous requests. It is unlikely the case will reach a jury before Trump and Biden face voters in the election.
Gag order request
Smith’s team was due to ask Cannon later on Monday to bar Trump from making statements that pose a threat to law enforcement while he awaits trial.
Trump falsely claimed that a routine FBI use-of-force policy in effect during a 2022 search of his Florida resort authorized agents to attempt an assassination.
Prosecutors called the claim “deceptive and inflammatory” in a court filing and said it subjected agents to “unjustified and unacceptable risks.”
Trump’s lawyers say a gag order would violate Trump’s free-speech rights in the heat of the presidential campaign. They also argue that prosecutors have not presented evidence of threats against the FBI.
Cannon previously denied the request on procedural grounds after she ruled that prosecutors had not adequately consulted with Trump’s lawyers before filing it.
Trump faces gag orders limiting his public statements in another federal case, also overseen by Smith, accusing him of attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, and a case in New York that led to his conviction in May for falsifying business records.
Trump has verbally attacked prosecutors, judges and witnesses in legal cases against him, contending that the U.S. justice system is being used to undermine his campaign.
Trump’s criticism of the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago social club intensified last month after the bureau’s use-of-force policy was made public as part of a tranche of records related to the FBI operation.
The policy stipulated that the FBI could not use lethal force unless an agent or other person was at serious risk of death or serious injury. Trump was not present at the club at the time of the search.
Trump’s baseless claim about an attempted assassination was included in campaign fundraising emails and was echoed by his allies in Congress.
Experiencing Art Immersion with the Vision Pro
date: 2024-06-24, from: TidBITS blog
Using the Art Authority Museum app for the Vision Pro, you can virtually wander among many masterpieces of Western art. Michael Cohen reports on his explorations.
https://tidbits.com/2024/06/24/experiencing-art-immersion-with-the-vision-pro/
Lawsuit challenges new Louisiana law requiring classrooms to display Ten Commandments
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Civil liberties groups filed a lawsuit Monday to block Louisiana’s new law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom, a measure they contend is unconstitutional.
Plaintiffs in the suit include parents of Louisiana public schoolchildren, represented by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“This display sends a message to my children and other students that people of some religious denominations are superior to others,” said the Rev. Jeff Simms, a Presbyterian pastor who is a plaintiff in the suit and father of three children in Louisiana public schools. “This is religious favoritism.”
Under the legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry last week, all public K-12 classrooms and state-funded universities will be required to display a poster-sized version of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” next year.
Opponents argue that the law is a violation of separation of church and state and that the display will isolate students, especially those who are not Christian. Proponents say the measure is not solely religious, but that it has historical significance. In the language of the law, the Ten Commandments are “foundational documents of our state and national government.”
Plaintiff Joshua Herlands has two young children in New Orleans public schools who, like their father, are Jewish. There are multiple versions of the Ten Commandments, and Herlands said the specific version mandated for classroom walls does not align with the version from his faith. He worries the display will send a troubling message to his kids and others that “they may be lesser in the eyes of the government.”
“Politicians have absolutely no business forcing their religious beliefs on my kids or any kids, or attempting to indoctrinate them with what they think is the right version of a particular piece of religious text,” Herlands said.
The lawsuit filed Monday seeks a court declaration that the new law, referred to in the lawsuit as HB 71, violates First Amendment clauses forbidding government establishment of religion and guaranteeing religious liberty. It also seeks an order prohibiting the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
“The state’s main interest in passing H.B. 71 was to impose religious beliefs on public-school children, regardless of the harm to students and families,” the lawsuit says. “The law’s primary sponsor and author, Representative Dodie Horton, proclaimed during debate over the bill that it ‘seeks to have a display of God’s law in the classroom for children to see what He says is right and what He says is wrong.’”
Defendants include state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley, members of the state education board and some local school boards.
Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill support the new law, and Murrill has said she is looking forward to defending it. She issued a statement saying she couldn’t comment directly on the lawsuit because she had not yet seen it.
“It seems the ACLU only selectively cares about the First Amendment — it doesn’t care when the Biden administration censors speech or arrests pro-life protesters, but apparently it will fight to prevent posters that discuss our own legal history,” Murrill said in the emailed statement.
The Ten Commandments have long been at the center of lawsuits across the nation.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.
In a more recent ruling, the Supreme Court held in 2005 that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol in Austin. Those were 5-4 decisions, but the court’s makeup has changed, with a 6-3 conservative majority now.
Other states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Utah, have attempted to pass requirements that the schools display the Ten Commandments. However, with threats of legal battles, none has the mandate in place except for Louisiana.
The posters in Louisiana, which will be paired with a four-paragraph “context statement” describing how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of public education for almost three centuries,” must be in place in classrooms by the start of 2025.
The controversial law comes during a new era of conservative leadership in Louisiana under Landry, who replaced two-term Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in January. The GOP holds a supermajority in the Legislature, and Republicans hold every statewide elected position, paving the way for lawmakers to push through a conservative agenda.
The case was allotted to U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, nominated to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama.
Explore these Airbnb alternatives for your next vacation
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Whether you’re looking for luxury, transparency or adventure, there’s an option to suit your needs and budget.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/24/explore-these-airbnb-alternatives-for-your-next-vacation/
Kathryn Barger | Fighting Fires
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
I know I speak for everyone when I say the passing of firefighter Andrew Pontious in the line of duty just one week ago was heartbreaking
https://scvnews.com/kathryn-barger-fighting-fires/
Santa Clarita Native Jeremy Bischoff to Compete in Olympic Trials
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Jeremy Bischoff, a Santa Clarita native and a member of the USA Gymnastics National Team for five years, will compete for a spot in the 2024 Summer Olympic Games this week. Bischoff, a 2020 graduate of Canyon High School/Learning Post Academy, will compete in the U.S. Olympic Trials June 27-June 30 in Minneapolis.
https://scvnews.com/santa-clarita-native-jeremy-bischoff-to-compete-in-olympic-trials/
North American car dealerships in revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — Car dealerships in North America continue to wrestle with major disruptions that started last week with cyberattacks on a software company used widely in the auto retail sales sector.
CDK Global, a company that provides software for thousands of auto dealers in the U.S. and Canada, was hit by back-to-back cyberattacks Wednesday. That led to an outage that has continued to impact operations.
For prospective car buyers, that has meant delays at dealerships or vehicle orders written up by hand. There’s no immediate end in sight, with CDK saying it expects the restoration process to take “several days” to complete.
On Monday, Group 1 Automotive Inc., a $4 billion automotive retailer, said that it continued to use “alternative processes” to sell cars to its customers. Lithia Motors and AutoNation, two other dealership chains, also disclosed that they implemented workarounds to keep their operations going.
Here is what you need to know.
What is CDK Global?
CDK Global is a major player in the auto sales industry. The company, based just outside of Chicago in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, provides software technology to dealers that helps with day-to-day operations — like facilitating vehicle sales, financing, insurance and repairs.
CDK serves more than 15,000 retail locations across North America, according to the company.
What happened last week?
CDK experienced back-to-back cyberattacks on Wednesday. The company shut down all of its systems out of an abundance of caution, spokesperson Lisa Finney said last week.
“We have begun the restoration process,” Finney said in an update over the weekend — noting that the company had launched an investigation into the “cyber incident” with third-party experts and notified law enforcement.
“Based on the information we have at this time, we anticipate that the process will take several days to complete, and in the interim we are continuing to actively engage with our customers and provide them with alternate ways to conduct business,” she added.
In messages to its customers, the company has also warned of “bad actors” posing as members or affiliates of CDK to try to obtain system access by contacting customers. It urged them to be cautious of any attempted phishing.
The incident bore all the hallmarks of a ransomware attack, in which targets are asked to pay a ransom to access encrypted files. But CDK declined to comment directly — neither confirming or denying if it had received a ransom demand.
Are impacted dealerships still selling cars?
Several major auto companies — including Stellantis, Ford and BMW — confirmed to The Associated Press last week that the CDK outage had impacted some of their dealers, but that sales operations continue.
In light of the ongoing situation, a spokesperson for Stellantis said Friday that many dealerships had switched to manual processes to serve customers. That includes writing up orders by hand.
A Ford spokesperson added that the outage may cause “some delays and inconveniences at some dealers and for some customers.” However, many Ford and Lincoln customers are still getting sales and service support through alternative routes being used at dealerships.
Group 1 Automotive Inc., which owns 202 automotive dealerships, 264 franchises, and 42 collision centers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, said Monday that the incident has disrupted its business applications and processes in its U.S. operations that rely on CDK’s dealers’ systems. The company said that it took measures to protect and isolate its systems from CDK’s platform.
All Group 1 U.S. dealerships will continue to conduct business using alternative processes until CDK’s dealers’ systems are available, the company said Monday. Group 1’s dealerships in the U.K. don’t use CDK’s dealers’ systems and are not impacted by the incident.
In regulatory filings, Lithia Motors and AutoNation disclosed that last week’s incident at CDK had disrupted their operations as well.
Lithia said it activated cyber incident response procedures, which included “severing business service connections between the company’s systems and CDK’s.” AutoNation said it also took steps to protect its systems and data — adding that all of its locations remain open “albeit with lower productivity,” as many are served manually or through alternative processes.
With many details of the cyberattacks still unclear, customer privacy is also at top of mind — especially with little known about what information may have been compromised this week.
In a statement last week, Mike Stanton, president and CEO of the National Automobile Dealers Association, said “dealers are very committed to protecting their customer information” and were seeking updates from CDK to determine the scope of impact “so they can respond appropriately.”
Cybersecurity experts have stressed that consumers connected to CDK (or a CDK-affilated dealership) should assume that their data may have been breached. Those impacted should monitor their credit — or even consider freezing their credit as an added layer of defense — and be wary of any suspicious phishing messages.
Goodrow likely still getting over ‘shock’ and ‘disappointment’ of Rangers’ move, Sharks’ Grier says
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
San Jose Sharks GM Mike Grier said Barclay Goodrow is likely still processing unceremonious departure from New York Rangers
Record labels gang up to sue AI music generator duo into utter oblivion
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Recording Industry Ass. of America orchestrates war on Udio and Suno
Updated Big name record labels are together suing two AI startups for allegedly training their music-generating models on copyrighted tracks without permission, resulting in the software emitting audio that rips off commercial work.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/udio_suno_riaa/
Outstanding Young Artists Recognized in MTD Art Contest
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA – Santa Barbara MTD held the 8th Annual Youth Art Poster Contest this spring for Grades 1 through
The post Outstanding Young Artists Recognized in MTD Art Contest appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/24/outstanding-young-artists-recognized-in-mtd-art-contest/
The Depth of the Tragedy
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Ynez Valley artist Max Gleason guides healing through “Art Medicine” workshop series.
The post The Depth of the Tragedy appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/24/the-depth-of-the-tragedy/
This Week’s Presidential Debate May Decide the Future of Democracy
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A TV event that may be the most important political show you will ever watch.
The post This Week’s Presidential Debate May Decide the Future of Democracy appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Sale closed in San Jose: $1.8 million for a three-bedroom home
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
A house located in the 6200 block of Sager Way in San Jose has new owners. The 1,727-square-foot property, built in 1968, was sold on June 6, 2024. The $1,800,000 purchase price works out to $1,042 per square foot.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/24/sale-closed-in-san-jose-1-8-million-for-a-three-bedroom-home/
Supreme Court still has 6 blockbuster rulings to issue
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Signal
By Jack Phillips Contributing Writer The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to release a number of significant rulings in the coming week, including ones relating to whether former President Donald Trump […]
The post Supreme Court still has 6 blockbuster rulings to issue appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/supreme-court-still-has-6-blockbuster-rulings-to-issue/
Santa Barbara’s Eastside Boys & Girls Club Reopens Under New Director
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Sunday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony follows last month’s split with the United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County.
The post Santa Barbara’s Eastside Boys & Girls Club Reopens Under New Director appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
‘Studio 74’ Coming to Zonta SCV’s Golden Anniversary Celebration
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Zonta Club of Santa Clarita Valley invites the community to celebrate its 50 years of improving lives of women and girls globally and in the SCV with a glittering disco gala at The Oaks Club, Valencia, on Saturday night, Sept.
https://scvnews.com/studio-74-coming-to-zonta-scvs-golden-anniversary-celebration/
Apple first company to be found violating DMA
date: 2024-06-24, from: OS News
Today, the European Commission has informed Apple of its preliminary view that its App Store rules are in breach of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), as they prevent app developers from freely steering consumers to alternative channels for offers and content. In addition, the Commission opened a new non-compliance procedure against Apple over concerns that its new contractual requirements for third-party app developers and app stores, including Apple’s new “Core Technology Fee”, fall short of ensuring effective compliance with Apple’s obligations under the DMA. ↫ European Commission press release File this in the category for entirely expected news that is the opposite of surprising. Apple has barely even been maliciously compliant with the DMA, and the European Commission is entirely right in pursuing the company for its continued violation of the law. The DMA really isn’t a very complicated law, and the fact the world’s most powerful and wealthiest corporation in the world can’t seem to adapt its products to the privacy and competition laws here in the EU is clearly just a bunch of grandstanding and whining. In fact, I find that the European Commission is remarkably lenient and cooperative in its dealings with the major technology giants in general, and Apple in particular. They’ve been in talks with Apple for a long time now in preparation for the DMA, the highest-ranking EU officials regularly talked with Apple and Tim Cook, they’ve been given ample warnings, instructions, and additional time to make sure their products do not violate the law – as a European Union citizen, I can tell you no small to medium business or individual EU citizen gets this kind of leniency and silk gloves treatment. Everything Apple is reaping, it sowed all by itself. As I posted on Mastodon a few days ago: The EU enacted a new law a while ago that all bottle caps should remain attached to the bottle, to combat plastic trash. All the bottle and packaging makers, from massive multinationals like Coca Cola and fucking Nestlé to small local producers invested in the development of new caps, changing their production lines, and shipping the new caps. Today, a month before the law goes into effect, it’s basically impossible to find a bottle without an attached cap. I don’t know, I thought this story was weirdly relevant right now with Apple being a whiny bitch. Imagine being worse than Coca Cola and motherfucking Nestlé. ↫ Thom Holwerda Apple is in this mess and facing insane fines as high as 10% of their worldwide turnover because spoiled, rich, privileged brats like Tim Cook are not used to anyone ever saying “no”. Silicon Valley has shown, time and time again, from massive data collection for advertising purposes to scraping the entire web for machine learning, that they simply do not understand consent. Now that there’s finally someone big, strong, and powerful enough to not take Silicon Valley’s bullshit, they start throwing tamper tantrums like toddlers. Apple’s public attacks on the European Union – and their instructions to their PR attack dogs to step it up a notch – are not doing them any favours, either. The EU is, contrary to just about any other government body in the Western world, ridiculously popular among its citizens, and laws that curb the power of megacorps are even more popular. I honestly have no idea who’s running their PR department, because they’re doing a terrible job, at least here in the EU.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140053/apple-first-company-to-be-found-violating-dma/
Johnson Celebrates LGBTQI+ Pride Month: Eva Granger
date: 2024-06-24, from: NASA breaking news
Eva Granger firmly believes that anyone can launch a career at NASA. As the events and milestones lead for the Orion Program’s strategic communications team, she dedicates her time to engaging with the public and educating them not only about the Orion spacecraft but also about the various opportunities to contribute to the agency’s mission. […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/johnson-celebrates-lgbtqi-pride-month-eva-granger/
Tamayo Perry dies at 49; former pro surfer killed in shark attack off Oahu
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Tamayo Perry also appeared in a handful of film and TV roles, including in “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” and “Hawaii Five-0.”
Emmys 2024: Predictions (and voting advice) for all 15 main categories
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Emmy voting is underway. Ballots are due June 24.
Decline of American students in China could mean fewer experts
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
washington — The number of Americans studying in China has dropped dramatically in recent years from around 11,000 in 2019 to 800 this year, and the slump is so bad that some China scholars worry the United States could lose a generation of “China experts” as a result.
David Moser, an American who has lived and worked in China for more than three decades and is the former academic director of China Educational Tours (CET) in Beijing, said that “I haven’t seen an American student in years.”
CET, which was launched in 1982, is a Washington-based organization that recruits American students for short-term language and culture studies in China. Moser said that his position as academic director recently went away and that the organization continues to struggle to get more students to return to China.
CET once carried out short-term study-abroad programs in several cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Harbin and Hangzhou. Now, the program is only available in Beijing and Shanghai. Harbin’s page on the website shows that programs are “suspended until spring 2025.”
“We have already lost a very crucial generation who would need to be continuing right now in China with studies or whatever,” Moser said, “so that 10 years from now, they would already be … very experienced China hands [experts].”
During the 2011-12 school year, the number of American students in China was around 15,000. Since then, with Xi Jinping’s rise as China’s leader and growing frictions between the two countries, the number has declined, dropping dramatically after the pandemic to about 200 at its lowest point.
Loss of understanding
Moser said the lack of talented people who understand China is undoubtedly a huge loss for the United States.
“You really need people who understand the two academic systems, the two college systems, and the way these things work in order to not make a huge mistake,” he said.
Compared with China, however, CET’s projects in Taiwan are in full swing.
Moser said CET started its first summer study abroad program at National Taiwan University in 2022, which attracted more than 120 American students. He said a program was set up in Taiwan because too few American students wanted to go to China.
He said he believed that starting around 2008, when Beijing held its first Olympics, China’s pollution and human rights violations turned some American students away, and that the trend has not reversed.
China’s strict lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic was also a crucial turning point. At that time, many foreigners, including American students, left China. After the Chinese government suddenly lifted the lockdown at the end of 2022, most foreigners did not immediately return.
China’s increasingly aggressive posture on the international stage under Xi, and its hostile propaganda against the West at home, is likely to have prevented foreign talents from visiting China for cultural and business exchanges.
A revised counterespionage law that took effect on July 1, 2023, has also made many Americans hesitant to travel to China, let alone study there.
As U.S.-China relations deteriorate, official academic exchanges have also been coldly received. Former U.S. President Donald Trump suspended all Fulbright exchange programs to China and Hong Kong in July 2020.
After the counterespionage law negatively affected China, the Chinese government sought to extend goodwill at the level of people-to-people exchanges. Xi announced during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in San Francisco in November 2023, “In order to expand exchanges between the people of China and the United States, especially the younger generation, China is willing to invite 50,000 American young people to come to China for exchanges and studies in the next five years.”
High school students visit
In January 2024, more than 20 students from Muscatine High School in Iowa visited Beijing, Hebei and Shanghai. In March, 24 students from Lincoln High School and Steilacoom High School in Washington state also boarded a plane from San Francisco to Beijing.
Wenzhou University and Kean University in New Jersey signed an agreement to jointly establish Wenzhou-Kean University in May 2006. At the time, Xi was the party secretary of Zhejiang, home province of Wenzhou, and he attended the signing ceremony in 2006.
In a letter to Kean’s president on June 7, Xi encouraged universities in the two countries to strengthen exchanges and cooperation. However, three days later, four American teachers who were giving short-term courses at Beihua University in Jilin, China, were stabbed by a Chinese man. Chinese officials quickly deleted the relevant content on social media, and a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson called the incident an “accident” that would not affect relations between the two countries.
Meghan Burke, a former sociology professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, said that although the attack on American teachers was a shocking and unexpected incident, she still hoped that it would not affect Americans’ confidence in studying and traveling in China.
“I think it’s always been there, but I think with the pandemic, there was some really racially loaded misinformation and fears that I wouldn’t be surprised if that came into play in some students’ and some families’ decisions about where they were willing to go abroad,” she said.
Asked about the 800 American students in China today, Burke said that was a big regret for the United States.
“Language is key to understanding culture. So, any limitations on learning Mandarin or other Chinese languages only hold back our ability to have a broader and more complex intercultural understanding and international perspective that I think benefits everyone who is involved in those conversations,” Burke said.
In contrast, 300,000 Chinese students are studying in the United States.
“Asymmetry is bad for China, but it’s much worse for the United States because asymmetry is in one direction, which is towards us,” Moser said. “The Chinese have very good knowledge of the U.S., of its culture, of its government, everything.”
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
Five Arrested as UC Santa Barbara’s ‘Liberated Zone’ Is Cleared Overnight
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The pro-Palestinian encampment on UCSB’s campus swept by law enforcement after 54 days.
The post Five Arrested as UC Santa Barbara’s ‘Liberated Zone’ Is Cleared Overnight appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
iOS and iPadOS 18 can format external drives
date: 2024-06-24, from: OS News
I can’t believe this is considered something I need to write about, but it’s still a very welcome new feature that surprisingly has taken this long to become available: iOS and iPadOS 18 now allow you to format external storage devices. Last year when I began testing iPadOS 17 betas, I noticed the addition of options for renaming and erasing external drives in the Files app. I watched these options over the course of the beta cycle for iPadOS 17 to see if any further changes would come. The one I watched most closely was the “Erase” option for external drives. This option uses the same glyph as the Erase option in Disc Utility on macOS. In Disc Utility on the Mac, in order to reformat an external drive, you first select the “Erase” option, and then additional options appear for selecting the new format you wish to reformat the drive with. When I saw the “Erase” option added in the Files app on iPadOS, I suspected that Apple might be moving towards adding these reformatting options into the Files app on iPadOS. And I’m excited to confirm that this is exactly what Apple has done in iPadOS 18! ↫ Kaleb Cadle It was soon confirmed this feature is available in iOS 18 as well. You can only format in APFS, ExFAT and FAT, so it’s not exactly a cornucopia of file systems to choose from, but it’s better than nothing. This won’t magically fix all the issues a lot of people have with especially iPadOS when it comes to feeling constrained when using their expensive, powerful tablets with detachable keyboards, but it takes away at least one tiny reason to keep a real computer around. Baby steps, I guess.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140051/ios-and-ipados-18-can-format-external-drives/
Slow time?
date: 2024-06-24, from: Status-Q blog
Back in the days when I had an analogue watch, rather than a serious computer, strapped to my wrist, I often wondered whether life would be more or less stressful if I removed the minute and second hands, so that I could only tell the time to, say, the nearest 5-10 minutes. Would I be Continue Reading
https://statusq.org/archives/2024/06/24/12102/
How to Take Advantage of NATO Enlargement in the Arctic
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: RAND blog
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine is reshaping NATO’s strategy in Eastern Europe, mounting tensions are also plaguing the Arctic. NATO could help defuse the situation.
Ollama drama as ‘easy-to-exploit’ critical flaw found in open source AI server
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
About a thousand vulnerable instances still exposed online, we’re told
A now-patched vulnerability in Ollama – a popular open source project for running LLMs – can lead to remote code execution, according to flaw finders who warned that upwards of 1,000 vulnerable instances remain exposed to the internet.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/rce_ollama_wiz/
No More Sanctuary: NATO Must Prepare for War at Home
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: RAND blog
As NATO leaders have acknowledged in recent summits and its revised Strategic Concept, the alliance now faces direct and pressing threats. Yet too many nations still lack robust plans, legislative powers, or capabilities for tackling preparedness challenges and securing their homelands.
Why Cooling Centers Were Closed Last Week
date: 2024-06-24, from: Heatmap News
With a brutal heat dome still threatening parts of the United States, one more thing about this summer has become clear: Cities are struggling to protect their most vulnerable citizens from extreme temperatures.
Just last week, on Juneteenth, over 82 million Americans were under active National Weather Service extreme heat alerts — but, due to the national holiday, many publicly operated cooling centers were closed. While Boston had opened 14 new facilities in partnership with the Centers for Youth and Families, for instance, none of them stayed open Wednesday.
The same thing happened in New York, where more than 200 cooling centers were closed for the holiday, most of them libraries. While other heat preparedness measures were still in place — Gov. Kathy Hochul announced free admission for state parks — residents counting on a facility near home had to change plans last minute. On Sunday, New York turned 45 public schools into cooling centers, this time because the public libraries were closed due to budget cuts.
In Chicago, only one cooling center was open during the holiday. The lack of cooling spaces available sparked action from homelessness advocates, who are urging the city to offer more cooling centers that are open 24/7 and also to make those facilities available when the heat index is above 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
Because cooling centers are often multi-purpose spaces, data on their usage is limited. In Boston, 245 people visited cooling centers from June 18 to 20, the mayor’s office told me. New York City’s Department of Emergency Management could only say that six people visited four of the schools open Sunday.
Emergency response services also attended more heat-related calls this past week. John Chisholm, chief of the Concord Fire Department, told The New York Times that the department received more calls than usual from seniors struggling with the heat on Tuesday. In New Hampshire, 39 individuals called 911 due to the heat on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — more than the total amount of calls the service received in all of June last year.
Cooling companies also struggled to meet demands. An HVAC company in Hartford, Connecticut told USA Today that it received about 100 calls for service per day last week — numbers usually only seen during peak summer temperatures in August. To protect its technicians, the company had to turn down requests from clients that would have required work in an attic.
Throughout the week, cities canceled activities like food markets, street fairs, Little League practices, and field trips, were due to the heat. Instead, people flocked to beaches. In Massachusetts, the number of people heading to the coast was so high on Wednesday that some were forced to head back home due to intense traffic and lack of parking spaces. One exception was New York’s annual Mermaid Parade, which went on as scheduled.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/heat-dome-cooling-centers
Recordatorio: Construcción para las Líneas Interinas de la Avenida Hollister Comienza Esta Noche
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
GOLETA, CA, 24 de Junio, 2024 – La construcción del Proyecto de trazado interino de Hollister Avenue comienza esta noche,
The post Recordatorio: Construcción para las Líneas Interinas de la Avenida Hollister Comienza Esta Noche appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Reminder: Hollister Avenue Interim Striping Construction Begins Tonight
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
GOLETA, CA, June 24, 2024 – Hollister Avenue Interim Striping Project construction begins tonight, June 24 on Hollister Avenue between Fairview Avenue and Kinman
The post Reminder: Hollister Avenue Interim Striping Construction Begins Tonight appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Chimpanzees May Self-Medicate With Plants, Using the Forest as a Pharmacy
date: 2024-06-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
New research suggests sick chimps seek out and eat plants with antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties—a finding that could advance drug discovery for humans
Apple Found in Breach of DMA
date: 2024-06-24, from: Michael Tsai
Lisa O’Carroll (via Hacker News, New York Times, Slashdot): Apple has been found to be in breach of sweeping new EU laws designed to allow smaller companies to compete and allow consumers to find cheaper and alternative apps in the tech business’s app store.The European Commission, which also acts as the EU antitrust and technology […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/24/apple-found-in-breach-of-dma/
SwiftData vs. Realm Performance Comparison
date: 2024-06-24, from: Michael Tsai
Jacob Bartlett: The Realm DB engine was written from the ground-up in C++ to minimise this overhead. […] Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to describe SwiftData as a wrapper over a wrapper over a wrapper.[…]These show that the SwiftData objects took around 10x longer to instantiate.[…]Realm topped out at writing 2,000,000 simple User objects before hitting […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/24/swiftdata-vs-realm-performance-comparison/
Always Allow Safari Bookmarklets
date: 2024-06-24, from: Michael Tsai
Jeff Johnson: You may already be aware that for a number of years, Safari has asked your permission every time you click on a link, such as an RSS feed, that opens in an app other than Safari[…][…]The permission prompt now has an option to “Always Allow”! This option is new in Safari 17. This […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/24/always-allow-safari-bookmarklets/
iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and Proton Drive
date: 2024-06-24, from: Michael Tsai
Ryan Christoffel (AppleInsider): The problem is, Apple “intelligently” decides which files can remain stored in local cache, and will make decisions to remove certain downloads without telling you. So when you need to access a given file—say, on an airplane with no connection—you might find that the file has been sent back to the cloud […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/24/icloud-drive-dropbox-and-proton-drive/
AI Companies Ignoring Robots.txt
date: 2024-06-24, from: Michael Tsai
Mark Sullivan: The AI search startup Perplexity is in hot water in the wake of a Wiredinvestigation revealing that the startup has been crawling content from websites that don’t want to be crawled.[…]“Perplexity is not ignoring the Robot Exclusions Protocol and then lying about it,” said Perplexity cofounder and CEO Aravind Srinivas in a phone […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/24/ai-companies-ignoring-robots-txt/
Pirate Ship
date: 2024-06-24, from: Michael Tsai
Adam Engst: Pirate Ship is a shipping platform with an elegant interface that allows users to access discounted shipping rates from USPS and UPS with no subscription fee. I’ve used it a handful of times for mailing packages, and it has been brilliant.[…]And, oh, what a lovely interface![…]Pirate Ship has negotiated corporate-level discounted shipping rates […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/24/pirate-ship/
Ventura prosecutors charge Newhall man again
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Signal
Ventura County prosecutors once again filed sex crime charges against a Newhall man after he was twice convicted of crimes involving minors in L.A. County, receiving a suspended sentence for […]
The post Ventura prosecutors charge Newhall man again appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/ventura-prosecutors-charge-newhall-man-again/
Everyone Wants Nuclear Now
date: 2024-06-24, from: Heatmap News
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm has become something of a one-woman band lately, traveling the country promoting nuclear energy. In Las Vegas at the American Nuclear Society annual conference last week, she told the audience, “We’re looking at a chance to build new nuclear at a scale not seen since the ’70s and ’80s.” A few weeks earlier she paid a visit to the Vogtle nuclear plant outside of Augusta, Georgia, site of the first new nuclear project to start construction this century “It’s time to cash in on our investments by building more, more of these facilities,” she told an audience there.
Unlike the past few decades, when nuclear power plants were more likely to shut down than be built amidst sluggish growth in electricity demand, any new nuclear power — whether from a new plant, one that’s producing new power on top of its regular output, or one that’s re-opening — is likely to be bought up eagerly these days by utilities and big energy buyers with decarbonization mandates. States and the federal government are more than happy to pony up the dollars to keep existing nuclear plants running. Technology companies will even pay a premium for clean power. Amazon, for instance, bought a data center adjacent to a nuclear plant despite despite having no nuclear strategy to speak of.
What brought about this abrupt about-face of enthusiasm? In spite of the rapid expansion of wind and solar and the recent boom in batteries, with electricity demand rising, it’s hard to turn down any green electrons. And with all that solar and wind comes a need for “clean firm” power, sources of electricity that can operate when other sources aren’t. The Department of Energy estimates that a decarbonized economy will require 700 to 900 gigawatts of clean firm power by 2050, about four times what is currently on the grid.
While a number of power sources fit this bill — long-duration batteries, geothermal, hydrogen — there is already a massive preexisting nuclear fleet, and the technology for nuclear power is well-proven, even if growing costs and decades of environmental opposition arrested the industry’s growth in the United States for decades.
“Demand has changed significantly,” Kenneth Petersen, the outgoing president of the American Nuclear Society, told me. With tech companies willing to pay additional for clean, reliable power, “demand is going up, and you’re getting a premium for that.”
While nuclear power has faced stiff opposition from environmental groups for decades, the crashing price of natural gas in the 2010s combined with the growth and falling cost of renewables made it difficult for some existing plants to stay in business, especially in regions of the country with “restructured” energy markets, where the plants were competing with whatever the cheapest source of power was on the grid. Despite the fact that these plants were producing large and steady amounts of carbon-free power, electricity markets at the time didn’t particularly value either of these attributes.
States with aggressive decarbonization goals simply could not reasonably meet them considering that nuclear plants shutting down tends to result in more burning of natural gas and more greenhouse gas emissions. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided another pot of funding for existing nuclear, and so in markets like New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, and California, nuclear plants receive some combination of state and federal dollars to stay online.
Constellation Energy, which has a 21 reactor nuclear fleet, saw its stock price shoot up earlier this year when it upped its forecast for revenue growth citing the strong demand and government support for its clean electrons. Its shares have risen almost 90 percent on the year.
“When you hear utilities talk about restarting a reactor, yep, it’s a huge effort. And they’re confident that they can sell the offtake of that,” Petersen told me. In the case of the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, which shut down in 2022 and is now in the process of re-opening, there is already a power purchase agreement with a group of rural utilities on the table.
Nuclear is the third biggest electricity source in the U.S. currently, and the largest non-carbon emitting one. As Secretary Granholm likes to remind the public — and the industry — nuclear power hasn’t had more explicit support than it has now in decades. That has come in the form of tax credits for energy output, an overhauled regulatory process for advanced reactors, and explicit funding for early-stage projects.
But Granholm isn’t the only public official talking to anyone who will listen about America’s nuclear industry.
Tim Echols, the vice chairman of Georgia Public Service Commission, the regulator that oversaw Southern Company’s Vogtle project, has been warning other state regulators about embarking on a new nuclear project without explicit cost protection from the federal government. The third and fourth Vogtle reactors started construction in 2013, about a decade after the planning process began; the final reactor was completed and started putting power on the grid in April, some $35 billion later (the project was originally expected to cost $14 billion).
And that was a successful project. A similar project in South Carolina was never completed and took down the utility, SCANA that planned it, even resulting in a two-year federal prison sentence for its chief executive, who was convicted of having “intentionally defrauded ratepayers while overseeing and managing SCANA’s operations — including the construction of two reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station.” Westinghouse, which designed the reactor in operation at Vogtle, known as the AP1000, itself went bankrupt in 2016.
Echols is proud of Vogtle now. “Finishing those AP1000s at Vogtle changed everything,” Echols told me in an email. “People are looking past the overruns and celebrating this as a great accomplishment.”
But he’s pretty sure no one else should do it like Georgia did, with a utility using ratepayer funds for a nuclear project of uncertain cost and duration. “So many of my colleague regulators in other states don’t feel there are enough financial protections in place yet — and that is holding them back,” Echols told me. “The very real possibility of bankruptcy exists on any of these nuclear projects, and I am not comfortable moving forward with some catastrophic protection — and only the federal government can provide that.”
Granholm and other DOE officials including Jigar Shah, head of the Loan Programs Office, have expressed puzzlement at this view. At the ANS conference, Granholm pointed to “billions and billions and billions” that the federal government is offering in terms of loan guarantees (from which Vogtle benefitted under presidents Obama and Trump) and investment tax credits that, according to the Breakthrough Institute’s Adam Stein, could amount to “around 60% cost overrun protection” when combined with DOE loans.
It’s unlikely that Republicans would be more interested in this level of cost protection than Democrats. Shelly Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican who helped shepherd a recent nuclear regulatory reform bill through Congress, told Politico, “I don’t think the government should be in the business of giving backstop.”
Echols conceded that Shah “is right in saying the deal is better than it was when we started our AP1000s,” but still said the possibility of bankruptcy was too daunting for state utility regulators.
While technology companies that want to buy clean electrons have demurred about actually financing construction of next generation “advanced” nuclear plants, Echols predicted that “companies like Dow, Microsoft, or Google build a [small modular reactor] before any utility in America can finish another AP1000,” referring to the reactor model at Vogtle, which is about one gigawatt per reactor, compared to the few hundred megawatts contemplated by designs for small modular reactors.
Dow is currently working on a gas-cooled reactor project with X-energy that would provide both power and industrial steam. The reactor would operate at a higher temperature than the light water reactors that dominate the U.S. nuclear fleet. TerraPower, the Bill Gates backed startup — that has received billions of dollars in federal support, started construction on the non-nuclear portion of its Natrium plant in Wyoming earlier this year, while a number of other advanced reactor projects are at various stages of design and preparation. There’s only one design that’s received certification from the NRC, however, and the company behind it, NuScale, saw its one active project to build a plant collapse due to rising costs.
As Breakthrough’s Stein told me, “It’s not really going to be a question of large LWR vs. SMR or water-based SMR vs advanced. We’re going to need a mix of technology to get to net zero, just like we need a mix of nuclear and non-nuclear. “The nuclear space is not nearly as homogenous as photovoltaic space — it’s not all one technology with different advantages that can fit different niches.”
Much of the Department of Energy’s work in past years has been in funding and supporting the development of these “advanced” reactors, which are supposed to be more efficient and safer than existing light-water reactor designs and can serve more discrete purposes, including industrial processes like steam. Last week, Granholm announced almost $1 billion of money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the construction of small modular reactors. The ADVANCE Act, which passed the Senate last week, was designed to help make reviews of these reactor designs faster, cheaper and more focused.
“I think the Vogtle experience and what that means for ratepayers makes it very, very unlikely that another utility is going to step up and ratebase a big first-of-its-kind, firm, flexible generation technology,” Jeff Navin, a former Department of Energy official and partner at the public affairs firm representing TerraPower, told me. “The challenges facing financing nuclear are the same challenges that you’re going to face with carbon capture, with large-scale hydrogen production, with enhanced geothermal, with all of these others technologies that we all know we need to have to solve climate change. But we don’t really know how to finance these things.”
Many analysts think that if we get advanced reactors, it will likely be sometime in the early 2030s. “Optimistically, maybe 2032 we should have a couple of these things up and running,” Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear engineering professor at MIT, told me. “All the industry needs is one winner, and the floodgates might open.”
https://heatmap.news/climate/everyone-wants-nuclear-now
Y Combinator, startups funnily enough aren’t fans of draft California AI safety law
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Same old whinging: We can’t change the world if you ask us to do it openly
Venture capitalist Y Combinator and more than 140 machine-learning startups have signed an open letter in opposition to a proposed hot-button AI safety law making its way through the California legislature.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/ai_startups_california_bill/
PAC Announces 2024-2025 Spotlight Series
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
In celebration of its 20th anniversary, the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center (PAC) Spotlight Series will feature a diverse lineup of talented musicians and performers, as well as family-friendly events as part of its programming.
https://scvnews.com/pac-announces-2024-2025-spotlight-series/
Small brush fire in Castaic handled
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Signal
A small brush fire in Castaic called for a Los Angeles County Fire Department response and was quickly handled on Monday, according to department officials. The fire was reported to […]
The post Small brush fire in Castaic handled appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/small-brush-fire-in-castaic-handled/
In an Era of Climate Uncertainty, NATO Must Adapt
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: RAND blog
A NATO that more deliberately incorporates climate change into its as-usual planning would stand a good chance of maintaining its capability edge in the future world.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/06/in-an-era-of-climate-uncertainty-nato-must-adapt.html
Man arrested on suspicion of arson at Old Orchard Park
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Signal
A 47-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of arson Sunday afternoon by Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies after being observed lighting a tree on fire, according to station officials. […]
The post Man arrested on suspicion of arson at Old Orchard Park appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/man-arrested-on-suspicion-of-arson-at-old-orchard-park/
NASA Webb, Hubble Scientist Marcia Rieke Awarded Gruber Cosmology Prize
date: 2024-06-24, from: NASA breaking news
Marcia Rieke, a scientist who worked on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope, has received the Gruber Foundation’s 2024 Cosmology Prize. Rieke will receive the award and gold laureate pin at a ceremony August 8, 2024, at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Cape Town, South Africa. Rieke was […]
Mozilla is trying to push me out because I have cancer, CPO says in bombshell lawsuit
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Steve Teixeira, said to be CEO-in-waiting, now sues Firefox maker for discrimination, retaliation
Mozilla Corporation was sued this month in the US, along with three of its executives, for alleged disability discrimination and retaliation against Chief Product Officer Steve Teixeira.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/mozilla_product_chief_sues_over/
Seven Productions Filming in Santa Clarita
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita’s Film Office has released the list of seven productions currently filming in the Santa Clarita Valley for the week of Monday, June 24 - Sunday, June 30.
https://scvnews.com/seven-productions-filming-in-santa-clarita/
Deputies: Wanted man arrested following pursuit
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Signal
A 35-year-old man with an outstanding warrant who led sheriff’s deputies on a pursuit through Bouquet Canyon northeast of Santa Clarita on Sunday morning was eventually arrested on suspicion of […]
The post Deputies: Wanted man arrested following pursuit appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/deputies-wanted-man-arrested-following-pursuit/
Indonesian government datacenter locked down in $8M ransomware rumble
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Variant of Lockbit 3.0 said to be weapon of choice for attack
The Indonesian government has admitted its national datacenter was hit by ransomware criminals, disrupting some of the country’s services.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/indonesia_datacenter_ransomware/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-24, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Example catchup sessions:
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc24/10184
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc24/10150
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc24/10181
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc24/10223
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112673063204840521
At Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade, Thousands Channel Aquatic Weirdness
date: 2024-06-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Crowds decked out as fantastical sea creatures flocked to Brooklyn’s amusement district for the summer kickoff event
Starliner Astronauts Will Remain on Space Station Until July Amid Technical Issues
date: 2024-06-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
NASA and Boeing have delayed the crewed mission’s return to Earth again, as engineers assess helium leaks and a thruster issue on the spacecraft’s service module
Entry-level GPD Pocket 3 mini-laptop gets a spec-bump
date: 2024-06-24, from: Liliputing
The GPD Pocket 3 is a versatile mini-laptop with an 8-inch display that supports pen and touch input, a hinge that swivels allowing you to fold the screen over the keyboard for use in tablet mode, and a modular port system that lets you swap out one of the ports. When the GPD Pocket 3 […]
The post Entry-level GPD Pocket 3 mini-laptop gets a spec-bump appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/entry-level-gpd-pocket-3-mini-laptop-gets-a-spec-bump/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-24, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
One thing I loved about this year’s WWDC is that there were plenty of catchup sessions, covering the basics for newcomers.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112673015401826718
US TV host Rachael Ray visits Ukraine, cooks for locals
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
TV personality Rachael Ray is a U.S.-based chef, author and celebrity. But Ukrainians know her better thanks to her charity work to help the war-torn country. Omelyan Oshchudlyak reports. Camera: Yuriy Dankevych.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-tv-host-visits-ukraine-cooks-for-locals/7668264.html
Listen to the AI-Generated Ripoff Songs That Got Udio and Suno Sued
date: 2024-06-24, from: 404 Media Group
The record industry has filed a list of thousands of songs it believes have been scraped without permission, and has recreated versions of famous songs using Udio and Suno.
https://www.404media.co/listen-to-the-ai-generated-ripoff-songs-that-got-udio-and-suno-sued/
Car dealers stuck in the slow lane after cyber woes at software biz CDK
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
More customers self-reporting to SEC as disruption carries into second week
The number of US companies filing Form 8-Ks with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and referencing embattled car dealership software biz CDK is mounting.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/the_number_of_cdk_customers/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-24, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I enjoyed the technical details on this slide deck. https://mastodon.online/@karppinen/112672855308433453
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112672898534110977
Santa Clarita’s Abbey Weitzeil Qualifies for Paris Olympic Team
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Eleven additional athletes claimed spots on the 2024 Paris Olympic Team, including Saugus High School alumna Abbey Weitzeil, on night eight of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials Swimming presented by Lilly, in Indianapolis, Ind
https://scvnews.com/santa-claritas-abbey-weitzeil-qualifies-for-paris-olympic-team/
[Scummvm-devel] Re: SCUMM Engine (2002)
date: 2024-06-24, from: Tilde.news
https://lists.scummvm.org/pipermail/scummvm-devel/2002-June/000341.html
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-24, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Unlike .NET where the improvements to Visual Studio support are behind a subscription, the Swift improvements are public and open for all:
https://forums.swift.org/t/improvements-to-swift-in-visual-studio-code-coming-with-swift-6/72708
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112672807503501506
US Supreme Court to consider gender-affirming care for minors
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/supreme-court-to-consider-gender-affirming-care-for-minors/7668190.html
Slack to Stop Storing Historical Content for Free Workspaces
date: 2024-06-24, from: TidBITS blog
Slack will be reducing its data storage needs and trying to incentivize free teams to upgrade by deleting data older than a year from free workspaces. Only the last 90 days of data is visible anyway; the change affects only those who upgrade to a paid plan and would previously have recovered all old data.
https://tidbits.com/2024/06/24/slack-to-stop-storing-historical-content-for-free-workspaces/
Pocket Z project aims to build $99 Linux PCs that fit in your pocket
date: 2024-06-24, from: Liliputing
Before smartphones with touchscreen displays began to dominate the mobile computing space, device makers tried out a number of different form factors to see what would stick. There were stylus-driven devices like the Apple Newton and Palm Pilot, thumb keyboard devices like the BlackBerry line of phones, and mini-laptops like the Psion Series 5mx and HP […]
The post Pocket Z project aims to build $99 Linux PCs that fit in your pocket appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/pocket-z-project-aims-to-build-99-linux-pcs-that-fit-in-your-pocket/
On the GOES
date: 2024-06-24, from: NASA breaking news
On June 14, 2024, NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) last Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-U, started its journey from the Astrotech Space Operations facility to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. GOES-U is the final weather-observing and environmental monitoring satellite in NOAA’s GOES-R Series. GOES-U will […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/on-the-goes/
NASA ought to pay up after space debris punched a hole in my roof, homeowner says
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Otero family sues Uncle Sam for $80K+ to make everything right
A Florida homeowner has sued NASA for more than $80,000 in compensation after debris from the International Space Station smashed a hole in his roof.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/nasa_ought_to_pay_up/
Microsoft Office for Mac 16.86.1
date: 2024-06-24, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/microsoft-office-for-mac-16-86-1/
GNU Guile 3.0.10 released
date: 2024-06-24, from: Tilde.news
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2024-06/msg00026.html
Georgian Epiphany
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: RAND blog
Georgian Dream has taken off its democratic mask. Its move to enact a repressive, Russian-style law has sparked a large public outcry. The West can help by sanctioning those who seek to rob Georgians of their freedom.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/06/georgian-epiphany.html
Centers of Excellence Can Support Federal Programs’ Mission and Enhance Engagement with Underserved Communities
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: RAND blog
Centers of Excellence, academic consortia that engage in research to support federal agencies, can help federal programs expand their geographic reach and increase the diversity of their technical workforce.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/06/centers-of-excellence-can-support-federal-programs.html
Move Over, Genghis Khan. Many Other Men Left Huge Genetic Legacies
date: 2024-06-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A 2015 study showed that ten other men have a lot of descendants. The paper is just one of several genetic studies revealing the secrets of descent
Mactracker 7.12.17
date: 2024-06-24, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/mactracker-7-12-17/
Ken Striplin | Enhancing Safety, Efficiency in Our Community
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
As a city manager, father and community member — the safety of Santa Clarita residents will always be my top priority - especially on the roads
https://scvnews.com/ken-striplin-enhancing-safety-efficiency-in-our-community/
Newhall brush fire swiftly stopped
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Signal
A quarter-acre brush fire that broke out Monday morning in Newhall was swiftly stopped, according to L.A. County Fire Department officials. The fire at the 21300 block of Trumpet Drive […]
The post Newhall brush fire swiftly stopped appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/newhall-brush-fire-swiftly-stopped/
Microsoft’s latest Surface devices almost as easy to fix as they are to break
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
iFixit hands out provisional 8 out of 10 for hardware designed with repairs in mind
Microsoft has received a thumbs-up from iFixit, with a provisional 8 out of 10 for repairability on its latest Surface Pro and Laptop devices.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/microsoft_surface_ifixit_repairs/
The Future of Fashion Commerce Is a Designer’s AI Bot Saying You Look Great and Your Personal AI Bot Sifting Through the Bullshit
date: 2024-06-24, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“The best commerce platforms will be constantly grooming you, priming you, shaping you to buy. The combination of short-term and long-term value that leads to the optimal financial outcome for the business.”
I think this is inevitably correct: the web will devolve into a battle between different entities who are all trying to persuade you to take different actions. That’s already been true for decades, but it’s been ambient until now; generative AI gives it the ability to literally argue with us. Which means we’re going to need our own bots to argue back.
Hunter’s analogy of a bot that’s supposedly in your corner calling bullshit on all the bots trying to sell things to you is a good one. Except, who will build the bot that’s in your corner? Why will it definitely be so? Who will profit from it?
What a spiral this will be.
<p>[<a href="https://hunterwalk.com/2024/06/24/the-future-of-fashion-commerce-is-a-designers-ai-bot-saying-you-look-great-and-your-personal-ai-bot-sifting-through-the-bullshit/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/the-future-of-fashion-commerce-is-a-designers-ai-bot
LASD Rolls Out New Crime Strategy Unit
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is set to roll out a fresh, data-oriented strategy aimed at curtailing crime throughout L.A. County
https://scvnews.com/lasd-rolls-out-new-crime-strategy-unit/
Why does moral progress feel preachy and annoying?
date: 2024-06-24, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Daniel Kelly and Evan Westra in Aeon]
“Many genuinely good arguments for moral change will be initially experienced as annoying. Moreover, the emotional responses that people feel in these situations are not typically produced by psychological processes that are closely tracking argument structure or responding directly to moral reasons.”
This is a useful breakdown of why arguments for social progress encounter so much friction, and why the first emotional response may be to roll our eyes. It’s all about our norm psychologies - and some people have stronger reactions than others.
As the authors make clear here, people who are already outside of the mainstream culture for one reason or another (immigration, belonging to a minority or vulnerable group, and so on) already feel friction from the prevailing norms being misaligned with their own psychology. If that isn’t the case, change is that much harder.
But naming it is at least part of the battle:
“Knowing this fact about yourself should lead you to pause the next time you reflexively roll your eyes upon encountering some new, annoying norm and the changes its advocates are asking you to make. That irritation is not your bullshit detector going off.”
Talking about these effects, and understanding their origins, helps everyone better understand their reactions and get to better outcomes. Social change is both necessary and likely to happen regardless of our reactions. It’s always better to be a person who celebrates progressive change rather than someone who creates friction in the face of it.
<p>[<a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-does-moral-progress-feel-preachy-and-annoying">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/why-does-moral-progress-feel-preachy-and-annoying
Dali cargo ship leaves Baltimore, nearly 3 months after bridge collapse
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
Better Than the Sum of Its Parts: Making NATO Reserves an Alliance Resource
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: RAND blog
NATO countries are trying to recruit and retain more service members, both active and reserve. And NATO is attempting to make its formations increasingly interoperable and multinational. Integrating reserve capabilities could help address both goals.
Contributing to open source docs as a technical writer
date: 2024-06-24, from: Blog by Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti
I’ve recently become a docs maintainer for OpenTelemetry, a pretty big open source project. As I often receive questions on how to start contributing to open source docs, this seemed the right time to write about it. Let me tell you how I started and progressed, and what you can do to start your open source documentation journey.
https://passo.uno/contribute-open-source-docs/
Why Are Some People Seemingly Immune to Covid-19? Scientists May Now Have an Answer
date: 2024-06-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers tracked the immune responses of 16 people intentionally exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and pinpointed a gene that seems to help resist the virus before it can take hold
Asus quietly launches Chromebox 5a with 13th-gen Intel Core “Raptor Lake” processors
date: 2024-06-24, from: Liliputing
The Asus Chromebox 5a is a small desktop computer with support for up to an Intel Core i7-1355U processor, up to 32GB of RAM, and PCIe Gen 4×4 storage. It’s looks a lot like last year’s Asus Chromebox 5, but Asus replaced 12th-gen Intel Core P-series processor options with 13th-gen Intel Core U-series chips, while also […]
The post Asus quietly launches Chromebox 5a with 13th-gen Intel Core “Raptor Lake” processors appeared first on Liliputing.
China and the EU agree to consultations over EV anti-subsidy investigation
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tit for tat spat could be avoided
China and the European Commission are to launch consultations on the European Union anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese electric vehicles (EVs).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/china_and_the_eu_agree/
Quick productivity tip: Renaming lots of files in MacOS Finder
date: 2024-06-24, from: Chris Heilmann
When you select several files in Finder and choose “rename” from the context menu, you can batch rename them. You can search and replace text, add to beginning or end or even generate numbered file names. Sadly, there’s no Regular Expressions support. Check the screencast to see it in action:
How Biden, Trump differ over Ukraine policy
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
U.S. presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump meet Thursday for the first of their two scheduled debates. Russia’s war on Ukraine is expected to be one of the top foreign policy questions. VOA’s Tatiana Vorozhko looks at how the two candidates differ in their approach to Ukraine.
https://www.voanews.com/a/how-biden-trump-differ-over-ukraine-policy/7667995.html
European Commission says Apple’s new App Store & payment rules still violate the DMA
date: 2024-06-24, from: Liliputing
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act took effect earlier this year with the goal of tackling anti-competitive behaviors from big tech companies, among other things. That’s why Apple rolled out a bunch of changes to the App Store, iOS, Safari web browser, and payment processing earlier this year… with most of those changes only applying […]
The post European Commission says Apple’s new App Store & payment rules still violate the DMA appeared first on Liliputing.
Parkour Group Damages Building in the Historic Italian City of Matera
date: 2024-06-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Team Phat posted a video showing one of its members breaking a stone protruding from a wall
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-24, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Oh shit, real estate is about to get more expensive
https://hachyderm.io/@mogul/112672174037838068
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112672216354591991
Has Facebook Stopped Trying?
date: 2024-06-24, from: 404 Media Group
Facebook has been overrun with AI spam and scams. Experts say Facebook has stopped asking them for help.
https://www.404media.co/has-facebook-stopped-trying/
Linux geeks cheer as Arm wrestles x86
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
AlmaLinux and upstream kernel support for Raspberry Pi 5, plus a forthcoming high-performance Arm64 Tuxedo laptop
Encouraging noises are coming from multiple directions around Linux support for both current and next-generation Arm64 kit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/arm_linux_x86/
Linux geeks cheer as Arm wrestles x86
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
AlmaLinux and upstream kernel support for Raspberry Pi 5, plus a forthcoming high-performance Arm64 Tuxedo laptop
Encouraging noises are coming from multiple directions around Linux support for both current and next-generation Arm64 kit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/almalinux_pi5_tuxedo/
Jill On Money: Elder financial abuse is on the rise
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Last year, elder fraud complaints jumped by 14 percent, and associated losses of those crimes increased by about 11%. (For these types of crimes, the government defines “elder” as individuals aged 60 and older.)
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/24/jill-on-money-elder-financial-abuse-is-on-the-rise/
Winners and losers in California budget deal
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
With Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature coming to a budget agreement on Saturday, some winners and losers of the spending plan have become clear.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/24/winners-and-losers-in-ca-budget-deal/
The town that is pure California perfection
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
SLO has small-town charm. And for those in search of the original California dream, this paradise destination — only a short hop from vineyards and Pacific Coast beaches — offers plenty of postcard moments that hark back to classic Golden State tourism.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/24/the-town-that-is-pure-california-perfection/
The Question of What’s Fair Illuminates the Question of What’s Hard
date: 2024-06-24, from: Quanta Magazine
Computational complexity theorists have discovered a surprising new way to understand what makes certain problems hard.The post The Question of What’s Fair Illuminates the Question of What’s Hard first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Cavs to hire top Warriors assistant Atkinson as head coach: report
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Kenny Atkinson won the 2022 NBA title in his first season on the Warriors’ coaching staff under Steve Kerr.
The case for wage insurance
date: 2024-06-24, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Job creation has been robust coming out of the worst of COVID, yet threats to workers remain: international competition, the Green Transition, artificial intelligence. How can workers respond? Today, we explore wage insurance as an option that could help. Also: What’s behind this election year stock rally? But first, Apple’s App Store has run afoul of European regulators. We’ll unpack.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/the-case-for-wage-insurance
‘Mirai-like’ botnet observed attacking EOL Zyxel NAS devices
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Seems like as good a time as any to upgrade older hardware
There are early indications of active attacks targeting end-of-life Zyxel NAS boxes just a few weeks after details of three critical vulnerabilities were made public.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/mirailike_botnet_zyxel_nas/
Supreme Court to decide whether states can restrict gender-affirming care for minors
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the Biden administration’s challenge to a transgender care ban in Tennessee, delving into the complicated and politically fraught issue of gender-affirming care in a substantive way for the first time.
Wildfire threats make utility companies uninsurable in Northern California, across West
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
As wildfire season starts, some utilities are now operating without insurance — and are on the hook for millions of dollars in damages if their power lines are linked to a blaze.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/24/wildfire-threats-make-utilities-uninsurable-in-us-west/
Dressel and Ledecky win again at U.S. Olympic swimming trials. Keep an eye on Kate Douglass, too
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Caeleb Dressel, the winner of five gold medals at the Tokyo Games, touched first in the men’s 100-meter butterfly at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials Saturday night.
Starliner to remain docked to the ISS into July – with no new departure date
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
If it’s Boeing, it isn’t going joke gets a bit real for ’nauts
Boeing’s Starliner will remain docked at the International Space Station (ISS) for a while longer as engineers analyze data from the vehicle’s propulsion system.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/starliner_to_remain_docked_to/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-24, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Great article, and companion Twitter thread:
https://x.com/isabellamweber/status/1805218925728129128
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112671934339647143
Europe accuses Apple of preventing devs from telling users about world outside
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Commission launches new probe into iPhone maker’s efforts to work with new laws
The European Commission has published preliminary findings that accuse Apple of breaching the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by preventing developers from telling customers about options outside the App Store.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/ec_puts_apple_on_notice/
Pride Month: Fremont trans woman shares her journey, is honored by lawmaker
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
A trans woman from Fremont has become an activist for the LGBTQ community. She was honored this month by a local lawmaker as a representative for Pride Month.
Can this marriage be saved? Walnut Creek couple debates whether to feed hummingbirds year round
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Do hummingbirds need feeders during the summer or are blooming flowers sufficient?
Travel Troubleshooter: ITA Airways lost my luggage. Why won’t it cover my expenses?
date: 2024-06-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Jacqueline Bartolini spends $992 after ITA Airways loses her luggage. It wants to reimburse her for just $733, but she wants the airline to cover everything. Who’s right?
Britain’s Ministry of Defence accused of wasting £174M on ‘external advice’
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Morpheus comms system online by 2025? You must be dreaming
The UK government has been accused of blowing £174 million ($220 million) on “external advice” for a new radio system for the armed forces that has been beset by delays and cancelled contracts.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/mod_external_advice_spending/
A Visit to the Hobo Jungle
date: 2024-06-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
As a child of about 10 years old, my friend and I would bike to the “Hobo Jungle” to visit.
The post A Visit to the Hobo Jungle appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/24/a-visit-to-the-hobo-jungle/
A New Coalition Is Pushing Governments to Make More Ambitious Climate Plans
date: 2024-06-24, from: Heatmap News
Excessive rainfall in the Swiss Alps triggered a landslide • Power was restored in the Balkans following a massive outage that left people sweltering • Flood waters are receding in Rock Valley, Iowa, after 1,500 people were forced to evacuate.
THE TOP FIVE
- ‘Mission 2025’ coalition launches to encourage governments to
improve climate plans
A group of influential leaders across business and politics have formed a new coalition, called Mission 2025, aimed at pressuring governments to “align their upcoming national climate plans with the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.” These plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), outline how countries will cut their emissions. There is a February 2025 deadline for new, updated NDCs to be submitted to the United Nations, so Mission 2025 is pushing governments to set ambitious goals. The coalition points to recent data showing that more than two-thirds of annual revenues across the world’s largest companies are now aligned with net zero, which is an increase of 45% over the last two years. Backers of Mission 2025 include IKEA, Unilever, Mastercard, and the heads of C40 Cities, among others. The coalition is spearheaded by Christiana Figueres, who helped shepherd leaders toward the Paris Agreement in 2015 and is now the co-founder of nonprofit Global Optimism. “The launch of Mission 2025 today is a clear rebuttal to everyone claiming that moving faster on tackling the climate crisis is too difficult, too unpopular or too expensive,” Figueres said.
- Heirloom will move a giant DAC project to Shreveport
Bay Area-based carbon removal company Heirloom announced today that it’s moving its half of the Department of Energy-funded Project Cypress DAC hub from coastal Calcasieu Parish inland to Shreveport — and that it will be building a second facility, capable of removing 17,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, on the same site. As Heatmap’s Kate Brigham reported, once the two facilities reach full scale, they will have the capacity to suck up a combined 317,000 metric tons of CO2 per year. Project Cypress is a partnership between Heirloom, the Swiss DAC company Climeworks, and project developer Battelle. As per the initial plan, Climeworks will still build out its portion of Project Cypress in southwest Louisiana, and together with Heirloom’s Shreveport plant, the two facilities will pull a combined megaton of CO2 out of the atmosphere every year. Heirloom expects its new 17,000 ton facility to be operational by 2026, while its larger Project Cypress plant is planned to come online in 2027. Initially, this larger facility will remove 100,000 metric tons of CO2 annually, eventually ramping up to 300,000 metric tons. For both projects, Heirloom is partnering with the carbon management company CapturePoint to permanently sequester CO2 in underground wells.
- Hajj death toll hits 1,300
The death toll from this year’s Hajj keeps climbing. Saudi Arabia now says at least 1,300 people died during the pilgrimage, which took place during an extreme heat wave. Temperatures in the holy city of Mecca reached 125 degrees Fahrenheit at one point. “May Allah forgive and have mercy on the deceased,” Health Minister Fahd Al-Jalajel said. Meanwhile, at least 1,400 heat records were set last week as temperatures soared across five continents. In the U.S., more than 100 million people were under heat warnings as of Sunday. The East Coast is getting some relief, but a heat dome is now situated over states in the Plains and the South and the heat index could reach 110.
- Study suggests West Coast geoengineering projects would bake Europe
A new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that geoengineering projects off the West Coast of the U.S. could inadvertently lead to more intense heat waves over Europe. The paper examines “marine cloud brightening,” which would involve spraying aerosol particles into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation. The researchers concluded that this process would indeed lower temperatures in Western states, but only temporarily. By 2050, if temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius, the researchers’ models suggest cloud brightening would be ineffective and would actually lead to temperature increases in Europe.
- EU and China to negotiate over EV tariffs
China and the European Union agreed during a call on Saturday to negotiate over the EU’s planned tariffs on Chinese EVs. EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and his Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao had a “candid and constructive” discussion that ended with an agreement to “engage at all levels.” The EU has threatened levies as high as 48% and accused China of unfairly subsidizing its EV production. Bloomberg reported that China hinted that Germany’s luxury carmakers could benefit from relaxed tariffs in China if Berlin “convinces” the EU to drop its tariffs. The discussions come weeks after President Biden announced that U.S. tariffs on electric vehicles made in China will quadruple from 25% to 100%.
THE KICKER
Researchers have created a new kind of fabric that they claim can keep wearers up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than traditional silk.
https://heatmap.news/mission-2025-ndcs-paris
Heirloom Is Moving a Giant DAC Project to Shreveport
date: 2024-06-24, from: Heatmap News
Northwest Louisiana is about to be awash in direct air capture. Heirloom announced today that it’s moving its half of the Department of Energy-funded Project Cypress DAC hub from coastal Calcasieu Parish inland to Shreveport — and that it will be building a second facility, capable of removing 17,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, on the same site. Once the two facilities reach full scale, they will have the capacity to suck up a combined 317,000 metric tons of CO2 per year.
Project Cypress, one of two regional DAC hubs that’s been announced thus far, is a partnership between Bay Area-based Heirloom, the Swiss DAC company Climeworks, and project developer Battelle. As per the initial plan, Climeworks will still build out its portion of Project Cypress in southwest Louisiana, and together with Heirloom’s Shreveport plant, the two facilities will pull a combined megaton of CO2 out of the atmosphere every year.
Those are the basic facts, but still, I had a lot of questions. Why make the move at all? What does it mean for Project Cypress, for the Calcasieu community, and for Climeworks? Here’s what Heirloom told me.
Why Shreveport?
Heirloom was already in the planning phase for its 17,000 ton facility in Shreveport prior to its selection for the DAC hubs program, a spokesperson told me. Thus, “it became clear that co-locating our portion of the Project Cypress Hub in the same location made a lot of sense from a cost and operational efficiency perspective.”
Will this make Project Cypress more expensive?
At this early stage it’s hard to say. But Heirloom and Climeworks will now need to develop their own distinct CO2 transport and storage systems, infrastructure that could have been shared were the two facilities close together.
Heirloom, for its part, expects its new 17,000 ton facility to be operational by 2026, while its larger Project Cypress plant is planned to come online in 2027. Initially, this larger facility will remove 100,000 metric tons of CO2 annually, eventually ramping up to 300,000 metric tons. For both projects, Heirloom is partnering with the carbon management company CapturePoint to permanently sequester CO2 in underground wells.
But storing carbon is not the only logistical challenge involved. The companies will now need to undertake separate community planning and engagement processes, a daunting task even when they had just one to figure out. And yet, the Heirloom spokesperson told us, because planning for Project Cypress is still in its early stages, any additional impacts will be “minimal.”
Did the Department of Energy approve the change?
The DOE administers the DAC Hub program that awarded Project Cypress $50 million in March, so this is no small question. The program is “meant to spur the development of clean energy capabilities across geographical regions, not necessarily in one specific location,” the Heirloom spokesperson told me, and said “the Department of Energy has been incredibly supportive of Heirloom’s expansion into North West Louisiana.” (When we asked DOE, a representative said the agency knew of the move but didn’t provide any further details.)
All this comes on the heels of a big year for Heirloom, which uses limestone powder to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Late last year it unveiled its first commercial DAC facility, which is capable of capturing 1,000 metric tons annually. The Shreveport plants thus represent a massive scale-up.
Heirloom wouldn’t disclose its cost per metric ton of CO2 removed, but the spokesperson said it’s currently “in the high hundreds of dollars,” and that it has an eye toward getting below $100 per metric ton by 2035, the widely accepted metric for commercial viability. So far, the company said, it has “sold a substantial portion of the capacity from both facilities to voluntary buyers.” Customers include major players in the voluntary carbon removal market, including Microsoft, Stripe, Klarna, JPMorgan Chase and Meta. Louisiana is also providing Heirloom with a set of economic incentives worth around $10 million, the company said.
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to include a response
from the Department of Energy.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/project-cypress-heirloom-shreveport
What the FAFSA misses
date: 2024-06-24, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The deadline for students and parents to get their federal financial aid form into colleges and universities is this Sunday. With all that data you input on income and savings, there’s still something big missing: overall household wealth. Some education policy researchers say the financial aid system should be taking a closer look at big assets, like homes. Also: Federal prosecutors are recommending criminal charges against Boeing, and visas for nurses are running out again.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/what-the-fafsa-misses
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
2024 Summer Olympics start July 26, broadcast on NBC in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Summer_Olympics
Financial survey: Women in US have just 1/3 of men’s retirement savings
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
New York — Women in the U.S. have saved just a third of the amount that men have set aside for retirement, setting up a potential crisis among female retirees, according to a Prudential Financial survey released on Monday.
On average, men had saved $157,000 for retirement, while women had only put aside $50,000 according to a survey of 905 U.S. adults between the ages of 55 and 75.
“The financial futures of certain cohorts – such as women – are especially precarious,” Caroline Feeney, CEO of Prudential’s U.S. Businesses, said in a statement. “Women have a more challenging time saving for retirement,” she added, citing inflation, housing prices and changes in tax policies as the main barriers.
Compared with the men surveyed, women were three times more likely to be focused on providing for their families and children than saving.
Of the respondents, 46% of men said they were looking forward to retirement and had more plans, compared with 27% of women polled, the survey showed.
Happy #MagPiMonday!
date: 2024-06-24, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Here’s a selection of some of the awesome Pi projects people sent us this month. Remember to follow along at the hashtag #MagPiMonday!
The post Happy #MagPiMonday! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/happy-magpimonday/
Abortion rights interests plow money into US election races after Supreme Court reversal
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
New York — In the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned women’s constitutional right to abortion, political contributions aimed at protecting abortion rights have far outstripped those to support anti-abortion causes.
In the 2023-2024 election cycle leading up to the Nov. 5 vote, pro-abortion rights interests have given $3.37 million to federal candidates, political parties, political action committees (PACs) and outside groups, compared to about $273,000 from anti-abortion interests, according to data from OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics.
The level of spending by pro-abortion rights interests is expected to offer a financial boost to the campaigns of some Democratic candidates including U.S. President Joe Biden, who has made protecting abortion rights a central part of his campaign message for reelection.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, in 2022 overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent that had legalized abortion nationwide, prompting 14 states to since enact measures banning or sharply restricting the procedure.
Groups like super PACs received 65.8% of contributions from those backing abortion rights in this election cycle, according to a Reuters analysis of OpenSecrets data.
Republican candidates and party committees got the bulk — about 75.9% — of contributions from anti-abortion rights interests.
PACs are typically set up to gather funds for candidates or political causes. They differ from outside money groups like super PACs, which can receive donations of unlimited size but cannot coordinate with campaigns directly.
So far this election cycle, PACs and super PACs allied with anti-abortion causes have raised $3.54 million, while abortion rights groups have raised $15.3 million, OpenSecrets data showed.
“The balance of spending between pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion rights groups always reflected the fact that there are more people who support abortion rights than who don’t,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at University of California, Davis.
Ziegler said she would not be surprised if political donations to support or oppose abortion rights rose for the 2024 election cycle compared to the 2020 election cycle.
2020 election cycle set records
The sums reported so far are dwarfed by those in the 2020 election cycle, in which abortion rights interests poured in $11.33 million in political contributions, with spending in the 2022 midterm election cycle coming in second with $10.67 million in contributions, OpenSecrets data showed.
Contributions from anti-abortion interests totaled $6.41 million in the 2020 cycle, and $2.7 million in the 2022 midterm cycle, during which the outcomes for ballot measures and competitive races seemed to suggest that voters were eager to protect abortion access at the state level.
With more than four months to go before the November election, it remains to be seen whether contributions this election cycle from abortion rights and anti-abortion causes will outstrip those in the 2020 cycle, when Biden beat the incumbent Donald Trump, a Republican.
The impact of political contributions on race outcomes is complicated, Ziegler said, as voters have various priorities at the ballot box.
“You can’t dismiss the importance of it, but it’s not like [more contributions] definitely means ballot initiatives are going to pass, Democrats are going to win, etc. It’s not that simple,” Ziegler said.
During Trump’s term as president, which started in 2017, he appointed a third of the current members of the Supreme Court and half of its conservative bloc, with all three of his picks coming from a list compiled by conservative legal activists.
Trump’s campaign earlier this month said he supports the rights of states to make decisions on abortion, supports exceptions for abortions in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother, and also supports protecting access to contraception and in vitro fertilization.
Two of the top contributors to candidates and groups are Planned Parenthood - which advocates for abortion rights — and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America — which lobbies against abortion rights.
So far this election cycle, Planned Parenthood has contributed $2.53 million, most of that to liberal groups, the Democratic party and its candidates.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has contributed about $92,600, almost all of it to Republican candidates and their party.
Why Are Teachers Funding Billionaires’ Private Jets?
date: 2024-06-24, from: The Lever News
Plus, Wall Street pretends it’s in Texas, Gordon Gekko gets rich off California workers, and the launch of Summer 2024’s blockbuster event.
https://www.levernews.com/why-are-teachers-funding-billionaires-private-jets/
Wavelet Labs Picks Lime Micro’s LMS7002M for its High-Performance 8×8 xMASS SDR
date: 2024-06-24, from: Lime Microsystems news
“xMASS SDR is a modular, high-performance MIMO [Multiple Input/Multiple Output] transceiver optimised for industrial, academic, and advanced software-defined radio (SDR) applications,” its creators say - promising a device suitable for a broad range of use-cases, including 5G NR cellular experimentation.
The post Wavelet Labs Picks Lime Micro’s LMS7002M for its High-Performance 8×8 xMASS SDR appeared first on Lime Microsystems.
The EU takes a bite out of Apple’s App Store
date: 2024-06-24, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Brussels has accused Apple of violating EU competition rules with its App Store. It’s the first time EU regulators have enforced the new Digital Markets Act against a major tech firm. Then, Indian students are furious following the last-minute cancellation of a crucial entrance test for post-graduate medical courses. And rental scams are on the rise in the U.K., with some criminals targeting illegal cannabis farms.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Bay Bridge sideshow Sunday ends with fireworks, noise, no arrests.
https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/23/bay-bridge-sideshow-ends-with-fireworks-noise-and-no-arrests/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Abortion in America after the end of Roe, in 8 charts.
HPE GreenLake sales on the rise as branding tweaks include more lines
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The strategy has changed so much that previously poor channel numbers don’t count, we’re told
HPE’s GreenLake strategy has changed so completely that the company said it’s impossible to compare poor channel sales numbers just three years ago to the modern GreenLake era.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/hpes_greenlake_strategy/
Levi’s and more affected in pants-dropping week of data breaches
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A busy few days for security teams
There were data breaches galore in the US last week with various major incidents reported to state attorneys general, some in good time, some not.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/security_breaches_of_the_week/
Levi’s and more affected in pants-dropping week of data breaches
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A busy few days for security teams
There were data breaches galore in the US last week with various major incidents reported to state attorneys general, some in good time, some not.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/breaches_of_the_week/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Why New York's Unlicensed Pot Stores Outnumber Legal Dispensaries.
https://reason.com/2024/06/24/new-yorks-predictable-legal-pot-disaster/
It’s desktop refresh season in the land of the Windowsalikes
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Those with curious disposition spoilt for choice as KDE 6.1, Cinnamon 6.2, and IceWM 3.5 all arrive
New versions of two of the most popular “traditional” desktops are out, alongside a new release of one of the oldest and smallest.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/kde_cinnamon_icewm/
Meta, Microsoft SQL Server make strange bedfellows on a couch of cyber-pain
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Yanks get food poisoning far more often than Brits. Is American IT just as sickening?
Opinion When two stories from opposite ends of the IT universe boil down to the same thing, sound the klaxons. At the uber-fashionable AI end of tech, Meta has grudgingly complied with a ruling not to feed European social media crap into its training data. Meanwhile, in the industrial slums, 20 percent of running Microsoft SQL Server instances are now past the end of support.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/meta_ms_sql_column/
Admin took out a call center – and almost their career – with a cut and paste error
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Have you heard the one about the techie who forgot what was on the clipboard?
Who, me? Brace yourselves, gentle readers, for it is once again Monday, and the work week has commenced. Thankfully, The Reg is here with another dose of Who, Me? in which readers share tales of times they had a day worse than the one you’re having. We hope it helps.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/who_me/
Today in SCV History (June 24)
date: 2024-06-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1980 – Saugus Train Station relocated to Hart Park, Newhall [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-june-24/
DARPA searched for fields quantum computers really could revolutionize, with mixed results
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It’s not all hype, but more work is needed before solutions are feasible or affordable
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has published the results of an exercise that assessed whether quantum computers will deliver on the promise of solving problems that stump classical machines – with mixed results.…
India to build re-usable launch vehicle after nailing third landing of mini-spaceplane
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Next: more work on crewed mission, including space yoga for astronauts
India’s Space Research Organization has signalled its intention to build a reusable launch vehicle after a third test of an unpowered experimental precursor again nailed its landing.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/india_orbital_reusable_vehicle/
Climate protesters run onto green, spray powder, delaying finish of PGA Tour event
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
CROMWELL, Conn. — Six climate protesters stormed the 18th green while the leaders were lining up their putts for the final hole of regulation at the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship on Sunday, spraying smoke and powder and delaying the finish for about five minutes.
The protesters waved smoke bombs that left white and red residue on the putting surface before Scottie Scheffler, Tom Kim and Akshay Bhatia finished their rounds. Some wore white T-shirts with the words “NO GOLF ON A DEAD PLANET” in black lettering on the front.
“I was scared for my life,” Bhatia said. “I didn’t even really know what was happening. … But thankfully the cops were there and kept us safe, because that’s, you know, that’s just weird stuff.”
The PGA Tour issued a statement thanking the Cromwell Police Department “for their quick and decisive action” and noting that there was no damage to the 18th green that affected either the end of regulation or the playoff hole.
Scheffler, who recently was arrested during a traffic stop at the PGA Championship, also praised the officers.
“From my point of view, they got it taken care of pretty dang fast, and so we were very grateful for that,” said Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 player, who beat Kim on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff for his sixth victory of the year.
“When something like that happens, you don’t really know what’s happening, so it can kind of rattle you a little bit,” Scheffler said. “That can be a stressful situation, and you would hate for the tournament to end on something weird happening because of a situation like that. I felt like Tom and I both tried to calm each other down so we could give it our best shot there on 18.”
Extinction Rebellion, an activist group with a history of disrupting events around the world, claimed responsibility for the protest. In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, the group blamed climate change for an electrical storm that injured two people at a home near the course on Saturday.
“This was of course due to increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather conditions,” the statement said. “Golf, more than other events, is heavily reliant on good weather. Golf fans should therefore understand better than most the need for strong, immediate climate action.”
After the protesters were tackled by police and taken off, Scheffler left a potential 26-foot clincher from the fringe on the right edge of the cup, then tapped in for par. Kim, who trailed by one stroke heading into the final hole, sank a 10-foot birdie putt to tie Scheffler and force the playoff.
Samsung teases investment to get into the GPU game
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A head-on assault on Nvidia seems unlikely – but dumping AMD from Exynos has merit
Analysis Samsung has teased its entry into the GPU industry, but its plans are obscure.…
Snowflake breach snowballs as more victims, perps, come forward
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Also: The leaked Apple internal tools that weren’t; TV pirate pirates convicted; and some critical vulns, too
Infosec in brief The descending ball of trouble over at Snowflake keeps growing larger, with more victims – and even one of the alleged intruders – coming forward last week.…
New Zealand wins Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix
date: 2024-06-24, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — New Zealand came out victorious in the Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix, the “world’s most exciting racing on water,” on New York’s Hudson River Sunday.
The two-day event was the penultimate race weekend of Mubadala SailGP before the competition’s fourth season concludes in San Francisco in July.
SailGP is an international sailing competition in which F50 foiling catamarans compete at 13 global destinations for a season of grand prix races. Some of this season’s previous destinations included Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Sydney, Australia.
Each grand prix consists of separate “fleet races” before the three highest-scoring teams compete in a final race to decide the champion.
This SailGP season consists of 10 world-renowned teams: Australia, Canada, Emirates Great Britain, France, Germany, New Zealand, Rockwool Denmark, Spain, Switzerland and the United States.
On Friday, Coutts announced that SailGP Season Five would feature a Brazil team, the competition’s first-ever team from South America.
“As a league, it’s an awesome place to be,” said Phil Robertson, Canada’s driver. “You got new teams and a lot of interest from a lot of countries so to have Brazil on the start line is very special and cool to expand to South America.”
Coming off its last race in Halifax, Canada, earlier this month, SailGP completed its 12th stop around the world this season in the waters between New York and New Jersey in which Canada placed second and Emirates Great Britain placed third.
The last time SailGP raced in New York was its debut season in 2019.
“Looking back on that inaugural event is like reflecting on a totally different stage in our journey,” Russell Coutts, CEO of SailGP, said in a press conference Friday. “We had just six national teams in a five-event calendar and now nearing the end of Season Four, we have 10 teams with the best of the best athletes in the sport, competing in a 13-event calendar, broadcast in 212 territories around the world.”
Approximately 9,000 ticketed attendees gathered on Governors Island and on the water Saturday and Sunday to watch the races.
Taylor Canfield, driver for the U.S. team, spoke on the significance of sailing in front of home fans in New York City and in San Francisco next month.
“It’s so cool to be here in the U.S. and these two iconic cities in New York and San Francisco,” Canfield said in Friday’s press conference. “It’s going to be amazing conditions and just perfect weather. This is the most iconic city in the world and it’s going to come alive so we’re excited about that.”
Looking forward to the final races in San Francisco next month, team Australia — reigning champion of SailGP seasons one, two and three — faces pressure to take home another win.
“It’s exciting to be in this position,” Tom Slingsby, driver for Australia, said. “For sure there’s a bit more adrenaline and there’s a bit more on the line knowing that every race really counts at the moment but I have full faith in my team. We’ve performed under pressure, we’ve won three one million dollar races.”
On July 14, one team will walk away with a $2 million prize and the title of SailGP’s season four champion.
https://www.voanews.com/a/new-zealand-wins-mubadala-new-york-sail-grand-prix/7667544.html
SoftBank boss says ‘artificial superintelligence’ could be three years away
date: 2024-06-24, updated: 2024-06-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Huawei closer to divorcing Android; India probes Amazon warehouses; Singapore gets autonomous street sweepers
Asia In Brief SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son last week told investors he believes an “artificial superintelligence” that has 10,000 times the intelligence of humans could arrive in as little as three years.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/asia_tech_news_in_brief/