News gathered 2024-06-26
(date: 2024-06-26 09:14:48)
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
Google festoons Chrome Enterprise browser with more controls
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Because if there’s one thing it really needed more of…
Google on Wednesday rolled out additional enterprise browser management features to help IT admins to keep corporate browsing software fit for purpose.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/google_chrome_enterprise/
5 Reasons Why Critical Decisions Should Be Made with a Business Plan
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
Making critical decisions without a solid framework can be a recipe for disaster when you are starting or growing your business. A well-crafted business plan serves as that essential framework, […]
The post 5 Reasons Why Critical Decisions Should Be Made with a Business Plan appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/5-reasons-why-critical-decisions-should-be-made-with-a-business-plan/
Mozilla integrating AI chatbots into Firefox
date: 2024-06-26, from: OS News
Mozilla has announced it’s adding easy access to tool like ChatGPT, Gemini, and so to Firefox. Whether it’s a local or a cloud-based model, if you want to use AI, we think you should have the freedom to use (or not use) the tools that best suit your needs. With that in mind, this week, we will launch an opt-in experiment offering access to preferred AI services in Nightly for improved productivity as you browse. Instead of juggling between tabs or apps for assistance, those who have opted-in will have the option to access their preferred AI service from the Firefox sidebar to summarize information, simplify language, or test their knowledge, all without leaving their current web page. Our initial offering will include ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Le Chat Mistral, but we will continue adding AI services that meet our standards for quality and user experience. ↫ Ian Carmichael My biggest worry is not so much Mozilla adding these tools to Firefox – other browsers are doing it, and people clearly want to use them, so it makes sense for Firefox, too, to integrate them into the browser. No, my biggest worry is that this is just the first step on the way to the next major revenue agreement – just as Google is paying Mozilla to be the default search engine in Firefox, what if OpenAI starts paying to be the default AI tool in Firefox? Once that happens, I’m afraid a lot of the verbiage around choice and the ability to easily disable it all is going to change. I’m still incredibly annoyed by the fact I have to dive into about:config just to properly remove Pocket, a service I do not use, do not want, and annoys me by taking up space in my UI. I’m afraid that one or two years from now, AI integration will be just another complex set of strings I need to look for in about:config to truly disable it all. It definitely feels like Firefox is only going to get worse from here on out, not better, and this AI stuff seems more like an invitation for a revenue agreement than something well thought-out and useful. We’ll see where things go from here, but my worries about Firefox’ future are only growing stronger with Mozilla’s latest moves. As a Linux user, this makes me worried.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140074/mozilla-integrating-ai-chatbots-into-firefox/
Alex Morgan left off U.S. soccer Olympic roster; Stanford well represented
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Bay Area will send several key players to Paris despite Morgan’s absence from the roster under new coach Emma Hayes.
AOOSTAR GEM12 Review: Mini PC with OCuLink, 2.5 GbE LAN and up to Ryzen 7 8845HS
date: 2024-06-26, from: Liliputing
The AOOSTAR GEM12 is a small desktop computer with a lot of features and a lot of customization options. It features a set of ports that includes OCuLink, USB4, and 2.5 GbE LAN. It’s available with a choice of AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, Ryzen 7 7840HS or Ryzen 9 6900HX processor options. And it can […]
The post AOOSTAR GEM12 Review: Mini PC with OCuLink, 2.5 GbE LAN and up to Ryzen 7 8845HS appeared first on Liliputing.
Biden, Trump to square off in 90-minute presidential debate
date: 2024-06-26, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-trump-to-square-off-in-90-minute-presidential-debate/7674625.html
US Supreme Court rules for Biden administration in social media dispute with conservative states
date: 2024-06-26, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices threw out lower-court rulings that favored Louisiana, Missouri and other parties in their claims that officials in the Democratic administration leaned on the social media platforms to unconstitutionally squelch conservative points of view.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court that the states and other parties did not have the legal right, or standing, to sue.
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The case is among several before the court this term that affect social media companies in the context of free speech. In February, the court heard arguments over Republican-passed laws in Florida and Texas that prohibit large social media companies from taking down posts because of the views they express. In March, the court laid out standards for when public officials can block their social media followers.
The cases over state laws and the one that was decided Wednesday are variations on the same theme, complaints that the platforms are censoring conservative viewpoints.
The states had argued that White House communications staffers, the surgeon general, the FBI and the U.S. cybersecurity agency are among those who applied “unrelenting pressure” to coerce changes in online content on social media platforms.
But the justices appeared broadly skeptical of those claims during arguments in March and several worried that common interactions between government officials and the platforms could be affected by a ruling for the states.
The Biden administration underscored those concerns when it noted that the government would lose its ability to communicate with the social media companies about antisemitic and anti-Muslim posts, as well as on issues of national security, public health and election integrity.
The Supreme Court had earlier acted to keep the lower-court rulings on hold. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have allowed the restrictions on government contacts with the platforms to go into effect.
Free speech advocates had urged the court to use the case to draw an appropriate line between the government’s acceptable use of the bully pulpit and coercive threats to free speech.
A panel of three judges on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled earlier that the Biden administration had probably brought unconstitutional pressure on the media platforms. The appellate panel said officials cannot attempt to “coerce or significantly encourage” changes in online content. The panel had previously narrowed a more sweeping order from a federal judge, who wanted to include even more government officials and prohibit mere encouragement of content changes.
The case is Murthy v. Missouri, 23-411.
‘Righting an historic wrong’: President Biden pardons veterans convicted under military law banning gay sex
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
The proclamation is set to affect roughly 2,000 people, according to a US official. The granting of pardons won’t automatically change convicted veterans’ records but allows those impacted to apply for a certificate of pardon that will help them receive withheld benefits.
Map: Fresno June Lightning wildfires and evacuation zone
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
Two wildfires that have grown to within a mile of each other prompted evacuation orders in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Fresno.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/26/map-fresno-june-lightning-wildfires-and-evacuation-zone/
Utah Is Sending a Conservative Climate Believer to the Senate
date: 2024-06-26, from: Heatmap News
The United States Senate is almost certainly getting another Republican who at least thinks climate change is a real problem.
Utah Congressman John Curtis, the founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus, won the Republican primary for Mitt Romney’s Senate seat over a gaggle of more conservative opponents, including one endorsed by former president Donald Trump. The primary victory puts Curtis in position to win the general election in November. (Utah hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1970.)
His victory was fueled in part by conservative environmental groups and donors, who put considerable resources toward his campaign. American Conservation Coalition Action, which seeks to mobilize young conservatives around climate, endorsed him, hosted events, knocked on doors, and spent around $250,000 in support of his candidacy, according to OpenSecrets. The most substantial support came from Clear Path Action, another center-right environmental group, which has spent almost $500,000 so far on Curtis, making up the overwhelming majority of its spending this cycle. The group’s founder, Jay Faison, is the biggest donor (to the tune of $2 million) to Conservatives Values for Utah, an outside group that’s spent $5 million to boost Curtis.
During his four terms in the House, Curtis largely steered clear of large scale, Democrat-backed climate and energy bills, instead supporting energy policies that have or could have broad, bipartisan support. He worked on the legislation that would become the ADVANCE Act, the nuclear regulatory reform bill that passed the House and Senate with huge bipartisan majorities; he’s also a supporter of geothermal energy, and has introduced legislation to ease the permitting process for new projects. Like all Republicans in Congress, he voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, and, like most Republicans in Congress, he also opposed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, more typically called the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which contained billions of clean energy funding.
Curtis is unlikely to garner support from the mainstream environmental groups that typically support Democrats, especially considering his opponent, Caroline Gleich, is an environmental activist. But he has gotten far more respectful notice than is typical for Republicans.The Sierra Club’s magazine profiled Curtis earlier this year, saying he “would be one of the few — perhaps the only — Senate Republicans who say that climate action is a priority.”
But Curtis is still unmistakably a Republican. Yes, he attended the United Nations climate conference in the United Arab Emirates and told Fox News, “the goal at COP should be to reduce global emissions, not energy choices;” but afterward, he also told the Deseret News, “you’re not going to replace [fossil fuels] with windmills and solar farms,’ and “we need to start having a discussion about the role of fossil fuels in our clean energy future.” When he appeared on the Climate One podcast, he said his interest in climate change derived from “an innate desire to be good stewards over this earth,” but also insisted that “it’s been a mistake to focus solely on fossil fuels [as] the problem here.”
It’s unlikely that Curtis will show up in the Senate and demand investigations of fossil fuel companies. More likely, he’ll continue his efforts to respond to Europe’s carbon border adjustment alongside fellow Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
“Representative Curtis’ thought leadership on environmental issues while staying true to his conservative values is a major step forward for the conservative environmental movement. We’re fortunate to have a strong ally like Representative Curtis in Congress, and we’re excited to hopefully continue working with him in the Senate to make America the most prosperous and cleanest country in the world,” ACC Action chief executive Danielle Butcher Franz told me in an emailed statement.
Curtis’ conservative environmentalism has helped him fundraise, but it’s also been the primary line of attack from his more conservative opponents, who seek to paint him as too liberal for the conservative state and whose climate politics are, at best, a misplaced priority, and at worst, at bat signal for out of state donors. (Faison, Curtis’ biggest supporter, lives in North Carolina.)
Curtis will likely join a small gaggle of Republican Senators who push policies to support American clean energy while remaining skeptical of the Democratic Party’s efforts to restrict fossil fuels, including Cassidy and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowksi.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/john-curtis-senate
Supreme Court sides with mayor accused of accepting a bribe in latest ruling to limit public anti-corruption laws
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, was convicted of accepting $13,000 from a trucking company weeks after it was awarded a contract. Snyder argued the payment was an after-the-fact “gratuity” that wasn’t covered by the federal bribery statute.
A Goliath vs. Goliath story 20 years in the making
date: 2024-06-26, from: Marketplace Morning Report
A federal judge has rejected an antitrust settlement that would have lowered the fees Visa and Mastercard charge every time you use your credit card to pay for a purchase. The judge ruled the settlement did not go far enough, agreeing with retailers who want to chip away at the power held by credit card companies. We’ll hear more. Then, hundreds of thousands of home sitting empty in Japanese cities. Expatriates are noticing.
Sights, sounds and smells of nature rule at this new Cal Academy of Sciences exhibit
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
New permanent exhibit promises a nature feast for the senses – from grizzly bears to a forest “Smell-o-Vision.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/26/nature-rules-at-this-new-cal-academy-of-sciences-exhibit/
Microsoft makes it harder to avoid OneDrive during new Windows 11 installs
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Hey, OneDrive! Leave my files alone
User data is being slurped into Microsoft’s cloud via OneDrive folder backup without user permission.…
Man dies in East Oakland shooting
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Tuesday night killing is the 46th homicide investigated by police this year.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/26/man-dies-in-east-oakland-shooting-4/
For Bay Area weather, a return to normal after two electric days
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
By Tuesday night, most of the lightning in the Bay Area had moved out, according to the weather service.
Researchers Prove Rabbit AI Breach By Sending Email to Us as Admin
date: 2024-06-26, from: 404 Media Group
The researchers claim they could see “all Rabbit R1 responses ever given.”
https://www.404media.co/researchers-prove-rabbit-ai-breach-by-sending-email-to-us-as-admin/
Doppio Zero in Campbell adds up to great Italian food
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
Los Gatos’s Bywater adds jazz to its Sunday brunch menu.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/26/doppio-zero-in-campbell-adds-up-to-great-italian-food/
How AI Revolutionized Protein Science, but Didn’t End It
date: 2024-06-26, from: Quanta Magazine
Three years ago, Google’s AlphaFold pulled off the biggest artificial intelligence breakthrough in science to date, accelerating molecular research and kindling deep questions about why we do science.The post How AI Revolutionized Protein Science, but Didn’t End It first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-ai-revolutionized-protein-science-but-didnt-end-it-20240626/
Resource burden of electric vehicles set to triple by 2050
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Experts say ‘circular economy strategies’ could keep demand at 2015 levels
Demand for raw materials to make electric vehicles will triple by 2050, while lithium-ion batteries could account for more than half the total resources needed for the auto industry by the same date, research from Japan has found.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/resource_burden_ev/
Supreme Court allows White House to press social media companies to remove disinformation
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
Of immediate significance, the decision means that the Department of Homeland Security may continue to flag posts to social media companies such as Facebook and X that it believes may be the work of foreign agents seeking to disrupt this year’s presidential race.
Los Gatos residents come together to plan multigenerational community center
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
Idea grew from desire for more senior services in town.
Kurtenbach: Answering your biggest Warriors questions ahead of the NBA Draft, free agency
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
There’s a lot going on, folks.
Pillars of Creation Star in New Visualization from NASA’s Hubble and Webb Telescopes
date: 2024-06-26, from: NASA breaking news
Made famous in 1995 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Pillars of Creation in the heart of the Eagle Nebula have captured imaginations worldwide with their arresting, ethereal beauty. Now, NASA has released a new 3D visualization of these towering celestial structures using data from NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. This is the […]
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/new-hubble-webb-pillars-of-creation-visualization/
The 1998 Florida Firestorm and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
date: 2024-06-26, from: NASA breaking news
Lightning Crashes East central Florida’s natural environment and climate have shaped, and delayed, Kennedy Space Center launch operations since the 1960s. Torrential pop-up thunderstorms, Atlantic hurricanes, roasting heat, and other climatic phenomena, including lightning and fire, repeatedly hampered mission timelines and created dangerous conditions for astronauts and workers. Kennedy Space Center personnel understood the dangers […]
https://www.nasa.gov/history/the-1998-florida-firestorm-and-nasas-kennedy-space-center/
GM brings in new CEO to steer troubled Cruise robotaxi service while Waymo ramps up in San Francisco
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
General Motors on Tuesday named a veteran technology executive with roots in the video game industry to steer its troubled robotaxi service Cruise as it tries to recover from a gruesome collision that triggered the suspension of its California license.
Hakone executive director to step down
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
Shozo Kagoshima is leaving the Saratoga landmark gardens after 9 years.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/26/hakone-executive-director-to-step-down/
Emergency track work causes BART to close one of its commute lines
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
According to BART, a maintenance vehicle derailed overnight.
ID Verification Service for TikTok, Uber, X Exposed Driver Licenses
date: 2024-06-26, from: 404 Media Group
As social networks and porn sites move towards a verified identity model, the actions of one cybersecurity researcher show that ID verification services themselves could get hacked too.
https://www.404media.co/id-verification-service-for-tiktok-uber-x-exposed-driver-licenses-au10tix/
Batten down the hatches, it’s time to patch some more MOVEit bugs
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Exploit attempts for ‘devastating’ vulnerabilities already underway
Thought last year’s MOVEit hellscape was well and truly behind you? Unlucky, buster. We’re back for round two after Progress Software lifted the lid on fresh vulnerabilities affecting MOVEit Transfer and Gateway.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/batten_down_the_hatches_its/
Taste-Off: The best sour cream at Bay Area supermarkets — and the duds
date: 2024-06-26, from: San Jose Mercury News
There are some divine sour creams in dairy cases at local markets - and there are some ghastly ones. Here’s what to buy and what to avoid.
Why VW and Rivian are Teaming Up
date: 2024-06-26, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Puerto Rico issued a heat advisory for the entire island for the first time ever • Flooding and landslides in Ivory Coast left at least 24 people dead • A fast-growing wildfire in central Oregon prompted evacuations.
THE TOP FIVE
- Volkswagen and Rivian team up in $5 billion joint venture
Volkswagen announced it will invest $5 billion ($1 billion now, another $4 billion over a few years) in EV pickup company Rivian as part of a joint venture “to create next generation software-defined vehicle (SDV) platforms to be used in both companies’ future electric vehicles.” The move will give VW access to Rivian’s technology, and Rivian a much-needed financial lifeline as it tries to launch its new R2 vehicles while cutting production costs. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said the money will allow Rivian to move ahead with plans to build a new manufacturing plant in Georgia. The news sent Rivian’s stock soaring, and Scaringe said the cash will help the company reach profitability. The company reported a $5.4 billion net loss last year.
- Cybertruck recalled for 4th time since November
Tesla’s Cybertruck was recalled again yesterday. This time, Tesla says the recall (which applies to more than 11,000 trucks) addresses a faulty front windshield wiper, and trim pieces that can apparently fly off the vehicle and hit people nearby. This is the pickup’s fourth recall since sales began last November. The wiper will be replaced free of charge. As for the trim, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tesla will apply an “adhesion promoter and pressure sensitive tape” to make sure it stays in place, or replace it if it’s already missing.
- Researchers identify new ‘tipping point’ for melting ice sheets
Our current projections for sea level rise from the melting ice sheets may be “significant underestimates,” according to a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The researchers said they identified a potential melting process by which warm seawater makes its way into the gap between the ice and the ground beneath it, known as the “grounding zone.” This water melts holes in the ice, allowing more warm water through, creating a feedback loop. “We find that grounding zone melting displays a ‘tipping point like’ behavior, where a very small change in ocean temperature can cause a very big increase in grounding zone melting, which would lead to a very big change in flow of the ice above it,” said Alex Bradley, an ice dynamics researcher at the British Antarctic Survey and lead author of the new paper. Bradley said this finding could help explain why the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are melting faster than scientists would expect, and called for incorporating seawater intrusion into the existing models.
Get Heatmap AM directly in your inbox every morning:
- Heat waves are shaping Americans’ summer vacation plans
Data from Booking.com shows how the heat waves baking the U.S. are influencing Americans’ summer travel plans. Nearly 64% of vacationers indicated that rising local temperatures were a factor in their choice of vacation spot for the July 4 holiday, and about one-third of travelers are considering coastal areas, hoping that proximity to water will keep temperatures cool, Reuters reported. Panama City Beach, Florida, and Myrtle Beach in South Carolina were among the destinations seeing a rise in searches.
- Denmark will become first country in the world to tax farmers for
methane-emitting livestock
In a world first, Denmark will start taxing farmers for the methane their livestock emit. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and livestock are a major source of emissions because ruminant animals like cows belch the stuff. Denmark’s new measure will charge farmers the equivalent of about $17 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent starting in 2030, increasing to roughly $28 by 2035. According to The Associated Press, a typical Danish cow produces methane emissions equivalent to 6.6 tons of CO2, so the new tax could add up to about $112 per year per cow in 2030, jumping to nearly $185 per cow per year by 2035. The hope is that other countries follow Denmark’s lead and that the tax will “lay the groundwork for a restructured food industry.”
THE KICKER
“We have fought many wars over oil. We will fight bigger wars over food and water.” –Sunny Verghese, chief executive of Singapore-based agricultural trading house Olam Agri, speaking to the Financial Times
https://heatmap.news/volkswagen-rivian-5-billion-evs
An apology for my comments about the British election
date: 2024-06-26, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
I want to apologize for yesterday’s rant about British politics. That kind of rhetoric isn’t big or clever, and it runs against the tone I usually try for*. Over time, this space has shifted from more personal thoughts towards more directed opinions at the intersection of tech and society, so newer readers may have been a bit confused.
I am angry, and I did take Brexit exceptionally personally. But it might have been more productive to discuss the details of why. For that, I encourage you to check out Richard Murphy’s Funding the Future, a blog about developing a fairer and sustainable economy, which has a UK focus.
* Aside from my comments about David Cameron. The guy deserves it. It’s hard to aporcine blame.
https://werd.io/2024/an-apology-for-my-comments-about-the-british-election
Atos in chaos as bailout talks unravel faster than you can say ‘restructuring’
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Time for plan B (or will it be C?)
Crisis-stricken Atos says the chosen bailout proposal from its largest shareholder has fallen through, just weeks after being confirmed, leaving the IT services biz to consider two alternative bids.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/atos_restructure_deal_fails/
Smart bee hotel features 11 Raspberry Pis
date: 2024-06-26, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Ten Raspberry Pis work with individual live-streaming cameras, and an eleventh powers six weather stations around this smart bee hotel.
The post Smart bee hotel features 11 Raspberry Pis appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/smart-bee-hotel-features-11-raspberry-pis/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump trusted more than Biden on democracy among key swing-state voters. When can we stop subsidizing Fox News?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/26/biden-trump-swing-state-poll-democracy/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Knicks trade for Mikal Bridges.
Etched looks to challenge Nvidia with an ASIC purpose-built for transformer models
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Startup says Sohu chip will be 20x faster than Nvidia’s H100 in Llama 70B … assuming it’s actually built
Following ChatGPT’s debut in late 2022, GPUs – Nvidia’s in particular – have become synonymous with generative AI.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/etched_asic_ai/
3 things you need to know about student loans this summer
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The LAist
The Biden administration’s student loan relief program, SAVE, is set to reduce payments this summer for many borrowers, but there are legal challenges looming.
https://laist.com/news/education/3-things-you-need-to-know-about-student-loans-this-summer
California Senate could approve a ballot measure to end forced labor in prison. Here’s why advocates have been pushing for it
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The LAist
Advocates say forcing incarcerated people to work deprives them of the ability to focus on other things like life training and education to better their lives after prison.
What do you get when you cross a VW with a Rivian electric?
date: 2024-06-26, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Volkswagen says it’s putting $5 billion into U.S. electric truck company Rivian. The cash infusion comes at a crucial time for Rivian, as it watches other EV startups go under. But VW also needs something out of this. We unpack. Plus, why it’s so difficult to maintain America’s aging bridge infrastructure and how the market for online comics is doing as Webtoon Entertainment looks to go public.
Glastonbury to turn festivalgoer pee into eco-friendly fertilizer
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Now that’s what you call a golden harvest
As normies arrive at the world’s most middle-of-the-road festival today, by the end of the week Glastonbury will be awash with hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemical-laced urine.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/glastonbury_pee_fertilizer/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Golf shirts and classified docs: New court filings show Trump’s clutter.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Silicon Valley wants unfettered control of the tech market. That’s why it’s cosying up to Trump.
Kenya anti-tax protests turn violent
date: 2024-06-26, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: At least 13 people have been killed and many more injured after police fired into crowds protesting Kenya’s controversial finance bill in Nairobi. An angry crowd stormed the parliament before setting parts of it on fire. Protests have taken place for several days. How did Kenya get here? Also: a look at the expats buying and renovating some of the 9 million empty homes in Japan.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/kenya-anti-tax-protests-turn-violent
British Airways blames T5 luggage chaos on fault ‘outside of our control’
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It was Vodafone, basically
Exclusive The Register can exclusively reveal that the “IT issue” behind the ongoing chaos at British Airways was due to problems with how its systems interact with the Vodafone platform.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/british_airways_t5_luggage/
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returns to Australia after US legal battle ends
date: 2024-06-26, from: VOA News USA
Was This Mysterious Woman a Medieval Warrior?
date: 2024-06-26, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Buried at a castle in Spain, the woman was found alongside the remains of 22 men who likely died on the battlefield
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-this-mysterious-woman-a-medieval-warrior-180984605/
Jim de Bree | An Interesting Tax Decision from SCOTUS
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
Last summer, I wrote two columns about a peculiar tax case that the Supreme Court decided to hear. Although the amount of tax involved in the case was less than […]
The post Jim de Bree | An Interesting Tax Decision from SCOTUS appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/jim-de-bree-an-interesting-tax-decision-from-scotus/
Rick Barker | Advice?
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
In re: Thomas Oatway, “Risky Medical Advice,” letters, June 21. Mr. Oatway ends his most recent rambling diatribe with: “My advice: Take medical advice from Mr. (Rob) Kerchner at your […]
The post Rick Barker | Advice? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/rick-barker-advice/
Arthur Saginian | Getting What They Asked For
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
Former President Donald Trump has been found guilty on all 34 counts by a jury of his “peers.” “Peers …” I find that a rather amusing characterization, but whatever. Sweeping […]
The post Arthur Saginian | Getting What They Asked For appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/arthur-saginian-getting-what-they-asked-for/
Joe Guzzardi | This Isn’t JFK’s Boston Anymore
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
Journalists who cover the immigration beat have a maxim: “Never say you’ve been witness to every conceivable violation of immigration law; you’ll soon be proven wrong.” In her relatively short […]
The post Joe Guzzardi | This Isn’t JFK’s Boston Anymore appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/joe-guzzardi-this-isnt-jfks-boston-anymore/
Walk On The Blade: The Marc Rich & Co Commodities Story
date: 2024-06-26, from: RIP Corp
RIP Corp is a Charts & Leisure production. Find us at ripcorp.biz, or follow in places @ripcorpdotbiz for all your dead business needs.
To support the show, please consider aligning yourself even more deeply with the brand, via our merch shop: ripcorp.threadless.com
RIP Corp is written and hosted by Ingrid Burrington. Produced by Meghal Janardan and Mike Rugnetta. Associate producer, Taylor Behnke. Original music and sound design from Andrew Atkin and Michael Simonelli. Fact-checking from Matt Giles. Logo design by Beatriz Lozano and illustrations by Megan Mulholland. Executive produced by Jason Oberholtzer.
https://ripcorp.biz/episodes/walk-on-the-blade-the-marc-rich-co-commodities-story-uenn68M9
AT&T wants Big Tech to help fund US internet access
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Affordable Connectivity funding coming to an end soon…
AT&T thinks that internet-based technology giants should contribute to a fund that subsidizes access to telecoms and broadband services in the US, and wants the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to force them to do so.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/att_wants_big_tech_network_fund/
Americans favored for overall Olympic medals, China will challenge for most gold
date: 2024-06-26, from: VOA News USA
America’s Nuclear Policy Is Getting … Pretty Good!
date: 2024-06-26, from: Heatmap News
Congress just passed perhaps its biggest support for zero-carbon energy since the Inflation Reduction Act. The ADVANCE Act, which the Senate adopted overwhelmingly last week, aims to keep America at the cutting edge of the global nuclear industry by cutting regulatory fees, making it easier for U.S. companies to build nuclear power plants abroad, and reforming the agency that oversees it all, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Ryan Norman, a senior policy advisor at Third Way’s climate and energy program, about how America got here. We talk about why nuclear is such a bipartisan issue, what the ADVANCE Act will actually do, and how soon new nuclear power plants could actually get built. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Ryan Norman: The U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a very well-regarded reputation, around the world partially because of the way it thinks about layers of different issues.
Stepping back for a brief second, when we talk about these relationships with other countries — I had mentioned that it’s an interagency option, but it’s also much deeper than financial. There’s a market piece, but there’s also a long-term relationship that you end up building with the country because your regulators understand each other. You’ve built a relationship with the international regulators and the monitoring agencies. You’re more or less introduced into that relationship by your partner, so by the U.S,. or by the French, or the Koreans, or whoever it is. So there’s a long-term relationship of trust that needs to be built there between those two poles.
So it’s really important that you work with a country that has experience mitigating some of these social issues and working that into the process effectively. Because when those disputes happen in a partner country, they want to be able to replicate the discourse process of transparency and all the different things that the NRC does.
When you think about how that translates to some of our competitors, countries like Russia and China, the dynamic of those countries’ regulators in the industry is very opaque. It’s much closer to the way the NRC’s precursor, the Atomic Energy Commission, used to operate in the United States, right? There’s just a lot of issues that those industries in Russia and China aren’t concerned with. Practically speaking, there’s no such thing as environmental or energy justice in China, right? Like there’s no community benefits plan process that they have to go through to build a new reactor. They have a lot of space. The density is very different. The authority and the permitting process is so different that they basically just make a decision and that’s how it goes.
So then that means that when you’re basing — when a country, you know, like a partner like Ghana, for example, is trying to base, okay, how do I want my regulator to look? Well, if I take the structure they have in another country that is not used to incorporating social engagement and understanding around some of these issues, and really mitigating social backlash, you’re really just replicating a system that is not going to be as equitable as what you could do if you were a partner with the U.S. So it’s another reason that U.S. leadership is really an imperative.
Robinson Meyer: And this is what makes nuclear reactors so different from solar, or onshore wind, or really any kind of wind or other kinds of energy technologies, I suppose, is that you’re signing up … You alluded to, like, a 50-year agreement, basically, between two countries, and you’re pledging a very long-term integration between those two regulatory states. In between, for lack of better term, energy-planning elites in those two countries.
Norman: Yeah, they call it the 100-year relationship, and that’s a long time. But it’s super real, and it’s super important because there’s a lot of influence that comes with being an energy partner, and you have the ability and I would say even the responsibility to guide that energy partner to do things responsibly and do things equitably. And I think that if we want a clean energy future that is abundant but also just, we can’t just defer leadership in these spaces to folks who are not focused on these principles.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
https://heatmap.news/podcast/shift-key-episode-21-advance-act
PeerJ Award Winners at APF 2024
date: 2024-06-26, from: PeerJ blog
The 2024 Annual Congress of the Association Paléontologique Française (APF) convened over sixty researchers, postdoctoral academics, PhD students, and amateur palaeontologists in the southwestern French city of Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne) from the 3rd to the 7th of June. The congress was organised with the support of the Victor Brun Natural History Museum of Montauban, the Lot […]
https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284889389/peerj-award-winners-at-apf-2024/
SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 to receive support right up to end of Unix epoch
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And there’s a special offer on the CentOS-compatible Liberty Linux
As SUSE ascends its self-imposed ALP, this version may be the last of the fixed release cycle for openSUSE Leap.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/sle_opensuse_15_6/
Can You Stop and Restart Social Security Benefits?
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
Dear Savvy Senior, Can I stop my Social Security retirement benefits and restart them later to get a bigger payment? I recently got a nice unexpected inheritance, so I don’t […]
The post Can You Stop and Restart Social Security Benefits? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/can-you-stop-and-restart-social-security-benefits/
Big Tech Wants Your Paycheck
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Lever News
Tech companies and a corporate-funded right-wing bill mill aim to pave the way for app-based payday-lending scams.
https://www.levernews.com/big-tech-wants-your-paycheck/
Classifieds – June 26, 2024
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.
The post Classifieds – June 26, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/26/classifieds-june-26-2024/
Want to save the planet from AI? Chuck in an FPGA and ditch the matrix
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Watts down, doc: Boffins find machine learning models can function with more modest power requirements
Large language models can be made 50 times more energy efficient with alternative math and custom hardware, claim researchers at University of California Santa Cruz.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/ai_model_fpga/
Today in SCV History (June 26)
date: 2024-06-26, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1972 – Upper (main) Castaic Lake opens for swimming and boating; afterbay opened in May [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-june-26/
Julian Assange pleads guilty, leaves courtroom a free man
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Now, about that bill for the private jet that’s taking him home to Australia …
Julian Assange is a free man.…
USC student will not be charged in fatal stabbing of unhoused carjacking suspect
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Xavier Cerf allegedly told Ivan Gallegos he had a gun, but no gun was ever found.
The post USC student will not be charged in fatal stabbing of unhoused carjacking suspect appeared first on Daily Trojan.
JuJu Watkins throws out Dodgers’ first pitch
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The basketball superstar showed off her baseball skills at Dodger Stadium.
The post JuJu Watkins throws out Dodgers’ first pitch appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/26/juju-watkins-throws-out-dodgers-first-pitch/
Student Health discusses respiratory health, environmental issues
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Extreme heat and poor air quality increase health risks to students during summer.
The post Student Health discusses respiratory health, environmental issues appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/26/student-health-discusses-respiratory-health-environmental-issues/
Everything reminds me of ‘Her’
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Crying isn’t always pointless, and it can sometimes be the catharsis one needs.
The post Everything reminds me of ‘Her’ appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/26/everything-reminds-me-of-her/
Onigiri satisfies on-the-go snack cravings
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Rice & Nori serves various hand-rolls, raw fish and finger foods.
The post Onigiri satisfies on-the-go snack cravings appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/26/onigiri-satisfies-on-the-go-snack-cravings/
Sometimes all you need is a good cry
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Crying isn’t always pointless, and it can sometimes be the catharsis one needs.
The post Sometimes all you need is a good cry appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/26/sometimes-all-you-need-is-a-good-cry/
Inside the biggest Summer Game Fest announcements
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Numerous new and exciting video game productions were revealed this June.
The post Inside the biggest Summer Game Fest announcements appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/26/inside-the-biggest-summer-game-fest-announcements/
João Neves wants the ball
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Benfica midfielder is the latest prospect from Portugal’s talent conveyor belt.
The post João Neves wants the ball appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/26/joao-neves-wants-the-ball/
Apple tells emulator developers it’s OK with retro games – not entire OSes
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
We sure hope this won’t upset European regulators given how great their relationship is with Apple right now
Updated A pair of developers have come away from encounters with Apple’s latest rules regarding video game emulators in its App Store and concluded the iGiant is not okay with software that emulates a whole operating system.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/apple_emulation_eu/
What share of lithium-ion batteries are recycled?
date: 2024-06-26, from: Hannah Richie at Substack
We don’t know, is the honest answer. But the 5% figure seems to be a myth.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/battery-recycling-myth
Yahoo! Japan to waive $189 million ad revenue after detecting fraudulent clicks
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Admits it’s not sure some clicks from from humans, points to bettter quality as sign not all is rotten
Yahoo! Japan will waive $189 million charged to advertisers after deciding they were fraudulently charged, the portal’s corporate parent revealed on Tuesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/yahoo_japan_ad_fraud/
City renews LASD contract with little discussion
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
The city of Santa Clarita handled important annual items Tuesday ahead of the fiscal year’s end, including a discussion of annual levying of fees, its service contracts and of course, […]
The post City renews LASD contract with little discussion appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/city-plans-to-renew-lasd-contract-without-discussion/
UC Santa Barbara Baseball Coach Andrew Checketts Named West Region Coach of the Year
date: 2024-06-26, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Gauchos finished the 2024 season with a 44-14 overall record.
The post UC Santa Barbara Baseball Coach Andrew Checketts Named West Region Coach of the Year appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
The Living Computers Museum finally isn’t
date: 2024-06-26, from: Old Vintage Computer Research
First off, apologies for a quiet month as I’ve been dealing with family matters which hopefully are now on a better footing (more articles are in the hopper). Unfortunately, the same apparently can’t be said for the once-great Living Computers Museum + Labs in Seattle, established by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and closed in 2020 during the COVID pandemic after his death, at least some of which is going up for auction. The specific pieces have not yet been announced by Christie’s, but will ostensibly include his personal DECsystem-10, a 1971 KI10 DEC PDP-10 from the MIT AI Lab which is the first computer he and Bill Gates ever used. (There’s just something about your first. I still have my actual first computer too, and with only around 1500 systems built the unit at the LCM was apparently the exact machine they used also. Here’s a picture of it from when it was in residence at the LCM and used to develop a replica.)Obviously, while I think it’s a crying shame, the estate can do what it likes with its own stuff and I hope the machine, plus the other 149 pieces reportedly to be auctioned off, goes to someone who appreciates it. (Bill Gates himself perhaps.) What’s more problematic is the people who donated systems and peripherals with the expectation they would remain there in some capacity, especially since the museum reportedly didn’t accept items as long-term loans. (Wikipedia has a substantially complete list of those items.) That’s not per se an unreasonable position, and one that helps protect the museum, but it’s also one that leaves their prior owners with no firm recourse for recovery before they get liquidated or scrapped in a situation like this. Throwing them away is bad enough but if those items also go up for sale, though doing so may be technically legal depending on how the transfer was written up, it’s pretty darn sleazy. Allen’s estate, notably his sister Jody who is the trustee and executrix, would then be profiting off items donated in good faith on the understanding that they would be in a museum. That’s bad and they should feel bad.
But then perhaps museums aren’t what they used to be. On cctalk someone mentioned the now defunct? National Museum of Communications in Irving, TX which downsized in 1998 by taking about five commercial dumpsters’ worth of radios and other items to the dump. It looks like one guy ran that shop and it probably became too large for him to handle, a story which is probably more common than most of us know, though it’s still bad news for the equipment that got junked — some of which was almost certainly rare or irreplaceable, even if specific items themselves weren’t particularly valuable. Every collector has had well-intentioned dreams at one time or another of opening our own museums, not realizing that they turn into massive sinks of time and money and regulatory filings, and they’re never as much fun to operate as the private computer room or display case you used to have in your house. Situations like this should also remind us that donating our own beloved items to any institution in the hopes they’ll “survive” us is no guarantee they’ll remain there either.
We’re amateurs, though. Paul Allen, on the other hand, was not an amateur and was an incredibly wealthy man who had to have some awareness of estate planning, and one who knew his cancer was likely to return. It is widely reputed that the LCM was expensive to run and hard to manage even with his sizeable fortune and a lot of diligent volunteers. Now his collection and quite a few artifacts I imagine some folks would like back are in the hands of his sister, who allegedly doesn’t have any interest in them other than the price they might fetch. Let that be a lesson to us that no one and nothing lives forever.
https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-living-computers-museum-finally-isnt.html
Organized crime and domestic violence perps are big buyers of tracking devices
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Australian study finds GPS trackers – and sometimes AirTags – are in demand for the wrong reasons
Tracking devices are in demand from organized crime groups and known perpetrators of domestic violence, according to an Australian study.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/criminals_use_gps_bluetooth_trackers/
NASA, SpaceX Launch NOAA’s Latest Weather Satellite
date: 2024-06-26, from: NASA breaking news
NASA successfully launched the fourth and final satellite in a series of advanced weather satellites for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) at 5:26 p.m. EDT Tuesday. The GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) will benefit the nation by providing continuous coverage of weather and hazardous environmental conditions across much of the Western Hemisphere. The satellite […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-spacex-launch-noaas-latest-weather-satellite/
China’s Chang’e-6 capsule returns with lunar loot from the far side
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Now to figure out if it really is rich in useful stuff that could fuel further exploration
China’s Chang’e-6 re-entry capsule reached Earth on Tuesday after a 53-day mission to the far side of the Moon. And it came back with a sample onboard.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/china_far_side_sample/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-26, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
This is why we can’t have nice
things
https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/112679629018556753
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112680425382508559
John Sullivan opened issue #142: SVN History? at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
Hi, I was curious about browsing some of the pre-2000s sources for A2, particularly to see the history of the X11 interface https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/blob/main/source/Unix.X11.Mod#L11
I tried using git-svn to pull the history from the ETH
hosted SVN server, but it doesn't appear to work unfortunately. I could
try again or take some pointers, but I don't want to blindly mash
against what's meant to be an archive. Maybe the SVN repo could be
dumped to an object storage service as a permanent download? In general
I think it would be illustrative to have a more complete history of the
source code, but I understand if that's not a priority of the faculty.
Thanks!
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/142
The First Crack Just Opened in the Climate Left
date: 2024-06-26, from: Heatmap News
There will be many chances this week to dissect why two-term New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman lost his primary to Westchester County Executive George Latimer, which The Associated Press called less than an hour after the polls closed on Tuesday. Post mortems will focus on the financial angle (the 16th District primary was the most expensive in House history) and, of course, the Israel-Palestine angle (nearly $15 million alone came from an American Israel Public Affairs Committee-affiliated super PAC that aggressively portrayed Bowman as antisemitic). Others will say it had been a forgone conclusion and point to the disturbing way Latimer co-opted Republican racial dog-whistles in his attacks, or claim Bowman sabotaged his own chances by shifting too far to the left.
It’s probably still a stretch to say that Bowman’s resounding loss was a referendum on progressive climate movements like Sunrise, which attached itself both to Bowman and to the Green New Deal. But look at it the other way around: In the context of Governor Kathy Hochul’s reneging on congestion pricing and the state legislature’s failure to pass the NY HEAT Act, one of the staunchest allies of progressive climate policy losing his election represents another blow to New York’s image as a national leader on the issue — and its ability to remain one.
The Sunrise Movement played a pivotal role in Bowman’s 2020 win against 30-year incumbent Eliot Engel — who was, himself, an original co-sponsor of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal bill. But Bowman, then 44, represented a fresh face for environmentally minded progressives in a district that once voted more overwhelmingly for Barack Obama than any other locality in the county. When Bowman ultimately defeated the then-73-year-old establishment figure, he also became the first Black representative of the majority minority district that covers the southern half of Westchester County and the northern lip of the Bronx.
In Congress, Bowman’s senior policy advisor reportedly helped spur Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer into action on the Inflation Reduction Act during the summer of 2022. Somewhat less gloriously, Bowman became only the 27th member of Congress to be censured after he pulled a fire alarm in the Capitol during spending bill negotiations. (He claimed he thought it opened a door.) But his legacy also includes the pursuit of progressive climate policies, such as the Sunrise-backed Green New Deal for Public Schools Act, which he’s introduced in each of the past two congressional sessions and, if passed, would invest $1.6 trillion to reduce emissions and lower environmental justice-related barriers at public schools. Still, that sort of aggressive public spending hasn’t always sat right with the powers that be in the Democratic Party; tellingly, Hillary Clinton endorsed Bowman’s challenger, Latimer, even as pro-Trumpers poured money into his campaign.
Fast-forward to 2024, and the Sunrise Movement is going through a reckoning of its own over whether President Biden’s climate record outweighs his handling of the crisis in Gaza. (Ironically, Bowman “probably had the worst politics on the issue of any Squad member early on in his tenure,” the progressive Discourse Blog has argued.)
That’s not to say that the climate is “losing” to Middle East policy in Americans’ hearts and minds, exactly; on the contrary, climate is a proven election winner, albeit not always in those words. “The NY16 race is a setback for the climate movement, but it also shows the popularity of our ideas,” Saul Levin, the campaigns and political director of the Green New Deal Network, wrote me. “It took the most money in primary history and GOP donors to buy Green New Deal champion Jamaal Bowman’s seat.”
But elections are about, and influenced by, many things, and whatever the combination of reasons may be, the truth stands that with Bowman’s defeat, Congress is now down one more progressive climate ally than it otherwise would have been. (Latimer has called climate change an “existential threat” but has not foregrounded it as a primary concern.)
Bowman’s loss might not sound like much in the bigger picture of the many climate elections happening this year — including, of course, the Big One. But if former President Donald Trump manages to take back the White House this November, every House and Senate seat sympathetic to the urgent realities of climate change will matter critically. That’s not to say, necessarily, that Latimer won’t fight for such causes, but it seems unlikely he’ll be a leader the way Bowman and other Squad members have been, at times pushing more centrist Democrats further to the left and to action.
So yes, you can draw many conclusions from the 16th District primary — that it represents the collapse of the progressive influence of groups like Sunrise; or that, with Bowman being the first Squad member to lose reelection, it reveals a growing impatience with absolutist politics; or that big-money interests have finally figured out a winning strategy in outspending scrappy underdogs; or how all these things in combination might spell trouble for Biden in a few months. But a loss is a loss, and it’s the nature of post mortems to leave out the most important question: What happens next?
https://heatmap.news/politics/jamaal-bowman-primary-loss
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
My friends in the Bay Area who started Berkeleyside and Oaklandside, now have a sister pub for Richmond.
We’re Fighting for Library Rights in Court This Friday – Join Us!
date: 2024-06-26, from: Internet Archive Blog
Friday is our day in court. After four long years of legal action, we will be in New York for the appellate oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the […]
https://blog.archive.org/2024/06/26/were-fighting-for-library-rights-in-court-this-friday-join-us/
Stability AI stablized by investment from Silcon Valley royalty, new executive team
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Text-to-image AI outfit can now buy time to build products and profit
Generative AI company Stability AI says it’s poised to accelerate development of its text-to-image products thanks to a fresh round of investments and a management shakeup.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/stability_ai_refinances/
US transportation official says railroad company interfered with derailment probe
date: 2024-06-26, from: VOA News USA
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that Norfolk Southern repeatedly tried to interfere with the agency’s investigation into the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and shape its conclusions about the flawed decision to blow open five tank cars and burn the vinyl chloride inside.
The NTSB also confirmed at Tuesday’s hearing that the February 2023 derailment was caused by a wheel bearing that video showed was on fire for 32.19 kilometers (more than 20 miles) beforehand but wasn’t caught in time by inaccurate trackside detectors. The board also approved more than two dozen recommendations to prevent similar disasters, including establishing federal rules for those detectors and the way railroads respond to them along with reviewing how officials decide whether to ever conduct a vent and burn again.
More than three dozen freight cars derailed February 3, 2023, on the outskirts of East Palestine near the Pennsylvania border, including 11 carrying hazardous materials. Some residents were evacuated that night, but days later more had to leave their homes amid fears of an imminent explosion. Despite potential health effects, officials intentionally released and burned toxic vinyl chloride three days after the crash, sending flames and smoke into the air.
COC AST receives $136,000 grant from NASA
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
News release It’s all systems go for the College of the Canyons Aerospace and Science Team, which has received a $136,000 grant from NASA to support its High-Altitude Student Platform, […]
The post COC AST receives $136,000 grant from NASA appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/coc-ast-receives-136000-grant-from-nasa/
LAUSD budget shrinks, but continues salary increases, class size reductions
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The LAist
The Los Angeles Unified School District board approved an $18.4 billion budget that avoids layoffs and continues to fund raises and class size reductions despite the expiration of billions in federal pandemic relief funding.
https://laist.com/news/education/los-angeles-unified-school-district-board-approves-budget-2024-2025
Ecuador ends visa-free entry for Chinese nationals
date: 2024-06-26, from: VOA News USA
Austin, Texas — Ecuador says it will suspend visa-free entry into the country for Chinese citizens, starting July 1, citing a “worrying” increase in irregular migration.
Over the past few years, Ecuador has been the starting point for many of the thousands of Chinese citizens who have decided to take the long and treacherous journey through South America, Central America and Mexico to reach the southern U.S. border.
Some who have already migrated to the United States say Ecuador’s decision and the growing resolve of both Washington and Beijing to stop the flow of illegal migration is a sign that the door may be closing for those seeking to “zouxian” or “walk the line” – as the journey is popularly described in Chinese.
Wang Zhongwei, a 33-year-old Chinese from Anhui, came to the U.S. by “walking the line” from Ecuador in May 2023. He said that after the Ecuadorian government’s announcement, “the discussion [among Chinese illegal immigrants] has been heated, and this has a great impact [because] more than 80% of the people came through Ecuador.”
According to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol statistics, the monthly number of encounters for Chinese nationals at the southwestern border hit a record high of nearly 6,000 in December of 2023. In recent months, those encounters have started to come down, slipping to just more than 3,600 in May.
In addition to a recent decision by U.S. President Joe Biden to temporarily restrict asylum eligibility at the U.S.-Mexico border, there are signs that Washington and Beijing are finding ways or at least trying to work together on the issue.
In May, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the Associated Press that Beijing is “willing to maintain dialogue and cooperation with the United States in the field of immigration enforcement” and accept the repatriation of people with verified Chinese nationality.
In April, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told a congressional hearing that he had “engaged” with his Chinese counterparts and that China had begun to accept the repatriation of Chinese immigrants who have no legal basis to stay in the United States.
VOA emailed the Department of Homeland Security to inquire about U.S.-Chinese cooperation on the deportation of Chinese nationals but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Guo Bin, a Chinese citizen from Guangxi who arrived in the United States at the end of last year with his 12-year-old daughter, said he has heard of some Chinese who “walked the line” being deported in Los Angeles since May.
“There are indeed deportations, and they can be deported on the spot,” he said.
According to posts from social media influencer Teacher Li, Chinese authorities recently issued two documents to public prosecutors that highlight their determination to crack down on those who “walk the line” and to strengthen border control.
VOA could not independently verify the authenticity of the documents, but when it asked the Chinese Embassy about the documents the spokesman did not say they were fabricated.
In an emailed response to questions about the post, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. said: “China’s Supreme Court performs its duty in keeping with the law.”
“On illegal migration, China’s position is clear and consistent,” he said. “We oppose and firmly combat all forms of illegal migration and human smuggling.”
Li also said that “China’s law-enforcement agencies are working with the relevant countries to combat human smuggling and on extradition as well, in a joint effort to uphold the orderly flow of people across the countries.”
Earlier this year, Mexico strengthened its border control by setting up new checkpoints on major roads and increasing patrols at the more heavily used crossing points into the U.S. More illegal migrants have been intercepted as a result.
According to the Washington Office on Latin America, Mexican immigration forces set a new record for the number of immigrant arrests in a single month in January and February of this year.
Guo said that he has heard about some Chinese who were intercepted while crossing Mexico.
“U.S. immigration officers cooperate with the Mexican government and go deep into central Mexico to intercept immigrants,” he said.
Once Chinese migrants are intercepted, they are sent to southern Mexico, he said.
If they want to continue “walking the line,” they must start again from a place farther away from the U.S., which will cost them more money and time.
Challenges aside, Wang and Guo say there are still ways to make it to the border.
Wang says the desire of people to leave China is still strong and that some are exploring new routes.
“You can fly to Cuba, and you can also fly to Bolivia,” Wang said.
In May, the Cuban government began allowing 90-day visa-free entry for Chinese citizens. Bolivia allows Chinese citizens holding ordinary passports to receive tourist visas upon arrival. Those with a transit visa can stay for 15 days or on a tourist visa for 30 days.
The straight-line distance from Cuba to the southernmost tip of Florida is about 150 km. The narrow waterway has been a smuggling route for decades. And some Chinese have already tried, despite the risks.
In October 2023, authorities in Florida say, 11 male and six female Chinese citizens were arrested after illegally entering Key Largo, Florida, from Cuba.
Li Xiaosan, a Chinese dissident, arrived in the U.S. in February 2023 by “walking the line.” He says he feels fortunate to be able to start a new life and sad for others who want to leave China now. Since arriving in the U.S., Li opened a translation company in New York and has passed his preliminary hearing for his political asylum application. He also obtained a work permit.
He says that once Ecuador’s new policy takes effect on July 1, even if Chinese people use other routes, the chances of successfully reaching the U.S. and staying will be significantly reduced.
“The door is closed,” Li said, adding that the question now is: “How many people can squeeze in through the cracks?”
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ecuador-ends-visa-free-entry-for-chinese-nationals/7671139.html
In deal with US, WikiLeaks’ Assange pleads guilty, secures freedom, ends legal fight
date: 2024-06-26, from: VOA News USA
SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has pleaded guilty to a single felony charge for publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that secures his freedom and concludes a drawn-out legal saga that raised divisive questions about press freedom and national security.
The plea was entered Wednesday morning in federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific. He arrived at court shortly before the hearing was to begin and did not take questions.
Though the deal with prosecutors required him to admit guilt to a single felony count, it would also permit him to return to his native Australia without spending any time in an American prison. He had been jailed in the United Kingdom for the last five years, fighting extradition to the United States on an Espionage Act indictment that could have carried a lengthy prison sentence in the event of a conviction.
The abrupt conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of victory, with the Justice Department able to resolve without trial a case that raised thorny legal issues and that might never have reached a jury at all given the plodding pace of the extradition process.
WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling website that Assange founded in 2006, applauded the announcement of the deal, saying it was grateful for “all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”
The deal, disclosed Monday night in a sparsely detailed Justice Department letter, represents the latest and presumably final chapter in a court fight involving the eccentric Australian computer expert who has been celebrated by supporters as a transparency crusader but lambasted by national security hawks who insist that his disdain for government secrecy put lives at risks, and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism duties.
The U.S. Justice Department agreed to hold the hearing on the remote island because Assange opposed coming to the continental U.S. and because it’s near Australia, where he will return.
The guilty plea resolves a criminal case brought by the Trump administration Justice Department in connection with the receipt and publication of war logs and diplomatic cables that detailed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prosecutors alleged that he conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records and published them without regard to American national security, including by releasing the names of human sources who provided information to U.S. forces.
But his activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view. 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.
The indictment was unsealed in 2019, but Assange’s legal woes long predated the criminal case and continued well past it.
Weeks after the release of the largest document cache in 2010, a Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. Assange has long maintained his innocence, and the investigation was later dropped.
He presented himself in 2012 to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution, and spent the following seven years in self-exile there, hosting a parade of celebrity visitors and making periodic appearances from the building’s balcony to address supporters.
In 2019, his hosts revoked his asylum, allowing British police to arrest him. He remained locked up for the last five years while the Justice Department sought to extradite him, in a process that encountered skepticism from British judges who worried about how Assange would be treated by the American criminal justice system.
Ultimately, though, the resolution sparing Assange prison time in the U.S. is a repudiation of sorts of years of ominous warnings by Assange and his supporters that the American criminal justice system would expose him to unduly harsh treatment, including potentially the death penalty — something prosecutors never sought.
July 16: Trash Talk with Burrtec at Valencia Library
date: 2024-06-26, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Step into the Valencia Branch community room for a session on the Santa Clarita Valley’s new waste collection partnership with Burrtec, Tuesday July 16, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Valencia Public Library,23743 W. Valencia Blvd. Santa Clarita, CA 91355.
https://scvnews.com/july-16-trash-talk-with-burrtec-at-valencia-library/
Microsoft blamed for million-plus patient record theft at US hospital giant
date: 2024-06-26, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Probe: Worker at speech-recog outfit Nuance wasn’t locked out after firing
Updated American healthcare provider Geisinger fears highly personal data on more than a million of its patients has been stolen – and claimed a former employee at a Microsoft subsidiary is the likely culprit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/geisinger_nuance_microsoft_worker/
July 2: Tie Dye Craft Event at Canyon Country Library
date: 2024-06-26, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Come tie-dye a bandana at the Canyon Country Jo Anne Darcy Library, 18601 Soledad Canyon Road, Santa Clarita, CA 91351 on Tuesday, July 2 from 3:30-4:30 p.m. Bring an item from home or dye a bandana that the Library will provide
https://scvnews.com/july-2-tie-dye-craft-event-at-canyon-country-library/
Senior Center nutrition program funding down millions
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
Roughly $5.1 million in temporary COVID funding no longer available; multiple services to be discontinued after Friday, approximately 900 to miss out on daily meals The Santa Clarita Valley Senior […]
The post Senior Center nutrition program funding down millions appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/senior-center-nutrition-program-funding-down-millions/
Hoedown raises funds for Circle of Hope cancer services
date: 2024-06-26, from: The Signal
When Alison Lindemann was diagnosed with breast cancer, she endured a harrowing experience with multiple surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation. During her battle, Lindemann didn’t receive mental or emotional support due […]
The post Hoedown raises funds for Circle of Hope cancer services appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/hoedown-raises-funds-for-circle-of-hope-cancer-services/
June 27: Suncatcher Windchime Workshop for Teens, Tweens
date: 2024-06-26, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Santa Clarita teens and tweens are invited to stop by to make a suncatcher windchime Thursday, June 27 from 3:30-4:30 p.m. at the Canyon Country Jo Anne Darcy Library
https://scvnews.com/june-27-recycled-suncatcher-windchime-workshop-for-teens-tweens/
Ahead of Thursday presidential debate, a look back to 2020
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
The first debate of the 2024 U.S. presidential election takes place on Thursday. But it isn’t the candidates’ first time debated each other. VOA’s senior Washington correspondent, Carolyn Presutti, looks back to 2020 for some clues about what we will see and hear in the debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ahead-of-thursday-presidential-debate-a-look-back-to-2020/7670106.html
West Ranch Grad Brennan Leem Wins National Merit Scholarship
date: 2024-06-25, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Brennan T. Leem, a 2024 graduate of West Ranch High School in Stevenson Ranch, has been awarded a corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship
https://scvnews.com/west-ranch-grad-brennan-leem-wins-national-merit-scholarship-award/
If you’re using Polyfill.io code on your site – like 100,000+ are – remove it immediately
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Scripts turn malicious, infect webpages after Chinese CDN swallows domain
The polyfill.io domain is being used to infect more than 100,000 websites with malware after a Chinese organization bought the domain earlier this year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/polyfillio_china_crisis/
SBMA Announces New Chair and Members of Board of Trustees
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
June 24, 2024 ― The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) is pleased to announce two new members of the Board
The post SBMA Announces New Chair and Members of Board of Trustees appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/25/sbma-announces-new-chair-and-members-of-board-of-trustees/
805title Opens Office In Santa Barbara
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Premier title company 805title has expanded to downtown Santa Barbara with the opening of a new office on State Street.
The post 805title Opens Office In Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/25/805title-opens-office-in-santa-barbara/
Unity Singers Present Summertime Fun
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA— June 25, 2024 — The public is invited to the Unity Singers’ concert, “Summertime Fun!” at Unity
The post Unity Singers Present Summertime Fun appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/25/unity-singers-present-summertime-fun/
June 26: Coffee With a Cop at Bodhi Leaf Coffee
date: 2024-06-25, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station invites residents to enjoy Coffee with a Cop on Wednesday, June 26 from 9-11 a.m.
https://scvnews.com/june-26-coffee-with-a-cop-at-bodhi-leaf-coffee/
Father of District Elections’ House Explodes in New Mexico Wildfires
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Leo Martinez, the first Latino elected to Santa Barbara City Council in the 20th century, says the fire was started by arson but allowed to spread due to incompetence.
The post Father of District Elections’ House Explodes in New Mexico Wildfires appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
June 26: Teen Library Biodiversity Scavenger Hunt
date: 2024-06-25, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Embark on a Biodiversity Scavenger Hunt, Wednesday, June 26 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the teen area at the Old Town Newhall Library, 24500 Main Street, Newhall,
https://scvnews.com/june-26-teen-library-biodiversity-scavenger-hunt/
Schiavo’s mascot bill hanging in ‘suspense’
date: 2024-06-25, from: The Signal
The bill coauthored by Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, and Assemblyman James Ramos, D-Highland, that would ban the usage of “derogatory” Native American terms as mascots or nicknames for K-12 public […]
The post Schiavo’s mascot bill hanging in ‘suspense’ appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/schiavos-mascot-bill-hanging-in-suspense/
US mayors urge Congress to ditch red-tape-slaying broadband expansion bill
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
What’s the matter, you want China to win, huh?
It’s been slow going expanding America’s high-speed internet coverage – and city-level opposition to one proposed national law to streamline broadband roll-outs may stall things further. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/mayors_broadband_expansion/
Of Psion and Symbian
date: 2024-06-25, from: OS News
As cool as the organizer was, it was extremely limited in pretty much every way. Psion had got many things right in the first go, as reviewers were quick to admit, and that made iterating on the design somewhat easy. The Organiser II CM released in 1986 was built on the Hitachi HD6303X (Motorola 6803) clocked at 920kHz with 8K RAM and 32K ROM. The screen was a much improved dot matrix LCD with two lines of sixteen characters. This version also shipped with a little piezo beeper built in, and an expansion slot on the top. The expansion slot could allow for a wired power adapter, a serial cable, a bar code reader, a telephone dialer, and even a USB port. Given the reputation of the first model for ruggedness and the coverage of the same quality in the second model, this particular model sold quite well to companies who needed handheld computers for inventory and other purposes. The Organizer II XP launched the same year, and this model had 32K RAM and a backlit screen while otherwise being the same machine. Given that both of these models had significantly more RAM than their predecessor, the programming capabilities were greatly enhanced with a new language, OPL, which was similar to BASIC. ↫ Bradford Morgan White The Psion Organiser II is the very root of all mobile computing today. This may seem like hyperbole – but trust me, it really is. I have an Organiser II LZ64 with a 32k datapak (memory card), and while it may look like a calculator, this little machine from 1986 already contains the very skeleton of the graphical user interface Palm would eventually popularise, and the iPhone and Android would take to extraordinary heights. Turn on an Organiser II, and you’re greeted by a home screen with a grid of applications (no icons, though, of course – just labels) with a selector you moved around with the cursor keys. Hit the EXE key, and the application would load up, ready to be used; hit the home button (the ON key if my memory serves) and it would take you back to the home screen. This basic paradigm, of a grid of applications as a home screen you always return to, survives to this day, and is used by billions of people on their Android and iOS devices, both smartphones and tablets. People with little to no knowledge of the history of mobile computing – or people spreading corporate propaganda – often seem to act as if the release of the iPhone was the big bang of mobile computing, and that it materialised out of thin air because Steve Jobs alone willed it into existence. The reality is, though, that there is a direct line from the early Psion devices, through to Palm OS, the iPhone, and later Android. There were various dead end branches along the way, too, like the Newton, like Symbian, like the original Windows PocketPC, and so on – but that direct line from early Psion to that fancy Pixel 8 Pro or whatever you have today is solidly visible to anyone without an agenda. I love my Organiser II. It’s approaching 40 years old now, and it still works without a single hitch. There’s barely a scratch on it, the display is bright, the pixels are clear, the characteristic sliding cover feels as solid today as it did when it rolled off the factory line. This is where mobile computing began.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140070/of-psion-and-symbian/
‘Drumbeat of Humanity’: Documentary by Yulia Maluta
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A fascinating historical journey through the lens of music and dance.
The post ‘Drumbeat of Humanity’: Documentary by Yulia Maluta appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/25/drumbeat-of-humanity-documentary-by-yulia-maluta/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
My friend Chuck Shotton says I should learn how to use this software.
https://lmstudio.ai/docs/welcome
Once a rallying cry, ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ fades from Trump rhetoric
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
Washington — In 2016, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign echoed with a frequent vow to crush “radical Islamic terrorism.”
Fast forward to today, as he seeks a second chance in the White House, Trump rarely mentions the phrase, his erstwhile rhetoric about Islamist terrorism eclipsed by a focus on immigration, crime and other domestic issues.
The shift came into sharp relief on Sunday when a coordinated terrorist assault on a police station, churches and synagogues in southern Russia left at least 20 people dead. What might once have prompted a flurry of tweets went unmentioned on Trump’s Truth Social platform.
Why the silence on what was once a rallying cry? Experts suggest two factors: diminished public concern about terrorism and a possible strategic play for the Muslim American vote.
Brian Levin, an extremism expert who has closely followed Trump’s rhetoric, said the former president — “more of an opportunist than an ideologue” — is zeroing in on issues that resonate with voters.
“Eight years ago, when the threat of foreign-inspired extremism polled among the top concerns of voters, Trump successfully invoked terror attacks … to drum up support,” Levin said. “Today, however, Trump has to pivot somewhat to domestic issues relating to the economy, democracy, crime and the border as well as the record of an incumbent he hopes to unseat.”
Defending his record in office, including his handling of southern border immigration, President Joe Biden has made protecting democracy a centerpiece of his campaign, casting Trump as a grave threat to the country.
But Biden’s staunch support of Israel during its military campaign in Gaza has angered many Muslim voters, opening a rare opportunity for Trump, according to experts.
Gabriel Rubin, a justice studies professor at Montclair State University, said Trump may be eyeing the Muslim vote in key battleground states with large Muslim populations that could determine the outcome of the November election.
“He has an avenue not to mention [‘radical Islamic terrorism’] too much,” Rubin, who has written about Trump’s past rhetoric about Muslims and terrorism, told VOA in an interview. “I think he can win some of these Midwestern states if he plays his cards right.”
To be sure, the threat of international terrorism hasn’t vanished. In the months since the outbreak of conflict in Gaza, U.S. officials, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, have been sounding the alarm about an increased potential for terrorist attacks.
But while the warnings seem to have raised the public’s worries about terrorism, “overall concern about the issue still doesn’t match the higher levels of concern it garnered” in 2015 and 2016, according to an April Gallup report.
Trump’s 2016 campaign rhetoric — from claiming “Muslims hate us” to calling for a “complete and total” shutdown of Muslims entering the country — did not happen in a bubble.
Though on the run, the Islamic State (IS) still controlled large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq and advocated attacking the West. Adding to Americans’ angst about terrorism were a spate of IS-inspired terror attacks across Europe and the United States.
In the 12 months leading up to the November election, Trump tweeted 164 times about Islamic State, “radical Islam” and terrorism — nearly twice as much as he did about border security and immigration, according to one estimate.
Trump’s vitriolic comments on Muslims and Islam, welcomed by his supporters, unnerved many in the Muslim community, drawing charges of Islamophobia against him, which he and his allies reject.
VOA reached out to the Trump campaign for comment but did not receive a response. The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Biden’s stance on terrorism, particularly Islamist terrorism, also has evolved over the years.
While he is not known to have used the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” in the past he was more willing to employ similar language while taking a tough stance on terrorism.
In 2014, as vice president under President Barack Obama, he criticized Turkey and the United Arab Emirates for supporting jihadi groups in Syria and “the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts to the world.” He later apologized for the comment.
Since becoming president in 2021, Biden has focused on terrorism more broadly without singling out any one region or religion, moving away from the rhetoric of the “War on Terror” of the 2000s.
On the day he entered the White House, he repealed the Trump administration’s “Muslim ban,” calling it “a stain on our national conscience.”
In the wake of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, moreover, his administration placed a greater emphasis on domestic terrorism as a significant threat to homeland security. In 2021, it launched the first-ever national strategy for countering domestic terrorism.
After the October 7 Hamas attack, Biden condemned the attack as “pure, unadulterated evil” while putting a distance between the perpetrators and the broader Muslim community.
“You know, I know many of you in the Muslim American community or the Arab American community, the Palestinian American community, and so many others are outraged and hurting, saying to yourselves, ‘Here we go again,’ with Islamophobia and distrust we saw after 9/11,” Biden said on October 10.
Trump is not known for moderating his rhetoric, even while in office. But after his second year in the White House, the volume of his rhetoric about Muslims and terrorism fell dramatically as he shifted his focus to a new area: border security and illegal immigration.
That trend has continued into the current campaign. A VOA examination of his most recent social media posts and campaign statements found fewer than 20 references since the start of his reelection campaign, including only one mention of “radical Islamic terrorists.”
That came last July when he announced that he’d reinstate a travel ban on several Muslim countries that he imposed during his first term in office and which Biden later repealed.
“We don’t want people coming into our country that hate us. We want people that love us,” he told a rally, citing anti-police riots in France sparked by the killing of a French Moroccan teenager.
Trump supporters dismiss his rhetoric about Muslims and terrorism as just that — rhetoric.
“Let’s forget about what this guy says. Let’s look at what he does,” a Muslim Republican activist said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Another activist questioned whether Trump has ever said he hates Muslims, adding that more Muslims will likely vote for the former president than did in 2016.
But if there is one thing both Trump supporters and detractors agree on, it is that Trump will likely follow through on his vow to bring back the “Muslim ban.”
“The legal structure that allowed the Muslim ban to be implemented in the first place is still on the books so we have to start planning as if a new Muslim ban will come into existence,” said Corey Saylor, research and advocacy director for the Council on American Islamic Relations.
The Case for EVs with Gas Tanks
date: 2024-06-25, from: Heatmap News
The American car buyer is a hard one to satisfy.
The freedom of the open road is embedded in our consciousness in a way it is in few (if any) other countries. A typical American consumer may want to be able to embark on a summer road-trip across the United States’ vast distances, to cram in a family of five and all their camping supplies (and maybe a dog and a canoe!), or to hitch up a trailer to haul a boat or RV wherever they might want to adventure.
We may not use all those features most of the time, but we don’t want to make a major purchase like a car, truck, or SUV to meet the average use case; if we can afford to, we buy for the edge case.
That’s why I can’t stop thinking about a recent announcement made by Stellantis, the Euro-American conglomerate behind brands like Dodge, Jeep, Ram and Alfa Romeo.
For model year 2025, Stellantis will electrify its full-size Ram 1500 pickup, following in the footsteps of GM and Ford. But unlike its rivals, Stellantis will offer the Ram 1500 REV in both an all-electric model (with 350-500 mile range) and a “range extender” Ramcharger 1500 that features around 140 miles of electric range — plus a V6 engine mated to a generator to power the vehicle when the battery is depleted.
I think it’s brilliant.
This kind of range-extended EV seems like the ideal near-term product to satisfy some of the trickiest American market segments to electrify: namely the uniquely American demand for full-size pickups and massive SUVs.
I’ve been a critic of plug-in hybrid vehicles as a bridge to an electrified future in the past. But I’ve leveled that critique against the popular “parallel” plug-in hybrid architecture, which features both a conventional internal combustion engine and mechanical transmission plus a battery and electric motor/generator.
Despite Toyota’s reputation for hybrids, Stellantis is actually the undisputed king of plug-in hybrids in the U.S. already, with plug-in hybrid versions of popular models like the Jeep Wrangler and Cherokee and the Chrysler Pacifica minivan selling at a record pace in recent months.
While this common plug-in hybrid architecture could be right for many Americans reluctant to fully electrify (especially those without access to dedicated Level 2 charging), they suffer from one big drawback: they carry around the full drive train — and all the baggage and cost — of both a conventional gas-burning vehicle and a full battery EV. Duplicate drivetrains means they’ll never be cheaper than a pure internal-combustion or electric car. And with limited space on board to cram in a big battery, these vehicles sport a modest 20-40 mile all-electric range.
(Listen to this recent episode of Shift Key for more on my problems with plug-ins and a discussion of recent U.S. electrified vehicle trends)
In contrast, a “range-extended EV” or “series” plug-in hybrid (or whatever we start calling this other third thing) like the new Ramcharger is a fully electric-drive vehicle. There’s no mechanical transmission to power the wheels. It simply has a compact gasoline engine, tuned to run at a single, most-efficient speed, married to a generator that can produce electricity to run the electric motors when the battery is depleted.
Thanks to the extended range provided by the gasoline generator, these vehicles can drop battery mass and cost, squeeze in a gasoline engine and fuel tank, and still come out comparable on cost as a pure EV with substantially longer range than parallel plug-in hybrids.
The Ram 1500 EV needs a massive 229 kilowatt-hour (kWh) pack to deliver an as-advertised 500 mile range. (The 168-kWh battery for the 350-mile-range version is also huge, 85% larger than the pack in my extended range Mustang Mach-E which gets about 300 miles range.)
In contrast, the Ramcharger has a 92 kWh pack and offers about 145 miles of all-electric range.
The range-extended series hybrid thus sheds 137 kWh of batteries vs. the 500 mile range EV. At about $100+ per kWh to manufacture and assemble those incremental battery cells, that saves Stellantis at least $14,000 to manufacture the truck. A new V6 engine costs about $5,000-10,000 retail and surely much less for an automaker to manufacture, so swapping batteries for the V6 nets a significant cost savings.
The economics and capabilities of a range-extended EV thus make a lot of sense, especially for massive vehicles like the full-size trucks and SUVs so many Americans love. And they squash any concerns about range anxiety that might give buyers pause — especially those interested in towing something, which decimates the range of the all-electric pickups on the market today.
At the same time, more range-extended EVs on the road would reduce demand for D.C. fast chargers — which are especially scarce in the more rural areas of America where the full-size pickup is king. You can still charge these vehicles at a D.C. fast charger (if you can find one), but you can also pull into any gas station to extend range on road trips.
Meanwhile, a 100+ mile electric range is sufficient to cover around 99% of trips taken in personal vehicle in America. Plus, even when running in generator mode, a series electric drive train with regenerative braking is more efficient than a pure internal combustion drive (especially when the internal combustion generator can bypass the battery to directly power the electric motors, as it can in the Ramcharger). Near-term adoption of range-extended EVs could deliver substantial reductions in both emissions and gas use.
Sound familiar? That’s because this was exactly how the original Chevy Volt and BMW i3 range extended option were configured way back in 2011. Why GM didn’t continue down this path to electrify their massive Silverados, Sierras, and Escalades is beyond me.
Stellantis isn’t the only automaker going down this path. Mazda has struggled to get a competitive EV out, with their MX-30 offering a paltry 100-mile range. So they’re launching a range-extended version with a compact 830cc rotary engine (one of Mazda’s core IPs), which could turn the compact SUV into a truly viable product. Across the Atlantic, Nissan also offers a series hybrid drivetrain marketed as e-POWER in Europe and the U.K.
Building range-extended battery EVs is also a good way for manufacturers to develop experience with all-electric vehicle architecture and achieve economies of scale in production. A series hybrid can ride on the same all-electric platform as a full battery electric variant — as in the case of the Ram 1500 REV and Ramcharger — which is key to keeping manufacturing costs low. (Several Chinese automakers took this route.) In contrast, a parallel plug-in hybrid always shares a platform with its pure fossil fueled siblings.
Finally, the U.S. is embarking on a strategic effort to onshore and “friend shore” the whole EV battery and critical minerals supply chain. It’s going to be a serious challenge. Cutting the size of battery packs in electric full-size pickup and SUVs in half makes that a lot easier.
So are range-extended EVs with 100 mile range the electrified vehicle Americans are waiting for? If they’re demanding big vehicles, towing capacity, and long-distance travel away from cities and interstates — e.g. exactly the segments hardest to satisfy with a pure EV — the answer might be yes.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article used “personal vehicle miles traveled” instead of trips taken in personal vehicles. It’s been updated.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/range-extender-ramcharger-1500
SCV Sheriff’s Station Conducts Retail Theft Operations
date: 2024-06-25, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Recently the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station Crime Prevention Unit has been partnering with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Major Crimes Bureau’s Retail Theft Task Force to crack down on ongoing retail crimes occurring in the Santa Clarita Valley
https://scvnews.com/scv-sheriffs-station-conducts-retail-theft-operations/
I_WANT_A_BROKEN_PS (exploration of Linux ‘ps’) (2004)
date: 2024-06-25, from: Tilde.news
https://aplawrence.com/Blog/B1011.html
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-25, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
But I did appreciate that even the tiniest restaurant had a DJ and great music.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112679444154780122
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-25, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I have wanted to party in Ibiza for about 23 years.
Last year I finally went, but it was a family vacation, and Laura got Covid. So I did not set foot in a single club.
Will try again in 22 years.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112679440782355648
‘Sham’ trial of US journalist Gershkovich begins in Russia
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
Washington — With his head recently shaven, American journalist Evan Gershkovich appeared briefly in photos taken before his closed-door trial began on Wednesday in Russia, nearly 15 months after he was jailed on espionage charges that are widely viewed as baseless and politically motivated.
A correspondent with The Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich was detained in March 2023 on spying charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently deny. The State Department has also declared Gershkovich wrongfully detained.
Press freedom experts have said that they expect the trial against Gershkovich to be a politically motivated sham.
“It’s certainly a sham trial. It’s a travesty of justice. The charges brought against him are spurious and unsubstantiated, and the whole thing is just a masquerade,” Gulnoza Said, the Europe and Central Asia program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, told VOA.
The trial is taking place in Yekaterinburg, where Gershkovich, 32, was first detained. The Ural Mountains city is about 1,400 kilometers, or 870 miles, east of Moscow.
Russian authorities have accused Gershkovich of “gathering secret information” about a Russian tank manufacturer. But to date, Moscow has not publicly provided any evidence to substantiate the charges against Gershkovich, who was accredited by Russia’s foreign ministry to work in the country.
Russia’s Washington embassy did not immediately reply to a VOA email requesting comment.
Secret trials are common practice in Russia for cases of alleged treason or espionage involving classified state material. But that means it will be difficult for observers and watchdogs to monitor the trial, according to Paul Beckett, an assistant editor at The Journal who is leading the newspaper’s campaign to secure Gershkovich’s release.
“I don’t have high hopes that we will be able to see much, if anything, that’s happening there. And I think that just speaks to the opacity of the whole system and its arbitrariness,” Beckett told VOA.
It is not clear how long the trial will take, but based on similar past cases, CPJ’s Said believes it will last a few months. She added that the trial is likely intended to foster a facade of rule of law in Russia.
U.S. embassy officials were present at the courthouse and given brief access before the proceedings began, the diplomatic mission in Moscow said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to the court, the next hearing has been scheduled for August 13, Daniel Kanigan, the spokesperson of the U.S. embassy, told VOA.
Kanigan told VOA on Tuesday that the embassy “will make efforts to attend any future proceedings.”
“Journalism is not a crime. Evan should not have been detained and both he and Paul Whelan should be released,” Kanigan added in the email.
Whelan is a former Marine who is serving a 16-year spying sentence in Russia. The State Department has also declared him wrongfully detained.
If convicted, Gershkovich faces up to 20 years behind bars.
Some press freedom experts believe a conviction — regardless of its illegitimacy — is a necessary yet imperfect step to eventually securing Gershkovich’s release through a prisoner swap.
“They’re trying to kill two birds with one stone. One is to silence Evan,” Said told VOA. “The second goal is, obviously, to get him exchanged for someone who is important for the Kremlin and for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
Putin has previously indicated that the Kremlin would be willing to trade Gershkovich for a convicted killer jailed in Germany. Prisoner swap negotiations between Moscow and Washington have been taking place for months.
Although Beckett said a conviction is likely, he added that he hopes the U.S. government can find a way to “short-circuit” the trial process and secure Gershkovich’s release as soon as possible.
“It’s high time that the U.S. government reached a settlement with Russia over how to get Evan, and other Americans wrongfully detained in Russia, back home and back to their families,” said Beckett, who is based in Washington.
In a Wednesday statement, Gershkovich’s family also urged the U.S. government to do everything it can to secure the reporter’s release.
“These past 15 months have been extraordinarily painful for Evan and for our family. We miss our son and just want him home,” they said in the statement. “We’re deeply disappointed that he will have to endure further attempts to discredit him and to paint a picture that is unrecognizable to anyone who knows him.”
Gershkovich’s case underscores the poor state of press freedom in Russia, according to media experts. At the end of 2023, the CPJ in New York documented the jailings of 22 journalists in Russia, including 12 foreign nationals.
“The Kremlin has clamped down severely on independent reporting, effectively turning journalism into a crime,” The Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, wrote in a Tuesday open letter on Gershkovich’s trial.
Gershkovich is one of two American journalists currently jailed in Russia.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian national who works at VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, has been jailed since October 2023 on charges of failing to self-register as a “foreign agent” and spreading what the Kremlin views as false information about the Russian army.
Kurmasheva, 47, rejects the charges, which carry a combined sentence of 15 years in prison. The U.S. government has also called for her immediate release.
July 1: Santa Clarita Transit to Increase Fares
date: 2024-06-25, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Santa Clarita Transit has updated its transit fares across all lines and services. The new fares will go into effect on July
https://scvnews.com/july-1-santa-clarita-transit-to-increase-fares/
How Capitalism Becomes Feudalism (Severance and Technofuedalism)
date: 2024-06-25, from: Literate Machine
Video Version | Podcast Version Unlike most of my videos, I’m going to try not to spoil too much of the first season of Severance, because I want you to watch it, and I want you not to have to watch it to enjoy this video. This will spoil a number of particulars about thellama.ttf
date: 2024-06-25, from: Michael Tsai
Søren Fuglede Jørgensen (via Hacker News): llama.ttf is a font file which is also a large language model and an inference engine for that model.[…]The font shaping engine HarfBuzz, used in applications such as Firefox and Chrome, comes with a Wasm shaper allowing arbitrary code to be used to “shape” text.In particular, this “arbitrary” code […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/25/llama-ttf/
visionOS Throttles CPU Based on Microphones
date: 2024-06-25, from: Michael Tsai
Shiny Quagsire (via Hacker News): visionOS 2 (or RealityKit) seems to have gotten way more aggressive about power throttling (or my battery/cable are having issues idk), so ALVR seems to throttle to 45Hz at much lower PPDs despite being totally fine thermally. lolll I found the answer, I was getting fucked by the userexperienced. Apparently […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/25/visionos-throttles-cpu-based-on-microphones/
Lightroom Classic 13.3 and 13.4
date: 2024-06-25, from: Michael Tsai
Agen Schmitz: Adobe has released Lightroom Classic 13.3, enabling you to erase unwanted objects and imperfections in your photos using the Generative Remove tool (powered by Adobe Firefly generative AI). This requires a new catalog database format. I’m seeing some weird behavior in that I can run it for days with it seemingly not doing […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/25/lightroom-classic-13-3-and-13-4/
MarsEdit 5.2.1
date: 2024-06-25, from: Michael Tsai
MarsEdit 5.2: The “Search” field in the main window now features a filter selection to toggle between searching everything or searching just the current selection. Inline “Find” support is now available in the rendered versions of posts in the Preview Window or Main Window. These are great. The ability to duplicate posts may serve as […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/25/marsedit-5-2-1/
Lilbits: A glimpse of the canceled Surface Duo 3
date: 2024-06-25, from: Liliputing
Microsoft has pretty much stopped making smartphones. Again. But before the company discontinued its Surface Duo line of dual-screen phones, Microsoft had allegedly begun work on a “Surface Duo 3” that would have had a foldable display rather than two separate screens. While that’s hardly a revolutionary idea these days, it would have been a […]
The post Lilbits: A glimpse of the canceled Surface Duo 3 appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/lilbits-a-glimpse-of-the-canceled-surface-duo-3/
Fiend touts stolen Neiman Marcus customer info for $150K
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Flash clobber chain fashionably late to Snowflake fiasco party
Customer information said to have been stolen from Neiman Marcus’s Snowflake instance has been put up for sale on the dark web for $150,000.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/neiman_marcus_snowflake_victim/
NASA Selects Participating Scientists to Join ESA’s Hera Mission
date: 2024-06-25, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has selected 12 participating scientists to join ESA’s (European Space Agency) Hera mission, which is scheduled to launch in October 2024. Hera will study the binary asteroid system Didymos, including the moonlet Dimorphos, which was impacted by NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft on Sept. 26, 2022. The objectives of DART and Hera […]
Registration Open for Youth Sports Fall Flag Football
date: 2024-06-25, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Registration is now open for the city of Santa Clarita 2024 Youth Sports 6-on-6 Fall Flag Football League.
https://scvnews.com/registration-open-for-youth-sports-fall-flag-football/
Olimex Neo6502pc is a retro PC that combines an Apple II compatible chip with a RP2040 microprocessor
date: 2024-06-25, from: Liliputing
The Olimex Neo6502pc is a modern mini computer designed to run some very old software. At its heart is a single-board computer that features a 6.25 MHz W65C02 processor that’s similar to the 6502 chip used in classic PCs and game consoles like the Atari 2600 and Apple II, which makes it possible to run […]
The post Olimex Neo6502pc is a retro PC that combines an Apple II compatible chip with a RP2040 microprocessor appeared first on Liliputing.
A Local Vision for a Permanent, Improved State Street Promenade
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Choose pedestrians over cars, with space for public transit and cyclists via a flexible, inviting, human-scale design.
The post A Local Vision for a Permanent, Improved State Street Promenade appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Doctors Without Walls Welcomes New BoardMember Jordan Turetsky
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA (June 20th, 2024) – Doctors Without Walls – Santa Barbara Street Medicine (DWW) is pleased to announce
The post Doctors Without Walls Welcomes New BoardMember Jordan Turetsky appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Sol 4225: Sliding Down Horsetail Falls
date: 2024-06-25, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Monday, June 24, 2024 This will be an important week for chemistry on our latest drill sample “Mammoth Lakes 2.” Curiosity’s primary goal today was a preconditioning of the SAM instrument in preparation for its chemical analysis. Due to the large amounts of power required by SAM, today’s science block was limited […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sol-4225-sliding-down-horsetail-falls/
Dolphin Derby Festival Returns to Chase Palm Park on July 14, 2024
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA – June 25, 2024 – From 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on July 14, Chase Palm Park
The post Dolphin Derby Festival Returns to Chase Palm Park on July 14, 2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
On Gaza pier, US troops confront waves, destruction and aid backlog
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
Trident Pier, off Gaza Coast — Baking under the summer sun, U.S. troops find shelter in containers stationed on what is known as the “parking lot” of a floating pier in the Mediterranean Sea that aims to boost the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
Just over the horizon, destroyed buildings and thick black smoke can be seen rising in the enclave of 2.3 million people, more than eight months into a war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas.
Reuters was given rare access to the pier on Tuesday and saw aid pallets being moved from a vessel onto the 370-meter-long pier as it bobbed around with the incoming waves. The pallets were then taken by trucks to the coast.
For U.S. Army Sergeant Ibrahim Barry, who is a forklift operator on the pier, the operation is personal. Barry, who is Muslim, was in the U.S. when war broke out and watched as families in Gaza during Ramadan in March and April had no food with which to break their fast.
“Being in this mission [is] on a personal level for me,” he said. “Helping to help them get food … just taking care of people.”
U.S. President Joe Biden announced in March the plan to put the pier in place for aid deliveries as famine loomed in Gaza. As of Tuesday, 8,332 pallets had been delivered via the pier.
But nearly 6,900 pallets of those have just been sitting on Gaza’s coast, in a marshaling area, waiting to be picked up by the United Nations for distribution. The World Food Program paused deliveries earlier this month over security concerns.
For many troops working on pier operations, this is their first combat zone. But not for Captain Joel Stewart, commander of Naval Beach group 1.
“War is a terrible thing. I don’t care where it is. I don’t care what it is. It is destruction. It is never pretty. It is certainly not something that I ever want to see again,” Stewart said while standing on the pier.
“The sailors, marines, merchant men, soldiers are all behind this mission because they see they are making a difference for the people of Gaza,” Stewart said.
The pier’s usage has been paused multiple times because of sea conditions and at one point was towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod for repairs.
A senior U.S. official said on Tuesday the pier may be extended well beyond its July 31 authorization date if the United States and aid organizations can get aid flowing again to Palestinians in the coming days and weeks.
Jupiter’s Signature Red Spot May Have Evolved More Than Once
date: 2024-06-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The planet’s massive storm, known as the Great Red Spot, seems to be different from a spot first observed at roughly the same location in the 17th century, a new study finds
Kim Stone to Lead Montecito Rotary Club
date: 2024-06-25, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
MONTECITO, California – Local realtor, investor and entrepreneur Kim Stone will take over as president of the Montecito Rotary Club beginning
The post Kim Stone to Lead Montecito Rotary Club appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/25/kim-stone-to-lead-montecito-rotary-club/
Open Call to New York-based Artists to Create Collaborative NASA Mural
date: 2024-06-25, from: NASA breaking news
NASA and the Hudson Square Business Improvement District are launching an open call to New York-based artists and artist teams to design and install a large-scale, space-themed neighborhood mural. The NASA x Hudson Square partnership was developed to inspire the surrounding Manhattan Hudson Square community by showcasing NASA’s work and missions. Artists are encouraged to […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/open-call-to-new-york-based-artists-to-create-collaborative-nasa-mural/
The Judy Garland Museum Wants to Buy Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers
date: 2024-06-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Officials hope to raise millions to bid on the shoes, which were missing for over a decade, at auction in December
OpenAI to pull plug on ‘unsupported’ nations – cough, China – from July 9
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It’s not entirely clear what actions the ChatGPT maker plans to take, if any
ChatGPT developer OpenAI has sent out emails to users based in countries it considers “unsupported,” saying it will block their access for good starting July 9.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/openai_unsupported_countries/
Unity in Orbit: Astronauts Soar with Pride Aboard Station
date: 2024-06-25, from: NASA breaking news
A powerful symbol of pride waved high above Earth aboard the International Space Station in December 2021, reflecting NASA’s commitment to a collaborative and inclusive environment in human spaceflight. The Pride flag was unveiled by NASA astronauts to celebrate our identities and unite in our commitment to equality and acceptance for all individuals. At NASA’s […]
Judge allows Trump to talk about jurors, witnesses in hush money conviction
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — A judge on Tuesday modified Donald Trump’s gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the hush money criminal trial that led to his felony conviction but keeping others connected to the case off limits at least until he’s sentenced July 11.
Judge Juan M. Merchan’s ruling — just days before Trump’s debate Thursday with President Joe Biden — clears the presumptive Republican nominee to again go on the attack against his former lawyer Michael Cohen, adult film actor Stormy Daniels and other witnesses. Trump was convicted May 30 of falsifying records to cover up a potential sex scandal, making him the first ex-president convicted of a crime.
Trump’s lawyers had urged Merchan to lift the gag order completely, arguing there was nothing to justify continued restrictions on Trump’s First Amendment rights after the trial’s conclusion. Trump has said that the gag order has prevented him from defending himself while Cohen and Daniels continue to pillory him.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office asked Merchan to keep the gag order’s ban on comments about jurors, court staffers and the prosecution team in place at least until Trump is sentenced on July 11 but said last week they would be OK with allowing Trump to comment about witnesses now that the trial is over.
Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records arising from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a hush money payment to Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. She claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier, which he denies.
The crime is punishable by up to four years behind bars, but prosecutors have not said if they would seek incarceration, and it’s unclear if Merchan would impose such a sentence. Other options include a fine or probation.
Following his conviction, Trump complained that he was under a “nasty gag order” while also testing its limits. In remarks a day after his conviction, Trump referred to Cohen, though not by name, as “a sleazebag.”
In a subsequent Newsmax interview, Trump took issue with jury and its makeup, complaining about Manhattan, “It’s a very, very liberal Democrat area so I knew we were in deep trouble,” and claiming: “I never saw a glimmer of a smile from the jury. No, this was a venue that was very unfair. A tiny fraction of the people are Republicans.”
Trump’s lawyers, who said they were under the impression the gag order would end with a verdict, wrote a letter to Merchan on June 4 asking him to lift the order.
Prosecutors urged Merchan to keep the gag order’s ban on comments about jurors and trial staff in place “at least through the sentencing hearing and the resolution of any post-trial motions.” They argued that the judge had “an obligation to protect the integrity of these proceedings and the fair administration of justice.”
Merchan issued Trump’s gag order on March 26, a few weeks before the start of the trial, after prosecutors raised concerns about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s propensity to assail people involved in his cases.
Merchan later expanded it to prohibit comments about his own family after Trump made social media posts attacking the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant. The order did not prohibit comments about Merchan or District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted the case.
During the trial, Merchan held Trump in contempt of court, fined him $10,000 for violating the gag order and threatened to put him in jail if he did it again.
In seeking to lift the gag order, Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that Trump was entitled to “unrestrained campaign advocacy” in light of Biden’s public comments about the verdict, and Cohen and Daniels’ continued public criticism.
Daily Deals (6-25-2024)
date: 2024-06-25, from: Liliputing
Valve is selling the original Steam Deck for 15% off between now and July 11th, which brings the starting price down to $297 for a model with an LCD display and 64GB of eMMC storage or $382 for an LCD model with a 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD. Note that these models lack some of the […]
The post Daily Deals (6-25-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-6-25-2024/
These Stunning Butterflies Flew 2,600 Miles Across the Atlantic Ocean Without Stopping
date: 2024-06-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers combined several lines of evidence to solve the mystery of why a group of painted ladies, which do not live in South America, were found fluttering on a beach in French Guiana
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-25, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I am much more likely to buy directly from you if you have Apple Pay checkout.
Otherwise, I just instinctively put it off or check Amazon.
I suspect many more folks are on that boat (or might have a preference for Google’s version)
Reminded of that by a toot by @vcsjones
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112678722791962014
Crypto scammers circle back, pose as lawyers, steal an extra $10M in truly devious plan
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Business is more lucrative than you might think
The FBI says in just 12 months, scumbags stole circa $10 million from victims of crypto scams after posing as helpful lawyers offering to recover their lost tokens.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/predators_steal_additional_10m/
You Can Now See Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works in a New Online Archive
date: 2024-06-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The Picasso Museum in Paris has released a digital portal featuring the Spanish painter and sculptor’s art
Peter Capaldi says posh actors are smooth, confident and tedious
date: 2024-06-25, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Vanessa Thorpe in The Guardian]
“Art is about reaching out. So I think it’s wrong to allow one strata of society to have the most access.”
This is an older article, but it resonated with me so much that I wanted to share it immediately.
This is so important, and a sign of what we’ve lost:
“I went [to art school] because the government of the day paid for me to go and I didn’t have to pay them back. There was a thrusting society then, a society that tried to improve itself. Yes, of course, it cost money. But so what? It allowed people from any kind of background to learn about Shakespeare, or Vermeer.”
A culture where only the rich are afforded the space, training, and platform to make art is missing the voices that make it special.
The same goes for other spaces: newsrooms where only the wealthy can serve as journalists cannot accurately represent the people who depend on it. Technology without class diversity is myopic. Above all else, a culture of rich people is boring as hell.
Art school - like all school - should be free and available to everyone. It’s tragic that it’s not. We all lose out, regardless of our background.
<p>[<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/jan/14/peter-capaldi-says-posh-actors-are-smooth-confident-and-tedious">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/peter-capaldi-says-posh-actors-are-smooth-confident-and-tedious
Six Adapters for Crewed Artemis Flights Tested, Built at NASA Marshall
date: 2024-06-25, from: NASA breaking news
As a child learning about basic engineering, you probably tried and failed to join a square-shaped toy with a circular-shaped toy: you needed a third shape to act as an adapter and connect them both together. On a much larger scale, integration of NASA’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and the Orion spacecraft for […]
And that’s 3 recalls for Tesla Cybertruck in as many months
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Now windshield wipers are failing and trim is detaching of its own accord
Tesla has issued two more physical Cybertruck recalls, bringing the total number of hardware issues the electric-car maker has had to fix on the troubled vehicle to three in as many months.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/tesla_cybertruck_recalled_again/
Microsoft faces antitrust violation for bundling Teams with Office software
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
Fighting bots is fighting humans
date: 2024-06-25, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“I fear that media outlets and other websites, in attempting to”protect” their material from AI scrapers, will go too far in the anti-human direction.”
I’ve been struggling with this.
I’m not in favor of the 404 Media approach, which is to stick an auth wall in front of your content, forcing everyone to register before they can load your article. That isn’t a great experience for anyone, and I don’t think it’s sustainable for a publisher in the long run.
At the same time, I think it’s fair to try and prevent some bot access at the moment. Adding AI agents to your robots.txt - although, as recent news has shown, perhaps not as effective a move as it might be - seems like the right call to me.
Clearly an AI agent isn’t a human. For ad hoc queries - where an agent is retrieving content from a website in direct response to a user query - it clearly is acting on behalf of a human. Is it a browser, then? Maybe? If it is, we should just let it through.
It’s accessing articles as training data that I really take issue with (as well as the subterfuge of not always advertising what it is when it accesses a site). In these cases, content is copied into a corpus in a manner that’s outside of its licensing, without the author’s knowledge. That sucks - not because I’m in favor of DRM, but because often the people whose work is being taken are living on a shoestring, and the software is run by very large corporations who will make a fortune.
But yes: I don’t think auth walls, CAPTCHAs, paywalls, or any added friction between content and audience are a good idea. These things make the web worse for everybody.
Molly’s post is in response to an original by Manu Moreale, which is also worth reading.
<p>[<a href="https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/fighting-bots-is-fighting-humans">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/fighting-bots-is-fighting-humans
Gavin Newsom warns that dark forces are threatening California
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The LAist
Newsom emphasized in his pre-recorded address how California is standing up against threats to the state’s success: pluralism, innovation and diversity.
https://laist.com/news/politics/gavin-newsom-california-state-address
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Meta is connecting Threads more deeply with the fediverse.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/25/24185226/meta-threads-fediverse-likes-replies
Oracle fears US TikTok ban will dent its cloud profits
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Dance! Dance for me!
ByteDance may not be the only company hurt by a US ban on TikTok: Oracle put a warning in its recently filed annual report that such a move could hit its revenue and profits as a provider of hosting services.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/oracle_fears_that_us_tiktok/
MINISFORUM UM890 Pro mini PC with Ryzen 9 8945HS launches globally for $479 and up
date: 2024-06-25, from: Liliputing
The MINISFORUM UM890 Pro is a small desktop computer with an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS processor, support for up to 96GB of DDR5 memory, and up to two PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs. It also features a lot of I/O options thanks to a set of ports that includes two 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports, two USB4 ports […]
The post MINISFORUM UM890 Pro mini PC with Ryzen 9 8945HS launches globally for $479 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
NATO Needs to Align on Supply of Critical Raw Materials
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: RAND blog
Of particular concern to NATO leaders are mounting threats to the critical raw materials that alliance members need to sustain their militaries, defense industries, and wider economies. Given an uncertain geopolitical future ahead, NATO should move now to ensure the supply of critical materials.
This Rubens Painting Vanished During World War II. Now, It’s Returning Home to a Castle in Germany
date: 2024-06-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
“St. Gregory of Nazianzus,” once part of the Baroque palace’s collection, was stolen and sold at the end of the war
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rubens-painting-returning-to-castle-in-germany-180984592/
Easter Island Did Not Collapse From Overuse of Resources After All, Study Suggests
date: 2024-06-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new paper contradicts the idea that people used up the island’s resources and experienced a significant population decline, instead proposing that a small society lived there sustainably
Motorola’s new razr (2024) smartphones bring more features to the cover display
date: 2024-06-25, from: Liliputing
Motorola is giving its razr and razr+ smartphones a 2024 refresh and, of course, that means the company is playing up the AI capabilities of its newest foldables. They’re the first phones to ship with the Google Gemini app to come pre-installed, customers will get a 3-month subscription to Gemini Advanced for free, and you […]
The post Motorola’s new razr (2024) smartphones bring more features to the cover display appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/motorolas-new-razr-2024-smartphones-bring-more-features-to-the-cover-display/
Introducing the Aesthetic and Regenerative Medicine Hub in Partnership with Agorà
date: 2024-06-25, from: PeerJ blog
PeerJ has partnered with Agorà, the Scientific Society of Aesthetic Medicine, to launch an Aesthetic and Regenerative Medicine Hub. Agorà is a renowned leader in aesthetic medical education and research. The partnership with award-winning Open Access publisher PeerJ aims to advance the fields of aesthetic and regenerative medicine, providing a collaborative environment for cutting-edge research […]
https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284889304/agora-hub/
SAP customers warned on hidden risks in the unofficial route to the cloud
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
But RISE with SAP can also be too rigid for some customers, Gartner says
SAP customers looking for infrastructure support for ERP software from community cloud, cloud-like, or former co-location providers should do so with care, as they could take a hit on risks and TCO in the long run.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/sap_customers_warned_on_hidden/
NASA Infrared Detector Technical Interchange
date: 2024-06-25, from: NASA breaking news
When/Where August 27-28, 2024NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA Who may attend? Invited participants from the NASA Centers, NASA HQ, and the broader community of IR technology developers and stakeholders. All participants must be U.S. Persons – the meeting will be held at the CUI level and presentations may contain ITAR material. Registration will […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-infrared-detector-technical-interchange-meeting-august-27-28-2024/
The Values of an Index: A Statistical Analysis of the Index of Case Files from Record Group 228: Records of the Committee on Fair Employment preserved by the National Archives at Philadelphia
date: 2024-06-25, from: National Archives, Text Message blog
Today’s post is written by John C. Harris, Archives Technician at National Archives at Philadelphia with a special thanks to Michael Demofonte, Archives Technician, Archives II, Research Services, Digitization Division for his editorial feedback and helping me make sense of the data. Introduction: Data. It is a daunting word for those of us who entered … Continue reading The Values of an Index: A Statistical Analysis of the Index of Case Files from Record Group 228: Records of the Committee on Fair Employment preserved by the National Archives at Philadelphia
Jake Cupani: Increasing Visibility in Data Science
date: 2024-06-25, from: NASA breaking news
Jake Cupani, a data science specialist, focuses on the intersection between data visualization and user experience — UX — design. Name: Jake CupaniTitle: Financial analytics support specialistOrganization: Financial Analytics and Systems Office, Office of the Chief Financial Officer (Code 156) What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? […]
Looking ahead to 30 years of FreeDOS
date: 2024-06-25, from: OS News
In a few days, 29 June, FreeDOS will turn 30. This happens to make it one of the oldest, continuously active open source projects in the world, originally created because Jim Hall had heard Microsoft was going to kill DOS when the upcoming Windows 95 was going to be released. After seeing the excitement around Linux, he decided it an open source DOS would be a valuable time investment. I still used DOS, and I didn’t want to stop using DOS. And I looked at what Linux had achieved: people from all over the world shared source code with each other to make this full operating system that worked just like Unix. And I thought “If they can do that with Linux, surely we can do the same thing with DOS.” I asked around on a discussion board (called Usenet) if anyone had made an “open source” DOS, and people said “No, but that’s a good idea .. and you should do it.” So that’s why I announced on June 29, 1994, that I was starting a new project to make an open source version of DOS that would work just like regular DOS. ↫ Jim Hall For an open source implementation of what was a dead end and now is a dead operating system, FreeDOS has been remarkably successful. Not only are there countless people using FreeDOS on retro hardware, it’s also a popular operating system for DOS gaming and running old DOS applications in virtual machines. On top of that, many motherboard makers and OEMs use FreeDOS to load firmware update tools, and some of them even offered FreeDOS as the preinstalled operating system when buying new hardware. With the ever-increasing popularity of retrocomputing and gaming, FreeDOS clearly has a bright future ahead of itself.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140067/looking-ahead-to-30-years-of-freedos/
US Surgeon General declares firearm violence a ‘public health crisis’
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-25, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Two great documentaries at the top of the charts on Apple TV:
https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/israelism/umc.cmc.5l93obwb09jqv7vzx5onscc1
https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/finding-the-money/umc.cmc.4wlgfqq0pdcphvcg89pd2us9r
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112677990278095190
Nvidia loses a cool $500B as market questions AI boom
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cisco was briefly the world’s most valuable company too, you know, just before the dot com bust
Nvidia has rapidly lost about $500 billion off its market capitalization amid concerns that the GPU maker may have become overvalued or that the AI market powered by its chips is a bubble set to burst.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/nvidia_share_price_drop/
Why I love Underdogs
date: 2024-06-25, from: Om Malik blog
That was quite a night. Not surprisingly, I woke up late this morning. I simply couldn’t sleep because I was buzzing from what I had just witnessed—and I still am. On paper, it was a wild game of the fast-paced T20 version of cricket. But it was more than that. It was ambition and desire …
https://om.co/2024/06/25/why-i-love-underdogs/
Farewell Scenes
date: 2024-06-25, from: John August blog
John welcomes back Aline Brosh McKenna to help figure out how to say goodbye… in your story. Using examples from some of their favorite movies, they explore how farewell scenes work, what sets them apart from the average see-you-later, and leaving a lasting effect on your characters and the audience. We also look at the […] The post Farewell Scenes first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/farewell-scenes
Sponsoring sqlite-vec to enable more powerful Local AI applications
date: 2024-06-25, from: Mozilla Developer Network blog
Today we’re proud to announce the next Mozilla Builders project: sqlite-vec. Led by independent developer Alex Garcia, this project brings vector search functionality to the beloved SQLite embedded database. Alex has been working on this problem for a while, and we think his latest approach will have a great impact by providing application developers with a powerful new tool for building Local AI applications.
The post Sponsoring sqlite-vec to enable more powerful Local AI applications appeared first on Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog.
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. ↫ European Commission press release 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.
US slaps sanctions on network it accuses of moving billions for Iran’s military
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on nearly 50 entities and people it accused of moving billions of dollars for Iran’s military.
The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement said those targeted on Tuesday constitute a “shadow banking network” used by Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), both of which are under U.S. sanctions.
The network helped the MODAFL and IRGC — which earn money notably from the sale of oil and petrochemicals — gain access to the international financial system and process the equivalent of billions of dollars since 2020, the Treasury said.
The Treasury said the revenue generated by the MODAFL and IRGC through networks of Iranian exchange houses and foreign cover companies supported the provision of weapons and funding to Iran’s proxy groups, including Yemen’s Houthi group, and the transfer of drones to Russia for use in the war against Ukraine.
Washington has issued rafts of sanctions targeting Iranian drones and the Houthis, who have been launching drone and missile strikes in shipping lanes since November in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s war in Gaza.
“We continue to work with allies and partners, as well as the global financial industry, to increase vigilance against the movement of funds supporting terrorism,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in the statement.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately comment on the action.
Tuesday’s action targeted dozens of companies in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Marshall Islands, as well as Iran and Turkey-based firms.
The Treasury said the MODAFL Supply Division uses exchange houses in Iran that manage numerous cover companies registered in jurisdictions such as Hong Kong or the UAE to launder revenue, including from oil sales conducted by Sahara Thunder, which the U.S. imposed sanctions on in April.
The Treasury at the time accused Sahara Thunder of being a front company that oversees MODAFL’s commercial activities in support of the IRGC and Russia’s war in Ukraine, playing a key role in Iran’s design, development, manufacture and sale of thousands of drones.
The move freezes the U.S. assets of banned companies and individuals, and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. Those that engage in certain transactions with them also risk being hit with sanctions.
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
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“Governed by an independent board of directors, the 501(c)3 charitable organization will help AP sustain, augment and grow journalism and services for the industry, as well as help fund other entities that share a commitment to state and local news.”
Fascinating! And much needed.
I’m curious to learn how this fits into other fundraising efforts, like the $500M Press Forward initiative for local news that was announced last year.
I do also have a question about whether all this centralized philanthropy is sustainable. What happens to these newsrooms if the foundation dollars go away? Are they incentivized to find their own business and fundraising models, or does this create a kind of dependence that might be harmful in the long run?
My hope, of course, is that these efforts are the shot in the arm that journalism needs, and that the newsrooms which receive this funding will be sustainable and enduring. It’s certainly lovely to see the support.
<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>
</div>
</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
Announcing Hono on JSR
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: Deno blog
Hono, a lightweight, fast, cross-platform web framework, is now on JSR.
https://deno.com/blog/hono-on-jsr
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: 2024-06-26, 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 blaze kills at least 23
date: 2024-06-25, updated: 2024-06-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
National Fire Agency responds with inspection of 213 batt-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_korea/
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’ Assange lands in Saipan before guilty plea in deal with US securing his freedom
date: 2024-06-25, from: VOA News USA
SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has arrived in Saipan ahead of an expected guilty plea in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will set him free to return home to Australia.
The plane carrying the eccentric computer expert and internet publisher touched down more than two hours before the scheduled start of a plea hearing, in which he is set to admit to a felony for publishing U.S. military secrets under a deal that spares him prison time in America after years spent jailed in the United Kingdom while fighting extradition to America.
The hearing, taking place in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, is the stunning culmination of the U.S. government’s yearslong pursuit of the publisher who has been painted both as a hero and a reckless criminal for exposing hundreds of thousands of sensitive military documents.
The U.S. Justice Department agreed to hold the hearing on the remote island because Assange opposed coming to the continental U.S. and because it’s near Australia, where he will return after he enters his plea.
The deal — disclosed Monday night in court papers — represents the final chapter in a more than decade-long legal odyssey over the fate of Assange, whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. U.S. prosecutors have said his actions recklessly put the country’s national security at risk.
Though the deal with prosecutors requires Assange to admit guilt to a single felony count, it also allows him to avoid spending any time in an American prison. He will get credit for the five years he has already spent in a high-security British prison while fighting extradition to the U.S. to face charges. Before being locked up in London, Assange spent years hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault, which he has denied.
The abrupt conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of success, with the Justice Department able to resolve without trial a case that raised thorny legal issues and that might never have reached a jury at all given the plodding pace of the extradition process.
Last month, Assange 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.
His wife, Stella Assange, told the BBC from Australia that it had been “touch and go” over 72 hours whether the deal would go ahead but she felt “elated” at the news. A lawyer who married the WikiLeaks founder in prison in 2022, she said details of the agreement would be made public once the judge had signed off on it.
“He will be a free man once it is signed off by a judge,” she said, adding that she still didn’t think it was real.
Assange on Monday left the London prison, where he has spent the last five years, after being granted bail during a secret hearing last week. He boarded a plane that landed hours later in Bangkok to refuel before taking off again toward Saipan. A video posted by WikiLeaks on X, showed Assange staring intently out the window at the blue sky as the plane headed toward the island.
“Imagine. From over 5 years in a small cell in a maximum security prison. Nearly 14 years detained in the UK. To this,” WikiLeaks wrote. The top Australian diplomat in the United Kingdom accompanied Assange on the flight.
The guilty plea resolves a criminal case brought by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration over the receipt and publication of war logs and diplomatic cables that detailed U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prosecutors alleged that Assange conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records and published them without regard to American national security, including by releasing the names of human sources who provided information to U.S. forces.
Former Vice President Mike Pence called the new arrangement a “miscarriage of justice,” writing on X that Assange “endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
But Assange’s activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view. 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.
Australia for years has been calling on the U.S. government to drop the case against Assange, arguing there’s a disconnect between the treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.
“Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange’s activities, the case has dragged on for too long,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “There’s nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia.”
Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London 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. He was arrested by British police after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then 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 had remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison during the extradition fight with the U.S.
Assange made headlines again 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 Trump.
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