News gathered 2024-06-28
(date: 2024-06-28 18:35:32)
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
Kurtenbach: Instant reaction to the Sharks’ No. 11 pick in the NHL Draft
date: 2024-06-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
NHL Draft: The Sharks selected defenseman Sam Dickinson No. 11 overall Friday.
Chamber hosts 2024 Business Expo
date: 2024-06-29, from: The Signal
The Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce held its annual Business Expo on Thursday at the Hyatt Regency Valencia, where attendees could visit the booths and learn about over 80 […]
The post Chamber hosts 2024 Business Expo appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/chamber-hosts-2024-business-expo/
San Jose police make arrest in 2016 stabbing death
date: 2024-06-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 26-year-old suspect was arrested on May 30 in the Central Coast community of Aromas.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/28/san-jose-police-make-arrest-in-2016-stabbing-death/
SF Giants activate LaMonte Wade Jr. but lose 2 more players to injured list
date: 2024-06-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Thairo Estrada and Wilmer Flores were placed on the 10-day injured list when the Giants activated LaMonte Wade Jr. before Friday’s game against the Dodgers.
FBI raids: Obscure Oakland homebuilder highlights ties between Duongs and East Bay’s messy politics
date: 2024-06-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
News about a small Oakland homebuilder adds to the questions about the Duong family, the influential Vietnamese business leaders and political donors at the center of last week’s FBI raids.
ChatGPT wrongly insists Trump-Biden CNN debate had 1 to 2-minute delay
date: 2024-06-29, updated: 2024-06-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Yes, Joe totally had editing help that night, he was certainly impresszzz….
Poll OpenAI’s ChatGPT fell for an inaccurate claim that Thursday night’s US presidential debate between Trump and Biden on CNN would have a one to two-minute delay, rather than the usual few seconds.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/29/chatgpt_presidential_debate/
NHL Draft: San Jose Sharks take 6-foot-3 defenseman 11th overall
date: 2024-06-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
The San Jose Sharks selected defenseman Sam Dickenson 11th overall at the NHL Draft
Better ways to save water than fake turf: Letter to the editor
date: 2024-06-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
“Artificial turf is not the answer to drought conditions.”
Brandon Aiyuk speaks about ‘dirty’ negotiations, options outside 49ers
date: 2024-06-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Brandon Aiyuk envisions himself returning to the 49ers but he said on The Pivot podcast he could also see himself with the Washington Commanders or the Pittsburgh Steelers.
If your immutable Linux desktop uses Flatpak, I’m going to have a bad time
date: 2024-06-29, from: OS News
The openSUSE project recently announced the second release candidate (RC2) of its Aeon Desktop, formerly known as MicroOS Desktop GNOME. Aside from the new coat of naming paint, Aeon breaks ground in a few other ways by dabbling with technologies not found in other openSUSE releases. The goal for Aeon is to provide automated system updates using snapshots that can be applied atomically, removing the burden of system maintenance for “lazy developers” who want to focus on their work rather than desktop administration. System-tinkerers need not apply. The idea behind Aeon, as with other immutable (or image-based) Linux distributions, is to provide the core of the distribution as a read-only image or filesystem that is updated atomically and can be rolled back if needed. Google’s ChromeOS was the first popular Linux-based desktop operating system to follow this model. Since the release of ChromeOS a number of interesting immutable implementations have cropped up, such as Fedora Silverblue, Project Bluefin (covered here in December 2023), openSUSE’s MicroOS (covered here in March 2023), and Ubuntu Core. ↫ Joe Brockmeier at LWN With the amount of attention immutable Linux desktops are getting, and how much work and experimentation that’s going into them, I’m getting the feeling that sooner or later all of the major, popular desktop Linux distributions will be going this route. Depending on implementation details, I actually like the concept of a defined base system that’s just an image that can be replaced easily using btrfs snapshots or something like that, while all the user’s files and customisations are kept elsewhere. It makes intuitive sense. Where the current crop of immutable Linux desktops fall flat for me is their reliance on (usually) Flatpak. You know how there’s people who hate systemd and/or Wayland just a little too much, to the point it gets a little weird and worrying? That’s me whenever I have to deal with Flatpaks. Every experience I have with Flatpaks is riddled with trouble for me. Even though I’m a KDE user, I’m currently testing out the latest GNOME release on my workstation (the one that I used to conclude Windows is simply not ready for the desktop), using Fedora of course, and on GNOME I use the Mastodon application Tuba. While I mostly write in English, I do occasionally write in Dutch, too, and would love for the spell check feature to work in my native tongue, too, instead of just in English. However, despite having all possible Dutch dictionaries installed – hunspell, aspell – and despite those dictionaries being picked up everywhere else in GNOME, Tuba only showed me a long list of variants of English. After digging around to find out why this was happening, it took me far longer than I care to publicly admit to realise that since the latest version of Tuba is only really available as a Flatpak on Fedora, my problem probably had something to do with that – and it turns out I was right: Flatpak applications do not use the system-wide installed spellcheck dictionaries like normal applications do. This eventually led me to this article by Daniel Aleksandersen, where he details what you need to do in order to add spellcheck dictionaries to Flatpak applications. You need to run the following commands: The list of languages uses two-letter codes only, and the first language listed will serve as the display language for Flatpak applications, while the rest will be fallback languages – which happens to include downloading and installing the Flatpak-specific copies of the spellcheck libraries. Sadly, this method is not particularly granular. Since it only accepts the two-letter codes, you can’t, say, only install “nl-nl”; you’ll be getting “nl-be” as well. In the case of a widely spoken language like English, this means a massive list of 18 different varieties of English. The resulting menus are… Not elegant. This is just an example, but using Flatpak, you’ll run into all kinds of issues like this, that then have to be solved by hacks or obscure terminal commands – not exactly the user-friendly image Flatpak is trying to convey to the world. This particular issue might not matter to the probably overwhelming English-speaking majority of Flatpak developers, but for anyone who has to deal with multiple languages on a daily basis – which is a massive number of people, probably well over 50% of computer users – having to mess around with obscure terminal commands hidden in blog posts just to be able to use the languages they use every day is terrible design on a multitude of levels, and will outright make Flatpak applications unusable for large numbers of people. Whenever I run into these Flatpak problems, it makes it clear to me that Flatpak is designed not by users, for users – but by developers, for developers. I can totally understand and see why Flatpak is appealing to developers, but as a user, they bring me nothing but grief, issues, and weird bugs that all seem to stem from being made to make developers’ lives easier, instead of users’. If immutable Linux distributions are really hellbent on using Flatpak as the the means of application installation – and it seams like they are – it will mean a massive regression in functionality, usability, and discoverability for users, and as long as Flatpak remains as broken and badly designed as it is, I really see no reason to recommend an immutable Linux desktop to anyone but the really curious among us.
Putin calls to resume production of intermediate nuclear-capable missiles
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
CaliBunga water park pushes back opening to July 4
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Electrical issues cited as the reason for delay from original June 29 date.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/28/calibunga-water-park-pushes-back-opening-to-july-4/
Biden’s debate debacle rattles Bay Area Democrats, but replacing him would bring ‘chaos’
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Biden’s stumbling speech and weakened appearance rattled many Bay Area Democrats, but calls from the left for him to step aside are far from universal.
Kurtenbach: Macklin Celebrini is officially a San Jose Shark. Now comes the tough part
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Macklin Celebrini does everything and does it well. Can that undeniable talent turn the Sharks’ fortunes around?
Slack-Jawed and Agape After the Presidential Debate
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Biden’s sole mission Thursday night was to radiate and communicate some serious mojo; what we got instead was a man who at times looked like he’d woke up in the middle of the night uncertain where the bathroom was.
The post Slack-Jawed and Agape After the Presidential Debate appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/28/slack-jawed-and-agape-after-the-presidential-debate/
Microsoft CEO of AI: Your online content is ‘freeware’ fodder for training models
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Unless you’ve got a lawyer, that is
Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, said this week that machine-learning companies can scrape most content published online and use it to train neural networks because it’s essentially “freeware.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/microsoft_ceo_ai/
Damage from Post Fire Closes Hungry Valley SVRA
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
California State Parks has announced the temporary full closure of the Hungry Valley State Vehicular Recreation Area in Gorman due to extensive damage caused by the Post Fire.
https://scvnews.com/damage-from-post-fire-closes-hungry-valley-svra/
Philly woman’s water breaks in Vasquez Rocks, premature baby Rocky shows resilience
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
Back in early November, Claire Lutz was out among Vasquez Rocks with her husband and some friends, 24 weeks pregnant, when her water broke. She was 2,500-plus miles from home. […]
The post Philly woman’s water breaks in Vasquez Rocks, premature baby Rocky shows resilience appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Review | Knight of White Satin Pop
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Moody Blues frontman Justin Hayward delivers the romantic/nostalgic goods at the Lobero.
The post Review | Knight of White Satin Pop appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/28/review-knight-of-white-satin-pop/
July 1: COC Board Vacancy Prompts Call for Special Meeting
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Community College District Board of Trustees will hold a special meeting Monday, July 1, beginning at 10 a.m.
https://scvnews.com/july-1-coc-board-vacancy-prompts-call-for-special-meeting/
🐾 No animals were harmed in the making of this newsletter
date: 2024-06-28, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
Some even got belly scritches during its editing.
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/no-animals-were-harmed-in-the-making
The Airport In Our Midst
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara has always been associated with aviation.
The post The Airport In Our Midst appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/28/the-airport-in-our-midst/
Biden-Trump debate draws 48M TV viewers
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
new york — Roughly 48 million TV viewers tuned in to watch Thursday’s U.S. presidential debate between Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump, according to preliminary Nielsen data.
The number suggests the final audience will be about one-third less than the 73 million people who watched the candidates’ first face-off in 2020, and among the three lowest-rated first presidential debates since 1976.
The relatively low number compared with past debates in recent election cycles could be indicative of low voter enthusiasm for both candidates. It does not capture the full extent of online viewing, which has grown in popularity as traditional TV audiences decline.
Media experts were looking to see how a new format by host CNN would play out, and whether it would provide a template for future debates. The restrictions of that format, which included the option for CNN to mute the candidates’ microphones, imposed some discipline on the candidates and should be emulated by other networks, three media experts said.
CNN, which held the exclusive rights to present the debate, allowed candidates two minutes for each answer and one minute for rebuttals, and muted their microphones if they exceeded those limits. The studio did not have an audience, and moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper did not fact-check the candidates in real time.
CNN defended itself against the criticism from some media commentators that the absence of real-time fact-checking allowed both candidates to spread false claims.
“The role of the moderators is to present the candidates with questions that are important to American voters and to facilitate a debate, enabling candidates to make their case and challenge their opponent,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-trump-debate-draws-48-million-tv-viewers-/7677698.html
Microsoft: all content on the web is fair use
date: 2024-06-28, from: OS News
When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Microsoft’s AI chief Mustafa Suleyman: With respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the ’90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like. That’s been the understanding. ↫ Mustafa Suleyman This is absolute bullshit from the first word to the very last. None of this is true – not even in the slightest. Content on the web is not free for the taking by anyone, especially not to be chewed up and regurgitated verbatim by spicy autocomplete tools. There is no “social contract” to that effect. In fact, when I go to any of Microsoft’s website, documents, videos, or any other content they publish online, on the open web, and scroll to the very bottom of the page, it’s all got the little copyright symbol or similar messaging. Once again, this underlines how entitled Silicon Valley techbros really are. If we violate even a gram of Microsoft’s copyrights, we’d have their lawyers on our ass in weeks – but when Microsoft itself needs to violate copyright and licensing on an automated, industrial scale, for massive profits, everything is suddenly peace, love, and fair use. Men in Silicon Valley just do not understand consent. At all. And they show this time and time again. Meanwhile, the Internet Archive has to deal with crap like this: The lawsuit is about the longstanding and widespread library practice of controlled digital lending, which is how we lend the books we own to our patrons. As a result of the publishers’ lawsuit, more than 500,000 books have been removed from our lending library. ↫ Chris Freeland at the Internet Archive Blogs Controlled lending without a profit motive is deemed illegal, but violating copyright and licensing on an automated, industrial scale is fair use. Make it make sense. Make it make sense.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140088/microsoft-all-content-on-the-web-is-fair-use/
County Mental Health Launches ‘Who Do I Call?’ Campaign
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
To better inform and educate the community on the differences between the county of Los Angeles’ emergency and resource phone numbers, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, in collaboration with the County of Los Angeles Fire Department, Sheriff’s Department, city of Los Angeles Police Department, 211 LA and Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, has launched the “Who Do I Call for Help?” awareness campaign
https://scvnews.com/county-mental-health-launches-who-do-i-call-campaign/
Apple II graphics: more than you wanted to know
date: 2024-06-28, from: OS News
The Apple ][ is one of the most iconic vintage computers of all time. But since Wozniak’s monster lasted all the way until 1993 (1995 if you could the IIe card, which I won’t count until I get one), it can be easy to forget that in 1977, it was a video extravaganza. The competitors– even much bigger and established companies like Commodore and Tandy– generally only had text modes, let alone pixel-addressable graphics, and they certainly didn’t have sixteen colors. (Gray and grey are different colors, right?) ↫ Nicole Branagan If there’s ever anything you wanted to know about how graphics work on the Apple II, this is the place to go. It’s an incredibly detailed and illustrated explanation of how the machine renders and displays graphics, and an excellent piece of writing to boot. I’m a little jealous.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140086/apple-ii-graphics-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
US, allies warn of North Korea-Russia military cooperation
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
new york — The United States and its allies warned Friday that expanding military cooperation between Russia and North Korea is dangerous, illegal and a growing threat to the wider international community.
“Last week, Russian and DPRK leaders signed a ‘Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,’ paving the way for further deepening their military cooperation,” Robert Wood, U.S. deputy U.N. ambassador, told reporters, surrounded by representatives of nearly 50 like-minded countries.
“We are deeply concerned about the security implications of the advancement of this cooperation for Europe, the Korean Peninsula, the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.”
DPRK is the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Wood spoke ahead of a meeting of the U.N. Security Council requested by the United States, Britain, France, Japan and South Korea to discuss North Korea’s transfer of arms and munitions to Russia, which are helping drive the Kremlin’s war machine in Ukraine. Such transfers would violate a U.N. arms embargo on North Korea.
“Before February 2022, it was hard to imagine that the war in Ukraine would pose such a direct threat to the security of the Korean Peninsula,” South Korean Ambassador Joonkook Hwang told council members. “But now we are facing a new reality.”
He said South Korea’s national defense ministry has assessed that since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a summit in Russia in September, Pyongyang has shipped at least 10,000 containers to Russia that can hold a total of as many as 5 million artillery shells. His government has also determined that 122-millimeter artillery shells made in North Korea were included in the weapons Russia has used against Ukraine.
In return for the weapons, North Korea is seeking trade and military assistance from Russia, which would violate U.N. sanctions. It is also benefiting from Russia’s political protection in the Security Council.
“All these developments can bring about a shift in the global security landscape, and the potential long-term effects are dangerously uncertain,” Hwang said, adding that Seoul would “resolutely respond” to any threats to its security in a “prudent and measured” way.
U.N. sanctions experts detailed prohibited transfers of military equipment and munitions from North Korea to Russia in a report in February — which Moscow denied. Russia then used its Security Council veto to shut down the 14-year-old monitoring panel in April.
Russia’s envoy again dismissed accusations it is getting weapons from North Korea at Friday’s meeting.
“This is completely false,” Vassily Nebenzia told the council, adding that the two countries’ cooperation “is exclusively constructive and legitimate in nature.”
Nebenzia dismissed the panel of experts’ findings as controlled and directed by the West.
“The panel of experts have been following those orders given them and turning in the direction they were told to turn,” he said.
North Korea’s envoy defended Pyongyang and Moscow’s treaty, saying relations between the two countries “are completely peace-loving and defensive in nature.”
“Therefore, there is no reason whatsoever to be concerned about development of their bilateral relations, unless they have intention to undertake a military invasion of the DPRK and Russian Federation,” Ambassador Song Kim said.
China, which has traditionally been North Korea’s closest ally, expressed concern about heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
“China calls on parties concerned to be rational and pragmatic and to find joint efforts to find a solution,” Deputy Ambassador Geng Shuang said.
Washington’s envoy urged Beijing to use its influence with both Pyongyang and Moscow to persuade them to cease their “increasingly dangerous cooperation.”
“So I appeal to my Chinese colleague to understand that if indeed the situation on the Korean Peninsula continues on the trajectory it’s going, the United States and its allies will have to take steps to defend their security,” Wood said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-allies-warn-of-north-korea-russia-military-cooperation/7677701.html
American interest in electric vehicles short circuits for first time in four years
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Funny what happens if you take Tesla out of the numbers, though
Interest in electric vehicles has waned slightly among US motorists for the first time since 2020 says Pew Research, with only three out of ten Americans right now saying they’re considering a battery-powered ride for their next purchase.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/us_ev_survey/
June 29: Western States Regional Speed Skating Championships
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Once again, the Santa Clarita Speed Skating Club will be hosting the Annual Western States Short Track Speed Skating Championships Saturday, June 29 at 1:45 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at The Cube – Ice and Entertainment Center, Powered by FivePoint Valencia, at 27745 Smyth Drive, Valencia, CA 91355.
https://scvnews.com/june-29-western-states-regional-speed-skating-championships/
This Week in the IndieWeb
date: 2024-06-28, from: This week in Indie Web
June 21-28, 2024
Recent Events
From events.indieweb.org/archive:
Join us online in Zoom for demos of personal sites, recent breakthroughs, discussions about the independent web, and meet IndieWeb community members! Homebrew Website club is for all levels and areas of IndieWeb interest, whether curious, creative, a coder, or all the above.
Upcoming Events
From events.indieweb.org:
The Homebrew Website Club to discuss the writing and writing-related topics. If you write on the web, whenever this is short message, detailed blog posts, reviews, rantings or fiction, come join us.
Front End Study Hall is an HTML + CSS focused group meeting, held on Zoom to learn from each other about how to make code do what we want.
Come prepared to teach and learn!
- NÜRNBERG, Bayern: LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation
HWC Nuremberg is a in-person meeting for everybody who is interested in setting up a personal website and talk about web-related issues.
Join us online in Zoom for demos of personal sites, recent breakthroughs, discussions about the independent web, and meet IndieWeb community members! Homebrew Website club is for all levels and areas of IndieWeb interest, whether curious, creative, a coder, or all the above.
- NÜRNBERG, Bayern: LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation
HWC Nuremberg is a in-person meeting for everybody who is interested in setting up a personal website and talk about web-related issues.
- NÜRNBERG, Bayern: LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation
HWC Nuremberg is a in-person meeting for everybody who is interested in setting up a personal website and talk about web-related issues.
- PORTLAND, Oregon: TBD
A one day IndieWebCamp Portland 2024 is planned for August 25th, the day after the XOXO conference and festival, pending confirmation of a venue! If you’re in Portland and have a suggested venue please get in touch via the IndieWeb chat!
New Community Members
From IndieWeb Wiki: New User Pages:
User:Zacharykai.net
Created by Zacharykai.net on Friday
Top New Wiki Pages
From IndieWeb Wiki: New Pages:
handshake
handshake is a type of post, typically a short note, that has some text, then a handshake emoji (🤝), and some more text, indicating two things or parties who are different, yet seemingly agree or collaborate on something in common.
Created by [tantek] on Wednesday with 4 more edits by loqi.me and tantek.com
New Event Notes
From IndieWeb Wiki: New Pages:
Homebrew Website Club Europe/London: 2024-06-26
Top Edited Wiki Pages
From IndieWeb Wiki: Recent Changes:
- colophon 2 edits by zacharykai.net and tantek.com
- git 2 edits by loqi.me
- discuss 2 edits by trainedmonkey.com and bw3.dev
- URL shortener 2 edits by loqi.me and tantek.com
- site-deaths 2 edits by loqi.me
- .bit 2 edits by gregorlove.com and martymcgui.re
- indielogin.com 2 edits by paulrobertlloyd.com
- search 2 edits by loqi.me and tantek.com
https://indieweb.org/this-week/2024-06-28.html
‘New Muralism: Inclusive Visions of Self and Place’
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Slingshot / Alpha Art Studio’s “New Muralism” art exhibit at Santa Barbara County’s Channing Peake Gallery gives a new meaning to murals.
The post ‘New Muralism: Inclusive Visions of Self and Place’ appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/28/new-muralism-inclusive-visions-of-self-and-place/
AOOSTAR WTR Pro is a 4-bay NAS with an Intel N100 processor, 2.5 GbE Ethernet, and an M.2 2280 slot
date: 2024-06-28, from: Liliputing
The AOOSTAR WTR Pro is small desktop computer that’s positioned for use as a network-attached storage (NAS) device thanks to its support for up to four 3.5 inch hard drives or SSDs and an M.2 slot for an optional PCIe NVMe SSD. But it’s also a versatile little computer with an Intel N100 Alder Lake-N processor, broad […]
The post AOOSTAR WTR Pro is a 4-bay NAS with an Intel N100 processor, 2.5 GbE Ethernet, and an M.2 2280 slot appeared first on Liliputing.
World’s largest naval exercise sends message to China
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
pentagon — The United States and 28 partner nations have begun the world’s largest naval war exercise off the shores of Hawaii, known as the Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC.
This year’s exercise brings international cooperation on a scale like no other: 40 surface ships, more than 150 aircraft, three submarines and 25,000 people.
Nations from around the globe are practicing a wide range of missions, from natural disaster response to attack skills needed for war. While most participants are nations with Pacific coastlines, this year’s RIMPAC also includes non-Pacific nations, including the United Kingdom, France, Brazil and Israel.
“Every nation in the world that has interests in the Pacific and will adhere to the same values is more than welcome to participate,” said Chilean Navy Commodore Alberto Guerrero, RIMPAC deputy commander.
One country not invited? China.
Why? Because the warm welcome RIMPAC gave to China in 2014 and 2016 backfired, according to Markus Garlauskas, director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council.
“There was this outreach to China, and definitely the U.S. and its allies and partners were essentially burned by the Chinese taking advantage of it … as an opportunity to essentially collect intelligence and to try and get more acceptance of what should be considered unacceptable behavior,” Garlauskas told VOA.
Since China’s last RIMPAC in 2016, he said, Beijing ramped up its aggressive behavior, building and militarizing more artificial islands in international waters, conducting aggressive maneuvers around Taiwan in recent months and pummeling Philippine ships with water cannons in recent days.
But the biennial exercise, officials say, can send a strong message to China to stop bullying its neighbors. RIMPAC nations this year will practice targeting the decommissioned assault ship USS Tarawa, in a rare chance to learn how effective their weapons are at sinking a large and protected adversary in open waters.
“They’re not just going to be facing the United States in the country they’re targeting, but they’re potentially going to have to deal with a response from a wide range of countries that have common interests in deterring and confronting Chinese aggression as threats to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Garlauskas said.
Israel’s inclusion this year sparked calls from pro-Palestinian activists wanting countries to skip the exercise in protest. Malaysia’s prime minister addressed the protesters ahead of the exercises, saying that while his country would continue to speak out in support of the Palestinian people, Malaysia needed to act in a way that was “not driven by anger,” while also considering the practical implications of missing the major military exercise.
RIMPAC is set to end in early August.
https://www.voanews.com/a/world-s-largest-naval-exercise-sends-message-to-china-/7677673.html
NatureTrack Film Fest Kicks Off Summer Series at El Cap
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Free screening of ‘The Beaver Believers’ on July 6.
The post NatureTrack Film Fest Kicks Off Summer Series at El Cap appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/28/naturetrack-film-fest-kicks-off-summer-series-at-el-cap/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
ChatGPT outperforms undergrads in intro-level courses, falls short later.
Volcanic Ash Preserved Trilobite Fossils in Surprising Detail at ‘Prehistoric Pompeii’
date: 2024-06-28, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The specimens date to more than 500 million years ago and provide new insights into trilobite anatomy, revealing previously unseen features
Barger issues statement on county homeless count results and Supreme Court ruling
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
News release Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger released a statement Friday regarding the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority’s 2024 Los Angeles Homeless Count results and the U.S. Supreme […]
The post Barger issues statement on county homeless count results and Supreme Court ruling appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
NASA astronauts to stay aboard ISS longer, troubleshooting Boeing capsule
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
July 2-3: Libraries Host Wine to Cup Etching Program
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Come elevate the drinking experience with a touch of eco-friendly sophistication as you fashion a repurposed wine bottle into a customized drinking glass.
https://scvnews.com/july-2-3-libraries-host-wine-to-cup-etching-program/
California State Parks Urges Safety for Fourth of July
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
This Fourth of July weekend California State Parks invites all Californians and visitors from around the world to celebrate the holiday in its parks and to recreate responsibly.
https://scvnews.com/california-state-parks-urges-safety-for-fourth-of-july/
Santa Barbara Rescue Mission Annual Fourth of July BBQ, Raffle, and Carnival
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – The Santa Barbara Rescue Mission is excited to announce its seventeenth annual 4th of July BBQ,
The post Santa Barbara Rescue Mission Annual Fourth of July BBQ, Raffle, and Carnival appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Suspected Stolen Bike Recovered During Arrest Owner Encouraged to Contact Isla Vista Foot Patrol
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Isla Vista, Calif. – Deputies arrested a juvenile suspect in an animal abuse case and are attempting to locate the
The post Suspected Stolen Bike Recovered During Arrest Owner Encouraged to Contact Isla Vista Foot Patrol appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Explainer: Replacing Biden as a presidential candidate
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/explainer-replacing-biden-as-a-presidential-candidate/7677643.html
Drilling Operation Continues Following Roadway Cracking on Highway 154 Which Remains Closed Near San Antonio Creek Road
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY – Highway 154 remains closed in both directions from San Antonio Creek Road to Painted Cave Road due to roadway
The post Drilling Operation Continues Following Roadway Cracking on Highway 154 Which Remains Closed Near San Antonio Creek Road appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Supreme Court allows city’s ban on public homeless encampments
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
By Matthew Vadum Contributing Writer The Supreme Court on Friday on a 6-3 vote upheld a local ordinance banning public camping, which activists claimed unconstitutionally punished homeless people for being homeless. […]
The post Supreme Court allows city’s ban on public homeless encampments appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/supreme-court-allows-citys-ban-on-public-homeless-encampments/
CISA looked at C/C++ projects and found a lot of C/C++ code. Wanna redo any of it in Rust?
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
So, so many lines of memory-unsafe routines in crucial open source, and unsafe dependencies
The US government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has analyzed 172 critical open source projects and found that more than half contain code written in languages like C and C++ that are not naturally memory safe.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/cisa_open_source/
July 3: Upcycle Tie Dye at Valencia Library
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Bring a shirt or bandana to the Valencia Library, 23743 West Valencia Blvd., Santa Clarita, CA 91355, on Wednesday, July 3 from 4 to 5 p.m. for Upcycle Tie Dye Program.
https://scvnews.com/july-3-upcycle-tie-dye-at-valencia-library/
Measurement Rules Takes Over as MOXI’s Newest Installation
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Height, weight, volume, and length take the spotlight at Santa Barbara’s STEAM-focused museum’s latest exhibit.
The post Measurement Rules Takes Over as MOXI’s Newest Installation appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/28/measurement-rules-takes-over-as-moxis-newest-installation/
Child airlifted after suffering medical emergency
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
A medical emergency that originated on the 22800 block of West Copper Hill Drive in Saugus resulted in a child being transported to Central Park and airlifted to a hospital […]
The post Child airlifted after suffering medical emergency appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/child-airlifted-after-suffering-medical-emergency/
June 30: Vet @ The Park Visits Heritage Park
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control will host Vet @ The Park on Sunday, June 30, at Heritage Park, 24155 Newhall Ranch Road, Santa Clarita, CA 91355 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
https://scvnews.com/june-30-vet-the-park-visits-heritage-park/
RCS in iOS 18 Beta
date: 2024-06-28, from: Michael Tsai
Ryan Haines: Then, it was time to jump into an RCS-powered future, and by that, I mean flipping a toggle in the Settings app. Seriously, that’s all there is to it right now for beta testers on the most recent build.From there, it was time to send my first RCS text message on an iPhone, […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/28/rcs-in-ios-18-beta/
Removing Archives of Comedy Central and MTV News
date: 2024-06-28, from: Michael Tsai
Rick Porter: A pop-up window on the Comedy Central site reads, “While episodes of most Comedy Central series are no longer available on this website, you can watch Comedy Central through your TV provider. You can also sign up for Paramount+ to watch many seasons of Comedy Central shows.”[…]As noted by LateNighter, the cleaning out […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/28/removing-archives-of-comedy-central-and-mtv-news/
Longevity, by Design
date: 2024-06-28, from: Michael Tsai
Joe Rossignol: Apple today published a lengthy whitepaper that highlights the company’s approach to device repairability and longevity. In the document, Apple revealed that iPhones will better support third-party displays and batteries later in 2024.[…]First, Apple said True Tone will work with third-party iPhone displays later this year[…][…]Second, Apple said battery health metrics such as […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/28/longevity-by-design/
Porting Google Sheets Calculations to WasmGC
date: 2024-06-28, from: Michael Tsai
Michael Thomas and Thomas Steiner Thomas Steiner (via Hacker News): The Google Sheets calculation engine was originally written in Java and launched in 2006. In the early days of the product, all calculation happened on the server. However, from 2013, the engine has run in the browser using JavaScript. This was originally accomplished through Google […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/28/porting-google-sheets-calculations-to-wasmgc/
NASA Awards Contract for Infrared Telescope Facility Operations
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has selected the University of Hawaii in Honolulu to maintain and operate the agency’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea in Hilo, Hawaii. The Management and Operations of NASA’s IRTF is a hybrid firm-fixed-price contract with an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity provision. The contract has a maximum potential value of approximately $85.5 million, with a base […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-contract-for-infrared-telescope-facility-operations/
Python Apps Rejected From App Store
date: 2024-06-28, from: Michael Tsai
Joe Brockmeier (via Hacker News): The problem at hand is that Apple’s macOS App Store is automatically rejecting apps that contain the string “itms-services”. That is the URL scheme for apps that want to ask Apple’s iTunes Store to install another app. […] That string is in the urllib parser in Python’s standard library, though […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/28/python-apps-rejected-from-app-store/
Rounded Quick Look Corners
date: 2024-06-28, from: Michael Tsai
Robin Allen (via Hacker News): For whatever reason, QuickLook will now remove the corners of your images before showing them to you.It doesn’t matter if they’re photos, game assets, or UI elements you’re designing. Everything will be rounded off before you see it.[…]We can click through these views and get info about them, including their […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/28/rounded-quick-look-corners/
Mac Marketshare in Q1 2024
date: 2024-06-28, from: Michael Tsai
Ben Lovejoy (via Hacker News): Mac shipments are estimated to have grown from 1.7M in the first quarter of 2023 to 2.1M in the same quarter this year. That represents year-on-year growth of 22%, giving Apple a 14.2% share of the US PC market.The launch of the new M3-powered MacBook Air models in March were […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/28/mac-marketshare-in-q1-2024/
Moaan InkPalm Plus
date: 2024-06-28, from: Michael Tsai
John Moltz (Hacker News): A post on Mastodon got boosted into my feed that touted the Xiaomi Moaan InkPalm 5 which sells for about $95. Now you’re talking my kind of cheap. Looking into the Moaan lineup, I then found the InkPalm Plus which features a slightly larger screen, more storage and a more up-to-date […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/28/moaan-inkpalm-plus/
Starlink Mini
date: 2024-06-28, from: Michael Tsai
Chris Wedel (via Hacker News): However, since I first began using these low-orbit satellites to power my internet, not only has the price gone up $30 per month, but the speeds and reliability have degraded significantly. I’ve talked to others in my area who use Starlink, and since January, we’ve experienced frequent downtime and fluctuating […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/06/28/starlink-mini/
July 3: CD Suncatchers Program at Old Town Newhall Library
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Visit The Old Town Newhall Library, 24500 Main St., Newhall, CA 91321 for a fun and eco-friendly CD Suncatchers program, Wednesday, July 3, at 3:30 p.m.
https://scvnews.com/july-3-cd-suncatchers-program-at-old-town-newhall-library/
HMD is bringing back the Nokia Lumia “Fabula” design for at least two new phones (leaks)
date: 2024-06-28, from: Liliputing
HMD is probably best known as the company that’s been selling Nokia-branded phones in recent years. But the Finnish company is starting to move away from the Nokia name by selling some phones under its own name. That doesn’t mean HMD isn’t still leveraging Nokia’s assets though. A series of leaks suggest that HMD is […]
The post HMD is bringing back the Nokia Lumia “Fabula” design for at least two new phones (leaks) appeared first on Liliputing.
World’s largest navy exercise sends message to China
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
This week the United States and 28 partner nations began the world’s largest naval war exercise off the shores of Hawaii. Known as Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, analysts say this year’s exercise gives partners a chance to work together while sending a strong deterrence message to China. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has details.
https://www.voanews.com/a/world-s-largest-navy-exercise-sends-message-to-china/7677593.html
Court records: Prom after-party ends in gunfire
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
The sound of a shotgun being racked sent a clear enough message that the prom after-party was over. Some ran from the house. A girl was seen crying on the […]
The post Court records: Prom after-party ends in gunfire appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/court-records-prom-after-party-ends-in-gunfire/
‘It Was a Sluggish Night’
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara Congressmember Salud Carbajal reacts to Biden’s performance in Thursday’s presidential debate while calling out Trump as a lying “would-be dictator.”
The post ‘It Was a Sluggish Night’ appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/28/it-was-a-sluggish-night/
July 15: Filing Period Opens for City Council Election
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita 2024 General Municipal Election, consolidated with the Los Angeles County Presidential General Election, will be held on Nov. 5. This will be the first by-district election in the city, with two district seats up for election.
https://scvnews.com/july-15-filing-period-opens-for-city-council-election/
Ballot measure madness: How California lawmakers are scrambling the November list
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The LAist
In late deals with Gov. Newsom and legislative leaders, proponents are pulling measures off the Nov. 5 ballot. But the Legislature may add others by next week.
NASA Announces Winners of Inaugural Human Lander Challenge
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s 2024 Human Lander Challenge (HuLC) Forum brought 12 university teams from across the United States to Huntsville, Alabama, near the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center, to showcase their innovative concepts for addressing the complex issue of managing lunar dust. The 12 finalists, selected in March 2024, presented their final presentations to a panel of […]
Debate notes
date: 2024-06-28, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
It was a bad night. But at least its over. …Right?
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/debate-notes
NATO Needs to Revive Its Human Security Agenda
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: RAND blog
It is important that NATO not allow human security to slip down its political agenda. The 2024 NATO Washington summit will be a timely opportunity to reiterate the alliance’s commitment to its human security–centered approach.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/06/nato-needs-to-revive-its-human-security-agenda.html
US official: World should be ‘alarmed’ by growing North Korea-Russia cooperation
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-28, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Godot Community Poll:
https://godotengine.org/article/godot-community-poll-2024/
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112695880071492018
Avalon VFW Post forced to close
date: 2024-06-28, from: Catalina Islander
As Catalina Island prepares to join the rest of the country in celebrating America’s Independence, Avalon will need to adjust a little bit, as a regular participant of its celebration has been lost. The Avalon chapter of the Veterans of Foreign War (VFW) Post is closing its doors, in a manner of speaking. It has […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/avalon-vfw-post-forced-to-close/
Pakistani parliament slams US demand for election probe
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistani-parliament-slams-us-demand-for-election-probe/7677503.html
Cabaret generates a win for former racehorses
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
Jaine Garcia grew up loving horses and began riding at the early age of 4. After traveling the world and riding horses in places such as South Africa and Australia, […]
The post Cabaret generates a win for former racehorses appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/cabaret-generates-a-win-for-former-racehorses/
Avalon 4th of July schedule of events
date: 2024-06-28, from: Catalina Islander
The USC Marching band free concert will be on July 3 on the Wrigley Stage. 10-11 a.m. House Judging 11-12 p.m. Golf Cart Judging on Lower Descanso. This year’s Theme is Avalon’s Golden Age of Avalon: Swinging into the 20s and 30s. Noon-12:30 p.m. Parade line up: No entrance through Casino way After 12:45 p.m. […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/avalon-4th-of-july-schedule-of-events/
What Killed the Last Woolly Mammoths? Scientists Say It Wasn’t Inbreeding
date: 2024-06-28, from: Smithsonian Magazine
New research suggests some catastrophic event—such as a natural disaster or a virus—killed the world’s last known population of mammoths on Wrangel Island
Council appoints new planners
date: 2024-06-28, from: Catalina Islander
The Avalon City Council appointed new members to the Planning Commission at last week’s council meeting. The vote was 4-0 with Councilmember Yesenia De La Rosa absent. Current terms for the Planning Commission end on June 30 of this year, according to the staff report by Administrative Analyst/Deputy City Clerk Devin Hart. Returning planners are: […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/council-appoints-new-planners/
Catalina Realtors, Hamilton Cove RE, Bravo’s Landscaping win
date: 2024-06-28, from: Catalina Islander
The start of the second round of CoEd Softball began with Catalina Realtors taking on Coyote Joe’s. Catalina Realtors was up first, and used five base hits to score three. Coyote Joe’s answered back with two runs off a base hit, a walk and a double from Ryan Hinkley. Catalina Realtors added another three runs […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/catalina-realtors-hamilton-cove-re-bravos-landscaping-win/
Conservancy announces hunting season for 2024
date: 2024-06-28, from: Catalina Islander
In response to requests from the public to increase recreational hunting opportunities on Catalina Island, the Conservancy will host a 2024 hunting season beginning July 22. The California Fish and Game Commission recently approved up to 1,000 tags for the 2024 season – twice the number allotted in previous years. The tags will be allocated […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/conservancy-announces-hunting-season-for-2024/
TeamViewer says Russia broke into its corp IT network
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Same APT29 crew that hit Microsoft and SolarWinds. How close were we to a mega backdoor situation?
TeamViewer says it was Russian intelligence that broke into its systems this week.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/teamviewer_russia/
Filing Period for 2024 City Council Election Opens Monday, July 15
date: 2024-06-28, from: City of Santa Clarita
The City’s 2024 General Municipal Election, consolidated with the Los Angeles County Presidential General Election, will be held on November 5, 2024. This will be the first by-district election in the City, with two district seats up for election. Registered voters in the City of Santa Clarita District 1 and District 3 will have the […]
The post Filing Period for 2024 City Council Election Opens Monday, July 15 appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
Fishing Derby sees 27 kids haul in 134 fish
date: 2024-06-28, from: Catalina Islander
The return of the summer kids Fishing Derby had a big day on June 26. A total of 27 kids from Avalon, San Clemente, Dana Point, San Diego, Oregon to Idaho participated, and as a group the young anglers hauled in 134 fish. 10 and under most fish Caught – 1st-Logan Henry, Avalon 11. 2nd-Jonathon […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/fishing-derby-sees-27-kids-haul-in-134-fish/
The Maze is Afoot
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
This labyrinth – with a silhouette of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes at its center – is used as a calibration target for the cameras and laser that are part of SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), one of the instruments aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. The image was […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/the-maze-is-afoot/
Showers of Hope restores dignity to homeless people
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
In Frederick, Maryland, when Tony Peterson got himself off the streets, he wanted to help others conquer their homelessness as well. He began by asking the homeless people he encountered what they needed, and the answer was simple but deeply personal. Arzouma Kompaore reports.
https://www.voanews.com/a/showers-of-hope-restores-dignity-to-homeless-people/7677366.html
Is There a Viking Ship Burial Underneath This Norwegian Farm?
date: 2024-06-28, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Archaeologists have uncovered around 70 iron rivets that may have once held together a boat belonging to a king
ISS Astronauts Forced to Briefly Take Shelter as Russian Satellite Suddenly Breaks Up in Orbit
date: 2024-06-28, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Officials are unsure why the satellite fractured unexpectedly, splintering into nearly 200 pieces
NASA Opportunities Fuel Growth and Entrepreneurship for Bronco Space Club Students
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s public competitions can catalyze big changes – not just for the agency but also for participants. Bronco Space, the CubeSat laboratory at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California, matured more than just space technology as a result of winning funds from NASA’s TechLeap Prize competition. It grew from its roots in a broom […]
Should the UK Bring Back National Service? Considerations and Lessons from International Research
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: RAND blog
In the absence of fully fledged national service, the United Kingdom should consider alternative avenues for strengthening societal links with the armed forces, contributing to societal resilience, and encouraging engagement in national security and defence.
Amazon’s Project Kuiper slips to end of 2024 for first full-scale launch
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Starlink rival slips again, but service still set for 2025
The first full-scale mission of Amazon’s Project Kuiper has slipped to the end of 2024, a year after the company finally got its prototype satellites into orbit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/amazon_project_kuiper_q4/
Milk-V Jupiter is a mini ITX board with a SpacemiT K1/M1 RISC-V processor
date: 2024-06-28, from: Liliputing
The Milk-V Jupiter is a mini ITX computer motherboard that combines an octa-core RISC-V processor with up to 16GB of onboard LPDDR4x memory, support for eMMC and PCIe NVMe storage, and a PCIe x8 expansion slot. It’s the latest in a line of RISC-V products from Milk-V, and it looks like one of the most versatile to […]
The post Milk-V Jupiter is a mini ITX board with a SpacemiT K1/M1 RISC-V processor appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/milk-v-jupiter-is-a-mini-itx-board-with-a-spacemit-k1-m1-risc-v-processor/
Behind the Blog: Too Many Tabs and Generative AI Hype
date: 2024-06-28, from: 404 Media Group
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss exciting new updates to the podcast, having too many tabs open, and the generative AI boom.
https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-too-many-tabs-and-generative-ai-hype/
It’s not unusual to port the Linux Vector Packet Processor (VPP) to FreeBSD
date: 2024-06-28, from: OS News
The Vector Packet Processor (VPP) is a framework for moving packets around at high rates. Its core concept is handling packets in groups known as “vectors,” which allows for the native use of vector processor instructions for packet classification and processing in different CPU architectures — currently amd64 and arm64. VPP can process packets at incredibly high rates and competes with many dedicated forwarding appliances. This is achieved using userspace networking that bypasses the host’s normal network stack. This article describes the porting of VPP to FreeBSD and working with the upstream VPP project to include FreeBSD as a supported target. ↫ Tom Jones It’s not unusual for me to link to something a little over my head, and this is another example of something I know y’all will like, but I don’t really understand fully.
What Happens After Chevron?
date: 2024-06-28, from: Heatmap News
It’s a sad day for the regulatory state. On Friday, the Supreme Court struck down a 40-year-old precedent that deferred to agencies’ interpretations of their own mandates where the statutory guidance was incomplete or ambiguous, otherwise known as Chevron deference, after the losing side in the original case. Not only has it been cited in more than 19,000 federal opinions, it’s the one congressional aides — the ones actually writing the laws — are most familiar with, as Lisa Heinzerling, a professor of environmental law at Georgetown Law, told me.
“So there’s a way in which Congress has been relying on Chevron for decades, right?” she said. “If Congress banked on Chevron, banked on the idea that if they didn’t make things clear the agency would take care of it, then that reliance is not being honored.”
This is not the first time the court has come for regulators. Two years ago, in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court held that the authority to resolve questions of interpretation involving high-stakes political and economic questions, a.k.a. “major questions,” rests with Congress, not the agencies, raising the threat of legal nightmares should regulators attempt to take any kind of big swings. This explicitly concerns only “extraordinary cases,” and yet regulators already appear to be reining in their own ambition to gird against potential challenges.
Friday’s decision comes the day after the court struck down a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act giving certain enforcement powers to the Securities and Exchange Commission and granted a stay on enforcement of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “good neighbor” rule, aimed at preventing harmful pollution from crossing state lines.
The two cases decided this week — Loper Bright Enterprises et al. v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, et al. and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce — turned on whether private commercial fishing companies could be compelled to pay for federal monitors to ride along and ensure they were complying with applicable fishing rules. Or at least they did initially. “The court decided to decide only the question whether to overrule Chevron, the case that establishes deference for agencies legal interpretations,” Heinzerling explained the day before the ruling came down. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Without Chevron, are we going to get completely bogged down in revising statutes? Are our courts going to be clogged up with nuisance suits from people who simply don’t want to have to follow the rules?
I think there will be a lot of efforts to undo other precedent that relied on Chevron — and especially paired with the Corner Post case, which has to do with the timing of challenges to agency action. You know, realistically, if that case comes down, accepting a longer period of time in which to sue people could go nuts, challenging all sorts of agency interpretations from the past. So that’s disruptive.
The Supreme Court is constantly saying, well, go and get a new statute. Well, okay, we saw what happens when Congress passes a new statute: The court holds it unconstitutional. The Dodd-Frank Act. Look what happened to the Affordable Care Act. These major pieces of legislation, major, major political stakes, and the court has not respected those. So I feel like we’re kind of in a shell game, something that’s not quite honest. That in all of these cases, actually, Congress did pass a law, but the court either rules it unconstitutional, says it’s not clear enough. And so I don’t think they’re respecting Congress’s handiwork as it exists now.
You mentioned Corner Post, could you talk about that case?
It came to the court kind of quietly. It’s got rich backers. It’s just a little truckstop, just like the commercial fisherman, that wants to challenge a rule on credit cards. They were incorporated after the rule went into effect, and they want to say, we weren’t injured when it first passed, so we should get the benefit of a longer period of time in which to sue. And amazingly, the justices seemed willing to accept that. That just adds to the stakes of overruling Chevron.
The Chevron deference is a big part of how agencies do their job. But after West Virginia, does it still matter? I’m not a lawyer, but I’m going to pretend I am one when I ask: Does the major questions doctrine effectively invalidate Chevron anyway?
No. They said that the major questions idea was for extraordinary cases, to see how it turns out over the years, but it’s not every case. Where Chevron applied, theoretically, in every case. At least it was a mix.
What recent regulatory decisions would be most vulnerable in a post-Chevron world?
It is complicated to know because it has to be a question about a statute, a question about a statute that a court finds ambiguous, right? That’s where Chevron would have helped. And I think it depends on what court you’re in. If you’re in the Fifth Circuit, there’s a good chance — I mean, they’ve just stopped using Chevron, period.
Is there a world in which courts develop more subject matter expertise as a result of being forced to decide on questions of statutory interpretation?
Over the years people have offered the possibility of science courts or environmental courts — specialized courts where adjudicators have expertise. That’s never really taken off — never really at all taken off. Certainly the D.C. Circuit judges handle administrative cases all the time. Cases go exclusively to them, and I think the judges do develop some expertise. But it doesn’t turn them into ecologists or engineers. And the thing is that the structure of a judicial chambers is both tiny and insular: you have one judge; on the Supreme Court four clerks, but elsewhere two to three. It’s just not that much. Whereas EPA, they have teams of people on these rules from all over the agency, and then the rule gets reviewed by others.
We’re obviously focused on climate-related regulations, but is there an area of policy that you think will be most vulnerable immediately without Chevron?
The hallmarks of where Chevron has been really important: complicated statutes; technical and/or scientific subject matter; places where the language is either vague or just broad enough, it’s not clear how to fill it in. That’s environmental law, but there’s a lot of other law that’s also … I mean, it’s just OSHA, FDA, the FTC. Looking for those signature traits, that’s going to be a place where it pinches particularly hard. I think the agencies now are sort of bracing for this, but they still have a lot of rules in the works, and this is going to come down in the middle of that in election year.
Chevron started with Reagan wanting to change the way the EPA interpreted its mandate. Would removing it potentially make things more difficult for an incoming Trump administration?
I mean, it should. Chevron was supposed to work that way. But certainly the major questions doctrine, at least as it’s been practiced, so far cuts only against ambitious regulation. It doesn’t cut in favor of it.
The thing that worries me is the anti-regulatory skew that’s in some of the court’s other recent rulings. So for example, in West Virginia itself, the Supreme Court struck down Obama’s Clean Power Plan but upheld — without even explaining why — Trump’s plan. They were the same question under the same statute with the same evidence, the same costs and benefits. Everything was the same except for the direction. If one was a major question, the other should have been a major question. And so if you want to put it in the terms of these two possible administrations, they will go after Biden rules more than they’ll go after Trump rules, at least on the major questions idea.
https://heatmap.news/climate/supreme-court-chevron
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Episodes.fm is beautiful and useful and solves an important problem.
https://nathangathright.com/introducing-episodesfm/
New Blood Test for Predicting Parkinson’s Disease With A.I. Shows Promise, Study Suggests
date: 2024-06-28, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In preliminary research, scientists identified eight protein anomalies in the blood of patients with Parkinson’s, which they say can help diagnose the disease up to seven years before symptoms appear
Bill Gates says not to worry about AI gobbling up energy, tech will adapt
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
So that’s fine then
Bill Gates says the massive power draw required for AI processing is nothing to worry about as AI will ultimately identify ways to help cut power consumption and drive the transition to sustainable energy.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/bill_gates_ai_power_consumption/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Which Democrats could replace Biden as 2024 nominee? - The Washington Post
Ancient Egyptian Scribes Were Worked to the Bone
date: 2024-06-28, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The administrators spent long periods writing in odd postures, which damaged their joints, researchers discovered
In Space Production Applications News
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
Technological innovations make headlines every day, and NASA’s In Space Production Applications (InSPA) Portfolio of awards are driving these innovations into the future. InSPA awards help U.S. companies demonstrate in-space manufacturing of their products and move them to market, propelling U.S. industry toward the development of a sustainable, scalable, and profitable non-NASA demand for services and products […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/inspa-news/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
What the Chevron Ruling Means for the Federal Government.
Stable Diffusion 3’s Disastrous Launch Could Change the AI Landscape Forever
date: 2024-06-28, from: 404 Media Group
Stability AI botched the launch of its latest model, proving the Stable Diffusion community doesn’t need the company that brought it to the world.
https://www.404media.co/stable-diffusion-3s-disastrous-launch-could-change-the-ai-landscape-forever/
US offers deportation relief to additional 309,000 Haitians in country already
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will expand deportation relief and work permits to an estimated 309,000 Haitians in the country already, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
The administration will expand access to the Temporary Protected Status program to Haitians through February 2026 because of violence and security issues in Haiti that limits access to safety, health care, food and water, the department said. The expanded program will be available to Haitians in the U.S. on or before June 3.
About 264,000 Haitians in the U.S. were already covered by the program, according to the U.S. government.
U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat seeking another term in the November 5 elections, has walked a political tightrope when it comes to immigration, both trying to step up security at the U.S.-Mexico border and take a more humane approach to immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
In a presidential debate on Thursday, Biden’s Republican challenger, former president Donald Trump, criticized Biden for failing to stem high levels of illegal immigration.
Gang wars in Haiti have displaced over half a million people and nearly 5 million are facing severe food insecurity. Armed groups, which now control most of the capital, have formed a broad alliance while carrying out widespread killings, ransom kidnappings and sexual violence.
Responsible Inventing
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: Tantek Çelik’s blog
https://tantek.com/2024/180/b1/responsible-inventing
Supreme Court says prosecutors improperly charged some Jan. 6 defendants
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The LAist
The statute is also the basis for one of the four obstruction counts brought against former President Donald Trump in the criminal case currently pending against him in federal court in Washington.
US Supreme Court curbs federal agency powers, overturning 1984 precedent
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to federal regulatory power on Friday by overturning a 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer, handing a defeat to President Joe Biden’s administration.
The justices ruled 6-3 in favor of fishing companies that challenged a government-run program partly funded by industry that monitored overfishing of herring off New England’s coast.
It marked the latest decision in recent years powered by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority that hemmed in the authority of federal agencies.
The precedent that the court overturned arose from a ruling involving oil company Chevron that had called for judges to defer to reasonable federal agency interpretations of U.S. laws deemed to be ambiguous. This doctrine, long opposed by conservatives and business interests, was called “Chevron deference.”
The decreasing productivity of Congress – thanks to its gaping partisan divide – has led to a growing reliance, especially by Democratic presidents, on rules issued by U.S. agencies to realize regulatory goals.
The 1984 precedent, set in a ruling involving oil company Chevron, has called for judges to defer to federal agency interpretations of U.S. laws that are deemed to be ambiguous.
This doctrine, long opposed by conservatives and business interests, is called “Chevron deference.”
Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration had defended the National Marine Fisheries Service regulation at issue and the Chevron deference doctrine. The fish conservation program was started in 2020 under Republican former President Donald Trump.
The regulation called for certain commercial fishermen to carry aboard their vessels U.S. government contractors and pay for their at-sea services while they monitored the catch.
The companies – led by New Jersey-based Loper Bright Enterprises and Rhode Island-based Relentless Inc – in 2020 sued the fisheries service, claiming the monitoring program exceeded the Commerce Department agency’s authority.
The bid by the fishermen was supported by various conservative and corporate interest groups including billionaire Charles Koch’s network. The litigation is part of what has been termed the “war on the administrative state,” an effort to weaken the federal agency bureaucracy that interprets laws, crafts federal rules and implements executive action.
The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has signaled skepticism toward expansive regulatory power, issuing rulings in recent years to rein in what its conservative justices have viewed as overreach by the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies.
The fish conservation program aimed to monitor 50 percent of declared herring fishing trips in the regulated area, with program costs split between the federal government and the fishing industry. The cost to commercial fishermen of paying for the monitoring was an estimated $710 per day for 19 days a year, which could reduce a vessel’s income by up to 20 percent, according to government figures.
The Biden administration said the program was authorized under a 1976 federal law called the Magnuson-Stevens Act to protect against overfishing in U.S. coastal waters. It said in court papers the program was suspended for the fishing year starting in April 2023 due to insufficient federal funding.
The Washington-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both ruled in favor of the government.
The Biden administration said Chevron deference among other things “gives due weight to the expertise that agencies bring to bear” and promotes national uniformity in the administration of federal law.
An attorney for the commercial fishermen said Chevron deference “incentivizes a dynamic where Congress does far less than the Framers [of the U.S. Constitution] anticipated, and the executive branch is left to do far more by deciding controversial issues via regulatory fiat.”
The Supreme Court has issued other rulings this term involving the scope of agency powers, including two rulings on Thursday. It rejected the Securities and Exchange Commission’s in-house enforcement of laws protecting investors against securities fraud. It also blocked an Environmental Protection Agency regulation aimed at reducing ozone emissions that may worsen air pollution in neighboring states.
The justices on May 16 upheld the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism in a challenge brought by the payday loan industry.
NASA@ My Library and Partners Engage Millions in Eclipse Training and Preparation
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
The Space Science Institute, with funding from the NASA Science Mission Directorate and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, provided unprecedented training, support, and supplies to 15,000 libraries in the U.S. and territories in support of public engagement during the 2023 and 2024 eclipses. From September 2022 to September 2024, these efforts included: One public library […]
NASA tests the ups and downs of air taxi comfort with VR
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Nobody would want a roller coaster ride in one of these long-promised flying cabs
NASA is testing what makes air taxi passengers comfortable – and uncomfortable – with a custom VR simulation rig.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/nasa_tests_rider_comfort_in/
Legendary San Jose State judo coach Yosh Uchida dies at age 104
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Uchida was a fixture at San Jose State over eight decades while turning the school into a national power in the martial art that made its Olympic debut at the 1964 Tokyo Games, where he coached the U.S. team.
Quicken 7.8
date: 2024-06-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/quicken-7-8/
Final Cut Pro 10.8, Compressor 4.8, and Motion 5.8
date: 2024-06-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/final-cut-pro-x-10-8-compressor-4-8-and-motion-5-8/
Analysis: 4 takeaways from the first presidential debate
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The LAist
Why so many Democrats are ringing the fire alarms after the first general election presidential debate of 2024.
https://laist.com/news/politics/analysis-4-takeaways-from-the-first-presidential-debate
OmniFocus 4.3.1
date: 2024-06-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/omnifocus-4-3-1/
Lightroom Classic 13.4
date: 2024-06-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/lightroom-classic-13-4/
The need for a President that speaks AI natively
date: 2024-06-28, from: Gary Marcus blog
Last night was a travesty, but that is just the beginning of our problems
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-need-for-a-president-that-speaks
Fantastical 3.8.19 and Cardhop 2.2.18
date: 2024-06-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/fantastical-3-8-19-cardhop-2-2-18/
Politics and “a tale of different economies”
date: 2024-06-28, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Last night, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump sparred off. Today, we’ll recap some of economic issues spotlighted in the presidential debate. Inflation was one of the hot topics, and the latest release of the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation shows inflation cooling — but how you experience rising prices can be splintered along partisan lines. We discuss. Also, Amazon plans on launching a “discount” section with goods shipped direct from China.
How to Empower Your Brand by Embracing the Good and Bad Reviews
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
How should you handle customer feedback and leverage reviews to your advantage? Let’s explore some strategies and best practices.
US Supreme Court backs anti-camping laws used against homeless people
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court upheld on Friday anti-camping laws used by authorities in an Oregon city to stop homeless people from sleeping in public parks and public streets — a ruling that gives local and state governments a freer hand in confronting a national homelessness crisis.
The justices ruled 6-3 to overturn a lower court’s decision that found that enforcing the ordinances in the city of Grants Pass when no shelter space is available for the homeless violates the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition on “cruel and unusual” punishments. Various jurisdictions employ similar laws.
The court’s conservative justices were in the majority, while its three liberal members dissented.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored the ruling, wrote, “Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it. At bottom, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. It does not.”
Homelessness remains a multifaceted problem for public officials in the United States as many municipalities experience chronic shortages of affordable housing. On any given night, more than 600,000 people are homeless, according to U.S. government estimates.
The case focused on three ordinances in Grants Pass, a city of roughly 38,000 people in southwestern Oregon, that together prohibit sleeping in public streets, alleyways and parks while using a blanket or bedding. Violators are fined $295. Repeat offenders can be criminally prosecuted for trespassing, punishable by up to 30 days in jail.
Advocates for the homeless, various liberal legal groups and other critics have said laws like these criminalize people simply for being homeless and for actions they cannot avoid, such as sleeping in public. They point to a 1962 Supreme Court ruling that the Eighth Amendment barred punishing individuals based on their status rather than their conduct.
A point of contention during the Supreme Court’s arguments in the case in April was whether homelessness can be deemed a status that would prohibit enforcing local laws.
President Joe Biden’s administration agreed with the plaintiffs that Grants Pass cannot enforce an “absolute ban” on sleeping in the city — which effectively criminalizes homelessness — but suggested the rulings by the lower courts against the city were too broad and should be reconsidered.
Proponents including various government officials have called such laws a necessary tool for maintaining public safety.
The case, which began in 2018, involved three homeless people who filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to block the measures impacting them in Grants Pass. One of the plaintiffs has since died.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke ruled that the city’s “policy and practice of punishing homelessness” violates the Eighth Amendment and barred it from enforcing the anti-camping ordinances. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Clarke’s injunction against the ordinances.
The city had defended itself in the case in part by noting that homeless people have alternatives outside the city, including nearby undeveloped federal land, county campsites or state rest stops. The judge said that argument “sheds light on the city’s attitude towards its homeless citizens” by seeking to drive them out or punish them if they stay.
Supreme Court makes it harder to charge Capitol riot defendants with obstruction, charge Trump faces
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
The justices ruled that the charge of obstructing an official proceeding, enacted in 2002 in response to the financial scandal that brought down Enron Corp., must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents.
Man shot in Oakland’s Fruitvale district
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Authorities said the man said he was walking when he heard gunfire and realized he had been shot.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/28/man-shot-in-oaklands-fruitvale-district-2/
Biden’s Disastrous Debate
date: 2024-06-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Biden’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Debate Overshadows Trump’s Torrent of Lies
The post Biden’s Disastrous Debate appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/28/2-0-debate-analysis/
Why Is This Shape So Terrible to Pack?
date: 2024-06-28, from: Quanta Magazine
Two mathematicians have proved a long-standing conjecture that is a step on the way toward finding the worst shape for packing the plane.The post Why Is This Shape So Terrible to Pack? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-is-this-shape-so-terrible-to-pack-20240628/
Map: Evacuations in Sierra foothills for Basin and Fresno June Lightning wildfires
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
The merged Bolt and Flash fires are now the fourth biggest of California’s season.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/28/map-evacuations-wildfire-basin-fresno-june-lighting/
California Clásico: Quakes to celebrate 50th anniversary during Saturday’s rivalry match against LA Galaxy
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
San Jose Earthquakes will celebrate 50th year on Saturday in California Clásico against LA Galaxy at Stanford Stadium
How Lobbyists Could Now Install Biden’s Replacement
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Lever News
If the president steps down, the DNC committee that could pick the new nominee is stocked with corporate lobbyists looking to influence public policy.
https://www.levernews.com/how-lobbyists-could-install-bidens-replacement/
Google cuts ties with Entrust in Chrome over trust issues
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Move comes weeks after Mozilla blasted certificate authority for failings
Google is severing its trust in Entrust after what it describes as a protracted period of failures around compliance and general improvements.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/google_axes_entrust_over_six/
Supreme Court overturns 1984 Chevron precedent, curbing power of federal government
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Supreme Court on Friday significantly weakened the power of federal agencies to approve regulations in a major decision that could have sweeping implications for the environment, public health and the workplace.
California credit card use up 34% in two years
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Golden State credit card balances equal to $4,450 per resident, 11th-highest among the states.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/28/california-credit-card-use-up-34-in-two-years/
Here’s what you need to know about the guilty verdict in the ‘NFL Sunday Ticket’ trial and what’s next
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
Even though the jury of five men and three women in a U.S. District Court awarded nearly $4.8 billion in damages Thursday to residential and commercial subscribers of “Sunday Ticket,” don’t expect any settlement checks or the shuttering of the service anytime soon.
Supreme Court allows cities to enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outside
date: 2024-06-28, from: San Jose Mercury News
In a 6-3 decision, the high court reversed a ruling by a San Francisco-based appeals court that found outdoor sleeping bans amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Why Our ‘Only Existential Threat’ Got Shortchanged at the Debate
date: 2024-06-28, from: Heatmap News
Advocates for televised presidential debates argue that they offer the best chance voters will have during the campaign to get an extended look at the candidates, beyond what they see in 30-second ads and 8-second sound bites. We can hear them defend their records as they critique their opponents, and answer tough questions from seasoned reporters about key issues. It’s a rare opportunity to delve deep into substance on important issues.
If only that were how televised debates actually turn out. The one exchange on climate change that occurred in Thursday’s meeting between Joe Biden and Donald Trump showed just how problematic a forum for voter education this is.
Perhaps we should be thankful that Biden and Trump were asked a single question about climate, since one is certainly more than zero. Unfortunately, to consider what ensued at all enlightening, you’d have to have a pretty low bar.
“Will you take any action as president to slow the climate crisis?” co-moderator Dana Bash asked Trump. “Let me just go back to what he said about the police,” Trump responded, then rambled for a while on a number of topics, none of which were climate change. So Bash tried again: “Thirty-eight seconds left, President Trump, will you take any action as president to slow the climate crisis?” Trump’s answer was characteristic gobbledygook:
“I want absolutely immaculate clean water. And I want absolutely clean air and we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever, and we did — we were using all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet, during my four years I had the best environmental numbers ever, and my top environmental people gave me that statistic just before I walked on the stage, actually.”
Though no viewer would have any idea what Trump was talking about with “the best environmental numbers ever,” I believe I know what he was referring to: Before the debate, Trump posted on Truth Social some suggested talking points he got from Andrew Wheeler, the coal lobbyist he appointed to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, including that Trump should mention that carbon emissions went down while he was president. It’s true that emissions dipped in 2020, when you may remember there was a pandemic that shut down much of the economy. That did not, however, answer the question of what actions he would take in a second term.
Perhaps marveling at Trump’s claim that “we had H2O” when he was president, Biden took a moment to respond. “I don’t know where the hell he’s been,” the president finally said. “I passed the most extensive climate change legislation in history.” It would have helped viewers unfamiliar with the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act if Biden had at least mentioned some of them, such as money for research into new sources of clean energy, incentives for domestic manufacturing of green technology, grants to help farmers cut emissions, and tax credits for electric vehicles and home electrification. After a digression into HBCUs, Biden returned to the issue: “He hadn’t done a damn thing for the environment. He pulled out of the Paris peace — Climate Accord. I immediately joined it, because if we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius at any one point there’s no way back. The only existential threat to humanity is climate change, and he didn’t do a damn thing about it. He wants to undo all that I’ve done.”
All of which is true, if probably too vague for most viewers to fully understand. But it did include a statement conveying the seriousness of the challenge (“The only existential threat to humanity is climate change”), and reference to some relevant facts. That led Trump to a criticism of the Paris agreement, that it’s “a rip-off of the United States.”
But any viewer not familiar with the details of the agreement would have had trouble following what Trump said; he seemed to be objecting to the fact that the agreement called on developed countries to help less developed countries adapt; he claimed that the agreement “was going to cost us a trillion dollars,” one of many fictitious numbers he tossed out. That left Biden to conclude that “we have made significant progress” under his administration, and tout his new Climate Corps.
In all, it wasn’t the least substantive exchange on climate one could imagine. A viewer who knew absolutely nothing about either of the candidates’ records would have learned that they disagree on the Paris agreement, and that Biden believes climate change is an existential threat. But as with the rest of this debate — and almost every televised debate — the best one can say from the standpoint of policy substance is, “That could have been worse.”
And now that there has been one climate question, chances are the moderators of the second debate will ignore the issue altogether. The prevailing view among political reporters is that, sure, climate is important, but the voters just don’t care about it all that much. Convinced by polls showing that other issues rank higher when voters are asked what their most important priorities are, they usually segregate climate coverage apart from the political stories that will dominate the news between now and November.
That creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: When news organizations run a thousand stories saying “Inflation dominates voter concerns” and then ask voters what their concerns are, most of them are going to talk about what seems to be on the political agenda. It’s not exactly a conspiracy to downplay climate as an issue in the presidential race, but it has much the same effect.
The savvy observer might suggest that it doesn’t really matter, since we know where the two candidates stand on climate change and the contrast couldn’t be clearer. And those of us who pay a great deal of attention to both politics and the climate issue do understand the difference. But that describes only a small portion of the electorate, which was why this debate was another missed opportunity. Even if it could have been worse.
https://heatmap.news/politics/biden-trump-debate-climate-change
An Eclipse Megamovie Megastar
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
Nazmus “Naz” Nasir is a software engineer by day, and an astrophotographer by night….and sometimes by day as well! This April, Naz participated in NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie 2024 project, photographing the total solar eclipse. He posted online a spectacular video composed of stabilized and aligned photographs of the sun taken during totality. The video includes links to tutorials Naz […]
https://science.nasa.gov/get-involved/citizen-science/an-eclipse-megamovie-megastar/
Microsoft hits snooze again on security certificate renewal
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Seeing weird warnings in Microsoft 365 and Office Online? That’ll be why
Microsoft has expiration issues with its TLS certificates, resulting in unwanted security warnings.…
NASA Shares Two New Moon to Mars Architecture White Papers
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has released two white papers associated with the agency’s Moon to Mars architecture efforts. The papers, one on lunar mobility drivers and needs, and one on lunar surface cargo, detail NASA’s latest thinking on specific areas of its lunar exploration strategy. While NASA has established a yearly cadence of releasing new documents associated with […]
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/nasa-shares-two-new-moon-to-mars-architecture-white-papers/
A Woman Thrifted This Ancient Maya Vase for $3.99—and Then Gave It Back to Mexico
date: 2024-06-28, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Anna Lee Dozier started to wonder about the object’s origins when she realized it resembled artifacts in a Mexican museum
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/woman-thrifted-this-ancient-maya-vase-180984618/
Former Fujitsu engineer apologizes for role in Post Office IT scandal
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Horizon system expert denied tailoring evidence in convictions later quashed
Gareth Jenkins, former distinguished engineer at Fujitsu Services Ltd, said he “clearly got trapped into doing things that I shouldn’t have done” when giving technical evidence that led to the wrongful conviction of Post Office workers in one of the biggest IT scandals to hit the UK.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/fujitsu_witness_post_office/
Well That Was a Very Distressing Presidential Debate
date: 2024-06-28, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Forecasters are keeping an eye on a weather system moving toward the Caribbean that could strengthen into a tropical storm • Heavy rains have rejuvenated dried-up lakes and lagoons in Chile • Severe storms could bring strong wind, excessive rain, and hail to parts of Europe over the next few days.
THE TOP FIVE
- Biden squanders his climate moment at presidential debate
Well, last night’s first 2024 debate between President Biden and Donald Trump was “altogether distressing,” writes Heatmap’s Katie Brigham. And while climate was far from the main focus, the two candidates did have one notable exchange. Trump initially dodged a question about whether he would take action to slow the climate crisis, then briefly noted “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O.” Biden responded by criticizing Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement. “I immediately [re]joined, because if we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, at any one point, there’s no way back,” Biden said. “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”
Making Paris the focus of the debate’s one exchange around climate was an odd choice, Brigham says. According to a poll conducted last November by Heatmap, only 35% of Americans say they are at least “somewhat familiar” with the Paris Agreement. The Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature piece of climate legislation, didn’t come up once. (Not that they’re that familiar with the IRA, either.) “Solar, wind, carbon emissions — all terms that resonate with Americans, none of which were mentioned,” Brigham adds.
HEATED’s Emily Atkin summed up reaction from climate-conscious viewers nicely, too:
X/emorwee
- SCOTUS blocks EPA’s ‘good neighbor’ pollution rule
The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to pause an EPA environmental rule while it is challenged in a lower court. The so-called good neighor plan would impose strict emissions limits on power plants and other industrial sources in 23 states, and was intended to prevent dangerous pollution that can cause breathing problems from drifting across state lines. The rule has been challenged by a number of Republican states, as well as companies. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that those challenges were “likely to succeed on a claim that the Good Neighbor Plan is ’arbitrary” or “capricious.’” The ruling blocks the EPA from ramping up pollution limits while the challenges are being heard. According to the EPA, the plan would prevent 1,300 premature deaths and cut down on ER visits.
- U.S. EV sales tick up
U.S. sales of electric vehicles were up 12% in April (the most recent month for which data is available) compared to the same month in 2023, “countering the widespread notion that American consumers have lost interest in the technology,” according to E&E News. The data, from S&P Global, also finds this increase was led by “traditional” automakers – Ford, Toyota, etc. – not Tesla. Those manufacturers have been encroaching on Tesla’s position as the dominant U.S. EV seller for a while, and may soon close the gap entirely. We’ll know more next week, when manufacturers are expected to report their second-quarter sales.
Get Heatmap AM directly in your inbox every morning:
- Biden administration blocks road proposed for mining in Alaska
The Biden administration today finalized a decision to block construction of a 211-mile mining road on federal land in north central Alaska. The move protects areas of pristine wilderness that are important to the traditions and livelihoods of Native communities from being carved up for copper and zinc mining. The venture behind the project, Ambler Metals, insists the materials it wants access to are essential for clean energy technologies like wind turbines and transmission lines, and says it will explore legal challenges. Below is a map of the proposed road:
In a separate decision, the Interior Department also said it would protect 28 million acres of land in Alaska that former President Donald Trump had tried to make available for drilling and mining. President Biden has a goal of conserving 30% of U.S. lands and waters.
- Vatican to build solar farm in Rome to power operations
Pope Francis has chosen a site for its solar farm, which will power Vatican City. Francis picked Santa Maria di Galeria, a patch of land on the outskirts of Rome that has long been used as the base for Vatican Radio transmitters. It’s not clear how big the solar farm will be or when construction will be completed. In a letter outlining the plan, Francis called for “a transition to a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, setting the goal of climate neutrality.”
THE KICKER
Global offshore wind capacity increased 24% last year, which makes 2023 “the second-highest year in offshore wind history,” according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
https://heatmap.news/politics/biden-trump-debate-scotus-epa
Market movements and uncertainty in American politics
date: 2024-06-28, from: Marketplace Morning Report
A rule of thumb is that market players don’t like uncertainty. The question this morning is whether there’s more or less of it in the wake of President Joe Biden’s rough showing against former President Donald Trump during last night’s debate. We’ll track how the debate is affecting the movement of money. Plus, Social Security cuts are inevitable by 2035 unless lawmakers act. Can a similar crunch from the ’80s offer guidance?
California exempts transitional kindergarten students from English-language proficiency test
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The LAist
Supporters of the change said the test was designed for older students and wasn’t developmentally appropriate for 4-year-olds.
LAUSD extends home internet program for a year after federal funding ends. What then?
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The LAist
In the early months of the pandemic, researchers estimated about one-in-three LAUSD households lacked devices or a broadband connection.
https://laist.com/news/education/los-angeles-unified-school-district-lausd-free-wifi-internet-2024
The Island Known as the Birthplace of Apollo Is Sinking
date: 2024-06-28, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers say climate change is to blame for the Greek island of Delos’ slow demise
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-birthplace-of-apollo-is-sinking-180984610/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Jon Stewart's Debate Analysis: Trump's Blatant Lies and Biden's Senior Moments.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3SJr44m-w1Y
Nokia to buy Infinera for $2.3B
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Aims to expand optical networking biz, particularly in North America
Nokia is set to buy optical networking biz Infinera in a $2.3 billion transaction, the companies have confirmed.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/nokia_to_expand_optical_networking/
Why Hasn’t Biden Stepped Down?
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Lever News
Democrats blocked a serious primary challenge to Biden — now after the first debate, the threat of a Trump presidency looms.
https://www.levernews.com/why-hasnt-biden-stepped-down/
John Boston | National Slap a Co-Worker Day Is Coming Soon
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
I’ve been completely in the dark about this. Just recently, I discovered that, every year, until the end of American Civilization, Oct. 23 is National Slap Your Co-Worker Day. Mark […]
The post John Boston | National Slap a Co-Worker Day Is Coming Soon appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/john-boston-national-slap-a-co-worker-day-is-coming-soon/
Elizabeth Barcohana | Democrats’ Sanctuary for Pedophiles
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
California became the first sanctuary state in the nation in 2017, which means our laws prevent local law enforcement from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport illegal immigrants. […]
The post Elizabeth Barcohana | Democrats’ Sanctuary for Pedophiles appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/elizabeth-barcohana-democrats-sanctuary-for-pedophiles/
Hubble Examines an Active Galaxy Near the Lion’s Heart
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
It might appear featureless and unexciting at first glance, but NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations of this elliptical galaxy — known as Messier 105 — show that the stars near the galaxy’s center are moving very rapidly. Astronomers have concluded that these stars are zooming around a supermassive black hole with an estimated mass of […]
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-examines-an-active-galaxy-near-the-lions-heart/
P&B: Alison Wilder
date: 2024-06-28, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>This is the 44th edition of <em>People and Blogs</em>, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Alison Wilder and her blog, <a href="https://alisonwilder.net">alisonwilder.net</a></p>To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you’re enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
Let’s start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?
I grew up on a ranch in West Texas. Horses, rodeo, and roping were my life. I was going to be a horse trainer. Then, when my life took a left turn in high school, I got much more serious about music, started writing songs, and ended up pursuing a music degree at the University of North Texas.
After college, I had a 3-year stint in Portland, Oregon, where I started the band Voodoo Economics. My bandmates and I moved to Philly in 2004-ish, where I wrote for, played in, and produced for Voodoo while completing a Master’s in music theory at Temple University. After a few years of adjunct teaching, I decided a PhD in music theory & cognition at McGill University in Montreal was the right move, so I went off to do that. The timing was epically bad – this was the beginning of the end of the humanities in North American universities, after all – and I realized after about a year that it would be nearly impossible to get a job in a place where I actually wanted to live. So I packed up the piano yet again and headed back to Philadelphia.
Back in Philly, I co-founded a music tech company with a super-cool and interesting composer/pianist/technologist named Greg Wilder. After a whirlwind couple of years in the depths of the music industry, we decided to move away from daily ops with that company, and I was very much at loose ends. I had never had any real marketable skills (don’t try to tell me songwriting and music theory are marketable!), and I had no idea what to do. So I asked Greg, “What should I do?”
“Learn Linux,” he said.
So I wiped my laptop, installed Debian, and was off to the races. Then I said, “but what should I do with Linux?”
“Maybe WordPress?” he said.
It was 2011, and the timing couldn’t have been better. I learned WordPress, started faffing about in PHP, Javascript, and all the rest, and somehow people started writing checks. Over the last 13 years, Greg and I have turned my faffing about into a couple of real businesses (Punkt Digital and Wicked Good Web). At some point during all of that, we got married, moved to New Hampshire, divorced, and stayed best friends.
Though I stopped music completely for about 7 years after the start-up (relationship status: it’s complicated), I’ve spent the last 6 years or so building my studio back up and pouring myself into songwriting and producing again (Blix Byrd and Doctor Body with Greg). Which brings us to today. Phew!
What’s the story behind your blog?
I’ve always loved writing. Some days, I harbor secret aspirations to be a real writer. (Uh-oh, secret’s out…) So blogging just comes naturally. I don’t think of my blog as part of a business, or as a way to promote myself exactly. It’s more of a place that gives me an outlet to organize my thoughts publicly.
I generally find myself writing about a combination of daily life, music, my own creative process, and things I’m doing or making. I haven’t used social media much (although I’ve been enjoying Mastodon for the last year or two!), so I sometimes use my blog as my own personal Insta-book feed. It’s fun to make a quick post of something I like and/or find amusing, and I enjoy perusing my old posts occasionally. My memory isn’t the greatest, so in the case of daily life posts, I often wouldn’t remember the thing at all if I didn’t blog about it!
Because blogging is purely for my own fun and enjoyment, I don’t force myself to keep any kind of posting schedule. I just post when I feel like it. I go through phases where that’s weekly, monthly, or even less. So if you’re looking for a consistent presence in your RSS feed, my blog is probably not for you.
I don’t have any blog posts from prior to my current website, although I did have other blogs on Tumblr and early Squarespace over the years. It looks like I started blogging on my own site in about 2014. See, told you my memory was bad…I had to sign in to find out when my earliest posts were!
What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?
My blogging process probably doesn’t qualify as a process. More like, “I just blog when I feel like it and say whatever I want to.” That said, I do also write quite a bit privately, so maybe it would be interesting to explore the difference between my public and private writing?
I’m generally an open book – the kind of person who will tell strangers whatever they want to know about me. That said, I do write differently on my blog than in my personal journals. Obviously, I edit a lot more on the blog. I also tend to post the kinds of things that I think others might find interesting, which means I don’t often post about my own internal thoughts and feelings.
That said, I enjoy reading blogs where people get personal, so now I’m wondering why I don’t do that! Perhaps a topic for a future blog post?
And to the second question: the above paragraphs illustrate how I get my inspiration – navel gazing and over-thinking. ;)
For quick posts, I write directly in WordPress. For longer bits or things that come out of my private journaling, I write in Markdown in Obsidian. (Yes, I’m one of those obsessive Obsidian people.)
Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?
I’m a very aesthetically-minded person who is most satisfied when I feel like I’m immersed in beautiful and creative objects. I’ve tried to craft my home environment so that I feel inspired in every seat in the house. Right now, I’m sitting on my back porch looking my gardens and typing on my laptop. It’s May in New Hampshire, and you can almost hear the plants growing.
I tend to write short bits on my laptop wherever I want to be sitting, because my office/studio is a place I work seriously. That said, my studio is beautiful, ergonomic, and has a powerful computer, so anything that takes awhile or requires lots of research/editing/photo work, I’ll tend to do there.
I don’t typically listen to music while I work, because my brain won’t agree to keep it in the background. And if music can be in the background, I probably don’t want to hear it at all. (Not a judgment about wallpaper music, that’s just how it is for me.) So there’s lots of silence at my house.
A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?
Greg and I operate our own managed WordPress hosting platform (Digital Ocean + Serverpilot) for our clients, so we also host all of our own personal websites there. How convenient!
Sometimes I think about switching to a static site generator, and have certainly enjoyed playing around with them and occasionally using them for client projects, but since I know so much about WordPress, it’s kinda my default.
We register all our domains at Namecheap, which has been rock solid over the years.
Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?
I don’t think so. If I weren’t a WordPress person for work, I would probably use a static site generator and really enjoy that experience. I could easily see using an Obsidian vault at my CMS, and in face, I maintain a public-not-public recipe site where I do exactly that, using Obsidian to write, and Jekyll to website.
Financial question since the web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost or does it generate some revenue? And what’s your position on people monetising personal blogs?
That’s a tough question since we run our own Digital Ocean servers. If I were a client of ours, I would pay $486/year for our managed hosting plan. But since I’m not, I don’t.
My blog generates absolutely no revenue. I haven’t tried, and I doubt I will, because I prefer keeping my creative life separate from my financial life. (Now that’s a blog post topic! I’m surprised I haven’t written about that before. Who knows, maybe I have.)
That said, I don’t see anything wrong with other people monetizing their blog. More power to ’em! I don’t regularly financially support any bloggers, although I do tend to throw folks the occasional bone when I enjoy their work for awhile.
Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?
Here’s a link to all the personal blogs I subscribe to in my RSS reader:
A few quick blog recs:
- Gotta plug Greg Wilder’s blog, which is an awesome and regularly-updated account of being a composer/pianist/synthesizer wizard/mountain man.
- Peter Rukavina is a writer, printer and developer on Prince Edward Island. I don’t know him, but I so enjoy his description of his life on his blog. He seems like a wonderful person!
- Ruben Schade is an prolific blogger/developer who I also don’t know, but whose writing style and perspective I totally enjoy.
Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?
I’ve been obsessed with Peter Strickland’s films over the last few years. Berberian Sound Studio and its soundtrack (by the super-cool band Broadcast) are AMAZING. Check them out if your taste tends toward the weird and wild.
More in weird electronic music: don’t sleep on Mort Garson. He may be dead, but he’s still on Bandcamp!
If you like hearing over-educated musicians who used to be married blathering about music, check out Greg’s and my podcast, Too Much Music.
This was the 44th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Alison. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
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Dan Walters | State of the State or a Stump Speech?
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
The California Constitution requires that “the governor shall report to the Legislature each calendar year on the condition of the state and may make recommendations.” Traditionally, that has meant that […]
The post Dan Walters | State of the State or a Stump Speech? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/dan-walters-state-of-the-state-or-a-stump-speech/
Funding for Ukraine up for debate again
date: 2024-06-28, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a security pact with the European Union during a visit to Brussels. We’ll delve in. Then, following weeks of protests in Argentina over proposed austerity reforms, the country’s parliament has approved controversial measures put forward by President Javier Millei. And later, prolonged heatwaves in India have boosted sales of air conditioning units.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/funding-for-ukraine-up-for-debate-again
Raspberry Pi AI Kit review | HackSpace #80
date: 2024-06-28, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
In the latest issue of HackSpace magazine, out now, Ben Everard puts the new Raspberry Pi AI Kit through its paces.
The post Raspberry Pi AI Kit review | HackSpace #80 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-ai-kit-review-hackspace-80/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Heather Cox Richardson on the debate.
OpenAI, Google ink deals to augment AI efforts with news – it was Time for better sources
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tech giants can’t play the RAG-time blues until they pay their dues – in this case to quality publishers
OpenAI and Google on Thursday independently announced fresh collaborations with major publishers as they work to expand paid access to information used by their AI products and services.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/openai_google_ai/
AI to boost datacenter capex by 28.5% and become the top server workload
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cooling tech left to sweat the details
AI is currently the big driver in datacenter investment and will push capital expenditure on the facilities up by nearly 30 percent this year, and is also on track to become the top server workload by deployment within a few years.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/datacenter_capex_tai/
Windows: Insecure by design
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Get your hands off my computer, Microsoft!
Opinion I’ve been pointing out Windows security bugs since Windows for Workgroups showed up in 1992 and I showed how you could steal data from your coworker’s spreadsheets using Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). You’d think Microsoft would have figured security out by now.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/windows_insecure_by_design/
For the record: You just ordered me to cause a very expensive outage
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And ordered so rudely this techie had little interest in sticking around to fix the subsequent chaos
On Call Techies are often beset by undeserving and despicable dolts who demand daunting feats of tech support. Which is why each Friday The Register brings you a fresh instalment of On Call – the reader-contributed column in which you share stories of defeating those dunderheads.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/on_call/
FLTK 1.4.x Weekly Snapshot (master)
date: 2024-06-28, from: Fast Light Tool Kit
A new weekly snapshot of FLTK 1.4.x (master) is now available
https://www.fltk.org/articles.php?L1929
Today in SCV History (June 28)
date: 2024-06-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1926 – Film director Mel Brooks born in Brooklyn; shot “Blazing Saddles” at Vasquez Rocks and “Robin Hood: Men In Tights” in Sand Canyon. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-june-28/
‘Skeleton Key’ attack unlocks the worst of AI, says Microsoft
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Simple jailbreak prompt can bypass safety guardrails on major models
Microsoft on Thursday published details about Skeleton Key – a technique that bypasses the guardrails used by makers of AI models to prevent their generative chatbots from creating harmful content.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/microsoft_skeleton_key_ai_attack/
Webcurios 28/06/24
date: 2024-06-28, from: Web Curios blog
Reading Time: 38 minutes HELLO I AM BACK HELLO! How are we all? I mean, I say ‘all’ – as is inevitable at this time of year, my already-vanishingly-small audience is further thinned by what I imagine is a significant number of you being in a field in Somerset, and a large proportion of the rest of you still…https://webcurios.co.uk/webcurios-28-06-24/
Felix Oliver Friedrich commented on issue #143 at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
A compiler cannot catch all semantic errors. An infinite recursion is often not caught by a compiler. Again, I argue for (in)completeness reasons: it would, probably, be not that difficult to catch cases like this one
PROCEDURE P();
BEGIN
P()
END P;but it already becomes more difficult when the error is not that obvious any more like in the following wrong attempt to implement the factorial function
PROCEDURE F(i: INTEGER): INTEGER;
BEGIN
IF (i > 1) RETURN i*F(i)
ELSE RETURN i
END
END F;So, for the time being, I don't know how to handle this. The compiler would need to do much more sophisticated things than it is currently doing in order to detect a lot of infinite recursion cases (and it would never be guaranteed to catch all cases).
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/143#note_192639
Felix Oliver Friedrich commented on issue #144 at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
The example I made was pretty artificial and I don't think it is a good idea to mark errors (only) for very special situations. If at all, we might issue a warning when a local variable is returned by reference because this is a case that can easily happen. But, to be honest, I am not that happy with this kind of incomplete solution either. The concept of return by reference is inherently dangerous and we will have to live with it or get rid of the concept altogether. I prefer the former because I cannot stand having getters and setters all over the place when an assignment operator shall be overloaded – here I prefer the C++ way over the Java way. (Niklaus Wirth would not have admitted a return by reference in the first place).
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/144#note_192635
OpenAI develops AI model to critique its AI models
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
When your chatbots outshine their human trainers, you could pay for expertise … or just augment your crowdsourced workforce
To help catch code errors made by ChatGPT, OpenAI uses human AI trainers in the hope of improving the model. To help the human trainers, OpenAI has developed another AI model called CriticGPT – in case the humans don’t spot the mistakes.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/openai_criticgpt_ai/
Infosys CEO to pay a whole $30K in penance for non-disclosure that enabled insider trading
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Staff were told of lucrative partnership before the rest of us
Infosys CEO Salil Parekh has agreed to pay a fine of ₹25 lakh ($30,000) for failing to implement adequate insider trading controls, according to Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) documents filed on Wednesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/infosys_ceo_fined_sebi/
Biden-Trump debate: A look at some of the false claims
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-trump-debate-a-look-at-some-of-the-false-claims/7676656.html
ISS ’nauts told to duck and cover after dead Russian sat sprays space junk
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
This has happened before after Moscow made a mess with a missile
Astronauts on the International Space Station were told to duck and cover on Thursday after a Russian satellite broke up.…
Biden Had His Climate Moment and He Used It to Talk About Paris
date: 2024-06-28, from: Heatmap News
In an altogether distressing debate in which climate was far from a main focus, the two candidates did have one notable exchange regarding the Paris Agreement. The 2015 treaty united most countries around the world in setting a goal to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, with 1.5 degrees as the ultimate target.
After Trump initially dodged a question about whether he would take action to slow the climate crisis, he then briefly noted “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O.”
While it is true that there was H2O during Trump’s presidency, Biden responded by criticizing Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement. “I immediately [re]joined, because if we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, at any one point, there’s no way back,” Biden said. “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”
But according to a poll conducted last November by Heatmap, only 35% of Americans say they are at least “somewhat familiar” with the Paris Agreement at all, perhaps making it an odd choice to anchor the debate’s one exchange around climate. By contrast, the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature piece of climate legislation, didn’t come up once. (Not that they’re that familiar with the IRA, either.) Solar, wind, carbon emissions — all terms that resonate with Americans, none of which were mentioned.
Of his decisions to leave the Paris Agreement in 2017, Trump claimed, “The Paris Accord was going to cost us $1 trillion,” while it would cost China, Russia, and India “nothing.”
The $1 trillion number actually appears to be a discount on Trump’s previously cited estimate. In his Rose Garden address announcing his decision to exit the agreement, he said that by 2040, compliance would entail a cost to the economy that would approach “$3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs,” citing a study conducted by NERA Economic Consulting.
According to the fact-checking website PolitiFact, the study’s authors were explicit that these projections are highly uncertain and do not take into account all the job gains and GDP growth that could be associated with the energy transition. PolitiFact also said NERA put forth a news release (which now appears to be unavailable online) stating that “the Trump administration selectively used results” from its study, and that “NERA’s study was not a cost-benefit analysis of the Paris Agreement, nor does it purport to be one.”
When Trump said that China, Russia, and India would not have financial commitments under the Paris Agreement, he was perhaps referencing the obligation (which the Paris Agreement reaffirmed) for wealthier nations like the U.S. to direct hundreds of billions of dollars to poorer nations to both aid their transition to clean energy and help them adapt to the impacts of climate change. It’s true that there’s controversy around whether China or India, which have giant (but still developing) economies, should either provide this funding or receive this funding. Russia, which joined the agreement in 2019, hasn’t really been a part of this conversation though.
In response to Trump’s defense of his decision to exit the agreement, Biden countered, “We were the only ones of consequence who were not members of the Paris Accord. How can we do anything if the United States can’t get its pollution under control?” He said the U.S. had made significant progress on climate, and while it felt like a moment to, I don’t know, note the job growth from the administration’s investment in cleantech manufacturing (in predominantly red states), Biden instead cited the formation of the Climate Corps, a nice but thus-far modest fellowship program that puts young Americans to work fighting the climate crisis. Most of the public likely hasn’t heard of it, and Biden has been mostly quiet about it of late.
The exchange ended when Biden said, “We’re moving in directions that are going to significantly change the elemental cause of pollution. But the idea that [Trump] claims that he has the biggest heart up here and is really concerned about pollution, and about climate, I’ve not seen any indication of that.”
And just like that, it was onto prescription drugs, who is better at golf, and Trump’s weight. You know, the usual debate stuff.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/biden-trump-debate-paris-agreement
Notebook: Biden, Trump face off in first 2024 presidential debate
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
Compiled by Catherine Yang, Jacob Burg, T.J. Muscaro and Jackson Richman Contributing Writers CNN hosted the first presidential debate of the 2024 election Thursday night with President Joe Biden and former President […]
The post Notebook: Biden, Trump face off in first 2024 presidential debate appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/notebook-biden-trump-face-off-in-first-2024-presidential-debate/
Polyfill.io owner punches back at ‘malicious defamation’ amid domain shutdown
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
No supply-chain attacks to see over here!
Updated After having its website shut down, the polyfill.io owner is fighting back against claims it smuggled suspicious code onto websites all across the internet.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/polyfillio_cloudflare_malware/
Sols 4226-4228: A Powerful Balancing Act
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Tuesday, June 25, 2024 As documented in a previous blog last week, we continue to juggle power constraints as we focus on analyzing our newest drilled sample on Mars: “Mammoth Lakes 2.” Today, the star of the show is a planned dropoff to SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite) and evolved […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4226-4228-a-powerful-balancing-act/
Interesting Rock Textures Galore at Bright Angel
date: 2024-06-28, from: NASA breaking news
Upon the rover’s arrival at Bright Angel, it was so exciting to see all the interesting features in the rocks of this interval! In particular, these rocks contain an abundance of veins and nodules. Veins are linear features containing mineral crystals that often form thin plates or sheets that cut through the rocks and across […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/interesting-rock-textures-galore-at-bright-angel/
Biden, Trump clash at first presidential debate of 2024 election
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
What Were Trump’s ‘Environmental Numbers,’ Actually?
date: 2024-06-28, from: Heatmap News
Former President Donald Trump has been known, on occasion, to exaggerate. Still, an assertion he made during the first presidential debate on Thursday night is one for the books: “During my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever,” he said.
It was “unclear” what Trump was “talking about,” The New York Times diplomatically said. But Thursday was hardly the first time Trump has claimed to be “the number one” environmentalist president. He’s said that the “environment is very important to me” and that “I’m a big believer in that word: the environment.” And for proof, he’s historically pointed to a book written by a longtime Trump Organization staffer that called him “An Environmental Hero” as well as the fact that “I did the best environmental impact statements.”
Trump’s actions tell a different story. Despite insisting on Thursday that he wants “absolutely immaculate clean water and … absolutely clean air,” Trump’s Project 2025 roadmap for a second term describes targeting California’s Clean Air Act waiver, reducing fuel economy requirements, and making it harder to keep big polluters in check. Trump’s presidential record also speaks for itself: During his four years in office, he rolled back 100 environmental rules or more, including removing pollution controls on streams and wetlands and gutting Obama-era emission standards. According to one estimate in the esteemed British medical journal The Lancet, Trump’s environmental policies resulted in 22,000 deaths in 2019 alone. He’s been described as the worst president for the environment in U.S. history.
President Biden put it even more succinctly in his rebuttal: Trump has “not done a damn thing for the environment.”
https://heatmap.news/sparks/trump-debate-best-environmental-numbers
Top takeaways from the Biden-Trump debate
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/top-takeaways-from-the-biden-trump-debate-/7676594.html
Apple crippled watchOS to corner heart-tracking market, doctors say
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Normally it’s the iGiant’s prices that give the ol’ ticker a hard time
A quartet of heart doctors are trying to resuscitate health-monitoring tech outfit AliveCor’s antitrust lawsuit regarding the Apple Watch, by arguing changes made to the iMaker’s gadget “resulted in a loss of access to a potentially life-saving product.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/apple_watch_alivecor/
Nearly 200 charged in $2.75 billion US health care fraud
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/nearly-200-charged-in-2-75-billion-us-health-care-fraud-/7676563.html
LASD: Suspect released after deputies seize 16 pounds of methamphetamine
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
Two weeks after Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies were spotted piling sizable bags of white powder on the hood of a car in the parking lot of a bustling […]
The post LASD: Suspect released after deputies seize 16 pounds of methamphetamine appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Man arrested in connection with fatal shooting on Lyons
date: 2024-06-28, from: The Signal
The Detective Bureau of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station arrested a man in connection with the investigation into a June 17 shooting death on Lyons Avenue. Fernando Bernabe, 31, of […]
The post Man arrested in connection with fatal shooting on Lyons appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/man-arrested-in-connection-with-fatal-shooting-on-lyons/
Californians will decide — in 2024 — whether to ban slavery. What will the measure do?
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The LAist
The oil industry’s decision will mean that state rules protecting homes and schools near oil and gas wells will go into effect. The companies instead will fight them in court.
Live Blog: Biden-Trump Debate
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/live-blog-biden-trump-debate/7676546.html
2 former police officials indicted over Uvalde shooting response, reports say
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
AUSTIN, Texas — The former Uvalde schools police chief and another former officer have been indicted over their role in the slow police response to the 2022 massacre at a Texas elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead, according to multiple reports Thursday.
The Uvalde Leader-News and the San Antonio Express-News reported former schools police Chief Pete Arredondo and former officer Adrian Gonzales were indicted by a grand jury on multiple counts of felony child endangerment and abandonment. The Uvalde Leader-News reported that District Attorney Christina Mitchell confirmed the indictment.
The Austin American-Statesman also reported two former officers had been indicted but did not identify them.
Mitchell did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. Several family members of victims of the shooting did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The indictments would make Arredondo, who was the on-site commander during the attack, and Gonzales the first officers to face criminal charges in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. A scathing report by Texas lawmakers that examined the police response described Gonzales as one of the first officers to enter the building after the shooting began.
The indictments were kept under seal until the men were in custody, and both were expected to turn themselves in by Friday, the news outlets reported. The indictments come more than two years after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom, where he remained for more than 70 minutes before officers confronted and killed him. In total, 376 law enforcement officers massed at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, some waiting in the hallway outside the classroom, even as the gunman could be heard firing an AR-15-style rifle inside.
The office of a former attorney for Arredondo said they did not know whether the former chief has new representation. The AP could not immediately find a phone number to reach Gonzales.
Arredondo lost his job three months after the shooting. Several officers involved were eventually fired, and separate investigations by the Department of Justice and state lawmakers faulted law enforcement with botching their response to the massacre.
Whether any officers would face criminal charges over their actions in Uvalde has been a question hanging over the city of 15,000 since the Texas Rangers completed their investigation and turned their findings over to prosecutors.
Mitchell’s office has also come under scrutiny. Uvalde city officials filed a lawsuit last year that accused prosecutors of not being transparent and withholding records related to the shooting. Media outlets, including the AP, have sued Uvalde officials for withholding records requested under public information laws.
But body camera footage, investigations by journalists and damning government reports have laid bare how over the course of over an hour, a mass of officers went in and out of the school with weapons drawn but did not go inside the classroom where the shooting was taking place. The hundreds of officers at the scene included state police, Uvalde police, school officers and U.S. Border Patrol agents.
In their July 2022 report, Texas lawmakers faulted law enforcement at every level with failing “to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety.” The Justice Department released its own report in January that detailed “cascading failures” by police in waiting far too long to confront the gunman, acting with “no urgency” in establishing a command post and communicating inaccurate information to grieving families.
Uvalde remains divided between residents who say they want to move past the tragedy and others who still want answers and accountability. During the first mayoral race since the shooting, locals voted in a man who had served as mayor more than a decade ago over a mother who led calls for tougher gun laws after her daughter was killed in the attack.
Robb Elementary School is now permanently closed. The city broke ground on a new school in October 2023.
TeamViewer can’t bring itself to say someone broke into its network – but it happened
date: 2024-06-28, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Claims customer data, prod environment not affected as NCC sounds alarm
Updated TeamViewer on Thursday said its security team just “detected an irregularity” within one of its networks – which is a fancy way of saying someone broke in.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/teamviewer_network_breach/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Meta Moves To More Directly Connect To ActivityPub, But Is It Really Open?
IMF says US needs to tackle debt despite robust growth
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
washington — The International Monetary Fund on Thursday called on the U.S. to raise taxes to curb rising debt levels while applauding “robust, dynamic” growth in the world’s largest economy and progress toward bringing inflation under control.
The IMF said in a closing statement for its “Article IV” review of U.S. economic policies that high deficits and debt “create a growing risk to the U.S. and global economy, potentially feeding into higher fiscal financing costs and a growing risk to the smooth rollover of maturing obligations.”
The IMF’s statement slightly revised down its 2024 U.S. GDP growth forecast to 2.6% from the 2.7% forecast in the global lender’s World Economic Outlook in April.
The IMF forecasts U.S. growth in 2025 to dip to 1.9%, unchanged from the April outlook, and remaining above 2% through the end of the decade.
“The U.S. economy has proven itself to be robust, dynamic and adaptable to changing global conditions,” the IMF said. “Activity and employment continue to expectations … and the disinflation process has been considerably less costly than many had feared.”
The IMF said it expects U.S. inflation to return to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target by mid-2025, considerably sooner than the Fed’s own forecast of returning to target in 2026.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters that the IMF’s forecast is more optimistic because of the current trajectory of inflation indicates a quicker return to target, partly because strong U.S. consumer spending driven by wealth built up during the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding and the labor market is cooling.
Debt, trade prescriptions
But the IMF chided Washington for rising deficits that, if continued, would bring the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio to a concerning level of 140% by the end of the decade. The IMF measure includes Social Security pension and Medicare health care obligations.
“Such high deficits and debt create a growing risk to the U.S. and global economy, potentially feeding into higher fiscal financing costs and a growing risk to the smooth rollover of maturing obligations,” the Fund said.
For the second year in a row, the fund prescribed that the U.S. increase income tax rates progressively, not only on the wealthiest Americans but also for households earning less than $400,000 a year — a threshold that U.S. President Joe Biden has vowed not to cross in his re-election campaign pledges.
The fund said the U.S. also should reform entitlement programs, cuts that Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump have both vowed not to pursue, and raise the threshold for eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit for workers without children.
Georgieva said the fund was trying to present a policy path for the U.S. “that in our view would serve the economy and its people well,” as it would for any IMF member country.
With the U.S. economy strong, it was a “good time” for the U.S. to consolidate its fiscal position, she said, adding: “It is in good times where you can do more to prepare yourself for risks in the future.”
The IMF also said that intensifying U.S. tariffs and other trade barriers along with the increased use of industrial policy to favor domestic firms represented a downside risk for the U.S. and global economies, with the potential to distort investment flows and undermine the global trading system.
Instead, the fund called for Washington to work out differences with trading partners through negotiations and strengthen the World Trade Organization.
In her discussion with Georgieva, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated the importance of “frank and thorough assessments” of IMF member economies and discussed the “remarkable performance of the U.S. economy over the past few years,” the Treasury said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/imf-says-us-needs-to-tackle-debt-despite-robust-growth-/7676503.html
CDC recommends updated COVID shots for everyone older than 6 months
date: 2024-06-28, from: VOA News USA
siegfried 1.11.1 released
date: 2024-06-28, from: IT for Archivists
Version 1.11.1 of siegfried is now available. Get it here. CHANGELOG v1.11.1 (2024-06-28) WASM build. See pkg/wasm/README.md for more details. Feature sponsored by Archives New Zealand. Inspired by Andy Jackson -sym flag enables following symbolic links to files during scanning. Requested by Max Moser XDG_DATA_DIRS checked when determining siegfried home location. Requested by Michał Górny Windows 7 build on releases page (built with go 1.20). Requested by Aleksandr Sergeev update PRONOM to v118 update LOC to 2024-06-14 zips piped into STDIN are decompressed with -z flag.
https://www.itforarchivists.com/post/sf1111/
Full Circle Magazine 206
date: 2024-06-28, from: Full Circle Magazine
This month:
- Command & Conquer
- How-To : Python, Stable Diffusion and Latex
- Graphics : Inkscape
- Review : Kubuntu 24.04 and Wo-We Mini PC
- Book Review : The Linux Devops Handbook
- UbPorts Touch
- My Opinion : Non-Snap Ubuntu’s
- Ubuntu Games - Cat Games
plus: News, Micro This, Q&A, The Daily Waddle, and more.
Other Languages
https://fullcirclemagazine.org/magazines/issue-206/
The Steam Deck ships with WireGuard
date: 2024-06-28, from: Ze Iaso’s blog
One less install required!
https://xeiaso.net/notes/2024/steam-deck-wireguard/
SCV Water dedicates treatment plant
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
A collection of past and present water officials, city leaders and some of those closest to Jerry Gladbach gathered Thursday at Central Park to honor the memory of the former […]
The post SCV Water dedicates treatment plant appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/scv-water-dedicates-treatment-plant/
SCV-Based Honda Racing Corp Partners with Meyer Shank
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Santa Clarita-based Honda Racing Corporation USA confirmed Thursday it will partner with championship-winning Meyer Shank Racing to field a pair of Acura ARX-06 entries in the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, starting with the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona in January
https://scvnews.com/scv-based-honda-racing-corp-partners-with-meyer-shank/
Louisiana law sparks debate over Ten Commandments in public schools
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
Uvalde
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
ultrices neque ornare aenean euismod elementum nisi quis eleifend quam adipiscing vitae proin sagittis nisl rhoncus mattis rhoncus urna neque viverra justo nec ultrices dui sapien eget mi proin sed…
https://sundial.csun.edu/182323/news/uvalde/
The Mental Health Pandemic in Texas
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
On a sunny and windy morning in Uvalde, sun beams illuminate crosses surrounding a water fountain in the middle of the town’s central plaza. Some of the crosses have been…
https://sundial.csun.edu/182344/news/the-mental-health-pandemic-in-texas/
A Club No One Wants To Be A Part Of
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Grief strikes at the most unexpected times. Never wished for, grief never goes away. Twenty-one families and dozens more community members in Uvalde, Texas, were forever changed on May 24,…
https://sundial.csun.edu/182266/news/a-club-no-one-wants-to-be-a-part-of/
Fragments of Failed Policing in Uvalde
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
The Uvalde Police Department has been on the lookout for new hires in recent months. Near the men’s bathroom is a locked entrance for duty dispatchers and command staff. A…
https://sundial.csun.edu/182329/news/fragments-of-failed-policing-in-uvalde/
Half Moon Bay residents appealed approval of senior farmworker housing. Here’s what the City Council just decided
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Half Moon Bay City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to deny appeals attempting to block a 40-unit, downtown apartment complex for senior farmworkers, clearing the way for the project to continue.
Iration x Autumn Brands Launch Party
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
This partnership between homegrown band and homegrown brand is good, clean farm fun.
The post Iration x Autumn Brands Launch Party appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/27/iration-x-autumn-brands-launch-party/
Letters: Replace Thao | Reconsider RCV | Natural resources | Applying reason | Left to Congress | Unqualified opinion
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for June 28, 2024
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/letters-1778/
Kurtenbach: Instant reaction to the Warriors’ second-round pick
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Warriors need shooters. They picked up two Thursday.
Bay FC coach Albertin Montoya ‘wishing the best’ for Lucy Rushton after general manager’s abrupt resignation
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
Montoya on Thursday: ‘We lost someone that we have so much respect for.’
Oklahoma state superintendent orders schools to teach the Bible in schools
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
oklahoma city, oklahoma — Oklahoma’s top education official on Thursday ordered public schools to incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades 5 through 12, the latest effort by conservatives to incorporate religion into classrooms.
The directive drew immediate condemnation from civil rights groups and supporters of the separation of church and state, with some calling it an abuse of power and a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The order sent to districts across the state by Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters says adherence to the mandate is compulsory and “immediate and strict compliance is expected.”
“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in a statement. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction.”
Oklahoma law already explicitly allows Bibles in the classroom and lets teachers use them in instruction, said Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for state Attorney General Gentner Drummond.
But it’s not clear if Walters has the authority to mandate that schools teach it. State law says individual school districts have the exclusive authority to decide on instruction, curriculum, reading lists, instructional materials and textbooks.
The head of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations criticized the directive as a clear violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from “establishing” a religion.
“We adamantly oppose any requirements that religion be forcefully taught or required as a part of lesson plans in public schools, in Oklahoma, or anywhere else in the country,” Adam Soltani said in a statement.
“Public schools are not Sunday schools,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement. “This is textbook Christian Nationalism: Walters is abusing the power of his public office to impose his religious beliefs on everyone else’s children. Not on our watch.”
The directive is the latest salvo in an effort by conservative-led states to target public schools: Louisiana has required them to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, while others are under pressure to teach the Bible and ban books and lessons about race, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Earlier this week the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked an attempt by the state to have the first publicly funded religious charter school in the country.
A former public school teacher who was elected to his post in 2022, Walters ran on a platform of fighting “woke ideology,” banning books from school libraries and getting rid of “radical leftists” who he claims are indoctrinating children in classrooms.
He has clashed with leaders in both parties for his focus on culture-war issues including transgender rights and banning books, and in January he faced criticism for appointing a right-wing social media influencer from New York to a state library committee.
Brush fire near Magic Mountain quickly put out
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
A brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon near Six Flags Magic Mountain had forward progress stopped prior to the arrival of firefighters, according to L.A. County Fire Department officials. […]
The post Brush fire near Magic Mountain quickly put out appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/brush-fire-near-magic-mountain-quickly-put-out/
CNN bans White House pool reporters from debate room
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
washington — The White House Correspondents’ Association said Thursday that CNN had rejected multiple requests to include White House pool reporters inside the studio during the first presidential debate between incumbent Joe Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump.
The press pool, made up of representatives of major news organizations, accompanies the president on foreign and domestic trips and normally has access to any event where he speaks or appears in public, with the goal of keeping the U.S. public informed.
It is extremely rare for it to be barred from an event in the United States.
“WHCA is deeply concerned that CNN has rejected our repeated requests to include the White House travel pool inside the studio,” Kelly O’Donnell, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said in a statement.
“The pool is there for the ‘what ifs?’ in a world where the unexpected does happen,” she said, and to provide “context and insight by direct observation and not through the lens of the television production.”
These reporters are there to see what is said and done when the microphones and cameras are off, and provide independent observation, she wrote, with duties “separate from the production of the debate as a news event.”
O’Donnell said both the Biden and Trump campaigns agreed to the WHCA’s request.
CNN has agreed to allow only one White House print pool reporter to enter the studio during a commercial break to “briefly observe the setting.”
The network will also allow still photographers from other outlets to cover the candidates inside the studio and will provide a television feed of the debate to other networks.
CNN has put in place many other rules for the first showdown, including two commercial breaks, no props and muted microphones except when the candidates are recognized to speak. The network did not respond to a request for comment.
“Precedent matters for future debates,” O’Donnell said, alluding to the next Biden-Trump face-off in September.
The National Association of Black Journalists also asked CNN to accredit reporters from local Black-owned news organizations, after none of Atlanta’s Black news groups got credentials to be on-site for the debate.
https://www.voanews.com/a/cnn-bans-white-house-pool-reporters-from-debate-room-/7676463.html
Opinion: Why this student is X-ing out Latinx
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
Solve the problem by changing the language, not manufacturing a word.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/opinion-why-this-student-is-x-ing-out-latinx/
Letters: Willie Mays | Enviable effort | Bad use | Google’s folly | Going digital | Risking legacy
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for June 28, 2024
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/letters-1777/
Windows 10 will be covered by 0patch, a third-party paid patching service
date: 2024-06-27, from: OS News
So I learned something new today: there are companies that provide security patches for Windows that aren’t Microsoft. I never even considered this could be a thing, but it turns out that a paid service called 0patch seems to have been around for a long time, and the consensus seems to be that not only can it be trusted, it also sometimes provides patches sooner than Microsoft does. Today, 0patch announced it’ll also be providing this service for Windows 10 after the end of support next year. With October 2025, 0patch will “security-adopt” Windows 10 v22H2, and provide critical security patches for it for at least 5 more years – even longer if there’s demand on the market. We’re the only provider of unofficial security patches for Windows (“virtual patches” are not really patches), and we have done this many times before: after security-adopting Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 in January 2020, we took care of 6 versions of Windows 10 as their official support ended, security-adopted Windows 11 v21H2 to keep users who got stuck there secure, took care of Windows Server 2012 in October 2023 and adopted two popular Office versions – 2010 and 2013 – when they got abandoned by Microsoft. We’re still providing security patches for all of these. ↫ Mitja Kolsek on the 0patch blog This service implements patching through what it calls “micropatches”, which are very small sets of CPU instructions injected into running code in memory without modifying – in this case – Microsoft’s own code. These micropatches are applied by briefly stopping the offending program, injecting the fix, and continuing the program – without having to close the program or reboot. Of course, they can be unapplied in the same, non-disruptive way. The 0patch service will provide patches for 0days that Microsoft hasn’t fixed yet, patches for issues Microsoft won’t fix, and sometimes patches for third party code. As the headline clearly states, this service isn’t free, but honestly, at roughly 25 dollars plus tax per computer per year, it’s not exactly expensive, and definitely cheaper than Microsoft’s own Windows 10 Extended Security Update program it’s going to offer for Windows 10 after the end of support date next year. Diving a bit deeper into who is providing this service, it comes from a company called ACROS Security, a small company out of Slovenia. The company details its micropatches on its 0patch blog if you want more information on how each individual ones works. I still don’t know exactly what to make of this, and I definitely wouldn’t rely on something like this for mission-critical Windows computers or servers, but for something like a home PC that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11 but still works just fine, or perhaps some disposable virtual machines you’re using, this might be a good stopgap solution until you can upgrade to a better operating system, like Linux or one of the BSDs. Are there any people in the OSNews audience who’ve used 0patch, or perhaps a service similar to it?
UC Santa Barbara’s Ajay Mitchell Becomes 14th Gaucho Drafted to NBA
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Oklahoma City Thunder acquires the 38th pick, the eighth of the second round, through a deal with the New York Knicks.
The post UC Santa Barbara’s Ajay Mitchell Becomes 14th Gaucho Drafted to NBA appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Warriors re-acquire pick, draft stretch 5 from Boston College: reports
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
Quinten Post is reportedly the newest Golden State Warrior.
Laurene Weste | Celebrating Our Heroes, Open Spaces
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul.”
https://scvnews.com/laurene-weste-celebrating-our-heroes-open-spaces/
Sharks reportedly had interest in Canucks forward before trade to Blackhawks
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
The San Jose Sharks reportedly had some interest in bringing in Ilya Mikheyev from the Vancouver Canuck
New migration patterns could fuel IS plans for US, some officials contend
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
washington — Recent changes in global migration patterns and smuggling routes have created an opening for terror groups like the Islamic State to set their sights on the U.S. southern border.
For years, top U.S. counterterrorism officials have pushed back against critics who sounded alarms about would-be terrorists streaming across the U.S. border with Mexico. But changes within the past year have increased the likelihood of such a reality.
“What we face today is a greater vulnerability to the possibility that terrorist organizations might use that pathway to get individuals into the United States,” according to Nick Rasmussen, the counterterrorism coordinator for the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS.
“The diversity of the migrant population arriving at our borders — this is not in any way, shape or form a problem of the Western Hemisphere,” Rasmussen told a conference Thursday in Omaha, Nebraska.
“It’s a global migration problem with migrants from literally every corner of the world, including from most conflict zones around the world, showing up and arriving on our shores,” he said, describing the convergence of the migration routes with concerns about terror groups like Islamic State “relatively recent.”
Concerns about possible infiltration by migrants linked to the Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS, have spiked in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, The New York Post reported the FBI arrested eight men from Tajikistan who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border partly with the help of an IS-linked network.
And earlier this week, NBC News reported more than 400 immigrants from Central Asia crossed into the U.S., again with help from IS-linked smugglers. Of those, some 150 have been arrested, while another 50 remain at large. The officials did not comment on the status of the remaining 200.
Senior DHS officials say there is no evidence to suggest any of the 400 Central Asian migrants are IS operatives.
But officials have said the eight men from Tajikistan were arrested because of potential ties to IS. All eight are in the middle of removal hearings and face deportation.
U.S. officials have sought to allay concerns.
White House deputy homeland security adviser Jen Daskal told the counterterrorism conference in Omaha on Wednesday that there is now increased vigilance along the U.S. southern border.
“We have enhanced our screening and vetting, instituted recurrent vetting of migrants to identify newly uncovered threats and detain those who pose a public safety threat,” Daskal said. “We know that there is a continued risk posed by those inspired by these terrorist organizations, and we are acutely focused on that risk.”
Rasmussen, speaking a day later, likewise pushed back against fears of a terrorist free for all.
“Most of the last decade there have been political critics who have said that terrorists are streaming across the southern border, and we could look at that analytically as our intelligence and law enforcement really did, and say, no, that’s actually not happening,” he said. “I would argue it’s not true today, as well.”
Rasmussen agreed, though, the newfound focus by groups like IS on exploiting migration to the Western Hemisphere deserves immediate attention.
The convergence of migration patterns and terrorism is “probably highest on my worry and priority list today,” he said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/new-migration-patterns-fuel-islamic-state-s-plans-for-the-us-/7676413.html
History-making milestone for San Jose school’s new buidling
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 44,000 square-foot Wade Academic Center is expected to be finished in time for Fall 2025.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/history-making-milestone-for-san-jose-schools-new-buidling/
COC board member resigns, third closed session meeting to be held
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
Chuck Lyon has announced his resignation from the Santa Clarita Community College District board of trustees, which oversees College of the Canyons, effective Thursday. Lyon’s resignation means the board likely […]
The post COC board member resigns, third closed session meeting to be held appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/coc-board-member-resigns-third-closed-session-meeting-to-be-held/
Bronny James drafted No. 55 to Lakers
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
Bronny James will join forces with his father in Los Angeles.
The post Bronny James drafted No. 55 to Lakers appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/27/bronny-james-drafted-no-55-to-lakers/
SF Giants denied four-game sweep of Cubs before Dodgers’ final visit
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
The sweep-seeking Giants fell 5-3 to the Cubs on Ian Happ’s 10th-inning home run at Oracle Park.
Backlog of identity theft cases at IRS leaving many without refunds
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
By Zachary Stieber Contributing Writer A backlog of identity theft cases at the Internal Revenue Service is growing, hitting 500,000 in April, according to a new report from National Taxpayer Advocate […]
The post Backlog of identity theft cases at IRS leaving many without refunds appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/backlog-of-identity-theft-cases-at-irs-leaving-many-without-refunds/
SCV Water Dedicates Water Treatment Plant After Jerry Gladbach
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
SCV Water recently held a dedication ceremony to rename its Rio Vista Water Treatment as the E. G. “Jerry” Gladbach Water Treatment Plant in honor of the late SCV Water Board Vice President Jerry Gladbach
https://scvnews.com/scv-water-dedicates-water-treatment-plant-after-jerry-gladbach/
Closer Russia-North Korea ties may create opportunity for US, China
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
washington — The recent defense pact between Russia and North Korea could present a diplomatic opportunity for the United States and China to work together for stability on the Korean Peninsula, an issue of mutual interest to both countries, some experts say.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Monday that China would be “somewhat anxious” about enhanced cooperation between Russia and North Korea, adding that Chinese officials have “indicated so in some of our interactions, and we can see some tension associated with those things.”
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters after the Russia-North Korea summit last week in Pyongyang that concern about the new defense agreement between the two countries “would be shared by the People’s Republic of China” — China’s official name.
During their keenly watched summit, Russian President Vladmir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty, vowing to challenge the U.S.-led world order.
Under the treaty, the two countries, which share a short border along the lower Tumen River, are now required to provide military assistance using all available means if either of them is attacked by a third country.
High-precision weapons
Putin further raised the stakes in this newly cemented relationship, saying he is not ruling out the possibility of Russia providing high-precision weapons to North Korea.
According to some experts in Washington, China’s frustration with its two neighbors could make room for a Sino-American effort to dissuade Russia and North Korea from moving forward with their nascent defense pact.
Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at the Hudson Institute, told VOA’s Korean Service earlier this week that there is a way for the U.S. to find “some common ground” with China on this issue.
He explained that it is in China’s interest not to see the transfer of Russia’s advanced, offensive military technologies to North Korea, which could be destabilizing on the Korean Peninsula.
“That opens up a common ground for the United States to deal with China to limit any destabilizing transfer of technology to the Korean Peninsula,” he said.
Joseph DeTrani, who served as the special envoy for six-party denuclearization talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2006, told VOA’s Korean Service on Wednesday that the U.S. and China need to come together on this issue.
DeTrani said North Korea has to be on the list of “the issues of mutual concern” between the top two powers, as the U.S. pursues dialogue with China on subjects such as artificial intelligence and trade.
Dennis Wilder, who served as senior director for East Asia affairs at the White House’s National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, was more cautious about the possibility of U.S.-China coordination.
Wilder told VOA’s Korean Service this week that the current state of U.S.-China relations makes Beijing averse to working with Washington on North Korea.
“No, they have no interest in joining with us, considering how they feel we are treating them,” Wilder said. “I very much doubt that the Chinese would be interested. A far possibility would be that they might want to share information, but that would be the only place.”
No ties to call on
Robert Gallucci, who was the chief U.S. negotiator during the 1994 North Korea nuclear crisis, offered a similar view.
“We don’t have a relationship with Beijing right now that we could call on,” he said earlier this week.
Gallucci told VOA’s Korean Service that China will not appreciate the possibility of its influence on North Korea being undercut.
Gary Samore, who served as the White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, told VOA’s Korean Service via email on Wednesday that China might have a limited influence on what is happening between Russia and North Korea, although Washington and Beijing share an interest in keeping things calm on the Korean Peninsula.
“I expect that Beijing will discourage any military assistance from Russia to North Korea that could be destabilizing,” he said. “Whether Putin or Kim Jong Un will respect China’s wishes, I can’t say.”
Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA’s Korean Service via email earlier this week that “in principle, China welcomes Russia to consolidate and develop traditional friendly relations with relevant countries,” without referring to North Korea.
Meanwhile, Washington is holding out hope that Beijing can still leverage its historical ties with Pyongyang to drive a solution.
“We urge Beijing to use its influence to encourage the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] to refrain from destabilizing behavior and return to the negotiating table,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service on Wednesday.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-27, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
To get a bunch of Godot games to work on mobile without changes, it is possible to use Apple's virtual controller, which gives you a mobile controller on top of your code for free, and you get to keep your physical controller code:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/gamecontroller/gcvirtualcontroller
We will be upstreaming this change soon.
Here it is with Godot on iPad:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112690800659059613
Fourth of July Parade Road Closures, Detours Announced
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
In celebration of the Fourth of July Parade, the city of Santa Clarita has announced several road closures in the Newhall area, which will require Santa Clarita Transit Route 4/14 and 5/6 to operate detours from 5:30 a.m. to 12 p.m
https://scvnews.com/fourth-of-july-parade-road-closures-detours-announced/
US sanctions Iran over nuclear escalations, petroleum transport
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The United States on Thursday issued fresh sanctions targeting Iran in response to “continued nuclear escalations,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
“Over the past month, Iran has announced steps to further expand its nuclear program in ways that have no credible peaceful purpose,” Blinken said. “We remain committed to never letting Iran obtain a nuclear weapon, and we are prepared to use all elements of national power to ensure that outcome.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thursday’s action imposes sanctions on three companies based in the United Arab Emirates the U.S. accused of being involved in the transport of Iranian petroleum or petrochemical products, as well as 11 associated vessels.
Earlier this month, the Group of Seven advanced industrialized economies warned Iran against advancing its nuclear enrichment program, and members said they would be ready to enforce new measures if Tehran were to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia.
Iran rebuked the statement, calling on the G7 to distance itself from “destructive policies of the past,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani.
Earlier in June, the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution calling on Iran to step up cooperation with the watchdog and reverse its recent barring of inspectors.
Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity — close to the 90% of weapons grade — and has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for three nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick.
Western powers say there is no credible civilian reason for that. Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful, but officials have recently said it could change its “nuclear doctrine” if it is attacked or its existence was threatened by arch-foe Israel. That has prompted alarm at the IAEA and in Western capitals.
NASA, Boeing to Provide Commercial Crew, Space Station Update
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
Leadership from NASA’s International Space Station and Commercial Crew Programs, as well as Boeing, will participate in a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT Friday, June 28. NASA and Boeing continue to evaluate Starliner’s propulsion system performance before returning from the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Crew Flight Test. The agency also […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-boeing-to-provide-commercial-crew-space-station-update/
Neanderthal Child May Have Had Down Syndrome, Fossil Suggests
date: 2024-06-27, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The child’s survival until at least 6 years old could be evidence of collaborative caregiving in Neanderthal societies, according to a new paper
Appeals court reanimates lawsuit accusing Meta of hiring bias against US citizens
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Software techie claims he was snubbed because he wasn’t on an H-1B
Meta is headed for a legal showdown after judges ruled a hiring discrimination case in the US shouldn’t have been dismissed and can go to trial.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/lawsuit_appeals_meta_h_1b/
Leveraging Social Psychology to Overcome Barriers to Climate Action
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
UC Santa Barbara professor David Sherman looks to solve why public views on climate change haven’t translated into bold enough action.
The post Leveraging Social Psychology to Overcome Barriers to Climate Action appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Tourist Carves His Name Into Ancient House in Pompeii
date: 2024-06-27, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The man damaged a wall in the House of Ceii, a dwelling celebrated for its beautiful frescoes
Vierra talks plans as Hart district interim head
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
Most people know the phrase, “hit the ground running.” For Michael Vierra, recently appointed as interim superintendent of the William S. Hart Union High School District, he’s starting off his […]
The post Vierra talks plans as Hart district interim head appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/vierra-talks-plans-as-hart-district-interim-head/
Lilbits: Intel Lunar Lake lineup leaked, Rabbit R1’s security fail, and the FCC could require carriers to unlock smartphones within 60 days, Rabbit R1
date: 2024-06-27, from: Liliputing
The Rabbit R1 has been off to a rough start. When the portable AI device hit the streets in May it was widely panned by reviewers for its limited functionality and unreliable performance. It turns out the company also failed to protect user data: a team of folks who have been working to jailbreak the […]
The post Lilbits: Intel Lunar Lake lineup leaked, Rabbit R1’s security fail, and the FCC could require carriers to unlock smartphones within 60 days, Rabbit R1 appeared first on Liliputing.
Champ, Tiger, Tiger Lily, Rex, and Racer
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Sweet pup and LOTS of kitties need homes!!!
The post Champ, Tiger, Tiger Lily, Rex, and Racer appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/27/champ-tiger-tiger-lily-rex-and-racer/
And the Winner Is … #014634!
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Historic St. Anthony’s property in Santa Barbara has sold for $16.7 million to a purchaser who remains unknown.
The post And the Winner Is … #014634! appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/27/and-the-winner-is-014634/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I love the design of the schedule for this conference.
https://config.figma.com/agenda?lang=en
Supreme Court temporarily allows emergency abortions in Idaho
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
By Matthew Vadum Contributing Writer The Supreme Court on Thursday decided to dismiss Idaho’s appeal against a lower court ruling that granted an exception to its strict abortion law for abortions […]
The post Supreme Court temporarily allows emergency abortions in Idaho appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/supreme-court-temporarily-allows-emergency-abortions-in-idaho/
NASA Awards Contract for Cargo Mission Support
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has awarded a contract to Leidos, Inc. of Reston, Virginia, to provide mission support for the agency’s International Space Station Program, Artemis campaign, and more. The Cargo Mission Contract 4 has a total potential value of $476.5 million, with a base period from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2026, followed by three option […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-contract-for-cargo-mission-support/
Station Nation: Meet Katie Burlingame, ETHOS Flight Controller and Instructor in the Flight Operations Directorate
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
Katie Burlingame is an ETHOS (Environmental and Thermal Operating Systems) flight controller and instructor in the Flight Operations Directorate supporting the International Space Station. Burlingame trains astronauts and flight controllers on the International Space Station’s environmental control systems, internal thermal control systems, and emergency response. Burlingame shares about their path to NASA, what Pride Month […]
FCC wants telcos to carrier unlock cellphones 60 days after activation
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Should you stay or should you go now? If Rosenworcel gets her way, there won’t be trouble
Long-term carrier lock-in could soon be a thing of the past in America after the FCC proposed requiring telcos to unlock cellphones from their networks 60 days after activation. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/fcc_carrier_unlock_proposal/
Teen Boy Arrested for Allegedly Killing Chickens at Isla Vista Church
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The 14-year-old is suspected of bludgeoning four hens to death at a chicken coop at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church earlier this June.
The post Teen Boy Arrested for Allegedly Killing Chickens at Isla Vista Church appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Women Can’t Build Secure Futures Without Financial Literacy
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: RAND blog
Despite the emergence of financial feminism and greater policy attention paid to this topic, women who face the greatest challenges in securing financial independence may still face barriers to improving their financial literacy. Women would benefit from free, diverse, and accessible forms of financial education.
NASA Prepares for Air Taxi Passenger Comfort Studies
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
A new custom virtual reality flight simulator built by NASA researchers will allow them to explore how passengers experience air taxi rides and collect data that will help designers create new aircraft with passenger comfort in mind. Wayne Ringelberg, a test pilot at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, recently completed a series […]
News nonprofit sues ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Microsoft for ‘exploitative’ copyright infringement
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
Los Angeles — The Center for Investigative Reporting said Thursday it has sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its closest business partner, Microsoft, marking a new front in the news industry’s fight against unauthorized use of its content on artificial intelligence platforms.
The nonprofit, which produces Mother Jones and Reveal, said that OpenAI used its content without permission and without offering compensation, violating copyrights on the organization’s journalism. The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court, describes OpenAI’s business as “built on the exploitation of copyrighted works” and focuses on how AI-generated summaries of articles threaten publishers.
“It’s immensely dangerous,” Monika Bauerlein, the nonprofit’s CEO, told The Associated Press. “Our existence relies on users finding our work valuable and deciding to support it.”
Bauerlein said that “when people can no longer develop that relationship with our work, when they no longer encounter Mother Jones or Reveal, then their relationship is with the AI tool.”
That, she said, could “cut the entire foundation of our existence as an independent newsroom out from under us” while also threatening the future of other news organizations.
OpenAI and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
The lawsuit is the latest against OpenAI and Microsoft to land at Manhattan’s federal court, where the companies are already battling a series of other copyright lawsuits from The New York Times, other media outlets and bestselling authors such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin. The companies also face a separate case in San Francisco’s federal court brought by authors including comedian Sarah Silverman.
Some news organizations have chosen to collaborate rather than fight with OpenAI by signing deals to get compensated for sharing news content that can be used to train its AI systems. The latest to do so is Time magazine, which announced Thursday that OpenAI will get access to its “extensive archives from the last 101 years.”
OpenAI and other major AI developers don’t typically disclose their data sources but have argued that taking troves of publicly accessible online text, images and other media to train their AI systems is protected by the “fair use” doctrine of American copyright law.
CIR’s lawsuit says a dataset that OpenAI has acknowledged using to build an earlier version of its chatbot technology contained thousands of links to the website of Mother Jones, a 48-year-old print magazine that’s been publishing online since 1993. But the text used for AI training was usually missing information about a story’s author, title or copyright notice.
Last summer, more than 4,000 writers signed a letter to the CEOs of OpenAI and other tech companies accusing them of exploitative practices in building chatbots.
“It’s not a free resource for these AI companies to ingest and make money on,” Bauerlein said of news media. “They pay for office space. They pay for electricity. They pay salaries for their workers. Why would the content that they ingest be the only thing that they don’t [pay for]?”
The AP is among the news organizations that have made licensing deals over the past year with OpenAI; others include The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post publisher News Corp., The Atlantic, Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France’s Le Monde newspaper and the London-based Financial Times.
Mother Jones and CIR were both founded in the 1970s and merged earlier this year. Both are based in San Francisco, as is OpenAI.
The lawsuit from CIR, also known for its Reveal podcast and radio show, outlines the expense of producing investigative journalism and warns that losing control of copyrighted content will result in less revenue and even fewer reporters to tell important stories in “today’s paltry media landscape.”
“With fewer investigative news stories told, the cost to democracy will be enormous,” the lawsuit says.
Meta must face lawsuit claiming it prefers foreign workers over US citizens
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
HIGOLE F9B is an Intel N100 mini PC with options for a 7 inch touchscreen, battery, and 4G LTE
date: 2024-06-27, from: Liliputing
The HIGOLE F9B is an odd little computer that’s positioned a mini PC with a low-power Intel N100 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a decent set of ports that includes two 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports and support for up to two external displays. But while the entry-level model is clearly a small fanless desktop computer with a […]
The post HIGOLE F9B is an Intel N100 mini PC with options for a 7 inch touchscreen, battery, and 4G LTE appeared first on Liliputing.
Celebrating Our Heroes and Open Spaces
date: 2024-06-27, from: City of Santa Clarita
By Councilmember Laurene Weste “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul.” This quote by John Muir in his book “The Yosemite” perfectly articulates the importance of our environment and its profound impact on our well-being. […]
The post Celebrating Our Heroes and Open Spaces appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/06/27/celebrating-our-heroes-and-open-spaces/
‘One Less Car’ Uber bets a grand you’ll ditch your wheels
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Taxi app wants to prove it itself is cheaper, greener than owning a motor
Comment Uber is launching a month-long trial dubbed the “One Less Car” challenge to demonstrate people are better off using its app-hailed rides rather than each owning a personal vehicle.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/uber_one_less_car/
Fixing KWin’s performance on old hardware
date: 2024-06-27, from: OS News
KWin had a very long standing bug report about bad performance of the Wayland session on older Intel integrated graphics. There have been many investigations into what’s causing this, with a lot of more specific performance issues being found and fixed, but none of them managed to fully fix the issue… until now. ↫ Xaver Hugl An excellent deep dive into a very annoying problem KWin on Wayland running on older Intel hardware was facing. It turns out the issue was related to display timings, and older Intel hardware simply not being powerful enough to render frames within the timing window. The solution consisted of a various smaller solutions, and one bigger one: triple-buffering. The end result is a massive performance improvement for KWin on Wayland on older Intel hardware. This detailed post underlines just how difficult it is to simply render a bunch of windows and UI elements on time, without stutters or tearing, while taking into account the wide variety of hardware a project like KDE Plasma intends to run on. It’s great to see them paying attention to the older, less powerful systems too, instead of only focusing on the latest and greatest like Apple, and recently Microsoft as well, do.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140076/fixing-kwins-performance-on-old-hardware/
‘Frog Saunas’ May Be the Key to Saving Amphibians From a Deadly Fungal Infection
date: 2024-06-27, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Providing frogs with sun-warmed bricks inside mini-greenhouses can help them recover from chytrid and make them more resilient against the disease in the future, a new study finds
Chinese maritime aggression seen as test of US-Philippine alliance
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
manila, Philippines — Analysts see China’s increasingly aggressive attacks on Philippine vessels in the South China Sea as a test of the U.S.-Philippines alliance. What happens next, they say, will depend largely on how Manila and Washington respond.
Dramatic footage released last week by the Philippine military showed Chinese coast guard personnel wielding knives, an ax and other weapons as they intercepted Philippine soldiers who were in rubber boats delivering supplies to a garrison at Second Thomas Shoal.
The June 17 clash was the worst so far in the escalating tension in the disputed waters, with several Philippine soldiers injured, including one who lost a thumb, according to Manila.
But while the Philippines tried to de-escalate the tension with diplomacy, analysts say future such incidents are likely.
“China will seek to push the Philippines further,” said Don McLain Gill, an international studies lecturer at De La Salle University in Manila.
“The main challenge here is to apply considerable cost on China in order for it not to illustrate this sort of behavior and turn it into something regular, like the same way it had regularized water canonning and ramming [of Philippine vessels],” he told VOA.
There have been several incidents in the past months in which Chinese coast guard ships blasted Philippine patrol boats with water cannons and performed dangerous maneuvers in attempts to stop resupply missions to Philippine troops stationed at the shoal.
The flash point of the conflict is the BRP Sierra Madre, a dilapidated warship that Manila deliberately ran aground in 1999 to stake its claim to Second Thomas Shoal, a maritime feature in the Spratly Islands that is within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
China claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea, including the Spratly chain, based on historical maps that an international tribunal has ruled have no legal basis.
Parallel strand of negotiation
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in his first media interview since the incident, acknowledged Thursday that more must be done than to just file diplomatic protests against China.
“We have [lodged] more than 100 protests already. … [What usually happens is] we summon the ambassador, we tell him our position, that we don’t want what happened, and that’s it. But we have to do more than that, so we are. We are doing more than just that,” Marcos told reporters Thursday, without elaborating.
But Collin Koh, a fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said there must also be a “parallel strand of negotiation and dialogue” between China and the United States to de-escalate the tension.
The United States is a treaty ally of the Philippines and is obligated to defend Manila against external armed attack, including in areas in the South China Sea.
Given the high stakes for all three countries, Koh said, China might listen to another superpower.
“I think in large part it will depend very greatly on U.S. signaling explicitly to China on things that it should refrain from doing, and it must come with a very explicit threat of repercussions or consequences,” Koh told VOA.
“If the messaging isn’t done clearly, then we are going to see a repetition of what’s happening,” he added.
Mutual defense treaty
Marcos has ruled out invoking the mutual defense treaty over the latest incident, saying it could not be considered an “armed attack.”
Marcos had earlier said he wanted a review of the treaty, which was signed in 1951, to respond to the changing security challenges in the region.
The recent escalation might provide urgency for Washington and Manila “to expedite the process of defining particular provisions and enhancing consultations,” according to Gill of De La Salle University.
One such clarification was provided earlier this year by Marcos, who said the death of a Philippine serviceman in “an attack or an aggressive action by another foreign power” could trigger the treaty.
This specific requirement, however, might work in China’s favor.
“If you set the bar so high, then it means that you are allowing China to keep doing whatever it is doing just under that threshold,” Koh said, although he agreed that it was not yet necessary to activate the treaty.
“Nobody died and there were no other serious injuries other than the poor guy who lost his thumb. The question is: Are we going to be lucky in the future like that?” Koh asked.
Canada’s 2023 fires spewed more heat-trapping gas than millions of cars
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Catastrophic Canadian wildfires last year pumped more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air than India did by burning fossil fuels, setting ablaze an area of forest larger than the U.S. state of West Virginia, new research finds.
Scientists at the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland calculated how devastating the impacts were of the monthslong fires in Canada in 2023 that sullied the air around large parts of the globe. They figured it put 2.98 billion metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air, according to a study update published in Thursday’s Global Change Biology. The update is not peer-reviewed, but the original study was.
The fire spewed nearly four times the carbon emissions as airplanes do in a year, study authors said. It’s about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 647 million cars put in the air in a year, based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.
Forests “remove a lot of carbon from the atmosphere and that gets stored in their branches, their trunks, their leaves and kind of in the ground as well. So, when they burn all the carbon that’s stored within them, [it] gets released back into the atmosphere,” said the study’s lead author, James MacCarthy, a research associate with WRI’s Global Forest Watch.
When and if trees grow back, much of that can be recovered, MacCarthy said, adding, “It definitely does have an impact on the global scale in terms of the amount of emissions that were produced in 2023.”
MacCarthy and colleagues calculated that the forest burned totaled 77,574 square kilometers (29,951 square miles), which is six times more than the average from 2001 to 2022. The wildfires in Canada made up 27% of global tree cover loss last year; usually it’s closer to 6%, MacCarthy’s figures show.
These are far more than regular forest fires, but researchers focused only on tree cover loss, which is a bigger effect, said study co-author Alexandra Tyukavina, a geography professor at the University of Maryland.
Syracuse University geography and environment professor Jacob Bendix, who wasn’t part of the study, said, “The loss of that much forest is a very big deal, and very worrisome.
“Although the forest will eventually grow back and sequester carbon in doing so, that is a process that will take decades at a minimum, so that there is a quite substantial lag between addition of atmospheric carbon due to wildfire and the eventual removal of at least some of it by the regrowing forest,” he said.
“So, over the course of those decades, the net impact of the fires is a contribution to climate warming.”
It’s more than just adding to heat-trapping gases and losing forests; there were health consequences as well, Tyukavina said.
“Because of these catastrophic fires, air quality in populated areas and cities was affected last year,” she said, mentioning New York City’s smog-choked summer. More than 200 communities with about 232,000 residents had to be evacuated, according to another not-yet-published or peer-reviewed study by Canadian forest and fire experts.
One of the authors of the Canadian study, fire expert Mike Flannigan at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, puts the acreage burned at twice what MacCarthy and Tyukavina do.
“The 2023 fire season in Canada was [an] exceptional year in any time period,” Flannigan, who wasn’t part of the WRI study, said in an email. “I expect more fire in our future, but years like 2023 will be rare.”
Flannigan, Bendix, Tyukavina and MacCarthy all said climate change played a role in Canada’s big burn. A warmer world means a longer fire season, more lightning-caused fires and especially drier wood and brush to catch fire “associated with increased temperature,” Flannigan wrote.
The average May-to-October temperature in Canada last year was almost 2.2 degrees Celsius warmer than normal, his study found. Some parts of Canada were 8 to 10 degrees Celsius hotter than average in May and June, MaCarthy said.
There’s short-term variability within trends, so it’s hard to blame one specific year and area on climate change, and geographic factors play a role, Bendix said in an email, but still, “there is no doubt that climate change is the principal driver of the global increases in wildfire.”
With the world warming from climate change, Tyukavina said, “The catastrophic years are probably going to be happening more often, and we are going to see those spikier years more often.”
Five Reasons Why Putin Is Reshuffling His Government
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: RAND blog
Fresh off his reelection, Vladimir Putin has shuffled some senior officials in his government to bolster his rule in the years ahead. What is Putin trying to accomplish with these moves? How will they affect Russia’s future?
Kaiser Permanente Appoints New Senior VP, Area Manager
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Kaiser Permanente is proud to announce the appointment of Camille Applin-Jones as the new Senior Vice President and Area Manager for the Panorama City and Antelope Valley service areas, which includes the Santa Clarita Valley
https://scvnews.com/kaiser-permanente-appoints-new-senior-vp-area-manager/
Cambodian rapper makes US debut as music festival headliner
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
Cambodian rapper VannDa was featured at a California festival of Asian music and culture called Sabaidee Fest. VOA’s Malis Tum and Chetra Chap report on this young rapper who’s shining a spotlight on Cambodian music, culture and history. Chetra Chap narrates.
https://www.voanews.com/a/cambodian-rapper-makes-us-debut-as-music-festival-headliner/7676184.html
July 4th cookout cost reaches ‘record high’ due to inflation, Farm Bureau says
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
By Jack Phillips Contributing Writer The average cost for a Fourth of July cookout has increased in 2024 to a “record high,” in part due to higher inflation, according to a […]
The post July 4th cookout cost reaches ‘record high’ due to inflation, Farm Bureau says appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Washington folklife festival honors Indigenous culture, communities
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
Historic Washington garden gets eco-friendly makeover
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
In Washington, the garden of former President Woodrow Wilson’s historic home is being reimagined to accommodate a changing climate. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports. Camera: Adam Greenbaum.
https://www.voanews.com/a/historic-washington-garden-gets-eco-friendly-makeover-/7676179.html
Another chance at life
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
West Ranch cross country team runs with the dogs of the Castaic shelter to promote adoption Karen Cirricione, co-head coach for the West Ranch Girls cross country team, may have […]
The post Another chance at life appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/another-chance-at-life/
US denies Zimbabwe’s claims it is militarizing Zambia
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
HARARE, ZIMBABWE — The head of U.S. Africa Command denied Thursday claims by Zimbabwean government officials that Washington is setting up a military base in neighboring Zambia and wants to move AFRICOM operations there from Germany.
At an online press briefing, General Michael Langley, head of AFRICOM, rejected Zimbabwe’s claims that the United States is establishing a base in neighboring Zambia.
“That’s absolutely false,” Langley said from an African Chiefs of Defense Conference in Botswana. “We have no bases in Zambia. We have no plans to put one there.”
He said the U.S.’s approach on the continent is “African-led and U.S.-enabled.”
“We have a deep partnership with Zambia,” he said. “We have increased security cooperation with them. But there is no footprint. There’s no posture. There’s no base.”
Zimbabwean officials declined to comment to VOA about Langley’s remarks. But Rutendo Matinyarare, chairperson of the pro-government Zimbabwe Anti-Sanctions Movement, alleged that Langley held a briefing in Lusaka and that the U.S. was setting up the AFRICOM hub in Zambia.
Matinyarare claimed that several businesspeople who have flown into the country have seen a substantial amount of American military equipment at Zambia’s airport.
“And so, the question is, ‘What are these weapons doing in Zambia?’” he said.
Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema denies that his country is being militarized by the U.S. He says Zambia’s army has exchange programs with a number of countries, including the U.S., which should not be mistaken for the U.S. establishing a base.
Zambia says it has called on two regional bodies — the African Union and the Southern African Development Community — to mediate talks with Zimbabwe. Zambia and Zimbabwe are members of both organizations.
Zambian officials have also said the fallout stems from comments that Zimbabwean President Emerson Mnangagwa made during a recent trip to Russia — namely, the accusation that the U.S. has been militarizing Zambia to consolidate power in the region and isolate Zimbabwe.
Western countries imposed travel and financial sanctions on Zimbabwe’s leadership and affiliated companies in the early 2000s for alleged election rigging and human rights abuses. The U.S. recently removed sanctions on most Zimbabweans, but a few prominent figures — including Mnangagwa — remain on the list.
Meanwhile, Langley told reporters that top regional security challenges throughout Africa were discussed at the just-ended defense conference.
“Our African partners want this conference here because they want to own it. But we are AFRICOM, and the U.S. government is here because we have common values, common objectives, that will affect stability, security and prosperity on the continent,” he said.
This year’s conference provided a “valuable wealth of information” and lessons ahead of talks next year, Langley said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-denies-zimbabwe-claims-it-is-militarizing-zambia/7676189.html
A Jewish Soldier Found in a German Mass Grave Has Been Reburied in an American Cemetery
date: 2024-06-27, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Nathan Baskind received a Jewish burial exactly 80 years after his death in World War II
Innovative Coronary Disease Device Comes to Henry Mayo
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital recently became one of the first hospitals in Los Angeles County to treat patients with the “AGENT Drug-Coated Balloon (DCB),” a device that is used to treat patients with coronary artery disease who are experiencing in-stent restenosis (the narrowing of a previously stented coronary vessel caused by plaque or scar tissue)
https://scvnews.com/innovative-coronary-disease-device-comes-to-henry-mayo/
Engineers risk blasting US missile defense to smithereens, say auditors
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Now the 2028 deadline is at risk
Engineers at the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) continue to ignore concerns about their next-generation missile interceptors, leaving serious technical shortcomings on the table and threatening the program’s 2028 deadline.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/missile_defense_agency_audit/
Daily Deals (6-27-2024)
date: 2024-06-27, from: Liliputing
The Steam Summer Sale is live with discounts up to 90% on select titles in the Steam game store. And as has become the norm over the past few years, other game stores including GOG and the Humble Store have launched their own game sales to coincide with Steam’s sale. Meanwhile Amazon is giving away […]
The post Daily Deals (6-27-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-6-27-2024/
Will This Be the Hottest Presidential Debate Ever?
date: 2024-06-27, from: Heatmap News
In spite of a deadly heat wave that has seen temperatures touch 100 degrees Fahrenheit and a first-ever summer date, today’s presidential debate in Atlanta won’t even come close to being the hottest ever. Temperatures will reach 84 degrees this afternoon and are forecasted to settle around 80 degrees by the time the debate begins at 9 p.m. Eastern.
This is the first presidential debate not to be held in September or October, when most American cities have started to cool down. And of the cities that have hosted debates, just four are further south Atlanta. Yet this is just the eighth-hottest debate in history.
The story would’ve been different if the debate had been held in any of the past six days. Thermometers in Atlanta have hit 93 degrees all week — which would’ve made this debate the hottest ever.
Even more remarkably, there have been three previous debates on days when temperatures surpassed 90 degrees.
The high of 92 degrees the day of the third presidential debate in 2004 between then-President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger John Kerry was ordinary for a mid-October day in Tempe, Arizona, where the debate was held. There, temperatures regularly reach into the 90s late into the month.
But the September 21, 1980 presidential debate in Baltimore between insurgent Republican nominee Ronald Reagan and Independent John B. Anderson (Democrat Jimmy Carter, the incumbent, declined the invitation) saw temperatures soar about 14 degrees higher than average, reaching 90 degrees. And in San Francisco on October 6, 1976, the thermometer also hit 90 degrees — more than 20 degrees above the average for the city at that time of year.
On average, debate-day high temperatures have been trending higher in recent years. But in truth, there aren’t many conclusions to be drawn from that metric. Temperatures can vary widely from day to day, and this will be only the 36th general-election presidential debate since then-candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon faced off for the first time on national television in 1960. That doesn’t give us a huge data set to work with.
Of the four cities that have hosted 90 degree debates, temperature
variability is especially pronounced in Baltimore, where at least 23
days out of the past year have been 10 degrees hotter or cooler than the
day before. The figure is lower but still pronounced for Atlanta, San
Francisco, and Tempe, underscoring the difficulty of drawing reliable
conclusions on the trajectory of debate-day forecasts.
Plus, every debate has been held in the evening, after heat has subsided for the day. On that scorching day in San Francisco, for instance, temperatures had fallen to the 70s by the time Carter and then-President Gerald Ford were making their opening statements.
But even if presidential debates go back to their usual early autumn time slot, we might still see a rise in debate temperatures as the seasons themselves change. One 2021 study found that climate change had increased the length of summer by 17 days from 1952 to 2011, while spring, autumn, and winter all lost days. By 2100, summer could last up to half the year, the study found.
https://heatmap.news/politics/trump-biden-debate-heat
Reports of visa checks, deportations worry Chinese STEM students in US
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Geopolitical tensions and growing competition in tech between the United States and China appear to be spilling over into academia despite commitments from the world’s two biggest economies to boost people-to-people exchanges.
The United States remains the top choice for Chinese students seeking to study abroad with nearly 300,000 studying in American colleges and universities during the 2022-2023 school year. But reports of some cases that students and professors are facing extra scrutiny while passing through immigration and the deportation of others are raising concerns.
For Chen Xiaojin, a doctoral student studying semiconductor materials at a university in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, it has been six years since she returned to her hometown of Beijing.
At first, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that kept her from going home. But over the past two years, she has been deterred by accounts of Chinese students majoring in science and engineering being required to reapply for their visas upon returning to China.
She also says she is worried by reports over the past six months of Chinese students being deported, even at nearby Dulles Airport.
“My current research is relatively sensitive, and my boss [adviser] is getting funds from the U.S. Department of Defense, making it even more sensitive,” she told VOA. “I am afraid that I won’t be able to return after I go back [to China].”
Chen says that if she did return to China, she would have to apply for a new visa.
In a report late last month, Bloomberg said it had found at least 20 Chinese students and scholars with valid visas who were deported at U.S. Customs since November and barred from reentry. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency does not release relevant data.
Immigration attorney Dan Berger represented one Chinese student who was deported late last year. He tells VOA Mandarin that the student studied biological sciences at Yale University and was about to complete her doctorate.
She visited her family in China and got a new visa but was deported by customs at Dulles Airport and barred from reentering the country for five years. Berger said he did not see anything suspicious in the transcript of the conversation between the student and the customs officer.
“We have seen what seems like a pattern over the last six months of Chinese PhD students being turned around…. more than I’ve seen in quite a while,” he said.
Matthew Brazil, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said neither country seems willing to explain the situation. However, he believes that in most cases, the United States must have valid reasons for blocking visa holders from entering the country.
In some cases, the student’s background may not match what is written on the visa application. In other cases, customs agents may also find something that the State Department missed, and once they see it, they are responsible for taking action.
“I wish the Chinese side would be specific about their students who were refused entry,” he said. “The fact that both sides are mum on details and that the Chinese side is engaged with the usual angry rhetoric means that each has security concerns. And that says to me that there was good reason for the U.S. to stop these particular applicants.”
Brazil also sees a connection between the entry denials and export control regulations issued by the United States in October 2022 that restrict China’s ability to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is one of the law enforcement agencies authorized to investigate violations of export control regulations, he said.
“Beijing’s intelligence agencies are known to focus attention on PRC [People’s Republic of China] students and scientists headed abroad who study or work on dual-use technologies controlled under the Export Administration Act — compelling Chinese students and scientists to report on what they’ve learned when they return to China on holiday,” he said. “This has been true for decades.”
Bill Drexel, a fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said the U.S. government did find some cases where students tried to steal strategic technology for China.
“I think it would both not be surprising that they found some really questionable or incriminating evidence for some students,” he said. “It would also not be surprising if, in their hunt for really solid evidence, they also may have made some mistakes on other students.”
Drexel adds that “it’s just kind of an unfortunate fact of the time that we live in and the tactics that the CCP uses when it comes to these measures.”
In a post on X in early May, U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns tried to dispel concerns about visas and entry to the United States for students and scholars. In the post, he said “99.9% of Chinese students holding visas encounter no issues upon entering the United States.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Monday, Burns said it is China that is making it impossible to promote people-to-people ties. Burns told the Journal that students attending events sponsored by the United States in China have been interrogated and intimidated.
He also said that since U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping held their summit in San Francisco last year, China’s Ministry of State Security and other agencies had interfered with Chinese citizens’ participation at some 61 events.
At a regular briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning dismissed those accusations, saying that they did not “reflect reality” and that went against key understandings reached by both countries’ presidents in San Francisco.
“The United States, under the pretext of ‘national security,’ unjustifiably harasses, interrogates, and deports Chinese students in the U.S., causing them significant harm and creating a severe chilling effect,” Mao said. “The image of the United States in the minds of the Chinese people fundamentally depends on the actions of the United States itself.”
Drexel said he believes Burns’ comments about visas and students’ willingness to study in the U.S. still ring true.
“On balance, it’s still the case that American universities are overwhelmingly warm towards Chinese students and want them in large numbers,” he said.
However, Berger, the immigration lawyer, is concerned about the chilling effect recent cases involving Chinese students could have.
“In general, we are being more careful about advising Chinese graduate students in STEM fields about traveling and letting them know that there is some small risk,” he said.
Even though the risk is small, it does seem to be real at the moment, he said.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
‘Constellations’ playing this weekend at The Main
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
News release “Constellations,” described as a love story about an unlikely romance, is playing this weekend at The Main in Old Town Newhall. “Constellations” is a play by Nick Payne […]
The post ‘Constellations’ playing this weekend at The Main appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/constellations-playing-this-weekend-at-the-main/
Americans abroad cut off as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US suffer roaming outages
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Why all three at once? Blame Syniverse – everyone else is
Updated AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile US are today experiencing international roaming outages, leaving at least some American subscribers unable to use their phones as they expect while overseas.…
Americans abroad cut off as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US suffer roaming outages
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Why all three at once? Blame Syniverse – everyone else is
AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile US are today experiencing international roaming outages, leaving at least some American subscribers unable to use their phones as they expect while overseas.…
NASA Kennedy Team Recognized During White House Sustainability Awards
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
A team of seven NASA Kennedy employees was recognized by the White House for charging ahead with the expansion of the agency’s sustainable electric vehicle (EV) fleet at Kennedy Space Center. They did so at minimal cost to taxpayers while also offering zero emission EV charging for any workers and visitors willing to pay out […]
FERC Says Yes to the LNG Terminal
date: 2024-06-27, from: Heatmap News
The Department of Energy may not be ready to say yes to more liquified natural gas export projects, but the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is. In a meeting on Thursday, FERC approved plans for a massive LNG terminal project in Louisiana by a 2-1 vote, with Allison Clements, an outgoing Democratic commissioner, as the lone dissenter.
The Calcasieu Pass 2, or CP2, project would install some 20 million metric tons of export capacity in a hurricane-battered coastal Louisiana community near the Texas border. You may have heard of it if you followed the drama in January around the Biden administration’s decision to pause approving new LNG export terminals, which will allow the DOE to reexamine how it assesses whether new energy projects are in the “public interest.” Republicans haven’t stopped talking about it since, arguing that the pause chokes off a major American export and that it both was tantamount to a fossil fuel ban and that it undermined the administration’s climate goals. Democrats — especially those running for reelection in swing states — have been lukewarm.
CP2 has enjoyed bipartisan political support within Louisiana but became a target for national and local environmental groups who want the Biden administration to do more to prevent the development of new fossil fuel resources. These groups argued that CP2 would both “lock in” substantial greenhouse gas emissions from the extraction and transport of natural gas (one former Environmental Protection Agency official called it a “carbon mega bomb”) and have deleterious environmental effects on an area that’s already heavily industrialized.
“Venture Global is a bad actor in the energy space and FERC is enabling them to start another disastrous project that puts polluters over people,” the Sierra Club’s Cathy Collentine said in a statement. “CP2 is an environmental justice, climate, and economic disaster waiting to happen, and with this decision, FERC has ignored the harm that will be caused by CP2 — and gas exports more broadly — and sided with the greedy fossil fuel industry.”
FERC evaluated CP2’s environmental impacts last year and concluded that they would be “less than significant,” but that the “visual resources” of the area would see “significant adverse effect” — in other words, it would be an ugly and permanent addition to the landscape.
But final approval has been delayed for months, much to the annoyance of the industry. FERC released its final environmental impact statement in July of last year, making the wait for approval one of “the longest to sit before the commission,” according to Bloomberg. The climate effect of LNG exports is a matter of some debate, with some researchers arguing that if LNG is replacing fuels with higher associated emissions, it can lead to lower overall global emissions over time.
LNG projects exist in a kind of regulatory Venn diagram. While FERC has jurisdiction over natural gas pipelines, natural gas exports to countries that don’t have free trade agreements with the U.S. — which make up the bulk of the natural gas market — requires DOE approval, and that’s still in limbo. “No major LNG terminal has ever reached a final investment decision or started construction without this critical export authorization,” the Sierra Club noted in its statement.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/ferc-cp2-lng-pause
Langley Celebrates Pride Month: Derek Bramble
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
Derek Bramble has served in a variety of mission and program support roles over his 14-year career at NASA Langley. He currently serves as an HR Business Partner in LaRC’s Human Capital Office, where he works closely with a number of organizations across the Center providing them with strategic and operational HR support. Derek previously […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/langley/langley-celebrates-pride-month-derek-bramble/
Researchers Make a Smiling Robotic Face From Living Skin
date: 2024-06-27, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The team designed a new way for their lab-grown skin to adhere to the robot’s face, in a creation that could help produce soft robots or train plastic surgeons
Boeing sanctioned over release of 737 MAX investigation details
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON/SEATTLE — U.S. investigators on Thursday sanctioned Boeing for revealing details of a probe into a 737 MAX mid-air blowout and said they would refer its conduct to the Justice Department, prompting the embattled planemaker to issue an apology.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Boeing had “blatantly violated” its rules by providing “non-public investigative information” and speculating about possible causes of the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines ALK.N door-plug emergency during a factory tour attended by dozens of journalists.
The decision sheds new light on strains between the crisis-hit planemaker and government agencies at a time when it is trying to avoid criminal charges being weighed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) ahead of a July 7 deadline.
“As a party to many NTSB investigations over the past decades, few entities know the rules better than Boeing,” the NTSB said.
The NTSB said Boeing would keep its status as a party to the investigation into the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines emergency but would no longer see information produced during its probe into the accident, which involved the mid-air blowout of a door plug with four missing bolts.
Unlike other parties, Boeing will now not be allowed to ask questions of other participants at a hearing on August 6-7.
“We deeply regret that some of our comments, intended to make clear our responsibility in the accident and explain the actions we are taking, overstepped the NTSB’s role as the source of investigative information,” Boeing said in a statement.
The NTSB’s criticism revolves around comments made during a media briefing about quality improvements on Tuesday at the 737 factory near Seattle - widely seen as part of an exercise to showcase greater transparency ahead of the Farnborough Airshow.
During the briefing, which was held on Tuesday under an embargo allowing contents to be published on Thursday, an executive said the plug had been opened on the assembly line without the correct paperwork to fix a quality issue with surrounding rivets, and that missing bolts were not replaced.
The team that came in and closed the plug was not responsible for reinstalling the bolts, Elizabeth Lund, Boeing’s senior vice president of quality, added.
The NTSB said that by providing investigative information and giving an analysis of information already released, Boeing had contravened its agreement with the agency.
“Boeing offered opinions and analysis on factors it suggested were causal to the accident,” it added.
In May, the DOJ said Boeing had violated a 2021 settlement with prosecutors that shielded it from criminal charges over interactions with the Federal Aviation Administration prior to MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
U.S. prosecutors have recommended criminal charges be brought, Reuters reported on Sunday. The DOJ already has a separate criminal probe into the door-plug episode.
Thursday’s rare exchange marks the latest sign of strains between Boeing and the NTSB.
In 2018, Boeing was widely criticized for issuing a statement appearing to question the performance of pilots in the first of two fatal crashes that led to a grounding of the MAX. Later investigations emphasized the role of flawed software.
In March this year, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told a U.S. Senate hearing Boeing had failed to provide names of employees on its 737 MAX door team for two months, drawing criticism from lawmakers. Boeing then quickly provided the names.
On Thursday, the NTSB said Boeing had portrayed its investigation of the Alaska air incident to media as a search to locate the individual responsible for plug work.
“The NTSB is instead focused on the probable cause of the accident, not placing blame on any individual or assessing liability,” the agency said.
Asked during Tuesday’s briefing who had failed to fill in documentation, Lund said: “There may have been one or more than one employee. What I will say is the ‘who’ is absolutely in the responsibility of the NTSB. That investigation is still going on and I am going to not comment on that right now”.
The role of individuals is a particularly sensitive topic in air safety amid an increasing focus on litigation and, in some countries, a trend towards criminalizing air accidents.
Under global rules, agencies carry out civil probes into air accidents for the sole purpose of finding the cause and making recommendations to improve safety in future. Such actions are separate from any judicial probes seeking to attribute blame.
Aviation experts say an 80-year-old international treaty that encourages people to speak freely and focus on causes rather than blame allowed the industry to cut the number of accidents dramatically since the start of the jet age, but depends on curbing any special pleading by the parties involved.
Critics, including some lawyers, say this system does not sufficiently take account of the need of the families of victims for detailed answers.
In 2013, the NTSB barred United Parcel ServiceUPS.N and its pilots union from an investigation of a crash in Alabama that killed two UPS pilots.
In 2018, it removed Tesla as a party to an investigation into a fatal crash involving a vehicle’s “Autopilot” system. Tesla hit back publicly, saying it had already decided to withdraw and accusing the NTSB of violating its own rules.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump's "absolute immunity" argument won't be decided until after the debate.
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/27/trump-immunity-decision-debate-scotus
Mapping the Red Planet with the Power of Open Science
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
Mars rovers can only make exciting new discoveries thanks to human scientists making careful decisions about their next stop. The Mars 2020 mission is aimed at exploring the geology of Jezero Crater and seeking signs of ancient microbial life on Mars using the Perseverance rover. Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California […]
https://science.nasa.gov/open-science/mars-mapping-open-source/
Sept 21: JCI Hosting Veterans Resource Fair
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
JCI is proud to announce the upcoming Veterans Resource Fair, scheduled to take place Sept. 21, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., at William S. Hart Park
https://scvnews.com/sept-21-jci-hosting-veterans-resource-fair/
Nokia to sell submarine network business to France in $375M deal
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Comms giant to dump undersea internet cable unit by early 2025
Nokia is planning to sell off its undersea internet cable business unit to France.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/nokia_submarine_network_france/
NASA Parachute Sensor Testing Could Make EPIC Mars Landings
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
Landing rovers and helicopters on Mars is a challenge. It’s an even bigger challenge when you don’t have enough information about how the parachutes are enduring strain during the descent to the surface. Researchers at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, are experimenting with readily available, highly elastic sensors that can be fixed […]
Discoveries from Disasters: A Conversation with Oceanographer David Valentine
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The UC Santa Barbara professor who discovered a massive DDT dumping ground off the coast of Los Angeles provides a glimpse of his life behind the headlines, discussing his research, policy work, and professional trajectory.
The post Discoveries from Disasters: A Conversation with Oceanographer David Valentine appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Hubble Captures Infant Stars Transforming a Nebula
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image presents a visually striking collection of interstellar gas and dust. Named RCW 7, the nebula is located just over 5,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. Nebulae are areas rich in the raw material needed to form new stars. Under the influence of gravity, parts of these molecular clouds collapse until […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hubble-captures-infant-stars-transforming-a-nebula/
Sergey Durmanov commented on issue #143 at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
The problem is that this code compiles without any warnings and gives the impression that the code is working. But when executed we will receive an error.
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/143#note_192621
NASA Celebrates 10 Years of Human Spaceflight’s NExT Pioneers
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
Experienced spacewalkers, university students, flight controllers, and NASA team members at all stages of their career recently came together at Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) for an anniversary celebration that looked to the future as much as the past. The Office of STEM Engagement’s Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (Micro-g NExT) marked […]
The Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (CADA) Announces Appointment of Next Executive Director
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA (June 25, 2024) – Following a comprehensive statewide search, the CADA Board of Directors announced their unanimous
The post The Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (CADA) Announces Appointment of Next Executive Director appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Santa Barbara’s Prime Time Band To Perform at FREE 4th of July Concert
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA, June 25, 2024 – Santa Barbara’s Prime Time Band will perform at Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation’s free outdoor Independence
The post Santa Barbara’s Prime Time Band To Perform at FREE 4th of July Concert appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
First SBHS Interpretation/ Translation Pathway Class Graduates
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
One of the newest pathway programs at Santa Barbara Unified is celebrating its first graduating class. The Interpretation/ Translation program
The post First SBHS Interpretation/ Translation Pathway Class Graduates appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Supreme Court rejects US opioid settlement with Purdue Pharma
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a nationwide settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that would have shielded members of the Sackler family who own the company from civil lawsuits over the toll of opioids but also would have provided billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.
After deliberating more than six months, the justices in a 5-4 vote blocked an agreement hammered out with state and local governments and victims. The Sacklers would have contributed up to $6 billion and given up ownership of the company but retained billions more. The agreement provided that the company would emerge from bankruptcy as a different entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said “nothing in present law authorizes the Sackler discharge.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
“Opioid victims and other future victims of mass torts will suffer greatly in the wake of today’s unfortunate and destabilizing decision,” Kavanaugh wrote.
The high court had put the settlement on hold last summer, in response to objections from the Biden administration.
It’s unclear what happens next.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling marks a major setback for the families who lost loved ones to overdose and for those still struggling with addiction,” Edward Neiger, a lawyer representing more than 60,000 overdose victims, said in a statement.
“The Purdue plan was a victim-centered plan that would provide billions of dollars to the states to be used exclusively to abate the opioid crisis and $750 million for victims of the crisis, so that they could begin to rebuild their lives. As a result of the senseless three-year crusade by the government against the plan, thousands of people died of overdose, and today’s decision will lead to more needless overdose deaths.”
An opponent of the settlement praised the outcome.
Ed Bisch’s 18-year-old son Eddie, died from an overdose after taking OxyContin in Philadelphia in 2001.
The older Bisch, who lives in New Jersey, has been speaking out against Purdue and Sackler family members ever since and is part of a relatively small but vocal group of victims and family members who opposed the settlement.
“This is a step toward justice. It was outrageous what they were trying to get away with,” he said Thursday. “They have made a mockery of the justice system and then they tried to make a mockery of the bankruptcy system.”
He said he would have accepted the deal if he thought it would have made a dent in the opioid crisis.
He’s now calling on the Department of Justice to seek criminal charges against Sackler family members
Arguments in early December lasted nearly two hours in a packed courtroom as the justices seemed, by turns, unwilling to disrupt a carefully negotiated settlement and reluctant to reward the Sacklers.
The issue for the justices was whether the legal shield that bankruptcy provides can be extended to people such as the Sacklers, who have not declared bankruptcy themselves. Lower courts had issued conflicting decisions over that issue, which also has implications for other major product liability lawsuits settled through the bankruptcy system.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the Justice Department, argued that the bankruptcy law does not permit protecting the Sackler family from being sued. During the Trump administration, the government supported the settlement.
The Biden administration had argued to the court that negotiations could resume, and perhaps lead to a better deal, if the court were to stop the current agreement.
Proponents of the plan said third-party releases are sometimes necessary to forge an agreement, and federal law imposes no prohibition against them.
OxyContin first hit the market in 1996, and Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of it is often cited as a catalyst of the nationwide opioid epidemic, with doctors persuaded to prescribe painkillers with less regard for addiction dangers.
The drug and the Stamford, Connecticut-based company became synonymous with the crisis, even though the majority of pills being prescribed and used were generic drugs. Opioid-related overdose deaths have continued to climb, hitting 80,000 in recent years. Most of those are from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.
The Purdue Pharma settlement would have ranked among the largest reached by drug companies, wholesalers and pharmacies to resolve epidemic-related lawsuits filed by state, local and Native American tribal governments and others. Those settlements have totaled more than $50 billion.
But the Purdue Pharma settlement would have been only the second so far to include direct payments to victims from a $750 million pool. Payouts would have ranged from about $3,500 to $48,000.
Sackler family members no longer are on the company’s board, and they have not received payouts from it since before Purdue Pharma entered bankruptcy. In the decade before that, though, they were paid more than $10 billion, about half of which family members said went to pay taxes.
https://www.voanews.com/a/supreme-court-rejects-us-opioid-settlement-with-purdue-pharma/7675956.html
Sergey Durmanov commented on issue #144 at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
It seems to me that this particular problem can be solved if the compiler marks the formal parameter, which is (possibly) returned by reference, and checks the actual parameter when calling the procedure. This will not solve all problems with returning by reference, but it will eliminate a significant number of errors.
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/144#note_192620
Microsoft is bringing Xbox cloud game streaming to the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and 4K Max
date: 2024-06-27, from: Liliputing
Microsoft and Amazon have announced plans to bring Xbox cloud gaming to the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K (2023) and Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2023). Starting in July you’ll be able to install an Xbox app on either of those devices and if you have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership you’ll be able […]
The post Microsoft is bringing Xbox cloud game streaming to the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and 4K Max appeared first on Liliputing.
Paramount Concerns
date: 2024-06-27, from: Tedium feed
In an immediate austerity measure after a failed merger, Paramount kills a ton of online content—an ironic move for a brand that has long exploited nostalgia.
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16727401/paramount-online-content-erasure
COC Fall 2024 Registration Continues
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The College of the Canyons fall 2024 semester will offer more than 1,780 sections of high demand “core” classes in a wide range of academic subjects and disciplines, as well as various noncredit offerings.
https://scvnews.com/coc-fall-2024-registration-continues/
AI query optimization in IBM’s Db2 shows you can teach a tech dinosaur new tricks
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The database Big Blue doesn’t like to talk about gets makeover in November
IBM likes to be secretive about Db2, the 41-year-old database still used by some of the world’s largest banks and retailers, but occasionally something leaks out.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/ibm_ai_optimization_db2/
Article Spotlight: Structured peer review: pilot results from 23 Elsevier journals
date: 2024-06-27, from: PeerJ blog
Lawsuit Claims Microsoft Tracked Sex Toy Shoppers With ‘Recording in Real Time’ Software
date: 2024-06-27, from: 404 Media Group
The complaint claims that Babeland and Good Vibrations websites uses Microsoft’s Clarity tracking software to see what visitors searched for and bought.
Two Massive Asteroids Will Fly Past Earth This Week. Here’s What to Know
date: 2024-06-27, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Within 42 hours of each other, the pair of large asteroids, which both have no chance of impacting our planet, will approach Earth as they orbit the sun
Snapshots for IPC Fuzzing
date: 2024-06-27, from: Mozilla Developer Network blog
Process separation remains one of the most important parts of the Firefox security model and securing our IPC (Inter-Process Communication) interfaces is crucial to keep privileges in the different processes separated. We take a more detailed look at our newest tool for finding vulnerabilities in these interfaces – snapshot fuzzing.
The post Snapshots for IPC Fuzzing appeared first on Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2024/06/snapshots-for-ipc-fuzzing/
Postcard from Aldeburgh
date: 2024-06-27, from: Logic Matters blog
A few days away, staying in a familiar cottage near Aldeburgh, less than two hours from home. And the best weather we have ever had here. Usually, at least in our memory, it is windswept and intermittent rain: this time, warm sun and welcome breezes. So, favourite walks, and favourite places to eat. Very relaxing. […]
The post Postcard from Aldeburgh appeared first on Logic Matters.
https://www.logicmatters.net/2024/06/27/postcard-from-aldeburgh/
Around the World in 175 Days, 1924: Department of State Contributions to the U.S. Army Flight Around the World: Part VI: Calcutta, India
date: 2024-06-27, from: National Archives, Text Message blog
This is the sixth in a series of occasional blog posts. When we last left the Army Around the World Flight, the planes were departing Amoy, China on June 8 heading for Hong Kong. From Hong Kong they flew on, making official stops at Haiphong, Tourane, Saigon, Bangkok, Rangoon, Akyab, and Chittagong before arriving in … Continue reading Around the World in 175 Days, 1924: Department of State Contributions to the U.S. Army Flight Around the World: Part VI: Calcutta, India
OnePlus Pad Pro 12.1 inch tablet with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 launches in China
date: 2024-06-27, from: Liliputing
Smartphone maker OnePlus launched its first Android tablet in 2023 and then expanded the lineup earlier this year with a new cheaper model. Now the company is filling out the OnePlus Pad family with a new OnePlus Pad Pro model that’s up for pre-order in China ahead of a July 3rd launch in that country. […]
The post OnePlus Pad Pro 12.1 inch tablet with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 launches in China appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/oneplus-pad-pro-12-1-inch-tablet-with-snapdragon-8-gen-3-launches-in-china/
California Legislature gets nearly $300 billion budget done
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The LAist
Democrats, including Senate leader Mike McGuire of Santa Rosa, defended the budget process and the deal, saying the Legislature held more than a hundred public hearings.
https://laist.com/news/politics/california-legislature-gets-nearly-300-billion-budget-done
Perseverance pays off as Mars rover’s SHERLOC brought back from the brink
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-28, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Bot’s arm used to free instrument’s dust cover and return to science
NASA engineers have performed another remarkable feat of remote debugging and restored the SHERLOC instrument of the Perseverance Mars rover to operation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/perseverance_sherloc_operational/
Taco Bell has a new $7 Luxe Cravings Box
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
The new combo costs more than McDonald’s high-profile $5 Meal Deal but includes more food and will be available longer.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/taco-bell-has-a-new-7-luxe-cravings-box/
California passes new workplace indoor heat rules. Again.
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
Eight years and two votes later, state-mandated relief from sweltering heat might finally be on its way to warehouse workers and other Californians who toil indoors.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/california-passes-new-workplace-indoor-heat-rules-again/
Supreme Court halts enforcement of EPA plan to limit downwind pollution from power plants
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
With its conservative majority, in recent years the justices have restricted the federal agency’s authority to fight air and water pollution.
Hawaii court orders deconstruction of house built on wrong lot
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
The house itself cost roughly $300,000 to construct on a one-acre lot worth approximately $100,000, on the current market with clear title. The mistakes made by the developer and construction company may amount to even more.
Perplexity’s Origin Story: Scraping Twitter With Fake Academic Accounts
date: 2024-06-27, from: 404 Media Group
CEO Aravind Srinivas explained how the company took off after it created a demo by scraping twitter with fake academic accounts using fake AI-generated research proposals.
https://www.404media.co/perplexitys-origin-story-scraping-twitter-with-fake-academic-accounts/
US Javelin anti-tank missile, a cherished weapon among Ukrainian soldiers
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
Javelin anti-tank missile systems are part of a new $275 million aid package the U.S. is sending to Ukraine. Since 2022, the Javelin has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance against Russia’s aggression. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. VOA footage and video editing by Pavel Suhodolskiy.
Magid: The Balkanization of messaging apps
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
In some ways, today’s messaging environment reminds me of what it was like before the internet when you had to be on the same email system as the person you were messaging. Services like MCI Mail, AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy weren’t interconnected. Internet email changed all that but now we’re back to a gaggle of unconnected messaging apps.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/magid-the-balkanization-of-messaging-apps/
Alphabet Soup: NASA’s GOLD Finds Surprising C, X Shapes in Atmosphere
date: 2024-06-27, from: NASA breaking news
Who knew Earth’s upper atmosphere was like alphabet soup? NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission has revealed unexpected C- and X-shaped formations in an electrified layer of gas high above our heads called the ionosphere. While these alphabetical shapes have been observed before, GOLD sees them more clearly than other instruments […]
Gathering at the Pierce campus celebrates Juneteenth
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
On a hot summer weekend preceding Juneteenth, as attendees walked deeper along the Pierce College Mall between the long lines of various vendors, they were
The post Gathering at the Pierce campus celebrates Juneteenth appeared first on .
President position at Pierce now filled until 2027
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
Ara Aguiar, who has been the Interim President at Pierce College for about two and a half years, was recommended by LACCD Chancellor Francisco Rodriguez
The post President position at Pierce now filled until 2027 appeared first on .
Supreme Court halts enforcement of the EPA’s plan to limit downwind pollution from power plants
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is putting the Environmental Protection Agency’s air pollution-fighting “good neighbor” plan on hold while legal challenges continue, the conservative-led court’s latest blow to federal regulations.
The justices in a 5-4 vote on Thursday rejected arguments by the Biden administration and Democratic-controlled states that the plan was cutting air pollution and saving lives in 11 states where it was being enforced and that the high court’s intervention was unwarranted.
The rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution. It will remain on hold while the federal appeals court in Washington considers a challenge to the plan from industry and Republican-led states.
The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has increasingly reined in the powers of federal agencies, including the EPA, in recent years. The justices have restricted the EPA’s authority to fight air and water pollution — including a landmark 2022 ruling that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming. The court also shot down a vaccine mandate and blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.
The court is currently weighing whether to overturn its 40-year-old Chevron decision, which has been the basis for upholding a wide range of regulations on public health, workplace safety and consumer protections.
Three energy-producing states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — have challenged the air pollution rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective. They had asked the high court to put it on hold while their challenge makes it way through the courts.
The challengers pointed to decisions in courts around the country that have paused the rule in a dozen states, arguing that those decisions have undermined the EPA’s aim of providing a national solution to the problem of ozone pollution because the agency relied on the assumption that all 23 states targeted by the rule would participate.
The issue came to the court on an emergency basis, which almost always results in an order from the court without arguments before the justices.
But not this time. The court heard arguments in late February, when a majority of the court seemed skeptical of arguments from the administration and New York, representing Democratic states, that the “good neighbor” rule was important to protect downwind states that receive unwanted air pollution from other states.
The EPA has said power plant emissions dropped by 18% last year in the 10 states where it has been allowed to enforce its rule, which was finalized a year ago. Those states are Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. In California, limits on emissions from industrial sources other than power plants are supposed to take effect in 2026.
The rule is on hold in another dozen states because of separate legal challenges. Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
States that contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog, are required to submit plans ensuring that coal-fired power plants and other industrial sites don’t add significantly to air pollution in other states. In cases in which a state has not submitted a “good neighbor” plan — or in which the EPA disapproves a state plan — the federal plan was supposed to ensure that downwind states are protected.
Ground-level ozone, which forms when industrial pollutants chemically react in the presence of sunlight, can cause respiratory problems, including asthma and chronic bronchitis. People with compromised immune systems, the elderly and children playing outdoors are particularly vulnerable.
Supreme Court allows emergency abortions in Idaho for now in a limited ruling
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
The Supreme Court allows emergency abortions in Idaho for now in a limited ruling
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
The final opinion appears largely similar to the draft released early. It reverses the court’s earlier order that had allowed an Idaho abortion ban to go into effect, even in medical emergencies.
Intel flashes 4 Tbps optical chiplet to supercharge datacenters
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Likens tech to going from horse-drawn carriages to trucks
Intel has demonstrated an optical chiplet co-packaged with a CPU capable of supporting 4 Tbps data links to feed the increasing datacenter bandwidth requirements of AI and high performance computing (HPC) applications.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/intel_says_its_optical_chiplet/
California home prices hit another record high at $908,040
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
May sales were 32% below 2018-19 average.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/california-home-prices-hit-another-record-high-at-908040/
Personal Finance Added to State’s High School Graduation Requirements
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond celebrated the passage of Assembly Bill (AB) 2927 (McCarty) Thursday through the California State Senate, which would make California the 26th state in the union to require personal finance as a high school graduation requirement
https://scvnews.com/personal-finance-added-to-states-high-school-graduation-requirements/
Are new stadiums a good use of taxpayer dollars?
date: 2024-06-27, from: Marketplace Morning Report
As cities look to grow and innovate in the recovery from the pandemic, some are pushing for new sports stadiums. The idea is that fresh ballparks attract visitors and create jobs, but these projects are almost always funded by public dollars. We’ll do the numbers on the investment and payoff. Also on the show: A ransomware attack could put a sizable dent in auto sales this month, and marketing around Pride is down this year.
Supreme Court rejects multibillion-dollar Purdue Pharma opioid settlement that shielded Sackler family
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a controversial settlement that would have sent billions of dollars to treatment programs and victims of the nation’s opioid epidemic but that also shielded the Sackler family from future lawsuits.
Ocean Water Use Warning Continues for L.A. County Beaches
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health cautions residents who are planning to visit the following Los Angeles County beaches to avoid swimming, surfing and playing in ocean waters due to bacterial levels exceeding health standards when last tested
https://scvnews.com/ocean-water-use-warning-continues-for-l-a-county-beaches/
eBay Removes Listing for StingRay Cellphone Spying Tech
date: 2024-06-27, from: 404 Media Group
The StingRay was listed at $100,000 before being removed for violating the platform’s policy on not selling electronic surveillance equipment.
https://www.404media.co/ebay-removes-listing-for-stingray-cellphone-spying-tech/
US lawmakers wave red flags over Chinese drone dominance
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Congressman warns tech is getting the ‘Huawei Playbook’ treatment
US Congress members warned against Chinese dominance of the drone industry on Wednesday, elevating the threat posed by Beijing’s control of the technology as similar to that of semiconductors and ships.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/congress_china_drones/
Coolest Projects 2024: 7197 young tech creators showcase their projects online
date: 2024-06-27, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
Our Coolest Projects 2024 online showcase has come to a close, with 7197 young people from 43 countries sharing the incredible things they have made with code. A huge congratulations to everyone who took part! Coolest Projects is our annual global celebration of young digital creators and the cool things they make with technology. This…
The post Coolest Projects 2024: 7197 young tech creators showcase their projects online appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Three-alarm fire rips through West Oakland warehouse
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
Firefighters contained the blaze in about two hours but were still working to extinguish it completely early Thursday. Crews stayed at the scene past sunrise to monitor hot spots and keep the blaze from flaring up again.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/three-alarm-fire-rips-through-west-oakland-warehouse/
7 awesome Bay Area things to do this weekend, June 28-30
date: 2024-06-27, from: San Jose Mercury News
Got your weekend plans? We have some nifty ideas, from cool concerts to a sunflower explosion and the return of ’The Bear.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/27/7-awesome-bay-area-things-to-do-this-weekend-june-28-30-2/
Carbon Removal’s Existential Question
date: 2024-06-27, from: Heatmap News
Carbon removal would seem to have a pretty clear definition. It’s the
reverse of carbon emissions. It means taking carbon out of the
atmosphere and putting it somewhere else — underground, into products,
into the ocean — where it won’t warm the planet. But a new kind of
carbon removal project shows how this formula can conceal consequential
differences between approaches.
A few months ago, Puro.earth, a carbon removal registry, certified a small ethanol refinery in North Dakota to sell carbon removal credits — the first ethanol plant to earn this privilege. Red Trail Energy, which owns the facility, captures the CO2 released from the plant when corn is fermented into ethanol, and injects it into a porous section of rock more than 6,000 feet underground. Since Red Trail started doing this in June of 2022, it’s prevented some 300,000 metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere, according to data published by the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources.
There are two ways to look at what’s happening here.
If you just follow the carbon, it started in the atmosphere and ended up underground. In between, the corn sucked up carbon through photosynthesis; when it was processed into ethanol, about a third of that carbon went into the fuel, a third was left behind as dried grain, and the remainder was captured as it wafted out of the fermentation tank and stashed underground. “That is, in a broad sense, how that looks like carbon removal,” Daniel Sanchez, an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley who studies biomass carbon removal, told me.
But if you zoom out, the picture changes. For the carbon to get from the atmosphere to the ground, a few other things had to happen. The corn had to be grown, harvested, and transported in trucks to the plant. It had to be put through a mill, cooked, and then liquified using heat from a natural gas boiler. And this was all in service, first and foremost, of producing ethanol to be burned, ultimately, in a car engine. If you account for the CO2 emitted during these other steps, the process as a whole is putting more into the atmosphere than it’s taking out.
So, is Red Trail Energy really doing carbon removal?
Puro.earth takes the first view — the registry’s rules essentially draw a box around the carbon capture and storage, or CCS, part of the process. Red Trail has to count the emissions from the energy it took to capture and liquify and inject the carbon, but not from anything else that happened before that. So far, Puro has issued just over 157,000 carbon removal credits for Red Trail to sell.
This is, essentially, industry consensus. Other carbon market registries including Gold Standard, Verra, and Isometric more or less take the same approach for any projects involving biomass, though they haven’t certified any ethanol projects yet. (Isometric’s current rules disqualify ethanol plants because they only allow projects that use waste biomass.)
But the nonprofit CarbonPlan, a watchdog for the carbon removal industry, argues that it’s a mistake to call this carbon removal. In a blog post published in December, program lead Freya Chay wrote that because the carbon storage is “contingent upon the continued production of ethanol,” it’s wrong to separate the two processes. The project reduces the facility’s overall emissions, Chay argued, but it’s not “carbon removal.”
This debate may sound semantic, and to some extent, it is. As long as an action results in less pollution warming the planet, does it matter whether we label it “carbon removal” or “emission reduction”?
The point of carbon credits is that they are paying for an intervention that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. “You have to look at, what part of the project is being built because they receive carbon removal credits?” Marianne Tikkanen, the co-founder and head of standard at Puro told me. “In this case, it was the capture part.” Previously, the emissions from the fermentation tank were considered to be zero, since the carbon started in the atmosphere and ended up back in the atmosphere. If you just look at the change that the sale of credits supported, those emissions are now negative.
But the logic of carbon credits may not be totally aligned with the point of carbon removal. Scientists generally see three roles for technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere. The first is to reduce net emissions in the near term — Red Trail’s project checks that box. In the medium term, carbon removal can counteract any remaining emissions that we don’t know how to eliminate. That’s how we’ll “achieve net-zero” and stop the planet from warming.
But those who say these labels really matter are thinking of the third role. In the distant future, if we achieve net-zero emissions, but global average temperatures have reached dangerous heights, doing additional carbon removal — and lowering the total concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere — will be our only hope of cooling the planet. If this is the long term goal, there is a “clear conceptual problem” with calling a holistic process that emits more than it removes “carbon removal,” Chay told me.
“I think the point of definitions is to help us navigate the world,” she said. “It will be kind of a miracle if we get there, but that is the lighthouse.”
Red Trail may have been the first ethanol company to get certified to sell carbon removal credits, but others are looking to follow in its footsteps. Chay’s blog post, written in December, was responding to news of another project: Summit Carbon Solutions, a company trying to build a major pipeline through the midwest that will transport CO2 captured from ethanol refineries and deliver it to an underground well in North Dakota, announced a deal to pre-sell $30 million worth of carbon removal credits from the project; it plans to certify the credits through Gold Standard. In May, Summit announced it planned to sell more than 160 million tons of carbon removal credits over the next decade.
Decarbonization experts often refer to the emissions from ethanol plants as low-hanging fruit. Out of all the polluting industries that we could be capturing carbon from, ethanol is one of the easiest. The CO2 released when corn sugar is fermented is nearly 100% pure, whereas the CO2 that comes from fossil fuel combustion is filled with all kinds of chemicals that need to be scrubbed out first.
Even if it’s relatively easy, though, it’s not free, and the ethanol industry has historically ignored the opportunity. But in the past few years, federal tax credits and carbon markets have made the idea more attractive.
Red Trail’s CCS project has been a long time in the making. The company began looking into CCS in 2016, partnering with the Energy and Environmental Research Center, the North Dakota Industrial Commission Renewable Energy Council, and the U.S. Department of Energy on a five-year feasibility study. Jodi Johnson, Red Trail’s CEO, answered questions about the project by email. “Building a first-of-its-kind CCS project involved significant financial, technical, and regulatory risks,” she told me. “The technology, while promising, required substantial upfront investment and a commitment to navigating uncharted regulatory frameworks.”
The primary motivation for the project was the company’s “commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainability,” Johnson said, but low-carbon fuel markets in California and Oregon were also a “strategic incentive.” Ethanol companies that sell into those states earn carbon credits based on how much cleaner their fuel is than gasoline. They can sell those credits to dirtier-fuel makers who need to comply with state laws. The carbon capture project would enable Red Trail to earn more credits — a revenue stream that at first, looked good enough to justify the cost. A 2017 economic assessment of the project found that it “may be economically viable,” depending on the specific requirements in the two states.
But today, two years after Red Trail began capturing carbon, the company’s application to participate in California’s low-carbon fuel market is still pending. Though the company does sell some ethanol into the Oregon market, it decided to try and sell carbon removal credits through Puro to support “broader decarbonization and sequestration efforts while awaiting regulatory approvals,” Johnson said. Red Trail had already built its carbon capture system prior to working with Puro, but it may not have operated the equipment unless it had an incentive to do so.
Puro didn’t just take Red Trail’s word for it. The project underwent a “financial additionality test” including an evaluation of other incentives for Red Trail to sequester carbon. For example, the company can earn up to $50 in tax credits for each ton of CO2 it puts underground. (The Inflation Reduction Act increased this subsidy to $85 per ton, but Red Trail is not eligible for the higher amount because it started building the project before the law went into effect.) In theory, this tax credit alone could be enough to finance the project. A recent report from the Energy Futures Initiative concluded that a first-of-a-kind CCS project at an ethanol plant should cost between $36 and $41 per ton of CO2 captured and stored.
Johnson told me Red Trail does not pay income tax at the corporate level, however — it is taxed as a partnership. That means individual investors can take advantage of the credit, but it’s not a big enough benefit to secure project finance. The project “requires significant capital expenditure, operating expense, regulatory, and long-term monitoring for compliance,” she said. “Access to the carbon market was the needed incentive to secure the investment and the continuous project operation.”
Ultimately, after an independent audit of Red Trail’s claims, Puro concluded that the company did, in fact, need to sell carbon removal credits to justify operating the CCS project. (Red Trail is currently also earning carbon credits for fuel sold in Oregon, but Puro is accounting for these and deducting credits from its registry accordingly.)
All this helps make the case that it’s reasonable to support projects like Red Trail’s through the sale of carbon credits. But it doesn’t explain why we should call it carbon removal.
When I put the question to Tikkanen, she said that the project interrupts the “short cycle” of carbon: The CO2 is captured during photosynthesis, it’s transferred into food or fuel, and then it’s released back into the air in a continuous loop — all in a matter of months. Red Trail is turning that loop into a one-way street from the atmosphere to the ground, taking more and more carbon out of the air over time. That’s different from capturing carbon at a fossil fuel plant, where the carbon in question had previously been trapped underground for millennia.
Robert Hoglund, a carbon removal advisor who co-founded the database CDR.fyi, had a similar explanation. He told me that it didn’t make sense to categorize this project as “reducing emissions” from the plant because the fossil fuel-burning trucks that deliver the corn and the natural gas boilers cooking it are still releasing the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere. “If we say only processes that, if they’re scaled up, lead to lower emissions in the atmosphere are carbon removal, that’s looking at it from a system perspective,” he said. “I can understand where they come from, but I think it does add some confusion.”
Red Trail Energy and Summit Carbon Solutions defended the label, noting that this is the way carbon market registries have decided to treat biomass-based carbon sequestration projects. “The fact that emissions remain from the lifecycle of the corn itself is not the focus of the removal activity,” Johnson told me. “The biogenic CO2 is clearly removed from the atmosphere permanently.”
Sanchez, the Berkeley professor, argued that Puro’s rules are adequate because there’s a path for ethanol plants to eventually achieve net-negative emissions. They will have to capture emissions from the boiler, in addition to the fermentation process, and make a few other tweaks, like using renewable natural gas, according to a recent peer-reviewed study Sanchez authored. “That’s not what’s happening here,” he told me, “but I view that as indicative that this is part of the basket of technologies that we use to reach net-zero and to suck CO2 out of the air.”
(Red Trail is working on reducing its emissions even more, Johnson told me. The company is finishing engineering on a new combined heat and power system that will improve efficiency at the plant.)
In addition to teaching at Berkeley, Sanchez is a principal scientist for the firm Carbon Direct, which helps corporate buyers find “high quality” carbon removal credits. He added that he felt the project was “worthy” of the dollars companies are designating for carbon removal because of the risk it involved, and the fact that it would blaze a trail for others to follow. Ethanol CCS projects will help build up carbon storage infrastructure and expertise, enabling other carbon removal projects in the future.
Though there is seeming consensus among carbon market participants that this is carbon removal, scientists outside the industry are more skeptical. Katherine Maher, an Earth systems scientist who studies the carbon cycle at Stanford University, said she understood the argument for calling ethanol with CCS carbon removal, but she also couldn’t ignore the fact that capturing the carbon requires energy to grow the corn, transport it, and so on. “You really need to be conscious about, what are the other emissions in the project, and are those being accounted for in the calculation of the CO2 removed?”
Carbon180, a nonprofit that advocates for carbon removal policy, shares that perspective. “When it comes to ethanol with CCS, we want to see the actual net negativity,” Sifang Chen, the group’s managing science and innovation advisor, told me.
In the U.S. Department of Energy’s Road to Removals report, a 221-page document that highlights all of the opportunities for carbon removal in the United States, the agency specifically chose not to analyze ethanol with CCS “due largely to its inability to achieve a negative [carbon intensity] without substantial retrofitting of existing corn-ethanol facilities.”
It’s possible to say that both views are correct. Each follows a clear logic — one more rooted in creating practical rules for a market in order to drive innovation, the other in the uncompromising math of atmospheric science.
At times throughout writing this, I wondered if I was making something out of nothing. But the debate has significance beyond ethanol. Sanchez pointed out to me that you could ask the same question about any so-called carbon removal process that’s tied to an existing industry. Take enhanced rock weathering, for example, which involves crushing up special kinds of rocks that are especially good at absorbing carbon from the air. A lot of the companies trying to do this get their rocks from mining waste, but they don’t include all the emissions from mining in their carbon removal calculation.
Similarly, Summit Carbon Solutions noted that CarbonPlan supports claims of carbon removal by Charm Industrial, a company that takes the biomass left behind in corn fields, turns it into oil, and sequesters the oil underground. In that case, the company is not counting emissions from corn production or the downstream uses of corn.
Chay admitted that she didn’t have a great answer for why she drew the boundaries differently for one versus the other. “We don’t claim to have all the answers, and this back-and-forth illustrates just how much ambiguity there is and why it’s important to work through these issues,” she told me in an email. But she suggested that one point of comparison is to look at how dependent the carbon removal activity is on “the ongoing operation of a net emitting industry, and how one thinks about the role of that emitting industry in a net-zero world.” There is no apparent version of the future where we no longer have mining as an industry, or no longer grow corn for food. But there is a path to eliminating the use of ethanol by electrifying transportation.
It’s worth mentioning that this niche debate about carbon removal is taking place within a much larger and longer controversy about whether ethanol belongs in a low-carbon future at all.
Red Trail told me the company sees the adoption of electric vehicles as an opportunity to diversify into making fuels for aviation and heavy-duty transportation, which are more difficult to electrify. But some environmental groups, like the World Resources Institute, argue that a more sustainable approach would be to develop synthetic fuels from captured carbon and hydrogen. I should note that experts from both sides of this debate told me that carbon credit sales should not justify keeping an ethanol plant open or building a new one if the economics of the fuel don’t work on their own.
In Chay’s blog post, she presented real stakes for this rhetorical debate. If we call net-emitting processes carbon removal, we could develop an inflated sense of how much progress we’ve made toward our overall capacity to remove carbon from the atmosphere, which in turn could warp perceptions of how quickly we need to reduce emissions.
Peter Minor, the former director of science and innovation at Carbon180 who is starting a company focused on measurement and verification, raised the same concern. “When the definition of what it means to remove a ton of CO2 from the air is subjective, what happens is you get a bunch of projects that might have quite different climate impacts,” he told me. “And you may or may not realize it until after the fact.”
There’s also a risk of diverting funding that could go toward scaling up more challenging, more expensive, but truly net-negative solutions such as direct air capture. This risk is compounded by the growing pressure on carbon market players like Puro and Carbon Direct to identify new, more affordable carbon removal projects. Over the past several years, influential groups like the Science Based Targets initiative and corporate sustainability thought leaders like Stripe and Microsoft have decided that old-school carbon credits — the cheaper so-called “offsets” that represent emissions reductions — are not good enough. Now companies are expected to buy carbon removal credits to fulfill their climate promises to customers, lest they be accused of greenwashing.
As a result, the industry has backed itself into a corner, Minor told me. “We have come out as a society and said, the only thing that is worth it, the only thing that is allowed to be used is carbon removal,” he said. “So if that’s the only thing with economics behind it, then yeah, like, magic! Everything is now all of a sudden carbon removal! Who would have predicted that this could have happened?”
The success of carbon removal depends, ultimately, on integrity — the industry’s favorite word these days. From the companies trying to remove carbon, to the carbon credit registries validating those efforts, to the nonprofits, brokers, and buyers that want to see the market scale, everyone is talking about developing transparent and trustworthy processes for measuring how much carbon is removed from the atmosphere by a given intervention. But how good is good measurement if experts don’t agree on what should be measured?
“There hasn’t been a way to standardize the climate impacts that are being promised,” said Minor. “And so I think unless we solve that problem, I just don’t see how we’re going to build the trust we need, to create the economics that we need and justify an industry that can’t really exist outside of the millions or billions of tons scale.”
https://heatmap.news/climate/what-is-carbon-removal
Laurene Weste | Celebrating our Heroes and Open Spaces
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
By Councilwoman Laurene Weste “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and […]
The post Laurene Weste | Celebrating our Heroes and Open Spaces appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/laurene-weste-celebrating-our-heroes-and-open-spaces/
Who Will Bring Up Climate at the First Presidential Debate?
date: 2024-06-27, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Severe storms dropped hail stones on Madrid • More than 500 people have died during a heat wave in Pakistan • A home near Minnesota’s failing Rapidan Dam was swept into the raging Blue Earth River.
THE TOP FIVE
- Biden and Trump to debate in Atlanta
President Biden and former President Donald Trump will meet in Atlanta tonight for the first presidential debate of 2024. The head-to-head comes as millions of Americans endure extreme weather events – from dangerous heat waves to wildfires to unprecedented flooding – made worse by climate change and our use of fossil fuels. If climate change comes up at the debate (and it may not), it’ll be interesting to see how both candidates handle it. Trump will probably attack Biden for cracking down on the fossil fuel industry. And while oil and gas production is soaring under Biden, he may not want to draw attention to that particular accolade as he vies for young progressive voters and touts his green agenda. “The dynamic could force Biden, who has made fighting climate change a pillar of his second-term pitch, to walk a rhetorical tightrope,” E&E News noted.
- Report: Corporate climate lawsuits are on the rise
A new report finds that climate lawsuits have risen in the last 20 years. While the overall number of cases has leveled off slightly recently, those filed against companies (as opposed to governments) are growing. About 230 were filed between 2015 and 2023, and the majority of those were launched in the last three years, according to the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. Here you can see the number of cases targeting corporations specifically since 2015:
Grantham
Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
The report says the trend is driven in part by a rise in lawsuits targeting the “professional and financial services that enable the work of fossil fuel companies.” For example, marketing and advertising companies that create positive campaigns for oil and gas firms. And another factor here is sectors that rely heavily on fossil fuels (airlines, for example) but may attempt to “climate wash” by overstating their environmental initiatives. These kinds of corporate lawsuits are becoming more and more common, and more than 70% have been successful. The report concludes that “companies from many sectors are now at risk of being taken to court over the climate.”
- Ford picks Long Beach for low-cost EV hub
Ford has chosen Long Beach, California, as the place where it will build its low-cost EV platform. The city’s mayor, Rex Richardson, announced the news yesterday. Ford has been bulking up its “secretive low-cost EV team” in recent months, hiring workers away from rivals like Rivian and Tesla. The Long Beach campus will open in early 2025 and house 450 employees who will focus on “developing a new generation of small, affordable vehicles,” according to Emma Bergg, a spokesperson for Ford’s EV division.
- Many Midwesterners hit by flooding lack flood insurance
Many Midwesterners don’t have flood insurance that would help them cover the damage from recent flooding events, ABC News reported. In the parts of Iowa that were inundated over the weekend, less than 1% of single-family homes have flood insurance from the government. One reason is because residents don’t expect to be flooded because they don’t live near major rivers or in areas that have historically been at high risk. But climate change is making extreme rainfall more common. As Heatmap’s Jeva Lange explained, “put simply, a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, which means worse deluges.”
- Heat battery startup Rondo Energy lands new customers
Rondo Energy, a Silicon Valley startup building “heat batteries” to replace fossil fuels in heavy industries, announced three new customers yesterday. As Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported, in just a few months’ time, the company has gone from serving a single industry — ethanol — at its pilot plant in California, to making deals around the globe that demonstrate the technology’s potential versatility. With grant funding from Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, as well as the European Investment Bank, the company will install three commercial-scale batteries at factories in Denmark, Germany, and Portugal. Each one will prove Rondo’s compatibility with a different industry: In Denmark, the battery will be used to produce low-carbon biogas. In Germany, it will power a Covestro chemical plant that produces polymers. In Portugal, it will power a to-be-announced food and beverage factory.
THE KICKER
Scientists are surprised to find that some small, low-lying islands in the tropics aren’t sinking even as sea levels rise due to climate change, The New York Times reported. Instead, it seems the islands can “adjust naturally” to the sea level changes, which offers a glimmer of hope to the islands’ residents.
https://heatmap.news/politics/debate-biden-trump-climate-2024
Anthropic tries ‘to enable beneficial uses’ of AI by government agencies
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Not keen on smart weapons, more interested in stopping human trafficking
Anthropic wants governments to think of it when they want AI to make the world a better place. No, seriously.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/anthropic_claude_government/
Biden and Trump will debate tonight. Here’s what you need to know
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The LAist
President Biden and former President Donald Trump will face off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 general election on Thursday night in Atlanta. Find out how to watch and what to watch for.
https://laist.com/news/politics/biden-and-trump-will-debate-on-thursday-heres-what-you-need-to-know
Stephen B. Maseda | Irreparable Harm to the Republic
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
One of the comments I heard concerning the events in the New York judicial system was made by constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University, that he […]
The post Stephen B. Maseda | Irreparable Harm to the Republic appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/stephen-b-maseda-irreparable-harm-to-the-republic/
Podcast: Replacing 404 Media with AI
date: 2024-06-27, from: 404 Media Group
Emanuel’s AI-powered ripoff news site; we listen to the music that has record labels suing startups; and chatbots have changed their personalities overnight.
https://www.404media.co/podcast-replacing-404-media-with-ai/
A Gentle Intro to TypeScript
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: Deno blog
Quick, digestible bites of TypeScript goodness for Deno developers. In this first bite, we introduce TypeScript, how to add type annotations to your code and why you should.
https://deno.com/blog/deno-bites-ts-intro
Tasmania Is Hiring for a ‘Wombat Walker’ and Other Odd Jobs
date: 2024-06-27, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The Australian island state is trying to drum up tourism during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter
Byron York | Trump Talks Debate Ahead of Rematch
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
Former President Donald Trump knows he overdid it in his first debate with Joe Biden back in September 2020. In a recent conversation at Mar-a-Lago, I asked Trump, “A lot […]
The post Byron York | Trump Talks Debate Ahead of Rematch appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/byron-york-trump-talks-debate-ahead-of-rematch/
Microsoft yanks Windows 11 update after boot loop blunder
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tour of recovery options not supposed to be part of KB5039302
Microsoft has pulled a Windows 11 update after users reported boot loops and startup failures.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/windows_11_faulty_update/
When a politician is paid out matters, Supreme Court says
date: 2024-06-27, from: Marketplace Morning Report
In a 6-3 ruling, Supreme Court justices have narrowed the scope of federal corruption law, as it pertains to state and local officials. Justices ruled that a former mayor in Indiana did not commit a crime when he took $13,000 as a purported consulting fee after — not before — awarding city contracts to a trucking company. We’ll also have an honest conversation about Social Security funding. Plus, is Nike a dinosaur brand?
Joe Guzzardi | The Newest Big Immigration Lie: ‘Fully Vetted’
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
If Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, the Committee on the Judiciary’s ranking member, can’t properly explain the vetting process for illegal immigrants to a national television audience, then the border […]
The post Joe Guzzardi | The Newest Big Immigration Lie: ‘Fully Vetted’ appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/joe-guzzardi-the-newest-big-immigration-lie-fully-vetted/
Lee Resolution: Declaring the Thirteen Colonies Free
date: 2024-06-27, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
On June 21, 2024, the exhibition Road to Revolution opened in the National Archives Building. The series features National Archives records that tell the story from colonial resistance to American independence and the diverse experiences of the nation’s founding generation. Today’s post from Mary Ryan on the Lee Resolution is an update of her 2002 … Continue reading Lee Resolution: Declaring the Thirteen Colonies Free
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2024/06/27/lee-resolution-declaring-the-thirteen-colonies-free/
Japanese Yen hits new low
date: 2024-06-27, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: The Japanese Yen has fallen to its weakest level against the U.S. dollar for nearly 40 years. It’s causing jitters in the markets, and analysts warn about potential government intervention. Then, protests are continuing in Kenya over the unpopular new finance bill. And as Barcelona becomes the latest city to crack down on short-term rentals, we hear from an unhappy property owner.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/japanese-yen-hits-new-low
Atos’s UK auditor raises ‘material uncertainty’ about future
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Looming debt repayments and stalling restructure talks cause for concern
The UK wing of Atos, the ailing IT services provider that has scored billions of pounds in government contracts locally, has pointed to a “material uncertainty” over its ability to continue trading as a going concern.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/atos_uk_going_concern/
Front-runners emerge in contest for Trump vice president
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/front-runners-emerge-in-contest-for-trump-vice-president-/7675278.html
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-06-27, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
“The night won’t end” - five month investigation into Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza.
Now freshly demoted by YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECFpW5zoFXA
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112687993041528225
Colour Word Clock | The MagPi #143
date: 2024-06-27, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
The Gurgle Apps siblings have created a kit that you can build yourself using Raspberry Pi Pico – the Colour Word Clock.
The post Colour Word Clock | The MagPi #143 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/colour-word-clock-the-magpi-143/
Elon Musk to destroy the International Space Station – with NASA’s approval, for a fee
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
SpaceX wins contract for ‘deorbit vehicle’ at a pleasing price
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has won a NASA contract to de-orbit the International Space Station (ISS).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/spacex_wins_iss_deorbit_contract/
How many Microsoft missteps were forks that were just a bit of fun?
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Raymond Chen on cutting loose with a copy of the code
Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen has dropped another nugget of Microspeak – the “fun fork.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/microsoft_windows_fun_fork/
long term curl versions
date: 2024-06-27, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
In the curl project we ship new releases based on the master branch of our git repository, in a clean and linear commit history. We have never maintained an old branch for long term or stability etc. Instead we promise to not break user behavior nor the ABI or API. All users should be able … Continue reading long term curl versions
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/06/27/long-term-curl-versions/
Felix Oliver Friedrich commented on issue #144 at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
The observation is correct. However, return by reference is an inherently dangerous thing to do and soundness cannot be guaranteed. The following is an example:
PROCEDURE P(VAR i: INTEGER): VAR INTEGER;
VAR j := -1;
BEGIN
j := -1;
IF i<0 THEN RETURN i
ELSE RETURN P(j)
END
END P;This returns the local variable but cannot be detected by the compiler.
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/144#note_192550
Felix Oliver Friedrich commented on issue #143 at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
I don't see the problem. The assignment operator
:= is used within its own
declaration. That yields an infinite recursion that should be avoided
but not something that the compiler should syntactically reject.
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/143#note_192547
Private Prisons Want You To Go Directly To Jail
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Lever News
Private prison companies are pushing states to get tougher on crime, then cashing in on the profits.
https://www.levernews.com/private-prisons-want-you-to-go-directly-to-jail/
Reddit hopes robots.txt tweak will do the trick in scaring off AI training data scrapers
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Pay up or go away, pretty please?
For many Reddit has become the go to repository of community and crowdsourced knowledge, a fact that has no doubt made it a prime target for AI startups desperate for training data.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/reddit_ai_info/
Sergey Durmanov opened issue #144: issue with returning a local variable by reference. at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
There is no check that a local variable or parameter is being returned (for a variable parameter, returning by reference is acceptable)
MODULE Test;
TYPE
R = RECORD
PROCEDURE P*(): VAR INTEGER;
VAR i: INTEGER;
BEGIN
RETURN i;
END P;
PROCEDURE Q*(i: INTEGER): VAR INTEGER;
BEGIN
RETURN i;
END Q;
PROCEDURE X*(CONST i: INTEGER): VAR INTEGER;
BEGIN
RETURN i;
END X;
PROCEDURE Y*(VAR i: INTEGER): VAR INTEGER;
BEGIN
RETURN i; (* OK *)
END Y;
END;
END Test.https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/144
Sergey Durmanov opened issue #143: problem when matching parameter types in the ":=" operator at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
This code compiles although it contains a parameter type matching error:
MODULE Test;
TYPE
R = RECORD END;
OPERATOR ":="(VAR l: R; r: BOOLEAN);
BEGIN
l := r; (*!*)
END ":=";
OPERATOR ":="(VAR l: R; r: INTEGER);
BEGIN
l := r; (*!*)
END ":=";
END Test.https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/143
Today in SCV History (June 27)
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1542 – Explorer Juan Cabrillo sets sail from Mexico; will stop for a drink at mouth of Santa Clara River. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-june-27/
99 Years Since the 6.5: Dispatches from the Epicenter
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Reporting the story of the 1924 Santa Barbara earthquake.
The post 99 Years Since the 6.5: Dispatches from the Epicenter appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/27/99-years-since-the-6-5-dispatches-from-the-epicenter/
Reducing the Strain on the Power Grid
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Two-way charging of car batteries can save utilities and customers money.
The post Reducing the Strain on the Power Grid appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/27/reducing-the-strain-on-the-power-grid/
Ads hypocrisy
date: 2024-06-27, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>I was browsing the web—like I often do—and I stumbled on a message on a website that read:</p>If you’re reading this, you blocked our ad. That’s cool, we block ads too. This site is free though, so maybe unblock the ad so we can keep paying for this website that you’re on, thanks.
This message rubbed me in the wrong way for a variety of reasons. First, the hypocrisy of its content is annoying: we do something to others but you should not do the same to us. Isn’t the whole “Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you.” common wisdom at this point? Second, the “This site is free though” is a shitty attempt to justify having ads served by an AD network because that’s literally what every goddamn site out there does. Facebook is free. Should I allow the tracking because of it? And lastly, the “so we can keep paying for this website” is a desperate attempt to guilt trip me into disabling my adblocker. I know very well how much running a site like that costs. And I know for a fact the people behind that site all have daily jobs. And so they can easily afford to pay for this site exactly like countless others are paying for theirs.
The discourse around advertising on the web is messy. And the pervasiveness of ads doesn’t help. You can just see how advertising manages to find its way into almost everything. But if you’re a creator of any kind it’s important to recognise the hypocrisy in some of the arguments that are floating out there. The most glaring example is YouTube. People often argue that by watching YouTube with adblockers I’m stealing revenues from creators. Fair. The proposed solution is to pay for YouTube Premium. Again, fair. My question is: are creators going to upload YT Premium exclusive versions of the videos without their sponsors’ ad reads baked in? The answer is no because that’s where the vast majority of the revenues come from for them. And that’s another example of the hypocrisy that’s powering this entire business model.
I don’t hate the general concept of an AD. I think sponsorships and partnerships can be a net benefit if done correctly, especially when done without tracking and profiling. If you run a site that’s focused on a niche, the profiling is implicit. For example, the people who visit minimalissimo.com probably have an interest in design and architecture otherwise they wouldn’t waste their time on that site. And so if I were to do some sort of partnership it would make sense to work with companies that make products within those niches. That’s how “good” advertising should work on the web. And that’s how it used to be before hyper-targeting was a thing. Mind you, it’s still an option and plenty of people do do it. It pays less than targeting advertising, for obvious reasons. But creators need to do their part if we hope to make progress on this front. Because the future can’t be targeted advertising everywhere at anytime.
I’m not going to disable my adblocker for you. I’m running two at the same time precisely because I don’t give a fuck about your stupid targeted ad. But if you give me an option to donate something to you directly I’m gonna do it. Because I believe contributing directly is the most sane way to keep this whole boat afloat.
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Alibaba Cloud reveals its datacenter design, homebrew network used for LLM training
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
15,000 GPUs per DC, in hosts packing eight apiece, plus nine NICs – helped by switches with custom heat sinks
Exclusive Alibaba Cloud has revealed the design of an Ethernet-based network it created specifically to carry traffic for training large language models – and has used in production for eight months.…
Indian govt probes claims Foxconn won’t hire married women
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cultural traditions clash with manufacturing ambitions
Updated India’s Ministry of Labor and Employment has ordered an investigation of Foxconn – the contract manufacturer supplier also known as Hon Hai Precision and one of Apple’s main suppliers – after reports emerged alleging the company will not hire married women to work at its main iPhone assembly plant on the subcontinent.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/foxconn_hiring_married_women/
Indy Hops 2024
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
July 1 – July 311 Month. 7 Breweries. 10 Locations. Indy Hops is back again! Join us for Santa Barbara’s
The post Indy Hops 2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/26/indy-hops-2024/
2 pandas en route from China to US under conservation partnership
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
SAN DIEGO — A pair of giant pandas are on their way from China to the U.S., where they will be cared for at the San Diego Zoo as part of an ongoing conservation partnership between the two nations, officials said Wednesday.
Officials with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were on hand in China for a farewell ceremony commemorating the departure of the giant pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao.
The celebration included cultural performances, video salutations from Chinese and American students and a gift exchange among conservation partners, the zoo said in a statement. After the ceremony, the giant pandas began their trip to Southern California.
“This farewell celebrates their journey and underscores a collaboration between the United States and China on vital conservation efforts,” Paul Baribault, the wildlife alliance president, said in a statement. “Our long-standing partnership with China Wildlife Conservation Association has been instrumental in advancing giant panda conservation, and we look forward to continuing our work together to ensure the survival and thriving of this iconic species.”
It could be several weeks before the giant pandas will be viewable to the public in San Diego, officials said.
Yun Chuan, a mild-mannered male who’s nearly 5 years old, has connections to California, the wildlife alliance said previously. His mother, Zhen Zhen, was born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007 to parents Bai Yun and Gao Gao.
Xin Bao is a nearly 4-year-old female described as “a gentle and witty introvert with a sweet round face and big ears.”
The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has a nearly 30-year partnership with leading conservation institutions in China focused on protecting and recovering giant pandas and the bamboo forests they depend on.
Island Breeze Farms Goes Back to the Drawing Board
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Cannabis operation next to the Polo Condos in the Carpinteria Valley must install carbon scrubbers for odor control, Santa Barbara County Planning Commission says.
The post Island Breeze Farms Goes Back to the Drawing Board appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/26/island-breeze-farms-goes-back-to-the-drawing-board/
Santa Barbara’s State Street Master Plan Begins to Take Form
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The city presents its latest vision for a “people-first” future of downtown.
The post Santa Barbara’s State Street Master Plan Begins to Take Form appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/26/santa-barbaras-state-street-master-plan-begins-to-take-form/
How Prisoners Find Freedom Behind Bars
date: 2024-06-27, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Two Santa Barbara psychologists help heal traumatic wounds.
The post How Prisoners Find Freedom Behind Bars appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/06/26/how-prisoners-find-freedom-behind-bars/
Isaiah Collier slides to No. 29 in NBA Draft
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The former No. 2 overall recruit will join the Utah Jazz.
The post Isaiah Collier slides to No. 29 in NBA Draft appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/06/26/isaiah-collier-slides-to-no-29-in-nba-draft/
Lenovo brings virtualization, cloud stack to Chinese chip designer Loongson’s CPU arch
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
NAS slingers, healthcare software makers, government buyers join the march to silicon sovereignty
Chinese chip shop Loongson, which has built modest CPUs based on its own MIPS-like architecture, is on the march towards enterprise workloads.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/lenovo_loongson/
Religious freedom report: US notes rising bigotry amid Gaza war
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
An annual U.S. government report has sounded an alarm about rising bigotry worldwide against both Jews and Muslims amid the war in Gaza. It also has found that religious freedom is under assault globally and offers rare criticism of the U.S. ally India. VOA State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching has more.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-06-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Cityside launches Richmondside, its third local news site in California.
Korean telco allegedly infected its P2P users with malware
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
KT may have had an entire team dedicated to infecting its own customers
A South Korean media outlet has alleged that local telco KT deliberately infected some customers with malware due to their excessive use of peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading tools.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/kt_p2p_malware_claim/
Evidence mounts Islamic State is looking to the US southern border
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence and security officials are increasing their focus on the country’s southern border, worried the constant flow of migrants has attracted the attention of the Islamic State terror group.
The heightened concern follows the arrests earlier this month of eight men from Tajikistan, all of whom entered the United States via its southern border with Mexico, some making the trip over a year ago.
While the initial background checks came up clean, U.S. law enforcement subsequently turned up information indicating potential ties to the Islamic State group, also known as IS or ISIS.
“It’s not lost on us that the people who killed over 150 Russians in that theater were from the same part of the world,” said Ken Wainstein, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, referring to the March attack on a Moscow concert hall, claimed by the terror group’s Afghan affiliate.
Wainstein, testifying Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, said concern about the potential for IS to exploit the border has led to daily meetings with the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), as well as unprecedented cooperation with the FBI.
But he sought to downplay concerns stemming from intelligence suggesting that the IS-linked human smuggling network may have brought more than 400 migrants from Central Asia into the U.S., across the southern border.
“There is not information which suggests those particular individuals are terrorist operatives,” Wainstein told lawmakers.
Information on the 400 migrants, first reported by NBC News, indicates more than 150 of the migrants have been arrested. But officials told NBC that the whereabouts of more than 50 others are unknown.
The newfound concerns about terror groups like IS actively trying to exploit the southern border seems to indicate a significant shift in the threat landscape.
For years, U.S. counterterrorism officials have maintained there was no evidence that IS or other Sunni terror groups were trying to infiltrate the U.S. along its border with Mexico.
And this past November, NCTC Director Christine Abizaid told lawmakers that while counterterrorism officials “absolutely recognize the risk,” evidence for such plots was lacking.
“We don’t have indications that are credible or corroborated,” she told members of the House of Representatives at the time.
But U.S. and Turkish sanctions unveiled earlier this month may point to the Islamic State terror group’s growing interest in human smuggling.
The sanctions focus on what the U.S. Treasury Department described as a Eurasian human smuggling network that was providing support for IS members in Turkey.
One of the key operatives, Olimkhon Ismailov, is based in Uzbekistan. And Ismailov had high-level help, with Treasury alleging he was given guidance by the leader of IS in the Republic of Georgia, Adam Khamirzaev.
According to the U.S. State Department, Khamirzaev apparently had his sights set on the U.S.
The IS-Georgia emir “provided guidance to this network on a range of activities supporting ISIS and was aware of its efforts to facilitate travelers to the United States,” the State Department said in a statement.
Multiple U.S. agencies, including DHS, the FBI and the State Department declined to respond to questions about the reach of the Eurasian human smuggling network involved with IS operatives in Turkey and Uzbekistan.
There are also no indications that the sanctioned network is connected to the same IS-linked network that brought the eight men from Tajikistan, or the hundreds of other Central Asian migrants, into the U.S. through the southern border.
As for the eight men from Tajikistan, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters in Tucson, Arizona, Wednesday that, “They are in removal proceedings as we speak.”
And other U.S. officials say they have stepped up security measures.
“We have increased our vigilance at our border,” said Jen Daskal, the White House deputy Homeland Security adviser, virtually addressing a counterterrorism conference Wednesday in Omaha, Nebraska.
“We have enhanced our screening and vetting, instituted recurrent vetting of migrants to identify newly uncovered threats and detain those who pose a public safety threat,” she said.
But Daskal admitted the threat from IS, and especially its Afghan affiliate, persists.
“Both ISIS and ISIS-Khorasan, or what we call ISIS-K, have demonstrated a capability and intent to conduct external operations,” she said.
US criticizes China in international religious freedom report
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-criticizes-china-in-international-religious-freedom-report/7675328.html
Saugus school district recognizes Joan Lucid Award honorees
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
Multiple studies, and test scores from the past couple years, have shown the toll the COVID-19 pandemic has had on students. To that end, the Saugus Union School District has […]
The post Saugus school district recognizes Joan Lucid Award honorees appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/saugus-school-district-recognizes-joan-lucid-award-honorees/
Saugus school board signs off on budget, union contracts
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
The Saugus Union School District governing board at Tuesday’s meeting signed off on the 2024-25 budget and ratified the union contracts that were agreed to earlier this month. Both items […]
The post Saugus school board signs off on budget, union contracts appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/saugus-school-board-signs-off-on-budget-union-contracts/
US health agency issues dengue virus infection advisory
date: 2024-06-27, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-health-agency-issues-dengue-virus-infection-advisory/7675298.html
Ocean Water Warning for June 26
date: 2024-06-27, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health cautions residents who are planning to visit the below Los Angeles County beaches to avoid swimming, surfing, and playing in ocean waters
https://scvnews.com/ocean-water-warning-for-june-26/
Hart district budget given OK by board
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
School districts across the state are facing a year in which funding could be well below what they have been used to in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic. With […]
The post Hart district budget given OK by board appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/hart-district-budget-given-ok-by-board/
City takes action against Plumwood home
date: 2024-06-27, from: The Signal
After a closed session discussion Tuesday evening, the Santa Clarita City Council authorized the takeover of a property on Plumwood Avenue in Canyon Country due to problems with an ongoing […]
The post City takes action against Plumwood home appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/06/city-takes-action-against-plumwood-home/
WhisperGate suspect indicted as US offers a $10M bounty for his capture
date: 2024-06-27, updated: 2024-06-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Russian national accused of attacks in lead-up to the Ukraine war
The US Department of Justice has indicted a 22-year-old Russian for allegedly attacking Ukrainian government computers and destroying critical infrastructure systems in the so-called “WhisperGate” wiper attack that preceded Russia’s illegal invasion of the European nation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/whispergate_malware_suspect_bounty/
PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2 Released!
date: 2024-06-27, from: PostgreSQL News
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that the second beta release of PostgreSQL 17 is now available for download. This release contains previews of all features that will be available when PostgreSQL 17 is made generally available, though some details of the release can change during the beta period.
You can find information about all of the PostgreSQL 17 features and changes in the release notes:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/release-17.html
In the spirit of the open source PostgreSQL community, we strongly encourage you to test the new features of PostgreSQL 17 on your systems to help us eliminate bugs or other issues that may exist. While we do not advise you to run PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2 in production environments, we encourage you to find ways to run your typical application workloads against this beta release.
Your testing and feedback will help the community ensure that the PostgreSQL 17 release upholds our standards of delivering a stable, reliable release of the world’s most advanced open source relational database. Please read more about our beta testing process and how you can contribute:
https://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta/
Upgrading to PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2
To upgrade to PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2 from an earlier version of
PostgreSQL, you will need to use a strategy similar to upgrading between
major versions of PostgreSQL (e.g. pg_upgrade or
pg_dump / pg_restore). For more information,
please visit the documentation section on
upgrading.
Changes Since Beta 1
Fixes and changes in PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2 include:
-
Correctly enforce the default behavior of the
ON EMPTYclause when it’s not present in a SQL/JSON query. -
Fixed issue with
pg_logical_slot_get_changesrelated to resource ownership. - Several fixes around the new data structure for vacuum-related data.
Please see the release notes for a complete list of new and changed features:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/release-17.html
Testing for Bugs & Compatibility
The stability of each PostgreSQL release greatly depends on you, the community, to test the upcoming version with your workloads and testing tools in order to find bugs and regressions before the general availability of PostgreSQL 17. As this is a Beta, minor changes to database behaviors, feature details, and APIs are still possible. Your feedback and testing will help determine the final tweaks on the new features, so please test in the near future. The quality of user testing helps determine when we can make a final release.
A list of open issues is publicly available in the PostgreSQL wiki. You can report bugs using this form on the PostgreSQL website:
https://www.postgresql.org/account/submitbug/
Beta Schedule
This is the second beta release of version 17. The PostgreSQL Project will release additional betas as required for testing, followed by one or more release candidates, until the final release around September/October 2024. For further information please see the Beta Testing page.
Links
- Download
- Beta Testing Information
- PostgreSQL 17 Beta Release Notes
- PostgreSQL 17 Open Issues
- Feature Matrix
- Submit a Bug
- Follow @postgresql on X/Twitter
- Donate
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-17-beta-2-released-2885/
The anatomy of metadata matching
date: 2024-06-27, from: Crossref Blog
In our previous blog post about metadata matching, we discussed what it is and why we need it (tl;dr: to discover more relationships within the scholarly record). Here, we will describe some basic matching-related terminology and the components of a matching process. We will also pose some typical product questions to consider when developing or integrating matching solutions.
Basic terminology
Metadata matching is a high-level concept, with many different problems falling into this category. Indeed, no matter how much we like to focus on the similarities between different forms of matching, matching affiliation strings to ROR IDs or matching preprints to journal papers are still different in several important ways. At Crossref and ROR, we call these problems matching tasks.
Simply put, a matching task defines the kind or nature of the matching. Examples of matching tasks are bibliographic reference matching, affiliation matching, grant matching, or preprint matching.
Every matching task has an input, which is all the data that is needed to perform the matching. Input data can come in many shapes and forms, depending on the matching task. For example, all of the following could be inputs to a matching task:
Department of Molecular Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo 060-8556, Japan
<fr:program xmlns:fr="http://www.crossref.org/fundref.xsd" name="fundref">
<fr:assertion name="fundgroup">
<fr:assertion name="funder_name">
European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program through Marie Sklodowska Curie
<fr:assertion name="funder_identifier">http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000780</fr:assertion>
</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="award_number">721624</fr:assertion>
</fr:assertion>
</fr:program>
Everitt, W. N., & Kalf, H. (2007). The Bessel differential equation and the Hankel transform. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 208(1), 3–19.
{
"title": "Functional single-cell genomics of human cytomegalovirus infection",
"issued": "2021-10-25",
"author": [
{"given": "Marco Y.", "family": "Hein"},
{"given": "Jonathan S.", "family": "Weissman", "ORCID": "http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2445-670X"}
]
}
Every matching task also has an output. For our purposes, this is almost exclusively zero or more matched identifiers. In the context of a specific matching task, output identifiers may be of a specific type (e.g. we might match to a ROR ID, and never to an ORCID ID). In some cases, there can be a certain target set as well (i.e. matching only to DataCite DOIs). The output identifiers can have different cardinality depending on the task, meaning that the matching task might allow for zero, one, or more identifiers as a result of matching to a single input.
A matching strategy defines how the matching is done. Multiple strategies can exist for a specific matching task. Compound strategies can run other strategies and combine their outcomes into a single result.
In some cases, we may also want the matching strategy to output a confidence score for each matched identifier. A confidence score represents the degree of certainty or likelihood that the matched identifier is correct, typically expressed as a value between 0 and 1. This score may help with post-processing or further interpretation of the results.
To summarise, the anatomy of the matching task can be diagrammed as follows:
How to specify a matching task
Whenever we plan the development or integration of a matching solution, it is good to begin by answering a few basic questions:
- What problem do we plan to solve with our matching task? What would we call our matching task and how would we describe it?
- What do we expect as the input for this matching task? Which input formats do we need to be able to accept? What information do we expect to find in this input?
- What kind of identifiers should be output? Is there a target set of identifiers? Can our matching output zero/one/or multiple identifiers, and under what conditions might that occur?
These sound fairly simple, but the answers to these questions can be remarkably complex. Once one tries to apply these concepts to real-world problems, they might encounter several non-obvious challenges.
For example, one common concern is at what level we should define each matching task. Consider the following problems:
- Matching bibliographic reference strings to DOIs. Example input:
Everitt, W. N., & Kalf, H. (2007). The Bessel differential equation and the Hankel transform. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 208(1), 3–19.
- Matching structured bibliographic reference to DOIs. Example input:
{
volume: "208",
author: "Everitt",
journal-title: "J. Comput. Appl. Math.",
article-title: "The Bessel differential equation and the Hankel transform",
first-page: "3",
year: "2007",
issue: "1"
}
Are those discrete matching tasks (unstructured reference matching vs. structured reference matching), or are they the same task (reference matching) that can accept different types of inputs (unstructured or structured)?
Similarly, let’s compare the following tasks:
- Matching affiliation strings to ROR IDs. Example input:
Department of Molecular Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo 060-8556, Japan
- Matching funder names to ROR IDs. Example input:
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Are these different matching tasks (affiliation matching vs. funder matching), or the same task with different inputs (organisation matching)?
Defining the boundaries of a matching task can also be difficult. Consider, for example, the need to obtain ROR IDs for organisations mentioned in the acknowledgements section of a full-text academic paper. To begin, one may first extract the acknowledgement section from the full text, then run something like a named entity recognition (NER) tool to isolate the organisation names from the extracted text, and finally match these names to ROR IDs. Is this entire process matching, with the input being the full text of a paper? Or perhaps matching starts with the acknowledgement section as the input? Instead, is it only the last phase, where we try to match the extracted name to the ROR ID, that constitutes the matching task, with the extraction phases being completely separate processes?
There are also important questions related to the expected behaviour of a matching strategy. Consider, for example, developing an affiliation matching strategy where we define our input as “an affiliation string”. What should happen when the strategy gets something else on the input, for example, song lyrics? Perhaps the strategy should simply return no matches, or an error, or we could say that in such a situation the behaviour is undefined and it simply doesn’t matter what is returned. But what should happen if in this input we have the lyrics of Street Life by Roxy Music, a song that mentions the names of a few universities that happen to have ROR IDs?
It is likewise important to consider what should happen if different parts of the input match to different identifiers, like in the following example:
Department of Haematology, Eastern Health and Monash University, Box Hill, Australia
Here, “Eastern Health” matches to https://ror.org/00vyyx863 and “Monash University” to https://ror.org/02bfwt286. Should the matching strategy return all the identifiers, one of them (if so, which one?), or nothing at all?
Similar questions arise when it is possible to match to multiple versions (or duplicates) in the target identifier set. This can happen, for example, in the context of bibliographic reference matching or preprint matching. Multiple matches may occur when there are different editions, reprints, or variations of the same publication in the target dataset, each with its own unique identifier.
If you are waiting for an answer to these questions, we unfortunately must disappoint you here. These can only be answered in the context of a specific problem, considering who the users are and what it is they need and expect.
Did you notice any other subtleties related to metadata matching and its concerns? Are there other non-obvious questions that should be considered when planning to develop or integrate metadata matching strategies? Let us know—we’d love to hear from you!
https://www.crossref.org/blog/the-anatomy-of-metadata-matching/
The Anatomy of Metadata Matching (cross-post)
date: 2024-06-27, from: ROR Research ID Blog
The second blog post about metadata matching by ROR’s Adam Buttrick and Crossref’s Dominika Tkaczyk describes some basic matching-related terminology and the components of a matching process, then poses some typical product questions to consider when developing or integrating matching solutions.
https://ror.org/blog/2024-06-27-anatomy-of-metadata-matching/
“No way to prevent this” say users of only language where this regularly happens
date: 2024-06-27, from: Ze Iaso’s blog
https://xeiaso.net/shitposts/no-way-to-prevent-this/CVE-2024-5535/
“No way to prevent this” say users of only language where this regularly happens
date: 2024-06-27, from: Ze Iaso’s blog
https://xeiaso.net/shitposts/no-way-to-prevent-this/CVE-2024-28820/