I was tempted, just for a moment, to preface all that abstract nonsense,
all those higher ramblings, with καὶ παίζειν ὅτε καιρός, ἐπαίξαμεν•
ἡνίκα καιρὸς οὐκέτι, λωιτέρης φροντίδος ἁψόμεθα. When it was time for
play, we played. Now that is no longer we will apply ourselves to higher
thoughts. So writes Philodemus, the final two […]
Voyagers
of Mars: The First CHAPEA Crew’s Yearlong Journey
date: 2024-07-11, from: NASA breaking news
When the first humans travel to the Red Planet, they will need to
know how to repair and maintain equipment, grow their own food, and stay
healthy, all while contending with Earth-to-Mars communication delays.
They must also find ways to build comradery and have fun. The first
all-volunteer CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog)
[…]
Google:
We’re still working to defeat Microsoft’s ‘anticompetitive’ cloud
policy
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Yesterday’s settlement between MS and Euro cloud providers shouldn’t
‘fool’ you, says Alphabet arm’s cloud boss
Google says Microsoft’s confidential settlement with a group of European
cloud providers is merely about using its financial muscle to make
complaints about software licensing costs vanish.…
3
men accused of murdering New Zealand tourist at California mall make
first court appearance
date: 2024-07-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
3 LA County men accused of carrying out an attempted armed robbery at
mall in which a 68-year-old New Zealand woman was dragged to her death
under a getaway car.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog, an early player in the Apple blogosphere
that has been defunct for a decade, has been revived as an AI-powered
site that rewrites content from other sites. iLounge suffered the same
fate. Avoid both sites from now on.
Oil
tanker held by Iran for over a year heads toward international
waters
date: 2024-07-11, from: VOA News USA
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An oil tanker held by Iran for over a
year after being seized amid tensions between Tehran and the United
States was sailing Thursday toward international waters, tracking data
showed.
The Marshall Islands-flagged tanker Advantage Sweet traveled toward
the Strait of Hormuz, where it was seized in April 2023 by Iran’s navy
while carrying $50 million worth of oil from Kuwait for Chevron
Corporation. That’s according to tracking data analyzed by The
Associated Press, which also listed the vessel’s destination at Khor
Fakkan in the United Arab Emirates, which has been the first port of
call for other vessels leaving Iranian detention.
Iran did not acknowledge the ship’s departure. It came after an
Iranian court on Thursday ordered the U.S. government to pay over $6.7
billion in compensation over a Swedish company stopping its supply of
special dressings and bandages for those afflicted by a rare skin
disorder after Washington imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Iran’s government initially said it seized the Advantage Sweet
because it hit another vessel, a claim not supported by any evidence.
Then Iranian officials linked the Advantage Sweet’s seizure to the court
case that was decided Thursday.
A report by the state-run IRNA news agency described the $6.7 billion
order as being filed on behalf of 300 plaintiffs, including family
members of victims and those physically and emotionally damaged. IRNA
said about 20 patients died after the Swedish company’s decision.
Epidermolysis bullosa is a rare genetic condition that causes
blisters all over the body and eyes. It can be incredibly painful and
kill those afflicted. The young who suffer from the disease are known as
“butterfly children” as their skin can appear as fragile as a
butterfly’s wing.
The order comes as U.S. judges have issued rulings that call for
billions of dollars to be paid by Iran over attacks linked to Tehran, as
well as those detained by Iran and used as pawns in negotiations between
the countries — something Iran has responded to with competing lawsuits
accusing the U.S. of involvement in a 2017 Islamic State group attack.
The United Nations’ highest court also last year rejected Tehran’s legal
bid to free up some $2 billion in Iranian Central Bank assets frozen by
U.S. authorities.
In 2018, then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S.
from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, apparently sparking the
Swedish company to withdraw from the Iranian market. Iran now says it
locally produces the bandages.
Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, has maintained that the
Advantage Sweet was “seized under false pretenses.” It has since written
off the cargo as a loss.
The U.S. Navy has blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on
vessels that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as for a fatal drone
attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker that killed two European crew
members in 2021.
Tehran denies carrying out the attacks, but a wider shadow war
between Iran and the West has played out in the region’s volatile
waters. Iranian tanker seizures have been a part of it since 2019. The
last major seizure came when Iran took two Greek tankers in May 2022 and
held them until November of that year.
NASA’s
Hubble Traces Dark Matter in Dwarf Galaxy Using Stellar Motions
date: 2024-07-11, from: NASA breaking news
The qualities and behavior of dark matter, the invisible “glue” of
the universe, continue to be shrouded in mystery. Though galaxies are
mostly made of dark matter, understanding how it is distributed within a
galaxy offers clues to what this substance is, and how it’s relevant to
a galaxy’s evolution. While computer simulations suggest dark […]
I think you can figure out a lot about a person if you know what books
have had the most impact on them. At one point or another, each of these
books was my current favorite. They all had a lasting impact on me. I’d
love to see your list.
Tracy has smartly split hers up into categories. I’ll do the same here.
And just as Lou said, I’d love to see your list!
Formative Books
These books disproportionately influenced me when I was a much younger
adult, and helped contribute to the way I saw the world in a hundred
ways, from my sense of what was possible to my sense of humor.
Constellations:
Stories of the Future — a mind-blowing collection of science fiction
short stories, some of which became episodes of The Twilight
Zone and so on. Jerome Bixby’s It’s a Good Lifeand Fritz
Leiber’s A Pail of Air are standouts for me.
Something Wicked
This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury — There’s a warm, beating heart at
the center of this story, and that’s what draws me in every time (and
I’ve reread it countless times). There are better Bradbury books which
have probably aged better — you’re probably thinking of them right now —
but at the time, it resonated.
Maus, by Art
Spiegelman — It was much later until I really understood how my own
family was affected by WWII, but I connected to this hard. It was also
the first graphic novel that made me really think about the
possibilities of the form: something that was clearly far beyond
superheroes and fantasy.
The Handmaid’s Tale,
by Margaret Atwood — Practically a documentary at this point, but
it’s always been a riveting work of speculative fiction that does what
that genre does best: help us grasp with elements of our present. To
most of us, it’s a warning. To the Heritage Foundation, I guess it’s a
manual.
1984, by George
Orwell — It’s hard to imagine a more culturally influential science
fiction novel. I love it: although it has a lot to say, I find it to be
a page-turner. If you haven’t read Sandra Newman’s follow-up,
Julia, run to
get it: it’s an impressive work of fiction in its own right that
reframes the story in brilliant ways.
Microserfs, by
Douglas Coupland — Coupland sometimes reads like a funnier Bret
Easton Ellis (which is to say zeitgeisty but hollow —
Shampoo
Planet and The
Rules of Attraction are cousins), but at his best he captures
something real. Microserfs gave me that first taste of the community and
camaraderie around building software together: it’s set in an earlier
version of the industry than I got to be a part of, but its depiction of
those early years is recognizable. Even the outlandish characters don’t
feel out of place. I don’t think it’s probably aged at all well, but it
resonated with me hard in my early twenties.
Motivating External Change
These books helped me think about how we need to change, and what we
might do.
The Ministry for the
Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson — There’s a very silly passage in
this book about the role of blockchain in solving climate change (come
on), as well as quite a bit in favor of climate engineering,
which I think is highly dubious bordering on terrifying. But at the same
time, the novel succeeds at painting a visceral picture of what the
effects of the climate crisis could be.
Caste: The Origins
of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson — A key to understanding
America. There’s a lot spelled out here that I simply didn’t know,
running the gamut from the details of peoples’ everyday lived
experiences to the chilling fact that Hitler based his Nazi caste system
on Jim Crow.
Books That Changed Me
These books either left me a different person somehow or touched
something in me I didn’t know existed.
Kindred, by Octavia
Butler — I wish I’d discovered Butler earlier. Her work is immediate
and deeply human, and while it shouldn’t have had to change a whole
genre, it absolutely did.
Parable of the
Sower is seismic, of course, and rightly famous. (It’s also getting
to be a harder and harder read in the current climate.) But it was
Kindred that opened the doors to a different kind of science fiction to
me, and through it, all kinds of possibilities.
How High We Go in
the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu — I have never read a more effective
metaphor for grief and change. I read it when I was in the depths of
grief myself, and the way this book captures the nuance, the brutality,
and the beauty is poetry. I still think about one chapter almost daily.
(It’s the rollercoaster. If you know, you know.)
The Color Purple, by
Alice Walker — A breathtaking example of a modern novel: a
masterclass in form as well as content. Not a word is wasted in bringing
the lived experiences of her characters to life (and through them, so
many more). I’ve read this many times, and I’ve never made it through
without absolutely weeping.
Bird by Bird: Some
Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott — So often
recommended to writers for really good reasons, Bird by Bird is
not just the best book I’ve ever read about writing but also about
embarking upon any large project. It’s hopeful, nourishing,
actionable, and lovely. Its lessons still motivate me.
Do you have a list of your own that you would like to
share? Let me know!
Prices
in US fell in June for the first time since the start of the
pandemic
date: 2024-07-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
The better-than-expected inflation report further bolstered hopes
that a Federal Reserve rate cut could come sooner than later and help
make borrowing money less expensive.
NASA’s Glenn Research Center civil servant retirees are invited to
attend the 2024 Summerfest! Wednesday, Aug. 7, 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Along Taylor Road at Lewis Field For more information or to RSVP,
contact Kathy Clark at 216–433–8354 or kathy.m.clark@nasa.gov
Registration closes: July 26
Advance
Auto Parts: 2.3M people’s data accessed when crims broke into our
Snowflake account
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Letters from CISO Ethan Steiger suggest the data related to job
applications
Advance Auto Parts’ CISO just revealed for the first time the number of
individuals affected when criminals broke into its Snowflake instance –
a hefty 2.3 million.…
Current conditions: More than 10 inches of rain
fell over nine hours in southwestern China • Wildfires are spreading in
Canada, with at least 140 burning as of yesterday afternoon • The
streets of Cape Town in South Africa are under water after severe storms
caused widespread flooding.
THE TOP FIVE
Wind and solar surpass nuclear in U.S. electricity generation
More electricity was generated by wind and solar than by nuclear plants
in the first half of 2024 for the first time ever in U.S. history,
Reutersreported,
citing data from energy think tank Ember. Solar and wind farms generated
401.4 terawatt hours (TWh) compared to 390.5 TWh generated from nuclear
reactors, setting 2024 on pace to be the “first full year when more U.S.
electricity will come from renewables than from any other form of clean
power.” It’s helpful to compare these numbers to the same period last
year, when nuclear generated 9% more power than solar and wind. Solar
saw the greatest gains, with output 30% higher in the first half of 2024
compared to 2023; wind generation was up 10% and nuclear was up just
3.4%. Between 2018 and 2023, installed capacity grew by 168% for utility
solar and 56% for wind. Meanwhile, nuclear generation capacity dropped
by 4%.
BP forecasts that oil demand will peak next year
In its latest
energy
outlook report, fossil fuel giant BP forecasts that global demand
for oil will peak in 2025, and the related carbon emissions will, too.
The analysis is based on current climate policies and pledges, growing
efficiency standards for the internal combustion engine and a rise in
electric vehicles, and rapid expansion of renewables. By 2050, oil’s
share of the energy mix is predicted to fall to about 25%, and that
would decrease even more, to just 10%, if nations strengthen (and follow
through on) their climate pledges to better align with the Paris
Agreement.
BP
The report notes that energy demand is rising, and says the world must
enter an “energy substitution” phase in which clean energy supply
increases quickly to keep up while also allowing for fossil fuels to be
phased out. “The longer it takes for the world to move to a rapid and
sustained energy transition, the greater the risk of a costly and
disorderly adjustment pathway in the future,”
wrote
Spencer Dale, BP’s chief economist.
Intense U.S. heat wave kills least 28 people, breaks temperature
records
More than 160 million Americans have been under excessive heat warnings
this week. The heat is particularly oppressive in the West, where
temperature records have been falling and heat-related deaths are
rising. At least
28
people have died due to heat in the last week, and that number is
expected to climb, especially as the heat wave persists into next week.
NWS/NOAA
Las Vegas recorded five days a row where temperatures soared above 115
degrees Fahrenheit, breaking a record of four days set in 2005. On
Sunday the city hit 120 degrees, a new record for the hottest day. It
will be 118 degrees there today. “This is the most extreme heatwave in
the history of record-keeping in Las Vegas since 1937,” Nevada National
Weather Service meteorologist John Adair
toldThe Associated Press. In California, the weather has
been so hot that emergency rescue helicopters are
struggling
to fly.
Human-caused climate change is
making
heat waves more intense and more frequent. “While this summer is likely
to be one of the hottest on record, it is important to realize that it
may also be one of the coldest summers of the future,”
wrote
climate scientist Mathew Barlow and meteorology professor Jeffrey Basara
in an essay for The Conversation.
Report: Biden ‘made progress’ on most climate commitments since 2020
Climate change advocacy group Evergreen Action reviewed President
Biden’s record of following through on
climate
actions over the last four years. In 2020, the group put forward a
comprehensive
set of policy recommendations for Biden to use as a roadmap. The new
analysis finds that the administration has “made progress” on 85% of
those recommendations, including implementing new clean power policies,
advancing environmental justice, the creation of the American Climate
Corps, and trying to restrict liquefied natural gas exports. “The
Biden-Harris administration has done more on climate than any president
before,” Evergreen said. It’s worth reviewing the
entire
list of recommendations.
Get Heatmap AM directly in your inbox every morning:
Google-linked carbon removal startup signs deals worth $40 million
A carbon capture company named
280
Earth has signed agreements worth $40 million to remove 61,600 tons
of the greenhouse gas between now and 2030, Bloombergreported.
The company emerged from Alphabet’s moonshot factory and recently
launched direct air capture operations at its plant in Oregon. The plant
is located next to a Google data center and can use excess heat from
that center to “improve its efficiency, while cutting the center’s
cooling costs,” according to Bloomberg. The company’s
website says it plans to build more facilities across the United States.
It recently raised $50 million from private investors in a Series B
round.
THE KICKER
“Biden’s tremendous climate legacy rests on whether he can sell
his accomplishments to the public and win the 2024 election. And that
ability is faltering, to say the least.”
–Heatmap’s
Robinson Meyer
Oakland
B’s launch community investment campaign, paving way for fan
ownership
date: 2024-07-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Oakland Ballers announced on Thursday that they are launching a
community investment campaign, one that will offer fans both economic
rights and decision-making power
Bay
Area traffic stop of suspected stolen car leads to fiery crash,
death
date: 2024-07-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
A man suspected of stealing a car in San Francisco died in a
collision following a failed traffic stop and pursuit initiated by the
Vallejo police, marking the fourth traffic fatality within the city this
year.
Bay
Area beekeepers plead guilty to misdemeanor in employee death
date: 2024-07-11, from: San Jose Mercury News
Employee Carlos Del Toro was crushed between a cage and forklift
while exiting a Bobcat, according to the California Division of
Occupational Safety and Health. His death was ruled accidental.
European
Commission accepts Apple’s ‘tap and go’ promises
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Makes third-party wallets getting iOS NFC access a ‘legally binding’
thing
Apple has avoided a potential hefty fine and an antitrust case in Europe
after making concessions that include opening up access to iPhone
hardware needed for “tap and go” applications.…
How
to help children understand the Indigenous land they live on
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The LAist
In recent years, a number of institutions have adopted land
acknowledgements. But for young children, settler colonialism might be
hard to grasp. Here’s how to help children understand.
When
Government Bureaucracy Fails Them, a Collective of Indigenous Migrants
Figure It Out Themselves
date: 2024-07-11, from: The Markup blog
The Concejo de Pueblos Originarios combats vaccine misinformation,
translates for fellow migrants in court, and works with linguists to
create new Indigenous words.
Colectivo
de inmigrantes indígenas se organiza ante la falta de servicios
gubernamentales
date: 2024-07-11, from: The Markup blog
El Concejo de Pueblos Originarios combate la desinformación sobre las
vacunas, realiza traducciones para las y los compañeros migrantes en la
corte, y trabaja con lingüistas para crear nuevas palabras
indígenas.
We love hearing from members of the community and sharing the stories of
amazing young people, volunteers, and educators who are using their
passion for technology to create positive change in the world around
them. In our latest story, we’re heading to London to meet Yang, a
Manager in Technology Consulting at EY specialising in…
The closely-watched consumer price index is slated to be released later
this morning. Despite agita over continued rising prices, incomes have
continued to outpace inflation. But consumer sentiment and spending can
be fickle things. We’ll hear more. Plus, does Citibank have a problem
with its safety systems? Regulators seem to think so. Also: Be wary of
that unsolicited job offer. If it seems too good to be true, it probably
is.
Boeing’s
Starliner set for extended stay at the ISS as engineers on Earth try to
recreate thruster issues
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
We all know the pain of reproducing that one pesky problem in test
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is set to spend a little longer attached
to the International Space Station (ISS) as engineers on the ground work
to recreate the oddities seen in orbit.…
From the BBC World Service: Indigenous leaders in Brazil are
asking the United Nations to pressure President Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva to stop illegal mining on their Amazon lands. We’ll hear the
latest. Then, a potential rival group may soon rival the Economic
Community of West African States. And later, Greece imposes regulations
to limit the areas on beaches that bars and restaurants can use after
complaints by locals.
Privacy
expert put away for 9 years after ‘grotesque’ cyberstalking
campaign
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Scumbag targeted many victims – and those who tried to help them
A scumbag who used to work as a privacy consultant has been put behind
bars for nine years for a “grotesque” cyberstalking campaign against
more than a dozen victims.…
Firefox 128
bumps system requirements for old boxes
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Get comfortable, it’ll be here for a while
Firefox 128 is out with a relatively modest feature set – but it will
also be the latest Extended Support Release (ESR) release, meaning that
the end for Firefox 115 is coming into view.…
Speed
limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Driving a new car in the EU? Get ready for a cacophony of beeps and
whistles if you’re a bit heavy on the go pedal
It was a big week for road safety campaigners in the European Union as
Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) technology became mandatory on all
new cars.…
Trump’s
Likely VPs All Have Different Bad Ideas About Climate
date: 2024-07-11, from: Heatmap News
Donald Trump will announce his running mate any day now, and according
to multiple reports his choice has come down to Florida Senator Marco
Rubio, Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.
All erstwhile critics of Trump, they now share a fervent admiration for
the former president they once scorned. But where do they stand on
climate change?
Opinions on climate within the Republican Party are
complex,
and these three men reflect the divisions. According to
Pew
Research Center polls, 47% of Republicans over the age of 65
believe that human activity contributes a great deal or some to climate
change, but a full 79% of Republicans under 30 think so. Yet only a tiny
number of them feel any urgency around climate: In
a
Pew poll earlier this year, only 12% of Republicans said climate
should be a top priority for the president and Congress, the lowest
score of the 20 issues they asked about. (59% of Democrats said it
should be a top priority.)
That leaves room for Republican politicians to take a variety of
positions, as long as they agree that the ideas favored by climate hawks
are bad. For many, the optimal position is a kind of malign neglect:
They’ll admit that warming temperatures are bad, but somehow find their
way to opposing all measures to address the problem. With one partial
exception, that describes all of Trump’s likeliest running mates.
Doug Burgum
Burgum can be a little tough to pin down on climate, in large part
because of how he shrewdly avoids talking about the issue in the
culture-war terms so many in his party prefer. At the start of his
second term he
set
a target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 — but without
regulation or any reduction in fossil fuel production. Instead, Burgum
wants the state to become a center for carbon capture, calling the room
underground to store large amounts of carbon the state’s “geologic
jackpot.”
As part of that project, Burgum has advocated the construction of a
pipeline to carry CO2 into the state from other Midwest states, which he
touts as simply a money-making proposition. “This has nothing to do with
climate change,”
he
said in March. “This has to do with markets.” He has
touted
environmental, social, and governance-related investing, which focuses
on companies with strong environmental records, as an opportunity for
the state to lure capital — but has also
joined
with other Republican governors to condemn it.
Burgum has close ties with the oil industry, so much so that he has
become
Trump’s key liaison to the industry and its
billionaire
magnates; he has also been mentioned as a possible energy
secretary if he is not Trump’s running mate, which would make him the
administration’s chief fossil fuel advocate.
In other words, Burgum seems to be on multiple sides of the climate
issue. He’s a fossil-fuel promoter and
critic
of electric vehicles who wants to make his state carbon neutral. And you
will look in vain for any statement where Burgum says exactly what kind
of threat he believes climate change poses, or even if he thinks it is
happening at all; in technocratic style, he shifts any question on the
issue to economic and practical concerns.
Marco Rubio
With its frequent hurricanes and dramatic sea level rise, Florida sees
direct and repeated effects of climate change as much as any state in
the country. Yet it took Marco Rubio many years to arrive at his current
position: In the early part of his career he was a clear climate denier,
but lately he has taken something more like the prevailing Republican
view, which is that while climate change is happening and human activity
may be contributing to it, we shouldn’t actually do much about it. At
the very least, we shouldn’t do anything that comes with even the
smallest cost in dollars or convenience.
During his first run for Senate in 2010, Rubio
said,
“The climate is always changing” — a common dodge among climate deniers,
used to make them sound like they aren’t completely oblivious while they
refuse to acknowledge the causes and consequences of
post-industrialization warming. But “I don’t think there’s the
scientific evidence to justify” the idea that humans have anything to do
with it, he added.
He continued to hold that position for years. “I do not believe that
human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way
these scientists are portraying it,”
he
said in 2014. But over time, Rubio became less hesitant about
admitting the reality of warming, even if he
steered
away from talking about the cause. He
proposed
modest measures to increase climate resilience, while always pairing
them with
attacks
on more aggressive action as an attempt by leftist radicals to destroy
the economy.
Today, Rubio is a member of the bipartisan
Senate
Climate Solutions Caucus, which has occasional meetings but
steers away from taking any positions on particular legislation or
regulations, making it mostly a way for senators to say “I care” without
committing themselves to action.
J. D. Vance
When Vance talks about climate, it’s in the terms of a culture warrior,
heaping contempt on liberals and their goals for a safer and cleaner
environment. His 2022 Senate campaign against Democrat Tim Ryan featured
substantial discussion of climate issues, with Vance regularly
condemning efforts to reduce emissions and lamenting the decline of
coal. “All of this ‘bring American manufacturing back’ from the
Democrats is fake unless we stop the green energy fantasy,”
he
tweeted that July. “Solar panels can’t power a modern
manufacturing economy. That’s why the Chinese are building coal power
plants, something Tim Ryan’s donors won’t let America do.”
“If you want to make our environment more clean, the way to do it is to
invest in Ohio natural gas,”
he’s
said. Or as
he
told Fox News, “The obsession Democrats have with eliminating
fossil fuels is crazy.”
Like Trump, Vance has emphasized his loathing for electric vehicles.
“Even if there was a climate crisis, I don’t know how the way to solve
it is to buy more Chinese manufactured electric vehicles,”
he
said on a radio show in 2022 in response to the EV incentives in
the Inflation Reduction Act (which in fact requires that to qualify for
subsidies vehicles must be mostly American-made with domestic materials;
the
requirements are complicated, but no Chinese vehicles qualify).
“The whole EV thing is a scam, right?”
Always attuned to the value of a PR stunt, Vance
introduced
a bill he called the “Consequences for Climate Vandals Act,” meant to
crack down on the scourge of climate activists throwing soup on
paintings. Fox News was
pleased,
but the bill went nowhere, leaving America dangerously vulnerable to
art-based climate protests.
This is the common thread running through Vance’s comments on climate:
Unlike Rubio, who may have no choice but to discuss the effects of
warming given the state he represents, Vance almost never mentions these
effects. He turns any discussion of climate into an attack on liberals,
environmentalists, and Democrats for their supposedly ruinous ideas to
address the problem. If Burgum’s response to climate is Can we
make money off this? and Rubio’s is It’s serious, but
let’s not be hasty, Vance’s could be summed up as Go
to hell, libs.
No matter who Trump picks, his vice president is unlikely to be anything
but the most tentative voice of reason in the administration’s climate
policy, even in the best of circumstances. None of these three has given
us much reason to think he would risk his own position by standing in
the way of what will no doubt be a determined effort to remove
regulations on the fossil fuel industry, undo the carrot-based approach
of the Biden administration to encouraging a green transition, and
generally let the emissions rip. Or even that they’d want to.
You
had a year to patch this Veeam flaw and now it’s going to hurt
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
LockBit variant targets backup software - which you may remember is
supposed to help you recover from ransomware
Yet another new ransomware gang, this one dubbed EstateRansomware, is
exploiting a Veeam vulnerability that was patched more than a year ago
to drop file-encrypting malware, a LockBit variant, and extort payments
from victims.…
Santa Clarita is known, not only for its scenic open spaces and
family-friendly community, but also for its commitment to nurturing the
arts and fostering a thriving, dynamic environment where […]
July
12-14: ‘The Lincolns of Springfield’ at Colony Theatre
date: 2024-07-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Premier Theatrical Productions have announced a limited engagement of
the critically acclaimed musical, “The Lincolns of Springfield,” at the
Colony Theater in the Burbank Town Center.
Xen
Project in peril as colo provider housing test platform closes
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Admits it may struggle to fund and implement replacement infrastructure
The Xen Project, creator and manager of the open-source Xen hypervisor
and associated tools, has warned its community of potential problems
flowing from the imminent closure of the colocation facility it uses.…
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: Chaos Computer Club
Updates
Einmalpasswörter werden oft per SMS versendet. Sicherheitsforscher
des CCC hatten nun Live-Zugriff auf 200 Millionen solcher SMS von mehr
als 200 betroffenen Unternehmen.
Japanese
space agency spotted zero-day attacks while cleaning up attack on
M365
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Multiple malware attack saw personal data acessed, but rocket science
remained safe
The Japanese Space Exploration Agency (JAXA) discovered it was under
attack using zero-day exploits while working with Microsoft to probe a
2023 cyberattack on its systems.…
NATO,
Ukrainian leaders to meet Thursday at Washington summit
date: 2024-07-11, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — NATO and Ukrainian leaders are to meet Thursday in
Washington, a day after NATO allies bolstered support for Ukraine to
join the alliance.
The NATO summit’s final day will also include talks with leaders from
Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the European Union
addressing security challenges and cooperation.
A NATO communique released by the 32-member bloc Wednesday said
Ukraine’s path to NATO membership is “irreversible.”
“It’s not a question of if, but when,” NATO Secretary-General Jens
Stoltenberg told reporters Wednesday.
The United States was once deeply concerned about whether Ukraine was
ready for NATO membership but now appears resolved to ensure Kyiv
eventually joins the alliance.
“We’re providing that bridge to membership for Ukraine. It’s really a
significant deliverable,” Michael Carpenter, the senior director for
Europe at the National Security Council, told VOA.
Stoltenberg said that when fighting stops in Ukraine, NATO will need
to ensure that halt will be the final end to violence there.
The way to ensure it stops for good, Stoltenberg said, is NATO
membership for Ukraine. Otherwise, he said, Russia could continue its
aggression.
Unlike the European Union, which began negotiations with Ukraine to
join its ranks on June 25, there is no consensus yet about Ukraine
joining NATO.
F-16 transfer under way
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the first
American-made F-16 fighter jets are currently being delivered to Ukraine
and are expected to patrol Ukrainian skies in coming weeks.
“The transfer of F-16s is officially under way, and Ukraine will be
flying F-16s this summer,” he said at the summit.
In a statement Wednesday, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Danish
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and U.S. President Joe Biden announced
that the Dutch and Danish governments were providing the F-16s, while
Belgium and Norway had committed to send more aircraft to Ukraine.
NATO member heads of state held their first working session of the
summit Wednesday as they sought to boost the alliance’s support for
Ukraine and enhance their own defense and deterrence efforts.
At the start of the session, Biden said Russia was ramping up its
defense production with Chinese, North Korean and Iranian help.
To counter their efforts, he said, NATO members must continue to
invest more in defense production.
“We cannot allow the alliance to fall behind,” Biden said.
China called out
In the NATO communique, all 32 allies on Wednesday also called on
China to cease its support for Russia’s war effort against Kyiv,
including its transfer of dual-use materials, such as weapons
components, equipment and raw materials that aid Russia’s defense
sector.
“The PRC cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history
without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation,” the
leaders wrote.
Asked by VOA whether the statement was a strong enough message to
deter China from continuing to support Russia, Stoltenberg replied in
the press conference that Wednesday’s declaration is “the strongest
message that NATO allies have ever sent on China’s contributions to
Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine.”
A spokesperson for China’s mission to the European Union rejected the
NATO statement, calling it “filled with Cold War mentality and
belligerent rhetoric.”
NATO allies invited Indo-Pacific partners from Japan, South Korea,
Australia and New Zealand to also attend this week’s summit. Officials
say their inclusion reflects their importance during growing Chinese,
North Korean, Russian and Iranian aggression.
Iulia Iarmolenko contributed to this report. Some information for
this report was provided by Reuters
Las
Vegas hits record of fifth consecutive day of 46.1 Celsius or
greater
date: 2024-07-11, from: VOA News USA
LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas baked Wednesday in its record fifth consecutive
day of temperatures sizzling at 46.1 Celsius or greater amid a
lengthening hot spell that is expected to broil much of the U.S. into
the weekend.
The temperature climbed to 46.1 shortly after 1 p.m. at Harry Reid
International Airport, breaking the old mark of four consecutive days
set in July 2005. And the record could be extended, or even doubled, by
the weekend.
Even by desert standards, the prolonged baking that Nevada’s largest
city is experiencing is nearly unprecedented, with forecasters calling
it “the most extreme heat wave” since the National Weather Service began
keeping records in Las Vegas in 1937.
Already the city has broken 16 heat records since June 1, well before
the official start of summer, “and we’re not even halfway through July
yet,” meteorologist Morgan Stessman said Wednesday. That includes an
all-time high of 48.8 C set on Sunday, which beat the previous 47.2 C
record.
Alyse Sobosan said this July has felt the hottest in the 15 years she
has lived in Las Vegas. She said she doesn’t step outside during the day
if she can help it.
“It’s oppressively hot,” she said. “It’s like you can’t really live
your life.”
It’s also dangerously hot, health officials have emphasized. There
have been at least nine heat-related deaths this year in Clark County,
which encompasses Las Vegas, according to the county coroner’s office.
Officials say the toll is likely higher.
“Even people of average age who are seemingly healthy can suffer heat
illness when it’s so hot it’s hard for your body to cool down,” said
Alexis Brignola, an epidemiologist at the Southern Nevada Health
District.
For homeless residents and others without access to safe
environments, officials have set up emergency cooling centers at
community centers across southern Nevada.
The Las Vegas area has been under an excessive heat warning on three
separate occasions this summer, totaling about 12 days of dangerous heat
with little relief even after the sun goes down, Stessman said.
Keith Bailey and Lee Doss met early Wednesday morning at a Las Vegas
park to beat the heat and exercise their dogs, Breakie, Ollie and
Stanley.
“If I don’t get out by 8:30 in the morning, then it’s not going to
happen that day,” Bailey said, wearing a sunhat while the dogs played in
the grass.
More than 142 million people around the U.S. were under heat alerts
Wednesday, especially in Western states, where dozens of locations tied
or broke heat records over the weekend and are expected to keep doing so
all week.
Oregon has seen record daily high temperatures, with Portland
reaching 39.4 C and Salem and Eugene hitting 40.5 C on Tuesday. The
number of potentially heat-related deaths in Oregon has risen to 10,
according to the state medical examiner’s office. The latest two deaths
involved a 54-year-old man in Jackson County and a 27-year-old man in
Klamath County.
On the other side of the nation, the National Weather Service warned
of major-to-extreme heat risk over portions of the East Coast.
An excessive heat warning remained in place Wednesday for the
Philadelphia area, northern Delaware and nearly all of New Jersey.
Temperatures were around 32.2 C for most of the region, and forecasters
warned the heat index could soar as high as 42.2 C. The warning was due
to expire at 8 p.m. Wednesday, though forecasters said there may be a
need to extend it.
The heat was blamed for a motorcyclist’s death over the weekend in
Death Valley National Park. At Death Valley on Tuesday, tourists queued
for photos in front of a giant thermometer that was reading 48.9 C.
Simon Pell and Lisa Gregory from London left their air-conditioned RV
to experience a midday blast of heat that would be unthinkable back
home.
“I wanted to experience what it would feel like,” Pell said. “It’s an
incredible experience.”
At the Grand Canyon, the National Park Service was investigating the
third hiker death in recent weeks. Temperatures on parts of some trails
can reach 49 C in the shade.
An excessive heat warning continued Wednesday in many parts of
southern and central Arizona. Forecasters said the high in Phoenix was
expected to reach 45.5 C after it hit 46.6 C Tuesday, tying the previous
record for the date set in 1958.
Authorities were investigating the death of a 2-year-old who was left
alone in a hot vehicle Tuesday afternoon in Marana, near Tucson, police
said. At Lake Havasu, a 4-month-old died from heat-related complications
Friday, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department said.
The U.S. heat wave came as the global temperature in June was a
record warm for the 13th straight month and marked the 12th straight
month that the world was 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial
times, the European climate service Copernicus said. Most of this heat,
trapped by human-caused climate change, is from long-term warming from
greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas,
scientists say.
Firefighters in Henderson, Nevada, last week became the first in the
region to deploy what city spokesperson Madeleine Skains called “polar
pods,” devices filled with water and ice to cool a person exhibiting
symptoms of heat stroke or a related medical emergency.
Extreme heat in the West has also dried out vegetation that fuels
wildfires.
A blaze burning in northern Oregon, about 178 kilometers east of
Portland, blew up to 28 square kilometers by Wednesday afternoon due to
hot temperatures, gusty wind and low humidity, according to the Oregon
State Fire Marshal. The Larch Creek Fire closed Highway 197 and forced
evacuations for remote homes.
In California, firefighters were battling least 19 wildfires
Wednesday, including a 117-square-kilometer blaze that prompted
evacuation orders for about 200 homes in the mountains of Santa Barbara
County.
College of the Canyons Chancellor Dianne Van Hook will be placed on
administrative leave, effective Monday, Santa Clarita Community College
District board President Edel Alonso announced Wednesday night after a
[…]
Ukraine,
China front and center of NATO 75th anniversary summit
date: 2024-07-11, from: VOA News USA
NATO allies on Wednesday pledged to support Ukraine on an
“irreversible” path to integration while calling on China to cease all
support for Russia’s war effort against Kyiv. This as new fighter jets
are set to patrol the skies of Ukraine. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla
Babb has the details.
China’s
homebrew openKylin OS creates a cut for AI PCs
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Devs of OS named for a mythical beast join in the ‘local models will
will deliver legendary productivity’ trope
China has jumped on the AI PC bandwagon, with the team behind local OS
openKylin creating a cut of its Linux-based software that can run AI
models on the desktop.…
July
24: ‘Water Matters’ Webinar to Explore Water Quality in SCV
date: 2024-07-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Interested in learning more about the quality of water in the Santa
Clarita Valley? Don’t miss an opportunity to engage with an SCV Water
expert and dive deeper into a crucial topic during the upcoming “Water
Matters” webinar: Exploring the 2024 Consumer Confidence Report and
Addressing Water Quality in the
US
plan to boost Pacific air power seen as counterbalance to China
date: 2024-07-11, from: VOA News USA
washington — A U.S. plan to boost its Pacific air power is seen by
analysts as an effort to reinforce deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and
counterbalance China’s attempt to gain dominance in the region.
The U.S. Air Force plans to upgrade more than 80 fighter jets
stationed at Japanese bases over the next several years as part of a $10
billion program to modernize its forces there.
The Defense Department announced the plan last week, saying it aims
to enhance the U.S.-Japan alliance and bolster deterrence in the
Indo-Pacific.
“This is a necessary upgrade that has been planned for some time. And
combined with Japan’s own investments, it will help maintain some degree
of air power balance between the allies and China’s progress in air
force modernization,” said James Schoff, senior director of the
U.S.-Japan NEXT Alliance Initiative at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation
USA.
“Without it, the credibility of U.S. deterrent capacity would be much
weaker, which could cause Beijing to doubt U.S. seriousness about
protecting the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and prompt more
aggressive Chinese behavior,” Schoff said.
The Taiwanese Defense Ministry said it spotted 37 Chinese aircraft
near Taiwan on Wednesday as they headed to the Western Pacific for
drills with the Shandong aircraft carrier.
Chinese jets and warships have frequently made dangerous maneuvers
around the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as a part
of its own territory.
Former U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander John Aquilino told the Senate
Armed Services Committee in March that China could soon have the world’s
largest air force.
China is currently the third-largest air power in the world, behind
the United States and Russia.
China’s rapid military modernization efforts have led it to possess
more than 3,150 aircraft, of which about 2,400 are combat aircraft,
including fighters, strategic and tactical bombers, and attack aircraft,
according to the Pentagon’s 2023 report on China’s military power.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington,
told VOA on Monday that “U.S.-Japan relations should not target or harm
other countries’ interests and should not undermine regional peace and
stability.”
Upgrade designed to help defend Japan
In addition to protecting Taiwan, the upgrade — which includes the
advanced F-35 jets — also will help U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ) deter North
Korea and defend Japan’s Southwest Islands, said James Przystup, a
senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Japan has a territorial dispute with China over what it calls the
Senkaku Islands and what China calls the Diaoyu Islands.
Japan and Russia also have a dispute over islands off Hokkaido, which
Japan calls the Northern Territories and Russia calls the Kuril
Islands.
The U.S. aircraft upgrade plan is to modify several deployed F-35B
jets stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi
prefecture south of Hiroshima.
The Misawa Air Base in Japan’s northern Aomori prefecture will see 36
F-16 aircraft be replaced with 48 F-35A jets.
Aircraft will be rotated
At Kadena Air Base in Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, 48 F-15 C/D
jets will be replaced with 36 new F-15EX jets. During the upgrades,
fourth- and fifth-generation tactical aircraft will be dispatched on a
rotational basis, according to the Pentagon.
“The upgrades will provide qualitative and quantitative boosts to the
USFJ inventory, which will also enhance the U.S.-Japan alliance’s
readiness against China, North Korea and Russia,” said Ryo
Hinata-Yamaguchi, a professor at the University of Tokyo and a
nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific
Security Initiative.
“Benefits will be seen not only in aerial operations but also
guarding U.S. and Japanese capabilities for naval and amphibious
operations. The platforms are not simply about technological superiority
for combat, but also more advanced electronic warfare capabilities to
penetrate weaknesses of China, North Korea and Russia,” he said.
China often conducts joint air drills with Russia over the waters
near South Korea and Japan. In December, Chinese and Russian jets
entered South Korea’s Air Defense Identification Zone, prompting Seoul
to scramble fighter jets in response.
David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific
Strategy, said, “Russia has been conducting some combined operations
with China on a limited basis recently, so if Russia operates in the
Indo-Pacific, it will certainly indicate these systems will contribute
to the defense of U.S.-allies’ interests.”
Maxwell said U.S. bases in Japan give the U.S. “a lot of operational
flexibility to be able to deal with multiple contingencies, either on
the Korean Peninsula or in the South China Sea, or really, anywhere in
Asia.”
Okinawa is about 740 kilometers (459.8 miles) from Taiwan and 990
kilometers (615.1 miles) from South Korea’s southern port city of Busan.
Kadena, which the U.S. calls “the keystone of the Pacific,” is the
largest U.S. installation in the Indo-Pacific.
Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who
served as special assistant to the principal deputy undersecretary of
defense for policy during the George W. Bush administration, said
rotating aircraft presence at Kadena during the upgrade transition helps
the U.S. disperse them in case of an attack.
“Kadena Air Base is under greater threat than it’s been in decades,”
from a range of Chinese capabilities, both ballistic and cruise
missiles, he said. “There are a couple of options for how to deal with
that. One is for the U.S. to disperse its forces more so that if there
was an attack, there would be less concentration of U.S. forces.”
Anonymous
‘ask me anything’ chat app NGL ordered to knock it off targeting
kids
date: 2024-07-11, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Hitting youngsters with faked texts and calling them suckers is a bit of
a no-no, watchdog sniffs
The US Federal Trade Commission has thrown the book at NGL Labs and its
founders for allegedly breaking a depressing amount of child internet
safety law.…
NATO calls
Ukraine’s path to membership ‘irreversible’
date: 2024-07-11, from: VOA News USA
washington — The United States and its NATO allies have agreed that
Ukraine’s path to membership in the organization is “irreversible,”
according to a communique released by the 32-member bloc during this
week’s summit in Washington.
“It’s not a question of if, but when,” NATO Secretary-General Jens
Stoltenberg told reporters Wednesday.
The United States was once deeply concerned about whether Ukraine was
ready for NATO membership but now appears resolved to ensure Kyiv
eventually joins the alliance.
“We’re providing that bridge to membership for Ukraine. It’s really a
significant deliverable,” Michael Carpenter, the senior director for
Europe at the National Security Council, told VOA.
Stoltenberg explained that when fighting stops in Ukraine, NATO will
need to ensure that it stops for good.
The way to ensure that, he added, is to secure NATO membership for
Ukraine. Otherwise, he said, Russia could continue its aggression.
Unlike the European Union, which began negotiations with Ukraine to
join its ranks on June 25, there is no consensus yet about Ukraine
joining NATO.
F-16 transfer under way
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the first
American-made F-16 fighter jets were being delivered to Ukraine and were
expected to patrol Ukrainian skies in the coming weeks.
“The transfer of F-16s is officially under way, and Ukraine will be
flying F-16s this summer,” he said at the summit.
In a statement Wednesday, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Danish
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and U.S. President Joe Biden announced
that the Dutch and Danish governments were providing the F-16s, while
Belgium and Norway had committed to send more aircraft to Ukraine.
NATO member heads of state held their first working session of the
summit Wednesday as they sought to boost the alliance’s support for
Ukraine and enhance their own defense and deterrence efforts.
At the start of the session, Biden said Russia was ramping up its
defense production with the help of China, North Korea and Iran.
To counter them, he said, NATO members must continue to invest more
in defense production.
“We cannot allow the alliance to fall behind,” Biden said.
China called out
In the NATO communique, all 32 allies also called on China to cease
its support for Russia’s war effort against Kyiv, including its transfer
of dual-use materials, such as weapons components, equipment and raw
materials that serve as inputs for Russia’s military sector.
China “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history
without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation,” the
leaders wrote.
Asked by VOA whether the statement was a strong enough message to
deter China from continuing to support Russia, Stoltenberg replied in
the press conference that Wednesday’s declaration was “the strongest
message that NATO allies have ever sent on China’s contributions to
Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine.”
NATO allies invited Indo-Pacific partners from Japan, South Korea,
Australia and New Zealand to attend this week’s summit. Officials said
their inclusion relayed the importance of these partners amid growing
aggression from China, North Korea, Russia and Iran.
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
Arson
Fire Reported at UCSB’s North Campus Open Space on Wednesday
Afternoon
date: 2024-07-11, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A person of interest was observed by witnesses leaving the area on a
bicycle; it is unknown if the incident is related to previous arsons
reported in the Isla Vista area.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced today
that Home Depot will pay $750,000 to settle a civil lawsuit alleging
violation of a state law mandating cash redemption for gift cards under
$
The president and CEO of the Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development
Corp., an organization that strives to promote business growth and
retention for the region, confirmed his resignation Wednesday. Former
[…]
July
18: Children’s Bureau hosts Latest Foster Orientation
date: 2024-07-11, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Children’s Bureau is seeking foster families and now offers two
virtual ways for individuals and/or couples to learn how to help
children in foster care while reunifying with birth families or how to
provide legal permanency by adoption
Playbook
for controlling government bureaucracy prepared for Trump
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
white house — “If I’m elected president, we are going to drain the
swamp in Washington, D.C.,” vowed Donald Trump – in 2016.
Eight years later, in his quest for a second, non-consecutive term,
“drain the swamp” – meaning to rid government of those who impose policy
but are unaccountable to the president – is still a key Trump campaign
slogan. If the Republican is victorious in November, he will have a
detailed playbook for placing the entire federal bureaucracy under his
direct control.
What is essentially a manual for how to swing a wrecking ball at the
administrative apparatus of government, which Trump has decried as the
“deep state,” has been written with the cooperation of more than 100
conservative organizations. The 922-page handbook, known as Project
2025, was organized and published by the right-wing Heritage
Foundation.
“Project 2025 is a plan to execute what amounts to a comprehensive
authoritarian takeover of American government,” wrote Thomas Zimmer, a
Georgetown University visiting professor, in his Democracy Americana
blog.
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will
remain bloodless — if the left allows it to be,” said Heritage
Foundation President Kevin Roberts in a recent appearance on a
right-wing podcast, The War Room with Stephen K. Bannon.
After Roberts’ incendiary comment, Trump tried to distance himself
from Project 2025, in a somewhat contradictory posting on his Truth
Social platform. He asserted that while he knew “nothing” about Project
2025 and its authors, “I disagree with some of the things they’re
saying.”
Many of those who wrote Project 2025’s chapters, however, were key
appointees in Trump’s administration. Some are reportedly assisting the
Trump re-election effort behind the scenes.
Several have also popped up in a recruitment video for Project 2025’s
online “Presidential Administration Academy,” which is recruiting and
training loyalists. The plan calls for restoring Schedule F, which
briefly existed at the end of the Trump administration, a classification
that made positions in the civil service more easily filled by loyalists
to the president.
Tens of thousands of appointees could then fan out across government
agencies to implement far-right priorities, such as detaining and
deporting undocumented immigrants, dismantling social safety nets,
infusing Christian values and ethics into government policy, eliminating
LGBTQ+ rights, directing the Justice Department to prosecute anti-white
racism and banning pornography.
On reproductive rights, including abortion, Project 2025 outlines far
stricter restrictions than even Trump or the platform for next week’s
Republican National Convention is advocating.
The plan’s proponents characterize it as restoring “self-governance
to everyday Americans.” The project’s head, Paul Dans, appearing on
C-SPAN, left no doubt Trump’s words and ideas were the inspiration.
“He was president for four years, so many of the ideas are carry-ons
from his original work. So, I would like to think a lot of it does
spring from that first term of Trump,” Dans said.
‘Full Trumpian’ document
VOA requested an interview with the Heritage Foundation for this
story. The think tank said it could not make anyone available to discuss
Project 2025. It did email a statement stressing that Project 2025 does
not speak for any candidate, and that if Trump was re-elected, it would
be up to him to decide which recommendations to implement.
“It’s a full Trumpian sort of document with an angry and highly
polarizing tone” is how Progressive Policy Institute President Will
Marshall characterized Project 2025.
It seeks to eliminate the checks and balances that writers of the
Constitution, such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, guaranteed
through dividing power among the executive, legislative and judicial
branches of the government, according to Marshall.
“Madison and Jefferson ought to be spinning in their graves when they
see how much power they want to concentrate in the next president’s
hands. And if that president happens to be Donald Trump, then it’s a
kind of a nightmare for the country, given the way he’s misused power in
the past,” Marshall told VOA.
The sweeping document is in line with Trump’s stances. It calls for
placing big tariffs on imported goods and ending America’s “blind
support for international organizations.”
“That would really endanger our prosperity and undercut our
leadership and influence in the world,” Marshall said.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has made Project 2025 a key
target.
“Trump’s advisers have created a 900-page blueprint — called Project
2025 — detailing everything else they plan to do in a second term,
including a plan to cut Social Security, repeal our $35 cap on insulin,
eliminate the Department of Education and end programs like Head Start
[which provides early education, health benefits and nutrition to
pre-school children],” Vice President Kamala Harris said during a
campaign appearance Tuesday at a Las Vegas hotel/casino.
The plan also calls for slashing government funding for renewable
energy and climate change mitigation. The Federal Bureau of
Investigation would be overhauled top to bottom, as would the U.S.
Agency for Global Media, which oversees the Voice of America. VOA, whose
news content is independent of higher government control, should —
according to Project 2025 — be supervised by either the National
Security Council or the State Department.
County
Parks Grieves Passing of Watashne a Bison at Hart Regional Park
date: 2024-07-10, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation is
saddened by the death Wednesday morning of “Watashne,” a 20-year-old
bison under its care at William S. Hart Regional Park
I finished wrapping my choose your own adventure books in paper covers
to keep them safe. I also decided to donate all my duplicates and the
books from the newer
#cyoa
series. I’m just going to keep those from the 70s-90s.
If you weren’t aware, I used to have an internet radio show where I read
these books and the listeners chose our path. It was a lot of fun and
the archives are all on my
#gopher
hole. I also have a how-to guide on making paper book covers on there as
well. Gopher rules.
I’m a bit behind on my reading goal for the year because I was reading
really really long books in the first half. I think I might run through
some of these to make up the difference.
Beryl
was not a surprise, but it battered southeast Texas electric grid
anyway
date: 2024-07-10, from: The Signal
By John Haughey Contributing Writer Hurricane Beryl was on radars for
more than 11 days, and its likely southeast Texas landfall was projected
for at least five days before it crashed […]
Judge
may end Giuliani’s bankruptcy, exposing him to lawsuits
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
new york — A U.S. judge on Wednesday said he would likely end
bankruptcy for Rudy Giuliani, a onetime lawyer for former President
Donald Trump. The move would enable lawsuits against Giuliani for
defamation, sexual harassment and other claims to proceed in other
courts.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane said at a court hearing in White
Plains, New York, that he would rule Friday on competing requests from
Giuliani - who was New York City’s mayor from 1994 through 2001 - and
his creditors about the future of his bankruptcy.
Giuliani, 80, filed for bankruptcy protection in December after a
Washington, D.C., court ordered him to pay $148 million to two Georgia
election workers that he falsely accused of rigging votes in the 2020
presidential election, which Democrat Joe Biden won.
The bankruptcy prevented the election workers from collecting on that
judgment, while freezing other lawsuits stemming from Giuliani’s work
for Trump, as he sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
Last week, Giuliani asked to convert his personal bankruptcy case
into a straightforward liquidation, which would force him to sell nearly
all of his assets. One group of creditors asked Lane to appoint a
trustee to take over Giuliani’s finances and businesses, which could
lead to a lengthy and contested bankruptcy liquidation, while another
group said Giuliani should be kicked out of bankruptcy altogether.
All three options pose significant risks for Giuliani.
Lane said dismissal was likely the best option, given the
difficulties the court has had in getting straight answers from Giuliani
about his finances. A trustee would likely face the same problems
getting Giuliani’s cooperation, while incurring additional expenses that
would reduce Giuliani’s ability to pay creditors, Lane said.
“I’m concerned that the difficulties we’ve encountered on
transparency will continue,” Lane said.
A dismissal of his bankruptcy would allow Giuliani’s creditors to
resume lawsuits against him, but it would also give him more freedom to
appeal the $148 million defamation judgment that forced him to seek
bankruptcy protection.
“We believe that the debtor’s best chance of getting an appellate
determination would be dismissal,” Giuliani attorney Gary Fischoff said
during Wednesday’s court hearing.
Lane previously stopped Giuliani from spending money on the appeal
while he was bankrupt, saying his Chapter 11 filing had paused
litigation on both sides.
Rachel Strickland, representing the former Georgia election workers,
Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, said Giuliani should
be kicked out of bankruptcy so her clients can try to collect on their
judgment against him.
Giuliani “regards this court as a pause button on his woes while he
continues to live his life unbothered,” Strickland told Lane.
Moss and Freeman, who are Black, faced a deluge of racist and sexist
messages, including threats of lynching, after Trump and his allies
spread false claims that they were engaged in vote fraud.
A committee representing Giuliani’s other creditors asked Lane to
instead appoint a trustee to take over Giuliani’s finances and
businesses, like his podcasting engagements and coffee promotions.
Committee attorney Phil Dublin said ending the bankruptcy now would
create a “race to the courthouse” among the many people who have sued
Giuliani.
Giuliani’s other creditors include former employee Noelle Dunphy, who
has accused Giuliani of sexual assault and wage theft, and the voting
machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic, who have also sued Giuliani
for defamation. Giuliani has denied the allegations.
In addition to the civil lawsuits, Giuliani is facing criminal
charges in Georgia and Arizona for aiding Trump’s efforts to subvert the
2020 election results, and his false claims about the election have
caused him to lose his license to practice law in New York.
The L.A. County Parks and Recreation Department announced the death of
20-year-old “Watashne,” a bison in the care of William S. Hart Regional
Park. “Watashne” came to Hart Park in […]
Let’s start here: Joe Biden is losing the presidential election. He is
now roughly 2 points behind Donald Trump in national polls, according to
the FiveThirtyEight average. Though that may sound small, no Democrat
has
been further behind in the polls, at this point in the election,
since Al Gore in 2000.
Some of this collapse is due to fatigue with Democrats in general, part
of
a
global wave of anti-incumbent fervor. But at least some is
specific to Biden. In some swing state polls, a large gap has opened up
between Biden and the Democratic Senate candidate. Senator Tammy
Baldwin, for instance, is running
12
points ahead of Biden in Wisconsin, according to an AARP poll
released on Tuesday. Wisconsin is one of three key states that the
president must win to clinch re-election.
This is, obviously, a significant problem for Democrats. Senator Michael
Bennett, a Democrat of Colorado,
believes
the party is on track to lose control of the House and Senate in
addition to the presidency.
But it is a particular issue for those who believe the American economy
should decarbonize. Biden alone among candidates in the presidential
election has an impressive climate record: He fought for the passage of
— and subsequently signed — the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest
climate law in American history. For 30 years, Democrats had tried and
failed to pass comprehensive climate legislation through the U.S.
Senate; it finally happened under Biden’s watch.
The Biden administration has also used its considerable presidential
powers to lower carbon emissions: The Environmental Protection Agency
has proposed rules that would significantly cut heat-trapping pollution
from
power
plants,
cars
and trucks, and
the
oil and gas sector, and the Department of Energy and the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have each set out their
own
emissions-reducingrules.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is also helping to establish new,
multi-billion-dollar “hubs” that aim to commercialize clean hydrogen
production and
carbon
removal technologies. The president even stepped in to block new
natural gas export terminals — a move that I have
more
complicated feelings about, but that, in any case, a federal
judge
has
now blocked.
I don’t need to go over the litany of Trump’s environmental misdeeds,
but suffice it to say that during his time in office, Donald Trump
demonstrated
a distinct glee in tearing up climate regulations and blocking
decarbonization. He withdrew America from the Paris Agreement, rolled
back the EPA’s climate rules, and deemed climate change a “hoax.” In his
second term, he again
seeks
to overturn the EPA’s new climate proposals, including
requirements that automakers sell more electric vehicles. The Heritage
Foundation’s
more
complete plans for a second Trump administration — dubbed
Project 2025 — calls for closing dozens of government offices concerned
with climate change, ending energy efficiency standards, repealing the
IRA’s tax credits, and breaking up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
Suffice it to say: Biden is the only serious candidate in the race who
wants to do something about climate change. He is the
climate candidate, and he has a climate record to run on. But Biden has
miserably failed to communicate any of these policy successes to the
masses. Nearly 60% of voters said they knew little or nothing about the
Inflation Reduction Act, according to the Heatmap Climate Poll,
conducted late last year. (A Yale and George Mason University survey
found
roughly similar results.)
You might think that reveals a canny strategy on the White House’s part:
Perhaps it knows the IRA is divisive, and so it is only bragging about
the law to the right audience. But polling shows Biden’s policies are
consistently failing to reach the very Americans who should have heard
about them — the subset of Americans who are worried about climate
change and want to see something done about it. Of Americans who believe
climate change is a “very important” issue, only 10% have heard or read
a lot about Biden’s climate policies, according to
an
April CBS News/YouGov poll. And nearly half of
Americans who rate climate change highly said that they have heard
nothing or “very little” about Biden’s efforts, according to the same
survey.
That is not the only poll to reach that conclusion. Another recent
survey, conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public
Research,
found
that nearly half of Americans were more concerned about climate change
this year than they were last year — but that barely any of that cohort
had heard about the IRA, and few thought the legislation would affect
their lives or mitigate climate change. Nearly half of the poll’s
respondents either didn’t know whether the IRA would help climate change
or thought it would make it worse. The IRA — and
Biden’s climate agenda more broadly — is failing to break through.
Now, I don’t labor under the impression that climate change is a
particularly potent or popular electoral issue. I’ve come to think that
climate, if not actively deleterious to Democrats, is at least an
electoral
sideshow to the more enduring issues at the center of American
politics: the economy, interest rates, taxes, health care, and national
security. (Of course, climate change could vastly reshape the American
economy and the public’s health, but other, more immediate concerns —
such as employment, inflation, or abortion access — understandably
remain more front-of-mind for voters.)
But as a climate journalist, I’ve still found the past two years
perplexing. Why do so few people seem to understand the IRA’s goals? Why
has the Biden administration struggled so much to communicate the IRA’s
most popular aspect — namely, that it will reduce electricity costs (if
not inflation itself) for voters? Consider the bare political record
here: The Biden administration passed a law called the Inflation
Reduction Act, and inflation
subsequently
came down. A more competent administration would be
all over that simplistic, but still potent, victory. So why don’t more
people seem to know about what Biden is doing? How is the federal
government doing so much on climate change and nobody — not even
climate-concerned Democrats — seem to care?
These questions have an easy answer: The candidate is not capable of
communicating these victories, so they are not breaking through. Biden,
in his diminished state, is not a skilled, crisp, or even very
decipherable communicator. As Ezra Klein
has
observed, Biden is not generating the kind of memorable moments
or sterling speeches that Democrats can share among themselves. He is
barely speaking in complete sentences. In today’s fragmented media
landscape, where first-person accounts and viral videos can go much
further than news stories or wonky analysis, the candidate must be the
chief champion of his or her victories. Judging from Biden’s disastrous
performance at the first presidential debate — and his relative lack of
lengthy,
unscripted public appearances since then, and
the
account of those who have interacted with him — he seemingly
cannot meet that standard.
Biden’s tremendous climate legacy rests on whether he can sell his
accomplishments to the public and win the 2024 election. And that
ability is faltering, to say the least.
Elon
Musk defeats $500 million lawsuit over Twitter layoffs
date: 2024-07-10, from: The Signal
By Tom Ozimek Contributing Writer A California judge handed Elon Musk a
win in a lawsuit filed over the mass firing of staff at Twitter after he
took over the social […]
Handbook
prepared for Trump to take direct control of government bureaucracy
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
If former U.S. president Donald Trump wins the November presidential
election, he may seek to place the entire federal bureaucracy under
direct presidential control. That move is outlined in a playbook crafted
by more than 100 conservative organizations for a prospective second
Trump term. VOA’s chief national correspondent Steve Herman reports. VOA
footage by Adam Greenbaum.
RNC’s
draft 2024 platform includes revoking China’s preferred trade
status
date: 2024-07-10, from: The Signal
By Katabella Roberts Contributing Writer The Republican National
Committee plans to cancel the most favored nation status of the Chinese
regime as part of a push to restore fair trade around […]
When MTVNews.com went offline in late June, Internet users were quick
to discover that some (but sadly, not all) of the site had been archived
in the Internet Archive’s Wayback […]
By Perry Smith & Tyler Wainfeld Signal Staff Writers A brush fire in
Agua Dulce burned 100 acres as of about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, according
to Saadullah Sheiah of the […]
South
Korean Samsung union strikes again in bid to chip away at
production
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
It’d be a shame if something happened to that HBM fab, warns NSEU
Unionized Samsung workers in South Korea have extended their three-day
strike indefinitely, claiming that company leadership refused to listen
to demands when an end date was on the table.…
The Office of the General Counsel provides functional leadership
regarding legal services and issues related to all aspects of NASA
activities for Center Chief and Patent Counsel and, for Agency-wide
issues, the Administrator. These services and issues include
establishing and disseminating legal policy and interpreting new
statutes and cases. The Office of the General Counsel […]
UCLA Health
to host blood drive at Christ Lutheran
date: 2024-07-10, from: The Signal
By Sara McCarthy Signal Staff Writer UCLA Health is set to host its
annual blood drive with longtime partner, Christ Lutheran Church, July
17 from 1 to 6 p.m. According to […]
Death Valley
Park Rangers Don’t Mess With the Heat
date: 2024-07-10, from: Heatmap News
Driving through
Death
Valley National Park, tourists pass three different extreme heat
warnings. Beyond the standard brown “caution” signs and the ones
prohibiting hiking after 10 a.m., visitors encounter a more makeshift
one warning that helicopters and other rescue options might not be
available when the temperature is above 115 Fahrenheit — when it gets
that hot, the air is simply too thin to support a chopper.
It’s the last sign that seems to catch people’s attention the most, park
ranger Abby Wines told me.
On the 111th anniversary of the world record for highest temperature
ever recorded — 134 mind-boggling degrees — news outlets have been
reporting on the tourists flocking to experience the hottest place on
Earth. At the same time, meteorologists have also
warned
that Death Valley could come close to matching that record, with
temperatures up to 129 degrees. According to Wines, the
number
of tourists this summer is a return to the park’s pre-pandemic
numbers: Over 150,000 visited the park in May 2019; this year, that
number was around 140,000.
While Death Valley is busy year-round, tensions run higher for park
workers during the summer when extreme temperatures limit much of their
work. And, for the 100 National Park Service employees working there in
the summer, taking care of tourists is not always their top priority.
“We will rescue who we can,” Wines said, “as long as we can do it safely
without losing a coworker.”
“We have 100 people and we’re running an entire community,” she
explained. “All the structure that a small town would have, providing
all the emergency services, maintaining the roads, maintaining the
buildings, and the park is the size of Connecticut.”
The park’s weather, on the other hand, is not at all like Connecticut’s.
And climate change is making it worse. Death Valley is currently tied
for the fourth longest streak of consecutive days above 125 degrees,
with more days to come. Overnight lows also seem to be getting warmer,
consistently hitting the high 90s. A couple of years ago, Wines
remembers an overnight low of 106. “And that overnight low is not at
midnight — it’s right before the sunrise,” she said.
Always, but especially during the summer, any work in the park is
extremely dangerous. Beyond routine tasks — for example, keeping toilets
at the trailheads clean — park workers also need to monitor the park’s
60-year-old infrastructure. “When a water main breaks in the middle of
the summer, we have to fix that, because that’s what we need to survive
here is drinking water,” Wines told me, “so that’s where we really put
our staff at the most risk of working in heat.”
Park employees carry a work/rest schedule which lays out how many
minutes they should work before resting according to different
temperature ranges. When temperatures are above 115 degrees, they are
only allowed to do moderate work for 10 minutes, before cooling down in
an air-conditioned space for an hour. When working on the trails,
vehicles must be idling the whole time so that there’s immediate AC for
workers to come back to.
In September 2013, one of Wines’ colleagues died after getting a flat
tire while repairing a road in the park, Wines told me. The park largely
lacks cell phone service, so it took staff until evening to find the
missing ranger. The high that day was 107 degrees, not even close to how
hot the park can get in the summer, she said.
I asked Wines about how she and her fellow rangers deal
with the stress associated with their jobs on a daily basis. She paused
for a long second.
“I say we’re used to it,” she replied. “But I would also say that
honestly, there’s always a tension between work that needs to happen and
keeping people safe.” While people might try to push themselves to get a
job done, Wines said the most important thing is trying to not become
inured to just how deadly heat can be. That is the same advice Wines
tries to convey to tourists.
On Saturday, a group of
six
German tourists motorcycling through the park needed assistance in
the extreme heat. According to Wines, four of them required immediate
help, but with the thermometer at 128 degrees,
no
helicopters could fly in. Because the park only has two ambulances
available, the rangers had to call in help from Pahrump and Shoshone,
each over 60 miles away. One of the riders died and another was
hospitalized.
“Being a local to Las Vegas for 26 years and an avid outdoors
enthusiast, I think it is foolish to visit Death Valley during the peak
temperatures of the day,” Brian Delaney told me. Delaney is one of the
owners of Mojave Wave, a small tourism company in Las Vegas that offers
tours to Death Valley. To keep employees and passengers safe, they leave
either early in the day or after dark. “We are a very small operation,
and the two of us who take groups on tours to Death Valley are very
prepared for the worst. We focus on maintaining our equipment, not
taking chances and keeping a keen eye on our guests as well as others in
the park.”
Yet, in Delaney’s experience, many tourists still prefer to take their
chances to experience peak temperatures. “Many of the visitors are
self-drivers and do not enlist our professional services,” he told me.
While educating tourists is never easy — and can add an extra strain to
already overwhelmed workers — Wines told me closing the park during the
summer is not an option. Of the 57 entrances to the park, 55 are unpaved
roads. That means that visitors could easily drive around any type of
blockage. A closed park would also mean fewer employees, which would
make it even more difficult for rescue crews to be deployed. “We’d
always be creating a less safe environment for those people that would
violate the closure,” she said.
AmigaKit
launches a new Amiga that’s not an Amiga at all
date: 2024-07-10, from: OS News
I try to keep tabs on a huge number of operating system projects out
there – for obvious reasons – but long ago I learned that when it comes
to the world of Amiga, it’s best to maintain distance and let any
important news find its way out of the Amiga bubble, lest one loses
their sanity. Keeping up with the Amiga world requires following every
nook and cranny of various forums and websites with different
allegiances to different (shell) companies, with often barely coherent
screeching and arguments literally nobody cares about. It’s a mess is
what I’m trying to say. Anyway, it seems one of the many small companies
still somehow making a living in the Amiga world, AmigaKit, has recently
released a new device, the A600GS. It’s a retrogaming-oriented Amiga
computer, but it does come with something called AmiBench, that’s
apparently a weird hybrid between bits of Amiga OS 4 and AROS, so it
does also support running a proper desktop and associated applications,
but only AmigaOS 3.x applications (I think? It’s a bit unclear). It has
HDMI at up to 1080p, and even WiFi and Bluetooth support, which is
pretty neat. Wait, Wifi and Bluetooth support? What are we really
dealing with here? Once again the information is hard to find because
AmigaKit is incredibly stingy with specifications – I had to read
goddamn YouTube comments to get some hints – but it seems to be a custom
board with an Orange Pi Zero 3 stuck on top doing most of the work. In
other words, the meat of this thing is just an emulator, which in and of
itself isn’t a bad thing, it’s just weird to me that they’re not upfront
and direct about this. While this answers some questions, it also raises
a whole bunch more. If this is running on low-end Allwinner ARM hardware
from 2022, how is this AmiBench desktop environment (or operating
system?) a “fork of OS4 with AROS code in it“? AmigaOS 4 is
PowerPC-only, which may explain why AmigaKit only mentions AmigaOS 3.x
and 68K compatibility, and not AmigaOS 4 compatibility. And what’s AROS
doing in there? I mean, this is an interesting product in the sense that
it’s a relatively cheap turnkey solution for classic Amiga enthusiasts,
but a new Amiga this is definitely not. At about €130, this is not a bad
deal, but other than hardcore fans of the classic 68K Amiga, I don’t see
many people being interested in this. The Apollo Standalone V4+ piques
my interest way more, but at €700-800, it’s also a lot more expensive,
but at least they’re much clearer about what the Apollo is, what
software it’s running, and that they’re giving back their work to
AROS.
NASA
CubeSat Launches as Rideshare on ESA’s First Ariane 6 Rocket
date: 2024-07-10, from: NASA breaking news
NASA launched CURIE (CubeSat Radio Interferometry Experiment) as a
rideshare payload on the inaugural flight of ESA’s (European Space
Agency) Ariane 6 rocket, which launched at 4 p.m. GFT on July 9 from
Europe’s Spaceport, the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, in French Guiana.
Designed by a team from the University of California, Berkeley, CURIE
[…]
How
low can you go: Tesla’s US market share dips below 50% for the first
time
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Electric car sales break records, but Elon’s luster is tarnished
US sales of electric vehicles hit a new record in the second quarter of
2024, no thanks to Tesla, which saw its market share drop below 50
percent of total US electric vehicle sales for the first time in its
history. …
Aug. 11:
Hoops for Hart 3-on-3 Basketball Fundraiser
date: 2024-07-10, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Santa Clarita Valley nonprofit, The New Way, announces its 3-on-3
basketball tournament, Hoops For Hart a fundraiser to support the 1,000+
homeless students in the William S. Hart School District
Caltrans announces the northbound Interstate 5 will be reduced to
one or two lanes from Lake Hughes Road to two miles north of Templin
Highway (near the Whitaker Sand Shed) north of Castaic overnights Monday
through Friday through July 19 for paving
AI demand
pushes TSMC revenue for 2024 up 28% so far
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Taiwan’s silicon supremo comfortably sails past analyst forecasts
Semiconductor colossus TSMC appears more confident that its fortunes are
on the upswing after posting strong growth in Q2 revenue based on demand
for advanced chips such as GPUs for AI acceleration.…
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: RAND blog
Five key domains are core to incident management. Understanding them
can help ensure incidents are managed appropriately using practices that
can quickly and efficiently resolve them.
MINISFORUM
AtomMan G7 PT now available for $999 and up (Mini PC with Ryzen 9 7945HX
and Radeon 7600 XT)
date: 2024-07-10, from: Liliputing
The MINISFORUM AtomMan G7 PT is a small PC with the beating heart of a
gaming laptop. Inside the small chassis is an AMD Ryzen 7 7945HX
processor and AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT discrete graphics. But since this is
a desktop rather than a laptop, there’s also room for plenty of ports.
The computer supports […]
Tim Cushing: The USPS wasn’t filing its required paperwork tracking
government requests for snail mail info. The USPS rarely rejected
another government agency’s demand for mail metadata. And the problems
weren’t minute. The forms detailing compliance with government demands
for data often weren’t being filed until more than two years after those
reports were due. […]
TUAW: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has been a cornerstone of
Apple-related journalism since its establishment on December 5, 2004.
Acquired by Web Orange Limited from Yahoo IP Holdings LLC in 2024
without its original content, our mission has been rejuvenated to
continue providing Apple enthusiasts and tech professionals with
authoritative and engaging content. We […]
Ron Miller (via Hacker News): [Rodney Brooks] knows what he’s talking
about, and he thinks maybe it’s time to put the brakes on the screaming
hype that is generative AI. Brooks thinks it’s impressive technology,
but maybe not quite as capable as many are suggesting. “I’m not saying
LLMs are not important, but we have […]
Emma Roth: Google Maps is changing the way it handles your location
data. Instead of backing up your data to the cloud, Google will soon
store it locally on your device.In an email sent to users, Google says
you have until December 1st to save all your travels to your mobile
device before it starts […]
Using
DLARC, Amateur Radio Operators are Resurrecting Technical Ideas from the
Past, Using 21st Century Tech
date: 2024-07-10, from: Internet Archive Blog
A Thank You to Internet Archive’s Digital Library of Amateur Radio
& Communicationsby Steve Stroh N8GNJ In 2021, I was a member of the
committee that recommended approval of a significant […]
Ahead of next week’s Prime Day sale, Amazon continues to offer discounts
on a range of products: this week Prime members can pick up Amazon Fire
TV media streaming devices for as little as $15, or save 50% on a set of
Amazon Echo Buds true wireless earbuds, bringing the price down to just
$25. […]
NASA Moon Rocket Stage for Artemis II Moved, Prepped for Shipment
NASA is preparing the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket core stage that
will help power the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis campaign for
shipment. On July 6, NASA and Boeing, the core stage lead contractor,
moved the Artemis II rocket stage to another part of […]
New
Bionic Leg and Surgical Procedure Allow People to Walk With More Control
After Amputations
date: 2024-07-10, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The experimental surgery connects two muscles in the legs of people
with below-the-knee amputations, allowing them to control a prosthetic
limb with their brain
Gavin
Newsom is a dynamic campaigner. A presidential bid may be a tough
sell
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The LAist
As Democrats have panicked over President Joe Biden’s lackluster
debate performance and looked elsewhere for a potential replacement,
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is the talk of the town. But how would he
fare on the national stage?
Surfing
NASA’s Internet of Animals: Satellites Study Ocean Wildlife
date: 2024-07-10, from: NASA breaking news
Anchoring the boat in a sandbar, research scientist Morgan Gilmour
steps into the shallows and is immediately surrounded by sharks. The
warm waters around the tropical island act as a reef shark nursery, and
these baby biters are curious about the newcomer. They zoom close and
veer away at the last minute, as Gilmour slowly […]
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick photographed red sprites in Earth’s
upper atmosphere from the International Space Station on June 3, 2024.
The bright red flashes (more easily seen by clicking on the photo to see
a larger version) are a less understood phenomena associated with
powerful lightning events and appear high above the clouds in the
[…]
PC
sales inch upwards as market starts to upgrade its hardware
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Analysts hoping Windows 11 refresh adds fuel to fire, as OS market share
finally on rise
Typical demand for new and faster PCs is returning to the market,
Canalys principal analyst Ishan Dutt tells The Register after
he totted up a third straight quarter of growth following several woeful
years in the sector.…
@Dave Winer’s
linkblog (date: 2024-07-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Today's Countdown is worth a listen. Takeaway – why doesn't Biden run
against the Supreme Court. And how about endorsing the call to
investigate Thomas' bribes. Action man. Show us you have some life in
you. Defend the USA.
In
‘Rust’ trial, Alec Baldwin accused of breaking gun rules; defense blames
experts
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
SANTA FE, New Mexico — A New Mexico prosecutor on Wednesday said Alec
Baldwin broke “cardinal rules” of gun safety in the 2021 killing of
“Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while his lawyer said he was
failed by firearms experts.
The 66-year-old Baldwin, on trial in Hollywood’s first on-set
shooting fatality in three decades, took notes at the defense table and
listened calmly to opening statements in his involuntary manslaughter
trial. The trial is largely unprecedented in U.S. history, holding an
actor criminally responsible for a gun death during filming.
A New Mexico jury of 12 and four alternates — 11 women and five men —
heard prosecutor Erlinda Johnson outline arguments that Baldwin
disregarded safety during filming of the low-budget movie before
pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal, cocking it and pulling
the trigger as they set up a camera shot on a set southwest of Santa
Fe.
“The evidence will show that someone who played make believe with a
real gun and violated the cardinal rules of firearm safety is the
defendant, Alexander Baldwin,” Johnson said.
Baldwin’s wife Hilaria Baldwin sat in the second row of the public
gallery, his brother Stephen Baldwin in front of her.
His lawyer Alex Spiro pointed to “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez —
head of gun safety — and first assistant director Dave Halls —
responsible for overall set safety. Both have been convicted in the
shooting, and Spiro said they did not check the rounds in the gun to
ensure it was safe for Baldwin to use.
“There were people responsible for firearms safety but actor Alec
Baldwin committed no crime,” said Spiro.
Hutchins was killed, and director Joel Souza wounded when Baldwin’s
reproduction 1873 Single Action Army revolver fired a live round,
inadvertently loaded by Gutierrez.
Since a police interview on Oct. 21, 2021, the day of the shooting,
Baldwin has argued the gun just “went off.”
In an ABC News interview two months later, Baldwin told George
Stephanopoulos he did not pull the trigger. A 2022 FBI test found the
gun was in normal working condition and would not fire from full cock
without the trigger being pulled.
Spiro said during his opening arguments that no one saw Baldwin
“intentionally pull the trigger,” but that it was the responsibility of
firearms safety experts to ensure a firearm was safe for an actor “to
wave it, to point it, to pull the trigger, like actors do.”
State prosecutors charged Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter in
January 2022. They dropped charges three months later after Baldwin’s
lawyers presented photographic evidence the gun was modified, arguing it
would fire more easily, bolstering the actor’s accidental discharge
argument.
Prosecutors called a grand jury to reinstate the charge in January
after an independent firearms expert confirmed the 2022 FBI study.
FBI testing broke the gun, and Baldwin’s lawyers will tell jurors
that destruction of the weapon prevented them from proving the gun was
modified.
Armorer Gutierrez, whose job on the set of “Rust” included managing
firearms safely, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March for
loading the live round.
Prosecutors will have to persuade jurors Baldwin is also guilty of
willful and reckless criminal negligence.
E10
ETBox is a 12th-gen Intel Core mini PC from Chuwi and Acer
date: 2024-07-10, from: Liliputing
The E10 ETBox is a compact desktop computer with a 45-watt Intel Core
i5-12450H 8-core, 12-thread processor, support for up to three 4K
displays, and a body that measures just 178 x 188 x 62mm (7″ x 7.4″ x
2.4″) and has an volume of 2 liters. But honestly the most surprising
thing about this […]
Astronauts
confident Boeing space capsule can safely return to Earth
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Two astronauts who should have been back on
Earth weeks ago said Wednesday that they’re confident that Boeing’s
space capsule can return them safely, despite breakdowns.
NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched aboard
Boeing’s new Starliner capsule early last month, the first people to
ride it. Leaks and thruster failures almost derailed their arrival at
the International Space Station and have kept them there much longer
than planned.
In their first news conference from orbit, they said they expect to
return once thruster testing is complete on Earth. They said they’re not
complaining about getting extra time in orbit and are enjoying helping
the station crew.
“I have a real good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft will
bring us home, no problem,” Williams told reporters.
The two rocketed into orbit on June 5 on the test flight, which was
originally supposed to last eight days.
NASA ordered the Starliner and SpaceX Dragon capsules a decade ago
for astronaut flights to and from the space station, paying each company
billions of dollars. SpaceX’s first taxi flight with astronauts was in
2020. Boeing’s first crew flight was repeatedly delayed because of
software and other issues.
Snowflake
lets admins make MFA mandatory across all user accounts
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Company announces intent following Ticketmaster, Santander break-ins
A month after incident response giant Mandiant suggested the litany of
data thefts linked to Snowflake account intrusions had the common
component of lacking multi-factor authentication (MFA) controls, the
cloud storage and data analytics company is offering a mandatory MFA
option to admins.…
NASA
Deputy Administrator Strengthens Ties in Japan, Republic of Korea
date: 2024-07-10, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy will visit Japan and the
Republic of Korea beginning Thursday, July 11, to underscore the
critical role of international cooperation in advancing space
exploration and technology development. During her week-long visit to
the region, Melroy will engage with ministers and other senior
government officials in both countries, including leaders from […]
Astroscale
space janitor attempts fly-around of derelict upper stage
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
ADRAS-J avoids adding to debris problem with autonomous collision
avoidance
Astroscale Japan has shown off images of orbital debris and demonstrated
the ability of its spacecraft to avoid adding to the problem thanks to
an autonomous collision avoidance system.…
Earth planning date: Monday, July 8, 2024 And just like we planned,
Curiosity successfully drove about 11 meters (about 36 feet) after a
27-sol drill campaign at Mammoth Lakes! Not so fast, though, these rocks
are just too interesting to leave behind so quickly. Instead of
high-tailing it uphill like we usually do after a […]
AYANEO
Pocket EVO is an Android handheld with a 7 inch, 120 Hz OLED
display
date: 2024-07-10, from: Liliputing
AYANEO is a company that’s made a name for itself in over the past few
years by launching a wide range of handheld gaming PCs with a variety of
shapes, sizes, features, and price points. Most ship with Windows
software and AMD Ryzen processors, but recently the company started to
branch out into Android-powered handhelds. […]
Microsoft
avoids formal antitrust EC probe over abusive licensing claims by
settling case with CISPE
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Pays ‘lump sum,’ setting up new Azure Stack for hosters and more but
some concerned about the private deal
A group of 27 cloud providers have agreed to settle the complaint they
lodged with the European Commission over alleged anti-competitive
behavior related to the cost they pay to run Microsoft’s software in
their datacenters.…
“I
fixed a 6-year-old .deb installation bug in Ubuntu MATE and
Xubuntu”
date: 2024-07-10, from: OS News
I love a good bug hunting story, and this one is right up there as a
great one. Way back in 2018, Doug Brown discovered that after installing
Ubuntu MATE 18.04, if he launched Firefox from the icon in the default
panel arrangement to install Chrome from the official Chrome website,
the process was broken. After downloading the .deb and double-clicking
it, GDebi would appear, but after clicking “Install”, nothing happened.
What was supposed to happen is that after clicking “Install”, an
authentication dialog should appear where you enter your root password,
courtesy of gksu. However, this dialog did not appear, and without
thinking too much of it, Brown shrugged and just installed the
downloaded Chrome .deb through the terminal, which worked just fine.
While he didn’t look any deeper into the cause of the issue, he did note
that as the years and new Ubuntu releases progressed, the bug would
still be there, all the way up until the most recent release. Finally,
2.5 years ago, he decided to dive into the bug. It turned out there were
lots of reports about this issue, but nobody stepped up to fix it. While
workarounds were made available through wrapper scripts, and deeper
investigations into the cause revealed helpful information. The actual
error message was a doozy: “Refusing to render service to dead parents”,
which is quite metal and a little disturbing. In summary, the problem
was that GDebi was using execv() to replace itself with an instance of
pkexec, which was intended to bring up an authentication dialog and then
allow GDebi to run as a superuser. pkexec didn’t like this arrangement,
because it wants to have a parent process other than init. Alkis
mentioned that you could recreate the problematic scenario in a terminal
window by running gdebi-gtk with setsid to run it in a new session. ↫
Doug Brown Backing up a few steps, if the name “gksu” rings a bell for
you, you might have already figured out where the problem most likely
originated from. Right around that time, 2018, Ubuntu switched to using
PolicyKit instead, and gksu was removed from Ubuntu. GDebi was patched
to work with PolicyKit instead, and this was what introduced the actual
bug. Sadly, despite having a clear idea of the origin of the bug, as
well as where to look to actually fix it, nobody picked it up. It sat
there for years, causing problems for users, without a fix in sight.
Brown was motivated enough to fix it, submitted the patch, but after
receiving word it would be looked at within a few days, he never heard
anything back for years, not helped by the fact that GDebi has long been
unmaintained. It wasn’t until very recently that he decided to go back
again, and this time, after filling out additional information required
for a patch for an unmaintained package, it was picked up, and will
become available in the next Ubuntu release (and will most likely be
backported, too). Brown further explains why it took so long for the bug
to be definitely fixed. Not only is GDebi unmaintained, the bug also
only manifested itself when launching Firefox from the panel icon – it
did not manifest when launching Firefox from the MATE menu, so a lot of
people never experienced it. On top of that, as we all sadly know,
Ubuntu replaced the Firefox .deb package with the SNAP version, which
also doesn’t trigger the bug. It’s a long story for sure, but a very
interesting one. It shows how sometimes, the stars just align to make
sure a bug does not get fixed, even if everyone involved knows how to
fix it, and even if fixes have been submitted. Sometimes, things just
compound to cause a bug to fall through the cracks.
For
immigrants, Biden offers some protections; Trump, mass deportations
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
U.S. presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump differ
sharply on immigration. Both sparred over immigration at their first
presidential debate. VOA’s immigration correspondent Aline Barros has
the story.
Microsoft
exits OpenAI’s boardroom to sidestep regulatory scrutiny
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Redmond ‘confident in the company’s direction’ says withdrawal letter
Microsoft is giving up its non-voting observer seat on OpenAI’s board,
citing progress in the company’s direction - yet fear of regulatory
scrutiny no doubt also played some part in the decision-making process.…
30
Years Ago: STS-65, the Second International Microgravity Lab
Mission
date: 2024-07-10, from: NASA breaking news
On July 8, 1994, space shuttle Columbia took to the skies on its 17th
trip into space, on the second International Microgravity Laboratory
(IML-2) mission. Six space agencies sponsored 82 life and microgravity
science experiments. The seven-person crew consisted of Commander Robert
D. Cabana, Pilot James D. Halsell, Payload Commander Richard J. Hieb,
Mission Specialists […]
A major regional bank has agreed to resolve claims that it harmed
thousands of customers by opening fake accounts, and charging for
unnecessary insurance tied to car and truck loans. Fifth Third Bank will
pay millions of dollars and is labeling these “legacy issues.” We’ll
unpack. Then, we’ll also do some bond and stock markets Powell-parsing,
and visit a Danish town where Novo Nordisk is racing to boost
weight-loss drug production.
Photos:
Unveiling of the new Contra Costa County Administration Building in
Martinez
date: 2024-07-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
According to the county, it’s the first government building in the
world to achieve the Total Resource Use and Efficiency certification.
TRUE is a zero-waste certification used to cut the carbon footprint and
help support public health.
July 1 BATTERY: 10:43 a.m. in the 500 block of West Hacienda Avenue.
A man hit the victim in the face approximately four times with a closed
fist, ripped her shirt and bit her on the knee. The victim did not have
any visible marks or a complaint of pain. The man was booked. DUI:
[…]
3
members of BBC journalist’s family killed in suspected crossbow
attack
date: 2024-07-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
A manhunt is underway in north London for a man suspected of being
armed with a crossbow after three women – the wife and two daughters of
a BBC journalist – were killed.
Coming
of Age during Wartime in Sudan: A Conversation with Omnia Mustafa
date: 2024-07-10, from: Care
<p>Omina Mustafa and Khadijah Abdurqhman discuss Mustafa’s experience of race and racialization as an African Arab person from northern Sudan, and the atrocities being committed against the people of Darfur and western Sudan.</p>
ROUGOL to see
Visions of the Impossible – 15th July
date: 2024-07-10, from: RiscOS Story
They’ll see things you people wouldn’t believe. The RISC OS User
Group of London (ROUGOL) next meets up on Monday, 15th July, and this
month they’ll be hallucinating. No, wait, I meant they’ll have Nathan
Atkinson from Visions of the Impossible as their guest speaker. Visions
of the Impossible (or VotI) were a programming group active in the
1990s, and brought a number of titles to the RISC OS platform, including
games, demos, and utilities. One of their more well known games was
Sunburst, a game in which you may…
The next meeting of Bristol RISC OS Users (BRU) will take place on
Thursday, 11th September. The group meets on an informal basis for a
chat over a meal, a drink and bite to eat, so there is usually no set
topic or formal speaker; it’s usually a case of discussing the latest
RISC OS news and developments, and often beyond into the wider world.
However, sometimes members might bring along their own latest projects –
or problems – for the group to look at. If you live in or…
A new version of StreetFix has been released by Kevin Wells. The
software provides a means for RISC OS users to report and check upon
local issues, such as damaged street furniture, potholes in the road,
and so on – all from within an application on the RISC OS desktop,
rather than via a web browser. The updated application now stands at
version 1.08, and the two changes Kevin has highlighted with this
release are the addition of Australia as a country in which the software
can be used, and…
An
Oakland-bound Southwest jet that did a ‘Dutch roll’ was parked outside
during severe storm
date: 2024-07-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Dutch roll is a swaying, rhythmic combination of yaw, or the tail
sliding sideways, and the wingtips rocking up and down. The Southwest
jet experienced the movement at 34,000 feet and again after descending
to 32,000 feet while flying from Phoenix to Oakland.
Malware
that is ‘not ransomware’ wormed its way through Fujitsu Japan’s
systems
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Company says data exfiltration was extremely difficult to detect
Fujitsu Japan says an unspecified “advanced” malware strain was to blame
for a March data theft, insisting the strain was “not ransomware”, yet
it hasn’t revealed how many individuals are affected.…
Samsung
Galaxy Z Fold6 brings a brighter screen, Galaxy Z Flip6 is a little
thinner and has longer battery life
date: 2024-07-10, from: Liliputing
Samsung is now taking pre-orders for its latest foldable smartphones,
the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 and Galaxy Z Flip6. Both feature Qualcomm
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processors and support for the latest Galaxy AI
features. But they’re also both pretty modest updates over the
previous-generation. The company is also unveiling the phones on the […]
US
veteran killed in Ukraine finally laid to rest in California
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
American soldier Jericho Magallon went to fight in Ukraine in March
2022. He was killed in September near Bakhmut. In late June, his body
was brought back home to California for a funeral. VOA’s Russian Service
spoke with his mother and siblings about his life in this story narrated
by Anna Rice. Camera: Vazgen Varzhabetian.
A small group of scientists on the biofilm mitigation team at NASA’s
Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, study solutions to combat
fast-growing colonies of bacteria or fungi, known as biofilm, for future
space missions. Biofilm occurs when a cluster of bacteria or fungi
generates a slimy matrix of “extracellular polymeric substances” to
protect itself […]
“We’re real people who have rent to pay and mouths to feed. We make $300
per month from donations from our self-hosted users. It would take us
more than ten years of donations to pay one month of salary for our
small team. If we cannot capture the economic value of our work, the
project will become unsustainable and die.”
It’s more than a little painful to see new open source businesses
re-learn what I and other open source founders have learned over time.
I’m fully in support of Plausible moving to AGPL and introducing a
Contributor License Agreement, but I don’t believe this will be enough.
Indeed, Plausible is moving to “open core” and privatizing some of the
more lucrative features:
“We’re also keeping some of the newly released business and enterprise
features (funnels and ecommerce revenue metrics at the time of being)
exclusive to the business plan subscribers on our Plausible Analytics
managed hosting.”
What’s particularly interesting to me is that they’re maintaining source
availability for these features - it’s just that they’re not going to be
released under an open source license.
Open source purists might complain, but I believe it’s better for the
project to exist at all and use licensing that allows for sustainability
rather than to maintain open source purity and find that the developers
can’t sustain themselves. I’d love for these things to be compatible,
but so far, I don’t believe that they are.
Microsoft
tries to clear the air with mountains of CO2 credits
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-11, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
‘Supply chains still powered by coal and gas’ scoffs Greenpeace
Microsoft has inked a contract with Occidental Petroleum to buy 500,000
metric tons of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) “credits” over six years to
support its overall carbon strategy. The move follows a dramatic rise in
Microsoft’s CO2 emissions due to datacenter construction.…
The Ticketmaster hack has got a lot, lot worse. We also talk about
how scalpers have teamed up with hackers, and then the continued sale of
netflow data to the U.S. government.
Current conditions: Extreme heat in Southern
California is causing cars to break down on the highway • Flooding in
northeastern India killed nine rare one-horned rhinos • Residents in
Mount Vernon, Indiana, are waking up to debris and devastation from a
violent tornado spawned by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl.
THE TOP FIVE
Microsoft and Oxy agree to largest-ever DAC credits deal
Tech giant Microsoft has agreed to the
“single
largest purchase” of direct air capture carbon credits,
buying
500,000 metric tons of credits from Occidental Petroleum’s (aka Oxy)
1PointFive DAC subsidiary. The deal is worth hundreds of millions of
dollars and will help Microsoft confront its growing emissions problem
as demand for energy-intensive artificial intelligence grows.
Microsoft’s emissions
grew
by 30% in 2023 compared to 2020. Google’s emissions are also rising, up
13% last year compared to the year before. Both companies pin the blame
on the growth of AI. As Bloomberg noted, DAC “is
expensive, energy-intensive and not yet proven at industrial scale.”
Occidental clinched a
similar
(but smaller) deal with Amazon last year.
New FEMA rule will improve infrastructure flood resilience
The Biden administration yesterday
finalized
a rule aimed at protecting federal infrastructure from flooding
exacerbated by climate change. The federal flood risk management
standard, first proposed in 2015, will require public structures funded
by FEMA be built above the projected flood level for their location, or
be moved to a different location entirely. The hope is to “put a stop to
the cycle of response and recovery, and rinse and repeat,”
said
Deanne Criswell, the FEMA administrator. FEMA will cover the cost of
implementing the changes. The rule will come into effect on September 9.
Texas power outages persist as temperatures rise
Frustration is growing in Texas, where nearly 2 million people are still
without power after Hurricane Beryl tore through the state Monday as a
category 1 storm. The power outages mean many residents are without
access to air conditioning as a heat wave pushes temperatures into the
90s. At least 16 hospitals were relying on generators to keep the lights
on yesterday,
according
toThe Associated Press. Making matters worse,
flooding from the storm caused a
“domestic
wastewater” spill in downtown Houston, where residents were told to
boil water before consuming it. A
report
published in April found that power outages from extreme weather events
are rising in the U.S., with Texas being the worst-affected state.
New
analysis
from the American Clean Power Association found that U.S. offshore wind
capacity will fall short of President Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts by
2030. There are currently 56 GW of capacity under development across 37
leases, the report finds, but just 14 GW will be deployed by 2030.
However, things will speed up quickly, and it’ll take just three years
for capacity to hit 30 GW in 2033, and another two to hit 40 GW in 2035.
Climate change-denying senator James Inhofe dies
Former Republican senator James Inhofe,
“the
capital’s most vociferous denier of climate change,” died Tuesday at
age 89. Inhofe served five terms in the Senate starting in the 1990s
before retiring in January last year. He began vocally downplaying
scientific evidence of climate change in 2003. His campaigns received
generous donations from fossil fuel interests. In 2012, Inhofe authored
a book called The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming
Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. In a 2015 stunt, he brought
a snowball into the Senate in an attempt to prove that man-made global
warming was not real. He opposed efforts to cap greenhouse gas emissions
and once called the Environmental Protection Agency a “Gestapo
bureaucracy.” He later went on to play a key role in transforming the
EPA under former President Trump.
The
late Sen. Inhofe during his 2015 snowball
stunt.YouTube/C-SPAN
THE KICKER
Global temperatures
seem
to be falling slightly now, after more than a year of unrelenting
new record monthly highs.
“Barely six months into the job, the mayor of Athens’s top priority is
simple: ensuring that the people of Greece’s capital – mainland Europe’s
hottest metropolis – survive the summer. After a June that was the
hottest on record, the city has already witnessed record-breaking
temperatures and wildfires.”
We’re deeply into the climate crisis at this point; a major city having
to make major changes in order to “survive the summer” is just another
example.
When you get into the detail, it’s terrifying - particularly considering
that we’re still only at the foothills of where the crisis will lead us:
“It’s not a matter of lifestyle, or improving the quality of life; it’s
about survival when 23% of the green lung around Athens has in recent
years been destroyed by fires. It’s vital we have more trees, more
air-conditioned community centres and more water stations on our streets
and squares.”
Over time, we’re going to see mass migrations and real, sustained
changes to the way people live. We’re also going to see a great deal of
suffering. These are things we’ve been warned about for many decades,
but the stories are transitioning from projections from climate experts
to being the news headlines.
The onus is on the international community to respond to the crisis with
robust energy, but we’ve been waiting for decades for this to really
happen. Instead we get carbon trading schemes and economic deals that
don’t cut to the core of the problem.
There’s an individual responsibility, too. These days that
responsibility goes beyond making sensible choices about our own energy
use (although most of us don’t) and extends to voting, taking to the
streets, and making it clear to our leaders that continued inaction is
not acceptable.
If there isn’t change, wars will be fought over this. In a certain
light, they already are.
How
NeWS became yesterday’s news in the window system wars
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
X co-designer David Rosenthal looks back at why his other project failed
A couple of weeks after its anniversary, one of the original engineers
behind X has explored why it succeeded where rivals – one of which he
co-developed – failed.…
“Newsletter platform and Substack rival Ghost announced earlier this
year that it would join the fediverse, the open social network of
interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed,
PeerTube, Flipboard and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others.
Now, it has made good on that promise — with its own newsletter as a
start.”
Ghost’s reader will certainly be augmented by other, standalone readers
that work a bit like Apple News. Its fediverse publishing capabilities
will be followed by other content management systems. Notably,
Automattic has been working on fediverse integration, for example, and
Flipboard has been doing amazing work in this area.
I’m also convinced there’s room for another fediverse-compatible social
network that handles both long and short-form content in a similar way
to Substack’s articles and Notes. If someone else doesn’t build that, I
will.
Campus
protests over Israel often target endowments. Community college students
find other ways to make noise
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The LAist
While universities nationwide have made headlines this year for
student protests of Israel’s war in Gaza, local community college
students haven’t seen the same attention.
Climate
Change Risk to National Critical Functions
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: RAND blog
The changing climate will strain the basic functions that underpin
American society. Core services such as supplying water and electricity,
providing medical care, and responding to emergencies like floods will
face regional- or even national-level disruptions in the years to
come.
“Voucher advocates, backed by a handful of billionaire funders, are on
the march to bring more red and purple states into the fold for “school
choice,” their preferred terminology for vouchers. And again and again,
they are running up against rural Republicans like Warner, who are
joining forces with Democratic lawmakers in a rare bipartisan alliance.
That is, it’s the reddest regions of these red and purple states that
are putting up some of the strongest resistance to the conservative
assault on public schools.”
This is heartening to see: a bipartisan push against the school voucher
system. Public schools are important social infrastructure that deserve
significantly more investment rather than having funds siphoned away to
support exclusive institutions. A free market for schools is not the way
- and clearly, the communities who would be most affected by a voucher
system see this too.
This also feels like one of those rare moments where some Republicans
are actively practicing old-school conservatism: the kind that isn’t
drawn from The Handmaid’s Tale. That’s nice to see, and I’d
love to see more of it.
“[Republican Representative] Greene believes vouchers will harm his
district. It has a couple of small private schools in it or just outside
it — with student bodies that are starkly more white than the district’s
public schools — but the majority of his constituents rely on the public
schools, and he worries that vouchers will leave less money for them.”
Would you work weekends? Make a longer commute? Even take a pay cut?
While unemployment isn’t high by historic standards, it is higher than
it was last summer. A new survey outlines the sacrifices some workers
are willing to make to avoid getting the axe. Plus, a new platform
elevates Black country artists, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell hinted that
the central bank may be getting closer to cutting rates.
View the Gateway space station’s first pressurized module, HALO
(Habitation and Logistics Outpost), illuminated in stunning detail.
Learn more about its role in supporting Artemis missions.
date: 2024-07-10, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
As the 2024 Summer Olympics approaches, we’re having an
#ArchivesHashtagParty: #ArchivesGoForGold! Join us on Friday, July 12,
2024, to celebrate all achievers, from Olympic champions to unsung
heroes. Use #ArchivesGoForGold and tag @USNatArchives on Instagram and X. The
2024 Summer Olympics is taking place from July 26 to August 11, 2024, in
Paris, France. Today’s …
Continue
reading U.S. Servicemembers at the 1984
Olympic Games
From the BBC World Service: A union representing workers at
South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics has called on its
30,000 members to go on strike indefinitely as part of its campaign for
better pay and benefits. Plus, NATO members are holding a three-day
summit to mark the organization’s 75th birthday — and the focus is on
Ukraine. Then, we visit the Danish town where Novo Nordisk, maker of
weight-loss drug Ozempic, is based.
When Adam Roe hits the accelerator and sends his vintage Land Rover
flying past a Porsche, he likes to imagine what the other driver must be
thinking.
While Roe’s ride looks the part of a restored Land Rover Series II, an
off-roading, unbreakable icon from the late 1950s, the secret is what’s
under the skin. Whereas the original bruiser produced about 45 total
horsepower, Roe says, the “restomod” created by his company, ZeroLabs,
is a fully electric vehicle with 600 horses — more than enough to catch
a sports car by surprise.
Being a classic car enthusiast doesn’t have to mean burning fossil fuels
anymore. ZeroLabs is part of a small but growing community of startup
companies and DIYers who are transforming some of the most beloved
vehicles of automotive history into zero-emissions EVs. The next time
you see a beautifully restored boxy Chevy Blazer rolling down the
highway, it might just be battery-powered.
Patrick Mackey has been turning vintage Mazda Miatas into electric cars
for more than a decade. Back in the 2000s, he wanted a fun but fully
electric car like the original Tesla Roadster, but couldn’t afford what
Elon Musk was asking. When he looked around at the kind of cars the
DIY-inclined were hacking into EVs, he thought about small rides like
the Toyota Yaris and Honda De La Soul. But it was the classic Miata —
derided by muscle-heads as too wimpy, but beloved by car enthusiasts who
recognize its compact greatness — that became the obvious choice.
“The Miatas have a great reputation for handling,” Mackey says. “They
sold a ton of ’em, so there’s a lot of ’em out there and you can get one
for a reasonable price.” Despite its small stature, the Miata was a
sturdy car, with thick frame rails that are strong enough to hold a
hefty EV battery back. (Mazda itself won’t be selling you an
electric
Miata until 2026, by the way.)
Initially, Mackey and his colleagues considered building their own EV
conversions and selling them directly to people, like ZeroLabs does, or
making kits to sell that would contain all the parts a person would need
to turn a gas-powered Miata into an electric one. But the steel parts
weighed a ton and wouldn’t fit inside one another for shipping,
rendering the idea impractical.
Instead, Mackey’s
EV
Miata website offers all the plans and fabrication documents a
home mechanic would need to take on the job. It’s up to the builder to
source the off-the-shelf electrical components to do the job, or,
perhaps, to salvage them from a wrecked EV as many DIYers do now, he
says.
Courtesy
of EV-Miata.com
A surprising amount of the original Miata parts can survive the
transformation. “You would keep the transmission and everything behind
it, so that part of the powertrain you keep. You’d replace the motor
with an adapter plate to connect the motor up to it. Then there’s the
battery pack and the controller and all those E components come into
play. But in that case, the majority of the car is there. If you are
going racing, or you’re looking for something with higher performance,
you could remove the transmission and then do a direct drive and have
two or three motors that are driving the rear wheels.” Or, he says, some
people are doing what’s called a stack replacement. They get a Nissan
Leaf’s entire subframe, containing the axles and transmission and
motors, and swap that into their EV conversion so it’s running on all
Leaf parts.
Car restoration has always been a money pit of a hobby. EV conversion is
no different — you do it for love, not because it’s cheaper than just
buying an electric car. Mackey says the EV Miata project probably costs
about $22,000 now, not counting the cost of buying an old Mazda nor the
sweat equity required to build it.
Nevertheless, plenty of people with the proper mechanical chops take on
the challenge. At Caltech, where I work (and where lots of people are
electrical engineers), there’s a vintage Porsche often plugged in next
to me that was clearly hacked into an electric. With enough cash, you
could buy a
kit
to convert just about any classic car into an EV.
And the DIY EV is just one end of the spectrum. On the far side lies
fully realized conversions like those by ZeroLabs, which specializes in
not just electrifying, but modernizing Ford Broncos and other beloved
SUVs of yore.
Courtesy
of ZeroLabs.
“A restoration is to say, hey, we’re going to put this back to the
original condition exactly as it would’ve been, which means no
Bluetooth, no three-point seat belts. You got to use radial tires, you
got to put on whitewalls. You got to use period-correct paint and AM
radio and [an] ashtray. That’s a restoration. That’s not what we’re
doing.”
Roe was inspired by a backcountry snowboarding trip when the engine on
his old Bronco cut out, a problem that plagued the old SUVs. As it
coasted silently, he fell in love with the idea of a classic car without
all the noise. “You could hear the winds, you could hear the tires,
you’re in your classic, but you’re also kind of with nature versus being
hidden by this loud rumbly loud noise engine with your stereo,” he says.
In place of their original bare-bones interiors, ZeroLab’s reimagined EV
trucks and SUVs have all the tech features of a modern vehicle. “We
looked at everything that needs to be done for a modern car: How do we
think about steering, how do we think about brakes, communication,
upgradeability, and charging rates? All of that has changed, and so
simply electrifying that car isn’t really enough.”
Their creations aren’t for the faint of wallet. The fully realized
ZeroLabs first-generation
Bronco
starts at nearly $300,000. But it seems there are plenty of wealthy
buyers looking for a boxy, retro, or just plain eccentric electric car
that doesn’t look anything like the production EVs now rolling off the
assembly line. Roe exudes optimism that EV restomods will have their
Tesla moment within the next couple of years — and the EVs that are old
on the outside and new on the inside will be the next big thing.
Ransomware
crews investing in custom data stealing malware
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
BlackByte, LockBit among the criminals using bespoke tools
As ransomware crews increasingly shift beyond just encrypting victims’
files and demanding a payment to unlock them, instead swiping sensitive
info straight away, some of the more mature crime organizations are
developing custom malware for their data theft.…
Glass
rain, supersonic winds, and Eau de Rotten Egg – just another day on HD
189733 b
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Sounds better than a British summer
At the time of year when thoughts naturally turn to a much-earned
vacation, news arrives of a planet with temperatures of 920°C (1,688°F),
raining glass blown horizontal by 5,000 mph (8,047 kph) winds, and the
constant smell of rotten eggs.…
What
the Supreme Court’s Rulings Mean for Climate Change
date: 2024-07-10, from: Heatmap News
Jesse is on vacation until August, so this is a special, Rob-only
summer episode of Shift Key.
Over the past few weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court has profoundly changed
how the federal government does its day-to-day work. In a series of
landmark rulings, the high court sharply curtailed the ability of
government agencies — including the Environmental Protection Agency — to
write and enforce rules and regulations.
That will change how the federal government oversees the products we
buy, the air we breathe, and the water we drink. But it could also alter
how the government regulates heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution.
But how, exactly, will these new rulings affect climate law? And is
there an upside to the deregulatory revolution? This week, Rob holds a
roundtable with two environmental law experts about what the high
court’s rulings mean for America’s decarbonization project — and whether
the court just inadvertently made the country’s already burdensome
permitting process even worse. They are Jody Freeman, a Harvard law
professor and former Obama administration lawyer, and Nicholas Bagley, a
University of Michigan law professor.
This episode of Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding
executive editor of Heatmap.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on
Apple
Podcasts,
Spotify,
Amazon,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add
the
show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Nicholas Bagley: I was working at the court and working
for Justice Stevens when Massachusetts v. EPA was
decided, and you know, even at the time, the level of frustration and
even anger from the conservative justices — it was a 5-4 decision — was
pretty intense. And since that time, of course, the conservatives have
really consolidated their authority on the court.
And there
are a lot of cases after Mass v. EPA that accept the
principle that EPA can regulate greenhouse gases while still finding
ways to push back on agency efforts to do so. And so, is Mass v.
EPA going to be overruled? Well, the court doesn’t tend to
like to overrule statutory holdings. Once the Supreme Court has said
statute means X, it gives that determination a very
high degree of precedential effect, even more so than in the
constitutional context. The theory is that if Congress doesn’t like what
we said, Congress can always fix it. In the constitutional context, we
actually have to be a little bit more flexible because Congress can’t
just fix any mistakes that we might make. So there’s a kind of super
stare decisis, is what they call it, a super
precedential effect of that decision.
And so far, the court
hasn’t decided to kind of go after that interpretation, and I’m not sure
they will. And I’m not sure they need to [with] all of these different
doctrinal outs that they’ve got: the major questions doctrine,
we’re going to interpret your statute differently,
we’re going to strike it down on arbitrary and capricious
grounds, it gives them all the tools they need to push back on
EPA without actually taking the big, bold, and splashy step of
overruling Mass v. EPA.
Jody
Freeman: You can see all these cases as revenge for
Mass v. EPA, a sort of reaction to Mass v.
EPA in a funny way. I mean, to be sure, if the court currently
constituted were to have to rule on that case, they would never have
decided that the Clean Air Act authorizes regulation of greenhouse gas.
So they’re fighting a rearguard action in all the ways Nick
suggested.
This Supreme Court appears to be, as one scholar
said, a sort of anti-novelty court. That is, agencies shouldn’t do new
things, Congress should have to pass new statutes for that to happen.
And it’s a really disabling notion because Congress passes broad
statutes that say things like “protect the public health with an
adequate margin of safety.” They give the agency broad authority to,
say, protect workers against grave dangers in the workplace without
necessarily defining what “grave danger” could mean, or what “public
health protection” could mean, because they expect the agencies to
develop their view over time, depending on what science says and what
technology makes available and so on.
And this court seems
to be opposed to evolution, right? To progress and letting agencies
adapt over time. And in that sense, I think they’re a kind of small-C
conservative court, in the sense that change is bad, and certainly
regulatory change is bad unless Congress itself authorizes agencies anew
to do something. And that, in and of itself, is, if not anti-regulatory,
it’s hostile to any kind of innovation or adaptation by the federal
bureaucracy.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure
and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an
audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get
the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at
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As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow
invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the
boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why
Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by
visiting
sungrowpower.com.
Babel
fish? We’re getting there. Reg reviews the Timekettle X1 AI Interpreter
Hub
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
A handy standalone translator, but you’ll need deep pockets, both
figuratively and literally, if you want one
Review One of the more useful applications of AI
technology is translation and interpreting. The Timekettle X1 AI
Interpreter hub attempts to move things forward with a pleasing
industrial design.…
Big
Tech’s eventual response to my LLM-crasher bug report was dire
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Fixes have been made, it appears, but disclosure or discussion is
invisible
Column Found a bug? It turns out that reporting it
with a story in The Register works remarkably well … mostly.
After publication of my “Kryptonite” article about a prompt that crashes
many AI chatbots, I began to get a steady stream of emails from readers
– many times the total of all reader emails I’d received in the previous
decade.…
ViperSoftX
variant spotted abusing .NET runtime to disguise data theft
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Freeware AutoIt also used to hide entire PowerShell environments in
scripts
A rapidly-changing infostealer malware known as ViperSoftX has evolved
to become more dangerous, according to security researchers at threat
detection vendor Trellix.…
Poll
Shows Deep Ambivalence About City of Santa Barbara’s Direction
date: 2024-07-10, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A recent survey on the proposed sales-tax measure for November’s ballot
shows more than half of respondents think city is headed down the “wrong
track.”
Accenture
buys Indian chip design firm to expand semiconductor smarts
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
450 Excelmax Technologies employees to get new badges
Global professional services company Accenture on Monday announced the
acquisition of India-based semiconductor design services provider
Excelmax Technologies.…
RADIUS
networking protocol blasted into submission through MD5-based flaw
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
If someone can do a little MITM’ing and hash cracking, they can log in
with no valid password needed
Cybersecurity experts at universities and Big Tech have disclosed a
vulnerability in a common client-server networking protocol that allows
snoops to potentially bypass user authentication via man-in-the-middle
(MITM) attacks.…
US-built
pier will be put back in Gaza for several days to move aid, then
permanently removed
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The pier built by the U.S. military to bring
humanitarian aid to Gaza will be reinstalled Wednesday to be used for
several days, but then the plan is to pull it out permanently, several
U.S. officials said. It would deal the final blow to a project long
plagued by bad weather, security uncertainties and difficulties getting
food into the hands of starving Palestinians.
The officials said the goal is to clear whatever aid has piled up in
Cyprus and on the floating dock offshore and get it to the secure area
on the beach in Gaza. Once that has been done, the Army will dismantle
the pier and depart. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity
because final details are still being worked out.
Officials had hoped the pier would provide a critical flow of aid to
starving residents in Gaza as the nine-month-long war drags on. But
while more than 8.6 million kilograms of food has gotten into Gaza via
the pier, the project has been hampered by persistent heavy seas and
stalled deliveries due to ongoing security threats as Israeli troops
continue their offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
The decision comes as Israeli troops make another push deeper into
Gaza City, which Hamas says could threaten long-running negotiations
over a cease-fire and hostage release, after the two sides had appeared
to have narrowed the gaps in recent days.
U.S. troops removed the pier on June 28 because of bad weather and
moved it to the port of Ashdod in Israel. But distribution of the aid
had already stopped due to security concerns.
The United Nations suspended deliveries from the pier on June 9, a
day after the Israeli military used the area around it for airlifts
after a hostage rescue that killed more than 270 Palestinians. U.S. and
Israeli officials said no part of the pier itself was used in the raid,
but U.N. officials said any perception in Gaza that the project was used
may endanger their aid work.
As a result, aid brought through the pier into the secure area on the
beach piled up for days while talks continued between the U.N. and
Israel. More recently, the World Food Program hired a contractor to move
the aid from the beach to prevent the food and other supplies from
spoiling.
The Pentagon said all along that the pier was only a temporary
project, designed to prod Israel into opening and allowing aid to flow
better through land routes — which are far more productive than the
U.S.-led sea route.
And the weather now is projected only to get worse.
The pier was damaged by high winds and heavy seas on May 25, just a
bit more than a week after it began operating, and was removed for
repairs. It was reconnected on June 7, but removed again due to bad
weather on June 14. It was put back days later, but heavy seas again
forced its removal on June 28.
Biden
launches NATO summit with sober warning about global threats
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday welcomed NATO leaders and
heralded the alliance’s 75th anniversary while making the case for peace
through strength amid the largest challenge to peace Europe has faced in
decades. Other administration officials made similar arguments for
bolstering defense to fight global threats. VOA White House
correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington
Supes
Vote to Place County Government Reform on Ballot
date: 2024-07-10, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a motion on
Tuesday, July 9 introduced by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice
Hahn to reform Los Angeles County government by expanding the board to
nine supervisors and to establish an office of County Executive to be
elected directly by voters
US
judge’s security shoots man during attempted carjacking, say
authorities
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
washington — A member of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s
security detail shot an armed man during an attempted carjacking in the
early morning hours, according to court documents.
It happened as two deputy U.S. Marshals were on duty in a government
car in Washington about 1 a.m. on July 5. They were confronted by a man
who got out of a silver minivan and pointed a gun at one of them through
the driver’s side window, according to a criminal complaint. The car was
unmarked, but the pair were dressed in U.S. Marshals shirts.
The deputy pulled out his department-issued gun and shot the man
about four times, hitting him in the mouth. He then gave the man first
aid while the minivan drove away, charges state. The suspect was
hospitalized and placed under arrest on suspicion of attempted
carjacking and resisting officers.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals confirmed the deputies were part
of the detail protecting Supreme Court justices. The deputies were
stationed near Sotomayor’s home.
Sotomayor was not directly mentioned in court documents and there is
no indication she was the target of the attack.
It comes after a string of high-profile carjackings in the nation’s
capital last year. Other victims included a diplomat from the United
Arab Emirates and U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas. Secret
Service agents protecting President Joe Biden’s granddaughter also
opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret
Service vehicle last year. No one was struck.
The overall number of carjackings is on the decline so far this year,
according to police data.
Russian
election meddlers hurting Biden, helping Trump, US intelligence
warns
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Russia is turning to a familiar playbook in its attempt
to sway the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, looking
for ways to boost the candidacy of former President Donald Trump by
disparaging the campaign of incumbent President Joe Biden, according to
American intelligence officials.
A new assessment of threats to the November election, shared Tuesday,
does not mention either candidate by name. But an intelligence official
told reporters that the Kremlin view of the U.S. political landscape has
not changed from previous election cycles.
“We have not observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the
presidential race from past elections,” the official told reporters,
agreeing to discuss the intelligence only on the condition of
anonymity.
The official said that preference has been further cemented by “the
role the U.S. is playing with regard to Ukraine and broader policy
toward Russia.”
The caution from U.S. intelligence officials comes nearly four years
after it issued a similar warning about the 2020 presidential elections,
which pitted then-President Trump against Biden.
Moscow was using “a range of measures to primarily denigrate former
Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia
‘establishment,’” William Evanina, the then-head of the U.S. National
Counterintelligence and Security Center, said at the time.
“Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President
Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television,” he
added.
A declassified post-election assessment, released in March 2021,
reaffirmed the initial findings. Russian President Vladimir Putin
authorized “influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s
candidacy and the Democratic Party” while offering support for Trump,
the report said.
U.S. intelligence officials said they have been in contact with both
presidential campaigns and the candidates but declined to share what
sort of information may have been shared.
Trump pushback
The Trump campaign Tuesday rejected the U.S. intelligence assessment
as backward.
“Vladimir Putin endorsed Joe Biden for President because he knows
Biden is weak and can easily be bullied, as evidenced by Putin’s
years-long invasion of Ukraine,” national press secretary Karoline
Leavitt told VOA in an email.
“When President Trump was in the Oval Office, Russia and all of
America’s adversaries were deterred, because they feared how the United
States would respond,” she said.
“The only people in America who don’t see this clear contrast between
Biden’s ineffective weakness versus Trump’s effective peace through
strength approach are the left-wing stenographers in the mainstream
media who write false narratives about Donald Trump for a living,” she
added.
The Biden campaign has so far not responded to questions from VOA
about the new U.S. assessment.
Russian sophistication
Russian officials also have not yet responded to requests for comment
on the latest allegations, which accuse the Kremlin of using a “whole of
government” approach to see Trump and other American candidates
perceived as favorable to Moscow win in November.
“Moscow is using a variety of approaches to bolster its messaging and
lend an air of authenticity to its efforts,” the U.S. intelligence
official said. “This includes outsourcing its efforts to commercial
firms to hide its hand and laundering narratives through influential
U.S. voices.”
Russia’s efforts also appear focused on targeting U.S. voters in
so-called swing states, states most likely to impact the outcome of the
presidential election, officials said.
Some of those efforts have already come to light.
Russia and AI
Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure
of two internet domains and of another 968 accounts on the X social
media platform, part of what officials described an artificial
intelligence-driven venture by Russian intelligence and Russia’s
state-run RT news network.
A Justice Department statement said Russian intelligence and RT used
specific AI software to create authentic-looking social media accounts
to mimic U.S. individuals, “which the operators then used to promote
messages in support of Russian government objectives.”
A joint advisory, issued simultaneously by the U.S., Canada and the
Netherlands, warned Russia was in the process of expanding the AI-fueled
influence operation to other social media platforms.
The U.S. intelligence official who spoke to reporters Tuesday
described such use of AI as a “malign influence accelerant,” and warned
the technology had already been deployed, likely by China, in the run-up
to Taiwan’s elections this past January.
China waiting
For now, though, U.S. intelligence officials see few indications
Beijing is seeking to interfere in U.S. elections, as it did in 2020 and
2022.
China “sees little gain in choosing between two parties that are
perceived as both seeking to contain Beijing,” said the U.S.
intelligence official, noting things could change.
“The PRC is seeking to expand its ability to collect and monitor data
on U.S. social media platforms, probably to better understand and
eventually manipulate public opinion,” the official said. “In addition,
we are watching for whether China might seek to influence select
down-ballot races as it did in the 2022 midterm elections.”
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, which has denied previous U.S.
allegations, responded by calling the U.S. “the biggest disseminator of
disinformation.”
“China has no intention and will not interfere in the US election,
and we hope that the US side will not make an issue of China in the
election,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email.
‘Chaos agent’
The new U.S. election threat assessment warns that in addition to
concerns about Russia and China, there is growing evidence Iran is
seeking to play the role of a “chaos agent” in the upcoming U.S.
vote.
“Iran seeks to stoke social divisions and undermine confidence in
U.S. democratic institutions around the elections,” according to an
unclassified version of the assessment.
It also warned that Tehran “has demonstrated a long-standing interest
in exploiting U.S. political and societal tensions through various
means, including social media.”
As an example, officials Tuesday pointed to newly declassified
intelligence showing Iran trying to exploit pro-Gaza protests across the
U.S.
“We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as
activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing
financial support to protesters,” said National Intelligence Director
Avril Haines.
Haines cautioned, though, that Americans who interacted with the
Iranian actors “may not be aware that they are interacting with or
receiving support from a foreign government.”
Iranian officials have not yet responded to VOA’s request for
comment.
Critical
Windows licensing bugs – plus two others under attack – top Patch
Tuesday
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: The Register (UK I.T.
News)
Citrix, SAP also deserve your attention – because miscreants are already
thinking about Exploit Wednesday
Patch Tuesday Clear your Microsoft system
administrator’s diary: The bundle of fixes in Redmond’s July Patch
Tuesday is a doozy, with at least two bugs under active exploitation.…
Pentagon — Ukraine is receiving five additional air defense systems
to protect its sovereign territory, including three additional Patriot
batteries from the United States, Germany and Romania.
U.S. President Joe Biden announced the five systems as NATO members
commemorated the 75th anniversary of the alliance during a summit in
Washington.
Allies marked the anniversary at Mellon Auditorium, the site of the
original signing of the North Atlantic treaty that established the
defensive bloc in 1949.
Topping the summit agenda is support for Ukraine’s battle against
Russia’s illegal invasion.
The Netherlands and other partners are donating Patriot components to
build a fourth Patriot battery, while Italy is donating an additional
SAMP-T system, according to a joint statement Tuesday by the leaders of
the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NATO members in April
that Ukraine needed a minimum of seven Patriot or other high-end air
defense systems to counter Russian air strikes.
NATO allies say they are coordinating closely with Kyiv to make these
systems available as soon as possible. They also said they are working
to make another announcement about additional strategic air defense
systems for Ukraine later this year.
“Not even our support for Ukraine has been a given,” NATO
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday. “The reality is there
are no cost-free options with an aggressive Russia as a neighbor. There
are no risk-free options in a war, and remember, the biggest cost and
the greatest risk will be if Russia wins in Ukraine.”
Since the U.S. Congress approved new aid for Ukraine following months
of delays, the United States has provided Ukraine with hundreds of
millions of dollars in equipment pulled from U.S. stockpiles, including
the additional Patriot battery announced Tuesday and multiple rounds of
long-range missiles known as ATACMS, two U.S. officials told VOA.
The ATACMS have a range of up to 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) and
nearly double the striking distance of Ukraine’s missiles.
In addition, the U.S. has provided billions of dollars of funding for
Kyiv’s long-term defense needs, including last week’s $2.2 billion
Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative package that is being used to
purchase interceptors for NASAMS (medium-range ground-based air defense
system) and Patriot air defense systems for Ukraine.
USPS
to raise postage stamp prices by 7.8% beginning Sunday
date: 2024-07-10, from: The Signal
By Naveen Athrappully Contributing Writer The U.S. Postal Service is
scheduled to raise the price of stamps for a second time this year by
the end of this weekend, with the […]
Los Angeles County is home to more than 10 million residents, with five
supervisors overseeing the most populous county in the country. That
means each supervisor represents approximately 2 million […]
Embattled
Biden rallies congressional Democratic support
date: 2024-07-10, from: VOA News USA
U.S. lawmakers returned to the nation’s capital this week for the
first time since President Joe Biden’s debate against presumptive
presidential Republican nominee Donald Trump in June. Katherine Gypson
reports on calls from Capitol Hill for Biden to step aside. Kim Lewis
contributed to this report.
date: 2024-07-10, updated: 2024-07-10, from: Tom Kellog blog
This post offers some helpful simplifications you can make when
working with RAG or embeddings that help build a working mental model
around them. Embeddings typically form a (hyper)sphere, because they’re
normalized.
Ora2Pg
Support - Chatbot and Converter, have been Released !
date: 2024-07-10, from: PostgreSQL News
Toronto, Canada - July 7th, 2024
Ora2Pg Chatbot and Converter
Ora2Pg is the most advanced database migration tool, for migrating
Oracle databases to PostgreSQL. Ora2Pg supports migrations from MySQL to
PostgreSQL and lately supported SQL Server to PostgreSQL.
HexaCluster announces the Ora2Pg Support that includes an Ora2Pg Chatbot
and Ora2Pg Converter.
Start a Chat session and ask your questions about Ora2Pg and Database
Migrations.
If you are not satisfied, click on “Continue with an Expert”. You will
now switch to “Expert mode”.
Once you are in the “Expert mode”, a Migration Specialist from
HexaCluster will review and respond back to your request.
Ora2Pg Converter
Sign Up for free
Supports Unlimited conversions of Oracle schema to PostgreSQL. Just
paste the Oracle DDL/Syntax and click on Convert, to generate PostgreSQL
DDL/syntax.
Click on “Connect with an Expert” for Experts Assistance on incorrect or
unsatisfied conversions.Links & Credits
This project is created and maintained by HexaCluster Corp.
PGroonga is a PostgreSQL
extension that makes PostgreSQL fast full text search platform for all
languages! It’s released under PostgreSQL license.
There are some PostgreSQL extensions that improves full text search
feature of PostgreSQL such as
pg_trgm^1.
pg_trgm doesn’t support languages that use non-alphanumerics characters
such as Japanese and Chinese.
PGroonga supports all languages, provides rich full text search related
features and is very fast. Because PGroonga uses
Groonga^2 that is a full-fledged full
text search engine as backend.
See the following benchmark results for performance:
Benchmark result for PGroonga, textsearch and pg_trgm with English
Wikipedia
https://pgroonga.github.io/reference/pgroonga-versus-textsearch-and-pg-trgm.html
Benchmark result for PGroonga and pg_bigm with Japanese Wikipedia
https://pgroonga.github.io/reference/pgroonga-versus-pg-bigm.html
PGroonga also supports JSON search. You can use each value for
condition. You can also perform full text search against all texts in
JSON like textsearch in PostgreSQL.
Changes
Here are highlights in PGroonga 3.2.1:
Added support for WAL resource manager
Added support for downgrading by using ALTER EXTENSION …
UPDATE
You can use PGroonga without full text search knowledge. You just create
an index and puts a condition into WHERE:
CREATE INDEX index_name ON table USING pgroonga (column);
SELECT * FROM table WHERE column &@~ 'PostgreSQL';
You can also use LIKE to use PGroonga. PGroonga provides a feature that
performs LIKE with index. LIKE with PGroonga index is faster than LIKE
without index. It means that you can improve performance without
changing your application that uses the following SQL:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE column LIKE '%PostgreSQL%';
Are you interested in PGroonga? Please
install^4 and try
tutorial^5. You can
know all PGroonga features.
You can install PGroonga easily. Because PGroonga provides packages for
major platforms. There are binaries for Windows.
BP
NWS/NOAA
The
late Sen. Inhofe during his 2015 snowball
stunt.
Courtesy
of EV-Miata.com
Courtesy
of ZeroLabs.
