News gathered 2024-07-17
(date: 2024-07-17 08:32:41)
Trump rally gunman asked for day off work, said he had ‘something to do’
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Nearly two minutes before the shooting began, witnesses alerted police that someone was crawling on the roof of the building.
How will photos of Trump shooting shape US presidential campaign?
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
Music Review | A Modernized ‘Carmen,’ a Bounty of Pianistic Glass
date: 2024-07-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Last weekend’s Music Academy of the West programming boasted a dazzling ‘Carmen’ to an epic night of Phillip Glass piano etudes.
The post Music Review | A Modernized ‘Carmen,’ a Bounty of Pianistic Glass appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/17/music-review-a-modernized-carmen-a-bounty-of-pianistic-glass/
California passed a law to fix unsafe homeless shelters. Cities and counties are ignoring it
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Supreme Court’s decision on homelessness will test a shelter system that’s full of problems – and lacking accountability.
How much did CalPERS claw back from retiree who grossly inflated his pension?
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
We’ve been revisiting the saga of Huntington Beach resident Bruce Malkenhorst Sr. — poster boy for public pension reform and once the most handsomely paid retiree in all of California, with pension checks totaling more than $551,000 a year.
Three days after attempted assassination, Trump shooter remains an elusive enigma
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Neighbors describe Thomas Matthew Crooks as an intelligent loner with few friends who left a vanishingly thin social media footprint and no hint of strong political beliefs.
Iconic casino on Las Vegas Strip marks its last day
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Volcano won’t survive the remaking of the Mirage.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/17/iconic-casino-on-las-vegas-strip-marks-its-last-day/
Ransomware continues to pile on costs for critical infrastructure victims
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Millions more spent without any improvement in recovery times
Costs associated with ransomware attacks on critical national infrastructure (CNI) organizations skyrocketed in the past year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/ransomware_continues_to_pile_on/
Woman, man wounded by stray bullets while driving in West Oakland
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 65-year-old man was in stable condition with a gunshot wound to his jaw, authorities said. The 53-year-old woman was in stable condition with a wound to her arm.
The Republican Party embraces crypto
date: 2024-07-17, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The GOP wants to be clear that it’s pro-cryptocurrency. The official Republican platform adopted earlier this week says the party will “defend the right to mine bitcoin.” We’ll hear more about the intersection of digital assets and politics. Plus, dinners in Spain tend to start pretty darn late — after 9 p.m. on average. One reason is that the working day runs deep into the evening. But could things be changing?
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/the-republican-party-embraces-crypto
High-pressure system that baked Bay Area earlier this month back in region
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
“It’s not going to be as bad as it was earlier this month,” NWS meteorologist Rachel Kennedy said.
Coming of Age during Wartime in Sudan: A Conversation with Omnia Mustafa
date: 2024-07-17, from: Care
<p>“When we are engaging with African people, they tell us, ‘You’re too Arab for us.’ And when we engage with Arab people, they tell us, ‘You’re too African for us.’”</p>FOSS funding vanishes from EU’s 2025 Horizon program plans
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Elimination of most Next Generation Internet funding ‘incomprehensible,’ says OW2 CEO Pierre-Yves Gibello
Funding for free and open source software (FOSS) initiatives under the EU’s Horizon program has mostly vanished from next year’s proposal, claim advocates who are worried for the future of many ongoing projects. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/foss_funding_vanishes_from_eus/
NASA STEM Program for Indigenous Communities Honored for Excellence
date: 2024-07-17, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has been selected by the International Astronautical Federation to receive its 2024 “3G” Diversity Award, which recognizes organizations for their contributions to fostering geographic, generational, and gender diversity in the space sector. NASA’s Indigenous Community-Based Education (CBE) Program is a consortium of partnerships between NASA and numerous, diverse Indigenous communities which co-create unique educational […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-stem-program-for-indigenous-communities-honored-for-excellence/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Allan Lichtman: The Science of Political Prediction.
https://guykawasaki.com/allan-lichtman-the-science-of-political-prediction/
Best remaining deals of Prime Day 2024
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Prime Day 2024 is happening now! Here are the best deals you won’t want to miss during Amazon’s big sale.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/17/best-remaining-deals-of-prime-day-2024/
End in sight for East Bay fire district? West County agency could lose independence
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Rodeo-Hercules Fire District board members are expected to vote on an annexation resolution July 31.
School district sues Gov. Newsom over new gender-identity law
date: 2024-07-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Chino Valley Unified School District and a handful of parents argued the law violates the rights of parents protected under the U.S. Constitution.
Tight-Knit Microbes Live Together to Make a Vital Nutrient
date: 2024-07-17, from: Quanta Magazine
At sea, biologists discovered microbial partners that together produce nitrogen, a nutrient essential for life. The pair are in the process of merging into a single organism.The post Tight-Knit Microbes Live Together to Make a Vital Nutrient first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/tight-knit-microbes-live-together-to-make-a-vital-nutrient-20240717/
Iran rejects accusations implicating it in plot to kill Trump
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/iran-rejects-accusations-implicating-it-in-plot-to-kill-trump/7701727.html
America Wasn’t Built for This
date: 2024-07-17, from: Heatmap News
America is melting. Roads are buckling everywhere from Houston to Aurora, Colorado, and in June caused traffic jams in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Last week, a New York City bridge that had opened to let a ship pass got stuck after expanding in the heat, forcing thousands of commuters to detour. The mid-June heat wave led to thousands of flight delays; more recently, even Toronto’s Pearson International Airport warned travelers to brace for heat-related complications. Commuters along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor have been harried by heat-induced delays for weeks.
The train delays have affected an especially large population. The Northeast Corridor is the most trafficked commuter rail system in the country, with over 750,000 daily commuters. In late June, Amtrak notified customers that trains in the corridor could face delays of up to an hour in the coming weeks as heat interfered with tracks and overhead power lines. Since it issued that warning, tens of thousands of people have experienced heat-related delays.
Amtrak estimates that severe weather, including extreme heat, storms, and floods, will incur $220 million in lost revenue in the coming decade. That will only compound problems for the beleaguered rail company, which is facing a backlog of $45 billion in Northeast Corridor repairs, Fortune reported. Some of the corridor’s bridges and tunnels were built more than a century ago, and the price tag for repairs has been accumulating for years.
Making the necessary infrastructure improvements won’t just mean replacing old equipment with new. It will also require that new equipment be able to withstand high temperatures that were far less common just a decade ago. Solids, and especially metals, expand in the heat, which can warp rail lines if they’re not protected against high temperatures. Overhead power lines, meanwhile, tend to sag on hot days, Mikhail Chester, the director of the Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University, told me. Most light rail lines have counterweights to balance that sag, but those often aren’t heavy enough to counteract the extreme effects of high heat.
Asphalt, too, tends to expand and soften in the heat, causing headaches for motorists and road crews. In Wisconsin and Washington State, where asphalt is the favored paving material, heat warped some roads so badly they were forced to close, and traffic on Wisconsin’s I-41 was partially restricted when high temperatures caused a joint to fail. In June, a highway through Wyoming’s Teton Pass collapsed from a landslide that authorities have attributed to unusually rapid snowmelt, blocking a critical route for commuters to Jackson Hole and Yellowstone. The closure could prevent nearly half of the workforce in the area from making it to work, CBS reported.
While cities in the Southeast and Southwest have also reckoned with heat-related challenges, it’s notable that many of the most pronounced infrastructure meltdowns recently have occurred in ordinarily cooler parts of the country. The reasons are twofold, Chester told me. First, cities in the hottest part of the country tend to be newer, meaning they built more of their base infrastructure in more recent (and warmer) decades. Second, these cities are simply more used to the heat. In Phoenix, it’s not unusual for a summer day to top 110 degrees Fahrenheit — on Friday, when I spoke to Chester, it reached 116 degrees. That kind of heat poses an undeniable risk to outdoor workers, young athletes, and under-resourced populations, Chester said, but it also means that civil engineers build infrastructure with heat in mind.
In Phoenix, “the infrastructure is much more designed to the environments — these high temperatures — than a place like Rhode Island is,” Chester said. Whereas Phoenix has always been hot, the climate in the Northeast is “significantly different at this point, climate change being one of those major changes.”
I appreciated the ironic signs warning me of deadly floods as I ran this morning in the brutal Phoenix desert heat pic.twitter.com/dKiZtCmL8s
— Chet Haase (@chethaase) July 14, 2024
That’s not to say Southwestern infrastructure is anything close to heatproof. Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory found that pavement temperatures on Phoenix streets frequently exceed 120 degrees on hot days, with many reaching between 140 and 160 degrees. Skin-to-pavement contact at those temperatures can cause severe burns; one Arizona burn center saw a 60% uptick in severe contact burns between 2022 and 2023, Axios reported.
National media coverage of climate-resilient infrastructure tends to focus on large federal legislation such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, but the standards set by professional societies like the American Society of Civil Engineers are at least as — if not more — influential, and far less sensitive to the ebbs and flows of national politics. Though not legally binding, these standards are often used as a model for local licensing authorities.
“A lot of states and regions and cities in the United States will look to those guidelines to adapt,” Chester said.
https://heatmap.news/climate/heat-wave-road-delays
What exactly did Microsoft promise CISPE in its settlement?
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Analysts: ‘At the end of the day, the settlement is nothing’
Analysis Microsoft’s deal to settle an antitrust complaint taken to the European Commission by a group of cloud providers is good for Microsoft, but no so meaningful for enterprise customers, says a well respected analyst.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/what_did_microsoft_promise_cispe/
Taiwan’s premier responds to Trump remark island should pay for defense
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
Innovation in news is an oxymoron
date: 2024-07-17, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
If you’re waiting for permission to build something, or if you want to see how well something has worked for your peers or competitors before you implement it yourself, you will never, ever innovate.
That’s the trap that news media seems to be in: nobody wants to be the first to build something new. Perhaps it’s that times are so dire that experimentation feels like too much of a risk; perhaps it’s just an extension of top-down editorial culture. But there’s nothing out-there in media technology right now. I’m aware of some stuff coming down the pipe that I’m really excited about, but the most innovative thing that’s actually been shipped is getting people to subscribe by addicting them to puzzle games. Forgive me for thinking that’s not particularly exciting.
How can the news industry break out of its shell? How can it act like technology is something that it can shape, rather than something that just happens to it? How can it put value not just in product management but actual nuts-and-bolts technical innovation?
This feels existentially important.
Thinking about it. Working on it.
https://werd.io/2024/innovation-in-news-is-an-oxymoron
Todoist is really good
date: 2024-07-17, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
I’m, uh, very bad at task management. I wouldn’t want to pathologize, but I’ve never been a particularly organized person. I’ve always aspired to be more organized, but I’ve never found a tool or a methodology that really works for me. They were either too rigid and opinionated or brought too much overhead: I had to remember to use them, and that was enough of a blocker to not.
Over the last two months, everything has — weirdly — changed.
Someone mentioned Todoist over on Threads, and although I had a vague memory of trying it years ago and it not working for me, I decided to install it again. Maybe it was just the right time for me now, or maybe the design has evolved, but it clicked pretty much immediately.
There are two things that make it great:
- It’s everywhere I work
- It gets the hell out of my way
Whenever I need to remember to do something, I press a key combo — I’ve configured shift-command-T — and a modal lets me quickly tap it in using relatively natural language. That’s a similar workflow to what I’ve been doing with Alfred for years and years, so adding this new combo isn’t a giant feat of muscle memory.
Then, whenever I want to check what’s on my plate, I can bring up the app (desktop via ctrl-command-T, or phone), or click the toolbar icon in my browser to bring up the browser extension version. Because I spend most of my life in my browser, that’s particularly handy. It’s just always there.
I’ve found myself adding new tasks via modal while I’ve been in meetings, so I don’t forget to follow up. Or I’ll be in a Google Doc and add a task the same way. (There’s a way to automatically sync Google Tasks with Todoist, but I don’t use that — I’d rather have direct control over my task inbox.)
It’s made me more productive, more organized, and as a result, much less anxious. And I feel really good about it.
This post isn’t an ad, by the way. It’s just so rare that I really love a piece of software, so I thought I’d let you know.
https://werd.io/2024/todoist-is-really-good
Police Really Want a Cybertruck, Email Shows
date: 2024-07-17, from: 404 Media Group
The Anaheim Police Department said it wanted to be the first department with a Cybertruck, according to an internal email obtained by 404 Media. But the company advertising the modified vehicles hasn’t actually made one yet, the police said.
https://www.404media.co/police-really-want-a-cybertruck-email-shows/
Rising ASML sales overshadowed by fears of more drastic US restrictions
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Market immediately responds as shares in Dutch maker of crucial photolithography tech dip
Europe’s tech darling ASML is forecasting increased sales following a mixed calendar Q2, but its share price is down amid talk of tighter restrictions on China exports being considered by the US government.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/rising_asml_sales_rumors_more_curbs/
Vineyard Wind Is Having Turbine Troubles
date: 2024-07-17, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Torrential rain brought flash flooding to Toronto • A wildfire on the Hawaiian island of Kauai has been contained • Parts of southern Spain could hit 111 degrees Fahrenheit this week.
THE TOP FIVE
- Intense heat waves and thunderstorms torment millions of Americans
The extreme heat wave over the East Coast may very well break a record in Washington, D.C., today that was set during the 1930s Dust Bowl: the longest stretch of days with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The mercury yesterday hit 104 degrees, after similarly scorching numbers on Monday and Sunday, tying the existing record of three days. The National Weather Service forecasts a high of 98 degrees for Wednesday but The Washington Post said there’s “an outside chance that it hits 100 (or higher).” Either way, with humidity at 55%, it will feel torturously hot, with a potential heat index of 110 degrees. An “Extended Heat Emergency” is in effect in the city through today. Nearly 75 major cities across the Northeast, South, and Southwest are currently facing dangerous heat levels, according to The New York Times.
A different dangerous weather pattern is playing out in the Midwest, where intense storms caused terrible floods. Residents of Nashville, Illinois, were ordered to evacuate due to an “imminent” dam failure. In St. Louis, Missouri, some streets were inundated, and water was seen pouring into the basement of a local fire house.
- Vineyard Wind project shut down ‘until further notice’ after broken
turbine scatters debris
The Vineyard Wind project, a large-scale commercial offshore wind farm off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, has been “shut down until further notice” after debris from a damaged turbine blade began washing up on nearby beaches. One of the project’s 351-foot-long turbine blades reportedly broke off on Saturday, though nobody seems to know why yet. Green and white debris, as well as sharp fragments of fiberglass, have been littering Nantucket beaches, many of which are closed for cleanup. A company notice said debris will be “1 square foot or less,” but some pieces appear significantly larger, like this one spotted by the Nantucket Current:
The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement is investigating the incident. Vineyard Wind is the second U.S. commercial offshore wind farm and is only partially constructed, though its existing 21 turbines are already sending power to the grid. Once completed, it is expected to produce enough electricity to power 400,000 homes. This incident is more bad news (and bad press) for America’s nascent and struggling offshore wind industry.
- COP29 president says new climate finance goal will be summit’s top
priority
The agenda for this year’s COP29 U.N. climate summit is coming into view. This morning the COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev (who is Azerbaijan’s environment minister as well as a former state oil company exec), published a letter outlining the “plan and expectations” for the event, which will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital. While the top priority is to agree “a fair and ambitious” New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance, “this is not just our priority,” Babayev wrote, adding: “We all must go the extra mile together to deliver this historic milestone.” The letter urges nations to put forward new National Determined Contributions that are in keeping with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit, submit climate adaptation plans, and finalize Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which sets out “how countries can reduce their emissions using international carbon markets.”
There are several references to Azerbaijan “leading by example” but the underlying message is one of shared responsibility between nations to tackle the climate crisis. The letter includes this rather ominous line: “The multilateral system is under pressure to show it can deliver at the speed and scale needed. COP29 will be a litmus test for the Paris Agreement and global climate action and cooperation.” You can read the full document here.
- U.K. sets out plans for state-owned energy company
The U.K. is going to create a state-owned energy company, called Great British Energy, that will be a key pillar of the new Labour government’s promise to decarbonize the nation’s energy sector by 2030. GB Energy will not supply electricity directly to households. Instead, it will receive £8 billion (about $10.4 billion – which will come partly from increased taxes on oil and gas companies) to own and operate clean energy assets alongside the private sector, “financing and helping to build low-carbon infrastructure,” The Guardian explained. It’s not clear yet which projects GB Energy will invest in. Analysis from energy think tank Ember suggests that if the U.K. hits its 2030 decarbonization goal, annual household energy bills could be £300 lower.
- Growth in global fusion investment stalls
Investment growth in fusion energy research and technology is down for the second year in a row, according to the Fusion Industry Association. Overall global investment has risen more than $900 million this year, but that’s less than last year’s $1.4 billion in growth, which was below the 2022 number, marking a downward trend. FIA CEO Andrew Holland called for more support, both private and public. The good news is that public funding in private fusion companies has jumped globally by almost 60%.
THE KICKER
Sales of used electric vehicles were up 63% in the U.K. in the first half of 2024 as prices fall to match those of used combustion engine cars.
https://heatmap.news/climate/vineyard-wind-broken-turbine-blade
Podcast: The Worst Telecom Breach Ever
date: 2024-07-17, from: 404 Media Group
We explain why the AT&T breach is possibly the worst one to hit a telecom ever. Then, the world of AI through the eye’s of JD Vance, and inside a face fraud factory.
https://www.404media.co/podcast-the-worst-telecom-breach-ever-404-media-podcast/
Everyone Is Judging AI by These Tests. But Experts Say They’re Close to Meaningless
date: 2024-07-17, from: The Markup blog
Benchmarks used to rank AI models are several years old, often sourced from amateur websites, and, experts worry, lending automated systems a dubious sense of authority
Mega-city’s Oracle system won’t have effective cash management until 2025
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Birmingham, Europe’s largest local authority, plans to reimplement software years after it replaced SAP
Europe’s largest local authority will not have a fully functioning cash system until April next year, three years after it went live on an Oracle ERP system intended to perform the task.…
Lunch break
date: 2024-07-17, from: Rachel Kwon blog
I never had a regular “lunch break” until recently. Early in my career it was not by choice — in surgery training there’s really no such thing as a break, only a stolen minute or two here and there to pee or wolf down whatever food you can scrounge or nap in a chair if it’s the middle of the night and you’re on call. We did get a $5 meal coupon for the hospital cafeteria which could get you a cup of terrible coffee and a bagel drier than a bag of silica gel in the Sahara desert.
https://kwon.nyc/notes/lunch-break/
These six people wanted a career change. Community colleges offered a path
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The LAist
Changing your career can feel like a leap of faith, but there are questions you can ask yourself to help weigh your decision.
https://laist.com/news/education/community-college-mid-career-change-zine
Saving Modernist Houses with the Help of the Internet Archive
date: 2024-07-17, from: Internet Archive Blog
George Smart is on a mission to save mid-century modern houses. He believes the structures are works of art that people should respect—if they only realized their significance and knew […]
https://blog.archive.org/2024/07/17/saving-modernist-houses-with-the-help-of-the-internet-archive/
The benefits — and costs — of hosting a political convention
date: 2024-07-17, from: Marketplace Morning Report
According to Milwaukee’s visitors bureau, hosting the Republican National Convention this week comes with $200 million in additional economic activity. But that figure doesn’t include business lost when locals try to avoid the crowds. Plus, stock prices wake up with a hangover. And later, it’s day 2 of Amazon Prime Day. Today, we check in on Amazon’s pledge to spend $1.2 billion to provide free job training to about 300,000 employees.
London council accuses watchdog of ‘exaggerating’ danger of 2020 raid on residents’ data
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
You escaped a big fat fine! Take the win and run, won’t you?
London’s inner city district of Hackney says the UK’s data protection watchdog has misunderstood and “exaggerated” details surrounding a ransomware attack on its systems in 2020.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/londons_hackney_council_accuses_the/
Biden aims to cut through voter disenchantment as he courts Latinos in Las Vegas
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
Amazon’s U.K. workers narrowly lose union vote
date: 2024-07-17, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Workers at an Amazon warehouse in the United Kingdom have failed to gain union recognition by the slimmest of margins. A majority of support was needed but just under 50% voted in favor. Then, in Bangladesh, thousands of students have been protesting over a lack of jobs. And in Spain, some are questioning the culture of working well into the evening.
Protecting the National Archives
date: 2024-07-17, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
When architect John Russell Pope was designing the National Archives Building, he included numerous symbolic elements to convey the ideas of protection. Around the building are swords, shields, and spear-topped gates to remind the public of the significance and importance of protecting the building’s contents. He also included a granite moat surrounding the building. Moats … Continue reading Protecting the National Archives
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2024/07/17/protecting-the-national-archives/
Porting the Windows 95 Start Menu to NT
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Running with coordinate transformations and the pitfalls of asynchronous code
Remember when the Windows Start Menu was a pure thing, unsullied by ads and decades of tinkering? Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer has shared his role in bringing an iconic piece of Windows 95 into the world of Windows NT.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/porting_the_windows_95_start/
GNOME head honcho Holly Million steps down
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The nonprofit behind the desktop environment of the world’s most profitable Linux company will be looking for money again
The executive director of the GNOME Foundation has quit after less than a year in the role.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/gnome_boss_steps_down/
How to Decarbonize the World’s Biggest Ships
date: 2024-07-17, from: Heatmap News
Jesse is on vacation until August, so this is a special, Rob-only summer episode of Shift Key.
Shipping is the backbone of the modern economy. At least 80% of all goods worldwide are shipped as ocean cargo, and the global economy rises and falls on the free movement of gigantic ships across the sea. But container ships and bulk carriers burn what’s known as bunker fuel, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. The international shipping industry generates 3% of global carbon emissions, a proportion that’s projected to rise through the century.
Most proposals to decarbonize ocean freight have focused on using ammonia or other zero-carbon liquid fuels. But Fleetzero, a Bill Gates-backed startup, is trying to use the only technology that it says can get cheap enough to compete with oil: batteries. The Alabama-based company is building batteries big enough to hybridize — and, eventually, power outright — the world’s largest ships.
This week, Rob chats with Steven Henderson, the cofounder and CEO of Fleetzero and a graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. They talk about Steven’s history in the oil and gas industry, why batteries will beat liquid fuels, and how to put out a fire in the middle of the ocean.
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:
Steven Henderson: What’s good about batteries, you can step into that, where you can use existing infrastructure and build on it. You don’t need a new fundamental technology to do this. The numbers to do this are not outside the realm of possibility.And if you think about it in terms of global … it’s about one-fifth of what you would need for electric cars and trucks.
So it’s not — yeah, these are big numbers. But if you think about an electric future, this is one of many parts, you know, so this is not going to be the hardest part on the grid. In fact, it’s a bunch easier because you don’t have to go send it across the country, and there are generating capabilities in and around ports, and you can use existing stuff.
Robinson Meyer: I would imagine even switching a ship from bunker fuel to electricity generated by natural gas, which is often just right there would be …
Henderson: Yeah, it’s a huge savings from carbon. And honestly, if you went to coal, it’s still cleaner. Ships, because of just the way they operate, there’s CO2 emissions, but it’s a huge SOx and NOx, it’s a sulfur and nitrous oxides emission. And at least with a stationary coal powered plant, at least in the West, there’s regulations on what you can send out the stack. When you’re in the middle of the ocean, these things, you know, sometimes they’re choking up some pretty nasty stuff.
So it’s an advantage, even if you go from coal. Obviously, we hope that all electricity coming into this is going to be clean over time. But if you suddenly have, oh, I need 100 megawatts of power, and I need to, you know, swap out this power plant — well, what if I need 300 megawatts of power? Now I’m going to build a new power plant, and the economics on that are going to stand on their own, and I can build it clean from the beginning, so I don’t have to scrap the existing infrastructure to make the grid clean.
So that’s why it’s super important to electrify the consumers, and that increased demand on the grid is how you clean up the grid.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
https://heatmap.news/podcast/shift-key-episode-24-fleetzero
Windows NT on a whole new platform: PowerMac
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Got a G3 iMac? Want to run NT? Now you can!
Ever wanted to run Windows NT on your vintage PowerPC Macintosh? No, me neither, but now it’s possible thanks to some amazing FOSS work.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/windows_nt_on_powermac_g3/
DIY electricity
date: 2024-07-17, from: Enlightenment Economics
My student Aneesha gave me a book a few weeks ago before she headed off to do her PhD in energy systems at Berkeley, The Grid by Gretchen Bakke. OK, I thought, I’ll give it a try – but how … Continue reading
http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2024/07/diy-electricity/
Get pied with this triple Pi(e) game
date: 2024-07-17, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
This innovative game incorporates three different forms of pi(e): the mathematical constant, a whipped cream pie, and a Raspberry Pi Pico.
The post Get pied with this triple Pi(e) game appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/get-pied-with-this-triple-pie-game/
Craig Wright admits he isn’t the inventor of Bitcoin after High Court judgment in UK
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ozzie definitely not Satoshi Nakamoto, faces £6M legal bill and possible perjury trial
Australian Craig Wright has finally admitted he is not the inventor of Bitcoin after losing several cases in the High Court of England and Wales, whose judge has suggested he be investigated for perjury.…
Increased security around Trump is apparent, agents wall him off from RNC crowds
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
Milwaukee — On the floor of the Republican National Convention Tuesday evening, vice presidential candidate JD Vance greeted and shook hands with excited delegates as he walked toward his seat.
It was a marked contrast from former President Donald Trump, who entered the hall a few minutes later and was separated from supporters by a column of Secret Service agents. His ear still bandaged after an attempted assassination, Trump closely hugged the wall. Instead of handshakes or hellos for those gathered, he offered fist pumps to the cameras.
The contrast underscores the new reality facing Trump after a gunman opened fire at his rally in Pennsylvania Saturday, raising serious questions about the agency that is tasked with protecting the president, former presidents and major-party candidates. Trump’s campaign must also adjust to a new reality after he came millimeters from death or serious injury — and as law enforcement warns of the potential for more political violence.
Trump campaign officials declined to comment on the stepped-up security and how it might impact his interactions going forward.
“We do not comment on President Trump’s security detail. All questions should be directed to the United States Secret Service,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose agency oversees the Secret Service, said Monday that he could not discuss “specifics of the protection or the enhancements made, as they involve sensitive tactics and procedures. I can say, however, that personnel and other protective resources, technology, and capabilities have been added.”
The Secret Service had already stepped up Trump’s protection in the days before the attack following an unrelated threat from Iran, two U.S. officials said Tuesday. But that extra security didn’t stop the gunman, who fired from an adjacent roof, from killing one audience member and injuring two others along with Trump.
The FBI and Homeland Security officials remain “concerned about the potential for follow-on or retaliatory acts of violence following this attack,” according to a joint intelligence bulletin by Homeland Security and the FBI and obtained by The Associated Press. The bulletin warned that lone actors and small groups will “continue to see rallies and campaign events as attractive targets.”
Underscoring the security risks, a man armed with an AK-47 pistol, wearing a ski mask and carrying a tactical backpack was taken into custody Monday near the Fiserv Forum, where the convention is being held.
The attack has led to stepped-up security not only for Trump. President Joe Biden’s security has also been bolstered, with more agents surrounding him as he boarded Air Force One to Las Vegas on Monday night. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also received Secret Service protection in the shooting’s wake.
Trump’s campaign has also responded in other ways, including placing armed security at all hours outside their offices in Florida and Washington, D.C.
Trump has already scheduled his next rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday. That’s where he will appear with Vance for their first event as a presidential ticket.
But the new posture complicates, at least for now, the interactions Trump regularly has with supporters as he signs autographs, shakes hands and poses for selfies at events and on airplane tarmacs.
The Savvy Senior | How to Prevent and Treat Age-Related Macular Degeneration
date: 2024-07-17, from: The Signal
Dear Savvy Senior, Is macular degeneration hereditary? My mother lost much of her vision from it before she died, and now at age 65, I’m concerned I may get […]
The post The Savvy Senior | How to Prevent and Treat Age-Related Macular Degeneration appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Today in SCV History (July 17)
date: 2024-07-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1834 – Sinforosa, daughter of Narciso and Crisanta, born at Mission San Fernando; mom from Tejon, dad from Piru; believed to be last speaker of Tataviam language (died 1915).[record
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-17/
Trump’s former foes pay homage at Republican Party convention
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
The U.S. Republican Party put some of Donald Trump’s intra-party former foes briefly back in the spotlight on the second night of its nominating convention. VOA’s chief national correspondent Steve Herman was on the convention floor Tuesday and has details from Milwaukee.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-s-former-foes-pay-homage-at-republican-party-convention/7701426.html
ESA starts work on planetary defence mission, because Bruce Willis is retired
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Asteroid Apophis will come within 32,000km of Earth in 2029, which makes it very much worth a visit
The European Space Agency has begun work on a planetary defence mission that will intercept an asteroid predicted to come within 32,000km of Earth in 2029.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/esa_ramses_prelim_approval/
Inspector General Issues New Report on LASD
date: 2024-07-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Office of Inspector General Max Huntsman has issued a report entitled Fourth Report Back on Meeting the Sheriff’s Department’s Obligations Under Senate Bill 1421.
https://scvnews.com/inspector-general-issues-new-report-on-lasd/
Holy Cross, SoCal Providence Hospitals Highly Ranked by U.S. News
date: 2024-07-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
All eight eligible Providence hospitals in Los Angeles and Orange counties, including Holy Cross in Mission Hills, have earned high ratings from U.S. News & World Report, including two that ranked nationally for orthopedics care and one for rehabilitation
https://scvnews.com/holy-cross-socal-providence-hospitals-highly-ranked-by-u-s-news/
July 24: Learn About the SBDC at COC
date: 2024-07-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Small Business Development Center at College of the Canyons will offer an inperson class “SBDC As A Resource” on Wednesday, July 24, 2:30-4:30 p.m
https://scvnews.com/july-24-learn-about-the-sbdc-at-coc/
Fujitsu picks model-maker Cohere as its partner for the rapid LLM-development dance
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Will become exclusive route to market for joint projects
Fujitsu has made a “significant investment” in Toronto-based Cohere Inc., a developer of large language models and associated tech, and will bring the five-year-old startup’s wares to the world.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/fujitsu_cohere_ai_partnership/
Washington-Seoul alliance is a ‘nuclear alliance,’ US official says
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — A high-ranking U.S. official stressed Tuesday that the U.S.-South Korea alliance is a “nuclear alliance,” reinforcing the South Korean government’s description of the two allies, after the United States and South Korea signed new deterrence guidelines last week.
Vipin Narang, U.S. acting assistant secretary of defense for Space Policy, told VOA’s Korean Service in an exclusive interview that “when we formally extend nuclear deterrence to our allies, it is a nuclear alliance, and South Korea is an example of that.”
Narang explained that it would be similar to what the United States has with the European allies through NATO.
“NATO publicly says, for example, that so long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will be a nuclear alliance. And the relationship with ROK, similarly, is a formal extension of U.S. nuclear,” he said, referring to South Korea with the abbreviated form of its official name, the Republic of Korea. “We commit to defend South Korea with all capabilities.”
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said earlier on Tuesday in a Cabinet meeting that South Korea’s alliance with the United States has been upgraded to a “nuclear-based alliance,” adding that the U.S nuclear assets will now be “specially assigned to missions on the Korean Peninsula” under the newly agreed guidelines between the two allies.
On Thursday, Yoon met U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington, reaffirming their commitments to the Washington Declaration unveiled in 2023, which outlines the two countries’ commitment to engage in deeper dialogue and information sharing to strengthen nuclear deterrence efforts on the Korean Peninsula.
According to the joint statement released after the two leaders’ latest meeting, Biden reiterated that the U.S. commitment to extended deterrence to South Korea is backed by “the full range of U.S. capabilities, including nuclear.”
In line with such a move, Narang, who co-chairs the Nuclear Consultative Group, a bilateral body set up by the United States and South Korea under the Washington Declaration, met his South Korean counterpart, Cho Chang Lae, in Washington last week and signed “the United States and Republic of Korea Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Operations on the Korean Peninsula.”
The guidelines, according to the Department of Defense, provide principles and procedures to assist policymakers and military officials of both countries “in maintaining an effective nuclear deterrence policy and posture.”
Narang emphasized that the guidelines would help the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) evolve in accordance with the threats faced by the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
“The guidelines document is the not the end, it’s the beginning, and sort of sets up the NCG as an enduring body,” he said. “The NCG is a living body, and the work streams evolve with the threat environment and the capabilities, just as North Korea’s capabilities continue to expand and diversify.”
However, he made it clear that only the U.S. president will be able to authorize the use and employment of U.S. nuclear weapons, while underscoring Washington and Seoul will be approaching the extended deterrence “as equal partners.”
“We have extended deterrence relationships. We need conventional support from our allies,” he stressed.
His remarks come amid growing skepticism in South Korea over the U.S. extended deterrence, especially after Russia and North Korea signed a defense pact, which indicated Moscow’s willingness to engage in full-fledged military cooperation with Pyongyang.
An increasing number of South Korean people are calling for South Korea’s own nuclear weapons, arguing that the U.S.-ROK alliance’s existing deterrence strategy would not be enough to protect South Korea from the possible attacks from North Korea, if it joins hands with Russia.
The acting assistant secretary of defense gave a strong warning against South Korea having its own nuclear weapons.
“It would be in violation of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty),” Narang said, adding that South Korea would probably face international sanctions.
He also suggested that Seoul would be “an international pariah” and would become vulnerable to North Korea’s nuclear attacks during the time it is pursuing nuclear weapons.
Experts in Washington remained cautious about what the new guidelines could mean for the extended deterrence for South Korea.
“It shows that the United States is taking seriously South Korea as a partner in all aspects of defense,” said Scott Snyder, president of Korea Economic Institute of America.
Snyder told VOA’s Korean Service on Tuesday that the decision to employ a nuclear weapon should be made in a closely integrated manner between Seoul and Washington.
“If it’s not integrated, the alliance will fail,” he said.
He added that the decision will heavily depend on the U.S. inclination.
Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, told VOA’s Korean Service on Tuesday that it is difficult to see the U.S.-South Korea alliance as a “nuclear alliance.”
“If South Korea has been given a role in planning the nuclear options, yes, but the U.S. has been implying that that hasn’t occurred,” Bennett said.
“If they are a nuclear alliance, then it ought to describe in what way it’s a nuclear alliance – is South Korea being included in planning how nuclear weapons will be used? That’s what President Yoon asked for. It’s not clear to me.”
Swap meet to sell until at least September
date: 2024-07-17, from: The Signal
Plan to replace the market draws numerous questions, concerns The owner of the land that hosts the Saugus Swap Meet confirmed Tuesday evening the market is expected to continue until […]
The post Swap meet to sell until at least September appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/swap-meet-to-sell-until-at-least-september/
Six UC Santa Barbara Baseball Players Selected in the 2024 Major League Baseball Draft
date: 2024-07-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
UC Santa Barbara led all California college baseball programs with six players drafted.
The post Six UC Santa Barbara Baseball Players Selected in the 2024 Major League Baseball Draft appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
TikTok’s Asian e-commerce haul quadrupled in a single year
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Rescued its partner in Indonesia as it dodged regulations
Chinese short video platform TikTok is fast becoming an Asian e-commerce giant, according to analysis released by Singapore-based consultancy Momentum Works on Tuesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/tiktok_as_ecommerce_giant/
NJ Senator Menendez found guilty on all counts
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
The corruption trial of U.S. Senator Robert Menendez ends with guilty verdicts on all charges against him. Aron Ranen reports from New York City.
https://www.voanews.com/a/nj-senator-menendez-found-guilty-on-all-counts/7701385.html
Not So Tenacious
date: 2024-07-17, from: Tedium feed
The hiatus and possible breakup of Tenacious D makes me feel sad about the state of creative partnerships, and how power dynamics can break them.
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16745780/tenacious-d-comedic-partnership-controversy
In speech to Black voters, Biden links violence on Trump to racial, gun violence
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
President Joe Biden addressed Black supporters in the battleground state of Nevada Tuesday, his first campaign appearance since the assassination attempt on his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump. He linked the attack on Trump to racial and gun violence, imploring Americans to “condemn violence in any form.” White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
Americans view China’s economic impact negatively, survey finds
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
A Pew Research Center survey finds most people recognize China’s economic influence in their country, but are divided on whether that influence is good. The poll also finds more people in the U.S. view China’s economic influence negatively compared to other countries. Michael Baturin reports. Camera: Elizabeth Lee.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Andreessen Horowitz co-founders explain why they're supporting Trump.
July 20: SCV Native Releases First Feature Film
date: 2024-07-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Steven Nassif, a native of the Santa Clarita Valley, wrote and directed “Homecoming” which will premiere at 2 p.m. Saturday, July 20 at the Lumiere Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA
https://scvnews.com/july-20-scv-native-releases-first-feature-film/
Discovery Alert: With Six New Worlds, 5,500 Discovery Milestone Passed!
date: 2024-07-17, from: NASA breaking news
On Aug. 24, 2023, more than three decades after the first confirmation of planets beyond our own solar system, scientists announced the discovery of six new exoplanets, stretching that number to 5,502. From zero exoplanet confirmations to over 5,500 in just a few decades, this new milestone marks another major step in the journey to […]
Republicans lean into Trump’s border message during a convention night focused on immigration
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
MILWAUKEE — Immigration took center stage as the Republican National Convention resumed Tuesday, with speakers spotlighting a key element of former President Donald Trump’s political brand that helped endear him to the GOP base when he began his first campaign in 2015.
Among speakers slated for Tuesday night were families who’ve been impacted by violent crime — part of a GOP strategy to link crime to border policies. They include the family of Rachel Morin, a Maryland woman whom prosecutors say was killed and raped by a fugitive from El Salvador and whose story has been frequently highlighted by Trump on the campaign trail.
Immigration has long been one of Trump’s banner issues, as he has criticized the unprecedented number of migrants entering the country illegally through the U.S. border with Mexico. The numbers of unauthorized crossings have fallen abruptly after President Joe Biden issued a rule suspending many asylum claims at the border.
At rallies and other campaign events, Trump has pointed to examples of migrants who committed heinous crimes and has blamed migration for the trafficking of drugs like fentanyl, even though federal data suggests many people smuggling fentanyl across the border are U.S. citizens. He has vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.
Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has also strayed into talking points not backed by evidence, including unfounded claims that migrants are entering the country to vote in the 2024 election.
Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House majority leader, made that statement in his remarks, declaring, “Biden and Harris want illegals to vote now that they’ve opened up the border.”
Senate candidates who were addressing the convention Tuesday not only blamed Biden for the number of migrants crossing the border, but just as often faulted Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Republicans have increasingly focused on amid speculation that she could replace Biden as the Democratic nominee after the president’s poor debate performance.
The GOP candidates, mindful of their own races, sought to blame their Democratic opponents as well. Pennsylvania candidate David McCormick, for example, tied in his challenger, Sen. Bob Casey, with the term “Biden-Harris-Casey wide open borders.”
Kari Lake, the party’s Senate candidate in Arizona, stuck to a message that appealed largely to the GOP base and her reputation as a former television news anchor turned conservative firebrand. She blasted the “fake news” for spending “the last eight years lying about President Donald Trump and his amazing patriotic supporters.” She also blamed Biden and Democrats for the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border, saying they’re “full of bad ideas.”
In the latest signal the party is solidifying to take on Biden in November, several of Trump’s fiercest GOP primary rivals will also speak Tuesday. They include former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump’s survival of an attempted assassination Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania was on the minds of many inside the hall. One of the delegates in the crowd could be seen with a folded white piece of paper over his ear — an apparent tribute to the bandage Trump wore when he entered the hall Monday to a roaring crowd.
Scalise, who was injured in a politically motivated shooting in 2017 while he was practicing for a charity baseball game, spoke of his own experience when he touched on Trump’s attack.
“While I was fighting for my life, Donald Trump was one of the first to come to console my family at the hospital. That’s the kind of leader he is. Courageous under fire, compassionate towards others,” Scalise said.
In the wake of Saturday’s attempt on Trump’s life, there was a heightened focus on security at the convention, which drew thousands of people to downtown Milwaukee, including a number of high-profile elected officials.
A man armed with an AK-47 pistol and wearing a ski mask was taken into custody Monday, the convention’s first day, near the Fiserv Forum where the convention is being held, a federal law enforcement official said Tuesday.
The 21-year-old was arrested after being encountered by U.S. Capitol Police and Homeland Security Investigations agents who said he was acting suspicious, according to the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Police found the weapon in his backpack, the official said.
On Tuesday, five Ohio police officers who were in Wisconsin for the convention shot a man who was in a knife fight near the convention, killing him, Milwaukee’s police chief said.
The man who police shot had a knife in each hand and refused police commands, Milwaukee Chief Jeffrey Norman said at a news conference. Two knives were recovered from the scene, the chief said.
Trump and Vance were expected to appear in the hall each of the last three nights of the convention. Vance will speak Wednesday and Trump will speak Thursday.
Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Lawrence Tabas said he hoped the assassination attempt on Trump would reset the tone nationally, beginning with Trump’s scheduled remarks Thursday.
“After a brush with death, I do believe — going through that — that his message will be better, and I think will appeal to our better emotions,” Tabas said in an interview after the Pennsylvania GOP’s delegation breakfast in suburban Milwaukee.
Trump, who has long decried rivals with harsh language and talked about prosecuting opponents if he wins a second term, seemed poised to deliver a more toned-down speech. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said in an Axios interview outside the RNC that he spent three or four hours going through his father’s convention speech with him, “trying to de-escalate some of that rhetoric.”
“I think it lasts,” the younger Trump said of the change in his father’s rhetoric. “There are events that change you for a couple minutes, and there are events that change you permanently.”
Eternal Valley issues statement on ‘cemetery conditions’
date: 2024-07-17, from: The Signal
A local water official confirmed plans are in place to provide a portion of the water needed to add a little more green to the grass at Eternal Valley Memorial […]
The post Eternal Valley issues statement on ‘cemetery conditions’ appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/eternal-valley-issues-statement-on-cemetery-conditions/
Newsom Signs AB 1955 SAFETY Act to Protect Rights of LGBTQ+ Students
date: 2024-07-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Following outcry from LGBTQ+ students and families whose local districts enacted “forced outing” policies over the past year, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond today celebrated the signage of AB 1955: Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act (SAFETY Act) into law by Governor Gavin Newsom
https://scvnews.com/newsom-signs-ab-1955-safety-act-to-protect-rights-of-lgbtq-students/
Exiled Chinese businessman convicted in US fraud case
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/exiled-chinese-businessman-convicted-in-us-fraud-case/7701353.html
If you think AI labs wouldn’t stoop to using scraped YouTube subtitles for training, think again
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
What next, nutrition labels on cartons? Probably
Comment FYI: It’s not just Reddit posts, books, articles, webpages, code, music, images, and so forth being used by multi-billion-dollar businesses for training neural networks. AI labs have been teaching models using subtitles scraped from at least tens of thousands of YouTube videos, much to the surprise of the footage creators.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/youtube_video_subtitles_ai/
Fallout continues for chiropractors’ office
date: 2024-07-17, from: The Signal
The legal fallout from a camera found in the family restroom of a local chiropractic office continues, with a pair of lawsuits alleging The Joint Chiropractic location on McBean Parkway […]
The post Fallout continues for chiropractors’ office appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/fallout-continues-for-chiropractors-office/
Salvation Army Opens Registration for School Backpack Giveaway
date: 2024-07-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
As families across the country prepare for the upcoming school year, The Salvation Army in Santa Clarita has announced its continued partnership with the Toyota Lexus Minority Owners Dealership Association to provide school backpacks to families in need
https://scvnews.com/salvation-army-opens-registration-for-school-backpack-giveaway/
Iran’s Islamist rulers silent on attempted assassination of Trump
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Iran’s Islamist rulers have made no public comment on the attempted assassination of former U.S. President Donald Trump in the three days since the shooting attack on the man whom they have long seen as their nemesis and targeted with threats of vengeance since he left office.
The only references in Iranian state media to Saturday’s attack on Trump have been articles citing details of the shooting at his election rally in Pennsylvania, showing images of the aftermath and amplifying conspiracy theories about whether it was real or staged.
Iran has threatened revenge against Trump and his key aides for carrying out the January 2020 assassination of top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a Baghdad drone strike. It was part of what Trump called a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Tehran for its nuclear and other perceived malign activities.
Since then, one of the most explicit threats against Trump has come from Amir Ali Hajizadeh, aerospace chief of Iran’s top military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He told state TV in February 2023 that “we are looking to kill Trump” to avenge Soleimani.
There is no indication of Iranian involvement in the Trump rally shooting, with U.S. authorities naming only one suspect, the 20-year-old American male shooter whom U.S. Secret Service personnel shot and killed at the scene.
CNN reported on Tuesday that the Secret Service had increased security around Trump “in recent weeks” in response to an alleged Iranian assassination plot that U.S. authorities purportedly learned about from intelligence attributed to an unidentified “human source.”
The Washington Post and New York Times published their own reports on the alleged Iranian threat, sourcing it to unnamed U.S. officials.
Iran’s U.N. Mission in New York told VOA the accusations are “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
“Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice,” the mission said in a statement.
U.S. Secret Service communications chief Anthony Guglielmi responded to the CNN report by telling VOA that his security agency and others are “constantly receiving new potential threat information and taking action to adjust resources, as needed.”
“We cannot comment on any specific threat stream other than to say that the Secret Service takes threats seriously and responds accordingly,” Guglielmi wrote.
One of the Iranian state media reports highlighting conspiracy theories about Saturday’s incident was published by the IRGC-run Tasnim news agency on Sunday.
It published a collage of photos of the bloodied former president with a superimposed three-word headline in Persian: “Blood and pig.”
Other state media articles published photos of Trump defiantly raising and pumping his fist to his supporters after Secret Service agents helped him to get back on his feet.
Shahram Kholdi, an Iranian Canadian teacher of Middle East history at Canada’s University of Waterloo, discussed Iran’s state media coverage of the shooting in the Tuesday edition of VOA’s Flashpoint Global Crises program.
The following interview transcript is edited for brevity and clarity.
VOA: Why would Iran allow its state media to publish photos of the wounded former president showing what many Americans see as his triumphant stance in the face of danger?
Shahram Kholdi, University of Waterloo, Canada: The Iranian regime’s hardcore supporters in the Basiji paramilitary force and the IRGC — the people who are willing to kill and die to keep this regime in power — they don’t see what you see as a positive. They see the weakness, they see division in the American masses, they see fractures in the U.S. democratic system. And the regime actually uses those pictures of Trump to reinforce this propaganda trope that the U.S. is a facade of a democracy, that there is something more sinister happening behind the scenes.
We should not be surprised to see the Iranian regime’s propaganda machine focus on such sinister scenarios in the next few weeks. Even though their propaganda machine is heavily equipped and well-manned, it has been only a few days since the shooting, and it takes time for them to churn out these kinds of stories.
VOA: Given Trump’s record of being tough on Iran, does the Iranian leadership have any fear that highlighting his survival of an assassination attempt will boost his election prospects and return him to power?
Kholdi: Iranian officials are fearful of that. There has been an atypical restraint by officials who are generally quick to react and make all sorts of preposterous statements on such occasions. They did not do so this time. They are on their toes right now.
The regime’s Chinese and Russian allies may have assured Tehran that if Trump is reelected, they will protect its interests in any negotiations with him.
President Joe Biden’s failure to stop U.S.-sanctioned Iranian oil being from exported to China, and to stop Iran from assisting Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, also has emboldened the regime.
But on the other hand, given the prospect of the Islamic republic once again facing the massive pressure campaign that Trump previously imposed on it, with a massive reduction in Iranian oil production and exports and interceptions of tankers, I think the regime is erring on the side of caution in its response to the assassination attempt. But the Chinese and Russians may have advised them to do so. I wouldn’t attribute that to any impeccable wisdom on their part.
Biden stands ground on gun policy, asks Americans to cool down
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
white house — With the recent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, the conversation around guns and gun policy is heating up — even as President Joe Biden is asking the country to cool down.
This is the first assassination attempt on a former or current U.S. president since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was shot
“First of all, that is preposterous,” said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas when asked about rumors that the assassination attempt was an inside job involving the current administration.
“It is also dangerous to propagate rumors that are so unequivocally false and provocative,” he said at a Monday news briefing. “As the president so powerfully said to the entire nation, we have to tamp down the rhetoric in this country.”
U.S. gun policy may see particular focus in campaigns and debates in the final approach to the 2024 presidential election.
Biden, even before the recent shooting, has been a strong advocate for stricter gun policy.
Biden served as vice president under President Barack Obama, who tried to tighten gun policy following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school that killed 26 people, mostly 6- and 7-year-olds, but was unable to pass major gun legislation.
After the Sandy Hook shooting, Obama asked Biden to lead a more concrete initiative on gun reform, and Biden met with a range of citizens to seek their thoughts on gun policy.
Trump has advocated a less stringent gun policy. His campaign calls for deregulation of firearms, and he has said he will undo some executive actions introduced by Biden.
White House reaffirms position
At the news briefing with Mayorkas on Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre affirmed Biden’s position on gun policy.
“The president has been, obviously, a strong advocate on gun control. He has been throughout his career as a senator, as vice president, as now as president,” Jean-Pierre said in answer to a question from VOA.
She noted that Congress in 2022 approved the first major gun safety legislation in 30 years. “The president led on that effort and was able to get that done. … The president has signed more than two dozen executive actions [on gun control],” she said.
‘Lower the temperature’
This week, Biden has also condemned the recent violence, asking the country to minimize its divisiveness.
“We have to lower the temperature … there is no place in America for violence. It is important that we are really clear about that,” said Jean-Pierre when asked if Biden plans to tone down his political rhetoric.
The message from the White House comes after Biden called Trump a “threat to democracy” on several occasions. Trump has repeatedly said “you will not have a country” if Biden is re-elected.
J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s recently chosen candidate for vice president, blamed Biden’s political rhetoric for the assassination attempt.
“Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” he posted on X shortly after the incident.
In a Monday interview with NBC News, Biden said he regretted saying “it was time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.” But he defended saying that the former president is a “threat.”
“Look, how do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says?” Biden said in the interview
Some analysts doubt that Biden’s call for a calmer climate will bring about big changes to the political landscape.
“I think the immediate effect [after the shooting] is going to be that it will escalate violent rhetoric and that people are going to be more vehement and vocal in vilifying their political rivals,” Valentine said.
“Unfortunately, I think that’s where we’re at, and that’s what we’re beginning to see already.”
Anita Powell contributed to this report from the White House.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-stands-ground-on-gun-policy-asks-americans-to-cool-down/7700978.html
SCV leaders react to new law banning parent notification of student gender identity
date: 2024-07-17, from: The Signal
Supporters of the LGBTQ community are calling Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signing of the SAFETY Act a win, while other local leaders say that it is simply another case of local […]
The post SCV leaders react to new law banning parent notification of student gender identity appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Deputies: 18-year-old arrested for trespassing, carrying loaded firearm, nitrous oxide
date: 2024-07-17, from: The Signal
A report Sunday evening of an alleged trespassing at a Canyon Country pool led to the arrest of multiple people, including juveniles, with an 18-year-old man arrested on suspicion of […]
The post Deputies: 18-year-old arrested for trespassing, carrying loaded firearm, nitrous oxide appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Man on probation arrested on suspicion of vandalism
date: 2024-07-17, from: The Signal
A 23-year-old man already on probation for vandalism was arrested Monday evening on suspicion of vandalism after causing approximately $1,000 in damage at a Castaic residence, according to Santa Clarita […]
The post Man on probation arrested on suspicion of vandalism appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/man-on-probation-arrested-on-suspicion-of-vandalism/
Castaic district’s preschool programs growing after director’s first year
date: 2024-07-17, from: The Signal
Melanie Long said she was surprised when she learned that she was being honored by the Castaic Union School District for, as she put it simply, doing her job. The […]
The post Castaic district’s preschool programs growing after director’s first year appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Whispers of Vanished Childhood
date: 2024-07-17, from: Care
<p>“The deserted street felt like a canvas wiped clean, with only my mother and I left as the remaining strokes of a forsaken painting.”</p>https://logicmag.io/issue-21-medicine-and-the-body/whispers-of-vanished-childhood
Vice presidential nominee Vance calls China ‘biggest threat to our country’
date: 2024-07-17, from: VOA News USA
Washington — In his short time in the U.S. Senate, J.D. Vance, the newly tapped Republican vice presidential nominee, has been a hawk on China.
He has introduced legislation to restrict Chinese access to U.S. financial markets and to protect U.S. higher education from Chinese influence.
In an interview with Fox News shortly after being named as former President Donald Trump’s running mate on Monday, Vance called China “the biggest threat” to the United States.
When asked about Russia’s war in Ukraine, Vance said Trump would negotiate with Moscow and Kyiv to “bring this thing to a rapid close so America can focus on the real issue, which is China.”
“That’s the biggest threat to our country and we are completely distracted from it,” said Vance, a staunch supporter of Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda.
The 39-year-old author and venture capitalist rose to fame with his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” He advocates for a hands-off approach to foreign policy and is dubious about military intervention.
Tariffs and more tariffs
Both Trump and Vance have supported strong tariffs on China. In an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” news program in May, Vance said the U.S. needs to apply across-the-board tariffs on imports.
“If you apply tariffs, really what it is you’re saying [is] that we’re going to penalize you for using slave labor in China and importing that stuff in the United States. What you end up doing is, you end up making more stuff in America, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio and in Michigan,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly accused China of stealing manufacturing jobs from the U.S., especially those jobs in the Midwestern part of the country.
“Vance has supported more economic restrictions and tariffs on Chinese imports and investments,” Dean Chen, a professor of political science at the Ramapo College of New Jersey, told VOA. “Hence, I expect his position on China to be in line with Trump nationalists in their potential new administration.”
Trump has promised that, if elected, he would impose 10% across-the-board levies on imported goods and a tariff of 60% or higher on Chinese goods to protect American industries.
Joel Goldstein, professor emeritus of law at Saint Louis University and an expert on the vice presidency, said Vance was selected because he is “a very loyal supporter who has embraced Trump’s policies and style and who seems disposed to defend Trump’s words and conduct.”
“The choice seems designed to appeal to Trump’s MAGA base, not to unify the Republican Party or the nation,” he told VOA.
Taiwan
Experts say Vance might be more of an isolationist than Trump, as Vance was vehemently opposed to funding the war in Ukraine.
“He previously served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq and felt that the lessons from that war should prevent future entanglements,” Chen said.
Chen added that whether that attitude translates to lessened support for a Taiwan military contingency remains to be seen.
“We all know that Trump has been clear that he won’t announce whether he would send troops to help Taiwan should Beijing invade the island democracy, saying that a lucid explanation would undercut his negotiating position,” he said. “I expect Vance to toe the same line as President Trump.”
Attracting Rust Belt voters
Vance was born on August 2, 1984, in Middletown, Ohio. He served in the Marine Corps before attending The Ohio State University and Yale Law School.
His 2016 bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” detailed his family’s struggles with poverty, addiction and instability. The book focuses on the hardship faced by white working-class people in the Rust Belt — the manufacturing region in the U.S. that includes parts of the Northeast and Midwest and has experienced economic decline and population loss.
“Senator Vance’s life story and diverse accomplishments are impressive,” Karen Hult, a political science professor at Virginia Tech, told VOA.
“He not only is from a ‘red’ Republican state, but one that is near the battleground state of Pennsylvania and may be seen as appealing to many more rural and smaller town residents in much of the Middle West,” Hult said.
In the 2020 presidential election, Trump lost Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, three important swing states along the Rust Belt.
Hult said that in most presidential elections, the choice of running mates makes little difference in voting results.
“That, of course, may differ in 2024, given the age of the two major party candidates and in light of Saturday’s assassination attempt,” she added.
July 26: SCVi Hosts Ice Cream Social for Families
date: 2024-07-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
SCVi, a TK-12 tuition-free public charter school in Castaic has announced an Ice Cream Social event on Friday, July 26, 4:30-5:30 p.m. at the school campus
https://scvnews.com/july-26-scvi-hosts-ice-cream-social-for-families/
Iran’s MuddyWater phishes Israeli orgs with custom BugSleep backdoor
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
India, Turkey, also being targeted by campaign that relies on corporate email compromise
MuddyWater, an Iranian government-backed cyber espionage crew, has upgraded its malware with a custom backdoor, which it’s used to target Israeli organizations.…
LA mayor vetoes police discipline ballot measure
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The LAist
Mayor Karen Bass told the City Council the proposed initiative “risks creating bureaucratic confusion” in the police department.
https://laist.com/news/politics/la-mayor-vetoes-police-discipline-ballot-measure
Music Review | The Rolling Stones Refuse To Stop
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Rolling Stones’ July 10 performance at SoFi Stadium did not disappoint.
The post Music Review | The Rolling Stones Refuse To Stop appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/music-review-the-rolling-stones-refuse-to-stop/
Santa Barbara Supervisors Get Positive Progress Report on Lake Fire
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Most evacuated residents have been allowed to return home, and fire crews are being deployed back to their home stations, to other fires, or onto north side of the more than 38,600-acre wildfire.
The post Santa Barbara Supervisors Get Positive Progress Report on Lake Fire appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Hundreds of runners gather for Independence Day Classic
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
The heat couldn’t stop hundreds of runners from the 40th annual Independence Day Classic in Santa Clarita on the Fourth of July. Numerous local distance runners and out-of-towners all gathered […]
The post Hundreds of runners gather for Independence Day Classic appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/hundreds-of-runners-gather-for-independence-day-classic/
Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office Provides Update on Project Opioid
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Overdose deaths are down in 2024, though Sheriff Bill Brown warns of “insidious” new drugs.
The post Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office Provides Update on Project Opioid appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Santa Barbara Charter School Teacher Arrested for Allegedly Placing ‘Secret Recording Devices’ Around School
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The 54-year-old suspect, Steven Schapansky, was detained over the weekend but has since been released.
The post Santa Barbara Charter School Teacher Arrested for Allegedly Placing ‘Secret Recording Devices’ Around School appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
How did Trump’s would-be assailant get to rooftop vantage point unchecked?
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Vision for Santa Barbara’s State Street Bogged Down by Details
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
State Street Advisory Committee members frustrated after three-year planning process.
The post Vision for Santa Barbara’s State Street Bogged Down by Details appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Stevenson Ranch Vons added to Kroger divestiture list
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
The Vons in Stevenson Ranch has been publicly listed among the 63 stores that Kroger and Albertsons have planned to divest from as a result of their merger. The Federal […]
The post Stevenson Ranch Vons added to Kroger divestiture list appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/stevenson-ranch-vons-added-to-kroger-divestiture-list/
Iran open to resuming nuclear accord talks, acting foreign minister says
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Tehran remains open to resuming negotiations with Washington on restoring their participation in a nuclear agreement, Iran’s acting foreign minister told Newsweek magazine in an interview published on Tuesday.
Ali Bagheri Kani’s remarks come as he prepares to address the United Nations Security Council in New York.
The United States under President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018 from the nuclear accord between Iran and six world powers, which restricted Tehran’s nuclear programs.
Indirect talks between the U.S. and Tehran to revive the deal have stalled. Iran is still part of the agreement, but it has decreased its commitments because of U.S. sanctions imposed on it.
Newsweek reported: “On the foreign policy front, he [Bagheri Kani] said that Tehran remained open to resuming negotiations with Washington toward restoring mutual participation in a nuclear deal.”
However, Iran also intended to foster its deepening ties with China, Russia and neighboring nations, it quoted him as saying. Iran will also call for greater action against Israel in view of the Gaza war, he said.
The Biden administration said last week the United States was not ready to resume nuclear talks with Iran under its new president.
Bagheri Kani became the acting foreign minister after foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian died in a helicopter crash along with Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi in May.
Iranians then elected Masoud Pezeshkian as president, a moderate who said he will promote a pragmatic foreign policy and ease tensions with the powers involved in the 2015 nuclear pact.
Theater Review | ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ at Solvang Festival Theatre
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The play goes just right in PCPA’s comedy offering of a show within a show.
The post Theater Review | ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ at Solvang Festival Theatre appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Supes Approve Tenant Right to Counsel Ordinance
date: 2024-07-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
On Tuesday, July 16, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the Tenant Right to Counsel Ordinance, which will provide free legal representation to eligible tenants facing eviction in unincorporated Los Angeles County beginning in January of
https://scvnews.com/supes-approve-tenant-right-to-counsel-ordinance/
Theater Review | ‘Legally Blonde: The Musical’
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Upbeat show from SBCC Theatre Group bends, snaps, and succeeds on multiple levels.
The post Theater Review | ‘Legally Blonde: The Musical’ appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/theater-review-legally-blonde-the-musical/
Israelis see much at stake in US elections
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Israelis are closely watching the U.S. elections, seeing the results as crucial in deciding the outcome of the war in Gaza and its aftermath. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Jerusalem. Camera: Ricki Rosen
https://www.voanews.com/a/israelis-see-much-at-stake-in-us-elections-/7700934.html
Lilbits: Audacity 3.6, Android 14 for the Fairphone, and a mini PC with Intel Meteor Lake and NVIDIA RTX 40
date: 2024-07-16, from: Liliputing
Earlier this year Asus introduced its first mini PC that’s part of both the NUC line of mini PCs and the Asus ROG line of gaming PCs. The Asus ROG NUC is a compact computer with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics, all crammed into a […]
The post Lilbits: Audacity 3.6, Android 14 for the Fairphone, and a mini PC with Intel Meteor Lake and NVIDIA RTX 40 appeared first on Liliputing.
NASA Invites Media to Discuss Exploration Science Program Update
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA will hold a media teleconference at 4 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, July 17, to provide an update on a program within NASA’s Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office. Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website at: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv Participants in the teleconference include: To ask questions during the teleconference, media must RSVP […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-invites-media-to-discuss-exploration-science-program-update/
WiSH Webinar Series Expands for College Bound Students, Families
date: 2024-07-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The WiSH Education Foundation, which benefits students in the William S. Hart Union School District, has announced that its Wednesday Webinar series for the coming ’24-’25 school year is being expanded to eight webinars.
https://scvnews.com/wish-webinar-series-expands-for-college-bound-students-families/
Purism wants to build an open source, remote controlled robot (crowdfunding)
date: 2024-07-16, from: Liliputing
Purism is a company that sells laptops, mini PCs, and smartphones that ship with free and open source software and privacy-focused features including hardware kill switches for cameras, microphones, and wireless radios. Now the company wants to branch out into new territory: robotics. Purism has launched a crowdfunding campaign with a goal of raising $1.2 […]
The post Purism wants to build an open source, remote controlled robot (crowdfunding) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/purism-wants-to-build-an-open-source-remote-controlled-robot-crowdfunding/
Santa Barbara Supervisors Approve $5.7M Proposal for Jail-Based Competency Treatment
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Department of State Hospitals will provide a program within the county jail that aids in the treatment of inmates deemed incompetent to stand trial.
The post Santa Barbara Supervisors Approve $5.7M Proposal for Jail-Based Competency Treatment appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
The Future of Nuclear Fusion Is Clear — Legally, At Least
date: 2024-07-16, from: Heatmap News
After decades of research and billions of dollars in funding, nuclear
fusion has produced “net energy” (more energy coming out of a reaction
than was necessary to start it) in exactly two places in our solar
system:
Lawrence
Livermore National Lab, and the sun. Even the scientists who did it
on Earth say that using the technology for real-world energy generation
is still a
“very
distant” prospect.
On the bright side, however, the regulatory path for fusion
energy has gotten a lot clearer.
The
ADVANCE
Act, signed by President Biden last week, contained language that
will simplify the path to deployment for fusion, should it ever reach
commercialization. The Fusion Energy Act, contained within the ADVANCE
Act (which itself was stapled onto Fire Grants and Safety Act),
confirmed a decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2023
separating the regulatory apparatus for fusion and fission projects.
Fission — the only process used to produce nuclear energy commercially
today — can lead to runaway nuclear reactions and inevitably creates
radioactive waste, and going through the complex regulatory process can
take
years.
Fusion, by contrast, doesn’t have those risks.
In a 2023 memo, the NRC approved its staff decision to “to license and regulate fusion energy systems under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s byproduct material framework,” i.e. the process used to approve things like particle accelerators and medical applications. That change had been prompted by an earlier nuclear bill, 2019’s Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act.
Still, both lawmakers and the industry were wary that might not hold up should the Supreme Court decide to overturn a decades-old precedent giving deference to agencies to interpret their own mandates — a world “anybody who’s in Washington saw coming,” Andrew Holland, head of the industry group Fusion Industry Association, told me. “If there’s any ambiguity about what Congress said, then that creates this regulatory uncertainty. So this is Congress saying, what the NRC did is what we wanted.”
That is a big relief for fusion investors. “There was a lot of angst among investors that, well, fusion is going to be regulated just like nuclear fission,” Holland said, referring to the period before the NRC’s decision in 2023. “So why shouldn’t I invest in the thing that I know works, versus the thing that’s technologically hard?”
About that technology: Fusion is often described as the “holy grail” of energy generation, both because of its immense promise (the fuel for fusion literally comes from seawater) with which it could generates immense carbon free power without the waste and risks associated with fission and because, like the grail, no one has been able to attain it.
Fusion has become something like the Brazil of energy research, with a working reactor always 20 (or 30) years away. ITER, a giant international fusion project that has been around in some form or another since the late 1970s, announced recently that it had pushed back the timeline for starting its machine from 2025 to 2034.
The private fusion industry, meanwhile, has raised over $7 billion in total, with about $6 billion coming since 2021, according to Fusion Industry Association data. About $2 billion of that of that has gone to Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which spun off from MIT in 2018.
The Massachusetts-based company is working on a fusion device that promises to be cheaper, faster, and easier to build that the unwieldy ITER model. In 2021, Commonwealth and MIT researchers were able to generate a magnetic field with a strength of 20 tesla, hailed by researchers as a meaningful step towards building a working fusion device.
At the same time, however, many industry figures and researchers think there’s more to be done on the funding side. The philanthropist John Arnold has called for explicit cost-sharing between the federal government and fusion companies based on achieving technological milestones, where fusion companies could certify that they achieved some kind of pre-established technological or commercial breakthrough and thus unlock government grants to defray their expenses. The Department of Energy has a program to fund fusion companies based on their achievements, but the funding has been in the tens of millions, which Arnold has described as “WAY TOO SMALL” and “barely worth the company’s time spent on the application.”
This isn’t just idle musing by a philanthropist with a Twitter account: Julien Barber, a climate investor at Emerson Collective, which has put money into Commonwealth, tends to agree. “We’re not allocating enough resources to actually make this a reality given the potential of it,” he told me. “We have to make hard decisions about funding and allocation as we move towards commercial fusion.”
The ADVANCE Act’s cements fusion — and the nuclear industry more broadly — as one of the favored energy technologies on Capitol Hill. The bill also builds on legislation passed and signed during the Trump administration and had the backing of a bipartisan group of senators.
“Fusion energy is a promising clean and safe power source that could help address America’s growing energy demands,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and one of the Fusion Energy Act’s co-sponsors, said in a statement after the bill was passed. “This legislation will advance fusion technology in pursuit of increased U.S. energy independence, and I am grateful to my Senate colleagues for supporting it.”
“The Fusion Act is a pretty critical piece of what the fusion industry has been working towards,” Barber said. “There are two big barriers towards commercialization: We need enough funding to develop technology, and we need to have regulatory pathways.”
Holland, of the Fusion Industry Association, is optimistic that whoever is running Washington in 2025 will remain receptive to fusion — a position will almost certainly not be the case for other forms of non-carbon-emitting energy.
“You have Democrats who care because it’s the best form of renewable energy, and Republicans who care because it’s an updated form of nuclear energy,” he told me. “There’s been remarkably strong bipartisanship. And I would expect that does not change in a new administration, whoever leads the new administration.”
https://heatmap.news/climate/advance-act-fusion
US voters consider impact of Trump assassination attempt
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
U.S. voters are assessing the impact of Saturday’s attempted assassination of presidential candidate Donald Trump. As VOA correspondent Scott Stearns reports, they are considering what the shooting means for the country and this November’s election. VOA’s Russian, Spanish, Persian and Korean language services contributed to this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-voters-consider-impact-of-trump-assassination-attempt/7700857.html
On one Prime Day, Amazon warehouse workers endured ‘45% injury rate’
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Bernie Sanders puts e-souk titan on blast for workplace harm
Risk of workplace injury is extremely high for Amazon warehouse workers during Prime Day and the holiday season, according to a US Senate committee report.…
Apple Opens Public Betas for macOS 15 Sequoia, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11, tvOS 18, and HomePod Software 18
date: 2024-07-16, from: TidBITS blog
Apple has opened the public beta program for its forthcoming 2024 operating systems. Remember, these aren’t meant for everyday use. Only install them on devices that you can dedicate to testing!
Stolen Cinematic Kisses for Santa Barbara
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
‘Steal Big Steal Little’, the quirky, personal film by hometown director Andrew Davis, kicks off the Granada Theatre’s “Home Movies” series.
The post Stolen Cinematic Kisses for Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/stolen-cinematic-kisses-for-santa-barbara/
Judge’s dismissal of classified document case against Trump, explained
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
By Sam Dorman Contributing Writer U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Justice Department’s classified documents case against former President Donald Trump on Monday, ruling that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment […]
The post Judge’s dismissal of classified document case against Trump, explained appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/judges-dismissal-of-classified-document-case-against-trump-explained/
NASA Ships Moon Rocket Stage Ahead of First Crewed Artemis Flight
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA rolled out the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s core stage for the Artemis II test flight from its manufacturing facility in New Orleans on Tuesday for shipment to the agency’s spaceport in Florida. The rollout is key progress on the path to NASA’s first crewed mission to the Moon under the Artemis campaign. Using […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-ships-moon-rocket-stage-ahead-of-first-crewed-artemis-flight/
NASA Deputy Administrator Holds First Bilateral Engagement with KASA
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy conducted the first bilateral meeting on Monday with Dr. Young-bin Yoon, administrator of the newly established KASA (Korea AeroSpace Administration), which opened on May 27. The creation of KASA underscores the Republic of Korea’s commitment to advancing space exploration. The bilateral meeting marks a pivotal moment for a NASA’s relationship […]
Purposeness Meets Deliciousness
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Moby Dick’s new Oyster Bar on Santa Barbara’s Stearns Wharf brings sustainable sourcing to the next level.
The post Purposeness Meets Deliciousness appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/purposeness-meets-deliciousness/
A Statue of a 12-Year-Old Hiroshima Victim Has Been Stolen
date: 2024-07-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The monument to Sadako Sasaki, who died of leukemia in 1955, vanished from Peace Park in Seattle
Trump officially secures GOP presidential nomination
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
By Janice Hisle Contributing Writer MILWAUKEE — It’s official: Former President Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. The announcement was made almost simultaneously with Trump’s announcement of his […]
The post Trump officially secures GOP presidential nomination appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/trump-officially-secures-gop-presidential-nomination/
How did would-be Trump assassin get to rooftop vantage point unseen?
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Antitrust: GoDaddy under fire for banning DNS automation tool in favor of its own
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Domain name giant yanked into court after Entri Connect disconnect
Updated GoDaddy is facing an antitrust lawsuit over claims it unfairly and underhandedly blackballed a smaller outfit’s DNS automation tool in favor of its own apparently inferior product. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/godaddy_antitrust_violations/
FBI gains access to suspected Trump shooter’s phone
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
By Zachary Stieber Contributing Writer FBI agents have gained access to a phone belonging to Thomas Crooks, the man identified by law enforcement officials as shooting former President Donald Trump, the […]
The post FBI gains access to suspected Trump shooter’s phone appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/fbi-gains-access-to-suspected-trump-shooters-phone/
Aug. 21: SCV Chamber After Hours Mixer at Henry Mayo
date: 2024-07-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Join the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce at the Business After Hours Mixer, alongside other business leaders from the Santa Clarita Valley, for an exclusive networking event at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 5:30-7:30 p.m
https://scvnews.com/aug-21-scv-chamber-after-hours-mixer-at-henry-mayo/
Sale closed in Los Gatos: $2.2 million for a four-bedroom home
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 2,050-square-foot property, built in 2013, was sold on July 3, 2024. The $2,210,000 purchase price works out to $1,078 per square foot.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/16/sale-closed-in-los-gatos-2-2-million-for-a-four-bedroom-home/
Scientists Find an Underground Cave on the Moon That Could Shelter Future Explorers
date: 2024-07-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Such caves could serve as lunar bases during upcoming missions, protecting astronauts against cosmic radiation and extreme temperatures
Peter Buxtun dies at 86; one-time public health worker blew whistle on Tuskegee syphilis study
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
In his complaints to federal health officials, Buxtun drew comparisons between the Tuskegee study and medical experiments Nazi doctors had conducted on Jews and other prisoners.
Nearly half of cancers linked to lifestyle factors, study finds
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
The study points to the possibility that the daily choices people make can give them some control over their cancer risk.
NASA Celebrates 20 Years of Earth-Observing Aura Satellite
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
A few of the many highlights from the last 20 years since Aura Launched.
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/nasa-celebrates-20-years-of-earth-observing-aura-satellite/
Safari already contains ad tracking technology, and they’re now adding it to Safari’s Private Browsing mode, too
date: 2024-07-16, from: OS News
We’ve been talking a lot about sleazy ways in which the online advertising industry is conspiring with browser makers – who also happen to be in the online advertising industry – to weaken privacy features so they can still track you and the ads they serve you, but with “privacy”. They’re trying really hard to make it seem as if they’re doing us a huge favour by making tracking slightly more private, and browser makers are falling over themselves to convince us that allowing some user and ad tracking is the only way to stop the kind of total everything, everywhere, all at once tracking we have now. We’ve got Google and Chrome pushing something called “Privacy Sandbox“, and we’ve got Mozilla and Facebook pushing something called “Privacy-Preserving Attribution“, both of which are designed to give the advertising industry slightly more private tracking in the desperate hope they won’t still be doing a lot more tracking on the side. Safari users, meanwhile, have been feeling pretty good about all of this in the knowledge Apple cares about privacy, so surely Safari won’t be doing any of this. You know where this is going, right? Today, the WebKit project published a lengthy blog post detailing all the various additional measures it’s taking to make its Private Browsing mode more, well, private, and a lot of them are great moves, very welcome, and ensure that private browsing on Safari is a little bit more private than it is on Chrome, as the blog post gleefully points out. However, not long into the blog post, the shoe drops. We also expanded Web AdAttributionKit (formerly Private Click Measurement) as a replacement for tracking parameters in URL to help developers understand the performance of their marketing campaigns even under Private Browsing. ↫ John Wilander, Charlie Wolfe, Matthew Finkel, Wenson Hsieh, and Keith Holleman A little further down, they go into more detail: Web AdAttributionKit (formerly Private Click Measurement) is a way for advertisers, websites, and apps to implement ad attribution and click measurement in a privacy-preserving way. You can read more about it here. Alongside the new suite of enhanced privacy protections in Private Browsing, Safari also brings a version of Web AdAttributionKit to Private Browsing. This allows click measurement and attribution to continue working in a privacy-preserving manner. ↫ John Wilander, Charlie Wolfe, Matthew Finkel, Wenson Hsieh, and Keith Holleman So not only does Safari already include the kind of tracking technology everyone is – rightfully – attacking Mozilla over for adding it to Firefox, Apple and the Safari team are actually taking it a step further and making this ad tracking technology available in private browsing mode. The technology is limited a bit more in Private Browsing mode, but its intent is preserved: to track you and the ads you see online. I would hazard a guess that when you enable a browser’s private browsing or incognito mode, you assume that means zero tracking. We already know that Chrome’s Incognito mode leaks data like a sieve with bullet holes in it, and now it seems Safari’s Private Browsing mode, too, is going to allow advertisers to track you and the ads you see – blog post full of fancy privacy features be damned. Do you know those “Around the web” chumboxes? Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term, you’ve most definitely seen these things all over the web, and really hate them. A major player in the chumbox business is a company called Taboola, a name that’s quite despised and reviled online. Popular Apple blogger John Gruber called Taboola a “slumlord” and the “lowest common denominator clickbait property“. Do you want to know which major technology company just signed a massive deal with Taboola? Ad tech giant Taboola has struck a deal with Apple to power native advertising within the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps, Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda told Axios. ↫ Sara Fischer at Axios Apple needs to find new markets to keep growing, and clearly, pestering its users with upsells and subscriptions to its services isn’t enough. The online advertising industry is massive – just look at Google’s and Facebook’s financial disclosures – and Apple seems to be interested in taking a bigger slice of that fat pie. And as Google and now Mozilla are finding out, a browser that blocks ads and ad tracking kind of gets in the way of that. Anyone who can make and sell plug-and-play Pi-Hole devices even normal people can use is going to make a killing.
Aug. 3: ‘Evening of Elegance’ Fundraising Gala to Benefit Mission Opera
date: 2024-07-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Mission Opera has announced the fundraising gala, “An Evening of Elegance,” will be held Saturday, Aug
https://scvnews.com/aug-3-evening-of-elegance-to-benefit-mission-opera/
What we can learn from ‘Money Moms’
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Moms groups can be fertile ground for financial tips.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/16/what-we-can-learn-from-money-moms/
Taboola + Apple News? No thanks
date: 2024-07-16, from: Om Malik blog
I’ve been a happy Apple One customer. It made perfect sense signing up for the package considering I was paying for Apple TV+, Apple Music and iCloud storage. For an extra couple of dollars, I could get Apple News+, so I thought why not. That ended today, when I learned that Apple had struck a …
https://om.co/2024/07/16/taboola-apple-news-no-thanks/
Apollo 11 Lifts Off
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
55 years ago on July 16, 1969, NASA’s Apollo 11 spacecraft launched from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as seen in this photo. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin were aboard. Apollo 11’s primary mission objective was to fulfill a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/apollo-11-lifts-off/
LA County leaders vote to give renters free eviction attorneys, a first in SoCal
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The LAist
The proposed Right To Counsel program would give low-income renters in unincorporated L.A. County a free eviction attorney starting next year.
NASA to Provide Background on Space Station Deorbit Planning
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA is planning for the future in low Earth orbit for science, research, and commercial opportunities as the agency and its international partners maximize the use of the International Space Station. As the agency fosters new commercial space stations, leadership from NASA and SpaceX will participate in a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-to-provide-background-on-space-station-deorbit-planning/
See Inside Denver’s 143-Year-Old Train Station
date: 2024-07-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The transit hub, which just got an $11 million makeover, is deeply connected to the city’s history
You know what spreadsheets need? LLMs, says Microsoft
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Excel-lent, Smithers, have we fired accounting yet?
Researchers at Microsoft have developed a framework designed to make it easier for large language models (LLMs) to analyze the content of spreadsheets and perform data management and analysis tasks, because why not?…
Why FTC Needs to Rethink Tech Regulation
date: 2024-07-16, from: Om Malik blog
If you’ve been a regular reader, you know I’m a little skeptical of government regulators (including the FTC and DOJ) being able to control and rein in Big Tech, and more importantly, bring about change that is timely, impactful and meaningful in the long run. No matter how well-meaning their intentions might be — and …
https://om.co/2024/07/16/why-ftc-needs-to-rethink-tech-regulation/
Realignment 101: Sankey focuses on “16” while ACC legal issues linger, but is Fox targeting unclaimed ground?
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
The SEC and Big Ten and their media partners won’t make a move toward further expansion until there is no threat of getting sued by the ACC.
Liccardo continues to lead Low in fundraising in the race to replace U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Liccardo raised more than twice as much as Low in the last filing period.
TV Tinsel: NBC set for Olympic coverage, including dash of Snoop Dogg
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
NBC Sports is going all-out programming the 2024 Paris Olympics, which begin July 26.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump’s Ugly New Post-Shooting Rant Instantly Wrecks His “Unity” Pivot.
https://newrepublic.com/article/183860/trumps-post-shooting-rant-wrecks-unity-pivot
Tamale Class Is Back
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Richard Lambert is hosting a pre-Fiesta training session on July 20.
The post Tamale Class Is Back appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/tamale-class-is-back/
Tech company opens new San Jose office and adds jobs in expansion
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
A tech company has opened a new office in San Jose in a job-creating expansion.
Nesting Shorebirds Are Mobbing Drones on New York City Beaches
date: 2024-07-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The drones, equipped with inflatable life rafts, were intended to help improve public safety for humans this summer—but they’re also upsetting orange-beaked birds called American oystercatchers
‘Happy Ice Cream Makes Happy People’
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Rori’s Artisanal Creamery scoops up special celebration for National Ice Cream Day on July 21.
The post ‘Happy Ice Cream Makes Happy People’ appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/happy-ice-cream-makes-happy-people/
Bucking the Rules
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Following the Biden-Trump debate, a friend and highly respected local medical specialist sent me an email containing a brief, analytical viewpoint of why President Biden, despite his great services since his inauguration, would be an unreliable choice for another term.
The post Bucking the Rules appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/bucking-the-rules/
California Republicans applaud Trump’s VP pick of JD Vance at national convention
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The LAist
California Republicans cheered as former President Donald Trump announced Republican senator and MAGA favorite JD Vance as his running VP at the Republican National Convention.
Ellwood Marine Terminal to Be Destroyed to Restore Site at UC Santa Barbara for Public Use
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Demolition and restoration join hands for a project involving a bankrupt oil company’s nearly century-old storage facility.
The post Ellwood Marine Terminal to Be Destroyed to Restore Site at UC Santa Barbara for Public Use appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Santa Maria Airport Boardmember at Center of Forklift Fatality Sues Airport, Insurance Company
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
David Baskett’s lawsuit alleges civil-rights violations pertaining to the accident investigation and his denied access to airport facilities.
The post Santa Maria Airport Boardmember at Center of Forklift Fatality Sues Airport, Insurance Company appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Parents of Cora Vides, on Trial for Attempted Murder, Testify
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
They said they “missed the signs” of their daughter’s mental illness.
The post Parents of Cora Vides, on Trial for Attempted Murder, Testify appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/parents-of-cora-vides-on-trial-for-attempted-murder-testify/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Many Judges Don't Recuse in Cases Involving Their Families’ Interests.
https://www.propublica.org/article/judges-ethics-codes-recusal-conflict-of-interest-families
July 18: The SENSES Games in Old Town Newhall
date: 2024-07-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The SENSES Block Party on Thursday, July 18 will feature the theme “The SENSES Games.”
https://scvnews.com/july-18-the-senses-games-in-old-town-newhall/
macOS 15 Sequoia Public Beta
date: 2024-07-16, from: Michael Tsai
Juli Clover: Apple today released the first beta of an upcoming macOS Sequoia update to its public beta testing group, giving the general public a chance to try out the new operating system’s features ahead of its fall launch. The first public beta includes the same content as the third developer beta. […] All of […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/16/macos-15-sequoia-public-beta/
An ambitious new food hall is coming to San Francisco’s Presidio
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Mess Hall, led by a James Beard award-winning Momofuku veteran, plans to open in the national park in 2025.
An Ode to the Volume Swipe
date: 2024-07-16, from: Michael Tsai
M.G. Siegler: I found myself thinking about the AirPods… Specifically, how truly great the volume swiping mechanism is on the AirPods Pro. This must be my most-used gesture in life beyond perhaps swiping up to unlock my phone. I have AirPods in my ears a good percentage of the day and I’m constantly swiping up […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/16/an-ode-to-the-volume-swipe/
NSCopyObject, the Griefer That Keeps on Griefing
date: 2024-07-16, from: Michael Tsai
Wade Tregaskis: Almost nobody intentionally uses NSCopyObject, but your superclass might, and therefore you might.[…]Someguides specify a better method, which is to manually zero out the copied object’s ivars and then repopulate them via formal property setters. That actually works with or without ARC, although it may break – causing memory leaks – if the […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/16/nscopyobject-the-griefer-that-keeps-on-griefing/
Chromium Browsers Preferencing *.google.com Domains
date: 2024-07-16, from: Michael Tsai
Simon Willison (Hacker News): It turns out Google Chrome (via Chromium) includes a default extension which makes extra services available to code running on the *.google.com domains - tweeted about today by Luca Casonato, but the code has been there in the public repo since October 2013 as far as I can tell.It looks like […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/16/chromium-browsers-preferencing-google-com-domains/
Carolina Ixta’s debut novel delves into the lives of Oakland teens
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Oakland’s Carolina Ixta addresses sex, racism and religion in debut novel, “Shut Up, This is Serious”
Daily Deals (7-16-2024)
date: 2024-07-16, from: Liliputing
You may have heard that Amazon is having a sale today. But Amazon isn’t the only place to score savings on tech. Walmart is selling a the Nintendo Switch Lite for $159 and a MacBook Air with an M1 processor for $649. Meanwhile Best Buy has deals on a bunch of Chromebooks, Windows laptops, and […]
The post Daily Deals (7-16-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-7-16-2024/
Sols 4246-4247: Next Stop: Fairview Dome
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Monday, July 15, 2024 Summer is in full swing in the northern hemisphere here on Earth. Warmer temperatures and fair weather make for prime opportunities for road trips and enjoying the best of the outdoors. Summer is in full swing too for the southern hemisphere of Mars and Gale crater, where Curiosity […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4246-4247-next-stop-fairview-dome/
Nest Healing Art Studio Looks to Expand
date: 2024-07-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Nest Healing Art Studio at ARTree in Old Town Newhall is a free community workshop consisting of an an hour of mindful, judgement free, art-making
https://scvnews.com/nest-healing-art-studio-looks-to-expand/
Brian Richards | Where Are the Apologies?
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
For years, right before our eyes, we have seen the gradual decline of Joe Biden. He has tripped, stumbled, mumbled, made up words, butchered the English language, and been led […]
The post Brian Richards | Where Are the Apologies? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/brian-richards-where-are-the-apologies/
Christine Flowers | The Dangers of Political Propaganda
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
It is an old childhood truism that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” In the U.S., where speech is protected with a constitutional […]
The post Christine Flowers | The Dangers of Political Propaganda appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/christine-flowers-the-dangers-of-political-propaganda/
Peter Roff | It’s High Time to Punch the Ticket on Ticketmaster
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
The most critical nexus in the free market is the transactions that occur when willing sellers and interested buyers meet. One does not usually look to the federal government to […]
The post Peter Roff | It’s High Time to Punch the Ticket on Ticketmaster appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/peter-roff-its-high-time-to-punch-the-ticket-on-ticketmaster/
A Tribute to “The Say Hey Kid”
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Baseball Legend Willie Mays died on June 18, at the age of 94. Craig Harris shares some remembrances of his hero.
The post A Tribute to “The Say Hey Kid” appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/a-tribute-to-the-say-hey-kid/
Wind Is More Powerful Than J. D. Vance Seems to Think
date: 2024-07-16, from: Heatmap News
It’s a good thing most of us aren’t accountable for every single silly thing we’ve ever said, but most of us are not vice presidential running mates, either. Back in 2022, when J.D. Vance was still just a “New York Times bestselling author” and not yet a “junior senator from Ohio,” much less “second-in-line to a former president who will turn 80 in office if he’s reelected,” he made a climate oopsie that — now that it’s recirculating — deserves to be addressed.
If Democrats “care so much about climate change,” Vance argued during an Ohio Republican senator candidate forum during that year, “and they think climate change is caused by carbon emissions, then why is their solution to scream about it at the top of their lungs, send a bunch of our jobs to China, and then manufacture these ridiculous ugly windmills all over Ohio farms that don’t produce enough electricity to run a cell phone?”
Vance is hardly the first person to get confused about intermittent energy sources such as wind; his new would-be boss, former President Donald Trump, likes to claim that wind turbines can’t even power a single household’s television. The fallacy stems from the idea that the power will “go out” if the wind isn’t blowing — which, in theory, would be true in any case where power demand outpaces supply. But grids are regulated with levels of redundancy specifically designed to prevent those sorts of outages, Kyri Baker, an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Colorado, previously explained to me. There are also, of course, batteries.
Still, for the sake of argument: If the wind is blowing, could a turbine “produce enough electricity to run a cell phone”? Even running at 42% capacity — typical for turbines circa when Vance was speaking — the average turbine in the U.S. generates roughly 1,170 kilowatt-hours of electricity in 60 minutes, according to the United States Geological Survey. Charging your phone twice daily for 365 days amounts to less than 3.7 kilowatt-hours per year. In other words, about the time it takes to watch an episode of Bridgerton, a single wind turbine can generate enough electricity to charge 316 phones each day twice over. So Vance is way off here.
Are the windmills “ridiculous” and “ugly”? That’s more subjective, but they’re certainly not being built “all over Ohio farms.” Wind makes up less than 2% of the electricity generated in Ohio, and despite the Buckeye State being one of the birthplaces of wind power, it only has about 419 windmills online, placing it 24th out of all the states. Strict laws in Ohio enacted in 2014 have all but halted new wind turbines from being built.
Vance is an oil and gas guy, so maybe his ignorance of wind power can be politely overlooked this one time. But going forward, when campaigning and potentially working at a national level, it’ll be important for him to get his facts straight. Wind is the largest source of renewable electricity in the United States. It’s charging a lot of cell phones.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the number of
cell phones a single wind turbine could charge twice each day for a
year. It is 316, not 244.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/jd-vance-fact-check-wind
Cyber-crime super-crew Scattered Spider falls in love with RansomHub and Qilin
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Extortionists left hanging after rivals crawled into the woodwork
The Scattered Spider cybercrime group is now using RansomHub and Qilin ransomware variants in its attacks, illustrating a possible power shift among hacking groups.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/scattered_spider_ransom/
US, Latin American grouping aims to confront economic problems
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The problems of rising poverty and decreasing productivity in Latin America will be on the agenda when the foreign ministers of 12 regional countries convene in Washington on Wednesday, a U.S. State Department official said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken aims during the talks to “tackle” those challenges and work toward making the Americas “the world’s most economically competitive region,” said Brian Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.
The ministers represent members of the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, established two years ago to “achieve concrete results for the middle class, workers, and historically marginalized groups” by deepening economic integration and creating good paying jobs, Nichols said, speaking at a briefing this week.
“Through this partnership, we will work together to build resilient supply chains, reinvigorate our region’s economic institutions, and invest in our workers, our infrastructure, and our strategic industries – whether through semiconductors or clean energy, or medical supplies or the critical minerals needed for our modern economy.”
Nichols pointed out that the United States is Latin America’s largest trading partner and its largest source of foreign direct investment. In 2023, U.S. trade with Latin America and the Caribbean totaled over $1.1 trillion, and Mexico displaced China as America’s top trading partner.
Nevertheless, he said “poverty rates are rising in Latin America, productivity has lagged, and income inequality remains a serious problem. The pandemic demonstrated to us and to our regional partners the importance of developing more diversified and reliable supply chains closer to home.”
Lisa Kubiske, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras and former deputy assistant secretary of state, said that in the past two years, the member nations have been able to close gaps in their free trade agreements and address structural issues that thwart broad-based economic growth.
At a summit in November, she said, the leaders of the 12 countries directed their ministers to develop three tracks: trade, finance and foreign affairs. On the foreign affairs front, the group has engaged “on clean hydrogen, entrepreneurship, rule of law and transparency, smart agriculture, peaceful uses of space” and other issues, she told journalists at a briefing.
The president of the Inter-American Development Bank and the deputy CEO of the Development Finance Corporation have been invited to a lunch with the ministers. There will also be two side events, one hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and another hosted by the Council of the Americas.
The founding members of the group are Barbados, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the United States, and Uruguay. Their leaders will meet again next year in Costa Rica.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-latin-american-grouping-aims-to-confront-economic-problems/7700569.html
Google Pixel 9 lineup: Everything we (think we) know about Google’s next-gen phones
date: 2024-07-16, from: Liliputing
Google is holding a hardware event on August 13th to introduce its new Pixel 9 series smartphones. But details about the upcoming Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold have been leaking for months. Now several new leaks provide some additional information about Google’s 2024 smartphone lineup. First, […]
The post Google Pixel 9 lineup: Everything we (think we) know about Google’s next-gen phones appeared first on Liliputing.
65 years of NASA’s meatball: Original logo lives on despite detractors
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Next year the ‘worm’ turns 50 – there’s room for both at the US space agency
Logowatch NASA is celebrating 65 years of its iconic “meatball” logo, despite spending the best part of 17 years trying to kill the poor thing.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/65_years_of_nasas_meatball/
Robotic Assembly and Outfitting for NASA Space Missions
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA is turning to the 3D modeling experts in the community for ideas and designs to use or enhance the current state of modular robotic construction techniques. Robotic building of structures in space is an active area of research for NASA and might prove to be a path towards sustainable and scalable space exploration. This […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/robotic-assembly-and-outfitting-for-nasa-space-missions/
Check Out Ten Never-Before-Seen Paintings by Winston Churchill
date: 2024-07-16, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The former British prime minister was an avid painter who sometimes gifted his works to other world leaders
US Senator Menendez convicted of all charges, including accepting bribes
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Sols 4243-4245: Exploring Stubblefield Canyon
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Friday, July 12, 2024 Curiosity, now heading uphill from the Mammoth Lakes drill site, has focused on a very interesting exposure of conglomerate rocks, consisting of pebbles cemented together by a fine-grained matrix material. On Earth, conglomerate rock is associated with downhill flows of rock and soil mixtures, often in a water-rich […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4243-4245-exploring-stubblefield-canyon/
What The Campaign Is For
date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
Biden is the candidate. The stakes are existential. The whole point of a campaign is that poll numbers in July are not immutable destiny.
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/what-the-campaign-is-for
Santa Barbara Police Search for Suspect in Hit-and-Run on Eastside
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
One pedestrian was injured, and police believe that the driver was involved in a prior theft on July 11.
The post Santa Barbara Police Search for Suspect in Hit-and-Run on Eastside appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
AlphaBirds, our favorite office game
date: 2024-07-16, from: John August blog
Back in 2017, friends and I came up with a fun little game called AlphaBirds.1 We’ve been playing it in the office nearly every Friday since then. It’s a word game like Scrabble or Wordle, but faster and more fun. And it’s ridiculously simple to learn. On your turn, draw two cards. Play one card […] The post AlphaBirds, our favorite office game first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/alphabirds-our-favorite-office-game
You’re Invited: 404 Media’s First Anniversary Party
date: 2024-07-16, from: 404 Media Group
We’re throwing a party and you’re invited!
https://www.404media.co/404-media-first-anniversary-party/
Huawei lays final bricks of billion-dollar Shanghai R&D complex
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Billed as a city in its own right, center built to advance megacorp’s 5G, cloud, and AI tech
Huawei’s massive R&D complex in Shanghai is finally built - intended to give the US-sanction-hit Chinese tech giant a boost when it comes to competing with international rivals.…
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War. Highly recommended.
https://www.netflix.com/title/81614129
Here’s How AI Is Changing NASA’s Mars Rover Science
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
Artificial intelligence is helping scientists to identify minerals within rocks studied by the Perseverance rover. Some scientists dream of exploring planets with “smart” spacecraft that know exactly what data to look for, where to find it, and how to analyze it. Although making that dream a reality will take time, advances made with NASA’s Perseverance […]
Overwritten
date: 2024-07-16, from: John August blog
John welcomes back Mike Schur (The Good Place, Parks and Recreation) to ask, how do you fix an overwritten script? They discuss ways to rebuild scenes and restore muddy characters that have become burdened by too many notes, all while making sure your script retains its voice. We also look at the new IATSE deal […] The post Overwritten first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/overwritten
Gartner nudges down global IT spending growth forecast as ‘change fatigue’ persists
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Meanwhile, software vendors are left paying the GenAI ‘tax’ as users yet to see value
Gartner has nudged down its expected growth in worldwide IT spending for 2024 from 8 percent to 7.5 percent, with the total figure now expected to reach $5.26 trillion.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/gartner_nudges_down_global_it/
NASA Announces Leadership Changes
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced Tuesday Dr. Kurt Vogel, associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), is retiring from the agency. NASA Langley Research Center Director Clayton Turner will become the acting associate administrator for STMD, and NASA Glenn Research Center Deputy Director Dawn Schaible will become acting Langley center director. The changes […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-announces-leadership-changes/
قبور وراء النافذة / “Graves behind the Window” معذبو الأرض / “The Wretched of the Earth”
date: 2024-07-16, from: Care
<p>A selection of poems by Gazan poet Anees Ghanima, Translator’s Note Leena Aboutaleb, and preface by Abdalhadi Alijla</p>https://logicmag.io/issue-21-medicine-and-the-body/2-poems
AI Maxers Thrilled with Trump’s Vice President Pick JD Vance
date: 2024-07-16, from: 404 Media Group
AI maxers coming out in support of Vance and Trump more than they already have is not surprising given their libertarian bent.
https://www.404media.co/ai-maxers-thrilled-with-trumps-vice-president-pick-jd-vance/
GEEKOM A8 Review: Mini PC with up to Ryzen 9 8945HS
date: 2024-07-16, from: Liliputing
Not long ago I reviewed the GEEKOM A7 mini PC, which is a small stylish mini PC with great performance and plenty of ports. Now GEEKOM has released a new model called the GEEKOM A8. At first glance, it looks like a modest update that trades a Ryzen 7040HS processor for a newer Ryzen 8040HS […]
The post GEEKOM A8 Review: Mini PC with up to Ryzen 9 8945HS appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/geekom-a8-review-mini-pc-with-up-to-ryzen-9-8945hs/
Dunking on J.D. Vance’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Is ‘Unusual Behavior,’ Goodreads Says
date: 2024-07-16, from: 404 Media Group
Goodreads attempts to protect Vance’s “poverty porn” memoir from review-bombing, now that he’s the vice presidential candidate.
https://www.404media.co/j-d-vance-hillbilly-elegy-goodreads-reviews/
How The Gun Lobby Ensured The RNC Couldn’t Be Gun Free
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Lever News
Even after Trump’s assassination attempt, Milwaukee can’t ban guns at the Republican convention — thanks to the gun lobby’s use of powerful state preemption laws.
https://www.levernews.com/how-the-gun-lobby-ensured-the-rnc-couldnt-be-gun-free/
Summer reading?
date: 2024-07-16, from: Logic Matters blog
The newspaper culture pages have been full of recommendations for summer reading. Let me add my two-pennyworth on books I’ve recently particularly enjoyed reading or re-reading. I’ve just devoured Rory Stewart’s Politics on the Edge (in the US, How Not to Be a Politician: A Memoir). Though I’m rather glad I left it until after […]
The post Summer reading? appeared first on Logic Matters.
https://www.logicmatters.net/2024/07/16/summer-reading/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Outcast upgrade notes: "Playback begins after the download completes, not after a portion of it is buffered." That was the initial design of podcasting, and its justification, at a time when networks were comparatively much slower.
https://marco.org/2024/07/16/overcast-rewrite
Biden returns to campaign trail with speech to Black voters
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Washington — All eyes will be on Joe Biden as he addresses Black supporters Tuesday in the battleground state of Nevada, his first campaign appearance since the assassination attempt on his Republican rival, former president Donald Trump.
The U.S. president is expected to sharpen the choice voters will face this November, while calling for unity amid concerns of escalating political violence in the country.
In Las Vegas, at a convention of an American civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, Biden will highlight his administration’s support for Black voters who have been part of the backbone of the Democratic party’s coalition.
He is set to unveil policies to rein in rising housing costs, a critical issue in Nevada. He’ll broadcast his message in an interview with Black Entertainment Television, BET, later the same day.
On Wednesday, he’ll address UnidosUS, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, attempting to win Latino voters, another key voting bloc for Democrats.
In both events, Biden is expected to repeat his calls to cool down the country’s political rhetoric, a message he has delivered in three remarks in less than 24 hours following the shooting at Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign event that killed a rallygoer and wounded others, including the former president.
“Disagreement is inevitable in American democracy,” the president said in a rare Oval Office address Sunday. “But politics must never be a literal battlefield, and, God forbid, a killing field.”
Biden faces the challenge of navigating his unity message with his vows to stop Trump at all costs, as his campaign adjusts its strategy to move forward amid the president’s declining poll numbers. The Biden team had just begun to more sharply criticize Trump in an effort to stabilize Biden’s candidacy, following his rocky debate performance last month when the shooting occurred.
Via his social media platform, Trump urged the nation to “stand united.” He said in an interview with the Washington Examiner newspaper that he rewrote his speech for this week’s Republican National Convention to focus more on unity following the attempt on his life.
“I fear that this moment of detente won’t last very long,” said Claire Finkelstein, director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. But it may bring greater awareness from each candidate to refrain from rhetoric that “can have an impact” especially on followers “who can be easily revved up into engaging in acts of violence,” she told VOA.
Biden continues to reject calls from at least 20 congressional Democrats and others within his party to step aside over concerns about his age and mental acuity, insisting that he is the best-positioned Democrat to beat Trump.
The latest polling data averages from various surveys compiled by FiveThirtyEight shows that Trump is leading by 4.7 percent in Nevada.
VOA’s Kim Lewis contributed to this story.
Biden, Trump call for unity in aftermath of Trump assassination attempt
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
The weekend assassination attempt on Donald Trump has silenced much of the chatter over President Joe Biden’s political future. But as Trump charged forward Monday, appearing at the Republican National Convention and naming his vice presidential pick, the Biden administration prepared for a Tuesday campaign stop in this uncertain stage in the presidential race. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
Republicans Have No New Ideas About Energy
date: 2024-07-16, from: Heatmap News
National political conventions don’t make for the best TV. Prime-time speeches are delivered by a parade of party celebrities and last for only a few minutes — typically just enough time to bash gas prices (nonsensically) and get in a few digs at the opposition. The highlight of the Republican National Convention’s broadcast out of Milwaukee on Monday night was, in fact, entirely wordless: former President Donald Trump’s walk across the floor with a conspicuous white bandage over his ear.
The only words that really mattered on Monday were reviewed and approved behind closed doors. “It’s a different kind of platform,” Tennessee Senator and Chair of the Committee on the Platform Marsha Blackburn said by way of introduction during her speech yesterday evening. Reviewing how the 2024 Republican Party Platform’s energy sections compare to the ones in 2016 (the GOP did not write a new platform for its convention in 2020), it’s clear how true that actually is.
Eight years ago, the Republican platform included “Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment” among its six chapters, describing goals such as “expedited siting processes” for transmission lines; better forest management to prevent wildfires; the “development of all forms of energy that are marketable in a free economy without subsidies, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and hydropower” and renewable sources like wind and solar by “private capital”; as well as the rejection of “the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.” The goals were reasonably detailed, at least enough so that the 2016 platform ran a full 50 pages longer than the 2024 version. (Trump, of course, has little patience for the written word.)
The 2024 Republican platform gets to its point much more quickly by design. “MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR!” is fourth on the priority list. That’s an easy enough goal since the U.S. is already the world’s dominant energy producer, at least in oil and natural gas, the favored fuels of both Trump and Vance. The platform further promises to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL” its way to the U.S. becoming “Energy Independent and even Dominant again” — another easy goal since the country is already energy independent by multiple definitions. Coal, until recently a staple Republican talking point, gets just one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference.
The platform offers no specific plan for improving on President Biden’s record oil and gas production numbers. It does, however, state that the party will ensure “Reliable and Abundant Low Cost Energy,” a statement that, by omission, implies the party will do so without the same level of all-caps enthusiasm for electrification. This will be quite a feat as the renewable cost curve continues to trend down.
Also new to the platform in 2024 is hostility toward electric vehicles, a favorite talking point of Trump’s on the campaign trail and a longtime punching bag of Vance’s. The party claims that it can “Save the American Auto Industry” by “reversing harmful Regulations, canceling Biden’s Electric Vehicle and other Mandates, and preventing the importation of Chinese vehicles.” Given that there isn’t actually an EV mandate, that sounds pretty much “exactly like what Democrats want,” the economic columnist Noah Smith wrote in his recent breakdown of the platform.
Finally, alongside other pressingly important issues to the American public like making Washington, D.C., “the most beautiful capital city,” the 2024 Republican platform gestures toward restoring “genuine Conservation efforts.” Such a promise, buried at the end of the document, rings especially hollow given that Trump oversaw the largest reduction of protected land in U.S. history.
Of course, shabby promises are to be expected. Party platforms are non-binding and, as Smith also points out, they reveal far more about who Republicans are appealing to, and how, than what they actually plan to do once they’re in power.
The pared-down energy and climate sections in the 2024 platform don’t necessarily mean Trump will keep Biden-era policies largely intact, then. If anything, they simply leave more room for Trump to do whatever he wants if — or when? — he wins back the White House.
https://heatmap.news/politics/republican-convention-speeches-platform
UK antitrust cops thrust probe into Microsoft, Inflection AI merger
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
AI supremacy is a helluva drug, and Redmond’s old habits die hard
Updated UK antitrust regulators today announced the beginning of a merger inquiry into Microsoft’s cash deal with startup Inflection AI, which included poaching employees. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/uk_competition_officials_kick_off/
California needs a million EV charging stations — but that’s ‘unlikely’ and ‘unrealistic’
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Public chargers must be built at an unprecedented pace to meet the target in less than 7 years, and then doubled to 2 million in 2035. The high cost — $120,000 or more for one fast charger— is just one obstacle.
Sticker Mule in Marketing Email: ‘Donald Trump Was Shot … Btw, get 1 Shirt for $4 (normally $19)’
date: 2024-07-16, from: 404 Media Group
Artists, bands, and small businesses are vowing to never use the company again, and have been posting links to competitors.
Man confesses to lighting fire under Campbell overpass
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
He attempted to set a paper cup ablaze.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/16/man-confesses-to-lighting-fire-under-campbell-overpass/
Microsoft to intro checkpoint cumulative updates for Win 11
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The mission? To spend less time in patch purgatory
Microsoft is making yet another attempt to combat update bloat with checkpoint cumulative updates coming to both Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025.…
From David Sacks to Elon Musk, Silicon Valley’s Trump backers cheer JD Vance as VP pick
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
The tech industry has long been a liberal bastion nestled in California, a Democratic stronghold, with roots in deeply progressive San Francisco. But a Republican contingent within tech has recently become increasingly visible.
Unihertz Jelly Max is a small phone with a big(ger) display (crowdfunding)
date: 2024-07-16, from: Liliputing
At a time when smartphone displays have gotten so big that it can be hard to tell the difference between a big phone and a small tablet, Unihertz continues to sell a line of small-screen phones under its Jelly line of products. Some have screens so small that they’re barely usable. The new Unihertz Jelly Max […]
The post Unihertz Jelly Max is a small phone with a big(ger) display (crowdfunding) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/unihertz-jelly-max-is-a-small-phone-with-a-bigger-display-crowdfunding/
Rebekah Hounsell: Tracking Cosmic Light to Untangle the Universe’s Darkest Mysteries
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
Rebekah Hounsell is an assistant research scientist working on ways to optimize and build infrastructure for future observations made by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The mission will shed light on many astrophysics topics, like dark energy, which are currently shrouded in mystery. Rebekah also works as a support scientist for the TESS (Transiting […]
J.D. Vance and a “much more populist economic mindset”
date: 2024-07-16, from: Marketplace Morning Report
If the Trump/Vance ticket emerges the winner in November, what might a Vice President J.D. Vance’s perspective on the government’s role in business and trade look like? Hint, Vance sees a big role for government. Then, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has given investors tantalizing hints on when rate cuts may occur. Plus, industrialized countries are getting older. What might immigration mean for economies as populations age?
Weird World
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Your troubling July 11 cover article on “Weird Cancer” makes no mention of cybersmog as a stressor and possible contributor.
The post Weird World appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/16/weird-world/
Barbecue lovers show up for cookoff in Milpitas
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Fundraiser for 2 local nonprofits pits police against firefighters.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/16/barbecue-lovers-show-up-for-cookoff-in-milpitas/
Niles: What’s the hot button issue dividing Disneyland and employees?
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
As the park and its labor unions negotiate a new contract for thousands of resort employees, Disneyland guests find themselves in the middle.
55 Years Ago: Apollo 11’s One Small Step, One Giant Leap
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
“Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.” “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” “Magnificent desolation.” Three phrases that recall humanity’s first landing on and exploration of the lunar surface. In July 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin completed humanity’s first […]
https://www.nasa.gov/history/55-years-ago-apollo-11s-one-small-step-one-giant-leap/
‘AI Employees’ Managed Through HR Software Is a Capitalist Fever Dream
date: 2024-07-16, from: 404 Media Group
Lattice’s now-canceled software would have allowed AI bots to be onboarded, trained, and evaluated “just as any person would be.”
https://www.404media.co/ai-employees-managed-through-hr-software-is-a-capitalist-fever-dream/
Saratoga works to revitalize downtown amid budget constraints
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
City strives to maintain ‘standard’ of locally owned small businesses.
Name your price to ride Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Los Gatos attraction celebrates its namesake July 24.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/16/name-your-price-to-ride-billy-jones-wildcat-railroad/
Vandals trash pool at Los Gatos High School
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Tables and lifeguard stand found in the water.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/16/vandals-trash-pool-at-los-gatos-high-school/
Tesla is on a hiring spree after Elon Musk-ordered mass firings
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Tesla Inc. is looking to hire nearly 800 new employees, three months after Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk hastily ordered the largest round of layoffs in the company’s history.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/16/tesla-is-on-a-hiring-spree-after-musk-ordered-mass-firings/
Former Food Network producer dishes on her new ‘Getting Sauced’ memoir
date: 2024-07-16, from: San Jose Mercury News
Karen Katz has led shows featuring chefs Emeril Lagasse and Buddy Valastro. Now she’s taking us behind the scenes.
Rite Aid admits 2.2 million people’s data stolen by criminals
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
RansomHub allegedly strikes again as its star continues to rise in the cybercrime scene
US drugstore chain Rite Aid has admitted that last month’s “data security incident” compromised the data of 2.2 million individuals.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/rite_aid_says_22_million/
What to Know About Vance’s Climate Stance
date: 2024-07-16, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: A year’s worth of rain fell in one day in China’s Henan province • A tornado reportedly touched down outside Chicago’s O’Hare Airport • The heat index could reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit today in Washington, D.C.
THE TOP FIVE
- Trump announces J.D. Vance as VP pick
Donald Trump has tapped Hillbilly Elegy author and Ohio junior senator J.D. Vance as his 2024 running mate. In recent years Vance has become a vocal climate change skeptic, casting doubt on the role of carbon emissions in warming the planet. As Heatmap’s Jeva Lange and Matthew Zeitlin write, he is a champion of the fossil fuel industry, especially in his home state of Ohio, where his 2022 Senate campaign received generous backing from the oil and gas industry. He is also a prominent critic of the use of environmental, governance, and social standards in investing, otherwise known as ESG, which he has called “a racket to destroy what we still have so that a few people on Wall Street can make some money.”
Last year Vance introduced a bill that would repeal federal tax credits for EVs (Electrek noted that “Tesla’s stock erased 2% worth of gains following the VP pick announcement”), and another that would double maximum penalties for climate change protesters. He has called for greater exploitation of the Utica Shale, a geological formation that runs under Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York that contains an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil and natural gas. He has slammed President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act as “dumb” and said it only makes Americans poorer, but The New York Times notes that in the years since the IRA passed, Ohio alone has seen more than $12 billion in clean energy investment.
- Biden administration considers more drilling protections in Alaska
The Biden administration may move to protect more land in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve from oil development, E&E News reported. The 23-million-acre reserve holds millions of barrels of oil and is where the contentious Willow oil project, run by ConocoPhillips, will be located. Other oil and gas companies are also eyeing the region for exploration, but environmentalists say “the region’s outsized vastness and ecological value” should be protected. More than 40 Indigenous communities rely on the resources and wildlife in the reserve. Earlier this year the Biden administration restricted new oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres of the reserve, and will soon invite the public to weigh in on whether more land should be protected. The Trump administration opened most of the reserve to fossil fuel exploration efforts in 2020, but Biden reversed that move in 2022.
- Climate change could eventually be a greater influence than the moon
on Earth’s rotation
For billions of years, the gravitational pull of the moon has tugged at the Earth’s oceans and slowed the planet’s rotation. In this way, our nearest celestial neighbor has been the dominant influence on the length of our days. But new research out of Switzerland concludes that human-caused climate change will “surpass the moon’s influence” in this respect, as huge amounts of water flow from the melting polar glaciers into the oceans toward the equator. The researchers estimate that if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t significantly reduced, the melting ice could lengthen days by 2.62 milliseconds a century by 2100. The melting is also altering the Earth’s axis of rotation, which is changing the dynamics of the Earth’s core. “We humans have a greater impact on our planet than we realize, and this naturally places great responsibility on us for the future of our planet,” said Benedikt Soja, professor of space geodesy at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at ETH Zurich, and an author on the new research.
- CO2 sequestration startup backed by Sam Altman raises $37 million
A carbon sequestration startup backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has raised $37 million in a Series A funding round led by Equinor Ventures. The company, 44.01, promises to trap CO2 underground and turn it into rock. It has already completed pilot and demonstration projects, Bloomberg reported, and will use the funding to commercialize its technology in Oman and the United Arab Emirates and expand internationally. 44.01 is backed in part by Altman’s investment fund Apollo Projects, and won an Earthshot Prize in 2022.
- Study: Indigenous communities help dramatically reduce deforestation
in Amazon
The results of a new study underscore the important role Indigenous groups can play in helping to protect vulnerable environments. The research, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, used satellite imagery to examine deforestation levels in the Brazilian Amazon and found that areas protected by Indigenous communities had deforestation levels that were 83% lower compared to unprotected regions. The Amazon stores roughly 150 billion metric tons of carbon, so preserving its rainforest is important to protecting the climate. This study’s results “demonstrate that returning lands to Indigenous communities can be extremely effective at reducing deforestation and boosting biodiversity to help address climate change,” the authors wrote.
THE KICKER
Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that wildfire smoke can have “unanticipated beneficial effects” on vulnerable conifer seedlings because it reduces the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground, thus protecting the young trees during extreme heat.
https://heatmap.news/politics/jd-vance-trump-climate-history
NASA Signs US, Saudi Arabia Agreement for Civil Aeronautics, Space Collaboration
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
The United States and Saudi Arabia signed a framework agreement that opens new possibilities for cooperation with NASA in areas such as space science, exploration, aeronautics, space operations, education, and Earth science. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson signed on behalf of the U.S., and CEO of the Saudi Space Agency Mohammed bin Saud Al-Tamimi signed on […]
Intel’s China investments may have spurred fresh US restrictions
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Has America been taking it too easy on local companies so far?
Analysis Intel’s investment arm might be forced to divest interests in China due to incoming US regulations governing American funds going to Chinese tech companies. The chipmaker is one of the biggest such investors, despite receiving billions from Washington to boost semiconductor production efforts at home.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/intels_china_investments_may_have/
Prime Day tech deals (July 16 – 17, 2024)
date: 2024-07-16, from: Liliputing
Amazon’s Prime Day sale runs from July 16th through July 17th this year. While some deals are certainly better than others, you can score some pretty deep discounts on Amazon, Apple, Google, or Samsung tablets, pick up a pair of true wireless, noise-cancelling earbuds for great prices, or save some money on recent laptops, smartphones, […]
The post Prime Day tech deals (July 16 – 17, 2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/prime-day-tech-deals-july-16-17-2024/
US Secret Service expresses support for local police after Trump assassination attempt
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Tesla delays ‘Robotaxi’ event as Musk ‘makes’ design ‘tweaks’
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Several models roasted for perceived flaws at this point, so maybe double-checking form’s not a bad idea
Tesla’s Robotaxi reveal event is being postponed after company boss Elon Musk decided the front of the vehicle needs a tweak.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/tesla_robotaxi_event_has_been/
Could union labor mandates on construction projects mean less affordable housing?
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The LAist
If passed, the measure would leave most developers little choice — work with labor unions or miss out on hundreds of millions in funding.
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/labor-costs-homelessness-funding
Announcing Supabase on JSR
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Deno blog
Supabase’s isomorphic JavaScript client library is now available on JSR.
https://deno.com/blog/supabase-on-jsr
A look at J.D. Vance’s economic views
date: 2024-07-16, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Yesterday, former President Donald Trump announced that Ohio Senator, author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance would be his running mate. But as a populist conservative, Vance’s economic views buck those of the traditional, Republican establishment. We’ll hear more. Also, we’ll hear about the Secret Service’s additional responsibilities besides protecting presidents and unpack how political turmoil and violence might affect the United States’ position in the global business community.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/a-look-at-j-d-vances-economic-views
Privacy warriors gripe to UK watchdog about Meta harvesting user data to train AI
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Move follows Instagram and Facebook giant’s decision to reverse direction in EU after protests
A UK data rights campaign group has launched a complaint with the data law regulator against Meta’s change of privacy policy which allows it to scrape user data to develop AI models.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/campaign_group_complains_to_uk/
Czech billionaire says he can deliver on U.K. mail
date: 2024-07-16, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: The United Kingdom’s 500-year-old postal service is up for sale. The Royal Mail, with its iconic red mailboxes, operates similarly to the United States Postal Service, but is publicly listed. Now, a $6.5 billion offer has been accepted from Daniel Křetínský, who explains why the nationally important company should be entrusted to him. Also: a look at the self-storage boom in Canada and beyond.
Latest MySQL release is underwhelming, say some DB experts
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Oracle’s priorities may lie elsewhere but it is unfair to say all innovation can go in community edition, reckons analyst
Updated The latest release of MySQL has underwhelmed some commentators who fear Oracle — the custodian of the open source database — may have other priorities.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/mysql_9_underwhelms_community/
J.D. Vance selected as Trump’s vice presidential running mate
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
After months of speculation, Donald Trump announced his vice presidential running mate. J.D. Vance joins the Republican presidential ticket as one of the youngest vice presidential candidates since Richard Nixon in 1952. The nomination puts his newcomer status and political inexperience to the test. Tina Trinh reports.
https://www.voanews.com/a/jd-vance-selected-as-trump-s-vice-presidential-running-mate-/7699986.html
The Dream of 24/7 Clean Electricity Gets a Funding Boost
date: 2024-07-16, from: Heatmap News
The United Nations calls 24/7 carbon-free energy generation, also known as hourly matching, “the end state of a fully decarbonized electricity system.” It means that every kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed is matched with a zero-emissions electricity source, every hour of every day. It’s something that Google and Microsoft are aiming to implement by 2030, and it represents a much more significant climate commitment than today’s default system of annualized matching
So here’s a positive sign: LevelTen Energy, the leading marketplace for power purchase agreements, just raised $65 million in Series D funding, led by the investment firm B Capital with participation from Microsoft, Google, and Prelude Ventures, among others.
The money will help support LevelTen’s work with the Granular Certificate Trading Alliance, a collaboration it started last December in partnership with the Intercontinental Exchange, a data firm that operates global financial marketplaces. Together they’re building a platform for trading and managing “granular certificates,” hourly-matched energy certificates that will help corporations — and ideally the electricity sector at large — move to 24/7 hourly matching. Other partners to the alliance include Google, Microsoft, and the energy companies AES and Constellation.
To date, LevelTen has facilitated over $15.8 billion in power purchase agreements, asset sales, and other clean energy transactions, totaling over 7 gigawatts of clean energy. Overall, the company has raised more than $125 million, with past investors including the My Climate Journey Collective as well as the investment arms of oil and gas companies such as Equinor and TotalEnergies, which are adding renewables to their portfolios.
Bryce Smith, LevelTen’s founder and CEO, told me the platform will launch its first auctions for hourly-matched clean energy by the end of the year, with initial customers expected to be corporate partners like Google and Microsoft themselves.
“Corporates have been leading the way in a lot of respects and they’re doing it again on the granular certificate front,” Smith said. He sees it as LevelTen’s job to get more industry players onboard by creating the transaction infrastructure to enable hourly matching. “So there’s a bit of a ‘build it and they will come’ aspect to this,” he told me.
Realistically, though, it’s unlikely that the electricity industry will move towards 24/7 clean energy absent some serious incentives to do so. That’s why the Biden administration’s proposed hydrogen tax credit rules could be so powerful. They stipulate that to qualify for the largest IRA subsidies, clean hydrogen must be produced using a relatively new source of carbon-free electricity, generated within the same hour that it’s used and in roughly the same location. If these regulations aren’t deleted or seriously altered by this or another new administration (which they probably will be), power grids would have until 2028 to set up new systems for hourly accounting, thereby laying the groundwork for 24/7 matching across the electricity sector at large.
That potential, tenuous and unlikely though it may be, has LevelTen excited, and the company is leaning hard into hydrogen. LevelTen is a founding member of the Hydrogen Demand Initiative, a coalition formed by the Department of Energy to ensure that the clean hydrogen produced by the seven designated hydrogen hubs is actually sold. The DOE is allocating $1 billion to help catalyze demand, and it’s up to H2DI to figure out how to distribute that. “A component of that is figuring out how to bring buyers and sellers together easily and smoothly,” Smith told me. “And that’s the role that we play in creating a marketplace where buyers and sellers can find each other and execute.”
Smith is aware that a change in administration could very well mean a change in the hydrogen tax credit rules, potentially decreasing incentives for green hydrogen and making hydrogen produced from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (“blue hydrogen”) or hydrogen produced without CCS (“gray hydrogen”) more attractive. He said the LevelTen platform would likely support transactions that involve a “variety of hydrogen colors and technologies.”
“What’s most important for us always is figuring out how to put a vital technology on the fastest track to scaling,” Smith told me. “And if that means accommodating different colors for some period of time, we have the end goal [of green hydrogen] always in mind.”
As LevelTen scales, it’s also working to get more utilities onto its platform. Smith told me that utility customers have, “really only fairly recently realized that their procurement needs around renewables are massive.” As the push to “electrify everything” gains momentum and data centers suck up more and more power, utilities are increasingly investing in renewable energy to meet their electricity needs, diversify their portfolios and respond to customer demand for clean power. “We’re used to seeing really slow, fairly predictable demand and electricity growth from a utility perspective, and that’s changing pretty dramatically,” Smith told me.
LevelTen currently operates in 29 countries across North America and Europe, and hopes to use its recent funding to expand into new regions.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/hourly-matching-google-microsoft
Prepare for Perseids!
date: 2024-07-16, from: NASA breaking news
The annual Perseid meteor shower is scheduled to peak this August 11-12. Cross your fingers for good weather, find a nice dark spot to bring a blanket or lounge chair, and get ready to relax and spot some meteors.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/night-sky-network/prepare-for-perseids/
Agile Manifesto co-author blasts failure rates report, talks up ‘reimagining’ project
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Jon Kern is looking for Agile exemplars, not the ‘Agile Industrial Complex’
Interview The Agile Manifesto was published almost a quarter of a century ago. Yet as the years have rolled by, its lofty ideals have run headlong into the brick wall of management desire for process and reporting.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/jon_kern/
Court appearance of American journalist Gershkovich moved forward in Russian ‘sham trial’
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/russian-trial-of-us-journalist-gershkovich-to-resume-thursday/7699959.html
Interview: More Patriots and F-16s for Ukraine, but no deep strikes in Russia
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Private revolutions
date: 2024-07-16, from: Enlightenment Economics
Yuan Yang’s Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in New China is quietly revelatory. One of the new intake of Labour MPs, the author was born in China, moved to the UK at age 4, and returned to China as an … Continue reading
http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2024/07/private-revolutions/
New RP2040 CMSIS Pack
date: 2024-07-16, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
To better integrate RP2040 into the Arm ecosystem, we’ve released a new Common Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS) Device Family Pack (DFP). With this new DFP, you can now use Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W with all of Arm’s CMSIS tools.
The post New RP2040 CMSIS Pack appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/new-rp2040-cmsis-pack/
Cold comfort to teachers who got paid late, but ERP software rollout had ‘unrealistic’ timeline
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
18 months late, overbudget… report finds council’s SAP ERP rip ‘n’ replace with Unit4 had hidden complexity
A UK public authority responsible for about £1.1 billion ($1.43 billion) in annual spending damaged its ERP project — which saw SAP ditched in favor of Unit4 — by underestimating its complexity and kicking off with an “unrealistic timeline of 15 months,” according to a public report.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/18_months_late_and_68pc/
Qualcomm sues Chinese handset-maker in India to defend African market
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
There’s a lot of territory to cover here
Qualcomm has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in India against Chinese smartphone-maker Transsion.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/qualcomm_sues_transsion_india/
Today in SCV History (July 16)
date: 2024-07-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1925 – Actor Harry Carey files patent on the original 160-acre Saugus homestead he’d purchased in 1916 (now Tesoro Del Valle). [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-16/
Big Music reprises classic hit ‘ISPs need to stop their customers torrenting or we’ll sue’
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Stop us if you think you’ve heard this one before: Legal supergroup demands billions from Verizon
Big Music has launched a fresh lawsuit aimed at forcing ISPs to take action against users who trade in stolen copyrighted content.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/big_music_vs_verizon_torrenting/
First appearance of Donald Trump after assassination attempt
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Former President Donald Trump made a triumphant return to the public eye at the Republican National Convention late Monday, two days after he was wounded in an attempted assassination. Carolyn Presutti reports from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
https://www.voanews.com/a/first-appearance-of-donald-trump-after-assassination-attempt-/7699898.html
Yandex sells off Russian ops, remaining Euro-biz now Putin itself about as Nebius Group
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-17, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Two-year legal saga ends with Netherlands-based entity ready to bring diverse AI interests to the world
Yandex’s Dutch entity has been untangled from its Russian operations in a $5.4 billion deal, leaving a new entity named Nebius Group without ties to Moscow and planning to pursue AI opportunties outside of Vladimir Putin’s domain.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/yandex_divests_russian_assets/
What is a nominating convention?
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Presidential nominating conventions are a relatively recent tradition that progressed from lengthy party debates into a political spectacle televised for the world. Take a closer look at the history, surprises, and stakes behind the quadrennial events that, come November, will set the shape of America’s political landscape. From marathon balloting to pandemic adaptations, VOA explores how conventions have changed and why they still matter in modern elections.
https://www.voanews.com/a/what-is-a-nominating-convention-/7699886.html
Donald Trump enters Republican convention hall with a bandaged ear and gets a hero’s welcome
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Milwaukee — Two days after surviving an attempted assassination, former President Donald Trump appeared triumphantly at the Republican National Convention’s opening night with a bandage over his right ear, the latest compelling scene in a presidential campaign already defined by dramatic turns.
Delegates cheered wildly when Trump appeared onscreen backstage and then emerged in the arena, visibly emotional, as musician Lee Greenwood sang “God Bless the USA.” That was hours after the convention had formally nominated the former president to head the Republican ticket in November against President Joe Biden.
Trump, accompanied by a wall of Secret Service agents, did not address the hall — with his acceptance speech scheduled for Thursday — but smiled silently and occasionally waved as Greenwood sang. He eventually joined his newly announced running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, to listen to the night’s remaining speeches, often with a subdued expression and muted reactions uncharacteristic for the unabashed showman.
The raucous welcome underscored the depth of the crowd’s affection for the man who won the 2016 nomination as an outsider, at odds with the party establishment, but has vanquished all Republican rivals, silenced most conservative critics and now commands loyalty up and down the party ranks.
“We must unite as a party, and we must unite as a nation,” said Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley, Trump’s handpicked party leader, as he opened Monday’s prime-time national convention session. “We must show the same strength and resilience as President Trump and lead this nation to a greater future.”
But Whatley and other Republican leaders made clear that their calls for harmony did not extend to Biden and Democrats, who find themselves still riven by worries that the 81-year-old question is not up to the job of defeating Trump.
“Their policies are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people,” said Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, welcoming the party to his battleground state, which Trump won in 2016 but lost to Biden four years ago.
Saturday’s shooting at a Pennsylvania rally, where Trump was injured and one man died, were clearly in mind, but the proceedings were celebratory — a stark contrast to the anger and anxiety that had marked the previous few days. Some delegates chanted “fight, fight, fight” — the same words that Trump was seen shouting to the crowd Saturday as the Secret Service ushered him off the stage, his fist raised and face bloodied.
“We should all be thankful right now that we are able to cast our votes for President Donald J. Trump after what took place on Saturday,” said New Jersey state Sen. Michael Testa as he announced all of his state’s 12 delegates for Trump.
When Trump cleared the necessary number of delegates, video screens in the arena read “OVER THE TOP” while the song “Celebration” played and delegates danced and waved Trump signs. Throughout the voting, delegates flanked by “Make America Great Again” signs applauded as state after state voted their support for a second Trump term.
Multiple speakers invoked religious imagery to discuss Trump and the assassination attempt.
“The devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle,” said Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. “But an American lion got back up on his feet!”
Wyoming delegate Sheryl Foland was among those who adopted the “fight” chant after seeing Trump survive Saturday in what she called “monumental photos and video.”
“We knew then we were going to adopt that as our chant,” added Foland, a child trauma mental health counselor. “Not just because we wanted him to fight, and that God was fighting for him. We thought, isn’t it our job to accept that challenge and fight for our country?”
“It’s bigger than Trump,” Foland said. “It’s a mantra for our country.”
Another well-timed development boosted the mood on the convention floor Monday: The federal judge presiding over Trump’s classified documents case dismissed the prosecution because of concerns over the appointment of the prosecutor who brought the case, handing the former president a major court victory.
The convention is designed to reach people outside the GOP base
Trump’s campaign chiefs designed the convention to feature a softer and more optimistic message, focusing on themes that would help a divisive leader expand his appeal among moderate voters and people of color.
On a night devoted to the economy, delegates and a national TV audience heard from speakers the Trump campaign pitched as “everyday Americans” — a single mother talking about inflation, a union member who identified himself as a lifelong Democrat now backing Trump, a small-business owner, among others.
Featured speakers also included Black Republicans who have been at the forefront of the Trump campaign’s effort to win more votes from a core Democratic constituency.
U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas said rising grocery and energy prices were hurting Americans’ wallets and quoted Ronald Reagan in calling inflation “the cruelest tax on the poor.” Hunt argued Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t seem to understand the problem.
“We can fix this disaster,” Hunt said, by electing Trump and sending “him right back to where he belongs, the White House.”
Scott, perhaps the party’s most well-known Black lawmaker, declared, “America is not a racist country.”
Republicans hailed Vance’s selection as a key step toward a winning coalition in November.
Trump announced his choice of his running mate as delegates were voting on the former president’s nomination Monday. The young Ohio senator first rose to national attention with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which told of his Appalachian upbringing and was hailed as a window into the parts of working-class America that helped propel Trump.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who had been considered a potential vice presidential pick, said in a post on X that Vance’s “small town roots and service to country make him a powerful voice for the America First Agenda.”
Yet despite calls for harmony, two of the opening speakers at Monday’s evening session — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and North Carolina gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson — are known as some of the party’s most incendiary figures.
Robinson, speaking recently during a church service in North Carolina, discussed “evil” people who he said threatened American Christianity. “Some folks need killing,” he said then, though he steered clear of such rhetoric on the convention stage.
Opening night also did not pass without references to the 2020 election and Trump’s repeated lies that it was stolen from him.
Trump’s nomination came on the same day that Biden sat for another national TV interview as the president sought to demonstrate his capacity to serve another four years despite continued worries within his own party.
Biden told ABC News that he made a mistake recently when he told Democratic donors the party must stop questioning his fitness for office and instead put Trump in a “bull’s-eye.” Republicans have circulated the comment aggressively since Saturday’s assassination attempt, with some openly blaming Biden for inciting the attack on Trump’s life.
The president’s admission was in line with his call Sunday from the Oval Office for all Americans to ratchet down political rhetoric. But Biden maintained Monday that drawing contrasts with Trump, who employs harsh and accusatory language, is a legitimate part of a presidential contest.
Inside the arena in Milwaukee, Republicans did not dial back their attacks on Biden, at one point playing a video that mocked the president’s physical stamina and mental acuity.
They alluded often to the “Biden-Harris administration” and took regular digs at Vice President Kamala Harris — a not-so-subtle allusion to the notion that Biden could step aside in favor of his second-in-command.
Biden, Trump call for unity in aftermath of Trump assassination attempt
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
The White House — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Monday made high-profile appearances, each man acknowledging in his own way how the weekend assassination attempt against Trump has reshaped both of their presidential campaigns.
Trump briefly appeared on stage at the Republican National Convention late Monday, a white bandage taped over his right ear where a bullet clipped him Saturday as he addressed a Pennsylvania rally. On Monday, the Biden administration announced a separate, independent investigation into the shooting, as the Federal Bureau of Investigation leads the main inquiry.
The stark differences between the two main presidential campaigns were further illuminated Monday, with Trump not uttering a word but entering the Milwaukee stadium to rapturous applause and a standing, cheering ovation sustained for the length of a very, very extended version of Trump’s signature campaign song, “God Bless the U.S.A.”
Meanwhile, Biden spoke in cool, measured tones to NBC’s Lester Holt, saying that he still deeply disagrees with Trump, and with the “inflammatory” and “vicious” way Trump and his base communicate their grievances.
And asked whether he thought the shooting would change the trajectory of the presidential race:
“I don’t know,” he replied. “You don’t either.”
But the weekend’s events seem to have resolved the last political cliffhanger – the national debate over whether Biden’s poor, stumbling June debate performance against Trump meant he should step aside.
“I expect that Joe Biden has weathered the storm and this question about whether he should drop out is mostly in the rearview mirror,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for think tank Third Way. “But he needs to perform well.”
Biden, in the lengthy interview held at the White House after he canceled a planned Monday trip to Austin, aimed to distinguish himself from his rival in stark terms.
“Look, I’m not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one,” he said. “I’m not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election. I’m not the guy who said that he wouldn’t accept the outcome of this election.”
Both men have called for unity in the wake of Trump’s shooting.
But analysts say that word may not mean what you think it means.
“They’re both calling for unity,” said John Geer, a distinguished professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. “But I think their differences in the kind of concept are fundamental. And that’s where the, I think the problem is going to break down. And so they’re calling for it, but, in fact, it may well be partisanship in disguise.”
And the political divide between Americans is so bitter that advocacy groups are warning that it’s not just the candidates who need to cool it – voters need to do so as well.
“Stay passionate about the causes you care about and remain engaged,” said Will Fuller, of Pennsylvania-based Common Ground USA, in guidance sent to journalists Monday. “We face significant challenges that require us to fulfill the promise of opportunity for all Americans. But in that work, it’s essential to distinguish between advocating for our beliefs and fighting against each other.”
Microsoft wasn’t CISPE’s only suitor – it seems Google was willing to pay for its views on cloudy licensing to prevail
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Euro trade body tires of being a pawn in the war of the tech giants
From the department of “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” comes news that Microsoft wasn’t the only tech giant willing to offer cash to a European cloud trade body. It seems Google was also keen to get a piece of the action.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/microsoft_google_cispe/
2024/07/16 Moving Quantum Computing from Hype to Prototype
date: 2024-07-16, from: Darpa News
DARPA is starting a new effort to examine industrial quantum computing. The Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) will benchmark quantum computing applications and algorithms as well as significantly expand our efforts to validate quantum computer hardware progress. DARPA’s goal is to determine if it’s possible to actually build an industrially useful quantum computer much faster than conventional predictions.
https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2024-07-16
FBI gains access to Trump rally shooter’s phone
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Hasn’t said how it did it, but has form cracking devices
The FBI on Monday revealed it has gained access to a phone it says was used by Thomas Matthew Crooks – the man who shot at and wounded former US president Donald Trump on July 13 in an apparent failed assassination attempt.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/fbi_access_trump_shooting_phone/
J.D. Vance Wants Police To Track People Who Have Abortions
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Lever News
Trump’s vice presidential pick pressured regulators to let police access the records of people who cross state lines for abortions.
https://www.levernews.com/j-d-vance-wants-police-to-track-people-who-have-abortions/
Baltimore officials sue to block ‘baby bonus’ initiative that would give new parents $1,000
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
BALTIMORE — Baltimore’s mayor and city council have filed a lawsuit seeking to stop a proposal that would let voters decide whether to give all new parents a one-time $1,000 “baby bonus” meant to help alleviate childhood poverty from birth.
The complaint was filed Thursday, according to online court records. It came not long after organizers secured the necessary 10,000 signatures to bring the question to voters as a ballot initiative in November.
City leaders argue that the proposal is unconstitutional and should be blocked from the ballot because it would give voters too much say over legislative decisions, effectively “usurping those powers” from their elected officials.
An estimated 7,000 children are born in Baltimore each year, so the program would cost about $7 million annually. That amounts to roughly 0.16% of the city’s annual operating budget, according to supporters. It wouldn’t result in higher taxes, but it would be up to the city council to allocate the necessary funds.
The lawsuit claims that the charter amendment process is meant to address changes to the form and structure of government, not specific legislative or budgetary questions.
But supporters of the baby bonus say the lawsuit is a political power grab.
“We are fully confident the courts will reject this attack on democracy,” the Maryland Child Alliance said in a statement posted to social media last week. The group was founded by Baltimore teachers advocating for legislation to alleviate child poverty.
They say more systemic change is needed on a national level to help lift families out of poverty, but giving new parents a modest financial boost could prove an important first step.
The proposal is loosely modeled on a program implemented this year in Flint, Michigan, where women receive $1,500 during mid-pregnancy and $500 per month for the first year after giving birth. Officials said the Flint program was the first of its kind in the U.S. Countries in Europe and Asia have experimented with larger cash payments, but those programs are meant to encourage people to have more kids, not address child poverty.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration, which launched a guaranteed income pilot program targeting young single parents in 2022, said in a statement that he’s “supportive of the proposed amendment’s objectives” even though he wants it off the ballot.
Registration Now Open for Annual River Rally Cleanup
date: 2024-07-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Registration for the 29th annual River Rally Cleanup and Environmental Expo is officially open. This is an opportunity for Santa Clarita volunteers of all ages to help clean up a portion of the Santa Clara River, one of the last natural, free-flowing river systems in Southern California.
https://scvnews.com/registration-now-open-for-annual-river-rally-cleanup/
Border arrests plunge 29% in June to the lowest of Biden’s presidency
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
SAN DIEGO — Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico plunged 29% in June, the lowest month of Joe Biden’s presidency, according to figures released Monday that provide another window on the impact of a new rule to temporarily suspend asylum.
Arrests totaled 83,536 in June, down from 117,901 in May to mark the lowest tally since January 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.
A seven-day average of daily arrests fell more than half by the end of June from Biden’s announcement on June 4 that asylum processing would be halted when daily arrests reach 2,500, which they did immediately, said Troy Miller, acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner.
“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully,” Miller said.
Arrests had already fallen by more than half from a record high of 250,000 in December, largely a result of increased enforcement by Mexican authorities, according to U.S. officials.
Sharp declines registered across nationalities, including Mexicans, who have been most affected by the suspension of asylum, and Chinese people, who generally fly to Ecuador and travel to the U.S. border over land.
San Diego was the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors bordering Mexico by number of arrests, followed by Tucson, Arizona.
More than 41,000 people entered legally through an online appointment app called CBP One in June. The agency said 680,500 people have successfully scheduled appointments since the app was introduced in January 2023.
Nearly 500,000 people from four countries entered on a policy to allow two-year stays on condition they have financial sponsors and arrive at an airport. They include 104,130 Cubans, 194,027 Haitians, 86,101 Nicaraguans and 110,541 Venezuelans, according to CBP.
China’s Honor debuts laptop with bonkers removable camera that lives in a little slot
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Privacy preserved, with potential to lose the camera in your pocket or beyond
Chinese consumer electronics outfit Honor has thought outside the clamshell by creating a laptop with a stowable magnetic camera.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/honor_laptop_with_removable_camera/
Biden says ‘bull’s-eye’ reference to Trump was a mistake
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday he made a mistake when he told supporters to put rival Donald Trump in a “bull’s-eye” in an effort to focus attention on his rival’s behavior but said Trump regularly employed rhetoric that was inflammatory.
“It was a mistake to use the word,” Biden said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. “I meant focus on it, focus on what he’s doing,” Biden said.
On July 8, Biden, 81, spoke to some of his biggest donors and said they needed to shift the election campaign’s focus from him and his poor debate performance to former President Trump, the Republican nominee in the Nov. 5 election.
“I have one job and that’s to beat Donald Trump … We’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye,” he said.
Some Republicans zeroed in on that comment as they blamed Biden for creating a climate that sparked the assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Biden has repeatedly decried political violence.
The president has endured more than two weeks of questions about his political future, so far facing down calls to step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate after his poor performance against Trump in the debate on June 27 sparked a crisis within his party.
He reiterated in the interview that he is not leaving the race, while acknowledging that people’s questions about his age were legitimate.
Biden also weighed in on Trump’s selection of Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate.
Asked by NBC’s Lester Holt what Vance’s selection said about Trump’s values, Biden replied: “He’s going to surround himself with people who agree completely with him.” Biden, chuckling, also noted some of Vance’s previously critical comments about Trump.
The president has sought to turn attention to his opponent, highlighting Trump’s falsehoods, his refusal to accept the 2020 election results and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“I’m not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one. I’m not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election,” Biden said.
He said Trump had engaged in inflammatory rhetoric, citing the former president’s comments about a bloodbath ensuing if he loses the 2024 election and making fun when former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked by an intruder with a hammer at their home.
“How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say anything because it may incite somebody?” Biden said. “I have not engaged in that rhetoric. Now … my opponent’s engaged in that rhetoric.”
Biden, who is seeking to prove that he is fit to stand for reelection and govern for a second four-year term despite concerns about his age, noted that millions of people had voted for him to be the Democratic Party’s nominee. “I listen to them,” he said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-says-bull-s-eye-reference-to-trump-was-a-mistake/7699811.html
Swap meet plan to recognize area’s history
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
Plans to build homes at the site of the Santa Clarita Valley’s popular twice-weekly swap meet will pay homage to the property’s historical past as the Saugus Speedway, city planners […]
The post Swap meet plan to recognize area’s history appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/swap-meet-plan-to-recognize-areas-history/
Mercado-Fortine ends 4-year turn as SCV Sheriff’s Foundation board president
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
Gloria Mercado-Fortine, board president for the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Foundation, a local nonprofit that supports law enforcement with equipment, training and additional resources, announced she will be stepping down […]
The post Mercado-Fortine ends 4-year turn as SCV Sheriff’s Foundation board president appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
City serves inspection warrant on Canyon Country home
date: 2024-07-16, from: The Signal
The city of Santa Clarita sought an L.A. County Superior Court order to search a Canyon Country home back in May because officials say it had so many code violations […]
The post City serves inspection warrant on Canyon Country home appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/city-serves-inspection-warrant-on-canyon-country-home/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Dismissal of the Trump Documents Case Is Yet More Proof: The Institutionalists Have Failed.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-documents-case-dsmissal/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Ghost Newsstands Haunting NYC Subways.
https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/07/11/mta-newsstands-revenue-vacant/
Trump taps Ohio’s junior senator as his running mate
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
Milwaukee — Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday selected J.D. Vance, a senator from the Midwestern state of Ohio, as his running mate in November’s presidential election.
Trump made the announcement on his Truth Social media platform, saying he decided the Marine Corps veteran and Yale Law School graduate is “the person best suited” to become vice president of the United States.
Shortly after Trump’s naming of the 39-year-old Vance, the bearded senator took a victory lap on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee as thousands of delegates cheered.
Trump drew his own cheers late Monday as he made an appearance at the convention sporting a bandage on his right ear from an assassination attempt at his Saturday campaign rally.
Vance is expected to address the gathering on Wednesday, the night before Trump formally accepts the party’s presidential nomination for the third consecutive time.
“I think it was an excellent choice,” an excited Ginger Howard, a party national committeewoman from Georgia, told VOA on the floor of the convention. “I think they’re going to make a great team.”
Just before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, President Joe Biden, responding to a reporter’s question about Vance’s selection, termed the senator “a clone of Trump on the issues. I don’t see any difference.”
Biden’s reelection campaign was quick to elaborate, characterizing Vance as a willing servant to Trump’s more autocratic and regressive undertakings.
Trump, twice impeached and now a convicted felon for falsifying business records, picked Vance because he “will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people,” said Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who chairs the Biden-Harris campaign.
Trump has downplayed the severity of the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, framing it as a legitimate protest against what he claimed without evidence was a “stolen” 2020 presidential election. He has also criticized the subsequent federal investigation and prosecution of those involved, labeling it a witch hunt politically motivated by Biden, his opponent in a second consecutive election.
Biden’s running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, is “fully prepared” to debate Vance under the format proposed by CBS News, according to the Democrats’ campaign.
“Trump’s VP pick is great news for wealthy Americans and terrible for everybody else,” Senator Elizabeth Warren told reporters on a Biden-Harris campaign conference call shortly after the former president’s announcement of his running mate.
“Social Security and Medicare cuts will bear down on seniors like an avalanche” if Trump and Vance are elected, predicted Warren. “Millions will face losing access to health insurance.”
Vance has emerged as a strong advocate of Trump and his hard-line policies, from immigration restrictions to cuts for social programs. But as was true of numerous other prominent Republicans when the New York real estate developer first ran for president eight years ago, Vance had been highly critical of Trump.
“Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us,” Vance said on Twitter in October 2016. He subsequently deleted the tweet.
Vance, a venture capitalist before being elected a senator, first rose to prominence with his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which was made into a Hollywood movie. The book and film chronicle his experiences coming of age in a struggling working-class family in the Appalachian region.
With his name aside Trump’s on the 2024 ticket, Vance immediately becomes the most prominent Republican to be passed the torch of a political party radically reframed by Trumpism.
Trump, if he is elected again and serves a full second term, would be 82 the day he leaves office.
Biden’s cognitive abilities at his current age of 81 have emerged as a major campaign issue and divided his own Democratic Party, with a growing number of prominent Democrats in and out of Congress calling for him to abandon his reelection bid in favor of a younger replacement.
“Trump wanted a younger candidate who can campaign and connect with working-class voters, especially in the Midwest. Vance is also the first millennial to appear as a major party nominee on a presidential ticket, representing a generational change in U.S. politics,” said Cayce Myers, a Virginia Tech professor of public relations.
Vance would become the second-youngest vice president in U.S. history if elected along with Trump. Democrat John C. Breckinridge was 36 when he took the oath of office as vice president on March 4, 1857, under President James Buchanan. Republican Richard Nixon, as President Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president, was 40 when he took on the role in 1953. Breckinridge failed in his subsequent quest for the presidency. Nixon was elected president in 1968 after a losing bid eight years earlier.
A survey of 3,000 U.S. adults conducted Monday by polling firm YouGov indicated a lack of strong opinions on Trump’s choice of Vance, particularly among political independents.
Asked if they had a favorable opinion of Vance, 43% of all respondents said they were not sure, compared to the equal split of 29% who said they had either favorable or unfavorable views.
Among respondents who identified as independents, 53% said they were not sure whether they viewed Vance favorably or unfavorably.
Self-identified Republicans had the highest views of Vance, with 33% selecting very favorable, while 46% of self-identified Democrats chose very unfavorable.
Roman Mamonov of VOA’s Russian Service contributed to this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-taps-ohio-senator-vance-as-his-running-mate-/7699779.html
Judge finds illegal discrimination blocks some disabled veterans from housing at West LA VA campus
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The LAist
Judge David O. Carter says he’ll rule in the future on what changes will have to be made.
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/homeless-veterans-west-la-campus-ruling-judge-carter
US Secret Service ‘confident in security’ for RNC
date: 2024-07-16, from: VOA News USA
The United States Secret Service says it’s “confident” in its ability to safeguard this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This, after the party’s leader, Donald Trump, survived an assassination attempt over the weekend. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-secret-service-confident-in-security-for-rnc-/7699777.html
DarkGate, the Swiss Army knife of malware, sees boom after rival Qbot crushed
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
The DarkGate malware family has become more prevalent in recent months, after one of its main competitors was taken down by the FBI.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/darkgate_malware/
Time To Reflect
date: 2024-07-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Saturday, July 13, 2024, was a dark day in American history.
The post Time To Reflect appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/15/time-to-reflect/
PGDay UK 2024 - Schedule published
date: 2024-07-16, from: PostgreSQL News
Join us on 11th September 2024 in London, for a day of talks on the World’s Most Advanced Open Source Database coupled with the usual valuable hallway track. This event is aimed at all users and developers of PostgreSQL and is your chance to meet and exchange ideas and knowledge with like-minded database fanatics in London.
Schedule
We are pleased to announce that the schedule for PGDay UK 2024 has now been published. You can see the fantastic selection of talks we have planned at:
https://2024.pgday.uk/schedule/
The team would like to thank all those who submitted talks, as well as the program committee who had a long and difficult job selecting the talks!
Registration
Registration for attendees is now open. For more information and to secure your seat, please visit:
https://2024.pgday.uk/registration/
Sponsors
Sponsor the event and take your chance to present your services or products to the PostgreSQL community - or see it as a give-back opportunity. The benefactor sponsorship level also includes a free entrance ticket. Please head to:
https://2024.pgday.uk/become-sponsor/
for more details.
See you there!
As usual, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at contact@pgday.uk.
We look forward to seeing you in London in September!
PGDay UK 2024 is a PostgreSQL Europe event run according to the PostgreSQL Community Conference Recognition programme. Local logistics and other services are provided by Slonik Enterprises Ltd. on a not-for-profit basis.
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgday-uk-2024-schedule-published-2895/