News gathered 2024-07-23
(date: 2024-07-23 08:39:59)
The Live Edit
date: 2024-07-23, from: John August blog
John and Craig finally become writing partners and edit the opening to one chapter of the upcoming Scriptnotes book live on-air. They wrestle with word choices, adapting the phrasing of a spoken conversation and finding a unified voice as they pass the keyboard back and forth. We also catch up Craig on what he’s missed […] The post The Live Edit first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/the-live-edit
Cybercrooks spell trouble with typosquatting domains amid CrowdStrike crisis
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Latest trend follows various malware campaigns that began just hours after IT calamity
Thousands of typosquatting domains are now registered to exploit the desperation of IT admins still struggling to recover from last week’s CrowdStrike outage, researchers say.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/typosquatting_crowdstrike_crisis/
Sizzling hot month to reach Bay Area crescendo before long-term relief settles into weather pattern
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
An excessive heat warning and advisory for areas of the region remained in effect Tuesday.
Secret Service director steps down after assassination attempt against ex-President Trump at rally
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
Heritage Foundation Claims to Use Location Data to Track Trump Shooter’s Movements
date: 2024-07-23, from: 404 Media Group
Organizations are now openly broadcasting the once dirty secret of the location data industry: it can be used to track specific people.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigns
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has tendered her resignation amid scrutiny of security lapses related to the recent assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/23/secret-service-director-kimberly-cheatle-resigns-sources-say/
A candidate shake-up means shaking up campaign spending
date: 2024-07-23, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Despite threats of legal challenges from the right, Vice President Kamala Harris’ camp appears poised to inherit around $100 million from what was the Biden-Harris campaign — and that’s after an additional $100 million was raised in the 24 hours after Sunday’s shake-up. So how will a new name at the top of the Democratic ticket change how campaign dollars are spent? Plus, little stocks are starting to get bigger attention.
Alphabet’s reported $23B bet on Wiz fizzles out
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cybersecurity outfit to go its own way to IPO and $1B ARR
On the day of Alphabet’s Q2 earnings call, cybersecurity firm Wiz has walked from a $23 billion takeover bid by Google’s parent company.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/alphabet_wiz_deal_scuppered/
Gardenia Los Gatos to serve coffee, French-Asian fusion cuisine
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
Coffeehouse and restaurant set to open on Aug. 2.
LogOn: Device may help disabled vocal cords speak again
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
Some people who have lost the ability to speak can still move their vocal cords. California researchers are working to transform those muscle movements into audible speech. Genia Dulot reports from Los Angeles in this week’s edition of LogOn.
https://www.voanews.com/a/logon-device-may-help-disabled-vocal-cords-speak-again-/7709503.html
This telephone sprays a custom scent to match what you say to it
date: 2024-07-23, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Techpla Lab incorporated Raspberry Pi 5 into a device which sprays you with the scent it thinks best suits your needs according to what you say to it
The post This telephone sprays a custom scent to match what you say to it appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/this-telephone-sprays-a-custom-scent-to-match-what-you-say-to-it/
South Bay chefs serve fresh offerings, old favorites this summer
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
New faces and places springing up in San Jose, West Valley.
Half tank of gasoline stolen out of car in Los Gatos
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
Fuel line had been cut.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/23/half-tank-of-gasoline-stolen-out-of-car-in-los-gatos/
LIVE: NASA is with you from Oshkosh
date: 2024-07-23, from: NASA breaking news
Welcome to NASA Aeronautics’ live update page with news about NASA events and other festivities taking place throughout the week at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2024, which we simply call Oshkosh. Day Two Begins Tuesday, July 23 at 10 a.m. EDT Good morning from the NASA Pavilion at Oshkosh 2024! Before opening to the public, our […]
https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/live-nasa-is-with-you-from-oshkosh/
NASA’s 21st Northrop Grumman Mission Launches Scientific Studies to Station
date: 2024-07-23, from: NASA breaking news
NASA and its international partners are sending scientific investigations to the International Space Station on Northrop Grumman’s 21st commercial resupply services mission. Flying aboard the company’s Cygnus spacecraft are tests of water recovery technology and a process to produce stem cells in microgravity, studies of the effects of spaceflight on microorganism DNA and liver tissue […]
Phony fire marshal steals $48,000 from Campbell business
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
Told employee they had to pay a fine.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/23/phony-fire-marshal-steals-48k-from-campbell-business/
No, Southwest Airlines is not still using Windows 3.1
date: 2024-07-23, from: OS News
A story that’s been persistently making the rounds since the CrowdStrike event is that while several airline companies were affected in one way or another, Southwest Airlines escaped the mayhem because they were still using windows 3.1. It’s a great story that fits the current zeitgeist about technology and its role in society, underlining that what is claimed to be technological progress is nothing but trouble, and that it’s better to stick with the old. At the same time, anybody who dislikes Southwest Airlines can point and laugh at the bumbling idiots working there for still using Windows 3.1. It’s like a perfect storm of technology news click and ragebait. Too bad the whole story is nonsense. But how could that be? It’s widely reported by reputable news websites all over the world, shared on social media like a strain of the common cold, and nobody seems to question it or doubt the veracity of the story. It seems that Southwest Airlines running on an operating system from 1992 is a perfectly believable story to just about everyone, so nobody is questioning it or wondering if it’s actually true. Well, I did, and no, it’s not true. Let’s start with the actual source of the claim that Southwest Airlines was unaffected by CrowdStrike because they’re still using Windows 3.11 for large parts of their primary systems. This claim is easily traced back to its origin – a tweet by someone called Artem Russakovskii, stating that “the reason Southwest is not affected is because they still run on Windows 3.1”. This tweet formed the basis for virtually all of the stories, but it contains no sources, no links, no background information, nothing. It was literally just this one line. It turned out be a troll tweet. A reply to the tweet by Russakovskii a day later made that very lear: “To be clear, I was trolling last night, but it turned out to be true. Some Southwest systems apparently do run Windows 3.1. lol.” However, that linked article doesn’t cite any sources either, so we’re right back where we started. After quite a bit of digging – that is, clicking a few links and like 3 minutes of searching online – following the various reference and links back to their sources, I managed to find where all these stories actually come from to arrive at the root claim that spawned all these other claims. It’s from an article by The Dallas Morning News, titled “What’s the problem with Southwest Airlines scheduling system?” At the end of last year, Southwest Airlines’ scheduling system had a major meltdown, leading to a lot of cancelled flights and stranded travelers just around the Christmas holidays. Of course, the media wanted to know what caused it, and that’s where this The Dallas Morning News article comes from. In it, we find the paragraphs that started the story that Southwest Airlines is still using Windows 3.1 (and Windows 95!): Southwest uses internally built and maintained systems called SkySolver and Crew Web Access for pilots and flight attendants. They can sign on to those systems to pick flights and then make changes when flights are canceled or delayed or when there is an illness. “Southwest has generated systems internally themselves instead of using more standard programs that others have used,” Montgomery said. “Some systems even look historic like they were designed on Windows 95.” SkySolver and Crew Web Access are both available as mobile apps, but those systems often break down during even mild weather events, and employees end up making phone calls to Southwest’s crew scheduling help desk to find better routes. During periods of heavy operational trouble, the system gets bogged down with too much demand. ↫ Kyle Arnold at The Dallas Morning News That’s it. That’s where all these stories can trace their origin to. These few paragraphs do not say that Southwest is still using ancient Windows versions; it just states that the systems they developed internally, SkySolver and Crew Web Access, look “historic like they were designed on Windows 95”. The fact that they are also available as mobile applications should further make it clear that no, these applications are not running on Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. Southwest pilots and cabin crews are definitely not carrying around pocket laptops from the ’90s. These paragraphs were then misread, misunderstood, and mangled in a game of social media and bad reporting telephone, and here we are. The fact that nobody seems to have taken the time to click through a few links to find the supposed source of these claims, instead focusing on cashing in on the clicks and rage these stories would illicit, is a rather damning indictment of the state of online (tech) media. Many of the websites reporting on these stories are part of giant media conglomerates, have a massive number of paid staff, and they’re being outdone by a dude in the Arctic with a small Patreon, minimal journalism training, and some common sense. This story wasn’t hard to debunk – a few clicks and a few minutes of online searching is all it took. Ask yourself – why do these massive news websites not even perform the bare minimum?
https://www.osnews.com/story/140301/no-southwest-airlines-is-not-still-using-windows-3-1/
Failure to follow proper procedures caused US-wide AT&T outage, FCC says
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
America’s second largest wireless carrier taking steps to prevent a repeat of 12-hour downtime in February
An AT&T cellular outage lasting more than 12 hours that prevented US customers from accessing services including 911 was caused by misconfigured hardware and a failure to follow standard procedures when deploying.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/atandt_outage_fcc_report/
Beyoncé gives Kamala Harris permission to use her song ‘Freedom’ for her presidential campaign
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
Vice President Kamala Harris made a big entrance during her first official visit to her campaign headquarters on Monday evening, walking out to Beyoncé’s song “Freedom.”
A look at false claims around Kamala Harris and her campaign for the White House
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
The announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris will seek the Democratic nomination for president is inspiring a wave of false claims about her eligibility and her background.
Wildlife sleuths use DNA to understand deadly pet attacks in Santa Cruz Mountains
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
Genetic research can reveal the killing patterns of mountain lions and coyotes, protecting domestic animals.
The Backlash Against AI Scraping Is Real and Measurable
date: 2024-07-23, from: 404 Media Group
In the last year, the number of websites specifically restricting OpenAI and other AI scraper bots has gone through the roof.
https://www.404media.co/the-backlash-against-ai-scraping-is-real-and-measurable/
Delta Air Lines is still melting down. It could last all week
date: 2024-07-23, from: San Jose Mercury News
The problems prompted the Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to announce the Department of Transportation would be starting an investigation to make sure Delta is following the law and treating passengers fairly. He asked passengers with complaints to contact the Department of Transportation.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/23/delta-air-lines-is-still-melting-down-it-could-last-all-week/
Now as many as 10,000 SAP jobs to be hit by restructure
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Revenue and underlying profit please markets in Q2 as German software giant retains focus on costs
SAP has expanded the number of jobs affected by its restructuring program by up to 20 percent after generating higher revenue but lower operating profit in the most recent full quarter.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/sap_jobs_restructuring/
Manchin and Barrasso Just Released a Big Permitting Reform Bill
date: 2024-07-23, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Taiwan is bracing for Typhoon Gaemi • A volcanic eruption from Mt. Etna closed Sicily’s Catania International Airport • Data suggests Sunday was the hottest day in Earth’s recorded history.
THE TOP FIVE
- Manchin and Barrasso release bipartisan permitting reform
legislation
Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso released a permitting reform bill last night that “is expected to bolster the buildout of both renewable and fossil fuel energy sources,” as The Hill reported. The legislation would impose a timeline on legal challenges to federal authorizations for energy projects, require annual lease sales of both offshore wind and offshore oil through 2029, exclude some exploration activity for geothermal energy from environmental reviews, and scrap the Biden administration’s (now overturned) pause on approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals by requiring the Department of Energy to decide on approving the terminals within 90 days. The bill also includes some longstanding Democratic and Republican ideas on environmental permitting, such as making permitting for renewables projects stand on a more equal footing with the relatively easy path for permitting oil and gas projects.
Reactions have so far been pretty mixed. Transmission company Grid United called the act “a significant bipartisan step forward in streamlining the permitting process for critical energy infrastructure projects,” and a “game changer for the U.S. electric grid.” Meanwhile the Center for Biological Diversity called it “the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry.”
Manchin and Barrasso are the chair and ranking member (respectively) of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Manchin is an independent from West Virginia who caucuses with Democrats, while Barrasso is a Republican from Wyoming, both states with large fossil energy resources and industries.
- NOAA teams up with United Airlines to measure GHGs with commercial
airliner
The U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is partnering with United Airlines to deploy a commercial airliner that monitors atmospheric greenhouse gases. The multi-year partnership will involve kitting out a Boeing 737 with equipment that can measure carbon dioxide, methane, and other warming gases to see if “a potential larger network” of commercial aircraft could be used to keep tabs on the atmosphere. NOAA already regularly measures air pollution by contracting with private pilots, but these missions are costly and their scope is restricted. “Installing instruments on airliners would vastly increase the number and distribution of samples that would be collected,” NOAA said.
- Analysis: U.S. emissions falling, but not enough to meet 2030 Paris
goals
The Rhodium Group think tank today published its annual report forecasting the trajectory of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions based on things like current policy, economic growth expectations, fossil fuel prices, and clean energy trends. It found that, by 2035, the U.S. will cut its emissions pretty significantly – between 38% and 56% – when compared to 2005 levels as abatement efforts grow. By 2030, Rhodium said emissions could fall by 43% compared to 2005, but this is still short of the 50% target under the Paris Agreement.
Rhodium
Group
When looking at emissions by sector, the sharpest decline will be in the power sector, where emissions are expected to be at least 42% lower than current levels by 2035, and possibly up to 83% lower. Renewables could account for up to 88% of electricity generation that year, and unabated coal generation will be near zero, thanks largely to the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies and new power plant emission limits imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Transportation emissions will also fall significantly thanks to the EPA’s tailpipe rules. Industry is expected to become the biggest source of emissions in 2033 and will see just modest declines, most of which will be in oil and gas operations.
The group applauded this progress but said growing demand for electricity (especially from data centers) coupled with slow permitting, building, and grid interconnection for clean energy projects could put Paris targets even further out of reach.
- Pentagon warns China and Russia are working together in melting
Arctic
The Pentagon is growing increasingly concerned about cooperation between Russia and China in the Arctic. As the planet warms and the Arctic region thaws, the two nations have been collaborating to develop new shipping routes in a broader effort to exert global influence, Reuters reported. The Defense Department released a report yesterday on the issue, saying it will expand its surveillance in the area to improve national security and “ensure the Arctic does not become a strategic blind spot.” The Arctic is warming about four times faster than the rest of the planet.
- Google AI weather tool could improve long-range forecasting
Google researchers have created an experimental weather-prediction tool called NeuralGCM that could open the door to the future of forecasting. The model combines the speed of artificial intelligence with the accuracy of conventional atmospheric forecasting to churn out quality weather predictions quickly and efficiently. According to a paper published in the journal Nature, this hybrid tool has proven to be faster than traditional forecasting tools, and more accurate than AI-only models at long-range weather predictions. Tools like NeuralGCM could provide a breakthrough in predicting large-scale climate events and extreme weather far in advance. Here’s a look at how the tool (blue line) performed in predicting global temperatures (orange line) between 1980 and 2020 compared to a traditional physics-based, atmosphere-only forecasting tool (red line):
Google
THE KICKER
Researchers say warming waters along the U.S. Gulf Coast are driving a fivefold increase in the number of baby bull sharks in the region’s estuaries.
https://heatmap.news/politics/manchin-barrasso-permitting-reform
Sydney Sweeney’s Verizon Phone Number Hijacked
date: 2024-07-23, from: 404 Media Group
A photo posted online shows an apparent SIM swap of Sydney Sweeney on July 2nd. That same day, hackers broke into her Twitter account and posted a cryptocurrency scam.
https://www.404media.co/sydney-sweeneys-verizon-phone-number-hijacked/
CrowdStrike CEO summoned to explain epic fail to US Homeland Security
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Boss faces grilling over disastrous software snafu
The US House Committee on Homeland Security has requested public testimony from CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz in the wake of the chaos caused by a faulty update.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/crowdstrike_ceo_to_testify/
As Harris launches her presidential run, the veepstakes is on. Here’s who to watch
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The LAist
With the announcement that President Biden would no longer run for the Democratic nomination, and his endorsement of Vice President Harris, the focus is on who Harris might choose as her running mate.
It’s day 5 of the great computer outage of 2024
date: 2024-07-23, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The Crowsdstrike software update — which knocked out an estimated 8.5 million Windows computers and impacted airlines, government operations and 9-1-1 emergency calls, is continuing to wreak havoc, and outage costs are estimated to be several billion dollars. We’ll discuss the latest and hear what to do if you’re one of the many, many passengers who’s been affected. And later: Why is everyone talking about “The Magnificent Seven” tech stocks?
Arch-based CachyOS promises speed but trips over its laces
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Strictly for performance fiends with ultra-modern kit who want a distro to match
Hands-on CachyOS is a performance-optimized rebuild of Arch Linux, with a simpler installer and dozens of desktops and options to tweak. Stable reliability, not so much.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/cachyos_arch_linux/
India announces high-spending budget
date: 2024-07-23, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: In India’s recent election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party won a third term but lost its ruling majority. Now, the coalition released its first budget, focusing on stability and boosting the economy. Then, the founder of South Korea’s popular KakaoTalk app has been arrested on allegations of manipulating stock prices. And there are growing calls to add an African country to the highly lucrative Formula One series of races.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/india-announces-high-spending-budget
ESA’s meteorite bricks hit Lego stores, but don’t get your wallet out just yet
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
In space, no one can hear you scream when you step on one
ESA’s space brick has landed in LEGO® stores, but you can’t buy the 3D-printed items to add to your own creations.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/esa_lego_space_brick/
Pilar Schiavo | Making Our Communities Safer
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Signal
Everyone deserves to feel safe in their communities. With kids at school facing the threat of gun violence, small businesses experiencing retail theft, seniors targeted by scammers, tragic accidental fentanyl […]
The post Pilar Schiavo | Making Our Communities Safer appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/pilar-schiavo-making-our-communities-safer/
Industrial policy – the long and the short of it.
date: 2024-07-23, from: Enlightenment Economics
I’ve been dipping into the proofs of a substantial book, Industrial Policy for the United States by Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher, due out in September. It will prove a significant resource for anybody interested in the issue. The book … Continue reading
Mildred (Millie) Hubert | Democrats: The Party of Groups
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Signal
Per our Constitution and our electoral process, we vote for our politicians to work for the common good of all citizens of the United States of America. The Democrat Party […]
The post Mildred (Millie) Hubert | Democrats: The Party of Groups appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/mildred-millie-hubert-democrats-the-party-of-groups/
Christine Flowers | Democrats Give Classical Lesson in Modern Betrayal
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Signal
One of the most famous phrases in history is one that my high school Latin teacher Sister Mary David intoned with deep solemnity as we were studying Caesar: Et tu, […]
The post Christine Flowers | Democrats Give Classical Lesson in Modern Betrayal appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/christine-flowers-democrats-give-classical-lesson-in-modern-betrayal/
SAP system gives UK tax collector a £750B headache as clock ticks on support
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
For now it’s Capgemini to the rescue (again)
Updated The UK’s Treasury ministry is to determine the fate of aging SAP software that runs the nation’s tax system – processing £750 billion ($968 billion) of transactions a year – over the coming weeks.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/sap_ecc_hmrc/
FrostyGoop malware shut off heat to 600 Ukraine apartment buildings
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
First nasty to exploit Modbus to screw with operational tech devices
A previously unseen malware, dubbed FrostyGoop, able to disrupt industrial processes was used in a cyberattack against a district energy company in Ukraine last northern winter, resulting in two days without heat for hundreds of people during sub-zero temperatures.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/frostygoop_ics_malware/
How to maintain code for a century: Just add Rust
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Proprietary code goes unpublished – but no FOSS package ever dies
Opinion One of the delicious promises of open source software is eternal life. In literature from Gilgamesh on, this has been a classic trap for the careless and greedy, but this is FOSS so it must be true. No package ever dies. Proprietary code goes unpublished: if its host company dies, it probably dies with it the moment the servers are wiped.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/opinion_column/
AMD claims Nvidia’s Grace CPU Superchip, Arm are no match for its Epyc Zen 4 cores
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
But does it matter when all Grace needs to is to babysit GPUs?
Comment AMD has claimed its current datacenter silicon is already more than twice as fast, and up to 2.75 times more efficient, than Nvidia’s Grace CPU Superchips.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/amd_nvidia_arm_benchmarks/
Sergey Durmanov commented on issue #143 at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
You are right, there is too much code for this in static analyzers, and (at least) without cfg and dfa it is difficult to make any assumptions. But do we need recursion (in practice, not theoretically) for operators? Maybe it's worth adding a {recursive} modifier to allow recursion?
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/143#note_193840
Hong Kong becomes major hub for shipping banned tech to Iran, Russia
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Government doesn’t seem to mind – and business is into it, claims report
Hong Kong’s government and local businesses undermine sanctions by deliberately facilitating the transfer of restricted and sensitive technology to naughty regimes, according to a report released on Monday by the nonprofit Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/hong_kong_tech_sanctions_evasion/
Intel to deliver fix for Raptor Lake CPUs made ‘unstable’ by voltage snafu
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Put those pesky crashes in the past with a fun microcode upgrade!
Intel has promised to deliver a fix for some of its recent desktop processors suffering “stability issues.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/intel_raptor_lake_instability_fix/
Hit and run reported in Canyon Country
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Signal
The L.A. County Fire Department responded to reports of a hit and run near the intersection of Annes Circle and Sandy Drive in Canyon Country on Monday night, according to […]
The post Hit and run reported in Canyon Country appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/hit-and-run-reported-in-canyon-country/
Tally shows Harris has enough support to be Democratic Party’s candidate
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
Tencent Cloud launches CentOS variant tuned for Chinese silicon
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Another sign of China’s technological turn inwards – but not, sadly, a SPARC revival
Tencent Cloud has launched a version of its homebrew cut of Linux distribution CentOS.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/tencentos_server_v3_launch/
Indonesia blocks 2.5 million pieces of gambling content, minister says it’s not enough
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Wagering boomed – and so did the quantity of money heading offshore
Indonesia has an online gambling problem. Despite having blocked access to wagering content over 2.5 million times last year, the nation’s Ministry of Communications and Information (KomInfo), believes it can only break the habit with further blocks and assistance from the private sector.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/indonesia_online_gambling_crackdown/
For Good Reason, Apache Foundation Says ‘Goodbye’ to Iconic Feather Logo
date: 2024-07-23, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Christine Hall at FOSS Force]
“The Apache Software Foundation is making changes in an attempt to right a wrong it unintentionally created when it adopted its name 25-years ago.”
This is an unnecessarily awkward article (why describe the existing logo as cool in this context?!) to describe a simple premise: the Apache Software Foundation is slowly, finally, moving away from its appropriation of the Apache name and its racist use of faux Native American imagery.
For a while, it’s preferred to refer to itself as ASF, and now it’s going to have a much-needed logo change. That’s fine, but it needs to go much further. It’s past time to just rip off the Band Aid.
Still, this is far better than the obstinate response we’ve seen in the past to requests for change. A new logo, slight as it is, is hopefully an iteration in the right direction.
<p>[<a href="https://fossforce.com/2024/07/apache-foundation-says-goodbye-to-iconic-feather-logo/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/its-time-for-apache-to-change-its-name-not-just
A look at Harris’ views on US policy toward China
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has not yet won the Democratic Party’s support for her presidential candidacy, but she has the endorsement of U.S. President Joe Biden, along with several senior Democrats, after his withdrawal from the race on Sunday.
If chosen by the party, and elected president, analysts agree Harris would likely continue the Biden administration’s foreign policy, including the management of one of the most tense and consequential relationships — that with China.
When she first became vice president, Harris, a former U.S. senator and attorney general for California, was considered by many analysts to be somewhat of a novice in foreign policy. Over the past 3 ½ years as vice president, she has visited more than 19 countries and met with more than 150 foreign leaders, according to the White House website.
VOA compiled some of Harris’s remarks on China policy during her tenure as vice president and earlier as a U.S. senator.
US-China economic relations
In September 2023, Harris traveled to attend the ASEAN summit in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta. After the meeting, she spoke about U.S.-China relations and Indo-Pacific policy on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“We, as the United States, in our policy, it is not about decoupling, it is about de-risking. It is about understanding,” she said.
“It’s not about pulling out, but it is about ensuring that we are protecting American interests, and that we are a leader in terms of the rules of the road, as opposed to following others’ rules,” Harris said.
China’s economic downturn
“It’s no secret that China is experiencing economic problems,” she said during the “Face the Nation” interview.
“And what you will find — certainly in my conversations with American business leaders — is that they are looking at the future in terms of their capital investments and taking into account which countries are engaged in practices that are about abiding by the rule of law and international rules and norms in a way that they can be guaranteed that there will be some stability so they can make long-term investments.”
“There is increasingly an understanding that China may not be the best bet when you are looking for stability, when you are looking for an investment in a place where there is an adherence to and respect for international rules and norms,” Harris added.
International aid
During her visit to Africa in March 2023, at a news conference with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, Harris reiterated her call for “all bilateral official creditors to provide a meaningful debt reduction for Zambia” — an oblique reference to China, Zambia’s top foreign creditor. However, she stressed that “our presence here is not about China.”
US-China relations
Harris’ first meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping was at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bangkok in 2022, when she held brief talks with Xi and stressed the importance of maintaining “open lines of communication to responsibly manage the competition between our countries.”
Taiwan
In a September 2022 meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Harris reaffirmed that the U.S. would continue to support Taiwan and oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo.
The White House said Harris underscored that the effort to preserve peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is an essential element of a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
During a visit to Japan that same month, she said aboard the destroyer USS Howard at Yokosuka Naval Base, “We have witnessed disturbing behavior in the East China Sea and in the South China Sea, and most recently, provocations across the Taiwan Strait.”
China considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province that must one day reunite with the mainland, by force if necessary, and often sends military air and watercraft nearby to assert its claim to the self-governing island.
South China Sea
During her visit to Japan, Harris commented on China’s aggression in the South China Sea.
“China is undermining key elements of the international rules-based order. China has challenged the freedom of the seas. China has flexed its military and economic might to coerce and intimidate its neighbors,” she said.
“We will continue to fly, sail, and operate undaunted and unafraid wherever and whenever international law allows,” Harris added.
Beijing claims most of the South China Sea as its own, putting it in conflict with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. Chinese ships on several occasions this year used water cannons and blocked its rivals’ ships in the disputed territories.
Last year on “Face the Nation,” Harris said, “What is happening in terms of unprovoked actions against the Philippine interests in the South China Sea is significant and we have been very clear that we stand with the Philippines.”
Beijing and Manila on Sunday announced a deal they say aims to stop the clashes.
China’s human rights, Hong Kong
During her tenure as a U.S. senator for California, Harris actively pushed for legislation to uphold human rights in Hong Kong, which analysts say has seen its autonomy gradually stripped away by Beijing.
In 2019, she co-sponsored the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act introduced by Republican Senator Marco Rubio, which aims to promote human rights in Hong Kong and sanction officials involved in “undermining Hong Kong’s fundamental freedoms and autonomy.” The bill was later signed into law by then-President Donald Trump.
Xinjiang
Harris also co-sponsored and facilitated the passage of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019, which became law in 2020. The bill authorizes the United States to impose sanctions on “foreign individuals and entities responsible for human rights violations in Xinjiang,” China’s westernmost province that is home to the ethnic Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim minority.
China denies there are any rights violations in Xinjiang.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/a-look-at-harris-views-on-u-s-policy-toward-china/7709060.html
New US Arctic strategy focused on Russian, Chinese inroads
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
washington — The United States is looking to boost intelligence collection in the Arctic and enhance cooperation with allies in the region, to prevent Russia and China from exploiting the cold and icy northern region at America’s expense.
The mandate, part of the Pentagon’s just-released 2024 Arctic Strategy, comes as U.S. defense officials warn climate change is melting Arctic ice that used to keep adversaries at bay, and there are indications of growing Russian-Chinese cooperation in the region.
“In the Arctic, the strategic can quickly become tactical,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, briefing reporters at the Pentagon.
“Ensuring that our troops have the training, the gear and the operating procedures for the unique Arctic environment [may] be the difference between mission success and failure,” she added.
The newly unveiled strategy calls for expanding the types of surveillance and intelligence capabilities that the U.S. military employs elsewhere in the world to the far north, where frigid temperatures can interfere with their operation.
Specifically, the strategy outlines the need for more ground-based sensors, space-based sensors and long-range radar to better pick up on activity by U.S. adversaries.
The U.S. is also looking to increase its unmanned aerial reconnaissance capabilities and its communication capabilities.
Hicks said the U.S. has already invested tens of millions of dollars in such capabilities, but that more is needed.
“The Arctic’s vast distances, especially in North America, make supporting infrastructure vital for Arctic operations and presence,” according to the new strategy. “However, much of the legacy Cold War-era infrastructure has declined over time due to the harsh environment, lack of investment, and climate change-driven permafrost thawing and coastal erosion.”
One bonus for the new Arctic strategy, according to U.S. defense officials, is the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO, which means every Arctic nation except for Russia is now part of the Western alliance.
U.S. officials have repeatedly praised Swedish and Finnish capabilities in the Arctic, and the strategy envisions additional joint exercises and cooperation, which could be required to counter an uptick in Russian and Chinese activities in the region.
“It’s very noticeable and concerning,” Hicks said.
“The Russians, of course, have, even as they’ve continued their operation, their war in in Ukraine, they’ve been continuing to invest in their infrastructure throughout the Arctic region that they can access,” she said. “And then we’ve seen much more PRC [People’s Republic of China] activity, both in terms of so-called research, but because of their civil fusion, we always have concern that there’s a military aspect to that.”
There have also been signs of increased cooperation between Russia and China.
The two countries conducted a joint naval patrol near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands last August, prompting the U.S. to deploy four naval destroyers and patrol aircraft as a precaution.
But Iris Ferguson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Arctic, told reporters Monday that those types of Russian and Chinese efforts are just the tip of the iceberg.
“We’ve seen an uptick, an uptick in their cooperation over the last couple of years,” Ferguson said. “We see China investing in a lot of Russian energy in order to not only have them supply that energy to the PRC, but also that is helping embolden some of Russia’s activity in Ukraine.”
Ferguson sought not to overplay the threat, saying Russian-Chinese cooperation in the Arctic is “somewhat superficial in nature still, especially from a military perspective.”
However, Pentagon officials expect the Russian-Chinese military relationship to evolve, noting the growing level of Chinese military research in the Arctic and Beijing’s attempts to “internationalize” and influence the region as a whole.
“We see them operating more regularly in the last several years from a military perspective. Even just a couple of weeks ago, there were several Chinese warships off of the coast of Alaska,” Ferguson said. “They are our long-term pacing challenge and I think that that includes in the Arctic.”
The Russian and Chinese embassies in Washington have yet to respond to requests for comment.
https://www.voanews.com/a/new-us-arctic-strategy-focused-on-russian-chinese-inroads-/7708692.html
Gordon unveils ‘A Symphony of Colors’
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Signal
Zony Gordon is no stranger to displaying her artwork at exhibits. The artist who began her painting journey almost 20 years ago has been featured in numerous art shows with […]
The post Gordon unveils ‘A Symphony of Colors’ appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/gordon-unveils-a-symphony-of-colors/
Local authors release psychological thriller
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Signal
News release Santa Clarita Valley residents J Bartell and Ginger Marin announced that their latest psychological thriller, “The Wolves Within,” based on a true story, is now available in print […]
The post Local authors release psychological thriller appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/local-authors-release-psychological-thriller/
Netanyahu visits DC amid US political turmoil at critical juncture of Gaza war
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
washington — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington late Monday, the day after President Joe Biden announced he is withdrawing from the U.S. presidential race – a decision that adds another layer of uncertainty to U.S.-Israel relations at a crucial moment in the Gaza war.
Without a cease-fire agreement in place, many had questioned the timing of Netanyahu’s visit when it was announced in June. Now, facing a potential shift in American politics, the Israeli leader aims to lay the groundwork for the next American administration.
A U.S. official said Biden and Netanyahu were expected to meet Thursday at the White House.
“I will seek to anchor the bipartisan support that is so important for Israel,” Netanyahu said as he departed Israel. “I will tell my friends on both sides of the aisle that regardless of who the American people choose as their next president, Israel remains America’s indispensable and strong ally in the Middle East.”
While publicly Netanyahu aims for the appearance of neutrality in the now likely match between potential Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, there is little doubt whom Netanyahu is rooting for, said Jonathan Rynhold, head of the Department of Political Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University.
“Republicans in general are more supportive of Israel’s security agenda,” he told VOA. “They’re more forgiving of Israel’s right-wing government and its policies towards the Palestinians.”
That’s especially true of Trump, whose administration’s pro-Israeli policies were “quite extraordinary” and “created a sugar high” for the country, said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. negotiator for the Middle East who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Trump brokered the Abraham Accords that normalized Israel’s diplomatic ties with some of its Arab neighbors – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Trump also moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to contested Jerusalem and recognized Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights.
While in the U.S., Netanyahu is requesting to meet with Trump, in part to dismiss claims that there are tensions between him and the former president, said Nimrod Goren, senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute.
Trump soured on Netanyahu when the prime minister congratulated Biden on his win in 2020. The former president has also warned Israel to “get back to peace and stop killing people.”
The Trump campaign has not responded to VOA for confirmation on Netanyahu’s request for a meeting.
Netanyahu meeting Harris
Harris will meet with Netanyahu this week at the White House, separate from the prime minister’s planned meeting with Biden, her aide told VOA. “Throughout her career, the vice president has had an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel,” the aide said.
Harris also has strong ties to the country’s Jewish community. Her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, is Jewish and has played a key role in the administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism.
However, instead of presiding over the Senate chamber during Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday, Harris will travel to Indianapolis, Indiana, to speak in front of the historically Black sorority Zeta Phi Beta.
The optics of applauding Netanyahu would not fly well amid anger over Gaza from progressives, Arab Americans and American Muslims who traditionally vote for Democratic candidates. Dozens of congressional Democrats in Congress are also expected to boycott the speech.
Gestures aside, a Harris presidency would unlikely yield a significant change in Middle East policy, Carnegie’s Miller told VOA, and would remain relatively “mainstream when it comes to supporting the U.S.-Israeli relationship.”
But Harris would be “far tougher, certainly rhetorically, on Israeli settlement activity, and much more, much more sympathetic to Palestinian suffering and Palestinian rights,” he said.
Harris’ comments in office have been largely in line with Biden on key foreign policy issues and it’s unclear whether she’ll manifest her own doctrine if elected.
Compared to Biden, who has an extraordinarily clear, integrated and well-thought-out American grand strategy, “she’s a blank slate, really, on a foreign policy,” Rynhold said.
Netanyahu’s domestic goals
With the Israeli Knesset nearing a three-month recess, Netanyahu is aiming to advance his own domestic political goals, and a cease-fire deal could be the silver lining, Goren said.
“There may be a political timing that will enable Netanyahu to make a move once the Knesset is in recess, without having that lead to immediate coalition breakdown,” he said. “That could not be done until the Knesset comes back to operation.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that a deal was within reach.
However, Goren and other analysts said they were skeptical the cease-fire deal would extend beyond phase one: a six-week pause in fighting in exchange for some of the hostages held by Hamas.
Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
NWS: SCV expected to cool down heading to the weekend
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Signal
Temperatures have been higher than normal recently for a Santa Clarita Valley summer, but there could be a reprieve over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service. An excessive […]
The post NWS: SCV expected to cool down heading to the weekend appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/nws-scv-expected-to-cool-down-heading-to-the-weekend/
Netanyahu visits DC amid US political turmoil at critical juncture of Gaza war
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington this week with a scheduled speech to Congress and meeting at the White House. The Israeli prime minister is landing in the middle of U.S. political turmoil following President Joe Biden’s decision Sunday to withdraw from the presidential race, which could add another layer of uncertainty to U.S.-Israel relations at a crucial moment in the Gaza war. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this preview.
Ken Striplin | City Cinemas Brings Back Movies Under the Stars
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Picture this…a cozy blanket laid out on the grass, the warm evening breeze and your favorite film playing on the big screen.
https://scvnews.com/ken-striplin-city-cinemas-brings-back-movies-under-the-stars/
Supervisors to look at creating ethics commission
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Signal
L.A. County voters will have the chance to decide in November if the county Board of Supervisors will expand from five to nine members through a change to the county […]
The post Supervisors to look at creating ethics commission appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/supervisors-to-look-at-creating-ethics-commission/
Missouri judge overturns murder conviction of man imprisoned more than 30 years
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
St. Louis — A Missouri judge on Monday overturned the conviction of Christopher Dunn, who has spent more than 30 years in prison for a killing he has long contended he didn’t commit.
The ruling is likely to free Dunn from prison, but it wasn’t immediately clear when that would happen. He has been serving a sentence of life without parole.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser’s ruling came several weeks after he presided over a three-day hearing on Dunn’s fate.
Dunn, now 52, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1990 shooting of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore filed a motion in February seeking to vacate the guilty verdict. A hearing was in May.
Sengheiser, in his ruling, wrote that the “Circuit Attorney has made a clear and convincing showing of ‘actual innocence’ that undermines the basis for Dunn’s convictions because in light of new evidence, no juror, acting reasonably, would have voted to find Dunn guilty of these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Dunn’s attorney, Midwest Innocence Project Executive Director Tricia Rojo Bushnell, said she was “overjoyed” by the judge’s ruling.
“Now, Chris looks forward to spending time with his wife and family as a free man,” Bushnell said in a statement.
The Missouri Attorney General’s Office opposed the effort to vacate Dunn’s conviction. Lawyers for the state said at the May hearing that initial testimony from two boys at the scene who identified Dunn as the shooter was correct, even though they later recanted as adults.
“That verdict was accurate, and that verdict should stand,” Assistant Attorney General Tristin Estep said at the hearing.
Spokesperson Madeline Sieren said the Attorney General’s Office will appeal.
The decision in Dunn’s case came days after Sandra Hemme was freed from a western Missouri prison after serving 43 years for a murder that a judge determined she didn’t commit. Bailey’s office also opposed Hemme’s release.
A Missouri law adopted in 2021 lets prosecutors request hearings when they see evidence of a wrongful conviction. While Bailey’s office is not required to oppose such efforts, he also opposed another effort in St. Louis that resulted in Lamar Johnson being freed last year after serving 28 years for a murder case in which a judge ruled he was wrongfully convicted.
Rogers was shot May 18, 1990, when a gunman opened fire while he was with a group of other teenage boys outside a home. DeMorris Stepp, 14, and Michael Davis Jr., 12, both initially identified Dunn as the shooter.
In a recorded interview played at the hearing, Davis said he lied because he thought Dunn was affiliated with a rival gang.
Stepp’s story has changed a few times over the years, Gore said at the hearing. Most recently he has said he did not see Dunn as the shooter. Gore said another judge previously found Stepp to be a “completely unreliable witness” and urged Sengheiser to discount him altogether.
Dunn has said he was at his mother’s home at the time of the shooting. Childhood friend Nicole Bailey testified that she spoke with him by phone that night and he was on a phone at his mother’s house.
Estep, the assistant attorney general, said that alibi could not be trusted and Dunn’s story has shifted multiple times over the years. Dunn did not testify at the hearing.
The 2021 law has resulted in the the release of two men who each spent decades in prison. In addition to Johnson, Kevin Strickland was freed in 2021 after more than 40 years for three killings in Kansas City after a judge ruled he was wrongfully convicted in 1979.
Another hearing is next month for Marcellus Williams, who narrowly escaped lethal injection and is now facing another execution date.
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filed a motion in January to vacate the conviction of Williams, who was convicted in the fatal stabbing of Lisha Gayle in 1998. Bell’s motion said three experts determined that Williams’ DNA was not on the handle of the butcher knife used in the killing.
Williams was hours from execution in 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens halted it and appointed a board of inquiry to examine his innocence claim. The board never issued a ruling, and Gov. Mike Parson, like Greitens a Republican, dissolved it last year.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled this month that Parson had the authority to dissolve the board and set a new execution date of Sept. 24.
Biden continues to recover from COVID, stays out of public view after ending campaign
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
REHOBOTH BEACH, Delaware — President Joe Biden’s “symptoms have almost resolved completely” from COVID-19, according to his physician, as the president on Monday remained out of public view for the fifth straight day.
Biden called into the Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters of his former campaign during a visit by Vice President Kamala Harris, whose bid for the White House has been endorsed by Biden. The president sought to pep up the staff, urging them to give “every bit” of their “heart and soul” to Harris. Biden also vowed to be “out on the road” campaigning for his vice president.
“If I didn’t have COVID, I’d be standing there with you,” said Biden, whose voice sounded a touch gravelly.
The president was last seen in public late Wednesday after arriving at a U.S. air base in Dover, Delaware, after testing positive for COVID-19 while campaigning in Las Vegas earlier in the day. He then motorcaded to his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, said that the president had completed his 10th dose of the COVID-fighting medication Paxlovid on Monday morning and continued to perform all of his presidential duties.
“His symptoms have almost resolved completely. His pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature remain absolutely normal,” O’Connor wrote. “His oxygen saturation continues to be excellent on room air. His lungs remain clear.”
The White House said Biden received separate briefings on Monday from homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Both briefings were conducted virtually.
Biden’s public schedule for the week has remained clear as he recovers from the virus, but he said in his letter on Sunday that he planned to deliver an address to the nation this week to discuss his decision to end his candidacy.
According to his official schedule, Biden is planning to return to the White House on Tuesday.
Biden plans to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House this week, according to a person familiar with the president’s schedule who was not authorized to comment publicly.
Biden also plans to meet at the White House later this week with the families of Americans who are still being held hostage in Gaza, according to a statement from the group of families who met privately with Sullivan earlier Monday.
It would be the second time that Biden has met with the families. The families again publicly urged Israel and Hamas to come to an agreement on a cease-fire deal that would release their loved ones. Biden in late May proposed a three-phased deal aimed at returning remaining hostages taken by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and could potentially lead to a permanent truce to end the nine-month war in Gaza.
“We’re going to keep working to an end to the war in Gaza,” Biden said during his call-in to the campaign headquarters. “I’ll be working really closely with the Israelis and with the Palestinians to try to work out how we can get the Gaza war to end, and Middle East peace, and get all those hostages home. I think we’re on the verge of being able to do that.”
Observers see Biden’s campaign exit having no impact on US-South Korea ties
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
washington — U.S. President Joe Biden’s announcement that he was dropping his reelection bid sparked reactions from former U.S. officials who said Washington’s relations with Seoul are at a crossroads and will either continue on the same path or make a sharp turn.
These officials, who dealt extensively with South Korea, said Biden’s exit would have no immediate impact on Washington-Seoul ties.
“The U.S.-ROK alliance has never been stronger and more capable than it is today, and that alliance will remain so until the end of President Biden’s term next year,” said Evans Revere, who served as the principal deputy assistant secretary and acting assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs.
The Republic of Korea (ROK) is the official name for South Korea.
“Given that Biden will remain president for the next six months, I see little change in U.S. foreign and national security policy and posture over that time with either allies or adversaries, regardless of whatever contingencies or provocations might arise, including on the Korean Peninsula,” Robert Rapson, who served as deputy chief of mission and charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said in written comments.
Biden called off his bid for reelection Sunday amid mounting pressure from top Democrats who cited his declining polling numbers since his poor debate performance against former President Donald Trump last month.
Biden said in a letter posted on his social media account X, formerly Twitter, that he would focus the remainder of his term on presidential duties and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president. He said he would speak more about his decision later this week.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry sent a statement via email to VOA’s Korean Service on Sunday that said Seoul “will continue to work closely with the United States to maintain and develop the ROK-U.S. alliance, which has been upgraded to a global comprehensive strategic alliance.”
The office of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said in a statement Sunday that it “would not comment on domestic political situations of any other countries.”
The statement continued, “Bipartisan support for the ROK-U.S. alliance is rock solid. We will closely collaborate with the United States to continuously strengthen the global comprehensive strategic alliance between the Republic of Korea and the United States.”
Harris, if nominated by her party at the Democratic National Convention next month, will face Trump, who secured the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention last week.
“If Trump wins, then yes, there could be big changes to the Nuclear Consultative Group and U.S. attitudes toward North Korea and the ROK nuclear program,” said Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and WMD during the Obama administration.
“If Harris wins, I don’t think there’ll be big changes. I think there’ll be continuity,” he said.
Dennis Wilder, senior director for East Asia at the White House’s National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, said some changes are to be expected if the Republicans win. But “in the Democratic Party, the views are quite set, and the views are very positive on South Korea.”
Unlike Trump, who preferred personal engagement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Biden and Yoon have preferred strengthening their defense against North Korea through mechanisms such as the Nuclear Consultative Group.
The NCG is a bilateral body aimed at discussing joint nuclear planning to strengthen deterrence against North Korea. The U.S. and South Korean heads of the NCG signed nuclear deterrence and operations guidelines on July 11 in Washington.
During their meeting on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Washington the same day, Biden and Yoon referred to the guidelines as “the advancement of U.S.-ROK security cooperation” since they announced the Washington Declaration in April.
The Washington Declaration affirmed the U.S. use of nuclear weapons to defend South Korea and Seoul’s commitment toward nonproliferation.
Yoon touted Seoul-Washington ties as a “nuclear-based alliance” on July 16 after returning home from Washington.
But a possible reelection of Trump, who had not discounted a U.S. troop reduction in South Korea, has fueled already growing calls among the South Korean public and some lawmakers for Seoul to develop its own nuclear weapons as they became increasingly uncertain of the U.S. defense commitment.
Harry Harris, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea during the Trump administration, said, however, “Alliance[s] transcend individual leaders.”
“I foresee no reduction in cooperation and coordination between the U.S. and South Korea, in all aspects of our relationship and especially in the combined military relationship,” he added.
Joon Ho Ahn contributed to this report.
‘We failed’ - Secret Service chief on protecting Trump from assassination attempt
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
U.S. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle faced calls to resign from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle Monday as she testified about the agency’s failure to prevent the assassination attempt against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on concerns about security during the upcoming election season.
Smiling Faces
date: 2024-07-23, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Joe Biden has been forced out as the Democratic Party nominee for president.
The post Smiling Faces appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/22/smiling-faces/
Google’s plan to drop third-party cookies in Chrome crumbles
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ad giant promises to protect privacy, as critics say surveillance continues
Google no longer intends to drop support for third-party cookies – the online identifiers used by the ad industry to track people and target them with ads based on their online activities.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/google_cookies_third_party_continue/
Former Hart High Standout Honored at White House’s NCAA Sports Day
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The California State University, Los Angeles Golden Eagle volleyball team, which included middle blocker Shelby Grubbs from Newhall, was welcomed to the White House on Monday, alongside other national champions from the past academic year, to celebrate their accomplishments as part of NCAA Sports Day
https://scvnews.com/former-hart-high-standout-honored-at-white-houses-ncaa-sports-day/
What is a delegate? Here’s what happens now that Kamala Harris is running for president
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The LAist
As Vice President Kamala Harris enters the spotlight, California 496 delegates have significant — and largely unprecedented — power over what happens next. On Monday, night the California delegation put their full support behind their fellow Californian.
Sept. 7: ‘Silents Under the Stars’ Returns to Hart Park
date: 2024-07-22, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Friends of Hart Park - in partnership with the Natural History Museum and Los Angeles County Parks - is pleased to announce the return of their signature event “Silents Under the Stars” on Saturday, Sept. 7, starting at 6 p.m., at William S. Hart Park
https://scvnews.com/sept-7-silents-under-the-stars-returns-to-hart-park/
Firefighters halt progress on blaze near Castaic
date: 2024-07-22, from: The Signal
Firefighters were able to halt progress on a brush fire that broke out Monday afternoon near a construction site in Charlie Canyon, near Castaic, according to L.A. County Fire Department […]
The post Firefighters halt progress on blaze near Castaic appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/firefighters-battling-blaze-in-castaic/
Asking Tough Questions About Old Spanish Days in Santa Barbara
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A cultural walking tour offered three perspectives on the annual “Fiesta” celebration.
The post Asking Tough Questions About Old Spanish Days in Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Fed report: Nearly 1 in 3 Americans earning over $150,000 worry about making ends meet
date: 2024-07-22, from: The Signal
By Naveen Athrappully Contributing Writer Americans in upper-income groups are concerned about their ability to pay bills, with more than 15% of this demographic taking up additional jobs over the past […]
The post Fed report: Nearly 1 in 3 Americans earning over $150,000 worry about making ends meet appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Thank You, President Biden
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Message from the Chair On behalf of the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party, I want to express our sincere gratitude
The post Thank You, President Biden appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/22/thank-you-president-biden/
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Appoints Lt. Rich Brittingham as City of Carpinteria’s New Chief of Police Services
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Carpinteria, CA – July 22, 2024 – The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office and City of Carpinteria are pleased to announce
The post Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Appoints Lt. Rich Brittingham as City of Carpinteria’s New Chief of Police Services appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara Welcomes Five New Board Members
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA — Five accomplished members of the community have been elected to the Board of Directors for the Scholarship Foundation
The post Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara Welcomes Five New Board Members appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Surely Microsoft Isn’t Blaming EU for Its Problems?
date: 2024-07-22, from: Om Malik blog
The CrowdStrike fiasco has once again focused the spotlight on Microsoft’s Achilles’ heel — security, or rather the lack there of. I have been writing about technology long enough to know that nothing about the Windows operating system surprises me. Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal outlined a multitude of reasons why the “blue …
https://om.co/2024/07/22/surely-microsoft-isnt-blaming-eu-for-its-problems/
La Jefa del Departamento de Libertad Condicional del Condado de Santa Bárbara, Holly Benton, honra a los oficiales y el personal que ayudan a mantener a las comunidades seguras y apoyan a las personas involucradas en la justicia en la celebración de la Semana de Servicios de Libertad Condicional y Previos al Juicio de 2024
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
(SANTA BÁRBARA, CA)– La Jefa y Oficial del Departamento de Libertad Condicional, Holly Benton, anunció que la celebración anual de
The post La Jefa del Departamento de Libertad Condicional del Condado de Santa Bárbara, Holly Benton, honra a los oficiales y el personal que ayudan a mantener a las comunidades seguras y apoyan a las personas involucradas en la justicia en la celebración de la Semana de Servicios de Libertad Condicional y Previos al Juicio de 2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
County of Santa Barbara Probation Chief Holly Benton Honors Officers and Staff Who Help Keep Communities Safe and Support Justice-Involved Individuals in Celebration of Probation Services Week 2024
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
(SANTA BARBARA, CA)– Chief Probation Officer Holly Benton announced this year’s annual Probation and Pretrial Services Week celebration will take
The post County of Santa Barbara Probation Chief Holly Benton Honors Officers and Staff Who Help Keep Communities Safe and Support Justice-Involved Individuals in Celebration of Probation Services Week 2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Lake Fire 90 Percent Contained
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Ynez Valley gets back to business as usual, though an evacuation warning and orders are still in effect for some areas due to the 38,664-acre fire.
The post Lake Fire 90 Percent Contained appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/22/lake-fire-90-percent-contained/
COC Fall 2024 Offering Flexible Learning Options
date: 2024-07-22, from: SCV New (TV Station)
To help students balance education with their diverse work and family responsibilities, College of the Canyons will offer a wide variety of flexible learning options during the fall 2024 semester
https://scvnews.com/coc-fall-2024-offering-flexible-learning-options/
Single-family housing landlord agrees to pay California cities $20M over unpermitted work claims
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The LAist
Invitation Homes buys, renovates and rents out suburban houses. A lawsuit claims many SoCal renovations were not permitted. The company settled but maintains there was no wrongdoing.
US Secret Service chief admits to failure, will not resign
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
washington — The director of the U.S. agency charged with protecting the country’s president and former presidents admitted to the “most significant operational failure” in decades for the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle appeared before lawmakers Monday, nine days after a 20-year-old man climbed a roof adjacent to a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and fired multiple shots, injuring the former president and two rally attendees and killing another man.
“We failed,” Cheatle testified. “As director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency.”
“I will move heaven and earth to make sure an incident like July 13 never happens again,” she added.
Cheatle said a full accounting by the agency of its own failures would not be available for about 50 days, and repeatedly declined to answer questions, citing the ongoing internal investigation.
She also raised the ire of both Republicans and Democrats on the House Oversight Committee by refusing to resign.
“Because Donald Trump is alive, and thank God he is, you look incompetent,” said Republican Representative Mike Turner, who also chairs the House Intelligence Committee.
“If Donald Trump had been killed, you would have looked culpable,” Turner added. “Not only should you resign, but if you refuse to do so, President [Joe] Biden needs to fire you.”
Democrats on the committee were also incensed.
“This relationship is irretrievable,” said Oversight Committee ranking member Representative Jamie Raskin, joining a formal call by the committee’s chairman, Representative James Comer, for Cheatle to step down.
“I think the director has lost the confidence of Congress at a very urgent and tender moment,” Raskin said. “We need to very quickly move beyond this.”
Cheatle defended her decision to stay on at the agency despite the failure to protect former President Donald Trump from harm at the Pennsylvania rally.
“Like every Secret Service agent, we don’t shirk our responsibilities,” she said. “I will remain on and be responsible to the agency, to this committee, to the former president and to the American public.”
Details on precisely why a would-be assassin was able to get within 140 meters (150 yards) of Trump with a straight line of sight, however, were scarce.
Cheatle did not provide answers on how the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to climb the roof of a building adjacent to the Trump rally on July 13 without being stopped, why Secret Service agents were not positioned on the building, or why the rally was not stopped after Crooks was identified as a suspicious person well before Trump took the stage.
“Those are absolutely questions that we need to have answers to,” she said.
During questioning, the Secret Service director confirmed reports that Crooks was seen with a range finder, an optical device used to measure distances, prior to the shooting. But, she said, “at a number of our sites, especially when you’re at outdoor venues, a range finder is not a prohibited item.”
She also said that while Crooks was identified as a suspicious person, he was not characterized as a threat and that agents were not aware he had a weapon.
“If the [protection] detail had been passed information that there was a threat, the detail would never have brought the former president out on to the stage,” she said.
The Secret Service director sought to refute some rumors and conspiracy theories, saying the evidence suggests the shooter acted alone.
Cheatle likewise dismissed media reports that requests from Trump’s team for additional security had been denied.
“For the request in Butler, there were no requests that were denied,” she said, while being questioned.
“A denial of a request does not equal a vulnerability,” she added. “In generic terms, when [protection] details make a request, there are times that there are alternate ways to cover off on that threat or that risk.”
Monday’s hearing is just the first of several Congressional efforts to examine how the Secret Service failed to prevent the attempted assassination of former President Trump.
The director of the FBI, which is conducting its own investigation into the attempted assassination, is set to appear Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee.
The Secret Service is responsible for protecting President Joe Biden, Trump and 34 other individuals, as well as visiting foreign dignitaries, Cheatle told lawmakers.
The agency has about 8,000 employees, including uniformed officers and special agents. Cheatle said the goal is to hire another 1,000 people “in order to meet future and emerging needs.”
U.S. national security and law enforcement officials have been warning for years that the country is facing a heightened threat landscape.
Public assessments have warned the greatest threats come from lone offenders or small groups, often driven by a variety of personal grievances.
The most recent public assessment, issued this past September, also warned attacks could be directed at “government officials, voters, and elections-related personnel and infrastructure, including polling places, ballot drop box locations, voter registration sites, campaign events, political party offices, and vote counting sites.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-secret-service-chief-admits-to-failure-will-not-resign-/7708625.html
Lilbits: Google’s post-Chromecast media streamer
date: 2024-07-22, from: Liliputing
It’s been almost exactly 11 years since Google’s first-gen Chromecast began shipping. The $35 dongle was one of the smallest, cheapest device available that allowed you to stream content from Netflix, YouTube, and other sources to a TV. And it introduced a new way to do that: the original Chromecast didn’t come with a remote […]
The post Lilbits: Google’s post-Chromecast media streamer appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/lilbits-googles-post-chromecast-media-streamer/
Santa Clarita Announces Upcoming Lane Closures
date: 2024-07-22, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Beginning Monday, July 29, crews will start the construction of traffic circulation modifications on two intersections, part of the federally-funded, Traffic and Pedestrian Circulation and Safety Improvements Project
https://scvnews.com/santa-clarita-announces-upcoming-lane-closures/
Kamala Biographer: Look for Harris to “Go Back to Her Roots as a Prosecutor” in Taking on Trump and His MAGA Movement
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A conversation with Dan Morain on the strengths and weaknesses of Harris, who now stands at the white hot center of an unprecedented moment in American history.
The post Kamala Biographer: Look for Harris to “Go Back to Her Roots as a Prosecutor” in Taking on Trump and His MAGA Movement appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for NOAA’s JPSS-4 Mission
date: 2024-07-22, from: NASA breaking news
NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has selected SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) to provide launch services for NOAA’s JPSS-4 mission. The spacecraft is part of the multi-satellite cooperative Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) program, a partnership between NASA and NOAA. This mission is the next satellite in the program, […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-launch-services-contract-for-noaas-jpss-4-mission/
Mozilla Thunderbird finally gets system tray notifications
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
After 24 years, bug report finally gets fixed
Mozilla’s Thunderbird team has fixed a 24-year-old feature bug, bringing system tray mail notifications to GNOME and KDE desktop environments for Linux users.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/mozilla_thunderbird_ffix/
In Memoriam Maria de la Luz Renteria 1937–2024
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Growing up, somehow, everywhere my family went, somebody knew my grandparents, my aunts or uncles, or one of my dozens
The post In Memoriam Maria de la Luz Renteria <br> 1937–2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/22/in-memoriam-maria-de-la-luz-renteria-1937-2024/
Oct. 19: Save the Date for Circle of Hope’s Annual Tea
date: 2024-07-22, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Circle of Hope’s Annual Tea is one of Santa Clarita’s most anticipated fundraisers bringing awareness of breast cancer and raising funds to help those in our local community fighting this disease
https://scvnews.com/oct-19-save-the-date-for-circle-of-hopes-annual-tea/
What Should Apple Users Take Away from the CrowdStrike Debacle?
date: 2024-07-22, from: TidBITS blog
By now, you’ve heard of the CrowdStrike update bug that wreaked havoc on Windows-based PCs around the world. It didn’t affect Macs, and it’s unlikely that something similar could. What about iPhones and iPads? Will the industry learn from this debacle or continue with business as usual?
https://tidbits.com/2024/07/22/what-should-apple-users-take-away-from-the-crowdstrike-debacle/
Traffic Advisory Upcoming Lane Closures Part of the Traffic and Pedestrian Safety Improvement Project
date: 2024-07-22, from: City of Santa Clarita
Median Modifications to Begin July 29 Beginning Monday, July 29, crews will start the construction of traffic circulation modifications on two intersections, part of the federally-funded, Traffic and Pedestrian Circulation and Safety Improvements Project. The first location is Golden Valley Road at Valley Center Drive, where there will be median modifications, paving, grinding and overlay […]
The post Traffic Advisory Upcoming Lane Closures Part of the Traffic and Pedestrian Safety Improvement Project appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
A brief history of Dell UNIX
date: 2024-07-22, from: OS News
“Dell UNIX? I didn’t know there was such a thing.” A couple of weeks ago I had my new XO with me for breakfast at a nearby bakery café. Other patrons were drawn to seeing an XO for the first time, including a Linux person from Dell. I mentioned Dell UNIX and we talked a little about the people who had worked on Dell UNIX. He expressed surprise that mention of Dell UNIX evokes the above quote so often and pointed out that Emacs source still has #ifdef for Dell UNIX. Quick Googling doesn’t reveal useful history of Dell UNIX, so here’s my version, a summary of the three major development releases. ↫ Charles H. Sauer I sure had never heard of Dell UNIX, and despite the original version of the linked article being very, very old – 2008 – there’s a few updates from 2020 and 2021 that add links to the files and instructions needed to install, set up, and run Dell UNIX in a virtual machine; 86Box or VirtualBox specifically. What was Dell UNIX? in the late ’80s, Dell started a the Olympic project, an effort to create a completely new architecture spanning desktops, workstations, and servers, some of which would be using multiple processors. When searching for an operating system for this project, the only real option was UNIX, and as such, the Olympic team set out to developer a UNIX variant. The first version was based on System V Release 3.2, used Motif and the X Window System, a DOS virtual machine to run, well, DOS applications called Merge, and compatibility with Microsoft Xenix. It might seem strange to us today, but Microsoft’s Xenix was incredibly popular at the time, and compatibility with it was a big deal. The Olympic project turned out to be too ambitious on the hardware front so it got cancelled, but the Dell UNIX project continued to be developed. The next release, Dell System V Release 4, was a massive release, and included a full X Window System desktop environment called X.desktop, an office suite, e-mail software, and a lot more. It also contained something Windows wouldn’t be getting for quite a few years to come: automatic configuration of device drivers. This was apparently so successful, it reduced the number of support calls during the first 90 days of availability by 90% compared to the previous release. Dell SVR4 finally seemed like real UNIX on a PC. We were justifiably proud of the quality and comprehensiveness, especially considering that our team was so much smaller than those of our perceived competitors at ISC, SCO and Sun(!). The reviewers were impressed. Reportedly, Dell SVR4 was chosen by Intel as their reference implementation in their test labs, chosen by Oracle as their reference Intel UNIX implementation, and used by AT&T USL for in house projects requiring high reliability, in preference to their own ports of SVR4.0. (One count showed Dell had resolved about 1800 problems in the AT&T source.) I was astonished one morning in the winter of 1991-92 when Ed Zander, at the time president of SunSoft, and three other SunSoft executives arrived at my office, requesting Dell help with their plans to put Solaris on X86. ↫ Charles H. Sauer Sadly, this would also prove to be the last release of Dell UNIX. After a few more point release, the brass at Dell had realised that Dell UNIX, intended to sell Dell hardware, was mostly being sold to people running it on non-Dell hardware, and after a short internal struggle, the entire project was cancelled since it was costing them more than it was earning them. As I noted, the article contains the files and instructions needed to run Dell UNIX today, on a virtual machine. I’m definitely going to try that out once I have some time, if only to take a peek at that X.desktop, because that looks absolutely stunning for its time.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140296/a-brief-history-of-dell-unix/
Is Genomic Data the New Oil of the Middle East?
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: RAND blog
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE are rushing to develop genomic databases with associated health data. The challenge for the Gulf States will be to translate their skill in gathering data into skills to analyze it to create value.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/07/is-genomic-data-the-new-oil-of-the-middle-east.html
CrowdStrike Is Too Big to Fail
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: RAND blog
The CrowdStrike outage underscores that the global economy and U.S. national security are vulnerable to attack. Managing risks will require intragovernmental and perhaps international coordination.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/07/crowdstrike-is-too-big-to-fail.html
NASA Rocket Discovers New Energization Process in Upper Atmosphere
date: 2024-07-22, from: NASA breaking news
When it comes to discoveries about our upper atmosphere, it pays to know your surroundings. Using data from the Twin Rockets to Investigate Cusp Electrodynamics (TRICE-2) rocket launch, NASA scientist Francesca Di Mare and Gregory Howes from the University of Iowa studied waves traveling down Earth’s magnetic field lines into the polar atmosphere. These waves […]
OpenBSD workstation for the people
date: 2024-07-22, from: OS News
This is an attempt at building an OpenBSD desktop than could be used by newcomers or by people that don’t care about tinkering with computers and just want a working daily driver for general tasks. Somebody will obviously need to know a bit of UNIX but we’ll try to limit it to the minimum. ↫ Joel Carnat An excellent, to-the-point, no-nonsense guide about turning a default OpenBSD installation into a desktop operating system running Xfce. You definitely don’t need intimate, arcane knowledge of OpenBSD to follow along with this one.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140293/openbsd-workstation-for-the-people/
Global cops power down world’s ‘most prolific’ DDoS dealership
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
One arrest was made weeks ago but no word on the suspect’s identity yet
A DDoS-for-hire site described by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) as the world’s most prolific operator in the field is out-of-action following a law enforcement sting dubbed Operation Power Off.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/ddos_for_hire_shutdown/
‘S.W.A.T.’ Among Four Productions Filming in Santa Clarita
date: 2024-07-22, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita’s Film Office has released the list of four productions currently filming in the Santa Clarita Valley for the week of Monday, July 22 - Sunday, July
https://scvnews.com/s-w-a-t-among-four-productions-filming-in-santa-clarita/
Chandra Sees the Peacock’s Galaxy
date: 2024-07-22, from: NASA breaking news
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory launch, the Chandra team released this never-seen-before image of NGC 6872, a spiral galaxy in the Pavo (Peacock) constellation, on July 22, 2024. This image and 24 others, which all include data from Chandra, demonstrate how X-ray astronomy explores all corners of the universe. NGC […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/chandra-sees-the-peacocks-galaxy/
Roman Wall Built to Contain Spartacus’ Forces Discovered in Italy
date: 2024-07-22, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Archaeologists think the Roman army constructed it to contain the revolting gladiator in 71 B.C.E.
Common Blood Thinners Could Combat Snakebites, Preventing Tissue Damage and Amputations, Study Finds
date: 2024-07-22, from: Smithsonian Magazine
An estimated 400,000 people per year are permanently disabled because of snake venom, which can cause lesions and necrosis at the bite site
Meta’s mass layoff severance agreements illegal, says judge
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
You can’t offer a better deal in exchange for silence, argues NLRB
Separation agreements Meta gave to employees during mass 2022 layoffs are illegal, a US judge has decided, and the reasoning could have implications far beyond Zuckercorp.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/meta_layoff_severance_agreements/
Practical SVG is Now Free to Read Online
date: 2024-07-22, from: Chris Coyier blog
Back in 2016 I wrote a book called Practical SVG. Recently, the publisher, A Book Apart, closed shop. Now you can Read Practical SVG on the web, here on this site, for free. I always like how Mat’s book was online so now mine can join that cool club. I’ll echo what I say on […]
https://chriscoyier.net/2024/07/22/practical-svg-is-now-free-to-read-online/
US Senate panel takes first step towards possible Menendez expulsion
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The U.S. Senate Ethics Committee told Senator Bob Menendez, who was convicted of corruption last week, that it has taken the first step of a review that could end in his expulsion, the heads of the panel said on Monday.
“The Committee anticipates completing the adjudicatory review promptly,” Democratic Chairman Chris Coons and Republican Vice Chairman James Lankford said in the statement.
The senator’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Menendez has remained defiant in the face of calls for his resignation, including from the governor of New Jersey, his home state, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, after he was convicted on 16 criminal counts including bribery in federal court in New York. Menendez, who has represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate since 2006, has said he will appeal the verdict.
Menendez and his wife accepted cash, gold bars and car and mortgage payments as bribes from three businessmen in exchange for steering billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Egypt, where one of the businessmen had ties to government officials.
Menendez, a Democrat, is running for reelection as an independent. His party has nominated U.S. Representative Andy Kim to fill his seat in November.
VOA investigates accused Russian hacker at center of Ukraine cyber plot
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
After years of uncertainty, Google says it won’t be ‘deprecating third-party cookies’ in Chrome - Digiday
date: 2024-07-22, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Kayleigh Barber and Seb Joseph at Digiday]
“After much back and forth, Google has decided to keep third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. Turns out all the fuss over the years wasn’t in vain after all; the ad industry’s cries have finally been heard.”
Advertisers are rejoicing. In other words: this is bad.
It’s possible that Chrome’s “new experience” that lets users make an “informed choice” across their web browsing is really good. Sincerely, though, I doubt it. Moving this to the realm of power user preferences rather than a blanket policy for everyone means that very few people are likely to use it.
The result is going to be a continued trend of tracking users across the web. The people who really, really care will do the work to use the interface; everyone else (including people who care about privacy!) won’t have the time.
All this to help save the advertising industry. Which, forgive me, doesn’t feel like an important goal to me.
Case in point: Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox isn’t actually going away, and this is what Digiday has to say about it:
“This could be a blessing in disguise, especially if Google’s plan gets Chrome users to opt out of third-party cookies. Since it’s all about giving people a choice, if a bunch of users decide cookies aren’t for them, the APIs in the sandbox might actually work for targeting them without cookies.”
A “blessing in disguise” for advertisers does not read as an actual blessing to me.
<p>[<a href="https://digiday.com/marketing/after-years-of-uncertainty-google-says-it-wont-be-deprecating-third-party-cookies-in-chrome/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/after-years-of-uncertainty-google-says-it-wont-be-deprecating
Use any desktop graphics card with the Asus ROG Ally or ROG Flow with this open source eGPU dock
date: 2024-07-22, from: Liliputing
The Asus ROG XG Mobile line of graphics docks are designed to let you add a high-performance external GPU to the Asus ROG Ally handheld gaming PC or Asus ROG Flow line of thin and light gaming laptops. Since the dock uses a proprietary XG Mobile connector it can support data transfer speeds as high as […]
The post Use any desktop graphics card with the Asus ROG Ally or ROG Flow with this open source eGPU dock appeared first on Liliputing.
Kenyans say Biden pulling out of presidential race was the right move
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Nairobi — Kenyans watching the U.S. presidential race say they agree with President Joe Biden’s decision to not seek a second term. But some say that choosing a replacement capable of defeating his opponent, former president Donald Trump, is going to be a big task for the Democratic Party.
On the streets of Nairobi, many people told VOA that while Joe Biden’s decision to step out of the race must not have been easy, it was the right decision for him to make.
James Owor said he was expecting Biden to step out of the race.
“A bit unsurprising just based on what I’ve seen in the news. He was obviously not very well. It might not be such a bad idea to take a back seat. He didn’t seem to have the energy he had,” he said.
Biden’s announcement Sunday followed a rising chorus within the Democratic Party urging him to “pass the torch” amid his declining national poll numbers and concerns raised by his shaky performance in the debate against Trump last month.
Brenda Okwaro said what President Biden has done is commendable because he put the needs of his country and party ahead of his need to retain power.
“This is a move that should be emulated by our African presidents. You don’t have to come to the race a second time and you know you are not going to deliver the expectations of the people who elected you. But if you feel you’ve done your best in your first term, you can just get out of the race, go home and rest and focus on other things. You can even give advice to people who are in leadership,” she said.
Africa is home to some of the longest-serving presidents in the world, several of whom, like Biden, are in their 80s. Cameroon’s Paul Biya is 91.
Martin Andati said he believes that if Biden had stayed in the race, it would’ve been difficult for him to beat Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“Biden had to drop out because all the odds are against him, he can’t beat Trump. So, to salvage the image and give the Democratic Party an opportunity, he had no choice but to exit the race,” he said.
President Biden’s announcement comes a little more than three months before the U.S. elections. Andati said he believes the Democrats still have a chance, but it all depends on who they pick to replace Biden, who has endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris.
“The only challenge is that he exited and endorsed Kamala Harris. The numbers are not in favor of Kamala Harris. The question is do they retain Harris or what happens, those are the issues the Democratic party will have to grapple with,” he said.
Macharia Munene, a professor of history and international relations at United States International University in Nairobi, said that while it took Biden a little longer to drop out of the race, it was expected.
“The signs were that he was not up to par, and it took time before his friends and people he respects to come and tell him [it’s] in the best interest of the country and himself, his own image was to step aside so that he’s not embarrassed in November,” said Munene.
The friends who persuaded Biden to step aside reportedly included Kenya’s favorite former U.S. president, Barack Obama. Obama is not eligible for a comeback because of the two-term limit in the U.S. Constitution.
Munene said he believes Democrats will nominate Harris.
“The question will be who’ll be her running mate in the hope they will make a dent on Trump’s bandwagon. For Harris, it’s a good opportunity if she does not win, she will not lose very badly. Then, it’s a preparation for a future encounter in case she doesn’t make it, she would’ve created a base for herself for the next time to run, maybe in 2028,” said Munene.
Democratic lawmakers, governors and financial donors have already expressed their support for Harris, who says she will work to earn the trust and backing of democratic delegates. The party’s candidate will be formally approved late next month when the party hosts its national convention.
US supports non-political representation by Myanmar at ASEAN
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
State Department — A top State Department official says the United States supports non-political representation by Myanmar, also known as Burma, at this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ foreign ministers’ meetings in Vientiane, Laos.
This Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will head to Asia to hold talks with ASEAN officials, including discussions on the ongoing crisis in Burma. Officials say Washington also continues to engage with the Burmese democratic opposition groups.
In a phone briefing on Monday, Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told VOA that it is his understanding that there will be a representative from Burma at the meetings.
“It will be at the permanent secretary, non-political level,” Kritenbrink said. “We believe that any Burmese representation in the ASEAN meeting should be at a downgraded, non-political level, and that is what you will see in this coming week.”
In January, Myanmar’s military junta sent a senior official to attend an ASEAN foreign ministers’ retreat in Laos. Since it launched a coup in 2021 that ousted Myanmar’s democratically elected government, the junta has been barred from sending political appointees to high-level meetings of the Southeast Asian bloc.
Marlar Than Htaik, the permanent secretary of the foreign ministry under the control of Myanmar’s junta, attended meetings earlier this year on January 29.
Last week, more than 300 Burmese civil society organizations and revolutionary forces endorsed a letter sent to ASEAN’s secretary-general, Kao Kim Hourn, and other bloc officials.
The letter urged ASEAN to exclude Myanmar’s military junta members from all meetings and events and to ensure Myanmar is represented by its democratically elected leaders.
“We’ve spent probably even more time and effort in engaging the democratic opposition, various Burmese related groups inside and outside of Burma, and our commitment to those groups will continue going forward,” Kritenbrink told VOA.
He added the U.S. will continue to implement “unprecedented sanctions and other measures” to cut off the junta leaders’ ability to “acquire the funds necessary to continue to prosecute the atrocities.”
The U.S. also “strongly supports” the ASEAN five-point consensus on ending the Myanmar crisis.
Shortly after the military coup began, the leaders of nine ASEAN member states and the Myanmar junta chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, agreed to an immediate end to violence in the country. They also agreed to the appointment of a special envoy to visit Myanmar and to meet with all parties and promote dialogue and humanitarian assistance from ASEAN.
Despite those promises, the Southeast Asian bloc, has largely been divided over the conflict in Myanmar, analysts say.
“The most authoritarian members of ASEAN, which would be Laos and Cambodia, to an extent, are still sticking with the junta,” Priscilla Clapp, a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, told VOA.
Other members, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, have had some level of interaction with the Myanmar resistance.
“I would say that none of the ASEAN countries really understands fully what’s happening on the ground in Burma,” Clapp said in a recent interview.
She added that since ASEAN operates by consensus, achieving unanimity when dealing with the junta is difficult, given the differences among individual governments.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-supports-non-political-representation-by-myanmar-at-asean/7708459.html
What does Google Gemini do with your data? Well, it’s complicated…
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Big misconception is that data ingestion is occurring, we’re told
Google, after facing accusations about its AI model ingesting private files, says Gemini can read and summarize this type of sensitive data in real time – but only with Workspace users’ express permission. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/google_workspace_gemini/
Seed Funding Proposals Due November 19 This Year!
date: 2024-07-22, from: NASA breaking news
Since 2020, NASA’s Citizen Science Seed Funding Program (CSSFP) has launched 24 new projects to expand citizen science in professional research. This year, proposals are due by November 19, 2024, with optional Notices of Intent by October 1, 2024. The planning start date is May 1, 2025. Current grant recipients can request a No Cost Extension, but must submit requests more than 10 days before the grant’s end date. NASA looks forward to new proposals and supporting citizen science projects.
Trump’s Suspicious Pivot on EVs
date: 2024-07-22, from: Heatmap News
When former President Donald Trump addressed a crowd of non-union
autoworkers in Clinton Township, Michigan, last fall, he came with a
dire warning: “You’re going to lose your beautiful way of life.”
President Biden’s electric vehicle transition, Trump claimed, would be
“a transition to hell.”
Nearly 10 months later, Trump seems to have warmed up considerably to the idea of that hell. Despite denouncing the electric vehicle transition at countless interim rallies as a woke and all-but-certain “bloodbath” for American automakers and making endless jokes about range (including, admittedly, the banger: “The happiest moment for somebody in an electric car is the first 10 minutes … The unhappiest part is the next hour because you’re petrified that you’re not going to be finding another charger”), Trump’s tone on EVs has considerably softened in the past several weeks.
“I have no objection to the electric vehicle — the EV. I think it’s great,” Trump told Bloomberg earlier this month, shortly after promising to end Biden’s nonexistent EV mandate on “day one” in office. His improved mood still came with caveats (“They don’t go far enough; they’re very, very expensive; they’re also heavy”) but it seemed to be part of a larger trend. “I’m totally for [electric cars], whatever the market says,” Trump followed up with a crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, over the weekend. “And if it’s 10% of the market, 12%, 7%, 20% — whatever it is, it’s okay.”
Some of this fluctuation is normal for Trump. As Patrick George has written for Heatmap, the former president’s “knowledge of the workings of the auto industry is suspect on a good day”; when in office, Trump even hyped the now-defunct EV manufacturer Lordstown Motors.
But you don’t have to look too far for the answers to, Why this particular flip-flop? and Why now? Trump told us himself when he was in Arizona last month: “I’m a big fan of electric cars,” he said. “I’m a fan of Elon — I like Elon.” That is, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, the country’s biggest EV maker.
Bemused Tesla shareholders asked Musk about Trump’s change of heart on EVs, to which the CEO reportedly quipped, “I can be persuasive.” Trump’s new tune comes amid reports that the Tesla CEO pledged to give a new pro-Trump super PAC $45 million monthly through November. Trump isn’t even shy about hiding this link; in the same speech he claimed to be “totally for” EVs, he also bragged about the size of Musk’s donation.
Tesla shares popped 4% after Trump’s most recent comments, and the company is now big enough not to need the government subsidies that Trump would inevitably roll back. (Of course, it’s a different story for Tesla’s rivals.)
It’s not just that Trump’s support of EVs evidently has a price tag. It’s the unspoken suggestion of what other industry interests might be able to buy. You can bet fossil fuel executives haven’t missed the message — Trump has reportedly even pitched policy priorities like expanding oil drilling leases, threatening offshore wind, and undoing Biden’s protections for the Arctic behind closed doors with would-be oil and gas donors.
Voters usually want conviction and vision from their politicians—not someone taking best offers from the rich. But this is no ordinary election. Besides, there are still plenty of weeks to go until November. That’s plenty of time to change a mind.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/trump-ev-pivot-elon-musk
Nvidia said to be prepping Blackwell GPUs for Chinese market
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
But will they ship before the Biden administration tightens export controls?
Comment US trade restrictions on the sale of AI accelerators to China haven’t detered Nvidia from bringing its latest Blackwell architecture to the Middle Kingdom.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/nvidia_said_to_be_prepping/
Mismatch
date: 2024-07-22, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>My current life situation is not great. For a variety of reasons that aren't worth listing here. It's not like everything's bad. Some aspects of my life are great. But overall, I'd not say I'm in a happy place. Which is fine, or at least it would be fine if the root cause of the problem was known. Because when you know the cause of a problem you can work towards a solution. But up until the other day, I didn't know why I was feeling this way. And when you're in that situation, you feel hopeless and you can see things slowly spiralling out of control. But the other day, I had a realisation: a mismatch. That's why I feel this way. I realised that there's a mismatch between the way I see myself, the way I perceive myself as a person, and who I actually am. And that mismatch is driving me insane. There are things I know about myself, or at least I think I know about myself, that are important to me. And those things should play a role in the way I live my life. And yet because of this stupid mismatch, those things weren't playing a role and were superseded by other things I absolutely despise. And this mismatch manifests in subtle ways.</p>I am a morning person. I know it. I experimented with it and I know for a fact that I’m happier, more productive and live a better life when I wake up early. Not once, when up early, I thought “Why am I already awake? Shouldn’t I be sleeping?”. That’s just not a thought I have because I know how much more I enjoy life when I’m up early. But late at night? That’s a constant thought. I’m sitting there, reading something online and I constantly think “Why am I here reading this? I should be sleeping”. And in doing that, in staying up late, the mismatch gathers strength. It’s a vicious cycle.
That’s one example but I’m realising that this is the source of all my struggles. And it’s not much the fact that I am not the person I’d love to be—or that I think I am—but the fact that I don’t do the things that I should be doing in order to become that person. And it fucking sucks. It sucks because I know that’s going to be incredibly hard to correct that but at the same time I’m glad that at least now I know where the problem is and I can work towards a solution.
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Taboola + Apple News
date: 2024-07-22, from: Michael Tsai
Sara Fischer (Hacker News): 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.[…]The deal is also a recognition from Apple that growing its ad business will require a serious sales operation — one that, […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/22/taboola-apple-news/
CrowdStrike Update Causes BSOD
date: 2024-07-22, from: Michael Tsai
Rory Tingle et al.: The ‘most serious IT outage the world has ever seen’ sparked global chaos today - with planes and trains halted, the NHS disrupted, shops closed, football teams unable to sell tickets and banks and TV channels knocked offline. See also: Reddit, Hacker News, and Slashdot. Qasim Nauman (Hacker News): Frontier Airlines […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/22/crowdstrike-update-causes-bsod/
Swift 6 Announced
date: 2024-07-22, from: Michael Tsai
What’s new in Swift: We’ll briefly go through a history of Swift over the past decade, and show you how the community has grown through workgroups, expanded the package ecosystem, and increased platform support. We’ll introduce you to a new language mode that achieves data-race safety by default, and a language subset that lets you […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/22/swift-6-announced/
25 Images to Celebrate NASA’s Chandra 25th Anniversary
date: 2024-07-22, from: NASA breaking news
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its launch, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is releasing 25 never-before-seen views of a wide range of cosmic objects. These images, which all include data from Chandra, demonstrate how X-ray astronomy explores all corners of the universe. By combining X-rays from Chandra with other space-based observatories and telescopes on the ground, as […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/chandra/25-images-to-celebrate-nasas-chandra-25th-anniversary/
SCV SELPA Seeking Children with Disabilities
date: 2024-07-22, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Valley Special Education Local Plan Area (SCV SELPA) and its member districts actively seek out all individuals with exceptional needs, from birth to age 22, including infants and children parentally placed in private schools.
https://scvnews.com/scv-selpa-seeking-children-with-disabilities/
See How the Brain Responds to Psychedelic ‘Magic Mushrooms’
date: 2024-07-22, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new study mapped large, temporary changes in brain areas related to introspection and one’s sense of self, after participants took a dose of the drug psilocybin
This Bronze Age Ship Replica, Made From Reeds and Goat Hair, Just Sailed 50 Nautical Miles
date: 2024-07-22, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers constructed the vessel using a list of materials found on a 4,000-year-old clay tablet
قبور وراء النافذة / “Graves behind the Window” معذبو الأرض / “The Wretched of the Earth”
date: 2024-07-22, 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
Democrats run the California Capitol. When the party backs a bill, lawmakers pay attention
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The LAist
The California Democratic Party’s primary function is electing candidates. Lately, it’s become a lobbying powerhouse, taking positions on dozens of bills. The party usually gets its way.
Ground Antenna Trio to Give NASA’s Artemis Campaign ‘LEGS’ to Stand On
date: 2024-07-22, from: NASA breaking news
Background NASA’s LEGS can do more than help Earthlings move about the planet. Three Lunar Exploration Ground Sites, or LEGS, will enhance the Near Space Network’s communications services and support of NASA’s Artemis campaign. NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program maintains the agency’s two primary communications networks — the Deep Space Network and the […]
Heat Records Don’t Stand a Chance
date: 2024-07-22, from: Heatmap News
While the Northeast might start breathing more easily this week, the heat will intensify again in the West. Keep reading to discover what sweltering lies in store.
The Pacific Northwest takes its turn in the hot seat
The weekend brough intense heat to the Northwest, with many cities inching close to their all-time temperature records. While the potential for record-breaking heat is set to decrease throughout the week, temperatures in the region will remain above average, Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service, told me. Cities like Spokane, Washington and Boise, Idaho will continue to see triple-digit temperatures until at least Wednesday. In fact, on Thursday, Boise might see its 10th day in a row above 100 degrees, breaking the city’s record.
The region also struggled this weekend — and will continue to struggle this summer — with increased wildfire activity. On Saturday, residents of Baker County had to evacuate as a fire spread to residential areas. As of yesterday, Oregon’s firefighters were dealing with 81 active fires, burning through over 500,000 acres of the state. This week, a high pressure area combined with moisture coming from the Pacific Ocean may contribute to thunderstorms — but not enough precipitation to break the dry conditions in the region. The pattern will increase the likelihood of wildfires, as lighting might spark blazes.
- Looking Ahead: While the Northwest will experience lower temperatures near the end of the week, conditions will remain scorching. The brief respite comes with bad news for cities a little to the right on the map as the heat shifts eastward. Populations in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and others in the region will be the next ones to live through 100-plus degrees.
Relief is on the way for the mid-Atlantic
All across the East Coast temperatures shattered records last week. On July 16, thermometers in Washington, D.C. reached 104 degrees for just the 13th time in history. The next day the District capped off a run of four days with temperatures above 101 degrees, setting — you guessed it — a new record. And that was just the heat — factoring in humidity, the weather felt more like 108 degrees at its hottest.
In Maryland, summer camps had to move activities indoors for the campers’ safety. Last Monday, only 75 children attended the Horizon Day Camp in Baltimore County. Usually there are around 200 campers.
The heat wave also brought back transit issues across the region. Commuters in the D.C. area and in New York struggled through train cancellations and delays.
- Looking Ahead: Thankfully, more agreeable temperatures are in store for this week. “On any given day, the temperatures might be one or two degrees above average or below average,” Oravec told me. He added that other regions of the country will also get a break this week. Parts of the Central and Southern Plains will see below average temperatures, he told me.
Arizona is investigating hundreds of heat-related deaths, with no end in sight
In Arizona County alone, more than 300 deaths are being linked to record-breaking heat, NBC News reported on Thursday. Also, 23 deaths in the county have been confirmed to have been caused by heat or heat-related complications — and those numbers are up to date only through July 13, meaning they don’t include last week’s heat. But unlike other parts of the country, the Southwest will continue to broil this week.
“Highs will be closer to historical averages in Phoenix next week, but still above 110 in Las Vegas most days, which could challenge some daily records again later next week,” Dan Pydynowski, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, told me.
The West will get the worst
Sorry, California. According to Oravec, for at least the month of August, most of the extreme heat in the U.S. will remain concentrated in the West. That’s not the worst of it, even — conditions will also be very dry. “There’s really not a very good chance of rain across the West, especially across parts of the Northwest and the Great Basin where there’s going to be a lot of record high temperatures,” Oravec told me. When hot and dry conditions occur together, that means wildfires.
On the bright side, CNET reported that California’s investment in solar-powered batteries might have kept the state’s lights on during a heat wave that lasted through July 12. The batteries provided an additional 10,000 megawatts of power.
- Looking Ahead: Another scorching heat wave started to make its way to California on Thursday, and the extreme temperatures are set to continue. Up through the middle of the week, Northern California can expect consecutive days with temperatures in the triple digits. “The interior of California and the Intermountain West could once again challenge some daily record highs. For example, Fresno, California will have highs near 110 degrees F from Monday through Wednesday, which can challenge records those days,” Pydynowski told me. Still, the worst may be behind them — this new wave likely won’t be as intense as the one Californians just went through, he said..
Tourists’ favorite European countries bake in the heat
Sweltering heat continues to spread across Europe. Early last week, Italy placed several cities under its most severe heat alert. The country also reported an increased number of wildfires — two firefighters died while putting out a fire in Southern Italy.
That said, most of the extreme heat hitting the region seems to be in the past now. “If we are looking for extreme heat, chances of that being widespread across Italy to Ukraine looks to be on the low side for the rest of the summer,” Pydynowski told me. In the second half of August, temperatures might return to the high 90s for a while, at least.
In Greece, authorities shut down the Acropolis on Wednesday to protect tourists and workers from extreme temperatures. Earlier in the day, before the closure, Red Cross volunteers were distributing bottled water to those waiting in line for the attraction. Several Greek islands have also been dealing with severe water shortages, and some have resorted to desalinating seawater for drinking and banning the refilling of swimming pools. Next week, the interior and coastal regions of the country will continue to see temperatures around 95 degrees, with the possibility of reaching 104 degrees.
- Looking Ahead: Spain got its first heat wave of the summer this past week, and while things cooled off some this weekend, heat will pick up again this week, “with daytime high temperatures near [104 degrees] in some places such as Madrid by the middle of the week,” Pydynowski told me.
https://heatmap.news/climate/summer-2024-heat-records
Caltrans Announces Overnight Southbound I-5 Lane Closures in Castaic Area
date: 2024-07-22, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The California Department of Transportation announced the right lane of southbound Interstate 5 will be blocked overnight Monday, July 22 through Friday, July 26 from two miles north of Templin Highway (near the Whitaker Sand Shed) north of Castaic Lake Hughes Road for paving work
https://scvnews.com/caltrans-announces-overnight-southbound-i-5-lane-closures-in-castaic-area/
LA County Superior Court closes doors to reboot justice after ransomware attack
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Some rest for the wicked?
Los Angeles County Superior Court, the largest trial court in America, closed all 36 of its courthouses today following an “unprecedented” ransomware attack on Friday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/ransomware_la_county_superior_court/
Family of American who died in Syria files lawsuit against Assad regime
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The family of an American doctor who died while being held in Syria filed a lawsuit Monday against the Syrian government, accusing it of wrongful death and false imprisonment.
Majd Kamalmaz, a Syrian-born American psychotherapist, was treating refugees from war-torn Syria during the time of his abduction. U.S. officials said he was last seen in 2017 at a checkpoint manned by forces loyal to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus where he was visiting a family member.
His family received official confirmation of his death from the U.S. government in May.
“Today, on behalf of the Kamalmaz family, we have taken just the first step towards holding the Syrian regime accountable for its crimes against Majd Kamalmaz which culminated in his murder,” Kirby Behre, a lawyer representing the Kamalmaz family, said Monday in a statement.
The lawsuit was filed in a U.S. District Court in Washington, under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s “state sponsor of terrorism” exception, seeking compensatory damages for wrongful death, assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false imprisonment. The plaintiffs also seek punitive damages, bringing the total claim to at least $70 million, according to the 19-page court complaint.
Maryam Kamalmaz, the daughter of Majd Kamalmaz and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, says she hopes this legal action will help raise awareness about other cases that are like her father’s.
“There are hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have gone through this,” she told VOA in a phone interview. “I’m just hopeful it raises awareness about those people who are being killed at the hands of the Syrian government. Those innocent people never get a trial. They are being tortured and killed for no reason.”
Since the beginning of Syria’s conflict in 2011, more than 350,000 civilians have been killed and more than 13.5 million people have been displaced at home and abroad, according to the United Nations.
The U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic
said in a report in early July that 155,000 Syrians have been detained or forcibly disappeared since 2011. Rights groups blame the Syrian regime for most of the cases.
“We support Majd’s family and the families of all those who are missing or unjustly detained in Syria in their quest for accountability,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement in June.
“Even as we pay tribute to Majd today, we will keep fighting for all Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” he said.
Kamalmaz is one of several Americans who have disappeared in Syria, including journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in 2012 at a checkpoint near Damascus. The Syrian government denies kidnapping or holding Americans in its territories.
“We will not stop at filing a civil case,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based advocacy group that has been involved in the case.
“There needs to be a criminal investigation and a criminal case against the Assad regime for the torture and murder of Majd Kamalmaz,” he told VOA.
Moustafa said his group was ready to cooperate with U.S. government agencies to provide documentation, witness statements and evidence to support a criminal case against Syrian government officials.
Lawyer Behre said the Kamalmaz family too “is counting on the U.S. government to initiate criminal charges against Syria.”
Last week, U.S. authorities announced the arrest of a former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where alleged torture and abuse routinely took place. Samir Ousman al-Sheikh was taken into custody at Los Angeles International Airport, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Moustafa said his organization alerted several federal agencies about al-Sheikh and worked with them to build a case against him.
As a humanitarian worker, Maryam Kamalmaz said her father had dedicated his life to helping those in need. He had worked with survivors of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, victims of the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, and the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s.
“My father had a big heart who cared for everybody and wanted the best for everyone,” she said. “It’s been very hard without him and it’s a big loss to have him gone this way.”
MINISFORUM MS-A1 now available for $269 and up (Mini PC with AMD A5 socket, OCuLink, and 2.5 GbE LAN)
date: 2024-07-22, from: Liliputing
The MINISFORUM MS-A1 is a small desktop computer that packs a lot of functionality into a compact package: it has two 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports, support for up to three displays, and an OCuLink connector that an be used for high-speed connections to an external graphics dock or other acccessories. But there’s one other thing that […]
The post MINISFORUM MS-A1 now available for $269 and up (Mini PC with AMD A5 socket, OCuLink, and 2.5 GbE LAN) appeared first on Liliputing.
Eileen Collins Broke Barriers as America’s First Female Space Shuttle Commander
date: 2024-07-22, from: NASA breaking news
At the end of February 1998, Johnson Space Center Deputy Director James D. Wetherbee called Astronaut Eileen Collins to his office in Building 1. He told her she had been assigned to command STS-93 and went with her to speak with Center Director George W.S. Abbey who informed her that she would be going to […]
Cybercrooks crafting solo careers in wake of ransomware takedowns
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
More baddies go it alone as trust in big gangs withers, claims Europol
A fresh report from Europol suggests that the recent disruption of ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) groups is fragmenting the threat landscape, making it more difficult to track.…
Why Climate World Loves Kamala
date: 2024-07-22, from: Heatmap News
Kamala Harris quickly rang up endorsements from Democratic elected officials and convention delegates Sunday afternoon after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign, making Vice President Harris the likeliest Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States. Many of these plaudits came from figures in the climate policy space, but few were quite as vociferous as the one from Gina McCarthy, a director of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama and White House climate advisor under Biden.
“Vice President Harris would kick ass against Trump,” she said in a statement. “She has spent her whole life committed to justice, fighting for the underdog, and making sure that no one is above the law. She will fight every day for all Americans to have access to clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment.”
When Harris has had the chance to formulate climate action on her own — as the attorney general of California, as a U.S. senator, as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 — it has tended to be aggressive in its timelines for decarbonization and heavily focused on the harms that fossil fuel extraction and processing inflict on marginalized communities.
As vice president, however, she has been subsumed into the rollout of both the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. In some cases, the programs she’s pitched and praised have an organic connection to her own personal policy work — a grant program for electric school buses, for instance, the launch of which was the source of one of her more enduring Kamala-isms: “Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus?”
Assuming she wins the party’s nomination and then, finally, the White House, a Kamala Harris climate agenda would no doubt look much like Biden’s. To people who’ve been paying attention all along, however, there’s no reason to think she couldn’t push the country even more zealously toward decarbonizing.
For one, there’s the historical record. Harris not only endorsed Green
New Deal legislation in 2019, she also put out a climate plan during her
campaign that included $10 trillion of public and private spending and
called for reaching net-zero by 2045, achieving a carbon neutral
electric grid by 2030, no new fossil fuel leasing on public lands, and a
carbon pollution fee. While expansive, Harris’s plan was not the work of
someone like Jay Inslee, who has legislated on climate for years, or
Bernie Sanders, who was willing to simply outbid his fellow candidates
on progressive policy, but her climate policy was the process of
consulting with climate activists. In fact, her team had reached out to
Inslee’s after he dropped out for advice on climate, Jamal Raad,
Inslee’s campaign communications director, told me.
“If we jump
in the Wayback Machine, [Harris] was one of the most ambitious
presidential candidates in the 2020 primary cycle,” Justin Guay, program
director at Quadrature Climate Foundation, told me. “She had the largest
proposed spending plan of any candidate not named Bernie. She promised a
sum 10 times that of the greatest climate president we’ve ever had, Joe
Biden.” Importantly, he added, she focused on “sticks, not just
carrots,” including
investigating
and bringing lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, as she’d
done in California. This, he said, is “red meat for the climate base.”
Where she did stand out in the Senate, on the campaign trail, and in the Biden administration was in her focus on environmental justice, an issue combining green politics and racial justice that she used to reach out to the party’s left wing. By the time the she was picked to be President Biden’s vice presidential nominee, she had won the praise of both the youth-led Sunrise Movement (which has since protested outside her Southern California home and notably withheld its support from Biden during his reelection campaign) and Evergreen Action, a climate policy group built by former Inslee staffers. “She made environmental justice central to her climate plans on the presidential campaign,” said Raad, an Evergreen Action cofounder.
In the summer of 2019, she joined up with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a bill that would have required all climate-related legislation to undergo a review of its effect on “frontline communities,” those living adjacent to energy-related facilities, which tend to be disproportionately populated by poor people of color, and created offices of climate equity within the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget.
While this particular piece of legislation went nowhere, the motivating ideas have been all over the Biden-Harris White House’s policy agenda — in tax benefits directed toward projects in “energy communities;” in the Justice40 Initiative, which aims to direct 40% of climate and related spending to flow toward disadvantaged communities; and in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a.k.a. “green banks,” aimed at making climate-friendly investing more affordable.
That’s all great, Raad told me. But he also added, “What’s more relevant has been how central she’s made climate in her vice presidency as one of her top priorities.” Harris reached out to Raad and others in the run-up to the IRA’s passage, he said. “She held a town hall. She barnstormed the country. As far as folks wanting further momentum in the next presidency, that’s the more relevant development — that she wanted to be associated with climate action.”
Whatever her policy priorities as president, they would have to fit between the lines of what would be, at best, narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress, limited by the filibuster and reconciliation process, along with large policy shifts that any new administration will have to deal with, such as the expiration of key portions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2025. It will be a far distance from the heady days of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, when Harris eagerly participated in a bidding war between the candidates for the most aggressive and expansive climate program — less Frank Capra, more Alan J. Pakula.
“The reality is that the climate movement should focus as much, if not more, on creating the conditions that force politicians to act on climate as we do pushing for candidates with a hawkish climate policy platform to begin with,” Guay told me. “That was the greatest lesson from the Joe Biden era. He was no climate hawk when he entered the 2020 primaries,” but thanks to decades of unrelenting pressure and calls for more policy ambition, “he emerged the most powerful climate president we’ve ever had.”
Raad, too, emphasized the importance of realpolitik at this point in history. Having a president willing to put herself on the line for climate policy is important — “even if we don’t get major legislation done,” he told me. “We need to make sure the IRA is implemented effectively in the fullest way possible. We need a very careful eye towards writing regulations that are as effective as possible so they’re not getting overturned by Federalist Society judges.” Getting money out the door will be key, he said, “and that’s why we need an advocate in the White House.”
With assistance from Jeva Lange and Robinson Meyer.
https://heatmap.news/politics/kamala-harris-climate-record
Ransomware Attack Closes L.A. County Superior Court
date: 2024-07-22, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Superior Court of Los Angeles County will be closed Monday, July 22, as the Court works diligently to repair and reboot network systems that were severely impacted by a ransomware attack first detected the morning of Friday, July
https://scvnews.com/ransomware-attack-closes-l-a-county-superior-court/
Asus ROG Ally X is now available for $800 (handheld gaming PC with bigger battery, more RAM, and USB4)
date: 2024-07-22, from: Liliputing
The Asus ROG Ally was one of the first handheld gaming PCs to truly give the Steam Deck a run for its money when the Asus handheld launched last year, thanks to a good mix of processing power, design, and a competitive price point. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t room for improvement. So earlier […]
The post Asus ROG Ally X is now available for $800 (handheld gaming PC with bigger battery, more RAM, and USB4) appeared first on Liliputing.
Tinderbox 10.0
date: 2024-07-22, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/tinderbox-10-0/
Engineers fix ESA’s Gaia observatory from 1.5M kilometers away
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And you thought rolling back a borked update on a server down the hall was hard?
The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared the story of how engineers brought a mission back from the brink after a micrometeoroid strike, an equipment failure, and an impressive solar storm.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/engineers_fix_esas_gaia_observatory/
Mellel 6.0.5
date: 2024-07-22, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/mellel-6-0-5/
Fantastical 3.8.20 and Cardhop 2.2.19
date: 2024-07-22, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/fantastical-3-8-20-cardhop-2-2-19/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-22, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump Freaks Out Over Biden Leaving Race.
https://politicalwire.com/2024/07/22/trump-freaks-out-over-biden-leaving-race/
Jill On Money: Still coping with inflation
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
When the government released the June Consumer Price Index, there was a sigh of relief among economists. The overall CPI rate actually slid by 0.1 percent in June from May. For the 12 months through June, CPI increased by 3% and the core rate, which strips out food and energy, was up 3.3%, the smallest 12-month increase since […]
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/22/jill-on-money-still-coping-with-inflation/
One final July heat wave for Bay Area on tap as temps to approach 100 in hottest areas
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
The weather service issued an excessive heat warning and a heat advisory for areas of the region.
Trump assassination bid puts spotlight on US gun violence
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
The recent assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump should be a “wake-up call” on gun violence, says U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who recently declared firearm violence in America a “public health crisis.” But disagreements on how to resolve the matter prevail. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has more.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-assassination-bid-puts-spotlight-on-us-gun-violence-/7708001.html
Brr Wants A Job
date: 2024-07-22, from: brr, an Antarctica IT blog
8 months post-ice, it’s time for something new!
https://brr.fyi/posts/brr-wants-a-job
California’s power grid stood up to a recent heat wave but summer is far from over
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
California grid operators are still on the lookout for potential problems as the summer wears on.
NASA Research Volunteers to Begin Next Simulated Mission to Mars
date: 2024-07-22, from: NASA breaking news
NASA selected a new team of four research volunteers to participate in a simulated mission to Mars within HERA (Human Exploration Research Analog) at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Erin Anderson, Sergii Iakymov, Brandon Kent, and Sarah Elizabeth McCandless will begin their simulated trek to Mars on Friday, Aug. 9. The volunteer crew […]
Russia convicts 2nd American journalist in secret trial
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Trial of Alsu Kurmasheva a ‘mockery of justice’ says RFE/RL president as Russia sentences journalist to more than 6 years in jail
https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-convicts-2nd-american-journalist-in-secret-trial/7707995.html
Websites clamp down as creepy AI crawlers sneak around for snippets
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Shrinks training pool, but hurts services like the Internet Archive
The internet is becoming significantly more hostile to webpage crawlers, especially those operated for the sake of generative AI, researchers say.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/ai_training_data_shrinks/
Here’s how technology’s tumble cooled California’s growth
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
The stall of one industry – creator of cutting-edge products and sky-high salaries – is roughly California’s entire GDP slowdown.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/22/heres-how-technologys-tumble-cooled-californias-growth/
Broken trust: Cal State is mending how it handles sexual discrimination cases
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
Changes are underway one year after scathing audits showed how the California State University system failed to handle reports of sexual discrimination, harassment and assault in its Title IX offices.
After the CrowdStrike outage and Biden’s big announcement, how’s the economy adjusting?
date: 2024-07-22, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Economic markets take a beat to adjust to Biden’s announcement that he won’t seek re-election; what the entire cybersecurity industry can learn from Friday’s CrowdStrike outage; and a new law makes it easier to pull emergency cash from a retirement account.
When ChatGPT summarises, it actually does nothing of the kind.
date: 2024-07-22, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Gerben Wierda at R&A IT Strategy & Architecture]
“ChatGPT doesn’t summarise. When you ask ChatGPT to summarise this text, it instead shortens the text. And there is a fundamental difference between the two.”
The distinction is indeed important: it’s akin to making an easy reader version, albeit one with the odd error here and there.
This is particularly important for newsrooms and product teams that are looking at AI to generate takeaways from articles. There’s a huge chance that it’ll miss the main, most pertinent points, and simply shorten the text in the way it sees fit.
<p>[<a href="https://ea.rna.nl/2024/05/27/when-chatgpt-summarises-it-actually-does-nothing-of-the-kind/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/when-chatgpt-summarises-it-actually-does-nothing-of-the-kind
Why Delta is still canceling flights as other airlines return to normal
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
Three days after a computer update problem caused more than 5,000 flight cancellations around the world, things are pretty much back to normal — except at Delta Air Lines.
US Secret Service chief: ‘We failed’ to stop attack on Trump
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
DHS Has a DoS Robot to Disable Internet of Things ‘Booby Traps’ Inside Homes
date: 2024-07-22, from: 404 Media Group
“NEO carries an onboard computer and antenna array that will allow officers the ability to create a ‘denial-of-service’ event to disable ‘Internet of Things’ devices that could potentially cause harm while entry is made.”
https://www.404media.co/dhs-has-a-ddos-robot-to-disable-internet-of-things-booby-traps-inside-homes/
US, Japan to hold security talks on July 28
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
TOKYO — Foreign and defense ministers from Japan and the United States will hold security talks in Japan on July 28 in an effort to push forward what U.S. President Joe Biden called a historic upgrade in the alliance.
The so-called “2+2” talks will cover extended deterrence, a term used to describe the U.S. commitment to use its nuclear and conventional forces to deter attacks on allies, Japan’s foreign ministry said on Monday.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also hold a bilateral meeting with his Japanese counterpart Yoko Kamikawa during the visit, while U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will hold three-way talks with his counterparts from Japan and South Korea.
Tokyo and Washington in April announced a series of initiatives to strengthen their ties in what Biden called the most significant upgrade since the U.S.-Japan alliance, which was first signed in 1951, began.
These include efforts to deepen cooperation between defense industries and upgrade military command structures to improve coordination, as both countries look to deter regional threats they see emanating from China, North Korea and Russia.
“These historic 2+2 talks will cement our shift from a focus on Alliance protection to one of Alliance projection,” U.S. ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said.
“Through a transformation of the command structure of the United States forces in Japan, aligned with Japan’s own groundbreaking launch of its joint command next March, the Alliance will be ready and equipped to respond to the security challenges of the Indo-Pacific for decades to come.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/7707913.html
Homeland Security secretary names independent panel to review Trump assassination attempt
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Panel will review Secret Service policies and procedures before, during and after July 13 assassination attempt
Vacuum of Space to Decay Sooner Than Expected (but Still Not Soon)
date: 2024-07-22, from: Quanta Magazine
One of the quantum fields that fills the universe is special because its default value seems poised to eventually change, changing everything.The post Vacuum of Space to Decay Sooner Than Expected (but Still Not Soon) first appeared on Quanta Magazine
What can a Los Gatos man do to bring native bees to his yard?
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
And what’s the best approach for backyard yellowjackets?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/22/what-can-a-los-gatos-man-do-to-bring-native-bees-to-his-yard/
Oracle coughs up $115M to make privacy case go away
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Big Red agrees not to capture personal details after two-year class action
Oracle has agreed to cough up $115 million to settle a two-year class action lawsuit that alleged misuse of user data.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/oracle_settles_privacy_case/
San Francisco homicide: Man fatally shot in daylight brawl
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
The man was shot around 2:30 p.m. Friday on Sixth Street between Market and Mission streets.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/22/san-francisco-homicide-man-fatally-shot-in-daylight-brawl/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-22, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Democrats Rally Around Harris As Trump Splutters.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/democrats-harris-trump-biden
Heat-related deaths in Texas climb after hurricane left millions without power
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Spring, Texas — As the temperature soared in the Houston-area home Janet Jarrett shared with her sister after losing electricity in Hurricane Beryl, she did everything she could to keep her 64-year-old sibling cool.
But on their fourth day without power, she awoke to hear Pamela Jarrett, who used a wheelchair and relied on a feeding tube, gasping for breath. Paramedics were called but she was pronounced dead at the hospital, with the medical examiner saying her death was caused by the heat.
“It’s so hard to know that she’s gone right now because this wasn’t supposed to happen to her,” Janet Jarrett said.
Almost two weeks after Beryl hit, heat-related deaths during the prolonged power outages have pushed the number of storm-related fatalities to at least 23 in Texas.
The combination of searing summer heat and residents unable to power up air conditioning in the days after the Category 1 storm made landfall on July 8 resulted in increasingly dangerous conditions for some in America’s fourth-largest city.
Beryl knocked out electricity to nearly 3 million homes and businesses at the height of the outages, which lasted days or much longer, and hospitals reported a spike in heat-related illnesses.
Power finally was restored to most by last week, after over a week of widespread outages. The slow pace in the Houston area put the region’s electric provider, CenterPoint Energy, under mounting scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared.
While it may be weeks or even years before the full human toll of the storm in Texas is known, understanding that number helps plan for the future, experts say.
What is known about the deaths so far?
Just after the storm hit, bringing high winds and flooding, the deaths included people killed by falling trees and people who drowned when their vehicles became submerged in floodwaters. In the days after the storm passed, deaths included people who fell while cutting limbs on damaged trees and heat-related deaths.
Half of the deaths attributed to the storm in Harris County, where Houston is located, were heat related, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
Jarrett, who has cared for her sister since she was injured in an attack six years ago, said her “sassy” sister had done everything from owning a vintage shop in Harlem, New York, to working as an artist.
“She had a big personality,” Jarrett said, adding that her sister had been in good health before they lost electricity at their Spring home.
When will a complete death toll be known?
With power outages and cleanup efforts still ongoing, the death toll likely will continue to climb.
Officials are still working to determine if some deaths that have already occurred should be considered storm related. But even when those numbers come in, getting a clear picture of the storm’s toll could take much more time.
Lara Anton, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which uses death certificate data to identify storm-related deaths, estimated that it may not be until the end of July before they have even a preliminary count.
In the state’s vital statistics system, there is a prompt to indicate if the death was storm related and medical certifiers are asked to send additional information on how the death was related to the storm, Anton said.
Experts say that while a count of storm-related fatalities compiled from death certificates is useful, an analysis of excess deaths that occurred during and after the storm can give a more complete picture of the toll. For that, researchers compare the number of people who died in that period to how many would have been expected to die under normal conditions.
The excess death analysis helps count deaths that might have been overlooked, said Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
What do different toll numbers tell us?
Both the approach of counting the death certificates and calculating the excess deaths have their own benefits when it comes to storms, said Gregory Wellenius, director of the Boston University School of Public Health’s Center for Climate and Health.
The excess death analysis gives a better estimate of the total number of people killed, so it’s useful for public health and emergency management planning in addition to assessing the impact of climate change, he said.
But it “doesn’t tell you who,” he said, and understanding the individual circumstances of storm deaths is important in helping to show what puts individual people at risk.
“If I just tell you 200 people died, it doesn’t tell you that story of what went wrong for these people, which teaches us something about what hopefully can we do better to prepare or help people prepare in the future,” Wellenius said.
Hemingway fans celebrate the author’s 125th birthday
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/hemingway-fans-celebrate-the-author-s-125th-birthday/7707920.html
Wish You Were Here: Cycling through Portugal and Spain
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
A Sunnyvale couple’s recent trip to Spain and Portugal included plenty of bicycle adventures.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/22/wish-you-were-here-cycling-through-portugal-and-spain/
TasteFood: Grilled steak with an herbaceous Portuguese sauce
date: 2024-07-22, from: San Jose Mercury News
Grilled coulotte steak gets saucy with a Portuguese salsa that’s similar to chimichurri.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/22/tastefood-grilled-steak-portuguese-sauce/
EU gave CrowdStrike the keys to the Windows kernel, claims Microsoft
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Was a 2009 agreement on interoperability to blame?
Did the EU force Microsoft to let third parties like CrowdStrike run riot in the Windows kernel as a result of a 2009 undertaking? This is the implication being peddled by the Redmond-based cloud and software titan.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/windows_crowdstrike_kernel_eu/
Musket Balls Fired in Early Revolutionary War Battle Unearthed in Concord
date: 2024-07-22, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Colonial militiamen fired the lead balls on April 19, 1775—and likely missed their mark
Laptop Ban? In 2024? What About My Facetop?
date: 2024-07-22, from: 500-ish blog, A collection of posts by M.G. Siegler of around 500 words in length.
US envoy to UN visits Haiti, reaffirms aid pledge amid security, humanitarian crisis
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Beyond Trans Archives, Beyond Trans Medicine
date: 2024-07-22, from: Care
<p>“Where does such profound love, overflowing with significance, appear in formalized, statistical data indexing and what people’s post-treatment lives mean to the world? What does it mean, to medical history or analysis, to begin with people’s relations rather than their records?”</p>https://logicmag.io/issue-21-medicine-and-the-body/beyond-trans-archives-beyond-trans-medicine
Examining Kamala Harris’ Climate Credentials
date: 2024-07-22, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: England’s wet and cold summer has been linked to a concerning decline in insect populations • At least 11 people died in northern China after torrential rain caused a bridge to collapse • The West Coast’s record-breaking heat wave will last at least through Wednesday.
THE TOP FIVE
- A quick look at Kamala Harris’ climate record
President Biden announced yesterday he will not run for re-election and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, for the 2024 Democratic ticket. Tributes from his colleagues poured in quickly, with many hailing Biden’s decision as brave and patriotic, and others recounting his accomplishments during three-and-a-half years in office, including his climate record. “Biden will leave office with easily the strongest climate record of any president — and one of the stronger environmental records, generally, in decades,” wrote Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer. Biden signed the largest investment in clean energy and decarbonization in American history, oversaw a revitalization of American industrial strategy, passed the bipartisan infrastructure law and CHIPS and Science Act (both of which funded or expanded climate-friendly programs), and moved quickly to regulate greenhouse gas emissions using executive authority. “Democrats had tried and failed for 30 years to pass a climate law through the Senate,” Meyer said. “Biden succeeded.”
Would a President Harris carry on this legacy? As Bloomberg noted, her own climate agenda as a presidential candidate in 2019 was more ambitious even than Biden’s. She called for a carbon tax, a ban on fracking and fossil fuel leases on public lands, and $10 trillion in spending to curb greenhouse gas emissions. She also was an early co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. She supported a pollution fee, a crackdown on fossil fuel companies, and as a top attorney in California, spearheaded several investigations into and lawsuits against major oil companies. She has also been a vocal advocate for protecting frontline and disadvantaged communities bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.
- Biden awards $4.3 billion in grants to fund community-driven climate
solutions
The Biden administration this morning announced the 25 recipients of more than $4 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to “implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis, reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition.” The EPA estimates that the projects, when taken together, would have the greenhouse gas reduction potential equivalent to 971 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2050. The grants will fund projects across 30 states and one Tribe. The largest grant, of $500 million, will go to California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District project to decarbonize transportation and goods movement in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Other large-sum recipients include:
- The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection ($450 million to fund heat pump installations)
- The Illinois EPA ($430 million for decarbonizing industry and buildings, freight electrification, agriculture, and renewables deployment)
- The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources ($421 million for carbon sequestration through natural and working lands)
- The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection ($396 million for industrial decarbonization)
- The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy ($300 million for climate-smart agriculture)
The CPGR program was created under the Inflation Reduction Act. EPA administrator Michael Regan said these funds would be allocated by the fall. As E&E News noted, this timeline “would make them virtually impossible for a new administration to rescind.”
- Rivian opens EV ‘charging outpost’ near Yosemite
EV startup Rivian opened a first-of-its-kind “charging outpost” – or, as Engadget calls it, a “crunchy not-gas station.” It’s a rest stop, basically, but instead of filling up with gas you top up your EV charge and get a chance to use the bathroom, grab some snacks, and even do some reading at the onsite library. The outpost, which has five DC fast chargers, is located about 24 miles outside of Yosemite National Park in Groveland, California, and sits on the site of an old gas station. It’s the first of what Rivian hopes will be many such EV rest stops near national parks and other high-traffic areas.
Rivian
- Azerbaijan suggests fossil fuel extraction can continue under Paris
Agreement
Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s COP29 climate summit, has set up an international fund to pool money from polluting countries and governments to help poorer countries adapt and build resilience to the climate crisis. Contributions to the “Climate Finance Action Fund” will be voluntary and will only go ahead if pledges reach $1 billion collectively between at least 10 countries. Meanwhile, “negotiations on the core outcome of the summit — a new, large-scale financial aid target to support climate action in developing countries — remain deadlocked,” Politico reported. The fund is one of 14 non-binding initiatives Azerbaijan announced on Friday, none of which “directly address” fossil fuel use. At a press conference on the same day, the summit’s chief executive Elnur Soltanov suggested that reducing fossil fuel extraction was not necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. “We should somehow delineate between a 1.5C alignment and this view about hydrocarbons,” Soltanov said. Azerbaijan is heavily dependent on income from fossil fuels, which make up more than 90% of its exports.
- Trump says he is ‘totally for’ EVs
Former President Donald Trump over the weekend changed his tone slightly on electric vehicles, telling a crowd at a rally in Michigan that he’s “totally for” EVs so long as they don’t make up 100% of the market. He said something similar at an event last month, announcing he was a “big fan” of EVs: “I think a lot of people are going to want to buy electric cars but…if you want to buy a different type of car you have to have a choice—some people need to go far.”
Trump has repeatedly vowed to end the (non-existent) EV “mandate” if he’s elected in November and has a history of complaining that EVs run out of battery. A report in The Wall Street Journal suggests his blossoming “bromance” with Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be inspiring the messaging shift. The two men have reportedly been chatting behind the scenes, and Musk has endorsed Trump. “He’s very nice when he calls,” Musk told an investor recently, adding that he can be very persuasive. “I was like, you know, electric cars I think are pretty good for the future, America’s the leader in electric cars…buy America.” At the Michigan event over the weekend Trump said he “loves” Elon.
THE KICKER
“We can turn a wrench in an oil and gas field to reduce methane emissions. There’s no wrench we can turn to slow emissions from the Amazon or permafrost.” –Rob Jackson, author of a new book on climate solutions called Into the Clear Blue Sky
https://heatmap.news/politics/kamala-harris-climate-change-record
A look at Biden’s economic legacy
date: 2024-07-22, from: Marketplace Morning Report
On the heels of the President’s announcement that he won’t seek re-election, assessing how history will remember the Biden economy. Plus, continued fallout from Friday’s CrowdStrike outage and global tech meltdown
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/a-look-at-bidens-economic-legacy
Two Russians sanctioned over cyberattacks on US critical infrastructure
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Supposed hacktivist efforts previously linked to the Kremlin’s GRU
Flying under the radar on Clownstrike day last week, two members of the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn (CARR) hacktivist crew are the latest additions to the US sanctions list.…
Why homelessness has more than doubled in LA County’s once-affordable northern desert
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The LAist
The Antelope Valley has seen a worrisome rise in homelessness. Most are living unsheltered in inhospitable conditions.
Has homelessness changed in your neighborhood since Mayor Bass took office?
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The LAist
As homelessness continues to be a top concern for Angelenos, LAist wants to hear from you. Tell us what’s shifted — or not — in your neighborhood.
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/los-angeles-homelessness-survey-in-your-neighborhood
Confronting Impossible Futures
date: 2024-07-22, from: One Useful Thing
We shouldn’t be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/confronting-impossible-futures
New Yorkers react to Biden exiting presidential race
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Hours after 81-year-old President Joe Biden announced he was abandoning his bid for reelection and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the nomination, VOA spoke with Americans on the streets of New York about their reactions to the historic news.
https://www.voanews.com/a/new-yorkers-react-to-biden-exiting-presidential-race-/7707770.html
Democrats face new challenges after President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from 2024 campaign
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
After weeks of speculation and intense pressure from within his own Democratic Party, U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor sent shockwaves across the nation Sunday. VOA’s Richard Green has more on how Biden’s withdrawal reshapes the 2024 race for the White House.
Investors react to Biden leaving the Presidential race
date: 2024-07-22, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: After Joe Biden announced he’s dropping out of the presidential race, Kamala Harris has secured the backing of some of the Democrats’ biggest donors; so what are investors thinking? Students in Bangladesh continue their protests a day after the Supreme Court eliminated most of the government job quotas they were fighting against. In Spain, concerns about tourism’s impact on locals has sparked protests on the island of Mallorca, with hundreds of people taking to the streets.
The Clacktop: A Thinkpad Yoga with a mechanical keyboard
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Impressively home-made, this is the sort of laptop we wish we could buy new
A Thinkpad Yoga, modded with a mechanical keyboard, may serve as a wake-up call to both Lenovo and Framework.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/clacktop_modded_thinkpad_yoga/
Israel’s Netanyahu walks political tightrope on Washington trip following Biden’s exit from race
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Jerusalem — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left for Washington on Monday, leaving behind a brutal war to make a politically precarious speech before the U.S. Congress at a time of great uncertainty following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race.
With efforts ongoing to bring about a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, rising concerns about the war spreading to Lebanon and Yemen, and the U.S. in the midst of a dizzying election campaign, Netanyahu’s speech has the potential to cause disarray on both sides of the ocean.
The risks only increased with Biden’s decision Sunday to drop out of the race for president, especially since the choice of a replacement Democratic nominee — and the potential next American leader — are still up in the air.
Before stepping on the plane, Netanyahu said he would emphasize the theme of Israel’s bipartisanship in his speech and said Israel would remain America’s key ally in the Middle East “regardless who the American people choose as their next president.”
“In this time of war and uncertainty, it’s important that Israel’s enemies know that America and Israel stand together,” he said, adding that he will meet Biden during his trip and thank him for his support for Israel.
A person familiar with Biden’s schedule confirmed Sunday that the president will host Netanyahu at the White House. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said the exact timing of the meeting has not been established because Biden is recovering from COVID-19.
Netanyahu is scheduled to address Congress on Wednesday. He is also expected to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Netanyahu will deliver his congressional address with an eye on several audiences: his ultranationalist governing partners, the key to his political survival; the Biden administration, which Netanyahu counts on for diplomatic and military support; and Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which could offer Netanyahu a reset in relations if he is reelected in November.
His words risk angering any one of those constituencies, which the Israeli leader cannot afford if he hopes to hold on to his tenuous grip on power.
“There are a few land mines and pitfalls on this trip,” Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israel relations at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, said before Biden’s withdrawal. “He is thought of as a political wizard who knows how to escape from traps. I am not sure he still knows how to do that.”
It is Netanyahu’s fourth speech to Congress — more than any other world leader. During his address, his far-right governing partners will want to hear his resolve to continue the war and topple Hamas.
The Biden administration will look for progress toward the latest U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal and details on a postwar vision. Republicans hope Netanyahu besmirches Biden and bolsters the GOP’s hoped-for perception as Israel’s stalwart supporter.
The war, which was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, has tested Israel’s ties with its top ally as never before.
The Biden administration has stood staunchly beside Israel. But it has grown increasingly alarmed about the conduct of the Israeli military, the continued difficulties of getting humanitarian aid into Gaza, especially after the short-lived U.S. military pier off Gaza coast, as well as Israel’s lack of postwar plans and the harm to civilians in Gaza. Similar concerns will likely persist if Americans elect a new Democratic president.
Biden earlier this year froze the delivery of certain bombs over fears they would be used in Israel’s incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which at the time sheltered more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
The U.S. abstained from a United Nations Security Council vote in March that called for a cease-fire and the release of hostages but did not link the two. Netanyahu called the decision a “retreat” from a “principled position” by Israel’s ally.
Biden has had to walk a fine line of his own. He has faced harsh criticism from progressive Democrats and many Arab Americans. Even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking elected U.S. Jewish official, lambasted Netanyahu in March for his handling of the war.
Some Democrats will likely demonstrate their anger toward Biden and Netanyahu by skipping Wednesday’s speech. Netanyahu is also likely to be hounded by pro-Palestinian activists during his trip.
The last time Netanyahu spoke to Congress in 2015 was at the invitation of the Republican Party. The trip drove Israeli-American politics deep into the partisan divide as Netanyahu railed against then-President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.
Netanyahu has not shied away from making Israel a partisan issue. With his nationalist conservative ideology, he has been perceived as throwing his support behind Republican candidates in the past, rankling Democrats and Israelis who want to keep the U.S.-Israel relationship bipartisan.
It’s unclear if he will meet Trump. If there is a meeting, it could expose Netanyahu to accusations that he is once again taking sides. But if he doesn’t meet with Trump, the former president could feel slighted.
The speech also offers Netanyahu opportunity. He will be able to show Israelis that despite the tensions with the Biden administration, U.S. support for him remains ironclad.
“He wants the Israeli public to believe that he is very much still very welcome in the United States. And this shows that the American people are with him,” said David Makovsky, director of the program on Arab-Israel Relations at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
For critics of Netanyahu, that embrace is unacceptable and grants legitimacy to a deeply polarizing leader whose public support has plummeted. Netanyahu faces widespread protests and calls to resign over the failures of Oct. 7 and his handling of the war.
In a letter to Congress, 500 Israeli writers, scholars and public figures expressed their dismay over the invitation to Netanyahu, saying he will use the platform to advance misguided policies that align with his far-right governing partners.
“His only interest is preserving his own power,” they wrote. “Does the United States Congress wish to support such a model of cynical and manipulative leadership in these times?”
Israeli media reported that Netanyahu will be joined by rescued hostage Noa Argamani and her father. But for many of the families of hostages held in Gaza, the trip is an affront.
“This is not the time for trips,” Ayelet Levy Shachar, whose daughter Naama was kidnapped on Oct. 7, told reporters.
“Netanyahu: First a deal, then you can travel.”
Biden’s decision to bow out goes viral on Chinese social media
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Taipei, Taiwan — The news of U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign quickly became a trending topic on Chinese social media platforms Monday.
In a statement released on Sunday afternoon U.S. time, Biden announced his decision to not run for a second term and vowed to focus his energy on fulfilling his duties as president.
So far, the Chinese government has remained tight lipped about the decision. At a regular press briefing on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning declined to comment, and said the “presidential election is an internal affair of the United States.”
Online, however, the entry “Biden withdrew from the election” attracted more than 400 million views on the China’s microblogging site Weibo and tens of thousands of comments.
Other topics went viral as well. Topics such as “Zelensky respects Biden’s decision to withdraw from the election,” “Harris praised Biden,” and “Trump thinks Harris is easier to beat” were all in the top 20 searches Monday on Weibo, which is similar to the social media site X.
Several major media outlets in China, including the state-run Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily, and the Global Times, covered Biden’s withdrawal from the race extensively.
Many Chinese netizens expressed the view that Biden’s decision ensures that Trump will win the election in November while some said things have suddenly changed for Ukraine, referring to Trump’s repeated criticism of U.S. military aid to Ukraine. “Tonight will be a sleepless night for Zelensky,” Chinese netizen “Yo-Huai-To-Bi” from northeastern Shandong province wrote on Weibo.
Other Chinese netizens argued that the United States will continue to compete with China and try to contain the country’s rise regardless of who wins the election in November.
“We shouldn’t be too happy about this news because Trump will likely continue Biden’s strategies toward China and he might roll out harsher measures,” a netizen called “BIGTREE33” from China’s southeastern Fujian Province wrote on Weibo.
Some Chinese commentators said the Democratic Party will have very little chance of winning the presidential election in November without Biden.
“No faction in the Democratic Party can rebuild a campaign that can challenge Trump within a short time, so after Biden withdrew from the race, the Democrats will return to a very divided situation,” Jia Min, an affiliated researcher at Shanghai Development Research Foundation, told Shanghai Morning News in a video.
Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of China’s state-run tabloid Global Times, wrote on X that whoever becomes the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate will make little difference to the presidential race in November.
“Because Trump’s personality is so outstanding, American voters are now divided into two groups: Trump lovers & Trump haters,” he wrote, adding that November’s election will be a choice between Trump or “anyone.”
Harris vs. Trump
After Biden endorsed U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris to be the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party and Harris vowed to win the Democratic Party’s nomination, the entry “Could Harris defeat Trump” quickly became a trending topic on Weibo.
More Chinese netizens seem to believe Harris has very little chance of beating Trump in the presidential election. “If Hillary Clinton couldn’t beat Trump back then, Harris would just be a joke,” a netizen named “Falling in Love with Jia-tze-hu” from Shandong Province wrote on Weibo.
Some Chinese analysts said Harris lacks the experience and achievement to serve as the next president of the United States.
“Looking at Harris’s overall track record, her performance as vice president has not been particularly outstanding, and she has not achieved satisfactory results,” Sun Chenghao, a fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, told Chinese online media outlet the Paper.
Beijing-Washington rivalry to continue
While Biden’s decision to pull out of the presidential race will likely shape the development of the U.S. presidential election, some analysts say the Chinese government may think that these developments won’t change the fact that Beijing and Washington are engaged in an intense competition.
“Beijing’s view is that the U.S. and China are in this rivalry, and it will continue no matter who runs in the election,” Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, told VOA by phone.
Other experts say the Chinese government may not have clear expectations about how different candidates may focus on issues related to China.
“Despite being the vice president, Harris hasn’t said that much on foreign policy, especially compared to the known track records of both Biden and Trump,” said Timothy Rich, a political scientist at Western Kentucky University.
“So, a known Trump, however erratic, may be easier [for Beijing] to prepare for than Harris,” he told VOA in a written response.
If November’s election becomes a race between Trump and Harris, Rich thinks a potential Trump victory would mean more tariffs on Chinese commodities and a more explicit view of trade as a zero-sum game. A potential Harris administration, he adds, may adopt a more nuanced approach to address Washington’s trade relationship with China.
On the issue of Taiwan, Rich said the fact that the Republican National Committee excluded Taiwan from the party platform may suggest Trump is “thinking transactionally about how cutting off support for Taiwan could lead to some big trade agreement with China.”
“In contrast, I can’t see a Harris administration deviating on support for Taiwan much from her predecessor,” he told VOA.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-22, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
With honor and decency, Joe Biden exits the race.
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/biden-leaves-presidential-race-20240721.html
Unit4 ends support for research costing tool used to plan the Covid vaccine
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
UK university users face migration path following plan to withdraw support for product some build £1M solutions around
Exclusive Software used to cost the University of Oxford’s Covid vaccine research has become the subject of an end-of-life announcement from enterprise application developer Unit4.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/unit4_ends_support_for_research/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-22, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
“The first party to retire its 80-year old candidate is going to be the one who wins this election.”
https://politicalwire.com/2024/07/22/flashback-quote-of-the-day-139/
Next-generation US jet fighter program may get hit by budget woes
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The U.S. Air Force’s ambitious next-generation fighter jet program, envisioned as a revolutionary leap in technology, could become less ambitious as budget pressure, competing priorities and changing goals compel a rethink, defense officials and industry executives said.
Initially conceived as a “family of systems” centered around a sixth-generation fighter jet, the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program is meant to replace the F-22 Raptor and give the United States the most powerful weaponry in the sky well into the mid-21st century.
When it was first proposed, expectations were high, including an unmatched stealth capability to keep it invisible from even the most sophisticated radar, laser weapons and onboard artificial intelligence to process masses of data coming from the latest in sensor technology.
However, sources said the current development budget of $28.5 billion over five years ending in 2029 could be spread out over more time or scaled-back as the Pentagon searches for a cost-effective solution.
Sources briefed on the Air Force’s internal budget deliberations said the anticipated 2026 fiscal-year NGAD budget of $3.1 billion would be slashed as funding shrinks, with one source adding that diminishing funds could stretch development by two more years.
While it is unclear how much the overall program will cost, it could eventually total well over $100 billion if 200 aircraft are produced, including initial costs - plus maintenance and upgrades over time. There are currently 185 F-22s in service — the plane NGAD is meant to replace.
The Air Force is also reviewing the concept for the jet - perhaps moving to a larger single-engine jet, from what is believed to be a two-engine design, or even shifting more funding to a less expensive unmanned drone to best address future air superiority needs given the potential budget cuts, industry experts said.
“NGAD was conceived before a number of things: before the threat became so severe, before CCAs [drone program] were introduced into the equation and before we had some issues with affordability that we are currently facing,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said on Saturday at Britain’s Royal International Air Tattoo, the world’s largest military air show.
“Before we commit to the 2026 budget, we want to be sure we are on the right path,” he added on a program that will be a popular talking point at the Farnborough International Airshow this week.
The shift in focus comes as the Air Force grapples with substantial cost overruns in several vital, and expensive, programs. For example, its Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program, which is set to replace the aging Minuteman III missiles, has ballooned 81% over budget, to around $141 billion.
Budget pressure has forced the Air Force to reassess its spending priorities across various modernization efforts which also include increasing production of the new B-21 bomber made by Northrop GrummanNOC.N.
U.S. aerospace and defense companies Lockheed Martin LMT.N and Boeing BA.N have responded to the Air Force’s request for proposal for the NGAD system, sources told Reuters.
While defense firms are not exactly desperate for orders with conflicts in Ukraine and Israel driving already-strong demand, NGAD was one of several potentially giant programs many hoped would feed the bottom line in the years ahead.
An Air Force spokesperson told Reuters the department is currently building its fiscal 2026 budget which will be released early next year. Representatives for Boeing did not return requests for comment. Lockheed would not comment on NGAD.
“The part that seems to be getting stalled and re-evaluated is the air vehicle itself, the central platform,” said J.J. Gertler, a senior analyst at aerospace and defense analysis firm the Teal Group.
“The Air Force is now making sure that that’s what they actually want and possibly changing their mind,” he added.
Possible new configurations might be shifting to a single engine for the jet to save on up-front cost and long-term maintenance. Twin-engine jets are much more expensive to buy and operate, but they are more dependable and faster, therefore more deadly in a dogfight than their single-engine foes.
Another key component emerging from this restructuring is the possibility of shifting funds toward the unmanned fighter drone known as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft initiative.
Development of the less expensive drone platforms, designed to operate alongside the main jet, does not face budget changes.
Microsoft’s CISPE settlement includes a suspension of audits for members
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cloud group companies free of Redmond’s compliance cops for 2 years in return for ditching EC antitrust complaint
Exclusive Part of Microsoft’s settlement with a bunch of cloud providers in Europe to make an antitrust complaint disappear is a two-year moratorium on software audits, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.…
Using the M.2 HAT+ with Raspberry Pi 5
date: 2024-07-22, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ M Key enables you to connect M.2 peripherals such as NVMe drives and other PCIe accessories to Raspberry Pi 5’s PCIe interface.
The post Using the M.2 HAT+ with Raspberry Pi 5 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/using-m-2-hat-with-raspberry-pi-5/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-22, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Best Places to Eat Before a Concert in NYC.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/best-restaurants-before-a-concert-nyc-1235054857/
Democratic officials, donors back Harris after Biden exits US presidential race
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Momentum appeared to be on the side of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday, as a groundswell of Democratic lawmakers, governors and financial donors expressed their support for her to be the party’s presidential nominee in the November election after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
Biden followed his surprise announcement Sunday by issuing his own endorsement of Harris to face former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee.
Harris, who is 59, quickly announced that she would seek the nomination. She was a senator from the country’s most populous state, California, when Biden picked her in 2020 as his running mate after Harris’ challenge to Biden and other primary contenders fell apart.
Her approval ratings in national surveys have largely reflected Biden’s, but some surveys of likely voters show Harris faring slightly better than he does against Trump. In a few, she has polled ahead of Trump.
Harris said in a statement that Biden, by withdrawing from the race against Trump, “is doing what he has done throughout his life of service: putting the American people and our country above everything else.”
“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party – and unite our nation – to defeat Donald Trump,” she said. “We have 107 days until Election Day. Together, we will fight. And together, we will win.”
Early Monday, the Harris campaign said it had collected $49.6 million in small-dollar donations since Biden withdrew and she announced her candidacy. That stood in contrast to weeks of waning support for Biden, particularly among top donors, following his stumbling performance in a late June debate against Trump.
The Association of State Democratic Committees said in a statement that an “overwhelming majority” of state party leaders backed Harris as the party’s nominee, with several abstaining for procedural reasons.
Sunday’s outpouring of support for Harris also included at least one Biden Cabinet member, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who said he would do “all I can” to help elect Harris.
If Harris is accepted by the party to replace Biden, she would be the first Black woman and South Asian major party presidential nominee in the 248-year history of the United States.
Biden’s announcement Sunday followed a rising chorus within the Democratic Party urging him to “pass the torch” amid his declining national poll numbers and concerns raised by his debate performance. During the debate, the 81-year-old president often appeared to lose his train of thought, failed to forcefully press his case against the 78-year-old Trump or defend his own tenure in the White House.
Biden persevered, insisting he would not quit the race unless “the Lord Almighty” asked him to or if he was shown polling numbers that he could not beat Trump a second time or advised by his doctors he was not physically able to continue.
But on Sunday, he said in a statement, “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” which ends in six months in January.
Biden said he plans to address the nation about his decision later this week.
Trump responded to the announcement by assailing both Biden and Harris.
“Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve - And never was!” Trump posted on social media, adding that Harris was just as bad as Biden.
“Harris will be easier to beat than Joe Biden would have been,” Trump told CNN.
Many Republicans reacted by calling for Biden to resign as president.
House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, who is second in the presidential line of succession behind Harris, called on Biden to step down, claiming if he is unfit to keep his candidacy alive for another four-year term, he is also unfit to remain as president until Jan. 20.
If Biden were to resign, Harris would immediately be sworn in as the country’s 47th president, at least until the inauguration for the victor in the November 5 election.
Names of other prominent Democrats have been floated as potential candidates other than Harris, including several state governors: Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Gavin Newsom of California. Shapiro and Newsom endorsed Harris on Sunday.
It was not immediately known who Harris might pick as her vice-presidential running mate.
Former president Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, who served as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama but lost the 2016 presidential contest to Trump, endorsed Harris in a statement.
Obama, whom Biden served with as vice president for eight years, thanked Biden for his patriotism in leaving the race, but did not endorse Harris or any other Democrat to be the party’s presidential nominee.
Media reports in the hours following Biden’s withdrawal quoted sources close to Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, now an independent, saying he was considering rejoining the Democratic Party to try to replace the president at the top of the party’s ticket.
There are two ways for Democrats to replace Biden as the party’s standard-bearer.
One would be a virtual vote among delegates to the Democratic National Convention next month in Chicago that would lock in a new nominee in early August. Chances are this process would favor Harris, avoiding conflict at the Aug. 19-22 convention in front of a national television audience.
The other way Democrats could pick a new nominee would be an “open” convention in which several candidates, including Harris, would seek the presidential nomination, a scenario the party hasn’t experienced since 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson dropped his plans to run for reelection in face of widespread opposition to his handling of America’s war against North Vietnam.
Some Democrats are suggesting the party quickly hold a “mini primary” to allow Harris and anyone else to openly compete.
Biden has no public events on his schedule for Monday. The White House said details on his schedule for the rest of the week will be forthcoming.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is headed to Washington to address Congress on Wednesday and said he also plans to meet with Biden.
Some material for this article came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-22, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The 38 Essential Restaurants in New York City.
https://ny.eater.com/maps/best-new-york-restaurants-38-map
Serco appoints former GDS leader Tom Read to digital leadership role
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Read also served at UK’s MoJ, where outsourcer paid fine over electronic tagging fiasco
UK outsourcing provider Serco has appointed Tom Read, head of central government’s digital agency, to the role of group chief digital and technology officer.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/serco_appoints_former_gds_leader/
Hundreds of migrants in new caravan headed for US border
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — Hundreds of migrants from around a dozen countries left from Mexico’s southern border on foot Sunday, as they attempt to make it to the U.S. border.
Some of the members of the group said they hoped to make it to the U.S. border before elections are held in November, because they fear that if Donald Trump wins, he will follow through on a promise to close the border to asylum-seekers.
“We are running the risk that permits (to cross the border) might be blocked,” said Miguel Salazar, a migrant from El Salvador. He feared that a new Trump administration might stop granting appointments to migrants through CBP One, an app used by asylum-seekers to enter the U.S. legally — by getting appointments at U.S. border posts, where they make their cases to officials.
The app only works once migrants reach Mexico City, or states in northern Mexico.
“Everyone wants to use that route” said Salazar, 37.
The group left Sunday from the southern Mexican town of Ciudad Hidalgo, which is next to a river that marks Mexico’s border with Guatemala.
Some said they had been waiting in Ciudad Hidalgo for weeks for permits to travel to towns further to the north.
Migrants trying to pass through Mexico in recent years have organized large groups to try to reduce the risk of being attacked by gangs or stopped by Mexican immigration officials as they travel. But the caravans tend to break up in southern Mexico, as people get tired of walking for hundreds of kilometers.
Recently, Mexico has also made it more difficult for migrants to reach the U.S. border on buses and trains.
Travel permits are rarely awarded to migrants who enter the country without visas and thousands of migrants have been detained by immigration officers at checkpoints in the center and north of Mexico and bused back to towns deep in the south of the country.
Oswaldo Reyna, a 55-year-old Cuban migrant, crossed from Guatemala into Mexico 45 days ago and waited in Ciudad Hidalgo to join the new caravan announced on social media.
He criticized Trump’s recent comments about migrants and how they are trying to “invade” the United States.
“We are not delinquents,” he said. “We are hard-working people who have left our country to get ahead in life, because in our homeland we are suffering from many needs.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/hundreds-of-migrants-in-new-caravan-headed-for-us-border/7707657.html
Facebook prank sent techie straight to Excel hell
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
When someone kicks a chair across the room out of fear they’ll be fired it’s stopped being funny
Who, Me? It’s another Monday, dear reader, which means the working week has begun anew. On the bright side, it also means another dose of the reader-submitted tales of IT hijinks we call Who, Me?…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/who_me/
Today in SCV History (July 22)
date: 2024-07-22, from: SCV New (TV Station)
2000 – Historic Larinan house in Pico Canyon burns down [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-22/
HCL’s back-to-office plan: Come in three days a week, or forget about holidays
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Indian tech workers’ union calls for a strike over 14-hour day proposal
HCL Technologies has devised a measure to make sure its India-based employees change out of their pajamas and head into the office: making on-premises attendance a condition of eligibility for leave.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/hcl_india_wfh_leave_eligibility/
Curiosity rover is crushing it: Ran over a rock and found pure sulfur
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
An unexpected splash of yellow on the red planet
The Curiosity rover has found something surprising: rocks made of pure sulfur.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/curiosty_rover_sulfur/
Google, Oracle, Microsoft make their case for VMware migrations – HPE on the outer?
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
New instance types and discounts galore, and Broadcom all smiles as its preferred licensing finds more friends
Google Cloud has delivered a Broadcom-compliant version of its cloudy VMware offering, and pitched it as a keenly priced migration target.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/vmware_cloud_migration_options/
A Campaign Reset
date: 2024-07-22, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
Thank you, Mr. President.
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/a-campaign-reset
Cellebrite got into Trump shooter’s Samsung device in just 40 minutes
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Also: Second-string Russian hackers sanctioned; Senators demand answers from Snowflake, and more
Infosec in brief Unable to access the Samsung smartphone of the deceased Trump shooter for clues, the FBI turned to a familiar – if controversial – source to achieve its goal: digital forensics tools vendor Cellebrite.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/infosec_in_brief/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-07-22, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Last night I went to sleep at 3:30am because I was watching TikTok’s.
And I don’t regret a single moment.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112827688781371497
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-22, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
No one cares who Aaron Sorkin endorses for president.
Chinese researchers create four-gram drone that might fly forever
date: 2024-07-22, updated: 2024-07-22, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Former Samsung worker jailed for leaking secrets; Robo-cabs reach Shanghai airport; and more
Asia in brief Chinese researchers have created a drone that weighs just over four grams – less than a sheet of printer paper – and may be able to fly indefinitely.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/asia_tech_news_roundup/
Salud Carbajal Praises Biden for ‘Putting Country Above Ego’
date: 2024-07-22, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Congressmember endorses Kamala Harris as Dems’ new presidential candidate.
The post Salud Carbajal Praises Biden for ‘Putting Country Above Ego’ appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/21/salud-carbajal-praises-biden-for-putting-country-above-ego/
Biden’s decision to drop out crystalized Sunday; his staff knew one minute before the public did
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — At 1:45 p.m. Sunday, President Joe Biden’s senior staff was notified that he was stepping away from the 2024 race. At 1:46 p.m., that message was made public.
It was never Biden’s intention to leave the race: Up until he decided to step aside Sunday, he was all in.
His campaign was planning fundraisers and events and setting up travel over the next few weeks. But even as Biden was publicly dug in and insisting he was staying in the race, he was quietly reflecting on the disaster of the past few weeks, on the past three years of his presidency and on the scope of his half-century career in politics.
In the end, it was the president’s decision alone, and he made it quietly, from his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, sick with COVID-19, the first lady with him as he talked it through with a small circle of people who have been with him for decades.
“This has got to be one of the hardest decisions he’s ever made,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the president’s closest ally in Congress, who spoke with him Sunday. “I know he wanted to fight and keep going and show that he could beat Donald Trump again, but as he heard more and more input, I think he was wrestling with what would be the best for the country,” Coons said in an interview with The Associated Press.
This story is based on interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the president’s thinking over the past few weeks, days and hours as he made his decision. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions.
Deciding to leave the race
It wasn’t until Saturday evening that Biden began to come to the conclusion that he would not run for reelection. He started writing a letter to the American people.
Biden had been off the campaign trail for a few days, isolated because of COVID-19, when it all started to deeply sink in — his worsening chances of being able to defeat Donald Trump with so much of his party in open rebellion, seeking to push him out of the race — not to mention the persistent voter concerns about his age that were only exacerbated by the catastrophic debate.
Biden was at his beach home with some of his and Jill Biden’s closest aides: chief strategist Mike Donilon, counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti, White House deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, and Anthony Bernal, senior adviser to the first lady.
By Sunday, his decision crystalized. He spoke multiple times with Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he would endorse. He informed White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, and his longtime aide and campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon.
A small group of senior advisers from both the campaign and the White House were assembled for the 1:45 p.m. call to relay Biden’s decision, while his campaign staff released the social media announcement one minute later.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote.
Just about a half-hour later came his public vote of support for Harris. It was a carefully choreographed strategy meant to give the president’s initial statement full weight, and to put a period on the moment before launching forward into the next step.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” Biden said in another post on X. “Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump.”
About that debate
It’s not like things had been going great before the June 27 debate. In an August 2023 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, fully 77% of U.S. adults said Biden was too old to be effective for four more years. Not only did 89% of Republicans say that, but so did 69% of Democrats.
And it hadn’t gotten any better by April, when more than half of U.S. adults thought Biden’s presidency hurt the country on issues like the cost of living and immigration.
But Biden had insisted — to himself, to the nation, to his supporters — that he would be able to bring voters around if he got out there, told people about his record, explained it to them. Talked to them. Looked them in the eye.
He had a lifetime of experience that told him that if he stuck to it, he’d overcome. His campaign was so confident, in fact, that they arranged to go around the Commission on Presidential Debates to set up a series of faceoffs with Trump under a new set of rules.
That produced the June 27 debate that set Biden’s downfall in motion. Biden gave nonsensical answers, trailed off mid-sentence and appeared to stare blankly in front of an audience of 51 million people. Perhaps most distressing to other Democrats, Biden didn’t go after Trump’s myriad falsehoods about his involvement in the violence around the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, abortion rights or immigration.
Biden and his team blamed the night on so many different things. He had a cold. He was jet-lagged. He needed to get more sleep. That night opened the door for his party to push him out.
A slow acceptance
Publicly and privately Biden was fighting to stay in the race. He was working to convince voters that he was up for the task for another four years. He was frustrated by the Democrats coming out publicly against him, but even angrier about the leaks and anonymous sources relaying how even former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were working to get him to drop out.
It looked like he’d won out a couple times; the chorus of naysayers seemed to die down. He had some well-received speeches mixed with so-so TV interviews and a day featuring an extended news conference in which he displayed a nuanced grasp of policy but also committed a few gasp-inducing gaffes.
But the doubts didn’t go away.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer eventually invited top Biden staff to a meeting on July 11 to talk about their concerns. It didn’t go well. Senators expressed their concerns, and almost none of them said they had confidence in the president. But even afterward, Schumer was worried it wasn’t getting to Biden.
Following the meeting, Schumer called Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Obama. Schumer decided that day to request a meeting with Biden.
At a July 13 meeting in Rehoboth, Schumer told Biden he was there out of love and affection. And he delivered a personal appeal focused on Biden’s legacy, the country’s future and the impact the top of the ticket could have on congressional races — and how that could potentially affect the Supreme Court. That same day came the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Schumer told the president he didn’t expect him to make an immediate decision, but he hoped Biden would think about what he said, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
Biden responded, “I need another week,” and the two men hugged.
Sunday’s decision
It was full steam ahead until Biden pulled the emergency brake.
The president had lost his voice, but he was recovering well and his doctor had sent an update to the public shortly before 1 p.m. on his condition. His small circle decided to post the statement on X on Sunday, rather than let it leak out for days before he was prepared to address the nation, which he is expected to do sometime early this week.
Much of his campaign was blindsided, and it was clear by how little had changed after he dropped out. For hours after the announcement, Biden’s campaign website reflected that he was still running and KamalaHarris.com still redirected to Biden’s page.
Even Harris’ statement announcing her intent to succeed Biden was sent from “Joe Biden for President.”
After the public announcement, Zients held a senior staff call, sent out an email and spoke with Biden’s cabinet. The president was also making personal calls.
“Team — I wanted to make sure you saw the attached letter from the President,” Zients wrote in the staff email. “I could not be more proud to work for President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the American people — alongside all of you, the best White House team in history. There’s so much more to do — and as President Biden says, ‘there is nothing America can’t do — when we do it together.’”
Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, a Democrat who had called for Biden to bow out, was gardening with his wife when the news broke, and said he was momentarily “stunned.” Senators texted each other questioning if it was really happening.
Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal was at an event in his state, and there was spontaneous applause when it was announced to the crowd that Biden wouldn’t run, he said.
There was a sense of excitement and energy in the crowd “that has been completely lacking,” Blumenthal said.
“It was also, let’s be blunt, a sense of relief,” he said. “And a sense of reverence for Joe Biden.”
By Sunday evening, Biden for President had formally changed to Harris for President.
O’Malley Dillon told campaign staff their jobs were safe, because the operation was shifting to a campaign for Harris.
Glass-ceiling breaker Kamala Harris could be Democratic presidential nominee
date: 2024-07-22, from: VOA News USA
President Harris?
date: 2024-07-22, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
I didn’t post about it — what is there to say that hasn’t been said elsewhere? — but former President Trump was almost shot last week. The would-be assassin’s motive is muddy (he was a Republican), but the bullet or a sliver of glass narrowly missed him, taking a nip out of his ear. He’s been using it as political ammunition ever since, and the entire RNC, which started the following day, was in essence a stage show about toxic masculinity, featuring guests like Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan (who tore off his shirt to reveal another shirt with the Trump / Vance logo on it), and the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. At one point, during a Michigan rally following the event, Trump pulled a guy out of the crowd to remark how well-defined his arms were. His campaign, his policies, his demeanor are Idiocracy come to life.
As for his Vice Presidential candidate, I’d love to see a lot more people talking about JD Vance’s support for Curtis Yarvin, who believes in the reinstatement of slavery, in replacing the democratically elected government with a CEO king, and that Hitler was acting in self defense.
I have many differences with Joe Biden: most notably, his failure to take a strong stand against the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, and his war-faring foreign policy history throughout his career. But he’s not Donald Trump and he’s not JD Vance. Domestically, the Biden Presidency undoubtedly had some strong progressive successes over the last four years, in ways that genuinely helped vulnerable Americans. I voted for him in 2020. And certainly, were he the Democratic nominee, I would have voted for him again.
It seems almost certain that the Democratic nominee will be Kamala Harris. If that turns out to be the case, I’ll absolutely vote for her. With enthusiasm.
What I hope is that she can paint a picture of the world she wants to create. Biden never quite achieved that for me: he even memorably said to donors, that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he was elected. America needs change; it needs equity; it needs a renewed compassion, stronger safety nets, a leg up for people who need it, and a mentality that nobody should fall through the cracks. A focus on strong communities and bonds based on empathy rather than breaks for the rich and military might. A focus on a democratic, inclusive world and not just an American one. Beyond just not being Trump and not being Vance, those are my hopes for a Harris Presidency.
https://werd.io/2024/president-harris
New Podcast Talking Postgres
date: 2024-07-22, from: PostgreSQL News
What is Talking Postgres?
Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano is a monthly podcast where we talk about the human side of Postgres, databases, and open source. Previously called “Path To Citus Con”, each of the 17 episodes published so far includes 1 or 2 amazing guests from the Postgres world. As for the new Talking Postgres name, it’s been called “a sensible move”, “a great name”, and “more fitting”—since the episodes are all about Postgres things.
- Talking Postgres is available via most podcast apps and also on YouTube.
- Catch up on the past 17 episodes at talkingpostgres.com.
- You can also subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode. And yes, there is an RSS feed on the subscribe page.
Podcast is recorded LIVE on Discord
Usually on the 1st or 2nd Wednesday of the month, we record the podcast live on Discord. So while most people download and listen to episodes after they are published, you can also join the live recordings on the Microsoft Open Source Discord to be part of the parallel live text chat. The text chat is quite fun.
Guests scheduled for future episodes
- David Rowley for Ep18 on Tue Aug 6 at 4:00pm PDT (an unusual timeslot due to David’s geography) to discuss How I got started as a developer & in Postgres
- Melanie Plageman and Richard Guo in Sep or Nov (date TBD) to discuss Becoming a Postgres committer 😊
- Tom Lane for Ep20 on Wed Oct 9 at 10:00am PDT to discuss How I got started as a developer & in Postgres
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/new-podcast-talking-postgres-2896/
Low-tech Magazine: The Ebooks
date: 2024-07-22, from: Blog Muffinlabs
Many of you have asked for ebooks, and now you can download both the chronological and thematic books series in epub version. The files work on any type of device, without restrictions. You can find all ebooks in our online bookshop.
Patrons get free access to all ebooks and PDF archives.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/07/low-tech-magazine-the-ebooks/
Metadata schema development plans
date: 2024-07-22, from: Crossref Blog
It’s been a while, here’s a metadata update and request for feedback
In Spring 2023 we sent out a survey to our community with a goal of assessing what our priorities for metadata development should be - what projects are our community ready to support? Where is the greatest need? What are the roadblocks?
The intention was to help prioritize our metadata development work. There’s a lot we want to do, a lot our community needs from us, but we really want to make sure we’re focusing on the projects that will have the most immediate impact for now.
Several projects were proposed, based on community demand over time. All are projects we intend to support long-term.
Projects
The projects included in the survey were:
- Alternate names - We proposed adding a repeatable ‘name’ element to allow for names that aren’t separated by given/family/surname.
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Updates to funding data
-this
update will be released in the near future and includes:
- Expand ROR support - Allow members to supply ROR ID instead of funder ID in funding data and grant records.
- Include Grant DOIs in funding metadata.
- Publication typing in citations - Support citation type in citation metadata (for example article, preprint, data, software, etc.).
- Expand contributor role support - Allow multiple contributor roles to be provided per contributor and add support for external vocabularies (like CRediT)
- Expand abstract support - We currently require all abstracts to be formatted using JATS. We will be adding new abstract formats, including BITS and ONIX (which have been requested), as well as a generic abstract format (non-JATS).
- Statements - Add support for free text statements such as data availability, acknowledgments, funding, and conflict of interest.
- Contributor identifiers - Accept contributor identifiers such as ISNI (in addition to ORCID, which is already supported).
- Conference event IDs - Identifiers for conference events.
What’s next?
There is a clear preference for publication types in citations and abstract markup, expanded support for multilingual metadata, followed by expanding contributor roles to support multiple roles and the CRediT taxonomy. The results have helped us prioritize our work and we’re advancing several projects soon based on our readiness to move forward.
First up is publication typing in citations and statements - we hope to be able to make this ready for registration in the coming months, but want to confirm a few things first, primarily the list of ‘types’ to apply to citations, so please review and comment: Metadata updates in need of feedback July 2024
We also have been discussing expansions to our support for preprints metadata with our Preprints Advisory Group and have a number of preprint-specific updates that will be rolled out in the coming months as well, including support for versions and status. These proposed changes are also available for comment.
And finally, we will be expanding support for contributor roles to include multiple roles per contributor, as well as adding support for the CRediT taxonomy. This update is yet to be scheduled but we do have the inputs and output planning done and welcome any comments on this as well.
We will also be continuing work on other projects highlighted in the survey that aren’t quite ready to go:
-
Multilingual metadata: Support for multilingual metadata in particular is very important and will require a fairly significant technical effort, so we want to be sure we get this right - at minimum we need to include repeatable fields flagged with language metadata for most items, there may be other considerations as well such as the scope of languages supported.
As we develop new metadata segments we’re keeping language metadata in mind, but I’d like to form a short-term working group to help shape this update - this group will be focused on the details of supporting multilingual metadata in our inputs and outputs, so conversations will be very XML and JSON heavy. If you are interested and available please contact pfeeney@crossref.org.
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Abstract markup: we are currently in the research phase of this project but will be proposing updates and asking for input this fall. At the moment support for BITS and ONIX abstracts have been requested, as well as an agnostic format.
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Expansion of name and contributor ID support: work is under way for this as well, and I should have inputs and outputs for feedback in the coming months.
We anticipate more developments and requests for feedback in the future as we still have other projects from the list above to get to. I’ve opened up a ‘Metadata Development’ section in our Community Forum to invite discussion and will be kicking off a renewed Metadata Interest Group in the fall.
https://www.crossref.org/blog/metadata-schema-development-plans/