News gathered 2024-07-24
(date: 2024-07-24 16:11:00)
Golden Valley announces new head coaches
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
Golden Valley has announced new head coaches joining the Grizzly family for the 2024-25 school year. Megan Cooper will remain co-head coach of track and field after leading the program […]
The post Golden Valley announces new head coaches appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/golden-valley-announces-new-head-coaches/
Letters: Trump’s record | Pushed to GOP | Democrats unite | Parties’ rot | Project 2025
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for July 25, 2024
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/24/letters-1807/
Condominium in San Jose sells for $1.2 million
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
The property located in the 5900 block of Golden Vista Drive in San Jose was sold on July 11, 2024.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/24/condominium-in-san-jose-sells-for-1-2-million-2/
Sheila Jackson Lee dies at 74; longtime Texas congresswoman was ‘a fierce champion of the people’
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Houston-area congresswoman, a Democrat, helped establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday and spoke out about police brutality.
25 Years Ago: STS-93, Launch of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
On July 23, 1999, space shuttle Columbia took to the skies on its 26th trip into space, to deliver its heaviest payload ever – the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The STS-93 crew included Commander Eileen M. Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, Pilot Jeffrey S. Ashby, and Mission Specialists Catherine “Cady” G. […]
https://www.nasa.gov/history/25-years-ago-sts-93-launch-of-the-chandra-x-ray-observatory/
Where are the kids? Preschools in LA County struggle with enrollment post-pandemic
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The LAist
Private centers and state-funded preschools in L.A. County have reported nearly 28,000 empty slots.
Former Stanford star pitcher NiJaree Canady transferring to Texas Tech
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Canady helped Stanford reach the Women’s College World Series the past two seasons.
Public Health issues report on fentanyl deaths
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
Los Angeles County substance abuse experts reported encouraging data this week, indicating fentanyl-related deaths, which increased exponentially over a six-year span, might be approaching “a plateau,” according to an L.A. […]
The post Public Health issues report on fentanyl deaths appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/public-health-issues-report-on-fentanyl-deaths/
State Street Dilemma
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
COVID was lifted and State Street should be re-opened.
The post State Street Dilemma appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/24/state-street-dilemma/
Apple Maps on the Web Appears in Beta
date: 2024-07-24, from: TidBITS blog
We may soon get better sharing of Apple Maps location links with Windows users thanks to the beta of Maps on the Web.
https://tidbits.com/2024/07/24/apple-maps-on-the-web-appears-in-beta/
The UNIX Pipe Card Game
date: 2024-07-24, from: Tilde.news
https://punkx.org/unix-pipe-game/
Deputies: Man arrested after reports of broken car windows
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
Reports on Monday of a man breaking windows of several vehicles in Canyon Country led to the arrest of a 40-year-old Santa Clarita man on suspicion of vandalism, according to […]
The post Deputies: Man arrested after reports of broken car windows appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/deputies-man-arrested-after-reports-of-broken-car-windows/
North Korea seen unlikely to engage US after fall election, regardless of winner
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
washington — North Korea’s broadening ties with Russia make a possible re-engagement with the U.S. less appealing for Pyongyang despite an apparent overture from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, analysts said.
A delegation from the Russian prosecutor’s office wrapped up a three-day visit to Pyongyang and headed home Wednesday, North Korea’s state-run KCNA said.
Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov, the head of the delegation, and Kim Chol Won, director of North Korea’s Central Public Prosecutors Office, signed an agreement on Monday to cooperate on law enforcement countering foreign influence.
Krasnov said the two countries are “actively developing their comprehensive partnership” in “openly and successfully fighting off attempts to impose alien development models and values on us,” according to the Russian news agency Tass.
Krasnov said Moscow and Pyongyang seek to consolidate their efforts in countering “crimes in the area of information and communications technologies,” among other areas.
The ties between the two have been expanding rapidly in multiple areas since Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Pyongyang in June and signed a mutual defense treaty with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, promising closer military cooperation.
Russia-North Korea ties
“Kim Jong Un may see less need to engage with the U.S. than in 2018 because the regime is now getting economic and possibly military benefits from Russia,” said Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation.
North Korea said, “We do not care” that “any administration takes office in the U.S.” or that Trump has “lingering desire for the prospects of the DPRK-U.S. relations,” according to state-run KCNA on Tuesday.
The statement was released after Trump said last week in his presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Republic National Convention that he “got along very well with Kim” and thought Kim wanted him to win the presidential election in November.
During his term, Trump’s personal diplomacy with Kim resulted in their first 2018 summit in Singapore, a failed 2019 summit in Hanoi, and a last meeting at the inter-Korean border in 2019.
But that engagement came before Kim had Putin by his side, according to Andrew Yeo, the SK-Korea Foundation chair in Korea studies at the Brookings Institution. “There’s less incentive for Kim to engage with the U.S.” now that Russia and China are backing him, Yeo said.
“That said, Kim is an opportunist, so I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Kim reaching out to Trump at some point if Trump is reelected,” Yeo added.
Little incentive for talks
In its KCNA statement, North Korea also said, “It is true that Trump, when he was president, tried to reflect the special personal relations between the heads of states in the relations between states, but he did not bring about any substantial positive change.”
Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center’s Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program, said the KCNA statement “reflected that Kim felt humiliated when Trump walked out of the Hanoi summit rather than continuing negotiations, and the strategic choices Kim has made since 2019 — that he has abandoned long-standing North Korean interest in normalizing relations with the U.S.
“If Trump wins, he may be tempted to try to revive nuclear talks with Kim, but Pyongyang has taken denuclearization off the table. The political space for a more limited, credible U.S.-North Korea deal has shrunk immensely.”
Trump walked out of the summit in Hanoi, rejecting Kim’s offer to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility in return for sanctions relief.
Nuclear talks between the U.S. and North Korea have remained stalled since 2019 despite the Biden administration’s call for Pyongyang to return to dialogue.
In the same KCNA statement that rebuffed Trump’s outreach, North Korea expressed its dissatisfaction with the deployment of U.S. FA-18 Super Hornets to the Suwon Air Force Base for joint drills with South Korea that began Tuesday and will run through this summer.
Washington’s continued call for dialogue in this context is a “sinister attempt” and “an extension of confrontation,” North Korea said.
The Heritage Foundation’s Klingner said North Korea’s message “hinted that the price for it reengaging with Washington would be the cancellation of bilateral military exercises, rotational deployment of U.S. strategic assets and reduction of the U.S. extended deterrence guarantee.
“If Washington capitulated to those demands, Pyongyang could seek to further divide the U.S.-ROK alliance and degrade deterrence by proposing a peace declaration or treaty which could then lead to advocacy for a premature decrease of U.S. troops in South Korea.”
Anthropic AI Scraper Hits iFixit’s Website a Million Times in a Day
date: 2024-07-24, from: 404 Media Group
“We’re just the largest database of repair information in the world, no big deal if they take it all without asking and swamp our servers in the process.”
https://www.404media.co/anthropic-ai-scraper-hits-ifixits-website-a-million-times-in-a-day/
Aug. 1: SCV Water’s Engineering and Operations Committee Meeting
date: 2024-07-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Valley Water Engineering and Operations Committee will hold a meeting Thursday, Aug 1, at 5:30 p.m., in the Engineering Services Section Boardroom, 26521 Summit Circle in Santa Clarita
https://scvnews.com/aug-1-scv-waters-engineering-and-operations-committee-meeting/
Blinken heads to Asia after Thursday’s meeting between Biden, Netanyahu
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
State Department — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will depart for Asia on Thursday to reaffirm ties with strategic allies, following his attendance at a highly anticipated White House meeting between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The secretary will now depart tomorrow for Asia, instead of tonight, as we had originally planned, so he can attend the meeting between the president and Prime Minister Netanyahu tomorrow here in Washington,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters during Wednesday’s briefing.
Washington said it is committed to allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, despite the Middle East crisis.
“This is the secretary’s 18th trip to the region,” Miller added. “He will still travel to Laos, to Vietnam, to Japan, to Singapore, to the Philippines and to Mongolia.”
Blinken will hold talks with senior officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Vientiane, Laos, before traveling to Hanoi, Vietnam. Although a schedule change will prevent him from attending the funeral of General Secretary Nguyen Phú Trong, the head of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, he will still visit Vietnam to pay his respects and meet with senior officials.
In Tokyo and Manila, Blinken will join Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for 2+2 security talks with their counterparts.
Blinken will also travel to Singapore and Mongolia to hold talks with senior officials there.
Saugus school district considering facilities measure on November ballot
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
The Saugus Union School District announced Wednesday that it is considering placing a school facilities measure on the November ballot. The formal announcement is expected to take place at the […]
The post Saugus school district considering facilities measure on November ballot appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
San Jose Sharks re-sign RFA defenseman to two-year deal
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
NHL: Henry Thrun was a San Jose Sharks restricted free agent
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/24/san-jose-sharks-re-sign-rfa-defenseman-to-two-year-deal/
49ers training camp: It’s the same old Brock Purdy, and that’s a good thing
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
A look at who did what on the first day of training camp for the 49ers.
Paris Olympics: Former Cardinal Newman running back makes his mark for the U.S. rugby team
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
The opening ceremony at the Paris Olympics isn’t until Friday, but competitions began on Wednesday.
DMV to Host Community Hackathons to Facilitate Additional Uses for Mobile Driver’s License
date: 2024-07-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The California Department of Motor Vehicles invites businesses, public agencies and innovators to apply to join two community “hackathons” to promote additional uses for the California mobile Driver’s License
John Mayall dies at 90; British blues pioneer helped introduce the world to Eric Clapton, Mick Fleetwood and other musical superstars
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
His Bluesbreakers band included musicians who went on to play with such legendary groups as Cream, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and Canned Heat.
San Jose police union asks DA to challenge judge after high-profile releases
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
A letter objects to the release of defendants charged with recent attacks on officers, including a viral sideshow vandalism of a patrol vehicle.
FBI: Trump shooter searched for info on a previous assassination
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
washington — The 20-year-old man who tried to kill former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally earlier this month appeared to have set his sights on the attempted assassination at least a week before the incident.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers on Wednesday that while many questions remain unanswered, analysis of Thomas Matthew Crooks’ laptop showed the would-be assassin seemed to be fixated on high-profile public figures and searched for information on the 1963 killing of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.
“On July 6, he did a Google search for – quote – ‘how far away was Oswald from Kennedy,’” Wray said.
“That’s obviously significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray added. “That is the same day that he registered for the Butler rally.”
Seven days later, on July 13, Crooks climbed onto a roof overlooking the campaign rally in western Pennsylvania, firing eight shots from an AR-style assault rifle, leaving Trump with a bloody ear, while killing a rallygoer and injuring two others.
The FBI director also told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that Crooks used his mobile phone to search for information on high-profile figures.
“The shooter appears to have done a lot of searches of public figures in general … news articles and things like that,” Wray said, adding that images of high-profile officials and politicians found on the shooter’s phone were linked to the articles.
“This does not appear to be some sort of target list,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to it so far other than that these are all prominent public people.”
Other searches of the shooter’s mobile phone and electronic devices, however, have so far not provided any insight into Crooks’ mindset.
Wray said the investigation has failed to turn up any evidence of a political ideology or a manifesto that could explain why Crooks targeted the former president.
Nor have investigators come across any indication that the shooter had help or that he alerted anyone else to his plans.
“So far, we have not found any evidence of any accomplices or co-conspirators, foreign or domestic,” Wray said, adding the investigation appears to confirm accounts that Crooks was a loner.
“His list of contacts, for example, is very short compared to what you would normally see from most people. It doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of interaction between him, face-to-face or digital with a lot of people,” he said.
Still, Wray cautioned that the FBI has not been able to access all of the shooter’s social media accounts and that investigators ultimately may never get past some of the passwords and encryption.
U.S. lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, have repeatedly expressed outrage in the days and weeks since the July 13 shooting, leading to Tuesday’s resignation of the director of the U.S. Secret Service, the agency responsible for providing security to current and former presidents and their families.
The now former director, Kimberly Cheatle, drew additional ire from lawmakers the day before she resigned, repeatedly refusing to answer questions about the attempted assassination while calling the event, “most significant operational failure … in decades.”
The FBI’s Wray on Wednesday took a different tact, assuring lawmakers that the bureau will “leave no stone unturned” in its investigation, while committing to provide as much information as possible.
“We need to know what happened play-by-play, moment-by-moment, second-by-second,” said the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Republican Representative Jim Jordan.
“A significant portion of the country has a healthy skepticism regarding the FBI’s ability to conduct a fair, honest, open and transparent investigation,” he said, accusing the law enforcement agency of what he described as multiple failures over the past several years.
During the more than three hours of testimony, the FBI’s Wray confirmed reports that the shooter had flown a drone at the site of campaign rally about two hours before the event got underway.
He said the flight path took the drone over an area about 180 meters (200 yards) from the stage where former President Trump was to speak, and that it appears the drone livestreamed video.
However, the camera appears to have been pointing away from the podium.
“We think it would have shown him what would have been behind him [on the roof],” Wray said. “Like, it’s almost like giving him a rearview mirror of the scene behind him.”
Wray also said the investigators have determined the shooter visited the site of the rally at least three times.
The first visit, which came a week before the shooting, lasted 20 minutes. A second visit, which lasted 70 minutes, took place the morning of the shooting. And the final visit was the afternoon of the shooting, when Crooks arrived and waited to carry out the attempted assassination.
Yet for all that investigators think they know after digging into the shooter’s social media and communications, and after more than 400 interviews, Wray said there are other questions that have yet to be answered.
One of those questions is how Crooks got up on the roof of the building overlooking the rally.
Investigators found a receipt showing he had bought a 1.5-meter-tall (5 feet) ladder, but that it was never brought to the scene of the shooting.
Wray said there is also still some confusion over whether the shooter had managed to place the rifle on the roof before the shooting or whether he carried it up with him right before he started firing.
“The weapon had a collapsible stock which might explain why it was less easy to observe,” Wray said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-shooter-searched-for-info-on-a-previous-assassination/7711611.html
Representing Santa Barbara and Team U.S.A.
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Olympic athletes have local ties in beach and indoor volleyball, water polo, and soccer competitions.
The post Representing Santa Barbara and Team U.S.A. appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/24/representing-santa-barbara-and-team-u-s-a/
LIVE: NASA is with you from Oshkosh
date: 2024-07-24, 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. It Takes All Jobs Wednesday, July 24 at 5:30 p.m. EDT Another panel today at Oshkosh titled “Unique Careers at NASA” expanded that career-advice subject […]
https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/live-nasa-is-with-you-from-oshkosh/
An unwelcome attendee has joined the Paris Olympic Games: COVID-19
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
After a handful of Australian water polo players tested positive for COVID-19 this week, questions have emerged around how the spread of the disease will be mitigated at the Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
AMD stalls Ryzen 9000 launch after chips fall short of quality controls
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
QA? In 2024? In this economy? How quaint!
AMD has delayed the launch of its Ryzen 9000 desktop processors after discovering that production units initially shipped to channel partners weren’t up to snuff.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/amds_ryzen_9000_launch_delayed/
UPDATE: NASA, Boeing to Stream Flight Test Mission Briefing on NASA+
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
NASA and Boeing will host a news conference with mission leadership at 11:30 a.m. EDT Thursday, July 25, to provide the latest status of the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test aboard the International Space Station. NASA previously planned an audio-only media teleconference to host the discussion. The agency will provide live coverage on NASA+, NASA […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/update-nasa-boeing-to-stream-flight-test-mission-briefing-on-nasa/
Saugus Union School District to Put Facility Measure on November Ballot
date: 2024-07-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
In an effort to maintain transparency with the entire Saugus Union School District community, SUSD is announcing that the Governing Board of the Saugus Union School District will consider placing a school facility measure onto the Nov. 5, 2024 ballot
https://scvnews.com/saugus-union-school-district-to-put-facility-measure-on-november-ballot/
Illumination Through Art
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Holly Harmon shines a light on Santa Barbara’s cultural history for Fiesta.
The post Illumination Through Art appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/24/illumination-through-art/
This 13-Year-Old Stumbled Upon a Roman-Era Ring While Hiking in Israel
date: 2024-07-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The small artifact, discovered near an ancient farmstead, features an engraving of the goddess Minerva
No Carnival, Fewer Charros, but Still Plenty of Punch at Fiesta
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Higher costs and safety concerns forced changes in the 100-year celebration.
The post No Carnival, Fewer Charros, but Still Plenty of Punch at Fiesta appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Harris was never ‘border czar,’ experts say, despite Republican claims
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
washington — After President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee, Republicans quickly focused on Harris and her work on immigration issues, calling her a “border czar.”
Congressman Guy Reschenthaler, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said at a House Rules Committee hearing Tuesday that Biden appointed Harris as the border czar 64 days into his administration. The hearing focused on an emergency resolution addressing the “failures of the border czar position and its negative impact on our fellow citizens across the country.”
“With Harris at the helm, the Biden-Harris administration made good on their promise to systematically dismantle President [Donald] Trump’s secure border [policies],” Reschenthaler said.
But was Harris appointed as border czar?
Immigration experts say no.
Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior adviser on immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that early in the Biden administration, Harris was assigned the task of reducing migration to the U.S. southern border and collaborating with Central American nations to address the root causes of migration through diplomacy, development and investment.
“She was never named a border czar. In fact, the border was not her priority issue at all. The border was the responsibility of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. She was never in charge of the border per se,” Brown said.
Brown said “czar” is not a recognized term under the U.S. legal system.
“But it has been adopted into American political discourse as, I’d say, a shorthand title for somebody who is given within a White House administration – within the executive branch – broad responsibility and authority to direct the administration across different Cabinet departments on a particular issue or policy,” Brown said.
Border politics
During the pandemic, the Trump administration virtually closed the border to migration, as officials implemented a health order that allowed for the rapid expulsion of migrants, effectively turning away most migrants without giving them a chance to seek asylum.
When President Biden took office in January 2021, expulsions continued, except for unaccompanied minors. Both Biden and Harris openly urged migrants not to come, but they did, presenting a political crisis for Biden at the beginning of his administration.
Biden soon asked Harris to spearhead a “root causes” strategy, banking heavily on using American investments to improve living conditions and discourage migrants from leaving three Central American nations where a significant number of migrants come from: Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
The Biden administration also reunited families separated under the Trump administration and expanded legal immigration pathways, including increasing refugee admissions and creating a humanitarian program for migrants from Central America, Venezuela and Haiti.
Although it is not known what Harris’ immigration policy will look like, immigration attorney Hector Quiroga said he thinks Harris will continue Biden’s policies, but he noted that Harris’ immigration message has changed.
“Her record is rather interesting because in the beginning, she was very much in the diplomatic kind of way. … With experience [in the vice president office], she has said, ‘Please don’t come’ to migrants,” he said, referring to Harris’ evolution to a stricter tone and tougher message.
Quiroga is referring to Harris’ 2021 trip to Guatemala to meet with former Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and address the root causes of illegal migration. During her visit, she emphasized the Biden administration’s commitment to helping Guatemalans find “hope at home.”
And she issued a stern warning to potential migrants.
“I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border,” Harris said. “Do not come. Do not come.”
The Biden administration has been highlighting progress at the border, noting that arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico dropped by 29% in June, marking the lowest number during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Princess Cruises Reveals Epic 2026 Alaska Season
date: 2024-07-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Princess Cruises, the leading cruise line in Alaska, today unveiled its biggest-ever Alaska season for 2026, highlighted by the debut of the newest ship in its fleet, Star Princess
https://scvnews.com/princess-cruises-reveals-epic-2026-alaska-season/
CrowdStrike blames quality control bug for global Windows outage
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
By Bill Pan Contributing Writer CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company at the center of massive global IT outages, blamed the meltdown on a bug in quality control software that allowed bad data […]
The post CrowdStrike blames quality control bug for global Windows outage appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/crowdstrike-blames-quality-control-bug-for-global-windows-outage/
Santa Barbara Funds $250K to Legal Aid for Tenants Facing Evictions
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
City Council unanimously supports a proposal to provide legal services for low-income tenants.
The post Santa Barbara Funds $250K to Legal Aid for Tenants Facing Evictions appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
How to Watch the Southern Delta Aquariids Meteor Shower
date: 2024-07-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Though not as prolific as the Perseids, this annual spectacle is ‘scientifically interesting’ because its comet of origin remains a mystery
In address to Congress, Netanyahu urges US, Israel to ‘stand together’ amid ongoing war
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
By Ryan Morgan Contributing Writer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for U.S. support amid his country’s ongoing war with terror group Hamas in an address to a joint session of […]
The post In address to Congress, Netanyahu urges US, Israel to ‘stand together’ amid ongoing war appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Downtown Santa Barbara’s Commercial Cognoscenti Want More Than Pretty Pictures
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
State Street business and property owners, real estate brokers, and bankers share their thoughts and concerns on the near and distant future of the city’s main drag.
The post Downtown Santa Barbara’s Commercial Cognoscenti Want More Than Pretty Pictures appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Oops. Apple relied on bad code while flaming Google Chrome’s Topics ad tech
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Yes, you can be fingerprinted and tracked via Privacy Sandbox – tho the risk is low
Apple last week celebrated a slew of privacy changes coming to its Safari browser and took the time to bash rival Google for its Topics system that serves online ads based on your Chrome history.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/apple_google_topics/
Garcia issues statement on Netanyahu’s address to Congress
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
News release Rep. Mike Garcia. R-Santa Clarita, released a statement in support of Israel in its war against Hamas after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress on […]
The post Garcia issues statement on Netanyahu’s address to Congress appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/garcia-issues-statement-on-netanyahus-address-to-congress/
Why the “Open Convention” proposal only appeals to Op-Ed columnists.
date: 2024-07-24, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
Political campaigns are supposed to tell a coherent story. Nominee-by-acclamation is Good, Actually.
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/why-the-open-convention-proposal
Art and Design Come Together
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Karen Lehrer’s exhibition at Santa Barbara Interiors spotlights art you can live with.
The post Art and Design Come Together appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/24/art-and-design-come-together/
The Upside of Tesla’s Decline
date: 2024-07-24, from: Heatmap News
Tesla, formerly the golden boy of electric vehicle manufacturers, has hit the skids. After nearly continuous sales growth for a decade, in May sales were down 15% year-on-year — the fourth consecutive month of decline. Profits were down fully 45% in the second quarter thanks to soft sales and price cuts. The only new model the company has produced in five years, the Cybertruck, has gotten weak reviews and been plagued with problems.
Electrifying transportation is a vital part of combating climate change, and for years Tesla benefited from the argument that as the pioneering American EV company, it was doing great work on the climate.
Declining sales aren’t good for Tesla CEO Elon Musk or the company’s shareholders. But the fact that other companies are taking up the slack — now accounting for a majority of EV sales — is good for the EV market as a whole. Here’s why.
First, from a traditional business standpoint, it is good to have several competitors in a market. This is how capitalism is supposed to work — for any particular good or service, a number of different businesses should be constantly fighting each other for profits by improving their products on price and quality (within the bounds of government regulations on safety, efficiency, and so on). When there is sustained competition, old, established companies have to keep researching and innovating, lest they lose market share to someone else.
We have seen this in the automobile space many times before, as when General Motors improved on Ford’s assembly line to come out with regular new models in the 1920s, or when upstart Japanese companies caught the incumbent American players flatfooted in the 1970s and 80s with small, reliable cars at a lower price. Modern cars are dramatically safer, cleaner, more reliable, and more efficient thanks in large part to this history of competition.
Second, Tesla’s peculiar history makes it a poor foundation for the EV industry. The company comes out of California’s Big Tech culture, with its ideology of “move fast and break things” and deep disdain for prior experience. The result, as auto journalist Edward Neidermeyer explains in his book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, is an unusually shoddy and dangerous manufacturing culture. Tesla’s factories are notorious for poor working conditions and regular injuries, and its cars are infamous for inconsistent panel gaps, structural failures, and of course Autopilot accidents.
We can see these two factors at work in the growing number of superior options available from other EV companies. Tesla’s habit of putting as many controls as possible into a massive central screen seemed fancy at first, but drivers are starting to remember that physical buttons are both more reliable and easier to use while driving. In the economy segment, Hyundai’s Kona EV or Chevy’s Bolt EUV both have dead simple rocker switches for adjusting the temperature — no touchscreen menu fiddling required. Indeed, Tesla has even replaced such a bog standard control as the turn signal stalk with capacitive buttons in the most recent Model 3 and Model S, which is straight-up dangerous.
Even in the upmarket segments Tesla is falling behind. The new GM Silverado EV is far more of a real utility vehicle than the Cybertruck — in particular, it can actually tow serious distances. Unlike Tesla, Kia and Rivian now have three-row vehicles for big families with the EV9 and Rivian R1S. For enthusiasts, Tesla’s top-shelf Model S Plaid is very fast in a straight line, but Hyundai’s new Ioniq 5 N both handles far better and comes with a (faintly comical, yet fun) manual transmission simulation system. This is what happens when serious companies cater to as many market segments as possible.
Then there is the fact that Musk seems to have turned against Tesla’s Supercharger network, which is legitimately the best in the business. That fact, along with some government subsidies and requirements, is why every other EV company has settled on the Tesla charging plug as the North American standard. But Musk recently fired almost the entire Supercharger team apparently in a fit of pique, and though he hired some of them back, the system’s future is in doubt. Relying on Tesla to build out a proper national charging network is unwise.
Finally, there is Elon Musk himself. Last year, I argued that Tesla could evolve into a normal car company if it could just be run by somebody other than him — like, for instance, then-Chief Financial Officer Zach Kirkhorn, who seemed to be running things at the time. Unfortunately, Kirkhorn is out, and Musk has since taken back control. His pet project Cybertruck looks to be a flop, and he’s reportedly canceled the $25,000 model that was supposed to be the end goal of Tesla’s entire business plan (though Musk denies this). Instead he is pivoting back to robotaxis — which, if year after year of broken promises and misleading promotions are any judge — is not going to happen.
More importantly, Musk has harnessed his vast fortune—which is mostly Tesla stock—on behalf of Donald Trump. Musk promised to donate $45 million per month for the rest of the presidential campaign (though he later walked back that specific figure). A second Trump presidency will probably not end the EV transition—all the world’s big automakers have bet heavily on it—but it might dramatically slow it down in this country. Trump has promised to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which would end the $7,500 tax credit for EV purchases, not to mention the hundreds of billions in other subsidies for renewable power, utility-scale batteries, and much more. This would be a catastrophe for the climate and the American economy, which will lose out on the industries of the future to China and Europe.
Indeed, it could be that Musk sees his company can’t compete with the traditional manufacturers on quality or price, and so is hoping to strangle their EV divisions by cutting off their subsidies before they’ve reached profitability, so that Tesla remains the only big player in a much smaller market.
In doing so, he might hamstring all kinds of forthcoming EV innovations — from more energy-dense solid-state batteries, to hyper-efficient new models, to using one’s car as a virtual power plant, to who knows what else. (Although to be fair Chinese companies will surely figure these out sooner or later, even if Americans can’t buy them.)
Whatever the case, the fact that every new Tesla purchase or lease is now effectively an in-kind donation to the Trump campaign blows up any claim Musk has to be doing good on climate change, and makes buying one grossly irresponsible for the climate. The quicker this company loses its ludicrously overvalued stock price, the better.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/tesla-results-competition
Firefighters tackle house fire in Castaic
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
Firefighters responded to a two-story house fire on North Medford Place in Castaic on Wednesday afternoon, according to the L.A. County Fire Department. “We were dispatched at approximately 12:47 p.m.,” […]
The post Firefighters tackle house fire in Castaic appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/firefighters-tackle-house-fire-in-castaic/
Steve Jobs: Objects of Our Life
date: 2024-07-24, from: Michael Tsai
Jony Ive (Hacker News): Steve rarely attended design conferences. This was 1983, before the launch of the Mac, and still relatively early days of Apple. I find it breathtaking how profound his understanding was of the dramatic changes that were about to happen as the computer became broadly accessible. Of course, beyond just being prophetic, […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/24/steve-jobs-objects-of-our-life/
Safari Profiles and Extension Permissions Madness
date: 2024-07-24, from: Michael Tsai
Jeff Johnson: I’ve discovered a bug that unexpectedly causes Safari extensions in a profile to lose access to websites. I’ve reproduced the bug in Safari 17.5 on macOS 14.5 and in the Safari 18 beta on the macOS 15 beta. I haven’t yet been able to reproduce on iOS, but correspondence with a customer—the origin […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/24/safari-profiles-and-extension-permissions-madness/
Man who attacked author Salman Rushdie charged with supporting terrorist group
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
Buffalo, New York — A man who severely injured author Salman Rushdie in a frenzied knife attack in western New York faces new terrorism charges.
A three-count indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Buffalo on Wednesday charges Hadi Matar with attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah, a militant group based in Lebanon and backed by Iran. The indictment didn’t detail what evidence linked Matar to the group. It also includes charges of committing terrorism transcending national boundaries and providing material support to terrorists.
The federal charges come after Matar earlier this month rejected an offer by state prosecutors to recommend a shorter prison sentence if he agreed to plead guilty in Chautauqua County Court, where he is charged with attempted murder and assault. The agreement also would have required him to plead guilty to a federal terrorism-related charge, which hadn’t been filed yet at the time.
Instead, both cases will now proceed to trial separately. Jury selection in the state case is set for Oct. 15.
Matar was scheduled to appear on the new indictment Wednesday afternoon.
“Mr. Matar plans on denying the accusations in the indictment,” his attorney, Nathaniel Barone, said by phone. “He plans on proceeding with a vigorous defense and maintain his innocence.”
Matar, 26, has been held without bail since the 2022 attack, during which he stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times as the acclaimed writer was onstage about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution. Knife wounds blinded Rushdie in one eye. The event moderator, Henry Reese, was also wounded.
Rushdie detailed the attack and his long and painful recovery in a memoir published in April.
The author spent years in hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for Rushdie’s death over his novel “The Satanic Verses.” Khomeini considered the book blasphemous. Rushdie reemerged into the public the late 1990s.
Matar was born in the U.S. but holds dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. He lived in New Jersey prior to the attack. His mother has said that her son became withdrawn and moody after he visited his father in Lebanon in 2018.
The attack raised questions about whether Rushdie had gotten proper security protection, given that he is still the subject of death threats. A state police trooper and county sheriff’s deputy had been assigned to the lecture. In 1991, a Japanese translator of “The Satanic Verses” was stabbed to death. An Italian translator survived a knife attack the same year. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher was shot three times but survived.
The investigation into Rushdie’s stabbing focused partly on whether Matar had been acting alone or in concert with militant or religious groups.
SwiftUI at WWDC24
date: 2024-07-24, from: Michael Tsai
What’s new in SwiftUI: Learn how you can use SwiftUI to build great apps for any Apple platform. Explore a fresh new look and feel for tabs and documents on iPadOS. Improve your window management with new windowing APIs, and gain more control over immersive spaces and volumes in your visionOS apps. We’ll also take […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/24/swiftui-at-wwdc24/
Psychosis, Birth Control Pills, and an ‘Oblivious’ Father
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Cora Vides’s attorneys lay out their insanity defense in her attempted murder trial.
The post Psychosis, Birth Control Pills, and an ‘Oblivious’ Father appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/24/psychosis-birth-control-pills-and-an-oblivious-father/
The Future is Bright: Johnson Space Center Interns Shine Throughout Summer Term
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
More than 100 interns supported operations at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston this summer, each making an important impact on the agency’s mission success. Get to know seven stellar interns nominated by their mentors for their hard work and outstanding contributions. Stella Alcorn Assignment: Engineering Directorate, Guidance, Navigation, and Control Autonomous Flight Systems Branch, […]
Elon Musk Wants to Shoot More Rockets over Santa Barbara
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Space Force tells Coastal Commission it has no say.
The post Elon Musk Wants to Shoot More Rockets over Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/24/elon-musk-wants-to-shoot-more-rockets-over-santa-barbara/
Get Tickets Now for Taste of the Santa Ynez Valley
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
This annual slate of food and drink events tends to sell out far in advance; this year features a “Sideways” celebration.
The post Get Tickets Now for Taste of the Santa Ynez Valley appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/24/get-tickets-now-for-taste-of-the-santa-ynez-valley/
The Marshall Star for July 24, 2024
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
25 Years On, Chandra Highlights Legacy of NASA Engineering Ingenuity By Rick Smith “The art of aerospace engineering is a matter of seeing around corners,” said NASA thermal analyst Jodi Turk. In the case of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, marking its 25th anniversary in space this year, some of those corners proved to be as far […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/the-marshall-star-for-july-24-2024/
Apple sends warnings to iPhone users over spyware attacks
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
By Jack Phillips Contributing Writer Apple is warning iPhone users of possible “mercenary spyware attacks” via its text message-based threat notification system, according to an antivirus software company, messages posted online […]
The post Apple sends warnings to iPhone users over spyware attacks appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/apple-sends-warnings-to-iphone-users-over-spyware-attacks/
Musk says he was tricked into allowing his son to receive puberty blockers
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
By Aldgra Fredly Contributing Writer Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that he was “tricked” into giving consent for his son to be given puberty-suppressing hormones, which ultimately led to […]
The post Musk says he was tricked into allowing his son to receive puberty blockers appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
You can contribute to KDE with non-C++ code
date: 2024-07-24, from: OS News
Not everything made by KDE uses C++. This is probably obvious to some people, but it’s worth mentioning nevertheless. And I don’t mean this as just “well duh, KDE uses QtQuick which is written with C++ and QML”. I also don’t mean this as “well duh, Qt has a lot of bindings to other languages”. I mean explicitly “KDE has tools written primarily in certain languages and specialized formats”. ↫ Thiago Sueto If you ever wanted to contribute to KDE but weren’t sure if your preferred programming language or tools were relevant, this is a great blog post detailing how you can contribute if you are familiar with any of the following: Python, Ruby, Perl, Containerfile/Docker/Podman, HTML/SCSS/JavaScript, Web Assembly, Flatpak/Snap, CMake, Java, and Rust. A complex, large project like KDE needs people with a wide variety of skills, so it’s definitely not just C++. An excellent place to start.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140316/you-can-contribute-to-kde-with-non-c-code/
July 24: Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Operation
date: 2024-07-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will conduct a traffic safety operation on, July 24 from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. focused on the most dangerous driver behaviors that put the safety of people biking or walking at risk.
https://scvnews.com/july-24-bicycle-and-pedestrian-safety-operation/
🤐🕵️ Silent Evidence
date: 2024-07-24, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
Avoiding incorrect assumptions based on limited evidence.
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/silent-evidence
Microsoft wants fatter pipes between its AI datacenters, asks Lumen to make light work of it
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Is this what the kidz call a glow-up?
Microsoft has tasked network operator Lumen Technologies — formerly CenturyLink — with scaling up its network capacity as the Windows giant looks to grow its burgeoning AI services business, the duo revealed Wednesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/microsoft_ai_dc_lumen/
Is Venice’s Controversial Entry Fee Working?
date: 2024-07-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Officials introduced the day-tripper fee to fight overtourism in the historic city, but critics aren’t convinced it’s helping
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/is-venices-controversial-entry-fee-working-180984758/
SCV Chamber Announces Honorees For Second Annual Black Business Month Celebration
date: 2024-07-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce today announced the honorees for its second Annual Black Business Month Celebration, taking place at California Institute of the Arts on Wednesday, Aug. 7 at 5:30 p.m
In photos: Protests as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addresses US Congress
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
Shows
date: 2024-07-24, from: Chris Coyier blog
Over the last few months I watched… They were all kinda dark. I’m starting the Bear Season 3 now and we’ll see if I can take it. I might need something a little funnier or lighter or something for a while.
https://chriscoyier.net/2024/07/24/shows/
Chimpanzees Take Turns in Fast-Paced Conversations, Just Like Humans Do
date: 2024-07-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new study finds the average chimpanzee response time in gestured conversations is 120 milliseconds, which isn’t that far from the human average of 200 milliseconds
Why the Vineyard Wind Blade Broke
date: 2024-07-24, from: Heatmap News
The blade that snapped off an offshore turbine at the Vineyard Wind project in Massachusetts on July 13 broke due to a manufacturing defect, according to GE Vernova, the turbine maker and installer.
During GE’s second quarter earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Scott Strazik and Vice President of Investor Relations Michael Lapides said there was no indication of a design flaw in the blade. Rather, the company has identified a “material deviation” at one of its factories in Gaspé, Canada. (Strazik provided more color in an interview with Bloomberg, noting that the blade had “insufficient bonding.”)
“Because of that, we’re going to use our existing data and re-inspect all of the blades that we have made for offshore wind,” Strazik told investors. The factory has produced about 150 blades total, he said, and likened the task before the company to giving each one an ultrasound. “So that gives you an indication and context of the work ahead.” He added that he has a “high degree of confidence” that the company can get it all done, but declined to speculate on how long it would take.
I reached out to GE Vernova to ask how many blades from the Gaspé plant have been installed at Vineyard Wind 1 but didn’t hear back in time for publication.
Blade production at the factory is on pause while the investigation continues. The executives also stressed that the incident was unrelated to a blade failure at the Dogger Bank wind farm in the U.K., which was due to “an installation error out at sea.” Installation is ongoing at Dogger Bank.
Meanwhile, on the ground and in the water around Nantucket, crews from Vineyard Wind and GE continued to collect blade debris on Wednesday morning, for the ninth day straight. An initial environmental assessment of the blade debris published late Tuesday night began to answer key questions about the risks all that debris poses to people and marine life.
The report was commissioned by GE and conducted by Arcadis US, an engineering and environmental consultancy. It asserts that the primary risk to people is injury from the sharp edges of fiberglass fragments and that the debris “are considered inert, non-soluble, stable, and nontoxic.” It also cautions, however, that further evaluation will be required to understand the risks posed by any blade materials that remain in the environment, such as assessing the potential for degradation.
One particularly concerning question has been whether the debris could discharge dangerous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or “forever chemicals,” into the environment. Though there are no PFAS used in the blade construction itself, the firm did identify the chemicals in “aerodynamic add-ons,” small 6 inch by 8 inch pieces of plastic that are installed on the outside of the blade to improve its efficiency that are also commonly used on airplanes, it said.
According to the report, the total amount of PFAS on one blade equals 28.2 grams, or about 0.06 pounds. To put that in perspective, the chemical company Daikin once estimated it would release roughly 200 pounds of PFAS per day into the wastewater at one of its paper mills, according to federal filings obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund in 2018. It’s not yet clear how many of those plastic “add-ons” made it into the ocean.
A comprehensive list of all materials that make up the blades shows that more than half, by weight, is fiberglass. The other key ingredients include carbon fiber and PET foam, a common construction material. “There are 33 different materials involved in the production of a turbine blade, from the most basic common household adhesives to the more complex industrial materials used to build the blade,” the report says.
An introduction to the report notes that GE is creating an inventory of the debris collected to assess how much of the blade has been recovered. The company has also hired Resolve Marine, a marine salvage firm, to aid in dismantling the remainder of the blade that’s still attached to the turbine, though it didn’t offer a timeline for this work.
Executives from Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova will be attending a Select Board meeting in Nantucket Wednesday night. We’ll update this story with any additional information coming from that.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/vineyard-wind-answers
A Saturnian Summer
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Saturn and its colossal rings on July 4, 2020, during summer in the gas giant’s northern hemisphere. Two of Saturn’s icy moons are also clearly visible: Mimas at right, and Enceladus at bottom. The light reddish haze over the northern hemisphere seen in this color composite could […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/a-saturnian-summer/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Harry McCracken discovers the utility of ChatGPT in technical work.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91158989/chatgpt-ai-appreciation-day
Philadelphia tree trimmers fail to nip FTC noncompete ban in the bud
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
What a Trump-appointed judge taketh away, a Biden judge giveth
The Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements has been upheld after a second legal challenge, with a Philadelphia judge deciding that the FTC was well within its legal authority to prohibit such contract clauses.…
Microsoft is making Windows 11 updates smaller and more efficient
date: 2024-07-24, from: Liliputing
Microsoft is bringing more changes to Windows Updates in Windows 11. The new checkpoint cumulative updates should reduce the number of large updates users need to download. If you’re only in charge of maintaining a few computers around your home this isn’t a change that will affect you all that much. It may save a […]
The post Microsoft is making Windows 11 updates smaller and more efficient appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/microsoft-is-making-windows-11-updates-smaller-and-more-efficient/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Netanyahu’s Congress address is already a debacle. So glad this backfired. Hopefully Israel will get up the gumption to retire him.
Hidden Self-Portrait by Norman Cornish Discovered Behind Another Painting
date: 2024-07-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A conservator in northern England stumbled upon the work on the reverse side of a piece called “Bar Scene”
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Elon Isn’t Blocking Kamala From Getting Followers.
Uncle Sam opens probe into CrowdStrike turbulence at Delta Air Lines
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Concerns abound over why it has taken so long to recover compared to competitors
The US Department of Transportation (DoT) is investigating Delta Air Lines over its handling of the global IT outage caused by CrowdStrike’s content update.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/transport_department_delta_probe/
@Liam on Linux (date: 2024-07-24, from: Liam on Linux)
ARRA was the first ever Dutch computer.There’s an account of its creation entitled 9.2 Computers ontwerpen, toen ("Computer Designs, then") by the late Carel S Scholten, but sadly for Anglophone readers it’s in Dutch.
This is a translation into English, done using ChatGPT 4o by Gavin Scott. I found it readable and fun, although I have no way to judge how accurate it is.
C.S. Scholten
In the summer of 1947, I was on vacation in Almelo. Earlier that year,
on the same day as my best friend and inseparable study mate, Brain Jan
Loopstra, I had successfully passed the qualifying exams in mathematics
and physics. The mandatory brief introduction to the three major
laboratories—the Physics Laboratory, the V.d. Waals Laboratory, and the
Zeeman Laboratory—was behind us, and we were about to start our doctoral
studies in experimental physics. For two years, we would be practically
working in one of the aforementioned laboratories.
One day, I received a telegram in Almelo with approximately the
following content: "Would you like to assist in building an automatic
calculating machine?" For assurance, another sentence was added:
"Mr. Loopstra has already agreed." The sender was "The Mathematical
Center," according to further details, located in Amsterdam. I briefly
considered whether my friend had already confirmed my cooperation, but
in that case, the telegram seemed unnecessary, so I dismissed that
assumption. Both scenarios were equally valid: breaking up our
long-standing cooperation (dating back to the beginning of high school)
was simply unthinkable. Furthermore, the telegram contained two
attractive points: "automatic calculating machine" and "Mathematical
Center," both new concepts to me. I couldn’t deduce more than the name
suggested. Since the cost of a telegram exceeded my budget, I posted a
postcard with my answer and resumed my vacation activities. Those of you
who have been involved in recruiting staff will, I assume, be filled
with admiration for this unique example of recruitment tactics: no fuss
about salary or working hours, not to mention irrelevant details like
pension, vacation, and sick leave. For your reassurance, it should be
mentioned that I was indeed offered a salary and benefits, which, in our
eyes, were quite generous.
I wasn’t too concerned about how the new job could be combined with the
mandatory two-year laboratory work. I believed that a solution had to be
found for that. And a solution was found: the laboratory work could be
replaced by our work at the Mathematical Center.
Upon returning to Amsterdam, I found out the following: the Mathematical
Center was founded in 1946, with a goal that could roughly be inferred
from its name. One of the departments was the ‘Calculation Department,’
where diligent young ladies, using hand calculators—colloquially known
as ‘coffee grinders’—numerically solved, for example, differential
equations (in a later stage, so-called ‘bookkeeping machines’ were added
to the machinery). The problems dealt with usually came from external
clients. The head of the Calculation Department was Dr. ir. A. van
Wijngaarden. Stories about automatic calculating machines had also
reached the management of the Mathematical Center, and it was clear from
the outset that such a tool—if viable—could be of great importance,
especially for the Calculation Department. However, it was not possible
to buy this equipment; those who wanted to discuss it had to build it
themselves. Consequently, it was decided to establish a separate group
under the Calculation Department, with the task of constructing an
automatic calculating machine. Given the probable nature of this group’s
activities, it was somewhat an oddity within the Mathematical Center,
doomed to disappear, if not after completing the first machine, then
certainly once this kind of tool became a normal trade
object.
We were not the only group in the Netherlands involved in constructing
calculating machines. As we later discovered, Dr. W.L. v.d. Poel had
already started constructing a machine in 1946.
Our direct boss was Van Wijngaarden, and our newly formed two-man group
was temporarily housed in a room of the Physics Laboratory on Plantage
Muidergracht, where Prof. Clay was in charge. Our first significant act
was the removal of a high-voltage installation in the room, much to the
dismay of Clay, who was fond of the thing but arrived too late to
prevent the disaster. Then we thought it might be useful to equip the
room with some 220V sockets, so we went to Waterlooplein and returned
with a second-hand hammer, pliers, screwdriver, some wire, and a few
wooden (it was 1947!) sockets. I remember wondering whether we could
reasonably submit the exorbitant bill corresponding to these purchases.
Nonetheless, we did.
After providing our room with voltage, we felt an unpleasant sensation
that something was expected from us, though we had no idea how to start.
We decided to consult the sparse literature. This investigation yielded
two notable articles: one about the ENIAC, a digital (decimal) computer
designed for ballistic problems, and one about a differential analyzer,
a device for solving differential equations, where the values of
variables were represented by continuously variable physical quantities,
in this case, the rotation of shafts. The first article was abominably
written and incomprehensible, and as far as we understood it, it was
daunting, mentioning, for instance, 18,000 vacuum tubes, a number we
were sure our employer could never afford. The second article (by V.
Bush), on the other hand, was excellently written and gave us the idea
that such a thing indeed seemed buildable.
Therefore, it had to be a differential analyzer, and a mechanical one at
that. As we now know, we were betting on the wrong horse, but first, we
didn’t know that, and second, it didn’t really matter. Initially, we
were not up to either task simply because we lacked any electronic
training. We were supposed to master electricity and atomic physics, but
how a vacuum tube looked inside was known only to radio amateurs among
us, and we certainly were not. Our own (preliminary) practicum
contained, to my knowledge, no experiment in which a vacuum tube was the
object of study, and the physics practicum for medical students (the
so-called ‘medical practicum’), where we had supervised for a year as
student assistants, contained exactly one such experiment. It involved a
rectifier, dated by colleagues with some training in archaeology to
about the end of the First World War. The accompanying manual prescribed
turning on the ‘plate voltage’ only tens of seconds after the filament
voltage, and the students had to answer why this instruction was given.
The answers were sometimes very amusing. One such answer I won’t
withhold from you: ‘That is to give the current a chance to go around
once.’
Our first own experiment with a vacuum tube would not have been out of
place in a slapstick movie. It involved a triode, in whose anode circuit
we included a megohm resistor for safety. Safely ensconced behind a
tipped-over table, we turned on the ‘experiment.’ Unlike in a slapstick
movie, nothing significant happened in our case.
With the help of some textbooks, and not to forget the ‘tube manuals’ of
some manufacturers of these useful objects, we somewhat brushed up on
our electronic knowledge and managed to get a couple of components,
which were supposed to play a role in the differential analyzer, to a
state where their function could at least be guessed. They were a moment
amplifier and a curve follower. How we should perfect these devices so
that they would work reliably and could be produced in some numbers
remained a mystery to us. The solution to this mystery was never found.
Certainly not by me, as around this time (January 1948), I was summoned
to military service, which couldn’t do without me. During the two years
and eight months of my absence (I returned to civilian life in September
1950), a drastic change took place, which I could follow thanks to
frequent contacts with Loopstra.
First, the Mathematical Center, including our group, moved to the
current building at 2nd Boerhaavestraat 49. The building looked somewhat
different back then. The entire building had consisted of two
symmetrically built schools. During the war, the building was
requisitioned by the Germans and used as a garage. In this context, the
outer wall of one of the gymnasiums was demolished. Now, one half was
again in use as a school, and the other half, as well as the attic above
both halves, was assigned to the Mathematical Center. The Germans had
installed a munitions lift in the building. The lift was gone, but the
associated lift shaft was not. Fortunately, few among us had suicidal
tendencies. The frosted glass in the toilet doors (an old school!) had
long since disappeared; for the sake of decorum, curtains were hung in
front of them.
Van Wijngaarden could operate for a long time over a hole in the floor
next to his desk, corresponding with a hole in the ceiling of the room
below (unoccupied). Despite his impressive cigar consumption at that
time, I didn’t notice that this gigantic ashtray ever filled
up.
The number of employees in our group had meanwhile expanded somewhat;
all in all, perhaps around five.
The most significant change in the situation concerned our further
plans. The idea of a differential analyzer was abandoned as it had
become clear that the future belonged to digital computers. Upon my
return, a substantial part of such a computer, the ‘ARRA’ (Automatische
Relais Rekenmachine Amsterdam), had already been realized. The main
components were relays (for various logical functions) and tubes (for
the flip-flops that composed the registers). The relays were Siemens
high-speed relays (switching times in the order of a few milliseconds),
personally retrieved by Loopstra and Van Wijngaarden from an English war
surplus. They contained a single changeover contact (break-before-make),
with make and break contacts rigidly set, although adjustable. Logically
appealing were the two separate coils (with an equal number of
windings): both the inclusive and exclusive OR functions were within
reach. The relays were mounted on octal bases by us and later enclosed
in a plastic bag to prevent contact contamination.
They were a constant source of concern: switching times were unreliable
(especially when the exclusive OR was applied) and contact degradation
occurred nonetheless. Cleaning the contacts (‘polishing the pins’) and
resetting the switching times became a regular pastime, often involving
the girls from the Calculation Department. The setting was done on a
relay tester, and during this setting, the contacts were under
considerable voltage. Although an instrument with a wooden handle was
used for setting, the curses occasionally uttered suggested it was not
entirely effective.
For the flip-flops, double triodes were used, followed by a power tube
to drive a sufficient number of relays, and a pilot lamp for visual
indication of the flip-flop state. Since the A had three registers, each
30 bits wide, there must have been about 90 power tubes, and we noted
with dismay that 90 power tubes oscillated excellently. After some time,
we knew exactly which pilot lamp socket needed a 2-meter wire to
eliminate the oscillation.
At a later stage, a drum (initially, the instructions were read from a
plugboard via step switches) functioned as memory; for input and output,
a tape reader (paper, as magnetic tape was yet to be invented) and a
teleprinter were available. A wooden kitchen table served as the control
desk.
Relays and tubes might have been the main logical building blocks, but
they were certainly not the only ones. Without too much exaggeration, it
can be said that the ARRA was a collection of what the electronic
industry had to offer, a circumstance greatly contributed to by our
frequent trips to Eindhoven, from where we often returned with some
‘sample items.’ On the train back, we first reminisced about the
excellent lunch we had enjoyed and then inventoried to determine if we
brought back enough to cover the travel expenses. This examination
usually turned out positive.
It should be noted that the ARRA was mainly not clocked. Each primitive
operation was followed by an ‘operation complete’ signal, which in turn
started the next operation. It is somewhat amusing that nowadays such a
system is sometimes proposed again (but hopefully more reliable than
what we produced) to prevent glitch problems, a concept we were not
familiar with at the time.
Needless to say, the ARRA was so unreliable that little productive work
could be done with it. However, it was officially put into use. By
mid-1952, this was the case. His Excellency F.J. Th. Rutten, then
Minister of Education, appeared at our place and officially inaugurated
the ARRA with some ceremony. For this purpose, we carefully chose a
demonstration program with minimal risk of failure, namely producing
random numbers à la Fibonacci. We had rehearsed the demonstration so
often that we knew large parts of the output sequence by heart, and we
breathed a sigh of relief when we found that the machine produced the
correct output. In hindsight, I am surprised that this demonstration did
not earn us a reprimand from higher-ups. Imagine: you are the Minister
of Education, thoroughly briefed at the Department about the wonders of
the upcoming computing machines; you attend the official inauguration,
and you are greeted by a group explaining that, to demonstrate these
wonders, the machine will soon produce a series of random numbers. When
the moment arrives, they tell you with beaming faces that the machine
works excellently. I would have assumed that, if not with the truth, at
least with me, they were having a bit of fun. His Excellency remained
friendly, a remarkable display of self-control.
The emotions stirred by this festivity were apparently too much for the
ARRA. After the opening, as far as I recall, no reasonable amount of
useful work was ever produced. After some time, towards the end of 1952,
we decided to give up the ARRA as a hopeless case and do something else.
There was another reason for this decision. The year 1952 should be
considered an excellent harvest year for the Mathematical Center staff:
in March and November of that year, Edsger Dijkstra and Gerrit Blaauw
respectively appeared on the scene. Of these two, the latter is of
particular importance for today’s story and our future narrative. Gerrit
had worked on computers at Harvard, under the supervision of Howard
Aiken. He had also written a dissertation there and was willing to lend
his knowledge and insight to the Mathematical Center. We were not very
compliant boys at that time. Let me put it this way: we were aware that
we did not have a monopoly on wisdom, but we found it highly unlikely
that anyone else would know better. Therefore, the ‘newcomer’ was viewed
with some suspicion. Gerrit’s achievement was all the greater when he
convinced us in a lecture of the validity of what he proposed. And that
was quite something: a clocked machine, uniform building blocks
consisting of various types of AND/OR gates and corresponding
amplifiers, pluggable (and thus interchangeable) units, a neat design
method based on the use of two alternating, separate series of clock
pulses, and proper documentation.
We were sold on the plan and got to work. A small difficulty had to be
overcome: what we intended to do was obviously nothing more or less than
building a new machine, and this fact encountered some political
difficulties. The solution to this problem was simple: formally, it
would be a ‘revision’ of the ARRA. The new machine was thus also called
ARRA II (we shall henceforth speak of A II), but the double bottom was
perfectly clear to any visitor: the frames of the two machines were
distinctly separated, with no connecting wire between them.
For the AND/OR gates, we decided to use selenium diodes. These usually
arrived in the form of selenium rectifiers, a sort of firecrackers of
varying sizes, which we dismantled to extract the individual rectifier
plates, about half the diameter of a modern-day dime. The assembly—the
selenium plates couldn’t tolerate high temperatures, so soldering was
out of the question—was as follows: holes were drilled in a thick piece
of pertinax. One end of the hole was sealed with a metal plug; into the
resulting pot hole went a spring and a selenium plate, and finally, the
other end of the hole was also sealed with a metal plug. For connecting
the plugs, we thought the use of silver paint was appropriate, and soon
we were busy painting our first own circuits. Some time later, we had
plenty of reasons to curse this decision. The reliability of these
connections was poor, to put it mildly, and around this time, the
‘high-frequency hammer’ must have been invented: we took a small hammer
with a rubber head and rattled it along the handles of the units, like a
child running its hand along the railings of a fence. It proved an
effective means to turn intermittent interruptions into permanent ones.
I won’t hazard a guess as to how many interruptions we introduced in
this way. At a later stage, the selenium diodes were replaced by
germanium diodes, which were simply soldered.
The AND/OR gates were followed by a triode amplifier and a cathode
follower. ARRA II also got a drum and a tape reader. For output, an
electric typewriter was installed, with 16 keys operable by placing
magnets underneath them. The decoding tree for these magnets provided us
with the means to build an echo-check, and Dijkstra fabricated a routine
where, simultaneously with printing a number, the same number (if all
went well) was reconstructed. I assume we thus had one of the first
fully controlled print routines. Characteristic of ARRA II’s speed was
the time for an addition: 20 ms (the time of a drum
rotation).
ARRA II came into operation in December 1953, this time without
ministerial assistance, but it performed significantly more useful work
than its predecessor, despite the technical difficulties outlined
above.
The design phase of ARRA II marks for me the point where computer design
began to become a profession. This was greatly aided by the introduction
of uniform building blocks, describable in a multidimensional binary
state space, making the use of tools like Boolean algebra meaningful. We
figured out how to provide ARRA II with signed multiplicative addition
for integers (i.e., an operation of the form (A,S) := (M) * (±S’) + (A),
for all sign combinations of (A), (S), and (M) before and of the
result), despite the fact that ARRA II had only a counter as wide as a
register. As far as I can recall, this was the first time I devoted a
document to proving that the proposed solution was correct. Undoubtedly,
the proof was in a form I would not be satisfied with today, but still…
It worked as intended, and you can imagine my amusement when, years
later, I learned from a French book on computers that this problem was
considered unsolvable.
In May 1954, work began on a (slightly modified) copy of ARRA II, the
FERTA (Fokker’s First Calculating Machine Type A), intended for Fokker.
The FERTA was handed over to Fokker in April 1955. This entire affair
was mainly handled by Blaauw and Dijkstra. Shortly thereafter, Blaauw
left the service of the Mathematical Center.
In June 1956, the ARMAC (Automatic Calculating Machine Mathematical
Center), successor to ARRA II, was put into operation, several dozen
times faster than its predecessor. Design and construction took about 1½
years. Worth mentioning is that the ARMAC first used cores, albeit on a
modest scale (in total 64 words of 34 bits each, I believe). For
generating the horizontal and vertical selection currents for these
cores, we used large cores. To drive these large cores, however, they
had to be equipped with a coil with a reasonable number of windings.
Extensive embroidery work didn’t seem appealing to us, so the following
solution was devised: a (fairly deep) rim was turned from transparent
plastic. Thus, we now had two rings: the rim and the core. The rim was
sawed at one place, and the flexibility of the material made it possible
to interlock the two rings. Then, the coil was applied to the rim by
rotating it from the outside using a rubber wheel. The result was a
neatly wound coil. The whole thing was then encased in Araldite. The
unintended surprising effect was that, since the refractive indices of
the plastic and Araldite apparently differed little, the plastic rim
became completely invisible. The observer saw a core in the Araldite
with a beautifully regularly wound coil around it. We left many a
visitor in the dark for quite some time about how we produced these
things!
The time of amateurism was coming to an end. Computers began to appear
on the market, and the fact that our group, which had now grown to
several dozen employees, did not really belong in the Mathematical
Center started to become painfully clear to us. Gradual dissolution of
the group was, of course, an option, but that meant destroying a good
piece of know-how. A solution was found when the Nillmij, which had been
automating its administration for some time using Bull punch card
equipment, declared its willingness to take over our group as the core
of a new Dutch computer industry. Thus it happened. The new company,
N.V. Elektrologica, was formally established in 1956, and gradually our
group’s employees were transferred to Elektrologica, a process that was
completed with my own transfer on January 1, 1959. As the first
commercial machine, we designed a fully transistorized computer, the XI,
whose prototype performed its first calculations at the end of 1957. The
speed was about ten times that of the ARMAC.
With this, I consider the period I had to cover as concluded. When I
confront my memories with the title of this lecture, it must be said
that ‘designing computers’ as such hardly existed: the activities that
could be labeled as such were absorbed in the total of concerns that
demanded our attention. Those who engaged in constructing calculating
machines at that time usually worked in very small teams and performed
all the necessary tasks. We decided on the construction of racks, doors,
and closures, the placement of fans (the ARMAC consumed 10 kW!), we
mounted power distribution cabinets and associated wiring, we knew the
available fuses and cross-sections of electrical cables by heart, we
soldered, we peered at oscillographs, we climbed into the machine armed
with a vacuum cleaner to clean it, and, indeed, sometimes we were also
involved in design.
We should not idealize. As you may have gathered from the above, we were
occasionally brought to the brink of despair by technical problems.
Inadequate components plagued us, as did a lack of knowledge and
insight. This lack existed not only in our group but globally the field
was not yet mastered.
However, it was also a fascinating time, marked by a constant sense of
‘never before seen,’ although that may not always have been literally
true. It was a time when organizing overtime, sometimes lasting all
night, posed no problem. It was a time when we knew a large portion of
the participants in international computer conferences at least by
sight!
comments
https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/91041.html
This Is the Best Permitting Reform Deal We’re Going to Get
date: 2024-07-24, from: Heatmap News
We now know what a real bipartisan permitting overhaul could look like.
Senators Joe Manchin and John Barrasso on Monday unveiled the Energy Permitting Reform Act, the product of months of negotiations over how to craft a sweeping change to the nation’s federal energy project approvals system that could actually pass through Congress. It’s got a little bit of everything: For the oil and gas folks, there’s mandatory offshore oil and gas lease sales and streamlined permitting requirements; for renewables, there’s faster permits for “low-impact” construction jobs and new deployment goals; for transmission, there’s siting authority for interstate lines, compulsory interregional planning, and clarity on cost allocation. There are also sections devoted to helping mining projects navigate legal uncertainties around mill sites and assistance for hydropower projects needing extended licenses. Lastly there’s a fresh limit on the length of time allowed for legal challenges against energy projects of all types.
In other words, it’s an energy smorgasbord, and all sorts of fuels and resources are invited to the party.
Will such a bill be able to sail through Congress in the middle of a close election cycle? Unclear, but highly doubtful. Will it be able to overcome opposition from the major environmental groups — Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Earthjustice — that stymied Manchin’s prior permitting deal? We have yet to hear from President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, or congressional Democratic leaders on whether they support the bill, and representatives for the White House and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not respond to requests for comment.
But to the people most deeply invested in bipartisan permitting compromise, none of that matters — for now, at least. In their view, this bill sets the parameters for whatever permitting deal will eventually become law, whether that’s in this Congress or the next.
“Some of the environmental community is going to look at this and see it as a net win for climate change, and some in the environmental community are more anti-fossil fuel than they are pro-reducing emissions, and so it’s harder for them to get over the fossil fuel aspect of the bill,” Xan Fishman, senior director of the energy program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told me. “But to some extent, that’s how bipartisan deals come together. Not everyone is going to be happy.”
The biggest gain for energy transition advocates is plainly the transmission language. Since the Inflation Reduction Act (which also similarly frustrated environmental groups with its giveaways to oil and gas) became law, it has been painfully apparent that easing the federal permitting burden on transmission could speed up the deployment of renewables projects boosted by the climate law. But Republicans have so far been unwilling to consider advancing transmission support on its own, in which case the Beltway Elite conventional wisdom calls for sweetening the deal with measures that benefit fossil fuels.
Agencies have already tried to advance permitting assistance sans new legislation. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has advanced a potential fix to regional transmission planning via Order 1920, and the Interior Department has moved forward with regulation to ease permitting burdens on solar and wind projects. Congress has also moved piecemeal solutions to sector-specific problems, such as the ADVANCE Act, which provided federal officials with new legal resources to process cutting-edge nuclear projects. But these have not achieved anything close to the broad changes that industry representatives say are needed for the overall permitting regime.
Fishman and other observers in D.C. expect Manchin to try and move the bill out of his Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee imminently, but it’s best shot of seeing the floor won’t come until after the election, during the so-called “lame duck” session. They’re also expecting more permitting proposals out of a different committee, Senate Environment and Public Works, which has key jurisdiction over activities of the Environmental Protection Agency. Manchin couldn’t touch those because they don’t fall under the remit of his committee, but advocates for a deal believe EPA language would help relieve more of the burden projects face.
Yet with some climate Democrats coming out in support of the bill already, those seeking a permitting deal say the immediate odds for the Manchin-Barrasso bill enactment into law are not at all the point. What matters is that we now have a real life example of what a true blue bipartisan compromise on permitting that advances the energy transition can look like.
“Even if this doesn’t pass, this is the baseline for conversations,” Ryan Fitzpatrick of Third Way told me. “This is a net win for climate … it’s the starting point, however it may be adapted.”
https://heatmap.news/politics/manchin-barrasso-permitting-bill
On goals, online projects, and the usefulness of money
date: 2024-07-24, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>I’m currently a <em>“<a href="https://getkirby.com/partners">Certified Kirby Partner</a>”</em>. Fancy title, I know. What that means is that I paid some money, last summer, to be listed on a website. This upcoming August, I will no longer be a <em>“Certified Kirby Partner”</em> because I am not going to pay money—again—to be listed on a website. But my certified status is not what I want to write about. It’s just an excuse to talk about the role money plays in achieving goals in the context of online projects.</p>Most online projects exist to fulfil a goal. Sometimes that goal is stated, sometimes it’s implied. And money may or may not be an aid in achieving said goal. I was chatting about online communities with Kev the other day and we both reached the same conclusion that in order to create something meaningful in that space it has to be a paid product. Not because you need that to make it sustainable financially but because a monetary commitment—even a small one—is a helpful tool to find people who are genuinely interested in what you’re creating. You’re not likely to spend money on something you don’t care about. So in that context, money is a helpful tool to achieve the goal of creating a small community of people who care about the shared space.
That same way of reasoning wouldn’t make sense for something like my People and Blogs series. My goal with that project is to help as many people as possible rediscover the beauty of having a personal blog and owning your corner of the web, and to encourage a healthier way to live online. Making it a paid series wouldn’t help me reach that goal. It would probably be an obstacle. This is why I started the series knowing it was going to be a cost for me both in terms of time and in terms of actual money but it was one I was willing to sustain because I believe it’s important.
It’s easy for me to commit to paying money when stated goals and monetisation schemes are aligned. To bring it back to Kirby, I absolutely love it both as a tool and as a project. It’s been run fantastically for more than a decade by a great group of people and I have nothing but positive things to say about it. I plan to keep using it and buying licenses for as long as they stay in business. But it’s also why I won’t pay again to be a “Certified Kirby Partner”. Because there the stated goals and the monetisation scheme are not aligned. As they say, money talks.
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https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/xX8CrexikM8ERTM7
Musk deflects sluggish Tesla car sales with Optimus optimism
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Claims ‘everyone on Earth is going to want one’
Tesla profits were nearly halved in the second quarter of 2024, extending a run of woe for the company, lightened only by a surge in energy generation and storage.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/tesla_q2_2024/
You can install Windows 11 on an iPhone, but you probably don’t want to
date: 2024-07-24, from: Liliputing
NTDEV — the developer behind the stripped-down tiny11 OS — strikes again, this time managing to get Windows 11 up and running on an iPhone 15 Pro. It’s a pretty amazing achievement even if the result isn’t something you’re likely to want to replicate. For starters it takes around 20 minutes for Windows to even […]
The post You can install Windows 11 on an iPhone, but you probably don’t want to appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/you-can-install-windows-11-on-an-iphone-but-you-probably-dont-want-to/
Drill team cultivates sense of identity for Chinese American girls
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
In the Pacific Northwest, there is a marching group that has thrilled parade audiences for more than 70 years. The Seattle Chinese Community Girls Drill Team has brought a sense of community and identity for generations of Chinese American girls. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya reports.
Crash Caused by Apple Mail’s Previous Recipients Window and Editing in Contacts
date: 2024-07-24, from: TidBITS blog
Mail will crash if you open its Previous Recipients window and then edit a contact in Contacts. This bug has existed since macOS 12 Monterey and continues to plague the betas of macOS 15 Sequoia.
US links Pakistan’s economic growth to political stability
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
ISLAMABAD — The United States urged Pakistan Wednesday to protect the rights of all citizens, including freedom of expression and assembly, as a military-backed crackdown on the opposition party of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan continues.
Donald Blome, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, stressed during a seminar in Islamabad that upholding constitutionally guaranteed rights is crucial to the country’s economic progress.
“Protecting human rights for all is not just a fundamental pillar of a democracy; it’s a critical component of a vibrant and stable society drawing on the talents and contributions of all its citizens for the country’s benefits,” Blome said.
“Without such stability, the prospects for investment and economic growth appear far less certain,” he noted, without directly naming Pakistani political stakeholders.
The U.S. ambassador’s remarks came as Pakistan faces prolonged political turmoil stemming from Khan’s removal from power in 2022 through a parliamentary no-confidence vote and his subsequent imprisonment last August, which the United Nations described as having no legal basis.
The ongoing crackdown has led to the arrest of hundreds of supporters of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party, including women.
This week, police raided the PTI’s headquarters in the Pakistani capital, detaining its chief spokesman and several other media team professionals, accusing them of running an “anti-state campaign.”
Khan’s aides have denounced the arrests as part of a campaign of suppression and intimidation.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government, struggling to address Pakistan’s deep economic problems, has publicly stated its intention to ban the party over charges of anti-state activities and maligning the military.
“We will, under no circumstances, tolerate such actions against our motherland, innocent people, or the armed forces of Pakistan,” Sharif reiterated Wednesday, while presiding over a cabinet meeting.
The threat of banning the country’s most popular and the single largest party in parliament has further fueled political tensions.
On Tuesday, during a congressional hearing in Washington, the crackdown and potential banning of the Pakistani opposition party also came under discussion when Donald Lu, the U.S. assistant secretary of state, was responding to questions from lawmakers.
Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, raised the issue of Pakistan banning Khan from holding public office and preventing his party from using its iconic cricket bat symbol on the ballots in the February 8 vote.
“The information minister and two other ministers have said that they want to ban the PTI. And we see in the latest development that the PTI office has been sealed, their national information security and many women have been arrested,” Sherman said.
“The best thing you can do is ask Ambassador Blome to go visit Imran Khan in prison, and I wonder if you would consider that,” the congressmen told Lu. “We’ll definitely discuss it with Ambassador Blome,” responded the assistant secretary of state.
“Pakistan’s future must be decided by its people. It’s clear that the PTI is Pakistan’s most popular party. I disagree with Imran Khan on many things, but it’s the right of Pakistan’s people to choose their leader,” Sherman wrote on his social media X platform after the hearing.
Khan’s arrest last year sparked violent street protests in Pakistan, with some of his supporters attacking facilities linked to the country’s powerful military.
The Sharif government and the military used the riots to defend the crackdown on the PTI and as a reason to keep Khan in prison after several of his convictions in other cases were recently overturned by appeals courts for lack of evidence.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the PTI was eligible for around two dozen extra reserved seats in parliament, saying the Election Commission of Pakistan deprived the party of them in breach of the constitution.
Once implemented, the verdict will further strengthen the PTI in the parliament and weaken the ruling coalition. It has also given credence to the opposition and independent monitors’ allegations that the February 8 elections were rigged in favor of pro-military parties and prevented the PTI from sweeping the polls.
Khan, 71, rejects all charges against him — ranging from corruption to sedition and a fraudulent marriage — as politically motivated and part of a larger effort by the military to keep him and his party from returning to power.
The former cricket hero turned politician insists on the return of his party’s “stolen mandate” or new elections overseen by an impartial election commission.
Sharif, who has the backing of the military, denies his government is unfairly targeting Khan and his party, saying it was determined to bring to justice those responsible for the May 2023 attacks on military facilities.
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted 368-7 to approve a resolution urging “the full and independent investigation of claims of interference or irregularities” in Pakistan’s election, a move Islamabad rejected.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-links-pakistan-s-economic-growth-to-political-stability-/7711118.html
Botanists Vote to Remove Racial Slur From Hundreds of Plant Species Names
date: 2024-07-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In a first for taxonomy, researchers opted to change scientific names containing derivatives of the slur “caffra” to derivatives of “afr,” in reference to the plants’ origins in Africa
One airport, thousands of stranded passengers
date: 2024-07-24, from: Marketplace Morning Report
“We started breaking down crying, because I didn’t think I would get out for my mother’s funeral.” “I’m about $10,000 out of pocket right now for just lodging, food and transportation.” These are just a few of the pained frustrations passengers at Atlanta’s airport, Delta’s primary hub, shared after flight delays and cancellations following the recent CrowdStrike outage. Also: sluggish home sales, the ban on noncompete agreements and politicization of the Federal Reserve.
Why OpenAI may well be completely Zuck’d
date: 2024-07-24, from: Gary Marcus blog
Regular readers of this Substack will recall that I have never been bullish on OpenAI. Last Fall, I warned that they might someday be known as the WeWork of AI, and in late January I wrote an essay about some of the strong headwinds they faced, despite their seeming invincibility, called “
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/why-openai-may-well-be-completely
Windows Patch Tuesday update might send a user to the BitLocker recovery screen
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Not now, Microsoft
Some Windows devices are presenting users with a BitLocker recovery screen upon reboot following the installation of July’s Patch Tuesday update.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/windows_update_bitlocker/
NASA’s Webb Images Cold Exoplanet 12 Light-Years Away
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
An international team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has directly imaged an exoplanet roughly 12 light-years from Earth. The planet, Epsilon Indi Ab, is one of the coldest exoplanets observed to date. The planet is several times the mass of Jupiter and orbits the K-type star Epsilon Indi A (Eps Ind A), […]
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-images-cold-exoplanet-12-light-years-away/
EMD Climate Adaptation Video
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
https://www.nasa.gov/organizations/osi/emd/emd-climate-adaptation-video/
Whale surfaces, capsizes fishing boat off New Hampshire coast
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
RYE, New Hampshire — Two fishermen are safe after a whale crashed onto their boat, capsizing it off the New Hampshire shore, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The incident occurred Tuesday near Odiorne Point State Park in Rye. The two men, who were thrown overboard, said they had seen the whale earlier and were trying to keep their distance.
“He went under, he disappeared for a few minutes, and then the next thing we know, he just popped right up on our transom,” fisherman Ryland Kenney told WMUR-TV.
The Coast Guard posted to social media platform X that they had received a mayday call stating that a 7-meter center console boat had turned over because of a whale breach.
“The occupants were ejected from the vessel as the boat capsized,” the Coast Guard posted, adding that an urgent marine information broadcast was issued, and the Coast Guard Station Portsmouth Harbor was alerted.
“A good Samaritan recovered both individuals from the water. No injuries were reported,” the Coast Guard posted.
The rescuers were two young brothers.
“I saw it come up, and I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s going to hit the boat,’” Wyatt Yager told the station. “It started to flip.” His brother, Colin Yager, caught what happened on his phone.
The boat crew from Station Portsmouth reported that the whale appeared not to be injured. The incident was reported to the Center of Coastal Studies Marine Animal Hotline and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The vessel has also been salvaged.
The whale probably did not know the boat was there, said Sara Morris of the University of New Hampshire Shoals Marine Laboratory.
“If you look at the video really carefully, you can see that the whale has its mouth open,” she told the station. “It looks like it’s lunge feeding and actually trying to catch fish.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/whale-surfaces-capsizes-fishing-boat-off-new-hampshire-coast-/7711013.html
Oak Ridge casts nets in search of Frontier supercomputer’s heir
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
US national lab expects Discovery to deliver ‘three to five times more computational throughput’
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a successor to the Frontier supercomputer, just a couple of years after the world’s first exascale system came online.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/oak_ridge_discovery/
How often you poop could suggest more than you think, study finds
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
How often you poop may influence more than whether you’re uncomfortably bloated. The frequency may also affect your gut microbiome and risk of chronic disease, a new study has found.
The Physics of Cold Water May Have Jump-Started Complex Life
date: 2024-07-24, from: Quanta Magazine
When seawater gets cold, it gets viscous. This fact could explain how single-celled ocean creatures became multicellular when the planet was frozen during “Snowball Earth,” according to experiments.The post The Physics of Cold Water May Have Jump-Started Complex Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Wildfires threaten communities in the West as Oregon fire closes interstate, creates its own weather
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Firefighters in the West are scrambling as wildfires threaten communities in Oregon, California and Washington, with at least one Oregon fire so large that it is creating its own weather.
Media Invited to Watch NASA Stream 4K Video to Space
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
NASA invites media to attend a real-time laser communications experiment at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Researchers are testing a laser communications networking system that could enable the public to watch the first woman and first person of color walk on the Moon in HD during the Artemis missions. The media availability begins […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/media-invited-to-watch-nasa-stream-4k-video-to-space/
NASA Streams First 4K Video from Aircraft to Space Station, Back
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
A team at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland streamed 4K video footage from an aircraft to the International Space Station and back for the first time using optical, or laser, communications. The feat was part of a series of tests on new technology that could provide live video coverage of astronauts on the Moon […]
Coco Gauff to be female flag bearer for US team at Olympic opening ceremony, joining LeBron James
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
Paris — Tennis star Coco Gauff will join LeBron James as a flag bearer for the U.S. Olympic team at Friday’s opening ceremony.
Gauff, the reigning U.S. Open champion, is set to make her Olympic debut at the Paris Games and will be the first tennis athlete to carry the U.S. flag. She and James were chosen by Team USA athletes.
“I mean, for me, the Olympics is a top priority. I would say equal to the Grand Slams. I wouldn’t put it above or below, just because I’ve never played before. This is my first time,” Gauff said earlier this year. “Obviously, I always want to do well, try to get a medal.”
Gauff and James, the 39-year-old leading scorer in NBA history, both compete in sports that are outside the traditional Olympic world and get attention year-round, not just every four years.
The 20-year-old Gauff made the American team for the Tokyo Games three years ago as a teenager but had to sit out those Olympics because she tested positive for COVID-19 right before she was supposed to fly to Japan.
Now Gauff, who is based in Florida, is a Grand Slam title winner in singles and doubles. She won her first major championship in New York in September, defeating Aryna Sabalenka in the singles final of the U.S. Open, then added her first Grand Slam doubles trophy at the French Open this June alongside Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic.
The same clay courts at Roland Garros used for the French Open will be where matches are going to be held for the Paris Olympics. The draw to set the brackets is Thursday, and play begins on Saturday.
Gauff is seeded No. 2 in singles, matching her current WTA ranking behind No. 1 Iga Swiatek of Poland, and will be among the medal favorites.
She and her usual doubles partner, Jessica Pegula, are seeded No. 1 in women’s doubles. It’s possible Gauff could also be entered in mixed doubles, but those pairings have not been announced yet.
“I’m not putting too much pressure on it, because I really want to fully indulge in the experience,” Gauff said about her Olympics debut. “Hopefully I can have the experience multiple times in my lifetime, (but) I’ll treat it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
45 Years Ago: Space Shuttle Enterprise Completes Launch Pad Checkout
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
On July 23, 1979, space shuttle Enterprise completed its time as a pathfinder vehicle at Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Workers towed it back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). During its four-month stay at KSC, Enterprise validated procedures for the assembly of the space shuttle stack and interfaces […]
https://www.nasa.gov/history/45-years-ago-space-shuttle-enterprise-completes-launch-pad-checkout/
The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
date: 2024-07-24, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge]
“Last week, the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz declared their allegiance to Donald Trump in their customary fashion: talking about money on a podcast.
“Sorry, Mom,” Ben Horowitz says in an episode of The Ben & Marc Show. “I know you’re going to be mad at me for this. But, like, we have to do it.”“
No, you don’t.
As I’ve discussed before, investors like Andreessen and Horowitz are putting concerns about crypto regulation and taxation of unrealized gains over a host of social issues that include mass deportations, an increase in death sentences, military police in our cities, and potential ends to contraception and no-fault divorce. It’s myopic, selfish, and stupid.
It looks even more so in a world where Trump is reportedly already regretting appointing JD Vance as his Vice Presidential candidate and where Musk has reneged on his $45M a month pledge to a Trump PAC. They come out looking awful.
The progressive thing to do would be to starve their firm: founders who care about those issues should pledge not to let a16z into their rounds, and other VCs should refuse to join rounds where a16z is present. This is likely too much activism for Silicon Valley, but it would send the strong signal that’s needed here.
The desire for profit must never trump our duty of care to society’s most vulnerable. Agreeing with this statement should be a no-brainer - but we’re quickly learning how many would much rather put themselves first.
<p>[<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/the-moral-bankruptcy-of-marc-andreessen-and-ben-horowitz
Data pilfered from Pentagon IT supplier Leidos
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
With numerous US government agency customers, any leak could be serious
Updated Internal documents stolen from Leidos Holdings, an IT services provider contracted with the Department of Defense and other US government agencies, have been leaked on the dark web.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/leidos_data_leak/
Taste-Off: The most delicious coffee ice creams — and the bitter disappointments
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Coffee ice cream is a favorite among java lovers but while some brands shine, others are merely meh. Here’s how Trader Joe’s, Straus, Talenti, Van Leeuwen and other brands measure up.
IOC awards 2034 Winter Games to Utah, pushes state officials to help end investigation
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
Paris — What was expected to be a simple coronation of Salt Lake City as the 2034 Winter Olympic host turned into complicated Olympic politics Wednesday, as the IOC pushed Utah officials to end an FBI investigation into a suspected doping coverup.
The International Olympic Committee is angry about an ongoing U.S. federal investigation of suspected doping by Chinese swimmers who were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Games despite positive drug tests. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accepted Chinese explanations for the tests, and U.S. officials are now investigating that decision under an anti-conspiracy law passed after the Russian doping scandal at the Sochi Winter Games.
President Thomas Bach wants to make sure WADA is the sole authority on Olympic doping cases, especially with the Sumer Olympics headed to Los Angeles in 2028. The IOC added a clause to Salt Lake’s host contract, demanding that local organizers - including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox - push to shut down the federal investigation or risk losing the Olympics.
Cox and others promised to lobby the U.S. president and Congress.
“We agree that if the United States does not support or violates the World Anti-Doping Federation’s rules, that they can withdraw the Games from from us and from the United States,” Cox said after the announcement. “That was the only way that that we could we could guarantee that we would get the Games.”
Even in the world Olympic diplomacy, it was a stunning power move to force government officials to publicly agree to do the IOC’s lobbying.
After getting the Utah contingent’s agreement on the clause, the IOC formally awarded the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake in an 83-6 vote.
The capital city of Utah was the only candidate after the IOC gave Salt Lake City exclusive negotiating rights last year in a fast-tracked process.
The campaign team presenting the bid on stage to IOC members included Cox, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Alpine ski great Lindsey Vonn. Back home, a 3 a.m. public watch party gathered to see the broadcast from Paris.
The clause inserted into the contract requires Utah officials to to work with current and future U.S. presidents and members of Congress “to alleviate your concerns” about the federal investigation into doping.
The IOC clause allows the Olympic body to terminate Salt Lake City’s deal if the authority of WADA was undermined on U.S. territory.
WADA’s role is under scrutiny for accepting a Chinese investigation that declared all 23 swimmers were contaminated by traces of a banned heart medication in a hotel kitchen. Three Chinese gold medals in the Tokyo Olympic pool were won by swimmers implicated in the case. Some are also competing in Paris next week.
The case an be investigated in the U.S. under federal legislation named for a whistleblower of Russian state doping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.
The IOC and WADA lobbied against passing the law, known as the Rodchenkov Act, which gives U.S. federal agencies wide jurisdiction of doping enforcement worldwide ahead of Los Angeles hosting the 2028 Summer Games.
“We will work with our members of Congress,” Gov. Cox told Bach and IOC voters ahead of the 2034 vote, “we will use all the levers of power open to us to resolve these concerns.”
Salt Lake City first hosted the Winter Games in 2002. That bid was hit with a bribery scandal, which led to anti-corruption reforms at the IOC.
Future U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney was brought in to clean up the Games, which went off well despite tightened security. The Games were the biggest international sports event hosted by the U.S. following the Sept. 11 attacks five months earlier.
“I am sorry for you, and for us, that this issue arose now,” Bach said, addressing the Salt Lake City delegation ahead of the vote.
It is an Olympic tradition for lawmakers and even heads of state to come to an IOC meeting and plead their case to be anointed as an host city.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did it in 2007, speaking in English to secure the 2014 Winter Games for Sochi. British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a key intervention in 2005 to help win the 2012 Olympics for London. U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Copenhagen in 2009 did not help in Chicago’s losing cause for the 2016 Summer Games that went to Rio de Janeiro.
For its second turn, Salt Lake City will get almost 10 full years to prepare — the longest lead-in for a modern Winter Games — amid longer-term concerns about climate change affecting snow sports and reducing the pool of potential hosts.
Salt Lake City opted to target 2034 and so avoided potential commercial and logistical clashes with the 2028 Summer Games being hosted by Los Angeles.
It will be the fifth Winter Games in the U.S. Before Salt Lake City in 2002, there was Lake Placid in 1980 and 1932, and Squaw Valley — now known as Olympic Valley — in 1960.
In a separate decision earlier in Paris, the 2030 Winter Games was awarded — with conditions — to France for a regional project split between ski resorts in the Alps and the French Riviera city Nice.
That project needs official signoff from the national government being formed, and the Prime Minister yet to be confirmed, after recent elections called by President Emmanuel Macron. He helped present the 2030 bid Wednesday to IOC members.
Pleasanton threatens to ‘pull the plug’ on Stoneridge Mall project if property owners don’t move forward
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
After six extensions, the City Council is giving the shopping center’s owners a last chance to make some progress.
Google Is the Only Search Engine That Works on Reddit Now Thanks to AI Deal
date: 2024-07-24, from: 404 Media Group
DuckDuckGo, Bing, Mojeek, and other search engines are not returning full Reddit results any more.
https://www.404media.co/google-is-the-only-search-engine-that-works-on-reddit-now-thanks-to-ai-deal/
This Bay Area school district is being sued over teacher vacancies. Is it violating students’ civil rights?
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Textbooks, qualified teachers and clean, safe and functional schools are required, following the landmark Williams v. California settlement in 2004.
CrowdStrike fiasco highlights growing Sino-Russian tech independence
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
China is playing a long game, which could pay off on an enormous scale
Analysis Some of the common arguments for moving away from proprietary operating systems are about increasing personal (or corporate) freedom and decreasing expenditure, but there are bigger things at stake.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/foss_gets_geopolitical/
tinyPod is a case that turns an Apple Watch into a modern iPod
date: 2024-07-24, from: Liliputing
The Apple Watch is basically a tiny computer for your wrist. But the tinyPod is a case that repurposes Apple’s wearable as a pocket-sized device that… looks a lot like a small iPod. Just remove the wristband, pop an Apple Watch into a tinyPod and you’ve got a small interactive device that you can use […]
The post tinyPod is a case that turns an Apple Watch into a modern iPod appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/tinypod-is-a-case-that-turns-an-apple-watch-into-a-modern-ipod/
Waveshare Pi5 module box turns a Raspberry Pi into a PC in a flash
date: 2024-07-24, from: Liliputing
The Waveshare Pi5 Module Box is a compact aluminum enclosure that quickly turns a are Raspberry Pi 5 board into a slick-looking mini PC. It’s offered in three different configurations, each with a handful of extra ports that break out via a PCIe adapter board. The Pi5 Module Box A adds a second gigabit Ethernet […]
The post Waveshare Pi5 module box turns a Raspberry Pi into a PC in a flash appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/waveshare-pi5-module-box-turns-a-raspberry-pi-into-a-pc-in-a-flash/
Podcast: The CrowdStrike Outage
date: 2024-07-24, from: 404 Media Group
The worldwide CrowdStrike outage; vaping the internet; and a bunch of leaked documents from Cellebrite.
https://www.404media.co/404-media-podcast-the-crowd-strike-outage/
‘Where have all the preschoolers gone?’ new UC Berkeley study asks
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
A new study finds that despite the state’s ambitious early-childhood investments, enrollment in California’s preschools has struggled to bounce back post-pandemic.
Byron York | Democrats Rally Around Worst Possible Candidate
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
It wasn’t really a surprise that President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he will no longer be a candidate for a second term. After all, Biden was under crushing pressure […]
The post Byron York | Democrats Rally Around Worst Possible Candidate appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/byron-york-democrats-rally-around-worst-possible-candidate/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Why Trump and Vance are flailing against Kamala.
49ers poll: What is team’s biggest issue to sort out in training camp?
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Brandon Aiyuk’s contract isn’t the only matter the 49ers must manage over the next month and a half before the season opener.
Huge Silicon Valley tech campus is foreclosed as office market staggers
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Office complex is now worth one-third its prior value.
Walters: California’s image will be a weapon as Harris faces Trump this year
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
New GOP strategy will paint VP’s home state as a dystopia of crime, unaffordable living costs and ruinous taxation
Frustrated by School Web Filters, One Teenager Created His Own
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Markup blog
During early COVID lockdowns, a teen raised $1.8 million in venture funding and built a web filter with a team of data scientists and psychologists that he now hopes will help students safely surf the web
Joby Aviation takes 523-mile hydrogen-electric flight above Monterey County
date: 2024-07-24, from: San Jose Mercury News
Joby’s test flight is believed to be the first forward flight of a vertical take-off and landing aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/24/joby-takes-523-mile-hydrogen-electric-flight-above-marina/
changelog changes
date: 2024-07-24, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
On the curl website we of course list exactly what changes that go into each and every single release we do. In recent years I have even gone back and made sure we provide this information for every single release ever done. At the moment that means 258 releases, listing over 10,000 bugfixes and almost … Continue reading changelog changes
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/07/24/changelog-changes/
Knock, knock. Who’s there? The Department of Public Health, and they want to help
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The LAist
A new L.A. County pilot program sends community health workers in select neighborhoods across the county to ask: What do you need?
What pathways to work do immigrants without permanent legal status have?
date: 2024-07-24, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Working for cash off the books is illegal. But there are routes to work for immigrants who don’t have permission to in the U.S. as an independent contractor or by establishing a Limited Liability Company, or LLC. Today, we’ll hear from one young man who’s seeking a visa that would allow him to work — but he’s looking to start an LLC in the meantime. But first: Tesla is losing ground overseas.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-07-24, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I made a letter from the tooth fairy to the 8yo. Then I added an AI generated tooth fairy logo to the letter.
This morning:
“Wow you got a letter form the tooth fairy, and this
is their official logo”
“Dad, it’s AI generated”
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112841336750918771
Talk of turbulence in aviation supply chains at British international airshow
date: 2024-07-24, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Some of the world’s biggest civilian and defense aviation businesses are gathered at this year’s Farnborough Airshow, a trade expo in the south of England. But with deals on the table, it’s clear that plane makers are struggling to keep up with demand. Also: a look at the the realities of Venezuela’s struggling economy as citizens head to the polls on Sunday.
Microsoft: Our licensing terms do not meaningfully raise cloud rivals’ costs
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Redmond comes out swinging as it files response to Competition and Markets Authority
Updated Microsoft has responded to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) probe into public cloud services and licensing by insisting that its terms “do not meaningfully raise cloud rivals’ costs.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/microsoft_cloud_cma/
The Crunch
date: 2024-07-24, from: 500-ish blog, A collection of posts by M.G. Siegler of around 500 words in length.
https://500ish.com/the-crunch-f051c764bc1e?source=rss----662a29c3b19e---4
Kia Niro electric vehicle defies physics with record-breaking 114 million miles on the clock
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
At least that’s what the app says…
BORK!BORK!BORK! One criticism frequently leveled at electric vehicles is about their batteries: “Won’t they wear out?”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/kia_niro_app_blunder/
U.S. Naval Torpedo Station
date: 2024-07-24, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
For nearly 20 years the National Archives’ Alexandria Federal Records Center was housed in the former U.S. Naval Torpedo station located on Alexandria’s waterfront. One day after the end of World War I, the U.S. Navy began construction of the U.S. Naval Torpedo Station on the waterfront of Alexandria, Virginia. The factory built torpedoes until … Continue reading U.S. Naval Torpedo Station
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2024/07/24/u-s-naval-torpedo-station/
Global Temperatures Hit a New Record High – Again
date: 2024-07-24, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Torrential rain from Typhoon Gaemi brought the Philippines’ capital to a standstill • California’s Santa Barbara County is dealing with an infestation of aggressive red fire ants • Monsoonal thunderstorms could bring flash flooding to the Great Basin region this week.
THE TOP FIVE
- Daily temperature record broken for 2 days in a row
Sunday was the hottest day ever recorded, and Monday was even hotter. Data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service shows the global average surface air temperature reached 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit Monday, which is just a touch higher than the all-time high of 62.76 degrees Fahrenheit recorded 24 hours earlier. And both days broke the new heat record set just last year. Before that, the previous hottest day was recorded in 2016. The trend is particularly worrying since the El Niño weather pattern, which tends to overlap with the warmest years on record, has now receded.
C3S
“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” said Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo. “We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years.” The records could well keep falling this week – last year’s stretch of new highs lasted for four days.
- Company behind damaged Vineyard Wind blade reports earnings today
GE Vernova will likely face some tough questions in a call with analysts today after it reports Q2 results. The company is the manufacturer behind a broken blade that fell from a Vineyard Wind turbine on July 13 and scattered debris across Nantucket beaches. Its shares have fallen by about 5% since the incident, which is still under investigation. Investors will want to know what happened – and whether it’s likely to happen again. As Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo explained, wind turbine blades can break for a variety of reasons, including factors like poor quality control and defects during manufacturing. In May, a blade on the same model of turbine sustained damage at a wind farm being installed off the coast of England called Dogger Bank.
An initial environmental assessment of the accident, commissioned by GE Vernova and released last night, concluded that the blade materials are non-toxic and do not contain any PFAS, but could pose an injury risk for beachgoers.
- Canada wildfires force 25,000 to evacuate
About 25,000 people have been evacuated from Canada’s Jasper National Park as wildfires rage. There are 170 blazes in the Alberta province, and 375 in British Columbia. Officials warn that more than half are burning out of control, and the hot weather conditions have only made things worse. Fires are also burning near oil sands in Alberta that produce two-thirds of Canada’s oil, according to Reuters. Last year’s fire season was the worst on record, scorching some 37 million acres. Here is a look at the regional wildfire map as of this morning:
- Musk denies pledging $45 million in monthly donations to Trump
Tesla CEO Elon Musk yesterday denied reports that he planned to donate $45 million a month to support Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid. “What’s been reported in the media is simply not true,” he told Jordan Peterson. Musk, who endorsed Trump, established a Super PAC called the America PAC, which he said will “promote the principles that made America great in the first place.” Trump and Musk have reportedly been speaking by phone, with Musk trying to persuade Trump on the merits of EVs. Trump has said he will end the EV “mandate” if he’s elected in November and gut EV tax credits. But he has adjusted his tone as of late. Over the weekend he said he was “totally for” EVs.
In related news, Tesla reported Q2 earnings yesterday, with net profits down 45% year-over-year. Musk sought to calm investors’ nerves by focusing on the company’s ambitions for self-driving technology, and promised to unveil the robotaxi in October.
- White House to focus on curbing U.S. nitrous oxide emissions
The Biden administration announced a new effort to “tackle climate super pollutants” like nitrous oxide, or N2O. This gas is far more potent than carbon dioxide but doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere. The White House said the new initiative would seek to reduce N2O emissions from industry by 50% next year compared to 2020 levels as companies work to curb their own pollution. The U.S. will also try to work with China to reduce these emissions from chemical plants across both countries. Together, the U.S. and China produce about 80% of industrial N2O pollution. “If successful, the two countries could reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking approximately 50 million automobiles off the road at a fraction of the cost of other emission reduction efforts,” Inside Climate News reported.
THE KICKER
The British royal family’s Crown Estate saw profits more than double over the last year, thanks largely to six offshore wind leasing deals.
https://heatmap.news/climate/hottest-day-ever-earth-temperature
Tim Peake joins Axiom Space as an astronaut advisor
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A new mission: Securing funding for Brits in orbit
Former European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake has joined Axiom Space’s astronaut team as a strategic advisor supporting a potential all-UK human spaceflight mission.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/tim_peake_joins_axiom_space/
The Real Hero of ‘Twisters’ Is Geoengineering
date: 2024-07-24, from: Heatmap News
This weekend, millions of Americans were reminded that we are living in extraordinary times. At moments, it almost seemed like you could feel our place in the great continuum of history — at once stretching backward to those who came before us while also extending forward, onward, to those who’ve been passed the torch.
I am talking, of course, about the Twister sequel.
Twisters touched down in theaters last Friday, nearly 30 years after its precursor was released on LaserDisc and VHS with a message from the FEMA administrator to “never try to outdrive a tornado.” For Hollywood reboots and the meteorological sciences both, three decades is an eon; Twisters’ lead actress, Daisy Edgar-Jones, was born two years after Twister premiered, and while Helen Hunt’s Jo had dreamed of improving tornado warning times in the mid-1990s, the Millennial storm chasers in Twisters own drones and plausibly discuss snuffing out the storms entirely. (Speaking of warnings: There are spoilers ahead.)
Twisters is a movie that loves science and shows its work. Director Lee Isaac Chung reportedly consulted researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and elsewhere to get the basic facts right, and in the opening minutes of the film, the screenplay debunks the common “one Mississippi” method of calculating a storm’s distance (in case you’re not familiar, here’s an explanation); casually references Lagrangian mechanics; and features a memorable PSA on why you should never use an overpass for shelter during a tornado. Twisters protagonists work for, or use taxpayer-funded technologies from, NOAA, the National Weather Service, and the military — a particularly meaningful inclusion at a time when government-funded science is under open threat by one of the leading candidates for highest office.
Even Twisters’ lack of focus on climate change is relatively accurate: While it might feel odd for there not to be an obvious climate nod in a weather disaster movie, scientists still haven’t demonstrated a strong correlation between global warming and tornadoes. Suggesting otherwise might actually have done more damage to public understanding by blurring the line between a frightening enough reality and Hollywood fiction in the name of topical relevance.
Still, Twisters does take some dramatic liberties. At one point, a weaker EF1 tornado breaks the blade off a wind turbine, which probably wouldn’t happen. The most egregious liberty, however, comes at the end of the film, when a tornado runs through an oil and gas refinery and wreaks havoc on the town of El Reno, Oklahoma. “The shelters are full; we’ve got to get everyone to the movie theater!” one character shouts when it becomes clear El Reno is on the verge of catastrophe. (I bet Warner Bros. loved that one.) But at just the moment when the tornado rips out the wall of the theater, turning the defacto shelter full of innocent people into the suck zone, Edgar-Jones’ character Kate is able to deploy a technology that decreases the moisture inside the twister, making it instantly collapse and dissolve.
To be clear, this is about as scientifically accurate as a Sharknado. Though the mechanics are real — Kate shoots the tornado with silver iodide, currently used in cloud seeding, to induce moisture, then saps the storm of water using sodium polyacrylate — the amount of absorbent material required to actually “tame” a tornado would be impossible to deploy. A twister also wouldn’t vanish instantly even if enough chemicals somehow could disrupt its moisture content. As Kevin Kelleher, a scientist who consulted on both Twister(s), told The New York Times, it would likely take closer to 15 to 20 minutes for a storm to — again, theoretically — collapse.
What is more interesting than Twisters’ dubious tornado-taming technique, though, is that it’s a rare positive example of geoengineering in an American film. Prior to Friday, the most memorable example of geoengineering in a widely seen movie was in Snowpiercer, where an attempt to correct global warming goes so awry that Chris Evans is forced to live on a train and eat babies. (This is a safe space from discussion of Geostorm.)
Twisters never reaches the point of exploring the ethics or potential downsides of Kate’s geoengineering experiment, and the credits roll over magazine and newspaper articles lauding her for “Taking Weather Science by Storm.” But Chung, the director, doesn’t let the moment pass entirely unremarked upon, either. The movie showing in the theater when the tornado hits El Reno is Frankenstein — perhaps our most famous parable about the hubris of playing God.
Movies don’t need to be accurate to be good, but Twisters nevertheless makes research and data the objective, nerds the hot heroes, and real-life scientists the background extras. In keeping with its dedication to science, it also takes geoengineering out of the realm of the dystopic; while there are plenty of people still staunchly opposed to climate modification, it is also no longer “one of climate science’s biggest taboos,” as my colleague Robinson Meyer has written.
Far more importantly, though, Twisters is a blast. It never tries to be anything more than what it is: a popcorn-worthy romantic disaster movie. Accuracy is just the cherry on top for us weather nerds in the audience; as one character rightly puts it: “Smile man — science is fun.”
https://heatmap.news/culture/twisters-movie-geoengineering
Apple’s Clamshell iBook G3 at 25 – not just a pretty case
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Remembering when laptops could be fun and fixable
It is 25 years since Apple’s Clamshell iBook G3 arrived, replete with iMac styling and an innovation – optional Wi-Fi connectivity via Apple’s AirPort.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/apple_clamshell_ibook_g3_25/
Humanity’s Most Abundant Material Is a Huge Climate Problem
date: 2024-07-24, from: Heatmap News
Jesse is on vacation until August, so this is a special, Rob-only summer episode of Shift Key.
The world uses about 30 billion tons of concrete every year — more than any other material except water. It is the most ubiquitous human-made substance in the global economy. It’s also a huge climate problem. Producing cement, which is the key ingredient in concrete, generates roughly 8% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions.
Cody Finke has a plan to change that. He is the chief executive officer and cofounder of Brimstone, a startup that says it can cheaply produce ordinary Portland cement — the kind used in construction worldwide — without carbon emissions. This week, Rob chats with Finke about why cement’s carbon emissions aren’t from fossil fuels, why there are fewer cement plants than you might think, and the all-important difference between cement and concrete.
This episode of Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Robinson Meyer: Concrete is such an archetypal big machine problem in decarbonization. Because not only is it carbon intensive, but also — like car engines or like plane engines but, notably, unlike power plants — maybe like power plants — the technology to do it is extremely dispersed. There are hundreds of thousands of concrete plants around the world, and they all have to be replaced to decarbonize this process. It’s just a huge, huge scaling endeavor, and one that, forces you to reckon with the material implications of decarbonization in a way that, I think, it can often be easier to skip over or, just think, in the form of electricity: Oh, we can just drop new power plants in, we can build renewables. But that’s not how decarbonizing concrete will work.
Cody Finke: I would actually want to challenge that slightly.
Meyer: Perfect.
Finke: So, for many solutions, that’s the case because you’re absolutely right, there are hundreds of thousands of concrete plants. But there are not hundreds of thousands of cement plants. Cement is the binder in concrete, and for the listeners —
Meyer: Yeah, let’s actually do this because clearly I also don’t fully understand.
Finke: Concrete’s the building material. It is the most consumed material on the planet. We make 40 to 50 billion tons of it every year as humans. Concrete is sand, gravel, water, and cement — cement is the glue. Without cement, concrete would just be a pile of sand and gravel — a wet pile of sand and gravel. Cement is essential for turning that pile of sand and gravel into a pourable rock.
But cement is only about 10% of concrete — 10% to 20% — and it’s made in large, centralized facilities that are located basically around big population centers. There are only 2,000 or 3,000 cement plants in the world. So it depends on your solution, right? If your solution is making a novel material, then it may require working at the concrete level, which can be good and bad. There’s a lot of those facilities, but they’re also a bit cheaper. There’s good and bad attributes of that.
But if you were to do something like what Brimstone is doing, which is making ordinary Portland cement, then what you have to do is replace those 2,000 or 3,000 cement plants, which is still a big number —
Meyer: It is still a big number, but actually not a very big number.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
https://heatmap.news/podcast/shift-key-episode-25-brimstone
Raleigh Solmonson | Safety Issue on the Bike Paths
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
I was born and raised in the Santa Clarita Valley. Having lived here for 15 years, I consider it my home, and enjoy living here. One of my favorite activities […]
The post Raleigh Solmonson | Safety Issue on the Bike Paths appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/raleigh-solmonson-safety-issue-on-the-bike-paths/
Richard Myers | Two Questions on the Lighter Side
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
With all the turmoil going on in the world, I’d like to get the answer to two simple questions. Not about politics or wars, but simple questions: First, who was […]
The post Richard Myers | Two Questions on the Lighter Side appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/richards-myers-two-questions-on-the-lighter-side/
TrackPack: a smart backpack for horse riders
date: 2024-07-24, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
TrackPack is a smart backpack designed for horse riders, featuring turn signals, automatic lights, and route tracking.
The post TrackPack: a smart backpack for horse riders appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/trackpack-a-smart-backpack-for-horse-riders/
Dan Walters | California Image to Be Election Weapon
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
“Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” Fading movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) utters those words in the final scene of “Sunset Boulevard,” Billy Wilder’s 1950 film noir […]
The post Dan Walters | California Image to Be Election Weapon appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/dan-walters-california-image-to-be-election-weapon/
The Savvy Senior | Kitchen Ideas for Aging in Place
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
Dear Savvy Senior, My 77-year-old mother, who loves to cook, has had several kitchen-related accidents over the past year. What tips can you recommend for making a kitchen safer and […]
The post The Savvy Senior | Kitchen Ideas for Aging in Place appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/the-savvy-senior-kitchen-ideas-for-aging-in-place/
School gets an F for using facial recognition on kids in canteen
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Watchdog reprimand follows similar cases in 2021
The UK’s data protection watchdog has reprimanded a school in Essex for using facial recognition for canteen payments, nearly three years after other schools were warned about doing the same.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/essex_school_facial_recognition/
In Indianapolis, Harris addresses Black sorority, a key campaign mobilizer
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
Indianapolis — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a speech to a historically Black sorority in Indianapolis on Wednesday, marking one of her first public appearances since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed her for the Democratic Party nomination on Sunday.
Speaking at the biennial gathering of the Zeta Phi Beta (ZPB) sorority, Harris delivered a speech that closely echoed remarks made on the campaign trail, though the event was part of her official duties as vice president.
Founded in 1920 at Harris’ alma mater, Howard University, ZPB is one of the nation’s largest historically Black sororities — social organizations with female-only memberships at colleges and universities whose purpose is to foster community, academic achievement and career development, among other things.
In remarks during the visit, announced as an official White House stop before Biden dropped out, Harris lauded the president, saying that “we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.”
“He cares about the future, he thinks about the future,” Harris said. “He has extraordinary determination and profound compassion for the people of our country.”
Earlier this month in Dallas, Texas, Harris spoke to more than 20,000 members and alumnae of her own sorority at Howard University, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., at its national convention.
Sorority figures play key roles in the group Win With Black Women, which organized a Zoom call with 44,000 attendees just hours after Biden endorsed Harris. The group said it raised more than $1.5 million for her campaign in just a few hours.
A similar effort by Win With Black Men raised more than $1 million, adding to the $100 million raised by the Harris campaign in less than 48 hours. This is in addition to money raised by political action committees separate from the campaign. The largest one, the Future Forward PAC, reported $150 million in commitments in the first 24 hours.
Sororities and fraternities
There are nine historically Black sororities — and fraternities, their male equivalent — known as the “Divine Nine.”
Sororities and fraternities are among the most important networks in the African American community, said Steve Phillips, founder of the political media organization Democracy in Color, and author of several books on demographic shifts in the American electorate.
“Members are passionate, energetic and engaged throughout their entire lives,” he told VOA, so these pre-existing and highly involved groups can swiftly emerge as formidable campaign resources.
“We saw some of this with [Barack] Obama in 2007 and 2008, and I expect it to be another order of magnitude fundraising and volunteering with Harris,” he said.
Sororities are pathways to another key resource — Black female celebrities.
These groups are actively recruiting notable figures and celebrities as honorary members, said Samantha N. Sheppard, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University.
With Hollywood big names including Kerry Washington, Viola Davis, Jenifer Lewis and others pledging support for Harris, the “groundswell of Black women celebrity activism” has already begun, she told VOA.
Harris’ run for the nation’s top job has energized African American voters, a key Democratic constituency whose enthusiasm waned when Biden was on top of the ticket. However, amid the rampant racist and sexist attacks on Harris online, they are also bracing themselves.
“It’s critical for Black women with platforms to work together to rise above the misogynoir that Harris will face,” Sheppard said, using a term that combines racism and sexism to describe the oppression of Black women.
Attacks are already being launched at Harris for traveling to Indianapolis and declining to preside over Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, also happening Wednesday.
From Indianapolis, Harris heads to Houston, Texas, to speak in front of the American Federation of Teachers on Friday. After landing in Houston, Harris is scheduled to meet with local emergency response officials for a briefing on the Hurricane Beryl recovery efforts, where she will reiterate the administration’s commitment to delivering resources to affected communities.
Dylan Ebs contributed to this report.
Apple Lisa Pascal compiler sources
date: 2024-07-24, from: Hans Otten’s, Pascal for small machines
I found an archive with the source of the early Lisa Pascal by Silicon Valley Software. The archive contains images of Lisa disks in dc42 format. In these disk images are the sources (and more) of the Silicon Valley Software Pascal compiler for the Lisa. Andy McFadden (of Ciderpres fame) analyzed this and found out […]
http://pascal.hansotten.com/2024/07/24/apple-lisa-pascal-compiler-sources/
‘Data embassies’ promise bubbles of digital sovereignty, but India just cooled on the idea
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Scratch the surface and they look more like a sales pitch – or a soft power play
Embassies are bubbles of sovereignty that local authorities cannot freely enter and in which certain communications are privileged – an arrangement that is generally agreed as essential to facilitate international relations. And now the same protections are being suggested as needed to create a “data embassy” – datacenters that local authorities can’t access and in which nations can store info and run software on foreign shores.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/data_embassies/
Will Kamala Harris Hold The Powerful Accountable?
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Lever News
As Harris locks in her presidential nomination, here’s her record on monopolies and financial power.
https://www.levernews.com/will-kamala-harris-hold-the-powerful-accountable/
Classifieds – July 24, 2024
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.
The post Classifieds – July 24, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/07/24/classifieds-july-24-2024/
Anti-war protesters gather at US Capitol ahead of Netanyahu address to Congress
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/netanyahu-seeking-to-rally-support-in-address-us-congress/7710667.html
Today in SCV History (July 24)
date: 2024-07-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1864 – Walker/Reynier family patriarch Jean Joseph Reynier, then 15, arrives in Sand Canyon from France; eventually homesteads 1,200 acres [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-24/
Forget security – Google’s reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Web puzzles don’t protect against bots, but humans have spent 819 million unpaid hours solving them
Updated Google promotes its reCAPTCHA service as a security mechanism for websites, but researchers affiliated with the University of California, Irvine, argue it’s harvesting information while extracting human labor worth billions.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/googles_recaptchav2_labor/
curl 8.9.0
date: 2024-07-24, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
Numbers the 258th release11 changes63 days (total: 9,623)260 bugfixes (total: 10,531)423 commits (total: 32,704)0 new public libcurl function (total: 94)1 new curl_easy_setopt() option (total: 306)4 new curl command line option (total: 263)80 contributors, 38 new (total: 3,209)47 authors, 16 new (total: 1,288)2 security fixes (total: 157) Download the new curl release from curl.se as always. … Continue reading curl 8.9.0
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/07/24/curl-8-9-0/
US investigates Delta flight cancellations, response to global tech outage
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Something called ‘Content Validator’ did not validate the content, and the rest is history
CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in its own test software for the mass-crash-event it caused last week.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/crowdstrike_validator_failure/
CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Something called ‘Content Validator’ did not validate the content, and the rest is history
CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in its own test software for the mass-crash-event it caused last week.…
Security biz KnowBe4 hired fake North Korean techie, who got straight to work … on evil
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
If it can happen to folks that run social engineering defence training, what hope for the rest of us?
Cybersecurity awareness and training provider KnowBe4 hired a North Korean fake IT worker for a software engineering role on its AI team, and only realized its mistake once the guy started using his company-provided computer for evil.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/knowbe4_north_korean/
What’s the outlook for global food production this year?
date: 2024-07-24, from: Hannah Richie at Substack
So far, USDA projections suggest a big year of production for our key crops.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/global-food-outlook-2024
Vehicle pursuit heads north on I-5
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
Law enforcement entered a pursuit on Interstate 5 with a vehicle suspected of being involved in a carjacking that originated Tuesday night in Stevenson Ranch, according to California Highway Patrol […]
The post Vehicle pursuit heads north on I-5 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/vehicle-pursuit-heads-north-on-i-5/
VMware sends vSphere 7 into extra time by extending support for six months
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A nice surprise, but some other vAdmins have an August 1 deadline to sort out subscriptions
VMware users have had a little win, as the Broadcom business unit has extended the supported life of its flagship vSphere software.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/vsphere_7_eos_date_extended/
All Evacuation Orders and Warnings Lifted for Lake Fire
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The fire remains at 38,644 acres and 90 percent containment, with 925 firefighters remaining in the fire zone.
The post All Evacuation Orders and Warnings Lifted for Lake Fire appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/23/all-evacuation-orders-and-warnings-lifted-for-lake-fire/
Harris promises compassion over ‘fear and hate’ in debut campaign rally
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
MILWAUKEE — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris assailed Donald Trump on Tuesday at her first campaign rally since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate.
In a 17-minute speech, Harris went after Trump’s vulnerabilities, comparing her background as a former prosecutor to his record as a convicted felon.
Harris ticked through a list of liberal priorities, saying that if elected she would act to expand abortion access, make it easier for workers to join unions, and address gun violence, drawing a sharp contrast with Trump, the Republican nominee for president in the November 5 election.
“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” she told a cheering crowd of several thousand at West Allis Central High School in a Milwaukee suburb in Wisconsin, a battleground state with a pivotal role in deciding the election outcome.
“Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate?”
The raucous rally was a notable contrast to the smaller, more subdued events Biden held, underscoring Democrats’ hope that Harris, 59, can revive what had been a flagging campaign under Biden, 81. The audience danced and waved Harris signs, while chants of “Ka-ma-la!” broke out when she took the stage.
She emphasized her commitment to reproductive rights, an issue that has plagued Republicans since the U.S. Supreme Court — powered by three Trump-appointed justices — eliminated a nationwide right to abortion in 2022.
Trump and his allies have tried to tether Harris to some of Biden’s more unpopular policies, including his administration’s handling of the surge of migrants at the southern border with Mexico.
In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Trump expressed confidence in his ability to defeat Harris, noting that her previous presidential run in 2020 did not even survive until the first statewide nominating contest.
Trump offered to debate Harris multiple times. Trump and Biden had one more debate scheduled on September 10 after their encounter on June 27. Biden’s poor performance that night led to Democratic calls for him to step aside.
“I want to debate her, and she’ll be no different because they have the same policies,” Trump said.
Harris swiftly consolidated her party’s support after Biden abandoned his reelection campaign under pressure from members of his party who worried about his ability to beat 78-year-old Trump, or to serve another four-year term.
Harris has received pledges from enough delegates to win the nominations, the campaign said. But nothing is certain until next month’s Democratic National Convention, when the delegates will vote to determine the nominee.
Her campaign said it had raised $100 million since Sunday.
Most Democratic lawmakers have lined up behind her candidacy, including the party’s leaders in the Senate and House, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who endorsed Harris on Tuesday at a joint press conference.
Harris’ rise dramatically reshapes an election in which many voters were unhappy with their options. As the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, she would make further history as the first woman elected U.S. president.
Wisconsin is among a trio of Rust Belt states, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, that are critical to Democrats’ chances of defeating Trump.
Alyssa Wahlborg, 19, vice chair of the Whitewater College Democrats, said Harris had reenergized young voters, particularly women who want Harris to break the ultimate U.S. glass ceiling.
“I talked to my grandmom. We are both excited that she may live to see the first woman president,” said Wahlborg while attending Tuesday’s rally. “It’s taken too long.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling and title of Alyssa Wahlborg.
Demonstrators protest Netanyahu’s US visit, military aid to Israel
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
washington — Protesters against the Gaza war staged a sit-in at a U.S. congressional office building on Tuesday, ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. Capitol Police made multiple arrests.
Netanyahu arrived in Washington on Monday for a visit that includes meetings with President Joe Biden and a Wednesday speech before a joint session of Congress. Dozens of protesters rallied outside his hotel Monday evening, and on Tuesday afternoon, hundreds staged a flashmob-style protest in the Cannon Building, which houses offices of members of the U.Sl House of Representatives.
Organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, protesters — wearing red T-shirts that read “Not In Our Name” — took over the building’s rotunda by sitting on the floor, unfurling signs and chanting “Let Gaza Live!”
After about a half-hour of clapping and chanting, officers from the U.S. Capitol Police issued several warnings, then began arresting protesters — binding their hands with zip ties and leading them away one-by-one.
“I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors and I know what a Holocaust looks like,” said Jane Hirschmann, a native of Saugerties, New York, who drove down for the protest along with her two daughters — both of whom were arrested. “When we say ‘Never again,’ we mean never for anybody.”
Anger aimed at US president
The demonstrators focused much of their ire on the Biden administration, demanding the president immediately cease all arms shipments to Israel.
“We’re not focusing on Netanyahu. He’s just a symptom,” Hirschmann said. “But how can (Biden) be calling for a cease-fire when he’s sending them bombs and planes?”
As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, the Capitol Police said they did not have a final tally of the number of people arrested. But JVP said in a statement that 400 people, “including over a dozen rabbis,” had been arrested.
Mitchell Rivard, chief of staff for Representative Dan Kildee of Michigan, said in a statement that his office called for Capitol Police intervention after the demonstrators “became disruptive, violently beating on the office doors, shouting loudly, and attempting to force entry into the office.”
Kildee later told The Associated Press that he was confused why his office was targeted, saying he had voted against a massive supplemental military aid package to Israel earlier this year.
Netanyahu’s U.S. visit has touched off a wave of protest activity, with some demonstrations condemning Israel and others expressing support but pressuring Netanyahu to strike a cease-fire deal and bring home the hostages still being held by Hamas.
Families of some of the remaining hostages held a protest vigil Tuesday evening on the National Mall, demanding that Netanyahu come to terms with Hamas and bring home the approximately 120 Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza.
About 150 people wearing yellow shirts that read “Seal the Deal NOW!” chanted “Bring Them Home” and listened to testimonials from relatives and former hostages. The demonstrators applauded when Biden’s name was mentioned, but several criticized Netanyahu — known by his nickname “Bibi” — on the belief that he was dragging his feet or playing hardball on a proposed cease-fire deal that would return all of the hostages.
“I’m begging Bibi. There’s a deal on the table and you have to take it,” said Aviva Siegel, 63, who spent 51 days in captivity and whose husband, Keith, remains a hostage. “I want Bibi to look in my eyes and tell me one thing: that Keith is coming home.”
Anticipating protests, security boosted
Multiple protests are planned for Wednesday, when Netanyahu is slated to address Congress. In anticipation, police have boosted security around the Capitol building and closed multiple roads for most of the week.
Biden and Netanyahu are expected to meet Thursday, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the White House announcement. Vice President Kamala Harris also will meet with Netanyahu separately that day.
Harris, as Senate president, would normally sit behind foreign leaders addressing Congress, but she’ll be away Wednesday on an Indianapolis trip scheduled before Biden withdrew his reelection bid and she became the likely Democratic presidential candidate over the weekend.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would meet with Netanyahu on Friday.
Google keeps the cost of AI search flat, and kids are lovin’ it
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
As the G-Cloud brings in big bucks and plentiful profit
Google has managed to cap the costs it incurs when using AI to generate results.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/alphabet_q2_2024/
‘Eye Candy’ opens Aug. 2 at SCAA Gallery
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
News release Three award-winning local artists, Harriette Knight, Patty Haft and Georgette Arison, are inviting the public to an opening reception of their art show, “Eye Candy,” from 5 to 8 […]
The post ‘Eye Candy’ opens Aug. 2 at SCAA Gallery appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/eye-candy-opens-aug-2-at-scaa-gallery/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Blues Legend John Mayall Is Dead at 90.
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/blues-legend-john-mayall-is-dead-at-90
Fire Department responds to multiple reports of fires around SCV
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
Personnel with the Los Angeles County Fire Department responded late Tuesday afternoon to reports of a pair of brush fires in Agua Dulce and a vehicle fire on the southbound […]
The post Fire Department responds to multiple reports of fires around SCV appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/fire-department-responds-to-multiple-reports-of-fires-around-scv/
SCAA to host 34th Annual Art Classic Sept. 28
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
News release Santa Clarita Artists Association is scheduled Sept. 28 to hold its annual Art Classic Gala, a fundraiser and celebration of fine arts in the Santa Clarita Valley. The […]
The post SCAA to host 34th Annual Art Classic Sept. 28 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/scaa-to-host-34th-annual-art-classic-sept-28/
County ethics commission proposal clears first step
date: 2024-07-24, from: The Signal
L.A. County 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger said her motion to get the ball rolling on establishing an independent ethics commission for the county is about “reforms to improve our […]
The post County ethics commission proposal clears first step appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/county-ethics-commission-proposal-clears-first-step/
Sols 4253-4254: Pit Stop for Contact Science
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Monday, July 22, 2024 Last week we wrapped up activities at Fairview Dome and started heading south towards our next potential drill location in the Upper Gediz Vallis ridge campaign. We had about a 29-meter (about 95 feet) drive over the weekend, which set us up nicely for contact science and remote […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4253-4254-pit-stop-for-contact-science/
Paris 2024 Olympics: The Summer Games
date: 2024-07-24, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
New sports like breakdancing and kayak cross ahead, while the surf will be up in French Polynesia, but don’t expect to see the Russian or Belarusian flag.
The post Paris 2024 Olympics: The Summer Games appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/23/paris-2024-olympics-the-summer-games/
Biden returns to White House as Harris soars on campaign
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
President Joe Biden returned to the White House Tuesday after an eventful news week that he spent entirely out of the spotlight – yet still managed to dominate with news of his exit from the presidential race. Meanwhile, his vice president hit the road launching her presidential campaign. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-returns-to-white-house-as-harris-soars-on-campaign/7710581.html
Harris’ campaign starts search for running mate
date: 2024-07-24, from: VOA News USA
washington — Who will she pick? That’s the big political question in America after U.S. President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who has quickly collected a critical mass of Democratic Party support and funding.
The selection in question is Harris’ running mate, the person who would step into the role she will shed if the Democrats are victorious in November’s presidential election against Republicans Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.
Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his law firm are vetting Harris’ potential vice presidential candidates, according to media reports.
The campaign has requested vetting materials from five Democratic governors — Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Tim Walz of Minnesota and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois — and one U.S. senator, Democrat Mark Kelly of Arizona, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Those who pass the vetting “will probably have a one-on-one conversation with Harris and then she’ll make a choice, probably in the week or so before the convention,” William Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told VOA. “The danger of an accelerated process is that you know things will be overlooked. Mistakes will be made that a more leisurely process would have prevented. But she has no choice. She has to do it fast and get it right.”
Quest to balance ticket
It “is most likely” that Harris, as the daughter of a Black father and a mother who emigrated from India, will choose a white man to be her number two, according to Joel K. Goldstein, a scholar of U.S. vice presidents and the Vincent C. Immel professor of law emeritus at the St. Louis University School of Law.
Geographical balance is another factor. Harris, who is from California, a solidly Democratic state, likely desires someone who can boost the party’s chance in one of the critical swing states — territory that spans westward from Pennsylvania to Michigan, as well as the southern state of Georgia.
“Someone from the Midwest or even from the South would be a good choice,” said Jay Chen, Democratic National Committee delegate from California and co-chair of Taiwanese Americans for Progress.
“Andy Beshear, he’s a governor from Kentucky. I think he would make a good choice. We want to make sure that we’re balancing out the ticket, because we have someone [Harris] from California,” said Chen. “I think we do have to make sure that folks in the Midwest on the East Coast from the South, that they don’t feel like they’re going to be ignored by this administration and this is an excellent opportunity to try to try to balance out the ticket.”
Historically, geographic balance “was perhaps the most common type of balance that you would see on tickets,” according to Goldstein. Nowadays, “the idea of geographic balance is not really as important a calculation as some other things.”
The governors of both Pennsylvania and Michigan, who are Democrats, endorsed Harris on Monday. That quashed any speculation that Shapiro or Whitmer might challenge Harris for delegates ahead of the party’s national nominating convention next month. It also appeared to automatically place them into consideration to be the vice presidential nominee.
Pennsylvania in play
Pennsylvania is practically a must-win for either party. The Keystone State offers 19 electoral votes — the most of any 2024 battleground state — of the 270 required to reach the threshold for victory in a U.S. presidential election.
In an on-air conversation about Shapiro, CNN chief national correspondent John King said the governor is a contender, but “he’s Jewish. There could be some risks with putting him on the ticket.”
Commentators on social media quickly responded that Harris may be hesitant to select Shapiro, who is a strong supporter of Israel, as he could jeopardize her chances in Michigan, where there has been a primary election backlash against the Biden-Harris ticket from Arab American voters because of the president’s support for Israel’s war against Hamas.
“It says a lot about the state of American politics, and perhaps especially in progressive circles that one of the ‘cons’ of Kamala Harris selecting” Shapiro as her vice president, is that he is Jewish and the pushback this might receive, Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum, a global network of lawyers supporting Israel, wrote on X on Sunday.
Harris’ husband, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish.
There has never been a Jewish president or vice president in the United States. Democrat Al Gore in 2000 selected a Jewish U.S. senator, Joe Lieberman, as his running mate on the ticket that lost to Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Jews comprise less than 3% of the American population but play an outsized role in academia, business, law, the U.S. Congress, popular culture and, as has been the case with other minorities, traditionally faced institutional discrimination. Antisemitism has resurged in recent years on both the far left and far right.
The Illinois governor is also Jewish. Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, runs a state that has a large bounty of 19 electoral votes and is considered reliably blue (Democratic).
Pritzker denied in an MSNBC interview on Tuesday that he had received a request for vetting materials from the Harris campaign. Asked if he is interested in running with her, he avoided giving a direct answer.
“I love being the governor of the state of Illinois, and I’ve been out on the campaign trail fighting hard for Democrats to win,” he responded.
A possible first
The governor of Michigan (15 electoral votes) on the ticket with Harris would present an unprecedented combination — female candidates for both president and vice president.
Whitmer on Monday dampened such speculation.
“No, I am not planning to go anywhere,” she told a reporter from WLNS TV on Monday, who asked Whitmer if she would be willing to accept an offer to join Harris on the party ticket. “I am not leaving Michigan.”
No other woman is known to be under consideration by the Harris campaign.
The Republicans once nominated a woman as their vice presidential candidate. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was selected by Senator John McCain in the 2008 election that saw Barack Obama, a Democrat, elected as the country’s first African American president.
The Democrats are also the only major party to have nominated a woman for president. Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state and the wife of former President Bill Clinton, won the popular vote in 2016, but Trump captured the most electoral votes, thus becoming president.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, was elected in 2016 and again in 2020, despite Trump winning the state on the same ballot both times. Cooper is term-limited and cannot seek reelection in the Tar Hill State, which holds 16 electoral votes.
Cooper was asked repeatedly during a Monday appearance on MSNBC whether he would consider the Number 2 spot if offered by Harris.
“I appreciate people talking about me,” he said, “But I think the focus right now needs to be on her this week.”
Then there is Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky (eight electoral votes), whose state some decades ago turned reliably Republican red in presidential contests. The last time a majority of Kentuckians chose a Democrat for president was in 1996, when Bill Clinton, successfully running for reelection, bested former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole in the Bluegrass State.
Some suggest a nonpolitician
Senator Mark Kelly is the sole non-governor known to be under consideration. Arizona is a Southwestern swing state with 11 electoral votes. A former Navy combat pilot and retired astronaut, Kelly is married to former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who resigned in 2012 due to severe brain injury caused by an assassination attempt.
There are suggestions Harris should think outside the box and choose a nonpolitician, such as a retired general, to bolster her chances with conservative-leaning independent voters concerned about Trump returning as commander-in-chief.
Law professor Goldstein, author of two books about the evolution of the role of the American vice presidency, does not expect that will happen.
“Every first-time vice presidential pick since 1940 has been either a current or former United States senator, governor, member of the House of Representative or a person who held high federal executive office,” he said. “So, it would be surprising if the choice was somebody who came from the military.”
These days, Goldstein told VOA, the primary consideration for selecting a vice presidential candidate is whether they have “the caliber that they are plausible as president, at least in the eyes of people who might support the ticket, or they have the stature and the ability [that] they can take on the sort of assignments that Vice President Harris has the last three and a half years.”
Stella Hsu and Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/harris-campaign-starts-search-for-running-mate/7710235.html
Philippines wipes out its legit online gambling industry to take down scammers
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
President apologizes in advance for job losses
The Philippines has decided to dismantle the worst of its offshored industries: the bits that run gambling and scam operations.…
SCV Food Pantry in Need of Volunteers
date: 2024-07-24, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The SCV Food Pantry is in need of volunteers to help sort food, stock shelves, fill bags and distribute food to its residents in need Monday through Thursday and Saturday of each week.
https://scvnews.com/scv-food-pantry-in-need-of-volunteers/
Sols 4250-4252: So Many Rocks, So Little Time
date: 2024-07-24, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Friday, July 19, 2024 As usual with our weekend plans, we are packing a lot of science into today’s three-sol plan. I had the fun of planning a complex and large set of arm activities as the Arm Rover Planner today. Since we did not drive in Wednesday’s plan, we still are […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4250-4252-so-many-rocks-so-little-time/
Mistral: Are LLMs Commodities Now?
date: 2024-07-24, updated: 2024-07-24, from: Tom Kellog blog
Mistral 2 Large is out, and it’s right up there with GPT-4o, …and Llama 3.1, and Claude Sonnet 3.5, and…yeah, there’s a lot of them. These “Frontier Models” are starting to look more like commodities. And with that shift, we need to adjust AI strategy to match. There’s strong arguments to make for using an operator that doesn’t also train models. Read more!
http://timkellogg.me/blog/2024/07/24/mistral
“kamala IS brat” and Has My Vote
date: 2024-07-23, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Kamala Harris has taken Gen Z by storm and embraced being “Brat.”
The post “kamala IS brat” and Has My Vote appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/23/kamala-is-brat-and-has-my-vote/
El-Farra Earns Coaches Associations’ Student-Athlete Scholarship
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
College of the Canyons graduating sophomore Jonah El-Farra has been named a California Community Colleges Men’s Basketball Coaches Associations (CCCMBCA) student-athlete scholarship recipient for the 2023-24 season.
https://scvnews.com/el-farra-earns-coaches-associations-student-athlete-scholarship/
Supes Unanimously Approve Creation of Ethics Commission, Reform
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Tuesday a motion introduced by Supervisor Kathryn Barger and co-authored by Chair Lindsey P. Horvath that directs the creation of an independent Ethics Commission and ethics reform measures to improve transparency and create greater oversight in County government
https://scvnews.com/supes-unanimously-approve-creation-of-ethics-commission-reform/
Revolutionizing How We Reunite Lost Pets With Their Families
date: 2024-07-23, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara County Animal Services partners with Petco Love Lost to reunite pets and their families.
The post Revolutionizing How We Reunite Lost Pets With Their Families appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/23/revolutionizing-how-we-reunite-lost-pets-with-their-families/
New Samsung phones block sideloading by default
date: 2024-07-23, from: OS News
The assault on a user’s freedom to install whatever they want on what is supposed to be their phone continues. This time, it’s Samsung adding an additional blocker to users installing applications from outside the Play Store and its own mostly useless Galaxy Store. Technically, Android already blocks sideloading by default at an operating system level. The permission that’s needed to silently install new apps without prompting the user, INSTALL_PACKAGES, can only be granted to preinstalled app stores like the Google Play Store, and it’s granted automatically to apps that request it. The permission that most third-party app stores end up using, REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES, has to be granted explicitly by the user. Even then, Android will prompt the user every time an app with this permission tries to install a new app. Samsung’s Auto Blocker feature takes things a bit further. The feature, first introduced in One UI 6.0, fully blocks the installation of apps from unauthorized sources, even if those sources were granted the REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES permission. ↫ Mishaal Rahman I’m not entirely sure why Samsung felt the need to add an additional, Samsung-specific blocking mechanism, but at least for now, you can turn it off in the Settings application. This means that in order to install an application from outside of the Play Store and the Galaxy Store on brand new Samsung phones – the ones shipping with OneUI 6.1.1 – you need to both give the regular Android permission to do so, but also turn off this nag feature. Having two variants of every application on your Samsung phone wasn’t enough, apparently.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140312/new-samsung-phones-block-sideloading-by-default/
‘Project Fiesta!’ Celebrates 100 Years of Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta
date: 2024-07-23, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara Historical Museum revisits a century’s worth of memories on view through November 1.
The post ‘Project Fiesta!’ Celebrates 100 Years of Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Google won’t be deprecating third-party cookies from Chrome after all
date: 2024-07-23, from: OS News
This story just never ever ends. After delays, changes in plans, more delays, we now have more changed plans. After years of stalling, Google has now announced it is, in fact, not going to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome by default. In light of this, we are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice. Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time. We’re discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out. ↫ Anthony Chavez Google remains unclear about what, exactly, users will be able to choose between. The consensus seems to be that users will be able to choose between retaining third-party cookies and turning them off, but that’s based on a statement by the British Competition and Market Authority, and not on a statement from Google itself. It seems reasonable to assume the CMA knows what it’s talking about, but with a company like Google you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone a few months from now. While both Safari and Firefox have already made this move ages ago, it’s taking Google and Chrome a lot longer to deal with this issue, because Google needs to find different ways of tracking you that are not using third-party cookies. Google’s own testing with Privacy Sandbox, Chrome’s sarcastically-named alternative to third-party cookies, shows that it seems to perform reasonable well, which should definitely raise some alarm bells about just how private it really is. Regardless, I doubt this saga will be over any time soon.
Aug. 4: Call for Art ‘Body & Presence’ Exhibit Deadline
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita is inviting artists to submit artwork for consideration for its upcoming “Body & Presence” juried exhibition, which will be on view at the Canyon Country Community Center during the City’s annual Business for Artists Conference.
https://scvnews.com/aug-4-call-for-art-body-presence-exhibit-deadline/
Lilbits: A WiFi 7 router for under $100, sideloading apps on Samsung phones, and Apple’s foldable iPhone is coming (in a two years… maybe)
date: 2024-07-23, from: Liliputing
The Wi-Fi Alliance finalized the WiFi 7 standard earlier this year, paving the way for faster wireless speeds, lower latency, and improved performance when connecting to multiple devices. But it’s a pretty new standard. And that means upgrading your networking gear can be expensive. Most of the WiFi 7 routers available so far sell for […]
The post Lilbits: A WiFi 7 router for under $100, sideloading apps on Samsung phones, and Apple’s foldable iPhone is coming (in a two years… maybe) appeared first on Liliputing.
Better Living Through ‘Green’ Chemistry
date: 2024-07-23, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
If you don’t create the hazardous waste in the first place, you don’t have to spend time, energy, and money to clean it up.
The post Better Living Through ‘Green’ Chemistry appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/23/better-living-through-green-chemistry/
St. Anthony’s Ire
date: 2024-07-23, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Maybe the new property owner of St Anthony’s will consider razing the place with a wrecking ball and turning it into a dog park.
The post St. Anthony’s Ire appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/23/st-anthonys-ire/
10 Things for Mars 10
date: 2024-07-23, from: NASA breaking news
Scientists from around the world are gathering this week in California to take stock of the state of science from Mars and discuss goals for the next steps in exploration of the Red Planet. In the spirit of Mars 10, formally known as the 10th International Conference on Mars, here are 10 recent significant events […]
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/planets/mars/10-things-for-mars-10/
LA County advances proposal to create new ethics commission
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The LAist
The commission would be tasked with overseeing ethical conduct of county officials.
https://laist.com/news/politics/la-county-advances-proposal-to-create-a-new-ethics-commission
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-23, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Justice Alito must resign.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/letters/justice-alito-must-resign/
After Historic Run, TMU Coach Zach Schroeder Steps Down
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Zach Schroeder, the head coach for The Master’s University track and cross country programs, is stepping down to be closer to family
https://scvnews.com/after-historic-run-tmu-coach-zach-schroeder-steps-down/
Meta claims ‘world’s largest’ open AI model with Llama 3.1 405B debut
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Zuck says he wants to mimic Linux and go open source, kind of
Meta today released Llama 3.1 405B, its largest and most capable large language model yet, which the social network claims can go toe-to-toe with OpenAI and Anthropic’s top models.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/meta_llama31_405b/
July 24: SCV Senior Center Wellness Program Lecture on Kidney Health
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The community is invited to an SCV Senior Center Health and Wellness program lecture “Let’s Talk About Kidney Health” on Wednesday, July 24, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m
https://scvnews.com/july-24-scv-senior-center-wellness-program-lecture-on-kidney-health/
U.S. 101 Southbound Lane Closure Resumes for Paving Project in Gaviota
date: 2024-07-23, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY – Southbound US 101 will be reduced back to one lane from the Highway 1/US 101 interchange to
The post U.S. 101 Southbound Lane Closure Resumes for Paving Project in Gaviota appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Community Environmental Council Hosts 2024 Green Gala: “Regeneration” – A Celebration of Hope and Climate Action
date: 2024-07-23, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, Calif (July 2024) – The Community Environmental Council (CEC) is thrilled to announce the 2024 Green Gala, set to take place
The post Community Environmental Council Hosts 2024 Green Gala: “Regeneration” – A Celebration of Hope and Climate Action appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
US invites Sudan’s warring parties for talks, RSF to participate
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The United States has invited the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for U.S.-mediated ceasefire talks starting on Aug. 14 in Switzerland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.
RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo said early on Wednesday they will constructively participate in the talks to achieve “a comprehensive ceasefire across the country and facilitate humanitarian access to all those in need.”
“We reaffirm our firm stance … which is the insistence on saving lives, stopping the fighting, and paving the way for a peaceful, negotiated political solution that restores the country to civilian rule and the path of democratic transition,” Dagalo said in a statement.
The talks will include the African Union, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations as observers, Blinken said in a statement. Saudi Arabia will be a co-host for the discussions, he added.
“The scale of death, suffering, and destruction in Sudan is devastating. This senseless conflict must end,” Blinken said, calling on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to attend the talks and approach them constructively.
The war in Sudan, which erupted in April 2023, has forced almost 10 million people from their homes, sparked warnings of famine and waves of ethnically driven violence blamed largely on the RSF.
Talks in Jeddah between the army and RSF that were sponsored by the United States and Saudi Arabia broke down at the end of last year.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Tuesday that the goal of the talks in Switzerland was to build on work from Jeddah and try to move the talks to the next phase.
“We just want to get the parties back to the table, and what we determined is that bringing the parties, the three host nations and the observers together is the best shot that we have right now at getting the nationwide cessation of violence,” Miller said.
How did a CrowdStrike file crash millions of Windows computers? We take a closer look at the code
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Maybe next time some staged rollouts? A bit of QA too?
Analysis Last week, at 0409 UTC on July 19, 2024, antivirus maker CrowdStrike released an update to its widely used Falcon platform that caused Microsoft Windows machines around the world to crash.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/crowdstrike_failure_shows_need_for/
Ojai Mountain Estate’s Towering Terroir
date: 2024-07-23, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The renowned NorCal winemaker Erich Bradley is crafting Olga and Mikhail Chernov’s ridgetop Rhônes and more.
The post Ojai Mountain Estate’s Towering Terroir appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/23/ojai-mountain-estates-towering-terroir/
Five Cougars Taking Skills to Next Level
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
College of the Canyons baseball is sending five players to four-year universities to continue their academic journeys and athletic careers following the 2024 season
https://scvnews.com/five-cougars-taking-skills-to-next-level/
2024 Olympics Torch and Torchbearer’s Uniform Sell at Auction
date: 2024-07-23, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The sale’s big-ticket item, a torch from the 1960 Winter Games, did not end up selling
Designing Space Exploration With the Human in Mind
date: 2024-07-23, from: NASA breaking news
When designing a new spacecraft or exploration vehicle, there is intense focus on its technical performance. Do its systems perform as expected? What kind of power does it need? Will it safely reach its destination? Equally important, however, is whether that vehicle also works for the humans inside. Can astronauts easily reach critical controls? Do […]
Chicago Building Where Nearly 1,000 Birds Died in One Night Last Fall Installs Bird-Safe Window Film
date: 2024-07-23, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The glass-covered lakefront convention center has long been known among wildlife advocacy groups as a site of mass casualties for migratory birds
Pierce College campus lockdown lifted after reported threat at West Valley Occupational Center
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Round Up (Peirce College Student Paper)
An approximately 45-minute lockdown on the Pierce College campus was lifted on Tuesday, July 23, at 11:16 a.m. The lockdown was issued as a safety
The post Pierce College campus lockdown lifted after reported threat at West Valley Occupational Center appeared first on .
Pitcher Mack Skeels Commits to Mustangs Baseball
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Master’s University baseball has signed pitcher Mack Skeels to join the team for the 2025 season.
https://scvnews.com/pitcher-mack-skeels-commits-to-mustangs-baseball/
Blinken, Austin to reinforce ties with Asian allies amid domestic political uncertainty
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
state department — U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration said it remains “intensely focused on” its foreign policy agenda in the final six months of his term, despite the challenges often faced by so-called lame-duck leaders.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at the State Department that the United States will continue the work, “particularly trying to bring peace to the Middle East, ending the war in Gaza,” dealing effectively with the ongoing aggression by Russia against Ukraine, and maintaining engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
This week, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin head to Asia to reassure allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific of the U.S. commitment, as the U.S. presidential election in November casts uncertainty over Washington’s foreign policy.
On Sunday, Biden announced he will not run for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor. Earlier this month, the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, survived an assassination attempt.
By late Monday, most Democratic delegates pledged their support for Harris, making her the likely nominee.
Blinken endorsed Harris on Tuesday.
“What I’ve observed is someone who asks, time and again, the penetrating questions, who cuts to the chase and is intensely focused on the interests of the American people and making sure that our foreign policy is doing everything it can to advance those interests,” he said.
2+2 security talks
Blinken and Austin will hold the so-called 2+2 security talks with U.S. allies Japan and the Philippines.
The U.S.-Japan Foreign and Defense Ministerial Dialogues will discuss “extended deterrence” for the first time amid growing, unprecedented threats in the region, according to U.S. officials. The term refers to the U.S. commitment to use its nuclear and conventional forces to deter attacks on its allies.
The first U.S.-Philippines 2+2 meeting to be held in Manila follows a crucial deal reached between China and the Philippines on Sunday, amid recent collisions near the waters around Second Thomas Shoal, known as Rén’ài Jiao in China.
The agreement aims to establish a mutually acceptable arrangement at the shoal without conceding either side’s territorial claims.
“As the Philippines’ ally, we do support the diplomacy that they’ve chosen to conduct. We welcome the announcement of this outcome,” Daniel Kritenbrink told VOA during a phone briefing on Monday. Kritenbrink is the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
After returning to the United States, the top U.S. diplomat and the defense chief will host their Australian counterparts in Annapolis, Maryland, for the 2024 Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations, or AUSMIN, on August 6, according to the Pentagon.
Vietnam
Blinken’s 10-day trip to Asia will start in Hanoi, where he will attend the funeral of General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng, head of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, who died last Friday. In 2023, the U.S. and Vietnam elevated their bilateral ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership.
The United States, China, and Russia are among the countries that maintain top-tier relations with Vietnam.
ASEAN in Laos
Blinken will then attend meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, in Vientiane, Laos, where he will hold face-to-face talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
State Department officials said they do not anticipate Blinken meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov or North Korean officials on the sidelines of ASEAN-related regional talks.
Japan
In Tokyo, in addition to the 2+2 security talks, Blinken will join his Australian, Indian and Japanese counterparts for a Quad foreign ministers’ meeting to reaffirm their collective commitment to regional stability. The Quad is a security dialogue involving the four countries.
The United States and Japan will demonstrate responsibly how they will ensure not just the defense of Japan but also their contribution to regional security, according to Kritenbrink.
In April, Tokyo and Washington announced a series of initiatives to strengthen their military ties, which the Biden administration described as the most significant upgrade since the U.S.-Japan alliance began in 1951.
The Philippines
In Manila, Blinken and Austin will meet with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
They will discuss ways to deepen coordination on shared challenges, including in the South China Sea, and advance our bilateral economic agenda, according to the State Department.
Singapore
In Singapore, Blinken will meet with Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and the city-state’s new leadership to discuss the U.S.-Singapore strategic partnership. U.S. officials said the focus on critical and emerging technologies highlights the partnership’s role in promoting a free, open, connected, and resilient Indo-Pacific region.
Mongolia
Tuesday, Blinken held talks with Mongolian Foreign Minister Battsetseg Batmunkh at the State Department.
The inaugural U.S.-Mongolia Comprehensive Strategic Dialogue highlighted the growing ties between the two countries, as evidenced by ongoing initiatives to strengthen people-to-people connections through professional and educational exchanges, English-language programs and the establishment of direct flights.
See 25 Stunning Images of the Cosmos From the Chandra X-Ray Observatory as It Celebrates 25 Years in Space
date: 2024-07-23, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Chandra, the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope, has been peering at black holes, stellar explosions and dark energy for a quarter-century
Google Breaking URL Shortener Links
date: 2024-07-23, from: Michael Tsai
Google: In 2018, we announced the deprecation and transition of Google URL Shortener because of the changes we’ve seen in how people find content on the internet, and the number of new popular URL shortening services that emerged in that time. This meant that we no longer accepted new URLs to shorten but that we […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/23/google-breaking-url-shortener-links/
Scaling Back Apple TV+ Content
date: 2024-07-23, from: Michael Tsai
Hartley Charlton: Apple is in active talks to license more films from major Hollywood studios as it seeks to bolster Apple TV+, according to Bloomberg.Apple has traditionally focused on original productions for its streaming platform, but it is increasingly looking to expand its offerings by acquiring programming from the extensive libraries of established studios, sources […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/23/scaling-back-apple-tv-content/
India Calls Out App Store
date: 2024-07-23, from: Michael Tsai
Aditya Kalra (via Ryan Christoffel): An investigation by India’s antitrust body has found that Apple exploited its dominant position in the market for app stores on its iOS operating system, engaging “in abusive conduct and practices”, a confidential report seen by Reuters showed.The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has been investigating Apple Inc, opens new […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/23/india-calls-out-app-store/
NASA Releases First Integrated Ranking of Civil Space Challenges
date: 2024-07-23, from: NASA breaking news
This spring, NASA published a document overviewing almost 200 technology areas requiring further development to meet future exploration, science, and other mission needs – and asked the aerospace community to rate their importance. The goal was to better integrate the community’s most pervasive technical challenges, or shortfalls, to help guide NASA’s space technology development and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-releases-first-integrated-ranking-of-civil-space-challenges/
This Is the Worst Possible Moment for an Offshore Wind Debacle
date: 2024-07-23, from: Heatmap News
Vineyard Wind’s turbine blade failure couldn’t have come at a worse time for offshore wind.
The industry is still dealing with the high inflation and supply chain issues that turned 2023 into a parade of horribles. Now opponents to American offshore wind — most prominently former president Donald Trump — are one election away from storming the gates of the federal bureaucracy. We don’t know yet whether the Vineyard Wind blade breakage was a fluke or the result of a problem with the blades themselves, but that hasn’t stopped critics of offshore wind from shouting about it — and with fiberglass still washing up on Nantucket beaches, they’re tough to ignore.
Major errors like blade failures are incredibly rare, but — like the risk of whale injuries — are precisely the sort of negative externality activists have had a tendency of magnifying when fighting offshore wind. Should Trump win in November and retake the White House, he could indefinitely stall projects in the nascent sector across both coasts, as operations often fall under the scope of federal control.
“If Donald Trump is elected, he has said on Day 1 he would terminate offshore approvals. He has said he will do that, and frankly he generally keeps his word,” Bruce Afrin, an attorney representing activists challenging projects off the New Jersey coastline, told me. And while he sees Vineyard Wind becoming a focal point of that effort, he also told me, “I’m sure they’re going to take a broader approach.”
Nearly all offshore wind projects have to face at least some form of federal review. Projects at commercial scale will usually be in federal waters — more than 3 miles from a state’s coastline — because the best wind is further from shore; in addition, permits may be required on endangered species and water regulations to build turbines or construct cabling.
Very few existing offshore wind projects have been fully permitted and reached the construction phase. There’s Revolution, Sunrise, Coastal Virginia, and, of course, Vineyard Wind, which is now in a work stoppage following the blade failure. Many other projects are still in the permitting process, per K&L Gates attorney Theodore Paradise, who advises project developers in the sector. Paradise told me data on how many projects are in the federal regulatory pipeline is scattered across various federal sources, making it “kind of an IKEA situation.”
Given how few projects have received all of their permits to date, this is a worrisome hypothetical to climate advocates and professionals working in offshore wind.
“Any project going through any of those gauntlets may be dead on arrival,” attorney Jeff Thaler, who consults on offshore and onshore wind projects, told me. “That’s the uncertainty and concern, and investors do not like uncertainty like that.”
Nothing is certain
Both Thaler and Paradise said regulators already take the risk of blade failures and a multitude of other potential project risks seriously. (This is why, for example, there are boat speed restrictions near offshore wind projects.) Not to mention that wind turbines are not a new technology and have been operating in much larger numbers offshore in Europe and China without much incident.
Those few projects in construction still face legal challenges. Coastal Virginia, for example, was allowed to continue construction despite a lawsuit from conservative legal groups over the risks posed to endangered whales. If re-elected, Trump and his Justice Department would have the opportunity to stop defending the government’s approvals of the project and side with the legal challengers.
Whether it would be possible for Trump to undo previously issued approvals is a thornier question. Afrin argued that a Trump administration both could and would re-examine previous approvals related to offshore wind projects, under the justification that the government erroneously issued them or failed to properly conduct a specific analysis. Existing environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, Afrin said, give “enormous tools” to “those who organize and have standing” in litigation.
Paradise made an audible sigh when I asked whether a future Trump administration could feasibly go that far.
“Some folks you’ll talk to might say, oh [they have] approved it, we’re all set,” he said. “If the administration were to change, you can imagine a scenario where somebody sues on an issued permit and the Justice Department decides not to defend the agency action, or maybe they want to settle with the folks bringing the suit.”
Some permits may be impossible to undo because project developers have a vested right in a regulatory approval depending on how far along they are, Thaler said. But if construction has yet to begin and more permits are needed, a Trump administration could potentially have an opening.
The risk lies in what happens to public perception and political maneuvering. Thaler compared what’s happening with Vineyard Wind to the PR backlash against Boeing after a door came out of a plane in the middle of a flight. “Any time this gets attention it will have an impact. People will be raising more concerns. Those who have been opposing will be emboldened, or energized, no pun intended.” That said, after the door debacle, “People kept flying,” Thaler said. “There was a suspension of that particular jet type for a while, but then people resumed flying around the world.”
Hope against a future
Scrutinizing offshore wind tech is already on the table to some in the Trumpworld braintrust. Oliver McPherson-Smith, head of energy and environment issues for the America First Policy Institute, told Axios last year that he wants regulators in a future administration to look “very, very closely at the environmental effects of all new technologies, including offshore wind.” Advocates fighting offshore wind certainly feel emboldened by the Vineyard Wind blade failure and are looking to magnify the importance of its environmental impacts. Mandy Gunasekara — the author of Project 2025’s section on dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency — on Monday retweeted claims that the failure was a “disaster” that environmentalists were “downplaying.”
Later this week, representatives from Vineyard Wind will appear in court to defend against a lawsuit from the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, seeking to stop the project on behalf of people in the commercial fishing industry. The group cited the blade failure in a press release about the case: “The federal government is required to ensure safety and environmental protection by law when approving projects like this — and they knew this project had environmental risks like the one that came to pass here — but they let it happen anyway.”
Some offshore wind industry backers are optimistic about the ability for the industry to weather the storm of a future Trump administration, however. Sam Salustro, vice president of strategic communication for Oceantic, formerly known as the Business Network for Offshore Wind, told me that he thinks it’s not a done deal Trump puts the breaks on offshore wind permits given the “enormous amount of investment and job creation that is happening from this dependable pipeline of projects coming through.”
He also pointed to examples of Republican support from folks like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who recently attended the christening of a new port in his state of Louisiana that will serve the offshore wind industry. “This is an industry that has robust bipartisan support from the people who know it best,” he said.
When asked specifically about how the Vineyard Wind blade failure would impact the future of U.S. industry growth, Salustro told me he didn’t immediately know how to respond. Ultimately, he settled on a brighter outlook. “We still have three other projects that are continuing development. This is a safety issue that is going to be addressed. From global data, we understand how rare it is, so I don’t see it as a huge hiccup to the industry like inflation was. Probably limited impact.”
Dave Rogers of Sierra Club, meanwhile, acknowledged that while the Vineyard Wind situation is “not great,” there is “a long track record we can point to” on project efficacy and environmental safety. While its critical regulators and companies figure out what went awry here, “it’s critical that it doesn’t actually slow down the deployment of offshore wind.”
“It’s not necessarily our job to get out ahead of [this],” Rogers said, “but we do think it’s important this is contextualized on a global scale so that people understand how rare something like this is and that offshore wind is going to be a key part of a decarbonization strategy in the U.S.”
https://heatmap.news/politics/vineyard-wind-trump
NASA, Boeing to Discuss Crew Flight Test Mission, Ground Testing
date: 2024-07-23, from: NASA breaking news
Leadership from NASA and Boeing will participate in a media teleconference at 11:30 a.m. EDT Thursday, July 25, to provide the latest status of the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test mission aboard the International Space Station. Audio of the media teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv Participants include: Media interested in participating […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-boeing-to-discuss-crew-flight-test-mission-ground-testing/
Forecasting the Probability of War Between Israel and Hezbollah
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: RAND blog
RAND is seeking to enhance its researchers’ ability to understand and develop policy-relevant solutions for complex challenges through early warning of risks and opportunities. Assessing the potential that Israel may declare war on Hezbollah offers an opportunity to show how crowdsourced forecasting can augment traditional RAND expertise and analysis.
AOOSTAR launches a Ryzen 7 5825U version of the WTR Pro 4-bay NAS
date: 2024-07-23, from: Liliputing
The AOOSTAR WTR PRO is a small desktop computer designed to be used as a NAS (network attached storage device) thanks to support for up to four 3.5 inch hard drives. Last month AOOSTAR launched a version of the WTR Pro with an Intel N100 processor based on Intel Alder Lake-N architecture. Now the company has introduced […]
The post AOOSTAR launches a Ryzen 7 5825U version of the WTR Pro 4-bay NAS appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/aoostar-launches-a-ryzen-7-5825u-version-of-the-wtr-pro-4-bay-nas/
US Senator Bob Menendez resigning following corruption conviction
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
TRENTON, New Jersey — U.S. Senator Bob Menendez is resigning from office August 20 following his conviction for taking bribes for corrupt acts including acting as an agent of the Egyptian government, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Menendez had insisted after the July 16 verdict that he was innocent and promised to appeal. The person who told the AP about Menendez’s resignation did so on the condition of anonymity because the New Jersey Democrat’s decision hadn’t been made public. Menendez’s attorney hasn’t returned messages seeking comment.
The resignation gives New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, the ability to appoint someone to the senate for the remainder of Menendez’s term, which expires on January 3. The seat was already up for election on November 5. Democrats have nominated U.S. Representative Andy Kim, who’s in a strong position in the Democratic-leaning state. He faces Republican Curtis Bashaw.
Menendez, 70, was convicted of charges that he sold the power of his office to three New Jersey businessmen who sought a variety of favors. Prosecutors said Menendez used his influence to meddle in three different state and federal criminal investigations to protect his associates. They said he helped one bribe-paying friend get a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund and another keep a contract to provide religious certification for meat bound for Egypt.
He was also convicted of taking actions that benefited Egypt’s government in exchange for bribes, including providing details on personnel at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, and ghostwriting a letter to fellow senators regarding lifting a hold on military aid to Egypt. FBI agents found stacks of gold bars and $480,000 in cash hidden in Menendez’s house.
After his conviction, Menendez denied all of those allegations, saying “I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent.”
But numerous fellow Democrats had urged him to resign, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Murphy had urged the Senate to expel Menendez if he didn’t quit. Only 15 senators have ever been expelled. Senator William Blount, of Tennessee, was ousted in 1797 for treason. The other 14 were expelled in 1861 and 1862 for supporting Confederates during the Civil War.
Menendez faces the possibility of decades in prison. A judge scheduled his sentencing on October 29, a week before the election.
His resignation bookends a career spent in politics that started with him getting elected to his local school board just a couple of years after high school graduation. He has held office at every level in his home state and had vowed to run as an independent in November for a fourth term.
The son of Cuban immigrants and an attorney by training, Menendez was a Union City, New Jersey, school board member at age 20 — before graduating from law school — and later became the mayor of the city, where he still has deep connections.
His own biography says he wanted to fight corruption early in his political career, testifying against Union City officials and building a reputation as tough. From there, he was elected to the state Assembly, then the state Senate before heading to the U.S. House.
He was appointed to be a U.S. senator in 2006 when the seat opened up after incumbent Jon Corzine became governor. He was elected outright in 2006 and again in 2012 and 2018. He served as chair of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee beginning in 2013.
Menendez’s political career looked like it might be over in 2015, when he was indicted in New Jersey on charges that he had accepted bribes of luxury overseas vacations, private jet travel and campaign contributions from a wealthy Florida eye doctor, Salomon Melgen.
In return, prosecutors said Menendez pressured government officials on Melgen’s behalf over an $8.9 million Medicare billing dispute and a stalled contract to provide port screening equipment in the Dominican Republic. They said he also helped obtain U.S. visas for the doctor’s girlfriends.
The defense argued that the gifts were not bribes but tokens of friendship between two men who were “like brothers.”
A jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict, resulting in a mistrial in 2017. U.S. prosecutors didn’t seek a retrial.
New Jersey voters then returned Menendez to the Senate for another term. Melgen was convicted in a separate fraud trial, but his 17-year prison sentence was later commuted by then-President Donald Trump.
Carvings of Ancient Pharaohs Unearthed in Nile River
date: 2024-07-23, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The underwater expedition took place at a site that was flooded during the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s
FTC sticks a probe into ‘surveillance pricing’ Big Biz uses to gouge us all
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ever had to shop in incognito mode to avoid paying more? This one’s for you
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into “surveillance pricing,” a phenomenon likely familiar to anyone who’s had to buy something in an incognito browser window to avoid paying a premium. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/ftc_surveillance_pricing/
Elon Musk says ‘woke mind virus’ ‘killed’ estranged trans daughter
date: 2024-07-23, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Anthony Robledo at USA Today]
“Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his estranged transgender daughter was”killed” by the “woke mind virus” after he was tricked into agreeing to gender-affirming care procedures.”
The thing is, his daughter Vivian is perfectly happy with the decision. The thing that’s causing Musk pain is not her decision to transition; it’s that she’s cut him off and no longer speaks to him. Interviews like this illustrate why.
That so many of his decisions are governed by this absolute loser energy says a lot. Just calm down, call your daughter, and reconcile.
As USA Today points out:
“Gender-affirming care is a valid, science-backed method of medicine that saves lives for people who require care while navigating their gender identity. Gender-affirming care can range from talk or hormone therapy to surgical intervention.”
It’s not done flippantly; a huge amount of care and attention is undertaken, particularly for minors. This backlash is pure conservative hokum: it does not have any scientific or factual basis. It just makes some small-minded, old-fashioned people feel uncomfortable.
<p>[<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2024/07/22/elon-musk-jordan-peterson-interview/74506785007/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/elon-musk-says-woke-mind-virus-killed-estranged-trans-daughter
Daily Deals (7-23-2024)
date: 2024-07-23, from: Liliputing
The MINISFORUM V3 is a 14 inch Windows tablet with a 2560 x 1600 pixel, 165 Hz display, an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U processor and a detachable keyboard. You can also use it as a portable monitor thanks to video input capabilities. When MINISFORUM first launched the tablet in May, a model with 32GB of […]
The post Daily Deals (7-23-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-7-23-2024/
Young People in the UK Need a Future. Can It Be Guaranteed?
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: RAND blog
As the new Labour government takes its first steps in power, it is a good time to explore what might be learned from youth employment initiatives both within the United Kingdom and the European Union.
The Kremlin Jails the Father of Russia’s Internet
date: 2024-07-23, from: Tilde.news
https://cepa.org/article/russia-jails-the-father-of-russias-internet/
Musk, the Foxy Kingmaker
date: 2024-07-23, from: Om Malik blog
No matter how much I try to avoid political news, there’s no hiding from the forthcoming U.S. presidential election and the ensuing political circus. Not even technology newsletters are a respite. Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic and Sarah Frier of Bloomberg in their most recent editions made a point that echoes something I said two …
https://om.co/2024/07/23/musk-the-foxy-kingmaker/
US presidents who did not seek reelection
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-presidents-who-did-not-seek-reelection/7709836.html
California forges ahead with social media rules despite legal barriers
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The LAist
The tech industry has argued successfully that imposing rules regulating how social media operate violates free speech rights.
Administrators have update lessons to learn from the CrowdStrike outage
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
How could this happen to us? We were supposed to be two versions behind?
If administrators have learned anything from the CrowdStrike chaos, it’s to understand exactly what delayed updates mean – or don’t mean – in the anti-malware world.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/crowdstrike_lessons_to_learn/
Are Pro-Police Scammers Campaigning For Your Cash?
date: 2024-07-23, from: The Lever News
Political action committees claiming to raise money for law enforcement are actually netting millions for an alleged fraud king, while Congress refuses to act.
https://www.levernews.com/are-pro-police-scammers-campaigning-for-your-cash/
Introducing Yuanxiao Xu, Authors Alliance’s New Staff Attorney
date: 2024-07-23, from: Authors Union blogs
By Dave Hansen Today I’m pleased to introduce to the Authors Alliance community Yuanxiao Xu, who will be taking on the role of Authors Alliance’s Staff Attorney. Over the past few years, Authors Alliance has been more active than ever before advocating for the interests of authors before courts and administrative agencies. Our involvement has […]
L.A. County’s Drug-Related Overdose Deaths Plateau for First Time in Decade
date: 2024-07-23, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Drug-related overdose and poisoning deaths plateaued for the first time in ten years in 2023 in Los Angeles County, a new Los Angeles County Department of Public Health analysis of Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner data has found
https://scvnews.com/l-a-countys-drug-related-overdose-deaths-plateau-for-first-time-in-decade/
Radxa Rock 5B+ brings memory, storage, and PCIe improvements to this single-board computer
date: 2024-07-23, from: Liliputing
The Radxa ROCK 5 Model B is a credit card-sized computer with a Rockchip RK3588 processor, a 2.5 GbE Ethernet port, and plenty of I/O options. Radxa first launched the ROCK5 in 2022, and now the company has introduced an upgraded model called the ROCK 5B+. While the new model has the same octa-core processor […]
The post Radxa Rock 5B+ brings memory, storage, and PCIe improvements to this single-board computer appeared first on Liliputing.
@IIIF Mastodon feed (date: 2024-07-23, from: IIIF Mastodon feed)
Save the date for the 2024 #IIIF Online Meeting, to be held November 12-14, 2024.
This year’s program will feature an update on the Consortium and the IIIF community, lighting talk sessions, and workshops for both implementers & end users. More details to come!
https://glammr.us/@IIIF/112836818404595282
Sam Altman’s basic income experiment finds that money can indeed buy happiness
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
But not necessarily health
The results of the largest universal basic income (UBI) trial program in the United States – this one backed by billionaire Sam Altman, no less – are in and entirely unsurprising.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/sam_altman_basic_income/
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-07-23, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
I was playing around with CSS aspect-ratio now that it has solid evergreen support, and wanted to see if I could apply it to Picture tags (which I use for responsive imagery) in a smart, concise way. I wanted to accomplish a few goals:
- No content shift on load
- Display some sort of placeholder while images load
- Ensure aspect-ratio is respected, especially when inside flexbox rows and columns
- (for funsies) styling the alt text on the placeholder when an image fails to load for a pretty fallback
I found several little tips and tricks around the web, but ultimately the secret sauce was flex-basis and flex-grow settings.
Here’s where I
landed:
https://codepen.io/jamestomasino/pen/dyBXgop
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/112836780272294766
Linking Through Hoops
date: 2024-07-23, from: Tedium feed
You would not believe the level of insanity you have to go through to allow a link to see an organic audience on LinkedIn.
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16751240/linkedin-complex-linking-schemes
An Astronomy Technique Could Detect Deepfakes Through People’s Eyes
date: 2024-07-23, from: 404 Media Group
Looking at the light reflections of eyes could be a clue to detecting AI-generated impersonations.
https://www.404media.co/an-astronomy-technique-could-detect-deepfakes-through-peoples-eyes/
The Vineyard Wind Turbine Fiasco, Explained
date: 2024-07-23, from: Heatmap News
It’s been just over a week since one of the 350-foot-long blades of a
wind turbine off the Massachusetts coast unexpectedly broke off, sending
hunks of fiberglass and foam into the waters below. As of
Wednesday
morning, cleanup crews were still actively removing debris from the
water and beaches and working to locate additional pieces of the
blade.
The blade failure quickly became a crisis for residents of Nantucket, where debris soon began washing up on the island’s busy beaches. It is also a PR nightmare for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, which is already on the defensive against community opposition and rampant misinformation about its environmental risks and benefits.
The broken turbine is part of Vineyard Wind 1, which is being developed by Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The project was still under construction when the breakage occurred, but it was already the largest operating offshore wind farm in the US, with ten turbines sending power to the New England Grid as of June. The plan is to bring another 52 online, which will produce enough electricity to power more than 400,000 homes. Now both installation and power generation have been paused while federal investigators look into the incident.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about why this happened, what the health and safety risks are, and what it means for this promising clean energy solution going forward. But here’s everything we’ve learned so far.
What happened?
On the evening of Saturday, July 13, Vineyard Wind received an alert that there was a problem with one of its turbines. The equipment contains a “delicate sensoring system,” CEO Klaus Moeller told the Nantucket Select Board during a public meeting last week. Though he did not describe what the alert said, he added that “one of the blades was broken and folded over.” Later at the meeting, a spokesperson for GE Vernova, which manufactured and installed the turbines, said that “blade vibrations” had been detected. About a third of the blade, or roughly 120 feet, fell into the water.
Two days later, Vineyard Wind contacted the town manager in Nantucket to explain that modeling showed the potential for debris from the blade to travel toward the island. Sure enough, fiberglass shards and other scraps began washing up on shore the next day, and all beaches on the island’s south shore were quickly closed to the public.
On Thursday morning, another large portion of the damaged blade detached and fell into the ocean. Monitoring and recovery crews continued to find debris throughout the area over the weekend. The beaches have since reopened, but visitors have been advised to wear shoes and leave their pets at home as cleanup continues.
Why did the blade break?
During GE’s second quarter earnings call on July 24, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik and Vice President of Investor Relations Michael Lapides said the company had identified a “material deviation” as the cause of the accident, and that the company is continuing to work on a “root cause analysis” to get to the bottom of how said deviation happened in the first place.
The turbine was one of GE’s Haliade-X 13-megawatt turbines, which are manufactured in Gaspé, Canada, and it was still undergoing post-installation testing by GE when the failure occurred — that is, it was not among those sending power to the New England grid. This was actually the second issue the company has had at this particular turbine site. One of the original blades destined for the site was damaged during the installation process, and the one that broke last week was a replacement, Craig Gilvard, Vineyard Wind’s communications director, told the New Bedford Light.
How did Vineyard Wind respond?
By Vineyard Wind’s account at the meeting last week, the accident triggered an automatic shut down of the system and activated the company’s emergency response plan, which included immediately notifying the U.S. Coast Guard, the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and regional emergency response committees.
Moeller, the CEO, said during the meeting that the company worked with the Coast Guard to immediately establish a 500 meter “safety zone” around the turbine and to send out notices to mariners. According to the Coast Guard’s notice log, however, the safety zone went into effect three days later. In response to my questions, the Coast Guard confirmed that the zone was established around 8pm that night and announced to mariners over radio broadcast.
Two days after the turbine broke, on Monday, Vineyard Wind contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for aid in modeling where the turbine debris would travel in the water. The agency estimated pieces would likely make landfall in Nantucket that day. Vineyard Wind put out a press release about the accident and subsequently contacted the Nantucket town manager. At the Nantucket Select Board meeting last week, Moeller said the company followed regulatory protocols but that there was “really no excuse” for how long it took to inform the public, and said, “we want to move much quicker and make sure that we learn from this.”
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has ordered the company to cease all power production and installation activities until it can determine whether this was an isolated incident or affects other turbines.
By Tuesday, Vineyard Wind said it had deployed two small teams to Nantucket in addition to hiring a local contractor to remove debris on the island. The company later said it would “increase its local team to more than 50 employees and contractors dedicated to beach clean-up and debris recovery efforts.”
GE Vernova is responsible for recovering offshore debris and has not published any public statements about the effort. In response to a list of questions, a GE Vernova spokesperson said, “We continue to work around the clock to enhance mitigation efforts in collaboration with Vineyard Wind and all relevant state, local and federal authorities. We are working with urgency to complete our root cause analysis of this event.”
Did anyone get hurt?
There have been no reported injuries as a result of the accident.
What are the risks now?
Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova have stressed that the debris are “not toxic.” At the Select Board meeting, GE’s executive fleet engineering director Renjith Viripullan said that the blade is made of fiberglass, foam, and balsa wood. It is bonded together using a “bond paste,” he said, and likened the blade construction to that of a boat. “That’s the correlation we need to think about,” he said.
One of the board members asked if there was any risk of PFAS contamination as a result of the accident. Viripullan said he would need to “take that question back” and follow up with the answer later. (This was one of the questions I asked GE, but the company did not respond to it.)
That being said, the debris poses some dangers. Photos of cleanup crews posted to the Harbormaster’s Facebook page show workers wearing white hazmat suits. Vineyard Wind said “members of the public should avoid handling debris as the fiber-glass pieces can be sharp and lead to cuts if handled without proper gloves.”
Though members of the public raised concerns at the meeting and to the press that fiberglass fragments in the ocean threaten marine life and public health, it is not yet clear how serious the risks are, and several efforts are underway to further assess them. Vineyard Wind is developing a water quality testing plan for the island and setting up a process for people to file claims. GE hired a design and engineering firm to conduct an environmental assessment, which it will present at a Nantucket Select Board meeting later this week. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has requested information from the companies about the makeup of the debris to evaluate risks, and the Department of Fish and Game is monitoring for impacts to the local ecosystem.
How is the cleanup going?
As of last Wednesday morning, Vineyard Wind had collected “approximately 17 cubic yards of debris, enough to fill more than six truckloads, and several larger pieces that washed ashore.” It is not yet known what fraction of the turbine that fell off has been recovered. Vineyard Wind did not respond to a request for the latest numbers in time for publication, but I’ll update this piece if I get a response.
Has anything like this happened before?
Yes. In May, a blade on the same model of turbine, the GE Haliade-X, sustained damage at a wind farm being installed off the coast of England called Dogger Bank. At the Nantucket Select Board meeting, a spokesperson for GE said the Dogger Bank incident was “an installation issue specific to the installation of that blade” and that “we don’t think there’s a connection between that installation issue and what we saw here.” Executives emphasized this point during the earnings call and chalked up the Dogger Bank incident to “an installation error out at sea.”
Several blades have also broken off another GE turbine model dubbed the Cypress at wind farms in Germany and Sweden. After the most recent incident in Germany last October, the company used similar language, telling reporters that it was working to “determine the root cause.”
A “company source with knowledge of the investigations” into the various incidents recently told CNN that “there were different root causes for the damage, including transportation, handling, and manufacturing deviations.”
GE Vernova’s stock price fell nearly 10% last Wednesday.
How did locals react?
The backlash was swift. Nantucket residents immediately wrote to Nantucket’s Select Board to ask the town to stop the construction of any additional offshore wind turbines. “I know it’s not oil, but it’s sharp and maybe toxic in other ways,” Select Board member Dawn Holgate told company executives at the meeting last week. “We’re also facing an exponential risk if this were to continue because many more windmills are planned to be built out there and there’s been a lot of concern about that throughout the community.”
The Select Board plans to meet in private on Tuesday night to discuss “potential litigation by the town against Vineyard Wind relative to recovery costs.”
“We expect Vineyard Wind will be responsible for all costs and associated remediation efforts incurred by the town in response to the incident,” Elizabeth Gibson, the Nantucket town manager said during the meeting last week.
The Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe is also calling for a moratorium on offshore wind development and raised concerns about the presence of fiberglass fragments in the water.
On social media, anti-wind groups throughout the northeast took up the story as evidence that offshore wind is “not green, not clean.” Republican state representatives in Massachusetts cited the incident as a reason for opposing legislation to expedite clean energy permitting last week. Fox News sought comment from internet personality and founder of Barstool Sports David Portnoy, who owns a home on Nantucket and said the island had been “ruined by negligence.” The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a nonprofit funded by oil companies and which is backing a lawsuit against Vineyard Wind, cited the incident as evidence that the project is harming local fishermen. The First Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear oral arguments on the case this Thursday.
Meanwhile, environmental groups supportive of offshore wind tried to do damage control for the industry. “Now we must all work to ensure that the failure of a single turbine blade does not adversely impact the emergence of offshore wind as a critical solution for reducing dependence on fossil fuels and addressing the climate crisis,” the Sierra Club’s senior advisor for offshore wind, Nancy Pyne, wrote in a statement. “Wind power is one of the safest forms of energy generation.”
This story was last updated July 24 at 3:15 p.m. The current version contains new information and corrects the location where the turbine blades are produced. With assistance from Jael Holzman.
https://heatmap.news/climate/vineyard-wind-turbine-nantucket
As Harris eyes US presidency, reaction in her mother’s native India is muted but tinged with pride
date: 2024-07-23, from: VOA News USA
New Delhi — When Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president in the U.S., residents in her maternal family’s ancestral village in southern India watched in real time, setting off fireworks, holding up portraits of her and wishing her a long life.
But, four years later, as she works to become the Democratic nominee for president after President Joe Biden ended his campaign, reaction across the country has been more muted. While some residents in the capital, New Delhi, expressed pride when asked about her this week, a handful wondered who she was.
At least partially, that could reflect how Harris — who is also Black, with a father born in Jamaica — has treated her origins.
“Harris doesn’t wear her Indian roots on her sleeve, choosing instead to emphasize her Jamaican heritage,” Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, said.
As vice president, she has deployed stories of her ties to India at key moments — at times light-heartedly — but her policy portfolio has been more domestic and did not focus on relations with India, he said.
In June last year, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a state visit to Washington, Harris spoke emotionally about her ties to her late mother Shyamala Gopalan’s country of birth. She credited her grandfather P.V. Gopalan, who was a civil servant, with teaching her about what democracy means as they walked hand-in-hand on a beach in his home state of Tamil Nadu.
These lessons, she said, “first inspired my interest in public service … and have guided me ever since.”
She also talked about her mother’s influence — and how she discovered her “love of good idli,” eliciting laughter from the crowd with her reference to a dish of steamed rice dumplings, a staple in southern India.
Sumanth Raman, a political commentator in Tamil Nadu, said there was excitement when she was named the VP nominee, “but after that, there’s not been a great deal of enthusiasm.”
Since Sunday, when Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, she has hardly featured in media reports in the state, he said.
“The coverage has been more about Joe Biden dropping out, that’s what has grabbed headlines here,” Raman said.
Beyond a smattering of references, analysts say Harris hasn’t tapped her Indian identity heavily.
Today, few members of her extended family remain in India. Other than the trips during her childhood, Harris hasn’t visited the country much — and not since she became vice president, another reason that could explain why her candidacy hasn’t resonated widely in the country yet.
Still, if Harris becomes the Democratic nominee, it would be a first for a South Asian American — and a sign of just how far the diaspora has come in the U.S., Kugelman said.
Harris and a slew of other political personalities with roots in India — from Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy to Usha Vance — have become household names in the U.S. and their rise has put a spotlight on the country, beyond the cliches of Bollywood and Indian cuisine, he added.
But the impact of a potential Harris presidency would be much greater for American politics and the Indian American community than for India-U.S. ties, experts say.
“When Indians look at Kamala Harris, they’re looking at an American official more than someone of Indian origin,” said Happymon Jacob, a professor of diplomacy and disarmament studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
That she was vice president did not have a substantive impact on India-U.S. ties, which are expected to grow over shared concerns about China regardless of who wins the November election, he said.
Modi, for instance, was feted with a glitzy state visit last year hosted by Biden, where both leaders affirmed that ties between the two countries were thriving. But the Indian leader was also close to former President Donald Trump, who received an adulatory reception when he visited India in 2020 as more than 100,000 people packed into a cricket stadium to see him.
“So I think there is a reality check in India, that these things don’t really matter at the end of the day,” Jacob added.
Even if a Harris presidency is unlikely to affect policy toward India or carry geopolitical implications, for Hindi literature professor Shivaji Shinde, it would still be a historic and meaningful moment for the nation.
The “United States is the most powerful country in the world. If they choose an Indian-origin person as their president, then it will be a huge moment for India and every Indian would be immensely proud,” Shinde said in New Delhi on Tuesday.
The news has also made its way to Thulasendrapuram, the village where Harris’ mother’s family once lived.
“We’re overjoyed to know that someone who traces her ancestry to our village might become the president of the United States,” said resident Sudhakar Jayaraman.
He said villagers performed prayers at the local temple, which Harris and her grandfather once donated to, after they heard the news.
“For a person of Indian descent with Tamil roots to reach such a high office makes us all proud,” Jayaraman added.
Pulled From the Flames: Paintings Rescued from the Great Chicago Fire
date: 2024-07-23, from: National Archives, Text Message blog
Today’s post was written by Addie Portela, an intern at the National Archives at Chicago. On Sunday October 8th, 1871, fire raged across the city of Chicago. Not quelled until Tuesday morning, fires devastated Chicago’s central business district. The Crosby Opera House, a theater with an art gallery attachment, was not spared from the damage. … Continue reading Pulled From the Flames: Paintings Rescued from the Great Chicago Fire
New Yorkers Step Into Life-Size Replicas of Iconic Edward Hopper Paintings
date: 2024-07-23, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Three of the realist painter’s most famous artworks came to life in an interactive installation in Manhattan
Kamala Harris has a long history with Silicon Valley that could help – or hurt
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The presumptive Democratic nominee has gone back and forth with Big Tech
Analysis With Joe Biden out of the US Presidential race, his VP Kamala Harris is poised to become the Democratic Party’s nominee, but whether her history with Silicon Valley will help is far less assured.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/kamala_harris_technology/
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/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-23, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
An ‘open convention’ would be a fiasco.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/22/dnc-open-convention-kamala-harris
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/
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 subscribers 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/
Discussing Markdown and structured content with Niklas Begley
date: 2024-07-23, from: Blog by Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti
Last week I had the pleasure of conversing with Niklas Begley from Doctave. It was a follow-up to The Pros and Cons of Markdown, focused on why Markdown and other lightweight markup languages could benefit from some structure, in the DITA sense, but without going the XML way. Hint: There could be a bit of JSON schemas involved.
https://passo.uno/markdown-structured-content/
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/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-23, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump-Lover Elon Musk Is Already Causing Kamala Harris Problems.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-lover-elon-musk-already-145940678.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-23, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Pirated Movies Flood YouTube, Millions of Views on Compromised Channels.
CrowdStrike CEO summoned to explain epic fail to US Homeland Security committee
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Boss faces grilling before Congress 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/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-23, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
If podcasting had a marketing team behind it, we'd run a campaign that says "It's not podcasting if you don't have choice."
http://scripting.com/2024/06/04.html
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/
Why The Llama 3.1 Announcement Is Huge
date: 2024-07-23, updated: 2024-07-23, from: Tom Kellog blog
Today Meta announced a new LLM, Llama 3.1 405B and along with it, a great letter by Mark Zuckerburg about why open source is good for developers, Meta & the world. It might seem redundant, amidst the flood of other AI models being released, but I do think this is a big moment, for 4 reasons.
http://timkellogg.me/blog/2024/07/23/llama-3.1
American Physical Society Becomes Largest Society Publisher to Adopt ROR
date: 2024-07-23, from: ROR Research ID Blog
The American Physical Society (APS) has become the largest society publisher to adopt ROR, incorporating it into their manuscript submission process and sending ROR IDs in author affiliation metadata to Crossref.
https://ror.org/blog/2024-07-23-aps-adopts-ror/
Thematic Book Series: How Circular is the Circular Economy?
date: 2024-07-23, from: Blog Muffinlabs
- Buy the print edition.
- Buy the epub edition.
The circular economy – the newest magical word in the sustainable development vocabulary – promises economic growth without environmental destruction or waste. However, growth makes a circular economy impossible, even if we recycle all raw materials and all recycling is 100% efficient. No technology can change that because it’s not a technological problem. In addition, many modern products are too complex to recycle.
In this series of articles, LOW←TECH MAGAZINE explores how the circularity of various technologies like bicycles, solar panels, and wind turbines evolves. Placing the recycling of resources in a historical context makes clear that we are not moving toward a circular economy but rather increasingly away from it.
Contents table:
- How circular is the circular economy?
- Can we make bicycles sustainable again?
- Plastic waste in the fuel tank?
- Recycling animal and human manure is the key to sustainable farming
- How to make wind power sustainable again?
- Reinventing the small wind turbine
- How to build a low-tech solar panel?
- How to escape from the Iron Age?
Available in our bookshop:
Patrons get free access to ebooks, as well as early access to new print books at a reduced price.
Other books in the series:
-
How to build a low-tech internet?, Kris De Decker, Roel Roscam Abbing, Marie Otsuka, 2023. Ebook edition.
-
How to downsize a transport network?, Kris De Decker, 2023. Ebook edition.
-
Heating people not spaces, Kris De Decker, 2024. Ebook edition
The Low-tech Magazine archives are also available as a chronological series consisting of four volumes.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/07/thematic-book-series-how-circular-is-the-circular-economy/