News gathered 2024-07-30
(date: 2024-07-30 09:58:36)
Simone Biles, Team USA take aim at gold in women’s gymnastics team final
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Biles is competing after tweaking her left calf during qualifying.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/30/paris-olympics-womens-gymnastics-team-final/
macOS 14.6 Enables Double Display Support for 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro
date: 2024-07-30, from: TidBITS blog
Apple has released updates to all its operating systems, saying only that they provide “important bug fixes and security updates” for everything other than macOS 14.6 Sonoma, which enables the M3 model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro to drive two external displays when the lid is closed.
https://tidbits.com/2024/07/30/macos-14-6-enables-double-display-support-for-14-inch-m3-macbook-pro/
Summer Olympics: Cal junior Jack Alexy tops field of 79 swimmers, Katie Ledecky qualifies for another final
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
The fastest sprinter in the Olympic pool on Tuesday morning was Cal junior Jack Alexy.
Optimizing the Number Row and Numpad Layouts
date: 2024-07-30, from: Tilde.news
https://old.reddit.com/r/KeyboardLayouts/comments/j4vt1s/optimizing_the_number_row_essay_script/
William Calley dies at 80; Army officer led My Lai massacre that shamed US military in Vietnam
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Lt. William Calley was convictedfor the murders of 22 people during the rampage. He was sentenced to life in prison but served only three days after President Richard Nixon ordered his sentence reduced.
Trump says he ‘probably’ will debate Harris but can ‘make a case for not.’ Her team says he’s scared
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign says former President Donald Trump is scared to debate her.
Oakland bookstore gutted in 3-alarm fire
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
A three-alarm fire early Tuesday left a popular Oakland bookstore a “total loss,” officials said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/30/oakland-bookstore-gutted-in-3-alarm-fire/
The inside story of John Roberts and Trump’s immunity win at the Supreme Court
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
By Joan Biskupic | CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst The Supreme Court’s toughest cases during Chief Justice John Roberts’ tenure have often generated internal suspense, with shifting votes, last-minute switches and the chief’s own push toward compromises that would lessen the appearance of politics. Not so this spring, when the six Republican-appointed conservatives established a […]
What happens when your publisher licenses your work for AI training?
date: 2024-07-30, from: Authors Union blogs
Over the last year, we’ve seen a number of major deals inked between companies like OpenAI and news publishers. In July 2023, OpenAI entered into a two-year deal with The Associated Press for ChatGPT to ingest the publisher’s news stories. In December 2023, Open AI announced its first non-US partnership to train ChatGPT on German […]
TSMC confirms it’ll dig into Dresden for chip giant’s first fab on Euro soil
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Partnership with NXP, Infineon, and Bosch finally gets under way
TSMC and partners will break ground in Dresden, Germany, to start building the Taiwanese chip maker’s first European fab.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/tsmc_breaks_ground_dresden/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-07-30, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
With 208,000 pictures I suspect I am not going to get to play with this new feature any time soon:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112876380763612814
Here’s what to know about Seine River water quality during the Paris Olympics
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
A monitoring group is taking daily tests to make sure the water is safe.
‘Mysterious’ Barron Trump eschewed school sports, dances, yearbook, classmate says
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
In Barron Trump’s unusual high school experience, he could be friendly, funny and ‘random’ but he mostly kept to himself, a classmate at his posh Florida private school recalls in a new report.
Best pool filter
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
A good pool filter is essential to keeping your pool’s water crystal-clear.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/30/best-pool-filter/
Around the World in 175 Days, 1924: Department of State Contributions to the U.S. Army Flight Around the World: Part VIII: Confusion and Intrigue in the Balkans
date: 2024-07-30, from: National Archives, Text Message blog
This is the eighth in a series of occasional blog posts. So far this series of posts has made stops in Tokyo, Shanghai, Amoy, Calcutta, and Baghdad. The Army Around the World Flight, flew out of Baghdad on July 9 and flew west to Aleppo. Over the next four days the flight passed through the following … Continue reading Around the World in 175 Days, 1924: Department of State Contributions to the U.S. Army Flight Around the World: Part VIII: Confusion and Intrigue in the Balkans
French police investigating abuse targeting Olympic opening ceremony DJ over ‘Last Supper’ scene
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
A storm of outrage about the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony has taken a legal turn.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/30/paris-olympics-opening-ceremony-legal-complaints/
Rituals
date: 2024-07-30, from: John August blog
John and Craig welcome back Megana Rao to look at rituals and what they can tell us about our characters. But what are characters doing deliberately, and what is just routine? They separate routines from rites, and how both can help deepen our understanding of characters and the threats that face them. We also follow […] The post Rituals first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/rituals
Trump Media Made Deal Involving GOP Donor James E. Davison
date: 2024-07-30, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski at ProPublica]
The majority of Donald Trump’s net worth is wrapped up in Truth Social’s parent company Trump Media & Technology Group. If he’s elected, its deals and ownership structure will present conflicts of interests - illustrated by this ProPublica investigation into its streaming TV deal:
“The deal announced by Trump Media involves a series of largely unknown small players. Trump Media’s disclosures about the deal describe a nesting doll of companies that leave many questions unanswered about its new business partners.”
“The sellers include a pair of Louisiana companies: [major Republican donor James E.] Davison’s JedTec LLC along with another called WorldConnect IPTV Solutions.”
JedTec’s issues are relatively straightforward. For me, the bigger mystery surrounds WorldConnect IPTV, which seems to be acting as a wrapper around a UK streaming company called Perception Group. In turn, Perception’s servers seem to be colocated with Hurricane Electric, a backbone provider based in Fremont.
Perception seems like a bit of a mystery operation in itself: there’s very little information on its website that really illuminates if there’s any new technology here at all. WorldConnect, meanwhile, seems to have spent many of its early years helping right-wing Christian TV stations reach audiences across the UK’s Freeview over-the-air digital TV service and the internet at large.
It’s all super-strange. There’s definitely more to discover.
<p>[<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-media-truth-social-jedtec-james-davison-conflict-of-interest">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/trump-media-made-deal-involving-gop-donor-james-e-davison
Ron Werft, Cottage Health President & CEO, Announces Retirement
date: 2024-07-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA — July 29, 2024— After serving 37 years at Cottage Health, the last 24 years as its
The post Ron Werft, Cottage Health President & CEO, Announces Retirement appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/30/ron-werft-cottage-health-president-ceo-announces-retirement/
Harris bets on reproductive rights while Trump plays down anti-abortion moves
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
Access to abortion is one of the main topics in this year’s U.S. presidential race. The Kamala Harris campaign is betting on support for abortion rights driving voters to the polls in November, while Donald Trump and the Republican party have toned down their anti-abortion public stances on the matter. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has more.
Keeping the mystery around airline ticket prices
date: 2024-07-30, from: Marketplace Morning Report
A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked new regulation that would have required airlines to disclose all their fees upfront so customers can better comparison-shop. The rule was scheduled to take effect in late fall. Now, its fate is up in the air. Then, we’ll hear how young Nigerians are responding to a cost of living crisis and what it costs to keep the International Space Station running.
Dynabook Portégé X40-M is a thin and light Meteor Lake laptop with full-sized Ethernet and HDMI ports
date: 2024-07-30, from: Liliputing
Dynabook’s Portégé X40 series laptops are premium, business-class 14 inch notebooks with thin and light, but sturdy designs and some features you don’t always find on compact notebooks these days: like smart card readers and full-sized Ethernet ports. The company’s newest model is the Portégé X40-M, which launches today with a Intel Core Ultra “Meteor […]
The post Dynabook Portégé X40-M is a thin and light Meteor Lake laptop with full-sized Ethernet and HDMI ports appeared first on Liliputing.
Hacker Breaches Pharma Giant Bausch Health, Wants to Extort DEA
date: 2024-07-30, from: 404 Media Group
The data includes DEA numbers used for ordering controlled substances. 404 Media contacted Bausch about the data breach last week.
https://www.404media.co/hacker-breaches-pharma-giant-bausch-health-wants-to-extort-dea/
Rising costs biggest issue for datacenter operators as demand grows
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Not to mention the skills gap, AI skepticism, and the unrelenting quest for power
Datacenter operators face multiple challenges such as power and cooling requirements, while staffing issues persist and many are not tracking the right sustainability metrics. On the plus side, they can count on strong and growing demand for digital services.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/rising_datacenter_costs/
NASA’s DART Mission Sheds New Light on Target Binary Asteroid System
date: 2024-07-30, from: NASA breaking news
In studying data collected from NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which in 2022 sent a spacecraft to intentionally collide with the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, the mission’s science team has discovered new information on the origins of the target binary asteroid system and why the DART spacecraft was so effective in shifting Dimorphos’ orbit. In five recently […]
Perplexity is cutting checks to publishers following plagiarism accusations
date: 2024-07-30, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“Perplexity’s “Publishers’ Program” has recruited its first batch of partners, including prominent names like Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and Automattic (with WordPress.com participating but not Tumblr). Under this program, when Perplexity features content from these publishers in response to user queries, the publishers will receive a share of the ad revenue.”
Now we’re talking. This was inevitable.
It also opens the floodgates: there’s a world where any publisher gets a direct revenue share for being a source, if they sign up and license their content. This seems like a solid improvement.
Which brings me to Automattic’s involvement. As Matt Mullenweg says in the piece:
“It’s a much better revenue split than Google, which is zero.”
Automattic will actually be sharing the revenue with customers of its hosted WordPress product. I’m not sure if that includes WordPress VIP, its premium product for publishers. Whether free hosted WordPress publishers who are used as sources by Perpexity see any kind of revenue share is also a mystery, which might put some foreign publishers in a bad place in particular.
Still, in general, although there will certainly be kinks to work out, this sets a really good precedent. More, please.
<p>[<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/30/24208979/perplexity-publishers-program-ad-revenue-sharing-ai-time-fortune-der-spiegel">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/perplexity-is-cutting-checks-to-publishers-following-plagiarism-accusations
Should LA County jail unhoused people for camping in public? Leaders to discuss
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The LAist
A motion up for approval by county supervisors calls for a regional strategy to reduce the effect of a recent Supreme Court ruling on homelessness.
‘Metaphysical Experiments’ Probe Our Hidden Assumptions About Reality
date: 2024-07-30, from: Quanta Magazine
Experiments that test physics and philosophy “as a single whole” may be our only route to surefire knowledge about the universe.The post ‘Metaphysical Experiments’ Probe Our Hidden Assumptions About Reality first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Skibidi Toilet Copyright Takedown Request to Garry’s Mod Is Very Dumb
date: 2024-07-30, from: 404 Media Group
A copyright takedown request against Garry’s Mod is a violation of the modding culture that made Skibidi Toilet possible.
https://www.404media.co/skibidi-toilet-copyright-takedown-request-to-garrys-mod-is-very-dumb/
‘LockBit of phishing’ EvilProxy used in more than a million attacks every month
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Leaves a trail of ransomware infections, data theft, business email compromise in its wake
Insight The developers of EvilProxy – a phishing kit dubbed the “LockBit of phishing” – have produced guides on using legitimate Cloudflare services to disguise malicious traffic. This adds to the ever-growing arsenal of tools offering criminals who lack actual technical expertise to get into the digital thievery biz.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/evilproxy_phishing_kit_analysis/
How are 49ers’ position battles shaping up? Here’s an early review
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Assessing how 49ers’ training camp position battles are faring so far.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/30/an-early-line-on-how-49ers-position-battles-are-shaping-up/
Thieves take beer, iPhones in separate incidents in Campbell
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
U-Haul, Honda Civic also reported stolen.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/30/thieves-take-beer-iphones-in-separate-incidents-in-campbell/
Hacker Shows How to Get Free Laundry For Life
date: 2024-07-30, from: 404 Media Group
Michael Orlitzky was sick of the washer and dryer machines in his building. So, he found an alternative to paying.
https://www.404media.co/hacker-shows-how-to-get-free-laundry-for-life/
Microsoft’s Azure Portal takes a worldwide tumble
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ready to talk it up to investors today, Microsoft?
Breaking Microsoft’s cloud services are having a bad day with users worldwide reporting difficulty connecting to Azure.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/microsofts_azure_portal_outage/
Group of 25 motorcyclists reported to police for doing wheelies in Los Gatos
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Two vehicles crash into buildings in town in separate incidents.
DA: Arson suspect reportedly ‘heavily intoxicated’ before Park Fire ignition
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ronnie Dean Stout II, the man accused of starting the Park Fire was reportedly seen leaving a local park “highly intoxicated” before high-centering his car and setting off the chain of events that led to the fire.
Twice-yearly injection offers ‘stunning’ 100 percent protection against HIV, experts say
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Experts working to stop the spread of AIDS are excited about the Sunlenca shots but are concerned Gilead hasn’t yet agreed on an affordable price for those who need them the most.
Undocumented immigrants in US pay nearly $100 billion in taxes
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
One of the most common arguments for curtailing immigration is the cost borne by the US government. But undocumented immigrants pay more than a quarter, about 26%, of their income in taxes.
Much More Than That
date: 2024-07-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Your story about the closing of Tunnel Trail is more than just about “lost access to hiking the Tunnel Trail.”
The post Much More Than That appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/30/much-more-than-that/
William Calley, US military officer convicted of infamous massacre of Vietnamese villagers, dies
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
Fred’s Burger opens in Concord, serving up halal hamburgers, shakes and more
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
In a little under two years, restaurateur Fred Akbarpour launched his halal burger concept, Fred’s Burger and set it on a rapid path of growth.
The story behind St. George Spirits’ new orange blossom gin
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
Have you ever had a sip of a spirit that completely transported you to a different time and place? That’s the kind of magic that the team behind St. George Spirits, an Alameda-based craft distillery, is all about, according to head distiller Dave Smith.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/30/the-story-behind-st-george-spirits-new-orange-blossom-gin/
San Jose green-lights Willow Glen rooftop beer garden and restaurant
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
The owner of Water Tower Kitchen in Campbell has proposed a rooftop beer garden on Minnesota Avenue.
W3C says Google’s cookie climbdown ‘undermines’ a lot of work
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
While some celebrate, the World Wide Web Consortium Technical Architecture Group is not happy
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published a blog criticizing Google’s climbdown over the deprecation of third-party cookies, declaring that the move “undermines a lot of the work we’ve done together.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/googles_cookie_w3c_criticism/
Man defends his home as Park Fire push devastation and spread smoke across US West
date: 2024-07-30, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Northern California wildfire has scorched more than 575 square miles, an area greater than the city of Los Angeles. It has destroyed more than 100 structures and is threatening 4,200 more.
How a Microsoft App is Powering Employee Surveillance
date: 2024-07-30, from: 404 Media Group
Microsoft Dynamics 365 uses AI-generated performance metrics to single out individual workers, a new report has found.
https://www.404media.co/how-a-microsoft-app-is-powering-employee-surveillance/
European Energy Is Worried
date: 2024-07-30, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: At least 45 are dead and many more are trapped in the Indian state of Kerala after heavy rainfall triggered landslides • California’s Park Fire, only 14% contained, is now the sixth-largest in the state’s history • Typhoon Gaemi’s death toll continues to climb as the storm’s remnants batter southern China • A flash flood hit the popular Dollywood theme park in Tennessee.
THE TOP FIVE
- European clean energy companies weigh their futures in the U.S.
ahead of the presidential election
European companies are considering whether to invest in new clean energy projects in the U.S. as November’s election looms, Reuters reported on Monday. The Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives for clean energy, EVs, and hydrogen – which drew many European firms to cross the Atlantic – are perceived to be in jeopardy in the event of a Trump victory. Companies like Thyssenkrupp Nucera, Nel, SMA Solar, and H2Apex, which have undertaken clean energy projects in the U.S. in the last two years, are all delaying investment decisions over worries that tax credits and demand could dry up.
Their concerns are warranted. Donald Trump has pledged to redirect clean energy funding to other priorities like roads and bridges should he win re-election. And the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (widely seen as a policy map for a second Trump term) proposes gutting key climate agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy’s Loans Program Office.
- Nuclear fusion company concludes giant funding round
Type One Energy closed its seed funding round at $82.5 million, a testament to the hype surrounding the emerging nuclear fusion company. As Heatmap’s Katie Brigham reports, the company uses a reactor design known as a stellarator, which – unlike the traditional tokamak reactor – employs a twisted magnetic field to keep the plasma stabilized inside. The company’s novel technology sparked interest from major funders like Breakthrough Energy, Centaurus Capital, and New Zealand-based GD1. Type One CEO Chris Mowry called the funding round, “one of the largest, if not the largest ever, seed financings in the history of energy.”
- Gas flaring in Azerbaijan hits a decadal high
The host of the UN COP29 climate summit flared 10.5% more methane in 2023 than it did in 2018, the last time the country reported its emissions, according to recent analysis by nonprofit group Global Witness. Flaring involves burning (rather than capturing) the natural gas produced as a byproduct of oil drilling, and it is responsible for over 381 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions annually, according to the World Bank. Several of the facilities most at fault for the increase in flaring are owned or operated by British multinational energy company BP.
It’s a new black mark on Azerbaijan’s climate record, already under scrutiny by those who object to holding another climate conference in a major oil and gas-producing country.
- Wildfires are hurting the U.S. economy
A forthcoming report by economic analysis group IMPLAN finds that wildfires could punch a nearly $90 billion hole in U.S. economic output this year. Wildfires are already displacing entire communities as they rage across much of the American West. That’s going to have an impact, says IMPLAN — potentially eliminating as many as 466,000 jobs by the end of the year. The report notes that some industries may actually benefit from the surge in wildfires. Businesses like electricity, healthcare, and (of course) fire prevention could see elevated spending as climate change increases the frequency of these destructive blazes.
- A new study casts doubt on forests’ ability to curb emissions
Vegetation isn’t acting as the carbon sponge many had hoped it would. A new study by the French research organization Laboratory for Climate and Environmental Sciences (LCES) found that between 2022 and 2023, the growth rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased 86%. That’s partly because drought in the Amazon and wildfires in Canada constrained forests’ ability to sequester carbon as they normally do. While the report’s authors noted that carbon uptake changes from year to year, these findings cast doubt on forests’ reliability as a carbon sponge in the future. “We are pumping less carbon from the atmosphere into the land,” one of the study’s authors told Reuters. “Suddenly the pump is choking, and it’s pumping less.”
THE KICKER
“Unfortunately, meteorological events beyond our control … can alter water quality and compel us to reschedule the event for health reasons.” – A joint statement by World Triathlon and Paris 2024 blaming the weekend’s rain storms for the pollution in the Seine that caused them to postpone today’s men’s Olympic triathlon.
https://heatmap.news/economy/european-clean-energy-ira
How deliciously binary: AI has yet to pay off – or is transforming business
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Calculating ROI of neural networks turns out to be rather complicated
Feature The tech industry’s enthusiasm for artificial intelligence software – a conveniently amorphous term – has yet to generate much of an economic windfall.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/ai_has_yet_to_pay/
How the DJT stock could finally make money for Donald J. Trump
date: 2024-07-30, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Donald Trump’s social media company is trading at around $30 — down early 40% since it launched on the stock exchange this spring. So far for the former president, the wealth there is locked up on paper. But something called a “Standby Equity Purchase Agreement” could mean cold, hard cash in former president’s hands. Also, the Senate is poised to approve legislation aimed at protecting children online. We’ll hear the latest.
Type One Energy Raised $82.5 Million to Do Fusion For Real
date: 2024-07-30, from: Heatmap News
The fusion world is flush in cash and hype, as the dream of near-limitless clean energy inches closer to reality. A recent report from the Fusion Industry Association found that in the last two years, companies in the industry have brought in over $2.3 billion, nearly a third of all fusion funding since 1992.
Today, one of those companies, Type One Energy, announced a giant, $82.5 million seed funding round, which CEO Chris Mowry told me is “one of the largest, if not the largest ever, seed financings in the history of energy.” This funding represents the total from the company’s first close in March of last year, which brought in $29 million, plus the recent close of its extension round, which brought in an additional $53.5 million. The extension was co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, New Zealand-based venture capital firm GD1, and Centaurus Capital.
Mowry said the follow-on funding is necessary for the company to achieve its target of commercializing fusion by the mid-2030s. “To do this, we need to ramp this company up pretty quickly and have some pretty ambitious milestones in terms of development of the actual pilot power plant. And that takes a lot of capital,” he told me.
Type One uses a reactor design known as a stellarator. The concept is similar to the more familiar doughnut-shaped tokamak reactors, used by the deep-pocketed MIT-spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems and the intergovernmental fusion megaproject ITER. Both stellarators and tokamaks use high-powered magnets to confine superheated plasma, in which the fusion reaction takes place. But unlike the symmetrical magnetic field created by a tokamak, a stellarator creates a twisted magnetic field that is more adept at keeping the plasma stabilized, though historically at the expense of keeping it maximally hot.
Recent progress in the stellarator universe has Mowry excited, as the world’s largest stellarator, developed at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany, has demonstrated high heating power as well as the ability to maintain a fusion plasma for a prolonged period of time. Thus, he told me this tech has “no fundamental science or engineering barriers to commercialization,” and that if the German stellarator were simply scaled up, it could likely provide sustained fusion energy for a power plant, albeit at a price point that would be totally unfeasible. Commercialization is therefore now simply an “engineering optimization challenge.”
The Type One team is composed of some of the world’s foremost experts on stellarator fusion, coming from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which Mowry said “built the world’s first modern stellarator;” Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and the Institute for Plasma Physics. The company plans to use the additional funding to jumpstart its FusionDirect program, which involves building a prototype reactor in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public utility. The timeline is aggressive — Type One is aiming to complete the prototype by the end of 2028. And while this machine will not generate fusion energy, its purpose is to validate the design concept for the company’s pilot plant, which will ideally begin putting fusion electrons on the grid by the mid-2030s.
Mowry’s goal is to enter into a public-private partnership by the end of the decade that will help get the company’s first-of-its-kind stellarator pilot off the ground. The government has an integral role to play in helping fusion energy reach scale, he argued, but said that as of now, it’s not doing nearly enough. Federal funding for fusion, he told me, is “on the order of a billion dollars a year.” While that might seem like a hefty sum, Mowry said only a minuscule portion is allotted to commercialization initiatives as opposed to basic research and development, a breakdown “aligned with where fusion was in the 20th century,” he told me, not where it is today.
If Type One’s pilot plant works as hoped, “then you’re talking about deploying the first wave of full-scale, truly commercial fusion power plants in the second half of the 2030s.” Which, when it comes to preventing catastrophic climate change, is “maybe just in time.”
https://heatmap.news/technology/type-one-fusion-seed-round
Inside the Controversial Plan to Turn a Hotel Where Jane Austen Attended Balls Into Student Dorms
date: 2024-07-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Devoted readers are worried about the fate of the historic Dolphin Hotel in southern England
Ransomware gangs are loving this dumb but deadly make-me-admin ESXi vulnerability
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Get those patches applied – all the big dogs are abusing it
Do you have your VMware ESXi hypervisor joined to Active Directory? Well, the latest news from Microsoft serves as a reminder that you might not want to do that given the recently patched vulnerability that has security experts deeply concerned.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/make_me_admin_esxi_flaw/
Unrest in Venezuela as opposition supporters protest election result
date: 2024-07-30, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Security forces have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in Venezuela, who demonstrating against Sunday’s disputed election result. President Nicolás Maduro, who was declared the winner, alleges that his opponents are trying to stage a coup. Later in this mornings’s program, we’ll examine the increasing numbers of young people leaving Nigeria.
Europe launches ‘AI Factories’ initiative in hopes of competing globally
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Yes, you’ve heard the term ‘AI Factories’ before but Europe has its own spin
Europe’s supercomputing body has officially added a new pillar to its strategy – to develop and operate AI Factories to drive “a more competitive and innovative” European AI ecosystem.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/europe_ai_factories/
Latest update for ‘extremely fast’ compression algorithm LZ4 sprints past old versions
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
New release does something you might have thought it already did
The new version of the high-speed compression algorithm LZ4 gets a big speed boost – nearly an order of magnitude.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/lz4_gets_much_faster/
California propositions: 10 measures make the ballot
date: 2024-07-30, from: The Signal
By CalMatters Staff Much is expected of the California voter. In any given election year, we may be asked to dust off our labor lawyer hats, brush up on oil […]
The post California propositions: 10 measures make the ballot appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/california-propositions-10-measures-make-the-ballot/
US announces $500 million in military financing for Philippines
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
Kipp Mueller | My Work as a Criminal Prosecutor
date: 2024-07-30, from: The Signal
When I reflect on my time working as a criminal prosecutor, the first thing I think about is the hardest part of the job: meeting the victims. Every meeting with […]
The post Kipp Mueller | My Work as a Criminal Prosecutor appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/kipp-mueller-my-work-as-a-criminal-prosecutor/
Brian Richards | A Bloodless Insurrection
date: 2024-07-30, from: The Signal
What just happened? A sitting president decides to run again. He campaigns through the primaries and wins just about every delegate, running almost unopposed. But then something happened. It seems […]
The post Brian Richards | A Bloodless Insurrection appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/brian-richards-a-bloodless-insurrection/
Revamped UK cybersecurity bill couldn’t come soon enough, but details are patchy
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Long overdue updates include expanded mandatory security incident reporting
Analysis The introduction of fresh UK cybersecurity legislation, though delayed, is timely.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/uk_csr_bill_analysis/
Dan Walters | Eye-Popping Construction Costs
date: 2024-07-30, from: The Signal
It’s not hyperbole to declare that California’s most serious economic, social and political issue is its chronic shortage of housing, particularly for families in the lower income brackets. As the […]
The post Dan Walters | Eye-Popping Construction Costs appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/dan-walters-eye-popping-construction-costs/
UCLA ordered by judge to craft plan in support of Jewish students
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge ordered Monday that the University of California, Los Angeles, craft a plan to protect Jewish students, months after pro-Palestinian protests broke out on campus.
Three Jewish students sued the university in June, alleging that they experienced discrimination on campus amid demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war. Yitzchok Frankel, a UCLA law student who is Jewish, said in the lawsuit that he declined an invitation from the director of student life to help host a lunch gathering because he did not feel safe participating.
“Under ordinary circumstances, I would have leapt at the chance to participate in this event,” Frankel said. “My Jewish identity and religion are integral to who I am, and I believe it is important to mentor incoming students and encourage them to be proud of their Judaism, too.”
But Frankel argued UCLA was failing to foster a safe environment for Jewish students on campus.
UCLA spokesperson Mary Osako said the school is “committed to maintaining a safe and inclusive campus, holding those who engaged in violence accountable, and combatting antisemitism in all forms.”
“We have applied lessons learned from this spring’s protests and continue to work to foster a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination and harassment,” Osako said in a statement.
The University was ordered to craft a proposed plan by next month.
The demonstrations at UCLA became part of a movement at campuses across the country against the Israel-Hamas war. At UCLA, law enforcement ordered in May that over a thousand protesters break up their encampment as tensions rose on campus. Counter-demonstrators had attacked the encampment overnight, and at least 15 protesters suffered injuries. In June, dozens of protesters on campus were arrested after they tried to set up a new encampment.
Automation needed to fight army of AI content harvesters stalking the web
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Just when you think you’ve ban-hammered one, it pops up with another name
Analysis This month Anthropic’s ClaudeBot – a web content crawler that scrapes data from pages for training AI models – visited tech advice site iFixit.com about a million times over a 24-hour period.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/taming_ai_content_crawlers/
Today in SCV History (July 30)
date: 2024-07-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1869 – The Del Valle family’s then-1,340 acre Rancho Camulos is legally separated (partitioned) from the Rancho San Francisco land grant [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-30/
South Korea creates $445M bailout fund after payment glitch trips up e-commerce giant
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Founder forbidden to leave the country, promises to make things right for out-of-pocket vendors
The South Korean government on Monday created a ₩560 billion ($445 million) rescue package to bail out merchants who used two major e-commerce marketplaces that have failed to pass on payments for several weeks.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/south_korea_ecommerce_bailout_fund/
Proofpoint phishing palaver plagues millions with ‘perfectly spoofed’ emails from IBM, Nike, Disney, others
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
They DKIM here, they DKIM there
A huge phishing campaign exploited a security blind-spot in Proofpoint’s email filtering systems to send an average of three million “perfectly spoofed” messages a day purporting to be from Disney, IBM, Nike, Best Buy, and Coca-Cola – all of which are Proofpoint customers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/scammers_spoofed_emails/
Foresters Advance to NBC World Series Quarterfinals After 12-6 Victory Over Haysville Aviators
date: 2024-07-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Foresters will take on a yet to be determined opponent in the quarterfinals on the Thursday.
The post Foresters Advance to NBC World Series Quarterfinals After 12-6 Victory Over Haysville Aviators appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Desktop hypervisors are not dead: Oracle preps major VirtualBox update
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Solaris support persists and support for Armed Macs improves
Oracle last week debuted a beta for a major update to its VirtualBox desktop hypervisor.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/virtualbox_7_1_beta/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-07-30, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Watching Dark for the third time, this time with my 11yo.
Finding all sorts of jewels I missed the first two times.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112873113192821376
Malaysia is working on an internet ‘kill switch’, says minister
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Follows requirement for social media and messaging platforms to get a license
Legislation for an internet “kill switch” will reach Malaysia’s Parliament in October, according to the country’s minister for Law and Institutional Reform.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/malaysia_internet_killswitch/
Kamala Harris vice president race narrows with Cooper, Whitmer out
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
RSS Feeds: Your Gateway to Enhanced Visibility of Your Legal Content, Articles, Insights and Blogs.
Supervisors to discuss homeless camps
date: 2024-07-30, from: The Signal
Following last week’s executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom ordering state agencies to clear homeless encampments — while assisting those living in them — the L.A. County Board of Supervisors […]
The post Supervisors to discuss homeless camps appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/supervisors-to-discuss-homeless-camps/
Apple Intelligence beta lands in iOS 18.1, macOS 15.1 previews
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
At last, the world-changing innovation of ML emojis can be yours to enjoy
Apple Intelligence, Cupertino’s promised suite of generative AI services, has debuted in beta versions of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/apple_intelligence_ai_beta/
Valencia by FivePoint to host Friday Night Happening
date: 2024-07-30, from: The Signal
Valencia by FivePoint is set to host a western-themed Friday Night Happening on Aug. 30 from 6 to 9 p.m. The event is set to take place at “The Porch” […]
The post Valencia by FivePoint to host Friday Night Happening appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/valencia-by-fivepoint-to-host-friday-night-happening/
Single Tickets for UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures’ Events Go On Sale Friday
date: 2024-07-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The 65th anniversary season is packed with world-class artistic and cultural events.
The post Single Tickets for UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures’ Events Go On Sale Friday appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Bond measure, contract renewals up for Saugus school board approval
date: 2024-07-30, from: The Signal
The Saugus Union School District governing board is scheduled Tuesday to discuss whether to approve putting a bond measure on the November ballot as well as approving contract renewals for […]
The post Bond measure, contract renewals up for Saugus school board approval appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/bond-measure-contract-renewals-up-for-saugus-school-board-approval/
Two arrested on suspicion of arson in unrelated fires
date: 2024-07-30, from: The Signal
By Maya Morales and Perry Smith Firefighters’ work in an already busy fire season was added to by a pair of arson suspects arrested in a 24-hour span, according to […]
The post Two arrested on suspicion of arson in unrelated fires appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/two-arrested-on-suspicion-of-arson-in-unrelated-fires/
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-07-30, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
Just saw Deadpool. Absolutely loved it. No spoilers from me, but stay till the very end of the credits for the post credit scene. The bit earlier on isn’t it.
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/112872507235577567
94 large wildfires burn across US
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/large-wildfires-burn-across-us/7718071.html
Santa Barbara Enviros and Glamp-Ground Reach Kumbaya Compromise
date: 2024-07-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Gaviota Coast Conservancy and El Capitan Canyon Resort owners bury the hatchet over new campsites on the coastline.
The post Santa Barbara Enviros and Glamp-Ground Reach Kumbaya Compromise appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Apple agrees to terms with US store union for first time
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Funny what threatening to walk off the job and shutter a retail store can do
Apple is on the verge of entering its first-ever agreement with a stateside retail employee union, caving to demands from store workers who threatened to walk off the job in May. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/union_apple_store/
“No way to prevent this” say users of only language where this regularly happens
date: 2024-07-30, from: Ze Iaso’s blog
https://xeiaso.net/shitposts/no-way-to-prevent-this/CVE-2024-5535/
Hollywood man due back for assault charge
date: 2024-07-29, from: The Signal
A Hollywood man accused of assaulting a sheriff’s deputy who found him slumped over his steering wheel on Plum Canyon Road is due in court next week, according to officials. […]
The post Hollywood man due back for assault charge appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/hollywood-man-due-back-for-assault-charge/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-07-29, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
When you are an Apple developer every day is Christmas! ”I hope it doesn’t destroy all my data” edition.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112872428454357601
Herbicide Risks
date: 2024-07-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
It is concerning that the manufacturer AMVAC is allowed to only reevaluate the safety/ effects of their pesticides every 15 years, when so much damage can be done between that time.
The post Herbicide Risks appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/29/herbicide-risks/
LASD Warns Residents of New Phone Scam
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department would like to warn the public of phone call scammers Impersonating L.A. County Deputies using spoofing apps that show their number on the victim’s caller ID as the Sheriff’s office or local police agencies
https://scvnews.com/lasd-warns-residents-of-new-phone-scam/
Chinese glass maker says it wasn’t target of raid at US plant featured in Netflix film
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
MORAINE, Ohio — A Chinese automotive glass maker says it was not the target of a federal investigation that temporarily shut down production last week at its Ohio plant, the subject of the Oscar-winning Netflix film “American Factory.”
The investigation was focused on money laundering, potential human smuggling, labor exploitation and financial crimes, Homeland Security agent Jared Murphey said Friday.
Fuyao Glass America said authorities told it that a third-party employment company was at the center of the criminal investigation, according to a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Agents with the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and Internal Revenue Service, along with local authorities, carried out federal search warrants Friday at the Fuyao plant in Moraine and nearly 30 other locations in the Dayton area.
“The company intends to cooperate fully with the investigation,” Lei Shi, Fuyao Glass America community relations manager, said in a statement to the Dayton Daily News. Messages seeking comment were left with the company on Monday.
Production was stopped temporarily Friday, but operations resumed near the end of the day, the statement said.
Fuyao took over a shuttered General Motors factory a decade ago and eventually hired more than 2,000 workers to make glass for the automotive industry. The company, which received millions in tax breaks and incentives from the state and local governments, has said the Ohio plant was the world’s largest auto glass production facility.
In 2019, a production company backed by Barack and Michelle Obama released “American Factory.” The film, which won a 2020 Oscar for best feature-length documentary, looked at issues including the rights of workers, globalization and automation.
Workers voted overwhelmingly against unionizing in 2017 after some employees complained about unsafe workplace conditions, arbitrary policies and unfair treatment on the job. Earlier that year, Fuyao agreed to pay a $100,000 penalty after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the company for alleged violations involving machine safety, electrical hazards and a lack of personal protective gear.
Car makers sold people’s driving habits, location data for pennies, say US senators
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Khaan! Khaaaaaan!
Two US senators have urged the FTC to probe and potentially prosecute three automakers that allegedly unlawfully sold motorists’ personal data for pennies.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/ftc_insurance_senators_car_driving/
Meet Goleta’s New Chief of Police Services
date: 2024-07-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The City of Goleta is pleased to introduce its new Chief of Police Services. Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Frank
The post Meet Goleta’s New Chief of Police Services appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/29/meet-goletas-new-chief-of-police-services/
Preparing for the ‘Silver Tsunami’ in Santa Barbara
date: 2024-07-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Addressing housing affordability and caregiver availability for the city’s growing population of adults over the age of 60.
The post Preparing for the ‘Silver Tsunami’ in Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/29/preparing-for-the-silver-tsunami-in-santa-barbara/
Cougars Standout Jake Schwartz Commits to Point Loma Nazarene
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Another former Cougar is headed to the next level with standout first baseman and relief pitcher Jake Schwartz having recently announced his commitment to Point Loma Nazarene University.
https://scvnews.com/cougars-standout-jake-schwartz-commits-to-point-loma-nazarene/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Carol Moseley Braun was just interviewed on MSNBC.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Moseley_Braun
Trial begins for US citizen accused of acting as Chinese agent
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
New York — A former university professor in China went on trial on Monday in Brooklyn on charges he acted as a Chinese agent by monitoring U.S.-based activists opposed to Beijing’s Communist government at the direction of intelligence officials in China.
Federal prosecutors said Shujun Wang, a naturalized U.S. citizen, exploited his leadership role in New York communities supporting democracy in China to collect information on dissidents, and shared it with four officials in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), an intelligence service.
Wang, who emigrated to the United States in 1994, was arrested in March 2022. He pleaded not guilty to four counts including acting as a foreign agent without notifying the U.S. attorney general and lying to U.S. authorities. Prosecutors said Wang’s scheme ran from 2005 to 2022.
The U.S. Department of Justice has in recent years cracked down on what it calls “transnational repression” by U.S. adversaries such as China and Iran.
The term refers to the surveillance, intimidation and, in some cases, attempted repatriation or murder of activists against those governments.
Last year, a former New York City police sergeant was convicted of acting as an illegal Chinese agent by intimidating a U.S.-based fugitive to return to his homeland to face charges.
Wang, in his mid-70s, faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. Jury selection began on Monday before U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, who normally hears appeals, in Brooklyn federal court.
Prosecutors say MSS officials directed Wang to target Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence campaigners and Uyghur and Tibetan activists.
Defense lawyers said in a June 16 court filing that Wang communicated with Chinese officials to try to “infiltrate and subvert” China’s government by spreading Western political ideas.
“Unfortunately, FBI Agents misunderstood him and his role,” defense lawyer Kevin Tung wrote.
U.S. prosecutors also charged four Chinese intelligence officers who they say acted as Wang’s handlers. Those officers are at large and believed to be in China.
The Home Page | Viva la Santa Barbara Summer!
date: 2024-07-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A sweet story, a bit of history, and churros galore.
The post The Home Page | Viva la Santa Barbara Summer! appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/29/the-home-page-viva-la-santa-barbara-summer/
Grace Colburn Transfers to Mustangs Volleyball
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Grace Colburn is transferring from University of California, Irvine to The Master’s University to continue her college volleyball career
https://scvnews.com/grace-colburn-transfers-to-mustangs-volleyball/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Arizona Republicans should vote for Kamala Harris, GOP mayor says.
Solving the Housing-Versus-Hotels Riddle in Santa Barbara
date: 2024-07-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The city looks into adaptive reuse and restriction hotel development to prioritize housing.
The post Solving the Housing-Versus-Hotels Riddle in Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/29/solving-the-housing-versus-hotels-riddle-in-santa-barbara/
July 30: Saugus Union School District Regular Meeting
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The regular meeting of the Saugus Union School District Governing Board will take place Tuesday, July 30, with closed session beginning at 6 p.m., followed immediately by public session at 6:30 p.m
https://scvnews.com/july-30-saugus-union-school-district-regular-meeting/
Film Review | Dances with Western Worlds
date: 2024-07-29, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Kevin Costner’s well-intended epic western ‘Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1’ hits screens, large and small.
The post Film Review | Dances with Western Worlds appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/29/film-review-dances-with-western-worlds/
Rachel Berger Appointed CalArts’ Vice Provost
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
California Institute of the Arts recently announced the appointment of Rachel Berger as its next vice provost
https://scvnews.com/rachel-berger-appointed-calarts-vice-provost/
Meta’s AI safety system defeated by the space bar
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Ignore previous instructions’ thwarts Prompt-Guard model if you just add some good ol’ ASCII code 32
Meta’s machine-learning model for detecting prompt injection attacks – special prompts to make neural networks behave inappropriately – is itself vulnerable to, you guessed it, prompt injection attacks.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/meta_ai_safety/
NASA to Highlight 13th Space Station Research, Development Conference
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
Editor’s Note: This media advisory was updated on July 29, 2024 to reflect the updated times for the Low Earth Orbit panel on Wednesday, July 31 and the keynote address on Thursday, Aug. 1. NASA will broadcast groundbreaking discoveries, benefits for humanity, and how the agency and its commercial and international partners are maximizing research […]
Sols 4257-4258: A Little Nudge on Kings Canyon
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Friday, July 26, 2024 Today’s 2-sol weekend plan is our first taste of a new location for a potential sampling campaign. We call today’s plan type: Drill Sol 1 – triage contact science. We arrived this morning to a lovely new workspace. The science team has been eagerly observing these lighter-toned rocks […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4257-4258-a-little-nudge-on-kings-canyon/
VIA Bash Announces Award Nominees
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Valley Industry Association has announce the nominees for the 2024 VIA Bash titled “Color My World.”
https://scvnews.com/via-bash-announces-award-nominees/
Sols 4255-4256: Just Passing Through
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 24, 2024 Happy Wednesday, terrestrials! We wrapped up our Mammoth Lakes drill campaign only three weeks ago and are already looking for our next drill site. This will be the last drill campaign in the Gediz Vallis region, an area on Mars the Curiosity team has had their eyes on since sol […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4255-4256-just-passing-through/
Lilbits: Intel’s 13th and 14th-gen desktop chip issues, AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 arrives, and a $56 Casio watch that’s also a (basic) fitness tracker
date: 2024-07-29, from: Liliputing
Over the past year or two there have been a growing number of complaints that some 13th and 14th-gen Intel Core chips for desktop computers were crash-prone and generally unstable. Now Intel has confirmed the issue is real, promised to roll out a microcode update that will prevent it from happening on chip that haven’t […]
The post Lilbits: Intel’s 13th and 14th-gen desktop chip issues, AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 arrives, and a $56 Casio watch that’s also a (basic) fitness tracker appeared first on Liliputing.
The Scientist Warning Against ‘Science-Based’ Targets
date: 2024-07-29, from: Heatmap News
Tackling climate change is a complex puzzle. Hitting internationally
agreed upon targets to limit warming requires the world to reduce
multiple types of greenhouse gases from a multiplicity of sources on
diverse timelines and across varying levels of responsibility and
control by individual, corporate, and state actors. It’s no surprise the
catchphrase “net zero by 2050” has taken off.
Various initiatives have sprung up to distill this complexity for businesses and governments who want to do (or say they are doing) what the “science says” is necessary. The nonprofit Science Based Targets initiative, for example, develops standard roadmaps for companies to follow to act “in line with climate science.” The groups also vets corporate plans and deems them to either be “science based” or not. Though entirely voluntary, SBTi’s approval has become a nearly mandatory mark of credibility. The group has validated the plans of more than 5,500 companies with more than $46 trillion in market capitalization — nearly half of the global economy.
But in a commentary published in the journal Nature last week, a group of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change experts argue that SBTi and other supposedly “science based” target-setting efforts misconstrue the science and are laden with value judgments. By striving to create straightforward, universal rules, they flatten more nuanced considerations of which emissions must be reduced, by whom and by when.
“We are arguing that those companies and countries that are best resourced, have the highest capacity to act, and have the highest responsibility for historical emissions, probably need to go a lot further than the global average,” Andy Reisinger, the lead author of the piece, told me.
In response to the paper, SBTi told me it “welcomes debate,” and that “robust debate is essential to accelerate corporate ambition and climate action.” The group is currently in the process of reviewing its Net-Zero Standard and remains “committed to refining our approaches to ensure they are effective in helping corporates to drive the urgent emissions reductions needed to combat the climate crisis.”
The commentary comes as SBTi’s reputation is already on shaky ground. In April, its board appeared to go rogue and said that the group would loosen its standards for the use of carbon offsets. The announcement was met first with surprise and later with fierce protest from the nonprofit’s staff and technical council, who had not been consulted. Environmental groups accused SBTi of taking the “science” out of its targets. The board later walked back its statement, saying that no change had been made to the rules, yet.
But interestingly enough, the new Nature commentary argues that SBTi’s board was actually on the right track. I spoke to Reisinger about this, and some of the other ways he thinks science based targets “miss the mark.”
Reisinger, who’s from New Zealand, was the vice-chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s mega-report on climate mitigation from 2022. I caught him just as he had arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria, for a plenary that will determine the timeline for the next big batch of UN science reports. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Was there something in particular that inspired you to write this? Or were you just noticing the same issues over and over again?
There were probably several things. One is a confusion that’s quite prevalent between net zero CO2 emissions and net zero greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC makes clear that to limit warming at any level, you need to reach net zero CO2 emissions, because it’s a long lived greenhouse gas and the warming effect accumulates in the atmosphere over time. You need deep reductions of shorter lived greenhouse gases like methane, but they don’t necessarily have to reach zero. And yet, a lot of people claim that the IPCC tells us that we have to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which is simply not the case.
Of course, you can claim that there’s nothing wrong, surely, with going to net zero greenhouse gas emissions because that’s more ambitious. But there’s two problems with that. One is, if you want to use science, you have to get the science correct. You can’t just make it up and still claim to be science-based. Secondly, it creates a very uneven playing field between those who mainly have CO2 emissions and those who have non-CO2 emissions as a significant part of their emissions portfolio — which often are much harder to reduce.
Can you give an example of what you mean by that?
You can rapidly decarbonize and actually approach close to zero emissions in your energy generation, if that’s your dominant source of emissions. There are viable solutions to generate energy with very low or no emissions — renewables, predominantly. Nuclear in some circumstances.
But to give you another example, in Australia, the Meat and Livestock Association, they set a net zero target, but they subsequently realized it’s much harder to achieve it because methane emissions from livestock are very, very difficult to reduce entirely. Of course you can say, we’ll no longer produce beef. But if you’re the Cattle Association, you’re not going to rapidly morph into producing a different type of meat product. And so in that case, achieving net zero is much more challenging. Of course, you can’t lean back and say, Oh, it’s too difficult for us, therefore we shouldn’t try.
I want to walk through the three main points to your argument for why science-based targets “miss the mark.” I think we’ve just covered the first. The second is that these initiatives put everyone on the same timeline and subject them to the same rules, which you say could actually slow emissions reductions in the near term. Can you explain that?
The Science Based Targets initiative in particular, but also other initiatives that provide benchmarks for companies, tend to want to limit the use of offsets, where a company finances emission reductions elsewhere and claims them to achieve their own targets. And there’s very good reasons for that, because there’s a lot of greenwashing going on. Some offsets have very low integrity.
At the same time, if you set a universal rule that all offsets are bad and unscientific, you’re making a major mistake. Offsets are a way of generating financial flows towards those with less intrinsic capacity to reduce their emissions. So by making companies focus only on their own reductions, you basically cut off financial flows that could stimulate emission reductions elsewhere or generate carbon dioxide removals. Then you’re creating a problem for later on in the future, when we desperately need more carbon dioxide removal and haven’t built up the infrastructure or the accountability systems that would allow that.
As you know, there’s a lot of controversy about this right now. There are many scientists who disagree with you and don’t want the Science Based Targets initiative to loosen its rules for using offsets. Why is there this split in the scientific community about this?
I think the issue arises when you think that net zero by 2050 is the unquestioned target. But if you challenge yourself to say, well net zero by 2050 might be entirely unambitious for you, you have to reduce your own emissions and invest in offsets to go far beyond net zero by 2050 — then you might get a different reaction to it.
I think everybody would agree that if offsets are being used instead of efforts to reduce emissions that are under a company’s direct control, and they can be reduced, then offsets are a really bad idea. And of course, low integrity offsets are always a bad idea. But the solution to the risk of low integrity cannot be to walk away from it entirely, because otherwise you’ve further reduced incentives to actually generate accountability mechanisms. So the challenge would be to drive emission reductions at the company level, and on top of that, create incentives to engage in offsets, to increase financial flows to carbon dioxide removal — both permanent and inherently non permanent — because we will need it.
My understanding is that groups like SBTi and some of these other carbon market integrity initiatives agree with what you’ve just said — even if they don’t support offsetting emissions, they do support buying carbon credits to go above and beyond emissions targets. They are already advocating for that, even if they’re not necessarily creating the incentives for it.
I mean, that’s certainly a move in the right direction. But it’s creating this artificial distinction between what the science tells you, the “science based target,” and then the voluntary effort beyond that. Whereas I think it has to become an obligation. So it’s not a distinction between, here’s what the science says, and here’s where your voluntary, generous, additional contribution to global efforts might go. It is a much more integrated package of actions.
I think we’re starting to get at the third point that your commentary makes, which is about how these so-called science-based targets are inequitable. How does that work?
There’s a rich literature on differentiating targets at the country level based on responsibility for warming, or a capacity-based approach that says, if you’re rich and we have a global problem, you have to use your wealth to help solve the global problem. Most countries don’t because the more developed you are, the more unpleasant the consequences are.
At the company level, SBTi, for example, tends to use the global or regional or sectoral average rate of reductions as the benchmark that an individual company has to follow. But not every company is average, and systems transitions follow far more complex dynamics. Some incumbents have to reduce emissions much more rapidly, or they go out of business in order to create space for innovators to come in, whose emissions might rise in the near term before they go down, but with new technologies that allow deeper reductions in the long term. Assuming a uniform rate of reduction levels out all those differences.
It’s far more challenging to translate equity into meaningful metrics at the company level. But our core argument is, just because it’s hard, that cannot mean let’s not do it. So how can we challenge companies to disclose their thinking, their justification about what is good enough?
The Science Based Targets initiative formed because previously, companies were coming up with their own interpretations of the science, and there was no easy way to assess whether these plans were legitimate. Can you really imagine a middle ground where there is still some sort of policing mechanism to say whether a given corporate target is good enough?
That’s what we try to sketch as a vision, but it certainly won’t be easy. I also want to emphasize that we’re not trying to attack SBTi in principle. It’s done a world of good. And we certainly don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater to just cancel the idea. It’s more to use it as a starting point. As we say in our paper, you can almost take an SBTi target as the definition of what is not sufficient if you’re a company located in the Global North or a multinational company with high access to resources — human, technology and financial.
It was a wild west before SBTi and we’re not saying let’s go back to the wild west. We’re saying the pendulum might have swung too far to a universal rule that applies to everybody, but therefore applies to nobody.
There’s one especially scathing line in this commentary. You write that these generic rules “result in a pseudo-club that inadequately challenges its self-selected members while setting prohibitive expectations for those with less than average capacity.” We’ve already talked about the second half of this statement, but what do you mean by pseudo-club?
You write a science based target as a badge of achievement, a badge of honor on your company profile, assuming that therefore you have done all that can be expected of you when it comes to climate change. Most of the companies that have adopted science based targets are located in the Global North, or operate on a multinational basis and have therefore quite similar capacity. If that’s what we’re achieving — and then there’s a large number of companies that can’t possibly, under their current capacity, set science-based targets because they simply don’t have the resources — then collectively, we will fail. Science cannot tell you whether you have done as much as you could be doing. If we let the simplistic rules dominate the conversation, then we’re not going to be as ambitious as we need to be.
https://heatmap.news/climate/science-based-targets-net-zero
Mars Rover Finds Three Possible Signs of Ancient Life on a Single Rock
date: 2024-07-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Scientists were cautiously optimistic about Perseverance’s discovery, though they indicated further research is needed before drawing definitive conclusions
60 Years Ago: Ranger 7 Photographs the Moon
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
Long before Apollo astronauts set foot upon the Moon, much remained unknown about the lunar surface. While most scientists believed the Moon had a solid surface that would support astronauts and their landing craft, some believed a deep layer of dust covered it that would swallow any visitors. Until 1964, no closeup photographs of the […]
https://www.nasa.gov/history/60-years-ago-ranger-7-photographs-the-moon/
Ancient Rome’s Appian Way Is Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site
date: 2024-07-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The 500-mile-long stone highway is Italy’s 60th property to receive the designation
US border cops really must get a warrant in NY before searching your phones, devices
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Do we really want to bother SCOTUS with this, friends? Surely they’re way too busy to take a look
US border agents must obtain a warrant, in New York at least, to search anyone’s phone and other electronic device when traveling in or out of the country, another federal judge has ruled.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/us_border_cops_warrant/
TMU to Launch Music Performance Group
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Beginning this fall, The Master’s University will offer a new music performance ensemble
https://scvnews.com/tmu-to-launch-music-performance-group/
The First Apple Intelligence Beta
date: 2024-07-29, from: Michael Tsai
Joe Rossignol: Apple Intelligence is still not available as of the fourth developer beta of iOS 18 this week, leading some to wonder if the features have been delayed. However, we have confirmed that Apple still plans to add some of the new Apple Intelligence features to an upcoming beta this summer. Matthew Cassinelli: I […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/29/the-first-apple-intelligence-beta/
Magic Lasso Redesigned
date: 2024-07-29, from: Michael Tsai
Matthew Bickham: Under the covers, Magic Lasso has been re-architected using SwiftUI which enables a shared but tailored UI implementation across the iPhone, iPad and Mac apps. The move to SwiftUI delivers improved user accessibility including complete support for variable type sizing and Dark mode. In the future, multilingual support will also be considerably easier […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/29/magic-lasso-redesigned/
Actor Reentrancy in Swift
date: 2024-07-29, from: Michael Tsai
Donny Wals (Mastodon): When you start learning about actors in Swift, you’ll find that explanations will always contain something along the lines of “Actors protect shared mutable state by making sure the actor only does one thing at a time”. As a single sentence summary of actors, this is great but it misses an important […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/29/actor-reentrancy-in-swift/
NASA Embraces Streaming Service to Reach, Inspire Artemis Generation
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
As part of its ongoing web and television modernization efforts, NASA is shifting its digital focus to its on-demand streaming service, NASA+, which has already gained four times more viewership than the agency’s traditional cable channel. To streamline how it brings the latest aeronautics, human spaceflight, science, and technology news to the universe, the agency […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-embraces-streaming-service-to-reach-inspire-artemis-generation/
Mail, Mirror, Express and Independent roll out ‘consent or pay’ walls
date: 2024-07-29, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“Mail Online, The Independent and the websites of the Daily Mirror and Daily Express have begun requiring readers to pay for access if they do not consent to third-party cookies.”
I believe this would have been illegal were the UK still a part of the EU. Meta is in trouble for a similar sort of scheme. Here, though, in a UK free from EU constraints, there are no such issues.
It’s a terrible approach, both in terms of user privacy, and in terms of the newsrooms’ own business models: the people most likely to pay to remove ads are also the wealthier people ad buyers want to reach. So not only does this create bad feeling with the reader-base as a whole, but it reduces the value of the ads. It’s lose-lose. (Also: who is actually paying for the Daily Express online?)
The irony, as always, is that contextual ads which adjust themselves to the content of articles are more lucrative than targeted ads that rely on reader surveillance. The business model reason to track users is overstated. But here it is again.
<p>[<a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/daily-mail-independent-reach-mirror-express-consent-or-pay-cookies/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/mail-mirror-express-and-independent-roll-out-consent-or-pay
Alzheimer’s Blood Test Outperforms Standard Diagnostics in New Study
date: 2024-07-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The blood test accurately diagnosed Alzheimer’s around 90 percent of the time, compared to 73 percent for specialists and 61 percent for primary care physicians
L.A. County’s ‘Clear the Shelter’ Nationwide Campaign Returns
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The County of Los Angeles Department of Animal Care & Control is pleased to join NBC4 and Telemundo 52’s annual month-long Clear The Shelters pet adoption and donation campaign for the tenth consecutive year
https://scvnews.com/l-a-countys-clear-the-shelter-nationwide-campaign-returns/
Focused on legacy, Biden speaks out for rule of law, democratic principles
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
austin, texas — No longer on the campaign trail, President Joe Biden on Monday delivered a speech at the LBJ Presidential Library designed to help cement his legacy.
Slightly more than a week after dropping out of this year’s election campaign, Biden marked the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act by speaking out for the rule of law and democratic principles. All the while, he warned about the threat he sees if Republican Donald Trump returns to the White House.
“No one is above the law,” Biden said.
Biden followed his denunciations of Trump with a mix of nostalgia for his early days in politics during the era of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
It’s a story he’s told before, about how he became a public defender and was cornered by Delaware leaders to run for the U.S. Senate. But it’s taken on a new resonance as he stares down the final six months of his political career.
“Because I got engaged like a Iot of you do … you get engaged and you want to change things,” he said.
The setting carried a special resonance. Biden spoke at the library dedicated to Johnson, the last president who opted against seeking reelection, just as Biden did.
Supreme Court changes
Biden also used his speech to call for changes to the Supreme Court that include term limits and an enforceable ethics code for justices, as well as a constitutional amendment that would limit presidential immunity. But his proposal is unlikely to clear a Republican House, leaving Biden to take a symbolic stand for the causes to which he has devoted his time in public office.
The Texas visit took on very different symbolism in the two weeks it took to reschedule it after Biden had to cancel because he got COVID-19.
The speech, originally set for July 15, was once seen by the White House as an opportunity for Biden to try to make a case for salvaging his sinking presidential campaign — delivered in the home district of Representative Lloyd Doggett, the 15-term congressman who was the first Democratic lawmaker to publicly call for Biden to step aside.
Two weeks later, the political landscape has been reshaped. Biden is out of the race. Vice President Kamala Harris is the likely Democratic nominee. And the president is focused not on his next four years, but on the legacy of his single term and the future of democracy.
Doggett was among the group of lawmakers, civil rights advocates and others who greeted Biden after the president landed Monday in Austin. Biden and the Texas congressman shook hands and spoke briefly.
Biden called Harris in his speech an “incredible partner” who will “continue to be an inspiring leader.”
Latest exit
No American incumbent president has dropped out of the race as late in the process as did Biden. Johnson announced he would not seek reelection in March 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War.
Biden has drawn a lot of comparisons to Johnson of late. Both men spoke to the nation from the Oval Office to lay out their decisions. Both faced pressure from within their own party to step aside, and both were ultimately praised for doing so.
But their reasons were very different. Johnson stepped away in the heat of the war and spoke at length about his need to focus on the conflict. Biden, 81, had every intention of running for reelection until his shaky June 27 debate performance ignited fears within his own party about his age and mental acuity, and whether he could beat Trump.
Biden has called Trump a serious threat to democracy, particularly after the ex-president’s efforts in 2020 to overturn the results of the election he lost and his continued lies about that loss. The president framed his decision to bow out of the race as motivated by the need to unite his party to protect democracy.
“I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. That’s the best way to unite our nation,” Biden said in his Oval Office address. “Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. And that includes personal ambition.”
During his presidency, Biden has often put equity and civil rights at the forefront, including with his choice for vice president. Harris is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to have the job. She could also become the first woman elected to the presidency.
Equity actions
Biden’s administration has worked to combat racial discrimination in the real estate market. He pardoned thousands of people convicted on federal marijuana charges that have disproportionately affected people of color. His administration has provided federal funding to reconnect city neighborhoods that were racially segregated or divided by road projects, and also has invested billions in historically Black colleges and universities.
His efforts, he has said, are meant to push the country forward — and to guard against efforts to undermine the landmark legislation signed by Johnson in 1964, one of the most significant civil rights achievements in U.S. history.
The law made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It was designed to end discrimination in school, work and public facilities, and it barred unequal application of voter registration requirements.
Johnson signed the act five hours after Congress approved it, saying the nation was in a “time of testing” that “we must not fail.” He added: “Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole.”
Biden has said he is “determined to get as much done” as he can in his final six months in office, including signing major legislation expanding voting rights and a federal policing bill named for George Floyd.
“I’ll keep defending our personal freedoms and our civil rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose,” Biden said from the Oval Office. “I’ll keep calling out hate and extremism, make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever, period.”
Later Monday, Biden will also travel to Houston to pay his respects to the late Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who died July 19 at age 74.
Visit with NASA SCaN
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
Interested in having a NASA SCaN expert speak to your class or group? The SCaN program is accepting requests for visits (both virtual and in-person) during the coming calendar year. Request a virtual visit below. Request a visit with the SCaN team at: NASA Glenn NASA Goddard NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Social Media Stay connected […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/visit-with-nasa-scan/
PLACES team publishes blog post on NextGenScience Blog
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
The NASA Science Activation program’s PLACES (Broadening Data Fluency Through the Integration of NASA Assets and Place-Based Learning to Advance Connections, Education, and Stewardship) team – which focuses on supporting educators to implement Place-Based, Data-Rich (PBDR) instruction using NASA assets in their own contexts – recently published a blog post about the PLACES PBDR framework […]
Evolving Norway’s Role in the NATO Alliance
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: RAND blog
In 2020 the Norwegian Ministry of Defence asked RAND to produce a study on NATO perspectives of the options facing Norway. How does Norway’s new Long-Term Plan on Defence meet the recommendations from that study?
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/07/evolving-norways-role-in-the-nato-alliance.html
These Backpack-Wearing Dogs Have an Important Job to Do
date: 2024-07-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The pups are dispersing seeds at an urban nature reserve—just like their wild wolf ancestors used to do before being hunted to extinction
Dasung Paperlike Color portable 12 inch E Ink monitor is now available (but it’s expensive)
date: 2024-07-29, from: Liliputing
The Dasung Paperlike Color (12 inch) is a portable touchscreen monitor with a 12 inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel display, USB Type-C ports for power and video input, and a compact design: the monitor weighs 439 grams (about 15.5 ounces). But while most portable monitors have LCD displays (and a few have OLED screens), Dasung’s new model […]
The post Dasung Paperlike Color portable 12 inch E Ink monitor is now available (but it’s expensive) appeared first on Liliputing.
Two Rare Jurassic Skulls Could Help Unlock the Secrets of Mammals’ Evolutionary Success
date: 2024-07-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Fossils reveal a prehistoric, mouse-like creature matured slower and lived longer than similar mammals of today
Peekaboo!
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
In this image from May 4, 2017, a rabbit is nearly obscured by grass at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Kennedy shares a border with the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, which is home to over 31 mammal species and hundreds of bird, fish, amphibian, and reptile species. Kennedy is responsible for more protected species […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/peekaboo/
Why Are the Olympic Surfing Events Being Held in Tahiti?
date: 2024-07-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The tiny village of Teahupo’o, known for its monstrous, barrel-shaped waves, will host 48 athletes from 21 countries during the Summer Games
Harris was never ‘border czar,’ experts say, despite Republican claims
date: 2024-07-29, 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.
L.A. County Parks Creating New Aquatics Agency
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation is creating a new Aquatics Agency that is a key departmental realignment of its vast network of swimming pools, lakes, lake swim beaches and water-related facilities and activities
https://scvnews.com/l-a-county-parks-creating-new-aquatics-agency/
Trump attacks Harris on immigration, calls her ‘border czar’
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
With President Joe Biden withdrawing from reelection, Republican nominee Donald Trump is shifting focus to his likely opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. VOA immigration reporter Aline Barros says Trump’s Republican Party is attacking Harris’ work on immigration issues, calling her a “border czar.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-attacks-harris-on-immigration-calls-her-border-czar-/7717385.html
Tesla asks customers to stop being wet blankets about chargers
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Trick appears to speed powering up but could cause damage to cables
Tesla has asked owners to stop wrapping wet towels around handles to speed up the recharging process, warning that this can damage its Supercharger stalls.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/tesla_harging_wet_rag/
Reddit Blocks Indexing by Search Engines Other Than Google
date: 2024-07-29, from: TidBITS blog
Seemingly as a result of Google’s deal to license Reddit content, Reddit is now blocking crawlers from other search engines, ensuring that new Reddit content can be found only through Google or other search engines that pay Google.
https://tidbits.com/2024/07/29/reddit-blocks-indexing-by-search-engines-other-than-google/
US to send $1.7 billion in new military aid to Ukraine
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
washington — The U.S. will send $1.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine, officials announced on Monday, including an array of munitions for air defense systems, artillery, mortars and anti-tank and anti-ship missiles.
The package includes $1.5 billion in funding for long-term contracts through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, and $200 million in immediate military aid taken from Pentagon stockpiles.
The latest infusion of weapons comes a bit more than two weeks after the NATO summit in Washington, where allies focused a significant amount of time on shoring up support for Ukraine as it fends off Russian forces. President Joe Biden announced during the summit that the U.S. would send a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, answering a key plea from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
NATO members agreed to create a new program to provide reliable military aid to Ukraine and prepare for its eventual membership in the alliance. And they declared Ukraine was on an “ irreversible ” path to join NATO.
In the latest package, air defense interceptors, rockets, artillery, and anti-tank weapons will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to pull the weapons directly from its shelves.
The air defense weapons include munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS.
The Pentagon said the longer-term contracted weapons will include “capabilities to augment” Ukraine’s air defenses, as well as other weapons.
The U.S. is also providing secure communications systems and funding for commercial satellite imagery services, as well as demolitions equipment.
In an unusual move, however, the Defense Department declined to make clear which specific systems were being sent to Ukraine quickly through the PDA and which would be funded through contracts and so wouldn’t get to the warfront for months or years.
With the latest funding, the U.S. has now sent more than $55.4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday that the package includes “key capabilities for the fight.” He said this is the ninth military aid package for Ukraine since late April, when Congress finally passed supplemental funding for aid to Kyiv after months of gridlock and delays.
At that time, he said, “there were legitimate concerns that Russia would achieve a strategic breakthrough on the battlefield by the summer.” But since the funding passed Congress, “Ukraine’s defensive lines have been fortified and Ukrainian forces have continued to fight bravely and repel Russia’s advances.”
Mele Overclock 4C pocket-sized computer with Intel N100 now available for under $200
date: 2024-07-29, from: Liliputing
The Mele Overclock 4C is a tiny desktop computer that’s a pocket-sized PC with support for user-upgradeable memory and storage, and a cheap but versatile Intel N95 processor. Now Mele has expanded the Overclock 4C lineup to include models with Intel N100 chips, which should offer slightly better performance while consuming a little less power. The […]
The post Mele Overclock 4C pocket-sized computer with Intel N100 now available for under $200 appeared first on Liliputing.
NASA Offers Virtual Activities for 21st Northrop Grumman Resupply Mission
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
NASA invites the public to participate in virtual activities ahead of the launch of Northrop Grumman’s 21st commercial resupply services mission for the agency. Mission teams are targeting 11:28 a.m. EDT Saturday, Aug. 3, for the launch of the company’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at […]
EU regulator reportedly set to give the nod to HPE-Juniper deal
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Aruba, Aruba! Some network pros worry it will lead to less choice
The European Commission is set to deliver unconditional approval for HPE’s proposed $14 billion purchase of Juniper Networks, according to reports.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/eu_hp_juniper_aruba/
FBI: Trump agrees to be interviewed for investigation into assassination attempt
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Former President Donald Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the FBI as part of an investigation into his attempted assassination in Pennsylvania earlier this month, a special agent said on Monday in disclosing how the gunman prior to the shooting had researched mass attacks and explosive devices.
The expected interview with the 2024 Republican presidential nominee is part of the FBI’s standard protocol to speak with victims during the course of their criminal investigations. The FBI said on Friday that Trump was struck by a bullet or a fragment of one during the July 13 assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“We want to get his perspective on what he observed,” said Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office. “It is a standard victim interview like we would do for any other victim of crime, under any other circumstances.”
Through roughly 450 interviews, the FBI has fleshed out a portrait of the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, that reveals him to be a “highly intelligent” but reclusive 20-year-old whose primary social circle was his family and who maintained few friends and acquaintances throughout his life, Rojek said.
The FBI has not uncovered a motive as to why he chose to target Trump, but investigators believe the shooting was the result of extensive planning, including the purchase in recent months of chemical precursors that investigators believe were used to create the explosive devices found in his car and his home and the use of a drone about 200 yards (180 meters) from the rally site in the hours before the event.
In addition, Rojek said, Crooks looked online for information about mass shootings, improvised explosive devices, power plants and the attempted assassination in May of Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico.
The FBI has said that on July 6, the day Crooks registered to attend the Trump rally, he googled: “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” That’s a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed President John F. Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Crooks’ parents have been “extremely cooperative” with investigators, Rojek said, and the extensive planning that preceded the shooting was done online. The parents have said they had no knowledge of Crooks’ plans, and investigators have no reason to doubt that, the FBI said.
Microsoft finds a new way to irritate Windows 11 users – a backup pop-up
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ads in the Start Menu not annoying enough for you? Hold my beer
Microsoft is always on the lookout for new and exciting ways to annoy Windows users. Its latest wheeze is a full-screen pop-up in Windows 11 to urge the non-initiated to back up their files.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/microsoft_onedrive_popup/
oberon@gitlab.inf.ethz.ch pushed to project branch main at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
oberon@gitlab.inf.ethz.ch (45a180eb) at 29 Jul 17:36
handle SYSTEM.VAL conversion and normal type conversion differently…
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/commit/45a180eb68f092b24471bab97682d06a7c6d60ae
NASA gives Falcon 9 thumbs-up to launch Crew-9
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
- Undock, bring Butch and Suni home on Starliner, 2. Launch Crew-9, 3.
Do the handover, 4. Bring Crew-8 home
NASA will be launching a crew atop a Falcon 9 in the coming weeks as the SpaceX workhorse returned to flight with three Starlink launches over the weekend.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/nasa_approves_crew_9_launch/
Breaking the Cycle: Against the Militarization of Neuroscience Research
date: 2024-07-29, from: Care
<p>“Adoption of a critical perspective on funding choices is possible—even for faculty previously connected to US military systems—but it is more labor intensive, entailing work that all too often lies outside of the research infrastructure universities provide.”</p>Tech Explainer: Brain–Computer Interfaces and Neural Prosthetics
date: 2024-07-29, from: Care
<p>“The brain is the ultimate site of an individual’s identity, and implanted devices not only have access to it, but the potential to alter it.”</p>California Burns, Japan Swoons
date: 2024-07-29, from: Heatmap News
For those looking forward to bidding good riddance to a hot July, I have some bad news for you: Get ready for hot August..
Keep sending those 🥵 emojis
If you thought it couldn’t possibly get hotter than July — the month that set a new record for warmest day ever — think again. Forecasters predict August will be just as extreme — and that those records won’t last long.
“It is something that can’t be ruled out, especially over the next week as we deal with the typical peak of summer,” Tyler Roys, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, told me.
According to Roys, the melting glaciers around the Arctic in particular have contributed to the intense heat this summer. As bright glaciers give way to darker land, the Earth absorbs more heat, trapping that energy within the atmosphere instead of bouncing it back out into space.
“The more areas that are dealing with above the historical average for temperatures, the more likely you are to see the global temperature average record be set,” Roys explained. “For some areas that have seen prolonged heat this summer, especially in the West in the United States and across southeastern Europe, the heat can create a nasty feedback loop that is extremely hard to break.”
In a well-timed announcement, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres released a call to action last week for countries to respond to extreme heat by investing in low-carbon cooling systems, worker protections, and improved heat-related mortality data, beyond a focus on phasing out fossil fuels. “Climate change is delivering a hotter and more dangerous world for all of us. And we are not prepared,” the report reads.
- Looking Ahead: “Our expectation is August will be another hot month over much of the country, especially from interior California and Nevada, northward to Idaho, with temperatures potentially several degrees above historical average,” Bob Larson, senior meteorologist AccuWeather, told me. The Great Lakes region can also expect some hot weather next month.
California races to contain its biggest fire yet this year
A wildfire that started in Northern California on Wednesday has grown into one of the largest in the state’s recent history. The Park Fire prompted evacuations in parts of Butte and Tehama county. Since then, Plumas and Shasta counties have also been affected by evacuations. As of this morning, more than 360,000 acres had burned, and only 12% of the fire had been contained. Almost 5,000 personnel and 33 helicopters are currently attempting to put out the fire.
Climate scientist Daniel Swain of the University of California, Los Angeles called the fire’s behavior “extraordinary” in a Thursday live briefing. In less than 24 hours, the fire had scorched through 40 to 50 miles of land. “California, until very recently, was not really at the epicenter” of wildfire activity this summer, Swain said. The Park Fire has just changed the game.
Another concern is smoke traveling to other states. In Nevada, which will see minor to moderate extreme heat risk this week, the smoke might impact air quality and visibility. On the other hand, the smoke could also lower temperatures by blocking sunlight. Las Vegas could hit up to 110 degrees on Thursday and Friday — which, while scorching, is still lower than recent temperatures in the city.
- Looking Ahead: California will continue to be at high risk for dangerous wildfires. “With temperatures expected to continue to run above historical averages, and rainfall below historical averages the rest of the summer, the fire season can last into the start of autumn,” Larson told me. But the Northwest, which has also dealt with its fair share of wildfires this summer, might have moved past some of the worst.
Heat to move to the Midwest, also affecting parts of the Southeast
Those in the Midwest and eastern Southwest can prepare for an especially sweaty week. Oklahoma, New Mexico, and northern Texas can expect the worst of it until Wednesday, when the heat will move east into Mississippi. Kansas could see temperatures ranging from 100 to 109 degrees on Wednesday, according to Brian Berg, a meteorologist in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Kansas office meteorologist. Wichita could come close to breaking its record of 109 degrees, set in 1934.
On Friday, the heat will be concentrated in the Southeast, but the heat risk will also go back to increasing in the Pacific Northwest.
Japan’s aging population suffers in the heat
Cities across Japan can expect temperatures above 100 degrees to persist this week. The number of heat strokes in Japan has been growing consistently since 1995, The Guardian reported, and the country’s meteorological agency has warned that this year’s summer temperatures might be even higher than in 2023 — Japan’s hottest summer on record. The data is particularly concerning considering Japan’s large senior population. As of last year, almost 30% of the country’s population is over 65 years old — the group is more vulnerable to heat illnesses and other health complications brought by extreme temperatures.
Iran shuts down under heat wave
Iran was forced to shut down government offices and commercial institutions on Sunday due to extreme temperatures. Over 200 people were hospitalized due to heat strokes. The day before, the government had cut working hours short in its agencies. In Tehran, temperatures went up to 107 degrees, but other provinces in the country saw up to 121 degrees. On Tuesday, Iran’s total energy consumption reached 78,106 megawatts, a record, and the closures were intended to conserve energy in addition to protecting workers. While some clouds and rain are expected today, temperatures will continue at extreme levels.
Not everything is hell. Here are a couple sweet snapshots to cool off by:
- Overheated squirrels can relax in a brand-new, hand-crafted spa in Texas. Breyana Elwell has spent some of the hottest days in the state providing snacks, fans, and more amenities to squirrels near her property. “It’s something we’ve committed to, and the animals are here for it,” she told The Washington Post.
- Strolling through a farmer’s market is a big commitment during a heat wave — especially if you are covered in fur. Two Golden Retrievers in Colorado cooled off by lounging on a pile of ice, making the day of every sweaty customer a little better.
https://heatmap.news/climate/july-29-heat-california-texas-japan
NASA Data Shows July 22 Was Earth’s Hottest Day on Record
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
July 22, 2024, was the hottest day on record, according to a NASA analysis of global daily temperature data. July 21 and 23 of this year also exceeded the previous daily record, set in July 2023. These record-breaking temperatures are part of a long-term warming trend driven by human activities, primarily the emission of greenhouse […]
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/nasa-data-shows-july-22-was-earths-hottest-day-on-record/
French internet cables cut in act of sabotage that caused outages across country
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Axe attack comes just days after arsonists target rail network
Fiber optic internet cables across France have been cut in an apparent act of sabotage, resulting in outages across the country.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/french_fiber_cables_cut/
Most people don’t think GenAI has improved their productivity
date: 2024-07-29, from: Gary Marcus blog
Damning new study from Upwork
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/most-people-dont-think-genai-has
No summer vacay for the Fed
date: 2024-07-29, from: Marketplace Morning Report
What are the chances of an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve this week? And how much will the central bank be paying attention to the unemployment report? We’ll discuss that and more as the guardians of rates gather for a meeting tomorrow and Wednesday. Then, we’ll unpack what Venezuela’s presidential election results mean for the country’s economy and hear why electric vehicle demand has been slowing.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/no-summer-vacay-for-the-fed
Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers (Because AI Companies Keep Making New Ones)
date: 2024-07-29, from: 404 Media Group
Hundreds of sites have put old Anthropic scrapers on their blocklist, while leaving a new one unblocked.
Divers Discover Mesmerizing Roman Mosaic Beneath the Sea
date: 2024-07-29, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Found near Naples, the marble slabs once adorned a villa in a city known as the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire
Retrial begins for man accused of starting 2021 Hopkins fire
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A 23-year old man accused of setting a wildfire which burned about 50 structures near Ukiah in 2021, is being prosecuted in Marin because of a change-of-venue ruling.
Texas man held to answer on involuntary manslaughter of friend in downtown Santa Cruz
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A judge ruled Friday that sufficient evidence exists to proceed to trial in the case of a Texas tourist charged with killing his best friend during a drunken downtown brawl.
Paris Olympics: Santa Cruz’s Haley Batten makes history for Team USA
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
With the pink and blue Olympics arch looming just 25 meters ahead, Haley Batten risked a look behind her. She needed to know if Jenny Rissveds of Sweden was closing in. She needed to know if the silver medal — the best Olympic result ever from an American mountain biker — could really be hers.
Managing Heat
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
Science in Space: July 2024 This time of year, managing heat is on everyone’s mind. Especially now, as May 2024 marked a full year of record-high monthly temperatures – an unprecedented streak, according to scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. NASA experts analyze data from thousands of land-, sea-, and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/managing-heat/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
President Biden Announces Bold Plan to Reform the Supreme Court and Ensure No President Is Above the Law.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Unread Now Available for Mac.
https://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/2024/07/unread-for-mac-available-now/
Intruders at HealthEquity rifled through storage, stole 4.3M people’s data
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
No mention of malware or ransomware – somewhat of a rarity these days
HealthEquity, a US fintech firm for the healthcare sector, admits that a “data security event” it discovered at the end of June hit the data of a substantial 4.3 million individuals. Stolen details include addresses, telephone numbers and payment data.…
Thoughts on politics and communities
date: 2024-07-29, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>Kev has written about the topic of <a href="https://kevquirk.com/blog/politics-and-communities">politics and communities</a> on his blog and it was related to his recently announced <a href="https://kevquirk.com/blog/introducing-500-social">500.social</a> project. In his post, he mentioned blog posts written by <a href="https://baty.net">Jack</a> and <a href="https://nice-marmot.net">Dave</a>. If you’re interested in the full discussion go read the various blog posts, they’re all relatively short.</p>I’m not interested in commenting on the opinions expressed in those blog posts but I am interested in the source of the discussion, and that was a bullet list item in the 500.social “Member expectations” section.
Posts about politics and religion should be avoided, if you strongly feel the urge to post about these topics, please put them behind a Content Warning Member expectations
Years ago, during the COVID era, the 37signals company got into hot water online because they announced in an internal communication that they were going to ban “societal and political discussions” on their internal work chat. The announcement is online if you’re interested in reading it.
People online reacted in all sorts of ways to that news and many, many opinion pieces got published. I remember talking about it with a few people privately and had some interesting conversations around that topic. As you can see, years later, positions on topics such as politics and religion are still controversial in the context of online spaces.
Personally, I think the issue is not with politics, religion or any other topic. The problem is a mixture of expectations and the tools we use. In his post, Dave wrote:
If there is a “public square” anymore, where we ought to be able to try to hash those things out, it seems to me that it’s in those “small social networks,” unless they’re intended to be bespoke bubbles where it’s all just happy talk and we never have difficult conversations.
I don’t disagree that small communities are the space where those conversations can happen which is why I think no topic should be banned or be off limits. At the same time though, I do think that having conversations means something very different than posting a reactionary tweet to comment on a piece of news. That’s why people like Kev end up with rules against politics and religion. Because if you dig deeper, people don’t want to have a conversation on social media. They want to vent.
I think social media platforms, like Mastodon, are not designed to have conversations. You can have them on there, sure, but the experience is going to be sub-par. Social media is designed to be reactionary and generating reactions is different than having a conversation. What would Mastodon look like if everyone was forced to post at least 500 words? What would Mastodon look like if you could only post once an hour? The reason why some people, like Kev, end up with rules like that is because social media is an imperfect tool. I don’t have a no politics rule attached to my email address. People can write to me and talk about whatever they want. If they write about something I don’t care about I can simply ignore that topic and don’t engage in conversation which is exactly what happens in real life.
What prompted me to consider joining 500.social was recalling the feeling I had when we learned that Biden had dropped out of the race. That’s the sort of event that evokes an immediate, emotional response because of its significance to a broad range of people, presumably my “community.”
This is the perfect example of why I think social media is a flawed tool. Can you imagine doing the same in the phone era? Can you imagine reading a piece of news and start calling hundreds, potentially thousands of people simply to share what you think about some news? And can you imagine doing that with people who don’t even live in your country and couldn’t care less about that specific news? Now can you imagine if everyone was doing the same for the news that evoked a strong reaction to them? You’d quickly put your phone on airplane mode because there are only so many random opinions on news you can bear to listen to. I can have a 3 hours discussion about politics, I can’t listen 3 hours of soundbites.
The problem with social media and politics is that way too many people are interested in sharing what they think on social media but very few are interested in having actual, real discussions. Because blasting out a tweet takes 10 seconds while having an actual conversation might take hours and span days.
I’d love to know what you think about this whole situation though. Do you think some topics should be banned on social platforms? If you have opinions get in touch or even better write a blog post!
<hr>
<p>Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.</p>
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https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/jaNItxY78PjwUEcx
Oakland man wonders if hummingbirds ever crash into humans
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Bird and butterfly encounters and a mourning dove question – and thoughts on horse racing from a young animal lover.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/29/oakland-man-wonders-if-hummingbirds-ever-crash-into-humans/
Gaining Steam: Far-Right Radicalisation on Gaming Platforms
date: 2024-07-29, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Shiraz Shaikh on Global Network on Extremism & Technology]
“Video games and their associated platforms are vastly becoming hubs of radicalisation, extremism and recruitment by far-right extremist organisations. The development of bespoke games and modifications, often known as MODs, has given extremist organisations the ability to further spread their digital propaganda.”
This is both depressing and inevitable: games are incredibly popular and share social media’s ability to let people share with each other at scale. Unlike social media, some of the modes of communication directly have violent modes of expression.
Valve’s apparent under-investment in trust and safety, and protections against extremism, are also partially inevitable. How do you police voice communication across disparate games? But there’s more to it than that:
“In terms of the material and content available on these gaming platforms, there is evidence of far-right propaganda available in huge amounts. The materials include books, videos, documents, manifestos, memes and more. Even on other platforms apart from Steam, interviews of far-right leaders, such as Andrew Anglin, are available for users.”
This seems easier to police, and should be. That this material is available says a lot about Valve’s priorities.
<p>[<a href="https://gnet-research.org/2024/07/29/gaining-steam-far-right-radicalisation-on-gaming-platforms/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/gaining-steam-far-right-radicalisation-on-gaming-platforms
Wish You Were Here: Adventures among Italy’s Aeolian Islands
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A historic, luxury windjammer swept this Saratoga couple off to the Aeolian Islands near Sicily.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/29/wish-you-were-here-adventures-among-italys-aeolian-islands/
Travel Troubleshooter: Medical records from Holland America are mysteriously held up
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
David Aronstein needs his medical records from Holland America. Without them, he can’t file an insurance claim for the treatment he received on a cruise. What’s the holdup?
NASA, JAXA Bounce Laser Beam Between Moon’s Surface and Lunar Orbit
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) has twice transmitted a laser pulse to a cookie-sized retroreflector aboard JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) SLIM lander on the Moon and received a return signal. As LRO passed 44 miles above SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) during two successive orbits on May 24, 2024, it pinged the lander […]
AI-backed autonomous robots monitor construction progress
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
The construction industry is finding new uses for artificial intelligence. In a multi-story building project in the northwestern U.S. city of Seattle, autonomous robots are tasked with documenting progress and detecting potential hazards. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya has the story.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ai-backed-autonomous-robots-monitor-construction-progress/7716947.html
Microsoft’s CrowdStrike post-mortem
date: 2024-07-29, from: OS News
Microsoft has published a post-mortem of the CrowdStrike incident, and goes into great depths to describe where, exactly, the error lies, and how it could lead to such massive problems. I can’t comment anything insightful on the technical details and code they show to illustrate all of this – I’ll leave that discussion up to you – but Microsoft also spends considerable amount of time explaining why security vendors are choosing to use kernel-mode drivers. Microsoft lists three major reasons why security vendors opt for using kernel modules, and none of them will come as a great surprise to OSNews readers: kernel drivers provide more visibility into the system than a userspace tool would, there are performance benefits, and they’re more resistant to tampering. The downsides are legion, too, of course, as any crash or similar issue in kernel mode has far-reaching consequences. The goal, then, according to Microsoft, is to balance the need for greater insight, performance, and tamper resistance with stability. And while the company doesn’t say it directly, this is clearly where CrowdStrike failed – and failed hard. While you would want a security tool like CrowdStrike to perform as little as possible in kernelspace, and conversely as much as possible in userspace, that’s not what CrowdStrike did. They are running a lot of stuff in kernelspace that really shouldn’t be there, such as the update mechanism and related tools. In total, CrowdStrike loads four kernel drivers, and much of their functionality can be run in userspace instead. It is possible today for security tools to balance security and reliability. For example, security vendors can use minimal sensors that run in kernel mode for data collection and enforcement limiting exposure to availability issues. The remainder of the key product functionality includes managing updates, parsing content, and other operations can occur isolated within user mode where recoverability is possible. This demonstrates the best practice of minimizing kernel usage while still maintaining a robust security posture and strong visibility. Windows provides several user mode protection approaches for anti-tampering, like Virtualization-based security (VBS) Enclaves and Protected Processes that vendors can use to protect their key security processes. Windows also provides ETW events and user-mode interfaces like Antimalware Scan Interface for event visibility. These robust mechanisms can be used to reduce the amount of kernel code needed to create a security solution, which balances security and robustness. ↫ David Weston, Vice President, Enterprise and OS Security at Microsoft In what is surely an unprecedented event, I agree with the CrowdStrike criticism bubbling under the surface of this post-mortem by Microsoft. Everything seems to point towards CrowdStrike stuffing way more things in kernelspace than is needed, and as such creating a far larger surface for things to go catastrophically wrong than needed. While Microsoft obviously isn’t going to openly and publicly throw CrowdStrike under the bus, it’s very clear what they’re hinting at here, and this is about as close to a public flogging we’re going to get. Microsoft’s post-portem further details a ton of work Microsoft has recently done, is doing, and will soon be doing to further strenghthen Windows’ security, to lessen the need for kernelspace security drivers even more, including adding support for Rust to the Windows kernel, which should also aid in mitigating some common problems present in other, older programming languages (while not being a silver bullet either, of course).
https://www.osnews.com/story/140356/microsofts-crowdstrike-post-mortem/
Trump running mate JD Vance to hold Silicon Valley fundraiser
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Tickets for the Palo Alto fundraiser range from $3,300 to $50,000
Sinead O’Connor’s cause of death revealed a year after her death
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
O’Connor, 56, was found unresponsive at her London home on July 26, 2023, and declared dead of what the coroner’s office ruled in January were “natural causes,” but without providing details.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/29/sinead-oconnor-death-copd-asthma/
Google apologizes for breaking password manager for millions of Windows users with iffy Chrome update
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Happy Sysadmin Day
Google celebrated Sysadmin Day last week by apologizing for breaking its password manager for millions of Windows users – just as many Windows admins were still hard at work mitigating the impact of the faulty CrowdStrike update.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/google_password_manager_outage/
TasteFood: An indoor-outdoor summer recipe
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
This easy summer dish of feta, tomatoes and red peppers can be made in the oven or on the grill, then enjoyed with crusty bread to sop up the delicious sauce.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/29/tastefood-an-indoor-outdoor-summer-recipe/
This little convertible laptop has a 10.95 inch display, Intel Alder Lake-N processor, and sub-$300 starting price
date: 2024-07-29, from: Liliputing
Chinese PC maker SZBox is selling a small, cheap laptop with a 10.95 inch, 2000 x 1200 pixel touchscreen display and a 360-degree hinge, allowing you to use the computer in notebook or tablet modes. The notebook is powered by a 15-watt Intel N95 qaud-core Alder Lake-N processor and features 16GB of RAM, a 34.2 […]
The post This little convertible laptop has a 10.95 inch display, Intel Alder Lake-N processor, and sub-$300 starting price appeared first on Liliputing.
How the Bay Area will contribute to California’s new ‘hydrogen hub’
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
The hub’s 37 different projects will focus on long-haul trucking, heavy cargo shipping, power generation and aviation.
California’s Park Fire Is Blanketing the West in Smoke
date: 2024-07-29, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: A heat dome is bringing scorching temperatures to parts of the Great Plains and the American Southwest • Typhoon Gaemi triggered a mudslide in southeast China, killing at least 15 • It’s 70 degrees and humid in Caracas, where both Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his rivals have claimed victory in Sunday’s heavily disputed election.
THE TOP FIVE
- Northern California’s Park Fire still barely contained
The Park Fire has burned 360,000 acres since Wednesday, making it the largest active fire in the country and the seventh-largest in California’s history. Evacuation orders have now been issued for four nearby counties, with heavy smoke rolling into Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. Windy conditions and steep slopes allowed the blaze to expand rapidly, but cooler, wetter air on Sunday aided firefighters’ efforts. As of Sunday evening, the fire was only 12% contained.
Firefighters
work to contain the Park Fire’s eastern front in Chico, California.
Photo
by David McNew/Getty Images.
Climate change has made California’s summers hotter and dryer, increasing the frequency of large wildfires by an estimated 25%. Case in point: extreme heat this summer provided the Park Fire with lots of dry vegetation to consume.
When the Inflation Reduction Act made clean energy tax credits transferable, it set the conditions for a whole new market for those who earn the tax credits (clean energy developers and investors) and those who want them (anyone who wants relief from a large tax bill). In its mid-year market intelligence report, Crux, one of the leading platforms for tax credit transfers, projected that 2024 would see $20 billion to $25 billion such transactions in total, up from $7 billion to $9 billion last year.
Before the IRA, clean energy tax credits were restricted to the companies that earned them. That limited their usefulness, as some developers and investors didn’t pay enough taxes to claim the full benefit. Transferability has drawn a wider range of participants into the market, writes Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. And expect much more in the years to come — investment bank Evercore is projecting that the market for tax credit trading could hit $100 billion by 2030.
- A novel housing solution at the Paris Olympics
The surfing competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics has been dogged by concerns over its impact on the environment and the local population of Tahiti, a French overseas territory known for its pristine beaches and vibrant coral reefs. Plans to construct new housing and a large observational tower aroused opposition, with locals voicing concern over how the new developments would disrupt the marine and terrestrial ecosystems.
The competition is now underway, though with a smaller footprint. Nearly 100% of on-land housing needs will be met by renting out existing structures, and the observational tower has been scaled down. And the athletes? They aresleeping on a 413-foot cruise ship anchored off the shore of the island. The changes have quieted some criticism, but concerns remain over the impact of the tower. As for the cruise ship solution, said French Polynesian President Moetai Brotherson, “It’s unusual, but they seem to like it.”
An
image of French athlete Joan Duru surfing at Teahupo’o, projected on a
wall in Paris’ Montmartre.
Photo
by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images.
- Yellen urges clean energy investment
United States Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen flew to Brazil this weekend for a meeting of G20 finance ministers. On Saturday, she delivered a speech touting a new partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Finance to combat climate change and urging more global cooperation. The transition to a low-carbon economy is, she said, “the single greatest economic opportunity of the twenty-first century.” Yellen urged G20 leaders to invest in this transition, to the tune of $3 trillion in new capital — annually — between now and 2050.
The Department of the Treasury has been central to the Biden-Harris administration’s climate strategy, providing key guidance on the many tax provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. In Brazil, Yellen encouraged her counterparts to “harness the power of markets” to speed up the energy transition.
- Another data point on congestion pricing
A year ago, London Mayor Sadiq Khan expanded the Ultra Low Emission Zone, a bounded area that uses fees to strictly limit vehicle traffic, to the entire city. According to newly released data, air pollutants like nitrogen oxide and particulate matter dropped dramatically in the six months that followed. Khan said the decision to expand the zone was “a difficult one, but the right one.” It’s a new piece of evidence about the effectiveness of congestion pricing, less than two months after New York Governor Hochul paused a similar policy in New York City.
THE KICKER
“We will be creating so much electricity that you’ll be saying, ‘Please, please, President, we don’t want any more electricity. We can’t stand it.’ You’ll be begging me, ‘No more electricity, sir. We have enough. We have enough.’” — Donald Trump, in a keynote speech at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference, perhaps obliquely referring to the need for new energy transmission and storage infrastructure.
https://heatmap.news/climate/california-park-fire-olympics
The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Fnding your code on the cutting room floor decades after the event
Ever thought you’d committed an elegant bit of code, only to find that somebody else decided to drop it because “that’s the way we’ve always done things”? If so, you aren’t alone. It happens to Microsoft engineers too.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/windows_start_menu_port/
Investors Are Betting Clean Energy Tax Credits Will Survive
date: 2024-07-29, from: Heatmap News
The Inflation Reduction Act will direct billions of dollars to subsidize clean energy in the form of tax credits. But those tax credits need to be bought and sold, requiring a whole industry to stand up between developers and corporate taxpayers looking to reduce their tax liabilities.
A key pillar of this emerging industry is Crux, which functions as a marketplace for these deals, which said Monday in its mid-year market intelligence report that it expects to see $20 billion to $25 billion worth of these transactions by the end of this year, with $9 billion to $11 billion having already occurred in the first half of the year, surpassing the $7 billion to $9 billion in total transactions Crux estimated for last year. Crux has been working to put itself quite literally at the center of this quickly growing industry, raising tens of millions of dollars from both technology venture capital investors as well as the renewables industry.
Clean energy tax credits that subsidize both investment and production of renewables are nothing new. What is new is that the Inflation Reduction Act made them “transferable,” meaning that the taxpayer who was able to reduce their tax liability didn’t have to be directly involved with the project in order to get the tax benefits, they could simply buy them.
This has drawn a wider range of participants into the market, Alfred Johnson, Crux’s co-founder and chief executive officer, told me. Transferability was written into the tax credits “in part to make up for the low demand that is inherent to the tax equity market” when only certain taxpayers can participate, he said. “So far, we have seen family offices, companies of all shapes and sizes. We’ve seen food and ag companies and retailers and different kinds of financial institutions and manufacturers.” The Financial Times even reported that cash-rich (and therefore tax liability-rich) oil and gas companies were buying tax credits from renewable developers.
In the past, the tax credits accrued to the actual investors and developers in projects, who often didn’t have enough taxable income to fully benefit from the available credits, so banks would then often be brought in to own some of the project and reap the tax benefits. This was a complicated system that would seize up if, for some reason, the taxable corporate income of banks disappeared, like during a global financial crisis. “Clean energy investment has long been constrained by the scarcity of tax equity investors relative to the addressable market,” the law firm White and Case wrote in a note to clients.
Now, with transferability, tax credits can be essentially sold for cash. But it’s not quite a dollar-for-dollar transfer. According to Crux’s data, pricing for these deals has improved slightly in the first half of the year, going up from 94 cents for a dollar of production tax credits in 2023 to 95 cents in 2024, and from 92 cents for investment tax credits to 92.5 cents. Deals have also gotten larger on average, although some of this is due to more tried-and-true projects coming to market earlier in the year, namely wind, solar, and storage, whereas last year saw a more diverse range of often smaller deals, including advanced manufacturing credits, which were newly introduced by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The investment bank Evercore estimates that the total addressable market for tax credit trading could get to $100 billion annually by 2030. And make no mistake: Those tax equity investors are doing it for the money. While some deals are struck as part of a company’s sustainability or climate change mandates, when Crux surveyed buyers and their advisors, 78% said they made these deals to reduce their effective tax rates, compared to 58% who said they supported clean energy development and 40% for other sustainability goals.
While many of the questions around the next year are around whether or the IRA and its tax credit regime will survive the outcome of the election in November — and dealmakers who work on this stuff every day seem confident that it will, for the most part — the shape of corporate liabilities could change in next year or beyond. Donald Trump has mused to Bloomberg about bringing down corporate tax rates to 15% from their current level of 21%. The Crux report notes that even debating such a bill can end up “stifling demand” for tax credits.
But looking forward, Johnson notes, the market appears to be confident that those who have tax liabilities in 2025 and even 2026 think tax equity will be there for them. “People are electing to commit on a production tax credit that goes well out into the future, or an investment tax credit that will be earned in 2025, or 2026,” Johnson said.
“I think that’s indicative of the market’s interpretation of risk, right? If the market thought that those 2026 credits would not be around, then you wouldn’t see as much as that,” Johnson said. He also noted that both the production and investment tax credits have typically been extended (although the uncertainty about extension can weigh on developers and tax equity investors) under just about every partisan configuration of Capitol Hill and the White House.
“You could certainly imagine scenarios, both from macroeconomic and a policy perspective, where the amount of taxes paid by companies went up or went down. But I think we are well covered right now in the market at the current volumes,” Johnson said.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/crux-tax-credit-report
Investors Are Betting Clean Energy Tax Credits Will Survive
date: 2024-07-29, from: Heatmap News
The Inflation Reduction Act will direct billions of dollars to subsidize clean energy in the form of tax credits. But those tax credits need to be bought and sold, requiring a whole industry to stand up between developers and corporate taxpayers looking to reduce their tax liabilities.
A key pillar of this emerging industry is Crux, which functions as a marketplace for these deals, which said Monday in its mid-year market intelligence report that it expects to see $20 billion to $25 billion worth of these transactions by the end of this year, with $9 billion to $11 billion having already occurred in the first half of the year, surpassing the $7 billion to $9 billion in total transactions Crux estimated for last year. Crux has been working to put itself quite literally at the center of this quickly growing industry, raising tens of millions of dollars from both technology venture capital investors as well as the renewables industry.
Clean energy tax credits that subsidize both investment and production of renewables are nothing new. What is new is that the Inflation Reduction Act made them “transferable,” meaning that the taxpayer who was able to reduce their tax liability didn’t have to be directly involved with the project in order to get the tax benefits, they could simply buy them.
This has drawn a wider range of participants into the market, Alfred Johnson, Crux’s co-founder and chief executive officer, told me. Transferability was written into the tax credits “in part to make up for the low demand that is inherent to the tax equity market” when only certain taxpayers can participate, he said. “So far, we have seen family offices, companies of all shapes and sizes. We’ve seen food and ag companies and retailers and different kinds of financial institutions and manufacturers.” The Financial Times even reported that cash-rich (and therefore tax liability-rich) oil and gas companies were buying tax credits from renewable developers.
In the past, the tax credits accrued to the actual investors and developers in projects, who often didn’t have enough taxable income to fully benefit from the available credits, so banks would then often be brought in to own some of the project and reap the tax benefits. This was a complicated system that would seize up if, for some reason, the taxable corporate income of banks disappeared, like during a global financial crisis. “Clean energy investment has long been constrained by the scarcity of tax equity investors relative to the addressable market,” the law firm White and Case wrote in a note to clients.
Now, with transferability, tax credits can be essentially sold for cash. But it’s not quite a dollar-for-dollar transfer. According to Crux’s data, pricing for these deals has improved slightly in the first half of the year, going up from 94 cents for a dollar of production tax credits in 2023 to 95 cents in 2024, and from 92 cents for investment tax credits to 92.5 cents. Deals have also gotten larger on average, although some of this is due to more tried-and-true projects coming to market earlier in the year, namely wind, solar, and storage, whereas last year saw a more diverse range of often smaller deals, including advanced manufacturing credits, which were newly introduced by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The investment bank Evercore estimates that the total addressable market for tax credit trading could get to $100 billion annually by 2030. And make no mistake: Those tax equity investors are doing it for the money. While some deals are struck as part of a company’s sustainability or climate change mandates, when Crux surveyed buyers and their advisors, 78% said they made these deals to reduce their effective tax rates, compared to 58% who said they supported clean energy development and 40% for other sustainability goals.
While many of the questions around the next year are around whether or not the IRA and its tax credit regime will survive the outcome of the election in November — and dealmakers who work on this stuff every day seem confident that it will, for the most part — the shape of corporate liabilities could change in next year or beyond. Donald Trump has mused to Bloomberg about bringing down corporate tax rates to 15% from their current level of 21%. The Crux report notes that even debating such a bill can end up “stifling demand” for tax credits.
But looking forward, Johnson notes, the market appears to be confident that those who have tax liabilities in 2025 and even 2026 think tax equity will be there for them. “People are electing to commit on a production tax credit that goes well out into the future, or an investment tax credit that will be earned in 2025, or 2026,” Johnson said.
“I think that’s indicative of the market’s interpretation of risk, right? If the market thought that those 2026 credits would not be around, then you wouldn’t see as much as that,” Johnson said. He also noted that both the production and investment tax credits have typically been extended (although the uncertainty about extension can weigh on developers and tax equity investors) under just about every partisan configuration of Capitol Hill and the White House.
“You could certainly imagine scenarios, both from macroeconomic and a policy perspective, where the amount of taxes paid by companies went up or went down. But I think we are well covered right now in the market at the current volumes,” Johnson said.
https://heatmap.news/economy/crux-tax-credit-report
Financial aid applications from undocumented California students plunged this year
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The LAist
As the deadline for undocumented community college students to apply for financial aid approaches, advocates are doubling down on their summer outreach.
https://laist.com/news/education/fafsa-california-dream-act-application-completion
What we got wrong about HTTP imports
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: Deno blog
Designing a module system around HTTP imports was ambitious. Here are some issues we encountered and how we solved for them.
https://deno.com/blog/http-imports
Biden offers broad plan to reshape US Supreme Court
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
Earth to Gateway: Electric Field Tests Enhance Lunar Communication
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
Learn how engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center are using electric field testing to optimize communications for the Gateway space station that will support Artemis exploration of the Moon.
Say you want kids. Can you afford it?
date: 2024-07-29, from: Marketplace Morning Report
A new survey from the Pew Research Center finds that money is a major factor in the kids-or-no-kids decision. Among adults under 50 who say they’re unlikely to have children, 36% say they can’t afford them. Also on the show: We’ll examine an $80 million settlement involving banks and price-fixing of bonds, and hear about pollution-reducing projects in 30 states that will use $4.3 billion in EPA grants.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/say-you-want-kids-can-you-afford-it
Inquiry hears UK government misled MPs over Post Office IT scandal
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Former business minister Vince Cable testifies, highlighting misinformation and oversight failures
Officials at the government department responsible for the Post Office sent out misleading information to MPs about court cases relating to the Horizon IT system, an inquiry into one of the UK’s greatest miscarriage of justice has heard.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/post_office_horizon_inquiry/
Taking The Climate Killers To Court
date: 2024-07-29, from: The Lever News
As deaths mount from extreme heat and other climate disasters, legal and scientific experts are joining forces on a bold new tactic: Charging polluters with homicide.
https://www.levernews.com/taking-the-climate-killers-to-court-2/
Examining Venezuela’s disputed presidential election results
date: 2024-07-29, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been declared the winner of the county’s election — but the result has sparked accusations of fraud from the opposition, who claim their candidate actually won. Then, Japanese airports are cracking down on a novel and potentially hazardous way of traveling through endless airport corridors: electric passenger-carrying suitcases. And later, we look at why Australia’s minimum wage increase hasn’t got everyone’s support.
Linux Mint 22 ‘Wilma’ still the Bedrock choice for moving off Windows
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Outsmarting Ubuntu’s midlife crisis and dodging Flintstone-sized bugs
Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” debuted late last week and holds on to the crown as the most sensible choice if you’re looking to move across from Windows.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/linus_mint_22_wilma/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Biden's speech might turn out to be a Gettysburg type speech.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/25.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Just a week ago, it seems, a new America began.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-28-2024?r=17m9&triedRedirect=true
Rairii’s incredible port of ARC & Drivers for NT PowerPC to G3 Macintoshes
date: 2024-07-29, from: Tilde.news
Logitech Zone 305 is light on the ears and wallet, maybe a bit too light on quality?
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A headset for workers who want to stride around the room bellowing
Review Logitech has released a lightweight headset aimed squarely at business users. While there are Bluetooth and connectivity options aplenty, the quality of the materials matches the headset’s low price.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/logitech_zone_305_review/
China rebukes US, Japan for ‘false accusations’ on maritime issues, military expansion
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
BEIJING — Joint statements between the United States and Japan “falsely accuse” China on maritime issues and point fingers at its normal military development and defense policy, China’s foreign ministry said on Monday.
The ministry’s comment followed the U.S. and Japan’s criticism of what they called Beijing’s “provocative” behavior in the South and East China Seas, joint military exercises with Russia and the rapid expansion of its nuclear weapons arsenal.
U.S. and Japan leaders on Sunday unveiled a new military structure that would be implemented in parallel with Tokyo’s own plans to establish a joint command for its forces by March 2025.
It would be among several measures taken to address what the countries said was an “evolving security environment,” noting various threats from China.
“They maliciously attacked and discredited China on maritime issues and made irresponsible remarks on China’s normal military development and national defense policy,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry during a regular press briefing.”
“China is strongly dissatisfied with the exaggeration of China’s threat and the malicious speculation of regional tensions,” Lin added.
The U.S. in annual reports on China’s military has called out the world’s second-largest economy for rapidly growing its military arsenal and nuclear warheads.
“China has always followed the path of peaceful development, firmly pursued a national defense policy that is defensive in nature, and its national defense construction and military activities are legitimate and reasonable,” Lin said.
He added that China “has always maintained its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security and does not pose a threat to any country.”
“We strongly urge the United States and Japan to immediately stop interfering with China’s internal affairs and stop creating imaginary enemies,” Lin said.
Arab American leaders listen as Harris tries to shore up swing-state support
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
DEARBORN, Mich — Osama Siblani’s phone won’t stop ringing.
Just days after President Joe Biden withdrew his bid for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination, top officials from both major political parties have been asking the publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News if Harris can regain the support of the nation’s largest Muslim population located in metro Detroit.
His response: “We are in listening mode.”
Harris, who is moving to seize the Democratic nomination after Biden stepped down, appears to be pivoting quickly to the task of convincing Arab American voters in Michigan, a state Democrats believe she can’t afford to lose in November, that she is a leader they can unite behind.
Community leaders have expressed a willingness to listen, and some have had initial conversations with Harris’ team. Many had grown exacerbated with Biden after they felt months of outreach had not yielded many results.
“The door is cracked open since Biden has stepped down,” said Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud. “There’s an opportunity for the Democratic nominee to coalesce the coalition that ushered in Biden’s presidency four years ago. But that responsibility will now fall on the vice president.”
Arab American leaders such as Hammoud and Siblani are watching closely for signals that Harris will be more vocal in pressing for a ceasefire. They’re excited by her candidacy but want to be sure she will be an advocate for peace and not an unequivocal supporter of Israel.
But Harris will need to walk a fine line not to publicly break with Biden’s position on the war in Gaza, where officials in his administration have been working diligently toward a ceasefire, mostly behind the scenes.
The divide within Harris’ own party was evident in Washington last week during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to address Congress. Some Democrats supported the visit, while others protested and refused to attend. Outside the Capitol, pro-Palestinian protesters were met with pepper spray and arrests.
Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress whose district includes Dearborn, held up a sign that read “war criminal” during Netanyahu’s remarks.
Harris did not attend.
Some Arab American leaders interpret her absence — she instead attended a campaign event in Indianapolis — as a sign of good faith with them, though they recognize her ongoing responsibilities as vice president, including a meeting Thursday with Netanyahu.
Her first test within the community will come when Harris chooses a running mate. One of the names on her short list, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, has been public in his criticism of pro-Palestinian protesters and is Jewish. Some Arab American leaders in Michigan say putting him on the ticket would ramp up their unease about the level of support they could expect from a Harris administration.
“Josh Shapiro was one of the first ones to criticize the students on campus. So it doesn’t differentiate Harris very much if she picks him. That just says I’m going to continue the same policies as Biden,” said Rima Meroueh, director of the National Network for Arab American Communities.
Arab Americans are betting that their vote holds enough electoral significance in pivotal swing states like Michigan to ensure that officials will listen to them. Michigan has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the nation, and the state’s majority-Muslim cities overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020. He won Dearborn, for example, by a roughly 3-to-1 margin over former President Donald Trump.
In February, over 100,000 Michigan Democratic primary voters chose “uncommitted,” securing two delegates to protest the Biden administration’s unequivocal support for Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. Nationally, “uncommitted” garnered a total of 36 delegates in the primaries earlier this year.
The groups leading this effort have called for — at a minimum — an embargo on all weapons shipments to Israel and a permanent ceasefire.
“If Harris called for an arms embargo, I would work around the clock every day until the election to get her elected,” said Abbas Alawieh, an “uncommitted” Michigan delegate and national leader of the movement. “There’s a real opportunity right now to unite the coalition. It’s on her to deliver, but we are cautiously optimistic.”
Those divisions were on full display Wednesday night when the Michigan Democratic Party brought together over 100 delegates to pitch them on uniting behind Harris. During the meeting, Alawieh, one of three state delegates who did not commit to Harris, was speaking when another delegate interrupted him by unmuting and telling him to “shut up,” using an expletive, according to Alawieh.
The call could be a preview of tensions expected to surface again in August, when Democratic leaders, lawmakers, and delegates convene in Chicago for the party’s national convention. Mass protests are planned, and the “uncommitted” movement intends to ensure their voices are heard within the United Center, where the convention will be held.
Trump and his campaign, meanwhile, are keenly aware of the turmoil within the Democratic base and are actively seeking the support of Arab American voters. That effort has been complicated by Trump’s history of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy during his one term as president.
A meeting between over a dozen Arab American leaders from across the country and several of Trump’s surrogates was convened in Dearborn last week. Among the surrogates was Massad Boulos, a Lebanese-born businessman whose son married Tiffany Trump, the former president’s younger daughter, two years ago. Boulos is leveraging his connections to rally support for Trump.
Part of the pitch that Boulos and Bishara Bahbah, chairman of Arab Americans for Trump, made in Dearborn was that Trump has shown an openness to a two-state solution. He posted a letter on social media from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and pledged to work for peace in the Middle East.
“The three main points that were noted in the meeting were that Trump needs to state more clearly that he wants an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and that he supports the two-state solution, and that there is no such thing as a Muslim ban,” said Bahbah. “This is what the community wants to hear in a clear manner.”
Before a July 20 rally in Michigan, Trump also met with Bahbah, who pressed him about a two-state solution. According to Bahbah, Trump responded affirmatively, saying, “100%.”
But any apparent political opportunity for Trump may be limited by criticism from many Arab Americans about the former president’s ban on immigration from several majority Muslim countries and remarks they felt were insulting.
“I have not heard any individuals saying I’m now rushing to Donald Trump,” said Hammoud, Dearborn’s Democratic mayor. “I have yet to hear that in any of the conversations I’ve had. They all know what Donald Trump represents.”
Siblani, who organized Wednesday’s meeting with Trump surrogates, has spent months serving as an intermediary between his community and officials from all political parties and foreign dignitaries. Privately, he says, almost all express the need for a permanent ceasefire.
“Everybody wants our votes, but nobody wants to be seen as aligning with us publicly,” Siblani said.
Silicon, stars, and sulfur make Apollo’s unlikely legacy
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Neil stepped on a rock. We’re surfing an interstellar wave 9,000 light years long. Go us
Opinion Fifty-five years after Neil Armstrong’s one small step, and the future it promised has not come to pass. Nobody has gone back to the Moon since the end of the Apollo program, let alone out to Mars. As for Clarke and Kubrick’s oh-so-plausible 2001 trip to Jupiter with a hallucinating AI, well, one out of two isn’t bad. But while those futures didn’t happen, what we have instead is unimaginably better.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/opinion_column_space/
A farewell from HackSpace magazine
date: 2024-07-29, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Starting next month, HackSpace will become part of The MagPi, the official Raspberry Pi magazine.
The post A farewell from HackSpace magazine appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/a-farewell-from-hackspace-magazine/
Never put off until tomorrow what someone could erase today
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
When even tape can’t save you, procrastination is a problem
Who, Me? Greetings once again, gentle reader, and welcome to another instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers like yourselves soften the start of the work week with reminders that we all sometimes make mistakes.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/who_me/
Today in SCV History (July 29)
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1983 – U.S. release of “National Lampoon’s Vacation;” Magic Mountain is Walley World. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-29/
Post-CrowdStrike, Microsoft to discourage use of kernel drivers by security tools
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Now there’s an idea – parsing config data in user mode
Updated Microsoft has vowed to reduce cybersecurity vendors’ reliance on kernel-mode code, which was at the heart of the CrowdStrike super-snafu this month.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/microsoft_crowdstrike_kernel_mode/
Microsoft admits 8.5 million CrowdStruck machines estimate was lowballed
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Promises to discourage use of kernel drivers – so they don’t crash the world again
Microsoft has admitted that its estimate of 8.5 million machines crashed by CrowdStrike’s faulty software update was almost certainly too low, and vowed to reduce infosec vendors’ reliance on the kernel drivers at the heart of the issue.…
China ponders creating a national ‘cyberspace ID’
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Because clearly it’s better for Beijing to know who you are than for every ISP and social service to keep its own records
Beijing may soon issue “cyberspace IDs” to its citizens, after floating a proposal for the scheme last Friday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/china_cyberspace_id_proposal/
US claims TikTok shipped personal data to China – very personal data
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Not even Oracle could stop it, claims DoJ
The US Department of Justice has alleged that TikTok shipped personal information to China and allowed profiling of the short video app’s users based on their attitudes to some ticklish topics.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/doj_tiktok_filing_china_data/
US, Japan, Australia and India announce efforts to boost maritime security
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/quad-foreign-ministers-meet-in-tokyo-with-eye-on-china/7716640.html
Group of 91 nations agree to continue not taxing cross-border data movement – for now
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Promote free use of government data, privacy, canning spam, and more
Five years of trade negotiations reached a milestone last Friday with 91 nations agreeing on new norms for e-commerce – among them extension of a moratorium on taxation of cross-border electronic transmissions.…
Secure Boot useless on hundreds of PCs from major vendors after key leak
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: More stalkerware exposure; a $16M TracFone fine; Ransomware victims don’t use MFA, and more
Infosec in brief Protecting computers’ BIOS and the boot process is essential for modern security – but knowing it’s important isn’t the same as actually taking steps to do it.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/infosec_roundup/
Apache Christ icon controversy sparks debate over Indigenous Catholic faith practices
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
MESCALERO, New Mexico — Anne Marie Brillante never imagined she would have to choose between being Apache and being Catholic.
To her, and many others in the Mescalero Apache tribe in New Mexico who are members of St. Joseph Apache Mission, their Indigenous culture had always been intertwined with faith. Both are sacred.
“Hearing we had to choose, that was a shock,” said a tearful Brillante, a member of the mission’s parish council.
The focus of this tense, unresolved episode is the 8-foot Apache Christ painting. For this close-knit community, it is a revered icon created by Franciscan friar Robert Lentz in 1989. It depicts Christ as a Mescalero medicine man and has hung behind the church’s altar for 35 years under a crucifix as a reminder of the holy union of their culture and faith.
On June 26, the church’s then-priest, Peter Chudy Sixtus Simeon-Aguinam, removed the icon and a smaller painting depicting a sacred Indigenous dancer. Also taken were ceramic chalices and baskets given by the Pueblo community for use during the Eucharist.
Brillante said the priest took them away while the region was reeling from wildfires that claimed two lives and burned more than 1,000 homes.
The Diocese of Las Cruces, which oversees the mission, did not respond to several emails, phone calls and an in-person visit by The Associated Press.
Parishioners, shocked to see the blank wall behind the altar when they arrived for Catechism class, initially believed the art objects had been stolen. But Brillante was informed by a diocesan official that the icon’s removal occurred under the authority of Bishop Peter Baldacchino and in the presence of a diocesan risk manager.
The diocese has returned the icons and other objects after the community’s outrage was covered by various media outlets, and the bishop replaced Simeon-Aguinam with another priest. But Brillante and others say it’s insufficient to heal the spiritual abuse they have endured.
Brillante said their former priest opened old wounds with his recent actions, suggesting he sought to cleanse them of their “pagan” ways, and it has derailed the reconciliation process initiated by Pope Francis in 2022. That year, Francis gave a historic apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Indigenous residential schools, forcing Native people to assimilate into Christian society, destroying their cultures and separating families.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declined comment on the Mescalero case. But last month, the conference overwhelmingly approved a pastoral framework for Indigenous ministry, which pointed to a “false choice” many Indigenous Catholics are faced with — to be Indigenous or Catholic:
“We assure you, as the Catholic bishops of the United States, that you do not have to be one or the other. You are both.”
Several of the mission’s former priests understood this, but Brillante believes Simeon-Aguinam’s recent demand to make that “false choice” violated the bishops’ new guidelines.
Larry Gosselin, a Franciscan who served St. Joseph from 1984 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2003, said he sought the approval of 15 Mescalero leaders before Lentz began the painting that took three months to complete.
“He poured all of himself into that painting,” said Gosselin, explaining that Lentz sprinkled gold dust on himself and skipped showering, using his body oils to adhere the gold to the canvas. Then he gave the painting to the humble church.
Albert Braun, the priest who helped construct the church building in the 1920s, respected Mescalero Apache traditions in his ministry and was so beloved that he is buried inside the church, near the altar.
Church elders Glenda and Larry Brusuelas said to right this wrong and to repair this damage, the bishop must issue a public apology.
“You don’t call or send a letter,” Larry Brusuelas said. “You face the people you have offended and offer some guarantee that this is not going to happen again. That’s the Apache way.”
While Bishop Baldacchino held a two-hour meeting with the parish council in Mescalero after the items were returned, Brillante said he seemed more concerned about the icon being “hastily” reinstalled rather than acknowledging the harm or offering an apology.
Still, some are hopeful. Parish council member Pamela Cordova said she views the bishop appointing a new priest who was more familiar with the Apache community as a positive step.
“We need to give the bishop a chance to prove himself and let us know he is sincere and wants to make things right,” she said.
The concept of “inculturation,” the notion of people expressing their faith through their culture, has been encouraged by the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, said Chris Vecsey, professor of religion and Native American studies at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.
“It’s rather shocking to see a priest who has been assigned a parish with Native people acting in such a disrespectful way in 2024,” he said. “But it does reflect a long history of concern that blending these symbols might weaken, threaten or pollute the purity of the faith.”
Deacon Steven Morello, the Archdiocese of Detroit’s missionary to the American Indians, said the goal of the U.S. bishops’ new framework is to correct the ills of the past. He said Indigenous spirituality and Catholic faith have much in common, such as the burning of sage in Native American ceremonies and incense in a Catholic church.
“Both are meant to cleanse the heart and mind of all distractions,” he said. “The smoke goes up to God.”
Morello said Pope Francis’ encyclical on caring for the Earth and the environment titled “Laudato Si” addresses the sacredness of all creation — a core principle Indigenous people have lived by for millennia.
“There is no conflict, only commonality, between Indigenous and Catholic spirituality,” he said.
There are over 340 Native American parishes in the United States and many use Indigenous symbols and sacred objects in church. In every corner of the Mescalero church, Apache motifs seamlessly blend in with Catholic imagery.
The Apache Christ painting hangs as the focal point of the century-old Romanesque church whose rock walls soar as high as 90 feet. Artwork of teepees adorns the lectern. A mural at the altar shows the Last Supper with Christ and his apostles depicted as Apache men. Tall crowns worn by mountain dancers known as “gahe” in Apache, hang over small paintings showing Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
For parishioner Sarah Kazhe, the Apache Christ painting conveys how Jesus appears to the people of Mescalero.
“Jesus meets you where you are and he appears to us in a way we understand,” she said. “Living my Apache way of life is no different than attending church. … The mindless, thoughtless act of removing a sacred icon sent a message that we didn’t matter.”
Parishioners believe the Creator in Apache lore is the same as their Christian God. On a recent Saturday night, community members gathered to bless two girls who had come of age. Kazhe and Donalyn Torres, one of the church elders who authorized Lentz to paint the Apache Christ, sat in lawn chairs with more than 100 others, watching crown dancers bring blessings on them.
Under a half-moon, the men wore body paint and tall crowns, dancing to drumbeats and song around a large fire. The women, including the two girls donning buckskin and jewelry, formed the outer circle, moving their feet in a quick, shuffling motion.
In the morning, many from the group attended Mass at their church, the Apache Christ restored to its place of honor.
The painting shows Christ as a Mescalero holy man, standing on the sacred Sierra Blanca, greeting the sun. A sun symbol is painted on his left palm; he holds a deer hoof rattle in his right hand. The inscription at the bottom is Apache for “giver of life,” one of their names for the Creator. Greek letters in the upper corners are abbreviations for “Jesus Christ.”
Gosselin, the mission’s former priest, said he was struck by the level of detail Lentz captured in that painting, particularly the eyes — which focus on a distance just as Apache people would when talking about spirituality. He believes the painting was “divinely inspired” because the people who received it feel a holy connection.
“This has resonated in the spirit and their hearts,” he said. “Now, 35 years later, the Apache people are fighting for it.”
Manipulated video shared by Musk mimics Harris’ voice, raising concerns about AI in politics
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
New York — A manipulated video that mimics the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris saying things she did not say is raising concerns about the power of artificial intelligence to mislead with Election Day about three months away.
The video gained attention after tech billionaire Elon Musk shared it on his social media platform X on Friday evening without explicitly noting it was originally released as parody.
The video uses many of the same visuals as a real ad that Harris, the likely Democratic president nominee, released last week launching her campaign. But the video swaps out the voice-over audio with another voice that convincingly impersonates Harris.
“I, Kamala Harris, am your Democrat candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate,” the voice says in the video. It claims Harris is a “diversity hire” because she is a woman and a person of color, and it says she doesn’t know “the first thing about running the country.” The video retains “Harris for President” branding. It also adds in some authentic past clips of Harris.
Mia Ehrenberg, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said in an email to The Associated Press: “We believe the American people want the real freedom, opportunity and security Vice President Harris is offering; not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.”
The widely shared video is an example of how lifelike AI-generated images, videos or audio clips have been utilized both to poke fun and to mislead about politics as the United States draws closer to the presidential election. It exposes how, as high-quality AI tools have become far more accessible, there remains a lack of significant federal action so far to regulate their use, leaving rules guiding AI in politics largely to states and social media platforms.
The video also raises questions about how to best handle content that blurs the lines of what is considered an appropriate use of AI, particularly if it falls into the category of satire.
The original user who posted the video, a YouTuber known as Mr Reagan, has disclosed both on YouTube and on X that the manipulated video is a parody. But Musk’s post, which has been viewed more than 123 million times, according to the platform, only includes the caption “This is amazing” with a laughing emoji.
X users who are familiar with the platform may know to click through Musk’s post to the original user’s post, where the disclosure is visible. Musk’s caption does not direct them to do so.
While some participants in X’s “community note” feature to add context to posts have suggested labeling Musk’s post, no such label had been added to it as of Sunday afternoon. Some users online questioned whether his post might violate X’s policies, which say users “may not share synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”
The policy has an exception for memes and satire as long as they do not cause “significant confusion about the authenticity of the media.”
Musk endorsed former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, earlier this month. Neither Mr Reagan nor Musk immediately responded to emailed requests for comment Sunday.
Two experts who specialize in AI-generated media reviewed the fake ad’s audio and confirmed that much of it was generated using AI technology.
One of them, University of California, Berkeley, digital forensics expert Hany Farid, said the video shows the power of generative AI and deepfakes.
“The AI-generated voice is very good,” he said in an email. “Even though most people won’t believe it is VP Harris’ voice, the video is that much more powerful when the words are in her voice.”
He said generative AI companies that make voice-cloning tools and other AI tools available to the public should do better to ensure their services are not used in ways that could harm people or democracy.
Rob Weissman, co-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, disagreed with Farid, saying he thought many people would be fooled by the video.
“I don’t think that’s obviously a joke,” Weissman said in an interview. “I’m certain that most people looking at it don’t assume it’s a joke. The quality isn’t great, but it’s good enough. And precisely because it feeds into preexisting themes that have circulated around her, most people will believe it to be real.”
Weissman, whose organization has advocated for Congress, federal agencies and states to regulate generative AI, said the video is “the kind of thing that we’ve been warning about.”
Other generative AI deepfakes in both the U.S. and elsewhere would have tried to influence voters with misinformation, humor or both.
In Slovakia in 2023, fake audio clips impersonated a candidate discussing plans to rig an election and raise the price of beer days before the vote. In Louisiana in 2022, a political action committee’s satirical ad superimposed a Louisiana mayoral candidate’s face onto an actor portraying him as an underachieving high school student.
Congress has yet to pass legislation on AI in politics, and federal agencies have only taken limited steps, leaving most existing U.S. regulation to the states. More than one-third of states have created their own laws regulating the use of AI in campaigns and elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Beyond X, other social media companies also have created policies regarding synthetic and manipulated media shared on their platforms. Users on the video platform YouTube, for example, must reveal whether they have used generative artificial intelligence to create videos or face suspension.
Photos: Brass Roots Initiative at Summer Sunset Concerts Valencia Marketplace
date: 2024-07-29, from: The Signal
The Summer Sunset Concerts Valencia Marketplace series featured Brass Roots Initiative, who performed groovy tunes from classics dating back to the 1960’s to 1990’s on Friday evening at the Valencia […]
The post Photos: Brass Roots Initiative at Summer Sunset Concerts Valencia Marketplace appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Open source AI helped China catch up to the world, researchers reckon
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Grab drops cab merger, Kakao founder goes to the clink, Alibaba denies Jack Ma cronyism, and more
APAC in brief Chinese researchers have told The New York Times that open source software has helped them to accelerate AI development.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/asia_tech_news_roundup/
Frank Stewart photos captured culture of jazz, church and Black life in US
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
CHADDS FORD, Pa. — At first glance, it looks like an aerial photo of a cemetery destroyed by war, with charred coffins ripped from broken concrete vaults and arched marble tombstones flattened by a bomb blast.
Then, the viewer begin to discern details: the coffins and vaults are actually parts of a keyboard. Instead of names and dates, the apparent tombstones are inscribed with words like “vibrato” and “third harmonic.”
“It looks like a graveyard,” photographer Frank Stewart said.
Stewart’s ghostly photograph of a New Orleans church organ ravaged by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina is part of a career retrospective of his decades documenting Black life in America and exploring African and Caribbean cultures.
“Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present,” is on display at the Brandywine Museum of Art through Sept. 22. Brandywine is the fourth and final stop for the exhibition, which was organized by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia.
“I wanted to talk about the Black church and what influence they had on the culture,” Stewart said of his post-Katrina work in New Orleans. “This organ, the music and everything corresponds. It all comes together. I just wanted to show the devastation of churches and the music and the culture.”
Music is elemental to Stewart’s practice. He was the long-time photographer for the Savannah Music Festival, and for 30 years he was the senior staff photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which paired him with artistic director and Grammy-winning musician Wynton Marsalis.
“He’s like my brother,” said Stewart, whose exhibition includes “Stomping the Blues,” a 1997 photograph of Marsalis leading his orchestra off the stage during a world tour of his Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz oratorio “Blood on the Fields.”
Stewart, who was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago, has his own ties to jazz and blues. His stepfather, Phineas Newborn Jr., was a pianist who worked with the likes of musicians Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus and B.B. King.
Describing himself as a child of the “apartheid South,” Stewart has drawn inspiration from photographers such as Ernest Cole and Roy DeCarava, who was among Stewart’s instructors at New York’s Cooper Union, where Stewart received a bachelor of fine arts degree. DeCarava’s photographs of 1950s Harlem led to a collaboration with Langston Hughes on the 1955 book, “The Sweet Flypaper of Life.”
Cole, a South African photographer, achieved acclaim in 1967 with “House of Bondage,” the first book to inspire Stewart. It chronicled apartheid using photographs he smuggled out of the country. Cole was never able to replicate his early success and fell on hard times before dying at age 49 in New York City. A documentary about him, “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
“He came to New York and he was homeless in New York, so I would see him on the street and we would talk,” said Stewart, who is quick to draw a distinction between his work and Cole’s.
“I consider myself an artist more than a documentarian,” explained Stewart, who attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before enrolling at Cooper Union and was a longtime friend and collaborator of artist Romare Bearden.
That’s not to say Stewart doesn’t have journalistic instincts in his blood. He recounts a work history that includes the Chicago Defender, the largest Black-owned daily in the country at the time, and stringing for Ebony, Essence and Black Enterprise magazines. He looks back less fondly on a short stint of large-format work photographing fine art for brochures and catalogs, an undertaking he described as “tedious.”
Through it all though, Stewart has maintained an artistic approach to his work, looking to combine pattern, color, tone and space in a visually appealing manner while not leaving the viewer searching for the message.
“It has to still be ‘X marks the spot,’” he explained. “It still has to be photographic. It can’t be just abstract.”
Or maybe it can. How else to explain the color and texture seen in “Blue Car, Havana” from 2002?
“It’s all about abstract painting,” Stewart said in wall text accompanying the photo.
The retrospective shines a light on how Stewart’s work has evolved over time, from early black-and-white photographs to his more recent prints, which feature more color.
“It’s two different languages,” he said. “English would be the black and white. French would be the color.”
“I worked in color the whole time, I just didn’t have the money to print them,” he added.
While photography can inform people about the world around them, Stewart has noted there is a gulf between the real world and a photograph.
“Reality is a fact, and a photograph is another fact,” he explained. “The map is not the territory. It’s just a map of the territory.”
pgAdmin 4 v8.10 Released
date: 2024-07-29, from: PostgreSQL News
The pgAdmin Development Team is pleased to announce pgAdmin 4 version 8.10. This release of pgAdmin 4 includes 29 bug fixes and new features. For more details please see the release notes.
pgAdmin is the leading Open Source graphical management tool for PostgreSQL. For more information, please see the website.
Note: With this release, pgAdmin 4 has transitioned from NW.js to Electron.
Notable changes in this release include:
Features:
- Add support for Postgres Server Logs for Text, CSV, and JSON format in plain and tabular formats.
- Add support for highlighting selection matches in the query editor.
- Add a keyboard shortcut to close the active tab panel.
Bugs/Housekeeping:
- Replace pgAdmin NW.js container with Electron container.
- Ensure that pgAdmin 4 is compatible with PostgreSQL v17.
- Fixed an issue where paste operation in query tool data grid should skip bytea columns and put the value as NULL instead.
- Ensure pgAdmin never makes network requests to Google etc.
- Fixed the permission denied issue for functions of the pgstattuple extension when accessing statistics with a non-admin user.
- Updated entrypoint.sh to utilize the email-validator package for email validation.
- Fixed an issue where users could not insert characters at the desired location, as it was added to the end of the line.
- Fixed an issue where users could not autofill their saved passwords in the connect server dialog in the browser.
- Fixed an issue where boolean values in node details of the graphical explain plan were not interpreted correctly.
- Ensure that pgAdmin works when opened in an iframe.
Builds for Windows and macOS are available now, along with a Python Wheel, Docker Container, RPM, DEB Package, and source code tarball from the tarball area.
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgadmin-4-v810-released-2899/