News gathered 2024-07-31
(date: 2024-07-31 07:56:01)
Name that Ware, July 2024
date: 2024-07-31, from: Bunnie’s Studio Blog
The Ware for July 2024 is shown below. Thanks again to jackw01 for contributing this ware! The last two images might be killer clues that give away the ware, but they are also so cool I couldn’t not include them as part of the post.
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/name-that-ware-july-2024/
Winner, Name that Ware June 2024
date: 2024-07-31, from: Bunnie’s Studio Blog
The Ware for June 2024 is a hash board from an Antminer S19 generation bitcoin miner, with the top side heatsinks removed. I’ll give the prize to Alex, for the thoughtful details related in the comments. Congrats, email me for your prize! I chose this portion of the miner to share for the ware because […]
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/winner-name-that-ware-june-2024/
Sergey Durmanov opened issue #148: issue with set constructor (range order) at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
If the order of the elements is in the range from largest to smallest, the set constructor produces an incorrect result.
MODULE TestSet1;
PROCEDURE Do*;
VAR s: SET;
BEGIN
s := { 13..7 };
TRACE(s);
s := { 7..13 };
TRACE(s);
END Do;
END TestSet1.
System.Free TestSet1~
TestSet1.Do~https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/148
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-07-31, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
As I was telling a friend, If you are not running iOS 18.1 you might as well just run Android or live in a cave.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112881574260230389
Santa Clara County fire responds to one-acre blaze in Lexington Hills area
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
At least one other fire has burned in same area this month.
‘This species could blink out’: Park Fire jeopardizing one of California’s most iconic species
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
The fire is moving into areas where salmon are waiting to spawn. Already in dire shape, experts worry that the Park Fire could be the deathblow to these fish.
Five months after takedown, LockBit is a shadow of its former self
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
An unprecedented period for an unparalleled force in cybercrime
Feature For roughly two years, LockBit’s ransomware operation was by far the most prolific of its kind, until the fateful events of February. After claiming thousands of victims, extorting hundreds of millions of dollars, and building a robust army of sophisticated cybercriminals, the life’s work of its mastermind, LockbitSupp – whom cops claim is Russian national Dmitry Khoroshev – is now hanging by a thread.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/five_months_after_lockbit/
DHS Cracks Large-Scale Apple Counterfeiting ‘Refund Fraud’ Ring
date: 2024-07-31, from: 404 Media Group
A traffic stop in Alabama led to the discovery of a large-scale counterfeiting ring.
https://www.404media.co/dhs-cracks-large-scale-apple-counterfeiting-refund-fraud-ring/
Scammer Allegedly Makes $600,000 a Month Holding Instagram Accounts Hostage
date: 2024-07-31, from: 404 Media Group
The case of Unlocked4Life, who outed himself on Adam-22’s No Jumper podcast, shows how Instagram account scammers have escalated to violence and intimidation too.
https://www.404media.co/unlocked4life-instagram-scam-no-jumper/
Car Insurance Rates Up
date: 2024-07-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Not only are home insurance rates going to increase, but many car owners should be sitting down when they open their auto insurance premium notice.
The post Car Insurance Rates Up appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/31/car-insurance-rates-up/
49ers poll: Is Brock Purdy’s run of interceptions a big deal?
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
Brock Purdy has seven interceptions in the last two days at training camp, his first as the full-time starter.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/31/49ers-poll-is-brock-purdys-run-of-interceptions-a-big-deal/
Skype goes ad-free, which is unusual for Microsoft
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Feedback prioritized, unless it’s about a feature customers really miss
Microsoft has announced an ad-free update for Skype, now headed to testers in the company’s Insider program. However, this update is unlikely to appease users who are still missing features previously dropped from the once-premier chat app.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/skype_adfree/
‘Insufficient evidence’: DA drops cases of 27 pro-Palestine protesters arrested at Cal Poly Humboldt
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
Some of the cases “have been rejected for filing of charges based upon insufficient evidence to prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt and/or interests of justice grounds,” District Attorney Stacey Eads said.
Toilet paper and flat tires — the strange ways that Californians ignite wildfires
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
Californians trigger thousands of wildfires every year with poor choices and reckless behavior. The Park Fire, ignited by a man pushing a burning car, was one.
Podcast: Google, Reddit, and the Robots.txt Rebellion
date: 2024-07-31, from: 404 Media Group
We go long on robots.txt, AI scraping, and what it means for search and the web today. Also, a leaked document shows a multibillion dollar AI company scraped YouTube videos from specific creators, and we discuss Skibidi.
https://www.404media.co/podcast-google-reddit-and-the-robots-txt-rebellion/
This 14 inch Windows tablet with AMD Mendocino sells for under $400
date: 2024-07-31, from: Liliputing
AMD’s Ryzen 7020 “Mendocino” processors launched about two years ago as budget chips for inexpensive laptops with decent performance and long battery life. From time to time they’ve also been used in other devices like handheld gaming PCs. Now Chinese PC company SZBOX has launched a 14 inch Windows tablet with an AMD Mendocino processor […]
The post This 14 inch Windows tablet with AMD Mendocino sells for under $400 appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/this-14-inch-windows-tablet-with-amd-mendocino-sells-for-under-400/
NASA’s First-Ever Quantum Memory Made at Glenn Research Center
date: 2024-07-31, from: NASA breaking news
Bringing bright minds together has once again proven to be the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Researchers developed technology that will store information within a cloud of atoms. Together with Infleqtion Inc., researchers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland produced NASA’s first-ever quantum memory. This technology is NASA’s first step in […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasas-first-ever-quantum-memory-made-at-glenn-research-center/
‘Error’ in Microsoft’s DDoS defenses amplified 8-hour Azure outage
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A playbook full of strategies and someone fumbles the implementation
Do you have problems configuring Microsoft’s Defender? You might not be alone: Microsoft admitted that whatever it’s using for its defensive implementation exacerbated yesterday’s Azure instability.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/microsoft_ddos_azure/
Former Raiders coach Jon Gruden asking full Nevada Supreme Court to reconsider NFL emails lawsuit
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
Gruden is asking the entire Nevada Supreme Court to reconsider a decision by a three-justice panel to throw out a lawsuit he filed against the NFL over emails leaked to the media before he resigned as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders in 2021.
Why 49ers’ Juszczyk swallowed his pride and took a pay cut after 7th Pro Bowl
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
Fullback Kyle Juszczyk lived up to his contract but was asked to take less anyway by the 49ers.
AI causing burnout, lower productivity
date: 2024-07-31, from: OS News
Is machine learning, also known as “artificial intelligence”, really aiding workers and increasing productivity? A study by Upwork – which, as Baldur Bjarnason so helpfully points out, sells AI solutions and hence did not promote this study on its blog as it does with its other studies – reveals that this might not actually be the case. Nearly half (47%) of workers using AI say they have no idea how to achieve the productivity gains their employers expect. Over three in four (77%) say AI tools have decreased their productivity and added to their workload in at least one way. For example, survey respondents reported that they’re spending more time reviewing or moderating AI-generated content (39%), invest more time learning to use these tools (23%), and are now being asked to do more work (21%). Forty percent of employees feel their company is asking too much of them when it comes to AI. ↫ Upwork research This shouldn’t come as a surprise. We’re in a massive hype cycle when it comes to machine learning, and we’re being told it’s going to revolutionise work and lead to massive productivity gains. In practice, however, it seems these tools just can’t measure up to the hyped promises, and in fact is making people do less and work slower. There’s countless stories of managers being told by upper management to shove machine learning into everything, from products to employee workflows, whether it makes any sense to do so or not. I know from experience as a translator that machine learning can greatly improve my productivity, but the fact that there are certain types of tasks that benefit from ML, doesn’t mean every job suddenly thrives with it. I’m definitely starting to see some cracks in the hype cycle, and this study highlights a major one. I hope we can all come down to earth again, and really take a careful look at where ML makes sense and where it does not, instead of giving every worker a ChatGPT account and blanket demanding massive productivity gains that in no way match the reality on the office floor. And of course, despite demanding massive productivity increases, it’s not like workers are getting an equivalent increase in salary. We’ve seen massive productivity increases for decades now, while paychecks have not followed suit at all, and many people can actually buy less with their salary today than their parents could decades ago. Demands imposed by managers by introducing AI is only going to make this discrepancy even worse.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140365/ai-causing-burnout-lower-productivity/
SFPD and street cleaners take aggressive approach to clearing homeless encampments
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
In California, which is home to nearly a third of an estimated 650,000 homeless people in the U.S., Gov. Gavin Newsom last week ordered state agencies to begin removing tents and structures on state land.
Opinion: California crackdown on ‘junk fees’ overlooks credit card companies
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
Americans are drowning in credit card debt – mostly due to bank fees – and deserve a cheaper, fairer financial system.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-31, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Vance’s History Of Extremist Remarks On Family Doesn’t Stop At ‘Childless Cat Ladies’.
Labor Protections Are So Hot Right Now
date: 2024-07-31, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Temperatures are expected to hit 99 degrees Fahrenheit today in Chico, California, hampering efforts to quell the country’s largest wildfire • North Korean state media says over 4,000 homes have been flooded after heavy rainfall near the Chinese border • Strong winds and high temperatures are fanning wildfires in Greece, Croatia, and North Macedonia.
THE TOP FIVE
- Americans support extreme heat protections
Earlier this month, the Department of Labor proposed a new rule that would require employers to take steps — such as mandatory rest breaks and illness prevention plans — to protect workers from extreme heat. A new poll from Data for Progress suggests that the rule is broadly popular, with 90% of respondents either “strongly” or “somewhat” supporting the requirements.
The Biden Administration is framing the rule as part of a broader response to extreme weather during a summer when wildfires, tropical storms, and extreme heat are afflicting large swaths of the country. Texas Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat and an outspoken supporter of the rule, said in a statement, “Protecting workers from the heat unites voters across the aisle in a way that virtually nothing else does.”
Photo
by Mario Tama/Getty Images.
- Methane levels rise dangerously
Methane has long been recognized as a dangerous greenhouse gas, shorter-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but more than 80 times more potent in its first 20 years there. A new paper in Frontiers in Science finds that methane emissions are growing at an alarming rate. Annual emissions in the 2020s are clocking in at about 30 million tons more than during the previous decade. While the study acknowledges there is no single reason for this, the authors point to fossil fuel processing, livestock, and wetlands as contributing factors. This spells trouble for the climate, particularly over the next couple decades. “Reducing CO2 will protect our grandchildren — reducing methane will protect us now,” one of the study’s authors told The Guardian.
- Kairos Power begins construction on a new reactor
Kairos Power, a nuclear technology company founded in 2016, began construction on its Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the company announced on Tuesday. The reactor uses a modular design, allowing Kairos to manufacture it in Albuquerque before shipping it to the construction location, and employs fluoride salt cooling technology, a departure from the light water cooling that is the norm in the U.S. nuclear industry. In fact, the reactor was the first non-light water reactor to receive construction approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in more than 50 years when the agency issued it a permit last year. Kairos aims to have the reactor operational in 2027.
- New climate change accounting standards
The International Accounting Standards Board sets the norms for companies in 140 jurisdictions — including the U.S., Canada, the E.U., and Japan — on how to record and report financial data. On Wednesday, the Board proposed guidance for companies to show how climate change might affect their bottom lines. Both climate impacts (like floods and extreme heat) and targets (like net-zero strategies) have a bearing on a firm’s financial performance, the IASB said. Wednesday’s guidance, which now enters a consultation period, aims to provide a standardized approach to reporting these factors to investors.
The guidance follows a March announcement by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it will require companies to disclose climate change-related information to investors. As Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo wrote at the time, “The rule is also set to spark an explosion in the businesses of corporate emissions accounting and climate risk analysis,” making robust standards that much more important.
- Meet Maximo, the solar-panel-installing robot
On Tuesday, electric utility AES introduced a new hire: Maximo, a pickup truck-sized robot charged with installing panels at the company’s solar farms. AES says Maximo can install these heavy panels at twice the rate a human could, using artificial intelligence to line them up. The company plans to employ Maximo first on its solar-plus-battery project in Kern County, California, later this year.
If Maximo proves effective, he may get some siblings. Large solar farms can take 12 to 18 months to build and often require workers to operate in extreme heat. Robots could reduce risks to workers and help companies accelerate their construction timelines. The flipside? The number of solar workers in the U.S. is expected to double by 2033, and these workers may find some stiff competition from Maximo.
Image
courtesy of AES.
THE KICKER
Add exploding Siberian craters to the list of climate-change-related hazards. Ongoing research suggests that longer thawing periods are allowing buildups of gas to escape (or detonate) from beneath the permafrost.
https://heatmap.news/climate/heat-protections-kairos-methane
EU AI Act still in infancy, but those with ‘intelligent’ HR apps better watch out
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Users and developers warned to prepare for what’s coming with human resources a focus in ‘high-risk’ category
As the world’s first legislation specifically targeting AI comes into law on Thursday, developers of the technology, those integrating it into their software products, and those deploying it are trying to figure out what it means and how they need to respond.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/eu_ai_act/
Why ‘You’re Being Weird’ Works So Well
date: 2024-07-31, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
The Republican Party stopped trying to appeal to normies a long time ago.
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/why-youre-being-weird-works-so-well
Evacuated animals headed home following Park Fire relocation
date: 2024-07-31, from: San Jose Mercury News
For Paradise ridge residents, the devastating and raging Camp Fire will never be forgotten. Park Fire brought back all those memories.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/31/evacuated-animals-headed-home-following-park-fire-relocation/
LAUSD ordered to hand over records in long-running funding dispute with archdiocese
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The LAist
The district cut federal Title I funding by 90% for low-income students in Catholic schools.
https://laist.com/news/education/lausd-ordered-to-hand-over-records-dispute-with-archdiocese
New rent hike limits largely unchanged for LA and OC residents. How to watchdog an illegal increase
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The LAist
Rent hike limits under a key state law stayed steady for many SoCal renters in 2024. Here’s what to do if your landlord demands more.
Komodo Dragons Have Iron-Coated Teeth, Study Finds
date: 2024-07-31, from: Smithsonian Magazine
New research provides the first evidence of the adaptation in a carnivorous reptile, and it might hold clues to understanding the teeth of dinosaurs
Gary Horton | COC’s Dynamism Paused for Review
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Signal
Signal readers are well informed of the machinations of the existing College of the Canyons governing trustees. After a four-week public flaying of COC’s mega-builder Dianne Van Hook, this scorched-earth […]
The post Gary Horton | COC’s Dynamism Paused for Review appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/gary-horton-cocs-dynamism-paused-for-review/
It’s decision day for the Federal Reserve
date: 2024-07-31, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Central bankers can adjust something called the Fed Funds interest rate in a way that makes borrowing more or less expensive in their campaign to bring inflation down to a healthy rate. But it’s like a lot of things in life: Timing is everything. We’ll discuss what to expect. Also on the show: Home purchase deals fell apart in June, and Roblox, the online game platform for kids, is grappling with a predator problem.
Is Princess Leia’s ‘Star Wars’ Bikini the Most Controversial Costume in Sci-Fi History?
date: 2024-07-31, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A version of the gold outfit worn by Carrie Fisher on the set of “Return of the Jedi” fetched $175,000 at auction
It is 60 years since a US spacecraft first took a close-up of the Moon
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ranger 7 finally gets its shot. Five years later, humans would follow
It has been 60 years since a spacecraft snapped the USA’s first close-up images of the lunar surface, a mere five years before astronauts set foot on the Moon. Ranger 7 finally achieved the feat in July 1964.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/ranger_7_60_years/
Logitech has an idea for a “forever mouse” that requires a subscription
date: 2024-07-31, from: OS News
Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber talked about someting called the “forever mouse”, which would be, as the name implies, a mouse that customers could use for a very long time. While you may think this would mean an incredibly well-built mouse, or one that can be easily repaired, which Logitech already makes somewhat possible through a partnership with iFixIt, another option the company is thinking about is a subscription model. Yes. Faber said subscription software updates would mean that people wouldn’t need to worry about their mouse. The business model is similar to what Logitech already does with video conferencing services (Logitech’s B2B business includes Logitech Select, a subscription service offering things like apps, 24/7 support, and advanced RMA). Having to pay a regular fee for full use of a peripheral could deter customers, though. HP is trying a similar idea with rentable printers that require a monthly fee. The printers differ from the idea of the forever mouse in that the HP hardware belongs to HP, not the user. However, concerns around tracking and the addition of ongoing expenses are similar. ↫ Scharon Harding at Ars Technica Now, buying a mouse whose terrible software requires subscription models would still be a choice you can avoid, but my main immediately conjured up a far darker scenario. PC makers have a long history of adding crapware to their machines in return for payments from the producers of said crapware. I can totally see what’s going to happen next. You buy a brand new laptop, unbox it at home, and turn it on. Before you know it, a dialog pops up right after he crappy Windows out-of-box experience asking you to subscribe to your laptop’s touchpad software in order to unlock its more advanced features like gestures. But why stop there? The keyboard of that new laptop has RGB backlighting, but if you want to change its settings, you’re going to have to pay for another subscription. Your laptop’s display has additional features and modes for specific types of content and more settings sliders, but you’ll have to pay up to unlock them. And so on. I’m not saying this will happen, but I’m also not saying it won’t. I’m sorry for birthing this idea into the world.
ByteDance’s Singapore workers suffer mass food poisoning
date: 2024-07-31, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Dozens of employees at ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, have been hospitalized after what seems to be a food poisoning outbreak. Then, heavy rains have caused deadly landslides In the Indian state of Kerala, known for its tea plantations. And South Africa is the latest country to welcome remote workers known as digital nomads, but in Cape Town, locals are unhappy.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-31, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
How Hungary's Orbán uses control of the media to escape scrutiny and keep the public in the dark.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-31, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The climate is changing so fast that we haven’t seen how bad extreme weather could get.
OpenTofu hits version 1.8 with more crowd-pleasing features
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Open source TerraForm rival introduces a new file extension so users can ‘keep older code around for compatibility’
Terraform alternative OpenTofu has reached version 1.8 amid further signs of fragmentation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/opentofu_version_18/
Rick Barker | Who Is Checking?
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Signal
In re: Sandy Cassidy, “A New Low in California,” letters, June 30. While I agree with where Ms. Cassidy is coming from, I would point out a flaw in her […]
The post Rick Barker | Who Is Checking? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/rick-barker-who-is-checking/
Arthur Saginian | Obama’s Third Term
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Signal
If anyone thinks that President Joe Biden is responsible for anything beyond having his name placed on policies and positions … hmm. I once Googled, “Who is pulling President Biden’s […]
The post Arthur Saginian | Obama’s Third Term appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/arthur-saginian-obamas-third-term/
Dan Walters | California’s Town Creation Trend Stalls
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Signal
When California emerged from its colonial beginnings nearly two centuries ago and began coalescing into a distinct society, its towns and villages tended to be located either on navigable rivers, […]
The post Dan Walters | California’s Town Creation Trend Stalls appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/dan-walters-californias-town-creation-trend-stalls/
Compared to other distros, Vanilla OS 2 ‘Orchid’ is rewriting how Linux works
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
In front, unmodified GNOME; underneath, it’s all a bit strange, but purposefully so
Vanilla OS is an experimental distro testing out new implementations of immutability, cross-distro packaging, A/B failover, and more.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/vanilla_os_friendly_radical/
Article Spotlight: Bat evolution study supports gliding-to-flying hypothesis
date: 2024-07-31, from: PeerJ blog
A Climate Answer to Project 2025
date: 2024-07-31, from: Heatmap News
It has been a strange year for the climate left’s relationship with the word “if.” Over the past several months, some activists and advocates had begun to use the word with me in such a way that it started to sound an awful lot like “when.” If Donald Trump is reelected… If Republicans return to power…
The tone wasn’t hypothetical; it was resigned.
In the past week and a half, however, “if” has gotten its mojo back. Early this morning, the climate policy group Evergreen Action released what it’s calling the “Evergreen Action Plan 2.0” — essentially, a green wishlist for an incoming Democratic administration. Had the document been published a month earlier, after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, it might have come across as vaguely farfetched; now, judging by the polls, there’s a real chance that some of its proposals could actually become law in 2025.
Started by former staffers of Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign, Evergreen Action has advised Kamala Harris on her climate policies before. The group also boasts that the Biden-Harris administration has made progress on 85% of the policy recommendations issued in its original 2020 Evergreen Action Plan. Although Evergreen Action doesn’t hold the same sway over a future Harris administration as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 does over Donald Trump (to his apparently increasing concern), it does seem pretty safe to say that Evergreen Action 2.0 has the potential to be an enormously influential document in a Harris White House.
So — what’s in it?
Unsurprisingly, the Evergreen Action Plan 2.0 aims to extend the gains made by Biden’s administration and the Inflation Reduction Act — the words “continue” or “continuing” are used 43 times in the document, “further” 38 times, and “expand” or “expanded” 28 times. The plan is broken into seven core strategies that are broadly framed around climate, jobs, and justice, including “Cementing a Clean and Effective National Grid,” “Promoting Healthy Communities With a Modern Transportation System,” “Achieving Healthy Neighborhoods With Zero-Emission Homes and Commercial Buildings,” and “Supporting All Communities to Build a Thriving Clean Energy Economy and Move Away From Fossil Fuels.”
Within these sections, stand-out proposals include:
- Setting a first-of-its-kind federal clean energy standard to fully decarbonize the grid by 2035.
- Passing a “national grid law creating an inter-regional transfer capacity and shared grid management entity” in order to “align federal authority to manage and site necessary transmission, and … ensure full uptake of valuable IRA incentives for clean energy.”
- Finalizing carbon limits for existing gas plants “no later than the end of 2025” and ideally by December 2024.
- Issuing an industrial decarbonization Day 1 Executive Order that commits the country to a “rapid decarbonization strategy for each industrial category.” Such an order could help “prioritize innovation projects … leading to the development of regional hubs for industrial decarbonization,” spur the EPA to begin a “standard-setting process to tackle industrial climate pollution,” and encourage the agency to further use grants, Superfund, and planning and permitting programs to “accelerate the deployment of clean industrial technologies and repurposing and clean up legacy industrial sites.”
- Joining an international “carbon club” via legislation that “adds duties or fees to imports of similar goods produced using high-carbon methods in other countries.”
- Focusing on building out a zero-emissions freight sector by issuing “clear standards to help decarbonize sources like trains, freight facilities and ports, off-road vehicles, ships, and planes.”
- Adopting a “climate test” to guide all federal energy extraction decisions; cutting subsidies and statutory loopholes for fossil fuel companies; ending exports of liquefied natural gas; withdrawing East Coast waters from oil drilling, and more.
The most radical section of the Evergreen Action Plan 2.0, however, comes at the end. Acknowledging both the volatility of our national politics and the reality that it will take longer than four more years to put the U.S. on the right course of decarbonization, the plan extends the definition of “climate policy” to include proposals intended to shore up public and democratic institutions. Some of those include:
- Abolishing the filibuster rule that “prevents the Senate from acting on climate and other policies the public overwhelmingly supports.”
- Repealing the “Congressional Review Act,” which has been used to “block needed climate standards and other common-sense public health and safety measures.”
- Ensuring the Supreme Court is “governed by a binding ethics code,” and potentially “adding justices to the Court, adding term limits, and exploring appropriate statutory guidance to limit or reverse the Court’s recent spate of radical attacks on environmental laws.”
- Working with Congress to restore the Chevron doctrine.
- Pursuing other democratic reforms “including restoration of the Voting Rights Act and federal legislative remedies for improper gerrymandering, along with long-term efforts to reform or abolish the Electoral College, would further shake loose fossil fuel control of Congress and enable equitable policymaking nationwide.”
Of course, the Evergreen Action Plan 2.0 is nothing more than a wishlist — it is far from a binding document — and there are still a whole lot of “ifs” standing between it and implementation.
But for the climate left, “if” is a start.
https://heatmap.news/climate/evergreen-action-harris-plan
The Savvy Senior | How Extreme Heat Affects Seniors: Tips to Stay Safe
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Signal
Dear Savvy Senior, I work for a county health department and every summer we’re seeing more and more seniors get sick and even die from heat-related illiness. Can you write […]
The post The Savvy Senior | How Extreme Heat Affects Seniors: Tips to Stay Safe appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/the-savvy-senior-how-extreme-heat-affects-seniors-tips-to-stay-safe/
UK Electoral Commission slapped for basic cybersecurity fails
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It took 13 months to notice 40 million voters’ data was compromised
The UK’s Electoral Commission has received a formal slap on the wrist for a litany of security failings that led to the theft of personal data belonging to around 40 million voters.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/uk_electoral_commission_ico/
Sergey Durmanov closed issue #146: issue with system.val(float, constant) at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
Issue with system.val for float constant
MODULE TestCast;
IMPORT SYSTEM;
CONST pi = UNSIGNED64(0x40091EB851EB851F); (*3.14*)
PROCEDURE Do*;
VAR d: RECORD f: FLOAT64; bits { OFFSET=0 }: SET64 END;
BEGIN
d.f := 3.14;
TRACE( d.f, d.bits);
d.bits := SET64(pi);
TRACE( d.f, d.bits);
VAR u64 := pi: UNSIGNED64;
d.f := SYSTEM.VAL(FLOAT64, u64); (* OK *)
TRACE( d.f, d.bits);
d.f := SYSTEM.VAL(FLOAT64, pi); (* BAD *)
TRACE( d.f, d.bits);
END Do;
END TestCast.
System.Free TestCast ~
TestCast.Do ~https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/146
Microsoft Dynamics 365 called out for worker surveillance
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Redmond disputes some claims made in Cracked Labs report
Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides “field service management” that allows customers to monitor mobile service workers through smartphone apps – allegedly to the detriment of their autonomy and dignity.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/microsoft_dynamics_365_surveillance/
Welcome To The Crypto Election
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Lever News
The crypto industry is spending big money on the election to sway policy in their favor — and this is what they want.
https://www.levernews.com/welcome-to-the-crypto-election/
Embrace Your Personal Style
date: 2024-07-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Whether industrial, beachy, or cottagecore, embrace your personal style.
The post Embrace Your Personal Style appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/31/embrace-your-personal-style/
Today in SCV History (July 31)
date: 2024-07-31, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1939 – Recording artist, music promoter and longtime Sand Canyon resident Cliffie Stone marries singer Dorothy Darling in Hollywood [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-31/
China stops worrying about lack of GPUs and learns to love the supercomputer
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The workaround is going to be inevitable in the future anyway, say Chinese boffins
Leading Chinese computer scientists have suggested the nation can build large language models without imported GPUs – by using supercomputers instead.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/china_supercomputer_not_gpu_plan/
curl 8.9.1
date: 2024-07-31, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
Some annoying regressions triggered this. Numbers the 259th release0 changes7 days (total: 9,630)28 bugfixes (total: 10,559)43 commits (total: 32,748)0 new public libcurl function (total: 94)0 new curl_easy_setopt() option (total: 306)0 new curl command line option (total: 263)19 contributors, 5 new (total: 3,211)10 authors, 1 new (total: 1,288)1 security fixes (total: 158) Download the new curl … Continue reading curl 8.9.1
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/07/31/curl-8-9-1/
Canceled meeting between US and UAE throws fresh scrutiny on Microsoft-G42 deal
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
All a simple misunderstanding, we’re told
A meeting intended to allay fears that Emirati AI firm G42’s deal with Microsoft could result in China accessing advanced US technology was reportedly cancelled by the UAE ambassador to the US.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/uae_g42_microsoft_us/
Back, and in reasonable working order …
date: 2024-07-31, from: Logic Matters blog
With huge thanks to the terrific (and uniformly kind) medical staff at the much admired Royal Papworth Hospital, here I am back home, after needed but non-urgent open-heart surgery, complete with a patched ascending aorta and a new heart valve. Some residual aching and annoying post-operative insomnia, but nine days after surgery I was already […]
The post Back, and in reasonable working order … appeared first on Logic Matters.
https://www.logicmatters.net/2024/07/31/in-more-than-reasonable-working-order/
An ‘Undue Burden’
date: 2024-07-31, from: VOA News USA
Prague/Washington — Portraits of Alsu Kurmasheva are scattered throughout the Prague apartment she shares with her husband and two daughters. But the journalist has not set foot here in more than a year.
Perhaps the most striking of the paintings, all of which were done by her husband, Pavel Butorin, is the one that remains unfinished, perched on an easel in the living room. Butorin started it after Kurmasheva, 47, was jailed in Russia in October 2023 on charges that are widely viewed as baseless and politically motivated.
Painting, Butorin says, is just one way he has tried to cope with his wife’s absence.
“Even to say, ‘We miss Alsu,’ doesn’t quite convey the emotion that we go through,” Butorin told VOA at the family’s home. “I get up, and the first thing in my head is Alsu. I’ve just been really unable to escape this.”
With their lives intertwined — from raising their daughters Bibi and Miriam, to working at the same news network — he is never far from reminders that his wife is 1,700 miles away, in a prison in the city of Kazan.
“In the evening, we sit at this table. We see an empty chair,” Butorin said, his eyes fixed on the seat at the large, wooden table, as if he were willing his wife to appear. “It signifies a broken family, a family torn apart by an unjust, merciless, heartless regime.”
When Butorin spoke with VOA in Prague in July, his wife — who has dual U.S.-Russian citizenship — was approaching nine months in custody. Less than one week later, on July 19, she was convicted behind closed doors of spreading what Moscow says is false information about its military and sentenced to six and a half years in prison.
On the same day, about 450 miles east, in the city of Yekaterinburg, Russia, a secret Russian court convicted American journalist Evan Gershkovich to 16 years behind bars.
The U.S. government has called for the immediate release of both journalists. Press freedom groups, meanwhile, have condemned the trials as shams and said the cases underscore how Moscow’s war in Ukraine means American journalists are at a heightened risk of being used as political pawns by the Kremlin.
Kurmasheva and Gershkovich count themselves among the 22 journalists jailed in Russia at the end of 2023, more than half of whom are foreign nationals, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry and embassy in Washington did not reply to VOA’s emails requesting comment for this story.
Despite the international condemnation, Butorin has largely shouldered the responsibility of advocating for Kurmasheva’s release by himself. For months, he has found himself balancing the roles of father, journalist and advocate as he shuttles between Prague and Washington.
Hostage experts say his experience is common for American families who have a loved one held hostage or unjustly detained.
A decade ago, Diane Foley was one of them as she tried to navigate complex bureaucracy and conflicting information when Islamic State militants kidnapped and later killed her son, American journalist James Foley, in 2014.
Her experience led her to establish the Foley Foundation, which supports families and advocates for Americans unjustly jailed abroad.
“A lot of families don’t have any idea how to contact media or get their story heard, how to contact their congressman, how to get their voices heard through the bureaucracy. So we seek to help them navigate that,” she told VOA during one of her regular trips to Washington.
The U.S. government has made progress in these policy areas, she says. But so much more still needs to be done.
A longtime journalist at the Tatar-Bashkir Service of VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, or RFE/RL, Kurmasheva had planned only a brief visit to Russia to care for her ailing mother.
Her desk at work remains relatively untouched. Business cards are still spread out on the table. And the calendar — still set to May 2023 — shows where she underlined in black ink the dates of the ill-fated trip.
In the weeks following Kurmasheva’s jailing, her colleague Ramazan Alpaut said he still turned around at his desk, half-expecting to see Kurmasheva sitting behind him.
“We miss her here as a person and as a colleague,” he told VOA.
Kurmasheva’s arrest came as a shock for the team, and a warning that travel to see family in Russia is no longer an option.
That fact, says Tatar-Bashkir Service chief Rim Gilfanov, crystallizes an already difficult reality for exiled Russians grappling with the fallout of the war in Ukraine.
But more immediately, he says, he just wants a key member of his team back.
“Alsu is our veteran journalist,” Gilfanov says. “The main quality that comes to my mind when I think of Alsu is constant eagerness and preparedness to help everyone.”
Authoritarian regimes have long targeted RFE/RL and its journalists. Russia has designated the outlet a foreign agent and an undesirable organization. And Kurmasheva is one of four of its journalists currently in prison, including two in Belarus and one in Russian-occupied Crimea.
“It’s a grim reality that starts to set in that we are targets,” RFE/RL president and CEO Stephen Capus told VOA. “They’re trying to make the pursuit of journalism a crime.”
“They are taking me to the investigative committee right now.”
Butorin was at work when he got this distressed voice message from his wife. It was October 18, 2023, and agents dressed in black and wearing balaclavas had arrived at the home of Kurmasheva’s mother to arrest the journalist.
The next time he heard his wife’s voice was in April 2024, when she spoke to reporters from a glass defendant’s box about the poor prison conditions she was experiencing.
“We love to hear her voice. But it’s also painful to see her in a glass cage,” Butorin said.
Butorin, director of Current Time TV, a Russian-language television and digital network led by RFE/RL in partnership with VOA, was at work when he listened to the message.
His office is now part shrine, filled with photos and posters and newspaper articles about his wife. On the whiteboard, Free Alsu magnets depict a cartoon of her face. Butorin drew the image for Kurmasheva’s Gmail profile picture, he said. Now it’s on magnets and buttons — like the one pinned to the lapel of his dark blue suit jacket this July afternoon.
In a corner, next to a Lego diorama of the set of the TV show “Seinfeld” — a series the family loves to watch — is a stack of copies of No to War. The book, which Kurmasheva helped edit, features stories of 40 Russians who opposed Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Pro-Russian media have reported that Kurmasheva’s arrest is linked to that book. But to date, authorities have failed to publicly provide evidence to substantiate its charges against her.
“It’s a harmless little book,” Butorin said. “It just reminds me how incredibly arbitrary this detention is.”
Butorin has spent an unknown number of hours thinking about his wife’s captors. Are they evil personified? Or, à la Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil, are they just bureaucrats “thoughtlessly” doing their jobs?
The answer likely lies somewhere in the middle, he recognizes, but Butorin still finds himself wondering whether the judges and prosecutors once listened to her deep voice on the radio, back when she hosted a show for audiences in Tatarstan.
Kurmasheva’s long absence has been marked by bittersweet birthdays and holidays, more media interviews than Butorin can count, and five trips to Washington to press lawmakers and U.S. government officials to do more for his wife.
In his office, just a few days before he departs for one of those trips, he admits that, like many journalists, he prefers to be behind the camera instead of being the story.
But that preference for privacy is no more.
“I fear if I don’t keep this story in the news, and if I don’t keep Alsu’s story alive, that U.S. policymakers, members of the administration, of any administration, will just start forgetting about her,” Butorin said. “I see a problem there.”
Butorin, who is also a U.S. citizen, is quick to voice appreciation for the support officials and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have offered. It turns out that press freedom is one of the few issues that Democrats and Republicans can agree on.
But the trips to the American capital are also stained with frustration.
Requests to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been denied, Butorin said. (Blinken also serves as an ex officio member of the board that oversees the entities under the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including RFE/RL and VOA.) To date, the highest-ranking official Butorin has met with is Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter.
Feeling optimistic can be difficult, Butorin said, when, in meeting after meeting, the same officials regurgitate the same talking points and offer little concrete information.
“Sometimes I walk out with a sense of desperation, and sometimes I find these meetings very unsatisfactory,” he says.
It’s a problem familiar to Diane Foley.
When Islamic State militants kidnapped her son in 2012, she says, the process was even more opaque.
“Our government doesn’t seem to trust these desperate families, who want their loved one back, with what information they have,” she said.
To Foley, “an undue burden” is still placed on families to fight for the U.S. government’s attention.
“It’s all on the family in the U.S. That hasn’t changed a whole lot,” she said. “It was all on me, all on our family, when Jim was taken — all on us to figure it out. And now it’s still all on the family.”
Foley and her foundation are helping Butorin navigate the process, including by working behind the scenes to push the State Department.
In that time, she has grown close to the couple’s daughters. “When I see Bibi and Miriam, God bless them. They shouldn’t, as teenagers, be dealing with this,” she said.
In late July, she and Butorin took part in a Foley Foundation event in the Capitol Building, to mark the release of its annual report on U.S. hostage policy. The foundation counts 46 Americans held hostage or unjustly detained around the world.
At the panel, Dustin Stewart, the deputy special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, spoke about the support the government offers.
Butorin rebutted that because Kurmasheva has not been declared wrongfully detained, his family is not receiving any of that support.
At the panel, Stewart told VOA, “On the process, I’ll just say, it’s ongoing.”
The designation opens up extra resources and support for families and commits the government to secure their release.
It is the biggest difference between the cases of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich, the other American journalist jailed in Russia. In the latter case, the United States declared The Wall Street Journal reporter wrongfully detained within two weeks of his arrest. Press freedom groups have criticized the State Department for not declaring Kurmasheva wrongfully detained, too.
When pressed as to if and when Kurmasheva will be designated, the State Department has on several occasions sent VOA identical or nearly identical statements that say the Department “continuously reviews the circumstances” of Americans detained overseas to determine if they are wrongful. Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, has denied VOA’s multiple requests for an interview about Kurmasheva’s case.
To cope, Butorin says compartmentalizing has become a necessary strategy.
“It may come across as a little disingenuous, but you do have to treat all these little areas of your life as projects,” he said. Those “projects” range from calling on Blinken to declare his wife wrongfully detained to dealing with the “Kafkaesque bureaucracy” of the Czech postal system that prevents him from collecting his wife’s mail.
In public events and interviews, Butorin leans toward the stoic, which he notes is unlike Kurmasheva, who can go into a room and “walk away with five or 10 new friends.”
“Some people may think that I lack emotion,” Butorin said. “But it’s all a front. I’m hurting on the inside.”
It’s when Butorin is by himself that he says he feels the most pain. “When the girls go to bed, I usually go to bed soon, too,” Butorin said, “so I’m not left alone with my thoughts.”
And when he is with the couple’s daughters, there are glimpses of the joy and the humor the family still manages to share.
After an interview in Washington, Butorin excitedly showed videos from an Olivia Rodrigo concert he attended with his daughters. Nearby, Bibi, 16, and Miriam, 12, were writing postcards to friends in Prague. Butorin made fun of one of them for how she wrote the number seven.
“You cross your sevens? That’s un-American,” he said with a smirk, provoking laughter from both girls.
When Kurmasheva eventually returns, Butorin quipped that she will find their daughters taller than she is. “But more importantly, she will see very strong young women who have had to grow up really quickly,” he said.
Sometimes, when Butorin sees videos or photos of his wife in court, he finds himself wondering whether she’s still the same person. In any case, he and his daughters aren’t.
“It’s hurting my family a lot that my mom isn’t here with us,” Bibi said. “It’s been so long already, and we just don’t want to get used to our mom not being here, because we’re getting close to that, unfortunately.”
Back in the family’s Prague apartment, the teenager alternates between talking about Taylor Swift and calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release her mother. On the wall opposite her, an abstract painting by her father depicts Kurmasheva pregnant with Bibi.
“At the dinner table, I always feel like there’s something missing because she’s not there. And it’s weird having to cook for one less person. And it’s weird being in the car with one less person. And it’s weird, because we were always a family of four. And now there’s one of us missing,” Bibi said.
Butorin doesn’t like to dwell on the past, and by that he primarily means Kurmasheva’s decision to travel to Russia in the first place. They were both well aware of the risks, he said.
She had traveled there without incident in 2022. But the day she left in 2023, he recalls Kurmasheva saying to him, “Tell me everything will be OK.”
Some days, Butorin wishes he hadn’t let her go. But then, Kurmasheva wouldn’t be Kurmasheva if she hadn’t gone.
“She is known as a selfless friend,” Butorin said. “That empathy and her responsibility as a devoted daughter, that was what really drove her to go to Russia.”
Bibi agreed. “She pays attention to every single person around her, and she’s really willing to give up so many things about her and her life to help others.”
As the family waits for any progress in her case, Butorin channels his wife’s unselfishness and his daughters’ resiliency.
“I don’t have the luxury of just falling apart. Honestly, that’s not an option for me,” Butorin said. “It’s just something that we have to live with. I think I’m a fairly unremarkable person. It’s just something that a father — any father — I think would do.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/russia_us_journalist_alsu_kurmasheva_jailed/7719832.html
The Lens and Research Strategies Australia Partner to Support Australian Government Innovation
date: 2024-07-31, from: Lens.org news
The Lens and Research Strategies Australia (RSA) are thrilled to announce a strategic partnership, culminating in becoming an approved provider to government of research performance data and analytical services. Dr Richard Jefferson, CEO of Cambia (doing business as The Lens), expressed his enthusiasm for the collaboration: “This partnership signifies a major step forward in our …
Microsoft remains massively profitable, investors await AI payoff
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Everyone loves Copilot, execs claim – and hope they can say the same for Copilot Plus PCs
Microsoft has tried to convince investors that AI is paying off, but they appear unimpressed by news of customer adoption and revenue revealed Tuesday in the software giant’s Q4 and full-year results for 2024.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/microsoft_q4_2024/
Peter Easthope commented on issue #141 at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
@fnec.ece · 4 weeks ago
Hi, I have corrected the problem for oberon subsystem in the MyUnix.KbdMouse.Mod file. Could you test after HotKeys disabled?
Best regards,
MyUnix.KbdMouse.Mod
Today, compiled MyUnix.KbdMouse.Mod in repository A2, Linux64.
Now, after <F12>, the <F1> key sets the * marker. The <delete> key remains inactive.
Auto switching keyboard functionality according to focus would be ideal. Oberon functionality when focus is in Oberon; A2 functionality when focus is in A2. Prior to release 10272 that worked.
Thanks, … P.L.
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/141#note_194106
Ridesharing makes new and unique mess in Japan’s taxi industry
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Minister accuses cab drivers of gaming algos to score more lucrative fares
Taxi drivers are gaming ride-sharing algorithms in Japan to find more and more lucrative fares, according to digital transformation minister Taro Kono.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/ride_hailing_japan_accusation/
Fiesta 2024 Listings
date: 2024-07-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Make plans to celebrate 100 years of S.B. Fiesta with authentic food, music, and dance with open-air mercados, historic tours, and curated art exhibitions in S.B.’s most comprehensive guide to Old Spanish Days Fiesta 2024.
The post Fiesta 2024 Listings appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/30/fiesta-2024-listings/
Celebrating 100 Years of Fiesta
date: 2024-07-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A comprehensive guide to the history, happenings, and who’s who of Santa Barbara’s century-old celebration.
The post Celebrating 100 Years of Fiesta appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/30/celebrating-100-years-of-fiesta/
One Hundred Years of Fiesta
date: 2024-07-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Unraveling the origins of Santa Barbara’s iconic celebration.
The post One Hundred Years of Fiesta appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/30/one-hundred-years-of-fiesta/
In Memoriam Kathy Cota 1941-2024
date: 2024-07-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
At this time of year, the city starts to buzz with the thought of the weeklong party called Fiesta. It
The post In Memoriam </br > Kathy Cota </br> 1941-2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/30/in-memoriam-kathy-cota-1941-2024/
Get to Know 2024’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta Luminaries
date: 2024-07-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Get to know more about this year’s El Presidente, Spirit of Fiesta, Jr. Spirit of Fiesta, and Saint Barbara.
The post Get to Know 2024’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta Luminaries appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/30/get-to-know-2024s-old-spanish-days-fiesta-luminaries/
Our Readers Remember
date: 2024-07-31, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Fiesta celebrations never forgotten.
The post Our Readers Remember appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/30/our-readers-remember/
Back-to-School For SCV Students Nears
date: 2024-07-31, from: SCV New (TV Station)
For students in the Santa Clarita Valley summer is fading fast as back-to-school dates loom. High school and junior high students in the SCV will return to school on Monday, aug. 12. Elementary schools in the four SCV school districts will spread out first day of school dates from Aug. 12-
https://scvnews.com/back-to-school-for-scv-students-nears/
Aug. 3: Saugus High Football Cornhole Fundraiser
date: 2024-07-31, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Saugus High School Gridiron Booster Club will host a Saugus High Foortball Cornhole Tournament Fundraiser at Lucky Luke Brewery on Saturday, Aug. 3.
https://scvnews.com/aug-3-saugus-high-football-cornhole-fundraiser/
Barger Honors West Ranch Team for Animal Adoption Efforts
date: 2024-07-31, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger honored the West Ranch High School cross country team for the “Run with Dogs” program at the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors meeting held Tuesday, July 30.
https://scvnews.com/barger-honors-west-ranch-team-for-animal-adoption-efforts/
Asia’s regional internet registry APNIC names new director general
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
ICANN’s local boss Jia Rong Low gets the gig – and a challenging to-do list
The Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) has named its new director general: ICANN regional managing director and vice president Jia Rong Low.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/apnic_director_general_appointment/
Income gap between Black and white US residents shrank between Gen Xers and millennials, study says
date: 2024-07-31, from: VOA News USA
AMD sold $1B of Instinct GPUs last quarter, driving triple-digit datacenter growth
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Which is nice, but way behind Nvidia, while other segments are soft and supply-chain pain persists
AMD has told investors that its Instinct MI300X GPUs – the chip designer’s alternative to Nvidia AI accelerator hardware – landed over $1 billion of datacenter revenues in Q2 this year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/amd_q2_2024/
DigiCert gives unlucky folks 24 hours to replace doomed certificates after code blunder
date: 2024-07-31, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
For the want of an underscore
DigiCert has given some unlucky customers 24 hours to replace their SSL/TLS security certificates it previously issued them – due to a five-year-old blunder in its backend software.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/digicert_certificates_revoked/
US carries out strike in Iraq as regional tensions worsen
date: 2024-07-31, from: VOA News USA
BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday carried out a strike in Iraq in self-defense, U.S. officials told Reuters, as regional tensions rose after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut that Israel said killed Hezbollah’s most senior commander.
Iraqi police and medical sources said the strike inside a base south of Baghdad used by Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) killed four members of the group, which includes several Iran-aligned armed militias, and wounded four others.
In a statement after the blasts, the Popular Mobilization Forces made no accusation about who was responsible.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States carried out an airstrike in Musayib, in Babil province, but did not provide more details on the location.
The officials added that the strike targeted militants that the U.S. deemed were looking to launch drones and posed a threat to U.S. and coalition forces.
The officials did not comment on any casualties.
“This action underscores the United States’ commitment to the safety and security of our personnel,” one of the officials said.
Multiple rockets were launched last week toward Iraq’s Ain al-Asad airbase housing U.S.-led forces, U.S. and Iraqi sources said, with no damage or casualties reported. U.S. officials said none of the rockets hit the base.
Tuesday’s action was the first known U.S. strike in Iraq since February, when the U.S. military launched airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against more than 85 targets linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Iran-aligned militias.
The 150,000-strong Popular Mobilization Forces, a state-sanctioned grouping of Iraqi paramilitaries, is dominated by heavily armed and battle-hardened groups loyal to Iran and with close ties to its Revolutionary Guards.
Iraq, a rare ally of both the U.S. and Iran that hosts 2,500 U.S. troops and has Iran-backed militias linked to its security forces, has witnessed escalating tit-for-tat attacks since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October.
Iraq wants troops from the U.S.-led military coalition to begin withdrawing in September and to formally end the coalition’s work by September 2025, Iraqi sources have said, with some U.S. forces likely to remain in a newly negotiated advisory capacity.
The issue is highly politicized, with mainly Iran-aligned Iraqi political factions looking to show that they are again pushing out the country’s one-time occupier, while U.S. officials want to avoid giving Iran and its allies a win.
U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, toppled former leader Saddam Hussein and then withdrew in 2011, only to return in 2014 to fight Islamic State at the head of a coalition.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-carries-out-strike-in-iraq-as-regional-tensions-worsen/7719828.html
County officials reaffirm ‘care-first’ strategy for homeless crisis
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Signal
L.A. County officials reaffirmed at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting that a “care-first” approach will be used when dealing with homeless encampments. Questions had been raised by cities across the […]
The post County officials reaffirm ‘care-first’ strategy for homeless crisis appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/county-officials-reaffirm-care-first-strategy-for-homeless-crisis/
Community responds to help family of residents killed in crash
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Signal
Support has poured in from all over for a Santa Clarita Valley family that tragically lost two of its members in a fatal crash in Arizona earlier this month. Heather […]
The post Community responds to help family of residents killed in crash appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/community-responds-to-help-family-of-residents-killed-in-crash/
US needs to do more to compete with China, says official
date: 2024-07-31, from: VOA News USA
washington — U.S. State Department Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell says that whether it is exploring for rare earth minerals, establishing military bases in Africa, or building more ships and submarines, the United States needs to do more to compete with China.
Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, Campbell called China the “defining geopolitical challenge confronting modern American diplomacy.”
“We need to do more, and we have to contest Chinese actions, not only in terms of their forward basing strategy, but their desire to go after Africa’s rare earths that will be critical for our industrial and technological capabilities,” he said.
Campbell added that China has presented U.S. diplomats with a global challenge that extends from economics and defense to information and human rights.
Bipartisan desire to compete
Lawmakers from across the political divide who attended the hearing agreed with that assessment and the need to compete with China’s influence.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio from Florida expressed concern about China being the “world’s leading shipbuilder” and “undisputed king of basic industrial inputs.”
Campbell agreed with the senator, noting that the difference between the two countries was “deeply concerning,” and that the U.S. “has to do better” in shipbuilding.
He also said the United States submarine program needs more attention.
In his opening remarks, Ben Cardin, a Democratic senator and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the United States needs to offer the Global South an alternative to China.
“In order to address these challenges, the United States should not only be investing in our military, but also our diplomatic and economic development tools,” Cardin said.
Technology and critical rare earth minerals used to make everything from semiconductor chips to batteries in electric vehicles was an area of particular focus during the hearing, given China’s dominance.
In 2022, China was the largest source of rare earth mineral imports for the United States at 70%, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It is also the world’s biggest supplier of rare earth minerals.
“If you look at a balance sheet of the top 40 trace elements and minerals that are necessary for batteries or for semiconductors, the vast lion’s share of those supplies are now controlled by China,” Campbell said. He noted that while the U.S. was initially in an unfavorable position, it has stepped up signing critical mineral agreements with Japan and Australia.
Campbell also said the Lobito corridor project in Africa — a railway that will run through mineral-rich Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to an Atlantic port in Angola — would help meet U.S. demand for the minerals.
Hearing looks at relations with Africa
Increasing diplomatic relations with Africa was a key focus of the hearing.
Campbell said he has traveled to Africa twice since his appointment in February and has plans for a third trip. He also noted that there are 14 ambassador nominations for posts on the continent yet to be approved by the Senate.
Several senators at the hearing stressed the need to increase the U.S. diplomatic footprint and fill empty ambassadorial posts, particularly within the Global South.
Campbell said the lack of U.S. ambassadors in key posts is “embarrassing” and “antithetical to U.S. strategic interests.”
During the hearing, lawmakers also discussed the need for U.S. involvement in international infrastructure development projects, continued support of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, and the need for more efforts to combat Chinese misinformation and press manipulation in third countries.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-needs-to-do-more-to-compete-with-china-says-official/7719471.html
Intermittent Social media fasting
date: 2024-07-31, from: Om Malik blog
As a diabetic, my life is a constant balance between hypoglycemic and hyperglycemic levels—and proper food consumption is key to maintaining steady blood sugar levels. Work, travel and access to the right kinds of food determine how successfully I can keep my sugar levels in my desired range. At the start of the pandemic lockdown, I decided to embrace intermittent fasting. Losing weight wasn’t the primary motive; instead, I wanted to bring some discipline to when and …
https://om.co/2024/07/30/intermittent-social-media-fasting/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-31, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Democracy Will Suffer a Relatively Quiet Death. We Simulated It.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/democracy-suffer-quiet-death-simulated-trump
After destroying nearly 200 structures, US wildfire threatens thousands more
date: 2024-07-31, from: VOA News USA
FOREST RANCH, California — Fire crews worked Tuesday to hold on to the progress made against the largest blaze in California this year ahead of warming temperatures forecast for later this week.
Authorities said containment was 14% and lifted evacuation orders in some communities of Butte County, where the Park Fire started last week before spreading to a neighboring county and scorching an area bigger than Los Angeles. The massive fire continues to burn through rugged, inaccessible terrain with dense vegetation, threatening to spread to two other counties.
“That’s going to be a continued challenge for us moving forward over the next couple of days,” said Mark Brunton, an operations section chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Cooler weather has helped firefighters stop the blaze’s path near some communities like Forest Ranch, where some people began returning to unscathed homes Tuesday.
Christopher and Anita Angeloni have lived in the community of 1,600 for 23 years and have had to evacuate several times due to wildfires, including the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people and decimated the town of Paradise, about 8 miles (13 kilometers) south.
Christopher Angeloni said he constantly worked on creating defensible space around his home and was happy to return home nearly a week after evacuating to see his hard work paid off.
“We were prepared to possibly lose everything,” he said.
Anita Angeloni said it has been a stressful week.
“We have not been sleeping enough, very tense, praying all the time, teary eyes,” she said. “But we’re here. We’ll see for how long.”
The Park Fire, now the fifth largest in the state’s recorded history, was one of more than 100 large active wildfires burning in the U.S. on Tuesday. It has scorched nearly 600 square miles (1,551 square kilometers), according to CAL Fire. For comparison, the city of Los Angeles covers about 470 square miles (1,217 square kilometers).
Some blazes were sparked by the weather, with climate change increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the western U.S. endures blistering heat and bone-dry conditions.
The Park Fire started last Wednesday after authorities say a man pushed a burning car down a ravine in Chico. It has destroyed nearly 200 structures and is threatening thousands more. The suspect, Ronnie Dean Stout II, was charged with arson on Monday. His public defender, Nicole Diamond, said in an email she had no comment.
Some progress against the fire was made after cooler temperatures, more humidity, and calmer winds in the last few days helped firefighters reach 14% containment as of Tuesday.
In the small forest community of Cohasset in Butte County, Ron Ward ignored evacuation orders last week and stayed behind with his son to defend his property, seeing Park Fire flames hundreds of feet high approach his family ranch.
He had lost insurance coverage on the property just a month earlier as companies increasingly drop California homeowners due to the growing risk of wildfires in the state.
He said the flames reached within 70 feet (21 meters) of his house. Then they stopped.
“It hit our sprinklers and kind of died down and then went around our property and missed, missed all of our structures,” Ward said. His 100-year-old ranch was saved.
Ward had to be the one to call his bookkeeper and neighbors to tell them their homes were gone.
“They haven’t even been able to get back to look at their homes,” he said, tearing up as he recounted last week’s experience to The Associated Press in an interview Monday.
All through Cohasset, there were remnants of the devastation, with charred mailboxes and vehicles covered with pink fire retardant dropped by aircraft. The husks of a washer and dryer set were surrounded by burned debris and a blackened motorcycle was propped upright, balancing on rims after its tires melted away.
Evacuation orders were in effect Tuesday on 25 wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 27,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel are assigned to wildfires that have burned more than 3,200 square miles (8,288 square kilometers) nationwide, the center said.
In Southern California, people in Kern and Tulare counties were ordered to evacuate because of a fire sweeping through the Sequoia National Forest. The Borel Fire scorched through almost the entirety of the historic mining town of Havilah, officials said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is scheduled to visit the town of 250 people later Tuesday.
“We’re seeing so many of these iconic places in California . . . being quite literally devastated by these new realities,” Newsom said.
The fires burning throughout the state have overwhelmed California’s firefighting capacity and outside help has started to arrive, officials said. Newsom thanked Texas Governor Gregg Abbott on Tuesday for sending more than two dozen fire engines to help combat the Park Fire this week.
U.S. Fire Administrator Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell said one-third of U.S. residents live in an area where human activities and wildland vegetation intersect, creating a higher potential for wildfires, according to a statement.
“We question living here for sure,” Ward said of his ranch in Cohasset. But generations have remained since his wife’s great-grandfather settled there in 1905, and he isn’t the one to leave, he said.
“There’s a lot of history here,” Ward said. “So we live on this ranch, and we’re committed to this ranch and preserving the ranch.”
Granada Hills man faces multiple felony counts in domestic violence case
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Signal
Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies investigated and arrested a man accused of terrorizing his ex-girlfriend on multiple occasions who was charged with 10 felony counts, one of which involved […]
The post Granada Hills man faces multiple felony counts in domestic violence case appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
White House pushes Biden’s Supreme Court proposal despite Republican objections
date: 2024-07-31, from: VOA News USA
WHITE HOUSE — The White House plans to continue President Joe Biden’s push for sweeping reforms of the U.S. Supreme Court during his final months in office, despite the proposal having little chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
“What we welcome is a debate,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response to VOA’s question during her briefing Tuesday.
Jean-Pierre said there is broad public support for reform of the court. She sidestepped questions on whether the proposal is mainly a messaging strategy ahead of the November presidential election rather than a legislative goal for Biden, who is not seeking reelection.
“As many times as the president introduced legislation, or some ideas of how the direction of the legislation that’s important to the American people, we see a healthy debate,” she said.
On Monday, Biden urged Congress to eliminate lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices and establish a system in which the sitting president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in service on the court.
His proposal would “reduce the chance that any single president imposes undue influence for generations to come,” Biden said.
Under the American political system, presidents appoint justices who are confirmed by the U.S. Senate and serve on the Supreme Court until they die or resign. The highest court of the land provides the final word on legal interpretations of the U.S. Constitution.
Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson dismissed the plan as part of Democrats’ “ongoing efforts to delegitimize the Supreme Court.”
“It is telling that Democrats want to change the system that has guided our nation since its founding simply because they disagree with some of the Court’s recent decisions,” he said in a statement. “This dangerous gambit of the Biden-Harris Administration is dead on arrival in the House.”
Biden’s proposal would “tilt the balance of power and erode not only the rule of law, but the American people’s faith in our system of justice,” he added.
Six of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents, including three by former President Donald Trump.
Biden also wants legislation to establish an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices. Currently, the justices are free to police themselves under ethics rules that were put in place last year following revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas had received expensive gifts from Republican donors and that the wife of Justice Samuel Alito flew two flags often used by followers of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
The ethics part of the proposal is “the most politically feasible,” said Claire Finkelstein, professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Penn Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law.
Chief Justice John Roberts’ failure to discipline his own members “cast great opprobrium on the court,” and makes it “illegitimate to a large degree,” she told VOA, adding that there may be bipartisan support “to rescue the court from its own problematic conduct.”
The third part of Biden’s reform proposal requires lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity.
An amendment would reverse the court’s recent landmark ruling in favor of Trump that presidents are allowed some immunity from criminal prosecution for acts conducted while in office.
“This nation was founded on the principle there are no kings in America,” Biden said. “Each of us are equal before the law. No one is above the law. For all practical purposes, the court’s decision almost certainly means the president can violate their oath, flout our laws, and face no consequences.”
Messaging push
Passage of the proposal seem unlikely in light of Republican control of House and the Democrats’ slim majority in the Senate.
Passage of a constitutional amendment requires two-thirds support in both congressional chambers, or approval by two-thirds of the states at a special convention. Either way, it would then need to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
Biden’s proposal is “both a messaging push and a warning to the Roberts court to clean up its act,” said Democratic Party strategist Julie Roginsky.
“It underscores the fact that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have posed a grave threat to democracy and that the next president will have an opportunity to shape the court and, with it, the future of our democracy,” she told VOA.
Only 41% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in June.
American confidence in the Supreme Court has declined in recent years as more people see the institution as partisan. A majority of Americans (53%) say that they think Supreme Court justices rule mainly on the basis of their partisan political views, according to a 2023 poll by ABC News/Ipsos, up 10 percentage points from 2022.
Various polls show that voters of both parties are in favor of term limits for justices, including a Fox News poll in July that show most Americans strongly favor mandatory retirement.
“Biden’s proposals bundle some of the most popular reforms while avoiding some of the more politically divisive,” said Chris Jackson, senior vice president at Ipsos, referring to a court-packing proposal pushed by some progressives that would expand the size of the Supreme Court to quickly eliminate the court’s lean to the right.
“It remains to be seen if this will be an effective campaign message for the Harris campaign heading into the election,” he told VOA.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, backed Biden’s proposal on Monday.
“President Biden and I strongly believe that the American people must have confidence in the Supreme Court,” she said in a statement. “Yet today, there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court as its fairness has been called into question after numerous ethics scandals and decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent.”
Trump, meanwhile, dismissed it.
“It’s going nowhere,” he said in a Fox News interview Monday. “He knows that, too.”
VOA’s Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
Weekly farmers market to launch in Valencia beginning Sunday
date: 2024-07-31, from: The Signal
News release A new certified farmers market is coming to Valencia on Sundays from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The market will feature fresh meats and produce direct from local […]
The post Weekly farmers market to launch in Valencia beginning Sunday appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/weekly-farmers-market-to-launch-in-valencia-beginning-sunday/
Less Coffee, Better Sleep
date: 2024-07-31, from: Marginallia log
As an experiment, I’ve reduced my coffee-intake to a single cup a day for about a week now. It’s made an enormous difference in sleep, mood and energy. I get tired at night, fall asleep quickly, and wake up refreshed. As mentioned previously in the context of morning sunlight exposure—another thing that’s aided my sleeping habits, but is somewhat less practical to sustain as it requires fair weather—I’ve always been slow to get going in the morning, active at night, bad at getting to bed at sane hours.
https://www.marginalia.nu/log/a_109_sleep2/
pg_ivm 1.9 released
date: 2024-07-31, from: PostgreSQL News
IVM Development Group is pleased to announce the release of pg_ivm 1.9.
Changes since the v1.8 release include:
Bug fixes
-
Add support for PostgreSQL 17 (Yugo Nagata, Takuma Hoshiai, reshke)
This contains the following changes:
-
Change functions to use a safe search_path during maintenance operations when used with PostgreSQL 17
This prevents maintenance operations (automatic maintenance of IMMVs and refresh_immv) from performing unsafe access. Functions used by IMMVs that need to reference non-default schemas must specify a search path during function creation.
-
refresh_immv can be executed by users with the MAINTAIN privilege when used with PostgreSQL 17
About pg_ivm
pg_ivm is an extension module that provides Incremental View Maintenance (IVM) feature.
Incremental View Maintenance (IVM) is a way to make materialized views up-to-date in which only incremental changes are computed and applied on views rather than recomputing. pg_ivm provides a kind of immediate maintenance, in which materialized views are updated immediately after a base table is modified.
Source repository: https://github.com/sraoss/pg_ivm
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pg_ivm-19-released-2902/
Announcing postgres-contrib.org | Contributions to PostgreSQL
date: 2024-07-31, from: PostgreSQL News
We are pleased to announce postgres-contrib.org, a new website started in July 2024 by members of the PostgreSQL community, highlighting contributions to the project by the amazing people standing behind it.
Many contributions to and for the PostgreSQL Project happen outside of
writing code. This was the topic of the
Increase
Community Participation session at
PGConf.dev
2024.
postgres-contrib.org has
weekly posts listing contributions, but they will likely not be complete
— if you spot something which is worth noticing, please contact us by
email.
The following people contributed to this list, and the general idea: Andreas Scherbaum, Boriss Mejías, Chris Ellis, Floor Drees, Jimmy Angelakos and Pavlo Golub.
PGConf NYC 2024 Schedule Announced!
date: 2024-07-31, from: PostgreSQL News
PGConf NYC 2024 (September 30 - October 2, 2024, New York City) is packed with user stories and best practices for how to use PostgreSQL. Join us in New York City and connect with other developers, DBAs, administrators, decisions makers, and contributors to the open source PostgreSQL community! We’re expecting to sell out - we’re not just saying that - so please register today to secure your spot!
The schedule is now available! You can see the schedule here:
https://postgresql.us/events/pgconfnyc2024/schedule/
PGConf NYC 2024 also has lots of content relevant to how you’re running PostgreSQL, including case studies on managing large fleets and workloads on PostgreSQL, how to improve your query performance, hot topics like the intersection of AI and databases, different ways to minimize your downtime, and learning about upcoming PostgreSQL features!
PGConf NYC 2024 is not possible without the generous support of our sponsors. PGConf NYC takes place in one of the largest markets of PostgreSQL users. Your sponsorship lets you connect with decision makers, developers, DBAs, and PostgreSQL contributors, helps keep ticket prices low, and helps grow the PostgreSQL community. We have sold out our Platinum and Gold sponsorships, but we still have other sponsorships available. For more information on sponsorship, please visit the below link:
https://2024.pgconf.nyc/sponsors/
Can’t wait to participate in PGConf NYC 2024? Registration is available:
https://2024.pgconf.nyc/tickets/
We look forward to seeing you in New York!
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgconf-nyc-2024-schedule-announced-2903/
This game would be perfect if it wasn’t gacha
date: 2024-07-31, from: Ze Iaso’s blog
TL;DR: Zenless Zone Zero is a fantastic game that’s ruined by its gacha system. It’s a shame that it’s a gacha game, because it’s so good otherwise. 8/10
https://xeiaso.net/videos/2024/zzz-review/
New US citizens could determine outcomes of key elections
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/new-us-citizens-could-determine-outcomes-of-key-elections-/7719420.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Entenmann's, Freihofer's Closing New York Plants, Laying Off 131.
https://hudsonvalleycountry.com/ixp/705/p/bakery-plants-closing-new-york/
Tiny Homes a Big Example
date: 2024-07-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Due to homelessness being such a complex issue, it is hard for many to have hope that housing projects, such as La Posada, will work.
The post Tiny Homes a Big Example appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/30/tiny-homes-a-big-example/
Amazon, you will do a total recall of bad stuff sold through your site, watchdog barks
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
E-super-souk isn’t having any of it
Amazon has been ordered by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to take full and proper responsibility for recalling faulty and dangerous products sold by merchants through its website and app.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/amazon_ordered_to_handle_recall/
11-year-old paints mural for local restaurant
date: 2024-07-30, from: The Signal
It’s not every day that 11-year-olds can say they have painted a mural in an iconic neighborhood restaurant. But for Lily Diaz, this is not the case. Lorena D’s has […]
The post 11-year-old paints mural for local restaurant appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/11-year-old-paints-mural-for-local-restaurant/
CalArts Students Shine in Paris-L.A. Olympic Poster Competition
date: 2024-07-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
In a celebration of artistic excellence and international collaboration, California Institute of the Arts Graphic Design students Vesper (Yuhuan) Ji (Art MFA 2025), Junyu Qian (Art MFA 2024), Oscar Thompson (Art BFA 2025) and Dariia Zamrii (Art MFA 2025) have been announced as winners of the 2024 Cultural Olympiad Poster Competition. Fellow CalArtian Jiating Shi (Art MFA 2025) also received an honorable mention.
https://scvnews.com/calarts-students-shine-in-paris-l-a-olympic-poster-competition/
Harris, Trump will offer competing approaches to China trade, tariffs
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
Last Leap and Testament of Scott Powers: ‘A Nice Man Who Just Needed Help’
date: 2024-07-30, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Powers’s death is one of six fatalities in the Santa Barbara County Jail reviewed by the Grand Jury.
The post Last Leap and Testament of Scott Powers: ‘A Nice Man Who Just Needed Help’ appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
CDPH Identifies Valley Fever Among Attendees of Music Festival
date: 2024-07-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
People who attended “Lightning in a Bottle” music festival in Kern County should see a healthcare provider if they are experiencing respiratory symptoms
https://scvnews.com/cdph-identifies-valley-fever-among-attendees-of-music-festival/
Correction: SUSD $190 Bond Measure to Be Discussed at Regular Board Meeting July 30
date: 2024-07-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Saugus Union School District board of Trustees will discuss placing a $190M bond measure for facilities improvements on the November ballot at the board’s regular public meeting on Tuesday, July 30.
https://scvnews.com/susd-board-submits-190m-bond-measure-for-november-ballot/
No love lost between Apple and Nvidia as iGiant chooses Google chips for AI training
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Things are getting Tensor between Cupertino and Nv
Apple has detailed in a research paper how it trained its latest generative AI models using Google’s neural-network accelerators rather than, say, more fashionable Nvidia hardware.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/apple_google_tpu_ai/
Project 2025 director leaves Heritage Foundation
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — The director of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 vision for a complete overhaul of the federal government has stepped down, the conservative think tank confirmed Tuesday.
Paul Dans’ exit comes after the project “completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a statement. Roberts said the group is sticking to its original timeline.
The news comes after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has increasingly disavowed Project 2025 amid escalating attacks by Democrats, prompting speculation that Trump’s campaign forced the exit.
Democrats for the past several months have made Project 2025 a key election-year cudgel, pointing to the ultraconservative policy blueprint as a glimpse into how extreme another Trump administration could be.
The nearly 1,000-page handbook lays out sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president.
Yet Trump has repeatedly disavowed the document, saying on social media he hasn’t read it and doesn’t know anything about it. At a rally in Michigan earlier this month, he said Project 2025 was written by people on the “severe right” and some of the things in it are “seriously extreme.”
“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”
Trump campaign representatives did not respond to messages inquiring about whether the campaign asked or pushed for Dans to step down from the project. The Heritage Foundation said Dans left voluntarily, and it was not under pressure from the Trump campaign. Dans didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
But it was almost certain that Trump’s campaign forced the shakeup, said one former Heritage aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation.
LaCivita had been aggressively monitoring the situation, the person said. It was clear that Project 2025 was becoming a liability for Trump and the party.
For months Trump’s campaign had warned outside groups, and Heritage in particular, that they did not speak for the former president, even though the Project 2025 team was staffed with his former White House aides and advisers.
In an interview from the Republican convention first published by Politico, LaCivita said Project 2025 was a problem because “the issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about.”
Many Trump allies and former top aides contributed to the project, including Dans, who was a personnel official for the Trump administration. Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and top Democrats have repeatedly tied Trump to Project 2025 as they argue against a second term for the former president.
The Harris campaign said Project 2025 remains linked to Trump’s agenda.
“Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real — in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding,” said Harris for President Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
Project 2025’s website will remain live, and the group will continue vetting resumes for its nearly 20,000-person database of potential government officials ready to execute the group’s vision for government, the Heritage Foundation said Tuesday. The group said Roberts will now run Project 2025 operations.
https://www.voanews.com/a/project-2025-director-leaves-heritage-foundation/7719377.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Friend's $99 necklace uses AI to help combat loneliness.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
New York Times Pitchbot should get an award for satire. It's funny because it's true.
https://x.com/DougJBalloon/status/1818346017252639221
Sept. 21: Be the Light 5K to Benefit A Light of Hope
date: 2024-07-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The 10th anniversary Be the Light 5K will be held on Saturday, Sept. 21 at West Creek Park in Valencia with the course traveling the paseos of the San Francisquito Creek Trail.
https://scvnews.com/sept-21-be-the-light-5k-to-benefit-a-light-of-hope/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Kamala Harris Wipes Out Trump’s Swing-State Lead.
https://politicalwire.com/2024/07/30/kamala-harris-wipes-out-trumps-swing-state-lead/
Coinbase appears to have violated campaign finance laws with a $25 million super PAC donation
date: 2024-07-30, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“With $45.5 million in corporate contributions, American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is the largest donor to Fairshake: a newly-minted super PAC focused solely on installing political candidates who will be friendly to the cryptocurrency industry, and ousting those with a history of pushing for stronger regulations and consumer protections when it comes to an industry that has long been a regulatory “Wild West”.”
“[Coinbase’s] $25 million contribution, however, appears to be in violation of federal campaign finance laws that prohibit contributions from current or prospective federal government contractors. This would be by far the largest known illegal campaign contribution by a federal contractor.”
Molly points out that there’s a possibility here that Coinbase is using a loophole that had previously been exploited by Chevron. But it’s certainly not clear that this is the case.
It’s also worth calling out what “candidates who will be friendly to the cryptocurrency industry” means in practice this election cycle. It’s far more likely that Trump-aligned candidates will fall into this camp.
<p>[<a href="https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/coinbase-appears-to-have-violated-campaign-finance-laws-with-a
Henry Mayo Receives AHA Award for Stroke Care
date: 2024-07-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital has received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines - Stroke Gold Plus quality achievement award for its commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment
https://scvnews.com/henry-mayo-receives-aha-award-for-stroke-care/
NASA Sets Coverage for Northrop Grumman’s 21st Station Resupply Launch
date: 2024-07-30, from: NASA breaking news
NASA, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX are targeting 11:28 a.m. EDT on Saturday, Aug. 3, for the next launch to deliver science investigations, supplies, and equipment to the International Space Station. This launch is the 21st Northrop Grumman commercial resupply services mission to the orbital laboratory for the agency. NASA’s live launch coverage will begin at […]
Sept. 14: Horse 2 Heart Fundraiser Jamboree
date: 2024-07-30, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Oak Creek Corrals 20th anniversary celebration will include a Fundraiser Jamboree for the Horse 2 Heart Non-Profit organization.
https://scvnews.com/sept-14-horse-2-heart-fundraiser-jamboree/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. He passed it to us.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-147115092
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Project 2025 director leaves Heritage Foundation after Democratic attacks and Trump criticism.
Can’t get Minecraft, MongoDB Cloud, others to work today? Blame that Azure outage
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Shut the Front Door!
If you’ve had or are having problems using websites and apps today, it might well be due to the Microsoft Azure outage.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/azure_outage_impact/
NASA images unlock complex history of two near-Earth asteroids
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
Washington — In the moments before NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos in a landmark planetary defense test in 2022, it took high-resolution images of this small celestial object and its larger companion Didymos.
These images have enabled scientists to unravel the complicated history of these two rocky bodies located in the vicinity of Earth and gain insight into the formation of what are called binary asteroid systems — a primary asteroid with a secondary moonlet orbiting it.
An analysis of the craters and surface strength on Didymos indicated it formed about 12.5 million years ago. A similar analysis indicated Dimorphos formed about 300,000 years ago. Didymos probably formed in our solar system’s main asteroid belt, between the planets Mars and Jupiter, and then was knocked into the inner solar system, the researchers said.
An examination of the largest boulders on Didymos and Dimorphos gave clues about the origins of the two asteroids.
“Both asteroids are aggregates of rocky fragments formed from the catastrophic destruction of a parent asteroid,” said astronomer Maurizio Pajola of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Italy, lead author of one of five studies on the asteroids published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
“These large boulders could not have formed from impacts on the surfaces of Didymos and Dimorphos themselves, as such impacts would have disintegrated these bodies,” Pajola added.
Didymos, which has a diameter of about a half mile (780 meters), is classified as a near-Earth asteroid. Dimorphos is roughly 560 feet (170 meters) wide. Both are “rubble pile” asteroids, composed of pieces of rocky debris that coalesced through the influence of gravity.
“Their surface is covered with boulders. The largest on Dimorphos is the size of the school bus, while the largest on Didymos is big as soccer field,” said Olivier Barnouin, a planetary geologist and geophysicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland and lead author of another of the studies.
“There are cracks on the surface and the rocks of Dimorphos, while Didymos may have finer-grained soils at the equator, although it is difficult to be sure with the images we have. The surfaces of both asteroids are weak, much weaker than loose sand,” Barnouin added.
The researchers concluded that Dimorphos is composed of material that flew off the equatorial region of Didymos due to the speed at which it was spinning.
“In the case of Didymos, it is thought that in the past, it rotated faster around its axis due to the YORP effect (spin acceleration driven by the effect of sunlight on its uneven surface), and thus ejected the boulders from its equatorial region, forming Dimorphos,” Pajola added.
Didymos currently spins at a rate of once every 2-1/4 hours.
Few boulders were observed at the equatorial region of Didymos.
“Its equator is much smoother, while mid-latitudes up to the poles are much rougher, with big boulders sitting on the surface,” Pajola said.
The U.S. space agency’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) carried out a proof-of-principle mission, demonstrating that a spacecraft could apply kinetic force to change the path of a space object that otherwise might be on a collision course with Earth. Didymos and Dimorphos do not pose an actual threat to Earth.
DART struck Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, at about 14,000 miles per hour (22,530 kph) at a distance of roughly 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth, and succeeded in modestly changing its path. The collision also slightly changed the shape of Dimorphos.
The DART data has improved the understanding of binary asteroid systems.
“Binary asteroid systems represent about 10-15% of the total number of asteroids that are in near-Earth space,” Barnouin said. “More generally, with every new observation of an asteroid or asteroid system, we learn more about how asteroids form and evolve. They are complex systems, but have some key similarities, especially when we consider the smaller — less than a kilometer (0.62 mile) — asteroids.”
AI ‘Friend’ Company Spent $1.8 Million and Most of Its Funds on Domain Name
date: 2024-07-30, from: 404 Media Group
AI companion Friend appears to have spent most of its funds on buying friend.com.
https://www.404media.co/ai-friend-company-spent-1-8-million-and-most-its-funds-on-domain-name/
A Record-Breaking 17 California Condor Chicks Hatched at the L.A. Zoo This Year
date: 2024-07-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The successful breeding season offers more hope for the endangered species, which has come back from the brink of extinction due to captive breeding efforts
Nearly 1,000 Native American children died in abusive US schools
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
BILLINGS, Montana — At least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system, according to the results of an investigation released Tuesday by officials who called on the government to apologize for the schools.
The investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children into white society. The findings don’t specify how each child died, but the causes of death included sickness, accidents and abuse during a 150-year period that ended in 1969, officials said.
The findings follow a series of listening sessions across the United States over the past two years in which dozens of former students recounted the harsh and often degrading treatment they endured while separated from their families.
“The federal government — facilitated by the Department I lead — took deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections that are foundational to Native people,” Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary, said in a news release Tuesday.
In an initial report released in 2022, officials estimated that more than 500 children died at the schools. The federal government passed laws and policies in 1819 to support the schools, the last of which were still operating in the 1960s.
The schools gave Native American children English names, put them through military drills and forced them to perform manual labor, such as farming, brickmaking and working on the railroad, officials said.
Former students shared tearful recollections of their experience during listening sessions in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Michigan, Arizona, Alaska and other states. They talked about being punished for speaking their native language, being locked in basements and having their hair cut to stamp out their identities. They were sometimes subjected to solitary confinement, beatings and the withholding of food. Many left the schools with only basic vocational skills that gave them few job prospects.
Donovan Archambault, 85, of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, said he was sent away to boarding schools beginning at age 11 and was mistreated, forced to cut his hair and prevented from speaking his native language. He said he drank heavily before turning his life around more than two decades later, and never discussed his school days with his children until he wrote a book about the experience several years ago.
“An apology is needed. They should apologize,” Archambault told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday. “But there also needs to be a broader education about what happened to us. To me, it’s part of a forgotten history.”
The new report doesn’t specify who should issue the apology on behalf of the federal government, saying only that it should be issued through “appropriate means and officials to demonstrate that it is made on behalf of the people of the United States and be accompanied by bold and actionable policies.”
Interior Department officials also recommended that the government invest in programs that could help Native American communities heal from the traumas caused by boarding schools. That includes money for education, violence prevention and the revitalization of indigenous languages. Spending on those efforts should be on a scale proportional to the money spent on the schools, agency officials said.
The schools, similar institutions and related assimilation programs were funded by more than $23 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending, officials determined. Religious and private institutions that ran many of the institutions received federal money as partners in the campaign to “civilize” Indigenous students, according to the new report.
By 1926, more than 80% of Indigenous school-age children — some 60,000 children — were attending boarding schools that were run either by the federal government or religious organizations, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
Legislation pending before Congress would establish a Truth and Healing Commission to document and acknowledge past injustices related to boarding schools. The measure is sponsored in the Senate by Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and backed by Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Biles, Team USA win Olympic gold in women’s gymnastics
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/biles-team-usa-win-olympic-gold-in-women-s-gymnastics-/7719045.html
Meta to cough up $1.4B to end fight over ‘unlawful’ facial recognition of friends
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Everything’s bigger in Texas – even the settlement deals
Meta will pay a record $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit with Texas, which accused the Facebook giant of breaking privacy laws by performing facial recognition on people’s photos without their consent.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/meta_texas_settlement/
Overview for NASA’s Northrop Grumman 21st Commercial Resupply Mission
date: 2024-07-30, from: NASA breaking news
NASA, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 11:28 a.m. EDT on Saturday, Aug. 3, for the next launch to deliver scientific investigations, supplies, and equipment to the International Space Station. Filled with more than 8,200 pounds of supplies, the Cygnus cargo spacecraft, carried on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This launch is the 21st Northrop Grumman commercial resupply services mission to the orbital laboratory for the agency.
https://www.nasa.gov/general/overview-for-nasas-northrop-grumman-21st-commercial-resupply-mission/
Delta Air Lines dials up Microsoft’s legal nemesis over CrowdStrike losses
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Oh, Boies, here we go again
Delta Air Lines lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to the CrowdStrike outage earlier this month – and it has hired a high-powered law firm to claw some of those lost funds back, potentially from the Falcon maker and Microsoft itself.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/crowdstrike_delta_microsoft_lawsuit/
US Senate passes major online child safety reforms
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-senate-passes-major-online-child-safety-reforms-/7719003.html
Back to the Future of Comms
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: RAND blog
Outgunned by Russia in electronic warfare, Kyiv should consider going further than it already has with more cost-effective communication solutions. Sometimes vintage systems and techniques can provide militaries with simpler and cheaper alternatives to keep critical lines of communication open.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/07/back-to-the-future-of-comms.html
Art Historian Discovers Long-Lost Portrait of Henry VIII in Background of Social Media Post
date: 2024-07-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Commissioned by a wealthy tapestry maker in the 1590s, the Tudor king’s likeness features a distinctive frame with a rounded top
BitTorrent Apps in AltStore PAL
date: 2024-07-30, from: Michael Tsai
Jess Weatherbed: Specifically, the new additions include iTorrent, an iOS torrent client that can be used without jailbreaking iPhones or iPads, and qBitControl, a qBittorrent remote client for iOS devices. PeopleDrop is a dating-focused “social discovery platform” that connects you with other users in the real world as they pass by. Hartley Charlton: Apple has […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/30/bittorrent-apps-in-altstore-pal/
Spain Investigates App Store
date: 2024-07-30, from: Michael Tsai
Hartley Charlton: Spain’s competition authority has launched an investigation into Apple’s App Store over potential anti-competitive practices that could result in hefty fines (via Reuters).[…]If the CNMC’s investigation confirms these allegations, Apple could face fines up to 10% of its global annual turnover, potentially amounting to billions of euros. The inquiry, which may take up […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/30/spain-investigates-app-store/
Social Media AI Training
date: 2024-07-30, from: Michael Tsai
C. Scott Brown: Meta is now scraping Facebook posts to train its AI model. While this isn’t surprising on its own, what is surprising is just how difficult Meta is making it for users to opt out of this process. Via X Daily News: Instagram is training AI on your data but makes it nearly […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/30/social-media-ai-training/
The Story Behind This Breathtaking Viral Photo of an Olympic Surfer
date: 2024-07-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Jérôme Brouillet, a photojournalist with the Agence France-Presse (AFP), captured an iconic moment when Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina celebrated after setting an Olympic record
Qualcomm goes budget with Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 5G chipset
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Latest silicon aims to bring Gigabit connectivity to sub-$100 handsets
Qualcomm has been pushing high-end smartphone platforms recently, but its latest release targets the budget segment, aiming to deliver Gigabit 5G connectivity to sub-$100 handsets.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/qualcomm_snapdragon_4s_gen_2/
Repair Kit for NASA’s NICER Mission Heading to Space Station
date: 2024-07-30, from: NASA breaking news
NASA will deliver a patch kit for NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer), an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station, on the agency’s Northrop Grumman 21st commercial resupply mission. Astronauts will conduct a spacewalk to complete the repair. Located near the space station’s starboard solar array, NICER was damaged in May 2023. The mission […]
Failures leading up to attempted Trump assassination indefensible, says acting Secret Service director
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The acting director of the U.S. agency charged with protecting high-profile officials called the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump this month a “failure on multiple levels,” describing it as shameful.
Ronald Rowe testified before U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday, promising immediate changes to fix breakdowns in communication and coverage that allowed a 20-year-old gunman to climb onto the roof of a nearby building and fire eight shots during the July 13 rally in western Pennsylvania, killing a rally-goer and wounding Trump and two others.
“What I saw made me ashamed,” he told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary committees. “As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”
Rowe, who took charge of the Secret Service following last week’s resignation of former director Kimberly Cheatle, appeared to be more forthcoming than his predecessor, who rankled both Republicans and Democrats during a hearing last Monday.
Cheatle said the attempted assassination was the “most significant operational failure” in decades, but repeatedly refused to answer questions about how the gunman evaded the Secret Service and local law enforcement agencies despite having been identified as a suspicious person at least 90 minutes before the rally began.
She resigned the next day.
Rowe told lawmakers Tuesday that the agency’s initial investigation indicated that a local sniper team had been assigned responsibility for securing the section of roof used by the shooter.
Those teams should have had a clear view of the shooter as he climbed into place, he said.
“We were told that building was going to be covered,” Rowe told lawmakers. “I could not, and I will not, and I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roof line when that’s where they were posted.”
Rowe also admitted that even though local law enforcement had communicated concerns about the shooter multiple times in the hour and a half before the rally, that information never got to the Secret Service agents protecting the former president.
“It appears that that information was stuck or siloed in that state and local channel,” he said.
“It is troubling,” Rowe said. “We didn’t know that there was this incident going on. … Nothing about a man on the roof. Nothing about a man with a gun.”
The acting Secret Service director additionally admitted there were other holes in the security set-up at the rally, specifically citing the agency’s inability to put its own drones in the air before the event got underway due to a lack of mobile connectivity.
It is “something that has cost me a lot of sleep,” Rowe said, noting the shooter had flown his own drone over the rally site in the hours before Trump took the stage.
“I have no explanation for it,” he said. “It is something that I feel as though we could have perhaps found him. We could have maybe stopped him.”
“Maybe on that particular day he would have decided this isn’t the day to do it, because law enforcement just found me flying my drone.”
Rowe even promised lawmakers that the Secret Service would be adding range finders, like the one the shooter was seen carrying, to the list of items prohibited at rallies and other events, going forward.
‘People will be held accountable’
Despite the admissions, some lawmakers were not satisfied.
“My question is, why don’t you relieve everybody of duty who made [a] bad judgment?” asked Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley. “What more do you need to investigate to know that there were critical failures that some individuals should be held accountable?”
“This could have been our Texas School Book Depository,” Rowe responded, referring to the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
“I have lost sleep over that for the last 17 days,” Rowe said. “I will tell you, Senator, that I will not rush to judgment, that people will be held accountable, and I will do so with integrity.”
‘Nothing has been ruled out’
Meanwhile, the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, has yet to determine why he tried to kill the former president.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told lawmakers on Tuesday that the bureau has conducted more than 460 interviews but has so far come up empty.
“The investigation has not identified a motive, nor any coconspirators or others with advance knowledge,” said Abbate. “Absolutely nothing has been ruled out.”
But the deputy FBI director said a newly discovered social media account used in 2019-2020 may shed some new light on the shooter’s motivation.
“There were over 700 comments posted from this account,” he told lawmakers. “Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature.”
“While the investigative team is still working to verify this account to determine if it did in fact belong to the shooter, we believe it important to share it … particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter’s potential motive and mindset.”
If verified, however, the newly discovered social media account would stand in contrast to an account on Gab, a social media platform popular with the far right, that might also be linked to Crooks.
The Gab account, according to the FBI and Gab officials, espoused pro-immigration views and endorsed other left-leaning policies.
Only the acting secret service director suggested the inconsistencies ultimately might not matter.
“We have an individual who was focused on Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” Rowe said, noting similarities between Crooks and John Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
“Hinckley traveled the ’80 campaign, and we know that he followed President [Jimmy] Carter,” he said. In “March of ’81, he happened to show up in Washington, D.C., and he saw an opportunity to try to attack President Reagan.”
FBI officials, who briefed reporters on Monday, described Crooks as an intelligent loner and said it appears he “made significant efforts to conceal his activities,” which may have begun more than a year ago.
Investigators said that is when he began using encrypted email accounts and aliases to make online, gun-related purchases, followed by a series of online purchases of chemicals to make the three explosive devices found in his car and bedroom.
Crooks also began to do internet searches on mass shootings, power plants, a variety of elected officials and attempted assassinations.
They also noted a lack of communication between the shooter and others, in general.
“We have identified only a couple people who we would call his friends, and most of those contacts were, in fact, dated,” said FBI Special Agent Kevin Rojek.
Rojek added that even the shooter’s accounts on gaming platforms showed “very little interaction,” describing it as outside the norm.
The Climate Cost of the Permitting Deal
date: 2024-07-30, from: Heatmap News
Senator Joe Manchin’s new permitting deal is the best shot Congress will get this year to boost transmission and renewables. It may also lock in generations of future fossil fuel production and exports.
To many climate activists, that’s not a trade worth making.
Tomorrow, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will vote on a deal Manchin struck with the panel’s top Republican, John Barrasso, that couples faster transmission and renewable energy approvals and restrictions on litigation with much stronger requirements for regular oil, gas, and coal lease sales on federal lands. It would also restrict the Energy Department from continuing its pause on liquified natural gas export terminal approvals (an action that has already been overturned in court) and also, activists note, potentially bar the federal government from having authority over oil and gas drill sites on private lands. Critics say this would take away a tool regulators in Washington can use to require a well — a potential source of methane, the hyper-potent greenhouse gas — be plugged in the event the owner goes bankrupt and abandons the site.
The environmentalist reaction to the bill has been swift and loud, with a broad swath of organizations coming out fiercely against its passage. Even some groups seen as more business-friendly, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, praised the transmission bits while calling out “permitting proposals drafted without meaningful consultation of frontline communities” and proclaiming the fossil fuel language objectionable.
In a development that has quietly befuddled activists, a growing number of climate-friendly Democrats are coming out in favor of the legislation. Senators John Hickenlooper and Martin Heinrich, whose transmission proposals landed in the deal, are likely to vote in favor of the bill in committee this week.
“This legislation is our opportunity to unlock an American-made clean energy future,” Heinrich told Politico’s E&E News in a statement last week. “It will create good-paying jobs, grow our workforce, and help us deliver affordable and reliable electricity to all Americans — all while helping to meet our ambitious and urgent climate goals.”
Fossil fuels produced on federal lands for energy represent a substantial portion of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the United States, a fact even Biden regulators have acknowledged while allowing more sales.
Whether this legislation can get to a full vote in the Senate is far from certain, and it’s a longshot for passage in this Congress. The bill goes further in favor of fossil fuels than the 2022 Manchin permitting deal, which was blocked by a confluence of opposition from environmentalists and far-right legislators that wanted an even more aggressive approach to overhauling environmental laws.
The same sort of coalition could stall this bill. But it would not surprise me if many more Democrats added their voices and votes in support. Over my years of reporting in Congress, I found a growing sense of frustration in Democratic circles at the lack of shovel-ready projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. They blame the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and pencil-pushing government officials. They’re tired of being asked “will they or won’t they” questions by Hill reporters about an ever-elusive permitting deal. So they may take any leap of faith to see those visual victories come to fruition faster — and help shore up political support for keeping the landmark climate law in place.
But that’s not how climate activists want them to see the bill. At all.
“Honestly, the amount of fossil fuels that can be deployed out of this far outweighs to me the gains we would get in transmission,” Johanna Bozuwa, executive director of the Climate and Community Project, told me. “I can understand the ‘for’ side of this. People are frustrated and they are sick of transmission not being deployed. Whereas the people who are against this bill are like, you need to think about the ramifications right now. Because what is being built into this bill is not next year’s emissions. It’s thirty years of emissions.”
What’s in the bill
Under Manchin-Barrasso, it would be much harder for the federal government to reduce how much land and sea it sells to fossil fuel companies every year.
The federal government regularly offers land for oil and gas companies to purchase for drilling sites. Deciding what land to sell and how much acreage to offer is normally a process decided at the bureaucratic level in tandem with industry input and environmental analyses. Under the Trump administration, lease sales were plentiful, though some had to be canceled because of inadequate climate and species reviews. Biden’s gone the opposite direction, but in order to win Manchin’s crucial vote, the IRA also complicated efforts to wind down fossil fuel auctions. One of Manchin’s non-negotiables for passing the bill was tying renewables leasing to millions of acres in mandatory oil and gas lease sales. In other words, to sell land for renewables, the government must now sell fossil fuels too.
Specifically, the IRA required the government to sell either millions of acres or the acreage that industry expresses interest in. So far, the Interior Department has found wiggle room by saying the acres they sell do not need to align precisely with properties requested by developers. Some in the oil and gas industry have accused the Biden administration of deliberately offering land the industry doesn’t want.
What Manchin-Barrasso would do, activists say, is essentially tie the hands of the government on this requirement. One provision would insert the phrase “for which expressions of interest have been submitted” into the mandatory onshore oil and gas leasing totals in the IRA, in effect putting industry’s desired land for leasing into statute as a requirement.
The bill would also require the government to hold annual offshore oil and gas lease sales at a time when the Biden administration is non-committal about auctioning in certain future years before environmental analyses are conducted.
There’s also the part about drilling on private land. A provision in Manchin-Barrasso appears to ban the federal government from requesting applications for permits to drill on private lands in circumstances when the government owns only the minerals beneath the surface but not above. These applications, known as APDs, are a key opportunity for federal regulators to require project developers post a bond on oil and gas wells as well as provide at least some level of info on environmental mitigation measures. Advocates emphasize this input also comes with an opportunity to intervene when an operator goes bankrupt and leaves a well unplugged, puking methane into the atmosphere. Manchin-Barrasso would instead cede that authority entirely to the states.
The bill would also require the government to process applications for coal leasing when the Biden administration is trying, essentially, to stop such leasing altogether.
Plus there’s the LNG export language which, well, explains itself.
Deal or no deal
For the energy transition, the bill would: create timetables for permitting renewables on federal rights-of-way; allow minimal environmental reviews of “low-disturbance” renewables construction projects; set a national goal of 50 gigawatts of renewables on federal land by 2030; ease geothermal permitting; provide easier environmental reviews to certain transmission activities within recently approved rights-of-way; grant FERC more authority to greenlight transmission projects that are considered to be in the “national interest;” and give hydropower projects more lenience on license extensions.
To some, that might be a worthwhile compromise — in the world of the possible, the deal may be the biggest opportunity for real gains on transmission and renewables this Congress. Should the November elections swing in the GOP’s direction, Democrats seeking a less fossil-friendly permitting deal would have essentially no chance because they could lose the House, the Senate and the White House, making this the only game in town, potentially for a long time. This bill would also achieve the elusive dream of a bipartisan compromise, where both sides get some but not all of what they want to achieve incremental progress on something viewed in D.C. as a long bemoaned problem.
“It is a really good bipartisan deal,” Xan Fishman of the Bipartisan Policy Center told me last week. “Not everyone is going to be happy.”
That argument isn’t convincing Rep. Jared Huffman, a top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, who has emerged as a vocal critic of the Senate legislation. Huffman told me he wants to see transmission boosted “without massive giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.” When asked if he’s comfortable with accusations he’s holding up a bipartisan compromise, he simply said, “Whatever.”
“This is a bad deal. It just goes way too far in the direction of oil, gas and coal,” he told me. “We’ve got to stop dignifying this notion that to take one step forward on clean energy, we’ve got to take two steps backward on fossil fuel production.”
Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, noted to me that when the Inflation Reduction Act was passed into law, Democrats had analyses showing the potential decarbonization benefits of the legislation — oil and gas warts and all. It ultimately showed net wins on climate, no matter how hard the other stuff may have been to swallow.
“Where’s the math that proves this is good?” he asked of the Manchin-Barrasso bill.
The truth is, we don’t know the climate impacts of this legislation yet, though experts are at work poring over the details. Meanwhile, some climate advocates are trying to get their own math out there. At the start of the week, I attended a small roundtable discussion with Jeremy Symons, a longtime environmental advocate who once worked on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, as well as representatives of Public Citizen and Earthjustice and other reporters from Politico and S&P Global. At that roundtable, Symons presented an analysis declaring the legislation’s impact on LNG exports reviews alone would be equivalent to that from 165 coal-fired power plants and that it would take roughly 50 large renewable electricity-powered transmission lines to make up the negative climate impacts of the provision.
“Lawmakers should do some deep dive reevaluation and reach out to other outside experts to make sure that they fully understand [this bill],” Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen said at the roundtable.
Manchin’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
https://heatmap.news/politics/permitting-deal-climate-opposition
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
WordPress.com Partners With Perplexity.
https://wordpress.com/blog/2024/07/30/perplexity-partnership/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The problem for JD Vance is there's only one Donald Trump, and he isn't it.
Ames Science Directorate’s Stars of the Month, July 2024
date: 2024-07-30, from: NASA breaking news
The NASA Ames Science Directorate recognizes the outstanding contributions of (pictured left to right) Ryan T. Scott, Mike Kubo, Ehsan (Sam) Gharib-Nezhad, and Kristen Okorn. Their commitment to the NASA mission represents the talent, camaraderie, and vision needed to explore this world and beyond. Space Biosciences Star: Ryan T. Scott Ryan Scott, a Space Biosciences […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/ames-science-directorates-stars-of-the-month-july-2024/
Archaeologists Crack Open a 2,000-Year-Old Coffin in Italy’s ‘Tomb of Cerberus’
date: 2024-07-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The stone coffin likely contains the leader of the family that built the frescoed chamber in Naples
Zuck dreams of personalized AI assistants for all – just like email
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A model finetuned on your social media profile? What could possibly go wrong?
SIGGRAPH Big public AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot have become near ubiquitous over the past few years – but Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is banking that before long, everyone will have at least one, if not more, personalized AI assistants to call their own.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/30/meta_personal_ai/
US to spend $10 million to curb bird flu in farm workers, including vaccine push
date: 2024-07-30, from: VOA News USA
Sols 4259-4260: Kings Canyon Go Again!
date: 2024-07-30, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Monday, July 29, 2024 Our weekend drill preload test on the target “Kings Canyon” (shown in the accompanying MAHLI image) didn’t give us the full range of data we need to move forward with the full drilling process. This coming Wednesday, we hope to rerun our preload test on Kings Canyon or somewhere […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4259-4260-kings-canyon-go-again/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Experiences of Adults Without Kids in the US.
Particle’s Tachyon is a single-board PC with a Snapdragon chip, a 12 TOPS NPU, and 5G and WiFi 6E support (crowdfunding)
date: 2024-07-30, from: Liliputing
IoT hardware company Particle has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a credit card-sized single-board computer called Tachyon. It has 4GB of RAM, 64GB of UFS flash storage, and a Raspberry Pi-compatible 40-pint GPIO header. But what sets the Tachyon board apart from Raspberry Pi’s devices is that Particle’s little computer is powered by an octa-core […]
The post Particle’s Tachyon is a single-board PC with a Snapdragon chip, a 12 TOPS NPU, and 5G and WiFi 6E support (crowdfunding) appeared first on Liliputing.
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.
GLOBE Alumna and Youth for Habitat Program Lead Named Scientist of the Month in Alaska
date: 2024-07-30, from: NASA breaking news
As a 16-year old high school graduate, Maggie House decided to leave the military base in Germany where she lived with her family and go to college close to nature in Fairbanks, Alaska. She had lived in many countries and US states and knew she was ready. At the University of Alaska Fairbanks Troth Yeddha’ […]
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 networking takes a worldwide tumble
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-31, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ready to talk it up to investors today, Redmond?
Updated 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 them all, more pop up
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/
Misfire
date: 2024-07-30, updated: 2024-07-30, from: Alex Russel blog
https://infrequently.org/2024/07/misfire/
“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/