News gathered 2024-08-06
(date: 2024-08-06 08:27:11)
This San Jose couple moved to Italy to save their marriage. Here’s how that worked out
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
Buying and renovating a home in a different country is a decision that would put any relationship to the test. But this Bay Area couple snapped up a dilapidated house in a picturesque Italian town with the hope of saving their marriage.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-06, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
2017: What if TWTR is bought by a Repub?
http://scripting.com/2017/01/14/whatIfTwtrIsBoughtByARepub.html
Bad apps bypass Windows security alerts for six years using newly unveiled trick
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Windows SmartScreen and Smart App Control both have weaknesses of which to be wary
Elastic Security Labs has lifted the lid on a slew of methods available to attackers who want to run malicious apps without triggering Windows’ security warnings, including one in use for six years.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/bad_apps_bypass_windows_security/
Man runs into door, drops stolen suitcase trying to flee Campbell store
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
Case was full of other stolen items, worth about $1k.
Google TV Streamer launches as a 4K streaming box and smart home hub for $99.99
date: 2024-08-06, from: Liliputing
Google has launched a new streaming box, the 4K-capable Google TV Streamer. It’s available now for pre-order in the U.S. at $99.99 in hazel (gray) and porcelain and begins shipping on September 24. The device itself looks exactly like what was leaked just a few weeks ago. The retail package includes the Google TV Streamer, […]
The post Google TV Streamer launches as a 4K streaming box and smart home hub for $99.99 appeared first on Liliputing.
Tech Today: Flipping NASA Tech and Sticking the Landing
date: 2024-08-06, from: NASA breaking news
NASA tech adds gecko grip to phone accessory
It’s not partisanship when democracy is at stake
date: 2024-08-06, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
This moment isn’t about partisanship, because the discussions we’re having aren’t about tax policy or the intricacies of how we interact overseas. In 2024, one candidate’s supporters are waving flags that read “mass deportations now”, while the candidate is telling them they’ll never need to vote in another election and calling for the termination of parts of the Constitution. The other candidate, while we might quibble about policy differences, is advocating for fairness and inclusivity, and, you know, continuing to have a democracy.
So I don’t have any qualms about throwing myself in for Harris and Walz. I would have voted for Biden and Harris, too, and probably also three ferrets in a trenchcoat, as long as we were sure the ferrets didn’t advocate for a white Christian nation. As it happens, I’m more aligned with Harris and Walz than I have been with any Presidential candidate maybe ever; certainly the last time I felt anything close to this excitement was when Obama was running in the wake of eight disastrous years under George W Bush. Even Obama was cautious on the campaign trail and knocked back support for marriage equality, for example.
I’m particularly excited to see us move beyond the level of discourse where we’re arguing about democracy vs not-democracy. Let’s get into the intricacies of how we can help people without homes get back on their feet, or to figure out how to help people buy their first houses; let’s talk about literacy levels and how to move ourselves away from fossil fuels without losing jobs and improving working conditions. A return to a marketplace of genuine ideas rather than ideas vs unbridled id would be an incredible step forward. I can’t wait to talk about tax policy again.
And yeah, I’m looking forward to not thinking about That Guy, the folks behind Project 2026, and their brand of nationalism for a good long time. We need to move forward. We’re not going back.
The future could be much, much brighter than it has been for almost a decade. Now we just have to win this thing.
https://werd.io/2024/its-not-partisanship-when-democracy-is-at-stake
Wall Street steadies after its worst day in nearly 2 years, and stocks are mixed
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
New York — Some calm is returning to Wall Street, and U.S. stocks are holding steadier after Japan’s market soared earlier Tuesday to bounce back from its worst loss since 1987.
The S&P 500 was 0.2% higher in early trading and on track to break a brutal three-day losing streak. It had tumbled a bit more than 6% after several weaker-than-expected reports raised worries the Federal Reserve had pressed the brakes too hard for too long on the U.S. economy through high interest rates in order to beat inflation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 47 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:43 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% lower.
Stronger-than-expected profit reports from several big U.S. companies helped support the market. Kenvue, the company behind Tylenol and Band-Aids, jumped 13.5% after reporting stronger profit than expected thanks in part to higher prices for its products. Uber rolled 4.3% higher after easily topping profit forecasts for the latest quarter.
Caterpillar veered from an early loss to a gain of 1.7% after reporting stronger earnings than expected but weaker revenue.
Several technical factors may have accelerated the recent swoon for markets, beyond the weak U.S. hiring data and other reports, in what strategists at Barclays call “a perfect storm” for causing extreme market moves. One is centered in Tokyo, where a favorite trade for hedge funds and other investors began unraveling last week after the Bank of Japan made borrowing more expensive by raising interest rates above virtually zero.
That scrambled trades where investors had borrowed Japanese yen at low cost and invested it elsewhere around the world. The resulting exits from those trades may have helped accelerate the declines for markets around the world.
But Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 10.2% Tuesday, following its 12.4% sell-off the day before, which was its worst since the Black Monday crash of 1987. Stocks in Tokyo rebounded as the value of the Japanese yen stabilized a bit against the U.S. dollar following several days of sharp gains.
“The speed, the magnitude and the shock factor clearly demonstrate” how much of the moves were driven by how traders were positioned, rather than just worries about the economy, according to the strategists at Barclays led by Stefano Pascale and Anshul Gupta.
Still, some voices along Wall Street are continuing to urge caution.
Barry Bannister, chief equity strategist at Stifel, is warning more drops could be ahead because of a slowing U.S. economy and sticky inflation. He had been predicting a coming “correction” in U.S. stock prices for a while, including an acknowledgement in July that his initial call was early. That was two days before the S&P 500 set its latest all-time high and then began sinking.
While fears are rising about a slowing U.S. economy, it is still growing, and a recession is far from a certainty. The U.S. stock market is also still up a healthy amount for the year so far. The S&P 500 has romped to dozens of all-time highs this year, in part due to a frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology and critics have been saying prices looked too expensive.
Elsewhere, European markets were mostly left out of the rebound, with stock indexes down modestly in Germany France and the United Kingdom.
Who is Tim Walz? Things to know about Kamala Harris’ choice for vice president
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
It would be hard to find a more vivid representative of the American heartland than Walz. Born in West Point, Nebraska, a community of about 3,500 people northwest of Omaha, Walz joined the Army National Guard and became a teacher in Nebraska.
Michelin star restaurants in the Bay Area: The 2024 list
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
There were 85 honored restaurants statewide, 42 in the Bay Area.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/06/michelin-star-restaurants-in-the-bay-area-the-2024-list/
At one South Bay winery, eggs are in for winemaking but corks are out for bottling
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
Beauregard Vineyards releasing all 2022 vintages with screwtops.
The number of top-ranked restaurants in California continues to fall
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
(Bloomberg) – In the last several weeks, a handful of big businesses have announced they’re leaving California, namely Chevron and Elon Musk’s SpaceX and X.
About 200 iPads stolen from Los Gatos High School
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
Suspect broke a window to gain access.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/06/about-200-ipads-stolen-from-los-gatos-high-school/
Where Facebook’s AI Slop Comes From
date: 2024-08-06, from: 404 Media Group
Facebook itself is paying creators in India, Vietnam, and the Philippines for bizarre AI spam that they are learning to make from YouTube influencers and guides sold on Telegram.
https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/
Elon Musk’s X to close San Francisco office, relocate workers
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino sent an email to employees saying X will move out of its Market Street space in San Francisco.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/06/musks-x-to-close-san-francisco-office-relocate-workers/
The Trumps would ‘happily’ send Harry and Meghan back to the U.K., Eric Trump says
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
Amid controversy over Harry’s US visa, the former president and current GOP nominee has made it very clear that he doesn’t like the California-based Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-06, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Another big chunk of work is done.
I rewrote the Godot 3D toolbars and context menus in SwiftUI. I am pretty happy how it turned out, and even has some live features that do not exist in regular Godot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpf3UaQ4G-M
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112915355764423407
Recipe: Make a veggie-centric Salad Californiçoise
date: 2024-08-06, from: San Jose Mercury News
This California twist on a classic French Salade Nicoise trades in extra veggies and avocado for the usual fish.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/06/recipe-make-a-veggie-centric-salad-californicoise/
Quantum Scale Sensors used to Measure Planetary Scale Magnetic Fields
date: 2024-08-06, from: NASA breaking news
Magnetic fields are everywhere in our solar system. They originate from the Sun, planets, and moons, and are carried throughout interplanetary space by solar wind. This is precisely why magnetometers—devices used to measure magnetic fields—are flown on almost all missions in space to benefit the Earth, Planetary, and Heliophysics science communities, and ultimately enrich knowledge […]
MINISFORUM AtomMan G7 TI mini PC combines NVIDIA RTX 4070 graphics with up to an Intel Core i9-14900HX processor
date: 2024-08-06, from: Liliputing
Chinese mini PC maker MINISFORUM is expanding its line of compact gaming desktops with the new MINISFORUM AtomMan G7 Ti. It’s basically a small desktop computer with the guts of a decent gaming laptop, including support for up to a 55-watt, 24-core, 32-thread Intel Core i9-14900HX Raptor Lake processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 mobile graphics. […]
The post MINISFORUM AtomMan G7 TI mini PC combines NVIDIA RTX 4070 graphics with up to an Intel Core i9-14900HX processor appeared first on Liliputing.
Need to move 1.2 exabytes across the world every day? Just Effingo
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
That’s what Google calls its massively parallel data copy service operating on dozens of clusters
Sigcomm 2024 Google has revealed technical details of its in-house data transfer tool, called Effingo, and bragged that it uses the project to move an average of 1.2 exabytes every day.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/google_effingo/
WordStar for DOS 7.0 archive
date: 2024-08-06, from: OS News
As you all know, I continue to use WordStar for DOS 7.0 as my word-processing program. It was last updated in December 1992, and the company that made it has been defunct for decades; the program is abandonware. There was no proper archive of WordStar for DOS 7.0 available online, so I decided to create one. I’ve put weeks of work into this. Included are not only full installs of the program (as well as images of the installation disks), but also plug-and-play solutions for running WordStar for DOS 7.0 under Windows, and also complete full-text-searchable PDF versions of all seven manuals that came with WordStar — over a thousand pages of documentation. ↫ Robert J. Sawyer WordStar for DOS is definitely a bit of a known entity in our circles for still being used by a number of world-famous authors. WordStar 4.0 is still being used by George R. R. Martin – assuming he’s still even working on The Winds of Winter – and there must be some sort of reason as to why it’s still so oddly popular. Thanks to this work by author Robert J. Sawyer, accessing and using version 7 of WordStar for DOS is now easier than ever. One of the reasons Sawyer set out to do this was making sure that if he passes away, the people responsible for his estate and works will have an easy way to access his writings. It’s refreshing to see an author think ahead this far, and it will surely help a ton of other people too, since there’s quite a few documents lingering around using the WordStar format.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140431/wordstar-for-dos-7-0-archive/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-06, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
In this household we shit on cryptocurrencies
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112915292228487661
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-06, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Who is Tim Walz, Kamala Harris' pick for vice president?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cleyjp5qldno
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-06, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Walz choice is all over the news.scripting.com politics tab.
https://news.scripting.com/?tab=politics
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-06, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Harris names Minnesota Gov Tim Walz as her VP pick.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/kamala-harris-trump-election-08-06-24/index.html
CDs are having a hot moment right now
date: 2024-08-06, from: Marketplace Morning Report
In the midst of recent market volatility, many investors are seeking safe havens for their money. Cue the handy-dandy certificate of deposit, which is currently giving guaranteed returns of 4% or 5% at many financial institutions — but that may change when the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. Also: a look at Japan’s market rebound, cash prizes that come with Olympic medals and the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/cds-are-having-a-hot-moment-right-now
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-06, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
It's as easy to sign up for the Harris for President press list as it should be, you just need the signup URL.
https://mailchi.mp/joebiden/press-signup
Slow-moving Tropical Storm Debby bringing torrential rains, major flood threat to southeastern US
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. — Tropical Storm Debby moved menacingly into some of America’s most historic Southern cities and was expected to bring prolonged downpours and flooding throughout the day Tuesday after slamming into Florida and prompting the rescue of hundreds from flooded homes.
Record-setting rain from the storm that killed at least five people was causing flash flooding, with up to 30 inches (76 centimeters) possible in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said.
The storm’s center was over southeast Georgia early Tuesday with maximum sustained winds near 45 mph (75 kph) and it was moving northeast near 7 mph (11 kph). The center is expected to move off Georgia’s coast later Tuesday. Some strengthening is forecast Wednesday and Thursday as Debby drifts offshore, before it moves inland Thursday over South Carolina.
“Hunker down,” Van Johnson, the mayor of Savannah, Georgia, told residents in a social media livestream Monday night. “Expect that it will be a rough day” on Tuesday, he said.
More than 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain had fallen through Monday at Savannah’s airport, but more rain fell overnight and was continuing Tuesday, the National Weather Service reported.
Flash flood warnings were issued in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, among other areas of coastal Georgia and South Carolina. Both Savannah and Charleston announced curfews Monday night into Tuesday.
In South Carolina, Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times in a 90-second briefing Monday.
In addition to the curfew, the city of Charleston’s emergency plan includes sandbags for residents, opening parking garages so residents can park their cars above floodwaters and an online mapping system that shows which roads are closed due to flooding.
In Edisto Beach, South Carolina, a tornado touched down Monday night, damaging trees, homes and taking down power lines, the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office said on social media. No injuries were immediately reported, officials said.
The weather service continued issuing tornado warnings well into Monday night for parts of the state including Hilton Head Island.
At the edge of Hilton Head Island, musician Nick Poulin wasn’t overly concerned about Debby since his equipment was inside and he made sure that his car wasn’t parked under trees so it won’t be hit by falling branches.
“I’m born and raised here, so we’ve had plenty of storms,” he said. “It’s usually not as bad as people hype it up to be.”
Debby made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. It has weakened to a tropical storm and is moving slowly, drenching and bringing areas of catastrophic flooding across portions of eastern Georgia, the coastal plain of South Carolina and southeast North Carolina through Wednesday.
About 500 people were rescued Monday from flooded homes in Sarasota, Florida, a beach city popular with tourists, the Sarasota Police Department said in a social media post. Just north of Sarasota, officials in Manatee County said in a news release that 186 people were rescued from flood waters.
“Essentially we’ve had twice the amount of the rain that was predicted for us to have,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said on social media.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that the state could continue to see threats as waterways north of the border fill up and flow south.
“It is a very saturating, wet storm,” he said. “When they crest and the water that’s going to come down from Georgia, it’s just something that we’re going to be on alert for not just throughout today, but for the next week.”
Five people had died due to the storm as of Monday night, including a truck driver on Interstate 75 in the Tampa area after he lost control of his tractor trailer, which flipped over a concrete wall and dangled over the edge before the cab dropped into the water below. Sheriff’s office divers located the driver, a 64-year-old man from Mississippi, in the cab 40 feet (12 meters) below the surface, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
A 13-year-old boy died Monday morning after a tree fell on a mobile home southwest of Gainesville, Florida, according to the Levy County Sheriff’s Office. In Dixie County, just east of where the storm made landfall, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy died in a car crash on wet roads Sunday night.
In south Georgia, a 19-year-old man died Monday afternoon when a large tree fell onto a porch at a home in Moultrie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
More than 140,000 customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia on Tuesday morning, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp. Nearly 12,000 more were without power in South Carolina early Tuesday.
More than 1,600 flights were also canceled nationwide on Monday and more than 550 flights were canceled early Tuesday, many of them to and from Florida airports, according to FlightAware.com.
President Joe Biden approved a request from South Carolina’s governor for an emergency declaration, following his earlier approval of a similar request from Florida. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he has asked Biden to issue a preemptive federal emergency declaration to speed the flow of federal aid to the state.
Vice President Kamala Harris postponed a campaign stop scheduled for Thursday in Savannah.
North Carolina is also under a state of emergency after Gov. Roy Cooper declared it in an executive order signed Monday. Several areas along the state’s coastline are prone to flooding, such as Wilmington and the Outer Banks, according to the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program.
North Carolina and South Carolina have dealt with three catastrophic floods from tropical systems in the past nine years, all causing more than $1 billion in damage.
In 2015, rainfall fed by moisture as Hurricane Joaquin passed well offshore caused massive flooding. In 2016, flooding from Hurricane Matthew caused 24 deaths in the two states and rivers set record crests. Those records were broken in 2018 with Hurricane Florence, which set rainfall records in both Carolinas, flooded many of the same places and was responsible for 42 deaths in North Carolina and nine in South Carolina.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-06, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I need to keep reminding myself to not put critical features behind a long-press gesture.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112915084172031233
Users call on Microsoft to update Outlook’s friendly name feature
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
That one weird thing in Outlook that gives phishers and scammers an in to an inbox
Users are urging Microsoft to rethink how it shows sender email addresses in Outlook because phishing criminals are taking advantage, using helpful, friendly names to serve up emails loaded with malicious intent.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/users_call_for_microsoft_to/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-06, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The only mode Trump ever operates in is “public nervous breakdown.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/05/republicans-cringe-trump-harris-attacks-00172724
This 16-Foot-Tall Pigeon Sculpture Is Coming to New York City’s High Line
date: 2024-08-06, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Artist Iván Argote hopes the artwork, titled “Dinosaur,” will inspire “attraction, seduction and fear”
MAGA World Loves a Cybertruck
date: 2024-08-06, from: Heatmap News
By now, there’s a decent chance that you’ve seen a Cybertruck out in the wild — perhaps blocking the visibility at an intersection or surrounded by gawkers in the Whole Foods parking lot. And upon seeing it, I’ll bet you had precisely one question:
How does a Cybertruck function in rural Maine?
Tucker Carlson is on the case. On Monday, the Tucker on X host posted an hour-long video to determine whether a “man with a real job” could replace his F-350 with a Cybertruck. I’ll be honest: Out of respect for my time and sanity, I did not actually watch the entire thing. But within the first three minutes, Carlson’s interview subject — a guy who’d been loaned a Cybertruck for all of five days — confirmed that he could swap out his Ford for a Tesla with a resounding “so far, yes.”
It was not the only unexpected Cybertruck endorsement of Monday, however. On the other end of the Eastern Seaboard, at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump appeared in his own (also quite long) video with a far-right personality, the gamer Adin Ross. Over an hour into the livestream, Ross presented the former president with a custom Cybertruck featuring a red, white, and blue “Make America Great Again” wrap and the picture of Trump lifting his fist in the air after the attempt on his life in Pennsylvania emblazoned on its side. (In addition to possibly committing a campaign finance violation, the pair also inadvertently proved that the only thing more outré than owning a Cybertruck is owning a Cybertruck with your own face on it.)
For anyone who has followed the Republican Party’s stance on EVs, the fact that an all-electric truck is now apparently being used to own the libs might cause your head to explode. But on the other hand: Of course it is. While the far right has for years pushed the idea that EVs are somehow emasculating, Tesla designed the Cybertruck to be just the opposite. It’s such a conspicuously masculine status symbol that it provoked an anthropologist to wonder to The New York Times whether “I’ll ever see a nice lady driving this kind of car.” The right’s change of heart on EVs (or at least one EV) has also coincided neatly with Elon Musk’s announcement of a new conservative super PAC. (Musk is credited as the supplier of the loaner vehicle in Carlson’s video.)
But is it possible the right’s embrace of the Cybertruck could have benefits beyond giving us amusing, if extremely long videos? The upside, of course, is that the planet would be much better off if every person who’d ever bought a gas-guzzling truck to project an image of “rural culture and manhood” had decided to get an EV instead. Removing political and cultural barriers to EVs as a whole is certainly something to celebrate, even while the exact motivations remain suspect.
And hey, I won’t turn my nose up at more fast chargers in rural Maine.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/trump-cybertruck
Nvidia’s subscription software empire is taking shape
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
$4,500 per GPU per year adds up pretty quick – even faster when you pay by the hour
Comment In the wake of the AI boom, Nvidia has seen its revenues skyrocket to the point at which it briefly became the most valuable corporation in the world.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/nvidia_software_empire/
The calm after the stock market storm
date: 2024-08-06, from: Marketplace Morning Report
After the surge downward in stock prices yesterday, U.S. stock index futures have stabilized for now. The kindling for the Monday fire sale was Friday’s weaker-than-expected jobs report. We’ll hear more and learn from an expert how best to deal with anxiety and your investment portfolio. And we’ll also head to Kent County, Michigan — a swing county in a swing state — to hear how consumers there view the economy.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/the-calm-after-the-stock-market-storm
Jonathan Kraut | Why We Need the Separation of Powers
date: 2024-08-06, from: The Signal
The founders of this nation were the architects of an ingenious structure to ensure democracy and the rule of law remained the cornerstone of American self-governance. The founders’ plan was […]
The post Jonathan Kraut | Why We Need the Separation of Powers appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/jonathan-kraut-why-we-need-the-separation-of-powers/
Thomas Oatway | Universal Polygraphs?
date: 2024-08-06, from: The Signal
Having read The Signal Editorial Board’s opinion (June 1) on the “lawfare” being applied to poor Donald Trump by the Biden Administration, in concert with state and local court venues, […]
The post Thomas Oatway | Universal Polygraphs? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/thomas-oatway-universal-polygraphs/
Rob Kerchner | Pity This Voter Bloc
date: 2024-08-06, from: The Signal
Editor’s note: The following letter was written before Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential election. Pity the poor affluent white female liberals. They trumpet abortion and they fear for “democracy,” […]
The post Rob Kerchner | Pity This Voter Bloc appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/rob-kerchner-pity-this-voter-bloc/
Japanese stocks rebound
date: 2024-08-06, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: After a dramatic 12% drop yesterday, Japanese stocks have rebounded — with the Nikkei 225 finishing more than 10% higher at the close of trading. Then, following weeks of unrest in Bangladesh and the resignation of its prime minster, the IMF says it’s committed to the country’s economic stability. And we’ll hear about a scam targeting Chinese people around the world, in which criminals pretend to be Chinese police.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/japanese-stocks-rebound
Dan Walters | Rare Reforms Would Dilute Power
date: 2024-08-06, from: The Signal
It’s axiomatic that institutions, whether governmental, academic, philanthropic or corporate, rarely reform themselves. Universally, if systemic change occurs, it tends to come from outside the existing structure for one overriding […]
The post Dan Walters | Rare Reforms Would Dilute Power appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/dan-walters-rare-reforms-would-dilute-power/
Why we’re taking a problem-first approach to the development of AI systems
date: 2024-08-06, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
If you are into tech, keeping up with the latest updates can be tough, particularly when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI). Sometimes I admit to feeling this way myself, however, there was one update recently that really caught my attention. OpenAI launched their latest iteration of ChatGPT, this time adding…
The post Why we’re taking a problem-first approach to the development of AI systems appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Nixon Resigns
date: 2024-08-06, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
August 8, 2024, marks the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation as President of the United States. Today’s post is an update of Emma Rothberg’s 2014 article. Early the morning of June 17, 1972, five men were caught and arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. … Continue reading Nixon Resigns
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2024/08/06/nixon-resigns/
It’s not a Nixie clock, it’s a Pixie clock
date: 2024-08-06, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Our Maker In Residence intern tells us about his foray into NeoPixels to build a Pixie clock (that’s a Pi-powered Nixie clock).
The post It’s not a Nixie clock, it’s a Pixie clock appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/its-not-a-nixie-clock-its-a-pixie-clock/
EVs continue to grow but private buyers are steering clear, say motor trade figures
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Hybrids snap at heels of battery-only vehicles in UK, but petrol is still king… for now
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has published UK data showing that while sales of new electric vehicles are on the rise, private buyers are staying away.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/evs_up_car_regs_uk/
Downgraded Debby Churns North
date: 2024-08-06, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: At least 11 people have died from extreme heat in South Korea • A fast-moving fire scorched 100 acres in California’s San Bernardino county • The Atlantic’s Saharan dust plume is disappearing, which could make for stronger tropical storms.
THE TOP FIVE
- Southeast braces for record rainfall as Debby lingers
Hurricane Debby has been downgraded to a tropical storm after slamming into Florida’s Big Bend region yesterday. Despite the downgrade, the storm remains extremely dangerous. In the days to come, it is expected to bring historic rainfall and life-threatening flooding to Georgia and the Carolinas as it churns up the coast. “Major flooding is the number one concern with Debby going forward,” according to The Weather Channel. In Sarasota, Florida, more than 11 inches of rain fell Sunday, breaking a daily record from 1945. “Essentially we’ve had twice the amount of the rain that was predicted for us to have,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said. More than 150,000 customers are without power, and at least five people are known to have died in the storm.
The
Weather Channel
- New Carbon Removal Standards Initiative launches
There’s a new player in carbon removal. The Carbon Removal Standards Initiative wants to help establish a different system for advancing carbon removal — one where the challenging but important goal of scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere is treated as a public good and not just a business opportunity. The initiative is run by Anu Khan, the former deputy director of science and innovation at Carbon180. CRSI will provide technical assistance to policymakers, regulators, and nongovernmental organizations in quantifying carbon removal outcomes, and as Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported, “Khan hopes CRSI will be a fulcrum around which the entire industry can begin to pivot.”
- Rivian to report Q2 earnings
EV startup Rivian reports Q2 earnings today, after months of cost-cutting measures in its quest for profitability. We already know the company delivered nearly 13,800 vehicles, which was a slight improvement on Q1 but down from Q4 of last year. Wall Street analysts expect revenue to have hit $1.15 billion, with losses of about $1.24 per share. CEO RJ Scaringe has cautioned investors that this quarter will be “messy” but hopes they’ll hang in there until efficiency upgrades to the manufacturing process start to pay off in the company balance sheets. Last month Rivian announced a $5 billion joint venture with Volkswagen that boosted its stock. The startup is working on its next-gen R2 and R3 vehicles, which are “expected to significantly expand its market,” wrote Peter Johnson at Electrek. But they’re not expected until 2026.
- Trump says he has ‘no choice’ but to embrace EVs
Former President Donald Trump told supporters at a rally that he has “no choice” but to support electric cars. Why? “Because Elon endorsed me very strongly.” He’s referring, of course, to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has backed Trump’s campaign. The two men have reportedly been speaking on the phone lately and despite Trump’s long history of trashing EVs, he seems to have changed his mind. Trump told the rally crowd EVs would make up a “small slice” of the auto industry and that “every kind of car” would be available. Trump’s concession “already feels very much like quid-pro-quo for the support of the world’s richest man,” wrote Rob Stumpf at Inside EVs.
- Bezos Earth Fund puts $9.4 million toward cow methane vaccine
research
The Bezos Earth Fund is pouring $9.4 million into researching whether a vaccine could be given to cows to cut their methane emissions. The funding will go to the Pirbright Institute and the Royal Veterinary College, which will “use state-of-the-art biotechnology to figure out the mechanism by which a vaccine could cut livestock methane emissions by more than 30%.” Microbes in the guts of cattle produce methane, which the cows burp out. Methane is a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide that many see as a good target for limiting global warming in the short term. There are a lot of ongoing efforts to curb agricultural methane emissions – from feed additives to better ranch management – but “a vaccine offers a universal solution which is both scalable and cost effective,” the fund said.
THE KICKER
Morgan Stanley yesterday released its annual intern survey, which examines the likes and dislikes of nearly 600 of the company’s summer interns to reveal the evolving preferences of future business leaders. It finds that Tesla is now less popular than Mercedes and BMW, and gas-powered cars are favored over EVs nearly 2-to-1.
https://heatmap.news/climate/hurricane-debby-rainfall-flooding
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-06, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
DOJ, states win Google search antitrust case.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/doj-states-win-google-search-191541412.html
Toward a More Perfect Carbon Removal Standard
date: 2024-08-06, from: Heatmap News
There’s a new player in carbon removal. It’s not another startup building machines to suck carbon from the air. And it’s not another trade association or consulting firm or marketplace peddling carbon removal credits. Instead, it wants to help establish a different system for advancing carbon removal — one where the challenging but important goal of scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere is treated as a public good and not just a business opportunity.
It’s called the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative, and it’s run by Anu Khan, the former deputy director of science and innovation at Carbon180. CRSI (pronounced like the Lannister queen in Game of Thrones, “Cersei”) is a “financially unconflicted, independent nonprofit,” that will provide technical assistance to policymakers, regulators, and nongovernmental organizations in quantifying carbon removal outcomes.
A group providing technical assistance may not sound like a revolutionary development. But Khan hopes CRSI will be a fulcrum around which the entire industry can begin to pivot.
Today’s carbon removal industry is built on selling credits, each of which is supposed to represent one ton of CO2 pulled out of the atmosphere. But the market is almost entirely self-regulated. The standards for measuring and reporting how much carbon a given project is removing have either been developed by the carbon credit registries that take a cut of the sales or by the developers themselves — in both cases a conflict of interest, even if governed by the best of intentions. Plus, there’s a multitude of standards for every type of project, and they vary in quality.
Take carbon farming, for example. If a farmer alters their practices to increase the carbon stored in their soil, they can choose from more than a dozen standards to quantify the effects. In theory, the standards all produce an identical product — a fungible carbon credit equivalent to one ton of carbon removed from the atmosphere. In reality, they vary widely in quality, with some standards producing more accurate results than others.
In watching this environment develop over the past several years, I’ve often wondered if some independent, unbiased entity might eventually step forward to enact one set of standards to rule them all. Khan told me that about a year and a half ago, she had the same thought. “Oh, to be so young,” she said.
At the time, there was growing concern that the carbon removal industry would suffer from the same credibility issues that plagued the wider market for carbon credits. “You have a multiplicity of these verification entities driven by profit motives, some of which have very loose standards,” Wil Burns, the co-executive director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University, told me. “From the standpoint of those purchasing credits or those viewing whether companies are doing anything meaningful, nobody can really distinguish.”
In early 2023, dozens of carbon removal suppliers, buyers, verifiers, academics, and nonprofit staff — including Khan — signed an open letter that now reads like an early draft of CRSI’s missions statement. It called for the creation of “an independent, not-for-profit initiative that conscientiously avoids conflicts of interest and has funding that does not depend on issuing or selling carbon credits.” This new body would “provide a trusted, scientific stamp of approval for CDR protocols through an inclusive process to identify scientific consensus.”
The letter focused on the issues with measuring carbon removal in the context of the voluntary sale of carbon credits. But over the next year, it became clear to Khan that carbon removal won’t reach the scale necessary to make a dent in climate change without government policy. “Even the market enthusiasts recognize that we’re going to need policy as quickly as possible to shore this up,” she said, “and it’s going to be policy, long term, that gets us to gigaton scale.”
So instead of providing “a trusted, scientific stamp of approval” to private businesses, CRSI is laser focused on working with policymakers. It’s not entirely clear yet what that will look like, and it’s likely to evolve as CRSI finds its footing. But the group is launching with a few projects that are already underway. It has created a database of “quantification resources,” which is basically a list of all of the methodologies published by companies, academics, government agencies, and international standards organizations, for measuring different kinds of carbon removal. It also has a database of carbon removal policies, both those enacted and proposed. Eventually, Khan plans to have them link out to each other, so you can see which standards underpin which policies.
Khan wants CRSI to be a go-to resource for policymakers and agency staff to ensure that carbon removal programs actually result in climate benefits. “We are fundamentally a mission organization,” she told me. “We believe that carbon removal is a tool for climate justice. Justice requires accountability, and in carbon removal, that means knowing how to count the carbon. We want to make sure that if we’re putting public dollars into these policies, that they are backed by the ability to actually measure the carbon.”
Khan isn’t the only one whose thinking on standards has shifted toward a government-led approach. Burns, who also signed the letter, told me he’s seeing more carbon removal companies pushing for a compliance market, where the government requires polluting businesses to buy carbon removal. “They would like to both have government standards that would provide more confidence, for example, to investors,” he said, “and they would like government mandates that generate more demand.”
Freya Chay is the program lead at the nonprofit Carbon Plan, which spearheaded the letter. She told me many in the industry are now thinking about carbon removal programs that don’t revolve around selling credits at all, and therefore may have very different measurement and verification needs.
One of CRSI’s first projects is an illustrative example. Imagine if the Department of Agriculture developed a program to help farmers restore the pH of soils that have gotten too acidic, by adding basalt — a mineral that also happens to capture CO2 from the atmosphere as it dissolves. Today, carbon removal companies that sell carbon credits based on this process are taking hundreds of soil samples to measure the outcomes. The USDA likely wouldn’t need that level of precision — the captured CO2 is a co-benefit, not the entire point of the program — but “at some point you probably do want to know if you removed carbon through this policy,” said Khan. CRSI is working on figuring out how you would do that.
Similarly, we might see the development of building codes that encourage the use of concrete cured with CO2 from the atmosphere, or waste management regulations that govern the injection of carbon-rich organic waste into underground storage wells. Bigger picture, the U.S. will eventually have to measure and report how much carbon removal it’s doing across all of these little programs as part of its obligation under the Paris Agreement.
In many of these cases, those setting the rules won’t be experts in carbon removal science. “They’re going to need technical expertise,” said Khan. “We want to make sure that when they are doing that work, they have access to all of the relevant information, and that it’s organized in a way that’s legible for the expertise that they already have.”
Shuchi Talati, the former chief of staff in the office of fossil energy and carbon management at the Department of Energy, told me that having this kind of centralized resource would definitely have been useful. “The private sector has a lot of power right now in setting standards because the public sector doesn’t have the capacity,” she said. And since the field is so diverse, efforts are spread across a bunch of different agencies that don’t always talk to each other. Talati sits on the board of CRSI, and for her, the focus on government is not just about helping carbon removal scale.
“If we’re allowing the private sector to set standards and norms — and maybe they’re fine right now — but if we continue to let that happen, I can see the actual climate benefit of CDR slipping away,” Talati said. “That’s really where I see Anu’s organization fit in, where we are trying to set standards and norms from this core, foundational principle of a public good.”
https://heatmap.news/climate/carbon-removal-standard-crsi
WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released for free
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The preferred tool of Arthur C Clarke, Anne Rice and George R R Martin
Before WordPerfect, the most popular work processor was WordStar. Now, the last ever DOS version has been bundled and set free by one of its biggest fans.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/wordstar_7_the_last_ever/
Dell makes new round of layoffs while it looks to unlock modern AI
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
HR apparently overwhelmed by attempt to sack 12.5k people in one day
Dell has made another round of layoffs, which The Register understands have cut deep and seen even company veterans let go.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/dell_layoffs/
Chrome Web Store warns end is nigh for uBlock Origin
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Will you see the Lite?
Back in June, Google’s Chrome Web Store began alerting users of uBlock Origin who had developer-oriented versions of Chrome that the popular ad-filtering extension could soon stop working.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/chrome_web_store_warns_end/
Today in SCV History (Aug. 6)
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1892 – Western actor and Saugus rodeo owner Hoot Gibson born in Nebraska [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-aug-6/
Billion-dollar bust as international op shutters Cryptonator wallet
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Chap named ‘Roman Boss’ accused of being just that at a cryptocash laundering outfit
Users of Cryptonator – an online digital wallet and cryptocurrency exchange – received an unpleasant surprise last weekend after the service was shuttered in a combined operation run by the FBI, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and German police.…
libcurl is 24 years old
date: 2024-08-06, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
On Monday August 7, 2000 at 14:49 UTC, we announced the release of the first libcurl version ever. Exactly twenty-four years ago today. We called it version 7.1. The simple reason we did a point one release as the first one was that we had shipped a whole range of 7.0 beta versions before that … Continue reading libcurl is 24 years old
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/08/06/libcurl-is-24-years-old/
Japan stops measuring train crowding by ease of newspaper readership
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The smartphone strikes again! And so might the Reg Standards Bureau, with your help
Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism has changed the way it measures crowding on trains, abandoning decades-old newspaper- and magazine-based metrics.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/japan_train_crowding_measurement/
Kamala Harris is now Democratic presidential nominee
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris, a daughter of immigrants who rose through the California political and law enforcement ranks to become the first female vice president in U.S. history, formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday — becoming the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket.
More than four years after her first attempt at the presidency collapsed, Harris’ coronation as her party’s standard-bearer caps a tumultuous and frenetic period for Democrats prompted by President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate performance that shattered his own supporters’ confidence in his reelection prospects and spurred extraordinary intraparty warfare about whether he should stay in the race.
Just as soon as Biden abruptly ended his candidacy, Harris and her team worked rapidly to secure backing from the 1,976 party delegates needed to clinch the nomination in a formal roll call vote. She reached that marker at warp speed, with an Associated Press survey of delegates nationwide showing she locked down the necessary commitments a mere 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.
Harris’ nomination became official after a five-day round of online balloting by Democratic National Convention delegates ended Monday night, with the party saying in a statement released just before midnight that 99% of delegates had cast their ballots for Harris. The party had long contemplated the early virtual roll call to ensure Biden would appear on the ballot in every state. It said it would next formally certify the vote before holding a celebratory roll call at the party’s convention later this month in Chicago.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted after Biden withdrew found 46% of Americans have a favorable view of Harris, while a nearly identical share has an unfavorable view of her. But more Democrats say they are satisfied with her candidacy compared with that of Biden, energizing a party that had long been resigned to the 81-year-old Biden being its nominee against former President Donald Trump, a Republican they view as an existential threat.
Already Harris has telegraphed that she doesn’t plan to veer much from the themes and policies that framed Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her delivery can be far fierier, particularly when she invokes her prosecutorial background to lambast Trump and his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records in connection with a hush money scheme.
“Given that unique voice of a new generation, of a prosecutor and a woman when fundamental rights, especially reproductive rights, are on the line, it’s almost as if the stars have aligned for her at this moment in history,” said Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who was tapped to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice president.
A splash in Washington before a collapse in the 2020 primaries
Kamala Devi Harris was born Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist who emigrated to the United States from India when she was 19 years old, and Stanford University emeritus professor Donald Harris, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jamaica. Her parents’ advocacy for civil rights gave her what she described as a “stroller’s-eye view” of the movement.
She spent years as a prosecutor in the Bay Area before her elevation as the state’s attorney general in 2010 and then election as U.S. senator in 2016.
Harris arrived in Washington as a senator at the dawn of the volatile Trump era, quickly establishing herself as a reliable liberal opponent of the new president’s personnel and policies and fanning speculation about a presidential bid of her own. Securing a spot on the coveted Judiciary Committee gave her a national spotlight to interrogate prominent Trump nominees, such as now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I’m not able to be rushed this fast,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a 2017 hearing as Harris repeatedly pressed him on potential conversations with Russian nationals. “It makes me nervous.”
Harris launched her 2020 presidential campaign with much promise, drawing parallels to former President Barack Obama and attracting more than 20,000 people to a kickoff rally in her hometown. But Harris withdrew from the primary race before the first nominating contest in Iowa, plagued by staff dissent that spilled out into the open and an inability to attract enough campaign cash.
Harris struggled to deliver a consistent pitch to Democratic voters and wobbled on key issues such as health care. She suggested she backed eliminating private insurance for a full government-run system — “Medicare for All” coverage — before releasing her own health care plan that preserved private insurance. Now, during her nascent general election campaign, Harris has already reversed some of her earlier, more liberal positions, such as a ban on fracking that she endorsed in 2019.
And while Harris tried to deploy her law enforcement background as an asset in her 2020 presidential campaign, it never attracted enough support in a party that couldn’t reconcile some of her past tough-on-crime positions at a time of heightened focus on police brutality.
Joining Biden’s team — and an evolution as vice president
Still, Harris was at the top of the vice presidential shortlist when Biden was pondering his running mate, after his pledge in early 2020 that he would choose a Black woman as his No. 2. He was fond of Harris, who had forged a close friendship with his now-deceased son Beau, who had been Delaware’s attorney general when she was in that job for California.
Her first months as vice president were far from smooth. Biden asked her to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts with Central America on the root causes of migration to the United States, which triggered attacks from Republicans on border security and remains a political vulnerability. It didn’t help matters that Harris stumbled in big interviews, such as in a 2021 sit-down with NBC News’ Lester Holt when she responded dismissively that “I haven’t been to Europe” when the anchor noted that she hadn’t visited the U.S.-Mexico border.
For her first two years, Harris also was often tethered to Washington so she could break tie votes in the evenly divided Senate, which gave Democrats landmark wins on the climate and health care but also constrained opportunities for her to travel around the country and meet voters.
Her visibility became far more prominent after the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that dismantled Roe v. Wade, as she became the chief spokesperson for the administration on abortion rights and was a more natural messenger than Biden, a lifelong Catholic who had in the past favored restrictions on the procedure. She is the first vice president to tour an abortion clinic and speaks about reproductive rights in the broader context of maternal health, especially for Black women.
Throughout her vice presidency, Harris has been careful to remain loyal to Biden while emphasizing that she would be ready to step in if needed. That dramatic transition began in late June after the first debate between Biden and Trump, where the president’s stumbles were so cataclysmic that he could never reverse the loss of confidence from other Democrats.
Headed to the top of the ticket
After Biden ended his candidacy July 21, he quickly endorsed Harris. And during the first two weeks of her 2024 presidential bid, enthusiasm among the Democratic base surged, with donations pouring in, scores of volunteers showing up at field offices and supporters swelling so much in numbers that event organizers have had to swap venues.
The Harris campaign now believes it has a renewed opportunity to compete in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia — states that Biden had started to abandon in favor of shoring up the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“The country is able to see the Kamala Harris that we all know,” said Bakari Sellers, who was a national co-chair of her 2020 campaign. “We really didn’t allow the country to see her” four years ago. Sellers said: “We had her in bubble wrap. What people are seeing now is that she’s real, she’s talented.”
Yet Democrats are anticipating that Harris’ political honeymoon will wear off, and she is inevitably going to come under tougher scrutiny for Biden administration positions, the state of the economy and volatile situations abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Harris has also yet to answer extended questions from journalists nor sit down for a formal interview since she began her run.
The Trump campaign has been eager to define Harris as she continues to introduce herself to voters nationwide, releasing an ad blaming her for the high number of illegal crossings at the southern border during the Biden administration and dubbing her “Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”
The Republican nominee’s supporters have also derisively branded Harris as a diversity hire, while Trump himself has engaged in ugly racial attacks of his own, wrongly asserting that Harris had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage and only recently played up her Black identity.
His remarks are previewing a season of racist and sexist claims against the person who would be the first woman and the first person of South Asian heritage in the presidency.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said while addressing the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
In her response, Harris called it “the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect” and said voters “deserve better.”
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts,” Harris said at a Sigma Gamma Rho sorority gathering in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/kamala-harris-is-now-democratic-presidential-nominee/7731481.html
MDM vendor Mobile Guardian attacked, leading to remote wiping of 13,000 devices
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Singapore Ministry of Education orders software removed after string of snafus
UK-based mobile device management vendor Mobile Guardian has admitted that on August 4 it suffered a security incident that involved unauthorized access to iOS and ChromeOS devices managed by its tools, which are currently unavailable. In Singapore, the incident resulted in 13,000 devices being remotely wiped and saw the nation’s Education Ministry cut ties with the vendor.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/mobile_guardian_mdm_attack/
Samsung labor union orders members back to work and a ‘tactical transition’ to ongoing action
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Actions haven’t stopped Chaebol from commencing mass production of new mobile memory
Approximately four weeks after unionized Samsung workers in South Korea went on strike indefinitely – the first-ever walkout at the company – the union instructed members back to return to work from Monday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/samsung_union_rto/
LASD reports local rise in domestic violence incidents
date: 2024-08-06, from: The Signal
Court records from a Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station investigation demonstrate one of the biggest problems the area is facing in terms of violent crimes: domestic violence. Local deputies became […]
The post LASD reports local rise in domestic violence incidents appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/lasd-reports-local-rise-in-domestic-violence-incidents/
Ex-Trump attorney to cooperate in Arizona fake electors case, charges to be dropped
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
phoenix — Former President Donald Trump’s campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, who worked closely with Rudy Giuliani, will cooperate with Arizona prosecutors in exchange for charges being dropped against her in a fake electors case, the state attorney general’s office announced Monday.
Ellis has previously pleaded not guilty to fraud, forgery and conspiracy charges in the Arizona case. Seventeen other people charged in the case have pleaded not guilty to the felony charges — including Giuliani, Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows and 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring Trump had won Arizona.
“Her insights are invaluable and will greatly aid the State in proving its case in court,” Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “As I stated when the initial charges were announced, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined — it is far too important. Today’s announcement is a win for the rule of law.”
Last year, Ellis was charged in Georgia after she appeared with Giuliani at a December 2020 hearing hosted by state Republican lawmakers at the Georgia Capitol during which false allegations of election fraud were made. She had pleaded guilty in October to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. The cooperation agreement signed by Ellis in the Arizona case requires her to provide truthful information to the Attorney General’s Office and testify honestly in proceedings in any state or federal court. Prosecutors can withdraw from the deal and refile charges if Ellis violates the agreement.
Prosecutors have already asked a court to dismiss the Arizona charges against Ellis. It wasn’t immediately clear if a judge had yet approved the request.
The Associated Press left messages with Ellis’ attorney, Matthew Brown, after the agreement was announced Monday.
While not a fake elector in Arizona, prosecutors say Ellis made false claims of widespread election fraud in the state and six others, encouraged the Arizona Legislature to change the outcome of the election and encouraged then-Vice President Mike Pence to accept Arizona’s fake elector votes.
The indictment said Ellis, Giuliani and other associates were at a meeting at the Arizona Legislature on Dec. 1, 2020, with then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers and other Republicans when Giuliani and his team asked the speaker to hold a committee hearing on the election.
When Bowers asked for proof of election fraud, Giuliani said he had proof but Ellis had advised that it was left back at a hotel room, the indictment said. No proof was provided to Bowers.
Ellis also is barred from practicing law in Colorado for three years after her guilty plea in Georgia.
Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme.
Arizona authorities unveiled the felony charges in late April. Overall, charges were brought against 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring Trump had won Arizona, five lawyers connected to the former president and two former Trump aides. President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes.
Trump himself was not charged in the Arizona case but was referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment.
The 11 people who claimed to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and asserting that Trump carried the state. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.
Illinois relaxes biometric privacy law so snafus won’t cost businesses billions
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Some scowl, some smile, as fines no longer apply every time your mugshot or fingerprint is shared
The US state of Illinois has reduced penalties for breaches of its tough Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).…
Biden aims to defuse Mideast tensions
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
U.S. President Joe Biden met with his national security team Monday and spoke with the king of Jordan to defuse heightened tensions in the Middle East after a pair of high-profile assassinations. Israel’s leader has warned the country will exact a “heavy price” if attacked by Iran or its proxies in the region. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-aims-to-defuse-mideast-tensions/7731444.html
NFL to begin using face scanning tech across all of its stadiums
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Smile for the camera to get in, or buy a beer without lining up
The National Football League and all 32 of its teams will use tech from facial recognition software vendor Wicket to verify the identity of thousands of staff, media and fans as part of its credentialing program.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/nfl_face_scanning_tech/
Biden aims to defuse Mideast tensions
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
THE WHITE HOUSE — U.S. President Joe Biden met with his national security team Monday and spoke with Jordan’s king to defuse heightened tensions in the Middle East after a pair of high-profile assassinations last week.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, warned Israel would exact a “heavy price” if attacked by Iran or its proxies in the region.
The White House said over the weekend that it was committed to a hostage-release and cease-fire deal that had so far been elusive — but emphasized that Washington stood ready to respond and had surged military resources to the region.
“We still believe a cease-fire deal is the best way to bring this war to an end,” John Kirby, White House national security spokesman, said. “It’s also, we believe, very possible. We still believe the gaps are narrow enough to close. The other thing that we’ve been doing since the 7th of October is making sure that not only Israel has what it needs to defend itself, but that this war doesn’t escalate to become something broader.”
Analysts say this is a tense moment.
“I think one of the reasons that this is also scary, to be honest, for everybody, is that it isn’t clear what the United States can do when we’re on the brink like this,” said Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Advocates for the American Muslim community, which has criticized Biden’s staunch support for Israel, say Washington should take a firm line on Israel’s aggression in Gaza.
“The United States possesses a wide array of diplomatic and political tools to hold Israel accountable, whether that’s withholding aid, ammunition, weapons, political support or sanctioning more of Israel’s far-right settlers that have been engaged in violence,” said Robert McCaw, Government Affairs Department director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Netanyahu said Israel is ready to meet challenges.
“Iran and its proxies seek to surround us with a stranglehold of terror on seven fronts,” he said. “Their visible aggression is insatiable, but Israel is not helpless. We are determined to stand against them on every front, in every arena, far and near. Anyone who murders our citizens, anyone who harms our country, will be held accountable. He will pay a very heavy price.”
Jordan Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi recently paid a rare visit to Tehran, and Biden on Monday spoke to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about de-escalating tensions in the region.
Hall says diplomacy may be the best way forward.
“What he [Safadi] wanted to do was play essentially a mediating role in much the same way that Qatar has been doing in recent months,” she said. “Just speak to Iran, try to address their concerns, but also to be essentially a conduit for the United States to ensure that there’s some kind of open channel during these particularly scary times.
“And I think that that is more necessary than ever before, since the United States does not directly speak to high-ranking Iranian officials. And so, they are depending on these kinds of regional mediators, probably more so than ever before,” Hall said.
So, with nearly 40,000 people dead, Gaza in ruins, and Lebanon and Iran on high alert, the world is waiting to see what happens next.
A reporter asked Biden about one of the key players in the conflict as he left church on Sunday.
“Do you think Iran will stand down, sir?” the reporter said.
“I hope so,” Biden replied. “I don’t know.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-aims-to-defuse-mideast-tensions/7731416.html
The OpenAI Plot Thickens
date: 2024-08-06, from: Gary Marcus blog
Crazy day gets crazier
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-openai-plot-thickens
COC adjunct faculty allege unpaid hours in lawsuit
date: 2024-08-06, from: The Signal
A pair of adjunct faculty members filed a lawsuit against College of the Canyons on behalf of the union alleging that adjunct faculty were not lawfully paid for “unscheduled office […]
The post COC adjunct faculty allege unpaid hours in lawsuit appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/coc-adjunct-faculty-allege-unpaid-hours-in-lawsuit/
The Value a Local REALTOR® Brings to the Sale of a Home
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
By Michele Allyn2024 PresidentSanta Barbara Association of Realtors As the President of the Board of Directors for the Santa Barbara
The post The Value a Local REALTOR® Brings to the Sale of a Home appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/05/the-value-a-local-realtor-brings-to-the-sale-of-a-home/
Three dead, 1 transported following collision on I-5
date: 2024-08-06, from: The Signal
Three people died and one was taken to Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in critical condition following a single-vehicle collision on the southbound lanes of Interstate 5 on Monday afternoon, according […]
The post Three dead, 1 transported following collision on I-5 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/three-dead-1-transported-following-collision-on-i-5/
Dow drops 1,000 points; Japanese stocks plunge as markets quake worldwide
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
new york — A scary Monday that started with a plunge abroad reminiscent of 1987’s crash swept around the world and pummeled Wall Street with more steep losses, as fears worsened about a slowing U.S. economy.
The S&P 500 dropped 3% for its worst day in nearly two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reeled by 1,033 points, or 2.6%, while the Nasdaq composite slid 3.4% as Apple, Nvidia and other Big Tech companies that used to be the stars of the stock market continued to wilt.
The drops were the latest in a global sell-off that began last week. Japan’s Nikkei 225 helped begin Monday by plunging 12.4% for its worst day since the Black Monday crash of 1987.
It was the first chance for traders in Tokyo to react to Friday’s report showing U.S. employers slowed their hiring last month by much more than economists expected. That was the latest piece of data on the U.S. economy to come in weaker than expected, and it’s all raised fear the Federal Reserve has pressed the brakes on the U.S. economy by too much for too long through high interest rates in hopes of stifling inflation.
Professional investors cautioned that some technical factors could be amplifying the action in markets, and that the drops may be overdone, but the losses were still neck-snapping. South Korea’s Kospi index careened 8.8% lower, and bitcoin dropped below $54,000 from more than $61,000 on Friday.
Even gold, which has a reputation for offering safety during tumultuous times, slipped about 1%.
That’s in part because traders began wondering if the damage has been so severe that the Federal Reserve will have to cut interest rates in an emergency meeting, before its next scheduled decision on Sept. 18. The yield on the two-year Treasury, which closely tracks expectations for the Fed, briefly sank below 3.70% during the morning from 3.88% late Friday and from 5% in April. It later recovered and pulled back to 3.89%.
“The Fed could ride in on a white horse to save the day with a big rate cut, but the case for an inter-meeting cut seems flimsy,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “Those are usually reserved for emergencies, like COVID, and an unemployment rate of 4.3% doesn’t really seem like an emergency.”
Of course, the U.S. economy is still growing, the U.S. stock market is still up a healthy amount for the year and a recession is far from a certainty. The Fed has been clear about the tightrope it began walking when it started hiking rates sharply in March 2022: Being too aggressive would choke the economy, but going too soft would give inflation more oxygen and hurt everyone.
Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle sees a higher chance of a recession within the next 12 months following Friday’s jobs report. But he still sees only a 25% probability of that, up from 15%, in part “because the data look fine overall” and he does not “see major financial imbalances.”
Some of Wall Street’s recent declines may simply be air coming out of a stock market that romped to dozens of all-time highs this year, in part on a frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.
“Markets tend to move higher like they’re climbing stairs, and they go down like they’re falling out a window,” according to JJ Kinahan, CEO of IG North America. He chalks much of the recent worries to euphoria around AI subsiding, with pressure rising on companies to show how AI is turning into profits, and “a market that was ahead of itself.”
Treasury yields also pared their losses Monday after a report said growth for U.S. services businesses was a touch stronger than expected. Growth was led by arts, entertainment and recreation businesses, along with accommodations and food services, according to the Institute for Supply Management.
Still, stocks of companies whose profits are most closely tied to the economy’s strength took sharp losses on the fears about a slowdown. The small companies in the Russell 2000 index dropped 3.3%, washing out what had been a revival for it and other beaten-down areas of the market.
Making things worse for Wall Street, Big Tech stocks tumbled as the market’s most popular trade for much of this year continued to unravel. Apple, Nvidia and a handful of other Big Tech stocks known as the “Magnificent Seven” had propelled the S&P 500 to record after record this year, even as high interest rates weighed down much of the rest of the stock market.
But Big Tech’s momentum turned last month on worries investors had taken their prices too high and expectations for future growth are becoming too difficult to meet. A set of underwhelming profit reports that began with updates from Tesla and Alphabet added to the pessimism and accelerated the declines.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 160.23 points to 5,186.33. The Dow sank 1,033.99 to 38,703.27, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 576.08 to 16,200.08.
A re-introduction for Blaugust
date: 2024-08-06, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
So, the Blaugust festival of blogging is a thing. Who knew?
For anyone arriving here for the very first time Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place each August which focuses on blogging primarily and has started to include other forms of serialized content over the last several years. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly.
Cool, cool. I already post very regularly, but I appreciate the spirit of this, and I’m delighted to take part.
I discovered this via Andy Piper’s post, and I like the way he’s taken a step back and (re-)introduced himself. So I’ll try and do the same.
You can learn more about me on my About page or on my narrative resumé, which collectively explain who I am and how I got here at length. Or at least, they explain the professional version of me. So perhaps this “about me” can be a little more personal.
About Me
I’m Ben Werdmuller. I’m in my mid-40s. My mother’s family are half Russian Jews whose village was burned down in pogroms conducted by the White Army, and half institutional east coast Americans who can be traced back to the Mayflower. My dad’s are Indonesian, Swiss, and Dutch: the Werdmuller von Elggs are a Swiss aristocratic family of textile merchants who were involved in the Reformation, among other things. My dad is one of the youngest survivors of Japanese concentration camps in Indonesia.
We moved around a bit when I was a kid, but the closest thing I have to a hometown is Oxford, England. These days I live in Greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after twelve years or so in the San Francisco Bay Area. I also lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, for close to a decade.
I see the world through a strongly internationalist lens, am fiercely pro-union and anti-war, love immigration, and believe in a strong Europe as long as it is a force for inclusive democracy and peace. I mostly align with progressive principles and emphatically reject the idea that the political center is the most reasonable — particularly in America, where the universal healthcare, gun control, and educational principles that are just accepted in most of the rest of the developed world are somehow considered to be incredibly left-wing.
I’ve lost five members of my family, including my mother, to a (so-far) incurable, genetic telomere dysfunction. Although I’m grateful to not have the genetic trait, I would gladly have exchanged it with them. It doesn’t and must not define any of their lives, but it hangs over my family. We’ve experienced a lot of loss in a short time and we miss them all terribly.
I’ve founded a handful of startups, have been the first employee at a few more, and generally find myself in CTO roles across smaller, growing organizations. A few years ago I took a sharp career turn and started leading technology in non-profit newsrooms, because I became more and more concerned about the state of the world and wanted to be on the side of strengthening democracy. These days I lead tech at ProPublica. I care a lot about supporting the fediverse and the indie web, which I see as incredibly liberating in a human way: they’re how the web should be.
I’m a lifelong Doctor Who fan. I remember watching the Daleks chase Peter Davison’s Doctor when I was very small, and I still look forward to every new story. I wrote this story about the 50th anniversary, eleven years ago now.
I care about using technology to make the world more informed and equal. If we’re not doing that, what’s the point?
About My Blog
Over time my blog has transitioned from just being my indie space to mostly talking about the intersection of tech and media. It’s led to working interesting jobs and meeting interesting people. I don’t have a ton of time to build new software or write longer work, but I’ve made reflecting here an integral part of my life. Lately I’ve been thinking about making it more personal again.
I’ve been blogging since 1998, which feels like a very long time ago, but this particular space has been going since 2013. Prior to that, I blogged at benwerd.com, which I keep online as an archive. My sites before that have been lost to time but are probably still available on the Internet Archive.
This site runs on Known. I write posts using iA Writer, and power the email version using Buttondown.
Every so often I ask readers here what they’d like me to write and think about. So I’ll ask you, too.
If you’re new here: glad to meet you! If you’re a long-time reader: thanks for sticking around.
https://werd.io/2024/a-re-introduction-for-blaugust
Chinese businesses hoping to expand in US face uncertainty, suspicion
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — It was billed as the “biggest ever economic development project” in north Michigan when Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2022 welcomed a Chinese lithium-ion battery company’s plan to build a $2.36 billion factory and bring a couple thousand jobs to Big Rapids.
Now the project by Gotion High-Tech is in the crosshairs of some U.S. lawmakers and residents.
Leading the charge is Republican Representative John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, who accuses the Chinese company of having ties to forced labor and says he fears it could spy for Beijing and work to extend China’s influence in the U.S. heartland. Gotion rejects the accusations.
“I want to see this area have more jobs and investments, but we must not welcome companies that are controlled by people who see us as the enemy and we should not allow them to build here,” Moolenaar said at a recent roundtable discussion in Michigan.
Lured by the large U.S. market, Chinese businesses are coming to the United States with money, jobs and technology, only to find rising suspicion at a time of an intensifying U.S.-China rivalry that has spread into the business world.
U.S. wariness of China, coupled with Beijing’s desire to protect its technological competitiveness, threatens to rupture ties between the world’s two largest economies. That could hurt businesses, workers and consumers, which some warn could undermine the economic foundation that has helped stabilize relations.
“This is a lose-lose scenario for the two countries,” Zhiqun Zhu, professor of political science and international relations at Bucknell University, said in an email. “The main reason is U.S.-China rivalry, and the U.S. government prioritizes ‘national security’ over economic interests in dealing with China.”
Lizhi Liu, an assistant professor of business at Georgetown University, said the trend, along with the decline of U.S. investments in China, could hurt China-U.S. relations.
“Strong investment ties between the two nations are crucial not only for economic reasons but also for security, as intertwined economic interests reduce the likelihood of major conflicts or even war,” she said.
But U.S. lawmakers believe the stakes are high. Senator Marco Rubio said at a July hearing that China is not only a military and diplomatic adversary for the U.S. but also a “technological, industrial and commercial” opponent.
“The technological and industrial high ground has always been a precursor of global power,” said Rubio, a Republican from Florida.
The bipartisan House Select Committee on China has warned that widespread adoption in the U.S. of technologies developed by China could threaten long-term U.S. technological competitiveness.
U.S. public sentiment against Chinese investments began to build during President Barack Obama’s administration, in a pushback against globalization, and were amplified after President Donald Trump came into office, said Yilang Feng, an assistant professor of business at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who studies economic nationalism and resistance to foreign direct investments in the U.S.
“The scale has increased, so has the intensity,” Feng said.
As President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to revive American manufacturing and boost U.S. technological capabilities, many politicians believe Chinese companies should be kept out.
“Can you imagine working for an American company working tirelessly to develop battery technology and then you find out that your tax dollars are being used to subsidize a competitor from China?” Moolenaar said as he campaigned against the Gotion project in his congressional district in a state that is critical in the presidential election.
Whitmer’s office has declined to comment on the project. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation told The Associated Press it has received “bipartisan support at all levels” to move forward with the project, which will create up to 2,350 jobs.
Residents of Green Charter Township, however, revolted against the project over its Chinese connections last year when they removed five officials who supported it in a recall election.
In Worcester, Massachusetts, the Chinese biotech company WuXi Biologics paused construction of a large facility a few weeks after lawmakers introduced a bill that would, over data security concerns, ban U.S. entities receiving federal funds from doing business with several China-linked companies, WuXi Biologics included.
John Ling, who has helped South Carolina and Georgia attract Chinese businesses for nearly two decades, said geopolitics have been getting in the way in recent years. Chinese companies are less likely to consider South Carolina after the state senate last year approved a bill banning Chinese citizens from buying property, even though the bill has yet to clear the statehouse, Ling said.
Data by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show the total investments by China in the U.S. fell to just under $44 billion in 2023, from a high point of $63 billion in 2017, although first-year expenditures rose to $621 million in 2023, up from $531 million in 2022 but drastically down from the high of $27 billion in 2016. The figures include acquisitions, new business establishments and expansions.
In 2022, Michigan beat out several other states in luring Gotion. Keen to revive its manufacturing base, the state offered a package of incentives, including $175 million in grants and the approval of a new zone that could save the company $540 million. Local townships approved tax abatements for Gotion to build a factory to make components for electrical vehicle batteries.
In Green Charter Township, the new board dropped support for the project and rescinded an agreement to extend water to the factory site, only to be rebuked by a U.S. district judge.
The future of the plant remains uncertain, as Moolenaar is rallying support for his bill that would prevent Gotion from receiving federal subsidies. He accuses the company of using forced labor, after congressional staff discovered links between the company and Xinjiang Production Construction Corps., a paramilitary group sanctioned by the U.S. Commerce Department for its involvement in China’s forced labor practice.
Chuck Thelen, vice president of manufacturing of Gotion North America, recently called the forced labor accusations “categorically false and clearly intended to deceive.”
A Fiesta to Remember
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Now one for the record books, here’s a photo gallery of the 100th year of Santa Barbara’s Fiesta, as seen through the lens of Ingrid Bostrom.
The post A Fiesta to Remember appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/05/a-fiesta-to-remember/
CSUN Prof Leads Study on How Climate Change Affects Joshua Trees
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
A team of researchers led by California State University, Northridge evolutionary biologist Jeremy Yoder partnered with hundreds of volunteer naturalists to reconstruct how 120 years of climate change has affected Joshua trees
https://scvnews.com/csun-prof-leads-study-on-how-climate-change-affects-joshua-trees/
Elon Musk is suing OpenAI again, claims CEO Sam Altman ‘betrayed’ him
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
These two are going through a really, really bad breakup
Elon Musk has decided he wants to bring Sam Altman and OpenAI to court after all in a brand-new lawsuit over whether OpenAI is actually open and not-for-profit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/musk_new_lawsuit_openai/
Federal prison leaders excoriated for ‘unconscionable’ conditions at shuttered FCI Dublin women’s prison
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
The report found FCI Dublin’s leaders failed at nearly ever turn to keep inmates safe and ensure their claims of sexual abuse were investigated properly.
Bloomberg apologizes for premature story on prisoner swap, disciplines journalists involved
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
H-1B visa: Spouses on H-4 visa can keep working, but fight goes on
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
Two months after the right to work was granted in 2015 to holders of the H-4 visa – a residence permit for spouses of people on the H-1B skilled-worker visa – a group of tech workers sued the federal government, claiming the employment authorization illegally and unfairly forced them to compete for jobs against noncitizens.
Sale closed in San Jose: $1.9 million for a multi family
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
The property located in the 600 block of Bolton Court in San Jose was sold on July 12, 2024.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/05/sale-closed-in-san-jose-1-9-million-for-a-multi-family/
Kurtenbach: The 49ers finally have a viable option to resolve the Brandon Aiyuk contract drama
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
There’s a real chance Brandon Aiyuk has played his final game in red and gold.
Stock market finally discovers economy is cooling. Indexes take big dives
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
Nasdaq stock index, a Wall Street benchmark for the California-centric technology industry, fell 3.4% to its lowest level since May.
Parents of Secretly Filmed Child Take Santa Barbara Charter School, School District to Court for Negligence
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Teacher Steven Schapansky, who was arrested last month on a misdemeanor charge of invasion of privacy with a recording device, was filming students with hidden cameras for almost six years, the parents’ attorneys say.
The post Parents of Secretly Filmed Child Take Santa Barbara Charter School, School District to Court for Negligence appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Lawsuit: VTA mass shooting made bus driver’s PTSD worse, agency fired him over unexcused absences
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
VTA bus driver says transit agency failed to properly record his absences and later fired him. He’s suing them, but VTA won’t comment on the lawsuit.
San Francisco homicide: Man shot in Mission District
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
A man was fatally shot Monday morning in San Francisco’s Mission District, the police said. Officers called at 5 a.m. to 20th and Shotwell streets found the man on the ground, with a gunshot wound. After lifesaving efforts by police and paramedics, he was pronounced dead at the scene. No suspect details have been released.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/05/san-francisco-homicide-man-shot-in-mission-district-9/
TMU Students Can Now Major in Cinema & Digital Arts
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Master’s University Department of Communication has now expanded the Cinema and Digital Arts (CDA) program from an emphasis into a major due to the increasing number of students at The Master’s University interested in the “seventh art.”
https://scvnews.com/tmu-students-can-now-major-in-cinema-digital-arts/
Sell-off on Wall Street: Why it is happening and what it says about the economy
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
The sudden pullback has jolted investors and raised questions that go beyond financial markets to questions about the underlying health of the economy.
Stock meltdown puts S&P 500 on brink of correction: Markets wrap
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
Just as markets started celebrating signals from the Federal Reserve about a first rate cut, they were hit by a perfect storm — weak economic data, underwhelming corporate earnings, stretched positioning and poor seasonal trends.
US personnel wounded in attack against base in Iraq, officials say
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
Washington — At least five U.S. personnel were injured in an attack against a military base in Iraq on Monday, U.S. officials told Reuters, as the Middle East braced for a possible new wave of attacks by Iran and its allies following last week’s killing of senior members of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Two Katyusha rockets were fired at al Asad airbase in western Iraq, two Iraqi security sources said. One Iraqi security source said the rockets fell inside the base. It was unclear whether the attack was linked to threats by Iran to retaliate over the killings.
On Wednesday, Iran said the U.S. bears responsibility in the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran because of its support for Israel.
The U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said one of the wounded Americans was seriously injured. The casualty count was based on initial reports which could still change, they said.
“Base personnel are conducting a post-attack damage assessment,” one of the officials added.
Last week the U.S. carried out a strike in Iraq against individuals U.S. officials said were militants getting ready to launch drones and posed a threat to U.S. and coalition forces.
The U.S. has been watching to see if Iran would make good on its vow to respond to the killing of Haniyeh two days ago in Tehran, one in a series of killings of senior figures in the Palestinian militant group as the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza rages.
The Pentagon has said it will deploy additional fighter jets and Navy warships to the Middle East, as Washington seeks to bolster defenses following threats from Iran and its allies Hamas and Hezbollah.
A rare ally of both the U.S. and Iran, Iraq hosts 2,500 U.S. troops and has Iran-backed militias linked to its security forces. It 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.
Baghdad has struggled to reign in Iran-backed armed groups that have attacked U.S. forces there and in neighboring Syria dozens of times since Oct. 7.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Sunday.
An Iraqi official said Blinken asked Sudani to help decrease regional tensions by helping to convince Iran to temper its response to an Israeli strike in Tehran that killed the leader of Hamas last week.
U.S. Army General Michael “Erik” Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, is currently in the Middle East. One of the U.S. officials said Kurilla was speaking with allies to ensure there was coordination in case of an Iranian attack against Israel.
US judge rules Google is a monopoly, search deals with Apple and Mozilla in peril
date: 2024-08-05, from: OS News
That sure is a big news drop for a random Tuesday. A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets. “After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” according to the court’s ruling, which you can read in full at the bottom of this story. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.” ↫ Lauren Feiner at The Verge Among many other things, the judge mentions Google’s own admissions that the company can do pretty much whatever it wants with Google Search and its advertisement business, without having to worry about users opting to go elsewhere or ad buyers leaving the Google platform. Studies from inside Google itself made it very clear that Google could systematically make Search worse without it affecting user and/or usage numbers in any way, shape, or form – because users have nowhere else to realistically go. While the ability to raise prices at will without fear of losing customers is a sure sign of being a monopoly, so is being able to make a product worse without fear of losing customers, the judge argues. Google plans to appeal, obviously, and this ruling has nothing yet to say about potential remedies, so what, exactly, is going to change is as of yet unknown. Potential remedies will be handled during the next phase of the proceedings, with the wildest and most aggressive remedy being a potential break-up of Google, Alphabet, or whatever it’s called today. My sights are definitely set on a break-up – hopefully followed by Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft – to create some much-needed breathing room into the technology market, and pave the way for a massive number of newcomers to compete on much fairer terms. Of note is that the judge also put yet another nail in the coffin of Google’s various exclusivity deals, most notable with Apple and, for our interests, with Mozilla. Google pays Apple well over 20 billion dollars a year to be the default search engine on iOS, and it pays about 80% of Mozilla’s revenue to be the default search engine in Firefox. According to the judge, such deals are anticompetitive. Mehta rejected Google’s arguments that its contracts with phone and browser makers like Apple were not exclusionary and therefore shouldn’t qualify it for liability under the Sherman Act. “The prospect of losing tens of billions in guaranteed revenue from Google — which presently come at little to no cost to Apple — disincentivizes Apple from launching its own search engine when it otherwise has built the capacity to do so,” he wrote. ↫ Lauren Feiner at The Verge If the end of these deals become part of the package of remedies, it will be a massive financial blow to Apple – 20 billion dollars a year is about 15% of Apple’s total annual operating profits, and I’m also pretty sure those Google billions are counted as part of Tim Cook’s much-vaunted services revenue, so losing it would definitely impact Apple directly where it hurts. Sure, it’s not like it’ll make Apple any less of a dangerous behemoth, but it will definitely have some explaining to do to investors. Much more worrisome, however, is the similar deal Google has with Mozilla. About 80% of Mozilla’s total revenue comes from a search deal with Google, and if that deal were to be dissolved, the consequences for Mozilla, and thus for Firefox, would be absolutely immense. This is something I’ve been warning about for years now, and the end of this deal would be yet another worry that I’ve voiced repeatedly becoming reality, right after Mozilla becoming an advertising company and making Firefox worse in the name of quick profits. One by one, every single concern I’ve voiced about the future of Firefox is becoming reality. Canonical, Fedora, KDE, GNOME, and many other stakeholders – ignore these developments at your own peril.
‘Follow the money’: Trial begins for ex-Antioch cop charged with college degree scam
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
At the start of the trial, jurors heard from the woman whose allegations against her ex-husband started the entire investigation into alleged corruption at the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments.
August 5, 2024, a big day in tech?
date: 2024-08-05, from: Gary Marcus blog
Big day.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/august-5-2024-a-big-day-in-tech
Farewell, Lynn Richardson
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Lynn Richardson’s talent was what made the Inkling Stamp Company a success, but she was also the business partner from heaven.
The post Farewell, Lynn Richardson appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/05/farewell-lynn-richardson/
US Supreme Court declines to halt Trump’s sentencing in hush money case
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
washington — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid by the state of Missouri to halt Donald Trump’s upcoming sentencing for his conviction in New York on felony charges involving hush money paid to an adult film star and left a related gag order until after the November 5 presidential election.
The decision by the justices came in response to Missouri’s lawsuit claiming that the case against Trump infringed on the right of voters under the U.S. Constitution to hear from the Republican presidential nominee as he seeks to regain the White House.
The Supreme Court’s order was unsigned. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicated they would have taken up Missouri’s case but added that they “would not grant other relief.”
Trump was found guilty in May of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence before the 2016 U.S. election about a sexual encounter she has said she had with Trump years earlier. Prosecutors have said the payment was designed help Trump’s chances in the 2016 election, when he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump, the Republican candidate in this year’s election, denies having had sex with Daniels and has vowed to appeal his conviction after his sentencing, scheduled for September.
Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a July 3 lawsuit against New York state asking the Supreme Court to pause Trump’s impending sentencing and the gag order placed on him by New York state judge Juan Merchan.
Legal disputes between states are filed directly to the Supreme Court.
Bailey argued that the criminal case against Trump violated the right of Missouri residents under the Constitution’s First Amendment to “hear from and vote for their preferred presidential candidate.”
“Instead of letting presidential candidates campaign on their own merits, radical progressives in New York are trying to rig the 2024 election by waging a direct attack on our democratic process,” Bailey said in bringing the case.
Republican attorneys general from Florida, Iowa, Montana and Alaska filed a Supreme Court brief in support of Missouri’s lawsuit.
Trump also faces federal and state criminal charges involving his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
The Supreme Court in a July 1 ruling powered by its 6-3 conservative majority granted Trump substantial criminal immunity for actions taken in office. It all but ensured Trump would not face trial in the federal election subversion case before the election.
Trump’s lawyers promptly invoked the immunity ruling in a bid to toss the hush money verdict. They said prosecutors improperly relied on social media posts made in 2018 by Trump when he was serving as president that qualified as official communications.
The judge in the case said he would rule on Trump’s arguments by September 6. Merchan said that if he upholds the conviction, he would sentence Trump on September 18.
A New York state appeals court last week rejected Trump’s challenge to his gag order. The decision by the Appellate Division in Manhattan means Trump, who has called all the criminal cases against him politically motivated, cannot comment publicly about individual prosecutors and others in the case until his sentencing.
Secretaries of state urge Elon Musk to fix AI chatbot spreading election misinformation on X
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
Chicago — Five secretaries of state are urging Elon Musk to fix an AI chatbot on the social media platform X, saying in a letter sent Monday that it has spread election misinformation.
The top election officials from Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington told Musk that X’s AI chatbot, Grok, produced false information about state ballot deadlines shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.
While Grok is available only to subscribers to the premium versions of X, the misinformation was shared across multiple social media platforms and reached millions of people, according to the letter. The bogus ballot deadline information from the chatbot also referenced Alabama, Indiana, Ohio and Texas, although their secretaries of state did not sign the letter. Grok continued to repeat the false information for 10 days before it was corrected, the secretaries said.
The letter urged X to immediately fix the chatbot “to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.” That would include directing Grok to send users to CanIVote.org, a voting information website run by the National Association of Secretaries of State, when asked about U.S. elections.
“In this presidential election year, it is critically important that voters get accurate information on how to exercise their right to vote,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said in a statement. “Voters should reach out to their state or local election officials to find out how, when, and where they can vote.”
X did not respond to a request for comment.
Grok debuted last year for X premium and premium plus subscribers and was touted by Musk as a “rebellious” AI chatbot that will answer “spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.”
Social media platforms have faced mounting scrutiny for their role in spreading misinformation, including about elections. The letter also warned that inaccuracies are to be expected for AI products, especially chatbots such as Grok that are based on large language models.
“As tens of millions of voters in the U.S. seek basic information about voting in this major election year, X has the responsibility to ensure all voters using your platform have access to guidance that reflects true and accurate information about their constitutional right to vote,” the secretaries wrote in the letter.
Since Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it to X, watchdog groups have raised concerns over a surge in hate speech and misinformation being amplified on the platform, as well as the reduction of content moderation teams, elimination of misinformation features and censoring of journalists critical of Musk.
Experts say the moves represent a regression from progress made by social media platforms attempting to better combat political disinformation after the 2016 U.S. presidential contest and could precipitate a worsening misinformation landscape ahead of this year’s November elections.
Hometown Boy Scotty Pieper Returns to Play for TMU
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Scotty Pieper is returning to his hometown as he will be playing baseball at The Master’s University
https://scvnews.com/hometown-boy-scotty-pieper-returns-to-play-for-tmu/
NASA Seeks Student Missions to Send to Space in 2026, Beyond
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
NASA announced a new round of opportunities for CubeSat, developers to build spacecrafts on that will fly on upcoming launches through the agency’s CSLI (CubeSat Launch Initiative). CubeSats are a class of small spacecraft called nanosatellites. The initiative provides space access to U.S. educational institutions, certain non-profit organizations, and informal educational institutions such as museums and science centers, as well as […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-seeks-student-missions-to-send-to-space-in-2026-beyond/
US urged countries to ‘pass messages’ to Iran against escalation, State Department says
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The United States has been urging countries through its diplomatic engagements to tell Iran that escalation in the Middle East is not in their interest, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday.
Speaking at a daily briefing, Miller said this was a “critical moment” for the region and that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was working the phones to help calm the tensions, but also said Washington was preparing for all possibilities.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran last week, an attack that drew threats of revenge on Israel and fueled further concern that the conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East war.
Iran has blamed Israel and has said it will “punish” it; Israeli officials have not claimed responsibility for the killing. Iran backs Hamas, which is at war with Israel in Gaza, and also supports the Lebanese group Hezbollah, whose senior military commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut last week.
The top U.S. diplomat spoke Monday with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty on the tensions in the Middle East.
“One of the points of the engagements that we have had is to urge countries to pass messages to Iran and urge countries to make clear to Iran that it is very much not in their interests to escalate this conflict, that it is very much not in their interest to launch another attack on Israel,” he said.
Miller did not say definitively whether Washington’s messages have been disseminated to Iran or through which channel.
“I would expect that some of them would pass that message along and impress that point upon the government of Iran,” he added.
Google paying to be default search on phones is totally against antitrust law, judge rules
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Web giant to seek second opinion after bench labels biz ‘a monopolist’ in DoJ win
Google’s payments to make its search engine the default for smartphone browsers and elsewhere broke US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/google_default_search_deals_violate/
Google loses massive antitrust case over its search dominance
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
Washington — A judge on Monday ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation in a seismic decision that could shake up the internet and hobble one of the world’s best-known companies.
The highly anticipated decision issued by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta comes nearly a year after the start of a trial pitting the U.S. Justice Department against Google in the country’s biggest antitrust showdown in a quarter century.
After reviewing reams of evidence that included testimony from top executives at Google, Microsoft and Apple during last year’s 10-week trial, Mehta issued his potentially market-shifting decision three months after the two sides presented their closing arguments in early May.
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote in his 277-page ruling.
It represents a major setback for Google and its parent, Alphabet Inc., which had steadfastly argued that its popularity stemmed from consumers’ overwhelming desire to use a search engine so good at what it does that it has become synonymous with looking things up online.
Google’s search engine currently processes an estimated 8.5 billion queries per day worldwide, nearly doubling its daily volume from 12 years ago, according to a recent study released by the investment firm BOND.
Google almost certainly will appeal the decision in a process that ultimately may land in the U.S. Supreme Court.
For now, the decision vindicates antitrust regulators at the Justice Department, which filed its lawsuit nearly four years ago while Donald Trump was still president and has been escalating it efforts to rein in Big Tech’s power during President Joe Biden’s administration.
The case depicted Google as a technological bully that methodically has thwarted competition to protect a search engine that has become the centerpiece of a digital advertising machine that generated nearly $240 billion in revenue last year. Justice Department lawyers argued that Google’s monopoly enabled it to charge advertisers artificially high prices while also enjoying the luxury of having to invest more time and money into improving the quality of its search engine — a lax approach that hurt consumers.
As expected, Mehta’s ruling focused on the billions of dollars Google spends every year to install its search engine as the default option on new cellphones and tech gadgets. In 2021 alone, Google spent more than $26 billion to lock in those default agreements, Mehta said in his ruling.
Google ridiculed those allegations, noting that consumers have historically changed search engines when they become disillusioned with the results they were getting. For instance, Yahoo — now a minor player on the internet — was the most popular search engine during the 1990s before Google came along.
Mehta said the evidence at trial showed the importance of the default settings. He noted that Microsoft’s Bing search engine has 80% share of the search market on the Microsoft Edge browser. The judge said that shows other search engines can be successful if Google is not locked in as the predetermined default option.
Still, Mehta credited the quality of Google’s product as an important part of its dominance, as well, saying flatly that “Google is widely recognized as the best [general search engine] available in the United States.”
Mehta’s conclusion that Google has been running an illegal monopoly sets up another legal phase to determine what sorts of changes or penalties should be imposed to reverse the damage done and restore a more competitive landscape.
Besides boosting Microsoft’s Bing search engine, the outcome could hurt Google at a critical pivot point that is tilting technology in the age of artificial intelligence. Both Microsoft and Google are among the early leaders in AI in a battle that now could be affected by Mehta’s market-rattling decision.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was one of the Justice Department’s star witnesses during the testimony that covered his frustration with Google deals with the likes of Apple that made it nearly impossible for the Bing search engine to make any headway, even as Microsoft poured more than $100 billion in improvements since 2009.
“You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth, and you search on Google,” Nadella said at one point in his testimony. “Everybody talks about the open web, but there is really the Google web.”
Nadella also expressed fear that it might take an antitrust crackdown to ensure the situation didn’t get worse as AI becomes a bigger force in search.
Google still faces other legal threats besides this one, both in the U.S. and abroad. any antitrust lawsuits brought against Google domestically and abroad. In September, a federal trial is scheduled to begin in Virginia over the Justice Department’s allegations that Google’s advertising technology constitutes an illegal monopoly.
https://www.voanews.com/a/google-loses-massive-antitrust-case-over-its-search-dominance/7730990.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-05, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Surprise Poll Reveals a Key Trump Weakness Against Kamala Harris.
https://newrepublic.com/article/184533/surprise-poll-reveals-key-trump-weakness-kamala-harris
Every Microsoft employee is now being judged on their security work
date: 2024-08-05, from: OS News
After a number of very bug security incidents involving Microsoft’s software, the company promised it would take steps to put security at the top of its list of priorities. Today we got another glimpse of the step it’s taking, since the company is going to take security into account during performance reviews. Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft’s chief people officer, has outlined what the company expects of employees in an internal memo obtained by The Verge. “Everyone at Microsoft will have security as a Core Priority,” says Hogan. “When faced with a tradeoff, the answer is clear and simple: security above all else.” A lack of security focus for Microsoft employees could impact promotions, merit-based salary increases, and bonuses. “Delivering impact for the Security Core Priority will be a key input for managers in determining impact and recommending rewards,” Microsoft is telling employees in an internal Microsoft FAQ on its new policy. ↫ Tom Warren at The Verge Now, I’ve never worked in a corporate environment or something even remotely close to it, but something about this feels off to me. Often, it seems that individual, lower-level employees know all too well they’re cutting corners, but they’re effectively forced to because management expects almost inhuman results from its workers. So, in the case of a technology company like Microsoft, this means workers are pushed to write as much code as possible, or to implement as many features as possible, and the only way to achieve the goals set by management is to take shortcuts – like not caring as much about code quality or security. In other words, I don’t see how Microsoft employees are supposed to make security their top priority, while also still having to achieve any unrealistic goals set by management and other higher-ups. What I’m missing from this memo and associated reporting is Microsoft telling its employees that if unrealistic targets, crunch, low pay, and other factors that contribute to cutting corners get in the way of putting security first, they have the freedom to choose security. If employees are not given such freedom, demanding even more from them without anything in return seems like a recipe for disaster to me, making this whole memo quite moot. We’ll have to see what this will amount to in practice, but with how horrible employees are treated in most industries these days, especially in countries with terrible union coverage and laughable labour protection laws like the US, I don’t have high hopes for this.
Disaster Response Coordination System (DRCS) Formally Launches
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
The NASA Disasters Response Coordination System (DRCS) formally launched on 6/13/24 during a ceremony at NASA Headquarters with Administrator Nelson as the keynote speaker. The DRCS is a revamped one NASA approach in how the agency responds to natural hazards and disasters domestically and internationally to support partners and stakeholders The DRCS will be organized […]
Coming in Hot – NASA’s Chandra Checks Habitability of Exoplanets
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
This graphic shows a three-dimensional map of stars near the Sun. The blue haloes represent stars observed with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. Astronomers are using these X-ray data to determine how habitable exoplanets may be based on whether they receive lethal radiation from the stars they orbit. This research will help guide […]
Ken Striplin | Santa Clarita Making Strides in Addressing Homelessness
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
It has been a landmark year for putting the crucial infrastructure in place to address homelessness in our community
https://scvnews.com/ken-striplin-santa-clarita-making-strides-in-addressing-homelessness/
Marshall Disasters Team Support National Weather Service Offices During May Severe Weather
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
May 2024 was a very active month for severe weather across the United States, with several hundred tornadoes occurring throughout the United States. The MSFC Disasters team has been working with several National Weather Service (NWS) Offices across the Southeast this spring to help support their damage surveys with high-resolution commercial imagery and derived products. […]
Snowstorm Field Campaign Wins Prestigious Presidential Rank Group Achievement Award
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
Personnel from the MSFC Earth Science Branch and local partners participated in the Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS), and they are members of the IMPACTS team that recently won the prestigious Presidential Rank Group Achievement Award from NASA. IMPACTS was a highly successful NASA Earth Venture Suborbital airborne field campaign […]
KNaCK LIDAR Technology Demonstration at 5th Joint EVA Test Team (JETT5) Field Compaign, Flagstaff, Arizona
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
Michael Zanetti (ST13), Kyle Miller (EV42), and Chris Whetsel (ES52) conducted a technology demonstration and field work with the NASA JSC 5th Joint EVA Test Team (JETT-3) from 5/17-23/24, near SP Crater, Flagstaff, AZ. JETT5 tested full-up mission operations with communication to JSC-Houston, and included astronauts Kate Rubins and Andre Douglas testing ATLAS suits and […]
Swimming in Schools May Help Fish Save Energy in Turbulent Waters
date: 2024-08-05, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new study suggests schooling fish use up to 79 percent less energy in rough conditions than fish that swim alone
Climate Change Causing You Decision Fatigue? Try a Map
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Maps can help us understand and visualize the complexity of the impacts of our decisions, which is especially critical as people navigate climate change.
The post Climate Change Causing You Decision Fatigue? Try a Map appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/05/climate-change-causing-you-decision-fatigue-try-a-map/
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society – Earth Science Informatics Workshop and Hackathon on Remote Sensing Data Systems Held at SRM University, Chennai
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
Muthukumaran Ramasubramanian, Slesa Adhikari, and Nish Pantha from IMPACT/ST11 organized hands-on workshops and a hackathon in collaboration with the Department of Computational Intelligence at SRMIST’s School of Computing in Chennai, India. These sessions were held as part of the IEEE GRSS-ESI TC (Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society – Earth Science Informatics Technical Committee) Remote Sensing […]
Ribbon Cutting Scheduled to Celebrate Reopening of Plaza del Mar Band Shell
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – August 5, 2024 The City of Santa Barbara Parks and Recreation Department will host a ribbon-cutting
The post Ribbon Cutting Scheduled to Celebrate Reopening of Plaza del Mar Band Shell appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
SERVIR Science Coordination Office (SCO) and Bhutan’s Implementing Partners Launch Farm Action Toolkit Service
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
On 5/13/24, in alignment with the NASA Interagency Agreement with the US Department of State Advancing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math in Bhutan through Increased Earth Observation Capacity, Aparna R. Phalke, Sarah Cox and Tony Kim (ST11) traveled to Thimphu, Bhutan, to represent the SERVIR SCO at the official launch on 5/17/24 of the “Farm […]
Free Will Astrology
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Week of August 8.
The post Free Will Astrology appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/05/free-will-astrology-222/
100 years young: SCV resident looks back on a century of life
date: 2024-08-05, from: The Signal
“I don’t feel any older,” Barbara Blakey Stephens said after celebrating her 100th birthday on Saturday. The birthday girl made sure she looked her best during her birthday brunch at […]
The post 100 years young: SCV resident looks back on a century of life appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/100-years-young-scv-resident-looks-back-on-a-century-of-life/
Participation at the National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Resource Event on Capitol Hill
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
Manil Maskey (ST11/IMPACT) represented NASA at a discussion on the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot program held on Capitol Hill. The event brought together key members of the House AI Caucus, including Representatives Anna Eshoo, Bill Foster, Haley Stevens, Jim Baird, and Sean Casten. In attendance were several congressional staffers and the director […]
SERVIR/ResilienceLinks Webinar on “Floods, Drought, and Water Security: How is Water Data Critical to Climate Resilience?”
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
On 5/22/24, Chinmay Deval, the Water Security Lead at the SERVIR Science Coordination Office, moderated a virtual panel for the ResilienceLinks monthly webinar series. ResilienceLinks is the knowledge platform for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Center for Resilience. The theme for May focused on Water Data and Climate Resilience. The panel featured distinguished […]
Excessive Heat Warning Continues for SCV
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Health Officer has issued an excessive heat warning for the Santa Clarita Valley as high temperatures have been forecast through Tuesday
https://scvnews.com/excessive-heat-warning-continues-for-scv/
50 years ago, CP/M started the microcomputer revolution
date: 2024-08-05, from: OS News
CP/M is turning 50 this year. The ancient Control Program for Microcomputers, or CP/M for short, has been enjoying a modest renaissance in recent years. By 21st century standards, it’s unimaginably tiny and simple. The whole OS fits into under 200 kB, and the resident bit of the kernel is only about 3 kB. Today, in the era of end-user OSes in the tens-of-gigabytes size range, this exerts a fascination to a certain kind of hobbyist. Back when it was new, though, this wasn’t minimalist – it was all that early hardware could support. ↫ Liam Proven I’m a little too young to have experienced CP/M as anything other than a retro platform – I’m from 1984, and we got our first computer in 1990 or so – but its importance and influence cannot be overstated. Many of the conventions set by CP/M made their way to the various DOS variants, and in turn, we still see some of those conventions in Windows today. Had Digital Research, the company CP/M creator Gary Kildall set up to sell CP/M, accepted the deal with IBM to make CP/M the default operating system for the then newly-created IBM PC, we’d be living in a very different world today. Digital Research would also create several other popular and/or influential software products beyond CP/M, such as DR DOS and GEM, as well as various other DOS variants and CP/M versions with DOS compatibility. It would eventually be acquired by Novell, where it faded into obscurity.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140419/50-years-ago-cp-m-started-the-microcomputer-revolution/
Swing Meets Salsa to Shut Down the Streets for Santa Barbara Lobero’s Free Block Party with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Ozomatli
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Big Bad Voodoo Daddy beat goes on: a conversation with drummer Kurt Sodergren.
The post Swing Meets Salsa to Shut Down the Streets for Santa Barbara Lobero’s Free Block Party with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Ozomatli appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
What AI bubble? Groq rakes in $640M to grow inference cloud
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
In the gold rush, be the one handing out the shovels
Even as at least some investors begin to question the return on investment of AI infrastructure and services, venture capitalists appear to be doubling down. On Monday, AI chip startup Groq — not to be confused with xAI’s Grok chatbot — announced it had scored $640 million in series-D funding to bolster its inference cloud.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/groq_ai_funding/
The Home Page | Fiesta Flavors and Road Trip Romance
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Pastel paletas, catnip dreams, and more.
The post The Home Page | Fiesta Flavors and Road Trip Romance appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/05/the-home-page-fiesta-flavors-and-road-trip-romance/
Vance Backed Attempts To Gut Dozens of Biden Rules
date: 2024-08-05, from: The Lever News
The vice presidential pick attempted to kill a slate of government protections under an obscure federal law — hinting at the GOP’s corporate vision for the next presidency.
https://www.levernews.com/vance-backed-attempts-to-gut-dozens-of-biden-rules/
17th-Century Home Unearthed in Colonial Williamsburg
date: 2024-08-05, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Crews were constructing a new archaeology center when they stumbled upon the historic structure’s foundations and accompanying artifacts
Marcia Mayeda | Urgent Need for Pet Shelter Adopters
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
I write to you today with deep concern as we face a critical crisis in our animal care centers
https://scvnews.com/marcia-mayeda-urgent-need-for-pet-shelter-adopters/
Michigan probes Musk-backed PAC website that weirdly tried and failed to help register people to vote
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It claimed to have one job and couldn’t do it
The Michigan Secretary of State’s office has opened an investigation into America PAC, a political action committee backed by billionaire Elon Musk.…
When Vultures Nearly Disappeared in India, Half a Million People Died, Too, Study Finds
date: 2024-08-05, from: Smithsonian Magazine
By being nature’s clean-up crew, the often maligned birds help prevent the spread of diseases, according to a new study
Circle of Hope’s 20th Annual Tea set for Oct. 19
date: 2024-08-05, from: The Signal
News release The nonprofit Circle of Hope announced that its annual tea event, designed to raise awareness of breast cancer and raise funds to help those in the community fighting […]
The post Circle of Hope’s 20th Annual Tea set for Oct. 19 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/circle-of-hopes-20th-annual-tea-set-for-oct-19/
Safari 17.6
date: 2024-08-05, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/safari-17-6/
Site-Specific Play Comes to Santa Barbara’s Stearns Wharf
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
See ‘Whalers’ Triptych, Part I’ at Moby Dick Restaurant August 19-28.
The post Site-Specific Play Comes to Santa Barbara’s Stearns Wharf appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/05/site-specific-play-comes-to-santa-barbaras-stearns-wharf/
Kiwanis Club Donates Adult Tricycles to VHS Special Needs Department
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Kiwanis Club recently completed the first segment of it’s Special Needs Tricycle Program
https://scvnews.com/kiwanis-club-donates-adult-tricycles-to-vhs-special-needs-department/
BusyCal 2024.3.3
date: 2024-08-05, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/busycal-2024-3-3/
Little Snitch 6.0.4
date: 2024-08-05, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/little-snitch-6-0-4/
TextExpander 7.8
date: 2024-08-05, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/textexpander-7-8/
Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case
date: 2024-08-05, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” the court’s ruling, which you can read in full at the bottom of this story, reads. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”“
This is seismic, both for Google and for the web. As The Verge points out, this is so far about liabilities, not about any prescriptive remedy. But as one of the major factors in the decision was the payments that Google makes to browser manufacturers, it seems likely that any remedy will change how this works. In turn, the impact across tech could be significant.
Apple received $20 billion from Google in 2022 to be the default search engine (it shares 36% of ad revenue from Safari users with the company). That’s a big number, but nothing compared to its $394bn in total revenue. But for Mozilla, the impact might be more profound: in 2021, these payments represented 83% of its revenue. What happens to it without this underwriting?
It’s too early to say exactly what will change, but this is also potentially a gift for the new batch of AI startups that are trying to seize search engine ground. The era of the internet flux that we’ve found ourselves in - wherein everything is once again up for grabs and seemingly-entrenched incumbents change dramatically at a moment’s notice - shows no sign of slowing.
<p>[<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-us-doj-v-google-antitrust-search-suit">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/judge-rules-that-google-is-a-monopolist-in-us-antitrust
How Moscow spins hostage-prisoner swap as domestic victory
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/how-moscow-spins-hostage-prisoner-swap-as-domestic-victory/7730805.html
Another law firm piles on Intel for Raptor Lake CPU failures as complaints grow louder
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Meanwhile, a boutique PC builder says Intel didn’t even need to chase high clock speeds
Yet another law firm says it’s investigating a potential class action lawsuit against Intel as Raptor Lake CPU owners increasingly complain about chip instability and failure.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/another_law_firm_piles_on/
Moxy Santa Barbara Hotel Is Bold Rebrand of Funk Zone Hotel
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Formerly The Wayfarer, Moxy is a fun and unique addition to the neighborhood.
The post Moxy Santa Barbara Hotel Is Bold Rebrand of Funk Zone Hotel appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/05/moxy-santa-barbara-hotel-is-bold-rebrand-of-funk-zone-hotel/
City confirms new diner location set for east side
date: 2024-08-05, from: The Signal
The city of Santa Clarita’s Planning Division officials confirmed a Northern California restaurant chain recently received the greenlight for a second location on the east side of the city. Black […]
The post City confirms new diner location set for east side appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/city-confirms-new-diner-location-set-for-east-side/
ARPA-E Is Cleantech’s Favorite Shadow VC
date: 2024-08-05, from: Heatmap News
When the George W. Bush administration established the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, better known as ARPA-E, the number one goal for the new agency sounded an ambitious and patriotic note: “To enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies.” And from that uncontroversial foundation, a bipartisan bastion of cleantech innovation was born.
I knew I wanted to dig into the critical role that ARPA-E plays in the climate tech funding landscape after Rajesh Swaminathan, a partner at Khosla Ventures, told me that he views the agency as the “least talked about VC in town.” So I reached out to ARPA-E’s director, Evelyn Wang, to learn more.
Of course, ARPA-E isn’t actually a venture capital firm — it provides no-strings-attached funding to promising energy projects rather than aiming for a return on investment. “So a little bit different,” Wang told me. “Our mission is very much focused on energy independence, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and enhancing energy efficiency.”
The Bush administration established ARPA-E in 2007 with the passage of the America COMPETES Act, which aimed to improve the technological competitiveness of the United States via investments in research and development. But the agency was funded for the first time in 2009, under Obama, as a part of an $800 billion stimulus package in response to the Great Recession. A substantial chunk of that funding — $90 billion — was allocated for clean energy, which the administration would go on to boast amounted to the “largest single investment in clean energy in history.”
Yet whether it’s been Bush or Obama — or Trump or Biden — in the White House, the messaging around ARPA-E has always trended less towards renewables and climate mitigation and more towards energy security and economic competitiveness. As the name suggests, ARPA-E is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which was established in 1958 in response to the Soviet’s launch of the Sputnik satellite. DARPA has since helped birth such little-known tech as the entire internet, GPS, automated voice recognition, and self-driving cars.
But while the de facto customer for DARPA-developed tech is always the Department of Defense, the pathway to commercialization for ARPA-E projects mainly relies on private sector interest. In that sense, the goal of ARPA-E is neatly aligned with that of venture capitalists: Get tech to market. Because while scientific learnings are all well and good, Wang said that “ultimately, we need to see these technologies commercialized — to actually be out there — to actually affect the ecosystem and change the energy landscape.”
Since ARPA-E can eschew the profit motive, it’s able to fund high-risk, high-reward projects at the earliest stages, when most investors would be reluctant to take on that level of uncertainty. Yet the inherent risk means the success rate for ARPA-E projects as measured by metrics such as the number of companies it’s spawned (157), exits via mergers, acquisitions or IPOs (30), and additional partnerships with other government agencies (360), can seem low compared to the 1,590 projects that the agency has funded over the past 15 years. A climate tech investor I spoke with on background told me that while they love ARPA-E and are glad it exists, they were expecting more success stories by now.
That’s at least partially because even after a project is funded and proof-of-concept has been demonstrated, there’s often still a ways to go before investors are ready to jump in. “I think when we first stood up ARPA-E, the idea was that at that point, it would be sufficiently de-risked for the private sector to then pick it up and invest,” Wang told me. But frequently, that hasn’t been the case. ARPA-E usually funds projects for one to three years, but often climate tech innovation relies on deeply complex and thus inherently slow advancements in science and engineering — think fusion energy, novel battery development, or direct air capture. Many venture funds have 10 year time horizons, so if investors don’t see a payoff happening in that timeframe, they’ll probably hold back.
The investor I spoke with on background told me that ARPA-E has become more effective in partnership with the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, established in 2021 under the Department of Energy, which uses its $25 billion budget to create model buildouts of new technology with private sector partners. Earlier this year, OCED selected six ARPA-E awardees focused on industrial decarbonization to receive a combined total of up to $775 million.
Even so, the investor told me, ARPA-E funding alone still might not be enough to get companies to a place where OCED would be interested. To help close that gap, ARPA-E started a program called SCALEUP, a mouthful of an acronym for The Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy (Technologies) with Untapped Potential, in 2019. It provides a small number of ARPA-E projects with follow-on funding to further prove out their concepts — provided they can identify at least one commercialization partner such as a potential customer, end-user, or supplier willing to take a stake in the development of the tech and help it get to market.
So far, Wang says the program has yielded some successes. The list includes LongPath Technologies, which monitors methane emissions and leaks in the oil and gas industry and received a conditional loan last year from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office; Natron Energy, which just opened the first commercial-scale sodium-ion battery production facility in the U.S.; and Sila, a battery materials manufacturer that has raised over $1.3 billion in total, and secured contracts with Mercedes-Benz and Panasonic.
When you look at ARPA-E’s success rate in terms of dollars in and dollars out, though, it starts to look pretty darn efficacious as is. Since 2009, ARPA-E has provided more than $3.8 billion for research and development, leading to over $12.6 billion in private-sector follow-on funding, while the 30 exits to date have yielded a combined market valuation of $22.2 billion. And since it often takes climate tech companies around a decade to mature to the point where they’re ready for an exit event, many of ARPA-E’s companies have yet to reach the acquisition or IPO threshold.
These days, ARPA-E projects are facing a completely different funding landscape than in the 2000s — one ripe with both excitement and cash as well as increasing competition. So while Wang told me that the agency’s goal is always to look for “technological whitespace” in the energy landscape, “it’s getting more crowded,” she said. “And I think in that context, we’ve strategically decided that we should also think about broader vision type efforts.” To that end, ARPA-E has identified three comprehensive focus areas: developing clean primary energy sources such as geothermal, small modular nuclear reactors, fusion and geologic hydrogen; power delivery for non-electrical sources, such as energy transported via hydrogen or heat; and figuring out how to source carbon sustainably, such as via engineered plants and algae.
Now that ARPA-E has been supporting projects for a decade and a half, it’s getting more experimental when it comes to developing novel testbeds for its tech. Exhibit A is the San Antonio International Airport, which recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the agency to deploy a series of ARPA-E backed technologies.
Many major airports are actually higher tech than passengers may realize, and given the mounting pressure on the aviation industry to decarbonize, they’re also open to novel sustainability solutions. In San Antonio, the airport is deploying EV chargers from Imagen Energy and sodium-ion battery tech from Natron Energy, both of which could help electrify their ground vehicles, as well as a distributed energy management system from Autogrid, which allows airports to control their virtual power plants, microgrids, EV fleet, and demand response measures. Other tech, such as hybrid-electric planes from Ampaire, could be integrated into the airport in the future.
That’s a lot of technology development for not many headlines. And when a company raises a major round or goes public, sometimes you have to dig deep to discover their ARPA-E origins. Hence, the “least talked about VC in town” comment. In some sense, Wang says, this is intentional.
“When we think about success, if our teams, our companies are successful, and they shine, then we shine,” she told me, and maybe that’s the way it should continue to be. Because while advertising government investment in anything seen as “clean” or “green” can immediately draw both partisan praise and ire, funding for ARPA-E has been steadily creeping up nearly every year since 2015. And yes, that includes the Trump era, even though the former president seemingly wanted to axe the agency altogether. Congress, it turned out, was not on board with that plan.
“Our mission is about energy independence and bolstering our economy and I think everyone agrees with this mission,” Wang told me. “Everyone,” of course, will always be an overstatement. But perhaps Wang is right that the agency does function better as a behind-the-scenes player. As she put it, speaking of the companies the agency funds, “It’s more about them, right? And how that affects the ecosystem, and helps our nation in terms of what we need to do as a country, and how that sets an example for the world.”
Editor’s note: This story initially misstated the size of
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the amount of funding
allocated to clean energy.
https://heatmap.news/technology/arpa-e-climate-tech
Shredding Tunes
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Iconic musician-skateboarder Tommy Guerrero set to perform in Santa Barbara at SOhO.
The post Shredding Tunes appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/05/shredding-tunes/
Stock-trading apps fall under the feet of stampeding panicking investors
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
They’re doing you a favor, probably best not to look today
As stock markets suffered a bit of a wobble today, share-trading apps and sites fell over as investors barreled in to see how badly their portfolios had been hit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/stock_market_outages/
Caltrans Announces SR-126 Lane Closures, Debris Removal
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The California Department of Transportation announces repairs on State Route 126, quarter mile east of Pena Ranch Road, to clear the shoulder and roadway of mudslide/debris, clear and clean drainage systems, repair damaged slopes and place erosion control
https://scvnews.com/caltrans-announces-sr-126-lane-closures-debris-removal/
Beta for Apple Intelligence in Apple Mail
date: 2024-08-05, from: Michael Tsai
Cabel Sasser (Hacker News): Apple Intelligence in 15.1 just flagged a phishing email as “Priority” and moved it to the top of my Inbox. This seems… bad I’ve been trying to test the new features in Mail to make sure that they work properly with my apps, but Mail is not showing any categories or […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/05/beta-for-apple-intelligence-in-apple-mail/
Apple Intelligence Privacy Dark Patterns
date: 2024-08-05, from: Michael Tsai
After I got off the beta waitlist, I went to enable Apple Intelligence, and it wouldn’t let me do so without also enabling Siri. I don’t find Siri to be useful on my Macs and tend to restrict it to my iPhone to prevent accidentally triggering the wrong device. It also doesn’t seem to work […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/05/apple-intelligence-privacy-dark-patterns/
Apple’s Q3 2024 Results
date: 2024-08-05, from: Michael Tsai
Apple (transcript, MacRumors, MacStories, ArsTechnica): The Company posted quarterly revenue of $85.8 billion, up 5 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.40, up 11 percent year over year. […] “During the quarter, our record business performance generated EPS growth of 11 percent and nearly $29 billion in operating cash flow, […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/05/apples-q3-2024-results/
“Find My” Privacy
date: 2024-08-05, from: Michael Tsai
Tim Sweeney (MacRumors): This feature is super creepy surveillance tech and shouldn’t exist. Years ago, a kid stole a Mac laptop out of my car. Years later, I was checking out Find My and it showed a map with the house where the kid who stole my Mac lived. WTF Apple? How is that okay?! […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/05/find-my-privacy/
Enterprise spend on cloud up sharply as world biz splashes $80B in Q2
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Oracle nudges to top of second tier providers
Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services continues to grow, now nearing $80 billion per quarter, with the big three continuing to dominate and Oracle emerging as leader of the second tier providers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/cloud_market_grows_22_percent/
DEVONthink 3.9.7
date: 2024-08-05, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/devonthink-3-9-7/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-05, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Secretaries of state call on Musk to fix chatbot over election misinformation.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/05/elon-musk-harris-grok-misinformation
Americans have more depth than anyone at pool, but gold harder to come by
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
NANTERRE, France — No one can match America’s depth at the pool.
That said, claiming the top step on the Olympic medal podium is no longer a given for U.S. swimmers.
Nine days of thrilling competition at La Defense Arena wrapped up Sunday night with the Americans barely pulling out the lead in the gold medal standings thanks to a victory in the last race.
The U.S. finished with eight golds, its fewest since the 1988 Seoul Games and one ahead of its biggest rival, Australia.
“It’s one of the worst performances in history as a U.S. team,” Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian ever and part of the NBC broadcast team in Paris, said Monday. “Something’s got to happen before 2028 because if you have a repeat like this, it’s gonna be even more embarrassing.”
Notably, the rest of the world totaled more victories (20) than the United States and Australia combined, the first time that’s happened since the 1996 Atlanta Games.
The Americans will certainly be intent on improving their performance heading into the home games at Los Angeles in 2028, when swimming will have in its largest, most spectacular setting yet — a temporary pool inside SoFi Stadium with a capacity for some 38,000 fans.
Still, with more and more international swimmers getting their training in the U.S. — and prominent American coaches such as Bob Bowman spreading their knowledge to other countries — a more diverse list of gold medalists is likely to be the norm going forward.
“This sport is growing and I can’t help but feel like we’ve been a part of that,” American gold medalist Bobby Finke said. “It’s something we should take home and be proud of.”
Two of the biggest swimming stars in Paris, France’s Léon Marchand and Canada’s Summer McIntosh, train in the U.S. but won a bevy of medals for their home countries.
Marchand, who captured four individual golds as well as a relay bronze, is coached by Bowman, best known as the guy who guided Michael Phelps throughout his record-setting career. It was a bit strange to see Bowman in a France shirt, working on the coaching staff of Marchand’s nation.
After a break to savor his Olympic triumph, Marchand will return to the U.S. to continue his work with Bowman, who now heads the swimming program at the University of Texas.
“Look at Bob Bowman. He doesn’t care if you’re from the USA or whatever,” said Shane Ryan, an American-born swimmer who competes for Ireland. “He just wants to coach the fastest swimmers at all times.”
McIntosh trains with a team in Sarasota, Florida, where she honed the form that produced three individual gold medals — the most ever by a Canadian athlete — and a silver.
“I think competition is great,” said longtime American stalwart Ryan Murphy, who trains with several international athletes at Cal-Berkeley including Spain’s Hugo González. “He’s pushed me a lot. There’s plenty of days where he’s right next to me and helping me get better.”
Murphy said it’s only natural in today’s information-driven world that more nations are rising up to challenge the U.S.
“People will take a video of what they’re doing in practice and put it up on social media right away,” he said. “The learning curve is so quick around the world. That’s a big reason why there’s so many talented athletes across the world now.”
The U.S. certainly has its shining moments in Paris.
Katie Ledecky won two more golds, moving her into a tie for second place among all athletes on the career list with nine. She also joined Phelps as the only swimmers to win the same event at four straight Summer Games with her victory in the 800-meter freestyle.
The women’s team produced several more stars, including Torri Huske (three golds, two silvers), Gretchen Walsh (two golds, two silvers) and Regan Smith (two golds, three silvers).
But there were plenty of disappointments, particular on the men’s side.
Caeleb Dressel, a big star at the Tokyo Games with five gold medals, finished sixth in the 50 freestyle and didn’t even qualify for the final of the 100 butterfly.
Murphy settled for a bronze in the 100 backstroke and, like Dressel, failed to qualify for the final of his other individual event, the 200 back.
In all, the American men produced only two gold medals, and they didn’t pick up an individual victory until Finke’s world record in the 1,500 freestyle on the final night.
“You always want to be better,” said Anthony Nesty, head coach of the men’s team. “Yes, we want our athletes to win gold medals, but the other teams have great athletes as well. We have to go back, all the coaches in the U.S., get back on it and hopefully four years from now we have a better result. From the men, for sure.”
The depth of the American team remains its biggest strength. Even with four of its most prominent stars — Dressel, Murphy, Lilly King and Simone Manuel — managing only one individual medal (Murphy’s bronze in the 100 back), the U.S. easily led the overall medals table with 28.
Three of the four world records set at the meet came from the Americans, two of them in relays.
“Whether our athletes won a gold medal or failed to make a semifinal or whatever it might be,” said U.S. women’s coach Todd DeSorbo, “you’ve got to learn from it, go back home and be better.”
Will AI ‘Photographs’ Make Selfies a Thing of the Past?
date: 2024-08-05, from: The Signal
We’ve all been there, whether it’s taking a professional photo for your resume, posing for a company headshot, or simply getting the perfect selfie, everyone has agonized in front of […]
The post Will AI ‘Photographs’ Make Selfies a Thing of the Past? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/will-ai-photographs-make-selfies-a-thing-of-the-past/
Hidden Underground Magma Pools Fueled Iceland’s Volcanic Eruptions, Study Suggests
date: 2024-08-05, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A subterranean plumbing system of magma beneath the island’s Reykjanes Peninsula may have helped set off the recent series of eruptions that could last for centuries
That cyber-heist of 2.9B personal records? There’s a class-action lawsuit looming for that
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Background check biz accused of negligence
A lawsuit has accused a Florida data broker of carelessly failing to secure billions of records of people’s private information, which was subsequently stolen from the biz and sold on an online criminal marketplace.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/national_public_data_lawsuit/
Senior economic aide Sperling leaving White House to work on Harris campaign
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
washington — White House senior adviser Gene Sperling is leaving his administration position to work with Vice President Kamala Harris’ election campaign as the Democrats step up efforts to challenge Donald Trump on policy issues in November’s election.
Sperling will be a senior economic adviser to Harris’ policy team. The shift was revealed by White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
Sperling served both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as director of the White House National Economic Council. President Joe Biden tasked Sperling with managing his $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package, a role in which Sperling implemented the temporary expansion of the child tax credit. He was also the White House liaison to the union and car companies during the auto strikes.
“Under Gene’s leadership, the American Rescue Plan has delivered economic relief to cities and counties across the country, protected millions of union pensions, made the largest-ever federal investment in public safety, and kept thousands of small businesses afloat,” Biden said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press.
Sperling first worked with Harris when she was California attorney general during his time in the Obama administration. He frequently consulted with her as an outside adviser when she was in the Senate. The two partnered during the Biden presidency on promoting the monthly payments for the child tax credit, among other policies.
The pandemic programs halved child poverty with tax credits that went to 40 million families and provided rental assistance to 8 million.
But Republican critics blame the pandemic aid for sparking higher inflation, an issue that has hounded the Biden administration as many voters say that groceries, housing and gasoline have become less affordable. Financial markets opened Monday with a selloff as a weaker than expected jobs report last week has raised concerns about the U.S. economy’s resilience.
The White House has maintained that the inflation was global in nature, with chief of staff Jeff Zients saying that the efforts coordinated by Sperling “produced the strongest economy in the world.”
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, described the work that Sperling spearheaded as “generational investments” and credited him working with states to get the programs right.
Anaconda’s Python-for-Excel escapes Azure Cloud, heads for your PC
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Badger, badger, badger your CIO to let you use this, perhaps
Anaconda, the maker and distributor of data science tools, has unleashed a public beta of Anaconda Code that enables Python code to be run locally within Microsoft Excel.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/anaconda_excel_python/
One hurt in single-car crash
date: 2024-08-05, from: The Signal
A single-car crash Monday morning slowed west-side commuters and left one person injured. The cause of the crash, which happened around 8:18 a.m. on McBean Parkway, just west of Newhall […]
The post One hurt in single-car crash appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/one-hurt-in-single-car-crash/
MiSTer, PlayStation 1, Nintendo 64 and the MIPS CPU
date: 2024-08-05, from: Stephen Smith’s blog
Introduction In the late mid-90s, the Nintendo 64 and Sony Playstation introduced a new generation of game consoles. Both utilized MIPS CPUs and licensed advanced 3D graphics capabilities from SGI. In fact SGI was the main developer for the N64 hardware as SGI was looking to expand into consumer markets from their lofty usual expensive […]
https://smist08.wordpress.com/2024/08/05/mister-playstation-1-nintendo-64-and-the-mips-cpu/
‘S.W.A.T.,’ ‘NCIS’ Among Seven Productions Filming in SCV
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita’s Film Office has released the list of seven productions currently filming in the Santa Clarita Valley for the week of Monday, Aug. 5 to Sunday, Aug.
https://scvnews.com/s-w-a-t-ncis-among-seven-productions-filming-in-scv/
X-Ample Technology comes to WROCC
date: 2024-08-05, from: RiscOS Story
The next Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) meeting is almost upon us – it takes place on Wednesday, 7th August – and the guest speaker this month will be Paul Reuvers from X-Ample Technology (XAT). Based in the Netherlands, XAT was at one time the Dutch representative for Computer Concepts, and later became the official Acorn distributor. The company also has a range of products of their own, having developed presentation software, medical applications, databases, both software and hardware for television subtitling, and much more. Paul’s talk will provide…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/xat-wrocc/
A Statue of Johnny Cash Is Coming to the U.S. Capitol
date: 2024-08-05, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Standing alongside civil rights leader Daisy Bates, the singer-songwriter will represent the state of Arkansas in Statuary Hall
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-08-05, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
I got a fabulous new-to-me sewing machine. It’s so much fancier than anything I’ve ever used. I love it!
Today I’m practicing basics: straight stitches, zig-zag, overlock, blind hems, joins, embroidery, curves, spacing, etc. Little break now, then button holes.
I’ll start on some basic patterns soon. Maybe dice bags for the players in my TTRPG game.
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/112910464563481714
US completes withdrawal from last base in Niger
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-completes-withdrawal-from-last-base-in-niger/7730618.html
Freighter bound for the ISS suffers engine abort
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Are the woes of the Calamity Capsule catching?
NASA’s latest cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) has encountered problems on its way to the orbiting outpost.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/freighter_bound_for_iss_engine_abort/
Students Gain Career Skills Through VIA Connecting to Success Program
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Valley Industry Association, a leading advocate for workforce development, proudly shares the success and impact of its Connecting to Success Program, which continues to transform the career readiness landscape for students and employers alike
https://scvnews.com/students-gain-career-skills-through-via-connecting-to-success-program/
Americans abroad help countries grow women’s basketball for Olympic opportunity
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
VILLENEUVE-D’ASCQ, France — Germany has lots of players who can score. The Germans knew they needed a point guard for the Paris Games with the country making its Olympic debut in women’s basketball.
Alexis Peterson, a native of Columbus, Ohio, has proven to be a perfect fit.
The guard who played at Syracuse in college has helped Germany qualify for Wednesday’s quarterfinals in Paris, and German coach Lisa Thomaidis said Peterson has been everything they wanted.
“Ball control, that’s always been the issue for us,” Thomaidis said. “We’ve had to kind of do it by committee. We’ve never really had a true point guard. We’ve been able to, you know, do it OK. But to get to that next level? We knew that she was someone that would be a huge help.”
Peterson’s not the only American abroad in these Olympics playing for other countries. The reason? The stacked pipeline of U.S. talent is essentially impossible to crack, and a FIBA rule allows countries to tap players with dual citizenships or a player who becomes a naturalized citizen.
For Peterson, it’s been a long road.
Now 29, she was drafted 15th overall in 2017 by the WNBA’s Seattle Storm. She spent six seasons bouncing around the WNBA from Indiana, Phoenix and the Las Vegas Aces. She’s played in Israel, Poland and France.
Then Germany and Thomaidis reached out to Peterson last summer to gauge her interest. She had represented the U.S. in 3x3 basketball, so USA Basketball and the German Basketball Association agreed to a change of Peterson’s nationality so she could play for Germany.
“If you recall, like Las Vegas head coach Becky Hammon played for Russia,” Peterson said of the Aces coach. “So it’s been happening for a while. Players find opportunities elsewhere and make the most of those opportunities. So I’m grateful that I was given this opportunity.”
Peterson has lots of company at these Games playing for other countries.
Yvonne Anderson was born in Springdale, Arkansas, and is the daughter of college coach Mike Anderson. The point guard will be playing in her second straight Olympic quarterfinals for Serbia against Australia on Wednesday. She helped Serbia finish fourth three years ago in the Tokyo Games.
Then, Anderson was fitting into a new team, figuring out her role. Time has made a big difference.
“At this point, I have a bond with the team,” said Anderson, who has been wearing a mask protecting the nose she broke earlier this year. “This is my family. Like, these are my girls. This is my team.”
Megan Gustafson from Port Wing, Wisconsin, played at Iowa and was the 2019 AP women’s player of the year. The 6-foot-4 Gustafson currently is a backup on the WNBA’s Aces and said yes when Spain asked if she’d be interested in playing for their team.
With her scoring and rebounding, Spain was among the first to qualify for the quarterfinals and will play Belgium on Wednesday.
Gabby Williams has dual citizenship. She played at UConn and was a late addition to the 2021 French Olympic team that won bronze in Tokyo, beating Serbia and Anderson.
Even more special because Williams’ French mother finally got to watch her daughter play for France in person.
“I think that was really, really hard on my mum to miss the Olympics (in Tokyo),” Williams said. “And then, of course, when you have games when it doesn’t go well and to not have your family there, that’s always really hard, and then to celebrate without them too is also really difficult.”
There are many others.
Houston native Mya Hollingshed played at Colorado and was the eighth pick overall by Las Vegas in the 2022 WNBA draft. Her grandfather, Terry Sykes, was a 1978 NBA draft pick by Washington. She has been playing for Puerto Rico since the 2022 World Cup.
Nigeria became the first African team, male or female, to reach the Olympic quarterfinals in basketball. The roster features five players born in the U.S. with four others who played at American colleges. Nigeria plays the U.S. on Wednesday.
Peterson spends up to 11 months a year in Europe with Fairfax, Virginia, home when in the U.S. Her European experience and being a pass-first point guard is why Thomaidis saw Peterson as a perfect fit for Germany’s roster.
“We knew we had a lot of weapons that we can distribute the ball to, and she’s been just that,” Thomaidis said.
Germany wants to make a splash in these Games as a big step toward hosting the 2026 World Cup. Olympic success will only give women’s basketball a huge boost in Germany, and these Olympians are getting messages of support and know people are paying attention.
“This is huge for German women’s basketball, for little girls in Germany right now watching us here compete here as the underdogs of our group and come out is just so inspiring to them,” Peterson said. “And I know it’ll give them something to look forward to as well.”
Writearound
date: 2024-08-05, from: Tedium feed
How I gradually fell out of love with the idea of using a code editor for all of my writing—in part because of a subtle MacOS feature that Linux doesn’t have.
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16762389/linux-markdown-writing-vs-code
Leaked Documents Show Nvidia Scraping ‘A Human Lifetime’ of Videos Per Day to Train AI
date: 2024-08-05, from: 404 Media Group
Internal emails, Slack conversations and documents obtained by 404 Media show how Nvidia created a yet-to-be-released video foundational model.
https://www.404media.co/nvidia-ai-scraping-foundational-model-cosmos-project/
Hotel to Search Rooms During DEF CON Hacking Conference
date: 2024-08-05, from: 404 Media Group
“As you may or may not know, a well-known hacking convention will be held in Las Vegas during your stay,” Resorts World Las Vegas writes. “We will be conducting scheduled, brief visual and non-intrusive room inspections daily,” it adds.
https://www.404media.co/hotel-to-search-rooms-during-def-con-hacking-conference/
How to Watch the Perseids, the ‘Best Meteor Shower of the Year’
date: 2024-08-05, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The annual celestial event is one of the year’s most anticipated, and it will peak from August 11 to 12
Infineon announces layoffs as Q3 results disappoint
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Follows 15% job cuts from chip giant Intel, with CEO blaming weak economy
Infineon has become another chipmaker to shed a chunk of the workforce to cut costs after reporting shrinking sales.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/infineon_announces_layoffs_as_q3/
‘We Have a Rattlesnake Problem’: Wildland Firefighters in the West Must Also Face a Slithering, Venomous Foe
date: 2024-08-05, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Nearly 100 large fires are burning in the United States right now, including some in rattlesnake territory
We’ll Always Have Heat Records
date: 2024-08-05, from: Heatmap News
Temperatures may still be scorching, but hey, at least you probably don’t have to swim in the Seine.
Don’t get used to cooler temperatures
The Midwest cooled off a bit over the weekend — but doesn’t mean extreme temperatures are behind us. More heat is in store this week for the Central Plains and the deep South. A heat dome developing in the Western side of the country will push hot air over to those regions, Bryan Jackson, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told me.
“Cities like Denver, Oklahoma City and Kansas City will have temperatures ranging from 95 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit the rest of the work week. That’s 6 to 12 degrees above historical averages,” Paul Pastelok, a senior meteorologist at Accuweather, told me.
The conditions in the Southern Plains across the Gulf States into the interior Southeast will be even more extreme, as high humidity levels will make already high temperatures in cities like Houston, Memphis, Tennessee, Jackson, Mississippi feel 8 to 10 degrees hotter, Pastelok explained. To be clear, that means heat indexes as high as 110.
Over in the West, the heat will focus over eastern Oregon, southern Idaho, Nevada, and central and southern California. According to Pastelok, Boise, Idaho, will see temperatures above 100 degrees for most of this week — 8 to 14 degrees above historical averages.
Olympians are having more trouble staying cool than winning medals
Beyond sleeping in cardboard beds and swimming in the Seine (which is potentially still full of E.coli), athletes are having to deal with the intense heat in the city.
In 2021, Tokyo became the hottest Olympic Games ever, with daily highs averaging nearly 90 degrees and the heat index soaring well past 113 degrees. While Paris won’t come close to challenging that, it’s still been plenty hot. Temperatures in the French capital reached 97 degrees last Tuesday before settling back into the high 70s over the weekend.
To counter the heat, athletes were taking extra breaks to hydrate, but sometimes not even that was enough. “We were drinking hot water out there,” British tennis player Jack Draper told ABC News. USA gymnast-slash-golden girl Simone Biles also complained about the heat and having to go around in a bus without AC. Spectators also struggled, and volunteers had to use a water hose to spray those in the bleachers at a beach volleyball game.
- Looking Ahead: After a cooler weekend, temperatures in Paris will trend warmer again early this week. The city will likely see temperatures above 86 degrees today and tomorrow, Jason Nicholls, lead international forecaster at Accuweather, told me. That same cycle will repeat again from mid-week through Friday. One spot of good news, though, for those toughing it out in the City of Lights: You’re likely already through the worst of it.
Park Fire rages
The Park Fire is now the fourth largest wildfire in California’s history — and there might still be weeks before it’s quenched. As of this morning, only 31% of the fire had been contained, with one more county being added to the evacuation list. Hundreds of structures have been destroyed, and over 400,000 acres have been burned.
Looking at California’s fire season to date, the numbers are even more shocking. During the summer of 2023, the state responded to 119 wildfire incidents. So far this summer — and remember we still have all of August to go — the state has already responded to 321 wildfires, according to Cal Fire data.
- Looking Ahead: The chances of putting out the Park Fire this week are low, as “precipitation is not in the forecast to help firefighters,” Pastelok told me. Dry thunderstorms and gusty winds coming from the south to southwest predicted for this week will also make the fire harder to contain. New wildfires in the region can also be expected.
“Extended summer” will last into fall
The first couple of weeks of August will continue to see much of the same extreme heat the country has experienced so far this summer, according to Pastelok. In fact, the Southeast looks to be getting even hotter and more humid late this week and into next. In northern California and parts of Oregon, some cooling may happen around the middle of the month, but not enough to end the wildfire season. More significant opportunities for cooler weather in the region won’t start until September — or even October.
Seattle and Portland may get lucky with a more substantial drop in temperatures later in August, but the Northeast will continue hot and humid throughout all of this month. The location of the cooler weather will mostly be determined by storms, Pastelok explained. “If more storms hit the East coast, the cooling will drive into the Midwest,” he said. “If the storms drive into the Gulf, then warmth will remain back to the Midwest and cooling will be more confined to the northern Rockies and Northwest.”
- Looking Ahead: From September through November, meteorologists at AccuWeather expect temperatures to be 1 to 3 degrees above historical averages. The only region that will be spared is the Pacific Northwest, where cooler, wetter weather will pop up earlier. This also means that the risk of extreme weather events, such as tornadoes and wildfires, will continue high through the end of the year.
The coldest place on the planet is not even that cold anymore
Not even Antarctica is safe from bizarre temperatures this summer. Last month, an intense heat wave caused temperatures across the continent to average up to 50 degrees above normal. Temperatures were up 82 degrees from historical readings on some days.
The numbers confirm what climate scientists have been telling us for years: Climate change will be most intensely perceived in the polar regions, making temperatures soar even higher in the rest of the globe. Zeke Hausfather, a researcher at Berkeley Earth, told The Guardian that the heat wave in Antarctica was one of the main factors behind the scorching temperatures in the last few weeks.
Extreme weather sends China from drought to drowning
Now major cities in China are also struggling under boiling heat. Shanghai issued its first red warning alert — the most severe temperature alert in the country — for the year last Thursday; the next day, temperatures along the country’s eastern coast hit 104 degrees. On August 3, the city of Hangzhou faced a high of almost 107 degrees, breaking its previous record set in 2022. Warnings have also been issued for the provinces of Fujian, Anhui, Jiangsu, among others, and intense heat is expected to continue through this week.
In Henan province, which had been battling a severe drought after months of no rain, the situation has taken a turn. In late July, the province was hit by a brutal typhoon, leading to the evacuation of tens of thousands.
This year, China recorded its hottest July in history.
https://heatmap.news/climate/paris-olympics-heat
Jill On Money: Consumers confound economists
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
When the government released its most recent update on U.S. economic growth (Gross Domestic Product or GDP), it was a classic “upside surprise.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/05/jill-on-money-consumers-confound-economists/
The stock market losses continue this morning
date: 2024-08-05, from: Marketplace Morning Report
In early trading this Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index both fell more than 1,000 points, but recovered some. A weaker jobs report on Friday suggests to some that the Federal Reserve was too slow to lower interest rates raising the possibility of a recession in the U.S. We’ll hear the latest. And later, what happens when K-Pop meets AI?
California police releases photos of suspects in killing of former ‘General Hospital’ actor Johnny Wactor
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
LAPD said the three men were trying to steal a catalytic converter when the Wactor interrupted them.
Vatican: Boston archbishop, ally of sex abuse victims, retires
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
Rome — U.S. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, known for championing survivors of sexual abuse and pushing the Catholic Church to reform, is stepping down as the Archbishop of Boston, the Vatican announced Monday.
The 80-year-old will be replaced by Richard Henning, the 59-year-old bishop of Providence, to helm the fourth-largest diocese in the United States, the Vatican said in a statement.
It did not give a reason, saying only that Pope Francis had accepted O’Malley’s resignation.
In the Catholic Church, bishops who lead a diocese have a traditional retirement age of 75, but the pope has the discretion to ask them to stay on longer.
For now, O’Malley remains head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, a body created by Pope Francis to fight pedophilia by priests that the bishop has led since 2014.
O’Malley’s resignation ends a two-decade chapter leading Catholics in the largely Irish and Italian city of Boston, where the global scandal over child sex abuse by clergy erupted in 2002, the year before he arrived.
An ally of Francis, O’Malley is part of the Franciscan mendicant order, Friars Minor Capuchin, and spent his early years as a priest building bridges with the immigrant Hispanic community in the diocese of Washington DC.
Before arriving in Boston, O’Malley served as bishop of Saint Thomas, a diocese covering all the US Virgin Islands, and later of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston.
In Fall River and the diocese of Palm Beach, Florida, he managed the fall-out of scandals involving the sexual abuse of minors by priests.
But it was in Boston where O’Malley came to prominence, managing what was then the highest-profile US clerical sex abuse scandal, later depicted in the Academy Award-winning film, “Spotlight.”
Recognized for his rapport with victims and his speed in settling cases, under O’Malley’s watch the archdiocese agreed to pay $85 million to settle nearly 550 victim lawsuits.
https://www.voanews.com/a/vatican-boston-archbishop-ally-of-sex-abuse-victims-retires/7730409.html
The significance of Bluesky and decentralized social media
date: 2024-08-05, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“The larger social networks provide a level of distribution that’s worth tapping into, but I strongly encourage investing a portion of your energy into networks where you will be able to maintain ownership long-term.”
Buffer CEO Joel Gascoigne talks about how the rise of the new, decentralized / federated social networks allow publishers to retain control.
“They have data portability baked in from the beginning. When you use these networks, you are much more likely to be able to maintain control over your content and audience than if you use social networks owned by large corporations with complex ownership structures of their own, and often with public markets to answer to.”
I’m a Buffer customer. I love that it works with both Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as every other major social network. More than that, I’ve long admired Joel’s approach while running Buffer: it’s a transparent company that works in the open and genuinely values independence. Alongside excellent ventures like micro.blog, I wish there were more like it.
<p>[<a href="https://joel.is/bluesky/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/the-significance-of-bluesky-and-decentralized-social-media
Elon Musk files new lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
While the first lawsuit was filed in California state court, the new one was filed in federal court in Northern California and is nearly double in length. In contrast to the original suit, it includes claims that OpenAI is engaging in racketeering activity.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/05/elon-musk-files-new-lawsuit-against-openai-and-sam-altman/
Sneaky SnakeKeylogger slithers into Windows inboxes to steal sensitive secrets
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Malware logs users’ keystrokes, pilfers credentials, exfiltrates data
Criminals are preying on Windows users yet again, this time in an effort to hit them with a keylogger that can also steal credentials and take screenshots.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/snakekeylogger_malware_windows/
Grad Students Find Inevitable Patterns in Big Sets of Numbers
date: 2024-08-05, from: Quanta Magazine
A new proof marks the first progress in decades on a problem about how order emerges from disorder.The post Grad Students Find Inevitable Patterns in Big Sets of Numbers first appeared on Quanta Magazine
‘Charger hogs’ are ruining the electric vehicle experience. One company is clamping down on bad manners
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
At 10 of the busiest EV fast charging stations in California, Electrify America has enacted a strict limit. Once a car’s batteries are 85% charged, charging will automatically stop and the driver will be told to unplug.
Tulip Creative Computer is a small, cheap, open source PC for making music and more (available for $59, but you can also build your own)
date: 2024-08-05, from: Liliputing
The Tulip Creative Computer is an open source computer designed for making music or coding simple games or other applications. It’s not exactly the most powerful little computer money can buy, but it doesn’t take a lot of money to buy one: you can pick up a pre-built Tulip system for $59 or build your own […]
The post Tulip Creative Computer is a small, cheap, open source PC for making music and more (available for $59, but you can also build your own) appeared first on Liliputing.
NASA Sends More Science to Space, More Strides for Future Exploration
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
Biological and physical investigations aboard the Northrop Grumman Commercial Resupply mission NG-21 included experiments studying the impacts of zero gravity on grass, how packed bed reactors could improve water purification both in space and on Earth, and observations on new rounds of samples that will allow scientists to learn more about the characteristics of different materials as they change phases on the tiniest of scales.
Lagniappe for August 2024
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
Explore Lagniappe for August 2024 featuring: Gator Speaks The roll out of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) Artemis II core stage from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on July 16 brought warm feelings to this Gator heart of mine. It shows the continued progress toward the Artemis II test flight for NASA’s first […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/stennis/lagniappe-for-august-2024/
Simone Biles finishes off her return to the Olympics with a silver on floor exercise
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
Paris — American gymnast Simone Biles didn’t get the golden sendoff she hoped.
Biles earned silver in the floor exercise finals on Monday — her 11th Olympic medal — after a routine that included a couple of costly steps out of bounds.
Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade became the first gymnast to beat Biles in a floor final in a major international competition, posting a score of 14.166 that finished just ahead of Biles at 14.133.
Jordan Chiles, a longtime friend of Biles, earned the bronze.
The 27-year-old Biles, considered the greatest in the history of the sport, wasn’t at her usual best during a routine set to music from pop icons Taylor Swift and Beyonce.
Still, she boosted her medal haul in Paris to four, gold in the team, all-around and vault finals and a silver that came as a surprise in her signature event.
Biles’ medal total (including seven gold, two silver, two bronze) ties Czechoslovakia’s Vera Caslavska for the second-most by a female gymnast in Olympic history. She missed a chance to add a fifth Paris medal earlier Monday when she fell during the beam final, finishing fifth.
Though she can make it look easy at times, it is not. She thudded to the floor during her floor warm-up and had the balky left calf she tweaked in qualifying re-wrapped before she competed.
Her tumbling passes weren’t perfect — she stepped out of bounds twice — but her difficulty is usually so far above everyone else that it hardly matters.
Not this time. She received a 7.833 execution score that included 0.6 in deductions for stepping out of bounds, allowing Andrade to win her second Olympic gold.
Still, wearing a red-white-and-blue leotard featuring thousands of crystals, Biles ended nine days of competition in Paris by silencing the critics once and for all who have long derided her for pulling out of multiple events at the Tokyo Games three years ago.
She won four medals in all, just one less than she did eight years ago in Rio de Janeiro.
Chiles — the last competitor of the day — initially received a 13.666 from judges. After some delay, her total was boosted by 0.1 when she filed an inquiry about her difficulty score, pushing Chiles past Romanians Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea and into third.
World stocks plunge on fears of US economic slowdown
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
New York — Stock markets across the globe plunged Monday as investors sold stocks on worries that the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, might be slowing and possibly headed to a recession.
In afternoon trading, all three major U.S. indexes — the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 blue chip stocks, the broader S&P 500 index and the tech-heavy NASDAQ — were still down more than 2% after sustaining even steeper declines earlier in the day.
In Europe, the Pan-European Stoxx 600 index fell 1.5%, rallying from a larger dip earlier in the day, as every major market in Europe declined. The FTSE 100, Britain’s benchmark index, dipped just over 2%, its worst day since July 2023.
The sell-off started in Japan, with the Nikkei 225 index suffering its largest single-day point drop in history, ending the day down a staggering 12.4% — drawing comparisons to the “Black Monday” stock market crash of 1987. Other Asian markets also fell.
Monday’s sell-off began last week after a monthly U.S. jobs report showed significantly slower hiring, with 114,000 new jobs in July, far fewer than had been forecasted and sharply down from recent months. Unemployment rose to 4.3%, its highest level in nearly three years.
The two pieces of data spooked investors, deepening fears that the U.S. economy could be sliding into a recession and that the Federal Reserve may have waited too long to cut its benchmark rate. It has delayed any rate cut until September, when the central bank’s policy makers are expected to trim the key rate that sets the standard for interest charges on many business and consumer loans.
The Fed last week held its benchmark rate at a two-decade high, where it has remained for a year.
In a new assessment, the Goldman Sachs investment company said it now expects the Federal Reserve to cut rates at its next three meetings — in September, November and December. Goldman raised its forecast for the probability of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months from 15% to 25%.
Because it encompasses 500 stocks, Standard & Poor’s index is often considered a key barometer of the U.S. economy. It has fallen sharply in recent days, but it is still up about 9% percent for the year. At its peak in mid-July, it was up 19%.
Trading in Japan was suspended to prevent panic selling after the decline triggered circuit breakers designed to contain severe market drops. The frenzy also activated circuit breakers in South Korea, where the main market finished nearly 9% lower.
In Taiwan, stocks plunged more than 8% — the worst single-day percentage drop in the island’s history. Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — the world’s largest chipmaker — fell nearly 10%.
Aside from fears about the U.S. economy, geopolitical tensions frequently draw concerns for investors, too, including last week’s assassination in Iran of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ top political leader. Iran has blamed Israel for the attack, and vowed retaliation, raising fears of a regional war.
The market plunge has been most severe in Japan, which analysts said was experiencing a market correction after many investors relied on a historically cheap yen and rock-bottom interest rates to fund risky investments. That strategy was exposed after Japan last week raised benchmark interest rates for only the second time in 17 years and hinted that such rate hikes may continue.
“I don’t think it’s a civilization-altering crash,” said Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ. “It’s just to me a simple case of market participants getting way ahead and, I guess you can argue, greedy, in over-leveraging, thinking that cheap and free money in Japan was going to be here to stay. And that has gone badly wrong, and they are having to very quickly unwind it and it’s having knock-on effects into asset markets.”
In an interview with VOA, Goh downplayed concerns about a U.S. recession.
“I think it’s a little bit unfair to blame the (U.S.) Fed for being late or behind the curve, because until recently a lot of people were thinking that the U.S. economy was still in reasonably good shape. And no one was really ringing the recession alarm bells,” he said.
Two years ago, the Fed started increasing borrowing costs to curb inflation, which had caused prices to soar for essentials like rent and food. Since then, it has aimed for a “soft landing,” seeking to control inflation without causing an economic recession.
In a commentary published Monday, BMI – A Fitch Solutions Company, said, “The Fed has significant fire power and can cut rates quite aggressively to support growth if needed.”
BMI said that while global markets have been more volatile than expected, they had recently rallied sharply and were vulnerable to a sell-off.
“Corrections of 5-10% are fairly common during bull markets and typically, there is a seasonal pick up in equity volatility during the July-October period,” it added.
NASA Stennis Flashback: Shuttle Team Achieves Unprecedented Milestone
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
As chief of test operations at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, Maury Vander has been involved in some long-duration propulsion hot fires – but he still struggles to describe a pair of 34-minute space shuttle main engine tests conducted onsite in August 1988. “When you stop and think about it, …” Vander begins, then pauses. “In […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/stennis/stennis-flashback-shuttle-milestone/
NASA’s Stennis Space Center Announces New Deputy Director
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Stennis Space Center Director John Bailey announced Aug. 2 that longtime propulsion engineer/manager Christine Powell has been selected as deputy director of the south Mississippi propulsion site, effective Aug. 12. “I am excited for Christine to join the NASA Stennis executive team,” Bailey said. “She has deep and proven experience and expertise in propulsion […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/stennis-announces-new-deputy-director/
NASA Inspires Employee to Reach Full Potential
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
NASA employee Kim Johnson’s desire for growth has taken her many places and continues unabated at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The D’Iberville, Mississippi, resident is a contracting officer in the NASA Stennis Office of Procurement, where she supports NASA’s mission at the largest rocket propulsion test site. Johnson oversees natural […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/kim-johnson-inspired-to-reach-potential/
The Energy Mascot that Electrified America
date: 2024-08-05, from: Heatmap News
With all the attention paid to electric vehicles and heat pumps, the 2020s might seem like the decade of home electrification — but nothing might ever rival the boom of the original Roaring Twenties. By 1929, 70% of all American homes had access to electricity, double the figure from the beginning of the decade – bringing home electrification from minority to majority.
Home electrification was so big back then, it even had a mascot: Reddy Kilowatt. Invented by a marketer at the Alabama Power Company in 1926, this cheery spokescharacter with a lightning-bolt body and a lightbulb nose was licensed to hundreds of utility companies throughout the greater part of the 20th century to promote electricity – and more specifically investor–owned utilities. Reddy was even used as a tool to link government-owned utilities to socialism or communism in years following World War II.
National
Museum of American History Archives Center
I first came across Reddy Kilowatt last year when a climate tech peer emailed me an image of him, probably from the 1950s, powering everything from a hot water heater to a record player with the headline “Your all Electric Home.”
National
Museum of American History Archives Center
For weeks I couldn’t stop thinking about that headline because I kept hearing people in the decarbonization movement say similar things (does Electrify Everything ring a bell?). Itching to learn more of the history of Reddy, I reached out to an expert.
Dr. Kirsten Moana Thompson is a professor at Seattle University who teaches and writes about animation. Her paper, Live Electrically with Reddy Kilowatt, Your Electrical Servant, explores the history of this “phenomenally successful and ubiquitous spokescharacter.”
I chatted with Dr. Moana Thompson over a video call from her office where a framed illustration of Reddy Kilowatt hung behind her. I went into the call thinking about positioning this article, “Is America ready for another Reddy?,” but by the end I learned he may be best left in the 1900s. The following interview was edited for length and clarity.
Mike Munsell
Can you introduce yourself and tell me how you ended up researching Reddy Kilowatt?
Dr. Kirsten Moana Thompson:
I’m a professor and chair of the film and media department at Seattle University, and Reddy Kilowatt was part of my research into animation that has been used in sponsored media — that is media used for non-traditional, non-entertainment purposes to do something else, like sell something, instruct you, persuade you. It forms a chapter in what will be a new book coming out in the next couple of years on animation and advertising. I think Reddy Kilowatt is a great example of how popular it was in the post-war period to use animated spokescharacters to sell products or ideas.
Munsell:
I’m curious: Are animated mascots less prevalent today than back in the post-war period?
Thompson:
My research doesn’t focus on the contemporary era, so I couldn’t give you a precise example. But certainly, as late as the ’70s, animation characters still were extensively used to promote products, not just cereal, and toys, but things like bubble bath and candy and, well into the ’70s, alcohol as well.
There are lots of reasons for that, because certain types of animation were fairly cheap to produce, were appealing, often comedic, and attention grabbing. They were a great means to sell a product — also great to use for abstract or more complex processes, like, how do you make oil or petrol or gas? How do you convey a concept like capitalism? Animation, as opposed to live action, was often a more successful way to convey or target topics of that nature.
We have to anthropomorphize the things that are too abstract, too conceptual, or too inhuman to make them translatable into something that we can comprehend and relate to. Hence the Geico lizard or the Aflac duck.
Munsell
And that makes sense then for Reddy Kilowatt to advertise electricity back when it was new, right?
Thompson
Yes, it really emerged around the time electrification was in two thirds of American households — by 1930. And electrical utility companies needed to find an appealing way to sell their product and to encourage consumer consumption of things like appliances, which themselves were emerging — things like dishwashers and washing machines and hair dryers and so on. But also rural electrification, and electrification for business purposes and factories, and on farms.
[Reddy Kilowatt] emerged targeting a fairly affluent consumer, by, for example, turning electricity into a servant – an abstract servant that was personalized and anthropomorphized.
But it was also a way of rather cleverly justifying rate increases as well, which occurred a little later, by making Reddy Kilowatt literally a figure that earns wages and was regarded as an employee by many electrical utility companies. So it’s a clever way to say to people, hey, everybody deserves a wage and Reddy Kilowatt deserves a wage and prices are going up, so we’re going to put his wages up. And that’s a fair thing.
National
Museum of American History Archives Center
Munsell:
The Smithsonian has a huge collection of Reddy Kilowatt material. Did you get to go check that out?
Thompson:
Yes, I did. The archives are extensive. And so you can read all about how [Reddy Kilowatt creator] Ashton Collins promoted the product, and what the kinds of speeches that he gave to many other business companies and electrical utility companies in the 30s and 40s.
But he’s part of a wider movement. There are other leading figures like Walt Disney and Walter Lantz, who were animation studio heads. Walter Lantz, of course, ran what he would pick the Walter Lantz studios that produced Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda, and a number of other popular cartoons of the 40s. And Walt Disney, of course, we’re all familiar with. But they all believed that the kinds of skills that animation studios were doing in the 1940s — by making cartoons to train troops to operate machinery or rifles, and by making propaganda to translate the values of the fight for democracy against fascism — they believed that those skills could be applied to the commercial market in the post-war period. And that animation was a key element of visual culture that could translate to a sometimes illiterate population or partially illiterate population.
So Ashton Collins is not alone there. He’s part of a broader movement in the film industry and in the animation industry, to understand the unique power of animation to communicate and to sell and persuade.
Munsell
Did you find anything in your research particularly surprising?
Thompson
In addition to extensive print materials in the Smithsonian, you see dozens and dozens of objects that featured Reddy Kilowatt. His image is on everything from stickers to comic books to toys, and other giveaways for kids to little marionettes, and robots, which were used in trade shows and trade fairs. [Author’s note: eBay has an extensive Reddy Kilowatt collection]
It was used in the 1939 World’s Fair, for example, to communicate and to encourage the public to interact with Reddy Kilowatt as if it was a real figure. I was quite taken with this – it’s really an early form of animatronics. They were using an avatar, a spokescharacter, who was fairly ubiquitous in the American home, on people’s electricity bills, and combining it with a large three dimensional object with a record player attached and somebody who operated the speaking, to interact with kids at fairs and to communicate basic ideas. So that was really exciting in a way because it shows how ahead of its time Ashton Collins was at understanding interactivity.
Mike Munsell
I was thinking about copyright and trademark law and the public domain. Reddy Kilowatt was, in his original form, created in 1926. We’re coming up on that 100 year mark. Is there a chance he enters the public domain?
Dr. Moana Thompson
I’m not sure about that. Because you can renew copyright. Which of course Disney did repeatedly before it finally had to succumb to the end of copyright. And Reddy is also a trademark as opposed to a copyrighted image. So he has not just appeared in what is public access now, some of his films and TV commercials, but he’s also a trademark figure that has a continuing commercial currency. And Ashton Collins was absolutely rigorous at paying attention to trademark law. He sued other companies that had similar characters, like Willie Wired Head.
National
Museum of American History Archives Center
I suspect that Xcel Energy [who now owns the rights to Reddy Kilowatt] is going to be very strict in policing its trademarks. Because if this product has value as a commodity of nostalgia for a certain generation, or multiple generations, or even if it has a new function in Xcel’s future corporate identity, he’s going to have value.
Munsell
I guess your research sort of doesn’t get quite into the present day, but for my understanding Reddy Kilowatt is not really used much today. It was used by a utility in Barbados and an Ecuadorian soccer club more recently, but from your understanding do you know why he stopped being used?
Thompson
Well, I’m not sure that he stopped being used. I have seen the return of Reddy Kilowatt as a consumer figure and as a licensed product that appears on T-shirts and stickers. Amazon has been selling quite a lot of Reddy Kilowatt products. So it’s possible that Xcel Energy that owns the trademark sees the value of the product for a new market, which is the nostalgic market, where you can sell a cartoon character itself.
Munsell: I do think that with the emergence of heat pumps, and induction stoves, there is a push toward home electrification and moving away from fossil fuels in your home. I wonder if that’s an opportunity for a reemergence of Reddy?
Thompson
Yeah, it could be an opportunity for them to repurpose the trademark.
Munsell
Is there anything else you wanted to add about your research into Reddy?
Thompson
I thought it was interesting, the blend that Reddy Kilowatt had of both the impersonal and the personal. On the one hand, we’ve mostly been talking about it as this cute cartoony character of appeal and personality. But on the other hand, he represents an abstract concept, which is almost robotic. He was literally a robot as part of his marketing. This concept of the kilowatt as one and a half horsepower was part of this wider discursive emergence in the ’20s that electricity was both a servant, as an anthropomorphized figure, and an abstraction that is there at the flick of a switch.
And in their marketing, they used imagery that of course would never be used today. The association of kilowatt as both a “coolie” – which was the specific language used – and a slave.
So this kind of racist imagery is interesting because it gets to the roots of this idea of the dehumanized, depersonalized aspects of Reddy Kilowatt – that electricity represented by using this imagery, and they had little pictures of kilowatt, which were described as a slave or a “coolie” to explain that, basically, this was free labor and unlimited labor. So obviously addressed to an implicitly white consumer. [The idea that] racial imagery of course affected all kinds of aspects of American advertising is well known to scholars in this field and often played on imagery of blackness or whiteness, in the case of soap advertising, for example, but Reddy Kilowatt in particular is this machinic identity.
And who knows, maybe that’ll come back again in the future, because machines are so much more part of our lives now, as compared to 1926 or the mid century with computers and artificial intelligence.
https://heatmap.news/culture/reddy-kilowatt
NASA Trains Machine Learning Algorithm for Mars Sample Analysis
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
When a robotic rover lands on another world, scientists have a limited amount of time to collect data from the troves of explorable material, because of short mission durations and the length of time to complete complex experiments. That’s why researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are investigating the use of […]
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/nasa-trains-machine-learning-algorithm-for-mars-sample-analysis/
Lenovo launches ThinkBook Plus Hybrid in China (14 inch Android tablet with a Windows keyboard dock)
date: 2024-08-05, from: Liliputing
The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid is basically two different mobile devices meant to work together. The first is a 14 inch Android tablet with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor that you can use as a standalone device. And the second is a keyboard dock that basically has the guts of a […]
The post Lenovo launches ThinkBook Plus Hybrid in China (14 inch Android tablet with a Windows keyboard dock) appeared first on Liliputing.
AI puppetry | #MagPiMonday
date: 2024-08-05, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
This #MagPiMonday, Rob Zwetsloot explores interesting uses for the new Raspberry Pi AI Kit.
The post AI puppetry | #MagPiMonday appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/ai-puppetry-magpimonday/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-05, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
The NYTimes main goal is to manufacture consent, not inform. That sometimes happens by chance.
And we are all playing into their game of manufactured consent when we refer to it as “the paper of record”.
(Yes other media is in the same business, but nobody else is benefiting from everyone parroting their propaganda)
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112909673462737103
Travel Troubleshooter: Refund still missing six months after seats were downgraded
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
When ITA Airways changes Rocco De Mella’s plane from Miami to Rome, he loses the seat upgrade he bought. An airline representative promises him a prompt refund. But six months later, the airline still has his money.
Wish You Were Here: Exploring New Zealand’s North and South Islands
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
A Santa Cruz couple’s New Zealand bucket list surpassed all expectations, offering kayak jaunts, hikes, biking and incredible scenery. Here are their travel tips.
Three white squirrels spotted in Los Altos; what does the future hold for them?
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
And a reader wonders where all the snails have gone.
TasteFood: A cheese worth grilling
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
This hearty, flavorful – and easy – dish combines Halloumi cheese, quinoa, red peppers and plenty of fresh herbs.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/05/tastefood-a-cheese-worth-grilling/
Top 7 places around the world for water adventures
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
From Alaska’s Inside Passage to the Faroe Islands, here are Travel+Leisure’s top destinations for water experiences.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/05/top-7-places-around-the-world-for-water-adventures/
Nvidia reportedly delays Blackwell GPUs until 2025 over packaging issues
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Backdrop of multi-billion dollar orders to support AI services, but unlikely to hurt NVDA long term
Updated Nvidia is understood to be delaying shipments of its Blackwell GPUs until the first quarter of 2025, and it appears the problems may be due to the complexity of the chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging tech that TSMC is using to manufacture the next-gen hardware.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/nvidia_delays_blackwell_gpus_until/
DOU: The Engineering Leader: A Must-Read for Success-Oriented Professionals
date: 2024-08-05, from: Accidentally in Code
I had a great conversation with Oleks about my book, about DRI-ing your career and why leadership starts with self management.
Did a father tell his teenage son to kill rapper PnB Rock? California jury to hear closing arguments at trial
date: 2024-08-05, from: San Jose Mercury News
The two sides at the murder trial in the killing of Philadelphia hip-hop star PnB Rock agree that a 17-year-old boy walked into Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles restaurant in South Los Angeles, shot the rapper twice in the back and once in the chest.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-05, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Silicon Valley’s Trump supporters are making a big mistake.
https://www.ft.com/content/14f0a270-5143-4c75-b1d0-fa302467d73f
Against the Grain: Indian Telemedicine and Its Discontents
date: 2024-08-05, from: Care
<p>“Telemedicine in India reflects larger gaps within the healthcare system.”</p>Hurricane Debby makes landfall in Florida
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/hurricane-debby-makes-landfall-in-florida/7730229.html
CrowdStrike unhappy about Delta’s ‘litigation threat,’ claims airline refused ‘free on-site help’
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Vendor plans to aggressively defend its case before listing catalog of shortcomings at the airline
CrowdStrike says it is “highly disappointed” and rejects the claims made by Delta and its lawyers that the vendor exhibited gross negligence in the events that led to the global IT outage a little over two weeks ago.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/crowdstrike_is_not_at_all/
The Climate Stakes of the Veepstakes
date: 2024-08-05, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Cooler weekend weather helped fire crews working to contain the Park Fire, which has now burned an area larger than the city of Los Angeles • Two people were killed and 12 were missing after mudslides in China’s Sichuan province linked to record rainfall • Assuming you have clear skies, you should be able to catch the annual Perseid meteor shower, which peaks this week.
THE TOP FIVE
- Hurricane Debby threatens southeast with catastrophic flooding
Hurricane Debby made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region this morning as a category 1 storm. It is expected to be extremely dangerous, not necessarily because of its wind speeds but because of the water it will dump over southeastern states in the coming days. Forecasters are warning of life-threatening storm surge, severe flash flooding, as well as strong winds. Up to 18 inches of rain could fall along the coast throughout the week, from Georgia through the Carolinas. If the storm stalls after it hits land, it is likely to strengthen and drop even more rain. Debby is the fourth named storm of the season and is making landfall in the same region Hurricane Idalia hit a year ago. Scientists agree climate change is heating the oceans, which is making tropical storms wetter and stronger.
Image:
NOAA
Sometime today or tomorrow, Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to announce who she has tapped as her running mate in the 2024 presidential race. She spent the last few days speaking with some of the top contenders, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. Here’s a look at their climate track records:
- Shapiro – He has proposed a “cap-and-invest” program to cut state emissions and lower electricity bills. He secured a $369 million federal grant to cut industrial emissions and create 6,000 jobs. Environmentalists aren’t jazzed about his murky history on fracking. As state attorney general, he investigated the gas drilling industry on fracking dangers, but as governor, “he’s become more friendly to drilling,” wrote Mike Soraghan at Politico. Harris might see that as a good thing, though, as Donald Trump tries to target her for being anti-fracking.
- Walz – With a keen understanding of what it will take to get Americans on board with climate policies, Walz is “one of the country’s most skillful climate communicators,” wrote Time’s Justin Worland. During Walz’s time in office, Minnesota has passed a law requiring utilities to be 100% carbon free by 2040, created a $2 billion climate spending program to incentivize electrification and emissions reductions, and secured a $200 million federal grant to cut food system emissions.
- Beshear – The Kentucky governor has remained pretty quiet about the climate crisis, probably because he has a fine line to walk as a democratic politician in a red state that depends heavily on coal. That said, he has helped quietly push for investment in renewable energy and EV battery production. Kentucky’s clean energy job growth is the second fastest in the country.
- Kelly – Representing one of the hottest states in the country, the former astronaut has been vocal about the effects of climate change. He pushed to get the final Inflation Reduction Act to include $4 billion from drought mitigation and cosponsored legislation to allow incentives for farmers that deploy carbon-storing agricultural practices. He has “frequently crossed the aisle to work on environment and mining legislation and is well-versed in ongoing disputes over the Western United States’ historic drought,” wrote Timothy Cama at E&E News. Kelly’s science background and knowledge of water and drought policy in the West could boost Harris’ campaign.
- China setting new emissions limits
China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, plans to set a hard emissions cap. The move is seen as positive because it decouples emissions targets from economic growth. As Bloomberg explained, the country has so far measured its emissions against gross domestic product. “That approach has allowed China to tout environmental successes even as its total emissions soared, so long as they didn’t grow faster than the overall economy.” Under a new five-year plan that begins in 2026, the country will start to target overall emissions volumes and these will become the main measure after the country’s emissions peak, which could happen in 2030 or sooner.
- Japanese automakers join forces to counter China
In case you missed it: Japanese auto manufacturers Nissan, Honda, and Mitsubishi are teaming up to produce a new EV by 2030, in a bid to take on Tesla and Chinese carmakers. The companies will work together to develop new software and e-axles, and share battery supplies. “It’s another example of big, global automakers pooling their resources in the interest of defraying costs and finding more efficient ways to introduce new EVs to the marketplace,” wrote Andrew J. Hawkins at The Verge.
- Geoengineering scientist in the spotlight
The New York Times over the weekend published a long feature on David Keith, a professor in the University of Chicago’s department of geophysical sciences and a longtime proponent of solar geoengineering. Keith makes his case for the contentious and still experimental idea of spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to lower global temperatures. He admits the process comes with risks, but says these are “quantitatively small compared to the benefits.” Yes, the practice could make twilight look different (more orange), but daylight would otherwise probably look the same.
The article quotes Frank Keutsch, one of Keith’s collaborators on a previous project, who compared solar geoengineering to opiates: “They only treat the symptom and not the actual cause,” Keutsch said. “You can get addicted to it if you don’t actually address the cause. In addition, like any painkiller, you’re going to have side effects. And then there are withdrawal symptoms, and that’s termination shock.”
THE KICKER
In an office park in Florida, far from the ocean, Disney-funded scientists are working to preserve and restore the state’s brain corals. The process involves carefully calibrating water chemistry and lighting to mimic the environment off the Florida Keys, Inside Climate News reports.
https://heatmap.news/politics/harris-vp-hurricane-debby-china
Another sharply down day?
date: 2024-08-05, from: Marketplace Morning Report
U.S. stock index futures are pointing to one amid worries that elevated interest rates from the U.S. Federal Reserve might lead to a recession rather than a soft landing. We’ll check in on global markets. And later in the program, grocery prices are elevated. Now, the Federal Trade Commission is launching an investigation to assess if companies are juicing profits by raising prices.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/another-sharply-down-day
Second patient receives the Neuralink implant
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Almost half the electrodes are working… for now
According to company boss Elon Musk, its Neuralink implant is now at work in a second patient, and this time, almost half of the device’s electrodes are working.…
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-05, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Beware Trump's secret weapon: Elon Musk's X-Twitter.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-05, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Has pop music got less melodic? I’ve immersed myself in 70 years of hits?
Low Leakage Cryogenic Disconnects for Fuel Transfer and Long-Term Storage
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
To enable deep space missions, the capability to transfer and store cryogenic fuels (typically liquid hydrogen, methane, and oxygen) without significant leakage over long duration missions is critical. NASA has been actively developing zero boil-off cryocooler technology to reduce storage losses. Another source of fuel loss is from leakage at the fuel disconnect used for in-space refueling. […]
Punkt MC02: As private, and pricey, as a Swiss bank account
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A de-Googled Android phone with extra security – and a subscription
Punkt adds a fondleslab to its lineup of minimalist tech kit, with a very unusual build of Android – and a hefty pricetag.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/mc02_swiss_private_phone/
Biden holds security talks as tensions heighten in Middle East
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
Global stocks are down on fears of a U.S. recession
date: 2024-08-05, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: The fall was most dramatic in Japan where, the Nikkei suffered its biggest one-day points drop ever. Then, the prime minister of Bangladesh has resigned and left the country following a protest that started over job shortages. And in in South Korea, AI is causing a split in the K-pop world, with some fans annoyed that K-pop stars are using AI to make music videos and experiment with song writing.
Talk notes: Let’s make a simpler, more accessible web
date: 2024-08-05, from: Chris Heilmann
I am just on my way back home from presenting at the Typo3 Developer Days in Karlsruhe, Germany. I had a great time and met a lot of interesting people. I also had the opportunity to present my talk on making the web simpler. The talk was well received and there were some requests to […]
https://christianheilmann.com/2024/08/05/talk-notes-lets-make-a-simpler-more-accessible-web/
UK axes plans for Edinburgh-based exascale computer
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Shortsighted or a chance to refocus? Tech sector is not happy
The UK’s £1.3 billion ($1.66 billion) plan for AI and tech investment that included an £800 million ($1 billion) exascale supercomputer at Edinburgh University has gone up in smoke.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/axe_exascale_uk_edinburgh/
NASA Furthers Aeronautical Innovation Using Model-Based Systems
date: 2024-08-05, from: NASA breaking news
As NASA continues cutting-edge aeronautics research, the agency also is taking steps to make sure the benefits from these diverse technologies are greater than the sum of their parts. To tackle that challenge, NASA is using Model-Based Systems Analysis and Engineering (MBSAE). This type of engineering digitally simulates how multiple technologies could best work together […]
https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/nasa-model-based-systems/
Keir Starmer says facial recognition tech is the answer to far-right riots
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The technology remains highly controversial despite widespread rollout
Responding to the riots across England over the past week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he’s backing a wider rollout of facial recognition technology to track and prevent “thugs” from traveling to areas where they plan to cause unrest.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/keir_starmer_facial_recognition/
The cybersecurity QA trifecta of fail that may burn down the world
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Malware is often described as biology. It should be the other way around
Opinion In Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, he invents malware that can leap species from silicon to the human brain. That’s a great metaphor for so much of our online lives, but it raises one question of particular interest. If humans can be damaged by our own technology, should we protect not just our data but ourselves through cybersecurity?…
Hello? Emergency services? I’d like to report a wrong number
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
911 is no joke
Who, Me? Greetings, gentle readerfolk, and welcome to Who Me? the section of The Reg in which we soften the crushing blow of the working week’s return with tales of technical transgression.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/who_me/
Today in SCV History (Aug. 5)
date: 2024-08-05, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1891 – Surrey post office established inside Saugus train station; Alexander Fraser, postmaster [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-aug-5/
FreeBSD as a daily driver
date: 2024-08-05, from: OS News
Not too long ago I linked to a blog post by long-time OSNews reader (and silver Patreon) and friend of mine Morgan, about how to set up OpenBSD as a workstation operating system – and in fact, I personally used that guide in my own OpenBSD journey. Well, Morgan’s back with another, similar article, this time covering FreeBSD. After going through the basic steps needed to make FreeBSD a bit more amenable to desktop use, Morgan notes about performance: Now let’s compare FreeBSD. Well, quite frankly, there is no comparison! FreeBSD just feels snappier and more responsive on the desktop; at the same 170Hz refresh it actually feels like 170Hz. Void Linux always felt fast enough and I thought it had no lag at all at that refresh rate, but comparing them side by side (FreeBSD installed on the NVMe drive, Void running from a USB 4 SSD with similar performance), FreeBSD is smooth as glass and I started noticing just the slightest lag/stutter on Void. The same holds true for Firefox; I use smooth scrolling and on FreeBSD it really is perfectly smooth. Similarly, Youtube performance is unreal, with no dropped frames at any resolution all the way up to 4Kp60, and the videos look so much smoother! ↫ Morgan/kaidenshi This is especially relevant for me personally, since the prime reason I switched my workstation back to Fedora KDE was OpenBSD’s performance issues. While those performance issues were entirely expected and the result of the operating system’s focus on security and hardening, it did mean it’s just not suitable for me as a workstation operating system, even if I like the internals and find it a joy to use, even under the hood. If FreeBSD delivers more solid desktop and workstation performance, it might be time I set up a FreeBSD KDE installation and see if it can handle my workstation’s 270Hz 4K display. As I keep reiterating – the BSD world has a lot to offer those wishing to run a UNIX-like workstation operating system, and it’s articles like these that help people get started. A lot of the steps taken may seem elementary to many of us, but for people coming from Linux or even Windows, they may be unfamiliar and daunting, so having it all laid out in a straightforward manner is quite helpful.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140416/freebsd-as-a-daily-driver/
Hurricane Debby to bring heavy rain, catastrophic flooding to Florida, Georgia, S. Carolina
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
TAMPA, FLORIDA — The center of Hurricane Debby is expected to reach the Big Bend coast of Florida early Monday bringing potential record-setting rains, catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge as it moves slowly across the northern part of the state before stalling over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina.
Debby was located about 40 miles (70 kilometers) west of Cedar Key, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph). The storm was moving north at 12 mph (19 kph), the National Hurricane Center in Miami said early Monday.
Debby is the fourth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season after Tropical Storm Alberto, Hurricane Beryl and Tropical Storm Chris, all of which formed in June.
Forecasters warned heavy amounts of rain from Debby could spawn catastrophic flooding in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia.
The storm was expected to make landfall around midday Monday in the Big Bend area of Florida, north of Tampa, the hurricane center said. A tornado watch also was in effect for parts of Florida and Georgia until 6 a.m. Monday.
“Right now, we are trying secure everything from floating away,” said Sheryl Horne, whose family owns the Shell Island Fish Camp along the Wakulla River in St. Marks, Florida, where some customers moved their boats inland. The sparsely populated Big Bend region in the Florida Panhandle was hit last year by Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane.
“I am used to storms and I’m used to cleaning up after storms,” Horne said.
Debby was expected to move eastward over northern Florida and then stall over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina, thrashing the region with potential record-setting rains totaling up to 76 centimeter) beginning Tuesday. Officials also warned of life-threatening storm surge along Florida’s Gulf Coast, with 1.8 to 3 meters of inundation expected Monday between the Ochlockonee and Suwannee rivers.
“There’s some really amazing rainfall totals being forecast and amazing in a bad way,” Michael Brennan, director of the hurricane center, said at a briefing. “That would be record-breaking rainfall associated with a tropical cyclone for both the states of Georgia and South Carolina if we got up to the 30-inch level.”
Flooding impacts could last through Friday and are expected to be especially severe in low-lying areas near the coast, including Savannah, Georgia; Hilton Head, South Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina. North Carolina officials were monitoring the storm’s progress.
Officials in Savannah said the area could see a month’s worth of rain in four days if the system stalls over the region.
“This is going to a significant storm. The word historic cannot be underscored here,” Savannah Mayor Van. R. Johnson said during a press conference.
The hurricane center said at 11 p.m. that Debby was located about 161 kilometers west of Tampa, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 120 kph. The storm was moving north at 19 kph.
Debby’s outer bands grazed the west coast of Florida, flooding streets and bringing power outages. Sarasota County officials said most roadways on Siesta Key, a barrier island off the coast of Sarasota, were under water. The hurricane center had predicted the system would strengthen as it curved off the southwest Florida coast, where the water has been extremely warm.
At a briefing Sunday afternoon, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned the storm could lead to “really, really significant flooding that will happen in North Central Florida.”
The storm would follow a similar track to Hurricane Idalia but would “be much wetter. We are going to see much more inundation,” he said.
A hurricane warning was issued for parts of the Big Bend and Florida Panhandle areas, while tropical storm warnings were posted for Florida’s West Coast, the southern Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas. A tropical storm watch extended farther west into the Panhandle.
Tropical storms and hurricanes can trigger river flooding and overwhelm drainage systems and canals. Forecasters warned of 15 centimeters to 30 centimeters of rain and up to 46 centimeters in isolated areas of Florida.
Storm surge expected to hit Gulf Coast, including Tampa Bay
Flat Florida is prone to flooding even on sunny days and the storm was predicted to bring a surge of 0.6 to 1.2 meters along most of the Gulf Coast, including Tampa Bay, with a storm tide of up to 2.1 meters north of there in the Big Bend region.
Forecasters warned of “a danger of life-threatening storm surge inundation” in a region that includes Hernando Beach, Crystal River, Steinhatchee and Cedar Key. Officials in Citrus and Levy counties ordered a mandatory evacuation of coastal areas, while those in Hernando, Manatee, Pasco and Taylor counties called for voluntary evacuations. Shelters opened in those and some other counties.
Citrus County Sheriff Mike Prendergast estimated 21,000 people live in his county’s evacuation zone.
Residents, businesses prepare for flooding
Residents in Steinhatchee, Florida, which flooded during Hurricane Idalia, spent Sunday moving items to higher ground.
“I’ve been here 29 years. This isn’t the first time I’ve done it. Do you get used to it? No,” Mark Reblin said as he moved items out of the liquor store he owns.
Employees of Savannah Canoe and Kayak in Georgia said they were busy tying down their watercraft, laying sandbags, and raising equipment off the ground. Mayme Bouy, the store manager, said she wasn’t too concerned about the forecast calling for a potential historic rain event.
“But we do have some high tides this week so if the rain is happening around then, that could be bad,” Bouy added. “I’d rather play it safe than sorry.”
Governors declare emergencies ahead of landfall
DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 61 of Florida’s 67 counties, with the National Guard activating 3,000 guard members. Utility crews from in and out of state were ready to restore power after the storm, he said in a post on X. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster made their own emergency declarations.
In Tampa alone, officials gave out more than 30,000 sandbags to barricade against flooding.
“We’ve got our stormwater drains cleared out. We’ve got our generators all checked and full. We’re doing everything that we need to be prepared to face a tropical storm,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said.
Northeast coast also preparing for storm conditions
Emergency managers in New England and New York were already monitoring the path of the storm for the possibility of remnants striking their states. States including New York and Vermont have been hit by heavy rain and thunderstorms in recent weeks and were still coping with flooding and saturated ground.
Tencent Cloud’s home-grown traffic-tamer halves WAN latency
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
MegaTE can arrange things so each endpoint gets just the network it needs
Sigcomm 2024 Chinese web giant Tencent has revealed “MegaTE”, a traffic engineering (TE) system it uses on its own cloud and which it claims outperforms rivals by tailoring network configurations to the needs of individual flows generated by VMs or containers.…
Are plug-in hybrids booming or fading, and are they better for the climate?
date: 2024-08-05, from: Hannah Richie at Substack
Plug-in hybrids are still going strong in some markets. Their climate benefits strongly depend on who is buying them.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/are-plug-in-hybrids-booming-or-fading
China starts testing national cyber-ID before consultation on the idea closes
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Eighty-one apps signed up to pilot facial recognition and real name ID system
Chinese app developers have signed up to beta test a national cyberspace ID system that will use facial recognition technology and the real names of users, according to Chinese media.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/china_cyber_id_pilot/
Atlassian softens its cloud-first approach for remaining on-prem customers
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Happy to have ’em go hybrid as it wises up to the enterprise
Fresh from moving its smaller customers off its server-based products onto and into its cloud, Atlassian has softened its cloud-first approach after recognizing that its larger customers can’t or won’t go there in a hurry – if ever.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/atlassian_q4_2024/
Cooler weather helps firefighters corral a third of big California blaze
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
CHICO, California — Fire crews battling California’s largest wildfire this year have corralled a third of the blaze aided in part by cooler weather, but a return of triple-digit temperatures could allow it to grow, fire officials said Sunday.
Cooler temperatures and increased humidity gave firefighters “a great opportunity to make some good advances” on the fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills, said Chris Vestal, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The Park Fire has scorched 1,623 square kilometers since igniting July 24 when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then fled. The blaze was 30% contained as of Sunday.
The massive fire has scorched an area bigger than the city of Los Angeles, which covers about 1,302 square kilometers. It continues to burn through rugged, inaccessible, and steep terrain with dense vegetation.
The fire’s push northward has brought it toward the rugged lava rock landscape surrounding Lassen Volcanic National Park, which has been closed because of the threat. The inhospitable terrain remains one of the biggest challenges for firefighters.
“The challenge with that is we can’t use our heavy machinery like bulldozers to go through and cut a line right through it,” Vestal said.
“On top of that, we have to put human beings, our hand crews, in to remove those fuels and some of that terrain is not really the greatest for people that are hiking so it takes a long time and extremely hard work,” he added.
The fire has destroyed at least 572 structures and damaged 52 others. At least 2,700 people in Butte and Tehama Counties remain under evacuation orders, Veal said.
After days of smoky skies, clear skies Sunday allowed firefighters to deploy helicopters and other aircraft to aid in the fight against the blaze as temperatures reached above 38 degrees Celsius.
“The fire is in a good place from the weather conditions we had the last couple of days but we still have to worry about the weather that we have and the conditions that are going to be present now for about the next five or six days,” Veal said.
The fire in Northern California is one of 85 large blazes burning across the West.
In Colorado, firefighters were making progress Sunday against three major fires burning near heavily populated areas north and south of Denver. Many residents evacuated by the fires have been allowed to go back home.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a blaze threatening hundreds of homes near the Colorado city of Littleton as arson.
About 50 structures were damaged or destroyed, about half of them homes, by a fire near Loveland. And one person was found dead in a home burned by a fire west of the town of Lyons.
Scientists say extreme wildfires are becoming more common and destructive in the U.S. West and other parts of the world as climate change warms the planet and droughts become more severe.
In Canada, a 24-year-old firefighter battling a blaze in Jasper National Park was killed Saturday by a falling tree, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
The firefighter from Calgary, whose name was not released, was battling a fire north of Jasper, a town in Alberta Province that was half destroyed last month by a fast-moving fire.
Google gamed into advertising a malicious version of Authenticator
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: CISA’s AI hire; and claimed Canuck SIM swappers busted
Infosec in brief Scammers have been using Google’s own ad system to fool people into downloading a borked copy of the Chocolate Factory’s Authenticator software.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/security_in_brief/
High School Students Get a Jump Start Through UC Santa Barbara Summer Research Programs
date: 2024-08-05, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Participants engage in interdisciplinary learning and research, presenting their findings at UCSB Research Conferences.
The post High School Students Get a Jump Start Through UC Santa Barbara Summer Research Programs appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
US expected to propose barring Chinese software in autonomous vehicles
date: 2024-08-05, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Commerce Department is expected to propose barring Chinese software in autonomous and connected vehicles in the coming weeks, according to sources briefed on the matter.
The Biden administration plans to issue a proposed rule that would bar Chinese software in vehicles in the United States with Level 3 automation and above, which would have the effect of also banning testing on U.S. roads of autonomous vehicles produced by Chinese companies.
The administration, in a previously unreported decision, also plans to propose barring vehicles with Chinese-developed advanced wireless communications abilities modules from U.S. roads, the sources added.
Under the proposal, automakers and suppliers would need to verify that none of their connected vehicle or advanced autonomous vehicle software was developed in a “foreign entity of concern” like China, the sources said.
The Commerce Department said last month it planned to issue proposed rules on connected vehicles in August and expected to impose limits on some software made in China and other countries deemed adversaries.
Asked for comment, a Commerce Department spokesperson said on Sunday that the department “is concerned about the national security risks associated with connected technologies in connected vehicles.”
The department’s Bureau of Industry and Security will issue a proposed rule that “will focus on specific systems of concern within the vehicle. Industry will also have a chance to review that proposed rule and submit comments.”
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment but the Chinese foreign ministry has previously urged the United States “to respect the laws of the market economy and principles of fair competition.” It argues Chinese cars are popular globally because they had emerged out of fierce market competition and are technologically innovative.
On Wednesday, the White House and State Department hosted a meeting with allies and industry leaders to “jointly address the national security risks associated with connected vehicles,” the department said. Sources said officials disclosed details of the administration’s planned rule.
The meeting included officials from the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Spain, and the United Kingdom who “exchanged views on the data and cybersecurity risks associated with connected vehicles and certain components.”
Also known as conditional driving automation, Level 3 involves technology that allows drivers to engage in activities behind the wheel, such as watching movies or using smartphones, but only under some limited conditions.
In November, a group of U.S. lawmakers raised alarm about Chinese companies collecting and handling sensitive data while testing autonomous vehicles in the United States and asked questions of 10 major companies including Baidu, Nio, WeRide, Didi Chuxing, Xpeng, Inceptio, Pony.ai, AutoX, Deeproute.ai and Qcraft.
The letters said in the 12 months ended November 2022 that Chinese AV companies test drove more than 450,000 miles in California. In July 2023, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said his department had national security concerns about Chinese autonomous vehicle companies in the United States.
The administration is worried about connected vehicles using the driver monitoring system to listen or record occupants or take control of the vehicle itself.
“The national security risks are quite significant,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in May. “We decided to take action because this is really serious stuff.”
India migrates 25,000 small lenders to ERP in just five months
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Food poisoning hits ByteDance Singapore; Indonesia bans DuckDuckGo; and more
ASIA IN BRIEF India’s government has successfully migrated 25,904 Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) to a unified ERP system in just five months, as part of its broader initiative to modernize and streamline rural lending operations.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/asia_tech_news_in_brief_/
New farmers market comes to Valencia
date: 2024-08-05, from: The Signal
Shoppers of the local Old Town Newhall and Canyon Country Farmers Markets Lee and LeeAnn Morrell, Saugus residents, arrived at the new weekly farmers market excited to see what new […]
The post New farmers market comes to Valencia appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/new-farmers-market-comes-to-valencia/
River of No Return 108K Race Report (2024)
date: 2024-08-05, updated: 2024-08-05, from: Educated Guesswork blog
https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/ronr-report/
pgspot 0.8.0 released
date: 2024-08-05, from: PostgreSQL News
The pgspot development team is happy to announce the release of version 0.8.0.
This version of adds the following new features:
- Add flag to ignore specific procedural languages
- Support @extschema:name@ placeholders introduced with PG16
- Warn about C security definer functions without search_path
See full release notes for more information.
pgspot is a tool to find security vulnerabilities in postgres sql scripts.
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgspot-080-released-2907/