News gathered 2024-08-07
(date: 2024-08-07 15:14:38)
Chris Esparza fostered a culture of connection in San Jose
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Longtime creative entrepreneur and restaurant owner died Aug. 4, leaving a legacy of community events and “third spaces.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/07/chris-esparza-fostered-a-culture-of-connection-in-san-jose/
Taylor Swift concerts in Austria canceled over fears of attack
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
The pop superstar was scheduled to play at a stadium in Vienna on Thursday, Friday and Saturday as part of her Eras Tour.
Tops, Roots, and Water
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Gather ’round, kidlets, and I’ll tell you a story about trees.
The post Tops, Roots, and Water appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/07/tops-roots-and-water/
Swift Sea Rescue by Good Samaritan Vessel Saves Man Overboard
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
‘Perception’ and Coast Guard ships and helicopters respond near the Channel Islands.
The post Swift Sea Rescue by Good Samaritan Vessel Saves Man Overboard appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
AMD’s latest desktop CPUs feature lower prices yet again as Intel readies a fightback
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Brand-new Ryzen 9000 processors are about 10% cheaper than their Ryzen 7000 counterparts
AMD’s next generation of desktop CPUs launch from tomorrow, and they’ll feature lower prices than the last series.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/amds_latest_desktop_cpus_feature/
Hart District Celebrates Decrease in Chronic Absenteeism
date: 2024-08-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The William S. Hart Union High School District is proud to announce that through its Be Present in School and Life campaign, the district saw a significant decrease in chronic absenteeism in the 2023/24 school year
https://scvnews.com/hart-district-celebrates-decrease-in-chronic-absenteeism/
All campus gates to open Aug. 15, ID still required to enter
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The McClintock Avenue and McCarthy Way entrances will be open 24 hours per day, but all other entrances will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The post All campus gates to open Aug. 15, ID still required to enter appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/08/07/all-campus-gates-to-open-aug-15-id-still-required-to-enter/
Starliner latest: NASA outlines options to rescue Boeing pilots stuck on space station
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Officials may turn to Elon’s SpaceX if Calamity Capsule proves too risky to return with crew
NASA has shared more details on how it hopes to get Boeing’s stricken Starliner craft and its two test pilots safely back to Earth from the International Space Station, if the Calamity Capsule is deemed unsuitable for a crewed return.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/nasa_spacex_starliner/
Here’s what $500 buys at a Michelin-star restaurant
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
We found Bay Area menus at price points that start at $500+ – and as little as $225, $140, even $85.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/07/prices-michelin-star-restaurants-bay-area/
Former Cal goalie Weinberg comes up huge for US in water polo shootout
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Behind the former Cal goalie, Team USA clinched a spot in the men’s water polo semifinals for the first time since 2008.
Some Bay Area neighborhoods breathe more hazardous air. Here’s where they are.
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
The most detailed map of emissions shows stark disparities in exposure to soot and smog in Bay Area neighborhoods.
CalArts Japanese Ensemble to perform at ‘Celebrate’ series Friday
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
The California Institute of the Arts’ Japanese Ensemble is scheduled to perform during the Japanese installment of the city of Santa Clarita’s “Celebrate” series at the Canyon Country Community Center […]
The post CalArts Japanese Ensemble to perform at ‘Celebrate’ series Friday appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/calarts-japanese-ensemble-to-perform-at-celebrate-series-friday/
Column Order in SQL Tables
date: 2024-08-07, from: Ocelot SQL GUI blog
Read The language rules we know – but don’t know we know which says “Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun.” Then you’ll know this is correct: CREATE TABLE little_girls ( grade FLOAT, height SMALLINT, birth DATE, fatness BLOB, hair SET(‘blond’,‘black’), previous_school VARCHAR(64), is_made_of_sugar_and_spice_and_everything_nice BOOL, reason_for_existence TEXT DEFAULT ‘thank heaven’);… Continue Reading Column Order in SQL Tables
https://ocelot.ca/blog/blog/2024/08/07/column-order-in-sql-tables/
49ers’ Deebo Samuel thriving in ‘weird’ camp as Brandon Aiyuk sits out
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Deebo Samuel is thriving in 49ers training camp even though it’s “weird” not having Brandon Aiyuk on the field with him amid a contract impasse.
Three-bedroom home sells for $2.1 million in Piedmont
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
The property located in the first block of Arroyo Avenue in Piedmont was sold on May 16, 2024 for $2,110,000, or $1,127 per square foot.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/07/three-bedroom-home-sells-for-2-1-million-in-piedmont-2/
Bay Area arts: 9 cool shows and concerts to catch this weekend
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
From 2 huge music festivals to a showcase of new plays in Palo Alto, there is a lot to see and do in the Bay Area this weekend.
Napa is getting a huge new sculpture devoted to birdwatching
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
An artwork so big you can’t see all of it is slowly growing in wine country.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/07/napa-is-getting-a-huge-new-sculpture-devoted-to-birdwatching/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Fall of Berlin 1945.
https://www.smays.com/2023/01/berlin1945/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Mozilla wants you to love Firefox again.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91167564/mozilla-wants-you-to-love-firefox-again
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Separate, unequal, and ‘glorious.’
Scientists Enlist the Help of Sea Lions to Reveal a Unique View of the Ocean Floor
date: 2024-08-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Australian researchers glued satellite-linked GPS cameras to the animals’ backs to capture footage that could be vital to marine conservation efforts
Olympics TV schedule for Thursday, Aug. 8
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
The U.S. women’s water polo and men’s basketball teams are in action.
Under-fire Elon Musk urged to get a grip on X and reality – or resign
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Chamber of Progress pens open letter pressing billionaire to behave better amid UK riots
Exclusive Echoing objections to social-media fueled violence from the government of the United Kingdom and others, the Chamber of Progress, a tech business advocacy group, is urging billionaire Elon Musk to take his leadership role at X more seriously or resign if he cannot do so.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/elon_musk_chamber_progress/
Safari Distraction Control
date: 2024-08-07, from: Michael Tsai
Ivan Mehta (Hacker News): Safari’s newest feature, Distraction Control, can remove distracting elements from a website. The feature follows Arc Browser’s addition of Boosts last year, which similarly lets users remove features from a site and further customize its appearance.Apple is rolling out the early version of the feature this week through new developer betas […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/07/safari-distraction-control/
Inside Apple Arcade
date: 2024-08-07, from: Michael Tsai
Neil Long: Some studios now wait up to six months to get paid, which almost put one indie dev out of businessThe Apple Arcade team do not respond to routine emails for weeks or even months, if they respond at allOne developer who had semi-regular meetings with the tech giant said that “half the Apple […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/07/inside-apple-arcade/
Twitter for Mac Dead Again
date: 2024-08-07, from: Michael Tsai
Zac Hall: As noted by Vedant, the official Twitter for Mac app is currently missing from the Mac App Store. While it hasn’t been confirmed, the most obvious guess is that X, formerly Twitter, finally got around to delisting the abandoned software.Twitter for Mac has been abandoned and rebuilt over the years long before Elon […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/07/twitter-for-mac-dead-again/
Discontinuing Spotify’s Car Thing
date: 2024-08-07, from: Michael Tsai
Chris Welch (via John Gruber): Spotify’s brief attempt at being a hardware company wasn’t all that successful: the company stopped producing its Car Thing dashboard accessory less than a year after it went on sale to the public. And now, two years later, the device is about to be rendered completely inoperable. Customers who bought […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/07/discontinuing-spotifys-car-thing/
Here’s How Curiosity’s Sky Crane Changed the Way NASA Explores Mars
date: 2024-08-07, from: NASA breaking news
Twelve years ago, NASA landed its six-wheeled science lab using a daring new technology that lowers the rover using a robotic jetpack. NASA’s Curiosity rover mission is celebrating a dozen years on the Red Planet, where the six-wheeled scientist continues to make big discoveries as it inches up the foothills of a Martian mountain. Just […]
Talking about Troubleshooting on the Chit Chat Across the Pond Podcast
date: 2024-08-07, from: TidBITS blog
In which Adam Engst and Allison Sheridan talk through Adam’s solar inverter connectivity problem as an example of how small assumptions can prevent successful troubleshooting.
Unraveling the Mysteries of the Battle of Attu, the ‘Forgotten Battle’ of World War II
date: 2024-08-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Underwater archaeologists discovered three shipwrecks submerged near the small Alaskan island, which was the site of one of the deadliest conflicts in the Pacific
Carbajal Brings $1 Billion to Central Coast Infrastructure
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Bridges, roads, airports, water, and more are destined for improvements and upgrades.
The post Carbajal Brings $1 Billion to Central Coast Infrastructure appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/07/carbajal-brings-1-billion-to-central-coast-infrastructure/
Delusional or Disturbed? ― Jury Begins Deliberations in Attempted Murder Trial
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Cora Vides, who pleaded insanity, faces at least 11 years behind bars if convicted.
The post Delusional or Disturbed? ― Jury Begins Deliberations in Attempted Murder Trial appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
The Marshall Star for August 7, 2024
date: 2024-08-07, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Additive Manufacturing Project Shapes Future for Agency, Industry Rocket Makers The widespread commercial adoption of additive manufacturing technologies, commonly known as 3D printing, is no surprise to design engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center whose research created stronger, lighter weight materials and new manufacturing processes to make rocket parts. NASA’s RAMPT (Rapid Analysis […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/the-marshall-star-for-august-7-2024/
Aug. 15: All For Kids Hosts Online Foster Care Orientation
date: 2024-08-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
All For Kids is seeking foster families and now offers two virtual ways for individuals and/or couples to learn how to help children in foster care while reunifying with birth families or how to provide legal permanency by adoption
https://scvnews.com/aug-15-all-for-kids-hosts-online-foster-care-orientation/
💲 Good day jobs for writers (and others)
date: 2024-08-07, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
Finding work that lets you do The Work.
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/good-day-jobs-for-writers-and-others
macOS Sequoia makes it harder to override Gatekeeper security
date: 2024-08-07, from: OS News
Speaking of an operating system for toddlers: Apple is eliminating the option to Control-click to open Mac software that is not correctly signed or notarized in macOS Sequoia. To install apps that Gatekeeper blocks, users will need to open up System Settings and go to the Privacy and Security section to “review security information” before being able to run the software. ↫ Juli Clover at MacRumors On a related note, I’ve got an exclusive photo of the next MacBook Pro.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140446/macos-sequoia-makes-it-harder-to-override-gatekeeper-security/
Nonprofit Guitars For Vets Opens Newhall Chapter
date: 2024-08-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Guitars for Vets is excited to announce the opening of its Newhall California Chapter supporting veterans in the Santa Clarita Valley and surrounding communities throughout Northern Los Angeles County.
https://scvnews.com/nonprofit-guitars-for-vets-opens-newhall-chapter/
macOS Sequia will nag you every week if you have screenshot apps and screen recorders installed
date: 2024-08-07, from: OS News
With macOS Sequoia this fall, using apps that need access to screen recording permissions will become a little bit more tedious. Apple is rolling out a change that will require you to give explicit permission on a weekly basis to these types of apps, and every time you reboot your Mac. If you’ve been using the macOS Sequoia beta this summer in conjunction with a third-party screenshot or screen recording app, you’ve likely been prompted multiple times to continue allowing that app access to your screen. While many speculated this could be a bug, that’s not the case. ↫ Chance Miller Everybody is making comparisons to Windows Vista, but I don’t think that’s fair at all. Windows Vista suffered from an avelanche of permission dialogs because the wider Windows application, driver, and peripheral ecosystem was not at all used to the security boundaries present in Windows NT being enforced. Vista was the first consumer-focused version of Windows that started doing this, and after a difficult transition period, the flood of dialogs settled down, and for a long time now you can blame Windows for a lot of things, but it’s definitely not throwing up more permission dialogs than, say, an average desktop-focused Linux distribution. In other words, Vista’s UAC dialogs were a desperately necessary evil, an adjustment period the Windows ecosystem simply had to go through, and Windows as a whole is better off for it today. This, however, is different. This is Apple having such a low opinion of its users, and such a deep disregard for basic usability and computer ownership, that it feels entirely okay with bothering its users with weekly – or more, if you tend to reboot – nag dialogs for applications the user has already properly given permission to. I don’t have any real issues with a reminder or permission dialog upon first launching a newly installed screen recording application – or when an exisiting application gains this functionality in an update – but nagging users weekly is just beyond insanity. More and more it feels like macOS is becoming an operating system for toddlers – or at least, that’s how Apple seems to view its users.
Back Outside at Outside Lands 2024
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
San Francisco’s premier music festival is back August 9-11, headlining with The Killers, Sabrina Carpenter, Sturgill Simpson, and Post Malone.
The post Back Outside at Outside Lands 2024 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/07/back-outside-at-outside-lands-2024/
Fire officials cautious as seasonal threat remains
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
With the main ingredients in place — an extremely dry heat following back-to-back wet winters — firefighters this week shared their concerns about the potential for a very troublesome fire […]
The post Fire officials cautious as seasonal threat remains appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/fire-officials-cautious-as-seasonal-threat-remains/
Photos: Concerts in the Park
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
Residents gathered for Saturday’s Concerts in the Park at Central Park, singing along with The Travelin’ Band: A Tribute to Credence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty. https://youtu.be/wALvTqZ0UMY
The post Photos: Concerts in the Park appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/photos-concerts-in-the-park/
Audit: California risked millions in homelessness funds due to poor anti-fraud protections
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The LAist
A critical new federal audit calls out California for doing too little to prevent fraudulent spending of homelessness funds. Nearly $320 million was at risk.
Shannon Serves Parenting Suggestions
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A new column popped up in our pages last month and is now making its second debut: Mom Brain. This
The post Shannon Serves Parenting Suggestions appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/07/shannon-serves-parenting-suggestions/
The Supreme Court’s Recent Ruling on Homeless Camps Could Have Major Impact on SoCal Cities, CSUN Prof says
date: 2024-08-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that cities can enforce bans on homeless people sleeping on sidewalks and other public outdoor spaces, a decision that will particularly resonate in cities like Los Angeles, where homeless encampments remain a major issue
Coroner IDs 2 killed in crash
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
Medical examiners with the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office identified two other men killed in a fatal crash Monday near the southbound lanes of Interstate 5, near the Templin Highway […]
The post Coroner IDs 2 killed in crash appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/medical-examiners-id-2-killed-in-crash/
Survey finds that four in five enterprise endpoints could run Windows 11
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Bad news: They aren’t, and Windows 10 end of support is looming
There is some good news for Microsoft on the Windows 11 enterprise adoption front as a survey of more than 750,000 Windows endpoints indicates that a healthy 88 percent of those not already running the tech giant’s latest operating system are ready for an upgrade.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/survey_windows_on_enterprise/
Meteorite Strikes Are the Primary Creator of the Moon’s Thin Atmosphere, Study Finds
date: 2024-08-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers examined lunar soil samples collected during the Apollo missions to determine which weathering processes contribute most to replenishing the moon’s atmosphere
As Japan marks atomic bombing anniversaries, its military emerges from shadow of WWII
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
Tokyo — Japan this week restated its aim to rid the world of atomic weapons as it marks the 79th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — even as the Japanese government seeks assurances the United States would be willing to use its own nuclear arsenal to protect Japan.
At 8:15 a.m. Tuesday — the time that the atomic bomb exploded 600 meters (1,969 feet) above Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 — people across Japan marked a minute’s silence to remember the horrors visited on the city.
“It is the mission of Japan, the only country to have suffered nuclear war, to pass on the reality of the atomic bombings to future generations,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told delegates gathered in Hiroshima.
The manner of Japan’s defeat in World War II changed the country, driving an aversion to war and military power that lasted for generations. However, after decades of pacifism, the country is undergoing profound changes in its attitude to military power amid multiple regional threats, said Yee Kuang Heng, a professor of international relations at the University of Tokyo.
“The DPRK’s [North Korea’s] nuclear missile programs; Chinese military assertiveness and territorial claims in the East China Sea; Russia’s closer military cooperation with China in the past couple of years. These are underlying drivers that have been around for the past couple of years,” Heng told VOA.
“There is Prime Minister Kishida’s oft-quoted fear that Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow, especially with potential flashpoints close to Japan, such as Taiwan.”
Those threats prompted Japan to last year announce a doubling of defense spending, to 2% of gross domestic product by 2027.
Last week, the United States, Japan’s closest ally, announced a major upgrade of its military command in the country. During the visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Tokyo again sought assurances from the U.S. that it would be prepared to use “extended deterrence” — that is, nuclear weapons — to defend Japan.
“They have always had doubts about the American commitment to use all their might to defend them. And that includes nuclear weapons, which gives you some idea of just how somewhat paradoxical Japan’s supposed nuclear allergy is,” said Grant Newsham, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy and a former U.S. Marines colonel who served in Japan.
For decades, anger among Asian neighbors over Japan’s actions in World War II prevented closer regional cooperation. That’s also changing, said analyst Heng.
“Countries like the Philippines, they’ve recently signed very important defense agreements with Japan, such as the Reciprocal Access Agreement, actually the first Asian country to do so with Japan,” he said. “South Korea, notably under President Yoon [Suk Yeol], has talked up a more forward-looking relationship with Japan.”
But 79 years after the trauma of defeat — the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — are the Japanese people ready to become a military power once more?
“There’s a sea change also in the public opinion in my country as well,” said Kunihiko Miyake of Japan’s Canon Institute for Global Studies.
“We are not rabbits. We are tortoises. We are probably slow, but we always go ahead, and one step forward at a time,” Miyake added. “Maybe this time, two or three steps forward.”
China has reacted with anger to the rapid changes in Japan’s military posture.
“During World War II, Japan invaded and colonized some Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines, and committed serious historical crimes. Japan needs to seriously reflect on its history of aggression and act prudently in the field of military security,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during a press conference last month.
At the same time, say analysts, Japan must secure itself against multiple threats — not least from China itself.
EPA Issues Rare Emergency Order to Suspend Use of Weed Killer Harmful to Fetuses
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
DCPA, or Dacthal, is widely used in California on vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower — two of Santa Barbara County’s top crops.
The post EPA Issues Rare Emergency Order to Suspend Use of Weed Killer Harmful to Fetuses appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
NASA Optical Navigation Tech Could Streamline Planetary Exploration
date: 2024-08-07, from: NASA breaking news
In a dim, barren landscape like the surface of the Moon, it can be easy to get lost. With few discernable landmarks to navigate with the naked eye, astronauts and rovers must rely on other means to plot a course. As NASA pursues its Moon to Mars missions, encompassing exploration of the lunar surface and […]
Carving Canyons
date: 2024-08-07, from: NASA breaking news
Erosion, tectonic uplift, and a human-built dam have all helped shape the Upper Lake Powell area in Utah. This astronaut photograph was acquired on July 28, 2023, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 1,150 millimeters. It is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/carving-canyons/
AWS ‘Bucket Monopoly’ attacks could allow complete account takeover
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Vulnerable services fixed by the cloud biz but open source projects still at risk
Black Hat Critical flaws across at least six AWS cloud services could have allowed attackers to execute remote code, steal data, or even takeover a user’s account without their knowledge, according to research presented today at Black Hat.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/aws_bucket_monopoly_attacks_could/
Are vice presidential picks game changers for US elections?
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
Now that both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have selected their running mates, the question is whether those picks will actually help boost the campaigns’ chances of winning the November election. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at the historical relevance of vice presidential candidates and what Tim Walz and JD Vance bring to their respective tickets.
https://www.voanews.com/a/are-vice-presidential-picks-game-changers-for-us-elections-/7733540.html
Review | Homeboy Got Game, Continued
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
In one of the more intimate and satisfying of his many hometown concerts, Jackson Browne wowed a packed Lobero Theatre.
The post Review | Homeboy Got Game, Continued appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/07/review-homeboy-got-game-continued/
Scores of Sea Lions Reported Sick on Beaches in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
This marks the third consecutive year of marine mammals suffering from domoic acid poisoning at local beaches.
The post Scores of Sea Lions Reported Sick on Beaches in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
As Paris Olympics wind down, Los Angeles swings into planning for 2028
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
PARIS — From the City of Love to the City of Angels, planning for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics is well underway and organizers are paying close attention to what’s worked, and what hasn’t, so far in Paris.
It will be LA’s third time hosting the Olympics — the last time was 40 years ago — and first time hosting the Paralympic Games.
Janet Evans remembers sitting in the stands at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the opening ceremony for the 1984 Summer Olympics as a 12-year-old.
“I remember watching those athletes march out behind their country’s flags in their beautiful opening ceremony uniforms and thinking, ‘I want to do that,’” Evans said.
That was before she went on to win four gold medals and set world records as a U.S. Olympic swimmer. Now, as chief athlete officer for LA2028, the organizing committee bringing the Games to LA, she is focused on giving a voice to athletes and their concerns.
“Having lived in three Olympic Villages and having competed in three Olympic Games … it’s really important to understand what the athletes are experiencing,” Evans said.
Much of the focus will be on hearing from athletes about their concerns after the Games are over. But Evans said some of the concerns that have been floated in the last few weeks — reports of uncomfortable beds, limited air conditioning and food shortages — won’t be an issue in LA, which plans to house the athletes on the UCLA campus.
“We feed thousands of students a day. UCLA houses thousands of students a day and so we’re tried and tested and true,” she said. “I eat the food once a week, at least, at UCLA, which is delicious. So I can vouch for that.”
As for concerns specific to Los Angeles, top of mind for many is the gridlocked traffic on freeways and streets in the City of Dreams and Hollywood.
Evans said the plan is to work around some challenges by making deliveries for athletes late at night, work with companies to implement a more robust work-from-home plan for employees in the Southern California region for the duration of the Games and institute “Olympic lanes” to ensure athletes can “get from point A to point B quicker.”
The official handoff to Los Angeles will take place on Sunday evening during the closing ceremony in Paris. Evans hopes the buildup in the next four years and LA’s own opening ceremony will inspire a new generation of spectators to follow their dreams.
“That’s what the Olympics do — they change people’s lives,” Evans said. “I think that’s why everyone loves the Olympics. It brings people together.”
The Feds Are Coming for Solar Scammers
date: 2024-08-07, from: Heatmap News
Federal regulators are joining forces on a fresh effort to go after solar energy scams and help the public parse potentially deceptive business practices in the industry.
Treasury Department officials said Wednesday they will soon release a consumer advisory warning against deceptive sales practices, officials said at a public event featuring leaders at Treasury as well as the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. These agencies are also releasing a slew of documents to help American consumers gauge whether solar marketers are legitimate and encourage people to report any potential fraudulent behavior in the sector to come forward to the government for potential inquiry.
Solar energy fraud at the residential consumer level is a rare but profoundly painful phenomenon that can acutely harm low- and middle-income households. At the public event announcing the move, officials said they took this step after seeing a rising amount of consumer losses due to frauds and predatory behavior in the household solar space. More than a quarter of a billion dollars in solar-related fraud has been reported between January 2022 and June of this year, FTC Chair Lina Khan said. The Internal Revenue Service issued a warning in July against new efforts by fraudsters to cite the Inflation Reduction Act in predatory pitches.
As Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said at the event, any time a major law passes and unleashes federal dollars to support consumers, you will “have people trying to take advantage” – but “like in most industries, these bad actors represent a small number of solar companies.”
CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, meanwhile, sounded a note of concern. “I’m really worried about this,” he said, pointing to the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis and saying these behaviors pose the risk of “undermin[ing] the growth and development of residential solar programs in our country.”
Chopra pointed to a specific business practice regulators that can be concerning: sales quotas and commissions. “Sometimes when those are set in unreasonable ways, it can create the conditions where people who are on the frontlines selling these products go too far.”
https://heatmap.news/sparks/solar-scams
The Mystery of the Bronze Age Ax Heads Mailed Anonymously to an Irish Museum Has Been Solved
date: 2024-08-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A farmer stumbled upon the 4,000-year-old artifacts while working in his field in central Ireland
Chrome will let you shop with “AI”
date: 2024-08-07, from: OS News
When you’re shopping online, you’ll likely find yourself jumping between multiple tabs to read reviews and research prices. It can be cumbersome doing all that back and forth tab switching, and online comparison is something we hear users want help with. In the next few weeks, starting in the U.S., Chrome will introduce Tab compare, a new feature that presents an AI-generated overview of products from across multiple tabs, all in one place. Imagine you’re looking for a new Bluetooth portable speaker for an upcoming trip, but the product details and reviews are spread across different pages and websites. Soon, Chrome will offer to generate a comparison table by showing a suggestion next to your tabs. By bringing all the essential details — product specs, features, price, ratings — into one tab, you’ll be able to easily compare and make an informed decision without the endless tab switching. ↫ Parisa Tabriz Is this really what people want from their browser, or am I just completely out of touch? I’m not at all convinced the latter isn’t the case, but this just seems like a filler feature. Is this really what all the AI hype is about? Is this kind of nonsense the end game we’re killing the planet even harder for?
https://www.osnews.com/story/140439/chrome-will-let-you-shop-with-ai/
Faulty instructions in Alibaba’s T-Head C910 RISC-V CPUs blow away all security
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Let’s get physical, physical … I don’t wanna hear your MMU talk
Black Hat Computer security researchers at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Germany have found serious security flaws in some of Alibaba subsidiary T-Head Semiconductor’s RISC-V processors.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/riscv_business_thead_c910_vulnerable/
Digital nudges
date: 2024-08-07, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>I design and code things for the web. I build them for myself, for friends, and clients. In doing that I have to make assumptions about how people behave. Because websites aren’t—usually—art pieces. They’re tools, used by people. People like yourself. And let me tell you: you’re quite unpredictable. When I build things for myself, I’m guided by a series of very simple principles:</p>- Don’t waste their time
- Don’t make things complicated for no reason
- Don’t add pointless distractions
The problem though, is that my way of experiencing the web is skewed by the fact that I spend almost all my days working on this damn thing. And so my assumptions on how people behave are sometimes incredibly wrong.
For example: the other day someone got in touch and asked if there’s a way to support what I do (there is). This link is present on literally every single page of my site, just below the end of the content. It’s also present in every single post in my RSS feed. And yet, some people don’t see it.
The same story is true for my guestbook. The link to it is right there, just below the end of this post. And yet, every time I mention it directly in a post, a bunch of people sign it, as if it’s the first time they see it mentioned even though there’s a link to it in every single post on this site.
And every time something like this happens I’m left wondering if my assumptions about what people notice on a site are just plain wrong. Maybe there’s a reason why creators in other types of media keep repeating the same damn thing—like and subscribe, leave a review—at every occasion. Maybe the attention span online is so low that you need to repeat something a thousand times before one goes through. Which is… sad? I don’t know, part of me refuses to believe this because I have high hopes for you all out there. I think we’re all collectively better than this.
<hr>
<p>Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.</p>
<p><a href="mailto:hello@manuelmoreale.com">Email me</a> ::
<a href="https://manuelmoreale.com/guestbook">Sign my guestbook</a> ::
<a href="https://ko-fi.com/manuelmoreale">Support for 1$/month</a> ::
<a href="https://manuelmoreale.com/supporters">See my awesome supporters</a> ::
<a href="https://buttondown.email/peopleandblogs">Subscribe to People and Blogs</a></p>
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/FZdk7LxXYeqSnf6V
CHP to conduct DUI checkpoint on Friday
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
A DUI checkpoint will be held from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday in the unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, according to a press release from the California Highway […]
The post CHP to conduct DUI checkpoint on Friday appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/chp-will-conduct-dui-checkpoint-on-friday/
She’s the Oldest Common Loon in the World. She Just Had Her 42nd Chick
date: 2024-08-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Fe, who is at least 38 years old, initially rose to fame as one half of the “resident power couple” at Michigan’s Seney National Wildlife Refuge
Cops Used Facial Recognition on Lost iPhone Lock Screen to Find Post Office Robbers
date: 2024-08-07, from: 404 Media Group
Two men face felony charges after allegedly losing an iPhone in the snow after a break-in at a post office.
US safety board plans to quiz officials about FAA oversight of Boeing before a panel blew off a 737
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
Washington — A federal safety board planned on Wednesday to probe the Federal Aviation Administration’s oversight of Boeing and how it has changed since a door plug blew off a Boeing 737 Max in midflight.
The National Transportation Safety Board is holding a two-day hearing on the blowout during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
Door plugs are installed on some 737s to seal a cutout left for an extra exit that was not required on the Alaska jet. The plug on the Alaska plane was opened at a Boeing factory to let workers fix damaged rivets, but bolts that help secure the panel were not replaced when the plug was closed.
A Boeing official said Tuesday that the company is redesigning door plugs so they cannot be closed until they are properly secured. Elizabeth Lund, who was named Boeing’s senior vice president of quality shortly after the blowout, said the company hopes to complete the fix within about a year, and that 737s already in service will be retrofitted.
On Wednesday, safety board members were scheduled to question representatives from Boeing and key supplier Spirit AeroSystems on their safety systems. They also plan to ask FAA officials about the agency’s monitoring of Boeing. including “changes in oversight methods.”
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker told Congress in June that the agency’s oversight was “too hands-off” before the blowout but has since put more inspectors inside Boeing and Spirit factories. Whitaker is not scheduled to testify.
The accident on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 occurred minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, on Jan. 5. The blowout left a hole in the plane, oxygen masks dropped and the cockpit door flew open. Miraculously there were no major injuries, and pilots were able to return to Portland and land the plane safely.
US 30-year mortgage rate drops on weak jobs data, Fed rate-cut signals
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
Tesla recalls over 1.6M electric cars in China for faulty hood lock
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Across China and the US, more than 3.5 million cars have been recalled
Tesla has issued a recall in China for four of its electric vehicle models, impacting more than 1.6 million cars.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/tesla_recalls_over_16m_electric/
DEVONtechnologies Resurrects Network Utility
date: 2024-08-07, from: TidBITS blog
Apple deprecated Network Utility in macOS 11 Big Sur, but DEVONtechnologies has now released the free Neo Network Utility, a near-clone of Apple’s obsolete utility.
https://tidbits.com/2024/08/07/devontechnologies-resurrects-network-utility/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Manton Reece ran a survey with users of micro.blog, here's his report.
https://www.manton.org/2024/08/07/microblog-survey-results.html
Android 15 has a smaller taskbar optimized for phones
date: 2024-08-07, from: Liliputing
Google may be planning to add a taskbar in Android 15 that’s optimized for phones and other devices with smaller displays. The taskbar has been part of Android’s tablet interface since Android 12L arrived two years ago. While it’s usable on smaller devices, doing so requires adjustments to display scaling. That’s not ideal, since it […]
The post Android 15 has a smaller taskbar optimized for phones appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/android-15-has-a-smaller-taskbar-optimized-for-phones/
Announcing Official Puppeteer Support for Firefox
date: 2024-08-07, from: Mozilla Developer Network blog
We’re pleased to announce that, as of version 23, the Puppeteer browser automation library now has first-class support for Firefox. This means that it’s now easy to write automation and perform end-to-end testing using Puppeteer, and run against both Chrome and Firefox.
The post Announcing Official Puppeteer Support for Firefox appeared first on Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2024/08/puppeteer-support-for-firefox/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Guy Kawasaki: How to Get a Standing Ovation.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Sam Newman dug up a piece I wrote in 2008 about a decentralized twitter.
https://mastodon.social/@samnewman@hachyderm.io/112921095951919277
Something Is Rotten in the State of Russian Arms Industry
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: RAND blog
Despite Russia’s claims of robust arms production and export capabilities, Moscow faces significant challenges. Declining sales, reliance on outdated weaponry, and strained international relationships indicate a stark contrast between state propaganda and the reality faced by the Russian arms industry.
Low orbit satellites for phone service may cause more light pollution
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Radiance much greater than current models, suggests paper
Astronomers and other stargazers have new cause for concern about light pollution following claims that Starlink’s latest satellites which support phone services may appear five times brighter in the sky than existing ones.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/low_orbit_satellites_for_phone/
The economics of a Harris-Walz ticket
date: 2024-08-07, from: Marketplace Morning Report
We now know who the Veep wants as Veep: Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Tuesday that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be her running mate in this year’s presidential election. But what does he bring to the table economically? We’ll dig in. Plus, total household debt in the U.S. is creeping up, and a new nonprofit aims to measure whether companies’ carbon removal plans actually work.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/the-economics-of-a-harris-walz-ticket
49ers assistant Staley enjoying escape from the head coaching grind
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Brandon Staley’s influence has the 49ers employing some 3-4 looks with Nick Bosa dropping into coverage.
Map: Park Fire’s active burning prompts more evacuations
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
New evacuations were ordered in Tehama County, and the following day the fire crossed Highway 172.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/07/map-park-fires-active-burning-prompts-more-evacuations/
Californians say they were fired for leaving their jobs in sweltering heat. Is the state on their side?
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
While California has rules to protect farmworkers from excessive heat, inspections and citations are significantly down. A bill before the Legislature would make it easier to file workers’ compensation claims for heat illnesses.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-07, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
It is now Wikipedia official, after a long and painful debate.
It is a genocide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
Sidebar: and it is so, because the US has ensured that it will continue to be funded and will do everything in its power to let it continue.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112921296260544982
OpenAI: On a Path to Becoming The World’s Most Frightening Surveillance Company?
date: 2024-08-07, from: Gary Marcus blog
⚠️ Something terrifying just snapped in place:
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/openai-on-a-path-to-becoming-the
More heat for the Bay Area, this time with more than a hint of mugginess mixed with it
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
A slight relief from the heat is expected during the weekend.
HPE’s $14B bid for Juniper waved through by UK regulator
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Probe began in June and was over by August, no need for corporate lobbying (you hearing this Microsoft?)
The UK’s competition watchdog – often a fly in the ointment of proposed global tech acquisitions – has approved Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion buy of rival Juniper Networks.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/hpes_14b_bid_for_juinper/
Physicists Pinpoint the Quantum Origin of the Greenhouse Effect
date: 2024-08-07, from: Quanta Magazine
Carbon dioxide’s powerful heat-trapping effect has been traced to a quirk of its quantum structure. The finding may explain climate change better than any computer model.The post Physicists Pinpoint the Quantum Origin of the Greenhouse Effect first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Santana Row in San Jose launches program to charge for parking on site
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Santana Row in San Jose has launched a program to charge for parking.
MSI MS-CF13 mini ITX motherboard supports up to Intel Core i3-N305 Alder Lake-N chips
date: 2024-08-07, from: Liliputing
Looking to build your own small form-factor PC with a low-power Intel Alder Lake-N processor? MSI’s new MS-CF13 mini ITX motherboard is a 170 x 170mm (6.7″ x 6.7″) board that comes with a choice of Intel N97, Intel Core i3-N305, or Intel Atom x7425E chips. While it’s marketed toward industrial applications (and will therefore […]
The post MSI MS-CF13 mini ITX motherboard supports up to Intel Core i3-N305 Alder Lake-N chips appeared first on Liliputing.
How Tim Walz became beloved by young voters with a message that the GOP is ‘weird’
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Now the party is turning the page with a new generation of candidates trying to appeal not just to Americans’ fears about what a second Trump presidency would mean, but to plainly label the policies and actions of the Republican party as abnormal.
When split newsrooms work, and when they falter
date: 2024-08-07, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Bill Grueskin in Columbia Journalism Review]
“What’s most important is that a disruptive start-up not be placed at the mercy of the old organization—which might see the upstart as a competitive threat and attempt to have it shut down or cause it to fail.”
“[…] Newsroom managers must figure out if their current staff is equipped—intellectually, emotionally, technologically—to handle the pace of change in the business.”
Interesting reflections here on newsrooms that split in order to incubate future-facing innovation alongside their legacy businesses. It seems like a good idea to me, if you can afford it: a pro-innovation culture is likely to shed the bureaucracy and processes that may be present in an older business. (This isn’t just true for newspapers vs “digital”, whatever digital is: it’s also true for businesses that are set in an older version of the web.)
The trouble is, as this article notes, that these innovative newsrooms are likely to be so successful that they end up re-merging with the main newsroom and falling under its control. At that point the culture of innovation tends to die, which is something anyone in the tech industry who watched Yahoo acquire startups in the mid-2000s will recognize clearly.
So what’s the solution? I think there isn’t one. It may be more effective for the innovative newsrooms to be spun off completely, so that they aren’t so much parallel sides of the same organization as new organizations entirely, with a more complete ability to reinvent how they work. My guess is that this would extend far beyond new modes of content and audience engagement and extend to the experience of working itself. After all, that’s exactly what happened in tech - an exploration that, depending on the organization, was often positive for tech workers. Some people in news describe tech workers as “coddled”; I’d describe it more as “free to invent”.
<p>[<a href="https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/separate-unequal-glorious-grueskin-christensen-harvard-business-wall-street-wsj.php">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/when-split-newsrooms-work-and-when-they-falter
Minnesota reacts to Tim Walz being named Kamala Harris’ running mate
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
While the governor’s allies celebrated, his opponents panned his progressive record.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
How could someone like Nicholas Carlini not have an RSS feed. I'll never find my way back to his site, that's why I wanted my software to do it for me. Too bad, no feed.
https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing
How Tim Walz pushed Minnesota towards aggressive climate policies
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Kamala Harris’s new VP running mate has made his home state a model of a quieter, Midwestern-style strategy for accelerating emission-free energy
How California School for the Deaf, Riverside became a football dynasty
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Thomas Fuller’s new book, “Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory,” tells the incredible, inspiring story.
Disneyland firefighters dethrone Davy Crockett champs in canoe races
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
The beloved employee tradition that started more than 60 years ago has been exported to Disney parks around the globe.
Lawmaker wants to ban California schools from serving food with Red 40, other dyes
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
Assembly Bill 2316 would ban six food dyes in school meals linked to developmental and neurobehavioral issues.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Nicholas Carlini: How I Use "AI".
https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2024/how-i-use-ai.html
“Mastodon for Harris” is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism
date: 2024-08-07, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Sean Tilley at We Distribute]
“Following President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 election, Democratic supporters have gained a massive influx of energy and support all over the Web. Hours after the president made his announcement, Heidi Li Feldman, a law professor emeritus at Georgetown University, launched an ActBlue fundraiser comprising of Mastodon users.”
It’s been pretty successful: almost half a million dollars at the time this article was written. It’s another example of how Mastodon users are politically engaged, more active per capita than any other social network, and ready to contribute.
It’s also a facet of Mastodon’s wider userbase that there were some criticisms this money was being raised for the Presidential election than, say, local mutual aid. From my perspective, both are important: perhaps there’s a way to learn from this in order to fund a wider mutual aid campaign, but contributing to an election campaign to stop an authoritarian, nationalistic second Trump administration feels incredibly important.
Political purity tests and fractions unfortunately are a feature of Mastodon’s communities, and will likely continue to be - but one positive way of looking at it is that it means they care, a lot, and are interested in ways to improve the lives of vulnerable people. That’s an incredibly good thing that should give us all hope for the future.
<p>[<a href="https://wedistribute.org/2024/08/mastodon-for-harris/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/mastodon-for-harris-is-a-success-story-for-fediverse-activism
Taste-Off: The best strawberry lunchbox yogurt — and the gooey rejects
date: 2024-08-07, from: San Jose Mercury News
We tasted our way through nine strawberry yogurt brands – Stonyfield, Trader Joe’s, Chobani and more – to find the tastiest tubes… and the horrible ones.
Small CSS tweaks can help nasty emails slip through Outlook’s anti-phishing net
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A simple HTML change and the warning is gone!
Researchers say cybercriminals can have fun bypassing one of Microsoft’s anti-phishing measures in Outlook with some simple CSS tweaks.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/small_css_tweaks_can_help/
BitClout Wasn’t So Decentralized
date: 2024-08-07, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“Here’s a thing. It costs $1. If you buy one, the next one will cost $2. If someone buys it, the next one will cost $4. Et cetera. The price of the thing always goes up, leaving every buyer (except the most recent one) with a large guaranteed profit. Of course they can’t sell the thing to realize the profit, but that too is a benefit: If they can’t sell, the price can’t go down.
“Man, 2019 was just amazing. That was an economic model that you could advertise.”
It genuinely is incredible. Matt Levine is incredulous that anyone could think that they could avoid SEC regulation because something was “decentralized” - but even then, BitCloud wasn’t really decentralized.
In a way, I’m a little envious: it seems like one could have raised millions and millions of dollars for some crypto venture and actually, with complete impunity, openly spent it on something else that really had nothing to do with a token scheme. Imagine what could have been funded that way!
As Matt points out:
“And then you could just take the money! And be like “what, I told you I wouldn’t spend it on developing the protocol, and I didn’t.”“
What a time. Anyway, I’m sure nothing like it is happening in the tech industry right now.
<p>[<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-08-06/bitclout-wasn-t-so-decentralized">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/bitclout-wasnt-so-decentralized
ONEXGPU 2 graphics dock features Radeon RX 7800M GPU
date: 2024-08-07, from: Liliputing
A bunch of Chinese PC makers have launched compact GPU docks recently that are designed to bring better graphics performance to laptops, handhelds, and mini PCs. But so far most, like the AYANEO AG01, BoostR, GPD G1, MINISFORUM R3GAF, and ONEXGPU all have the same AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT GPU inside. Now One Netbook […]
The post ONEXGPU 2 graphics dock features Radeon RX 7800M GPU appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/onexgpu-2-graphics-dock-features-radeon-rx-7800m-gpu/
I Am Artemis: Julia Khodabandeh
date: 2024-08-07, from: NASA breaking news
Unlike most of her friends in the 80s who covered their walls with posters of bands, Julia Khodabandeh plastered hers with posters of rockets and fighter jets. Khodabandeh’s interest in aerospace and aeronautics developed at a young age. Her parents were avid fans of the Apollo Program and were heavily invested in her education. Khodabandeh’s […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/i-am-artemis-julia-khodabandeh/
NASA pushes back missions to the ISS to buy time for Starliner analysis
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Next SpaceX crew trip moves deep into September while engineers agonize over the Calamity Capsule
The saga of Boeing’s delayed Starliner capsule continues: NASA has confirmed it pushed back the next SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station to give Starliner teams more time to work out how to bring the spacecraft back to Earth.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/nasa_pushes_back_iss_missions/
What to Make of SunPower’s Bankruptcy
date: 2024-08-07, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Tropical Storm Debby will make landfall again somewhere between Myrtle Beach and Charleston, South Carolina, tonight • Torrential rain brought severe flooding to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, where extreme heat killed more than 1,000 pilgrims in June • Non-essential outdoor lighting has been banned in China’s megacity of Hangzhou to conserve energy amid a scorching heat wave.
THE TOP FIVE
- Tim Walz supercharges Kamala Harris’ climate cred
Vice President Kamala Harris yesterday tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate in the 2024 presidential election, delighting the climate left. Of all the finalists reportedly in contention, Walz had the most impressive clean energy and environmental accomplishments:
- Within months of being sworn in as governor of Minnesota in 2019, Walz set a goal for his state to get its electricity from 100% carbon-free sources by 2050. By the time Walz signed actual emissions legislation into law last year, he’d set an even more ambitious timeline — carbon-free electricity by 2040. The bill also streamlined permitting, set a minimum wage for employees constructing large-scale utility projects, and included an environmental justice provision to keep energy from waste incineration plants in frontline communities from counting toward the 2040 goal.
- Walz secured a $2 billion budget package that included grid improvements, solar panels on state-owned buildings, an electric-vehicle rebate program, heat pump grants and rebates, a green bank, and more.
- He signed a transportation bill to overhaul transit hubs, expand passenger rail service, improve infrastructure, and offer electric bike credits.
- Earlier this summer, Walz announced a $200 million grant to reduce food-related pollution, including protecting and restoring carbon-absorbing peatlands, improving food waste programs, and replacing gas-powered agricultural machinery with trucks that run on electricity or clean fuel.
In a statement, Evergreen Action Executive Director Lena Moffitt applauded Walz’s “masterclass in how to govern in a way that meaningfully improves people’s lives and sets the state up for a thriving future.” Cassidy DiPaola, the communications director at Fossil Free Media and a spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, likewise acknowledged Walz’s progress on green issues, nodding to his “evolution into a climate champion.” She added that Walz has more than proven himself at the state level and that “his ability to connect climate policy to the everyday concerns of Midwestern and rural voters could prove invaluable in building broader support for climate action.”
- New data shows how Americans are using the IRA
The Treasury Department today released new data that offers the most significant insight yet into how Americans are actually using the Inflation Reduction Act. The numbers show more than 3 million households used the IRA’s subsidies for homeowners last year, collectively saving more than $8 billion on things like solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, insulation, and other clean energy technologies and efficiency upgrades. A closer look at the data reveals the rooftop solar tax credit was especially popular, and particularly in sun belt states (no big surprises there perhaps). Northeastern states leapt at the energy efficiency tax credit, which encourages Americans to make energy efficient changes to their home, e.g. installing a heat pump or a more efficient water heater. But “not all of the data flatters the Biden administration’s goals,” wrote Emily Pontecorvo and Robinson Meyer for Heatmap. “The tax credits — especially those that reward energy-efficient home upgrades — are used in large part by richer households who have the money and wherewithal to pay for costly upgrades to their homes in the first place.” Read their full analysis of the data here.
- SunPower files for bankruptcy
SunPower, one of the largest installers of residential rooftop solar in the U.S., has filed for bankruptcy. High interest rates and inflation have hurt demand for residential solar, “leaving companies with too much inventory on hand,” CNBC reported. But SunPower faced internal issues in recent months, too. The company breached a credit agreement, and was notified by Nasdaq that it was out of compliance with financial reporting requirements by not filing on time. “SunPower’s travails are emphatically a company-specific issue and should not be seen as a comment on the underlying demand for U.S. residential solar,” Pavel Molchanov, an analyst with Raymond James, told Bloomberg. “It has been a difficult six months for SunPower.”
- Rivian reports Q2 earnings
Rivian beat Wall Street’s expectations for revenue in its second-quarter earnings report yesterday. The EV startup reported $1.16 billion in revenue, just above analysts’ projections. But its net losses didn’t budge much compared to Q1, coming in at about $1.46 billion thanks in part to a planned shut down at an Illinois factory that reduced production. And the company is still losing money on every vehicle it builds, but it lost less per vehicle in Q2 ($32,705) than in Q1 ($38,784). Rivian has been working to cut costs through more efficient manufacturing, and still expects to record a gross profit by the end of the year. Looking ahead, pre-orders for the R2, set for launch in 2026, have surpassed 100,000, according to the company’s vice president of manufacturing Tim Fallon.
- Nissan tests new cooling car paint
Nissan is testing a new kind of car paint that it claims can reflect the sun’s near-infrared rays and redirect the energy back into the atmosphere, thus keeping vehicles cooler on hot days. It’s been trialing the paint on a Nissan NV100 service vehicle as it drives around on the scorching tarmac at Tokyo International Air Terminal. Early results have been “impressive,” the company said in a news release. The paint seems capable of reducing the car’s internal temperatures by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and cutting exterior surface temperatures by about 21 degrees. “A cooler cabin is not only more pleasant to enter, but also requires less air-conditioning run-time to cool the cabin to a comfortable temperature,” Nissan said. “This helps reduce load to the engine, or in the case of an electric vehicle, draw on the battery. In both powertrains, an improvement in efficiency is expected, as well as occupant comfort.”
Nissan
THE KICKER
“Removing political and cultural barriers to EVs as a whole is certainly something to celebrate, even while the exact motivations remain suspect.” –Heatmap’s Jeva Lange on MAGA’s somewhat puzzling obsession with the Cybertruck.
https://heatmap.news/technology/sunpower-bankruptcy-solar
LAUSD board approves $9 billion bond election
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The LAist
The Los Angeles Unified School District voted unanimously put a bond that would pay for school repairs and upgrades to voters.
https://laist.com/news/education/lausd-9-billion-dollar-bond-proposal-vote
Why did LA take the ‘right’ out of the city’s plans for a renter’s ‘right to counsel’ in eviction court?
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The LAist
Other cities give free eviction lawyers to tenants as a right. But the city of L.A. is weighing a proposal that explicitly says that won’t be guaranteed.
Banksy Unveils Two New Animal Murals in Two Days
date: 2024-08-07, from: Smithsonian Magazine
One piece features a goat perched on a ledge, while the other shows two elephants in windows
Tropical Storm Debby expected to make landfall in South Carolina again
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
white house — Tropical Storm Debby is expected to make landfall for a second time in South Carolina late Wednesday or early Thursday, having taken the lives of six people earlier in the week.
The storm hit the southeast United States on Monday, initially making landfall in Florida as a Category 1 Hurricane. It has since moved into the western Atlantic but continues to cause concern as it is predicted to regain some strength before hitting South Carolina again.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order on August 2, prior to the storm making landfall, and declared a state of emergency in 61 counties. The order gave state officials the ability to distribute resources to areas that were expected to be impacted by the storm.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre outlined the federal government’s response to the story at a press briefing Tuesday.
“The Biden-Harris administration has been in close touch with officials from affected states and FEMA has deployed staff to the region to support as needed,” she said.
Federal support such as FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Teams, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and more have been deployed and will provide support to the impacted areas as needed.
Jean-Pierre continued, “The president has approved emergency declaration requests from the governors of Florida, South Carolina and Georgia, which will unlock additional federal resources.”
The White House is also recommending that those who remain in Tropical Storm Debby’s path to stay alert and visit ready.gov for safety tips.
A series of disasters
Tropical Storm Debby comes less than a month after reports of power outages that affected millions in Texas, resulting in seven reported deaths due to heat exposure. The power issues were part of the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, which first hit the state on July 8. The storm also comes just weeks after Illinois saw 25 tornadoes hit the Chicago area in the span of two days.
As the summer’s climate disasters continue, affected areas will seek the support of the federal government and Biden administration to help offset damages and minimize the risk of casualties. The administration has made climate change a key issue since President Joe Biden took office in 2021.
“Climate-fueled disasters are impacting communities nationwide — and it’s costing the U.S. billions every year,” White House spokesperson Jeremy M. Edwards told VOA on Wednesday.
“That’s why President Biden is leading the most ambitious climate agenda in history, including securing the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest-ever climate investment, which provides billions to help communities build resilience to these increasingly frequent and extreme weather events.”
The Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in 2022 and aims to combat air pollution and climate change. The Biden administration faced climate-based criticism in 2023 after it approved the Willow Project, which allows for massive oil drilling in Alaska.
Some $92.9 billion in damages from natural disasters were recorded in 2023, reaching a record high of 28 such events that cost more than $1 billion. As of July, the National Centers for Environmental Information confirmed 15 disasters that have cost the U.S. more than $1 billion so far in 2024.
V is for volatility
date: 2024-08-07, from: Marketplace Morning Report
A measure of stock market volatility called the VIX has been swinging up and down wildly since Monday’s investor sell-off. Thing is, the month of August has a reputation for volatility — and this week has certainly been living up to that rep. We’ll also hear more on the challenges facing Boeing and travel back to Kent County, Michigan — a swing county in a swing state — to hear how businesspeople there view the economy.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/v-is-for-volatility
Sales of weight-loss drugs slimmer than expected
date: 2024-08-07, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Novo Nordisk, the company behind popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, didn’t sell as many of those medications as expected in the second quarter. A lot has to do with supply issues and competition. Then, a Nobel Prize winner has been chosen as Bangladesh’s interim leader. And Spain’s tourism industry is hitting new records, but not everyone is thrilled with the surge in visitors.
Police take just 2 days to recover $40M stolen in business email scam
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Timor-Leste is a known cybercrime hotspot
Two days is all it took for Interpol to recover more than $40 million worth of stolen funds in a recent business email compromise (BEC) heist, the international cop shop said this week.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/police_take_just_two_days/
Life After The Googleopoly
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Lever News
A federal judge ruled Google violated antitrust laws to maintain its search-engine monopoly — what happens now?
https://www.levernews.com/life-after-the-googleopoly/
Developing a cryptographically secure bootloader for RISC-V in Rust
date: 2024-08-07, from: OS News
It seems to be bootloader season, because we’ve got another one – this time, a research project with very limited application for most people. SentinelBoot is a cryptographically secure bootloader aimed at enhancing boot flow safety of RISC-V through memory-safe principles, predominantly leveraging the Rust programming language with its ownership, borrowing, and lifetime constraints. Additionally, SentinelBoot employs public-key cryptography to verify the integrity of a booted kernel (digital signature), by the use of the RISC-V Vector Cryptography extension, establishing secure boot functionality. SentinelBoot achieves these objectives with a 20.1% hashing overhead (approximately 0.27s additional runtime) when compared to an example U-Boot binary (mainline at time of development), and produces a resulting binary one-tenth the size of an example U-Boot binary with half the memory footprint. ↫ Lawrence Hunter SentinelBoot is a project undertaken at the University of Manchester, and its goal is probably clear from the description: to develop a more secure bootloader for RISC V devices. An additional element is that they looked specifically at devices that receive updates over-the-air, like smartphones. In addition, scenarios where an attacker has physical access to the device in question were not considered, for obvious reasons – in such cases, the attacker can just replace the bootloader altogether anyway, and no amount of fancy Rust code is going to save you there. The details of the implementation as described in the article are definitely a little bit over my head, but the gist seems to be that the project’s been able to achieve a much more secure boot process without giving up much in performance. This being a research project with an intentionally limited scope does mean it’s most just something that’ll immediately benefit all of us, but it’s these kinds of projects that can really push the state of the art and try out the viability of new ideas.
Is Tim Walz the Real Deal?
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Lever News
On Lever Time, we unpack the career of Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ choice for running mate, and explore how he managed to win over a divided Democratic Party.
https://www.levernews.com/is-tim-walz-the-real-deal/
Dueling political rallies in one of US oldest cities
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
The two U.S. presidential tickets are set. Vice President Kamala Harris named her running mate Tuesday. But the Democratic Party nominee wasn’t alone making news in one of America’s oldest cities, Philadelphia, in the northeastern state of Pennsylvania. That’s where we find VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti.
https://www.voanews.com/a/dueling-political-rallies-in-one-of-us-oldest-cities-/7733070.html
Explainer: Tim Walz’s long track record in China
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
Taipei, Taiwan — From teaching at a high school in China to his experience serving on a key congressional committee that focuses on relations between Beijing and Washington, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz has a decades-long connection with China dating back to the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
As an educator, Walz taught American History, culture, and English to Chinese students at the Foshan No.1 High School in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong in 1989, the year that saw hundreds of thousands of Chinese students protesting against the ruling Chinese Communist Party in Tiananmen Square.
“China was coming, and that’s the reason that I went,” Walz said in a 2007 interview with The Hill, a Washington D.C.-based news website. During his one-year teaching stint in China, Walz was nicknamed “Fields of China” by his students due to his kindness.
His time in China had an impact on his perspectives of Chinese people’s lives under the ruling Communist Party.
“If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish,” he said in an interview with the Star Herald in 1990, describing teaching in China as “one of the best things” he has ever done.
His interest in China didn’t stop there. Upon returning to the United States, Walz and his wife set up a company named “Educational Travel Adventures” to coordinate summer trips to China for American high school students.
Five years after the Tiananmen Square protests and the Chinese government’s violent crackdown, Walz returned to China with his wife for their honeymoon and they brought along two American high school tour groups. Walz continued running the summer exchange program to China for American students with his wife until 2003.
Advocating human rights in China
After becoming a member of Congress in 2007, Walz continued to focus on issues related to China. During his time in Congress, Walz served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which focuses exclusively on human rights issues in the country.
Walz quickly established himself as a vocal critic of the Chinese government, holding regular meetings with high-profile activists from China and Hong Kong, including prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong and Tibet’s spiritual leader Dalai Lama.
In an interview with VOA in 2014, Walz recounted his impression of witnessing the student-led protest in Tiananmen Square unfold. “I remembered waking up and seeing the news on June Fourth that the unthinkable had happened,” he said.
While most Americans at the time decided to leave China due to security concerns following the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, Walz said he felt it was “more important than ever to go” to China because he wanted to ensure that “the story was told” and let the Chinese people know that the outside world was with them.
In addition to engaging with activists from China and Hong Kong, Walz also co-sponsored several resolutions on key human rights issues in China, including demanding the release of Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo and Chinese activist Huang Qi, as well as co-signing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act in 2017.
In one of his congressional remarks in 2016, Walz highlighted the importance of having “constructive dialogues” with Beijing to ensure “the preservation of traditional Tibetan culture and Tibet’s fragile ecology.”
“The U.S. was founded on the ideas of universal freedom, and I believe that we must continue to urge the Chinese government to provide less regulated religious freedom to the Tibetans,” he said at the time.
Foreign policy boost
In addition to being a vocal critique of China’s human rights record, Walz also expressed concerns about China’s attempt to expand its presence in the South China Sea in 2016, citing Beijing’s efforts to build artificial islands in the disputed water as the reason to oppose Washington’s attempt to reduce military spending.
Despite his strong stance on China’s human rights record and military posture, Walz continued to stress the importance of maintaining cooperation with China. “I don’t fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship,” he said in a video interview with Agri-Pulse Communications.
“I think we need to stand firm on what they are doing in the South China Sea, but there [are] many areas of cooperation that we can work on,” Walz added.
Some analysts say Walz’s deep connections to China and track record in U.S.-China diplomacy could potentially help the Democratic presidential pair make more informed decisions on foreign policy, especially on issues related to China.
“I think [his emergence as Democratic vice-presidential nominee] is going to put a lot of people who care a lot about American foreign policy in this part of the world at ease, knowing that there is someone on the ticket who is informed, has spent time in the region, and is not starting from square one when it comes to learning about American foreign policy in East Asia,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Taiwan University.
He said since Walz has expressed many humanistic views of the Chinese people, Tibetan people, and Hong Kongers, the Minnesota governor could add more nuance to the policy debate related to China in the United States.
“He may be able to articulate the need to push back against China’s authoritarianism and human rights violations in different parts of the world in a way that doesn’t vilify Chinese citizens or doesn’t lean antagonistically in this overtly scare tactic rhetoric that I think a lot of U.S.-China discourse has turned into in the U.S.,” Nachman told VOA by phone.
https://www.voanews.com/a/explainer-tim-wolz-s-long-track-record-in-china-/7733051.html
EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz Acronis
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Went at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified
Acronis, the Swiss disaster recovery turned cybersecurity firm and catch-all for managed service providers, has been majority acquired by Europe’s largest private equity firm, EQT.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/eqt_buys_shares_acronis/
Study backer: Catastrophic takes on Agile overemphasize new features
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Users just want stuff that works. How hard can it be?
Interview You can have your software fast or in a state where it won’t blow up in your face. But getting both at the same time in an era of layoffs and restructuring is, at best, challenging and, at worst, impossible.…
The First IRA Tax Credit Data Is In
date: 2024-08-07, from: Heatmap News
More than 3 million American households used the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies for homeowners last year, collectively saving more than $8 billion on things like solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, insulation, and other clean energy technologies and efficiency upgrades.
That’s according to new data released Wednesday by the Treasury Department, which provided the most significant insight yet into how Americans are actually using the IRA. Polling had so far suggested that Americans were curious — if confused — about the law’s benefits, but until today, there was no official data available to back up those impressions.
The data sheds light on usage of two tax credits in particular, one of which encourages Americans to make energy efficient changes to their home, e.g. installing a heat pump or a more efficient water heater, the other of which goes toward installing rooftop solar or another form of zero-carbon energy generation.
Of the more than 137 million tax returns the government had processed by late May, some 3.4 million of them — or approximately 2.5% — took advantage of at least one of these two subsidies. That’s about 30% more people than used similar, though less generous tax credits in 2021.
“The Biden Harris administration’s top economic priority is making life more affordable for Americans,” Wally Adeyemo, the deputy secretary of the Treasury, said during a briefing call this week. “The Inflation Reduction Act is doing exactly that.”
Not all of the data flatters the Biden administration’s goals, however. The tax credits — especially those that reward energy-efficient home upgrades — are used in large part by richer households who have the money and wherewithal to pay for costly upgrades to their homes in the first place. Here are four takeaways from this first crucial look into how the law is going.
- Americans are using the tax credits more than projected — but that’s
mostly because of the popularity of rooftop solar.
More than 1.2 million Americans used the residential clean energy tax credit, which covers some of the cost of installing clean electricity-generating technology. A comfortable majority of those claiming the credit — some 750,000 — purchased rooftop solar panels.
When the IRA was first proposed in 2022, the Joint Committee on Taxation projected the government would spend $2 billion on the residential clean energy credit in 2023. In fact, it has spent more than triple that — a total of $6.3 billion and counting. The Biden administration expects more claims to appear as tax returns keep rolling in through November.
- Uptake is more about geography and economics than politics.
The top three states claiming the efficiency tax credit were Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. These states have some of the strongest state energy efficiency policies in the country, according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy’s state scorecard, giving homeowners the chance to stack multiple subsidies to help them pay for upgrades. Northeast states also have some of the most expensive electricity in the country, and many homes there still use fuel oil heating systems, the priciest option for home heating.
But another set of states dominated the clean energy tax credits, which cover solar panels. The top three states to use that subsidy were Nevada, Florida, and Arizona — some of the sunniest places in the country, which have long led on rooftop solar adoption.
Ironically, West Virginia — home of Senator Joe Manchin, one of the IRA’s architects — was dead last of states that used at least one of the credits.
- The federal government helped pay for nearly 600,000 new natural
gas-burning heating systems.
The Inflation Reduction Act revived an earlier, expired tax credit that helped Americans pay for energy efficient home upgrades and appliances. But while the new program increased the amount households could get back for installing electric heat pumps from $500 to $2,000, it also kept in place subsidies for “qualified” natural gas heaters. The government helped pay for taxpayers to install nearly 600,000 new natural gas-burning space heating and water heating systems in 2023. Those appliances have a useful life of at least 15 to 20 years.
The level of uptake is not necessarily surprising — the upfront cost of a natural gas boiler or furnace is much lower than that of a heat pump system. In many states, natural gas heating systems will also result in lower energy bills than a heat pump will.
Heat pump water heaters are more competitive on cost than space heaters, so there the mismatch may be more of a marketing issue. With the federal tax credit, the upfront cost can be nearly on par with natural gas water heaters, and they actually beat their natural gas-powered brethren when it comes to energy bill savings.
- Wealthier Americans were more likely to take advantage of the IRA.
On a call with reporters on Tuesday, Adeyemo pointed out that nearly half the families who claimed one or both of the residential clean energy credits had incomes lower than $100,000 in 2023.
That’s true. But roughly 75% of filers had incomes lower than $100,000 in 2023. When you look at how many people claimed each tax credit as a percentage of the total number of filers in that bracket, it’s clear that both tax credits are more frequently adopted by higher income Americans.
There’s also an interesting split between the two credits. Wealthier households were especially enthusiastic about efficiency upgrades — roughly one in 25 of those bringing in more than $100,000 claimed the energy efficiency tax credit.
Adeyemo also pointed out that, since people invest in their home’s heating system rather rarely, the administration expects uptake to increase over time.
“Our expectation is that as more American families become more familiar with these tax credits, and they look for ways to save money, they’ll continue to see this as a means to do so,” he said. “Given what we’ve heard from some of the companies selling these products, our expectation is that this will continue.”
https://heatmap.news/economy/ira-tax-credit-data
The Savvy Senior | This is not a scam: Social Security needs you to update your online account
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
Dear Savvy Senior, I recently received an email that I needed to update my online Social Security account. Is this legit or is it a scam? – Suspicious Susan Dear […]
The post The Savvy Senior | This is not a scam: Social Security needs you to update your online account appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Gary Horton | Taking Trump Literally: If the Fix Is In, Be Afraid
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
Just for a moment, read the following quote, close your eyes, and pretend that it is Kamala Harris speaking these words: “I don’t care how, but you have to get […]
The post Gary Horton | Taking Trump Literally: If the Fix Is In, Be Afraid appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/gary-horton-taking-trump-literally-if-the-fix-is-in-be-afraid/
Rob Kerchner | The Religion of Liberal Politics
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
Jimmy Carter got 41% of the vote in 1980, which is frankly astounding given his incompetence, but since Joe Biden polled about the same level it’s clear that two out […]
The post Rob Kerchner | The Religion of Liberal Politics appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/rob-kerchner-the-religion-of-liberal-politics/
Arthur Saginian | Crazy Crime Classifications
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
I believe Donald Trump was dealt with unfairly in the “Hush Money” case, but not because of the way our justice system works. No. He was dealt with unfairly because […]
The post Arthur Saginian | Crazy Crime Classifications appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/arthur-saginian-crazy-crime-classifications/
Thomas Oatway | Pandemic Pandering
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
“Figures don’t lie, but liars figure” — Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). This famous quote applies to regular Signal letter writer Rob Kerchner (June 15). His latest treatise, full of highly […]
The post Thomas Oatway | Pandemic Pandering appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/thomas-oatway-pandemic-pandering/
Dan Walters | Voters Face Competing Ballot Measures
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
Although the initiative process — proposing new laws via ballot measures — has been in California’s constitution for more than a century, its use was fairly uncommon until the 1970s. […]
The post Dan Walters | Voters Face Competing Ballot Measures appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/dan-walters-voters-face-competing-ballot-measures/
UK health services call-handling vendor faces $7.7M fine over 2022 ransomware attack
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Nearly 83,000 people had their data stolen amid chaos that struck NHS healthcare
The UK’s data protection watchdog says it plans to fine a managed software provider to the NHS £6.09 million ($7.7 million) for failings that led to a 2022 ransomware attack.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/ico_plans_to_fine_nhs/
Classifieds – August 7, 2024
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The Daily Trojan features Classified advertising in each day’s edition. Here you can read, search, and even print out each day’s edition of the Classifieds.
The post Classifieds – August 7, 2024 appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/08/07/classifieds-august-7-2024/
Intel: Our balance sheet is a smoking ruin, but we think our new chips work
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
18A process delivers bootable Panther Lake AI PC processor and Clearwater Forest server silicon
Intel has told the world its vaunted 18A manufacturing process works – at least in early tests … that it’s announced with few details.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/intel_boots_18a_chips/
Today in SCV History (Aug. 7)
date: 2024-08-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1901 – Giant meteor seen over SCV skies; possibly makes landfall in Bouquet-Texas canyon area [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-aug-7/
Drones warn New Yorkers about storm dangers
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — Gone is the bullhorn. Instead, New York City emergency management officials have turned high-tech, using drones to warn residents about potential threatening weather.
With a buzzing sound in the background, a drone equipped with a loudspeaker flies over homes warning people who live in basement or ground-floor apartments about impending heavy rains.
“Be prepared to leave your location,” said the voice from the sky in footage released Tuesday by the city’s emergency management agency. “If flooding occurs, do not hesitate.”
About five teams with multiple drones each were deployed to specific neighborhoods prone to flooding. Zach Iscol, the city’s emergency management commissioner, said the messages were being relayed in multiple languages. They were expected to continue until the weather impacted the drone flights.
Flash floods have been deadly for New Yorkers living in basement apartments, which can quickly fill up in a deluge. Eleven people drowned in such homes in 2011 amid rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ida.
The drones are in addition to other forms of emergency messaging, including social media, text alerts and a system that reaches more than 2,000 community-based organizations throughout the city that serve senior citizens, people with disabilities and other groups.
“You know, we live in a bubble, and we have to meet people where they are in notifications so they can be prepared,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Adams is a self-described “tech geek” whose administration has tapped drone technology to monitor large gatherings as well as to search for sharks on beaches. Under his watch, the city’s police department also briefly toyed with using a robot to patrol the Times Square subway station, and it has sometimes deployed a robotic dog to dangerous scenes, including the Manhattan parking garage that collapsed in 2023.
https://www.voanews.com/a/drones-warn-new-yorkers-about-storm-dangers/7732976.html
Supermicro CEO teases service to build or upgrade datacenters in six months
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Doubles annual revenue, but warns repeating that will be hard while waiting until March for Nvidia Blackwell
Supermicro has teased a datacenter construction methodology that CEO Charles Liang claimed can create a small bit barn in six months or shrink the time to build bigger houses from three to two years.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/supermicro_q4_2024/
South Korea to force e-commerce marketplaces to pay vendors faster
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Platforms owe billions after they stopped paying and sent thousands of SMEs into cashflow crunches
South Korea’s government will shrink the period in which e-commerce marketplace platforms must settle up – from 60 days to 40 – to ensure that small sellers aren’t caught in a cash crunch.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/korea_ecommerce_payment_policy/
SharpRhino malware targets IT admins – Hunters International gang suspected
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Fake Angry IP Scanner will make you furious - or maybe remind you of how the Hive gang went about its banal business
The latest malware from upstart criminal gang Hunters International appears to be targeting network admins, using malicious code disguised as the popular networking tool Angry IP Scanner.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/sharprhino_malware_admins/
Quick quake felt in SCV on Tuesday
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
Seismologists reported a magnitude-5.2 earthquake struck Mettler, a small town nearly 60 miles northwest of Santa Clarita, around 9:09 p.m. Tuesday, according to the United States Geological Survey website. There […]
The post Quick quake felt in SCV on Tuesday appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/quick-quake-felt-in-scv-on-tuesday/
Huawei Cloud built a network monitor so sensitive it spotted the impact of a single faulty chip
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Focus on physical ports helped spot issues across 100,000 switches and a million servers
Sigcomm 2024 Huawei Cloud has developed a network monitoring tool that, when used in production on three of its own regions, was able to observe more of its infrastructure than existing tools, and revealed issues that previously evaded human efforts.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/huawei_cloud_rd_probe/
Georgia’s voter portal gets a crash course in client versus backend input validation
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Trying to cancel a citizen’s registration would be caught by humans no matter what the page said, officials say
The US state of Georgia has a website for cancelling voter registration, and it’s had a bumpy start.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/security_flaw_and_data_leak/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-07, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Made the toolbar fluid in Godot for iPad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKl_XMxVUio
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112918612762359516
Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer released in virtual version that runs in AWS
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Graviton processors get the job of helping RIKEN achieve HPC world domination
Japan’s RIKEN Center for Computational Science has unveiled a virtual version of its Fugaku supercomputer that can be deployed in AWS.…
Microsoft punches back at Delta Air Lines and its legal threats
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
SatNad himself offered CrowdStrike recovery help, Redmond says, before suggesting airline’s IT is in a mess
Microsoft has labelled Delta Air Lines’ accusations it’s partly to blame for the outages caused by CrowdStrike’s buggy software “false” and “misleading” – and insulted the state of the carrier’s IT infrastructure.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/07/microsoft_delta_fight/
CHP officers following electronic trail after pursuit
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
California Highway Patrol officers are investigating three suspects who told officers they didn’t know each other after they were arrested running from the same car following a high-speed pursuit livestreamed […]
The post CHP officers following electronic trail after pursuit appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/chp-officers-following-electronic-trail-after-pursuit/
Families of Americans detained in China seek action after US-Russia swap
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Harrison Li, the son of Kai Li, a Chinese American wrongfully detained in China since 2016, felt a mix of emotions after witnessing the recent return of Americans wrongfully imprisoned in Russia.
Last Thursday, President Joe Biden and the families of those released celebrated the return of three Americans and a permanent resident, including two journalists and an activist, as part of the largest prisoner exchange since the Soviet era.
Kai Li is one of at least three Americans wrongfully detained in China. He was arrested in Shanghai in September 2016 and in 2018 was sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage, which he has consistently denied. The other two wrongfully detained by China are Texas businessman Mark Swidan and California pastor David Lin.
The U.S. State Department does not disclose the number of wrongful detention cases due to privacy concerns and the sensitivity of efforts to secure the release of wrongfully detained U.S. nationals.
“U.S. citizens are not required to register their travel to a foreign country with us, and we do not maintain comprehensive lists of U.S. citizens residing overseas,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA in an email when asked about the total number of wrongfully detained Americans in China.
For the past eight years, Harrison Li has urged two consecutive U.S. administrations to secure his father’s release.
“Our family is extremely pleased to see the return of Paul Whelan, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Evan Gershkovich back to the U.S. and wish them and their families the best in the long road to recovery,” Li told VOA in a written statement.
“Once again, President Biden has shown his willingness to make difficult decisions that prioritize the safety of Americans unjustly detained abroad … except in China.”
Li expressed frustration over the lack of attention given to his father’s case by the U.S. administration.
“All we can do is once again remind the President that my dad has suffered unjustly for almost 8 years now, and that he must act to ‘finish the job’ before it’s too late,” Li wrote.
Several members of Congress are also urging the Biden administration to secure the release of Americans wrongfully detained in China.
Congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, told VOA that Americans wrongfully detained in China and elsewhere deserve to be home with their families.
“One American wrongfully detained abroad is too many,” he said. “As wrongfully detained Americans returned home this week from Russia, we cannot forget about those held around the world, including those in China — particularly Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and David Lin.”
Families call for urgent action
Katherine Swidan, the mother of Mark Swidan, revealed that her son has been on a hunger strike for many days. He has been detained in China since 2012 on narcotics trafficking charges, which he denies.
“Mark’s been on a hunger strike for 115 days. He’s lost a lot of weight, and he’s been sick. His leg was swollen, and they did a very sparse medical exam,” Swidan told VOA.
According to Swidan, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns visited her son in the past.
“When he went to see Mark, he told Mark the next time I come to see you, hopefully it will be to bring you home,” Swidan said.
That message left both her and Mark full of hope, but Mark continues to experience disappointment and anger and has had suicidal tendencies.
“When I talked to him, he said he was in a room with, like, nine other people, seven to nine people. He is doing gardening, planting stuff. But he is furious because he doesn’t understand why they are not pushing for him to come home,” she said.
Renewed focus
Peter Humphrey, a former British reporter in China, was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to two and a half years in prison for illegally obtaining citizen information. He was released early in June 2015 due to health reasons and was deported after medical treatment in Shanghai.
Now a nonresident researcher at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for China Studies, Humphrey uses his experience to assist foreign citizens detained in China and help them contact government officials. He says he has supported some American detainees whose cases remained unreported for fear that publicity would make their situations worse.
Humphrey believes that after last week’s U.S.-Russia prisoner exchange, the United States should refocus its attention on Americans improperly detained in China and elsewhere.
“These people are arbitrarily detained, and the American government should wake up and understand the fact that it is their duty of care to protect American citizens in China who become victims of this false and cruel process of Chinese justice,” he told VOA. “Some talks are happening but not like significant progress.”
Travel advisory
A U.S. State Department spokesperson said the department has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas.
“Secretary Blinken, Ambassador Burns, and other senior U.S. government officials continue to advocate for the immediate and unconditional release of wrongfully detained U.S. citizens in meetings with PRC officials,” the spokesperson told VOA. “The U.S. mission in China will continue to offer consular services to every U.S. citizen detained in the PRC.”
The Department of State travel advisory is at Level 3 for mainland China, recommending that U.S. citizens reconsider travel due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws, exit bans and the risk of wrongful detentions.
“The sad facts are that the PRC has blocked U.S. citizens, including college students, minors, businesspeople and tourists from leaving the country. U.S. citizens have been wrongfully detained by the PRC, and the PRC often arbitrarily enforces its own laws,” the spokesperson said.
Family appeals
Nelson and Cynthia Wells, whose son Nelson Wells Jr. was detained in China in 2014 and sentenced to life imprisonment for “drug smuggling” (later commuted to 22 years), have written letters to three consecutive U.S. presidents about their son’s imprisonment but have never received a response.
“We also don’t know if they received the letters,” they said. “I really believe that if we’re high-profile people, well, if we’re famous, or we’re a top athlete, or we have a lot of money, or we have any type of political connections, then we might get some recognition,” Nelson Wells told VOA.
The case has drawn the attention of U.S. Senators John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, who are advocating for Nelson Wells Jr. to be recognized as “wrongfully detained.” Last October, Nelson and Cynthia Wells spoke with House Speaker Mike Johnson, who assured them he continues to address the issue.
How much wood would a retired couple cut?
date: 2024-08-07, from: The Signal
Call them on a weekday morning and chances are you’ll get their machine telling you that the “Wood Guy” and the “Wood Gal” are “probably out splitting wood.” You wouldn’t […]
The post How much wood would a retired couple cut? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/how-much-wood-would-a-retired-couple-cut/
CrowdStrike hires outside security outfits to review troubled Falcon code
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And reveals the small mistake that bricked 8.5M Windows boxes
CrowdStrike has hired two outside security firms to review its threat-detection suite Falcon that sparked a global IT outage last month – though it may not have an awful lot to find, because CrowdStrike has identified the simple mistake that caused the meltdown.…
Teens Arrested After Stolen Car Chase in Santa Barbara
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The 16-year-old driver is facing charges of DUI and hit-and-run after a pursuit ends with a crash.
The post Teens Arrested After Stolen Car Chase in Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/06/teens-arrested-after-stolen-car-chase-in-santa-barbara/
credcheck v2.8 has been released
date: 2024-08-07, from: PostgreSQL News
Antananarivo, Madagascar - August 07, 2024
PostgreSQL credcheck extension
The credcheck PostgreSQL extension provides few general credential checks, which will be evaluated during the user creation, during the password change and user renaming. By using this extension, we can define a set of rules:
- allow a specific set of credentials
- reject a certain type of credentials
- deny password that can be easily cracked
- enforce use of an expiration date with a minimum of day for a password
- define a password reuse policy
- define the number of authentication failure allowed before a user is banned
- define a delay on authentication failures
Release 2.8 has been published, it adds the compatibility with PostgreSQL 17 and shows current credcheck settings in error messageis.
Upgrade require a PostgreSQL restart to reload the credcheck library.
Complete list of changes is available here
Links & Credits
credcheck is an open project under the PostgreSQL license created at MigOps Inc. Any contribution to build a better tool is welcome. You can send your ideas, features requests or patches using the GitHub tools.
Links :
- Download: https://github.com/MigOpsRepos/credcheck/releases/
- Support: use GitHub report tool at https://github.com/MigOpsRepos/credcheck/issues
About credcheck
The credcheck extension is an original work of MigOps Inc, Since MigOPs is closed the extension is developped and maintained by Gilles Darold at HexaCluster Corp. If you need more information please contact us.
Documentation at https://github.com/MigOpsRepos/credcheck#readme
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/credcheck-v28-has-been-released-2908/
Tropical Storm Debby drenches Southeast as it drifts along Atlantic coast
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
Temporary Nightime Lane Closures Scheduled for McBean Parkway
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita warns residients of temporary lane closures on McBean Parkway between Creekside Road to Del Monte Drive from Aug. 5-
https://scvnews.com/temporary-nightime-lane-closures-scheduled-for-mcbean-parkway/
Santa Barbara Olympians Score in Paris
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Women’s water polo and indoor volleyball competitors continue this week.
The post Santa Barbara Olympians Score in Paris appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/06/santa-barbara-olympians-score-in-paris/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-06, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Cool hack to share builds of iOS apps on the simulator quickly:
https://tuist.io/blog/2024/08/06/url-centric-collaboration/
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112917685294239971
Musk’s X sues advertisers over alleged ‘massive advertiser boycott’
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
wichita falls, texas — Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a group of advertisers, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws.
The company formerly known as Twitter filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted.
It accused the advertising group’s brand safety initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of helping to coordinate a pause in advertising after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and overhauled its staff and policies.
Musk posted about the lawsuit on X on Tuesday, saying “now it is war” after two years of being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement that the lawsuit stemmed in part from evidence uncovered by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which she said showed a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against X.
The Republican-led committee had a hearing last month looking at whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”
The lawsuit’s allegations center on the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover and not a more recent dispute with advertisers that came a year later.
In November 2023, about a year after Musk bought the company, a number of advertisers began fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Musk later said those fleeing advertisers were engaging in blackmail and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.
The Belgium-based World Federation of Advertisers and representatives for CVS, Orsted, Mars and Unilever didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
A top Unilever executive testified at last month’s congressional hearing, defending the British consumer goods company’s practice of choosing to put ads on platforms that won’t harm its brand.
“Unilever, and Unilever alone, controls our advertising spending,” said prepared written remarks by Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA. “No platform has a right to our advertising dollar.”
L.A. County Offers $1 Hollywood Bowl Tickets
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted on Tuesday, Aug. 6 to support a motion introduced by Supervisor Kathryn Barger to elevate awareness about the $1 Hollywood Bowl tickets available to the general public for purchase.
https://scvnews.com/l-a-county-offers-1-hollywood-bowl-tickets/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-06, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Friends, I have perfected my Gazpacho skills.
The trick was to strain the mixture after blending!
I always skipped that step because “just how big of a difference will it make, and I need to wash more stuff”.
Anyways, here it is:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112917642607431103
Santa Barbara Police Report Big Uptick in Fiesta-Related Emergency Calls and Arrests
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
“We have returned to pre-pandemic levels of activity for Fiesta,” Police Chief Kelly Gordon says.
The post Santa Barbara Police Report Big Uptick in Fiesta-Related Emergency Calls and Arrests appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Twitter tells advertisers to go fsck themselves, now sues them for fscking the fsck off
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-07, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
CEO claims ‘illegal boycott’ was attack on Musk’s version of free speech
Twitter today sued the World Federation of Advertisers, whose members are said to control about 90 percent of global marketing spend, for cutting back their ads on the social network – or in most cases pulling them entirely.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/twitter_rumble_wfa_musk/
Photos: ‘Eye Candy’
date: 2024-08-06, from: The Signal
The Santa Clarita Artists Association held its reception of “Eye Candy: A Visually Stimulating Art Show” on Saturday at the SCAA Gallery in Old Town Newhall. Displaying the works of […]
The post Photos: ‘Eye Candy’ appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/photos-eye-candy/
NASA delays next crew launch to buy more time at space station for Boeing’s troubled capsule
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/7732512.html
Aug. 8: Volunteers Sought for Trek Bike Park
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Volunteer to help on Thursday, Aug. 8 from 9-11 a.m. at the Trek Bike Park of Santa Clarita to help maintain the park and keep it safe for users.
https://scvnews.com/aug-8-volunteers-sought-for-trek-bike-park/
All y’all love AI, right? Get ready for Gemini in Nest cameras, Google Assistant
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And you’re replacing Chromecast with TV Streamer? Great! That’s a logical step for the evolving landscape of …
Google’s Gemini AI is making its way to Nest cameras and Google Assistant, with the web goliath claiming the upgrade will make its smart devices smarter.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/google_upgrades_nest_cameras_and/
Democracy: The Safe Bet for the Growth of Money
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Maybe some of these Silicon Valley Tech Bros are thinking that they will be one of the newly enriched oligarchs under our more powerful leader.
The post Democracy: The Safe Bet for the Growth of Money appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/06/democracy-the-safe-bet-for-the-growth-of-money/
Successful Democratic presidential ticket would reverberate in Minnesota
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
The Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara and 2nd Story Associates Provide School Supplies to Low-income Youth and their Families
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA, August 6, 2024 – The Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara (HACSB) in partnership with its
The post The Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara and 2nd Story Associates Provide School Supplies to Low-income Youth and their Families appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Future for Lompoc Youth: 2024 Teen Career Fair Conference
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Lompoc, CA – August 1, 2024- Future for Lompoc Youth, in collaboration with the County of Santa Barbara Department of
The post Future for Lompoc Youth: 2024 Teen Career Fair Conference appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/06/future-for-lompoc-youth-2024-teen-career-fair-conference/
The Santa Barbara County Food Action Network Announces the 2024 Food Justice Microgrant Program Awardees.
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The 2024 Food Justice Microgrant Program seeks to address inequities and vulnerabilities in our local food system. The Santa Barbara County
The post The Santa Barbara County Food Action Network Announces the 2024 Food Justice Microgrant Program Awardees. appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
U.S. 101 San Jose Creek Bridge Project Continues with Drilling Operation Beginning Tuesday, August 6
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY — A project to replace the southbound US 101 San Jose Creek Bridge continues this week with a
The post U.S. 101 San Jose Creek Bridge Project Continues with Drilling Operation Beginning Tuesday, August 6 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
First Bell of Opening Round in Santa Barbara County’s Showdown with Big Oil
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Sable’s application to transfer ExxonMobil’s offshore and onshore assets to itself were deemed “complete” by the county.
The post First Bell of Opening Round in Santa Barbara County’s Showdown with Big Oil appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Aug. 8: Young Professionals Bowling for Cystic Fibrosis Night
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Get ready for a night of fun, networking and support for a great cause, Thursday, Aug. 8 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. for the Cystic Fibrosis Bowling Night for Young Professionals at Santa Clarita Lanes
https://scvnews.com/aug-8-young-professionals-bowling-for-cystic-fibrosis-night/
The Moral Implications of Being a Moderately Successful Computer Scientist and a Woman
date: 2024-08-06, from: Tilde.news
AMD hopes to unlock MI300’s full potential with fresh code
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Devs invited to ROCm out with FP8 precision, quantize to their heart’s delight
AMD today released the latest version of ROCm, claiming the improved software will bring about strong performance boosts for its Instinct GPU family.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/amd_unleashes_mi300s_full_potential/
Aug. 10: Back-to-School Event at Valencia Town Center
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Valencia Town Center’s free Back to School event will be held 11 a.m.-2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 10 on the lower level, near H&
https://scvnews.com/aug-10-back-to-school-event-at-valencia-town-center/
Leader of L.A.’s community colleges announces early retirement
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The LAist
Chancellor Francisco Rodriguez says he’s retiring to take care of his ailing father, but the announcement comes amid district turmoil.
https://laist.com/news/education/laccd-resignation-retirement-chancellor-francisco-rodriguez
Santa Barbara Supervisors Caught in Crossfire over Ambulance Contract
date: 2024-08-06, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The county is reportedly contemplating a settlement that would give AMR a three-year contract extension before the reins are handed over to County Fire.
The post Santa Barbara Supervisors Caught in Crossfire over Ambulance Contract appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Harris selects Tim Walz as her running mate
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate Tuesday, capping off a whirlwind sequence of events since President Joe Biden endorsed her to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee less than three weeks ago. Harris and Walz will kick off a seven-state trip to some of the biggest battleground states in the election. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/harris-selects-tim-walz-as-her-running-mate/7732361.html
Doomed Star Eta Carinae
date: 2024-08-06, from: NASA breaking news
Eta Carinae may be about to explode. But no one knows when – it may be next year, it may be one million years from now. Eta Carinae’s mass – about 100 times greater than our Sun – makes it an excellent candidate for a full blown supernova. Historical records do show that about 170 […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/doomed-star-eta-carinae/
NASA to Provide Crew Flight Test, Space Station Missions Update
date: 2024-08-06, from: NASA breaking news
NASA will host a media teleconference at 12:30 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, Aug. 7, to discuss ongoing International Space Station operations, including the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test and NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Audio of the briefing will stream live on NASA’s website. Agency participants include: To ask questions during the teleconference, media must RSVP […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-to-provide-crew-flight-test-space-station-missions-update/
The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research: Five Years of Accomplishments
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: RAND blog
Just five years ago, little scientific evidence existed on the effects of gun laws in the United States. Since 2019, the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research has allocated more than $24 million to fund research projects on gun violence prevention, resulting in a windfall of new scientific results, with more to come.
California’s Two Biggest School Districts Botched AI deals. Here Are Lessons From Their Mistakes
date: 2024-08-06, from: The Markup blog
Educators can learn caution from AI mistakes in Los Angeles and San Diego. But they also face pressure to adopt the technology quickly
Supes Green Light Transfer of Hart Park to City
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved transferring ownership of William S. Hart Park and the Hart Museum to the City of Santa Clarita on Tuesday, Aug.
https://scvnews.com/supes-green-light-transfer-of-hart-park-to-city/
Iranian plot to kill US officials, politicians tied to Pakistani man
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
Washington — An Iranian plot to kill former U.S. President Donald Trump appears to have centered on a Pakistani man with ties to Tehran who hoped to also target other high-profile politicians and officials.
The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed charges against 46-year-old Asif Merchant, saying he traveled to the U.S. this April in search of hitmen willing to take on multiple jobs.
But according to the criminal complaint, the plot fizzled after the person Merchant contacted in his effort to carry out the scheme reached out to law enforcement.
“This dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in [Tuesday’s] complaint allegedly was orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
“A foreign-directed plot to kill a public official, or any U.S. citizen, is a threat to our national security and will be met with the full might and resources of the FBI,” he said.
The criminal complaint unsealed in New York does not identify any specific target for Merchant’s plot, but the release comes just weeks after U.S. officials said they had increased security for the former president due to a threat linked to Tehran.
And the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that the threats were one and the same.
“I was previously briefed concerning the Iranian threat and the circumstances of Mr. Merchant’s arrest and questioned then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on whether she had reviewed the intelligence concerning the Iranian threat,” Republican Representative Mike Turner said in a statement.
“She confirmed to me that she read the intelligence and was aware of this Iranian murder-for-hire plot,” Turner added, referring to a July 22 hearing on the failures to prevent an unrelated assassination attempt against Trump on July 13 during a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania.
Tuesday’s charges are the latest in a growing list of foiled plots designed to kill Americans and other enemies of Iran on U.S. soil.
This past January, the U.S. charged three men, one of whom was based in Iran, in a plot to murder two U.S. residents in the state of Maryland.
The U.S. has also brought charges in plots targeting Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American human rights activist and VOA Persian TV host and a murder-for-hire scheme targeting former U.S. national security adviser Ambassador John Bolton.
Many of the recent threats, including the ones targeting Bolton and Trump, stem from Tehran’s desire to seek revenge for the Trump-ordered January 2020 drone strike in Baghdad that killed Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.
“We have said many times that we’ve been tracking Iranian threats against former politicians. We’ve been very clear about that,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday.
“We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority,” she said. “We have invested extraordinary resources in developing additional information about these threats, disrupting individuals involved in these threats, enhancing protective arrangements and potential targets of these threats, engaging with foreign partners and directly warning Iran.”
The court-appointed lawyer for the defendant in this latest plot targeting Trump, and others, declined comment when contacted by VOA.
But the charging documents allege Merchant traveled from Pakistan to Turkey and then to Houston, Texas, in April, after spending about two weeks in Iran.
Once he landed in the U.S., the criminal complaint states, Merchant immediately began recruiting individuals to assist him with the plan, telling the informant that he could earn up to $100,000 and that the scheme would target multiple individuals.
“[The] people who will be targeted are the ones who are hurting Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world. These are not normal people,” Merchant said, according to the charging documents.
Steal, plan, kill
During meetings in New York in June, Merchant allegedly sketched out a three-part plan that involved stealing documents or computer files from a target’s home, planning protests and then killing the targets on U.S. soil.
Merchant is charged with giving two undercover agents posing as hitmen a $5,000 advanced payment in late June to carry out the plot, adding more money would be coming after he returned to Pakistan.
U.S. law enforcement officials arrested Merchant on July 12, before he was able to leave the U.S.
“For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement Tuesday.
“The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting.”
U.S. officials expect there will be no let-up in Tehran’s attempts to get revenge.
“We need to recognize the brazenness of the Iranian regime,” the FBI’s Wray told U.S. lawmakers during a hearing late last month. “I expect we’re going to see more of it. I expect there will be more coming on that.”
And some experts warn that even if some of the Iranian attempts appear amateurish, they need to be taken seriously.
“Much like Iranian projectiles, sometimes quantity has a quality of its own,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“On the one hand, some of these things may sound cartoonish or too far-fetched, but on the other hand, there’s a persistence behind it, which is worrisome,” he told VOA. “My fear is that it’s going to be throwing everything or what it can at the wall and seeing what sticks.”
Patsy Widakuswara and Lynn Davis contributed to this report.
Sept. 27-29: The MAIN to Host ‘Provenance’
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Presented by Noisivision Studios and Olive Branch Theatricals, “Provenance” by Braddon Mendelson will show at The MAIN Friday, Sept. 27 - Sunday, Sept. 29.
https://scvnews.com/sept-27-29-the-main-to-host-provenance/
Google Search and Ads Monopoly
date: 2024-08-06, from: Michael Tsai
Lauren Feiner (Hacker News): 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 […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/06/google-search-and-ads-monopoly/
NetNewsWire and Conditional GET Issues
date: 2024-08-06, from: Michael Tsai
Brent Simmons (Mastodon): I had thought that NetNewsWire’s conditional GET support was rock-solid — and so my first reaction was to be very surprised to learn that it’s not! […] When a server returns a Last-Modified header, the client should return that exact same string in follow-up requests in an If-Modified-Since header. The server then looks […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/06/netnewswire-and-conditional-get-issues/
Google Chromecast to Google TV Streamer
date: 2024-08-06, from: Michael Tsai
Google (Hacker News): After 11 years and over 100 million devices sold, we’re ending production of Chromecast, which will now only be available while supplies last. The time has now come to evolve the smart TV streaming device category — primed for the new area of AI, entertainment and smart homes.[…]We invested heavily in embedding […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/06/google-chromecast-to-google-tv-streamer/
SuperDrive Sunset
date: 2024-08-06, from: Michael Tsai
Filipe Espósito (MacRumors): As noted by one of our readers, it’s no longer possible to buy an Apple USB SuperDrive online via the official Apple Store in the US. The product’s webpage says that it’s “Sold Out,” and given that it’s a product introduced in 2008, it seems very unlikely that Apple will ever produce […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/06/superdrive-sunset/
Verisign under fire for increasing .com prices each and every year it can
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Registry happy to chat about caps, just don’t consider it a commitment to actually do anything
The US government’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has said it will renew its Cooperative Agreement with Verisign to oversee the .com domain registry and other responsibilities – while expressing some concern about price hikes.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/verisign_well_talk_about_limiting/
Nurturing and Destroying Democracy: The Two Sides of Bangladesh’s Ousted Awami League
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: RAND blog
Amidst violent protests and mounting dissent in Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation marks the end of an era, leaving Bangladesh in turmoil and casting a shadow over its democratic aspirations. The future of Bangladesh hangs in the balance with an uncertain military role and a populace hungry for change.
Tundra Vegetation to Grow Taller, Greener Through 2100, NASA Study Finds
date: 2024-08-06, from: NASA breaking news
Warming global climate is changing the vegetation structure of forests in the far north. It’s a trend that will continue at least through the end of this century, according to NASA researchers. The change in forest structure could absorb more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, or increase permafrost thawing, resulting […]
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/tundra-vegetation-to-grow-taller-greener-through-2100-nasa-study-finds/
US-Australia talks focus on China’s ‘coercive behavior,’ climate change
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON/SYDNEY — The United States and Australia kicked off high-level talks Tuesday that will focus on China’s “coercive behavior,” as well as the AUKUS nuclear submarine project, mounting tensions in the Middle East and climate change, officials said.
The annual Australia-U.S. AUSMIN talks, taking place in Annapolis, Maryland, include the top defense and diplomatic officials from both nations.
“We’re working together today to tackle shared security challenges, from coercive behavior by the PRC [People’s Republic of China], to Russia’s war of choice against Ukraine, to the turmoil in the Middle East,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
“And I know that [this] year’s AUSMIN will deliver results for both of our peoples.”
The U.S. and China are at odds on a range of issues, including U.S. support for Taiwan. Another topic will be Chinese military activity in the South China Sea. China claims control over most of the sea, including the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, where U.S. ally the Philippines has maritime claims.
Austin spoke in the wake of a rocket strike on Monday in Iraq that wounded seven U.S. personnel, as the Middle East braced for a possible new wave of attacks by Iran and its allies following last week’s killing of senior leaders of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defense Minister Richard Marles held meetings in Washington on Monday, a day before the AUSMIN talks.
Marles highlighted the expanding role of a U.S. Marine rotational force in northern Australia and defense industry cooperation.
“We’re seeing America’s force posture in Australia grow really significantly. AUKUS is part of that, but it’s not the only part of that,” Marles said in talks with Austin, according to a statement.
Under the AUKUS program, Washington will sell three nuclear-powered submarines to Australia in the next decade. Wong said there was bipartisan U.S. political support for the program.
U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy told ABC Television that China and climate change — priorities for the Pacific Islands, where the U.S. and Australia are competing with China for security ties — would be discussed.
“Obviously with China being such an important … trading partner and competitor for both of us, that is obviously one of the main topics,” she said.
“We are also talking about what we can do together to fight climate change [and] to help the Pacific Islands to build critical infrastructure to connect them,” she said.
As part of cooperating on environmental and resource issues, Australia will spend $200 million ($130 million U.S.) to upgrade ground station facilities in its remote central desert to process data from NASA’s Landsat Next satellite.
Landsat Next is an earth observation program the U.S. space agency says will provide early warnings on the onset of fires or ice melting. The program is scheduled to be launched in 2030.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the satellite data would also be used to target resource exploration in Australia, as the two nations develop a supply chain for critical minerals.
The U.S. and its allies are seeking to reduce China’s market dominance in rare earths and critical minerals used in electric vehicles and defense technology.
Scientists Find Water Molecules in Lunar Rock Sample for the First Time
date: 2024-08-06, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The samples from China’s Chang’e 5 mission shed light on lunar resources that could be vital to future missions and habitations
Kamala Harris’ VP choice, Tim Walz, ‘happy’ to be labeled a liberal
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
Enhancing Connectivity: Los Nettos Turbocharges Its Optical Network
date: 2024-08-06, from: Los Nettos News
Los Nettos Network Engineer Shaun Roberts (center) and Senior Internet Engineer Ernest Johanson (right) perform configuration work with the assistance of Ekinops customer service manager Isaac Ben-David. Los Nettos Regional Network, a pivotal research and education network in Southern California, is undergoing a significant … Continue reading
https://losnettos.net/2024/08/06/enhancing-connectivity-los-nettos-turbocharges-its-optical-network/
Archaeologists Stumble Upon Ancient Pot of Gold Coins in Turkey
date: 2024-08-06, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers think the hoard, which dates to the fifth century B.C.E., may have been buried during a time of upheaval
US blames Iran-backed militia for attack on air base in Iraq
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The United States accused an Iranian-backed militia of carrying out a rocket attack on a U.S. air base in Iraq that injured seven people, two of whom had to be evacuated for additional medical treatment.
“We’re sure that it was an Iranian-backed Shia militia group,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Tuesday during a news conference in Annapolis, Maryland, with Australian officials.
“Specifically which group, we’re still investigating,” he added.
U.S. officials had previously said two rockets slammed into the al-Asad air base in western Iraq during Monday’s attack, wounding five service members and two contractors.
Despite the need to evacuate two of the injured, officials said all seven were in stable condition.
Earlier Tuesday, the Iraqi military said in a statement that it had found the truck and rocket launcher used in the attack in the nearby town of Haditha.
It also said it was getting closer to finding the perpetrators.
“They are currently being pursued to bring them to justice,” the statement said.
The attack came as much of the region has been on edge, awaiting a possible attack by Iran and its proxies against Israel in retaliation for the killing of senior members of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Hamas terror groups.
Austin, though, declined to comment on media reports that Iran’s reprisal might be imminent.
“I’m not going to speculate on any Iranian actions going forward,” he said. “What I’ve been focused on is making sure that we’re doing everything we can to put measures in place to protect our troops, and also make sure that we’re in a good position to aid in the in the defense of Israel if called upon to do that.”
Austin announced Friday that the Pentagon was sending additional warships, an aircraft carrier strike group, and additional fighter jets to the region to prepare for an Iranian attack, as well starting preparations to send land-based missile defense capabilities, if needed.
Speaking alongside Austin on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged all parties in the region to seek calm.
“It is manifestly in the interests of everyone involved to avoid escalation, to avoid the conflict spreading,” he told reporters.
“I believe that actually no one wants escalation, no one wants to see the conflict spread,” Blinken added. “But it’s very important that no one takes steps that could lead to that, even if it’s unintended.”
Some U.S. partners in the Middle East appear to be heeding that call.
In its statement Tuesday, the Iraqi military condemned the rocket attack on the al-Asad air base as irresponsible.
“We reject all reckless actions and practices targeting Iraqi bases, diplomatic missions, and the whereabouts of the international coalition’s advisers, and everything that would raise tension in the region,” the Iraqi statement said.
Iraq hosts about 2,500 U.S. troops tasked with advising and assisting Iraqi forces as they pursue the remnants of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, or Daesh.
But Iraq is also home to numerous Iranian-backed militias, some of which have been consulting with Tehran about the anticipated retaliation against Israel.
Additionally, there has been periodic tension between Washington and Baghdad.
The U.S. and Iraq have been engaged in recent, ongoing talks to eventually end the anti-IS mission and transition to what officials have described as a bilateral military partnership.
Some information from Reuters was used in this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-confirms-7-injured-in-attack-on-base-in-iraq-/7732236.html
Google splats device-hijacking exploited-in-the-wild Android kernel bug among others
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And Qualcomm addresses ‘permanent denial of service’ flaw in its stuff
Google released 46 fixes for Android in its August security patch batch, including one for a Linux kernel flaw in the mobile OS that can lead to remote code execution (RCE).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/google_fixes_linux_kernal_rce/
Historic space mission commander tours South African schools
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
Esteemed American astronaut, geoscience professor and artist Sian Proctor is touring South African schools to emphasize the importance of education in science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. Her goal is to inspire students to pursue careers in the sciences and equip them for space jobs. Zaheer Cassim reports from Johannesburg. (Camera and Produced by Zaheer Cassim)
https://www.voanews.com/a/historic-space-mission-commander-tours-south-african-schools-/7732185.html
Oct. 5-6: 30th Annual Hart of the West Pow Wow
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The 30th Annual Hart of the West Pow Wow will be held at William S. Hart Regional Park in Newhall Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 5-
https://scvnews.com/oct-5-6-30th-annual-hart-of-the-west-pow-wow/
Sept. 6: ‘Spooktacular’ Art Show Call For Artists
date: 2024-08-06, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Acton Agua Dulce Arts Council is issuing a call for artists for its “Spooktacular” Art Show which will run Saturday, Sept. 14 through Oct. 27.
https://scvnews.com/sept-6-spooktacular-art-show-call-for-artists/
Port of Hueneme Partners with STAX Engineering “Breaking Waves” with Emissions Capture and Control Project
date: 2024-08-06, from: Port Hueneme
Download Press Release Contact: Letitia Austin Public and Gov’t Relations Manager Laustin@Portofh.org [PORT HUENEME, CA] – The Port of Hueneme, a vital gateway for international trade and a leader…
The post Port of Hueneme Partners with STAX Engineering “Breaking Waves” with Emissions Capture and Control Project appeared first on The Port of Hueneme.
‘Pro-democracy activist’ convicted in US of giving dissidents’ intel to China
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — A Chinese American scholar was convicted Tuesday of U.S. charges of using his reputation as a pro-democracy activist to gather information on dissidents and feed it to his homeland’s government.
A federal jury in New York delivered the verdict in the case of Shujun Wang, who helped found a pro-democracy group in the city.
Prosecutors said that at the behest of China’s main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, Wang lived a double life for over a decade.
“The defendant pretended to be opposed to the Chinese government so that he could get close to people who were actually opposed to the Chinese government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen Sise said in an opening statement last month. “And then, the defendant betrayed those people, people who trusted him, by reporting information on them to China.”
Wang was convicted of charges that include conspiring to act as a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general. He had pleaded not guilty.
A message seeking comment was sent to Wang’s attorneys.
Wang came to New York in 1994 to teach after doing so at a Chinese university. He later became a U.S. citizen.
He helped found the Queens-based Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, named for two leaders of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1980s.
According to prosecutors, Wang composed emails — styled as “diaries” — that recounted conversations, meetings and plans of various critics of the Chinese government.
One message was about events commemorating the 1989 protests and bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, prosecutors said. Other emails talked about people planning demonstrations during various visits that Chinese President Xi Jinping made to the U.S.
Instead of sending the emails and creating a digital trail, Wang saved them as drafts that Chinese intelligence officers could read by logging in with a shared password, prosecutors said.
In other, encrypted messages, Wang relayed details of upcoming pro-democracy events and plans to meet with a prominent Hong Kong dissident while the latter was in the United States, according to an indictment.
During a series of FBI interviews between 2017 and 2021, Wang initially said he had no contacts with the Ministry of State Security, but he later acknowledged on videotape that the intelligence agency asked him to gather information on democracy advocates and that he sometimes did, FBI agents testified.
But, they said, he claimed he didn’t provide anything valuable, just information already in the public domain.
Wang’s lawyers portrayed him as a gregarious academic with nothing to hide.
“In general, fair to say he was very open and talkative with you, right?” defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma asked an undercover agent who approached Wang in 2021 under the guise of being affiliated with the Chinese security ministry.
“He was,” said the agent, who testified under a pseudonym. He recorded his conversation with Wang at the latter’s house in Connecticut.
“Did he seem a little lonely?” Margulis-Ohnuma asked a bit later. The agent said he didn’t recall.
Wang told agents his “diaries” were advertisements for the foundation’s meetings or write-ups that he was publishing in newspapers, according to testimony. He also suggested to the undercover agent that publishing them would be a way to deflect any suspicion from U.S. authorities.
Another agent, Garrett Igo, told jurors that when Wang found out in 2019 that investigators would search his phone for any contacts in the Chinese government, he paused for a minute.
“And then he said, ‘Do anything. I don’t care,’” Igo recalled.
Collegiate Teams to Focus on Aviation Solutions for Agriculture in 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition
date: 2024-08-06, from: NASA breaking news
In the 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition, the theme is AgAir: Aviation Solutions for Agriculture. NASA asks collegiate teams to investigate either new or improved aviation capabilities that could assist the agriculture industry by improving production, efficiency, environmental impact and extreme weather/climate resilience. The agriculture industry plays a vital role in providing food, fuel, […]
Ancient Egyptians May Have Used Hydraulic Lift to Build Pyramid
date: 2024-08-06, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers propose that a system of water could have lifted heavy stones to the height necessary to construct the Step Pyramid
SAP Core AI bugs allowed access to internal network servers, say researchers
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Wiz infoseccers able to promote themselves from humble customer to full-blown admin
Black Hat Flaws in SAP’s Core AI service created a gateway to its customers’ private data, including code and training materials, until they were patched earlier this year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/sap_core_ai_bugs_granted/
China to beef up regulations on fentanyl chemicals, White House says
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — China said it would begin adding controls and regulation to the production of three chemicals used to make illicit fentanyl, the White House said on Tuesday, calling the move “a valuable step forward.”
It is the third significant such action since the United States and China resumed bilateral counter-narcotics cooperation in November 2023, acting National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said in a statement.
Illicit fentanyl remains a potent issue for U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has clinched the Democratic nomination for the November 5 U.S. presidential election. Fentanyl overdoses have surged to become the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 and over 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2023.
As part of an effort launched last year to thaw icy relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden agreed to cooperate with Beijing on counter-narcotics.
A delegation of senior Chinese officials met Biden administration officials last Wednesday to continue conversations on increasing controls on fentanyl chemicals and restricting financing for the drug trade in China.
A U.S. congressional committee said in April that China was directly subsidizing production of illicit fentanyl precursors for sale abroad and fueling the U.S. opioid crisis, releasing findings from an investigation it said unveiled Beijing’s incentives for the deadly chemicals.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-06, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
As a Black woman, I can vouch for a white, male VP prospect from Minnesota, Tim Walz
Google Search Includes Paid Promotion of “Nudify” Apps
date: 2024-08-06, from: 404 Media Group
Google Search is providing promoted links to nonconsensual AI “undress” apps.
https://www.404media.co/google-search-includes-paid-promotion-of-nudify-apps/
Reddit Hentai Community Fights Over AI-Generated Monster Girls
date: 2024-08-06, from: 404 Media Group
r/MonsterGirl members are tired of AI-generated slop in its subreddit.
https://www.404media.co/reddit-hentai-community-fights-over-ai-generated-monster-girls/
Tim Walz. Hell yeah.
date: 2024-08-06, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
The electoral math made Shapiro look like the safer pick. But Walz better communicates the story and stakes of this election.
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/tim-walz-hell-yeah
Sonic Automotive says ransomware-linked CDK software outage cost it $30M
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Misery loves company – all of its competitors were also negatively impacted
One of the US’s largest car dealerships says the IT outage caused by CDK Global’s June ransomware attack cost it approximately $30 million.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/sonic_automotive_says_cdk_disruption/
Celebrate Heliophysics Big Year: Free Monthly Webinars on the Sun Touches Everything
date: 2024-08-06, from: NASA breaking news
Once a month (usually on the first Tuesday), the Heliophysics Education Community meets online to share knowledge and opportunities. During the Heliophysics Big Year (HBY) – a global celebration of the Sun’s influence on Earth and the entire solar system, beginning with the Annular Solar Eclipse on October 14, 2023, continuing through the Total Solar […]
Artemis Emergency Egress System Emphasizes Crew Safety
date: 2024-08-06, from: NASA breaking news
Since NASA began sending astronauts to space, the agency has relied on emergency systems for personnel to safely leave the launch pad and escape the hazard in the unlikely event of an emergency during the launch countdown. During the Mercury and Gemini programs, NASA used launch escape systems on spacecraft for the crew to safely […]
Wall Street bounces back from its biggest wipeout in almost 2 years
date: 2024-08-06, from: VOA News USA
New York — Stocks closed higher on Wall Street as calm returned to the market a day after its biggest pullback in almost two years.
The S&P 500 rose 1% Tuesday, breaking a brutal three-day losing streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite added 1%. Strong profit reports from Uber and other companies helped support the market.
Most stocks climbed in a mirror opposite of the day before, when the unraveling of some popular trades and worries about the U.S. economy wracked markets. Treasury yields climbed, clawing back some of their sharp drops since April.
Stronger-than-expected profit reports from several big U.S. companies helped drive the market. Kenvue, the company behind Tylenol and Band-Aids, jumped 14.5% after reporting a stronger profit than expected thanks in part to higher prices for its products. Uber rolled 11.2% higher after easily topping profit forecasts for the latest quarter.
Caterpillar climbed 3.8% after the maker of heavy machinery reported stronger earnings than expected.
The whiplash moves for financial markets globally have been the result of several technical factors, not just worries ignited by several weaker-than-expected reports on the U.S. economy, in what strategists at Barclays called “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 the cash elsewhere around the world. The resulting exits from those investments may have helped accelerate the declines for markets around the world.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 10.2% Tuesday to claw back much of 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 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, according to the strategists at Barclays led by Stefano Pascale and Anshul Gupta. It wasn’t just worries about the U.S. economy.
Too soon to relax?
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’s forecasting both will be worse in the second half of this year than what much of Wall Street expects.
The stock market’s “dip is not a blip,” he warned in a report, and called it “too soon to jump back in.”
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 a couple 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 or even, as some economists say, from a likelihood. The U.S. stock market is also still up a healthy amount for the year so far, and the Federal Reserve says it has ample room to cut interest rates to help the economy if the job market weakens significantly.
S&P 500
The S&P 500 has romped to dozens of all-time highs this year and is still up more than 10% this year so far, in part because of a frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology. Critics have been saying that euphoria has sent stock prices too high in many cases.
They’ve pointed in particular to Nvidia, Apple and the other handful of Big Tech stocks in the “Magnificent Seven” that were the main reason the S&P 500 set so many records this year. They helped overshadow weakness across other areas of the stock market, which were struggling under the weight of high interest rates.
A set of underwhelming profit reports recently, kicked off by Tesla and Alphabet, added to the pessimism and dragged Big Tech stocks lower. Nvidia dropped nearly 19% from the start of July through Monday on such concerns, but it rose 5.8% Tuesday and was one of the strongest forces pushing upward on the market.
Apple, though, slipped another 0.7% and was a heavy weight on the market.
Bond market
In the bond market, Treasury yields climbed to claw back some of their sharp drops since April, which were driven by rising expectations for coming cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 3.89% from 3.78% late Monday. It had briefly dropped below 3.70% during Monday when fear in the market was spiking and investors were speculating the Federal Reserve could even have to call an emergency meeting to cut interest rates quickly.
Nominations for the 2024 Microsoft Store App Awards are now open
date: 2024-08-06, from: Windows Developer Blog
We are thrilled to announce the 2024 Microsoft Store App Awards, a testament to our continued commitment to honor and celebrate developers for their exceptional quality, creativity and originality of Windows apps and games.
The post Nominations for the 2024 Microsoft Store App Awards are now open appeared first on Windows Developer Blog.
Multi-Cam Comedies and WGA Dollars
date: 2024-08-06, from: John August blog
John welcomes writer-director Betsy Thomas (Superior Donuts, Superstore) to finally discuss writing multi-camera sitcoms. Using famous sitcom scripts as guides, they look at how multi-cam sets itself apart through its unique formatting and production, how it utilizes blocking, its surprising limitations in post, and the live studio audience. But Betsy is more than just a […] The post Multi-Cam Comedies and WGA Dollars first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/multi-cam-comedies-and-wga-dollars
Backblaze sees drive failure rates tick up, asks if AI can help
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Puts drive models into focus to assess how often they fall over in their lifetime
Backblaze has issued the latest report detailing failure rates for the multitude of drives that power its storage and backup services, and is looking at recent trends in the figures as well as considering whether AI might lower those failure rates.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/backblaze_sees_drive_failure_rates/
Bindu Rani Explores Black Holes, Mothers Hard, Balances Life
date: 2024-08-06, from: NASA breaking news
Bindu Rani had childhood dreams of flight. Today she lifts her gaze even higher, helping researchers study stars, planets beyond our solar system, and black holes billions of times more massive than our Sun. Name: Bindu RaniTitle: Astrophysicist, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Guest Investigator Program Lead ScientistOrganization: Astroparticle Physics Laboratory, Science Directorate (Code 661) What […]
Tim Walz Supercharges Kamala Harris’ Climate Cred
date: 2024-08-06, from: Heatmap News
It’s official: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz got the rose.
On Tuesday morning, after days of frenzied speculation that floated names including Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, and Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Kamala Harris announced that Walz’s name will be the one to underline hers on the presumptive Democratic presidential ticket.
Many on the climate left will likely be thrilled by the pick: Of all the finalists reportedly in contention for VP, Walz had the most impressive clean energy and environmental accomplishments. An Army veteran and former congressman of a rural, otherwise conservative Minnesota district, Walz has a record of working across party lines to get things accomplished. In 2009, he memorably voted for the doomed cap-and-trade bill and defended his position to tough crowds of Midwestern farmers and ranchers.
Within months of being sworn in as Governor of Minnesota in 2019, Walz set a goal for his state to get its electricity from 100% carbon-free sources by 2050. At the time, only a few other states had similar goals. “Climate change is an existential threat. We must take immediate action,” Walz argued at the time. “If Washington is not going to lead, Minnesota will lead.”
By the time Walz signed actual emissions legislation into law last year, he’d set an even more ambitious timeline — carbon-free electricity by 2040. The bill also streamlined permitting, set a minimum wage for employees constructing large-scale utility projects, and included an environmental justice provision to keep energy from waste incineration plants in frontline communities from counting toward the 2040 goal. Minnesota continued “crushing it on climate action” in the months that followed, with Walz securing a $2 billion budget package that included grid improvements, solar panels on state-owned buildings, an electric-vehicle rebate program, heat pump grants and rebates, a green bank, and more. He also signed a transportation bill to overhaul transit hubs, expand passenger rail service, improve infrastructure, and offer electric bike credits.
And he hasn’t stopped. Earlier this summer, Walz announced a $200 million grant to reduce food-related pollution, including protecting and restoring carbon-absorbing peatlands, improving food waste programs, and replacing gas-powered agricultural machinery with trucks that run on electricity or clean fuel. The state is also considering bills that would reform building codes to improve access to affordable housing — an issue Walz has taken a personal interest in. Walz is also, apparently, a YIMBY on energy permitting.
YIMBYs to the white house!
“We have permitting that takes too long…and prohibits or makes more expensive doing renewable energy projects. I think that same thing applies to housing. We put up barriers to making it more affordable.” - Democratic VP Candidate Tim Walz https://t.co/MAiy3Ct5B5 pic.twitter.com/EnswfMw67g
— Jordan Grimes 🚰 (@cafedujord) August 6, 2024
Walz’s canny communication skills have already been much remarked upon, and he’s openly recognized that many on the left struggle with a messaging problem regarding climate change. “The surest way to get people to buy in is to create a job that pays well in their community,” the governor told Time’s Justin Worland. “All of us are going to have to be better about our smart politics, about bringing people in.”
Walz’s record isn’t spotless, though. During his congressional career, he earned a score of just 75% from the League of Conservation Voters. Earlier this summer, a coalition of 16 environmental groups, including the local Sierra Club chapter, called out Walz and his administration for being too soft on regulation, including state agencies’ reliance on farmers voluntarily complying with nitrate pollution limits, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s failure to adequately police air quality violations from a foundry in a low-income neighborhood, and what the group argued was a flawed permitting process for a crude oil pipeline built through wetlands. North Dakota Republicans — including Governor Doug Burgum, who’s been floated for a potential Trump cabinet — have pressured Walz to include carbon capture as a carbon-free energy technology under the state’s emissions law (currently, decisions over CCS and hydrogen are under the purview of Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission).
There’s also the small matter that Harris and Walz have to actually win to be able to enact any of their climate goals. At least on paper, the math had looked slightly better for Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro, who is an incredibly popular governor in a must-win state. “Minnesota is very unlikely to be the tipping point state — less than a 1% chance,” Nate Silver wrote Tuesday morning, arguing that Shapiro would have been a better pick despite mounting criticism from progressives.
Within hours of the news, though, the climate left had already enthusiastically circled around Walz. In a statement, Evergreen Action Executive Director Lena Moffitt applauded Walz’s “masterclass in how to govern in a way that meaningfully improves people’s lives and sets the state up for a thriving future.” Cassidy DiPaola, the communications director at Fossil Free Media and a spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, likewise acknowledged Walz’s progress on green issues, nodding to his “evolution into a climate champion.” She added that Walz has more than proven himself at the state level and that “his ability to connect climate policy to the everyday concerns of Midwestern and rural voters could prove invaluable in building broader support for climate action.”
That, after all, will be the big question. Early voting for the next president of the United States begins in 41 days.
https://heatmap.news/politics/walz-harris-vp
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
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 starts new round of layoffs while it looks to unlock modern AI
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-07, 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/
Browsertrix 1.11: Self Sign-Up, QA Improvements, Easier Downloading and new APIs
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: Web Recorder
Self Sign-up
https://webrecorder.net//2024/08/06/browsertrix-1-11.html
Meet the Projects Receiving NGI Taler grants
date: 2024-08-06, updated: 2024-08-06, from: nlnet feed
https://nlnet.nl/news/2024/20240806-Taler-selection.html
Using ROR for Funder Identification
date: 2024-08-06, from: ROR Research ID Blog
Several widely used scholarly systems are using ROR IDs to identify and disambiguate funding organizations. In this post, we’ll give you a glimpse of how and why these systems use ROR IDs as funder identifiers.
https://ror.org/blog/2024-08-06-using-ror-for-funder-identification/