News gathered 2024-08-08
(date: 2024-08-08 10:42:57)
Five arrested over attack that wounded US troops in Iraq air base, statement says
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
CAIRO — Security forces have arrested five people in connection with an attack this week at a military base in Iraq in which five U.S. troops and two U.S. contractors were wounded, Iraqi officials said on Thursday.
The arrests were announced by the Iraqi Security Media Cell, an official body responsible for disseminating security information.
“After in-depth legal investigations and listening to witnesses’ statements … five of those involved in this illegal act were arrested,” the Security Media Cell added in a statement.
In Monday’s attack, two Katyusha rockets were fired at Ain al-Asad air base in the west of the country. On Tuesday, Iraq’s military condemned what it called “reckless” actions against bases on its soil and said it had captured a truck with a rocket launcher.
The attack came as the Middle East braced for a possible new wave of attacks by Iran and its allies following last week’s killing of senior members of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
It was unclear whether the incident in Iraq was linked to threats by Iran to retaliate over the killing in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Iraq is a rare ally of both the U.S. and Iran. It hosts 2,500 U.S. troops and has Iran-backed militias linked to its security forces. It has witnessed escalating tit-for-tat attacks since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza in October.
Iraq wants troops from the U.S.-led military coalition to begin withdrawing in September and to formally end the coalition’s work by September 2025, Iraqi sources have said, with some U.S. forces likely to remain in a newly negotiated advisory capacity.
Walz’s personal experiences shape his health policy outlook
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Tim Walz has built a career in state and federal politics focused on expanding health coverage and advocating for reproductive rights.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/walzs-personal-experiences-shape-his-health-policy-outlook/
On Long Island, Republicans defend an unlikely stronghold as races could tip control of Congress
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
It’s a 2024 election battleground where millions of dollars are being spent and some of the biggest names in American politics are sure to pop up. But it’s not in the Rust Belt. And it isn’t Georgia or Nevada.
TMU Announces Return of Russell Moir
date: 2024-08-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Master’s University’s newest executive isn’t new to TMU.
https://scvnews.com/tmu-announces-return-of-russell-moir/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Video of JD Vance approaching Air Force 2 yesterday. How embarrassing for him. Amateur mode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhmiOE0e9WI
Raptor Lake microcode patch arrives for Intel motherboards this month, ASUS and MSI say
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
MSI even claims all of its LGA 1700 motherboards will get updated before month end
Two of Intel’s biggest motherboard partners say their users will start receiving new BIOS updates containing the crucial microcode patch for Raptor Lake CPUs next week.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/raptor_lake_microcode_patch_arrives/
Review: Alanis Morissette parties like it’s 1995 during superb Bay Area show
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Sharing a bill with Joan Jett and Morgan Wade, Alanis Morissette dedicated nearly half of her set to the 1995 blockbuster “Jagged Little Pill.”
Where did the ‘Tampon Tim’ Walz nickname come from? We explain
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The title originally stems from a law that Walz signed surrounding access to menstrual products.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/where-did-the-tampon-tim-walz-nickname-come-from-we-explain/
Tim Walz Fixed Your Bicycle
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/tim-walz-fixed-your-bicycle
US women’s volleyball team, eyeing repeat gold, beats Brazil in Olympic semifinal
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Former Stanford star Kathryn Plummer made several key plays for Team USA, including the winning spike.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/usa-volleyball-brazil-semifinal-gold-medal-paris-olympics/
The Walz record: Abortion rights, free lunches for schoolkids, and disputes over a riot response
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
His record is a major reason why Harris chose him to be her running mate.
Single-family house in San Jose sells for $2.2 million
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The spacious property located in the 6500 block of Leyland Park Drive in San Jose was sold on July 12, 2024 for $2,200,000, or $1,009 per square foot.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/single-family-house-in-san-jose-sells-for-2-2-million/
Best toaster
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Toast is a wonderful thing — white or whole wheat, store-bought or homemade, slathered in butter or topped with avocado — and the right toaster makes it easier.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/best-toaster/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Governor Tim is Mr Rogers for adults. And you know who should play him on SNL? Tom Hanks.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/08.html#a164705
Best Moroccan oil
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Moroccan oil is a hot commodity for hair and skin care. Despite being a heavy oil, Moroccan oil won’t make your skin break out.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/best-moroccan-oil/
Police ID Hayward teen killed in drive-by shooting
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 18-year-old survived long enough to be placed on life support before succumbing to his injuries, authorities said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/police-id-hayward-teen-killed-in-drive-by-shooting/
Calling All Innovators: Apply for NASA’s 2025 Lunabotics Challenge
date: 2024-08-08, from: NASA breaking news
NASA invites teams from colleges, universities, as well as technical and vocational schools around the country to test their engineering skills in the 2025 Lunabotics Challenge. Applications open at 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 6. The competition is aimed at inspiring Artemis Generation students to explore science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for the […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/calling-all-innovators-apply-for-nasas-2025-lunabotics-challenge/
Gunfire reported near UC Berkeley’s Clark Kerr Campus track
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
UC Berkeley police were seeking someone who apparently fired gunshots Thursday morning near the Clark Kerr Campus track.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/gunfire-reported-near-uc-berkeleys-clark-kerr-campus-track/
#NoTechforICE x #NoTechforApartheid with Lau Barrios and Jacinta González
date: 2024-08-08, from: Logic Magazine
<p>“War, policing, and deportation have been areas of the federal budget that just continue to grow. So there are thousands of tech companies trying to position themselves in a really lucrative industry.”</p>Best artificial flowers
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Whether you’re planning a large event or looking for elegant home decor artificial flowers can breathe new life into any space while helping you stay on budget.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/best-artificial-flowers/
Spot fire reported near Auto Row
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Signal
Los Angeles County Fire Department officials handled a small spot fire near Auto Center Drive and Valencia Boulevard on Thursday morning. No structures were damaged and no injuries were reported […]
The post Spot fire reported near Auto Row appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/spot-fire-reported-near-auto-row/
Oakland police ID woman killed on International Boulevard
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 24-year-old woman was shot multiple times around 2 a.m. on July 25.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/oakland-police-id-woman-killed-on-international-boulevard/
macOS 14.6.1, macOS 13.6.9, iOS 17.6.1, and iPadOS 17.6.1 Fix Advanced Data Protection
date: 2024-08-08, from: TidBITS blog
Apple’s latest updates address a problem that prevented users from turning Advanced Data Protection on or off. What other problems might they fix as well? Read on for details and our installation advice.
Crews unable to increase containment on Park Fire
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The blaze has destroyed 640 buildings.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/crews-unable-to-increase-containment-on-park-fire/
The Portable Feminist Reader, edited by Roxane Gay. Includes writing by Agrippa,…
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045088-the-portable-feminist-rea
After recent challenges, US looks to rethink AFRICOM, aid initiatives
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday completed one of the last major troop departures from Niger ahead of the military junta-imposed September 15 deadline. About 1,000 troops were stationed in Niger before the ruling leadership’s order to leave.
A joint statement from the Nigerien Defense Ministry and the U.S. military said personnel and equipment from the base had been withdrawn and coordination would continue over the coming weeks to make sure the pullout is complete.
“The effective cooperation and communication between the U.S. and Nigerien armed forces ensured that this turnover was completed ahead of schedule and without complications.”
In an interview with VOA’s Anthony LaBruto, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, details how the United States is reevaluating its military presence in light of the troop departures as well as recent challenges to its broader security initiatives on the continent.
The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
VOA: What role does the United States Africa Command, or AFRICOM, play in the continent? In what capacity do AFRICOM’s teams serve in different countries in Africa and how is it helping to stabilize democracy?
U.S. Representative Michael McCaul: I just met with AFRICOM. I had a briefing from them. So, this is a very timely interview. They’re primarily military. That’s why in 2019, I introduced the Global Fragility Act. … And to your point, it forces [AFRICOM] to go beyond just being a military organization. It forces them to coordinate with states and with the United States Agency for International Development together on the African continent, and that’s very helpful if they’re working together rather than independently with their own missions. When I was at AFRICOM, they talked about it a lot, how that bill has really changed the way they operate.
VOA: I noticed that when the head of Africa Command testified before your committee, he mentioned that military presence in Africa should go alongside diplomatic and aid efforts on the continent. Can you elaborate on how these different elements are coordinated and their overall impact on the region?
McCaul: Look, the military is important. But that’s not going to win this alone, right? I mean, when you have economic ties, they strengthen our alliances and that’s where I think the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation can be helpful.
And then of course USAID, you know, we provide our humanitarian assistance. I passed the branding bill, which requires the American flag to be on this, so that they know where the aid is coming from, because prior to that, they didn’t know where it’s coming from. Now, if China brings in the [diplomatic] systems, their flags are everywhere and so now USAID has the American flag. They know where it’s coming from. That really helps in diplomacy.
I would also throw trade in there. If we could get back to having some trade agreements, which we haven’t done, quite frankly, under this administration. Of course, the military we need. They provide the security umbrella to provide the soft power — that being diplomatic and economic assistance.
VOA: What are the U.S. military’s strategies for countering threats in countries like Somalia and Kenya, and how do these efforts support and integrate with aid projects in the region?
McCaul: We have counterterrorism operations — that’s where AFRICOM comes in — but they’re overstretched and overburdened. Their role in coordinating with the State Department and USAID is to provide that security piece. … But when you have Niger kicking us out, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t operate within countries.
You look at Somalia, I mean our presence there is … quite frankly, that embassy is so dangerous you can’t even drive to it, you have to fly in. That’s probably the most dangerous embassy in the world right now. And now, with the events of the Houthi rebels joining forces with al-Shabab, it’s even worse. I really worry about that embassy. … They have a lot of security there, and it’s probably the most secure embassy in the world, but still. I mean, what good is that presence if you can’t really operate out of the country?
VOA: With the military or AFRICOM being challenged so much, is the U.S. rethinking any of its military or aid policies on the continent?
McCaul: They are [being challenged], and it’s a resource issue; it’s a big continent. There’s not much we can do if the country doesn’t want us there. They kicked the French out of Mali, in the Sahel regions, they’re gone.
They have this anti-colonialism attitude that goes back to the French, and I understand that, and they probably look at us [similarly] in some respects. We want them to look at us as a liberator, not an occupier, but they do have a sense of, ‘Oh, the colonials are coming back in,’ certainly with the French, probably less so with the Americans, but we still have that issue.
The AFRICOM General [Michael] Langley warned that the loss of U.S. bases in the Sahel will “degrade our ability to do active watching and warning, including for the homeland defense.” Right now, the terrorist organizations in Africa are more focused on Africa and not external operations, but we always have to be mindful of that, that any of these terror operations can go operational, external operations, if that’s the direction they want to go. Right now, I’m not sure they have that capacity to conduct external operations necessarily over here, but it’s something we have to continue to watch.
This Q&A originated in VOA’s English to Africa Service.
Aaron Rodgers and parents became estranged after Olivia Munn bragged about their sex life: book
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ed and Darla Rodgers felt that Munn was the ‘chief culprit’ behind their family discord, according to a new biography of Rodgers.
80 years ago, IBM gave Harvard University one of the world’s earliest computers
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
In celebration of US Navy funded electromagnetic wonder that is the Automated Sequence Controlled Calculator
Feature Eighty years ago, IBM presented Harvard University with one of the world’s earliest computers: the Automated Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), later known as the Harvard Mark I.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/harvard_mark_1/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
It’s wrong that posts from Timothy Snyder, Joe Trippi and NYT Pitchbot are only available on Twitter. I’d like to help their posts reach a wider audience.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/08.html#a155601
‘World champion of what?’: The Noah Lyles-NBA players beef explained
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The track and field star wasn’t shy about comparing his accomplishments to those of his professional basketball counterparts back in the US.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/the-noah-lyles-nba-players-beef-explained/
A Herd of Life-Size Elephant Sculptures Is Marching Across America
date: 2024-08-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Created by artists in India, the artworks are part of a larger effort to promote coexistence between humans and animals
From far and wide, crews across the US band together fighting Park Fire
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
According to Cal Fire, there are 507 engines and 6,627 total personnel in the area. Twenty-five engines came from Texas, 10 from Utah and one from Nevada, and an engineer from Arizona also joined the team fighting the blaze.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/from-far-and-wide-crews-band-together-fighting-park-fire/
US bans imports from five more Chinese companies over Uyghur forced labor
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
Partner of slain OPD officer Tuan Le recounts shooting at key hearing
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Le was shot while responding to a break-in at an Oakland marijuana grow house in December.
3 men shot, one fatally, on San Francisco’s Market Street
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Three men were shot, one fatally, on Monday night near Market and Sixth streets in San Francisco, police said. A shot spotter activation at 10:49 p.m. Aug. 5 sent officers to the 1000 block of Market, the police report said. While en route, they were informed that a man had been shot at Sixth and […]
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/3-men-shot-one-fatally-on-san-franciscos-market-street/
Sedimentary and Planetary Geologist Dr. Michael Thorpe
date: 2024-08-08, from: NASA breaking news
“I didn’t always grow up knowing that I was going to be working for NASA. It was just the way my life unfolded, and I couldn’t be more grateful and lucky to have this opportunity to be here. I think hiking is what really got me into my passion for wanting to have this outdoors […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/sedimentary-and-planetary-geologist-dr-michael-thorpe/
Coming this October: The Vanishing Culture report
date: 2024-08-08, from: Internet Archive Blog
This October, we are publishing Vanishing Culture, a new open access report examining the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. As more content is created digitally and […]
https://blog.archive.org/2024/08/08/coming-this-october-the-vanishing-culture-report/
2024-08-08 Man pages
date: 2024-08-08, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-08-08 Man pages
Here’s a great thing on the command line. You want to use the command foo and don’t know how, so you run man foo and read the manual page. Sometimes there will be more info in different “sections”. Commands are in section 1, which is why documentation would sometimes refer to the command “foo” as foo(1) because foo(5) might document the file format or the config file that goes along with the command.
If that’s news to you, run man man. And if you find the structure bewildering, read the manual on how to write manual pages: man man-pages (section 7).
I’ve embraced man pages because when I write Perl code, I can put documentation into the script such that when the script is installed, it automatically works as its own man page – this works for jupiter, bookmark-feed – it also works for bigger projects, like phoebe where each extension is also a Perl module and therefore also gets its own man page.
For programming languages where the documentation is more focused on
documenting the code, things are different. Of course, there’s
pydoc for Python code and go doc for Go code,
but it’s not great. The list of variables and functions are maybe
suitable for libraries, but not for applications.
Since I don’t enjoy writing man pages directly (man is
actually a macro package for the nroff language, see
man nroff, obviously) I write my documentation in the
scdoc format.
@drewdevault wrote
it in 2018.
It looks a bit like Markdown and friends and I like it. I even put a
little sequence of sed expressions into a Makefile to turn
scdoc into Markdown so that I could publish the man pages on this site,
see Oddµ man pages.
When documentation for a project is a website, I wonder how they serve people offline or with bad connections. Perhaps they want to write the documentation in texinfo? I haven’t done that in a long time but I really enjoy reading a well-written manual like that. And you can get a PDF for free but I’m not sure anybody really wants that. Even a README is bad because in those rare cases where the program gets added to a distro, how will end-users find the README? Man pages are the answer.
README files and offline copies of the HTML documentation have multiple problems.
-
Which directory is it, exactly?
/usr/docdoes not exist on my system./usr/sharelists lots of package names but these are not the docs./usr/share/docis the one! But the problems continue. Which is the file that you want to read when you’re faced withBUGS changelog.Debian.gz changelog.gz copyright README README.Debian README.frames RELEASE-NOTES.txt WhatsNew.gz– it’s README, I guess, but I am always confused. Sometimes you’re looking at binary and it’s also not obvious what the package name would be.findis in/usr/share/doc/findutils, for example.
Compared to this, man pages are so much better.
And some package managers like go, pip
(Python), cabal (Haskell) and cargo (Rust)
don’t install any of these files, I think.
I suspect that many developers consider using a website like Read the Docs to be good enough. Bad luck for people who are offline or who have bad reception, in hotel rooms with bad wife, in planes? My sister lives in the Rhine valley, on the German side, close to Switzerland, in a tiny village of a bit more than 100 people. They have no glass fibre. They have bad reception, both from Switzerland and from Germany. It’s terrible! But even for me: I have wifi in the apartment and glass windows that act that block the signal. I have no reception on the balcony unless I use my phone as a hotspot.
Local documentation that is easy to find is so much better.
And man pages are powerful. All of Perl is documented in many pages. All the modules. All the switches. All the language features. I learned to program in Perl from man pages back when my browser was NCSA Mosaic. (I am a bit astonished to find that I still knew that acronym! But I didn’t know that it stands for National Center for Supercomputing Applications.) Anyway, what I wanted to say is that man pages can be used to document large and complex things. From the command line, they are readily accessible. With the right man reader, they can act as a hypertext, linking to other pages. They don’t have to be terse and cryptic, either. Man pages can be tutorials, introductions, FAQs, and more. And if you write man pages using a suitable format, you can still generate HTML pages with links.
If you’re not writing man pages, if your community doesn’t have the
habit of writing man pages, start small. Get scdoc and
write a little something. Skim man man-pages and learn
about the conventions, then write some text files. Then use scdoc
< text-file > man-page to create the file and install them
into ~/.local/share/man, following the conventions. A page
from section 1 (commands) has the extension “.1” and goes into
~/.local/share/man/man1 whereas a page from section 5 (file
formats and config files) has the extension “.5” and goes into
~/.local/share/man/man5.
#Programming #Software #Documentation
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-08-08-man-pages
Samsung is recalling 1 million stoves to prevent pets from setting your home on fire
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The recall said that Samsung received more than 300 reports of accidental activation by pets or humans since 2013, resulting in about 250 fires.
Are cheaper mortgages bad news for California’s housing market?
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
When mortgage rates grow, California home prices average 10%-a-year gains. Rates down? Only 4.4% increases.
Communications Strategist Thalia Patrinos
date: 2024-08-08, from: NASA breaking news
“The public perception of NASA has a lot to do with our technological successes and the discoveries that we’ve made, but none of that is possible without the people. “In the six or so years that I’ve worked at NASA, I’ve learned a lot of incredible stories — not just of the struggles that different […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/communications-strategist-thalia-patrinos/
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 - RP2350 adds more PIO, RISC-V cores
date: 2024-08-08, from: Jeff Geerling blog
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 - RP2350 adds more PIO, RISC-V cores
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><img width="700" height="auto" class="insert-image" src="https://www.jeffgeerling.com/sites/default/files/images/raspberry-pi-pico-2.jpeg" alt="Pico 2 Logo"></p>The $5 Raspberry Pi Pico 2 was announced today, with a new chip, the RP2350. This silicon improves on almost every aspect of the RP2040:
- 3 PIOs instead of 2
- 150 MHz instead of 133 MHz base clock
- Faster Arm Cortex M33 cores and RISC-V Hazard3 cores
I’ve had access to pre-release hardware and good news: even though the new chip is faster and has more features, it actually uses less power than RP2040, meaning if you run one of these things off a battery, it’ll last longer.
I’ll talk more about power later, but first, here’s the specs.
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/raspberry-pi-pico-2-rp2350-adds-more-pio-risc-v-cores
Houthis undeterred despite US action to protect Red Sea shipping
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
Washington — U.S.-led efforts to thwart attacks on international shipping by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen are nothing more than a “shock absorber” and are unlikely to lead to stability or safer seas, according to a senior U.S. commander.
Vice Admiral George Wikoff, who heads the U.S. naval efforts in the Middle East, shared the blunt assessment Wednesday, saying that not only have U.S. strikes and defensive efforts done little to change the Houthis’ behavior, it now appears unlikely the group will be swayed by military force.
“The solution is not going to come at the end of a weapon system,” Wikoff told an audience in Washington, speaking via video from U.S. 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
“We have certainly degraded their capability. There’s no doubt about that. We’ve degraded their ability,” he said. “However, have we stopped them? No.”
The comments build on other U.S. assessments that have questioned the ability of the United States and its allies to stop the Houthis from targeting commercial ships transiting the Red Sea, which account for up to 15% of international maritime trade.
An unclassified report issued this past June by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, found container shipping in the region plunged by 90% from December 2023 through mid-February 2024.
It also warned that despite U.S. and European countermeasures, such as the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian and the European Union’s ASPIDES mission, the Houthis still carried out more than 43 attacks between November 19 and March 23, driving up security costs and insurance premiums.
Wikoff on Wednesday said U.S. forces have seen some signs of stabilization since February but called it an “unacceptable stabilization,” with the number of ships crossing the Bab el Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, still down by about half.
Yet the attacks and threats to commercial shipping and U.S. forces in the region persist.
Houthi officials Wednesday claimed they launched attacks on a container ship and on two U.S. military vessels, although a U.S. defense official told VOA there was no “operational reporting to support those claims.”
Separately, U.S. Central Command, which oversees American troops in the Middle East, has said its forces have destroyed seven Houthi aerial drones, seven Houthi missiles, one Houthi naval drone and one Houthi missile launcher, all in the past five days.
“It’s a struggle we have every day to try to figure out where are we on the meter with regards to stability in the region,” Wikoff said.
The Houthis have said their campaign in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is to show solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza amid the war between Israel and Hamas.
But Wikoff pushed back against that notion, noting Houthi attacks on shipping predate the war while describing the U.S.-designated terror group as “a weapon looking for a reason to use it.”
And if the Houthis have anything they value enough that they do not want to risk using it, the U.S. and its partners have yet to find it.
“It’s very difficult to find a centralized center of gravity that we can hold at risk over time and use that as a potential point of deterrence,” Wikoff said. “So, trying to apply a classic deterrence policy in this particular scenario is a bit challenging.”
It is an argument some experts have been making for months.
“We have very little leverage over the Houthis, and air strikes are unlikely to deter them,” according to Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen specialist at the University of Cambridge in Britain.
“They have a high tolerance for casualties, they are highly adaptable, they do not need sophisticated weapons to wreak havoc, they just need to keep going — not losing is winning, and they believe they have God on their side,” she told VOA via email. “In reality, air strikes by the U.S. and U.K. benefit the Houthis by providing evidence to back up their propaganda narratives against the U.S. and its allies.”
But other experts, such as former British Ambassador to Yemen Edmund Fitton-Brown, are more critical of the approach taken by the U.S. and its allies in trying to degrade and dissuade the Houthi attacks.
The U.S.-led responses have been “meticulously proportionate,” said Fitton-Brown, now a senior adviser for the New York and Berlin-based Counter Extremism Project.
“We need to be more determined and creative about what to do about this,” he said. “We are looking at a de facto authority, and a de facto authority has fixed points you can attack.”
“They have military bases that were previously in the hands of the government. They have intelligence headquarters. They have security deployments in [the port city of] Hodeidah,” Fitton-Brown told VOA. “Significant escalation of targeting is possible without changing the legal status of the conflict.”
The U.S. vice admiral in charge of U.S. naval forces in the region, however, is wary that military force will ultimately move the Houthis.
“Our mission remains to disrupt their ability and try to preserve some semblance of maritime order while we give an opportunity for policy to be developed against the Houthis,” Wikoff said. “The more players in the field that can get involved in a diplomatic piece of this, the better off I think we’ll be.”
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 lands with (drum roll) RISC-V cores
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Beefier Arms next to RV rival CPUs, offering a glimpse of the future
It’s exciting news for RISC-V fans: Raspberry Pi is adding support for the open ISA with the launch of the Pico 2 and the company’s new RP2350 microcontroller.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/pi_pico_2_risc_v/
Larry Magid: Tech can sometimes be too complicated
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Sometimes when I try out a new product or even one that I’ve had for a while, it occurs to me that it was probably designed by a 20-something tech-savvy engineer with perfect eyesight and great hand-eye coordination. But unfortunately, it has to be used by the rest of us, including seniors and others whose […]
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/larry-magid-tech-is-too-complicated/
How NASA Citizen Science Fuels Future Exoplanet Research
date: 2024-08-08, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s upcoming flagship astrophysics missions, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Habitable Worlds Observatory, will study planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. Over 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed to date — and given that scientists estimate at least one exoplanet exists for every star in the sky, the hunt has just […]
https://science.nasa.gov/open-science/exoplanet-future-citizen-science/
Raspberry Pi Pico 2, our new $5 microcontroller board, on sale now
date: 2024-08-08, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
On sale now at $5: Raspberry Pi Pico 2, our new microcontroller board. It’s built on RP2350, our new high-performance, secure microcontroller.
The post Raspberry Pi Pico 2, our new $5 microcontroller board, on sale now appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new-5-microcontroller-board-on-sale-now/
Google Pigweed comes to our new RP2350
date: 2024-08-08, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Google Pigweed helps programmers and teams of developers build great software for embedded devices that use microcontrollers like our new RP2350.
The post Google Pigweed comes to our new RP2350 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/google-pigweed-comes-to-our-new-rp2350/
Real-time ML audio noise suppression on Raspberry Pi Pico 2
date: 2024-08-08, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Arm’s Sandeep Mistry shows us how to apply audio noise suppression to a microphone input on the brand new Raspberry Pi Pico 2.
The post Real-time ML audio noise suppression on Raspberry Pi Pico 2 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/real-time-ml-audio-noise-suppression-on-raspberry-pi-pico-2/
Getting rewarded for not being a terrible tourist
date: 2024-08-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Scoop litter from canals. Volunteer on an urban farm. Use a bike to get around. As a perk for climate-friendly actions, visitors to Copenhagen are being offered rewards like free ice cream, a glass of wine and museum discounts. Could programs like this make tourism more sustainable? Also, we’ll hear more about the mixed signals the economy is giving and Delta passengers’ class-action lawsuit over compensation for last month’s CrowdStrike travel fiasco.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
New York Times Pitchbot is a fantastic version of the NY Times. #satire
https://x.com/DougJBalloon/status/1820848752531272100
Santa Cruz-based Joby aims to start commercial air taxi flights from late 2025
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The electric aviation startup is one of several manufacturers of electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft designed to fly customers on short commuter journeys.
curl welcomes wcurl to the team
date: 2024-08-08, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
The curl project welcomes its newest sibling into the family: wcurl. I already wrote about wcurl. I will try to not repeat myself too much here, but starting now wcurl has its new home under the curl organization umbrella. It is now an official curl project. www: https://curl.se/wcurlGitHub: https://github.com/curl/wcurl The initial developers and people behind … Continue reading curl welcomes wcurl to the team
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/08/08/curl-welcomes-wcurl-to-the-team/
China’s preferred desktop Linux, openKylin, chases the AI PC in version 2.0
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Middle Kingdom netizens can look forward to the same kind of letdown Windows users get with Copilot
Developers behind openKylin, the desktop Linux distro backed by China’s National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, have decided local users need to take advantage of Intel’s Meteor Lake silicon and the neural processing units it includes, tuning the latest release of the OS to Chipzilla’s AI PC SoC.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/openkylin_2/
Can 7-Eleven change its U.S. image and become more like the stores in Japan?
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
7-Eleven in Japan is known for its high-quality food items. Now, they are trying it in the U.S.
Ethics complaint filed against California GOP Rep. Ken Calvert over real estate holdings
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Corona Republican is accused by End Citizens United of failing to disclose investments near areas where he steered federal funds.
The cost of fueling my body
date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Rupert blog
I’ve become a bit obsessed with how much it costs to fuel my body during the working hours.
| Item | Cost/Serving | Qty/Day | Cost/Day | Qty/Month | Cost/Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Snap Kitchen 500cal meal | $10.00 | 1 | $10.00 | 22 | $220 |
| Fairlife 42g Protein Shake | $3.50 | 1 | $3.50 | 22 | $77 |
| Liquid Death | $1.75 | 1 | $1.75 | 22 | $38.50 |
| Ruta Maya Dark Roast | $0.25 | 3 | $0.75 | 66 | $16.50 |
| Califia Farms Café Oat | $0.11 | 3 | $0.33 | 66 | $7.26 |
| Total | $16.33 | $359.26 |
To keep me and my brain running during working hours costs me ~$359.26/month. Not much to say beyond that –no grand epiphanies– except that I think it’s too expensive. Sitting in an office by myself costs me $16.33/day (or $2/hour). This budget doesn’t include breakfast, dinner, exercise, healthcare, transit, internet, electricity, or office supplies… all necessities that enable the work. This is just the daily cost of caloric fuel to keep my body going during the nine-to-five. My family has three other humans in it too, so this seems collossaly expensive.
If I wanted to save money (I sort of do), here’s what I’d could try to optimize from top to bottom:
- I could make my own pre-made meals for about ~$2/meal. I’ve had success with this but it requires a lot of weekend logistics to execute properly. This would be the most significant cost reduction, costing only $44/month and saving $176/month.
- I could buy whey protein in bulk. A 5 lb bag of Muscle Milk (nearest approximate flavor) is $72/bag and contains 68 servings for a reduced costs of $1.05/serving. However, one serving only has 25g of protein, so if I’d need to double the scoops. The total cost would then be $2.11/serving or $46.42/month. Buying bulk powder makes fiscal sense, but $30/month to not have to deal with drinking clumpy protein shakes and washing crusted stinky shakers seems almost worth it.
- I considered eggs as an alternate source of protein instead. A single egg has ~6g of protein and costs about 50¢. The cost could potentially come down but the bigger issue is to get the same 42g of protein I’d need to eat 7 eggs. I don’t know if you’ve eaten eggs before but 7 eggs is a lot of eggs. Imagine woofing down 7 sweaty hard-boiled orbs a couple times a day, yikes.
- I could brew my own agave-sweetened tea. I’ve done this once, but the crisp flavor profile wasn’t the same so I wouldn’t call it a success. Needs more experimentation.
- Thanks to Costco selling our favorite local coffee roaster in bulk, we have caffeine ritual costs dialed down about as low as they can go. Feel comfortable there.
Lowering my lunch costs stands out as the best candidate for improvement. But as I noted before, adding even a small pile of extra duties risks toppling the wagon and I’m back to eating emergency $14 Spicy Chicken Sando Combos to quench my hunger. I wonder where my daily costs fit on a graph of national statistics. Is this average? Is this Bidenomic inflation? Am I making myself poor with my avocado toast? Someone who understands finances help me budget! Ack!
https://daverupert.com/2024/08/fueling-my-body/
Help Build a Tool To Track Apple Support Page Changes
date: 2024-08-08, from: TidBITS blog
It’s possible to write software that can traverse the entire universe of Apple support pages. Wouldn’t it be helpful if there were a tool that would tell you which pages were new or had changed?
https://tidbits.com/2024/08/08/help-build-a-tool-to-track-apple-support-page-changes/
@IIIF Mastodon feed (date: 2024-08-08, from: IIIF Mastodon feed)
We're delighted to welcome The French Ministry of Culture as the Consortium's newest member! Please read more about our newest member and their ongoing work to promote IIIF among cultural institutions across France on our website: https://iiif.io/news/2024/08/06/french-ministry/
https://glammr.us/@IIIF/112926816569417347
Bilbao, Spain
date: 2024-08-08, from: mrusme blog
“Bilbao is a city in northern Spain, the largest city in the province of Biscay and in the Basque Country as a whole. It is also the largest city proper in northern Spain. Bilbao is the tenth largest city in Spain, with a population of more than 347,000 as of 2023.”
https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/travel/spain/bilbao/
My version of the NYT
date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
My version of the NY Times has campaign news too, featuring the cutest kitty on the trail, headed to North Carolina today to support the cute and adorable running mates, Kamala and Tim!
http://scripting.com/2024/08/08/140537.html?title=myVersionOfTheNyt
World’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
GEORGETOWN, Texas — As with any desktop 3D printer, the Vulcan printer pipes layer by layer to build an object – except this printer is more than 45 feet (13.7 m) wide, weighs 4.75 tons and prints residential homes.
This summer, the robotic printer from ICON is finishing the last few of 100 3D-printed houses in Wolf Ranch, a community in Georgetown, Texas, about 30 miles from Austin.
ICON began printing the walls of what it says is the world’s largest 3D-printed community in November 2022. Compared to traditional construction, the company says that 3D printing homes is faster, less expensive, requires fewer workers, and minimizes construction material waste.
“It brings a lot of efficiency to the trade market,” said ICON senior project manager Conner Jenkins. “So, where there were maybe five different crews coming in to build a wall system, we now have one crew and one robot.”
After concrete powder, water, sand and other additives are mixed together and pumped into the printer, a nozzle squeezes out the concrete mixture like toothpaste onto a brush, building up layer by layer along a pre-programmed path that creates corduroy-effect walls.
The single-story three- to four-bedroom homes take about three weeks to finish printing, with the foundation and metal roofs installed traditionally.
Jenkins said the concrete walls are designed to be resistant to water, mold, termites and extreme weather.
Lawrence Nourzad, a 32-year-old business development director, and his girlfriend Angela Hontas, a 29-year-old creative strategist, purchased a Wolf Ranch home earlier this summer.
“It feels like a fortress,” Nourzad said, adding that he was confident it would be resilient to most tornados.
The walls also provide strong insulation from the Texas heat, the couple said, keeping the interior temperature cool even when the air conditioner wasn’t on full blast.
There was one other thing the 3D-printed walls seemed to protect against, however: a solid wireless internet connection.
“Obviously these are really strong, thick walls. And that’s what provides a lot of value for us as homeowners and keeps this thing really well-insulated in a Texas summer, but signal doesn’t transfer through these walls very well,” Nourzad said.
To alleviate this issue, an ICON spokeswoman said most Wolf Ranch homeowners use mesh internet routers, which broadcast a signal from multiple units placed throughout a home, versus a traditional router which sends a signal from one device.
The 3D-printed homes at Wolf Ranch, called the “Genesis Collection” by developers, range in price from around $450,000 to close to $600,000. Developers said a little more than one quarter of the 100 homes have been sold.
ICON, which 3D-printed its first home in Austin in 2018, hopes to one day take its technology to the Moon. NASA, as part of its Artemis Moon exploration program, has contracted ICON to develop a construction system capable of building landing pads, shelters, and other structures on the lunar surface.
High school football 2024: Ten storylines as Bay Area teams hit practice field
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Is Serra still best in WCAL, Bay Area? Clayton Valley returns to former league. Does Los Gatos have its next star QB? SRV, Monte Vista loaded with college prospects. Plus, much more.
No, the news is not information junk food
date: 2024-08-08, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
Every so often, a post goes around in tech circles about how news is bad and we shouldn’t pay attention to it. I think that’s ludicrous.
Today’s was a post from 2022 called The News is Information Junk Food. I think it’s a bad argument that could have poor consequences.
It was featured on Hacker News, so, gods help me, I commented there. Here’s what I said:
This is a pretty bad take.
For example, multiple studies have shown that in communities that aren’t addressed by a robust local news outlet, local corruption goes up. Having a good newsroom does improve an understanding of what your representatives are up to, and a lack of information does allow them to get up to more behind our backs.
I think the biggest failure of this piece is to make all news equivalent. Yes, much cable news is junk; yes, many of the corporate newsrooms that churn out hundreds of articles a day are junk. They use engagement as a metric for success rather than finding ways to align themselves with impact and creating an informed, empowered electorate. That last thing - an informed, empowered electorate - is what it’s all about.
Real journalism that is diligently undertaken in the public interest does make a real difference. (Should we know whether Clarence Thomas was taking corrupt bribes? Yes. Should we know how climate change is progressing? Yes. Should we know if the police are killing innocent people? Yes. Should we know that the police at the Uvalde school shooting hung around for over an hour doing nothing? Yes.) Telling people not to pay attention to the world around them results in an electorate who cannot meaningfully vote on real issues.
For those of us who build software, we need to know the factors that impact the lives of the people we’re serving. We need to know the trends in the marketplaces and communities where we show up. The news is good for that, too.
Turn off cable news; pay more attention to non-profit news; go for long-form written journalism. Stay informed.
It’s absolutely true that we take a psychic hit for doing so. I’d say that’s more to do with the world than it is the media overall. Perhaps we should spend more time trying to make it better?
One user responded:
The key is to focus on local news: these are updates that a person can take action upon.
Seeing the latest tragedies on the other side of the world catches headlines, but rarely actionable by regular people.
To which I replied:
We all have foreign policies. For example, in the US, our government is heavily involved in Gaza and Ukraine. It’s far away, but it’s also highly relevant to how our representatives work on our behalf.
Should we give aid to other countries? How should we think about global society? Those things are all relevant, too.
The bottom line to my argument: Journalism is a key to understanding the world around us. We shouldn’t give ourselves excuses to look away.
https://werd.io/2024/no-the-news-is-not-information-junk-food
7 incredible Bay Area things to do this weekend, Aug. 9-11
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
Got your weekend plans? We have some nifty ideas, from major music festivals to killer croissants, and much more.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/08/7-incredible-bay-area-things-to-do-this-weekend-aug-9-11/
Using 1Password on Mac? Patch up if you don’t want your Vaults raided
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Hundreds of thousands of users potentially vulnerable
Password manager 1Password is warning that all Mac users running versions before 8.10.36 are vulnerable to a bug that allows attackers to steal vault items.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/using_1password_on_mac_patch/
Article Spotlight: Modelling take-off moment arms in an ornithocheiraean pterosaur
date: 2024-08-08, from: PeerJ blog
Clown Services Company - Unregistered Agent, Incompliance, Welfare, Debt Market, Analog, and Imaginary-Risk Solutions
date: 2024-08-08, from: Tilde.news
https://clownstrike.lol/crowdmad/
The most disgusting recipe ever for steak is on TikTok. Of course
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
You might think that social media is a great source for cooking tips. You would be wrong. Unless, of course, you enjoy your chicken simmered in Orange Fanta and cream…
San Jose office building is bought at higher price, in market rarity
date: 2024-08-08, from: San Jose Mercury News
A big north San Jose office building has been bought for more than $60 million.
This Raspberry Pi lookalike has a StarFive JH7110 RISC-V processor
date: 2024-08-08, from: Liliputing
The Geniatech XPI-7110 is a credit card-sized single-board computer that bears more than a passing resemblance to a Raspberry Pi: it has a similar shape, size, and set of ports and connectors, including a Raspberry Pi-compatible 40-pin GPIO header. What makes the XPI-7110 stand out is its processor. Instead of an ARM-based chip, this little computer […]
The post This Raspberry Pi lookalike has a StarFive JH7110 RISC-V processor appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/this-raspberry-pi-lookalike-has-a-starfive-jh7110-risc-v-processor/
Apple memory holed its broken promise for an OCSP opt-out
date: 2024-08-08, from: OS News
When you launch an app, macOS connects to Apple’s OCSP service to check whether the app’s Developer ID code signing certificate has been revoked by Apple. In November 2020, Apple’s OCSP service experienced a mass outage, preventing Mac users worldwide from launching apps. In response and remedy to this outage, Apple made several explicit promises to Mac users in a support document, which can still be seen in a Wayback Machine archive from September 24, 2023. ↫ Jeff Johnson One of the explicit promises Apple made was that it would allow macOS users to turn off phoning home to Cupertino every time you launch an application on macOS. It’s four years later now, and this promise has not been kept – Apple still does not allow you to turn off phoning home. In fact, it turns out that last year, Apple scrubbed this promise from all of its documentation, hoping we’re all going to forget about it. In other words, Apple is never going to allow its macOS users to stop the operating system from phoning home to Cupertino every time you launch an application. Even though the boiling frog story is nonsensical, it’s apt here. More and more Apple is limiting its users’ control over macOS, locking it down to a point where you’re not really the owner of your computer anymore. Stuff like this gives me the creeps.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140450/apple-memory-holed-its-broken-promise-for-an-ocsp-opt-out/
‘Airbnb Hopping’: How Hunted Hackers Stay on the Run From Kidnappers
date: 2024-08-08, from: 404 Media Group
Hackers are using false identities to book Airbnbs after being doxed and hunted by violent criminals.
https://www.404media.co/airbnb-hopping-how-hunted-hackers-stay-out-of-reach-of-crypto-thieves-2/
US elections have never been more secure, says CISA chief
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Election tech is fine – it’s all those idiots buying into the propaganda that’s worrying Jen Easterly
Black Hat US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) director Jen Easterly and her counterparts from the UK and EU want the world to know that, when it comes to securing elections, they’ve never been more prepared.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/election_tech_is_fine_says/
AYANEO Pocket EVO is an Android handheld with a 7 inch, 120 Hz OLED display
date: 2024-08-08, from: Liliputing
AYANEO is a company that’s made a name for itself in over the past few years by launching a wide range of handheld gaming PCs with a variety of shapes, sizes, features, and price points. Most ship with Windows software and AMD Ryzen processors, but recently the company started to branch out into Android-powered handhelds. […]
The post AYANEO Pocket EVO is an Android handheld with a 7 inch, 120 Hz OLED display appeared first on Liliputing.
Anaconda puts the squeeze on data scientists deemed to be terms-of-service violators
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Academic, non-profit organizations now being told to pay up – or else
Four years after data science biz Anaconda revised its terms of service, some research and academic organizations are just now finding out they have to pay for software they’d previously used at no cost.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/anaconda_puts_the_squeeze_on/
Tropical Storm Debby makes 2nd landfall in South Carolina, heavy rain expected up the East Coast
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
HUGER, S.C. — Tropical Storm Debby has made a second landfall in South Carolina on its way up the East Coast, where residents as far north as Vermont could get several inches of rain this weekend.
The National Hurricane Center says Debby came ashore early Thursday near Bulls Bay, South Carolina. The storm is expected to keep moving inland, spreading heavy rain and possible flooding all the way up through the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast by the weekend.
Debby first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday on the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is now a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds at 50 mph (80 kph).
Considerable flooding is expected across parts of eastern South Carolina and southeast North Carolina through Friday, with an additional 3 to 9 inches (8 to 23 centimeters) of rain forecast, as well as in portions of Virginia, according to the hurricane center.
Days of rain have forced the deluge-hardened residents of a South Carolina community to begin the near-ritualistic task of assessing damage left behind by Debby, which continued spinning over the Atlantic Ocean and influencing thunderstorms from the East Coast to the Great Lakes on Wednesday. The National Weather Service’s office in Charleston also said survey teams confirmed four-Debby related tornadoes.
In Huger, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Charleston, Gene Taylor was waiting in the afternoon for a few inches of water to drain from his house along French Quarter Creek as high tide passed.
Taylor saw the potential for flooding last week and started moving belongings out or up higher in his home. It’s a lesson learned the hard way — Taylor estimated that this is the fourth time he has had floodwater in his home in the past nine years.
“To save everything, we’ve learned from the past it’s better be prepared for the worst. And unfortunately, I think we got it,” Taylor said.
A few doors down, Charles Grainger was cleaning up after about 8 inches (20 centimeters) of water got into his home.
“Eight inches disrupts your whole life,” Grainger said. “You don’t get used to it. You just grin and bear it. It’s part of living on the creek.”
In Georgia, at least four dams were breached northwest of Savannah in Bulloch County, but no deaths had been reported, authorities said at a briefing.
More than 75 people were rescued from floodwaters in the county, said Corey Kemp, director of emergency management, and about 100 roads were closed.
“We’ve been faced with a lot of things we’ve never been faced with before,” Bulloch County Commission Chairman Roy Thompson said. “I’m 78-plus years old and have never seen anything like this before in Bulloch County. It’s amazing what has happened, and amazing what is going to continue to happen until all these waters get out of here.”
For residents on Tappan Zee Drive in suburban Pooler, west of Savannah, Georgia, the drenching that Debby delivered came with a painful dose of déjà vu. In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew overflowed a nearby canal and flooded several of the same homes.
Located roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) inland from the Atlantic Ocean, with no creeks or rivers nearby, the neighborhood doesn’t seem like a high-risk location for tropical flooding. But residents say drainage problems have plagued their street for well over a decade, despite local government efforts to fix them.
Debby also dumped rain on communities all the way up to the Great Lakes and New York and New Jersey. Moisture from the tropical storm strengthened another system Tuesday evening, which caused strong thunderstorms, according to weather service meteorologist Scott Kleebauer.
“We had a multi-round period of showers and thunderstorms that kind of scooted from Michigan eastward,” Kleebauer said.
As much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain fell in parts of New Jersey in less than four hours.
Emergency officials in New York City warned of potential flash flooding, flying drones with loudspeakers in some neighborhoods to tell people in basement apartments to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Multiple water rescues were reported in and near the city.
About 270,000 customers remained without power in Ohio as of Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, following severe storms including two confirmed tornadoes. Utility officials with FirstEnergy’s Illuminating Company said via social media that power restoration would take days due to the damage.
In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster said his state was just entering Act 2 of a three-act play, after more than 60 homes were damaged but roads and water systems were without significant problems.
The final act may come next week if enough rain falls upstream in North Carolina to cause major flooding along rivers as they flow to the Atlantic Ocean.
A state of emergency was in effect for both North Carolina and Virginia. Maryland issued a state of preparedness declaration that coordinates preparations without declaring an emergency.
At least six people have died due to the storm, five of them in traffic accidents or from fallen trees. The sixth death involved a 48-year-old man in Gulfport, Florida, whose body was recovered after his anchored sailboat partially sank.
The Global Town Square
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/08/08/the-global-town-square/
In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, company cancels plans for grain export facility in historic Black town
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
WALLACE, La. — Residents of a historic Black community in Louisiana who’ve spent years fighting against a massive grain export facility set to be built on the grounds where their enslaved ancestors once lived appear to have finally halted the project.
A representative from the company, Greenfield Louisiana LLC, announced during a public hearing on Tuesday evening that the company is “ceasing all plans” to construct a grain export facility in the middle of the town of Wallace in St. John the Baptist Parish.
After a moment, opponents of the project broke out in cheers and began clapping and hugging each other.
“I’m still obviously in disbelief — I can’t believe this is happening, but I’m ecstatic and all praise to the ancestors,” said Joy Banner, a Wallace resident and one of the most vocal opponents of the project. She and her sister, Jo, founded The Descendants Project to preserve the community’s heritage.
The company’s announcement signaled a rare win for a community in a heavily industrialized stretch of the Mississippi River known as “Cancer Alley” for its high levels of pollution. Wallace is about 80 kilometers west of New Orleans.
“I think all of the fighting – it is coming from the love and the passion for our communities we have here along the river, and to show the world we can and you should fight,” Banner said. “We are recognizing that we do have power – that power comes from the love we have for our community.”
Earlier this year, the Banner sisters’ nonprofit purchased a plantation which had been the site of one of the largest slave rebellions in American History, the 1811 German Coast Uprising. They plan to transform it into an educational space.
The Army Corps of Engineers had already determined the 90-hectare facility could adversely impact cultural heritage sites in Wallace and was tasked with reviewing Greenfield’s application.
Army Corps representative Brad LaBorde said his agency had not been informed in advance of the company’s unexpected decision to cancel plans for the facility.
“We don’t know exactly what that means,” LaBorde said. “We still have an active permit application so, if it is Greenfield’s intention to no longer pursue the project, then we would ask they formally submit a withdrawal to us so that we can conclude the review.”
Lynda Van Davis, Greenfield’s counsel and head of external affairs, said the long delay in government approval for the project has been “an expensive ordeal,” adding that she did not have an answer for when the company would submit a formal withdrawal to the Army Corps.
“This has been a difficult ride the whole time, we didn’t wake up yesterday and say we’re done,” Van Davis said. “We said we’ll stay in the fight a little bit longer, because we’ve become friends with this community. Unfortunately, how long are we supposed to stay in this fight?”
The Army Corps had found the project could affect historic properties in Wallace, including the Evergreen, Oak Alley and Whitney plantations. There also remained the possibility that the area contained burial sites for the ancestral Black community.
Some community members had supported the project, believing it would bring jobs to their town, even as opponents of the facility said tourism surrounding cultural heritage was already a thriving industry that deserved greater investment.
“I was looking forward to economic development in my community – jobs, new businesses, just all around better living for my community,” said Nicole Dumas, 48, a Wallace resident, who supported the project.
But the evening became a celebration for others. Angelica Mitchell, 53, held back tears as she took in the company’s announcement. Mitchell is still recovering from treatment for a rare form of cancer which had attacked her pancreas, but she chose to attend the public hearing despite her health struggles. The facility would have been built within a few hundred feet of her home.
“To hear that they are backing out, I am so excited, my prayers have been answered, because I’ve been praying for this for the last three years,” Mitchell said. “I’ve been asking God, just don’t let this plant come into our community. I don’t want this for our children.”
Fraud investigation launched into homeless service provider for LA’s Inside Safe program
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The LAist
People were served almost exclusively instant noodles, even thought the providers are being paid to serve nutritious foods, according to officials.
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/fraud-investigation-homeless-inside-safe-bass
LA’s plan to give renters free eviction attorneys as a ‘right’ moves forward
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The LAist
The vote by the city housing committee overrides language drafted by the city attorney’s office, which had stripped the word “right” from the city’s proposal for a “right to counsel.”
Protect your cloud spend with new Deno Deploy spend limits
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: Deno blog
You can now exercise greater control over your Deno Deploy spend with our new spend limits. Here’s how they work.
https://deno.com/blog/deploy-spend-limits
Wind Power Capacity Is Growing, But Not Fast Enough
date: 2024-08-08, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: A tsunami advisory is in effect in Japan after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the southern island of Kyushu • Tropical Storm Debby made landfall over South Carolina • Last month was the second-hottest July ever recorded.
THE TOP FIVE
- Global wind power capacity isn’t growing fast enough to meet 2030
goals
A new report from energy think tank Ember finds that the world is not on target to meet 2030 added capacity goals for wind power. Global leaders agreed at last year’s COP28 that, to be in line with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world must triple renewables capacity by the end of the decade. Ember’s report concludes that under current plans, wind power is set to more than double in that timeframe, “but fall short of tripling.” Ember also reiterates that China is “overachieving,” and is on a path to triple its wind capacity from 2022 to 2030. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is underachieving.
Ember
The U.S. is the country with the biggest gap between its expected wind installations and how much new capacity will be needed to meet its 2030 target, followed by India. And most countries don’t even have explicit wind targets yet. “Amidst the hype of solar, wind is not getting enough attention, even though it provides cheap electricity and complements solar,” said Katye Altieri, Ember’s global electricity analyst. “The path to a cleaner energy future could be shaped by prioritizing improved policies, regulatory frameworks and financial support.”
- House Republicans pressure Johnson not to repeal IRA energy tax
credits
A group of 18 Republican lawmakers from the House of Representatives wrote a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson this week, urging him not to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits. The politicians say industry leaders and constituents have been reaching out to express their fears that the GOP will upend the tax regime and “undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing.” The letter goes on: “A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.” A majority of clean tech spending made possible so far under the IRA has gone toward projects in Republican districts. As Bloomberg noted, the letter “indicates Johnson may not have the support to undo the Inflation Reduction Act if the GOP retains control of the House next year.”
- Study: Great Barrier Reef ocean temperatures hottest in 400 years
Ocean temperatures surrounding Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are higher now than they’ve ever been in the last 400 years, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. Researchers figured this out by drilling into some of the reef’s coral and analyzing the samples to measure temperatures going back to 1618. They observed a marked temperature rise starting in 1900 due to the burning of fossil fuels, and warmth has really accelerated in the last decade, with this year’s temperatures “head and shoulders” above any other year, according to Benjamin Henley, an academic at the University of Melbourne and one of the study’s authors. This chart shows the “exceptional nature” of the coral sea temperatures recorded in recent years, and in 2024:
Nature
The heat is causing recurring mass coral bleaching that puts the reef in danger. “In the absence of rapid, coordinated and ambitious global action to combat climate change, we will likely be witness to the demise of one of Earth’s great natural wonders,” the authors wrote.
- The Feds will soon start targeting solar scammers
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, reported Heatmap’s Jael Holzman. Officials from the Treasury Department, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced yesterday they will soon release a consumer advisory warning against deceptive sales practice, along with 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. Solar energy fraud at the residential consumer level is a rare but profoundly painful phenomenon that can acutely harm low- and middle-income households. More than a quarter of a billion dollars in solar-related fraud has been reported between January 2022 and June of this year, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said.
- In China, EV sales are up and CO2 emissions are down
More than half of the cars sold in China last month were electric or plug-in hybrids, according to new figures from the China Passenger Car Association. The number of new vehicles sold in the country overall fell last month because of a summertime lull, but the share of “new-energy vehicles” sold grew to about 51%. The country also saw its CO2 emissions drop by 1% in the second quarter, marking the first decline since strict zero-COVID lockdowns came to an end. Analysis from Carbon Brief suggests China’s emissions could be on track to decline this year, but a lot hinges on whether demand for electricity eases in the coming months.
THE KICKER
Recent research finds that tipuana trees, commonly found in Brazil, are tolerant of extreme drought and that planting more of them could help make urban environments more resilient to climate change.
https://heatmap.news/climate/wind-power-capacity-2030-ember
PeerJ Award Winners at ECBB 2024
date: 2024-08-08, from: PeerJ blog
The European Conference on Behavioural Biology (ECBB) 2024 was held at the Irchel Campus of the University of Zurich, Switzerland on September 16-19, 2024. It was a joint conference with the Summer Meeting of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB). The theme of this year’s conference was ‘long-term studies in animal behaviour’, […]
https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284889538/peerj-award-winners-at-ecbb-2024/
The biggest loans of our lives are getting a bit cheaper
date: 2024-08-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage peaked at just under 8% in October 2023. Rates have hovered around 7% for a good part of this year but have dipped further thanks to the prospect of a rate cut by the Federal Reserve come September. We’ll also travel once again to Kent County, Michigan — a swing county in a swing state — to hear how the economy is influencing voters there. Plus: quarterly results from two big media companies.
Nokia goes from phones to drones with Swiss service rollout
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
No pricing disclosed but plan allows users to order hands-off flights without operating any units
Nokia has hooked up with telco Swisscom Broadcast on a “Drones-as-a-Service” network across Switzerland, aimed at the emergency services and other applications where aerial observation is required.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/nokia_goes_from_phones_to/
Felix Oliver Friedrich pushed to project branch main at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: Oberon A2 repository
Felix Oliver Friedrich (408878ee) at 08 Aug 13:26
Merge branch 'fixes' into 'main'
… and 1 more commit
CSTA 2024: What happened in Las Vegas
date: 2024-08-08, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)
About three weeks ago, a small team from the Raspberry Pi Foundation braved high temperatures and expensive coffees (and a scarcity of tea) to spend time with educators at the CSTA Annual Conference in Las Vegas. With thousands of attendees from across the US and beyond participating in engaging workshops, thought-provoking talks, and visiting the…
The post CSTA 2024: What happened in Las Vegas appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/csta-2024/
Bangladesh is restarting its economy
date: 2024-08-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Following weeks of protests in Bangladesh, a new interim prime minister is being sworn in and the economy is reopening, including the crucial garments industry. Then, three Taylor Swift concerts have been canceled in Vienna, because of security concerns. It’s a big disappointment for local businesses expecting to benefit from Swiftanomics. And would you volunteer to pick up trash while on vacation? Copenhagen is incentivizing visitors to do so.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/bangladesh-is-restarting-its-economy
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-08, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I have mostly cruised without bothering with the failed google/wiz deal, but it turns out it is a juicy scandal!
Check this post!
https://updates.techforpalestine.org/wiz-and-google-the-deal-that-wasnt/
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112926045515720640
Peggy Stabile | A Taste of Misrepresentations
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Signal
In his commentary entitled “Where Are We Now” (Signal, July 17), columnist Gary Horton treated our community to a taste of misrepresentations and untruths the likes of which I have […]
The post Peggy Stabile | A Taste of Misrepresentations appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/peggy-stabile-a-taste-of-misrepresentations/
Joe Guzzardi | Immigration: The Kamala Conundrum
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Signal
Throughout her career, Kamala Harris has benefited from the support of friends in high places. Michelle and Barack Obama’s recent endorsement of Harris for president is just the latest example. […]
The post Joe Guzzardi | Immigration: The Kamala Conundrum appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/joe-guzzardi-immigration-the-kamala-conundrum/
Dan Walters | Newsom’s Authoritarian Tendencies
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Signal
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been one of the loudest Democratic politicians in denouncing former President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. While endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign […]
The post Dan Walters | Newsom’s Authoritarian Tendencies appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/dan-walters-newsoms-authoritarian-tendencies/
Sergey Durmanov pushed to project branch fixes at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: Oberon A2 repository
Sergey Durmanov (7fa1db46) at 08 Aug 12:42
Preparing code to replace the base type for VMGraphics.Color – SIG…
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/commit/7fa1db46436ee4a55abe8c2775cb30a6da43a4b0
Sergey Durmanov pushed new project branch fixes at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: Oberon A2 repository
Sergey Durmanov (fc3421e9) at 08 Aug 12:40
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/commits/fixes
Report: Tech misconceptions plague the IT world
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Just snapping the webcam shutter closed won’t keep a user safe online
New research shows that while many Brits will snap shut a laptop camera in the name of privacy, a worrying amount will just as happily shovel all manner of personal information into an online game in order to get a result they can share with their friends.…
UK Royal Mint mining PCBs for precious metals in e-waste recovery effort
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
There’s gold in them thar boards
The UK’s Royal Mint has cut the ribbon on its Precious Metals Recovery factory, which extracts material from old Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/uk_royal_mint_metals_pcbs/
Mid-Year Real Estate Update
date: 2024-08-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Steady gains in median prices and number of sales.
The post Mid-Year Real Estate Update appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/08/mid-year-real-estate-update/
Entrust faces years of groveling to regain browsers’ trust, say rival chiefs
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Sectigo bosses claim it’s only a matter of time before Microsoft and Apple drop Big E from their root stores too
After falling down in the estimations of major browser makers Google and Mozilla, Entrust faces a lengthy fight on its hands to regain industry trust and once more issue trusted TLS certificates.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/entrust_faces_years_of_groveling/
Designing for Function and Beauty
date: 2024-08-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Let the joyful moments in your life be your guide.
The post Designing for Function and Beauty appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/08/designing-for-function-and-beauty/
Ask the Motor Cop | Making heads or tales of pedestrian crossings
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Signal
Question: Jerry, not too long ago I got a ticket for crossing the street where I wasn’t supposed to be crossing. The officer explained why, but I don’t know if […]
The post Ask the Motor Cop | Making heads or tales of pedestrian crossings appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/ask-the-motor-cop-making-heads-or-tales-of-pedestrian-crossings/
Rickety Raptor Lake CPUs won’t lose Turbo-boosted speeds after microcode medicine, Intel claims
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Chipzilla still has ways to stop these processors cooking in their own juices
Intel has claimed the microcode update it’s delivering for wonky 13th and 14th generation Raptor Lake CPUs won’t compromise the chips’ top end clock speeds.…
Today in SCV History (Aug. 8)
date: 2024-08-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1769 – Portolá expedition crosses Newhall Pass near Elsmere Canyon, camps at Chaguayanga village (Rye Canyon/Castaic Junction) [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-aug-8/
Rising AI tide lifts price of all chips - HBM, natch, but also slower memory and storage
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Thank binary brainboxes for helping to inflate PC and Smartphone prices
AI infrastructure is a hot commodity, as is the high bandwidth memory (HBM) on which it depends, driving up prices for the newfangled tech and for less glamourous memory and storage hardware.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/memory_prices_rising/
ICANN reserves .internal for private use at the DNS level
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Vint Cerf revealed Google already uses the string, as do plenty of others
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has agreed to reserve the .internal top-level domain so it can become the equivalent to using the 10.0.0.0, 172.16.0.0 and 192.168.0.0 IPv4 address blocks for internal networks.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/dot_internal_ratified/
Chelsea Handler Wants to Take Responsibility for Your Good Time
date: 2024-08-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Multi-hyphenate comedian Chelsea Handler brings her “Little Big Bitch Tour” to the Santa Barbara Bowl on August 17.
The post Chelsea Handler Wants to Take Responsibility for Your Good Time appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
New Wound Care Center Opens in Santa Clarita
date: 2024-08-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Ian R. Cook MD, a Santa Clarita resident and native, has announced the opening of a state-of-the-art Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center located in the heart of Santa Clarita.
https://scvnews.com/new-wound-care-center-opens-in-santa-clarita/
The Accidental Artist-Activist
date: 2024-08-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Baret Boisson’s vibrant work paints a love letter to the universe.
The post The Accidental Artist-Activist appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/07/the-accidental-artist-activist/
Aug. 10-11: SoCal Special Hockey Festival 2024 at The CUBE
date: 2024-08-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
SNAP Hockey presents the SoCal Special Hockey Festival 2024 on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 10-11 at the The CUBE Ice and Entertainment Center in Valencia
https://scvnews.com/aug-10-11-socal-special-hockey-festival-2024-at-the-cube/
Would you rather buy space broadband from a billionaire, or Communist China?
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Beijing’s first Starlink-slayers are in orbit, and buyers beyond the Great Firewall are on the agenda
The first batch of satellites in China’s answer to Starlink – known as the Qianfan Constellation, sometimes also called G60 – was launched into orbit on Tuesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/china_qianfan_launch/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Google Recorder is the perfect voice memo app, and great for the informal kind of podcast I do. Hats off to whoever designed it. Well done.
https://recorder.google.com/b5aa5e3f-2164-4005-a302-38d5919775eb
For the record
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Daily Trojan (USC Student Paper)
The post For the record appeared first on Daily Trojan.
https://dailytrojan.com/2024/08/07/for-the-record-aug-7/
Your victim’s Windows PC fully patched? Just force undo its updates and exploit away
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
This guy showed the world how – with the right level of access
Black Hat Techniques to forcibly remove security patches from Windows machines so that fixed vulnerabilities are exploitable again were demonstrated this week.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/microsoft_windows_updates/
Democratic Party greatness
date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
I have great respect for Hillary Clinton and supported her over Sanders in 2016. I also supported Biden because we needed to win in 2020.
But we could have had a campaign team like the one we saw yesterday and today, with some very impressive presenters who’ve yet to take the stage, we could have had it in 2016. We didn’t have to go through the tragedy of Trump.
The Democrats are stage managing perfectly now. I never really thought we’d see this day, but here it is.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/07/032858.html?title=democraticPartyGreatness
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The blogging world as viewed through my blogroll is for some reason much more interesting after the launch of the Harris/Walz ticket yesterday. Probably my mind playing tricks, again. 😀
Angstrom age angst ameliorated as ASML’s High NA EUV chipmaking kit delivers
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Imec tests show Dutch master etcher has markedly boosted transistor density
Research org Imec claims it has demonstrated the viability of ASML’s next generation extreme UV technology for next generation chip manufacturing, showing off how it can create patterned structures at a smaller scale than previously possible – in a single pass.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/imec_asml_na_uev_results/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
“With ChatGPT, OpenAI has effectively created a next-generation search engine. Instead of a list of links and ads, it provides an answer, increasingly the correct ones.”
https://om.co/2024/08/07/googles-real-googly-no-not-the-anti-trust/
Garcia focuses on securities at town hall
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Signal
Security was the big talking point for Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, at his town hall Tuesday evening at the College of the Canyons Performing Arts Center. He kicked things […]
The post Garcia focuses on securities at town hall appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/garcia-focuses-on-securities-at-town-hall/
New head of COC aims to ‘keep the college running’
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Signal
David Andrus said he doesn’t care why he was chosen to be the acting chancellor of College of the Canyons. He was appointed to the role last month by the […]
The post New head of COC aims to ‘keep the college running’ appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/new-head-of-coc-aims-to-keep-the-college-running/
US judge again dismisses Mexico’s lawsuit against most gun manufacturers
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
MEXICO CITY — A U.S. federal judge in Massachusetts again dismissed a $10 billion Mexican government lawsuit against six U.S. gun manufacturers on Wednesday.
Mexico had argued the companies knew weapons were being sold to traffickers who smuggled them into Mexico and decided to cash in on that market.
However, the judge ruled that Mexico had not provided concrete evidence that any of the six companies’ activities in Massachusetts were connected to any suffering caused in Mexico by guns.
Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department said Wednesday the ruling would allow the lawsuit to proceed against a seventh manufacturer and a gun wholesaler.
Regarding the dismissal against the others, the department said, “Mexico is analyzing its options, among them presenting an appeal.”
The case has been a legal rollercoaster.
In early 2022, six companies — not including the seventh manufacturer — filed to dismiss Mexico’s claims based on the broad protection provided to gun manufacturers by a 2005 U.S. law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA.
The law shields gun manufacturers from damages “resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a firearm. Later in 2022, the federal judge ruled to dismiss the case on those grounds.
Mexico appealed that ruling, and in January the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Massachusetts revived the lawsuit, saying the PLCAA did not apply to the claims the guns caused deaths, damages and injuries in Mexico.
The appeals court returned the case to the lower court, which again ruled to dismiss the claims against six of the companies.
The Mexican government estimates 70% of the weapons trafficked into Mexico come from the U.S., according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
Cloud storage lockers from Microsoft and Google used to store and spread state-sponsored malware
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Why run your own evil infrastructure when Big Tech offers robust tools hosted at trusted URLs?
Black Hat State-sponsored cyber spies and criminals are increasingly using legitimate cloud services to attack their victims, according to Symantec’s threat hunters who have spotted three such operations over recent months, plus new data theft and other malware tools in development by these goons.…
Sols 4266-4267: Happy ‘Landiversary,’ Curiosity
date: 2024-08-08, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Monday, Aug. 5, 2024 After the usual morning routine of doing some engineering housekeeping, Curiosity continues to take some remote science observations. We take a ChemCam LIBS observation and a Mastcam image of the “Peeler Lake” target, a dark, nodular target that appears to be more erosion-resistant than nearby rocks. By comparing […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4266-4267-happy-landiversary-curiosity/
changes ahead
date: 2024-08-08, from: Ayjay blog
Faithful readers, this may be the last post on this blog. My longtime hosting provider, Reclaim Hosting, has recently made a number of changes to their security procedures, and those procedures have broken the workflow that I have had here for more than a decade. They have also let me know that they will do […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/changes-ahead/
Biden ‘not confident’ of peaceful power transition if Trump loses election
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
washington — President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he was not confident about a peaceful transfer of power in the United States if Republican Donald Trump loses the Nov. 5 presidential election.
“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” Biden said in an interview with CBS News when asked whether he thought there would be a peaceful transfer of power after the vote.
“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it. All this stuff about if we lose there’d be a bloodbath,” Biden added.
During a March campaign appearance in Ohio, Trump warned of a “bloodbath” if he fails win the election. At the time Trump was discussing the need to protect the U.S. auto industry from overseas competition, and Trump later said he was referring to the auto industry when he used the term.
Trump has falsely claimed he won the 2020 election against Biden and was criminally charged in Washington and Georgia with illegally trying to overturn the results.
Biden dropped out of the campaign last month after fellow Democrats called for him to step aside following a poor debate performance against Trump that raised questions about the Democratic president’s age and health.
Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, has since captured the Democratic nomination and is running against Trump.
Samsung boosts bug bounty to a cool million for cracks of the Knox Vault subsystem
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Good luck, crackers: It’s an isolated processor and storage enclave, and top dollar only comes from a remote attack
Samsung has dangled its first $1 million bug bounty for anyone who successfully compromises Knox Vault – the isolated subsystem the Korean giant bakes into its smartphones to store info like credentials and run authentication routines.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/samsung_microsoft_big_bug_bounty/
Struggle and process
date: 2024-08-08, updated: 2024-08-08, from: Robin Rendle Essays
https://robinrendle.com/notes/struggle-and-process/
Tropical Storm Debby doles out repeat deluges for weather-weary residents
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
huger, south carolina — Days of rain from Tropical Storm Debby forced the residents of a South Carolina community to begin the task of assessing damage left by a cyclone that was spinning over the Atlantic Ocean and influencing thunderstorms from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.
Gene Taylor waited Wednesday afternoon for a few inches of water to drain out of his house as high tide passed at his home along French Quarter Creek in Huger, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Charleston.
Taylor saw the potential for flooding last week and started moving stuff out or up higher in his home. It’s a lesson learned the hard way. Taylor estimates this is the fourth time he has had floodwater in his home in the past nine years.
“To save everything, we’ve learned from the past it’s better be prepared for the worst. And unfortunately, I think we got it,” Taylor said.
A few doors down, Charles Granger was cleaning up after about 8 inches (20 centimeters) of water got into his home. He said it is an annoyance, but one he is trying to get used to.
“Eight inches disrupts your whole life,” Grainger said. “You don’t get used to it. You just grin and bear it. It’s part of living on the creek.”
The National Hurricane Center warned that isolated areas could see up to 25 inches (64 centimeters) of rain from Tropical Storm Debby.
For Georgia homeowners in suburban Pooler west of Savannah, the drenching came with a dose of déjà vu. In October 2016, rain from Hurricane Matthew overwhelmed a nearby canal and flooded several of the same homes.
Located roughly 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Atlantic Ocean, with no creeks or rivers nearby, the inland neighborhood doesn’t seem like a high-risk location for tropical flooding.
But residents say drainage problems have plagued their street for well over a decade, despite efforts by the local government to fix them.
Debby also rained on residents all the way up to the Great Lakes and New York and New Jersey. Moisture from the tropical storm strengthened another storm system Tuesday evening, which caused strong thunderstorms, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Kleebauer.
Up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain fell in parts of New Jersey in less than four hours.
Emergency officials warned of potential flash flooding, flying drones with loudspeakers in some New York City neighborhoods to tell people in basement apartments to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Multiple water rescues were reported in New York City and surrounding areas.
Nearly 330,000 customers remained without power in Ohio by Wednesday afternoon following severe storms there, according to PowerOutage.us.
‘Imminent failure’ of dam
Meanwhile, the “imminent failure” of a dam in southeast Georgia was threatening to swamp a mobile home park and other areas downstream, the National Weather Service said in a flash flood warning Wednesday afternoon. The Cypress Lake Dam is in Bulloch County, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Savannah.
“If the dam breaks, flash flooding will occur immediately downstream of the dam,” the weather service said.
In South Carolina, Governor Henry McMaster said the state was just entering Act 2 of a three-act play.
“We’ve been lucky so far. Things have not been as bad as they could have been,” McMaster said of heavy rains that damaged over 60 homes but did not cause significant problems to roads or water systems.
Act 2 is overnight into Thursday when Debby moves back onshore and heavy rain returns, this time to the northern part of the coast and inland. An additional 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) of rain could fall, said John Quagliariello, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Columbia.
“It may not be as catastrophic as what we were saying, but we still think as these rain bands develop they could sit over the same area for long periods of time, produce a lot of rainfall and a lot of flooding,” Quagliariello said.
Flooding possible next week
The final act may come next week if enough rain falls upstream in North Carolina to cause major flooding along rivers as it flows to the Atlantic Ocean.
The center of Debby was over the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday afternoon, 55 miles (89 kilometers) east-southeast of Charleston, the National Hurricane Center said. The tropical storm could make a second landfall in either North Carolina or South Carolina, expected late Wednesday or early Thursday. Debby first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday along the Gulf Coast of Florida.
A state of emergency was in effect for both North Carolina and Virginia. Maryland issued a state of preparedness declaration.
At least six people have died due to the storm, five of them in traffic accidents or from fallen trees. The sixth death involved a man in Gulfport, Florida, whose body was recovered after his anchored sailboat partially sank.
Central Valley quake raises alarms in SCV
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Signal
While no major damage was reported Tuesday night in the Santa Clarita Valley from the magnitude-5.2 earthquake that hit the unincorporated area of Mettler, California, 60 miles northwest of the […]
The post Central Valley quake raises alarms in SCV appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/central-valley-quake-raises-alarms-in-scv/
Acton woman arrested after reported domestic assault
date: 2024-08-08, from: The Signal
A 24-year-old Acton woman was arrested early Sunday morning in Canyon Country on suspicion she intentionally slammed her vehicle into someone else’s, according to Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station officials. […]
The post Acton woman arrested after reported domestic assault appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/acton-woman-arrested-after-reported-domestic-assault/
Stranded NASA Starliner pilots may return to Earth on SpaceX
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — What should have been a quick trip to the International Space Station may turn into an eight-month stay for two NASA astronauts if they have to switch from Boeing to SpaceX for a ride home.
There’s lingering uncertainty over the safety of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, NASA officials said Wednesday, and the space agency is split over the risk. As a result, chances are increasing that test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams may have to watch from the space station as their Starliner is cut loose to return to Earth empty.
If that happens, NASA will leave behind two of four astronauts from the next SpaceX taxi flight in late September, with the vacant seats set aside for Wilmore and Williams on the return trip in February. The pair expected to be gone just a week or two when they launched June 5 as Starliner’s first crew.
NASA is bringing in additional experts to analyze the thruster failures experienced by Starliner before it docked. At the same time, NASA is looking more closely at SpaceX as a backup.
At this point, “we could take either path,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s space operations mission chief.
During a recent meeting, “we heard from a lot of folks that had concern, and the decision was not clear,” he said. A final decision is expected by mid-August.
Boeing issued a brief statement following NASA’s news update, repeating its position that the capsule could still safely bring the astronauts home.
“We still believe in Starliner’s capability and its flight rationale,” the company said.
Boeing will need to modify the capsule’s software in case Starliner ends up returning without a crew.
No serious consideration was given to launching a separate SpaceX flight just to retrieve Wilmore and Williams, according to commercial crew program manager Steve Stich.
Tests on the ground have replicated the thrust problems, pointing to seals as one culprit. But it’s still not understood how or why those seals swell when overheated and then shrink back to the proper size, Stich noted. All but one of the Starliner’s five failed thrusters have since been reactivated in orbit.
These thrusters are essential for allowing Starliner to back away from the space station following undocking, and for keeping the capsule in the proper position for moving out of orbit.
At the same time, engineers are grappling over helium leaks in Starliner’s propulsion system, crucial for maneuvering. The first leak occurred before liftoff but was deemed isolated and stable. Then more cropped up in flight.
NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the space station after the shuttles retired in 2011. SpaceX flew its first crew in 2020. Boeing stumbled on its first test flight without a crew and then fell further behind after a repeat demo.
Officials repeated their desire for a backup taxi service on Wednesday, A situation like this one could happen again, and “that’s why we want multiple vehicles,” Bowersox said.
The next crew flight will be SpaceX’s 10th for NASA. On Tuesday, it was delayed for a month until late September to allow for extra time to figure out how best to handle Starliner’s return. Three NASA astronauts and one Russian are assigned to the flight, and managers on Wednesday declined to say who might be bumped.
https://www.voanews.com/a/stranded-nasa-starliner-pilots-may-return-to-earth-on-spacex-/7734335.html
Aug. 14: SCV Water Resources, Watershed Committee Meeting
date: 2024-08-08, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency’s Water Resources and Watershed Committee is holding a meeting Wednesday, Aug. 14, at 5:30 p.m
https://scvnews.com/aug-14-scv-water-resources-watershed-committee-meeting/
Santa Barbara Police Nab Suspect After Hit-And-Run Accident
date: 2024-08-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Early morning collision on Saturday injured a pedestrian and caused a gas leak.
The post Santa Barbara Police Nab Suspect After Hit-And-Run Accident appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/07/santa-barbara-police-nab-suspect-after-hit-and-run-accident/
The Right-Wing Revolution in the United States
date: 2024-08-08, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Trump, the oldest person ever to run for the presidency, has put a young revolutionary clone one heartbeat away from the White House.
The post The Right-Wing Revolution in the United States appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/07/the-right-wing-revolution-in-the-united-states/
Crews fight revived Park Fire in California
date: 2024-08-08, from: VOA News USA
SAN BERNARDINO, California — Firefighters battled on Wednesday the reawakened Park Fire, a massive blaze that re-exploded in Northern California on Monday after several days of slumber and grew by as much as 53 square kilometers, mostly in about 12 hours.
The Park Fire, California’s largest so far this year and the state’s fourth largest on record, had scorched nearly 1,676 square kilometers by Tuesday morning.
Firefighters were told during their morning briefing to focus on safety and to be mindful of extreme fire behavior, including intense and rapidly moving flames.
The Park Fire was allegedly ignited by arson on July 24 outside the Sacramento Valley city of Chico and has destroyed 640 structures and damaged 52.
In Southern California, a fast-moving wildfire that swept into a hillside community this week destroyed five homes and damaged three others, authorities said Tuesday.
The flames erupted Monday afternoon and chased residents from the neighborhood in San Bernardino, about 97 kilometers east of Los Angeles,
One firefighter was treated for a minor injury but there were no reports of injuries to residents, said Eric Sherwin, spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
“How quickly this fire hit this community,” Sherwin said, “the fact that we have no civilians injured is truly a miracle.”
The fire was reported at 2:40 p.m. Monday and stopped progressing about three hours later after scorching 22 hectares. Containment was holding at 75%, Sherwin said. All evacuations were lifted late Tuesday morning.
Investigators were working to determine the cause of the fire, which erupted amid very dry and hot conditions that have made swaths of California quick to burn this summer.
https://www.voanews.com/a/crews-fight-revived-park-fire-in-california/7734319.html
PostgreSQL 16.4, 15.8, 14.13, 13.16, 12.20, and 17 Beta 3 Released!
date: 2024-08-08, from: PostgreSQL News
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released an update to all supported versions of PostgreSQL, including 16.4, 15.8, 14.13, 13.16, and 12.20, as well as the third beta release of PostgreSQL 17. This release fixes 1 security vulnerability and over 55 bugs reported over the last several months.
For the full list of changes, please review the release notes.
PostgreSQL 12 EOL Notice
PostgreSQL 12 will stop receiving fixes on November 14, 2024. If you are running PostgreSQL 12 in a production environment, we suggest that you make plans to upgrade to a newer, supported version of PostgreSQL. Please see our versioning policy for more information.
Security Issues
CVE-2024-7348: PostgreSQL relation replacement during pg_dump executes arbitrary SQL
CVSS v3.1 Base Score: 8.8
Supported, Vulnerable Versions: 12 - 16.
An attacker able to create and drop non-temporary objects could inject
SQL code that would be executed by a concurrent
pg_dump
session with the privileges of the role running pg_dump
(which is often a superuser). The attack involves replacing a sequence
or similar object with a view or foreign table that will execute
malicious code. To prevent this, introduce a new server parameter
restrict_nonsystem_relation_kind that can disable expansion
of non-builtin views as well as access to foreign tables, and teach
pg_dump to set it when available. Note that the attack is
prevented only if both pg_dump and the server it is dumping
from are new enough to have this fix.
The PostgreSQL project thanks Noah Misch for reporting this problem.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
This update fixes over 55 bugs that were reported in the last several months. The issues listed below affect PostgreSQL 16. Some of these issues may also affect other supported versions of PostgreSQL.
- Avoid incorrect results from “Merge Right Anti Join” plans, where if the inner relation is known to have unique join keys, the merge could misbehave when there are duplicated join keys in the outer relation.
-
Prevent infinite loop in
VACUUM. -
Fix partition pruning setup during
ALTER TABLE DETACH … PARTITION CONCURRENTLY. -
Fix behavior of stable functions that are used as an argument to a
CALLstatement. -
pg_sequence_last_value()now returnsNULLinstead of throwing an error when called on unlogged sequences on standby servers and on temporary sequences of other sessions. -
Fix parsing of ignored operators in
websearch_to_tsquery(). -
Correctly check updatability of view columns targeted by
INSERT … DEFAULT. -
Lock owned sequences during
ALTER TABLE … SET LOGGED|UNLOGGED. -
Don’t throw an error if a queued
AFTERtrigger no longer exists. -
Fix selection of an arbiter index for
INSERT … ON CONFLICTwhen the desired index has expressions or predicates, for example, through an updatable view. -
Refuse to modify a temporary table of another session with
ALTER TABLE. -
Fix handling of extended statistics on expressions in
CREATE TABLE … LIKE STATISTICS. -
Fix failure to recalculate sub-queries generated from
MIN()orMAX()aggregates. - Disallow underscores in positional parameters.
- Avoid crashing when a JIT-inlined backend function throws an error.
- Fix handling of subtransactions of prepared transactions when starting a hot standby server.
- Prevent incorrect initialization of logical replication slots.
- Fix memory leak in the logical replication WAL sender when publishing changes to a partitioned table whose partitions have row types that are physically different from the table.
- Disable creation of stateful TLS session tickets by OpenSSL.
-
Fix how
PL/pgSQL
handles integer ranges containing underscores (e.g.,
FOR i IN 1_001..1_002). - Fix incompatibility between PL/Perl and Perl 5.40.
- Several fixes related to recursive PL/Python functions and triggers.
-
Ensure that
pg_restore -lreports dependent table of contents entries correctly. -
pg_stat_statementsnow passes a query ID for utility (non-SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE) statements that appears in SQL-language functions. -
Fix for
postgres_fdwwhen mapping a foreign table to a nontrivial remote view. -
postgres_fdwno longer sends aFETCH FIRST WITH TIESclause to a remote server.
Updating
All PostgreSQL update releases are cumulative. As with other minor
releases, users are not required to dump and reload their database or
use pg_upgrade in order to apply this update release; you
may simply shutdown PostgreSQL and update its binaries.
Users who have skipped one or more update releases may need to run additional post-update steps; please see the release notes from earlier versions for details.
For more details, please see the release notes.
A Note on the PostgreSQL 17 Beta
This release marks the third beta release of PostgreSQL 17 and puts the community one step closer to general availability tentatively around the end of the third quarter.
In the spirit of the open source PostgreSQL community, we strongly encourage you to test the new features of PostgreSQL 17 on your systems to help us eliminate bugs or other issues that may exist. While we do not advise you to run PostgreSQL 17 Beta 3 in production environments, we encourage you to find ways to run your typical application workloads against this beta release.
Your testing and feedback will help the community ensure that the PostgreSQL 17 release upholds our standards of delivering a stable, reliable release of the world’s most advanced open source relational database. Please read more about our beta testing process and how you can contribute:
https://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta/
Upgrading to PostgreSQL 17 Beta 3
To upgrade to PostgreSQL 17 Beta 3 from an earlier version of
PostgreSQL, you will need to use a strategy similar to upgrading between
major versions of PostgreSQL (e.g. pg_upgrade or
pg_dump / pg_restore). For more information,
please visit the documentation section on
upgrading.
Changes Since Beta 2
Fixes and changes in PostgreSQL 17 Beta 3 include:
-
Rename the
standby_slot_namesparameter to tosynchronized_standby_slots. - Several SQL/JSON fixes.
-
Fix
pg_combinebackup –clone. -
Fix
pg_createsubscriberto work for database names that contain a space. -
pg_createsubscribernow drops pre-existing subscriptions when run on a target database. -
Improve efficiency in retrieving subscription information during
pg_upgrade. -
Fix TLS fallback behavior during
sslmode=preferto error when a server sends an error during the startup process. -
Document an error case with
pg_basebackupincremental backup on a standby server when it’s executed immediately after the previous backup. -
Fix issue where
pg_upgrade –transaction-sizecan cause the backend to use an order of magnitude more RAM.
Please see the release notes for a complete list of new and changed features, and PostgreSQL 17 open items for more details on fixes and changes.
Testing for Bugs & Compatibility
The stability of each PostgreSQL release greatly depends on you, the community, to test the upcoming version with your workloads and testing tools in order to find bugs and regressions before the general availability of PostgreSQL 17. As this is a Beta, minor changes to database behaviors, feature details, and APIs are still possible. Your feedback and testing will help determine the final tweaks on the new features, so please test in the near future. The quality of user testing helps determine when we can make a final release.
A list of open issues is publicly available in the PostgreSQL wiki. You can report bugs using this form on the PostgreSQL website:
https://www.postgresql.org/account/submitbug/
Links
- Download
- Release Notes
- Security
- Versioning Policy
- Beta Testing Information
- PostgreSQL 17 Beta Release Notes
- PostgreSQL 17 Open Issues
- Feature Matrix
- Submit a Bug
- Follow @postgresql on X/Twitter
- Donate
If you have corrections or suggestions for this release announcement, please send them to the pgsql-www@lists.postgresql.org public mailing list.
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-164-158-1413-1316-1220-and-17-beta-3-released-2910/
Aug. 7: Snap Sports Hosts Several Hockey Events at The Cube
date: 2024-08-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Snap Sports is excited to share two events this week that will have people hitting the rink to beat the heat
https://scvnews.com/aug-7-snap-sports-hosts-several-hockey-events-at-the-cube/
US insists Gaza cease-fire talks in final stage as region braces for wider war
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
US presidential campaigns clash in Midwest battleground state
date: 2024-08-07, from: VOA News USA
Ocean Water Warning for Aug. 7
date: 2024-08-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health cautions residents who are planning to visit the below Los Angeles County beaches to avoid swimming, surfing, and playing in ocean waters
https://scvnews.com/ocean-water-warning-for-aug-7/
Finally Family Homes Launches Oasis Resource Center
date: 2024-08-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Finally Family Homes, a Santa Clarita-based non-profit organization dedicated to supporting young adults in need, is delighted to invite the community to a special open house event celebrating the launch of their new Oasis Resource Center
https://scvnews.com/finally-family-homes-launches-oasis-resource-center/
Devices with insecure SSH services are everywhere, say infosec duo
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Serendipitous’ discovery may have you second guessing your appliances
Black Hat A funny thing happened to security researchers at attack surface management company runZero when they were digging into the xz backdoor earlier this year: They found a whole bunch of vulnerabilities stemming from poorly secured or implemented SSH services.…
Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara Earns Candid Platinum Seal of Transparency
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA — The Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara has received a 2024 Platinum Seal of Transparency from Candid (formerly
The post Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara Earns Candid Platinum Seal of Transparency appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Santa Barbara Triathlon Selects Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara as 2024 Beneficiary
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA – The Santa Barbara Triathlon is excited to announce that it selected the Cancer Foundation of Santa
The post Santa Barbara Triathlon Selects Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara as 2024 Beneficiary appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Sept. 18: Apply Now for the 2024 SCV Water Academy
date: 2024-08-07, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Enrollment is now open for the SCV Water Academy, an exclusive and complimentary educational experience exclusively for Santa Clarita Valley residents
https://scvnews.com/apply-now-for-the-2024-scv-water-academy/
Comienza la construcción de la restauración de Mission Creek en Oak Park
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BÁRBARA, CA – 7 de agosto 2024 La División de Arroyos de la Ciudad de Santa Bárbara se complace
The post Comienza la construcción de la restauración de Mission Creek en Oak Park appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Construction Begins on Mission Creek Restoration at Oak Park
date: 2024-08-07, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA – August 7, 2024 The City of Santa Barbara’s Creeks Division is excited to announce the start
The post Construction Begins on Mission Creek Restoration at Oak Park appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/07/construction-begins-on-mission-creek-restoration-at-oak-park/
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: 2024-08-08, 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. on weekdays.
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/
NASA mulls using SpaceX in 2025 to rescue Starliner pilots stuck on space station
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Officials may overhaul next year’s Dragon mission if Boeing’s 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_boeing/
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: 2024-08-08, 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.
How Technology Is Making Olympic Mountain Bikers Faster
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/how-technology-is-making-olympics-mountain-bikers-faster
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/
2024-08-06 Pocket Reform
date: 2024-08-07, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-08-06 Pocket Reform
I got my MNT Pocket Reform miniature laptop! I’m hoping that this will be my new travel laptop as the Purism laptop I got back in 2017 has a broken hinge. The two halves are attached to each other using two super strong hinges. The hinges are so strong, in fact, that one of them ripped its screws out of the plastic. So now the screen is held up by just one super strong hinge and don’t really want to open or close it all that often for fear of breaking it.
Here are my initial impressions of the new MNT Pocket Reform.
It is small, but chunky. It’s definitely not flat. It also isn’t heavy, so I’m happy. The small keyboard and the small trackball work.
I was unable to power it on for the longest time. I had two problems.
First, there’s a small standby power switch on the left hand side that you need to turn on. The manual suggests “using a pointed object such as a SIM card ejector.” Which I managed to find. And then what do you do? You use the SIM card ejector like you always do: stab it into the small hole. So I did that for a bit, wondering at the empty spaces I was a able to reach. What was I supposed to press? It was only when I started to really look into the small hole that I realized: there was actually something to be moved left and right within it!
Second, the manual says that to turn it on, “hold Hyper + Enter for more than 2 seconds.” I pressed those two keys and the OLED display lit up. There was the menu! There it said “Power On”. I picked it. Nothing happened. Then the OLED display showed a tiny “T” in the upper left corner. I did this again and again, exploring the small menu. The laptop wouldn’t power on no matter how often I selected the menu. That’s because I didn’t press Hyper + Enter for more than 2 seconds! Press those keys until the keyboard lights up with the pink backlights.
I setup my root passwords, created my user account, ran sudo apt
update and sudo apt upgrade and looked around at
things. After a few minutes I noticed that there is no indication of the
batteries charging. That made me nervous for a while as I kept seeing
that “1%” charge in the top right corner. It’s probably charging, I
thought. Then the laptop turned off. Oh! I guess it wasn’t charging
after all. What did I miss? Now that it is powered off, I see that the
load percentage starts climbing again.
This is what it says right now:
🔋 3.6 8%
🔋 3.7 Off
-1.07A
7.57V
Why is the second battery off? The manual doesn’t explain what On/Off on the second line means. It’s an indication of whether the computer is on or off! For the longest time I thought that the first battery had some charge and the second battery was “off”. Once I rebooted, it changed to “On”.
In any case, it seems that my problem is that when the laptop powers on
without being connected to a charger, it won’t charge if you do connect
it. Perhaps a new system image would fix it? I’m not sure. I downloaded
an image, unzipped it, wrote it to a microSD card, and maybe booted from
it, but nothing seemed to have changed. I had to provide a root password
and a first username and another password… and that’s it. Was I supposed
to run a command? I don’t know. Did the apt update && apt
upgrade fix the problem? I don’t know.
Anyway, when the laptop suddenly lost power (see above) I waited for it to recharge for a bit and rebooted. It looked like this had corrupted the disk, somehow. There are plenty of recovery messages and percentages ending with an error because something cannot be written to the read-only file system.
The output ends with the following, in an extremely tiny font:
...
mount: mounting /dev/mmcblk2p2 on /root failed: Structure needs cleaning
Failed to mount /dev/mmcblk2p2 as root file system
And now I am dropped in the initramfs. I try figure what
I’m supposed to do. I search for some keywords online but don’t
understand what I’m seeing. Finally, I try to leave with
exit, Ctrl+D and whatever else I can think off. I reboot.
This time there are fewer messages about the filesystem and then I’m
back at the login prompt. It fixed itself.
Phew!
I’m back.
My take-away is this: usability and user interface issues both large and small remain a challenge in computers.
2024-08-07. Before the login prompt is shown, there is
a long and helpful introduction that flashes by. At the login prompt,
you can specify a different command to run instead of starting the
window manager. I did that, specifying /usr/bin/fish (I
have installed fish and prefer it over the default shell,
bash). This allows you to read the message. I guess it’s
the /etc/reform-help message.
Specifically, I learned about all the commands starting with
reform-. Nice! In the manual these tools are mentioned on
page 50.
When I run sudo reform-check, it tells me that “eMMC does
not contain the latest uboot” and that I can run
reform-flash-uboot emmc to fix it. Do I dare? The following
two messages are shown and they are not identical. That’s a bit strange.
W: /boot/flash.bin is not the latest uboot
W: You can update it to the latest version by running as root:
reform-flash-uboot
W: eMMC does not contain latest uboot
W: You can update it to the latest version by running as root:
reform-flash-uboot emmc
I guess I’ll run the first command and then reform-check
again.
In the meantime I saw that I don’t have the
pocket-reform-handbook installed but that I do have the
reform-handbook. Heh. (The MNT Reform is the bigger
laptop.)
Anyway, when I run reform-flash-uboot without arguments, I
get an error.
/usr/sbin/reform-flash-uboot: 59: MMC_BOOT: parameter not set
I cannot decide whether this is a typo or not. It looks like one?
alex@subterraneobombus ~> sudo nl /usr/sbin/reform-flash-uboot|grep MMC_BOOT
27 if [ "$EMMC_BOOT" = false ]; then
49 if [ "$EMMC_BOOT" = true ] && [ "$SD_BOOT" = true ]; then
53 elif [ "$MMC_BOOT" = true ]; then
60 if [ "$EMMC_BOOT" = true ] && [ "$SD_BOOT" = true ]; then
71 elif [ "$MMC_BOOT" = true ]; then
alex@subterraneobombus ~> grep MMC_BOOT "/usr/share/reform-tools/machines/MNT Pocket Reform with
i.MX8MP Module.conf"
EMMC_BOOT=true
Do I really want to do this? Luckily, I mentioned this issue on IRC, and @josch pointed me to this post by @andypiper: Updating uboot?. This is the important bit:
Do not flash u-boot to emmc on the pocket reform. There is a bug in the u-boot offset which will make your pocket unbootable if you fix the other bug in reform-flash-uboot. – josch on IRC
Oof! Disaster narrowly avoided. And now I understand what Andy Piper means when he writes:
I also managed to temporarily brick the machine by corrupting the uboot in flash, and needed to rig it up with Dupont wires on headers and access the machine from another via USB to get back to where I wanted to be. – MNT Pocket Reform: first impressions
Andy’s post had a screenshot showing the fediverse client Tuba which is available on Debian testing. Nice! I’ll give it a try.
Tuba requires a “login” keyring so I had to install
seahorse also known as “Passwords and Keys”.
Back to small things to watch out for. When I run apt
update it ends with a notice saying: “Missing Signed-By in the
sources.list(5) entry for
https://mnt.re/reform-debian-repo”
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-08-06-pocket-reform
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.
Yes, the “ope!” explainer that America needs right now. As a native…
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045084-yes-the-ope-explainer-tha
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/
The Undisguised Extremism of the Republican Party
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/the-undisguised-extremism-of-the-republican-party
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: 2024-08-08, 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/
Countering Fentanyl with Diplomacy
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: RAND blog
The fentanyl epidemic in the United States parallels China’s historical opium crisis, which was exacerbated by foreign powers and led to widespread societal damage. Understanding China’s past and its current role in fentanyl production could offer valuable insights for combating the ongoing U.S. crisis.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/08/countering-fentanyl-with-diplomacy.html
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
Utah is basically burning books now. “State has ordered books by 13…
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045082-utah-is-basically-burning
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/
Why the word “Taiwan” is banned at the Olympics. “Taiwan is one…
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045081-why-the-word-taiwan-is
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
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Timothy Snyder: “If JD Vance really were a normal midwestern guy he’d be very respectful of someone like Tim Walz.”
http://scripting.com/2024/08/07.html#a160344
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
The World’s First Medieval Electronic Instrument
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/the-worlds-first-medieval-electronic-instrument
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.
The theme for the Cooper Hewitt’s upcoming Design Triennial (in collaboration with…
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045079-the-theme-for-the-cooper
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
55 Things to Know About Tim Walz
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/55-things-to-know-about-tim-walz
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.
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
When
I see a reference to an evil NYT piece, I RT it with a simple message:
Ignore the NY Times. It’s relaxing. You don’t have to do something about
it, in fact it says the opposite. Do nothing. It works on all social
nets, and for any news org that’s promoting lies, ignoring relevant
facts, against the interest of the US. Find new ways to get informed.
And if you can’t find them, start one. And we can find each other.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/07.html#a140432
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.
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The Bruce Springsteen mention at last night’s rally was no accident. Boomers are now of the age where we vote in great numbers. So our feeling like there’s something here for us might make the difference in one or more of the swing states.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/07.html#a140039
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 Scripting News (date: 2024-08-07, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Last night’s Democratic rally was wonderful. I was laughing and sobbing all the way through it. What an emotional release. We needed and deserved this. Beyond hope, we’re finally going to fight. I hope President Kamala is really up to it, because we have a pretty substantial cleanup job to do here.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/07.html#a134011
@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.
Paradise Jost
date: 2024-08-07, updated: 2024-08-07, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/08/07/paradise-jost/
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
the state and the people
date: 2024-08-07, from: Ayjay blog
A few years ago I published an essay called “Miss Marple and the Problem of Modern Identity,” in which I described the rise of certain technologies by which people have become “legible” to the state. At that point I had not read a classic, though a somewhat controversial classic, of history, A. J. P. Taylor’s […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/the-state-and-the-people/
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: 2024-08-08, 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: 2024-08-08, 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: 2024-08-08, 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: 2024-08-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And reveals more and more about 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/