News gathered 2024-08-10
(date: 2024-08-10 17:59:49)
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-11, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Spotify created then killed the podcast boom in Latin America. #stolenvalor
https://restofworld.org/2024/spotify-podcast-crash-latin-america/
Vehicle fire quickly extinguished
date: 2024-08-11, from: The Signal
Personnel with the Los Angeles County Fire Department quickly extinguished a vehicle fire that occurred on the southbound lanes of Interstate 5 and State Route 14 interchange on Saturday afternoon. […]
The post Vehicle fire quickly extinguished appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/vehicle-fire-quickly-extinguished-2/
Photos: Monthly Placerita Canyon Nature Center bird walk
date: 2024-08-10, from: The Signal
Every first and second Saturday morning of the month, local bird enthusiasts join docent naturalists on a two-hour trek through the Placerita Canyon Nature Center, led by Rosemarie Regis and […]
The post Photos: Monthly Placerita Canyon Nature Center bird walk appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/photos-monthly-placerita-canyon-nature-center-bird-walk/
Photos: Paris Olympics Day 15 highlights
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
PARIS (AP) — The United States collected gold in men’s basketball and women’s soccer and earned three more golds in a huge night at the track at the Paris Olympics. Stephen Curry scored 24 points to lead Team USA over France 98-87 to win its fifth straight gold medal and 17th overall. The U.S. women’s […]
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/10/photos-paris-olympics-day-15-highlights/
Rooker hits 29th HR, Bido and 3 relievers combine on 2-hitter as A’s blank Blue Jays 1-0
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Mason Miller strikes out the side in the ninth to finish off Oakland’s ninth shutout of the season.
Photos: The Hodads
date: 2024-08-10, from: The Signal
The Hodads returned to Santa Clarita to bring the beach to the valley at Valencia Marketplace’s Summer Concerts on Friday, singing classics for residents of all ages to enjoy.
The post Photos: The Hodads appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/photos-the-hodads/
Stapler: I remade a 32 year old classic Macintosh app
date: 2024-08-10, from: Tilde.news
https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/08/10/stapler-i-remade-a-32-year-old-classic-macintosh-app/
Steph Curry’s late barrage seals another Olympic men’s basketball title as US beats France
date: 2024-08-10, from: VOA News USA
It was the fifth consecutive gold medal for the U.S.
Let No Lie Be Left Untold
date: 2024-08-10, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Kellyanne Conway (former Senior Counselor to Donald Trump) whimpered, “She (Kamala Harris) does not speak well, she does not work hard, she should not be the standard bearer for the (Democratic) party.”
The post Let No Lie Be Left Untold appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/10/let-no-lie-be-left-untold/
Taking cues from 2014 team, SF Giants appear to be hitting stride at right time
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Behind 7 strong innings from Logan Webb, the Giants clinched their fifth series win in a row and won for the 12th time in their past 15 games.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos.
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-project-2025-secret-training-videos-trump-election
Caltrain rolls out first electric train for trip from San Francisco to Millbrae
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Limited public service for electric trains starts Sunday.
The Soul of Maintaining a New Machine - First Draft
date: 2024-08-10, from: Tilde.news
Steph Curry leads Team USA to gold medal win over France
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Steph Curry is a gold medalist, and head coach Steve Kerr helped lead Team USA to the top of the podium.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/10/usa-france-olympics-france-gold-medal-olympics/
Reticent of spotlight, Madison Bumgarner can’t avoid being center of attention at SF Giants’ World Series reunion
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Bumgarner kept his public comments brief and avoided reporters but made a brief appearance on the Giants’ telecast.
Ferguson officer critically injured at protest on anniversary of Michael Brown’s death
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
The St. Louis Fire Department placed a member of the department on leave after he made a social media post that the department described as insensitive.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/10/ferguson-officer-injured-michael-brown-protest/
Navigating School Traffic Safely
date: 2024-08-10, from: City of Santa Clarita
By City Manager Ken Striplin As the new school year approaches, the streets around our schools will once again be bustling with activity. With over 50 elementary, junior high and high schools in our community, tens of thousands of students are dropped off and picked up in the surrounding neighborhoods every day. Ensuring the safety […]
The post Navigating School Traffic Safely appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/08/10/navigating-school-traffic-safely/
San Jose Jazz Summer Fest energy lights up downtown
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
“This is really the best weekend of the year in San Jose, where we come together as a community,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said of the big event.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/10/san-jose-jazz-summer-fest-energy-lights-up-downtown/
Romanian gymnast bumped to 3rd in floor exercise. Will Jordan Chiles have to forfeit medal?
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
The ruling adds another layer to what has been a difficult few days for all three athletes.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/10/romanian-gymnast-jordan-chiles-bronze-floor-exercise/
49ers pregame: Where things stand with Trent Williams, Brandon Aiyuk
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Left tackle Trent Williams’ contract holdout got extra costly Saturday, even though an eventual pay raise will cushion the NFL-imposed fines he’s accruing.
DEF CON Badge Maker Pulled Off Stage Amid Claims of Non-Payment and Failed Work
date: 2024-08-10, from: 404 Media Group
Entropic Engineering, the small company that helped manufacture this year’s DEF CON badge, claims the conference organizers failed to pay for completed work. DEF CON says the company went well over budget.
US downs Brazil, 1-0, to win gold medal in women’s soccer
date: 2024-08-10, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-downs-brazil-1-0-to-win-gold-medal-in-women-s-soccer/7737636.html
How to ingeniously and wirelessly inject malware onto someone’s nearby Windows PC via Google’s Quick Share
date: 2024-08-10, updated: 2024-08-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Or rather could, until the web giant was tipped off
DEF CON Ten now-fixed bugs in Google’s Quick Share for Windows could have been exploited to wirelessly write new files onto victims’ PCs without their approval, and ultimately execute code remotely on those victims’ machines by chaining together a handful of other vulnerabilities.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/10/google_quick_share_rce/
SanDisk introduces the first 8TB SD and 4TB microSD cards
date: 2024-08-10, from: Liliputing
Earlier this year Western Digital announced plans to release 4TB SD cards in 2025. Now the company is showing off its first 4TB microSD cards, and promising that full-sized SD cards with up to 8TB of storage are also on the way. WD announced both of upcoming products at the Future Memory Storage 2024 conference […]
The post SanDisk introduces the first 8TB SD and 4TB microSD cards appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/sandisk-introduces-the-first-8tb-sd-and-4tb-microsd-cards/
We don’t need a boss, we need a process
date: 2024-08-10, updated: 2024-08-10, from: Robin Rendle Essays
https://robinrendle.com/notes/we-dont-need-a-boss-we-need-a-process/
How LLMs Guide Us to a Happy Path for Configuration and Coding
date: 2024-08-10, from: John Udell blog
“Some argue that by aggregating knowledge drawn from human experience, LLMs aren’t sources of creativity, as the moniker “generative” implies, but rather purveyors of mediocrity. Yes and no. There really are very few genuinely novel ideas and methods, and I don’t expect LLMs to produce them. Most creative acts, though, entail novel recombinations of known … Continue reading How LLMs Guide Us to a Happy Path for Configuration and Coding
https://blog.jonudell.net/2024/08/10/how-llms-guide-us-to-a-happy-path-for-configuration-and-coding/
Frostapalooza Visualizations
date: 2024-08-10, from: Chris Coyier blog
A week from today is Frostapalooza, Brad’s big show he’s throwing incorporating a ton of friends and family. In addition to the 40 musicians rotating on stage, now there will be visual artists showing off their work as well. Brad writes: Jeff Robbins makes some really amazing music software called Visibox that helps bands easily create, manage, and […]
https://chriscoyier.net/2024/08/10/frostapalooza-visualizations/
Trust the vibes
date: 2024-08-10, updated: 2024-08-10, from: Robin Rendle Essays
https://robinrendle.com/notes/trust-the-vibes/
@Robert’s feed at BlueSky (date: 2024-08-10, from: Robert’s feed at BlueSky)
Alex Schroeder’s idea about an off-line blog reader using NNTP is intriguing. https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-08-10-offline-reader
https://bsky.app/profile/rsdoiel.bsky.social/post/3kzewjd47xc25
2024-08-10 An offline reader using NNCP
date: 2024-08-10, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-08-10 An offline reader using NNCP
The NNCP manual suggests
using rss2email to read feeds offline, via NNCP. And why
not! Email is great. Email via NNCP works.
Yesterday, however, I wondered about a program that would use NNCP directly to pull new (Markdown) files. Such a “site” wouldn’t have to be on the web. It wouldn’t need a feed. It would act like a blog because new files are requested as they are published. They are published by being linked to from some sort of index. In my case, for example, index.md would be the “blog view” of the site (you’d only get new pages as they are published) and changes.md would be the “wiki view” of the site (you’d get updates if the page changes). Request this file on a regular bases, then request every file linked to from those pages (unless you already have a copy).
I’ve scripted this all using a bit of Perl. Sadly, installation is not
trivial because there’s no Perl module to turn HJSON into JSON, so I’m
calling the hjson-cli programm which you have to install,
too. Sorry!
To install the Perl modules, use CPAN:
cpan JSON
cpan CommonMark
To install hjson-cli if you have Go installed:
go install github.com/hjson/hjson-go/v4/hjson-cli@latest
Ideally, I’d write a JSON::HJSON module, package it all for
CPAN, and then you’d install it using cpan NNCP::Pull or
something like that.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-08-10-offline-reader
Using AppleTalk with QEMU 9 on Raspberry Pi 5
date: 2024-08-10, from: Biosrhythm blog
I recently built QEMU from scratch on the Raspberry Pi 5 and wanted to document my steps. My goal was to run two different Mac emulations: a 68k and PPC Mac, specifically with AppleTalk networking functioning over Ethernet. Assumptions: Raspberry Pi 5 with Raspbian Bookworm 64-bit using Ethernet interface eth0. This part builds on the […]
https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2837
Review: San Jose native has triumphant homecoming at Outside Lands
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Rising EDM star Gryffin shines bright on Day 1 of the three-day festival, which also featured The Killers, “Mean Girls” star Renee Rapp and more.
Record-breaking fires scorch more than 1.4 million acres in Oregon
date: 2024-08-10, from: VOA News USA
PORTLAND, Oregon — Wildfires in Oregon have burned more acres of land in 2024 than in any year since reliable records began, authorities said Friday, with the mid-August peak of fire season still on the horizon.
Blazes have scorched more than 5,700 square kilometers (2,200 square miles), Northwest Interagency Coordination Center spokesperson Carol Connolly said. That’s more than any other year since 1992, when reliable records began to be kept, she said. It surpasses the previous record, set in 2020.
Connolly said 71 large fires have burned most of the land this year. Large fires are defined as those that consume more than 40 hectares (nearly 100 acres) of timber or more than 120 hectares (almost 300 acres) of grass or brush.
Thirty-two homes in the state have been lost to the fires, she said, which have been fueled by high temperatures, dry weather and low humidity.
They have prompted evacuation notices across the state and largely torched rural and mountain areas, although some have also sparked closer to the Portland metro area.
Level 3 “go now” evacuation notices were in place Friday for the small town of Cherry Grove, about 56 kilometers (35 miles) west of Portland, as a fire burned in a nearby forest. David Huey, a deputy with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said most residents evacuated after officers went door to door encouraging them to leave.
Airplanes and helicopters were scooping water from nearby Henry Hagg Lake to drop on the fire, said Gert Zoutendijk, spokesperson for the Gaston Rural Fire District. The lake was set to be closed to the public throughout the weekend.
The fire was roughly 1.3 square kilometers (half a square mile) with zero containment as of Friday afternoon, although crews have made progress on lining the fire, Zoutendijk said.
Another fire, near the Portland suburb of Oregon City, led authorities to temporarily close part of a state highway in the morning and issue “go now” evacuation orders along part of the route. By midafternoon, authorities downgraded the evacuation and reopened the highway.
The largest blaze is the Durkee Fire in eastern Oregon, which has scorched more than 1,200 square kilometers (459 square miles) but was at least 95% contained as of Friday, according to authorities. At one point it was the biggest fire in the country.
California’s Park Fire has since become the largest, burning more than 1,710 square kilometers (660 square miles) and destroying more than 600 structures. A man was arrested and accused of starting the fire by pushing a burning car into a gully in a wilderness park outside the Sacramento Valley city of Chico.
Also in California, the Crozier Fire in El Dorado County has burned about 7.7 square kilometers (3 square miles) and was 5% contained as of Friday evening, according to Cal Fire. The fire is burning in steep and rugged terrain and threatens 4,017 structures. The weather is expected to remain hot and dry through the weekend.
Why Walz was the perfect choice
date: 2024-08-10, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
Lakoff
talks about the Nurturing Mother and the Strict Father as models for
Democrats and Republicans respectively, and how the Dems never got this,
and never campaigned accordingly. Now they’re doing it. Owning the
nuturing mother mode, but also the Protective Father, tough and angry
when necessary, but a fun dad, a sweetheart. Biden was that, but we
caught him too late in life for that to really flourish, hence the low
approval ratings.
I think we can afford now to ignore the NY Times et al. We don’t just want freedom, we are free, now. That’s what we’re feeling. Now we’re an army and we’re ready to march. We’re ready to fight and our weapons are our feet, our voices and our votes. This is why it’s working.
At first I didn’t like White Dudes for Harris but now I get it. I saw a guy who’d normally I’d think of as a MAGA, in the crowd behind Kamala yesterday while she spoke, I thought yeah us old white dudes need permission to have sweet hearts. It’s time for us to be happy too. Why the f not.
PS: Bush had the highest approval in history after 9/11. 90%.
PPS: In case it’s not obvious, there are some old white dudes who overwhelmingly support Trump who might respond to the Protective Father position.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/10/155808.html?title=whyWalzWasThePerfectChoice
USA Women’s Water Polo Stunned by Netherlands 11-10 in Bronze Medal Match
date: 2024-08-10, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Ryann Neushul shined with two goals off the bench in the USA’s 11-10 loss to Netherlands.
The post USA Women’s Water Polo Stunned by Netherlands 11-10 in Bronze Medal Match appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Police raided Livermore smoke shop for allegedly selling flavored tobacco and ‘magic’ mushrooms
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Police say the hundreds of products seized included nicotine liquid for vaporizer pens, cigar wraps, as well as chocolate bars and gummies containing psilocybin.
Saving SSH passphrases on KDE
date: 2024-08-10, from: Stavros Stuff
I now notice I haven’t written anything in almost a year, which nobody else seems to have noticed, so I guess it’s just as well. I have, though, broken my unintentional hiatus to post something that reminds me why I hate technology so much: All UX is bad.
I’ve been a Linux user for more than a decade now, but the latest Ubu
https://www.stavros.io/posts/saving-ssh-passphrases-on-kde/
An open letter to Fei-Fei Li concerning California’s proposed AI regulation, SB-1047
date: 2024-08-10, from: Gary Marcus blog
Dear DrFeiFei,
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-fei-fei-li-concerning
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-10, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
From Andreas Kling, creator of SerenityOS and the new Ladybrowser:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112938178750826167
Man fatally shot while driving in Oakland
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Oakland police are investigating the city’s 56th homicide of the year, a man fatally shot while driving early Saturday.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/10/man-fatally-shot-while-driving-in-oakland-2/
Richmond’s regulating street vending, but brick-and-mortar merchants aren’t convinced they’re being heard
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Without adequate enforcement, shop owners worry the new program won’t lead to change.
July breaks record for California’s hottest month ever
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
The sweltering month “is, unfortunately, very consistent with expectations that we’re going to see hotter and hotter summers,” one expert said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/10/july-breaks-record-for-californias-hottest-month-ever/
Youth engagement reaches new heights this election cycle
date: 2024-08-10, from: VOA News USA
Will the youth vote send Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to the White House? Organizers on both sides have seen a swell of voter enthusiasm and support, particularly among young people. But the younger demographic has had a historically low turnout at the polls. VOA’s Tina Trinh explores whether that could change come November.
https://www.voanews.com/a/youth-engagement-reaches-new-heights-this-election-cycle/7737401.html
2024-08-06 Pocket Reform
date: 2024-08-10, 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”. See
keyring
issues for more.
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”
2024-08-10. After a recent upgrade, the battery indicator stopped working. It just kept on showing 100%. The temporary fix, based on the discussion in the forum:
-
sudo apt install upower -
edit
~/.config/waybar/configand replace"battery"with"upower"on line 7 - restart the window manager
You don’t need to configure waybar-upower(5) because the
defaults are good. I didn’t delete the config for
waybar-battery(5) because as far as I can tell, the idea is
to go back to it.
While we’re looking at the window manager, this is my new background image:
Note that when you view the image in another tab, it’ll be a negative: purple grass instead of green grass. The original is what I used before coming up with the image above.
You know what I’ve been putting off? Firefox setup. 😭
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-08-06-pocket-reform
How table tennis is helping Parkinson’s, brain tumor patients take back control
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
The U.S. national team trains at 888 Table Tennis in Burlingame, but top-tier training wasn’t the only purpose of the facility, which opened in 2020. The owner’s son is one of many people with brain tumors and other neurological impairments who have found ping pong helps their condition.
YOU LOVE TO SEE IT: StubHub Gets A Ticket To Court
date: 2024-08-10, from: The Lever News
Plus, Google takes a hit, an electric utility compensates wildfire victims, homeowners get thousands to use less energy, and Ohio touches grass.
https://www.levernews.com/you-love-to-see-it-stubhub-gets-a-ticket-to-court/
Blight woes mount in San Jose — where are the biggest offenders?
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Blighted buildings, junk-packed empty lots and decaying properties have alarmed a growing number of people in San Jose.
Opinion: BART’s manufactured ‘fiscal crisis’ affects entire Bay Area
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Member of district’s own board says transit agency prefers to play victim rather than addressing its money problems.
‘It’s right back in my face again’: Relatives of murder victims decry death penalty resentencings
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
“It’s not fair to any family who has had to sit through a trial just to re-live those memories all over again.”
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Donald Trump isn't fun anymore: How Kamala Harris stole the show — and extinguished his flame.
Opinion: Delta tunnel project will protect California’s vital water supply
date: 2024-08-10, from: San Jose Mercury News
Modern, reliable water infrastructure is essential to our health, homes and livelihoods as well as the state’s economy.
The ‘Unsettling,’ Nearly Normalized Surveillance Tech Monitoring the U.S.-Mexico Border
date: 2024-08-10, from: The Markup blog
“At any given moment, there is something or someone watching you,” sociologist Francisco Lara-García tells The Markup
Webmentions and lobster rolls
date: 2024-08-10, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
Webmentions have been broken on this blog for a little while. I’m on vacation this week, so I’m hoping to get them fixed up — as well as a few other fixes here and there.
Mostly, though, I have to admit that I’ll be taking the little one to the beach, cooking delicious food, and finding my first lobster roll of the season. I’m looking forward to it.
https://werd.io/2024/webmentions-and-lobster-rolls
Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos
date: 2024-08-10, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Andy Kroll at ProPublica and Nick Surgey at Documented]
“Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda for a right-wing presidential administration, has lost its director and faced scathing criticism from both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump. But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy on behalf of a future Trump administration remains on track.”
It’s not hyperbole to look at these as training videos to enact a heavily right-wing America: one that is subject to Christian nationalist ideas and seeks to squash dissent. They discuss how to eliminate climate change protections and erase decades of progress on race and gender.
At any rate, it’s a fascinating view on a movement that, regardless of your political views, clearly seeks to re-make America. In that sense they’re a little like something from a Philip K Dick novel - or, dare I say it, the Handmaid’s Tale.
<p>[<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-project-2025-secret-training-videos-trump-election">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/inside-project-2025s-secret-training-videos
Cybercrime Convention: Überwachungsabkommen mit Missbrauchsgarantie
date: 2024-08-10, updated: 2024-08-10, from: Chaos Computer Club Updates
Die geplante Cybercrime Convention bei den Vereinten Nationen entpuppt sich als Überwachungsabkommen, das Menschenrechte mit Füßen tritt und weltweit IT-Sicherheitsfachleute und Journalisten gefährdet. Dieses Abkommen darf Europa nicht ratifizieren.
https://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2024/stopp-cybercrime-convention
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki dies, aged 56.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Silicon Valley May Be Losing Its Cultural Connection With Burning Man.
2024-08-09 Grenzland Zine
date: 2024-08-10, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-08-09 Grenzland Zine
Es ist wieder soweit, auf dem Grenzland Discord Server wird an einem Zine gewerkelt! Vorbestellungen nimmt grenzland@betola.de 📧 bzw. @wandererbill 🐘 entgegen.
Um zu sehen, was in den A5 Heften so drinnen ist, kann man sich die alten Ausgaben als PDF anschauen.
Wahrscheinlicher ist allerdings, dass ein Zine aus Papier ein interessanteres, langfristigeres Artefakt unserer Zeit und unserer Spielkultur ist.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-08-09-grenzland
@Jessica Smith’s blog (date: 2024-08-10, from: Jessica Smith’s blog)
On the news tonight there was an item on a town in Thailand where there’s been a massive increase in the monkey population and these monkeys have got very assertive stealing food, seizing control of the local swimming pool, etc.. The best part of the item was when they said police had responded by rounding monkeys up en masse and confining them in some dedicated facility… so 30 of the monkeys swiftly staged a breakout, and went and stormed police headquarters in retaliation! I told Viv that those Canadian polar bears should take some notes…
https://www.jayeless.net/2024/08/monkeys-in-thailand.html
The Time Ranger | What Foul Evil Lurks in Newhall Pool?
date: 2024-08-10, from: The Signal
Top of the August 2024 morn to you, trail riders and dear friends of local history. We’ve a most interesting trek ahead, what with some eye-wateringly dumb crooks and an […]
The post The Time Ranger | What Foul Evil Lurks in Newhall Pool? appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/the-time-ranger-what-foul-evil-lurks-in-newhall-pool/
Robert Lamoureux | How to determine which improvements help resale most
date: 2024-08-10, from: The Signal
Question: Hello Robert, I love your article in The Signal. Thank you so much for contributing your time and effort to producing the article each week. My wife and I […]
The post Robert Lamoureux | How to determine which improvements help resale most appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/robert-lamoureux-how-to-determine-which-improvements-help-resale-most/
Today in SCV History (Aug. 10)
date: 2024-08-10, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1769 – Fr. Juan Crespi, en route to San Francisco Bay with the Portolá expedition, names the Santa Clara River Valley (SCV) for St. Clare [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-aug-10/
Bangladesh not the first student uprising to help bring about radical change
date: 2024-08-10, from: VOA News USA
BANGKOK — In Bangladesh, weeks of protests against a quota system for government jobs turned into a broad uprising that forced the prime minister to flee the country and resign.
The demonstrations began peacefully last month and were primarily led by students frustrated with the system that they said favored those with connections to the ruling party.
But it turned violent on July 15 as student protesters clashed with security officials and pro-government activists. Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled this week after the unrest during which nearly 300 people died, including both students and police officers.
Students or other young people have frequently played pivotal roles in popular uprisings that have brought down governments or forced them to change policies. Here are some other major cases:
Gota Go Gama protests in Sri Lanka
Like in Bangladesh, widespread protests in Sri Lanka in 2022 were able to bring down a government, and youth played a key role.
Scattered demonstrations turned into months-long protests starting in March 2022 as an economic crisis worsened in the Indian Ocean island nation, leading to a shortage of fuel, cooking gas and other essentials as well as an extended power outage.
In April, protesters primarily led by university students and other young people occupied an esplanade adjoining President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s office in the capital Colombo, demanding he and his government resign.
More people joined daily, setting up a tent camp dubbed “Gota Go Gama,” or “Gota Go Village,” a play on Gotabaya’s nickname “Gota.”
The protest site was peaceful, with organizers offering free food, water, toilets and even medical care for people. Camp leaders, many of whom were university students, held daily media briefings and made regular speeches, while the crowd was entertained by bands and plays.
The government reacted by imposing a curfew, declaring a state of emergency, allowing the military to arrest civilians and restricting access to social media, but were unable to stop the protest.
Under pressure, many ministers resigned but President Rajapaksa and his older brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa remained.
In May, Rajapaksa supporters attacked the protest camp, drawing widespread condemnation from across the country and forcing Prime Minister Rajapaksa to resign.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa clung to power until July, when protesters stormed his official residence, forcing him to flee the country. After taking temporary refuge in the Maldives, Rajapaksa later resigned.
His successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, in one of his first moves as new president ousted protesters from occupied government buildings and shut down their camp, dismantling their tents in the middle of the night.
The situation has since calmed, and Wickremesinghe has been able to address the shortages of food, fuel and medicine and restore power.
Complaints continue, however, about the rise in taxes and electric bills that are part of the new government’s efforts to meet International Monetary Fund loan conditions. Former Prime Minister Rajapaksa’s son Namal Rajapaksa will be running in the presidential elections this September.
Athens Polytechnic uprising in Greece
In November 1973, students at Athens Polytechnic university rose up against the military junta that ruled Greece with an iron fist for more than six years.
Military officers seized power in a 1967 coup, establishing a dictatorship marked by the arrest, exile and torture of its political opponents.
The regime’s brutality and hardline rule gave rise to a growing opposition, particularly among students, culminating in the November uprising.
The protest began peacefully on November 14, with students staging a strike at the Athens Polytechnic university and occupying the campus. By the next day, thousands from around Athens had joined in to support the students and the demonstrations grew, as did calls to end the dictatorship.
On November 17, the military crushed the revolt when a tank smashed through the university’s gates in the early hours of the day, killing several students. The number of fatalities is still disputed, but at the time the regime had announced 15 dead.
Days after the uprising, another military officer staged a coup and implemented an even harsher regime. It was short lived however, after a series of events led to a return to democracy in Greece, its birthplace, in 1974.
A prosecutor’s report issued after the return to civilian government, estimated fatalities at 34, but mentioned only 18 names. There were more than 1,100 injured.
Today, annual marches in Athens to commemorate the pro-democracy student uprising still attract thousands of people.
Kent State demonstrations in the United States
American students had long been protesting the U.S. involvement in Vietnam when President Richard Nixon authorized attacks on neutral Cambodia in April 1970, expanding the conflict in an attempt to interrupt enemy supply lines.
On May 4, hundreds of students at Ohio’s Kent State University gathered to protest the bombing of Cambodia, and authorities called in the Ohio National Guard to disperse the crowd.
After failing to break up the protest with teargas, the National Guard advanced and some opened fire on the crowd, killing four students and wounding nine others.
The confrontation, sometimes referred to as the May 4 massacre, was a defining moment for a nation sharply divided over the protracted conflict, in which more than 58,000 Americans died.
It sparked a strike of 4 million students across the U.S., temporarily closing some 900 colleges and universities. The events also played a pivotal role, historians argue, in turning public opinion against the conflict in Southeast Asia.
Soweto Uprising in South Africa
In the decades-long struggle against white minority rule in South Africa, a pivotal moment came in 1976 in the Soweto area of Johannesburg.
In a series of demonstrations starting June 16, Black students from multiple schools took to the streets to protest against being forced to study in Afrikaans, the Dutch-based language of the white rulers who designed the system of racial oppression known as apartheid.
The protests spread to other areas in South Africa, becoming a flashpoint for anger at a system that denied adequate education, the right to vote and other basic rights to the country’s Black majority.
Hundreds are estimated to have died in the government crackdown that followed.
The bloodshed was epitomized by a photograph of a dying student, Hector Pieterson. The image of his limp body being carried by another teenager was seen around the world and galvanized international efforts to end South Africa’s racial segregation, though apartheid would linger for nearly two more decades.
South Africa achieved democracy with majority rule elections in 1994 and today June 16 is a national holiday.
Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia
As the Communist governments of Eastern Europe teetered in 1989, widespread demonstrations broke out in Czechoslovakia after riot police suppressed a student protest in Prague on November 17.
On November 20 as the anti-Communist protests grew, the students being joined by scores of others and some 500,000 took to the streets of Prague.
Dubbed the “Velvet Revolution” for its non-violent nature, the protests led to the resignation of the Communist Party’s leadership on November 28.
By December 10, Czechoslovakia had a new government and on December 29, Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright who had spent several years in prison, was elected the country’s first democratic president in a half century by a parliament still dominated by communist hard-liners.
In 1992, Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
How Maui’s 151-year-old banyan tree is coming back to life after fire
date: 2024-08-10, from: VOA News USA
LAHAINA, Hawaii — When a deadly wildfire tore through Lahaina on Maui last August, the wall of flames scorched the 151-year-old banyan tree along the historic town’s Front Street. But the sprawling tree survived the blaze, and thanks to the efforts of arborists and dedicated volunteers, parts of it are growing back — and even thriving.
One year after the fire, here’s what to know about the banyan tree and the efforts to restore it.
Why is Lahaina’s banyan tree significant?
The banyan tree is the oldest living one on Maui but is not a species indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands. India shipped the tree as a gift to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the first Protestant missionaries to live in Lahaina. It was planted in 1873, a quarter century before the Hawaiian Islands became a U.S. territory and seven decades after King Kamehameha declared Lahaina the capital of his kingdom.
The tree is widely beloved and fondly remembered by millions of tourists who have visited Maui over the years. But for many others it is a symbol of colonial rule that has dispossessed Native Hawaiians of their land and suppressed their language and culture.
For generations, the banyan tree served as a gathering place along Lahaina’s waterfront. By many accounts, it was the heart of the oceanside community — towering more than 18 meters (60 feet) high and anchored by multiple trunks that span nearly an acre.
The enormous tree has leafy branches that unfurl majestically and offer shade from the sun. Aerial roots dangle from its boughs and eventually latch onto the soil to become new trunks. Branches splay out widely and have become roosting places for choirs of birds.
What happened to it during the fire?
The 2023 fire charred the tree and blackened many of its leaves. But it wasn’t the flames so much as the intense heat that dried out much of the tree, according to Duane Sparkman, chair of the Maui County Arborist Committee. As a result of this loss of moisture, about half of the tree’s branches died, he said.
“Once that section of the tree desiccated, there was no coming back,” he said.
But other parts of the tree are now growing back healthy.
How was it saved?
Those working to restore the tree removed the dead branches so that the tree’s energy would go toward the branches that were alive, Sparkman said.
To monitor that energy, 14 sensors were screwed into the tree to track the flows of cambium, or sap, through its branches.
“It’s basically a heart monitor,” Sparkman said. “As we’ve been treating the tree, the heartbeat’s getting stronger and stronger and stronger.”
Sparkman said there are also plans to install vertical tubes to help the tree’s aerial roots, which appear to be vertical branches that grow down toward the ground. The tubes will contain compost to provide the branches with key nutrients when they take root in the soil.
A planned irrigation system will also feed small drops of water into the tubes. The goal, Sparkman said, is to help those aerial roots “bulk up and become the next stabilizer root.” The system will also irrigate the surrounding land and the tree’s canopy.
“You see a lot of long, long branches with hundreds of leaves back on the tree,” Sparkman said, adding that some branches are even producing fruit. “It’s pretty amazing to see that much of the tree come back.”
What other trees were destroyed in the fire?
Sparkman estimates that Lahaina lost some 25,000 trees in the fire.
These included the fruit trees that people grew in their yards as well as trees that are significant in Hawaiian culture, such as the ulu or breadfruit tree; the fire charred all but two of the dozen or so that remained.
Since the blaze, a band of arborists, farmers and landscapers — including Sparkman — has set about trying to save the ulu and other culturally important trees. Before colonialism, commercial agriculture and tourism, thousands of breadfruit trees dotted Lahaina.
To help restore Lahaina’s trees, Sparkman founded a nonprofit called Treecovery. The group has potted some 3,500 trees, he said, growing them in “micro-nurseries” across the island, including at some hotels, until people can move back into their homes.
“We have grow hubs all over the island of Maui to grow these trees out for as long as they need. So, when the people are ready, we can have them come pick these trees up and they can plant them in their yards,” he said. “It’s important that we do this for the families.”
2024-08-09 NNCP setup automation
date: 2024-08-10, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-08-09 NNCP setup automation
This is a continuation of the minimal NNCP setup to get started. Once we verified that everything works as expected with manual invocations, the next step is automation. There are two options:
- Enable all the services. This makes sense if you expect a lot of traffic.
- Only call the executables every now and then. This makes sense if you expect very little traffic.
If you want to enable all the services, the examples
directory has service definitions for you. Running
nncp-caller only makes sense if there is at least one entry
in your /etc/nncp.hjson that has a cron key.
sudo systemctl enable /usr/share/doc/nncp/examples/nncp-daemon.service
sudo systemctl enable /usr/share/doc/nncp/examples/nncp-caller.service
sudo systemctl enable /usr/share/doc/nncp/examples/nncp-toss.service
sudo systemctl start nncp-daemon.service
sudo systemctl start nncp-caller.service
sudo systemctl start nncp-toss.service
sudo systemctl status nncp-daemon.service
sudo systemctl status nncp-caller.service
sudo systemctl status nncp-toss.service
I don’t expect a lot of NNCP traffic. This is why my setup on the laptop and server uses the alternative.
In order to conserve resources, you could decide not to have these services running all the time. I’m doing this for two reasons: I don’t want to upgrade the virtual machine I’m renting. It’s a point of pride to do much with very little. From the perspective of impeding collapse, I also think that we should all get on board with frugal computing (@wim_v12e).
Ready for some frugal computing? Here we go.
Run the daemon on the server. That is, if other sites know your internet
address and call you, then you need this. My laptop does not but my
server does. When somebody calls the server on port 5400, start the
nncp-daemon using inetd (from the
openbsd-inet or the inetutils-inetd packages
on Debian).
In your /etc/inetd.conf file:
5400 stream tcp nowait nncp /usr/bin/nncp-daemon nncp-daemon -quiet -ucspi
Run nncp-call every hour or every day from cron for the
systems you want to call. Those systems don’t need a cron
key in the /etc/nncp.hjson file.
This is my laptop calling my server every hour, via
/etc/cron.hourly/nncp:
#!/bin/sh
if [ -x /usr/bin/nncp-call ]; then
su nncp -s /bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/nncp-call -noprogress sibirocobombus"
fi
This is on the laptop, for my neighbours erebor and
quux in /etc/cron.daily/nncp:
if [ -x /usr/bin/nncp-call ]; then
for neighbour in erebor quux; do
su nncp -s /bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/nncp-call -noprogress $neighbour"
done
fi
This is for the server, tossing stuff once per hour, via
/etc/cron.hourly/nncp:
#!/bin/sh
if [ -x /usr/bin/nncp-toss ]; then
su nncp -s /bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/nncp-toss"
fi
Adding autotoss: true only helps for the system calling
others. On the server, tossing needs to happen on a regular basis.
Finally, you can do some clean-up by copying
/usr/share/doc/nncp/examples/cron-daily-nncp to
/etc/cron.daily/nncp-cleanup.
I’m using the following, both on the laptop and the server:
#!/bin/bash
if [ -x /usr/bin/nncp-rm ]; then
for TYPE in part seen hdr area; do
su nncp -s /bin/bash -c "nncp-rm -quiet -all -older 7d -$TYPE"
done
su nncp -s /bin/bash -c "nncp-rm -quiet -tmp -older 7d"
fi
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-08-09-nncp-automation
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-10, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Israel waited for people to assemble for prayer this morning and then killed about 100 people.
The pictures circulating show children in pieces.
The Biden administration really likes to bend backwards for that ass backwards right wing regime.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112935553274685976
SCV 40 Under Forty Nominations Open
date: 2024-08-10, from: SCV New (TV Station)
JCI Santa Clarita has announced nominations for the 2024 Santa Clarita Valley 40 Under Forty are now open
https://scvnews.com/40-under-40-nominations-now-open/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-10, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Today I got my Hello World app for ChatGPT working.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/09.html#a030535
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-10, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I’m
really excited about maybe finally getting my archive of Scripting News
and DaveNet stuff, dating back to 1994, into ChatGPT before too long.
Some people will be surprised to find that they’re in the archive. If
this works it’ll be like the index in the back of a large book. I know
I’ve tried this before, but this time I think I’ll be able to do it
myself and fuss over it and learn from it the way I do software
development. Converting a very large work of writing into a reference, I
hope.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/09.html#a030021
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-10, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
1995: “There was nothing rehearsed about Jerry Garcia.”
http://scripting.com/2024/08/09.html#a025928
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Ignore the NY Times.
https://balloon-juice.com/2024/08/09/the-new-york-times-is-an-arm-of-the-trump-campaign/
Sept. 14: Cheers for Charity Benefits Michael Hoefflin Foundation
date: 2024-08-10, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Michael Hoefflin Foundation will present the Second Annual Cheers for Charity fundraiser, an event with “Drinks, Food and Music” on Saturday, Sept. 14, at the Canyon Country Community Center
https://scvnews.com/sept-14-cheers-for-charity-benefits-michael-hoefflin-foundation/
US ambassador confirms Mexican drug lord was brought to US against his will
date: 2024-08-10, from: VOA News USA
MEXICO CITY — The U.S. ambassador to Mexico confirmed Friday that drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was brought to the United States against his will when he arrived in Texas in July on a plane along with fellow drug lord Joaquín Guzmán López.
Zambada’s attorney had earlier claimed the longtime chief of the Sinaloa cartel had been kidnapped. But officials had not confirmed that, and Zambada’s age and apparent ill-health had led some to speculate he turned himself in.
U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar on Friday said, “the evidence we saw … is that they had brought El Mayo Zambada against his will.”
“This was an operation between cartels, where one turned the other one in,” Salazar said. Zambada’s faction of the Sinaloa cartel has been engaged in fierce fighting with another faction, led by the sons of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Guzmán López is the half-brother of the factional leaders.
Salazar said no U.S. personnel, resources or aircraft were involved in the flight on which Guzmán López turned himself in, and that U.S. officials were “surprised” when the two showed up at an airport outside El Paso, Texas on July 25.
Frank Pérez, Zambada’s attorney, said in a statement in July that “my client neither surrendered nor negotiated any terms with the U.S. government.”
“Joaquín Guzmán López forcibly kidnapped my client,” Pérez wrote. “He was ambushed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed by six men in military uniforms and Joaquin. His legs were tied, and a black bag was placed over his head.”
Pérez went on to say that Zambada, 76, was thrown in the back of a pickup truck, forced onto a plane and tied to the seat by Guzmán López.
In early August, Zambada made his second appearance in federal court in Texas after being taken into U.S. custody the week before.
Guzmán López had apparently long been in negotiations with U.S. authorities about possibly turning himself in. Guzmán López, 38, has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in federal court in Chicago.
But U.S. officials said they had almost no warning when Guzmán López’s plane landed at an airport near El Paso. Both men were arrested and remain jailed. They are charged in the U.S. with various drug crimes.
Salazar said the plane had taken off from Sinaloa — the Pacific coast state where the cartel is headquartered — and had filed no flight plan. He stressed the pilot wasn’t American, nor was the plane.
The implication is that Guzmán López intended to turn himself in and brought Zambada with him to procure more favorable treatment, but his motives remain unclear.
Zambada was thought to be more involved in day-to-day operations of the cartel than his better-known and flashier boss, “El Chapo,” who was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019.
Zambada is charged in a number of U.S. cases, including in New York and California. Prosecutors brought a new indictment against him in New York in February, describing him as the “principal leader of the criminal enterprise responsible for importing enormous quantities of narcotics into the United States.”
The capture of Zambada and Guzmán López — and the idea that one cartel faction had turned in the leader of the other — raised fears that the already divided cartel could descend into a spiral of violent infighting.
That prompted Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to take the unusual step of issuing a public appeal to drug cartels not to fight each other.
Garcia checks in on local resources with federal support
date: 2024-08-10, from: The Signal
From local water treatment to improving the Child & Family Center, Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, made the rounds Friday reveling in the kind of goodwill that $82.4 million to […]
The post Garcia checks in on local resources with federal support appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/garcia-checks-in-on-local-resources-with-federal-support/
Tightrope walker marks Twin Towers stunt, 50 years on
date: 2024-08-10, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — Renowned French high-wire artist Philippe Petit marked the 50th anniversary of his famous walk between New York’s Twin Towers with a performance in a Manhattan cathedral, accompanied by live music from Sting.
Petit walked between the spires of the World Trade Center skyscrapers, 1,350 feet up, on August 7, 1974.
A photographer captured the feat with the New York skyline in the background as Petit — without a harness — made the crossing.
Now 74 years old, Petit partly re-created his gravity-defying stunt Thursday in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, about seven miles north of the former Twin Towers, which were destroyed in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
“Of course, my illegal walk between the towers was the most important moment of my life at the time, and now I look back and I have done something like 100 high wire walks all over the world,” Petit told AFP.
In the reconstruction, Petit was met by a police officer as he completed his walk.
The New York Times, which called Petit’s Twin Towers walk the “art crime of the century,” reported that in 1974 after 45 minutes of “knee bends and other stunts,” Petit turned himself over to waiting police.
He was charged with disorderly conduct and trespass, but the charges were dropped in return for a free aerial performance in a city park.
The feature film The Walk, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire tell the story of the famous stunt.
https://www.voanews.com/a/tightrope-walker-marks-twin-towers-stunt-50-years-on-/7737224.html
Garcia authors bill to stop ‘wasteful high-speed rail spending’
date: 2024-08-10, from: The Signal
Congressman Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita has introduced H.R. 9308, the “No Frankenrail Act,” to put an end to the misuse of federal funds on high-speed rail projects that have been […]
The post Garcia authors bill to stop ‘wasteful high-speed rail spending’ appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/garcia-authors-bill-to-stop-wasteful-high-speed-rail-spending/
Kathryn Barger | Keeping Up With Kathryn
date: 2024-08-10, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Accessibility to the arts is often connected to affordability. The high cost of living in Los Angeles County can decrease residents’ disposable income and become a barrier for them to experience arts, culture and leisure activities.
https://scvnews.com/kathryn-barger-keeping-up-with-kathryn-10/
US election looms over US-South Korea-Japan security cooperation
date: 2024-08-10, from: VOA News USA
washington — Experts in Washington are split on their perspectives of the durability of the recently elevated U.S.-South Korea-Japan security cooperation in the event of former President Donald Trump winning the November U.S. presidential election, given his critical stance toward U.S. alliances in the past.
Last month, the U.S., South Korea and Japan signed a memorandum of cooperation on the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework (TSCF), which is aimed at institutionalizing the countries’ security partnership against threats from China and North Korea.
While not legally binding, the memorandum is expected to facilitate trilateral security cooperation regardless of any leadership changes in their respective countries.
The agreement calls for regular high-level talks, joint exercises and other exchanges among the three nations.
Some in Washington, however, question whether the United States, South Korea and Japan would successfully institutionalize the enhanced security cooperation in a second Trump presidency.
“Certainly, the greatest and near-term concern is if President Trump is reelected, whether he would undo some of the progress of recent years,” Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation, told VOA Korean by telephone Wednesday.
Klingner added that the three governments hoped that signing the memorandum would regularize and operationalize the ongoing security improvements among the three nations.
The Biden administration says stronger trilateral cooperation is an integral part of its Indo-Pacific strategy.
The administration also has been touting the August 2023 summit at Camp David with the U.S., South Korea and Japan as a historic meeting, saying the three leaders “inaugurated a new era of trilateral partnership” there.
In a Washington Post opinion piece published this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the U.S. security partnership in the Indo-Pacific region is working more effectively than before, citing the cooperation among the United States, South Korea and Japan as an example.
“President [Joe] Biden brought together Japan and South Korea — two countries with a difficult history — to join the United States in the Camp David Trilateral Summit, spurring unprecedented defense and economic cooperation among our countries,” they wrote.
Uncertainty looms
It is uncertain how the U.S. trilateral partnership with South Korea and Japan would shape up if Trump returns to power, as the former president has not publicly articulated a stance on the trilateral cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.
Trump has put strong emphasis on U.S. allies paying their “fair share” of defense costs.
During his presidency, Trump demanded that South Korea and Japan pay more for the cost of the U.S. military presence in their countries. He warned the U.S. could withdraw its troops unless the demands were met.
Michael O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told VOA Korean via email Wednesday that it would be hard to predict whether the TSCF would survive a possible Trump second term.
“Most things are personalized with him, or they relate to his instincts and impressions based on previous business dealings,” he said.
“Both the leaders [of South Korea and Japan] he dealt with when president are now gone. So, it’s a wild card or blank slate.”
However, some disagree.
Richard Armitage, who served as deputy secretary of state during the George W. Bush administration, told VOA Korean by telephone Thursday that Trump would likely allow the institutionalization of the TSCF, considering the strong support from both sides of the aisle.
“I find the majority [of] members on Capitol Hill are very positive to it,” Armitage said.
“I do notice that some of the people who are rumored to be coming in, should Mr. Trump win, are actually quite international in their outlook,” he added, declining to say who those people are.
Alliance commitment
Frederick Fleitz, who served as chief of staff of the National Security Council in the Trump White House, told VOA Korean by phone Wednesday that he would expect the agreement on the security framework among the U.S. and the two U.S. allies in Asia to be upheld in a second Trump administration.
“It’s going to remain,” Fleitz said. “He [Trump] is a strong supporter of alliances, particularly our alliance in the Asian Pacific.”
Fleitz added that the stronger security ties among the three countries is “a significant achievement that’s going to continue.”
Evans Revere, who served as acting assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, told VOA Korean via email that China’s rise to become the greatest threat in the Indo-Pacific theater is a fact not to be ignored by any of the three countries.
“There is every reason to believe the three countries can effectively institutionalize trilateral security cooperation, even if there is a change of administration in one or more of the three capitals,” Revere said. “There is a growing perception in all three countries of the threats and challenges they share in common. China’s attempts at political, military and economic intimidation are becoming more frequent.”
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running to become the successor to Biden, is widely predicted to continue on the path Biden forged.
“Harris does not have a clearly established record on U.S.-South Korea-Japan security cooperation, but I expect that she will follow the policies of the Biden administration on this issue,” Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, told VOA Korean via email.
Blinken, Austin and Sullivan highlighted in the Post opinion piece that the transformed approach toward the Indo-Pacific region is “one of the most important and least-told stories of the foreign policy strategy advanced by President Biden and Vice President Harris.”
Joeun Lee contributed to this report.
Aug. 15: Castaic School Board Regular Meeting
date: 2024-08-10, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Castaic Union School District Governing Board will hold its regular meeting Thursday, Aug. 15, at 6 p.m
https://scvnews.com/aug-15-castaic-school-board-regular-meeting/
Sept. 14: Guardians SCV Fourth Annual Patriot Day Car Show
date: 2024-08-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Guardians SCV is hosting the Fourth Annual 9/11 Patriot Day Car Show event on Saturday, Sept.14, in the Higher Vision Church parking lot from 8 a.m. to noon
https://scvnews.com/sept-14-guardians-scv-fourth-annual-patriot-day-car-show/
Twilio’s Segment SDK challenged with wiretapping claim
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Mobile app analytics software said to surreptitiously snarf data
Twilio, a communications service provider, was sued on Thursday based on allegations that the developer’s Segment software siphons data from mobile apps without consent.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/twilio_privacy_lawsuit/
Of MAW, Mahler and a Bold Transitional Season
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Orchestral performance of Mahler’s “Tragic” at the Granada Theatre finalized a strong Music Academy of the West summer festival.
The post Of MAW, Mahler and a Bold Transitional Season appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/09/of-maw-mahler-and-a-bold-transitional-season/
Redox gets HTTP server, wget, UEFI improvements, and much more
date: 2024-08-09, from: OS News
In line with the release of the COSMIC alpha, parts of which are also available for Redox, we’ve got another monthly update for the Rust-based operating system. First, in what in hindsight seems like a logical step, Redox is joining hands with Servo, the Rust-based browser engine, and they proposed focus will be on Servo’s cross-compilation support and a font stack written in Rust. It definitely makes sense for these two projects to work together in some way, and I hope there can be more cross-pollination in the future. Simple HTTP Server, an HTTP server written in Rust, has been ported to Redox, and the Apache port is getting some work, too. Wget now works on Redox, and several bugs in COSMIC programs were squashed. UEFI also saw some work, including fixing a violation of the EUFI specification, as well as adding several workarounds for buggy firmware, which should increase the number of machines that can boot Redox. Another area of progress is self-hosting, and Redox can now compile hello world-programs in Rust, C and C++ – an important step towards compiling more complex programs and the end-goal of compiling Redox itself on Redox. There’s way more in this update, so head on over to get the full details.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140455/redox-gets-http-server-wget-uefi-improvements-and-much-more/
The Repercussions of Clearing Homeless Camps
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
This approach is not only inhumane but also costly and ineffective in ending homelessness.
The post The Repercussions of Clearing Homeless Camps appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/09/the-repercussions-of-clearing-homeless-camps/
Santa Maria Airport Boardmember Charged with Vehicular Manslaughter in Forklift Fatality
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
David Baskett, 81, was driving a forklift in May when a pickup truck collided with its prongs, killing Tiffany Ann Peterson, 39.
The post Santa Maria Airport Boardmember Charged with Vehicular Manslaughter in Forklift Fatality appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Summer of the Goddess
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
As a mythologist, I am thrilled to witness the repeated emergence of epic feminine power this summer.
The post Summer of the Goddess appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/09/summer-of-the-goddess/
US to lift ban on offensive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, sources say
date: 2024-08-09, from: VOA News USA
washington — The Biden administration has decided to lift a ban on U.S. sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday, reversing a three-year-old policy to pressure the kingdom to wind down the Yemen war.
The administration briefed Congress this week on its decision to lift the ban, a congressional aide said. One source said sales could resume as early as next week, while another said deliberations on timing were still under way.
“The Saudis have met their end of the deal, and we are prepared to meet ours, returning these cases to regular order through appropriate congressional notification and consultation,” a senior Biden administration official said.
Under U.S. law, major international weapons deals must be reviewed by members of Congress before they are made final.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers have questioned the provision of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia in recent years, citing issues including the toll on civilians of its campaign in Yemen and a range of human rights concerns.
But that opposition has softened amid turmoil in the Middle East following Hamas’ deadly October 7 terror attack on Israel and because of changes in the conduct of the campaign in Yemen.
The threat level in the region has been heightened since late last month, with Iran and Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah group vowing to retaliate against Israel after Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran.
The Biden administration also has been negotiating a defense pact and an agreement for civil nuclear cooperation with Riyadh as part of a broad deal that envisions Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel, although that remains an elusive goal.
Since March 2022 — when the Saudis and Houthis entered into a U.N.-led truce — there have not been any Saudi airstrikes in Yemen and cross-border fire from Yemen into the kingdom has largely stopped, the administration official said.
Biden adopted the tougher stance on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in 2021, citing the kingdom’s campaign against the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen, which has inflicted heavy civilian casualties.
Yemen’s war is seen as one of several proxy battles between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Houthis ousted a Saudi-backed government from Sanaa in late 2014 and have been at war against a Saudi-led military alliance since 2015, a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and left 80% of Yemen’s population dependent on humanitarian aid.
“We are regularly conducting airstrikes to degrade Houthi capabilities, an effort that is ongoing and will continue together with a coalition of partners,” the senior U.S. administration official said.
“We have designated the Houthis as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, and we will have imposed sanctions and additional costs on the Houthi smuggling networks and military apparatus. This pressure will continue to build over the coming weeks,” the official said.
Vandenberg Can Be the Launchpad for Worldwide Economic Prosperity
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Increasing the number of launches at Vandenberg is not just a strategic imperative for the U.S. space program; it is a vital step toward a more connected and equitable world.
The post Vandenberg Can Be the Launchpad for Worldwide Economic Prosperity appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Study Reveals Link Between Wildfire Smoke and Dementia
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
More than 1.2 million Southern California residents were part of the decade-long study.
The post Study Reveals Link Between Wildfire Smoke and Dementia appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/09/study-reveals-link-between-wildfire-smoke-and-dementia/
This Week in the IndieWeb
date: 2024-08-09, from: This week in Indie Web
August 2-9, 2024
Recent Events
From events.indieweb.org/archive:
Upcoming Events
From events.indieweb.org:
- NÜRNBERG, Bayern: LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation
HWC Nuremberg is a in-person meeting for everybody who is interested in setting up a personal website and talk about web-related issues.
- PORTLAND, Oregon: TBD
A one day IndieWebCamp Portland 2024 is planned for August 25th, the day after the XOXO conference and festival, pending confirmation of a venue! If you’re in Portland and have a suggested venue please get in touch via the IndieWeb chat!
Front End Study Hall is an HTML + CSS focused group meeting, held on Zoom to learn from each other about how to make code do what we want.
Come prepared to teach and learn!
New Community Members
From IndieWeb Wiki: New User Pages:
User:Getimiskon.xyz
Created by Getimiskon.xyz on Wednesday
Top New Wiki Pages
From IndieWeb Wiki: New Pages:
homegrown
homegrown is a thin shell wrapper around wp-cli.
Created by Tantek.com on Friday and edited 3 more times
New Event Notes
From IndieWeb Wiki: New Pages:
Homebrew Website Club Europe/London: 2024-08-07
Top Edited Wiki Pages
From IndieWeb Wiki: Recent Changes:
- indieweb-movie-club 6 edits by www.zinzy.website, marksuth.dev, www.benji.dog, jamesg.blog, and tantek.com
- Front End Study Hall 5 edits by artlung.com
- search 4 edits by www.claudinec.net, loqi.me, and tantek.com
- wp-cli 3 edits by tantek.com and loqi.me
- rel-author 3 edits by tantek.com and trainedmonkey.com
- footnote 3 edits by vanderven.se martijn
- Bluesky 2 edits by tantek.com
- authorship 2 edits by vanderven.se martijn
https://indieweb.org/this-week/2024-08-09.html
Sept. 7: SNAP Sports Charity Pickleball Tourney
date: 2024-08-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Join Dink For Cause and SNAP Sports (Special Needs Athletic and Peers) for a charity pickleball tournament at The Paseo Club on Saturday, Sept. 7 to raise funds and awareness for SNAP Sports
https://scvnews.com/sept-7-snap-sports-charity-pickleball-tourney/
Proposed Chumash Marine Sanctuary off Coast of Santa Barbara and S.L.O. Counties Nears Finish Line
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
But plans for developing offshore wind energy within the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary’s proposed boundaries muddy the waters.
The post Proposed Chumash Marine Sanctuary off Coast of Santa Barbara and S.L.O. Counties Nears Finish Line appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
A Second Yardi Project Proposes 14 Homes in Downtown Santa Barbara
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Brothers Jason and Kevin Yardi look to repurpose 12 East Carrillo Street.
The post A Second Yardi Project Proposes 14 Homes in Downtown Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Overnight Family Camping: Experience Summer Nights at County Parks
date: 2024-08-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation will present the final August dates of Overnight Family Camping throughout Los Angeles County on Aug. 16 and Aug.
https://scvnews.com/overnight-family-camping-experience-summer-nights-at-county-parks/
Operación de preparación y bienestar antes del regreso a la escuela
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
(SANTA BÁRBARA, Calif.)- El 7 de agosto de 2024, nueve oficiales del Departamento de Libertad Condicional del Condado de Santa
The post Operación de preparación y bienestar antes del regreso a la escuela appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Rioter who attacked police at US Capitol gets 20-year sentence
date: 2024-08-09, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — A California man with a history of political violence was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in prison for repeatedly attacking police with flagpoles and other makeshift weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
David Nicholas Dempsey’s sentence is one of the longest among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. Prosecutors described him as one of the most violent members of the mob of Donald Trump supporters that attacked the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.
Dempsey, who is from Van Nuys, stomped on police officers’ heads. He swung poles at officers defending a tunnel, struck an officer in the head with a metal crutch and attacked police with pepper spray and broken pieces of furniture, prosecutors said.
He climbed atop other rioters, using them like “human scaffolding” to reach officers guarding a tunnel entrance. He injured at least two police officers, prosecutors said.
“Your conduct on January 6th was exceptionally egregious,” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth told Dempsey. “You did not get carried away in the moment.”
Dempsey pleaded guilty in January to two counts of assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon.
Only former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has received a longer sentence in the January 6 attack. Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years for orchestrating a plot to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 presidential election.
Dempsey called his conduct “reprehensible” and apologized to the police officers whom he assaulted. “You were performing your duties, and I responded with hostility and violence,” he said before learning his sentence.
Justice Department prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of 21 years and 10 months for Dempsey, a former construction worker and fast-food restaurant employee. Dempsey’s violence was so extreme that he attacked a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him, prosecutors wrote.
“David Dempsey is political violence personified,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Brasher told the judge.
Defense attorney Amy Collins, who sought a sentence of 6 years and six months, described the government’s sentencing recommendation as “ridiculous.”
“It makes him a statistic,” she said. “It doesn’t consider the person he is, how much he has grown.”
Dempsey was wearing a tactical vest, a helmet and an American flag gaiter covering his face when he attacked police at a tunnel leading to the Lower West Terrace doors. He shot pepper spray at Metropolitan Police Department Detective Phuson Nguyen just as another rioter yanked at the officer’s gas mask, prosecutors wrote.
“The searing spray burned Detective Nguyen’s lungs, throat, eyes, and face and left him gasping for breath, fearing he might lose consciousness and be overwhelmed by the mob,” they wrote.
Dempsey then struck MPD Sergeant Jason Mastony in the head with a metal crutch, cracking the shield on his gas mask and cutting his head.
“I collapsed and caught myself against the wall as my ears rang. I was able to stand again and hold the line for a few more minutes until another assault by rioters pushed the police line back away from the threshold of the tunnel,” Mastony said in a statement submitted to the court.
Dempsey has been jailed since his arrest in August 2021.
His criminal record in California includes convictions for burglary, theft and assault. The assault conviction stemmed from an October 2019 gathering near the Santa Monica Pier, where Dempsey attacked people peacefully demonstrating against then-President Trump, prosecutors said.
“The peaceful protest turned violent as Dempsey took a canister of bear spray from his pants and dispersed it at close range against several protesters,” they wrote, noting that Dempsey was sentenced to 200 days of jail time.
Dempsey engaged in at least three other acts of “vicious political violence” that didn’t lead to criminal charges “for various reasons,” according to prosecutors. They said Dempsey struck a counterprotester over the head with a skateboard at a June 2019 rally in Los Angeles, used the same skateboard to assault someone at an August 2020 protest in Tujunga, California, and attacked a protester with pepper spray and a metal bat during an August 2020 protest in Beverly Hills, California.
More than 1,400 people have been charged with January 6-related federal crimes. Over 900 of them have been convicted and sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to Tarrio’s 22 years.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7736882.html
👷 #212 - Don’t Quit Your Day Job
date: 2024-08-09, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
What does your character’s job say about them? Does it matter?
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/212-dont-quit-your-day-job
Las Vegas journalist murder trial to begin Monday
date: 2024-08-09, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The trial of a former elected official in Nevada accused of murdering an investigative journalist in 2022 is set to begin on Monday in Las Vegas.
Jeff German, a longtime reporter at The Las Vegas Review-Journal, was found stabbed to death outside his suburban home on September 3, 2022.
Former Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles, 47, is charged with open murder, meaning he could be found guilty of first- or second-degree murder or manslaughter. He has pleaded not guilty.
German, 69, reported extensively on alleged mismanagement in Telles’ office. When Telles then lost a reelection bid in 2022, he posted a letter online in which he attacked the Review-Journal for its coverage.
“German’s killing was really shocking to the whole press freedom community, to the world of media,” Clayton Weimers, who heads the U.S. bureau of Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, told VOA. “Accountability in this crime is essential to demonstrate that no one can intimidate, threaten or hurt a journalist because they don’t like the coverage they’re getting.”
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday. The judge will also consider a renewed request for dismissal from Telles.
Telles has indicated that he wants the trial to begin as soon as possible. He has spent months hiring and firing different lawyers and even served as his own attorney for a period, according to media reports.
His two requests to remove the judge from the case over claims that she was biased have failed.
“He wants to proceed to trial, wants to have his day in court,” Robert Draskovich, the current attorney for Telles, told reporters outside court on Wednesday. “He’s been fairly adamant since the get-go that he wants to tell his story.”
Journalist killings are rare in the United States. Data from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, shows that 17 journalists and media workers have been killed in the U.S. since the watchdog started keeping records in 1992. Of those, the CPJ has said it believes 15 cases — including German’s — were in relation to the journalist’s work.
“German is the only journalist suspected of having been killed by a politician in the United States since CPJ began keeping record,” Katherine Jacobsen, the U.S. and Canada program coordinator at CPJ, told VOA.
“It’s really important that any time a journalist is assaulted or killed, that the perpetrator is held responsible,” Jacobsen, who is based in Washington, said.
“This sends a very clear message to both those who might have committed the crime that it’s not OK, and also to any would-be perpetrators of crimes against journalists that there are very real consequences and that they should think twice before harming reporters,” she said.
Impunity in journalist killings is a global problem. Nearly 80% of journalist killings over the past decade remain unsolved, CPJ reported in 2023.
German’s case has had sweeping press freedom implications for the U.S.
As part of the investigation into his killing, city police seized the reporter’s cell phone and computers in a move that the Review-Journal said was unlawful.
The Review-Journal argued that since German’s devices could also contain sensitive information, such as the names of confidential sources or unpublished information, independent hearing masters should first review the devices.
Press freedom groups were concerned that if police were given unrestricted access to German’s devices, it could set a legal precedent allowing journalists’ private source material to be accessed after they are killed.
“We need a better sense of awareness from law enforcement officials of the sensitivities of investigating a crime against the journalist,” said Weimers, who is based in Washington.
“It needs to be very, very clear for law enforcement that they need to respect the confidentiality of journalistic sources. It has a profound chilling effect on the work of investigative journalists like Jeff German if they’re not able to safely communicate with their sources,” Weimers said.
Nevada’s Supreme Court in October 2023 ruled in favor of shielding German’s devices from an unchecked police search.
“Jeff would be very happy with this decision,” Glenn Cook, the Review-Journal’s executive editor, told VOA after the ruling was announced. “Jeff would be appalled if he thought his death could compromise the sources that he held so closely.”
Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty in this case. But if convicted, Telles could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
https://www.voanews.com/a/las-vegas-journalist-murder-trial-to-begin-monday/7736859.html
NASA Explores Industry, Partner Interest in Using VIPER Moon Rover
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
As part of its commitment to a robust, sustainable lunar exploration program for the benefit of all, NASA issued a Request for Information Friday to seek interest from American companies and institutions in conducting a mission using the agency’s VIPER Moon rover. VIPER, short for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, was designed to map the […]
Aug. 15: The 100th SENSES Block Party in OTN
date: 2024-08-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Step back in time and celebrate 13 years of memories at The Big 100 SENSES Block Party, Thursday, Aug. 15 7-10 p.m. on Main Street in Old Town Newhall.
https://scvnews.com/aug-15-the-100th-senses-block-party-in-otn/
Aug. 10: National Night Out at Central Park
date: 2024-08-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Join the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station for National Night Out on Saturday Aug. 10 at the city of Santa Clarita Concerts in the Park
https://scvnews.com/aug-10-national-night-out-at-central-park/
@Ayjay blog (date: 2024-08-09, from: Ayjay blog)
J. M. W. Turner, Scarbrough (a drawing owned by Ruskin)
https://blog.ayjay.org/46599-2/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I just noticed that I am using different colors for the captions of my Vectors and my Floats.
Fascinating.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112933932180837679
New Banksy Murals Appeared in London Every Day This Week. What Do They Mean?
date: 2024-08-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The street artist has unveiled five animal-themed artworks, sparking debate about their intended message
Lilbits: Intel extends warranties for desktop chips (but your PC maker may not be following suit)
date: 2024-08-09, from: Liliputing
Last month Intel finally acknowledged issues with its 13th and 14th-gen desktop chips based on Raptor Lake architecture and promised to release microcode updates that would prevent these chips from becoming unstable. They’re starting to roll out now. But if you have one of these chips and it’s already become glitchy and crash-prone, the only […]
The post Lilbits: Intel extends warranties for desktop chips (but your PC maker may not be following suit) appeared first on Liliputing.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
What it is looking like now.
Just the snap settings so far.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112933854482127686
Flying electric taxis, personal aircraft prepare for takeoff
date: 2024-08-09, from: VOA News USA
Flying cars, long the dream of futurists, may finally be here. From California, Matt Dibble has our story about the rise of electric aircraft.
https://www.voanews.com/a/flying-electric-taxis-personal-aircraft-prepare-for-take-off/7736788.html
Raptor Lake microcode limits Intel chips to a mere 1.55 volts to prevent CPU destruction
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Is that a lot? Depends on the context. GHz, no. Voltage, yes
Intel has divulged more details on its Raptor Lake family of 13th and 14th Gen Core processor failures and the 0x129 microcode that’s supposed to prevent further damage from occurring.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/new_raptor_lake_microcode_limits/
Collect Cards Bypassing App Review via CodePush
date: 2024-08-09, from: Michael Tsai
Filipe Espósito: A peculiar app called “Collect Cards: Store box” has been available on the App Store for over a year. The App Store description doesn’t say much about it, while the screenshots show a simple interface with what appears to be an app for managing photos and videos.But in reality, when users download the […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/09/collect-cards-bypassing-app-review-via-codepush/
Deluge of Fake Mac App Store Reviews
date: 2024-08-09, from: Michael Tsai
Jeff Johnson: There are a bunch of fake Mac App Store reviews for the Safari extensions Wipr, Dark Reader, and Vinegar. They are #1, 3, and 5 top paid. Vinegar, at least, is a legit good app. Jeff Johnson (Mastodon): I’ve now checked the reviews for all of the current top 40 paid apps in […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/09/deluge-of-fake-mac-app-store-reviews/
Apple Pressures ByteDance and Tencent Over IAP
date: 2024-08-09, from: Michael Tsai
Tim Hardwick: Apple is putting pressure on Tencent and ByteDance to make significant changes to two of China’s most popular apps in order to remove loopholes that circumvent Apple’s typical 30% commission, Bloomberg reports.The loopholes are linked to mini-apps that allow users of Tencent’s social-messaging app WeChat and ByteDance’s short-video app Douyin to play games, […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/09/apple-pressures-bytedance-and-tencent-over-iap/
Allowing iOS PC Emulator Apps to Download Games
date: 2024-08-09, from: Michael Tsai
Apple: Updated 4.7 to clarify that PC emulator apps can offer to download games. They’ve also changed the notarization guidelines: 4.7 Mini apps, mini games, streaming games, chatbots, plug-ins, and game emulators Apps may offer certain software that is not embedded in the binary, specifically HTML5 mini apps and mini games, streaming games, chatbots, and […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/09/allowing-ios-pc-emulator-apps-to-download-games/
‘Dangerous’ Pesticide That Could Harm Fetuses Is Pulled From the Market in Historic Move by EPA
date: 2024-08-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Often used to kill weeds around crops, DCPA poses a health risk to the unborn babies of pregnant farmworkers, according to the agency
Newly Deciphered, 4,000-Year-Old Cuneiform Tablets Used Lunar Eclipses to Predict Major Events
date: 2024-08-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Ancient Babylonians linked astronomical phenomena to pestilence, the death of kings and the destruction of empires
Daily Deals (8-09-2024)
date: 2024-08-09, from: Liliputing
The Epic Games Store is giving away two PC games this week. Best Buy has some decent deals on cheap Chromebooks and Windows laptops. And Samsung’s latest budget and mid-range tablets continue to be on sale for well below their list prices. Here are some of the day’s best deals. Laptops Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 […]
The post Daily Deals (8-09-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-8-09-2024/
These Olympic Gold Medalists Get to Ring a Bell Bound for Notre-Dame
date: 2024-08-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The bell was built for the Games, but it will soon get a second life in one of Paris’ most beloved landmarks
Open Wings Theatre to Present “Sagittarius Ponderosa” at The MAIN
date: 2024-08-09, from: City of Santa Clarita
Experience a Bittersweet Production of Family, Identity and Change Experience the poignant and thought-provoking world of “Sagittarius Ponderosa,” a play that delves into the complexities of family, identity and transformation. Written by MJ Kaufman and directed by Skylar Reede, “Sagittarius Ponderosa” takes place amidst a family’s time of transition. Archer, still known to their family […]
The post Open Wings Theatre to Present “Sagittarius Ponderosa” at The MAIN appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
What makes a blog a blog.
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+makes+a+blog+a+blog+site:scripting.com
Maui After the Fire
date: 2024-08-09, from: Heatmap News
On August 9, 2023, the smoke finally cleared in Lahaina.
The scene was shocking. In the course of just a few hours on the afternoon of August 8, winds had fanned a dry grass fire on the northwest coast of Maui into an inferno that trapped fleeing residents and left more than 100 people dead and the city in ashes. “We understand that recovery will take years,” Kaniela Ing, the national director of the Green New Deal Network and a seventh-generation Indigenous Hawaiian, told me when we spoke in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. “And as that recovery unfolds, we want to make sure that the people, the communities, are actually empowered to rebuild themselves — that we don’t open the door for disaster capitalists.”
Since then, Ing and other community leaders have put in the work. Over the past year, their group, Lahaina Strong, has tried to empower the community and challenge the power structures they say contributed to the confluence of factors that made the fire possible.
“We’re all about the community arm — grassroots power, and coalitions,” he told me this week. “Unfortunately, our groups are the same groups that have had to respond to climate disasters like Hurricanes Maria, Harvey, Sandy, and the Paradise fires. There’s always something, and it’s getting more and more frequent.”
On the anniversary of the fire, I spoke to Ing about how other communities can learn from the Lahaina model, the victories organizers secured to ensure a better future for native Hawaiians and locals, and how to ride the momentum forward into November. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity and brevity.
It’s been almost a year since we last spoke; at that time, you’d just arrived in Maui from your home on Oahu after the fire. What happened after that?
I don’t think there had been a clear model of best practices for how to respond. So when [a climate disaster] happened in my backyard, it was like, “Okay, let’s learn from all the responses and organizing traditions that we’ve studied and been trained on” — from the Civil Rights era to the mutual aid of the Black Panthers and tenant rights and welfare organizers, to the modern efforts of the Alinsky-type ACORN model, to the Sunrise model, which is momentum-based. But how do you draw from everything at once?
That is where Lahaina Strong came from. Because this is where I grew up, we knew which community leaders would be stepping up. But it’s not common for everyone to work together — they can be on different sides of different issues. So we convened all of them — mostly those we call kupuna, the older generation of elders. We started coordinating the responses of our leaders and immigrant churches, the heads of canoe clubs and governmental departments, Indigenous leaders, and pro-surfers, because that’s what the community here looks like. And what came of it was a few younger leaders — Millennials, so young for our community — were given the elders’ blessing and told, “It’s time for y’all to lead.”
There was Pa’ele [Kiakona], who was a server at a restaurant, and Courtney [Lazo] and Jordan [Ruidas], who were expecting mothers, and they’re the ones who really blew it up. I raised some money to get them on a salary and train them, but they were already community leaders in their own right. So the question was, “How do we maximize their power?”
The first thing we did was needs assessments. Everyone lived in a hotel, but many of the more established charities were opening up in malls 13 or 14 miles away. But our team had iPads and lived in the hotels, too, so while more established groups were getting 100 or so folks signed up, we were getting thousands every day because they were neighbors.
Yeah, you have to be there.
Right, and they all knew each other. We were working on a team with Salesforce — Marc Benioff was helping us back then — and we could figure out people’s needs and direct them to services. There are so many services, but people just lost their homes; they don’t know where to go. So that was the job.
The last question was, “Would you want to get involved down the line with the big decisions that the government will have to make about the priorities of the rebuild?” So once the council started holding hearings about the rebuilding and the policies of reopening and tourism, we were able to turn out hundreds of people instantly. We seized the momentum. We won unanimous support from the council for delaying the reopening of Lahaina to tourists, and we did a big petition delivery to the governor. The governor wasn’t supportive of us at the time, though, and we didn’t ultimately win that one.
From there, it was, “What else do we need?” We needed to house people; that was the main thing. There was also a government guy, Kaleo Manuel [who had been on the state Commission on Water Resource Management until a land developer accused him of delaying water resources during the fire], who we demanded to be reinstated, and we won that. We also had a demand for a billion dollars in direct aid; we won that. But the housing thing was a longer-term flight and went through the legislative session this year. We did this thing called Fishing for Housing, which involved the occupation of Kā’anapali Beach.
I saw your video about that!
That occupation was rough because we lived on a really sandy beach. And it was big. A lot of people came out. But the local news covered it pretty much daily, and it raised a lot of sympathy. We were educating tourists and raising money.
With that, we were able to form a historic partnership. Pa’ele’s uncle is an activist who wants to return water from the hotels to the communities and restore public streams. The unions generally don’t like that kind of stuff in Hawaii, but we were able to bring in ILWU, the hotel union here, and Local 5, another hotel union, which hadn’t partnered with ILWU since 1940. When we came to the legislative session, it was like, “Okay, we have real power now.” The governor came around and committed to passing the bill.
Our theory was that we had to raise a ton of money for direct relief; that was the most important thing, getting direct monetary aid to people. But it was not going to be enough; we weren’t going to raise $10 billion. We could buy one house if we raised a million and a half. Instead, we did this through a [501(c)4 social welfare organization], where you can advocate and contest power where it matters. And we were able to win 50,000 homes instead.
What’s next?
The next steps are on the climate front. The Inflation Reduction Act is a good step; building and electricity, we’re also on track. Agriculture and transportation on a national level are where we need to fill the gaps. Why is Maui growing mono-crops like sugar and coffee for people thousands of miles away? Why can’t we feed our own people? And transportation — when the fires hit, everyone was stuck because of the one-way-in, one-way-out road. Those issues are pertinent not only on the disaster, resiliency, and community infrastructure levels, but also on the mitigation side.
People are also excited about the possibility of microgrids or community-owned energy systems. When we initially had community hubs, members were using Star Link or small solar systems, and locals were like, “Wow, why can’t we do this everywhere?” It’d be way cheaper than fixing the grid at this point.
We have a blank slate to build the future we need. And we’re going to be up against a lot of powerful opponents in the next 10 years.
When we spoke last year, you talked about how rebuilding after the fire was an opportunity to ensure that the people came first and that the forces that contributed to the problem were pushed out of power. Has that effort been successful?
It’s ongoing. Power has many forms: There are the institutional forms, like CEOs and politicians, but there are the shadows — how ideas are organized, industry association gatherings — that are harder to crack. It’s a chess game, and we’re all trying to stay a step ahead.
I think that’s what is critical about our work. If we were to stop, if we could no longer provide our organizers with salaries, they’d have to go back to working two service jobs, and they wouldn’t have the time to compete with full-time lobbyists.
You mentioned other climate disasters early in our conversation. What advice would you give to people in other communities about incorporating mutual aid and holding corporate powers accountable after a catastrophe?
If you come out right away and say, “Hey, this is a climate disaster!” then everyone is like, Oh, an activist. But if you just come out and help and earn people’s trust — that’s what it really takes. Listen to folks.
The thing about climate action and climate solutions is that they have been so polarized over the last few years. I think it’s been moving in our favor. Generally, the population supports us. But those who don’t are much more vocal than they were 10 years ago, and that matters because as soon as they start speaking up, the less political people are just like, “Keep me out of this.” So we have to be careful about how we approach these communities. They’re not thinking about climate; they’re thinking about how to feed their family and how they will get their kids to school or if school is even available. You have to meet them where they are.
Then you go from there. You start to have conversations with them, and they will support getting the polluters out and not being taken advantage of by corporate utilities. You don’t have to talk to them about climate like we always do among advocates; you shouldn’t. If you want to build power in a community, you’ve got to have a different approach. These people, their power is ultimately that they’re survivors, not activists. The public doesn’t perceive them as having an agenda other than just surviving and showing up for their community.
There’s still a lot of work to be done. How do you plan to keep up the forward momentum heading into this fall and the election season?
Visibility and outreach. There’s that old saying that politics is downstream from culture, and our group has been really political, especially during the legislative session. So we’re trying to show up for the community in more direct ways. Today, we paddled with the canoe clubs to honor the first anniversary of the fire. We’re showing up in these more community-based ways so we grow in cultural power, too — not just as an advocacy group, but as a holistic community.
Do you think anything has been missing from the media narrative about Lahaina?
Some of the media that came out today was like, “A year later, people are still without homes.” But if you look at the numbers, the per capita investments from the federal government, and the commitment from FEMA — I mean, it wasn’t great at first, I’ll admit that, but we’ve won quite a bit. We’re winning. The momentum is on our side, and I think it’s important for folks to understand that. They have to feel like it’s worth it and that there’s hope to keep going. I know it’s not the sexiest media narrative and it’s easier to draw criticism, but this is the rise of self-determination. The survivors, to me, are the real story.
And it’s going to take a long time. The fact that it’s like, “Oh, we can’t rebuild a year later.” It was still toxic just a few months ago! There’s debris everywhere. The focus should be less on charity and more on the change and how the power structures have shifted. That’s been really positive.
Do you feel optimistic about the Harris-Walz ticket heading into this fall?
I do. Many reporters have asked me, “Why Harris and not Biden?” Politics is all about coalitions; our movement did a lot of work to become part of the Biden coalition, which was great. But Big Oil was also a part of the coalition he needed to win, so there was always that tension, from my perspective, during his presidency. But with Harris, we’ll have the opportunity to build a dual coalition — perhaps with us and labor, and not Big Oil.
https://heatmap.news/climate/maui-lahaina-fire-anniversary
Humans Could Warm Up Mars for Space Travelers by Spraying Tiny Metal Rods Into Its Atmosphere
date: 2024-08-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers propose a new technique for making the Red Planet more habitable by engineering heat-trapping nanoparticles from Martian dust
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 is a $5 board powered by the new RP2350 microcontroller (with RISC-V and ARM Cortex-M33 cores)
date: 2024-08-09, from: Liliputing
Three and a half years after launching the Raspberry Pi Pico and RP2040 microcontroller, Raspberry Pi has introduced new versions of each that bring a number of upgrades. The new Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller features faster CPU cores, twice as much memory, and optional support for on-chip storage. It’s also the first Raspberry Pi device to feature […]
The post Raspberry Pi Pico 2 is a $5 board powered by the new RP2350 microcontroller (with RISC-V and ARM Cortex-M33 cores) appeared first on Liliputing.
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Any news org with cash to invest could do to the NYT what ChatGPT is doing to Google.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/09.html#a174039
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Lawrence is the new Rachel.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/09.html#a174025
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
What we call journalism in the US isn’t.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/09.html#a174019
Rosie Cadman passes away at 99
date: 2024-08-09, from: Catalina Islander
Perhaps the only woman in Avalon with the power to stop pedestrian traffic on Crescent Avenue, Rosie Cadman meandered like royalty through the island streets for most of her life. “Rosie,” to many, “Grandma” to others, Rosie Cadman was a once-in-a-lifetime citizen of Catalina who left an indelible mark on the island’s lore after nearly […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/rosie-cadman-passes-away-at-99/
Eight decades of island love
date: 2024-08-09, from: Catalina Islander
Editor’s note: This article was originally published 2018. It has been updated. If Catalina Island had a queen, there is little doubt who would currently wear the crown. After turning 93, Rosie Cadman has become Catalina royalty, holding court daily on the pier where she fell in love with the island seven decades ago. Her […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/eight-decades-of-island-love/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Starting now the Godot 2D Toolbar redesign.
This is the desktop edition that I need to turn into an iPad-friendly UI.
I can reuse the toolbar itself from the 3D view, just need to sort out all these settings.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112933262144340502
Possible record-setting Zipliner
date: 2024-08-09, from: Catalina Islander
Former Avalon resident Marlee Fritzsch recently finished a summer back on the island, visiting with friends. While here, she extended an invitation to her 93-year-old grandfather to join her during her stay. When he accepted the invitation, he inquired about the possibility of taking a ride on the Zipline. Marlee had worked at the Zipline […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/possible-record-setting-zipliner/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Podcast: My first ChatGPT app. 4 minutes.
https://shownotes.scripting.com/scripting/2024/08/09/myFirstChatgptApp.html
Intel’s annus horribilis continues as AMD gains ground
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Rival making its biggest inroads in server CPU segment
The bad news for Intel keeps coming as rival AMD is slowly chipping away at its dominance in server, desktop and mobile processors, although the industry giant still holds onto the lion’s share of the market and any other outfit has a long way to go to unseat it.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/intel_amd_market_research/
Council extends moratorium for short-term rental licenses
date: 2024-08-09, from: Catalina Islander
The City Council on Tuesday, Aug. 6, voted unanimously to extend the current moratorium on issuing short-term rental licenses. The decision required a four-fifths vote to pass, but received yes votes from all five council members. The moratorium is now extended to July 30, 2023. During the council meeting, City Manager David Maistros said going […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/council-extends-moratorium-for-short-term-rental-licenses/
Sheriff’s Log: Aug. 1 to Aug. 7, 2024
date: 2024-08-09, from: Catalina Islander
The following is the Avalon’s Sheriff’s Stations significant incidents report for the period of Aug. 1 to Aug. 7, 2024. All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Many people who are arrested do not get prosecuted in the first place and many who are prosecuted do not get convicted. […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/sheriffs-log-aug-1-to-aug-7-2024/
That Time When Twitter CEO Said Smart Things
date: 2024-08-09, from: Om Malik blog
OM: Do you think that the future of the Internet will involve machines thinking on our behalf Ev: Yes, they’ll have to. But it’s a combination of machines and the crowd. Data collected from the crowd that is analyzed by machines. For us, at least, that’s the future. Facebook is already like that. YouTube is like that. …
https://om.co/2024/08/09/that-time-when-twitter-ceo-said-smart-things/
My first ChatGPT app
date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
4-minute podcast about my first venture into ChatGPT via its API.
There’s an accompanying GitHub repo, with an example app in JavaScript that runs in the browser.
Includes instructions for setting up and funding a developer account, which was the biggest hurdle.
Functionality: It tells you who Bull Mancuso is.
Much excitement as I think about integrations I can now do.
Don’t know why I waited so long. 😄
http://scripting.com/2024/08/09/164417.html?title=myFirstChatgptApp
NASA Hosts Astronaut Don Pettit Prelaunch Interviews
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
NASA astronaut Don Pettit is available for limited interview opportunities beginning at 10 a.m. EDT, Friday, Aug. 16, to discuss his upcoming mission to the International Space Station in September. The virtual interviews will stream live on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA+ through a variety […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-hosts-astronaut-don-pettit-prelaunch-interviews/
Behind the Blog: The Tasks In Front of Us
date: 2024-08-09, from: 404 Media Group
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss crushing and publishing stories and what goes into reporting on a leak.
https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-the-tasks-in-front-of-us/
Astro Campers SCoPE Out New Worlds
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
Teachers at Smokey Mountain Elementary School have collaborated with the NASA Science Activation (SciAct) program’s Smoky Mountains STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Collaborative (SMSC) and project coordinator, Randi Neff, to create a summer camp for students who are passionate about STEM topics. What started as a small summer camp has since evolved into Astro […]
https://science.nasa.gov/learning-resources/science-activation/astro-campers-scope-out-new-worlds/
US presidential campaign: The view from Ukraine
date: 2024-08-09, from: VOA News USA
The U.S. presidential campaign is being closely followed in Ukraine as its outcome could significantly impact regional security, U.S. foreign policy, NATO support, aid to Ukraine, and relations with Russia. VOA Eastern Europe Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports. Camera: Daniil Batushchak, Vladyslav Smilianets
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-presidential-campaign-the-view-from-ukraine-/7736428.html
Why Fixed Wireless is Stealing the Broadband Show
date: 2024-08-09, from: Om Malik blog
When I visited the Palouse earlier this month, I spent a lot of time driving around the backroads, traveling through many small towns and communities. These towns were no bigger than a few hundred people. I kept coming across signs for “WiFiber.” As an ex-broadband reporter, I looked into the company and found out that …
https://om.co/2024/08/09/why-fixed-wireless-is-stealing-the-broadband-show/
Will Harris Vibes Deliver Walz Policy?
date: 2024-08-09, from: The Lever News
The Democratic ticket offers vagueness, corporate ties, and now laudable prairie populism. What will the agenda actually be?
https://www.levernews.com/will-harris-vibes-deliver-walz-policy/
This Alder Lake-N mini PC is a dual-bay NAS with two 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports
date: 2024-08-09, from: Liliputing
The easiest way to set up a NAS (network-attached storage) device is to buy a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) system from an established company like Synology, QNAP, Asustor, or Terramaster. But folks with the technical know-how often find they get better bang for the buck by building their own systems from scratch and installing software that […]
The post This Alder Lake-N mini PC is a dual-bay NAS with two 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/this-alder-lake-n-mini-pc-is-a-dual-bay-nas-with-two-2-5-gbe-ethernet-ports/
Closed in England
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: Robin Rendle Essays
https://robinrendle.com/notes/closed-in-england/
A ‘FURST’ of its Kind: Sounding Rocket Mission to Study Sun as a Star
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
By Jessica Barnett From Earth, one might be tempted to view the Sun as a unique celestial object like no other, as it’s the star our home planet orbits and the one our planet relies on most for heat and light. But if you took a step back and compared the Sun to the other […]
2024-08-08 Man pages
date: 2024-08-09, 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/doc does not
exist on my system. /usr/share lists lots of package names
but these are not the docs. /usr/share/doc is the one! But
the problems continue. Which of the directories do you check? Sometimes
you’re looking at binary and it’s also not obvious what the package name
would be. find is in /usr/share/doc/findutils,
for example. And we’re still not done. Which is the file that you want
to read when you’re faced with BUGS 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. It’s all very confusing.
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 wifi, in planes, in trains? 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
2024-08-09. At one point I was interested in using troff as an alternative to LaTeX, so not to write documentation but to create PDFs, and I kept eyeing the mom macros. But before I could give them a try I discovered how to create PDFs using Markdown to HTML to PDF via weasyprint and that has been my workflow ever since. For a zine I’m contributing to, however, I’m using groff and the ms macros because that’s what’s in the Makefile…
The reason I write this all up is that flexibeast wrote in, saying that man pages can be written using the semantics-oriented mdoc macros instead of the presentation-oriented man macros – and they had written an mdoc quickstart guide. Nice!
I really have to take a look at mandoc as a groff alternative.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-08-08-man-pages
Secure Web Gateways are anything but as infosec hounds spot dozens of bypasses
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Vendors cannot fix’ this architectural failure, SquareX founder tells us
DEF CON Secure Web Gateways (SWGs) are an essential part of enterprise security, which makes it shocking to learn that every single SWG in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SASE and SSE can reportedly be bypassed, allowing attackers to deliver malware without gateways ever catching on.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/secure_web_gateways_are_anything/
NASA Teams Change Brakes to Keep Artemis Crew Safe
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
Recently, teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) Program at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center met with engineering teams at a central Florida amusement park to share knowledge on a new braking system NASA is using for its launch pad emergency egress system for Artemis missions. “We have a new magnetic braking system for the […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/artemis-2/nasa-teams-change-brakes-to-keep-artemis-crew-safe/
Fossils Shed New Light on Small ‘Hobbit-Like’ Humans That Lived on a Remote Island
date: 2024-08-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Two teeth and a small adult arm bone found in Indonesia suggest the ancestors of Homo floresiensis were even shorter than scientists previously thought
Oakland: Defendants in 2017 killing avoid more jail time through plea deals
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
One of the men agreed to testify for the prosecution against his co-defendant, but both ended up serving roughly the same sentence.
Building Flood Resilience: A Grand Challenge for U.S. Water Policy
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: RAND blog
Flooding has become the most expensive and frequent disaster in the United States. Since 2000, flooding events occur almost daily and the cost of inland flooding alone in 2023 was nearly $200 billion. Managing flood risk requires transformations in land use, regulation, insurance, and financing.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/08/building-flood-resilience-a-grand-challenge-for-us.html
Travis Kelce offered to leave training camp for Taylor Swift as ISIS plot foiled
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Kansas City Chiefs tight end, who is preparing for the 2024 NFL season, reportedly reached out to Swift immediately as she was grappling with the news of a terrorist plot targeting one of her Vienna shows.
50 years after Nixon’s resignation, some eerie parallels with Trump and the Egypt story
date: 2024-08-09, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">“Four years ago, Boston lawyer and journalist James Barron wrote that the Watergate break-in may well have been an attempt to steal documents from Democratic Party headquarters showing that Nixon had taken $549,000 from the Greek government in order to help finance his 1968 campaign.”
Dan Kennedy argues that there are parallels here with the story, reported a year ago, that Donald Trump might have partially funded his 2016 election campaign with an illegal contribution from the Egyptian government.
It does seem strange that the story hasn’t been followed up on by either the press or the Democratic Party. What sticks out to me about Dan’s commentary, though, is this:
“What makes a story stick is repetition — and without prominent Democrats coming out every day and giving journalists something to report on, it quickly withers away.”
Should that be true? I’d hope that the press could find their own leads. Otherwise it, in effect, becomes a press release driven industry. I’m not disputing that it probably is true in reality, but I’d hope for a better dynamic.
<p>[<a href="https://dankennedy.net/2024/08/09/50-years-after-nixons-resignation-some-eerie-parallels-with-trump-and-the-egypt-story/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/50-years-after-nixons-resignation-some-eerie-parallels-with-trump
TikTok, Brat and Kamala Harris: Will newly fired-up young voters flip elections in California?
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Young voters in California and across the country are excited about Vice President Kamala Harris. Democrats are trying to capitalize, counting on a surge at the polls to win key congressional races.
Mac As Appliance
date: 2024-08-09, from: Tedium site
Apple ticks off its non-casual users by upping the naggy permissions menus in the upcoming version of MacOS.
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16767142/macos-annoying-permissions-strategy
Best Foot Under
date: 2024-08-09, from: Tedium site
My thoughts on using an elliptical machine under my desk for a couple of weeks. Can you exercise and type at the same time?
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16767143/under-desk-elliptical-review
Regina Caputo Charts the Future of High-Energy Astrophysics
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
Research astrophysicist Regina Caputo puzzles out how the universe works by studying the most extreme events in the cosmos. Name: Regina CaputoTitle: Research Astrophysicist Organization: Astroparticle Physics Laboratory (Code 661) What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? I’m a research astrophysicist in the particle astrophysics lab at Goddard. […]
Police, family ID 16-year-old girl killed in Hayward shooting
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Police say multiple cars pulled up in the area and that the gunmen wore masks in what appeared to be a targeted killing.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/09/police-family-id-16-year-old-girl-killed-in-hayward-shooting/
Microsoft really wants those old Exchange 2016 servers put out to pasture
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Come to 2019. The in-place upgrades to the Subscription Edition will be lovely
Microsoft is getting serious about the impending end of extended support for Exchange 2016 and has published a guide on stripping the product from an environment that already has Exchange 2019 installed.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/microsoft_really_wants_those_old/
How the Park Fire and other California wildfires get their names
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Wildfires are unfortunately something that most Californians are used to seeing every summer. But have you ever stopped to think about how these fires get their names?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/09/wildfires-whats-in-a-name/
This 26-year-old Silicon Valley tech worker uses her impostor syndrome as novel inspiration
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
A chat with novelist Kyla Zhao
Crozier Fire map: Evacuations of Sierra communities, smoke over Lake Tahoe
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
The mandatory evacuation zone includes the communities of Volcanoville, Quintette and Spanish Flat and part of Georgetown.
Running a business during a time of division and polarization
date: 2024-08-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Marketplace’s Nancy Marshall-Genzer has been gathering perspectives on the economy from Kent County, Michigan — a swing county in a swing state. More than that, the county is divided. And how people vote is playing an increasingly large role in how well they view the economy. Also: how consumers in China are feeling the pinch of rising prices, and what a rate cut by the Federal Reserve would mean for consumer debt and savings.
Man charged in 1977 strangulations of three California women after DNA investigation
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
73-year-old Warren Luther Alexander was extradited to California from North Carolina, where he is awaiting prosecution for a 1992 cold case killing.
The International Space Station’s “window to the world”
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
The cupola is a small module designed for the observation of operations outside the station such as robotic activities, the approach of vehicles, and spacewalks. Its six side windows and a direct nadir viewing window provide spectacular views of Earth and celestial objects. The windows are equipped with shutters to protect them from contamination and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/the-international-space-stations-window-to-the-world/
Alameda police investigating murder, suicide on Lagunaria Lane
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Police say the woman appears to have written a confession note and left food for dogs after allegedly killing her husband.
California lawmaker switches to Republican party, criticizes Democratic leadership
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
State Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil is known for her support of the tough-on-crime approach and fiscally conservative outlook. She also has voted with Republicans on labor legislation.
Trump said he ‘went down’ in helicopter ‘emergency landing’ with former SF mayor Willie Brown, who says it never happened
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Asked about Brown’s rebuttal of the former president’s narrative, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung only responded, “Slick Willie!”
Philippe Petit Marks the 50th Anniversary of His World Trade Center Walk With a New High Wire Act
date: 2024-08-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The 74-year-old French artist reflected on his stunt and balanced on a tightrope at two performances in Manhattan
An Injustice to Condo Owners
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The proposed Santa Barbara Community Benefit Improvement District does not exempt owner-occupied condominiums even though our situation is exactly the same as that of the excluded single-family owner-occupied properties.
The post An Injustice to Condo Owners appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/09/an-injustice-to-condo-owners/
NASA to Launch 8 Scientific Balloons From New Mexico
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program has kicked off its annual fall balloon campaign at the agency’s balloon launch facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Eight balloon flights carrying scientific experiments and technology demonstrations are scheduled to launch from mid-August through mid-October. The flights will support 16 missions, including investigations in the fields of astrophysics, heliophysics, and […]
NASA Tests Deployment of Roman Space Telescope’s ‘Visor’
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
The “visor” for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope recently completed several environmental tests simulating the conditions it will experience during launch and in space. Called the Deployable Aperture Cover, this large sunshade is designed to keep unwanted light out of the telescope. This milestone marks the halfway point for the cover’s final sprint of […]
Software innovation just isn’t what it used to be, and Moxie Marlinspike blames Agile
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Layers of abstraction and speedy development have left engineers unable to understand what lies beneath
black hat There’s a rot at the heart of modern software development that’s destroying innovation, and infosec legend Moxie Marlinspike believes he knows exactly what’s to blame: Agile development.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/marlinspike/
Hubble Spotlights a Supernova
date: 2024-08-09, from: NASA breaking news
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy LEDA 857074, located in the constellation Eridanus. LEDA 857074 is a barred spiral galaxy, with partially broken spiral arms. The image also captured a supernova, named SN 2022ADQZ, shining brightly on the right side of the galaxy’s bar. Several evolutionary paths can lead to a supernova […]
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-spotlights-a-supernova/
Princeton University to help Ukraine rebuild, reduce corruption risks
date: 2024-08-09, from: VOA News USA
By the beginning of 2024, the war in Ukraine had inflicted over $150 billion of damage on Ukraine’s infrastructure, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. But some scholars in the U.S., alongside Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, are already looking ahead to the end of the war and the opportunity to rebuild. Princeton University recently created a legal database to help. Iuliia Iarmolenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Oleksii Osyka
Joby Aviation rolls third aircraft off production line at its facility in Monterey County
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
The aviation company has designed and produced an electric air taxi that will carry a pilot and four passengers at speeds up to 200 mph offering high-speed mobility with a fraction of the noise produced by helicopters and zero operating emissions.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
This startup's plan makes me nauseous. As if the big problem in AI is compensating rentiers for their supposed losses due to AI apps. The information that news reports on does not belong to anyone. Bill Gross already has enough money. Instead, maybe he should find innovative ways to give it away.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/08/one-startups-plan-to-fix-ais-shoplifting-problem/
Bay Area lawmakers announce resolution to designate ‘Willie Mays Highway’
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Say Hey Kid, will there be a Willie Mays Highway? Yes, for a designated portion of Interstate 80 on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, if and when a state Senate resolution takes effect.
How Base 3 Computing Beats Binary
date: 2024-08-09, from: Quanta Magazine
Long explored but infrequently embraced, base 3 computing may yet find a home in cybersecurity.The post How Base 3 Computing Beats Binary first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-base-3-computing-beats-binary-20240809/
East Bay man charged with sex trafficking minor, after minor escapes, calls 911
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Monterey County Police found they young girl was taken from Stockton on April 3, 2021 and was forced to engage in sex acts in Antitoch, Pittsburgh, San Jose, Salinas, Reno and other cities.
Federal judge: San Rafael can enforce homeless camping law
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
The order means the city’s updated ordinance regulating the size and location of the camps is now in full effect.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/09/federal-judge-san-rafael-can-enforce-homeless-camping-law/
Aptos native Nikki Hiltz qualifies for 1,500 final, makes history
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Hiltz, who is transgender/nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, frequently calls being queer their superpower.
Scotts Valley native Dominique Parrish ousted: ‘I didn’t wrestle my best’
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Team USA freestyle wrestler Dominique Parrish, a Scotts Valley native, saw her 2024 Summer Olympics come to a close in Paris on Thursday.
Santa Cruz native Natalia Grossman falls short of making Women’s Combined climbing final
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Team USA’s Natalia Grossman and Brooke Raboutou, among the 20 women’s Combined climbers who competed in the Boulder round on Tuesday at the 2024 Summer Olympics, returned to complete their scores in the Lead round Thursday in Le Bourget, France.
COSMIC alpha released
date: 2024-08-09, from: OS News
After two year of development, System76 has released the very first alpha of COSMIC, their new Rust-based desktop environment for Linux. This is an alpha release, so they make it clear there’s going to be bugs and that there’s a ton of missing features at this point. As a whole, COSMIC is a comprehensive operating system GUI (graphical user interface) environment that features advanced functionality and a responsive design. Its modular architecture is specifically designed to facilitate the creation of unique, branded user experiences with ease. ↫ System76 website Don’t read too much into “branded experience” here – it just means other Linux distributions can easily use their colours, branding, and panel configurations. The settings application is also entirely modular, so distributors can easily add additional panels, and replace things like the update panel with one that fits their package management system of choice. COSMIC also supports extensive theming, and if you’re wondering – yes, all of these are answers to the very reason COSMIC was made in the first place: GNOME’s restrictiveness. There’s not much else to say here yet, since it’s an alpha release, but if you want to give it a go, the announcement post contains links to instructions for a variety of Linux distributions. COSMIC is also slowly making its way into Redox, the Rust-based operating system led by Jeremy Soller, a System76 employee.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140453/cosmic-alpha-released/
Be careful where you park. AI is watching AC Transit bus stop lanes
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
AC Transit is gearing up to issue citations to drivers to park in the bus stop lanes. Fines will $110 starting Oct. 7. Agency using AI to help spot violators.
Pro-Iran groups lay groundwork for ‘chaos and violence’ as US election meddling attempts intensify
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Political officials, advisors targeted in cyber attacks as fake news sites deliver lefty zingers
Microsoft says Iran’s efforts to influence the November US presidential election have gathered pace recently and there are signs that point toward its intent to incite violence against key figures.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/iran_state_groups_lay_groundwork/
Biden set to share a legacy with LBJ
date: 2024-08-09, from: VOA News USA
U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to pass the Democratic Party’s torch to Vice President Kamala Harris makes him a lame-duck president – one who remains in office without any hope of an additional term. VOA’s chief national correspondent Steve Herman at the White House looks at how Biden’s legacy may eventually compare to the previous one-term president who did not run for reelection.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-set-to-share-a-legacy-with-lbj-/7736107.html
Naomi Girma dominated San Jose youth soccer. Now she’s the ‘best center back in the world’
date: 2024-08-09, from: San Jose Mercury News
Naomi Girma and the U.S. women’s national team are one win away from a gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
A Quick Roundup of This Week’s DOE Funding News
date: 2024-08-09, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Japan has issued its first-ever “megaquake” caution after a temblor rattled its southern coast yesterday • The remnants of Tropical Storm Debby could bring tornadoes to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast • India’s record heat has been mentioned at least 80 times in quarterly earnings calls.
THE TOP FIVE
- Solar panel company Qcells secures $1.45 billion DOE loan
The Biden administration announced yesterday a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee of up to $1.45 billion for solar panel maker Qcells to support the construction of the company’s new manufacturing facility in Cartersville, Georgia. The plant would be Qcell’s second in Georgia, but the largest of its kind in the U.S., churning out solar panel components like silicon ingots and wafers, as well as finished solar panels. Its completion will “re-establish critical parts of the domestic solar supply chain and reinforce the United States’ status as a global clean energy leader,” the Department of Energy said in a statement. The plant will create 1,950 jobs, and is expected to make 3.3 gigawatts of panels each year, enough to power half a million homes. And it will be eligible for the IRA’s clean-energy tax credits.
In other government funding news this week, the DOE announced $10.2 million to advance the “cost effective and environmentally responsible” production of critical minerals and materials in the U.S., $85 million to boost domestic heat pump manufacturing, and $2.2 billion to shore up the grid.
- Glacial dam outburst floods Alaska’s capital
Alaska’s capital of Juneau has been inundated by flooding from a glacial dam outburst this week. More than 100 homes have been damaged in the Mendenhall Valley after the Suicide Basin, which holds meltwater from Suicide Glacier, began to overflow on August 1 and sent water pouring into the Mendenhall River. Climate change is melting glaciers, putting nearby communities in danger. Recent research shows the number of glacial lakes has grown by more than 50% since 1990, and more than 15 million people globally are at risk.
Facebook/Alaska
Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
- Canadian nuclear fusion firm gets government backing
Canadian nuclear fusion company General Fusion this week raised about $14.6 million in a Series F funding round from two government agencies, the Business Development Bank of Canada and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. The injection brings the company’s funding total to more than $320 million, with backers including Jeff Bezos. As Bloomberg explained, General Fusion “uses mechanically driven pistons to compress a cloud of plasma as a means to generate energy,” and the company said this money will help it move toward compressing plasmas at large scale, which is “a key milestone on our path to reach transformational results for commercialization.”
- L.A. could soon get an air taxi network
California-based eVTOL developer Archer Aviation is planning an “air mobility network” that will bring flying electric taxis to Los Angeles as early as 2026. Customers would be able to skip the L.A. traffic by hopping into one of Archer’s Midnight aircraft and travelling in a matter of minutes to one of the company’s vertiports, which will be located near various popular destinations including LAX, USC, and perhaps the SoFi Stadium. Here’s what the network could look like:
The Midnight electric aircraft can carry four passengers at a time and travel at 150 mph. The company recently announced plans for a similar network in the San Francisco Bay Area. Stellantis is planning to help Archer ramp up production of the Midnight aircraft by covering some $370 million in labor-related costs.
- Study reveals how past volcanic eruptions affected climate, plants
A new study published in the journal Science examines how the Earth’s plants and carbon cycle have responded in the past to climate change caused by huge releases in carbon dioxide from volcanic activity. They find that the severity of the fallout depended on how quickly the Earth could sequester the carbon and remove it from the atmosphere, but also how well plants could adapt to the resulting temperature changes. After past volcanic eruptions, some plant species evolved to survive, some migrated to cooler climates, but others were wiped out entirely. The authors found that damages to vegetation made global warming worse in the past. “This study, in my perspective, serves as a ‘wake-up call’ for the global community,” said co-author Loïc Pellissier, a professor of ecosystems and landscape evolution at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research. “We are currently releasing greenhouse gases at a faster rate than any previous volcanic event. We are also the primary cause of global deforestation, which strongly reduces the ability of natural ecosystems to regulate the climate.”
THE KICKER
Satellite data suggests deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is now at its lowest levels since 2016.
https://heatmap.news/economy/a-quick-roundup-of-this-weeks-doe-funding-news
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Aptly named “welcome to hell”
B’tselem released a detailed report documenting Israel’s torture practices in Israel:
http://www.btselem.org/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112932086461120505
NASA’s NEOWISE asteroid spotter turned off for the final time
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A mission that was supposed to last for less than a year went on for more than a decade
NASA’s comeback kid, the NEOWISE spacecraft, was this week shut down for the final time as its transmitter was turned off ahead of a reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere later this year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/nasas_asteroid_spotter_turned_off/
colonialist owls
date: 2024-08-09, from: Ayjay blog
This is a fascinating report: “Very soon, the federal government may authorize the killing of nearly a half-million barred owls in the Pacific Northwest in a desperate bid to save the northern spotted owl.” The argument appended to the report is that this proposal is unwise. The key passage, I think, is this: Many philosophers, […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/colonialist-owls/
How Extra Mass and Air Drag Affect Sprinters
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/08/09/how-extra-mass-and-air-drag-affect-sprinters/
How much sway should the president have over interest rates?
date: 2024-08-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report
As president, Donald Trump was highly critical of the Federal Reserve and Chairman Jerome Powell. Now, Trump is signaling that he would want to have more say on interest rate decisions should he win the election in November — even though the Fed’s relative independence is seen as a key pillar of U.S. economic strength. Also on the program: how a summer camp is marrying mariachi music with exposure to careers in STEM.
Core Python developer suspended for three months
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Code of Conduct violations include allegations that posts created ‘atmosphere of FUD’
The Python Steering Council has decided to suspend a core Python developer for three months for alleged Code of Conduct violations.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/core_python_developer_suspended_coc/
The American Roots Of The World’s Right-Wing Nationalism
date: 2024-08-09, from: The Lever News
On Lever Time, journalist Zack Beauchamp explains how an anti-democratic tradition that began in the U.S. has spread to right-wing governments around the world.
https://www.levernews.com/the-american-roots-of-the-worlds-right-wing-nationalism/
A good performance on social media can secure Olympic riches
date: 2024-08-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: There’s been a lot of talk about the Olympics’ boost to Paris’ economy, but what about the athletes themselves? The all-encompassing influence of social media looks set to create some surprising winners. And breaking — better known as breakdancing — makes its Olympics debut, yet it’s not in the line-up for the LA games in 2028. Now could be the chance to grab the spotlight and secure some funding.
Apple tries again to make EU DMA officials happy – with new fees
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Meanwhile, UK watchdog contemplates breaking Cupertino’s WebKit rule
Apple this week revised its alternative contractual terms for devs selling apps in the European Union – a revision that was immediately dismissed by critics as more “malicious compliance.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/apple_eu_compliance/
P&B: Georgie Cooke
date: 2024-08-09, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>This is the 50th edition of <em>People and Blogs</em>, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Georgie Cooke and her blog, <a href="https://hey.georgie.nu">hey.georgie.nu</a></p>To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Let’s start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?
I’m Georgie and I was born and reside in Sydney, Australia. I grew up in the ’burbs, which was something I despised until I moved to a spot closer to the city, and there’s a certain nostalgia that Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs evokes about my childhood that no other album or song has done to date.
My first experience using a computer was when I was probably about four
years old, watching my dad type commands into MS-DOS to launch games.
When I couldn’t figure out how to load King’s Quest, I would just type
dir and press spacebar dozens of times for amusement until
my dad came to my aid. These days, I work as a software engineer and I
fell into this line of work after teaching myself how to code and build
websites, then trying to find data entry jobs, but realising there were
actually jobs for building websites.
I’ve competed in two powerlifting competitions (placing third and second), I used to be a concert photographer and a ballerina, I like hiking, and I am passionate about expressing myself through my style and what I wear. One might describe my style as containing deliberate elements of juxtaposition, and a blend of 80s, 90s, punk, and grunge. I am a 90s kid, pretty much, but my interests and knowledge of pop culture give people the impression that I’m an older millennial than I actually am. I also still get ID’d, and it now amuses me since I’m old enough to appreciate it. I’ll take what I can get.
What’s the story behind your blog?
After playing Neopets in the early 2000s and then getting my account banned because I was transferring items and neopoints to myself from a secondary account, I started blogging on LiveJournal. My website was on a free hosting site, and was my playground for practicing coding and graphic design. I was writing about pretty inane stuff on LiveJournal, and my website was reserved for updates about graphics, trivia and other miscellanea I was adding to my website.
Since I had been writing in a physical diary for most of my childhood and early adolescence, writing stuff online seemed like a fair transition. It was also easier for me to let my friends read my diary if it was on a website they could visit.
After LiveJournal, I blogged on MSN Spaces for a while. My blog was called “Consolation in a Jar”, because I thought the visual of a jar was cute (think those jars full of hand-made paper stars) and also because I was going through a difficult time with severe depression.
I forget what my website’s name was when I first created it, but I settled on the name “Out The Window”. I am pretty sure it came from the Linkin Park song “In The End”. I started blogging about my school life and hobbies, and more emotional posts found their home on Consolation in a Jar.
In 2008 I registered my first domain name, Heartdrops.org. This is the URL at which I gained a lot of notoriety, fame, what have you. MSN Spaces had shut down, and I chose not to save all of the painful posts I’d published. Heartdrops became my main blog, and would be that way for four years. Facebook took off around this time, and I continued to strongly hold the opinion that friends could contact me via phone number or—quite literally—my website that I’d had years before social media.
I started a few other blogs for different creative projects, like photoblogging, letters to friends, and scans of doodling and drawing on paper. I went through a couple of cycles of starting new blogs for specific topics, then pulling them all back into my main blog. Now I like to have everything in the one place and feel free to use my space to write about any topic I want.
I’d been using georgie.nu as a “domain collective”—a website to showcase all of my domains and projects—for three years before I decided to name rename Heartdrops to “Hey Georgie” and use the URL. I was working on an exciting, bold WordPress theme that was a departure from my usual design style, and didn’t suit the name Heartdrops. I started to feel like the name was juvenile and reminded me too much of a difficult time in my life.
My blog has been called Hey Georgie for the past 12 years now. I feel like it suits my personality more accurately. The name just comes from the greeting of “hey” or “hello”, but one of my favourite local bands is called Hey Geronimo as well. I know I must have sounded like a hypocrite when I renamed my blog because I used to diss people who had their name in their website name. I said so much shit online in my youth. But damn, have I learned. I have learned a lot.
What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?
In my early years of blogging (from the mid to late 2000s), I would just sit at my computer or laptop and write any time I wanted a blog post to happen, or if I had an idea, I would try to write the blog post as soon as possible. My ideas mostly revolved around funny stories from my childhood, or experiences in my day to day as a suburban kid being in the heart of the city for university and social events. I would usually write a 500-word post in 30 minutes or so. I didn’t proofread. It was a combination of being a little bit cocky and confident in my writing skills and speed, and an obsession with posting something every two days. I just wanted to write the blog post and be done, and took pride in having something new to share.
My process is very different these days. I’ve not only matured, but the blog posts I write are less stream-of-consciousness and centre around a specific topic. They take a bit more time because I care about them reading well and being well structured. My writing has matured the same way I’ve matured as a person.
I stopped having the freedom to just drop everything and write as soon as an idea came to mind, so I keep a list of ideas instead. I don’t have as many ideas as I used to. When I think about why, I think it’s that I don’t enjoy writing about the mundanities of life the way that I did as an adolescent. (I promise my life is not boring… haha.) My interest in writing about certain topics also waned. Any time I’m in the mood, I’ll take one of those ideas and just start writing something until I get stuck, then I leave the draft there and come back to it later. Some of those drafts never see the light of day because I give up on the idea, while others are eventually worked on and published. In the past, I had the mentality of a completist and anything I worked on was published, even if I thought it sucked. I still don’t proofread too meticulously, and sometimes I even do it after I’ve published a post, because I am so comfortable with my writing that there will usually only be some small typos. If the topic is a really delicate one, I might ask a couple of close friends to proofread it.
I used to use an app called Bear to help me focus while I was writing. Now I just write most of my posts directly in my WordPress installation or in the Notes app on my iPhone or MacBook. I can’t remember why I abandoned Bear, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with paying for features that I refused to pay for.
Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?
My physical space really influences my ability to write and put a blog post together. I value my noise-cancelling headphones and a bit of stoner rock or hard rock or metal. It’s music that’s energetic enough because of the beat, and I like having the lyrics present, but they don’t feel distracting because the vocals are rough. I also need to be physically comfortable, but this doesn’t necessarily mean I need to be in an armchair in a library. I like cafes, and often work from them, but I can’t write while sitting in a cafe unless it’s during a quieter time of the day and the cafe doesn’t play pop music loudly for ambiance. I can write whilst sitting on a park bench, even if the bench isn’t like a sofa, but maybe there aren’t many people around and the weather is pleasant. I can write from my phone on public transport, as long as I have a long enough journey and am seated by the window.
Oddly enough, I’ve found that I can write better and am more forced to focus during periods of being “in transit”, like sitting in an airport lounge, being on a long-distance ferry, or waiting at a cafe for a friend to arrive because I’m early for our date. It might be because there is a definite end to the time I’m in that place—compared to sitting at home with an entire afternoon ahead of me and falling into procrastination. It is entirely possible that the “forced deadline” created by being in those temporary situations is beneficial for me because of my neurodivergent brain. If I’m at home, I just won’t make a deadline to write a post by, but in some of the scenarios I described, I have no choice.
A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?
I register most of my domains with NameCheap (I have one on Name.com). Before I could afford to pay for my own hosting, I had a friend who set me up on her shared hosting. I bought my own plan at NameCheap after about a decade of her generously letting me use some of her space for free.
I use self-hosted WordPress. I take pride in the fact that I’ve coded my theme myself—it’s not compatible with new features of WordPress and I don’t try to make it that way, as it’s mostly just an outlet for my coding creativity. I remember the days when I had the time, inspiration, and energy to code and update a new theme every two weeks. If I remember correctly, my current theme has been there since 2018, which is a personal record for me. I’m not sure what changed (apart from the obvious, like having more responsibilities in life and already doing coding as part of my day job, etc.). I think I just focused more on the idea of “branding” and simplicity, and that led me to build something that I was happy with long-term.
I know WordPress has an interesting (if not slightly poor) reputation, but I’ve just used it ever since I had my own domain name in the late 00’s, and I decided to stick with it. I’ve had many conversations with friends about why I never converted to a static site generator, or why I don’t do it now. I put too much emphasis on comments and having a comments section, and didn’t want them to be owned by a third-party service. A friend even joked that he’d build something custom for me, but my needs made him give up. Hahah. I have well over 1,500 blog posts and 26,000 comments. The thought of migrating them was not only a tricky problem to solve, but at some point converting them made the possibility of a sunk cost fallacy inevitable. I debated just removing the comment functionality entirely, given that most readers either don’t leave comments, or reach out to me through email or social media to share their thoughts. With the rise of social media-type trolling comments and inauthentic AI-generated ones, perhaps this could be a reason to no longer care about blog post comments…
Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?
I’m not sure that I would do anything too differently, because I’ve owned a blog for so long and the things I would do differently have already been applied, or weren’t too hard to change on an existing blog. For example, the renaming of my blog from Heartdrops to Hey Georgie was pretty straightforward.
If you asked me to start fresh today, perhaps I really would abandon the whole comment thing—hahaha—and then use it as an opportunity to use something that will let me write blog posts more “simply” with Markdown. That’s probably all I’d really change. These days it’s not uncommon for a blog to have no comments section, but it was just such a huge part of me making friends and connections on the internet pre-social media.
Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what’s your position on people monetising personal blogs?
In a year, for domain and hosting, I pay about $80–100 AUD, give or take. The .nu domain is notoriously expensive and costs some $40 a year, but I committed to that when I first got it. Haha. (It’s kind of like the custom licence plate I have for my car; I committed to that several hundred dollar annual payment when I got it, so I keep paying for it because it has sentimental value.) I don’t pay much attention to the actual cost. I just pay for it when it’s due. Even though my frequency of posts don’t suggest this, my blog is my passion project and something I really care about.
I feel very strongly about monetising content in relation to being my authentic self online. The topic first came up for me a while ago, long before social media and living in a world of subscriptions and content creation and ads and things. I first dabbled in sponsored posts and accepting money for links when I only had a job for six hours a week, because I just wanted extra cash. I felt uncomfortable about it though, and I realised that my personal morals were important to me. All my friends were telling me that I should make money from my online space, but it didn’t sound like something I wanted to do. I put a PayPal donate button on my blog and I felt gross, especially after I managed to get more part time jobs. My blog was an outlet for my writing and a place where I put my honest and personal thoughts. It was not a business.
I decided that my blog would always be a space that genuinely represents myself and the things I care about and stand for. I previously accepted payment for certain types of advertisements that I might not agree with today. These days, I accept payment for in-post advertising, and free products in return for honest reviews, but they must be from businesses or companies whose principles I support, or whose products I might actually use.
If other people choose to monetise their blog, I think they have every right to do so. But I will admit that it’s sometimes funny to see advertisements completely unrelated to the blog’s general content. It only bothers me if someone’s blog is littered with ads and content that they obviously paid for. But then I think we are getting into “content creation” territory, which I consider different from people’s personal blogs.
I don’t usually financially support other bloggers. If they have some kind of “buy me a coffee” link, I might buy them a few coffees but it’ll be a once-off. If I get to meet any other bloggers in real life, I am more than happy to buy them a coffee in person. 😊
Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?
My good friend Pauline at pawlean.com, my friend Jane from lemonandlively.com, Ruben at rubenerd.com, Jem at jemjabella.co.uk. 💙 I’m sure least one of them might be up for an interview, but I’d gladly read an interview with any of them.
Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?
If you’ve read this far, just, thank you. I think there might be some people reading this who know me from when I was literally fifteen years old, too, which is not only astonishing, but really touching to me that there was something about my writing or about me as a person that made you read my blog in the first place. I’ve always liked writing, and unlike other interests and hobbies, it’s a thing that innately stays with you over time.
I have a podcast called Toast & Roast, a super low budget pod that my friend and I record for fun. It was a mid-pandemic project that has been going for several years, and I think the success of its tenure is to do with the fact that our recording sessions are also the time we chat and catch up. We release episodes weekly. It’s got the same unfiltered vibe that my blog posts have, and we don’t really plan topics. Hopefully we’re the kind of pod you might have playing in the background or just listen to when you don’t feel like paying too much attention. I like to think it’s like eavesdropping on two friends who are just talking shit. But if you’ve ever wanted to put a voice to my face or writing, or whatever… hehe.
You can find me on Instagram at @hey.georgie, where I mostly post outfits and travel pictures. It’s ended up being the platform I use most to interact with internet folk. I joined back when filters were part of the aesthetic, and I think you couldn’t even write a caption? Instagram has continued to be a good way to see what my friends are up to and to message them casually. I was also an early adopter of Twitter and got a lot of value out of it, but it’s no longer the platform it once was. However, you can find me on Mastodon where I don’t mind posting silly thoughts and banter.
Back in 2020, in the early months of the pandemic, I published a poetry collection called “the off switch is broken”, inspired by my experience as a software engineer, growing up on the internet, and what identity means online. It has themes of discomfort and failure, as well as nostalgia and triumph. Although there are pieces of poetry in the depths of my blog, this was something I created with a lot more intent. I hope you consider taking a look, as I think it documents feelings that we all share.
This was the 50th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Georgie. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
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UK monopoly police launch full blown probe of Amazon’s Anthropic tie-up
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Poor cloud titans, just trying to give a helping hand to AI startups valued at billions of dollars
Britain’s competition regulator is embarking on a full blown deep dive into Amazon’s multi-billion dollar investments in Anthropic to ascertain if the exchange equates to a stealthy “merger situation.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/cma_launches_full_blown_probe/
Sergey Durmanov opened issue #152: INCL/EXCL - No range check at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: Oberon A2 repository
MODULE TestSet3;
PROCEDURE Do*;
VAR set: SET16;
BEGIN
INCL(set, 20); (*! out of range *)
END Do;
END TestSet3.https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/issues/152
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Lawrence: 'Stupidest' candidate Trump did not answer reporters' questions.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD-oTJ49nls
Intel’s processor failures: A cautionary tale of business vs engineering
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Chipzilla taking some punches but could it stay down?
Opinion Just like Boeing, once upon a time, Intel was the darling of the engineering world. Both companies were the premier tech companies in their day, but those days are long gone now.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/opinion_column_intel/
more curl help
date: 2024-08-09, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
With the ever-growing number of command line options for curl, the problem of how to provide documentation and help users understand how options work and should be used is a challenge that is worth revisiting regularly. To keep iterating on. I personally often use the curl manpage to lookup descriptions for options. Often not only … Continue reading more curl help
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/08/09/more-curl-help/
Techie told ‘Bill Gates’ Excel is rubbish – and the Microsoft boss had it fixed in 48 hours
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
I’m a Mac. I’m a PC. You’re both annoying me
On Call The Register knows that tech support is a vocation that induces frustration, which is why each Friday we offer a new edition of On Call – the reader-contributed column that details real-life support stories so you can at least enjoy misery in company.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/on_call/
Today in SCV History (Aug. 9)
date: 2024-08-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1919 – Charles Kingsburry (Kingsburry House at Hart Park) arrives in Newhall to work on Power House No. 1 construction in San Francisquito Canyon [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-aug-9/
What’s going on with AMD funding a CUDA translation layer, then nuking it?
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
We guess the House of Zen wants all you HIP kids to ROCm out with its own runtimes instead
Analysis AMD’s legal team appears to have clawed back control of much of the ZLUDA project’s code base. The open source project, for which the House of Zen pulled support earlier this year, enabled compiled CUDA code to run natively on non-Nvidia GPUs.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/amd_zluda_take_down/
Webcurios 09/08/24
date: 2024-08-09, from: Web Curios blog
Reading Time: 37 minutes Welcome to England, a country now reaching the ‘results’ stage of a decades-long experiment designed to answer the question ’so what do you think happens to the social fabric of a nation when its inhabitants spend 20 years watching their quality of life diminish by almost every conceivable available metric while a significant proportion of…https://webcurios.co.uk/webcurios-09-08-24/
Huge California wildfire chews through timber in very hot and dry weather
date: 2024-08-09, from: VOA News USA
CHICO, California — California’s largest wildfire so far this year continued to grow Thursday as it chewed through timber in very hot and dry weather.
The Park Fire has scorched more than 1,709 square kilometers since erupting July 24 near the Sacramento Valley city of Chico and burning northward up the western flank of the Sierra Nevada. Containment remained at 34%, Cal Fire said.
The conflagration’s early explosive growth quickly made it California’s fourth-largest wildfire on record before favorable weather reduced its intensity late last week. It reawakened this week due to the heat and very low relative humidity levels.
A large portion of the burned area was in mop-up stage but spot fires were a continuing problem, officials said during Thursday morning’s operational briefing.
The fire’s northeast corner was the top firefighting priority, operations deputy Jed Gaines said.
“It’s not time to celebrate,” he said. “We got several more days of hard work to hold what we got in there.”
The latest Park Fire assessments found 636 structures destroyed and 49 damaged. A local man was arrested after authorities alleged he started the fire by pushing a burning car into a gully in a wilderness park outside Chico.
About 160 kilometers to the south, a new forest fire in El Dorado County was exhibiting extreme behavior, and some Park Fire aircraft were being diverted there.
The Crozier Fire, about 16 kilometers north of Placerville, had burned more than 5.17 square kilometers of timber and chaparral as of Thursday evening and was just 5% contained. The fire threatens 1,625 structures, according to Cal Fire.
It’s 2024 and we’re just getting round to stopping browsers insecurely accessing 0.0.0.0
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Can’t reach someone’s private server on localhost from outside? No problem
A years-old security oversight has been addressed in basically all web browsers – Chromium-based browsers, including Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, WebKit browsers like Apple’s Safari, and Mozilla’s Firefox.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/0000_day_bug/
HP Inc loves China – but wants to reduce the risks it presents
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Amid reports that plenty of PC production will shift elsewhere, supply chain boss emphasizes agility
HP Inc loves China and wants to keep making and designing products there, but also loves the idea of diversifying its operations to other countries in case geopolitics becomes a problem.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/hp_china_supply_chain/
SCV Water Board Member Ed Colley Resigns Seat
date: 2024-08-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Ed Colley, who represented District 2 on the Board of Directors of the Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency, resigned his seat effective Wednesday, Aug. 7. Colley’s resignation was prompted by his planned move out of his district, and California, to Texas
https://scvnews.com/scv-water-board-member-ed-colley-resigns-seat/
Giant panda habitat opens at California zoo to much fanfare
date: 2024-08-09, from: VOA News USA
san diego, california — Two Chinese giant pandas are now California residents as their enclosure at the San Diego Zoo opened to the public on Thursday in an international ceremony.
The pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, are the first to enter the United States in 21 years and were welcomed by California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng.
Yun Chuan, a 5-year-old male, is easily recognized by his long, slightly pointed nose, while Xin Bao is a 4-year-old female with big fluffy ears whose name means a “precious treasure of prosperity and abundance.”
Yun Chuan’s name means “big river of cloud.” His mother, Zhen Zhen, was born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007.
The zoo is working closely with Chinese experts to help with the adaptation period and understanding of the needs of the two pandas. The pair are enjoying a variety of fresh bamboo and a local adaptation of “wotou,” a traditional Chinese steamed cornbread that’s also called “panda bread.”
“The arrival of Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, as we celebrate the 45th anniversary of our diplomatic ties, has sent a clear and important message,” said Xie.
“China-U.S. cooperation on panda conservation will not cease. Our people-to- people exchanges and subnational cooperation will not stop, and once opened, the door of China-U.S. friendship will not be shut again,” he added.
Newsom said the new pandas were about “celebrating our common humanity. It’s about celebrating the things that bind us together.”
“And so, for me, this spirit of pride that is associated with this opening today with the experience that so many will have, that we just had at Panda Ridge, is about a deeper meaning,” Newsom added.
Visitors of all ages to Panda Ridge on Thursday were exuberant about the pandas’ cuteness.
“I have never seen a panda before. I’ve only seen them on TV and nature documentaries,” said Kobi Davis from Michigan. “They are super cute. They just kind of laze around, you know. There’s charm in that.”
Keena Butcher from Canada called them “quiet, thoughtful creatures, and just realize we can have hope for our future if we can conserve them.”
China’s Communist government has long used “panda diplomacy” to enhance the country’s soft power, lending the large but cuddly looking black-and-white bears to zoos in various countries over the decades as goodwill animal ambassadors.
In late 2023, Washington’s National Zoo said goodbye to its beloved giant pandas, which were returned to China amid heightened tensions between the two global superpowers.
In May this year, the National Zoo said China would send two young pandas to Washington by the end of the year.
https://www.voanews.com/a/giant-panda-habitat-opens-at-california-zoo-to-much-fanfare-/7735821.html
Friday Links: August 9, 2024
date: 2024-08-09, from: California Native Plants Society
Learn about cemeteries’ ecological value, moon-based genetic preservation, and more intriguing stories from the native plant world and beyond.
The post Friday Links: August 9, 2024 appeared first on California Native Plant Society.
https://www.cnps.org/friday-links/friday-links-august-9-2024-39795
County OKs $115k settlement in deputy crash
date: 2024-08-09, from: The Signal
Officials with the Los Angeles County Contract Cities Liability Trust Fund approved a $115,000 settlement for a deputy-involved crash that happened back in 2021, according to county records. The case […]
The post County OKs $115k settlement in deputy crash appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/county-oks-115k-settlement-in-deputy-crash/
Report slams Boeing and NASA over shoddy quality that’s delayed SLS blastoff
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Space Launch System project overspent, under-built, and is overdue, government probe finds
Boeing and NASA have come in for scathing criticism from federal investigators, who examined the next generation of Space Launch System rockets.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/nasa_boeing_sls/
Lasagna as a Sacrament
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
I never met David Peri, but he had something to do with me having the greatest lasagna of my life. And he was one of a kind.
The post Lasagna as a Sacrament appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/08/lasagna-as-a-sacrament/
Supervisors to hear appeal on Cali Lake
date: 2024-08-09, from: The Signal
The L.A. County Board of Supervisors is set to hear an appeal Tuesday for Cali Lake RV Resort by residents seeking to permanently house their recreational vehicles at the property. […]
The post Supervisors to hear appeal on Cali Lake appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/supervisors-to-hear-appeal-on-cali-lake/
Castaic hosts on-site adoption event to kick off Clear the Shelters
date: 2024-08-09, from: The Signal
Castaic Animal Care Center is encouraging residents to join the “paw-ty” to commemorate 10 years of Clear the Shelters, a nationwide initiative that’s held in partnership with hundreds of local […]
The post Castaic hosts on-site adoption event to kick off Clear the Shelters appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/castaic-hosts-on-site-adoption-event-to-kick-off-clear-the-shelters/
Jury deadlocks on charges in Black and Blue shooting
date: 2024-08-09, from: The Signal
Jury deadlocks on charges in Black and Blue shooting By Perry Smith Senior Staff Writer After two days of deliberation in the case of a man accused of shooting another […]
The post Jury deadlocks on charges in Black and Blue shooting appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/jury-deadlocks-on-charges-in-black-and-blue-shooting/
School resource deputy program extended to 2026
date: 2024-08-09, from: The Signal
High schools and junior highs in the Santa Clarita Valley will continue to have school resource deputies on campus after the L.A. County Board of Supervisors extended its agreement with […]
The post School resource deputy program extended to 2026 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/school-resource-deputy-program-extended-to-2026/
Hello? Are you talking on a Cisco SPA300 or SPA500 IP phone? Now’s the time to junk ’em
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Multiple critical flaws found and they won’t be fixed
A boffin from British defence contractor BAE has found three critical flaws in Cisco’s Small Business SPA300 and SPA500 IP phones – and another couple of nasties – none of which will be fixed or mitigated.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/cisco_ip_phone_critical_flaws/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Someday soon twitter will be on this list.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/08.html#a002605
Save Money and Time with These DIY Home Repair Tips
date: 2024-08-09, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Photo by Blue Bird Have you ever faced a home repair and felt your wallet cringe? Or maybe you’ve spent hours waiting for a professional, only to watch them complete…
Mustangs Baseball Adds Matt Chapman to Roster
date: 2024-08-09, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Matt Chapman is transferring from Coe College in Iowa to The Master’s University to continue his baseball career.
https://scvnews.com/mustangs-baseball-adds-matt-chapman-to-roster/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-09, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Another practical use for ChatGPT. A super techy service you use decides to require 2FA but reading their instructions you realize the docs were written by someone who hates people like you. Idea! Ask ChatGPT to translate. Out come nice instructions easy to read for people like me. Turns a dismal exercise in frustration to happiness at finding another huge stress- and time-saving application for ChatGPT.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/08.html#a001102
On Fire
date: 2024-08-09, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The world is a hot mess.
The post On Fire appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/08/on-fire/
Access local Ollama models from a cloud Kubernetes Cluster
date: 2024-08-09, updated: 2024-08-09, from: Inlets.dev, cloud tunneling
Renting a GPU in the cloud, especially with a bare-metal host can be expensive, and even if the hourly rate looks reasonable, over the course of a year, it can really add up. Many of us have a server or workstation at home with a GPU that can be used for serving models with an open source project like Ollama.
https://inlets.dev/blog/2024/08/09/local-ollama-tunnel-k3s.html
GSoC 2024: GPU Libc Benchmarking
date: 2024-08-09, from: LLVM Blog
Hey everyone! My name is James and I worked on LLVM this summer through GSoC. My project is called GPU Libc Benchmarking. The main objective of this project was to develop microbenchmarking infrastructure for libc on the GPU.
Background
The LLVM libc project was designed as an alternative to glibc that aims to be modular, configurable, and sanitizer-friendly. Currently, LLVM libc is being ported to Nvidia and AMD GPUs to give libc functionality (e.g. printf(), malloc(), and math functions) on the GPU. As of March 2024, programs can use GPU libc in offloading languages (CUDA, OpenMP) or through direct compilation and linking with the libc library.
What We Did
During this project, we developed a microbenchmarking framework that is directly compiled for and run on the GPU, using libc functions to display output to the user. As this was a short project (90 hours), we mostly focused on developing the infrastructure and writing a few example usages (isalnum(), isalpha(), and sin()).
Our benchmarking infrastructure is based on Google Benchmark and measures the average cycles, minimum, maximum, and standard deviation of each benchmark. Each benchmark is run for multiple iterations to stabilize the results. Benchmark writers can measure against vendor implementations of libc functions by passing specific linking flags to the benchmark’s CMake portion and registering the corresponding vendor function from the benchmark itself.
Below is an example of our benchmarking infrastructure’s output for
sinf()
Benchmark | Cycles | Min | Max | Iterations | Time / Iteration | Stddev | Threads |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sinf_1 | 764 | 369 | 2101 | 273 | 7 us | 323 | 32 |Sinf_128 | 721 | 699 | 744 | 5 | 913 us | 16 | 32 |Sinf_1024 | 661 | 650 | 689 | 9 | 7 ms | 31 | 32 |Sinf_4096 | 666 | 663 | 669 | 5 | 28 ms | 28 | 32 |SinfTwoPi_1 | 372 | 369 | 632 | 70 | 7 us | 39 | 32 |SinfTwoPi_128 | 379 | 379 | 379 | 4 | 895 us | 0 | 32 |SinfTwoPi_1024 | 335 | 335 | 338 | 5 | 7 ms | 20 | 32 |SinfTwoPi_4096 | 335 | 335 | 335 | 4 | 28 ms | 0 | 32 |SinfTwoPow30_1 | 371 | 369 | 510 | 70 | 7 us | 17 | 32 |SinfTwoPow30_128 | 379 | 379 | 379 | 4 | 894 us | 0 | 32 |SinfTwoPow30_1024 | 335 | 335 | 338 | 5 | 7 ms | 20 | 32 |SinfTwoPow30_4096 | 335 | 335 | 335 | 4 | 28 ms | 0 | 32 |SinfVeryLarge_1 | 477 | 369 | 632 | 70 | 7 us | 58 | 32 |SinfVeryLarge_128 | 487 | 480 | 493 | 5 | 900 us | 14 | 32 |SinfVeryLarge_1024 | 442 | 440 | 447 | 5 | 7 ms | 18 | 32 |SinfVeryLarge_4096 | 441 | 441 | 442 | 4 | 28 ms | 14 | 32 |Users can register benchmarks similar to Google Benchmark, using a macro:
uint64_t BM_IsAlnumCapital() { char x = 'A'; return LIBC_NAMESPACE::latency(LIBC_NAMESPACE::isalnum, x);}BENCHMARK(LlvmLibcIsAlNumGpuBenchmark, IsAlnumCapital, BM_IsAlnumCapital);Results
This project met its major goal of creating microbenchmarking infrastructure for the GPU. However, the original scope of this proposal included a CPU component that would use vendor tools to measure GPU kernel properties. However, this was removed after discussion with the mentors due to technical obstacles in offloading specific kernels to the GPU that would require major changes to other parts of the code.
Future Work
As this was a short project (90 hours), we only focused on implementing the microbenchmarking infrastructure. Future contributors can use the benchmarking infrastructure to add additional benchmarks. In addition, there are improvements to microbenchmarking infrastructure that could be added, such as more options for user input ranges, better random distributions for math functions, and a CPU element that can launch multiple kernels and compare results against functions running on the CPU.
The existing code can be found in the LLVM repo.
Acknowledgements
This project would not have been possible without my amazing mentor, Joseph Huber, the LLVM Foundation admins, and the GSoC admins.
Links
https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2024-08-09-libc-gpu-benchmarking/