News gathered 2024-08-13
(date: 2024-08-13 08:33:42)
Feds bust minor league Radar/Dispossessor ransomware gang
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The takedown may be small but any ransomware gang sent to the shops is good news in our book
The Dispossessor ransomware group is the latest to enter the cybercrime graveyard with the Feds proudly laying claim to the takedown.…
Race Is a Fiction, Racism Is Real
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/race-is-a-fiction-racism-is-real
Older Americans prepare for world altered by artificial intelligence
date: 2024-08-13, from: VOA News USA
LoFone is a distraction-free phone with an E Ink Kaleido 3 color display and just a few simple apps
date: 2024-08-13, from: Liliputing
Smartphones have become ubiquitous mobile companions in recent years. And in many ways that’s probably a good thing: you can reach out and connect with friends, family, or emergency services from nearly anywhere. And you can use the same device to make calls, stay up to date on the news, and make payments in a […]
The post LoFone is a distraction-free phone with an E Ink Kaleido 3 color display and just a few simple apps appeared first on Liliputing.
On that two-hour convo between Trump and Musk
date: 2024-08-13, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Elon Musk made news yesterday during his conversation with former President Donald Trump, which live-streamed on X. In it, Musk advocated for reducing federal government spending and reducing deficits as a way of fighting inflation, and he angled for a role in the administration if Trump wins. Plus, what would it take to see an emergency interest rate cut? Then, A generally strong job market has led to economic improvements for people without higher levels of education.
Article Spotlight: New species of Ontocetus from the Lower Pleistocene of the North Atlantic
date: 2024-08-13, from: PeerJ blog
Chrome iOS browser on Blink
date: 2024-08-13, from: OS News
Earlier this year, under pressure from the European Union, Apple was finally forced to open up iOS and allow alternative browser engines, at least in the EU. Up until then, Apple only allowed its own WebKit engine to run on iOS, meaning that even what seemed like third-party browsers – Chrome, Firefox, and so on – were all just Safari skins, running Apple’s WebKit underneath (with additional restrictions to make them perform worse than Safari). Even with other browser engines now being allowed on iOS in the EU, there’s still hurdles, as Apple requires browser makers to maintain two different browsers, one for the EU, and another one for the rest of the world. It seems the Chromium community is already working on bringing the Chromium Blink browser engine to iOS, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. A blog post by the open source consultancy company Igalia digs into the details, since they are contributing to the effort. While they’ve got the basics covered, it’s far from completed or ready for release. We’ve briefly looked at the current status of the project so far, but many functionalities still need to be supported. For example, regarding UI features, functionalities such as printing preview, download, text selection, request desktop site, zoom text, translate, find in page, and touch events are not yet implemented or are not functioning correctly. Moreover, there are numerous failing or skipped tests in unit tests, browser tests, and web tests. Ensuring that these tests are enabled and passing the test should also be a key focus moving forward. ↫ Gyuyoung Weblog I don’t use iOS, nor do I intend to any time soon, but the coming availability of browser engines that compete with WebKit is going to be great for the web. I’ve heard from so many web developers that Safari on iOS is a bit of a nightmare to support, since without any competition on iOS it often stagnates and lags behind in supporting features other browsers already implemented. With WebKit on iOS facing competition, that might change. Now, there’s a line of thought that all this will do is make Chrome even more dominant, but I don’t think that’s going to be an issue. Safari is still the default for most people, and changing defaults is not something most people will do, especially not the average iOS user. On top of that, this is only available in the EU, so I honestly don’t think we have to worry about this any time soon, but obviously, we do have to remain vigilant.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140481/chrome-ios-browser-on-blink/
This nasal vaccine that “prevents COVID from spreading” sounds promising. I haven’t…
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045109-this-nasal-vaccine-that-p
‘She Turned Ghost White:’ How a Ragtag Group of Friends Tracked Down a Sex Trafficking Ringleader
date: 2024-08-13, from: 404 Media Group
Michael Pratt hid a massive sex trafficking ring in plain sight on PornHub. On the run from the FBI, an unexpected crew of ex-military, ex-intelligence officers and a lawyer tracked him down using his love of rare sneakers and crypto. For the first time, the group tells their story.
https://www.404media.co/girls-do-porn-michael-pratt-captured-investigation/
NASA Demonstrates ‘Ultra-Cool’ Quantum Sensor for First Time in Space
date: 2024-08-13, from: NASA breaking news
Future space missions could use quantum technology to track water on Earth, explore the composition of moons and other planets, or probe mysterious cosmic phenomena. NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, a first-of-its-kind facility aboard the International Space Station, has taken another step toward revolutionizing how quantum science can be used in space. Members of the science […]
SpaceX tries to wash away Texas pollution allegations
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Elon Musk: aiming for Mars, but sometimes ends up with Mercury?
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is disputing claims that its rockets are polluting water in Texas thanks to the deluge system used to stop Starship ripping up the launchpad on launch.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/spacex_snaps_back_over_texas/
Low Expected Return
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/08/13/low-expected-return/
Huge drop in homicides in the first half of 2024 in many…
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045108-huge-drop-in-homicides-in
Huawei’s Ascend 910 launches this October to challenge Nvidia’s H100, report says
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
US sanctions may make things hard for Huawei, but the tech titan still has big GPU ambitions
Huawei is reportedly preparing a graphics chip on par with Nvidia’s popular H100, and will launch it later this year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/huaweis_ascend_910_launches_this/
Harris faces misogyny, racism in bid for White House
date: 2024-08-13, from: VOA News USA
Critics of Vice President Kamala Harris have used her gender as a cudgel, saying subtly and overtly that a woman cannot hold the most powerful job in the free world. Gender scholars say those railing against Harris have also chosen another line of attack: her race. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
https://www.voanews.com/a/harris-faces-misogyny-racism-in-bid-for-white-house/7740559.html
Demand for AI servers causing a run on enterprise SSDs, hiking prices
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Bad news if you’re buying personal kit as consumer flash starts getting $$$
Demand for AI-capable infrastructure is causing server buyers to significantly up orders for enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), and this is having an inflationary impact on the price of flash-based storage units.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/demand_for_ai_servers_ssd_pricing/
US adds census category for Americans of Middle Eastern, North African descent
date: 2024-08-13, from: VOA News USA
The next time there is a census in the United States in 2030, Americans who trace their ancestral roots to the Middle East and North Africa will have their own demographic category – MENA. VOA’s Genia Dulot went to the Little Arabia neighborhood of Anaheim, California, to see what people think about the change.
on deciding not to read a book
date: 2024-08-13, from: Ayjay blog
I had been thinking of reading Eliza Griswold’s new book Circle of Hope, but then a friend sent me a passage that included these sentences: Franklin Graham was different from his father. Billy Graham preached broadly about God; Franklin Graham spoke exclusively of Jesus, exemplifying the rightward political and cultural swing among most evangelicals in […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/on-deciding-not-to-read-a-book/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-13, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
One thing I want to have before I ship Godot on iPad is the ability to publish your game to the AppStore.
I couldn’t find any OAuth-system for authenticating. Looks like I must ask people to grab a token from their developer account and paste that before I can access Apple’s backends.
That seems very primitive. Am I missing something?
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112954858912858712
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-13, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
The other challenge is just how many commands are available via right-click, or keyboard+mouse action.
None of that is going to work, so everything must be rerouted to some finger idiom.
They will of course work with a keyboard/trackpad, but there should be no loss in access to features for people just holding their iPad without any additional hardware.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112954839170297876
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-13, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
To convince myself of the value of this hack I told myself (and the audience) that “there are more iPads than atoms in the universe so I am hoping I will find some users”
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112954813057983420
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-13, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Last night at the New England Godot user group I did an impromptu talk on bringing Godot to the iPad.
One topic that I went on for a while was how the smaller screen display had forced me to either redesign or eliminate plenty of configurable options in Godot.
For starters, almost every Editor tunable option had been removed. I didn’t see any reason to keep them.
Someone did point out “40 inch displays are barely enough space for me”. Made me wonder of the sanity of the effort :-)
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112954806247193585
US standards body proposes atomic clocks in lunar orbit to keep Moon time
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Knowing precise time on satellite essential if we want accurate GPS-like system for exploration
Researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have come up with a proposal for keeping track of time on the Moon – an essential for lunar navigation tools.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/nist_lunar_orbit_clocks/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The new rule for journalists is sweeping Threads and Mastodon. People have power we don’t use but could. We could turn off the interview after the first egregious lie, even if the reporters don’t.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/13.html#a122158
CalMatters/The Markup Honored for Leadership in Diversity and Solidarity, Community Innovation, by Asian American Journalists Association
date: 2024-08-13, from: The Markup blog
The awards honor thoughtful reporting, thorough coverage and strong storytelling and celebrate stories that would have gone untold without the cultural competence that AAJA journalists bring to the profession
Breaking Just Made Its Olympic Debut. Will It Return in 2032?
date: 2024-08-13, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The event won’t be featured at the Los Angeles Games in 2028, but that doesn’t mean its Olympic journey is over
Tropical Storm Ernesto is Headed Toward Puerto Rico
date: 2024-08-13, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: High wind speeds are expected to fan wildfire flames today in Athens • A scorching heat wave in South Korea won’t let up for another 10 days • The aurora borealis has been stunning viewers in the Northern Hemisphere and may be visible again tonight across northern and upper Midwest states.
THE TOP FIVE
- Tropical Storm Ernesto takes aim at Puerto Rico
Tropical Storm Ernesto formed in the Atlantic yesterday and is moving toward the eastern Caribbean islands. Puerto Rico has activated its National Guard and canceled school in preparation for landfall on Tuesday night. The storm is expected to bring strong winds, heavy rain, flooding, and landslides to the islands before turning north toward Bermuda and possibly strengthening into a hurricane by Thursday. Forecasters don’t think Ernesto will make landfall on the U.S. mainland but said it could bring dangerous rip currents to the East Coast. This is the fifth named storm of the 2024 season and comes just a little over a week after Hurricane Debby struck Florida and swamped states along the southeast for several days.
NOAA
Hurricane season started on June 1 and usually peaks in late August or early September. A few days ago the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reiterated its warning that this season could be one of the busiest on record. “Sea surface temperatures remain abnormally high, and La Niña is still expected to emerge during the hurricane season, so the time to prepare is now,” said Matthew Rosencrans, lead hurricane season forecaster with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
- Biden allows more tariff-free solar cell imports
President Biden yesterday gave the green light to additional tariff-free imports of solar cells, more than doubling the volume allowed – from 5 GW to 12.5 GW. The move is an effort to support production for domestic panel makers and put Americans to work manufacturing clean energy tech. Somewhat relatedly, New Mexico’s Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced recently that Ebon Solar will build a $942 million solar cell factory in the state. The facility will create more than 900 jobs. New Mexico is also set to be home to the largest solar cell and panel factory in the country when Maxeon Solar Technologies gets its planned facility up and running. “While a huge number of solar panel factories are opening in the U.S., there’s still a dearth of domestic supply of earlier stages of the supply chain – including solar cells,” wrote Michelle Lewis at Electrek.
- Heatmap poll: Wildlife is top concern for Americans when it comes to
renewable energy projects
In case you missed it yesterday: Exclusive Heatmap polling conducted in April found the top concern both Democrats and Republicans have with renewable energy projects in their areas is the harm those facilities could inflict on wildlife. Notably, almost half of all Democrats said consequences for wildlife from projects would elicit “strong concern” from them. Other big concerns for Republicans such as reliability during extreme weather and land use factors received nowhere near the same level of Democratic agreement. The polling result underscores a real vulnerability that energy projects labeled “clean” can face when a would-be host community is faced with information indicating they may produce pollution or harm to the environment, wrote Heatmap’s Jael Holzman. “These conflicts are real, I’m not going to say they aren’t. That’s why I say there are appropriate places to site and inappropriate places to site,” Matt Kirby, senior director of energy and landscape conservation for the National Parks Conservation Association, told Holzman. “I hope that industry understands that it needs to have social license to operate, and it will only be able to get that if they’re a good player.”
- Analysis of heat-related deaths in Europe suggests adaptation
efforts are working
Nearly 50,000 people died from extreme heat in Europe in 2023, the hottest year on record, according to a new report from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and published in the journal Nature Medicine. Europe is warming faster than any other continent. Italy had the highest overall number of heat-related deaths last year, followed by Spain and Germany.
ISGlobal
There is a sliver of good news though: Last year’s estimated death toll of 47,690 was lower than the 60,000 heat-related deaths recorded in 2022, and could have been 80% higher if it weren’t for our growing knowledge of how to protect vulnerable populations, especially the elderly. “We see that since 2000, the minimum mortality temperature – the optimum temperature with the lowest mortality risk – has been gradually warming on average over the continent, from 15ºC in 2000-2004 to 17.7ºC in 2015-2019,” said Elisa Gallo, researcher at ISGlobal and lead author of the study. “This indicates that we are less vulnerable to heat than we were at the beginning of the century, probably as a result of general socio-economic progress, improvements in individual behavior, and public health measures such as the heat prevention plans implemented after the record-breaking summer of 2003.”
- World’s largest pumped hydro plant complete in China
Construction of the world’s largest pumped hydro plant is complete, according to Bloomberg. The Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station, located in China’s Hebei province, cost $2.6 billion to build and began operating in 2022 to help power the Beijing Winter Olympics, but it reportedly just became fully operational with the addition of the 12th and final turbine unit. Some of its units can be adjusted to match variable grid load and demand. The plant has a capacity of 3.6 gigawatts, making it larger than the Bath County plant in Virginia. But a 5GW project planned for Australia would be even bigger.
THE KICKER
The motorcycle Tom Cruise rode through Paris in the 2024 Olympics closing ceremony was a LiveWire Del Mar, an electric bike made by Harley-Davidson.
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
https://heatmap.news/climate/tropical-storm-ernesto-forecast
“Left behind” Rust Belt workers have seen gains in recent years
date: 2024-08-13, from: Marketplace Morning Report
An analysis from The Economist looks at people who feel “left behind” in America — those who got the short end of globalization and deindustrialization, people who took the biggest hits in recent decades from not having advanced education — and shows that that group has been seeing economic improvement under the Trump and Biden administrations. Plus, Harris and Trump look to nix federal taxes on tips, and consumers expect inflation to become less of a problem.
Orion SA says scammers conned company out of $60 million
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Incident sounds like a BEC fraud targeting an unwitting staffer
Luxembourg-based chemicals and manufacturing giant Orion SA is telling US regulators that it will lose out on around $60 million after it was targeted by a criminal wire fraud scheme.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/orion_sa_says_scammers_conned/
The Webb Telescope Further Deepens the Biggest Controversy in Cosmology
date: 2024-08-13, from: Quanta Magazine
A long-awaited study of the cosmic expansion rate suggests that when it comes to the Hubble tension, cosmologists are still missing something.The post The Webb Telescope Further Deepens the Biggest Controversy in Cosmology first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Millions of campaign dollars aimed at tilting school voucher battle are flowing into state races
date: 2024-08-13, from: VOA News USA
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Millions of dollars are being spent this year to steer voters toward candidates for Republican-led Legislatures who not only support school vouchers, but will become key figures in implementing school choice programs in states across the U.S.
Most recently, national pro-voucher advocates declared victory after spending more than $4.5 million in Tennessee’s primary election to defend and elect legislative candidates they claim will support school choice proposals in 2025 when state lawmakers are slated to return to the Capitol to enact policy.
Meanwhile, at least $14.8 million was spent by similar advocacy groups in the Texas primary election earlier in May to oust and replace voucher opponents. In Idaho, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on candidates who both opposed and supported school vouchers in the rural mountain-west state.
The spending spree is backed by the nation’s most high-profile voucher influencers, including the School Freedom Fund, a pro-voucher group tied to Club for Growth; the American Federation for Children, which was founded by former Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and Americans for Prosperity, the Koch family’s well-heeled free-market group.
Their focus is often on primary elections because in Republican-dominated states, primaries are seen as the most competitive hurdle to getting elected.
“Make no mistake — if you call yourself a Republican and oppose school freedom, you should expect to lose your next primary,” said David McIntosh, president of the School Freedom Fund, said in a statement shortly after Tennessee’s primary election. “As we continue to hear from different governors, we plan on repeating our results from Tennessee and Texas across the country. The school freedom revolution is just beginning.”
Thirty-two states have implemented some sort of voucher program in the U.S., and some have been in place for decades, often with strict income requirements or narrowly tailored for students with disabilities.
Yet, over the years, there’s been a noticeable push among Republican leaders to make available taxpayer-funded vouchers, or scholarships that can follow a child regardless of income to any public or private school. About a dozen states now have such programs. But proposals are being considered in many more, with varying degrees of legislative support.
Idaho, Tennessee and Texas all weighed sweeping school voucher proposals over the past year, but faced resistance not only from Democrats — who don’t hold as much political power — but also Republican members wary of directing public education dollars away from their districts.
Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee was forced to abandon his plans for universal school choice earlier this year after divisions inside the GOP-controlled Statehouse failed to come to a consensus on key specifics.
The failure prompted Lee to break with his previous stance of remaining quiet during GOP primary elections and instead publicly pick favorites this year in a handful of legislative races.
Additionally, outside groups like Club for Growth, American Federation for Children, Americans for Prosperity Action, and others poured $4.5 million across 16 House and Senate legislative races. Three of the open primaries saw almost a million dollars spent in each of the races.
Club for Growth spent the majority of the money, pouring $3.6 million across five races and ultimately winning four of those seats.
Lee didn’t endorse any opponents of a sitting Republican incumbent, but he did throw support behind candidates in four open legislative seats — three of which were successful.
The modest gains for Lee’s cause came at a big political cost.
After Lee endorsed Sen. Jon Lundberg, this year’s voucher bill sponsor, former President Donald Trump backed Lundberg’s opponent, Bobby Harshbarger, son of U.S. Rep. Diane Harshbarger. After Harshbarger was declared the winner, Trump swiped at Lee on social media, calling him a RINO, or “Republican in Name Only” even though he endorsed Lee in his 2022 reelection.
Lee has so far brushed aside the criticism, and instead released a statement declaring that Republican primary voters “sent a clear message: It’s time to deliver school choice for Tennessee families.”
Focusing solely on primary voters may be a winning strategy to securing key state level races, but it comes at a cost of electing candidates who may not represent the average voter, said John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University.
“A very small proportion of the Tennessee voting public is driving these outcomes, that’s not good for democracy,” he said.
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott also touted major wins for voucher advocates in the aftermath of the state’s runoff primary election in May.
Months prior, back in late 2023, a group of House Republicans joined Democrats to help defeat a school voucher bill — delivering a blow to one of Abbott’s top legislative priorities.
Similar to the playbook used in Tennessee, Abbott and national voucher groups pivoted to ousting voucher opponents in the primary election in order to secure a legislative victory in 2025.
Club for Growth ultimately took credit for removing 10 GOP incumbents who had opposed Abbott’s voucher push after targeting 14 races in primary and runoff election. Club for Growth reported spending $8.8 million and Abbott spent at least $6 million between the primary and runoff elections.
“The Texas legislature now has enough votes to pass school choice,” Abbott posted after the runoff election.
And in Idaho, four anti-school voucher Republican incumbents lost their reelection bids after the American for Children PAC spent more than $300,000 to promote school choice candidates.
During the 2022 election cycle, the organization spent $9 million on state legislative races to support school choice friendly candidates but CEO Tommy Schultz promised to spend “at least $10 million” this year.
“To date, AFC and its affiliates have deployed more than $9 million in state legislative primary elections across the country, and we will spend millions more in the general election to advance school choice policies for American families,” Schultz said in a statement to AP.
Wildfires spread on the outskirts of Greece’s capital
date: 2024-08-13, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: One person has died and thousands of homes and businesses have been evacuated due to the fires close to Athens, all during the country’s peak tourist season. The fire started some 20 miles away from the capital. We’ll hear about the latest developments.. Also, Western airlines are dropping routes to China. Why?
Who uses LLM prompt injection attacks IRL? Mostly unscrupulous job seekers, jokesters and trolls
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Because apps talking like pirates and creating ASCII art never gets old
Despite worries about criminals using prompt injection to trick large language models (LLMs) into leaking sensitive data or performing other destructive actions, most of these types of AI shenanigans come from job seekers trying to get their resumes past automated HR screeners – and people protesting generative AI for various reasons, according to Russian security biz Kaspersky.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/who_uses_llm_prompt_injection/
Getting up close and personal with Concorde, Concordski, and Buran
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The Reg flies to Germany to visit the Speyer and Sinsheim palaces of engineering marvels
Geek’s Guide The Register’s Geek’s Guide series for explorers who love feats of tech and engineering prowess took a trip to the European mainland to see exhibits ranging from an Air France Concorde and a Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 “Concordski” to a Buran prototype, alongside various industrial marvels.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/geeks_guide_speyer_and_sinsheim/
UK semi industry exposed to supply chain risk, China state ownership
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Report suggests govt get cracking on a proper ownership structure survey and … hang on, did they forget the Midlands?
UK government may need to revisit the National Semiconductor Strategy to guard against potential supply chain disruptions and succeed in nurturing a successful domestic semiconductor ecosystem for the future.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/uk_semi_industry_exposed_to/
IndieWeb Carnival: Rituals
date: 2024-08-13, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>Ritual, <em>a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or revered objects.</em> Nothing in my life fits that definition.</p>That’s it, that was my entry for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival on the topic of Rituals. See you next month!
I’m just kidding. Well, I’m partly kidding. I’m serious when I say that I don’t have anything that fits that definition in my life. I’d love to, but I don’t. I’ve always been fascinated by rituals and strict routines. And believe me when I say that I tried to implement them in my life many many times before but always failed. I tried it with my meditation routine, with my reading habits, and with my sleeping schedule. Nothing sticks and introducing a ritual so far has been close to impossible. I don’t know why. I’m just bad at living a structured life even though I’d love to. But I think that’s mostly because I’m not really happy with the life I’m currently living and settling into a routine is hard when you know, deep down, that you want to change everything.
That said, rituals are awesome. There’s something deeply enjoyable in seeing someone performing something in a very ritualistic way. Which is why I always enjoyed things like the Japanese tea ceremony. This idea of doing something the same way over and over again is very appealing to me. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll manage to do the same myself.
<hr>
<p>Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.</p>
<p><a href="mailto:hello@manuelmoreale.com">Email me</a> ::
<a href="https://manuelmoreale.com/guestbook">Sign my guestbook</a> ::
<a href="https://ko-fi.com/manuelmoreale">Support for 1$/month</a> ::
<a href="https://manuelmoreale.com/supporters">See my awesome supporters</a> ::
<a href="https://buttondown.email/peopleandblogs">Subscribe to People and Blogs</a></p>
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/9TU5fOSHyQmujwRz
AI chatbots amplify creation of false memories, boffins reckon – or do they?
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
We can misremember it for you wholesale
AI chatbots, known for their habit of hallucinating, can induce people to hallucinate too, researchers claim.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/ai_chatbots_amplify_creation_of/
Today in SCV History (Aug. 13)
date: 2024-08-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1961 – First Mass celebrated at new Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church (3rd building) in Newhall. Cardinal McIntyre attends [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-aug-13/
DEF CON badge disagreement gets physical as firmware dev removed from event stage
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing?
def con The electronic badges at DEF CON have long been a hot commodity for attendees, tinkerers, and collectors, though this year they’re getting attention for an entirely different reason.…
2024-08-11 Serving bare git on the web
date: 2024-08-13, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
2024-08-11 Serving bare git on the web
In the old days, I used cgit to render my git repositories
on the web. It’s simple to set up since it’s a CGI script. This is ideal
for URLs that get very few hits. When nobody is requesting the URL, the
CGI script isn’t running and no resources are being used. When a URL is
requested, however, the CGI script loads, the interpreter loads, the
libraries load, the script executes… It’s an expensive end-point! And
you know how it is. The web is full of leeches and bad bots, crawlers
and idiots. Having an expensive end-point means it needs protection.
For I while I thought that legit was the answer. It was
nice and fast and all that. But recently, git clone no
longer worked. It calls git upload-pack as an intermediate
workaround for
#1062. This
was failing for some reason, however. I tinkered with it for a while but
didn’t get anywhere.
Then I started thinking about
@Sandra’s post on
hosting git
repos. I made some changes to my Apache config and now git
clone works again.
The key is that you need a post-update hook that calls
git update-server-info. Each git repository already comes
with a post-update.sample hook containing the necessary
code, so I needed to loop over all the bare repositories I had and
rename the example hook.
Using the Fish shell:
for d in *.git
sudo -u git mv $d/hooks/post-update.sample $d/hooks/post-update
end
Sadly, this is not good enough.
In order to generate an index.html file for every
repository, I need a hook that regenerates it. If you know how to
determine whether regeneration can be skipped, I’d love to hear how to
that.
This hook also updates or adds the AddDescription lines I
need.
I prepared a hook that I wanted to install in every repository and saved
it as ~/post-update.
This is what it looks like, using the Fish shell:
#!/usr/bin/fish
git update-server-info
# create index.html
set branch (git branch --show-current)
set template (cat /home/git/.readme.html | string collect)
set title (basename (pwd))
set body (git show $branch:README.md | cmark --to html | string collect)
printf "$template" "$title" "$body" "$title" > index.html
# update description
set description (cat description)
sed --in-place=~ --expression "/ $title/d" /home/git/.htaccess
printf "AddDescription \"$description\" $title\n" >> /home/git/.htaccess
(I need the title twice, once for the title and once for the reminder on how to clone.)
I turn Markdown into HTML using cmark. Common Mark is the
closest we have to a standard, I guess.
The template /home/git/.readme.html looks like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">
<title>%s</title>
<style>
html { max-width: 70ch; padding: 1ch; margin: auto; }
body { hyphens: auto; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<nav>
<a href="https://src.alexschroeder.ch/">Source code repositories</a>
</nav>
<main>
%s</main>
<footer>
<h2>Clone</h2>
<pre>
<mark>git clone https://src.alexschroeder.ch/%s</mark>
</pre>
</footer>
</body>
</html>
So now I needed to distribute the post-update hook to every
repository and run it once. I wrote yet another Fish script,
~/recreate-index:
#!/usr/bin/fish
for d in /home/git/*.git
echo $d
cd $d
cp ~/post-update hooks/
chown git:git hooks/post-update
chmod 775 hooks/post-update
sudo -u git git hook run post-update
end
I’m currently hosting 95 repositories according to ls -d
/home/git/*.git | wc -l. Some of these don’t have a
README.md file. Should I ever touch them again, I’ll have
to investigate.
Now, for the Apache web server – I changed my site to the following:
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerAdmin alex@alexschroeder.ch
ServerName src.alexschroeder.ch
Include conf-enabled/blocklist.conf
SSLEngine on
DocumentRoot /home/git
<Directory /home/git>
Options Indexes
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
The /home/git directory has an .htaccess file
that starts out containing the following:
HeaderName .top.html
IndexOptions SuppressIcon SuppressSize FancyIndexing HTMLTable IgnoreCase
IndexOrderDefault Descending Date
IndexHeadInsert "<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width, initial-scale=1\">"
IndexOptions Charset=UTF-8
The .top.html file contains a fragment to add to the top of
the index:
<style>
body { max-width: 80ch }
table { overflow-x: auto }
td { padding: 0.5ex 1em 0 0; white-space: nowrap }
td:nth-child(3) { white-space: wrap }
</style>
<h1>Source code repositories</h1>
<p>
Hello!
</p>
<p>
I'm Alex Schroeder.
These are my source code repositories. You can find out more about me on
<a href="https://alexschroeder.ch/">my blog</a>. There, you'll also find a page
listing ways to <a href="https://alexschroeder.ch/view/Contact">contact me</a>.
</p>
<p>
As for the git repositories, you should be able to clone them as they are.
For example:
</p>
<pre>
git clone https://src.alexschroeder.ch/oddmu.git
</pre>
<p>
For more about this setup, see
<a href="https://idiomdrottning.org/hosting-git-repos">How to host git repos</a>
by <a href="https://idiomdrottning.org/users/Sandra">@Sandra</a> and my post,
<a href="https://alexschroeder.ch/edit/2024-08-11-bare-git">2024-08-11 Serving bare git on the web</a>.
</p>
#Butlerian Jihad #Git #Administration
2024-08-12. I wondered about links from the README to
local files. Right now, linking to images and files hosted in the same
repository doesn’t work since they don’t exist in the raw repository.
The question then becomes, as far as I am concerned, whether this README
is supposed to speak to developers or end-users? If it is for
developers, then pictures, screenshots, PDF files and all of that don’t
need to be linked from the repository. If you are interested in these
things, do a git clone –depth 1 and investigate locally.
If the repository is for the end users, however, things are harder. The
post-update hook should extract all the local files linked
to from the README. Something like the following, perhaps:
for file in (printf "%s\n" $body | /home/oddmu/oddmu links - | egrep -v '^(https?:|mailto:|/)')
set dir (dirname $file)
if test ! -d $dir
mkdir -p $dir
end
echo $file; sudo -u git git show $branch:$file > $file
end
This uses oddmu to extract the links from a Markdown file, creates the necessary directories and checks out the files.
But if the files are no longer linked from the README, they are not deleted. If a directory is linked from the README (I have done this! 🤦), the checkout won’t work.
I think the better way forward is to move this information elsewhere. The README is not the documentation.
And with that, I think I did it! Serving git repositories from static
files. A single directory per project containing the bare git data and a
single index.html file. No more gazillion end points for
crawlers to lose themselves.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-08-11-bare-git
‘Digital arrest’ scams are big in India and may be spreading
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Bad guys claim they’re cops, keep you on hold for hours until you pay to make loved ones’ crimes go away
A woman in the Indian city of Delhi last week found herself under “digital arrest” – a form of scam in which victims make payments to criminals posing as law enforcement officers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/india_digital_arrest_scams/
Elon Musk claims live Trump interview on X derailed by DDoS
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Once-great platform tanks another major political livestream, bigly
Elon Musk has blamed a “DDoS” attack for a forty-minute delay in the start of his live-streamed interview, hosted on X, with presidential candidate Donald Trump.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/trump_musk_livestream_ddos_delay/
Elon Musk interview of Trump marred by technical issues
date: 2024-08-13, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s interview with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk finally got underway on Musk’s social media platform X on Monday evening, following a lengthy delay caused by technical problems that kept many users from accessing the live stream.
Musk, who has endorsed Trump, began the event at 8:42 p.m., more than 40 minutes after the scheduled start time. He blamed the difficulties on a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which a server or network is flooded with traffic in an attempt to shut it down, though his claim was not confirmed.
More than 1.3 million people were listening about 45 minutes into the conversation, according to a counter on X.
Trump sought to turn the problems into a positive, congratulating Musk on the number of people trying to tune in.
The former president sounded at times as if he had a lisp, many listeners on X pointed out. Some said it made him sound like a cartoon character, others suggested it could be due to audio compression issues.
The technical issues recalled a similar event on X in May 2023, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suffered a chaotic start to his bid for the Republican presidential nomination due to glitches on the platform.
At the time, Trump mocked DeSantis on his own, social media platform, Truth Social. “My Red Button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working (TRUTH!)” Trump posted, “Yours does not.”
Ahead of Monday’s event, Musk had written: “Am going to do some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance of the conversation.” X did not respond to requests for details or evidence of the alleged cyberattack.
Musk spent much of the early part of the interview lauding Trump for his bravery during the attempt on his life on July 13, when his ear was struck by a bullet.
Musk, the world’s richest person, announced his support for Trump shortly after the shooting. He backed Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 but has tacked rightward since.
Trump said he plans to return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the attack, for a rally in October.
As the conversation unfolded, Trump delivered his usual mix of grievances, exaggerated claims and personal attacks, with Musk offering occasional encouragement.
Trump claimed without evidence that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if he were still president and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — all authoritarian strongmen — as at the “top of their game.”
He also expressed anger that Vice President Kamala Harris had been swapped in for Biden on the Democratic ticket.
“She hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam started,” Trump said, claiming falsely that Biden dropping off the ticket was a “coup.” Trump had been leading Biden in many polls of battleground states likely to be critical to the outcome of the Nov. 5 election but is now trailing Harris in some of the same states.
In an interview that was light on policy detail, Trump also appeared to praise Musk for firing workers.
“You’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you just say: ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike — I won’t mention the name of the company — but they go on strike. And you say: ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone.’”
Trump back on X
The interview provided an opportunity for Trump to seize the limelight at a time when his campaign is facing new headwinds.
Harris has erased Trump’s lead in opinion polls and energized Democratic voters with a series of high-energy rallies since she replaced Biden as the party’s candidate three weeks ago. Her momentum could get another boost from the Democratic National Convention next week in Chicago.
Trump returned to X, formerly known as Twitter, with a series of posts on Monday for the first time in a year, reviving an account that had served as a main method of communication in previous campaigns and his four years in the White House, including his followers’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump’s access to his account, @realDonaldTrump, was restored a month into Musk’s ownership of X after being suspended by the platform’s previous owners following the Jan. 6 attack, citing concerns he would incite violence.
Trump frequently posts on his Truth Social platform, which was launched in February 2022, but his posts there reach a much smaller audience than on X.
Musk backs Trump
Musk, who heads electric car company Tesla, has echoed Trump’s false claims about voter fraud and Biden’s immigration policies.
Musk has started an external super PAC spending group to support Trump’s campaign. The political action committee is now under investigation in Michigan for possible violations of state laws on gathering voter information.
Trump, a longstanding critic of electric vehicles, shifted gears after Musk’s endorsement.
“I’m for electric cars. I have to be, because Elon endorsed me very strongly. So I have no choice,” Trump said at an early August rally.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fein, campaigning in support of Harris, called Trump a “sellout.”
The Biden administration has worked to popularize electric vehicles through tax breaks and other support as part of its broader goal of reducing carbon emissions blamed for climate change.
Republicans in Congress, including Trump’s running mate Senator JD Vance, have opposed those subsidies.
https://www.voanews.com/a/elon-musk-interview-of-trump-marred-by-technical-issues/7740274.html
AMD won’t patch Sinkclose security bug on older Zen CPUs
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Kernel mode not good enough for you? Maybe you’ll like SMM of this
Some AMD processors dating back to 2006 have a security vulnerability that’s a boon for particularly underhand malware and rogue insiders, though the chip designer is only patching models made since 2020.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/amd_sinkclose_patches/
Small datacenters face the axe under China’s new energy policy
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tech industry told to clean up its act – and help others to do likewise – in pursuit of 2035 ‘Beautiful China’ goal
China’s digital infrastructure providers have been told they need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption, plus consider ending use of smaller facilities, under a sweeping “comprehensive green transition” plan announced yesterday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/china_green_policy_tech_elements/
Judge rules RFK Jr. not a state resident, can’t be on New York ballot
date: 2024-08-13, from: VOA News USA
ALBANY, N.Y. — A judge ruled Monday that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name should not appear on New York’s ballot, saying that he falsely claimed a New York residence on nominating petitions despite living in California.
Kennedy’s lawyers quickly vowed to appeal ahead of the Aug. 15 deadline. If the judge’s ruling is upheld, it would not only keep Kennedy off the ballot in New York but could also lead to challenges in other states where he used an address in New York City’s suburbs to gather signatures.
The ruling came after a North Carolina judge decided earlier Monday that Kennedy can remain on that state’s ballot following a separate challenge on different grounds.
Judge Christina Ryba, in her 34-page decision, said the rented bedroom Kennedy claimed as his home in the state wasn’t a “bona fide and legitimate residence, but merely a ‘sham’ address that he assumed for the purpose of maintaining his voter registration” and furthering his political candidacy.
“Given the size and appearance of the spare bedroom as shown in the photographs admitted into evidence, the Court finds Kennedy’s testimony that he may return to that bedroom to reside with his wife, family members, multiple pets, and all of his personal belongings to be highly improbable, if not preposterous,” the judge wrote.
Ryba said evidence submitted in trial showed Kennedy had a “long-standing pattern” of borrowing addresses from friends and relatives so he could maintain his voter registration in New York State while actually residing in California.
“Using a friend’s address for political and voting purposes, while barely stepping foot on the premises, does not equate to residency under the Election Law,” the judge wrote. “To hold otherwise would establish a dangerous precedent and open the door to the fraud and political mischief that the Election Law residency rules were designed to prevent.”
Clear Choice Action, the Democrat-aligned political action committee that backed the legal challenge, said the ruling makes it clear that Kennedy “lied about his residency and provided a false address on his filing papers and candidate petitions in New York, intentionally misleading election officials and betraying voters’ trust.”
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of several voters in the state, claims Kennedy’s state nominating petition falsely listed a residence in well-to-do Katonah while actually living in the Los Angeles area since 2014, when he married “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor Cheryl Hines.
Kennedy, who led a New York-based environmental group for decades and whose namesake father was a New York senator, argued during the trial that he has lifelong ties to New York and intends to move back.
During the trial, which ran for less than four days, Kennedy said he currently rents a room in a friend’s home in Katonah, about 65 kilometers north of midtown Manhattan, though has only slept in that room once due to his constant campaign travel.
The 70-year-old candidate testified that his move to California a decade ago was so he could be with his wife, and that he always planned to return to New York.
Barbara Moss, who rents the room to Kennedy, testified that he pays her $500 a month. But she acknowledged there is no written lease and that Kennedy’s first payment wasn’t made until after the New York Post published a story casting doubt on Kennedy’s claim that he lived at that address.
The judge also heard from a longtime friend of Kennedy’s who said the candidate had regularly been an overnight guest at his own Westchester home from 2014 through 2017, but was not a tenant there as Kennedy had claimed.
Attorneys representing several New York voters grilled Kennedy in often heated exchanges as they sought to make their case, pointing to government documents including a federal statement of candidacy with a California address, and even a social media video in which Kennedy talks about training ravens at his Los Angeles home.
“Kennedy’s testimony that none of the furniture, bedding and other decorative items in the spare bedroom belonged to him, as well as his testimony that his wife and family, his extensive book collection, and his wide assortment of domestic and exotic pets all remained in California, was further compelling evidence that Kennedy lacks the necessary physical presence and intent to remain” at the Katonah address, the judge wrote in her ruling.
Kennedy has the potential to do better than any independent presidential candidate in decades thanks to his famous name and a loyal base. Both Democrat and Republican strategists have expressed concerns that he could affect their candidate’s chances.
Kennedy’s campaign has said he has enough signatures to qualify in a majority of states, but his ballot drive has faced challenges and lawsuits in several.
Kennedy has told reporters that getting knocked off the ballot in New York could lead to lawsuits in other states where his campaign listed the same address.
After the trial ended Thursday, Kennedy argued that people who signed his petitions deserve a chance to vote for him.
“Those Americans want to see me on the ballot. They want to have a choice,” he said.
FBI investigating after Trump campaign says it was hacked by Iran
date: 2024-08-13, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. FBI said on Monday it was investigating after Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said its internal communications were hacked and the campaign blamed the Iranian government.
The former president said on Saturday that Microsoft had informed his campaign that Iran had hacked one of its websites. Trump said Iran was “only able to get publicly available information.”
The FBI is also investigating an alleged hack targeting advisers to the campaign of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, The Washington Post reported on Monday.
The FBI began the investigation in June, when Biden was still running for president, suspecting that Iran was behind the attempts to steal data from two U.S. presidential campaigns, the newspaper said, citing sources.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee after Biden withdrew his bid last month.
The Iranian government has denied that it hacked the Trump campaign.
Trump’s campaign has pointed to a report on Friday by Microsoft researchers that indicated that Iranian government-linked hackers tried breaking into the account of a “high-ranking official” on a U.S. presidential campaign in June.
The report added that the hackers took over an account belonging to a former political adviser and then used it to target the official. It did not provide further details on the targets’ identities.
COC administration undergoes reshuffle
date: 2024-08-13, from: The Signal
There has been an apparent reshuffling of the College of the Canyons administration as Deputy Chancellor Diane Fierro and Sharlene Coleal, assistant superintendent of business services, are set to retire, […]
The post COC administration undergoes reshuffle appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/coc-administration-undergoes-reshuffle/
Faith Degroot Commits to TMU Volleyball
date: 2024-08-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Faith Degroot is going to continue her volleyball career at The Master’s University
https://scvnews.com/faith-degroot-commits-to-tmu-volleyball/
Brush fire breaks out near Newhall Avenue
date: 2024-08-13, from: The Signal
By Lucas Nava and Katherine Quezada A brush fire broke out near Newhall Avenue and the State Route 14 freeway and grew to nearly 3 acres on Monday afternoon, according […]
The post Brush fire breaks out near Newhall Avenue appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/small-brush-fire-breaks-out-near-newhall-avenue/
Off and learning: Hart High welcomes Hawks for first day of school
date: 2024-08-13, from: The Signal
Newhall Avenue was lined up with cars Monday morning as parents dropped off their kids at Hart High for the first day of the 2024-25 school year. Senior Ashley Santillan […]
The post Off and learning: Hart High welcomes Hawks for first day of school appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/off-and-learning-hart-high-welcomes-hawks-for-first-day-of-school/
Reckoning: Part 2 — Object Lesson
date: 2024-08-13, updated: 2024-08-13, from: Alex Russel’s blog
https://infrequently.org/2024/08/object-lesson/
Cougars Set to Kick Off 2024 Football Season Sept. 7
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
College of the Canyons has announced its 2024 football schedule with the Cougs scheduled to host five home games on the recently renovated turf playing field inside Cougar Stadium.
https://scvnews.com/cougars-set-to-kick-off-2024-football-season-sept-7/
Green Santa Clarita Offers Tips to Reduce Pollution in Santa Clara River
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Did you know that water has the ability to transport just about any pollutant it comes in contact with
https://scvnews.com/green-santa-clarita-offers-tips-to-reduce-pollution-in-santa-clara-river/
Crowdfunding: CrowView Note 14 laptop dock turns a Raspberry Pi 5 into a notebook (also works with NVIDIA Jetson Nano, phones, and other devices)
date: 2024-08-12, from: Liliputing
Laptop docks have been around for more than a decade, with most marketed as ways to use a smartphone as a pseudo-laptop by interacting with your mobile apps on a bigger screen and a full-sized keyboard. But you can also use these smartphone-to-laptop docks with other devices. Plug a single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi into a […]
The post Crowdfunding: CrowView Note 14 laptop dock turns a Raspberry Pi 5 into a notebook (also works with NVIDIA Jetson Nano, phones, and other devices) appeared first on Liliputing.
The Thrill of Victory Meets the Agony of Defeat at the Paris Games
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A Santa Barbara wrap-up of the Olympics, with an eye turning south on the 101 for 2028.
The post The Thrill of Victory Meets the Agony of Defeat at the Paris Games appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Apple is coming to take 30% cut of new Patreon subs on iOS
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
You don’t get to be the biggest business in the world by being nice
Patreon today said Apple will soon take a 30 percent cut of new subscriptions bought via its iOS app.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/patreon_apple_ios/
Ken Striplin | Navigating School Traffic Safely
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
As the new school year approaches, the streets around our schools will once again be bustling with activity
https://scvnews.com/ken-striplin-navigating-school-traffic-safely/
Water official resigns, board to discuss options
date: 2024-08-12, from: The Signal
The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency governing board this week will decide on whether to appoint or hold a special election to fill the vacancy created by a longtime board […]
The post Water official resigns, board to discuss options appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/water-official-resigns-board-to-discuss-options/
Site of deadliest church shooting in US history is torn down over protests
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
sutherland springs, texas — Crews on Monday tore down a Texas church where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshippers in 2017, using heavy machinery to raze the small building even after some families sought to preserve the scene of the deadliest church shooting in U.S. history.
A judge cleared the way last month for the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs to tear down the sanctuary where the attack took place, which until now had been kept as a memorial. Church members voted in 2021 to tear it down, but some families in the community of less than 1,000 people filed a lawsuit hoping for a new vote on the building’s fate.
Authorities put the number of dead in the November 5, 2017, shooting at 26 people, including a pregnant woman and her unborn baby. After the shooting, the interior of the sanctuary was painted white and chairs with the names of those who were killed were placed there. A new church was completed for the congregation about a year and a half after the shooting.
John Riley, an 86-year-old member of the church, watched with sadness and disappointment as the long arm of a yellow excavator swung a heavy claw into the building over and over.
“The devil got his way,” Riley said, “I would not be the man I am without that church.”
He said he would pray for God to “punish the ones” who put the demolition in motion.
“That was God’s house, not their house,” Riley said.
For many in the community, the sanctuary was a place of solace.
Terrie Smith, president of the Sutherland Springs Community Association, visited often over the years, calling it a place where “you feel the comfort of everybody that was lost there.” Among those killed in the shooting were a woman who was like a daughter to Smith — Joann Ward — and Ward’s two daughters, ages 7 and 5.
Smith watched Monday as the memorial sanctuary was torn down.
“I am sad, angry, hurt,” she said.
In early July, a Texas judge granted a temporary restraining order sought by some families. But another judge later denied a request to extend that order, setting in motion the demolition. In court filings, attorneys for the church called the structure a “constant and very painful reminder.”
Attorneys for the church argued that it was within its rights to demolish the memorial while the attorney for the families who filed the lawsuit said they were just hoping to get a new vote.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that some church members were wrongfully removed from the church roster before the vote was taken. In a court filing, the church denied the allegations in the lawsuit.
A woman who answered the phone at the church said Monday that she had no comment then hung up.
The man who opened fire in the church, Devin Patrick Kelley, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he was chased by bystanders and crashed his car. Investigators have said the shooting appeared to stem from a domestic dispute involving Kelley and his mother-in-law, who sometimes attended services at the church but was not present on the day of the shooting.
Communities across the U.S. have grappled with what should happen to the sites of mass shootings. Last month, demolition began on the three-story building where 17 people died in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, it was torn down and replaced.
Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York, and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where racist mass shootings happened, both reopened. In Colorado, Columbine High School still stands, though its library, where most of the victims were killed, was replaced.
In Texas, officials closed Robb Elementary in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting there and plan to demolish the school.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta recently hired a team of professional pickpockets to…
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045107-arsenal-manager-mikel-art
Earth hit by ‘severe’ solar storm
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The Earth was hit Monday by an intense solar storm that could bring the Northern Lights to night skies farther south than normal, a U.S. agency announced.
Conditions of a level-four geomagnetic storm — on a scale of five — were observed Monday from 1500 GMT, according to a specialized center at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
These conditions may persist for several hours but were not expected to increase further in intensity, NOAA added in a statement.
“A severe geomagnetic storm includes the potential for aurora to be seen faintly as far south as Alabama and northern California,” NOAA said in a statement, referring to the two U.S. states.
The new solar storm is caused by coronal mass ejections, which are explosions of particles leaving the sun. When these particles arrive on Earth, they disrupt the planet’s magnetic field.
“There are a lot of auroras now. … If it lasts until nightfall here, we might be able to see some,” Eric Lagadec, an astrophysicist at the Cote d’Azur Observatory in France, said on X, formerly Twitter.
On Sunday, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick published on X a superb photo of the aurora borealis — or Northern Lights — taken from the International Space Station, where he is currently stationed.
But solar or geomagnetic storms can also trigger undesirable effects.
For example, they can degrade high-frequency communications, disrupt satellites and cause overloads on the electricity grid. Operators of sensitive infrastructure have been notified to put in place measures to limit these effects, NOAA said.
In May, the planet went through the most powerful geomagnetic storms recorded in 20 years. They caused auroras to light up the night sky in the United States, Europe and Australia, at much lower latitudes than usual.
This type of event has increased recently because the sun is currently close to its peak activity, as per its 11-year cycle.
https://www.voanews.com/a/earth-hit-by-severe-solar-storm-/7739842.html
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The new rule is getting a great response on Threads, Mastodon.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/12.html#a224354
After Difficult and Emotional Trial, Cora Vides Is Convicted of Attempted Murder
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Santa Barbara jury will now decide if the former Laguna Blanca student is sent to state prison or a psychiatric hospital.
The post After Difficult and Emotional Trial, Cora Vides Is Convicted of Attempted Murder appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Always. Be. Knolling.
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/always-be-knolling-1
Lobero Anniversary Block Party Brings Smiling Santa Barbara Community Together
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Exuberant free show features Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Ozomatli.
The post Lobero Anniversary Block Party Brings Smiling Santa Barbara Community Together appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Businessmen Earl Minnis and the Berti Family Each Donate $100,000 bringing Total to $200,000 (to Date) for Daniel Bryant Youth & Family Treatment Centers at CADA
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara, CA, August 12, 2024 – The Berti Family and Earl Minnis’ combined donation of $200,000 will support the Daniel Bryant
The post Businessmen Earl Minnis and the Berti Family Each Donate $100,000 bringing Total to $200,000 (to Date) for Daniel Bryant Youth & Family Treatment Centers at CADA appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Pacific Northwest tribes battered by climate change but fight to get money meant to help them
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
SEATTLE — Coastal tribes in the Pacific Northwest experience some of the most severe effects of climate change — from rising seas to severe heat — but face an array of bureaucratic barriers to access government funds meant to help them adapt, a report released Monday found.
The tribes are leaders in combating climate change in their region. But a report by the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative says as tribes seek money for specific projects to address climate change repercussions, such as relocating a village threatened by rising waters, they often can’t provide the matching funds that many grants require or the necessary staff or struggle with stringent application requirements. If they do get funding, it’s often a small amount that can only be used for very specific projects when this work is typically much more holistic, the report found.
“Trying to do projects by piecing together grants that all have different requirements and different strings attached, without staff capacity is a challenge,” Robert Knapp, environmental planning manager at the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in northwest Washington, said in the report.
The collaborative, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, spent two years holding listening sessions with 13 tribes along the Pacific Coast of Oregon and Washington, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Puget Sound. The communities face significant challenges from coastal flooding and erosion, rising stream temperatures, declining snowpack, severe heat events and increasing wildfire risk.
In addition to funding challenges, those interviewed also described not having enough staff to adequately respond to climate change as well as sometimes not being able to partner with state and local governments and universities in this work because of their remote locations. They also said it can be hard to explain to people who don’t live in their communities about the impact climate change has on the tribes.
But as they work to restore salmon habitats affected by warming waters or move their homes, funding gaps and complications were key concerns.
A representative from one anonymous tribe in the report said it was not able to hire a grant writer and had to rely on its biology department to navigate the maze of funding applications. Another talked about depending on 15 separate funders just to build a marina.
“This is a time of historic state and federal investment in climate action, and tribal priorities really need to be considered when making decisions around how we’re going to be directing this investment,” said Meade Krosby, senior author of the report.
“Hopefully this will help to inform how this work is being done, how these funds are being directed, so that they are actually responsive to the barriers that tribes are facing and helping to remove some of those barriers so the tribes can get the good work done.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
Most of the tribes included in the report had completed publicly available reports on the impacts of climate change, and some had developed detailed plans for relocation as rising waters threaten buildings, or even entire villages.
The Quinault Indian Nation, in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, has a plan for relocating its largest village. The multimillion-dollar effort has relied on a piecemeal of federal and state grants and the constraints that come with them, Gary Morishima, Quinault’s natural resources technical adviser, explained in the report.
Other tribes brought up concerns about competing against other tribal nations for funding when collaboration is such a vital part of responding to climate change. Tribal lands share borders and coastlines, and the impacts of climate change on those lands do not stop at any border, the report pointed out.
Amelia Marchand, citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and another author of the report, explained that it comes down to the federal government fulfilling its trust responsibility to tribes.
“The treaty is supposed to support and uplift and ensure that what the tribes need for continued existence is maintained,” she said. “And that’s one of the issues with not having this coordinated federal response because different federal agencies are doing different things.”
Millions of dollars have gone to coastal tribes, and the report said much more is needed. It referenced a 2020 Bureau of Indian Affairs report that estimated that tribes in the lower 48 states would need $1.9 billion over the next half-century for infrastructure needs related to climate change.
Amid all the challenges, Pacific Northwest tribes are still leaders in climate adaptation and have plenty to teach other communities, Marchand said.
“Finding ways to make their progress happen for their nations and their communities despite those odds is one of the most inspiring and hopeful resilient stories,” she said.
SCV Water Completes Earl Schmidt Filtration Plant
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
SCV Water recently completed construction of the Wash Water Return and Sludge Systems Project at its Earl Schmidt Filtration Plant, located near Castaic Lake
https://scvnews.com/scv-water-completes-earl-schmidt-filtration-plant/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-08-12, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
When you are an Apple developer every day is Xmas, SwiftUI edition:
I just discovered that at some point onGeometryChange(for:of:action:) was introduced and this just made my life a thousands times easier.
Someone give a promotion to whoever did this:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/view/ongeometrychange(for:of:action:)-qbyx
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112951235938731728
Apple forces Patreon to charge Patreons 30% tax, or have its iOS application banned from the App Store
date: 2024-08-12, from: OS News
I have no contracts, agreements, or business with Apple, I do not use any Apple products, I do not rely on any Apple services, and none of my work requires the use of any of Apple’s tools. Yet, I’m forced to deal with Apple’s 30% tax. Today, Patreon, which quite a few of you use to support OSNews, announced that Apple is forcing them to change its billing system, or risk being banned from the App Store. This has some serious consequences for people who use Patreon’s iOS application to subscribe to Patreons, and for the creators you subscribe to. First: Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in your Patreon shop. ↫ Patreon’s website First things first: the 30% mafia tax will only be applied to new Patreons subscribers using the Patreon iOS application to subscribe, starting early November 2024. Existing Patreons will not be affected, iOS or no. Anyone who subscribes through the Patreon website or Android application will not be affected either. Since creators like myself obviously have no intention of just handing over 30% of what our iOS-using supporters donate to us, Patreon has added an option to automatically increase the prices of subscriptions inside the Patreon iOS application by 30%. In other words, starting this November, subscribing to the OSNews Patreon through the iOS application will be 30% more expensive than subscribing from anywhere else. As such, I’m pondering updating the description of our Patreon to strongly suggest anyone wishing to subscribe to the OSNews Patreon to do so either on the web, or through the Patreon Android application instead. If you’re hell-bent on subscribing through the Patreon iOS application, you’ll be charged an additional 30% to pay protection money to Apple. And just to reiterate once more: if you’re already a Patreon, nothing will change and you’ll continue to pay the regular amounts per tier. Second: Any creator currently on first-of-the-month or per-creation billing plans will have to switch over to subscription billing to continue earning in the iOS app, because that’s the only billing type Apple’s in-app purchase system supports. ↫ Patreon’s website This is Patreon inside baseball, but as it stands right now, subscribers to the OSNews Patreon are billed on the first of the month, regardless of when during a month you subscribe. This is intentional, since I really like the clarity it provides to subscribers, and the monthly paycheck it results in for myself. Sadly, Apple is forcing Patreon to force me to change this – I am now forced to switch to subscription billing instead, somewhere before November 2025. This means that once I make that forced switch, new Patreons will be billed on their subscription date every month (if you subscribe on 25 April, you’ll be charged every 25th of the month). Luckily, nothing will change for existing subscribers – you will still be billed on the 1st of the month. This whole thing is absolutely batshit insane. Not only is Patreon being forced by Apple to do this at the risk of having their iOS application banned from the App Store, Apple is also making it explicitly impossible for Patreon to go any other route. As we all know, Patreon won’t be allowed to advertise that subscribing will be cheaper on the web, but Apple is also not allowing Patreon to remove subscribing in the Patreon iOS application altogether – if Patreon were to do that, Apple will ban the application from the App Store as well. And with how many people use iOS, just outright deprecating the Patreon iOS application is most likely going to hurt a lot of creators, especially ones outside of the tech sphere. Steven Troughton-Smith did some math, and concluded that Apple will be making six times as much from donations to Patreon creators than Patreon itself will. In other words, if you use iOS, and subscribe to a creator from within the Patreon iOS application, you will be supporting Apple – a three trillion dollar corporation – more than the most likely small creator you want to encourage to keep making content, art, or whatever. That is absolutely, balls-to-the-wall, batshit insanity. Remember that ad Apple made where it crushed a bunch of priceless instruments and art supplies into an iPad – the ad it had to pull and apologise for because creators, artists, writers, and so on thought it was tasteless and dystopian? Who knew that ad was literal.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
When the New York Times lost its way.
https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-times-lost-its-way
Republicans Will Refuse to Certify a Harris Win. “There are more than…
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045105-republicans-will-refuse-t
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
https://politicalwire.com/2024/08/12/trump-campaign-then-and-now-2/
Before we put half a million broadband satellites in orbit, anyone want to consider environmental effects?
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
SpaceX ‘WasteX’ Starlink said to make up 60% of sats circling Earth
The US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), a federation of public interest advocacy groups, has asked the FCC to halt low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite launches until the environmental consequences of space pollution can be better managed.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/starlink_spacex_environment_review/
“S.W.A.T.” Among Four Productions Filming in SCV
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita’s Film Office has released the list of four productions currently filming in the Santa Clarita Valley for the week of Monday, Aug. 12 to Sunday, Aug.
https://scvnews.com/s-w-a-t-among-four-productions-filming-in-scv/
Apple’s next-gen Mac Mini will be faster, could also be (a lot) smaller
date: 2024-08-12, from: Liliputing
The Mac Mini has been Apple’s smallest, cheapest member of the Mac lineup for years. But soon it could be even smaller. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is on track to launch a next-gen Mac Mini later this year, and it could be about half the size of the current-gen Mac Mini. According to Gurman, […]
The post Apple’s next-gen Mac Mini will be faster, could also be (a lot) smaller appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/apples-next-gen-mac-mini-will-be-faster-could-also-be-a-lot-smaller/
Scientists Drill Deeper Into Earth’s Mantle Than Ever Before, Probing for the Origin of Life on Earth
date: 2024-08-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The record-setting rock samples will provide insight into the chemical processes that may have kick-started life on our planet
Ukraine, Russia Trade Blame After Fire at Europe’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant
date: 2024-08-12, from: The Signal
By Aldgra Fredly Contributing Writer Ukraine and Russia traded blamed on Sunday for a massive fire that erupted at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — the largest in Europe — in […]
The post Ukraine, Russia Trade Blame After Fire at Europe’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Culinary Union Endorses Harris’ Proposal to End Tax on Tips, Weeks After Trump Proposed It
date: 2024-08-12, from: The Signal
By Joseph Lord Contributing Writer The Culinary Workers Union in Nevada endorsed a plan by Vice President Kamala Harris to end taxes on tips for service workers two months after former […]
The post Culinary Union Endorses Harris’ Proposal to End Tax on Tips, Weeks After Trump Proposed It appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
The Van Gogh–Inspired ‘Colors of Love’ Comes to Downtown Santa Barbara
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Yulia Maluta directs a dance showcase at Center Stage Theater.
The post The Van Gogh–Inspired ‘Colors of Love’ Comes to Downtown Santa Barbara appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Texas Officials Release Bodycam Footage from Uvalde’s Robb Elementary Shooting
date: 2024-08-12, from: The Signal
By Zachary Stieber Contributing Writer Newly released body camera footage shows Texas law enforcement officers spending more than an hour outside an elementary school classroom after a man with a gun […]
The post Texas Officials Release Bodycam Footage from Uvalde’s Robb Elementary Shooting appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon Helps Close the Information Gaps on Santa Barbara’s History
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Research as a form of activism with S.B. Public Library and S.B. Trust for Historic Preservation.
The post Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon Helps Close the Information Gaps on Santa Barbara’s History appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
US Sending Guided-Missile Submarine to Middle East
date: 2024-08-12, from: The Signal
By Aldgra Fredly Contributing Writer Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Sunday ordered the deployment of the USS Georgia guided-missile submarine to the Middle East amid mounting tensions between Israel and […]
The post US Sending Guided-Missile Submarine to Middle East appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/us-sending-guided-missile-submarine-to-middle-east/
Free Will Astrology
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Week of August 15.
The post Free Will Astrology appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/12/free-will-astrology-223/
Nancy Pelosi’s Art of Power, a short profile by David Remnick. My…
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045104-nancy-pelosis-art-of-powe
Haiku gets tentative Firefox port
date: 2024-08-12, from: OS News
Haiku, the platform grossing in ported browsers while its native WebPositive browser languishes, has added another notch to its belt – and this time, it’s a big one. Firefox has been tentatively ported to Haiku, but it’s early days and there’s no package ready to download – you’ll have to compile it yourself if you want to get it running. It’s version 128, so it’s the latest version, too. Without the ability to easily test and run it, there’s not much more to add at this point, but it’s still a major achievement. I hope there’ll be a nice Haiku package soon.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140473/haiku-gets-tentative-firefox-port/
Intel’s microcode fix to save Raptor Lake chips may only work with default power settings
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
All those BIOS options that promise better performance? Enabling them might kill your processor
Owners of Intel’s 13th and 14th Gen Core processors may need to stick to the chip giant’s official power limits in order to safely use their CPUs.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/raptor_lake_cpu_microcode_patch/
Earthquake reported south of Pasadena, felt in SCV
date: 2024-08-12, from: The Signal
A 4.4 magnitude earthquake rocked Los Angeles County, including the Santa Clarita Valley, on Monday afternoon, according to the United States Geological Survey. The earthquake was reported at 12:20 p.m. […]
The post Earthquake reported south of Pasadena, felt in SCV appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/earthquake-reported-south-of-pasadena-felt-in-scv/
Reports: Riders stranded, escorted off rollercoaster
date: 2024-08-12, from: The Signal
Riders were stranded on a Six Flags Magic Mountain rollercoaster after it broke down on Sunday evening and were escorted off by personnel, according to media reports. Amusement park guests […]
The post Reports: Riders stranded, escorted off rollercoaster appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/reports-riders-stranded-escorted-off-rollercoaster/
HMNH nationally recognized for stroke care
date: 2024-08-12, from: The Signal
News release Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital has received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines – Stroke Gold Plus quality achievement award for its commitment to ensuring stroke patients […]
The post HMNH nationally recognized for stroke care appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/hmnh-nationally-recognized-for-stroke-care-2/
Mushroom Color Atlas: A Rainbow of Dye Colors
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/mushroom-color-atlas-a-rainbow-of-dye-colors
Shakespeare in the Park
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The play’s the thing at Santa Barbara’s Elings Park.
The post Shakespeare in the Park appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/12/shakespeare-in-the-park/
Apple Going After Patreon
date: 2024-08-12, from: Michael Tsai
Sarah Perez (MacRumors, Hacker News, Slashdot): Apple has threatened to remove crowdfunding app Patreon from the App Store if creators continue to use unsupported third-party billing options or disable transactions on iOS, instead of using Apple’s own in-app purchasing system. In a blog post and email to Patreon creators about upcoming changes to membership in […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/12/apple-going-after-patreon/
The Mac Is a Power Tool
date: 2024-08-12, from: Michael Tsai
John Gruber (Mastodon, tweet, Hacker News): The Mac is a platform where you need to be able to shoot yourself in the foot. Increased protections that make it less likely that you’ll shoot yourself in the foot are, obviously, a good idea. Many of them are downright necessary. But such protections are only undeniably good […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/12/the-mac-is-a-power-tool/
Apple Intelligence Foundation Language Models
date: 2024-08-12, from: Michael Tsai
Apple (PDF, Hacker News): We present foundation language models developed to power Apple Intelligence features, including a ~3 billion parameter model designed to run efficiently on devices and a large server-based language model designed for Private Cloud Compute. These models are designed to perform a wide range of tasks efficiently, accurately, and responsibly. This report […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/12/apple-intelligence-foundation-language-models/
Susan Wojcicki, RIP
date: 2024-08-12, from: Michael Tsai
Juliana Kim: Susan Wojcicki, a Silicon Valley visionary who helped shape Google and YouTube, died Friday after a two-year battle with non-small cell lung cancer, according to her husband. She was 56.[…]In 1998, Wojcicki rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, a pair of Stanford grad students on the cusp of building the […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/08/12/susan-wojcicki-rip/
Microsoft deprecates Paint 3D
date: 2024-08-12, from: OS News
Way back in the early before time, Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to brand Windows 10 entirely around the label “creators”, and one distinctly odd consequence of that was an application called “Paint 3D”, a replacement for the traditional Paint application that Microsoft had been shipping one way or another since 1985, when it included a simple bitmap editing program called “Doodle” with its mouse drivers for DOS. Doodle would be replaced shortly after by a whitelabel version of ZSoft Corporation’s PC Paintbrush, and once Windows 1.0 rolled around, it was rebranded as Paint, a name that has stuck until today. Paint 3D was supposed to replace the regular Paint, with a focus on creating and manipulating 3D objects, serving as an extension to Microsoft’s failed efforts to bring VR and AR to the masses. Microsoft even went so far as to list the regular Paint as deprecated, but after a lot of outcry, has since reneged and refocused its efforts on improving it. Paint 3D, however, is not officially going to be deprecated, and has been added to Microsoft’s list of deprecated Windows features. Paint 3D is deprecated and will be removed from the Microsoft Store on November 4, 2024. To view and edit 2D images, you can use Paint or Photos. For viewing 3D content, you can use 3D Viewer. ↫ Microsoft’s list of deprecated Windows features I don’t think anyone is going to shed a tear on this, but at the same time, as with everything Microsoft changes or removes from Windows, there’s bound to be at least a few people whose entire workflow heavily depends on Paint 3D, and they’re going to be pissed.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140467/microsoft-deprecates-paint-3d/
Former Sand Canyon detective charged in international extortion case
date: 2024-08-12, from: The Signal
Federal prosecutors alleged a now-retired homicide detective from Sand Canyon was part of a group hired to bully an Irvine man into signing away his multimillion-dollar interest in a company […]
The post Former Sand Canyon detective charged in international extortion case appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/08/former-sand-canyon-detective-charged-in-international-extortion-case/
Beyond the Playing Field
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Held at UC Santa Barbara, Sports Industry Academy opens scholars’ minds to a world of opportunities.
The post Beyond the Playing Field appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/12/beyond-the-playing-field/
@Robert’s feed at BlueSky (date: 2024-08-12, from: Robert’s feed at BlueSky)
This makes so much sense for political interviews.
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/rsdoiel.bsky.social/post/3kzkaujhh7o2b
Vote for the August 2024 Plus Post Topic
date: 2024-08-12, from: Computer ads from the Past
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week for this month’s topic
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/vote-for-the-august-2004-plus-post
DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructure
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Voting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included
Def Con With an average of 30,000 attendees per year at the DEF CON security conference in Las Vegas, it’s safe to assume at least one or two hackers attending have some necessary insights to secure critical infrastructure. Now a new initiative dubbed “Franklin” hopes to capture some of that infosec pro expertise in a policy-friendly format. …
Study: Gen Z Having Less Sex Due To Allure Of Leftovers At…
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045102-study-gen-z-having-less
Tourist Carves His Family’s Initials Onto a Wall in Pompeii
date: 2024-08-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In recent years, officials have seen a series of similar incidents at Italy’s most popular historic sites
COC Launching Clinical Lab Scientist Program in Fall 2024
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
College of the Canyons will launch its Clinical Laboratory Scientist (CLS) certificate program in the fall 2024 semester, which begins on Aug.
https://scvnews.com/coc-launching-clinical-lab-scientist-program-in-fall-2024/
Americans’ Top Concern About Renewable Energy Projects
date: 2024-08-12, from: Heatmap News
Renewable energy’s biggest political liability? It may be the whales and tortoises, according to Heatmap polling.
Conflicts over the environmental impacts of energy transition technologies — some rooted in fact, others founded more in fear — have played out in myriad ways across America over the past few years, from residents of beach towns protesting against offshore wind in the name of whale safety to farm communities opposing solar and onshore wind over impacts to livestock and birds. While some of these fights have been seeded by anti-renewable interest groups, these outside actors have fertile soil to work with. Exclusive Heatmap polling conducted in April found the top concern both Democrats and Republicans have with renewable energy projects in their areas is the harm those facilities could inflict on wildlife.
Notably, almost half of all Democrats said consequences for wildlife from projects would elicit “strong concern” from them. Other big concerns for Republicans such as reliability during extreme weather and land use factors received nowhere near the same level of Democratic agreement.
It’s hard to say whether this is because people are really concerned about animals and species protection generally or because there’s a concerted public relations effort (funded in no small part by fossil fuel companies) to focus on the negative environmental effects of solar farms and wind turbines. But nevertheless, this polling result — which is being reported today for the first time — underscores a real vulnerability that energy projects labeled “clean” can face when a would-be host community is faced with information indicating they may produce pollution or harm to the environment.
It also helps explain a recent statewide poll of New Jersey residents conducted by researchers at Stockton University that found a sharp increase in the percentage of respondents opposed to offshore wind following a very public campaign to tie new offshore project development to a spate of whale deaths.
“These conflicts are real, I’m not going to say they aren’t. That’s why I say there are appropriate places to site and inappropriate places to site,” Matt Kirby, senior director of energy and landscape conservation for the National Parks Conservation Association, told me. “I hope that industry understands that it needs to have social license to operate, and it will only be able to get that if they’re a good player.”
The Jersey campaign
How this played out in New Jersey should be cause for concern to anyone trying to deploy more renewable energy.
In 2019, researchers at Stockton, a public university in the state, found broad bipartisan support for offshore wind development. Then came at least a dozen dead whales that washed onto the Atlantic coastline, an incident that lacks a known cause to this day … but also spurred a non-stop anti-offshore wind campaign driven by politicians and political media figures, including those with ties to fossil fuel-funded opposition groups.
There’s been no evidence to date that the offshore wind build-out off the Atlantic coast has harmed a single whale. But studies have shown that activities related to offshore wind could harm a whale, which appears to be enough to override the benefits for some people. When Stockton pollsters checked again in September 2023 to measure support for offshore wind, they found it had plummeted. More state residents supported wind farms than opposed them, still. But support had dropped 30%, to roughly half of all participants backing the projects. Only a third of those living on the coasts were for constructing new offshore wind.
Alyssa Maurice, one of the researchers involved in the recent poll, told me there’s multiple ways to read this data, including that it may have been driven by partisanship. The whale campaign had a lot of play on Fox News (and still does today). But there’s a very real chance the campaign to tie the whale deaths and other potential environmental harms to offshore wind worked: Nearly 44% of respondents said they believed offshore wind would impact marine life “a great deal,” a figure that rose to 62% when it came to people on the coast.
“There’s now this gap between shore communities and the state that wasn’t there before,” Maurice said. “[It’s] a really stark geographic divide.”
Climate vs. environment
Climate change is a major risk to wildlife habitat and imperiled species across the world — that much is plain as day. There’s a reason the survival of certain mammals, fish and fauna often described as “keystone species” are seen as bellwethers for planetary warming. When they go extinct from climate impacts to river temperatures or food availability, it portends harms that may befall other species too — including, maybe, humans.
But an unfortunate truth is that major industrial projects — even ones aimed at decarbonizing the global economy — will always impact the local environment. To build large-scale solar farms or lithium mines or sprawling CO2 pipelines, we may need to disrupt a substantial number of endangered species and their habitat, not to mention the livelihoods of countless people who make their livelihoods off the land, air, and sea, or who enjoy outdoor recreation and hunting.
These conflicts are the reason I gave a talk at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ conference this year explaining why I do not use the term “clean energy” without quotation marks — not for the derisive reasons climate deniers put scarequotes around the term, but in pursuit of accuracy and out of respect for the populations most impacted by new projects. Before I joined Heatmap, I spent years writing about mining for battery metals, and I heard countless complaints from individuals in frontline communities and human rights groups about how there’s nothing “clean” about a car made with cobalt mined by a child or lithium chemicals that sapped an aquifer dry.
That’s not to say focusing on the “clean” part of decarbonization is a bad thing — it’s just not what brings people together, according to the Heatmap poll. In fact, we found the most bipartisan agreement for supporting “clean” energy projects in two areas: job creation and reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign sources for oil and gas.
Reducing local air and water pollution? There was a 52 percentage point difference in support between Democrats and Republicans, with only a third of GOP respondents identifying it as a major driver of support. Combating climate change? That gulf widens to 66 percentage points, with only 16% GOP support.
Whether those who favor overlooking wildlife concerns in favor of deployment like it or not, these findings undergird an argument being made by the ecologically-focused segments of the climate advocacy world that planning through the transition can have a political upside.
Patrick Bigger, a senior researcher at the left-aligned Climate and Community Project, said he wasn’t surprised by Heatmap’s findings.
“Talking about conservation polls really well and talking about climate change polls really poorly” with some communities, Bigger said. “I think there’s this implicit sense by folks who care about climate action that clean and green are permanently symbiotically coded as good, and it’s very hard to break that habit until you’re confronted with the polling that this doesn’t actually play well with the communities you’re trying to reach.”
https://heatmap.news/climate/renewables-wildlife-impact
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
When the NYT makes Trump sound like a reasonable candidate that a sane person might vote for, remember this day.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/12.html#a185536
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Speaking of which, I must’ve converted DocServer some time ago and didn’t test it well enough. It didn’t even load. Oy. It works now.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/12.html#a184825
Santa Barbara Photographer Documents Indigenous Activism in New Photobook
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
A new photobook presents a decade-long collaboration between photographer Tristan Partridge and the Ancestral Community of San Isidro, a Kichwa-Panzaleo
The post Santa Barbara Photographer Documents Indigenous Activism in New Photobook appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Iconic ‘Double Arch’ Rock Formation Collapses in Utah
date: 2024-08-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Changing water levels and erosion from waves may have contributed to the collapse in the popular Glen Canyon National Recreation Area
Oct. 19: Annual Business for Artists Conference
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Join Santa Clarita Arts for the third Annual Business for Artists Conference on Saturday, Oct. 19 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Canyon Country Community Center
https://scvnews.com/oct-19-annual-business-for-artists-conference/
When Do Kids Go Back to School? It Depends on Where They Live
date: 2024-08-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In some districts, students returned to their classrooms weeks before Labor Day
Carpinteria Surf ‘N’ Suds Beer Fest Hits Double Digits
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
More than 70 craft breweries and beverage makers gather to celebrate the festival’s 10th edition.
The post Carpinteria Surf ‘N’ Suds Beer Fest Hits Double Digits appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/12/carpinteria-surf-n-suds-beer-fest-hits-double-digits/
Cisco plans to slash 4,000 more jobs amid AI, cybersecurity push
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cuts reportedly to come as soon as Wednesday’s earnings release
Networking goliath Cisco will reportedly slash thousands of jobs as it focuses on growing its cybersecurity business and capitalizing on AI demand.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/cisco_job_cuts/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
FBI, in private meeting with Trump, revealed new details about his would-be assassin.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-private-meeting-trump-revealed-new-details-assassin/story?id=112714355
This 10.95 inch dual-screen laptop has an Intel Core i3-1215U chip and a sub-$500 starting price
date: 2024-08-12, from: Liliputing
Asus and Lenovo have both introduced new dual-screen laptops that feature a second display in the spot where you’d normally find a keyboard. But the Asus Zenbook Duo and Lenovo Yoga Book 9i are both premium devices with prices that start at around $1500 and $2000, respectively. Meanwhile smaller Chinese companies like SZBOX and Topton […]
The post This 10.95 inch dual-screen laptop has an Intel Core i3-1215U chip and a sub-$500 starting price appeared first on Liliputing.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Polymarket Hires Nate Silver After Taking in $265M of Bets on U.S. Election.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/polymarket-hires-nate-silver-taking-154956290.html
Station Science Top News: August 9, 2024
date: 2024-08-12, from: NASA breaking news
Researchers tested a treatment on cartilage and bone tissue cultures subjected to compressive impact injury and found differences in the metabolites and proteins released by cells in space and on Earth along with partial improvement in both gravity conditions. The findings suggest the treatment is safe and could help ensure the health of crew members on future […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/johnson/station-science-top-news-august-9-2024/
‘We gotta be somewhere’: Unhoused Californians react to Newsom’s crackdown
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The LAist
Unhoused Californians and activists say authorities are cracking down harder on encampments after getting the green light from the Supreme Court and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/homeless-californians-react-to-crackdown
Webb Sees Gassy Baby Stars
date: 2024-08-12, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a phenomenon for the very first time. The bright red streaks at top left of this June 20, 2024, image are aligned protostar outflows – jets of gas from newborn stars that all slant in the same direction. This image supports astronomers’ assumption that as clouds collapse to […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/webb-sees-gassy-baby-stars/
US to resume sales of ‘offensive’ weapons to Saudi Arabia
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The United States said Monday it would resume sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, ending a yearslong suspension triggered by the kingdom’s bloody operations in Yemen.
With Saudi Arabia once again seen as a pivotal player for the United States as the Gaza war enters its 10th month, the State Department said it would return to weapons sales “in regular order with appropriate congressional notification and consultation.”
“Saudi Arabia has remained a close strategic partner of the United States, and we look forward to enhancing that partnership,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.
President Joe Biden took office in 2021 pledging a new approach to Saudi Arabia that emphasizes human rights and immediately announced that the administration would only send “defensive” weaponry to the longtime U.S. partner.
The step came after thousands of civilians were estimated to be killed in Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen, including children, in a campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who have taken over much of the country.
But geopolitical considerations have changed markedly since then. The United Nations, with U.S. support, brokered a truce in early 2022 that has largely held.
Since the truce, “there has not been a single Saudi airstrike into Yemen and cross-border fire from Yemen into Saudi Arabia has largely stopped,” Patel said.
“The Saudis since that time have met their end of the deal, and we are prepared to meet ours,” Patel said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-to-resume-sales-of-offensive-weapons-to-saudi-arabia-/7739488.html
Elon Musk to interview Trump on X social media network
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
washington — Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is due to interview Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the X social media network on Monday in an event that could inject more surprises into the turbulent U.S. presidential election.
The interview, scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern Time (0000 Tuesday GMT), could provide the former president an opportunity to seize the limelight at a time when his campaign is seen as sagging.
His Democratic rival for the Nov. 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, has erased Trump’s lead in opinion polls and energized Democratic voters with a series of high-energy rallies.
The interview on Musk’s social media platform could allow Trump to reach a different audience than the conservative faithful who attend his rallies and watch his interviews on Fox News. However, similar events on the platform have been plagued by technical problems.
“Am going to do some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance of the conversation,” Musk wrote on the platform, formerly known as Twitter.
The interview will be hosted live using Trump’s official X account, his campaign said on Sunday. Trump’s access to his account, @realDonaldTrump, was restored a month into Musk’s ownership of X after being suspended by the platform’s previous owners following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress by his supporters.
Trump frequently posts on his Truth Social social media platform, which was launched in February 2022. On Monday morning, Trump returned to X for the first time in a year, posting an ad that highlighted his claim that the four criminal prosecutions he faces are politically motivated.
His last X post before Monday was one in August 2023 appealing for donations and showing a mug shot after he was booked at an Atlanta jail in relation to felony charges tied to his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia.
Musk could prove to be an unusual interviewer. The world’s richest person backed Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 but has tacked rightward since and endorsed the Republican following the attempted assassination of Trump in July.
Musk, who heads electric car company Tesla, also started a fundraising organization to support Trump’s campaign. The political action committee is now under investigation in Michigan for possible violations of state laws on gathering voter information.
Trump, a longstanding critic of electric vehicles, shifted gears after Musk’s endorsement.
“I’m for electric cars. I have to be, because Elon endorsed me very strongly. So I have no choice,” Trump said at an early August rally.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fein, campaigning in support of Harris, called Trump a “sellout.”
The Biden administration has worked to popularize electric vehicles through tax breaks and other support as part of its broader goal of reducing carbon emissions blamed for climate change.
Republicans in Congress have opposed those subsidies. Senator JD Vance, Trump’s vice presidential running mate, said the Biden policy merely subsidizes rich people who purchase the cars.
Advertisers have fled X since Musk bought it in 2022 and subsequently reduced content moderation that has resulted in a dramatic increase in hate speech, civil rights groups have said.
In the meantime, the entrepreneur has been involved in a swirl of additional controversies. He has falsely accused Biden and the Democratic Party of opening U.S. borders to undocumented immigrants in a ploy to boost the number of potential Democratic voters. Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections.
Musk in November 2023 endorsed an antisemitic post on X that said members of the Jewish community were stoking hatred against white people. He defended himself, saying the user was speaking “the actual truth.” Musk has also attacked the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that works to fight antisemitism, accusing it, without evidence, of being responsible for a drop in advertising on X.
https://www.voanews.com/a/elon-musk-to-interview-trump-on-x-social-media-network-/7739496.html
South Korean Nuclear Nonproliferation Pivot Points
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: RAND blog
The growing North Korean nuclear weapon force has created a pivot point for South Korea, where many are unsure that they can blindly depend on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to deter North Korea. A growing number of South Korean officials are calling for South Korea to build its own nuclear weapons.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/08/south-korean-nuclear-nonproliferation-pivot-points.html
What a glimpse inside the Black Hat NOC reveals about infosec pros’ security habits
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Basic Auth among web traffic? Possible flaw in a well-known commercial VPN product? ‘Security has to watch its own things’
Black Hat The large network that materializes along with legions of infosec professionals at Black Hat every year presents the perfect opportunity to see how well the security community practices what it preaches. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/black_hat_security/
Join Santa Clarita Arts for the 3rd Business for Artists Conference
date: 2024-08-12, from: City of Santa Clarita
Where Creativity Meets Business! Join Santa Clarita Arts for the 3rd Annual Business for Arts Conference on Saturday, October 19 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., at the Canyon Country Community Center (18410 Sierra Hwy). This conference is designed to equip artists, creative professionals and non-profit organizations with the necessary tools to thrive in their […]
The post Join Santa Clarita Arts for the 3rd Business for Artists Conference appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
If elected in November, Kamala Harris would be the first US president…
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045100-if-elected-in-november-ka
4.4 Earthquake Shakes L.A. County
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
A 4.4 magnitude earthquake shook Los Angeles County early Monday afternoon
https://scvnews.com/quake-prompts-barger-to-remind-residents-of-emergency-preparedness/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Hillary Clinton's 3AM and the phone is ringing ad from 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yr7odFUARg
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I listened to a bunch of podcasts this morning about how freaked out Trump is. If a president freaks out over something like this, how would he handle a Cuban Missile Crisis? Remember the phone call at 3AM? We saw what he did with COVID, he froze, like he’s freezing now.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/12.html#a163833
Registration Still Open for WiSH Foundation’s College Webinar
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
If you join just one webinar, WiSH Education Foundation’s General College Overview, is the webinar to join - and it’s happening Wednesday, Aug. 21, from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
https://scvnews.com/registration-still-open-for-wish-foundations-college-webinar/
Attacker steals personal data of 200K+ people with links to Arizona tech school
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Nearly 50 different data points were accessed by cybercrim
An Arizona tech school will send letters to 208,717 current and former students, staff, and parents whose data was exposed during a January break-in that allowed an attacker to steal nearly 50 types of personal info.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/200k_with_links_to_arizona/
NOAA Forecasts Severe Geomagnetic Storm
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
August 12, 2024 NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) — a division of the National Weather Service — is monitoring
The post NOAA Forecasts Severe Geomagnetic Storm appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/08/12/noaa-forecasts-severe-geomagnetic-storm/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
A new rule for journalists. End the interview on the first egregious lie. Turn the lights out, switch off the recorder, get up and leave. And your report should state clearly that this is why the interview was terminated. It never should have been tolerated in the first place.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/12.html#a162319
Scott Heiferman sold his dotcom company in 1999 and then went to…
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045096-scott-heiferman-sold-his-
NatureTrack Foundation Awards Nancy Stearns Scholarship to Lompoc High School Student for the First Time
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Lompoc, CA – The NatureTrack Foundation is proud to announce Braiden Flaherty as the first student from Lompoc HS to
The post NatureTrack Foundation Awards Nancy Stearns Scholarship to Lompoc High School Student for the First Time appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-08-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
When Google tells you it’s easy to convert a site to HTTPS they’re wrong. It’s an insurmountable job for scripting.com. 30 years of writing is on that domain, lots of different runtimes on lots of different domains which would also have to be converted. Images in all the pages. All that breaks when you flip the switch. I can’t walk away from a big part of my life’s work. Sorry, not for Google. Every time someone assumes I’m to blame for this situation, that’s how Google has tricked you. I followed the rules. They broke them.
http://scripting.com/2024/08/12.html#a162013
NASA Retires Orbiting Telescope That Charted Asteroids for Over a Decade
date: 2024-08-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
NEOWISE, which looked for potentially hazardous objects in the solar system, received its last command on Thursday and will burn up when it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere
MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation Opens Mamava Lactation Pod
date: 2024-08-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
SANTA BARBARA, CA. (Thursday, August 9, 2024) – MOXI has opened a Mamava lactation pod to help breastfeeding parents in conjunction with National
The post MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation Opens Mamava Lactation Pod appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
CHP Announces New Executive Team Leaders
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee announced Monday his appointments of the Department’s new Deputy Commissioner Ezery Beauchamp and Assistant Commissioner Rodney Ellison
https://scvnews.com/chp-announces-new-executive-team-leaders/
California Credit Union Foundation Seeking Innovative Santa Clarita Teachers
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
California Credit Union Foundation encourages Los Angeles County teachers, including those in Santa Clarita, who have an innovative class project idea to apply for a credit union grant through its Teacher Grant program.
https://scvnews.com/california-credit-union-foundation-seeking-innovative-santa-clarita-teachers/
One Year After a Devastating Fire, Lahaina’s 151-Year-Old Banyan Tree Is Healing
date: 2024-08-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Arborists didn’t know if the historic tree would survive, but they’ve been working to give it the best possible odds
Sols 4270-4272: Sample for SAM
date: 2024-08-12, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 9, 2024 The focus for this three-sol weekend plan is delivering a portion of the Kings Canyon drill sample to SAM for Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA), following on from a successful CheMin analysis. The CheMin and SAM analyses, coupled with APXS and ChemCam analyses, will tell us about the composition […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4270-4272-sample-for-sam/
That One Nice Week of August Is Here
date: 2024-08-12, from: Heatmap News
I come bearing good news for a change: Most of the United States will see reasonable summer temperatures this week! With, of course, a few exceptions …
Debby brings cooler days across the country
Hurricane Debby, which first made landfall in Florida last Tuesday, has set new weather trends in motion. After hitting Georgia and South Carolina, the storm continued north, reaching the Northeast last Friday. The wind and rainfall brought cooler, less humid air into the region, Reneé Duff, senior meteorologist at Accuweather, told me. Temperatures in the Northeast — which were several degrees below historical averages this weekend — will continue to be more comfortable this week compared to the recent past. Same goes for the northern Plains and Midwest.
In the Southeast, where the hurricane has caused the most destruction, temperatures will be near their historical averages — around the low 90s degrees Fahrenheit. While the cool-off will be good for those trying to recover after the storm, Duff told me that higher humidity levels with rounds of showers and thunderstorms in the region may still end up slowing cleanup efforts.
Despite Debby, the heat has found a way to stick itself to some states. Parts of Texas and New Mexico will see temperatures much higher than those expected for this time of the year, Tom Kines, senior meteorologist at Accuweather, told me. During the later part of the week, an intense heat wave will build across Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas. On Thursday, southern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama will be under extreme heat risk alerts, according to data from the National Weather Service.
The rest of the country should “experience temperatures close to where they should be for this time of year,” Kines told me.
More updates on the Park Fire
Little progress has been made on containing the Park Fire since last week. The wildfire, which is now 38% contained, continues to grow aggressively. Climate scientist Daniel Swain of the University of California, Los Angeles, explained in a live briefing Thursday that while parts of the fire that had been burning through grass have been contained, in its northeastern flank, the fire is currently ravaging through timber plantations which burn more violently than natural forests. The fire has now also reached the Lassen National Forest, burning over 100,000 acres of the protected area.
- Some useful numbers: Ranking directly above the Park Fire among the largest wildfires in California’s history (for the moment) is the Mendocino Complex Fire of July 2018, which burned around 460,000 acres, but lasted 161 days. The Park Fire has already scorched almost 430,000 acres in less than 20 days. The largest fire in California’s history was the 2020 August Complex fire, which devoured more than a million acres over 87 days.
There is one tiny bit of good news: According to updates from Cal Fire, firefighters have been able to lift evacuation orders and warnings in Butte County.
Meanwhile, other wildfires have continued to pop up in California. On Tuesday, the Crozier Fire started in El Dorado County, and almost 2,000 acres have so far been burned. While not as powerful as the Park Fire, Crozier is also growing fast and in a more densely populated area, Swain said.
- Looking Ahead: The heat wave in California has broken, with near average — and maybe even lower — temperatures in store this week. The only issue is that the cooler weather comes from stronger winds, which are not ideal for containing a wildfire. Despite more forgiving temperatures, wildfire risk will remain high in California for the foreseeable future.
Alaska has been super weird
In late July, an especially long and intense heat wave settled over Alaska. On July 22, Fairbanks hit 90 degrees, breaking the previous record of 89 set last year. On that day, it was hotter in northern Alaska than it was in Atlanta.
The fact that such high temperatures are being seen so late into the summer in Alaska is particularly concerning, Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist for the NWS, told Scientific American. Peak temperatures usually happen much sooner, in June; by July, after the summer solstice, Alaska gets fewer hours of sunlight, so temperatures should start settling down. Alaskans’ housing and habits are all adapted to keep the cold away, so scientists are worried about the health risks of prolonged high temperatures in the state.
- Looking Ahead: While temperatures in Alaska dipped below average this weekend in the central and southern parts of the state, the mercury will soon start rising again. “If there is more record-breaking heat, the middle of the month would be the most likely time frame,” Duff told me. The possibility of record-breaking heat will decrease again starting at the end of August, but temperatures will continue to be warmer than average in the northern part of the state.
A heat wave in South Korea is killing livestock by the thousands
East Asian countries have been sizzling this summer, and South Korea is no exception. Following the end of the monsoon season in late July, Seoul has constantly seen temperatures of 89 degrees and up. Most of the country has seen temperatures 10 degrees higher than historical averages. The relentless heat has led to almost 2,000 heat-related illnesses and 17 fatalities since the start of the summer. In some regions, including Jeju, people are struggling to keep livestock alive, for example using fans and air conditioners to try to cool down the island’s rare black pigs. Over 300,000 livestock have died since mid-July.
“The heat is mostly due to a persistent area of high pressure over the Philippine Sea with the high’s axis reaching to the Korean Peninsula over the past week to 10 days,” Duff explained.
The country has opened 50,000 cooling shelters in response to the heat crisis, on top of smaller-scale counter-measures such as distributing umbrellas and salt tablets to try to keep people cool and hydrated.
- Looking Ahead: Despite some cloudiness and rain this past Friday, the scorching heat will prevail this week in the country. “A better chance for relief from the heat may come late next week or early the week of August 19,” Duff told me.
Extreme heat in northern Canada is making some miss the winter
Several communities in northern Canada broke heat records last week. Temperatures reached 95 degrees, breaking the record of 91 set last year. Inuvik, which saw its second ever recorded heat wave this summer, has been especially vulnerable to the recent heat. The region’s famous midnight sunsets means heat takes longer to dissipate, exacerbating the issues with low water levels in the Mackenzie River. Due to the dry and hot conditions, the community so used to ice and snow is now concerned about wildfires. Regions in Canada that have been historically shielded from major fire threats have been in the line of destruction in recent years, The Guardian reported.
- Looking Ahead: In Inuvik, temperatures will stay below 68 degrees for most of this week. While it seems like record-breaking heat is now behind northern Canada, it’s harder to say when drought conditions might improve. At least in the next 10 days, heavy precipitation is not predicted for the Northwest Territories.
Research corner:
- Over 70% of the global workforce is at risk from extreme heat-related death and injuries, according to a United Nations report — that’s almost 2.5 billion workers. While Africa leads as the region with the highest percentage of vulnerable workers, the report also points out that the number of those vulnerable in Europe is growing at the fastest rate.
- In Montana, Missoula County first responders teamed up with researchers at the University of Montana to investigate the most vulnerable group to extreme heat. After going through 911 calls, they found that those living in rural areas — which also tends to have older populations — were the ones that required most assistance during periods of intense heat. They also found that every 1 degree Celsius increase in average daily temperatures led to a 1% increase in 911 activity, i.e. hundreds of additional distress calls.
- A poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that seven in 10 Americans have seen the impact of extreme heat on their electricity bills in the past year. In the past five years, according to the survey, 70% of Americans have been personally affected by extreme heat. Those in the West and South were more likely to report having been impacted by the hot weather than those in the Northeast.
https://heatmap.news/climate/summer-heat-2024-new-york-new-mexico
US officials to travel to China for economic meetings
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-officials-to-travel-to-china-for-economic-meetings/7739294.html
It’s all drying up: Microsoft to erase 3D Paint from digital store
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Unloved multi dimensional doodler set for axe as its predecessor gets an AI update
Microsoft has hammered home a final nail in the coffin of its Mixed Reality adventures with confirmation that Paint 3D is to be ditched once and for all in the not-too-distant-future.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/in_memoriam_microsoft_3d_paint/
NASA to Provide Coverage of Progress 89 Launch, Space Station Docking
date: 2024-08-12, from: NASA breaking news
NASA will provide live launch and docking coverage of a Roscosmos cargo spacecraft delivering nearly three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the Expedition 71 crew aboard the International Space Station. The unpiloted Progress 89 spacecraft is scheduled to launch at 11:20 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, Aug. 14 (8:20 a.m. Baikonur time, Thursday, Aug. 15), […]
The Next Full Moon is a Supermoon Blue Moon
date: 2024-08-12, from: NASA breaking news
The Next Full Moon is a Supermoon, a Blue Moon; the Sturgeon Moon; the Red, Corn, Green Corn, Barley, Herb, Grain, or Dog Moon; Raksha Bandhan or Rakhi Purnima; and Tu B’Av.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/the-next-full-moon-is-a-supermoon-blue-moon/
Beelink GTi14 Ultra and GTi12 Ultra mini PCs have PCIe x8 connectors for external graphics cards
date: 2024-08-12, from: Liliputing
The Beelink GTi14 Ultra is a small desktop computer that measures 158 x 158 x 56mm (6.2″ x 6.2″ x 2.2″). It supports up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, up to 96GB of RAM, and up to two storage devices. But there are a few things that really help this little computer stand […]
The post Beelink GTi14 Ultra and GTi12 Ultra mini PCs have PCIe x8 connectors for external graphics cards appeared first on Liliputing.
The Geometric Tool That Solved Einstein’s Relativity Problem
date: 2024-08-12, from: Quanta Magazine
Tensors are used all over math and science to reveal hidden geometric truths. What are they?The post The Geometric Tool That Solved Einstein’s Relativity Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-geometric-tool-that-solved-einsteins-relativity-problem-20240812/
PeerJ Award Winner at EED 2024
date: 2024-08-12, from: PeerJ blog
James Malone PhD candidate at University of Oxford, UK. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your research interests? I’m a first year PhD student from the Oxford Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP. I studied biology for my undergraduate degree, but I have always had a strong interest in the more theoretical approaches towards the […]
https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284889559/peerj-award-winner-at-eed-2024/
Falling in Love With Wetlands
date: 2024-08-12, from: California Native Plants Society
Home to some of the state’s most unique and fascinating flora, California’s wetlands are critically important – and under threat again.
The post Falling in Love With Wetlands appeared first on California Native Plant Society.
https://www.cnps.org/flora-magazine/falling-in-love-with-wetlands-39537
Who would you trust to run the country … and this economy?
date: 2024-08-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report
A recent survey shows a slightly larger percentage of Americans trust Vice President Kamala Harris to handle the economy over former President Donald Trump. It’s the first time the poll has found the Democratic nominee leading Trump on economic issues this year. We’ll dig in. Then, what are forecasters expecting from this week’s inflation readings? And we’ll also hear about temp gigs and the youth unemployment rate.
Mega money, unfathomable violence pervade thriving underground doxxing scene
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It also attracts exactly the type of unempathetic people you would think it does
Black Hat Recently published interviews with known doxxers reveal the incredible finances behind the practice and how their extortion tactics are becoming increasingly violent.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/mega_money_and_unfathomable_violence/
The free healthcare for athletes in the Olympic Village shines a bright…
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045099-the-free-healthcare-for-a
Earth Educators Rendezvous with Infiniscope and Tour It
date: 2024-08-12, from: NASA breaking news
At the Earth Educator’s Rendezvous, held July 15-19, 2024, NASA’s Infiniscope project from Arizona State University hosted a two-day workshop aimed at empowering Earth educators with the tools to design and build virtual tours (VTs). This hands-on session provided participants with a unique opportunity to experience first-hand how to create immersive virtual tours using Tour […]
I Gazed Lovingly Into Strangers’ Eyes on ‘Eyechat’
date: 2024-08-12, from: 404 Media Group
Neal Agarwal’s eyes-only video chat sets you up with a stranger’s eyes only.
https://www.404media.co/eyechat-video-chatting-with-strangers/
The Political “Center” Between Fascism and Democracy Is Fascism
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/the-political-center-between-fascism-and-democracy-is-fascism
the diaconal charism
date: 2024-08-12, from: Ayjay blog
Earlier today I read this conversation with David French about how he was made unwelcome at his church because of race and politics. I had read an earlier column by him on the subject, but I was especially attentive to this discussion because I just before I read it I had been walking Angus and […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/the-diaconal-charism/
Twitter’s former chairman sues X over unpaid options
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Seeks $23 million in damages over Musk’s alleged reluctance to pay his bills
Elon Musk’s Twitter X is being sued by its former chairman for damages he alleges run to more than $23 million over unpaid stock options.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/twitters_former_chairman_sues_x/
Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s estranged daughter, excoriates Walter Isaacson for his…
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Jason Kottke blog
https://kottke.org/24/08/0045097-vivian-jenna-wilson-elon-
Co-Founder of DDoSecrets Was Dark Web Drug Kingpin
date: 2024-08-12, from: 404 Media Group
Thomas White ran the Silk Road 2.0 drug marketplace and was convicted of child abuse imagery-related crimes. He was also a co-founder of transparency activist organization Distributed Denial of Secrets.
https://www.404media.co/co-founder-of-ddosecrets-was-dark-web-drug-kingpin/
Mixing Business With Toxic Politics
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/08/12/mixing-business-with-toxic-politics/
Google-commissioned report claims early adopters already enjoying fruits of gen-AI labor
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
43% of the time, it really, really works 45% of the time
Analysis Although a lot is promised of generative AI, it has the potential to be expensive at scale, and the return on investment isn’t always clear. It’s understandable why some enterprises, big and small, may be hesitant to invest in the technology at this stage.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/google_ai_roi_report/
Researchers Created A Super Thin Solar Cell That Could Be ‘Painted’ Onto Surfaces
date: 2024-08-12, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Another tropical storm is brewing in the Atlantic and could bring more devastation to the Caribbean • In North Korea, Kim Jong Un has been visiting victims of recent catastrophic floods • July was California’s hottest month on record.
THE TOP FIVE
- Report: Many IRA manufacturing projects on hold
About 40% of the largest manufacturing projects made possible through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips Act are delayed or paused, according to an investigation from the Financial Times. Some of the projects facing delays are a $1.3 billion lithium refinery in South Carolina, a $1 billion solar panel factory in Oklahoma, and LG Energy Solution’s $2.3 billion battery storage facility in Arizona. The companies point to a combination of factors, including overproduction of clean tech from China, macroeconomic pressures, policy confusion, and a drop in EV demand. “Everybody’s running into higher-than-expected costs just because of labor and supply chain,” said Craig MacFarland, mayor of Casa Grande, Arizona, where a semiconductor facility has been delayed by two years. The IRA marks its second anniversary this Friday.
- Large wildfires force evacuations near Athens
Large wildfires are raging on the outskirts of Athens in Greece, turning the skies an eerie shade of brown and prompting evacuations of at least 11 towns and several hospitals. More than 670 firefighters have been deployed to tackle blazes north of the capital city. Forty new fires ignited yesterday alone, and half the country is under a high-risk fire warning. Drought-stricken Greece is in the grips of its hottest summer ever recorded, and other parts of Europe are sweltering, too.
- Enthusiasm for COP29 is already wavering
This year’s COP29 global climate summit in Azerbaijan is expected to draw a smaller crowd than last year’s event in Dubai, according to Politico. Businesses are “wary of the event’s location and logistics, the oil-evangelizing autocratic regime running it and, perhaps most notably, the prospect of Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidential election just days before the November summit begins.” Anticipation is already growing for next year’s event in Brazil, where countries will be expected to submit their new and updated climate plans, or nationally determined contributions, which will outline how they plan to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. In an article published today, the World Economic Forum insisted this year’s summit in Baku remains relevant because it will determine new goals for climate finance, and could finalize Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which sets out how countries can use international carbon markets. “With a nationally determined contribution update on the horizon, achieving a robust outcome at COP29 is critical to send a strong signal of progress,” the WEF post said.
- Researchers create thin film that could turn almost anything into a
solar-power surface
Researchers at Oxford University have created a new solar power-generating material that “is thin and flexible enough to apply to the surface of almost any building or common object.” The new perovskite film, which Tina Casey at CleanTechnica called a “paint-on solar cell,” matches the energy efficiency performance of a traditional single-layer silicon PV and is almost 150 times thinner than a modern silicon wafer. Could this replace silicon-based solar panels altogether? Not anytime soon, Casey wrote, but it could turn almost anything into a solar surface. “We can envisage perovskite coatings being applied to broader types of surfaces to generate cheap solar power, such as the roofs of cars and buildings and even the backs of mobile phones,” said Dr. Junke Wang, a Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions Postdoc Fellow at Oxford University Physics. “If more solar energy can be generated in this way, we can foresee less need in the longer term to use silicon panels or build more and more solar farms.”
- Study: Older trees grow more wood to absorb rising CO2 emissions
Mature trees appear to be able to respond to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by increasing the amount of the greenhouse gas they can absorb. In a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers observed that a group of 180-year-old oak trees exposed to elevated CO2 emissions over a seven-year period made about 10% more woody biomass than trees that didn’t experience the emissions rise. The added wood locks away the gas for decades. The study is only about half-way done and will continue through 2031, but the researchers hope the initial results demonstrate the power of mature forests to act as a natural climate solution. “This is evidence in favor of careful management of established forests,” said Rob MacKenzie, director of Birmingham Institute of Forest Research and one of the study’s authors. “The old forest is doing a huge amount of work for us. What we definitely should not be doing is cutting it down.”
THE KICKER
“Certainly, neither despair nor complacency is any use to us. Conversely however, both acceptance and optimism are functionally necessary. Acceptance of our current circumstances is a precondition of effective action in the reality we actually inhabit, whilst hope that liveable futures are possible remains a precondition of necessary effort to bring them about.” –Jamie Bristow and Rosie Bell writing about navigating the messy middle paths of climate breakdown at DeSmog.
https://heatmap.news/technology/solar-cell-thin-oxford-breakthrough
Reviewing git contributions via email
date: 2024-08-12, from: Tilde.news
From Paris to Los Angeles: How the city is preparing for the 2028 Olympics
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
Los Angeles — It’s Los Angeles’ turn for the torch. Mayor Karen Bass accepted the Olympic flag at the Paris closing ceremony Sunday, before handing it off to a key representative of LA’s local business — Tom Cruise — who in a pre-recorded trek via motorcycle, plane and parachute kicked off the countdown to 2028.
The city will become the third in the world to host the games three times as it adds to the storied years of 1932 and 1984. Here’s a look forward and back in time at the Olympics in LA.
LA’s Olympic trilogy
Los Angeles got the 2028 games as a consolation prize when Paris was picked for 2024.
Back in 1932, LA hosted its first Olympics. The city was the only bidder for the games at a time marred by the Great Depression and the absence of several nations. Yet memorable sport moments came from athletes including American athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who won golds in the new women’s events of javelin and hurdles.
Financial and cultural success gave 1984 a reputation as the “good” Olympics” which made seemingly every major world city want their own.
Emphasizing both the modern and the classical with a hand from Hollywood, the games opened with decathlon champion Rafer Johnson lighting the torch, a guy in a jetpack descending into the Memorial Coliseum and theme music by “Star Wars” maestro John Williams.
With Eastern Bloc countries boycotting, the U.S. dominated. Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton are among the athletes who became household names. A young Michael Jordan led the men’s basketball team to gold.
The games renewed, for a while, the global reputation of a city that had been perceived to be in decline.
“We want our games to be a modern games, youthful, full of the optimism that Southern California brings to the world and the globe,” Janet Evans, four-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming and chief athlete officer for the LA 2028 organizing committee, told The Associated Press in Paris.
Passing the torch
Bass, who arrives back in LA Monday, spent these games in Paris along with organizers and city officials, learning what it takes to host the world’s largest sporting event.
Joining her were LA28 Chairperson Casey Wasserman, an entertainment executive, and LA councilmember Traci Park, chair of the city Olympic committee.
“As we’ve seen here in Paris, the Olympics are an opportunity to make transformative change,” Bass said at a press conference ahead of the closing ceremony.
Venues old and new, plus a swimming stadium
Amid a stadium-and-arena boom, LA will polish existing structures rather than erect new ones.
“It’s a no-build games,” Evans said.
After Paris’ innovative opening ceremony on the Seine River, LA plans to open with a traditional, stadium-based approach at SoFi Stadium in neighboring Inglewood that also incorporates the century-old Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles itself.
Home to two NFL teams, SoFi has hosted a Super Bowl and several Taylor Swift concerts since opening in 2020. It will become what organizers say is the largest Olympic swimming venue ever. Its opening ceremony role means swimming will come after track and field for the first time since 1972.
Intuit Dome, the soon-to-open Inglewood home of the NBA’s Clippers, would be the games’ newest major venue and is the planned home for Olympic basketball. The Lakers’ downtown Crypto.com Arena will host gymnastics.
The toxicity of swimming in the Seine became a serious issue in Paris. That could put renewed focus on the Long Beach area waterfront when it hosts marathon swimming and triathlon races. Its cleanliness history is mixed but its ocean waters got consistently high marks in a 2023 analysis by nonprofit Heal the Bay.
The Long Beach shore was home to the pre-recorded performances during Sunday’s ceremony of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, though it was easy to mistake for LA’s Venice Beach, where the journey of the flag begun by Cruise was shown ending moments earlier.
Trains, buses and traffic
A city that’s notoriously hard to traverse may seem like an odd fit for the Olympics, but it can work.
Bass said she plans to emulate the tactics of Tom Bradley, the mayor in 1984, whose traffic mitigations had some saying it was better than at non-Olympic times. They include asking local businesses to stagger workforce hours to reduce the number of cars on the road and allow work from home during the 17-day games.
Landing the Olympics under then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2017 gave the city an unusually long lead time for planning.
While it’s no Paris Metro, LA has built a subway since its last Olympics, with lines running past major venues.
In 2018, the city planned an ambitious slate of 28 bus and rail projects to transform public transit. Some were scrapped but others moved forward, including the extension of a subway line to connect downtown Los Angeles with UCLA, the planned home of the Olympic Village.
Another high-profile project is the Inglewood People Mover, an automated, three-stop rail line past major Olympic venues. It initially received a commitment of $1 billion in federal funding, but opposition from Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters led to a $200 million reduction, the Los Angeles Times reported. It’s unclear whether the line will be completed by 2028.
Metro recently received $900 million in funding through an infrastructure spending package and grants from the Biden administration, of which $139 million will go directly toward improving transportation by 2028 and the goal of a “car-free” Olympics.
“The biggest challenge is not waiting to 2028, but really taking the opportunity between now and 2028 to help Angelenos and visitors alike reimagine the transportation network as something that will be their first choice,” Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins said.
Crime, safety and perception
While crime rates were considerably higher in 1984 than today, the countdown to 2028 comes as the issue has gotten increased attention and cast a social-media-amplified shadow.
The Olympics are designated as a national special security event, which makes the U.S. Secret Service the lead agency tasked with developing a security plan, supported by significant federal resources.
LA city and county law enforcement sent officers to Paris to observe, learn and assist as they prepare for their own 2028 games.
There are many more encampments on city streets than there were in 1984, and it’s unlikely LA will have solved its homeless crisis in the next four years. As the Paris games ended, California Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to withhold funding from cities unable to clear encampments.
Ahead of the Games in Paris, organizers relocated thousands of unhoused people, a practice also used for the 2016 Rio de Janiero games and criticized by activists as “social cleansing.”
Tourists and finances
LA is the “next logical destination” for the Olympics, said Adam Burke, president and CEO of the LA Tourism and Convention Board. “LA has emerged as really one of the world’s sports capitals.”
First though, the city will host a FIFA World Cup event and U.S. Women’s Open in 2026 and another Super Bowl in 2027.
The city’s hotel industry has continued to see growth, adding 9,000 new hotel rooms in the past four years with more to come over the next four.
LA28 organizers are banking on ticket sales, sponsorships, payments from the International Olympic Committee and other revenue streams to cover the games’ $6.9 billion budget. The committee has brought in just over $1 billion toward a goal of $2.5 billion in domestic corporate sponsorships.
Is it your child’s first day of school? Here’s our parent guide to getting involved
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The LAist
There are all kinds of ways to engage with your child’s education, whether you have only a little time or a lot.
https://laist.com/news/education/california-los-angeles-school-guide-parent-engagement-involvement
After fire struck Maui’s Upcountry, residents of one town looked to themselves to prep for next one
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
The costs of a brand new capital
date: 2024-08-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report
This week, Nusantara is set to become Indonesia’s new planned capital, with a price tag of $33 billion. Egypt is also relocating its capital, with an estimated cost of $59 billion. While other governments have moved their seats of government, is all the expense worth it? Also: a preview of where consumers think inflation is headed and a look at how the presidential campaigns are diverging on Federal Reserve independence.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/the-costs-of-a-brand-new-capital
CrowdStrike president cheered after accepting ‘Epic Fail’ Pwnie award
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Michael Sentonas hopes trophy will remind staff that failure is unacceptable
DEF CON CrowdStrike’s president received commendations from DEF CON attendees after accepting the Pwnie Award for Most Epic Fail, following the recent global IT outage caused by the infamous Falcon sensor update.…
Hong Kong: Jimmy Lai loses appeal over pro-democracy protest conviction
date: 2024-08-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Billionaire media tycoon Jimmy Lai has lost his bid at Hong Kong’s highest court to overturn his conviction on charges relating to unauthorized pro-democracy protests in 2019. We’ll discuss the fallout of his rejected appeal. Plus, global youth unemployment is at a low, though some regions are still feeling the impact of COVID-19. And how did South Africa turn around its electricity grid to stop rolling blackouts?
Americans’ refusal to keep paying higher prices may be dealing a final blow to US inflation spike
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The great inflation spike of the past three years is nearly spent — and economists credit American consumers for helping slay it.
Some of America’s largest companies, from Amazon to Disney to Yum Brands, say their customers are increasingly seeking cheaper alternative products and services, searching for bargains or just avoiding items they deem too expensive. Consumers aren’t cutting back enough to cause an economic downturn. Rather, economists say, they appear to be returning to pre-pandemic norms, when most companies felt they couldn’t raise prices very much without losing business.
“While inflation is down, prices are still high, and I think consumers have gotten to the point where they’re just not accepting it,” Tom Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said last week at a conference of business economists. “And that’s what you want: The solution to high prices is high prices.”
A more price-sensitive consumer helps explain why inflation has appeared to be steadily falling toward the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, ending a period of painfully high prices that strained many people’s budgets and darkened their outlooks on the economy. It also assumed a central place in the presidential election, with inflation leading many Americans to turn sour on the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the economy.
The reluctance of consumers to keep paying more has forced companies to slow their price increases — or even to cut them. The result is a cooling of inflation pressures.
Other factors have also helped tame inflation, including the healing of supply chains, which has boosted the availability of cars, trucks, meats and furniture, among other items, and the high interest rates engineered by the Fed, which slowed sales of homes, cars and appliances and other interest rate-sensitive purchases.
Still, a key question now is whether shoppers will pull back so much as to put the economy at risk. Consumer spending makes up more than two-thirds of economic activity. With evidence emerging that the job market is cooling, a drop in spending could potentially derail the economy. Such fears caused stock prices to plummet a week ago, though markets have since rebounded.
This week, the government will provide updates on both inflation and the health of the American consumer. On Wednesday, it will release the consumer price index for July. It’s expected to show that prices — excluding volatile food and energy costs — rose just 3.2% from a year earlier. That would be down from 3.3% in June and would be the lowest such year-over-year inflation figure since April 2021.
And on Thursday, the government will report last month’s retail sales, which are expected to have climbed a decent 0.3% from June. Such a gain would suggest that while Americans have become vigilant about their money, they are still willing to spend.
Many businesses have noticed.
“We’re seeing lower average selling prices … right now because customers continue to trade down on price when they can,” said Andrew Jassy, CEO of Amazon.
David Gibbs, CEO of Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut, told investors that a more cost-conscious consumer has slowed its sales, which slipped 1% in the April-June quarter at stores open for at least a year.
“Ensuring we provide consumers affordable options,” Gibbs said, “has been an area of greater focus for us since last year.”
Other companies are cutting prices outright. Dormify, an online retailer that sells dorm supplies, is offering comforters starting at $69, down from $99 a year ago.
According to the Fed’s “Beige Book,” an anecdotal collection of business reports from around the country that is released eight times a year, companies in nearly all 12 Fed districts have described similar experiences.
“Almost every district mentioned retailers discounting items or price-sensitive consumers only purchasing essentials, trading down in quality, buying fewer items or shopping around for the best deals,” the Beige Book said last month.
Most economists say consumers are still spending enough to sustain the economy consistently. Barkin said most of the businesses in his district — which covers Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and North and South Carolina — report that demand remains solid, at least at the right price.
“The way I’d put it is, consumers are still spending, but they’re choosing,” Barkin said.
In a speech a couple of weeks ago, Jared Bernstein, who leads the Biden administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, mentioned consumer caution as a reason why inflation is nearing the end of a “round trip” back to the Fed’s 2% target level.
Emerging from the pandemic, Bernstein noted, consumers were flush with cash after receiving several rounds of stimulus checks and having slashed their spending on in-person services. Their improved finances “gave certain firms the ability to flex a pricing power that was much less prevalent pre-pandemic.” After COVID, consumers were “less responsive to price increases,” Bernstein said.
As a result, “the old adage that the cure for high prices is high prices [was] temporarily disengaged,” Bernstein said.
So some companies raised prices even more than was needed to cover their higher input costs, thereby boosting their profits. Limited competition in some industries, Bernstein added, made it easier for companies to charge more.
Barkin noted that before the pandemic, inflation remained low as online shopping, which makes price comparisons easy, became increasingly prevalent. Major retailers also held down costs, and increased U.S. oil production brought down gas prices.
“A price increase was so rare,” Barkin said, “that if someone came to you with a 5% or 10% price increase, you almost just threw them out, like, ‘How could you possibly do it?’”
That changed in 2021.
“There are labor shortages, Barkin said. “Supply chain shortages. And the price increases are coming to you from everywhere. Your gardener is raising your prices, and you don’t have the capacity to do anything other than accept them.”
The economist Isabella Weber at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, dubbed this phenomenon “sellers’ inflation” in 2023. In an influential paper, she wrote that “publicly reported supply chain bottlenecks” can “create legitimacy for price hikes” and “create acceptance on the part of consumers to pay higher prices.”
Consumers are no longer so accepting, Barkin said.
“People have a little bit more time to stop and say, ‘How do I feel about paying $9.89 for a 12-pack of Diet Coke when I used to pay $5.99?’ They don’t like it that much, and so people are making choices.”
Barkin said he expects this trend to continue to slow price increases and cool inflation.
“I’m actually pretty optimistic that over the next few months, we’re going to see good readings on the inflation side,” he said. “All the elements of inflation seem to be settling down.”
India’s Bharti Enterprises now largest shareholder in UK’s BT Group
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Surprising move’ for Indian megacorp but less so for French seller Altice
India’s Bharti Enterprises has swooped in to buy the 24.5 percent stake in BT Group from Patrick Drahi’s Altice, at a stroke making it the biggest shareholder in the UK telecoms giant.…
anarchism as a spiritual discipline
date: 2024-08-12, from: Ayjay blog
Perhaps the most unusual element of my 2022 essay on anarchism is this: I present anarchism not as a political system but as a spiritual discipline. I don’t put the point quite that bluntly, but I come fairly close: The first target of anarchistic practice ought to be whatever it is in me that resists […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/anarchism-as-a-spiritual-discipline/
In celebration of Curiosity’s successful landing on Mars
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Forget the woes of Starliner with an audacious NASA landing on another planet that went very very right
While NASA might be struggling to get its Starliner crew home, it’s worth remembering that circa 12 years ago, the agency was celebrating the successful deployment of the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars.…
Pentagon chief orders submarine to the Middle East, tells aircraft group to hasten its transit
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
LLM-driven C-to-Rust. Not just a good idea, a genie eager to escape
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Automatic for the people? Don’t mind if we do
Opinion Rust changes worlds. The iron ore we mine to feed the industrial age started out as iron atoms dissolved in oceans two billion years ago. Then photosynthesis happened, pouring out oxygen that rusted that iron out of the water into the solid minerals we’ve found so useful today. Much the same is happening with Rust the programming language, as it becomes the mechanism of choice for turning prehistoric C code into secure, performant material fit for the future.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/opinion_column/
verbose, verboser, verbosest
date: 2024-08-12, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
A key feature for a tool like curl is its ability to help the user diagnose command lines and operations that do not work the way the user intended them to. When I do XYZ, why does it not work? The command line option -v and its longer version –verbose have been supported by curl … Continue reading verbose, verboser, verbosest
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/08/12/verbose-verboser-verbosest/
Sols 4268-4269: Admiring Kings Canyon
date: 2024-08-12, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024 Curiosity is admiring our latest drill hole, “Kings Canyon.” Today’s plan is dedicated to continuing analysis of the drilled sample, including preconditioning for SAM evolved gas analysis (EGA) scheduled for the weekend. In planning today, the environmental (ENV), and the geology and mineralogy (GeoMin) theme groups planned two […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4268-4269-admiring-kings-canyon/
Cigarette break burned out a huge chunk of Africa’s internet
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A fake hacker trying to take credit didn’t help much, either
who, me? Welcome denizens of The Reg to another Monday morn, which means an instalment of Who, Me? – the column in which readers share tales of times their undoubted technical prowess fell just a little short.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/who_me/
Today in SCV History (Aug. 12)
date: 2024-08-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1944 – Newhall Refinery on Sierra Highway destroyed by fire (then rebuilt) [watch film
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-812/
Harris is pushing joy. Trump paints a darker picture. Will moods matter?
date: 2024-08-12, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — At the top of his first speech as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz turned to Vice President Kamala Harris and declared, “Thank you for bringing back the joy.” The next day, Harris took the theme a step further, branding the Democratic ticket “joyful warriors.”
Contrast that with former President Donald Trump, who opened a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida a few days later by saying, “We have a lot of bad things coming up,” and predicting the U.S. could fall into an economic depression unseen since the dark days of 1929 or even another world war.
“I think that our country is, right now, in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in, from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint,” Trump said Thursday.
Democrats are playing up their sunnier outlook, promoting the idea that voters can be inspired to support someone and not just cast their ballot against the other side. The Trump campaign argues their candidate is reflecting the dour mood of the country and dismisses the idea that a growing contrast in tone and upbeat attitude will decide the presidency.
Two-thirds of Americans reported feeling very or somewhat pessimistic about the state of politics, according to polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research from last month. Roughly 7 in 10 said things in the country are heading in the wrong direction.
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the former president, said people don’t care about “vibe checks.”
“That’s not making gas or food or housing less expensive,” Miller said.
Walz promotes positivity
Still, just how hard Harris is betting on the opposite approach is evident in her decision to pick Walz, whose personal story includes being on the coaching staff of a high school football team that had gone winless just a few years earlier to clinching a state championship in 1999.
The Minnesota governor’s relentless positivity is meant to give supporters a jolt of new energy and keep the momentum that Harris has built after President Joe Biden — facing mounting pressure from within his own party and increasingly pessimistic views about his chances in November — stepped aside and endorsed his vice president.
Walz spent his first week as Harris’ running mate traveling to swing states with Harris and underscored the point during a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, celebrating what he said was “the ability to talk about what can be good.”
“This idea of caring for our neighbor and kindness, and a hand up when somebody needs it. And just the sense that people go through things and to be able to be there when they need it, that’s who we are,” he said. “It’s not about mocking. It’s not name-calling.”
Biden often ended his speeches saying he’d never been more optimistic. But he built his now-shuttered reelection bid around branding Trump an existential threat to democracy. The president offered dire predictions about the former president, suggesting he’d dismantle the nation’s founding principles should he retake the White House.
Harris’ campaign still relies on many of the same themes, decrying Trump as a threat to democracy, warning that he’ll impose draconian limits to abortion and voting and that he will follow Project 2025, a plan championed by top conservatives to remake large swaths of the federal government.
And despite Walz insisting that smiles were more powerful than insults, he and Harris have continued their share of denunciations, decrying Trump’s conviction in New York on 34 felony counts in a hush-money case and his being found liable for fraudulent business practices and sexual abuse in civil court.
Still, even before she named Walz her running mate, Harris was suggesting that she could help make politics fun again.
“We love our country. And I believe it is the highest form of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country,” Harris declared in campaign speeches before picking Walz. She now tells crowds that she and her running mate “both believe in lifting people up, not knocking them down.”
Paula Montagna, who went to see Harris and Walz at a rally outside Detroit last week, highlighted the shift in messaging since Harris took over from Biden.
“Kamala is so positive, and it’s nice to hear positive instead of negative,” Montagna said.
Trump team says their candidate is reflecting reality
Trump’s senior campaign advisers counter that the mood of the country right now is sour over the economy, the state of the U.S.-Mexico border and turmoil in the Middle East and beyond. They see their candidate as reflecting that reality rather than what they believe is a temporary exuberance igniting the Democratic base after months of discouragement over their ticket.
Trump has tried to harness that with his repeated predictions of stock market crashes and war. His campaign appearances have included a long list of other warnings that have veered into the apocalyptic, saying that if he’s not elected, “we’re not going to have a country anymore,” that “the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me,” and that under a Harris administration, “Social Security will buckle and collapse” and “the suburbs will be overrun with violent crime and savage foreign gangs.”
During his Republican National Convention speech last month, where his advisers said Trump would seem changed and more personal after surviving an attempted assassination, the former president did strike a different tone — at least to start.
He said early on that he had “a message of confidence, strength and hope” and sought to “launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed.”
But by the end, Trump had returned to predictions of doom, twice warning, “Bad things are going to happen.”
Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has drawn a sharp contrast with Walz. Vance has been cheered on the right for being an aggressive fighter on behalf of the former president, particularly when engaging with reporters.
“Right now, I am angry about what Kamala Harris has done to this country and done to the American southern border,” Vance said at a campaign stop in Michigan. “And I think most people in our country, they can be happy-go-lucky sometimes, they can enjoy things sometimes, and they can turn on the news and recognize that what’s going on in this country is a disgrace.”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, not himself known for a sunny disposition, offered much the same assessment Friday at a conservative conference in Atlanta hosted by radio host Erick Erickson.
“The country is obviously in a bad mood,” McConnell said.
Trump supporters waiting to see him at a rally in Bozeman, Montana, said they felt the former president’s campaign made them feel positive — even if his message often isn’t.
“Just looking at the state of the country now, I don’t think Kamala Harris’ campaign is one of joy and hope. I think that’s Trump’s campaign,” said Alex Lustig, a 23-year-old from Billings, Montana.
Fred Scarlett, a 63-year-old retiree from Condon, Montana, said that “everyone understands that we need to be here to support Trump because he has never let us down.”
“They shoot at him,” Scarlett said, “and he still keeps firing back.”
Former YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki, 56, succumbs to cancer
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A career and life so classically Silicon Valley
Susan Wojcicki, the architect of YouTube’s spectacular rise and one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures, has passed away at age 56 after a two-year battle with cancer.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/former_youtube_ceo_susan_wojcicki/
Trump campaign cites Iran election phish claim as evidence leaked docs were stolen
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Dots have been joined, but hard evidence is not apparent
Former US president Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has claimed it’s been the victim of a cyber attack.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/trump_campaign_hacked_iran_claim/
Alibaba Cloud claims K8s service meshes can require more resources than the apps they run
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Built its own replacement – Canal Mesh – that it says leaves Google’s Istio and Ambient eating dust
SIGCOMM 2024 Alibaba Cloud has claimed its home-grown service mesh for Kubernetes – Canal Mesh – significantly outperforms Google’s Istio and other rival tools.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/alibaba_microservices_mesh_canal/
Change blindness
date: 2024-08-12, from: One Useful Thing
21 months later
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/change-blindness
The UN unanimously agrees that cybercrime is bad, mkay?
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Also: British nuke subs get code from Russia; and BlackSuit begs for $500M
Infosec in brief The United Nations often reaches consensus rather than complete agreement, but last week a proposal from Russia to cut down on cyber crime was unanimously approved.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/in_brief_infosec/
Chinese satellite broadband launch rocket breaks up into space junk
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Vietnam’s PM leads chips push; Tesla backs out of Thailand; Drones fly trash off Everest; and more
Asia In Brief US Space Command last Friday warned that a Chinese Long March 6a rocket launched on August 6 broke up in orbit and created at least 300 pieces of debris.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/12/asia_tech_news_in_brief/
@Jessica Smith’s blog (date: 2024-08-12, from: Jessica Smith’s blog)
My sister just got back from two months in Europe and returned bearing gifts, including this adorable onesie for our baby in utero that I just had to share 😅 I couldn’t help but quip, “Ah, a country I’ve never been to!” (in good humour – it’s super cute, I was very appreciative!) but seriously, I guess I do have some Irish heritage, and therefore, so does our baby, so it still works. It’s a gorgeous onesie in any case 😂
https://www.jayeless.net/2024/08/ireland-baby-onesie.html
Reckoning: Part 1 — The Landscape
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Alex Russel’s blog
https://infrequently.org/2024/08/the-landscape/
Vector Stores Are Dumb
date: 2024-08-12, updated: 2024-08-12, from: Tom Kellog blog
“Is this magic?”