News gathered 2024-09-10
(date: 2024-09-10 08:23:26)
We know ‘Linux is a cancer’ but could CentOS chaos spell opportunity for Microsoft?
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Analyst suggests Redmond’s internal distro may one day fly the coop
Azure Linux is Microsoft’s take on the open source operating system. It is primarily used for internal purposes, but could it become (yet another) distribution option?…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/azure_linux_directions_on_microsoft/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-10, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Oh, @asymco is hosting the "Apple Worldwide Investor Conference", this event looks sweet.
I am having big FOMO, as I am tied up with kid related activities that day:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113113839945298973
MNT Reform Next is thinner, lighter modular, open source laptop
date: 2024-09-10, from: Liliputing
The makers of the MNT Reform and Pocket Reform line of modular, customizable, and open source laptops have unveiled plans for a new model they’re calling the MNT Reform Next. While it has a lot of the same features as existing models, including support for the same removeable, replaceable processor modules, the MNT Reform Next […]
The post MNT Reform Next is thinner, lighter modular, open source laptop appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/mnt-reform-next-is-thinner-lighter-modular-open-source-laptop/
The economic mood is cooling
date: 2024-09-10, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Yesterday, we talked about surveys of farmers, which showed a growing economic pessimism in that sector. Today, survey data from the National Federation of Independent Business show a decline in optimism among small businesses generally in August. So what exactly is behind the souring mood among investors, consumers and others? We’ll discuss. Also this morning’s program: a closer look at the business of manifesting.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/the-economic-mood-is-cooling
Crypto scams rake in $5.6B a year for cyberscum lowlifes, FBI says
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Elderly people report the greatest losses
The FBI just dropped its annual report examining the costs of crypto-related cybercrime, painting a predictably grim picture as total losses in the US exceeded $5.6 billion in 2023 – a 45 percent year-on-year increase.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/crypto_scams_rake_in_56/
What will the candidates say about AI in tonight’s debate?
date: 2024-09-10, from: Gary Marcus blog
AI policy should be front and center
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/what-will-the-candidates-say-about
NASA to Test Telemedicine, Gather Essential Health Data with Polaris Dawn Crew
date: 2024-09-10, from: NASA breaking news
NASA researchers will soon benefit from a suite of experiments flying aboard a new fully-commercial human spaceflight mission, strengthening future agency science as we venture to the Moon, Mars and beyond. The experiments are flying as part of the Polaris Dawn mission which launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket earlier today. […]
Apple owes billions in back taxes over Ireland state aid rule break
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Final judgment handed down by Court of Justice of the European Union
Following an eight-year legal tussle, Europe’s highest court has ruled in a “final judgment” that Apple benefited from massive tax breaks after Ireland contravened EU state aid rules.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/apple_owes_billions_in_back/
ServiceNow moves its backend off MariaDB to homebrew Postgres
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Xanadu release also adds a Pro tier, along with lots more AI
SaaSy workflow vendor ServiceNow has opted for a different database to back its applications, and will introduce it this week along with the new “Xanadu” release.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/servicenow_xanadu_postgres_raptordb/
Oracle reports rising top line as it hooks up database service to AWS
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: CTO Larry says Big Red uses hardware ‘efficiently’ but ‘labor sparingly because labor is a security risk’
Oracle beat investment analysts’ estimates with a Q1 revenue haul of $13.3 billion, up 7 percent year-on-year, a feat one market watcher chalked up to “several large deals being signed” in the period.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/oracle_q1/
Google Locks in Carbon Removal at a Milestone Price: $100 a Ton
date: 2024-09-10, from: Heatmap News
Direct air capture companies are in a race to prove they can reduce the cost of removing carbon from the atmosphere down below $100 per ton. Now, one is closing in on the prize with a first-of-its-kind deal.
On Tuesday, Google announced it will pay the startup Holocene $10 million to remove 100,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere, to be delivered “by the early 2030s.” The tech giant said the price point was made possible by the federal tax credit for carbon sequestration, and its own willingness to cough up the bulk of the funds upfront.
There’s no question the deal is risky on both sides. Today, most estimates place the cost of direct air capture at upwards of $600 per ton. Bringing the cost down is essential if the tech is ever going to play a meaningful role in tackling climate change. But even the companies that are farthest along, like the Swiss pioneer Climeworks, aren’t sure they will be able to offer a price of $100 per ton by 2030. Holocene has yet to build a commercial plant, so its ability to remove carbon for $100 per ton is pure projection at this point.
But for Google, the goal is more to catalyze a potentially important climate solution than to clean up its carbon footprint.
“The point of our program is to help Google reach net zero in whatever way most helps the world reach net zero,” Randy Spock, the company’s carbon credits and removals lead, told me in an email. “So this deal is an example of us identifying what the planet needs (long-term cost reduction for Direct Air Capture) and then doing what we can to help it take a step in that direction.”
Though Holocene is relatively new to the direct air capture market, it was started by veterans. Co-founders Anca Timofte and Tobias Rüesh spent roughly six years working in research and development at Climeworks back in its early days, when the company was building its first prototypes. Timofte left in 2020 to get an MBA at Stanford, and while there, came across some exciting research out of Oak Ridge National Laboratory that described a new approach to removing carbon from the ambient air — one that seemed to have distinct advantages. Seeing the potential, Timofte decided to start Holocene with Rüesh and another Stanford classmate and, in 2023, licensed the Oak Ridge technology.
“The chemistry from Oak Ridge is special,” Timofte told me. “It’s different than all other chemistries, we think, in direct air capture.”
Most direct air capture systems fall into one of two categories, liquid or solid, and each approach has trade-offs. Liquid systems typically have simpler engineering and can capture CO2 continuously, but require more heat, and therefore more energy. Solid systems have lower heat requirements, but work sort of like cartridges that get “charged” with CO2 and have to be “discharged,” and therefore capture CO2 in batches rather than in perpetuity.
Timofte described Holocene’s process as the “best of both worlds.” It captures CO2 in water and operates in a continuous loop, but requires relatively low heat — between 70 to 100 degrees Celsius (158 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit) — which could potentially come from a source of waste heat like a data center. The enabling discovery was the use of two chemicals — an amino acid and a compound called guanidine — that attract CO2 and then further concentrate it within the water, making it easier and less energy-intensive to isolate so that it can be stored securely underground.
After licensing the tech, Holocene moved quickly. Within a year, the team had built a small pilot plant in Knoxville, Tennessee that’s capable of capturing about 10 tons of CO2 annually. That’s, of course, a totally insignificant amount, but it’s enough for the team to demonstrate its approach to potential funders and to keep testing variations on the basic chemistry to refine the system, Timofte told me.
Timofte said the company has made it this far with just over $6 million in grants and prizes from the Department of Energy, Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, and Frontier Climate, a coalition of carbon removal buyers that includes Google in addition to other tech companies. The $500,000 that Holocene got from Frontier was technically a pre-purchase of 332 tons of removal, which would put the current cost per ton at roughly $1,500.
Frontier’s pre-purchases are not a precise indicator of price as they are meant to “pressure-test the viability of novel CDR solutions,” and are granted with the expectation that some ventures will fail. Still, even with a fresh influx of cash from Google and the prospect of a $180 per ton tax credit from the federal government, the company has a steep climb ahead. Timofte told me the team is beginning to fundraise to build their next project — a 2,000- to 5,000-ton per year demonstration plant. When asked about how it reached the $100 per ton deal with Google, she stressed that having a delivery date past 2030 was crucial to the deal.
The industry’s fixation on achieving $100 per ton is somewhat arbitrary. A 2019 National Academies of Sciences report found that estimates of the cost of capturing CO2 via direct air capture spanned “an order of magnitude, from $100 to $1,000” per ton. In 2021, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy set a goal to bring the cost of all kinds of carbon removal below $100 per ton, which seemed to solidify the goal across the field. In 2022, the nonprofit CarbonPlan surveyed carbon removal buyers, suppliers, and brokers, and found that $100 per ton was a common benchmark. “If cost were $100/ton, demand would be practically unlimited,” one supplier said. “Bringing down cost to $100/ton for CDR would be the sweet spot,” said a buyer. CarbonPlan pointed out, however, that the responses weren’t consistent on whether $100 per ton was the desired break-even point for carbon removal companies or the desired price for buyers.
“I think we focus too much on the cost of DAC,” Erin Burns, the executive director of the nonprofit Carbon180 told me when I asked her if $100 per ton was a meaningful goal. “Sure, DAC should and will get cheaper. But we need to also be thinking, right now, about things like renewable energy availability, infrastructure, and reducing emissions as quickly as possible.”
Finding clean sources of power for direct air capture is becoming more of an issue as companies try to scale. At the end of August, a startup called CarbonCapture Inc. announced it would try to relocate a commercial-scale project it had planned to build in Wyoming because it was struggling to procure enough clean energy to power the plant due to competition with data centers and cryptocurrency miners.
Timofte agreed that “clean electrons are hard to come by,” but added that Holocene’s potential to use waste heat might make it a little easier for the company.
“I don’t want to dismiss the challenge. I think this is the challenge that everyone faces. We each have to solve it, and the solutions are going to be individual.”
https://heatmap.news/technology/google-carbon-100-ton
The DEA Really Didn’t Want to Release Records About Its Retirement Medals for Some Reason
date: 2024-09-10, from: 404 Media Group
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request over some frivolous records shows how agencies are increasingly refusing to release details on what the U.S. government spends its money on.
Louisiana Braces for Tropical Storm Francine
date: 2024-09-10, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: A year’s worth of rain fell in just two days in southern Morocco • A single dropped Cheetos bag disrupted the delicate ecosystem of a large cave at New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park • It will be about 75 degrees Fahrenheit and clear this evening in Philadelphia, where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will take the stage for the first 2024 presidential debate.
THE TOP FIVE
- Louisiana braces for Francine
A hurricane warning is in effect for parts of the Louisiana coast as Tropical Storm Francine approaches. The storm is expected to strengthen into a Category 2 hurricane today and make landfall in Louisiana tomorrow. It could bring 10 feet of storm surge and up to 12 inches of rain, triggering flash floods in the state, as well as in Texas and Mississippi. Several towns along the Louisiana coast have issued evacuation orders. Oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico are evacuating their staff from offshore platforms. The storm follows a similar path to that of Hurricane Beryl, which knocked out power to millions of Texans for days. The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, which peaks today, has been less active in recent weeks than forecasters had expected despite incredibly warm ocean temperatures. Some meteorologists worry climate change is making it harder to make long-term hurricane predictions.
NOAA
- Fervo says enhanced geothermal well test showed ‘record-breaking
commercial flow rates’
The enhanced geothermal startup Fervo said today that it had “achieved record-breaking commercial flow rates,” a measure of how much water can move through an enhanced geothermal system, at its Utah site, Cape Station. According to Fervo’s announcement, the project generated 10 megawatts over a 30-day test, which substantially outpaces targets set for enhanced geothermal energy as far out as 2035. The Cape Station site is scheduled to have 400 megawatts of capacity by 2028, with power beginning to flow to customers – including Southern California Edison, which this summer contracted with Fervo for 320 megawatts over 15 years – in 2026. Fervo also announced that it had raised $100 million from X-Caliber Rural Capital for the project.
Enhanced geothermal borrows fracking techniques from oil and gas drilling, pumping fluid underground to create or expand fissures in hot rocks, thus creating the hot fluid necessary for geothermal energy production. This process could vastly expand the potential for generating geothermal energy beyond existing pools of underground hot water and steam. In February, the company announced it had reduced its drilling time by 70% in the past year, a key step to making the process more economical.
- Lawmakers say fossil fuel companies won’t cooperate in Trump ‘quid
pro quo’ investigation
A group of Democratic lawmakers said oil and gas companies have not been cooperating with a congressional investigation into an alleged “quid pro quo” offer from former President Donald Trump, according to Bloomberg. The probe is looking into an April meeting at Mar-a-Lago where Trump reportedly offered to roll back environmental rules as a favor to fossil fuel companies in exchange for $1 billion in donations to his 2024 presidential campaign. In letters made public today, leaders of the Senate budget and finance panels and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability said companies including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, and others had given “woefully inadequate” responses to inquiries in the investigation.
- Report finds climate change is disrupting education world wide
Since 2022, more than 400 million students across the globe have missed school because of extreme weather linked to the climate crisis, according to a report from the World Bank. The problem is especially acute in low-income countries, where children miss 18 school days each year on average because of events like drought, floods, and extreme heat. That’s compared to 2.4 days lost each year in wealthier nations. The report points to the link between education and overall awareness of the climate crisis and its causes. It finds that education makes people more climate aware, more adaptive, more likely to engage in pro-climate behavior, and more likely to change mindsets in their communities with conversations around climate change. And of course, it says education is essential for training people in the skills needed for the green transition. The analysis calls for governments to invest in helping schools adapt, and says such efforts could cost as little as $18.51 per student.
- Cities make their own stormy weather, research suggests
The built-up environments of cities affect the local weather, according to a new study. Specifically, the research found that urban areas receive more rain in a year than surrounding rural landscapes, and this effect is stronger in cities that are hotter, more populated, and more polluted. “Cities can make a storm on steroids,” Dev Niyogi, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the study’s authors, told Bloomberg. About 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in cities by 2050. The new findings can help inform urban planners as they look for ways to upgrade infrastructure in a changing climate.
THE KICKER
A 10-year-old in 2024 will experience 36 times more heat waves over the span of their life compared to a 10-year-old in 1970.
https://heatmap.news/climate/francine-hurricane-louisiana-texas
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-10, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Via @squillace, Matt Stoller on the hearing aid cartels (I didn’t know this was a thing), Biden breaking them up, which leads to Apple’s hearing aid announcement yesterday:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/silencing-the-competition-inside
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113113246587887620
Nurse, Rub Some Doritos on There Before Placing the IV
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/09/10/nurse-rub-some-doritos-on-there-before-placing-the-iv/
How inflation has transformed our dining and tipping habits
date: 2024-09-10, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The restaurant industry has been through a lot in recent years — hemorrhaging workers during the pandemic and struggling to bring them back; grappling with inflation that’s up and foot traffic that’s down. Then, there’s the transformation of tipping. We’ll check in on some of the latest trends impacting restaurants. Then, U.S. tech giants owe billions in taxes and fines to Europe, and we’ll examine misinformation about illegal voting by non-citizens.
SpaceX aims high with Polaris Dawn mission
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Altitude record within grasp and in-house spacesuits to be put through their paces
SpaceX has launched the Polaris Dawn mission, which is set to surpass the altitude record set by Gemini 11 and feature a commercial spacewalk using SpaceX-designed Extravehicular Activity (EVA) spacesuits.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/spacex_polaris_dawn_launches/
A bad day for tech giants in Europe
date: 2024-09-10, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Two long-running legal cases concluded in Europe today — a $14 billion tax dispute for Apple and a $2.6 billion antitrust fine for Google. Both companies lost out. We’ll hear about the latest developments Plus, do you believe you can get what you want through positive thinking? If so, you may be part of the increasingly valuable manifesting movement.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/a-bad-day-for-tech-giants-in-europe
Google loses final EU court appeal against $2.7 billion fine in antitrust shopping case
date: 2024-09-10, from: VOA News USA
London — Google lost its final legal challenge on Tuesday against a European Union penalty for giving its own shopping recommendations an illegal advantage over rivals in search results, ending a long-running antitrust case that came with a whopping fine.
The European Union’s Court of Justice upheld a lower court’s decision, rejecting the company’s appeal against the $2.7 billion penalty from the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust enforcer.
“By today’s judgment, the Court of Justice dismisses the appeal and thus upholds the judgment of the General Court,” the court said in a press release summarizing its decision.
The commission’s punished the Silicon Valley giant in 2017 for unfairly directing visitors to its own Google Shopping service to the detriment of competitors. It was one of three multibillion-dollar fines that the commission imposed on Google in the previous decade as Brussels started ramping up its crackdown on the tech industry.
“We are disappointed with the decision of the Court, which relates to a very specific set of facts,” Google said in a brief statement.
The company said it made changes in 2017 to comply with the commission’s decision requiring it to treat competitors equally. It started holding auctions for shopping search listings that it would bid for alongside other comparison shopping services.
“Our approach has worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services,” Google said.
At the same time, the company appealed the decision to the courts. But the EU General Court, the tribunal’s lower section, rejected its challenge in 2021 and the Court of Justice’s adviser later recommended rejecting the appeal.
European consumer group BEUC hailed the court’s decision, saying it shows how the bloc’s competition law “remains highly relevant” in digital markets.
“Google harmed millions of European consumers by ensuring that rival comparison shopping services were virtually invisible,” director general Agustín Reyna said. “Google’s illegal practices prevented consumers from accessing potentially cheaper prices and useful product information from rival comparison shopping services on all sorts of products, from clothes to washing machines.”
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-10, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
The night before, Israel dropped a 2,000 lb bomb on tents while civilians slept. They killed some 60, maimed another:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113112996055133143
Top US, British diplomats meet with Ukraine, Gaza on agenda
date: 2024-09-10, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/top-us-british-diplomats-meet-with-ukraine-gaza-on-agenda-/7778287.html
Cassandra redesigns indexing, storage management for 5.0 release
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Users warned to get off 3.x releases as support ends
The Apache Software Foundation Cassandra project has released the 5.0 iteration of the wide-column store database boasting new features to improve vector search, a Java update and enhanced performance.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/cassandra_5_point_zero/
Top EU court crushes Google appeal against $2.65B Shopping antitrust ruling
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
After years of legal wrangling, judges say Chocolate Factory played dirty
The European Union’s Court of Justice (ECJ) has dismissed Google’s appeal of a €2.4 billion ($2.65 billion) 2017 antitrust ruling, finding it had abused its dominance in favor of its own Google Shopping service, diverting traffic that would otherwise have gone to rival comparison services.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/eu_denies_google_shopping_appeal/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
New Harris ad, this one is funny. 😀
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tlOC0tc7x88&feature=youtu.be
The AI Blues
date: 2024-09-10, from: O’Reilly Radar
A recent article in Computerworld argued that the output from generative AI systems, like GPT and Gemini, isn’t as good as it used to be. It isn’t the first time I’ve heard this complaint, though I don’t know how widely held that opinion is. But I wonder: is it correct? And why? I think a […]
https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-ai-blues/
Down and out: Aegon’s pension pothole and TfL’s mystery ‘maintenance’
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
When is maintenance maintenance, and when is it ‘we’ve been pwned’?
Sometimes, an extended period of “maintenance” can mean a cyber incident. Other times, it can mean an IT team is struggling to make one system talk to another. The travails of Transport for London (TfL) and pensions manager Aegon are examples at both ends of the spectrum.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/aegon_tfl_maintenance/
UK Lords push bill to tame rogue algorithms in public sector
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Peer says government needs to learn lessons from Post Office scandal
The UK Parliament’s second chamber is set to launch a bill designed to regulate the use of algorithms and automated decision-making by public bodies.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/uk_lords_algorithms_bill/
Top US, Chinese military brass hold first call to stabilize ties
date: 2024-09-10, from: VOA News USA
BEIJING — The United States and China held theater-level commander talks for the first time on Tuesday, Chinese authorities said, amid efforts to stabilize military ties and avoid misunderstandings, especially in regional hot spots such as the South China Sea.
Washington seeks to open new channels of regular military communication with Beijing since ties sank to a historic low after the United States downed a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon last year.
Admiral Sam Paparo, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, held a video telephone call with his counterpart Wu Yanan of the Southern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s areas of responsibility include the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, two hot spots for regional tension that are also flashpoints in U.S.-China bilateral ties.
Both sides had an “in depth exchange of views on issues of common concern,” the Chinese defense ministry said in a readout.
Paparo urged the PLA “to reconsider its use of dangerous, coercive, and potentially escalatory tactics in the South China Sea and beyond,” the Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement that described the exchange as “constructive and respectful.”
He also stressed the importance of continued talks to clarify intent and reduce the risk of misperception or miscalculation.
The call followed a meeting in Beijing last month between U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s leading military adviser, at which the talks were agreed.
U.S. and Chinese troops were also taking part in large-scale military exercises led by the Brazilian Armed Forces this week in the Brazilian city of Formosa in the state of Goiás.
American and Chinese troops had not trained side by side since 2016, when Beijing participated in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, or Rimpac, led by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
Most two-way military engagements between the U.S. and China were suspended for almost two years after Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visited Taiwan in August 2022.
“I certainly worry about an unintended conflict between our military forces, an accident, an accidental collision,” Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, told the magazine Foreign Policy in an online interview.
Later this week, the United States plans to send a senior Pentagon official to a major security forum in China.
Francine gains strength, expected to be hurricane when it reaches US Gulf Coast
date: 2024-09-10, from: VOA News USA
BATON ROUGE, La. — Tropical Storm Francine churned in the Gulf of Mexico with increasing strength and was expected to reach hurricane status on Tuesday before reaching landfall in Louisiana.
A storm surge warning was in effect for an area stretching from just east of Houston to the mouth of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans, according to the National Hurricane Center. Such a warning means there’s a chance of life-threatening flooding.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry urged residents “not to panic, but be prepared” and heed evacuation warnings. Forecasters said Francine’s landfall in south Louisiana was expected Wednesday afternoon as a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 155-175 kph.
“We do not want people to wait to the last minute to get on the road and then run out of fuel,” Landry said. “We put a lot of information throughout the summer, throughout hurricane season, so that people can be prepared. The more prepared we are, the easier it is for us.”
Francine is taking aim at a Louisiana coastline that has yet to fully recover since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles in 2020, followed a year later by Hurricane Ida. Over the weekend, a 22-story building in Lake Charles that had become a symbol of storm destruction was imploded after sitting vacant for nearly four years, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps.
Francine’s storm surge on the Louisiana coast could reach as much as 10 feet (3 meters) from Cameron to Port Fourchon and into Vermilion Bay, forecasters said.
“It’s a potential for significantly dangerous, life-threatening inundation,” said Michael Brennan, director of the hurricane center, adding it could also send “dangerous, damaging winds quite far inland.”
He said landfall was likely somewhere between Sabine Pass — on the Texas-Louisiana line — and Morgan City, Louisiana, 350 kilometers to the east.
Louisiana officials urged residents to immediately prepare while “conditions still allow,” said Mike Steele, spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
“We always talk about how anytime something gets into the Gulf, things can change quickly, and this is a perfect example of that,” Steele said.
Residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital, began forming long lines as people filled gas tanks and stocked up on groceries. Others filled sandbags at city-operated locations to protect homes from possible flooding.
“It’s crucial that all of us take this storm very seriously and begin our preparations immediately,” Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said, urging residents to stock up on three days of food, water and essentials.
A mandatory evacuation was ordered for seven remote coastal communities by the Cameron Parish Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness. They include Holly Beach, a laid-back stretch dubbed Louisiana’s “Cajun Riviera,” where many homes sit on stilts. The storm-battered town has been a low-cost paradise for oil industry workers, families and retirees, rebuilt multiple times after past hurricanes.
In Grand Isle, Louisiana’s last inhabited barrier island, Mayor David Camardelle recommended residents evacuate and ordered a mandatory evacuation for those in recreational vehicles. Hurricane Ida decimated the city three years ago, destroying 700 homes.
Officials warn that flooding, along with high winds and power outages, is likely in the area beginning Tuesday afternoon through Thursday.
In New Orleans, Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to prepare to shelter in place. “Now is the time to finalize your storm plans and prepare, not only for your families but looking out for your neighbors,” she said.
City officials said they were expecting up to 15 centimeters inches of rain, gusty winds and “isolated tornado activity” with the most intense weather likely to reach New Orleans on Wednesday and Thursday.
The hurricane center said Francine was last about 205 kilometers south-southeast of the mouth of the Rio Grande, and about 690 kilometers south-southwest of Cameron, with top sustained winds of about 100 kilometers per hour. It was moving north-northwest at 7 kph.
As rain fell Monday in northern Mexico, more than a dozen neighborhoods in Matamoros — across the border from Brownsville, Texas — flooded, forcing schools to close Monday and Tuesday. Marco Antonio Hernandez Acosta, manager of the Matamoros Water and Drainage Board, said they were waiting for Mexico’s federal government to provide pumps to drain affected areas.
The storm was expected to move in north-northeast motion through Monday evening and then accelerate to the northeast beginning Tuesday before nearing the upper Texas and Louisiana coastlines Wednesday.
AMD deprioritizing flagship gaming GPUs
date: 2024-09-10, from: OS News
I had a chance to speak to Jack Huynh, AMD’s senior vice president and general manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group, during IFA 2024 in a question and answer session. Due to speculation that AMD won’t launch flagship GPUs for its next-gen lineup, I pressed Huynh for information regarding the company’s plans for the high-end GPU market with the RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 8000-series. His comments sketch out a plan focused specifically on gaining market share in the GPU market above all else, and this strategy deprioritizes chasing Nvidia’s highest-end gaming cards — at least for now. ↫ Paul Alcorn at Tom’s Hardware Reading through the actual comments, it seems that AMD is not going to chase the very, extreme high-end that NVIDIA serves, like the 4090 level of GPUs. Honestly, I’m completely okay with that – those high-end GPUs are insanely expensive, and unlike what YouTube and tech websites might suggest, nobody buys these GPUs. Consistently, for more than a decade now, it’s the xx60-xx70 levels of cards that dominate the market, and it’s smart of AMD (and Intel) to focus on that segment if you want to sell as many GPUs as possible. The very top of the GPU market just doesn’t make a lot price/performance sense. You pay considerably more for a 4090 compared to a 4080, but the price increase does not correspond to a similar increase in performance. It simply makes a lot more sense to save that money and spend it elsewhere, such as on a better CPU, more RAM, more storage, or a new display. I’d rather AMD not waste time and energy on making these high-end GPUs nobody buys, and instead focus on improving the GPUs people actually buy. And of course, AMD just hasn’t been able to match NVIDIA at the top end, and that’s probably not going to change any time soon. Releasing a high-end, expensive GPU, only to be trounced by your one competitor every single time is not a good look, so why even try?
https://www.osnews.com/story/140718/amd-deprioritizing-flagship-gaming-gpus/
We’re in the brute force phase of AI – once it ends, demand for GPUs will too
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Gartner thinks generative AI is right for only five percent of workloads
AI techniques that require specialist hardware are “doomed,” according to analyst firm Gartner’s chief of research for AI Erick Brethenoux – who included GPUs in his definition of endangered kit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/brute_force_ai_era_gartner/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
“Are You Saying No to Elon Musk?”: Scenes from the Slash-and-Burn Buyout of Twitter.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/elon-musk-twitter-buyout
Master Plan, Ep 5: How Corporations Became People
date: 2024-09-10, from: The Lever News
Our fifth episode examines a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases that laid the groundwork for PACs, Citizens United, and money-as-speech.
https://www.levernews.com/master-plan-ep-5-how-corporations-became-people/
Sols 4297-4299: This Way to Tungsten Hills
date: 2024-09-10, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. 6, 2024 Curiosity completed an impressive 60-meter drive (about 197 feet) across the channel floor within Gediz Vallis and parked along the edge of a shallow linear depression. Just about 20 meters (66 feet) away, an intriguing dark, textured rock named “Tungsten Hills” is the destination for our weekend drive […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/sols-4297-4299-this-way-to-tungsten-hills/
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be gone in ten years – for chump change
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
$7.5 billion needed, the kind of cash Apple makes without trying
Video After six years of sea trials, environmental group The Ocean Cleanup claims it has proved that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a floating mass of plastic waste twice the size of Texas – could be cleaned up in ten years using current technology, at a cost of a mere $7.5 billion.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/great_pacific_garbage_patch/
Harris, Trump set for Tuesday debate
date: 2024-09-10, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/harris-trump-set-for-tuesday-debate-/7778157.html
Thanks, Edward Snowden: you propelled China to quantum networking leadership
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Beijing aimed research at immediate needs – like blocking leaks – while the US sought abstract knowledge
China has an undeniable lead in quantum networking technology – a state of affairs that should give the US pause, despite its lead in quantum computing.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/china_quantum_innovation_itif_report/
US spends CHIPS Act cash to explore Indian chipmaking collabs
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Starting with an analysis of what India has to offer, which is plenty
The US has decided to partner with India and its Semiconductor Mission (ISM) to grow and diversify global chip supply chains.…
Malaysia’s plan to block overseas DNS dies after a day
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Minister orders regulator to slow down following immediate backlash
Malaysia’s telecom regulator has abandoned a plan to block overseas DNS services a day after announcing it, following a sharp backlash and accusations of government overreach.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/malaysias_dns_blocking_plan_paused/
US sets reporting requirements for AI models, infrastructure operators
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Washington wants to know what the biggest model-makers are up to
The US Commerce Department has proposed a fresh set of reporting requirements for developers of cutting-edge AI models and those renting the infrastructure required to train them.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/us_ai_reporting/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Jan. 6 can’t be denied in federal court
https://apnews.com/projects/january-6-cases/
7th fatality since July 31 occurs at Grand Canyon National Park
date: 2024-09-10, from: VOA News USA
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Arizona — There has been another fatality at Grand Canyon National Park, authorities announced Monday.
Park officials said Patrick Horton, 59, of Salida, Colorado, was on the 10th day of a noncommercial river trip along the Colorado River and was discovered dead by members of his party Saturday morning.
Officials said the National Park Service was investigating Horton’s death in coordination with the Coconino County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Horton was believed to have been the seventh person to die at the canyon since July 31 and the 15th this year.
Park officials reported 11 fatalities in 2023 and say there are usually about 10 to 15 deaths per year.
Google insists the ad tech business ain’t broke, urges Washington not to fix it
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
As its other monopoly trial - the one brought by the DoJ and eight states - begins in Virginia
Google defended its advertising technology businesses in the court of public opinion on Sunday, just as its attorneys prepared similar arguments against US antitrust allegations now being heard in a Virginia courtroom.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/google_ad_tech_antitrust_trial/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-10, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Pixel Watch 3 review: Google finally got it right, especially with the battery life.
New Stack Maps for Wasmtime and Cranelift
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: Bytecode Alliance News
As part of implementing the WebAssembly garbage collection proposal in Wasmtime, which is an ongoing process, we’ve overhauled the stack map infrastructure in Cranelift. This post will explain what stack maps are, why we needed to change them, and how the new stack maps work.
https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/new-stack-maps-for-wasmtime
Secure, efficient private npm registries with Cloudsmith and Deno
date: 2024-09-10, updated: 2024-09-10, from: Deno blog
Deno can use private npm registries with Cloudsmith, which offers additional security features, analytics into module usage, and more. Here’s how to do it.
https://deno.com/blog/private-npm-registries-cloudsmith
Experts applaud US steps to disrupt Russian disinformation
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
washington — The U.S. Justice Department announced September 4 that two Russian nationals, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, had been charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the Southern District of New York.
“The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. “The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.”
That same day, the Justice Department announced the seizure of 32 internet domains used in the Russian government-directed “Doppelganger” foreign malign influence campaign, which it said violated U.S. money-laundering and criminal trademark laws.
Experts who study disinformation say disrupting the paid-influencer campaign is an important step in efforts to counter the Kremlin’s broader disinformation strategy of spreading propaganda that undermines support for Ukraine and stokes American political divisions.
Disrupting the Doppelganger campaign
“Persistent efforts to impersonate authoritative news websites and promote their content at scale in a coordinated manner can have a tangible impact, casting propaganda narratives far and wide consistently,” wrote Roman Osadchuk and Eto Buziashvili, researchers at the Disinformation Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.
According to an FBI affidavit, Russia’s “Doppelganger” campaign created domains impersonating legitimate media sites, produced fake social media profiles and deployed “influencers” worldwide.
According to the Atlantic Council researchers, the primary method used by those involved in “Doppelganger” is to post, on X and other social media platforms, links to fake news sites in replies to posts by politicians, celebrities, influencers and others with large audiences.
Osadchuk told VOA that while the FBI’s measures are unlikely to stop Russian influence activities, they will make them more costly, noting those involved in the Russian influence campaign will be forced “to rewrite scripts, change the operation’s infrastructure, etc.”
At the same time, according to Osadchuk, the U.S. government’s moves against those involved in the influence campaign, which were widely covered in the U.S. and international media, will educate a broader audience.
“Researchers of the Russian disinformation have known about the Doppelganger campaign for some time,” he said. “Now, Americans and people in other countries have learned about it and maybe will become more aware that not all information they consume is coming from legitimate sources and hopefully will be more attentive to the domain names and other signs that might indicate that the page they are reading is not The Washington Post or Fox News but a fake created by Kremlin-linked entities.”
Influencers will be more aware
In a statement it released after indicting the two RT employees, the Justice Department said that “over at least the past year, RT and its employees, including Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, deployed nearly $10 million to covertly finance and direct a Tennessee-based online content creation company [U.S. Company-1],” and that “U.S. Company-1” had “published English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube.”
While the Justice Department did not specifically identify “U.S. Company-1,” it is thought to refer to Tenet Media, a Tennessee company co-founded by entrepreneur Lauren Chen, who recruited six popular U.S. influencers with a large following.
YouTube subsequently took down Tenet Media’s channel on the platform, along with four other channels that YouTube said were operated by Chen.
Bret Schafer, a disinformation researcher at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a political advocacy group set up under the auspices of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington think tank, told VOA that by financing the U.S. content creation company, Russia was able to create an information channel with a large audience, and to use it for such messages as blaming the U.S. and Ukraine for the March terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack.
Shutting down that Russian information channel sent a powerful message to influencers and content creators to do “due diligence about people funding their work and to try to figure out who’s behind these companies and their motives,” Schafer added.
Ben Dubow, a disinformation researcher affiliated with the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based research group, believes that influencers contracted by Tenet Media are unlikely to lose their existing followers, but that they might have difficulty attracting new ones.
“Hopefully, people who might otherwise explore those influencers will recognize their names and understand them as untrustworthy now,” he told VOA.
The Justice Department’s indictment quotes RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonian, as saying in an interview on Russian television that RT built “an enormous network, an entire empire of covert projects,” to influence Western audiences.
The FBI affidavit also revealed that one of the sanctioned Russian companies had a list of 2,800 people active on social media in the U.S. and 80 other countries, including “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors and comedians,” whom the company refers to as “influencers.”
Concrete steps and good timing
Several experts commended the U.S. government for taking concrete steps.
“They are sanctioning individuals and disrupting the supply chain of influence available to these threat actors,” noted Olga Belogolova, director of the Emerging Technologies Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
“Punitive measures absolutely have to be part of the package,” said Jakub Kalenský, a senior analyst at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki. “Otherwise, the aggressors have a free hand to continue their aggression unopposed. And in order to identify those who deserve to be punished, a proper investigation from the authorities is necessary.”
Experts also said that the Justice Department’s actions were taken early enough to prevent influence in the November U.S. elections and to signal to Russia and other foreign actors that the U.S. government is monitoring their actions and will respond aggressively.
“Of course, that was what the Obama administration was concerned about in 2016 and led to them not being as transparent as they probably should have been with the American public about what they knew about Russian interference,” Schafer said.
In announcing their actions against the Russian disinformation campaign, U.S. government representatives did not mention which political party or candidate they thought that the Russians were trying to assist.
“I know that the U.S. government, including agencies and the Foreign Malign Influence Center at ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence], have been doing a lot of thinking over the last few years about how to strategically communicate these actions without unintentionally amplifying the very campaigns they are trying to thwart or politicizing the topic. And I think they’ve actually done a good job of striking that balance, at least from what I’ve seen thus far,” Belogolova said.
Ihor Solovey, who heads the Ukrainian government’s Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security, welcomed the U.S. government’s actions but told VOA that more steps are needed to thwart Russian activities on social media.
“X, TikTok or even more so the Russian Telegram - they are unlikely to want to spend on the fight against bots, troll farms or planned disinformation,” he said, adding that only pressure by a state, or even a coalition of states, will be able to force these social media platforms to block intruders and malicious content.
Andrei Dziarkach of VOA’s Russian Service contributed to this report.
Morgan Wallen leads the 2024 Country Music Association award nominations
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — He had some help: Morgan Wallen tops the 2024 Country Music Association Awards nominations with seven.
For a third year in a row, Wallen is up for both the top prize — entertainer of the year — and the male vocalist categories.
Rounding out the entertainer of the year categories are Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Chris Stapleton and Lainey Wilson.
Post Malone’s massive radio hit, “I Had Some Help,” which features Wallen, is the main reason why the country singer leads the pack this year. It is up for single, song, musical event and music video of the year. His last nomination is a second one in the musical event category, for his collaboration with Eric Church, “Man Made a Bar.”
Single of the year is awarded to the artist, producer and mix engineers; song of the year is given to the songwriters.
Ahead of the nominations announcement, some fans speculated that Beyoncé, whose landmark country-and-then-some reclamation Cowboy Carter was released during the eligibility window, could receive a nomination at the 2024 CMAs. She did not.
Earlier this year, the album hit No. 1 on the Billboard country albums chart, making her the first Black woman to top the chart since its 1964 inception.
The album was five years in the making, a direct result of what Beyoncé has called “an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t,” most likely a reference to a 2016 CMAs performance that resulted in racist backlash.
The CMA Awards are nominated and voted on by members of the Country Music Association, which includes music executives, artists, publicists, songwriters and other industry professionals.
Wallen is followed by both Cody Johnson, who is also nominated in the male vocalist category for the third year in a row, and 7-time male vocalist of the year winner, Stapleton.
Stapleton and Johnson have five nominations each.
But Stapleton could take home seven trophies, should he sweep his categories.
Stapleton is both an artist and producer on “White Horse,” up for single of the year, and Higher, up for album of the year.
At the CMAs, production credits are not counted as separate nominations, although they are factored into trophy counts.
First-time nominee Post Malone and Wilson, last year’s entertainer of the year winner, are tied with four nominations. All of Malone’s nominations are for “I Had Some Help.”
Louis Bell, Charlie Handsome and Hoskins are tied with three nominations for their work as producers and co-writers on “I Had Some Help.”
Jelly Roll, Combs, Kacey Musgraves and Megan Moroney also boast three nods each. The latter three could take home four trophies: Combs is both artist and producer on Fathers & Sons, up for album of the year. The same is true for Musgraves’ album Deeper Well.
And Moroney is both artist and director of her nominated music video, “I’m Not Pretty.”
The CMA Awards will air on November 20 on ABC at 8 p.m. Eastern. It can be streamed the next day on Hulu.
Feds urge 3D printing industry to end DIY machine guns
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
DoJ, ATF target MCDs, but what about the printers?
The US Department of Justice is turning to the 3D printing industry to help combat the scourge of machine gun conversion devices (MCDs) used by criminals to turn semi-automatic firearms into deadly bullet sprayers. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/3d_print_gun_mcd/
Trump signals support for reclassifying pot as a less dangerous drug, in line with Harris’ position
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
washington — Donald Trump has signaled support for a potentially historic federal policy shift to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, putting his position in line with that of his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.
The commonality reflects a major shift toward broad public support for legalization in recent years and marks the first time that both major-party presidential candidates support broad cannabis reform, according to the U.S. Cannabis Council.
The Republican presidential nominee posted on his social media platform late Sunday that he would “continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug,” and also said he would be voting “yes” on a proposal to allow the sale of marijuana to adults for any reason in Florida.
Coming shortly before the two will meet for a pivotal debate, Trump’s post sets up the possibility that he could criticize Harris for her past cannabis prosecutions when she was district attorney in San Francisco. Because drug prosecutions disproportionately affect nonwhite defendants in the U.S., the line of attack could also fit with Trump’s efforts to increase his support among nonwhite men.
Harris backs decriminalization and has called it “absurd” that the Drug Enforcement Administration now has marijuana in the Schedule I category alongside heroin and LSD.
Earlier in her career, she oversaw the enforcement of cannabis laws and opposed legalized recreational use for adults in California while running for attorney general in 2010.
Harris has absorbed attacks on her prosecutorial record on the debate stage before, most notably from Democrat-turned-Trump supporter Tulsi Gabbard, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and announced in 2022 that she was leaving the party.
Trump said during his 2016 run that pot policy should be left up the states. During his term in the White House, though, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions lifted an Obama-era policy that kept federal authorities from cracking down on the marijuana trade in states where the drug is legal.
The DEA process to change the drug’s federal classification is already underway, kickstarted by President Joe Biden’s call for a review. But the DEA hasn’t made a final decision on the shift, which would not legalize recreational marijuana outright. It may not decide until the next presidential administration, putting a spotlight on the candidates’ positions.
Federal drug policy has lagged behind that of many states in recent years, with 38 having already legalized medical marijuana and 24 legalizing recreational use.
About 70% of adults supported legalization in a Gallup poll taken last year, the highest level yet recorded by the polling firm and more than double the roughly 3 in 10 who backed it in 2000. Support was even higher among young voters, a key demographic in seven main battleground states.
“We believe cannabis reform is a winning issue,” said David Culver, senior vice president of public affairs at the U.S. Cannabis Council, in a statement Monday.
The federal policy shift wouldn’t legalize marijuana outright for recreational use. Instead, it would move marijuana out of Schedule I to the Schedule III category, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids.
The proposed shift is facing opposition from advocates who say there isn’t enough data and from attorneys general in more than a dozen states, according to the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
Trump chimed in on the ballot question on the same day that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a fellow Republican who previously challenged him for the 2024 presidential nomination, spoke at City Church Tallahassee, where he ardently opposed two ballot initiatives this November: one to enshrine abortion rights and the other to legalize recreational marijuana.
For months DeSantis has publicly opposed the marijuana amendment, saying it would reduce the quality of life in Florida cities by leaving a marijuana stench in the air.
The Florida Republican Party has also formally denounced the amendment, saying in a May resolution that it would “benefit powerful marijuana special interests, while putting children at risk and endangering Florida family-friendly business and tourism climates.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/7777728.html
NASA JPL Scientists, Engineers Collaborate With Artists for Exhibition
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
Works in ‘Blended Worlds: Experiments in Interplanetary Imagination,’ an exhibit in Glendale, California, help shrink the universe into something tangible. The universe is vast and filled with countless worlds, but a new exhibit at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, California, aims to shrink time and space. For “Blended Worlds: Experiments in Interplanetary […]
WhatsApp’s ‘View Once’ could be ‘View Whenever’ due to a flaw
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It promised vanishing messages, but now ‘it’s privacy theater’
Video A popular privacy feature in WhatsApp is “completely broken and can be trivially bypassed,” according to developers at cryptowallet startup Zengo.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/whatsapp_view_once_flaw/
US facing more scattered, more technological terror landscape
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Leading terror groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State, once pushed to the brink after years of military pressure from the United States and its allies, have found ways to recover and once again represent a serious and lethal threat, according to a top U.S. counterterrorism official.
The rare public assessment from the acting director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center comes just days before the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terror attacks on the U.S. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, and emphasized the impact of more recent terror strikes and of technology in galvanizing the terror landscape.
“We are today in the midst of another transformative moment in the global terrorism threat landscape,” said the NCTC’s Brett Holmgren, speaking to a counterterrorism symposium in New York.
“Groups like ISIS just a few years ago were at their nadir,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State terror group, also known as IS or Daesh.
But now the U.S. sees “a much more distributed threat, in part because of some of the counterterrorism pressures that have been applied,” Holmgren added.
“We see a real proliferation of the threat and really a shift towards, at least for al-Qaida, the center of gravity in parts of Africa,” he said. “You see, frankly, al-Qaida basically [was] kicked out of Afghanistan over the last few years, and they have a very small footprint left there.
“You also see the Islamic State and others that have been pushed out of their safe havens in Syria, where they are now deliberately operating in much smaller cells to evade detection,” he added.
As a result, the threat posed by al-Qaida and IS to the U.S. are not the same as they once were, according to Holmgren, echoing statements by other top U.S. intelligence officials that while the terror organizations and their affiliates have a desire to strike at the U.S., they are, for now, lacking the ability to do so.
“The capacity and the capability is not there,” Holmgren said, citing sustained counterterrorism pressure from the U.S. and its allies.
Instead, U.S. counterterrorism officials see al-Qaida and IS embracing the online environment to recruit and, in some cases, provide resources to individuals in the West to carry out attacks on their own.
Other nations, however, including some U.S. allies, are not as convinced that the threat from hotspots like Afghanistan and Syria have diminished.
A United Nations report this past July, based on intelligence from member states, argued that al-Qaida has thrived in Afghanistan, benefiting from the protection of the Taliban government while expanding its network of training camps and safe houses.
And U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, said separately in July that the pace of IS attacks in Syria and Iraq is set to double compared to last year.
The political wing of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic forces has issued similar warnings in the past year.
But Holmgren and other U.S. intelligence officials argue the biggest danger, for now, is what al-Qaida, IS and other terror groups can organize online.
U.S. officials see signs that al-Qaida, IS and even Iranian-backed terror groups like Hezbollah have embraced AI, or artificial intelligence, using the technology to produce higher-quality and more targeted propaganda.
And while the use of AI may not be sophisticated, officials say there is evidence it has been effective, both in gaining followers and in using AI-generated voices and images, to help terrorist operatives evade detection.
Additionally, the new push by terror groups like al-Qaida and IS continues to be super-charged by last year’s October 7 Hamas terror attack carried out against Israel in which the group — designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., United Kingdom and European Union — killed about 1,200 people, with another 250 taken hostage.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed due to Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas. And a range of terror groups has seized on the conflict to call for attacks against the West.
The Hamas attack sparked a “tectonic shift in the threat environment,” said Rebecca Weiner, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism.
“The ripple effects that we have experienced since October 7, that we will experience over the years to come, they’re not really ripples. They’re waves,” she said, speaking at the symposium in New York. “I don’t really expect things to get too much better, unfortunately, in the months ahead.”
The NCTC’s Holmgren called the October 7 attack a “unique flashpoint.”
“That is, in our view, the most consequential event when it comes to violent Islamic extremism in terms of radicalization and recruitment since 9/11,” he said. “It’s really remarkable in how it’s united these really disparate groups, from neo-Nazis to al-Qaida to Iranian-linked groups.”
There are also fears the AI-enhanced propaganda and recruitment drives have been especially efficient at targeting young adults and teenagers.
“We have a whole new generation of homegrown violent, violent extremists, especially younger individuals and juveniles, to worry about,” said the NYPD’s Weiner. “The younger people who are radicalizing, who [are] unable to incorporate all this information that they’re receiving in a digital world and bring that into the 3D context in a way that’s safe.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-facing-more-scattered-more-technological-terror-landscape-/7777632.html
America’s Biggest Grid Is Losing Its Balance
date: 2024-09-09, from: Heatmap News
Here’s a dilemma: Large chunks of fossil fuel-powered energy generation are scheduled to fall off the U.S. electric grid in the next decade thanks to economic and regulatory pressures. Even larger chunks of renewable energy generation have not yet been approved to connect to the grid and may not be for years, if ever. Meanwhile, data centers and electrification have kicked off the first notable demand growth for electricity markets in over 20 years. On top of all that, the grid has become increasingly vulnerable to climate change-fueled disruptions, whether from solar power being knocked out by hail or natural gas lines freezing in an ice storm.
In some parts of the country, the solution to this dilemma is relatively simple. In much of the Southeast and -west, large utilities that own power plants are simply building more natural gas power plants. In California, regulators are mandating that utilities procure enormous amounts of energy storage, and have rejiggered residential solar rules to encourage more combinations of solar panels and batteries. And Texas is planning to lend billions of dollars at low interest rates to help finance natural gas plant construction.
Then there’s the PJM Interconnection, the 13-state electricity market serving much of the East Coast and Midwest, run by the country’s largest regional transmission organization. Despite PJM’s constant warnings about natural gas and coal generation retiring, it has not been able to bring new generating resources online in a reasonable timeframe. The grid operator — technically a non-profit — has neither the regulatory muscle nor the financial firepower to shape new energy generation to its preferences; its interconnection queue got so long, it instituted a two-year pause on new applications.
While many of PJM’s problems are unique to its particular circumstances, they’ve gotten so severe in recent months, it calls into question whether the decades-long project of structuring electricity generation, transmission, and distribution into something like a market is even working anymore.
“The whole premise is that a capacity market is about efficient entry and efficient exit,” Abe Silverman, an assistant research scholar at Johns Hopkins and former New Jersey utility regulatory official, told me. “We’re squeezing the tube on the entry side and letting very few new entrants in.”
According to PJM’s independent market monitor, at the end of last year, there were just over 7 gigawatts of natural gas projects in the queue, about half of which it expected to go into service eventually, while some 24 gigawatts to 58 gigawatts of coal and natural gas is expected to retire by 2030. There were over 200 gigawatts of renewables projects in the queue, the market monitor said, but only around 30 gigawatts that’s expected to go into service, and for the purpose of a capacity auction, only about 11 would count.
But for power market observers, the sirens really started going off at
the end of July, when PJM held what’s called a capacity auction, which
determines the price companies get paid to supply energy-generating
capacity over and above forecasted peak demand
in
order to avoid blackouts. By the end of the five-day process, the
cost of that capacity came out almost 10 times higher for than the
previous PJM capacity auction —
$14.7
billion, compared to just over $2 billion in 2022 — a signal that
supply, demand, and reliability dynamics within PJM are seriously
imbalanced.
That almost certainly means rate increases for consumers. In Maryland specifically, some residential electricity bills could rise anywhere from 2% to 24%, a monthly change of $4 to $18, according to the state’s Office of People’s Counsel.
What that almost certainly does not mean is a huge amount of new generation coming online. “In an efficient capacity market structure, the market starts sending higher price signals and generators start coming on-line,” Silverman told me. “Usually when you see high prices, you would expect more of a response from the supply side.”
In PJM, however, “new generation cannot come online quickly,” according to a letter from a group of consumer advocates in PJM states, therefore “the high capacity market prices are not an effective signal for new entry but instead a windfall for the owners of existing generation.”
Ironically, the high prices were due, in part, to PJM applying a formula it typically reserves for renewables to coal and gas plants, which “derates” the capacity they’re able to offer in times of stress, e.g. during a winter storm. Historically, coal and gas got high ratings because high winds and cold temperatures was considered unlikely to disrupt their production, while solar and wind scored much lower. But after 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott, during which natural gas lines froze and caused a mass blackout, PJM knocked down the rating for combined cycle gas plants — the most efficient kind of gas plant, which recaptures heat exhaust to produce more power — from 96% to 79%, and for combustion turbine natural gas plants from 90% to 62%. Wind got a bump, while solar was rated down.
In other words, “PJM doesn’t view all these megawatts as reliably as they did before Elliott,” Nicolas Freschi, a senior associate at Gabel Associates, which does energy and environmental consulting for federal agencies, told me. That meant some 26 gigawatts of projected coal and gas capacity disappeared from the auction, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.
The environmental activist community has long argued that gas is less reliable than utilities and the public seem to think it is, and that this should be taken into account with grid planning. The gas derating was “a good thing,” Claire Lang-Ree of the Natural Resources Defense Council told me, “because that means what we’re paying for in this auction is actually reliable. It’s a truing-up of the system.”
At the same time, she acknowledged, the auction result was “a bad thing insofar as it was the driving cause of the price spike,” which also means huge payouts for power companies.
“Despite the decrease in capacity credit, the higher capacity prices will impact the capacity revenue received for projects in PJM, generally increasing it,” S&P analysts wrote in August. By way of example, S&P looked at one natural gas plant in Ohio and found that its project per-megawatt-hour net revenue in 2026 would increase by 40%.
Morgan Stanley estimated that major power producers such as Texas-based Vistra and Maryland’s Constellation Energy would see a boost to their earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization of $700 million to $800 million each.
And yet in both Texas and PJM, many analysts (not to mention the gas industry) still see gas as the solution to a shortfall exacerbated by gas’s documented vulnerability. That’s due to its ability — at least on paper — to generate large amounts of power at any time of day.
So far, however, only one power producer with a large natural gas fleet, Calpine, has publicly indicated that it will aggressively pursue development in PJM. Calpine operates a 76-facility fleet that includes 66 fossil fuel-fired plants from California to Massachusetts. “The PJM market needs and values reliable, dispatchable, non-duration-limited power” the company said in a press release. (These are all industry code words for natural gas.) Calpine said it was “accelerating its PJM electricity generation development program following market signals indicating higher demand for reliable power,” and that it was looking at “multiple new locations in the PJM region, particularly in Ohio and Pennsylvania.”
Other companies have been more cautious. “It is only one auction, of course, and not long enough out in the future to be starting a new project,” Vistra chief executive Jim Burke said in an August earnings call. Morgan Stanley analysts noted that because the next auction is in December, “we don’t foresee enough time to build significant new generation capacity. There are only 18 months between the auction and the start of the delivery year, which doesn’t leave time for permitting, interconnection queue timing, and construction because they are behind.”
S&P forecast that only one natural gas project under construction in Ohio could possible bid into the next auction. And while stock and bond analysts are more focused on the prospects for new natural gas plants, they are not particularly optimistic they’ll come online any time soon. “Merchant newbuilds remain marginal under our assumptions, indicating price signals may need to improve further to incent merchant new entry,” Guggenheim analyst Shahriar Pourreza wrote in a note.
Todd Snitchler, the head of the independent power generator trade group Electric Power Supply Association, noted to me that the July auction price was “coming off a record low,” and that the “abnormally” low prices in the previous two auctions — which were then followed by a lengthy delay — “suggested that assets should be leaving, and not coming on” — a trend PJM and other electricity market overseers have been warning about for years.
“One auction does not make a trend make,” Snitchler said.
If prices stay high, however, some analysts think power producers will eventually start trying to build new natural gas plants in PJM. “Investors don’t want to start building extremely expensive projects until they’re sure this price environment is sustainable,” Freschi told me.
Instead of beckoning new gas construction, clean energy and ratepayer
advocates want PJM to
focus
on interconnection reform so that its existing queue —
which
is overwhelming renewables — can finally make its way onto the grid.
In a statement to Heatmap, PJM said its new system of evaluating projects in groups instead of on a first-come, first-served basis will lead to 230,000 megawatts being processed over the next three years. The PJM spokesperson also pointed to Calpine’s announcement as a sign that the capacity auction was bringing new investment.
“We need investment in real projects that can get connected to the grid quickly, as opposed to the speculative projects that have clogged the queue in the past,” the spokesperson said. “Our reformed interconnection process encourages projects with the best chance of being built, and we are weeding out some of those that have been hanging on for years past receiving an interconnection agreement from PJM and who have not moved to construction.”
“Generators should submit their new project queue positions today,” the spokesperson added.
But like so many projects clogging the queue, these reforms are speculative, and in the end the restructured market, where new supply supposedly responds to high prices, simply may not work on its own terms. Some of this is due to policy in PJM states — you’re unlikely to be able to build a new natural gas plant in Democratic-controlled states like Maryland, New Jersey, or Illinois, and Guggenheim’s Pourreza wrote that “any new gas generation will be clustered in [Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia],” which could both lead to lower capacity prices in some areas and a more unbalanced market as new gas capacity becomes concentrated geographically.
But even in areas that are famously friendly to fossil fuels and have less complicated market and interconnection processes, demand for new gas has not smoothly resulted in gas plant construction. In Texas, which has closest thing to a free electricity market that exists in the United States, the state has had to turn to a multibillion low interest rate financing program to entice developers to build new natural gas plants.
May that be a warning to regional transmission planners everywhere. As S&P analysts wrote, “High prices signal the need for new generation, but do not guarantee it.”
https://heatmap.news/economy/pjm-natural-gas
US: Transfer of ballistic missiles from Iran to Russia would be ‘dramatic escalation’
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The transfer of ballistic missiles from Iran to Russia would signify a “dramatic escalation” of Tehran’s support for Moscow, and the United States is prepared to respond with “significant consequences,” the State Department said Monday.
U.S. media outlets reported last week that Washington believed Iran had transferred the weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine, and the European Union has said allies shared “credible” intelligence that Tehran had done so.
“Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told journalists.
“We have been clear … that we’re prepared to deliver significant consequences,” he said.
Tehran has rejected the accusation that it transferred the missiles, but the Kremlin has not explicitly denied it.
Faced with punishing Western sanctions, Moscow has turned to Iran and North Korea for weapons supplies to keep its war machine going in Ukraine.
Ukraine says it has been attacked with Iranian-designed Shahed drones on an almost daily basis from Russia and has found fragments of North Korean missiles on its territory.
The reported delivery of missiles to Russia comes as the Kremlin has once again stepped up its bombing campaign against Ukraine’s key infrastructure ahead of winter.
Blinken arrives in London on week of US-UK diplomacy
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
London — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived late Monday in London at the start of a week of diplomacy with the new U.K. government expected to touch on Ukraine and the Middle East.
Blinken’s visit comes ahead of a trip to Washington on Friday by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his second meeting at the White House since his Labour Party won July elections, sweeping out the Conservatives after 14 years.
Blinken — the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit London since Labour’s triumph — is expected to meet Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy during his talks Tuesday.
The top U.S. diplomat will discuss Asia, the Middle East and “our collective efforts to support Ukraine,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement announcing Blinken’s trip.
The United States and Britain cooperate in lockstep on most global issues, and Starmer has made clear that he will maintain the U.K. role as one of the most assertive defenders of Ukraine as it pushes back against the Russian invasion.
Former human rights lawyer Starmer, however, has taken a harder line on Israel since taking office, with his government announcing a suspension of some arms shipments, citing the risk that they could be used to violate humanitarian law.
The Labour government has also dropped its Conservative predecessor’s plans to challenge the right of the International Criminal Court to seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The United States is not a member of the ICC and has opposed the bid to target Netanyahu, arguing that Israel has its own systems for accountability.
But the United States, Israel’s primary weapons supplier, did not criticize the U.K. arms decision, saying that Britain had its own process to make assessments.
https://www.voanews.com/a/blinken-arrives-in-london-on-week-of-us-uk-diplomacy/7777604.html
Apple debuts iPhone 16, Watch Series 10, assorted AirPods
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Setting the stage for pending AI feature while doubling down on health tech
Apple just introduced its iPhone 16 line, Watch Series 10, and assorted AirPods, and also set formal release dates next week for its iOS 18 and watchOS 11 software.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/apple_phone_16_watch_10_intelligence/
The Empty Chair: One family’s fight to bring jailed American journalist home
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
Husband, father, journalist, advocate: Pavel Butorin spent nine long months fighting to secure the release of his wife, U.S.-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, from a Russian prison. His journey shows the challenges American families confront when a loved one is taken hostage or wrongfully detained by a foreign government.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
James Earl Jones Dead: Darth Vader Voice, 'Field Of Dreams' Star, EGOT Winner.
https://deadline.com/2024/09/james-earl-jones-dead-1236082801/
Apple Intelligence may be key to Apple’s future, but it’s getting a gradual rollout (won’t be on the iPhone 16 at launch)
date: 2024-09-09, from: Liliputing
The new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro line of smartphones go up for pre-order on September 13 and should be available starting September 20. But a key feature won’t be available at launch. Apple Intelligence, which is Apple’s name for its suite of AI tools, will begin rolling out in October as part of […]
The post Apple Intelligence may be key to Apple’s future, but it’s getting a gradual rollout (won’t be on the iPhone 16 at launch) appeared first on Liliputing.
Boeing’s Starliner Lands Successfully, but Without Its Astronauts on Board
date: 2024-09-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The troubled spacecraft conducted a “bull’s-eye landing,” but NASA officials still say they made the right decision to leave its astronauts on the ISS out of an abundance of caution
Boston Museum Returns Looted 2,700-Year-Old Necklace to Turkey
date: 2024-09-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The gold and carnelian artifact is nearly identical to other jewelry found at an archaeological site in western Turkey
US charges 2 in Telegram terror plot against minorities, officials, infrastructure
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Two people who prosecutors say were motivated by white supremacist ideology have been arrested on charges that they used the social media messaging app Telegram to encourage hate crimes and acts of violence against minorities, government officials and critical infrastructure in the United States, the Justice Department said Monday.
The defendants, identified as Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, face 15 federal counts in the Eastern District of California, including charges that accuse them of soliciting hate crimes and the murder of federal officials, distributing bombmaking instructions and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, California, and Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho were arrested Friday. Humber pleaded not guilty in a Sacramento courtroom Monday to the charges. Her attorney Noa Oren declined to comment on the case Monday afternoon after the arraignment.
It was not immediately clear if Allison had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
The indictment accuses the two of leading Terrorgram, a network of channels and group chats on Telegram, and of soliciting followers to attack perceived enemies of white people, government buildings, energy facilities and “high-value” targets such as politicians.
“Today’s action makes clear that the department will hold perpetrators accountable, including those who hide behind computer screens, in seeking to carry out bias-motivated violence,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the Justice Department’s top civil rights official, said at a news conference.
The pair’s exhortations to commit violence included statements such as “Take Action Now” and “Do your part,” and users who carried out acts to further white supremacism were told they could become known as “Saints,” prosecutors said.
Justice Department officials say Humber and Allison used the app to transmit bomb-making instructions and to distribute a list of potential targets for assassination — including a federal judge, a senator and a former U.S. attorney — and to celebrate acts or plots from active Terrorgram users.
Those include the stabbing last month of five people outside a mosque in Turkey and the July arrest of an 18-year-old accused of planning to attack an electrical substation to advance white supremacist views. In the Turkey attack, for instance, prosecutors say the culprit on the morning of the stabbing posted in a group chat: “Come see how much humans I can cleanse.”
A 24-minute documentary that the two had produced, “White Terror,” documented and praised some 105 acts of white supremacist violence between 1968 and 2021, according to the indictment.
“The risk and danger they present is extremely serious,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said of Terrorgram users. He added, “Their reach is as far as the internet because of the platform they’ve created.”
Telegram spokesman Remi Vaughn said: “Calls to violence have no place on Telegram’s platform. Moderators removed several channels that used variations of the ‘Terrorgram’ name when they were discovered years ago. Similar content is banned whenever it appears.”
Telegram is a messaging app that allows for one-on-one conversations, group chats and large “channels” that let people broadcast messages to subscribers. Though broadly used as a messaging tool around the world, Telegram has also drawn scrutiny, including a finding from French investigators that the app has been used by Islamic extremists and drug traffickers.
Telegram’s founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, was detained by French authorities last month on charges of allowing the platform’s use for criminal activity. Durov responded to the charges with a post last week saying he shouldn’t have been targeted personally and by promising to step up efforts to fight criminality on the app.
He wrote that while Telegram is not “some sort of anarchic paradise,” surging numbers of users have “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”
Americans lost $5.6 billion last year in cryptocurrency fraud scams, FBI says
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Americans were duped out of more than $5.6 billion last year through fraud schemes involving cryptocurrency, the FBI said in a report released Monday that shows a 45% jump in losses from 2022.
The FBI received nearly 70,000 complaints in 2023 by victims of financial fraud involving bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies, according to the FBI. The most rampant scheme was investment fraud, which accounted for $3.96 billion of the losses.
“The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, the speed of irreversible transactions, and the ability to transfer value around the world make cryptocurrency an attractive vehicle for criminals, while creating challenges to recover stolen funds,” wrote Michael Nordwall, assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division.
Scammers will often make contact through dating apps or social media to build trust over several weeks or months before suggesting cryptocurrency investing, the FBI said. Once the relationship is built, they convince the targets to use fake websites or apps to invest their money, sometimes even allowing the victims to withdraw small amounts of money early on to make it seem legitimate.
In some cases, those victims are then targeted by bogus businesses claiming they will help the victim recover the cryptocurrency they lost, according to the FBI.
FBI officials say Americans of all ages can be a target of such scams, and should be extremely cautious when presented with investment opportunities from people they’ve never met in real life.
Vietnamese immigrants and their children divided on US border policy
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
More than 1.2 million Vietnamese immigrants live in the United States, many of them having settled after the Vietnam war. More recently, a new wave of Vietnamese migration has sparked debate in the community about immigration and has become one of the main talking points this election season. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details from Texas, the state with the second-largest Vietnamese immigrant population in the country.
NASA Astronauts to Discuss Mission from Space Station
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
Media are invited to hear from NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams during an Earth to space call at 2:15 p.m. EDT, Friday, Sept. 13. The pair will participate in a news conference aboard the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. Coverage of the event will stream on NASA+, the NASA app, and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-astronauts-to-discuss-mission-from-space-station/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Mets legend Ed Kranepool dead at 79.
https://sny.tv/articles/mets-legend-ed-kranepool-dead-79
OneFileLinux: A tiny recovery distro that fits snugly in your EFI system partition
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The kind of thing the big names should be doing instead of working with proprietary vendors
OneFileLinux is a very different sort of distro that runs entirely from your UEFI system partition, without a bootable USB key or any other partitions on the disk.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/onefilelinux_esp_distro/
Russia’s top-secret military unit reportedly plots undersea cable ‘sabotage’
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
US alarmed by heightened Kremlin naval activity worldwide
Russia’s naval activity near undersea cables is reportedly drawing the scrutiny of US officials, further sparking concerns that the Kremlin may be plotting to “sabotage” underwater infrastructure via a secretive, dedicated military unit called the General Staff Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research (GUGI).…
Redox 0.9.0 released
date: 2024-09-09, from: OS News
It’s been two years, but we finally have a proper new Redox release: the Redox team released version 0.9.0 today. Since we’ve been covering all the monthly progress reports from this Rust-based operating system for a long time now, we’ve already covered most of the improvements in this new release, so if you’ve been following along there shouldn’t be any major surprises in here, but let’s do a quick summary anyway just so we’re all up to speed. I think the primary thing anyone moving from the previous release to the new one will be massive performance and stability improvements, as well as the arrival of the first few applications from System76’s new COSMIC Desktop. Redox is led by Jeremy Soller, a System76 engineer, and since COSMIC uses Rust as well, it only makes sense for the two projects to start benefiting from each other’s progress. Porting Linux and BSD programs has also become a lot easier, which is also evidenced by a whole slew of new ports from those operating systems. Redox works in both virtual machines and on real hardware, but the former is definitely advised over the latter. In the latest monthly progress report, which was published only a few days ago, it’s mentioned that Redox performance in virtual machines has improved greatly. The team discovered that reading the system time was a huge bottleneck in the context switching code, which affects virtual machines particularly hard because it needs to be read from outside oft he VM. Redox now reads the TSC using KVM’s paravirtualized system time API to remove this bottleneck. Running in a VM, Redox is now becoming slightly faster than Linux at certain synthetic benchmarks, for example the same-core context switch latency when using POSIX pipes (tested with mitigations=off). More exciting optimizations are coming, both to reduce context switch overhead further towards the hardware limit, and to reduce unnecessary context switches overall. ↫ Ribbon and Ron Williams As time moves on and both Redox and COSMIC improve, my excitement for this operating system grows along with it. It seems the people working on both projects have their priorities quite straight, and while I’m obviously not going to make any idiotic grand statements about how Redox will replace anything, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it become a fairly solid option for those of us willing to deal with the issues that come with running something that isn’t Windows, Linux/BSD, or macOS.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140715/redox-0-9-0-released/
iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max
date: 2024-09-09, from: Michael Tsai
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News): The new Pro lineup features the thinnest borders of any Apple product and introduces larger display sizes: 6.3 inches on iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches on iPhone 16 Pro Max — the largest iPhone display ever. […] The new mechanical architecture improves heat dissipation and efficiency for up to […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/09/iphone-16-pro-and-iphone-16-pro-max/
iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus
date: 2024-09-09, from: Michael Tsai
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News): Camera Control — a result of thoughtful hardware and software integration — elevates the camera experience on the iPhone 16 lineup. It is packed with innovation, including a tactile switch that powers the click experience, a high-precision force sensor that enables the light press gesture, and a capacitive sensor that […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/09/iphone-16-and-iphone-16-plus/
AirPods 4
date: 2024-09-09, from: Michael Tsai
Apple (video, MacRumors): The new AirPods 4 are the most advanced and comfortable headphones Apple has ever created with an open-ear design, and today, customers can choose between two distinct models: AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC). AirPods Max now come in midnight, starlight, blue, purple, and orange, and offer USB-C […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/09/airpods-4/
See New Detailed Photos of Mercury From a Spacecraft’s Closest Flyby Yet
date: 2024-09-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
BepiColombo, a joint European-Japanese mission, completed its fourth close pass of the innermost planet last week, and it will enter Mercury’s orbit in 2026 to learn more about its mysteries
Apple Watch Series 10
date: 2024-09-09, from: Michael Tsai
Apple (video, MacRumors): Apple Watch Series 10 is nearly 10 percent thinner than Apple Watch Series 7, Series 8, and Series 9, while offering all the advanced capabilities users love, adding new features, and maintaining all-day 18-hour battery life. An innovative metal back integrates the antenna into the housing of the device itself, combining the […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/09/apple-watch-series-10/
Russia Explained: What Americans Need to Know
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: RAND blog
Among the many international issues confronting the candidates for U.S. president and the American electorate in this fall’s election is the U.S. strategic posture with regard to Russia, its aggression against Ukraine, and the policies of its leader, Vladimir Putin. Two RAND experts explore a range of critical issues that will confront the next president.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/09/russia-explained-what-americans-need-to-know.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Jennifer Rubin: "Imagine obsessing over polls in the 1933 German election without covering Mein Kampf. That is what is going on now."
https://x.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1832938297917600251
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I appreciate Apple gives us five days to ponder the color of iPhone that is right for us, before we place an order on Friday.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113109242187850300
DoE drops $23M in effort to reinvigorate supercomputing
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Challenges span energy efficiency, memory, programmability, and national security
The US Department of Energy has launched a $23 million program aimed at overcoming a litany of supercomputing performance bottlenecks.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/doe_supercomputing_bottlenecks/
Apple’s iPhone 16 picks up two new buttons: Action and Camera Control
date: 2024-09-09, from: Liliputing
A few years ago it looked like the future of smartphones might be devices without any ports or buttons. But it looks like Apple is moving in the other direction. Its new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro smartphones have more buttons than their predecessors, thanks to the introduction of a new Camera Control button. The […]
The post Apple’s iPhone 16 picks up two new buttons: Action and Camera Control appeared first on Liliputing.
Cyprus, US sign defense deal outlining ways to tackle regional crises
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
nicosia, cyprus — Cyprus and the United States have signed a defense cooperation framework agreement that outlines ways the two countries can enhance their response to regional humanitarian crises and security concerns, including those arising from climate change.
Cyprus Defense Minister Vassilis Palmas and U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallander hailed the agreement Monday as another milestone in burgeoning Cypriot-U.S. ties in recent years that saw the lifting in 2022 of a decades-old U.S. arms embargo imposed on the east Mediterranean island nation.
“The Republic of Cyprus is a strong partner to the United States, in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, and plays a pivotal role at the nexus of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East,” Wallander said after talks with Palmas.
The U.S. official praised Cyprus for acting as a haven for American civilians evacuated from Sudan and Israel last year and for its key role in setting up a maritime corridor to Gaza through which more than 20 million pounds of humanitarian aid has been shipped to the Palestinian territory.
“It is evident that Cyprus is aligned with the West,” Wallander said.
Palmas said Cyprus would continue building toward “closer, stronger and beneficial bilateral defense cooperation with the United States.”
According to a joint statement, the agreement also foresees working together on dealing with “malicious actions” and bolstering ways for the Cypriot military to operate more smoothly with U.S. forces.
NASA Ames Fire Department to Conduct Live Aircraft Fire Training
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
The NASA Ames Fire Department will conduct emergency response fire training on the west ramp of the Moffett Federal Airfield between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. PDT Tuesday, Sept. 10 through Saturday, Sept. 14. The media and the public are advised that sirens may be audible and smoke plumes and flames may be visible from U.S. Highway 101 […]
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Well, that was pure bliss.
Right amount of toys to buy - so not a vastly expensive Monday.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113109052631190540
Tropical Storm Francine forms off Mexico, expected to hit Louisiana as hurricane
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Tropical Storm Francine formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday and was expected to drench the Texas coast with rain before coming ashore in Louisiana as a hurricane on Wednesday night.
“We’re going to have a very dangerous situation developing by the time we get into Wednesday for portions of the north-central Gulf Coast, primarily along the coast of Louisiana, where we’re going to see the potential for life-threatening storm surge inundation and hurricane force winds,” said Michael Brennan, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Heavy rain was already falling in northeastern Mexico and deep South Texas, where some places could get up to 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) into Monday night, Brennan said.
Francine is taking aim at a stretch of coastline that has yet to fully recover since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 2020, followed a year later by Hurricane Ida. Over the weekend, a 22-story building in Lake Charles that had become a symbol of the destruction was imploded after sitting vacant for nearly four years, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps.
The storm surge pushed by Francine could reach as much as 3 meters (10 feet) along a stretch of Louisiana coastline from Cameron to Port Fourchon and into Vermilion Bay. And if the current track holds, the storm could blow northward up the Mississippi River, into the Illinois area by Saturday.
“Francine is expected to bring multiple days of heavy rainfall, considerable flash flooding risk,” Brennan said.
Residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s riverfront capital, began forming long lines as people filled up their gas tanks and stocked up on groceries. Others went to fill sandbags at city-operated locations to try to keep floodwaters from entering their homes.
“It’s crucial that all of us take this storm very seriously and begin our preparations immediately,” Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said during a news conference Monday morning.
She urged residents to prepare a disaster supply kit, complete with enough food, water and essential supplies for three days.
The hurricane center said Monday morning that Francine was located about 395 kilometers (245 miles) southeast of the mouth of the Rio Grande, and about 770 kilometers (478 miles) south-southeast of Cameron, Louisiana, sustaining top winds of about 85 kilometers (53 miles) per hour.
The storm is expected to be centered just offshore through Tuesday, and then intensify significantly from Tuesday night into Wednesday as it nears the upper Texas coast and Louisiana, according to the hurricane center.
A storm surge watch has been issued from just east of Galveston, Texas, to the Mississippi-Alabama border, while a hurricane watch has been issued for much of the Louisiana coast, from Cameron to Grand Isle.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
This new iPhone pro has the right amount of CPUs, GPUS, Neural cores and auxiliary processors.
Just what the doctor ordered.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108975596220605
In profitability push Mobileye dumps LiDAR, slashes workforce
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
But then again is LiDAR even on the radar in 2024?
Mobileye is axing its light detection and ranging (LiDAR) research team, noting the tech has fallen out of favor in the automated driver assist space though to the keen observer it might be looking for any way to save money.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/mobileye_cut_lidar_layoff/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
New iPhonePro, I am sold.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108949561970664
Archaeologists Unearth Rare Trove of Silver Coins on Mediterranean Island
date: 2024-09-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The 27 Roman denarii found on the island of Pantelleria date back more than 2,000 years
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Man, Mastodon's brand is anger.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108876812479980
How Large Gold Nuggets Form in Quartz Crystals During Earthquakes
date: 2024-09-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Quartz, which can generate electricity, attracts large chunks of gold when stressed and squeezed by seismic shaking, according to a new study
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I know people like to shit on these LLM models, but these tools to improve writing are a boon for immigrants.
It is the ultimate accessibility tool.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108866148266187
Google’s “Assistance” Is Killing Journalism
date: 2024-09-09, from: The Lever News
California had a shot at making Big Tech pay for its stranglehold on local news — but instead it caved to industry pressure and strengthened tech firms’ grip.
https://www.levernews.com/googles-assistance-is-killing-journalism/
Google’s “Assistance” Is Killing Journalism
date: 2024-09-09, from: The Lever News
California had a shot at making Big Tech pay for its stranglehold on local news — but instead it caved to industry pressure and strengthened tech firms’ grip.
https://www.levernews.com/googles-assistance-is-killing_journalism/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Craig is so relatable.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108851447088258
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
This new phone has the right amount of CPUs, GPUS and Neural cores.
Just what the doctor ordered.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108847373711134
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
brb - Shorting hearing aid stocks.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108832358648009
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
God I love those iPhone colors.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108829629884223
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
New iPhone, I am sold.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108827194400697
GenAI hype meets harsh reality as enterprises wrestle with business case
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Nvidia, Equinix clearly making a killing over costs, confusion, and cold feet
Enterprises are still struggling with the business case for generative AI projects more than a year after the craze started, and we may have to wait until the end of 2025 to see if they’re seen through to completion.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/equinix_ai_business_case/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump threatens to jail adversaries in escalating rhetoric ahead of pivotal debate.
https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2024/sep/08/trump-threatens-to-jail-adversaries-in-escalating/
Freed from Russian jail, American journalist is focused on colleagues still imprisoned
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Being able to open a door whenever she wants is one of the many freedoms Alsu Kurmasheva is enjoying after months of wrongful detention in Russia.
“I’m enjoying freedom. I’m loving every minute of it,” the American journalist told VOA, just a few weeks after she was freed as part of a historic prisoner swap between the United States and Russia.
An editor with VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, Kurmasheva was back in Washington late last month to accept an award from the National Press Club. The visit was the start of what she described as her “thank you tour.”
A dual U.S.-Russian national, Kurmasheva traveled to Russia in May 2023 to visit her ailing mother in the Tatarstan city of Kazan. But authorities blocked her from leaving and later jailed her for more than nine months on bogus charges.
“What happened to me was so wrong, and it shouldn’t happen to any innocent person. It shouldn’t happen to any journalist,” Kurmasheva said. “I was jailed for 288 days, and every minute of it is suffering. It’s going through humiliation. And inmates in Russia and Belarus, they don’t have any rights.”
In prison, daily life was monotonous for Kurmasheva. “It was endless,” she said, adding that she forced herself to remain optimistic.
“I couldn’t write in my letters to my mom or to my husband or family or friends that I was falling apart, that I was collapsing, because I knew they were trying so hard to get me out,” she said.
Letters that she received from supporters from all over the world helped, said Kurmasheva, holding up some of the postcards she received from supporters in New York and Oregon.
“When my spirit was really low, I just opened my cards and letters, and I kept reading them,” she said.
At one point during her detention, Kurmasheva shared a cell with nine other women. There was more social interaction, she said, but that didn’t make the situation any easier.
“The doors were still locked, and every woman was there with her own bad luck and uncertain future,” she said.
When it was time for Kurmasheva’s release, her captors obscured that she was being freed, telling the journalist she was heading to a destination other than Moscow.
It wasn’t until she was hugging her husband and daughters at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington that reality set in. “Only then I felt it was real,” Kurmasheva said. “That was the moment I was dreaming of for months and months.”
Before returning home to Prague, Kurmasheva went to a military base in Texas, where she received care from doctors and psychologists.
The recovery process after wrongful detention varies greatly from person to person, according to Katherine Porterfield, a consulting psychologist at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma in New York.
“The experience of incarceration is one of loss of liberty, loss of agency, loss of freedom of movement, as well as lots of other disconnections,” Porterfield told VOA, speaking generally about how journalists and others are helped after a wrongful detention.
“It’s basically moving a person from powerlessness to a sense of agency again,” Porterfield said.
Throughout Kurmasheva’s imprisonment, press freedom groups criticized the State Department for not declaring her wrongfully detained. The designation — which The Wall Street Journal’s Gershkovich received within two weeks of his arrest — opens up extra resources and support for families and commits the U.S. government to secure their release.
The State Department in August said it had declared Kurmasheva wrongfully detained shortly before the prisoner swap took place.
“If any journalist is detained anywhere in the world doing their job, they should immediately be designated as wrongfully detained,” Kurmasheva said.
Kurmasheva’s own freedom feels bittersweet, she admits. At the top of her mind are her three RFE/RL colleagues who are still unjustly jailed.
Andrey Kuznechyk and Ihar Losik are jailed in Belarus, and Vladyslav Yesypenko is jailed in Russian-occupied Crimea. RFE/RL has condemned all three cases as politically motivated.
Kurmasheva isn’t sure whether she wants to stick with journalism or try something new, she said, but she does know that she wants to help free her jailed colleagues and other political prisoners.
“I feel the pain that their families are going through,” she said. “I feel the pain of those journalists.”
With Kurmasheva’s own family, she takes every opportunity to thank her daughters, as well as her husband, for fighting so hard to secure her release.
“They were the leaders of my advocacy group. It all started at home,” she said.
Noting how her daughters have matured significantly in the time Kurmasheva was in jail, she says she is relishing her newly reclaimed freedom and figuring out what comes next.
“I want to enjoy my life from now on,” she said.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I’ll buy whatever pro phone they announced today, but really wished pro users were not penalized with the uninspiring colors.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113108613385209490
Avis alerts nearly 300k car renters that crooks stole their info
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Insider wrongdoing’ to blame for the breach
Avis Rent A Car System has alerted 299,006 customers across multiple US states that their personal information was stolen in an August data breach.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/avis_data_breach_car_rental/
AppSumo: this week’s sponsor
date: 2024-09-09, from: OS News
AppSumo is a marketplace where software developers and other entrepreneurs can launch their products, giving special offers to early adopters. Many AppSumo deals offer lifetime licenses, so you can throw in your support for an up-and-coming product and be rewarded with a deal-for-life that will save you up to 95% compared to paying monthly. If you’re a developer, AppSumo is a great way to get attention for your launch, and quickly find a cohort of savvy paying customers. AppSumo deals are all limited-time offers, but this week they’re doing their “Last Call” event, where crowd favorite deals are brought back for a limited time (but only for members paying for the Plus tier).
https://www.osnews.com/story/140709/appsumo-this-weeks-sponsor/
North Korea Explained: What Americans Need to Know
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: RAND blog
The Korean Peninsula will demand a nuanced strategy from the incoming U.S. administration. Two RAND experts discuss foreign policy challenges, denuclearization, and bolstering the U.S.–South Korea alliance, as well as cybersecurity threats, economic sanctions, and human rights abuses in the region.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/09/north-korea-explained-what-americans-need-to-know.html
1.7M potentially pwned after payment services provider takes a year to notice break-in
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Criminals with plenty of time on their hands may now have credit card details
Around 1.7 million people will receive a letter from Florida-based Slim CD, if they haven’t already, after the company detected an intrusion dating back nearly a year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/slim_cd_breach/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Archie Bunker on Democrats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=7fqCS7Y_kME
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
New Harris commercial about Trump's fitness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6oQXN2WNtU&t=60s
Black creatives band together to navigate fashion industry barriers
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
A lack of opportunities has resulted in underrepresentation of Black designers, stylists and other creatives in the fashion industry. It’s also created a new wave of Black entrepreneurs who are passing on lessons of the business. Tina Trinh reports. (Camera and Produced by: Tina Trinh)
Trump Touts Commitment to Child Care But as President He Worked to Slash It
date: 2024-09-09, from: Capital and Main
The former chief executive proposed deep cuts to child care and aid for low-income families while Project 2025 calls for the elimination of Head Start.
The post Trump Touts Commitment to Child Care But as President He Worked to Slash It appeared first on .
The dome-shaped Brandburg Massif near the Atlantic coast of central Namibia
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
The dome-shaped Brandburg Massif, near the Atlantic coast of central Namibia, containing Brandberg Mountain, the African nation’s highest peak and ancient rock paintings going back at least 2,000 years, is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 261 miles above. Image Credit: NASA
MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo is a 2.2 pound Lunar Lake laptop with a 13.3 inch, 2.8K OLED display
date: 2024-09-09, from: Liliputing
The new MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo (A2VMG) is a thin and light laptop with a big battery, a high quality display, and support for up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 288V processor. Unveiled during the IFA show in Berlin earlier this month, the 2.2 pound notebook is now available for pre-order for $1400. It’s […]
The post MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo is a 2.2 pound Lunar Lake laptop with a 13.3 inch, 2.8K OLED display appeared first on Liliputing.
Public Affairs Manager Gary Jordan
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
“It’s 2 a.m. in the morning on a Sunday. You have your headset in your hand. You’re about to walk into Mission Control. And you understand — in the darkness, the crickets chirping, the lights shining on the building — you understand where you’re going and what you’re a part of. “This is the building […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/public-affairs-manager-gary-jordan/
The Roman Siege of Masada May Have Lasted Weeks, Not Years
date: 2024-09-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
New research suggests that the Romans defeated the Jewish rebels at Masada much more quickly than scholars previously assumed
BlueSCSI v2 (again!)
date: 2024-09-09, from: Tilde.news
Cluster II spacecraft reenters and burns up with a nod to its controllers
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Salsa’s final act: Reminding us it was the humans all along
The European Space Agency (ESA) has bid farewell to the Cluster II spacecraft with a final set of commands to show that engineers are indeed human.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/esa_cluster_salsa_farewell/
Onyx BOOX T10C is a slightly cheaper 10.3 inch E Ink color tablet
date: 2024-09-09, from: Liliputing
The Onxy BOOX T10C is an tablet with a 10.3 inch E Ink Kaleido 3 color display, support for pressure-sensitive pen input, and an Android 12-based operating system. In other words, it’s a lot like the Onyx BOOX Tab Ultra C and BOOX Tab Ultra C Pro tablets that launched late last year. But the new model […]
The post Onyx BOOX T10C is a slightly cheaper 10.3 inch E Ink color tablet appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/onyx-boox-t10c-is-a-slightly-cheaper-10-3-inch-e-ink-color-tablet/
Celebrate International Observe the Moon Night at NASA Goddard
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
The public is invited to celebrate International Observe the Moon Night on Saturday, Sept. 14, from 6 to 9 p.m. EDT at NASA Goddard’s Visitor Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. International Observe the Moon Night is a time to come together with fellow Moon enthusiasts and curious people around the world. The public is invited to […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/celebrate-international-observe-the-moon-night-at-nasa-goddard-3/
Like a Diamond in the Sky: How to Spot NASA’s Solar Sail Demo in Orbit
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
Now that its reflective sail has deployed fully open in orbit, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System can be seen in the night sky from many locations across the world! Stargazers can join NASA’s #SpotTheSail campaign by using the NASA app on mobile platforms to find out when the spacecraft will be visible at their location. The app, […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/like-a-diamond-in-the-sky-how-to-spot-nasas-solar-sail-demo-in-orbit/
Where Tiafoe learned how to play tennis
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
For the first time in over 20 years, there were two American semifinalists in both men’s and women’s tournaments at the U.S. Open. One of them was Frances Tiafoe, an alumnus of the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Maryland. VOA Russian visited the center, where Tiafoe still trains between tennis tournaments. Rafael Saakov and Karina Bafradzhian have the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Sergii Dogotar.
https://www.voanews.com/a/where-tiafoe-learned-how-to-play-tennis-/7776992.html
Find Me on the Moon: NASA Lunar Navigation Challenge
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Artemis campaign is a series of lunar missions to further explore the lunar landscape to prepare for future missions to Mars. The Artemis missions will send humans to land on the moon and explore the lunar south pole. This will be NASA’s first human lunar landing since the Apollo missions over 50 years ago. […]
Why farmers are feeling so down
date: 2024-09-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Purdue’s Farmer Sentiment Index hit an 8-year low in August, and half of agricultural economists surveyed by the University of Missouri last month say the farm economy is in a recession. Input and borrowing costs are still high, while prices for commodities have been trending down. We’ll unpack, but first will mull how likely a government shutdown is before the election. And, will it be another rough week for markets?
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/why-farmers-are-feeling-so-down
Rapidus, rapidly running through funds, needs $700M for 2nm chip plant
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Japanese government has also earmarked $6.4B for the project
Japanese chip upstart Rapidus has only worked on its 2nm wafer fab in Hokkaido for a year, yet the company is reportedly already seeking ¥100 billion ($699 million) in additional funding for the project.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/rapidus_government_funding/
Mourners attend funeral for American activist witness says was shot dead by Israeli troops
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
NABLUS, West Bank — The Western-backed Palestinian Authority held a funeral procession Monday for a U.S.-Turkish dual national activist who a witness says was shot and killed by Israeli forces while demonstrating against settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Dozens of mourners — including several leading PA officials — attended the procession. Security forces carried the body of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi which was draped in a Palestinian flag while a traditional black-and-white checkered scarf covered her face. The 26-year-old’s body was then placed into the back of a Palestinian ambulance.
Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Oncu Keceli said Turkey was working on repatriating Eygi’s remains for burial in the Aegean coastal town of Didim as per her family’s wishes, but “because the land crossing from the Palestinian territories to Jordan was closed as of Sunday, the ministry was trying to have the body flown directly to Turkey.”
U.S. officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli peace activist who participated in Friday’s protest, said Israeli forces shot her on Friday in the city of Nablus while posing no threat, adding that the killing happened during a period of calm after clashes between soldiers and Palestinian protesters. Pollak said he then saw two Israeli soldiers mount the roof of a nearby home, train a gun in the group’s direction and fired, with one of the bullets striking Eygi in the head.
The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area of the protest.
The West Bank has seen a surge of violence since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, with increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians.
‘Celebrity Number Six’ Internet Mystery Is Solved
date: 2024-09-09, from: 404 Media Group
Spanish model Leticia Sardá is Celebrity Number Six.
https://www.404media.co/celebrity-number-six-internet-mystery-leticia-sarda-is-solved/
NASA’s Hubble, Chandra Find Supermassive Black Hole Duo
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
Like two Sumo wrestlers squaring off, the closest confirmed pair of supermassive black holes have been observed in tight proximity. These are located approximately 300 light-years apart and were detected using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. These black holes, buried deep within a pair of colliding galaxies, are fueled by infalling […]
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-chandra-find-supermassive-black-hole-duo/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
An MMT ray of light blesses the headlines for our European friends:
Via Stephanie Kelton and Warren Mosler:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113107931028777436
NASA Science for Your Classroom: Opportunities for Educators
date: 2024-09-09, from: NASA breaking news
The summer season for educators can be a time of rest and rejuvenation, but it can also offer opportunities for professional learning with new colleagues beyond your own school. The following programs from NASA’s Science Activation Program offer end-of-summer/early-fall curricular resources and connections with other educators that can help you bring new science ideas and […]
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Dark predicted our collective mood on the Apple launch
day:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113107895950563989
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113107905939268229
Kremlin-linked COLDRIVER crooks take pro-democracy NGOs for phishy ride
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The latest of many attempts to stifle perceived threats to Putin’s regime
A pro-democracy NGO in Russia says it looks like the Kremlin-linked COLDRIVER group was behind last month’s hack-and-leak job that saw files and inboxes dumped online.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/russia_coldriver_ngo_phishing/
Google faces new antitrust trial after ruling declaring search engine a monopoly
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends in court papers.
Google says the government’s case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock to reach audiences.
In recent years, Google Networks, the division of the Mountain View, California-based tech giant that includes such services as AdSense and Google Ad Manager that are at the heart of the case, actually have seen declining revenue, from $31.7 billion in 2021 to $31.3 billion in 2023, according to the company’s annual reports.
The trial over the alleged ad tech monopoly begins Monday in Alexandria, Virginia. It initially was going to be a jury trial, but Google maneuvered to force a bench trial, writing a check to the federal government for more than $2 million to moot the only claim brought by the government that required a jury.
The case will now be decided by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton and is best known for high-profile terrorism trials including Sept. 11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui. Brinkema, though, also has experience with highly technical civil trials, working in a courthouse that sees an outsize number of patent infringement cases.
The Virginia case comes on the heels of a major defeat for Google over its search engine. which generates the majority of the company’s $307 billion in annual revenue. A judge in the District of Columbia declared the search engine a monopoly, maintained in part by tens of billions of dollars Google pays each year to companies like Apple to lock in Google as the default search engine presented to consumers when they buy iPhones and other gadgets.
In that case, the judge has not yet imposed any remedies. The government hasn’t offered its proposed sanctions, though there could be close scrutiny over whether Google should be allowed to continue to make exclusivity deals that ensure its search engine is consumers’ default option.
Peter Cohan, a professor of management practice at Babson College, said the Virginia case could potentially be more harmful to Google because the obvious remedy would be requiring it to sell off parts of its ad tech business that generate billions of dollars in annual revenue.
“Divestitures are definitely a possible remedy for this second case,” Cohan said “It could be potentially more significant than initially meets the eye.”
In the Virginia trial, the government’s witnesses are expected to include executives from newspaper publishers including The New York Times Co. and Gannett, and online news sites that the government contends have faced particular harm from Google’s practices.
“Google extracted extraordinary fees at the expense of the website publishers who make the open internet vibrant and valuable,” government lawyers wrote in court papers. “As publishers generate less money from selling their advertising inventory, publishers are pushed to put more ads on their websites, to put more content behind costly paywalls, or to cease business altogether.”
Google disputes that it charges excessive fees compared to its competitors. The company also asserts the integration of its technology on the buy side, sell side and in the middle assures ads and web pages load quickly and enhance security. And it says customers have options to work with outside ad exchanges.
Google says the government’s case is improperly focused on display ads and banner ads that load on web pages accessed through a desktop computer and fails to take into account consumers’ migration to mobile apps and the boom in ads placed on social media sites over the last 15 years.
The government’s case “focuses on a limited type of advertising viewed on a narrow subset of websites when user attention migrated elsewhere years ago,” Google’s lawyers write in a pretrial filing. “The last year users spent more time accessing websites on the ‘open web,’ rather than on social media, videos, or apps, was 2012.”
The trial, which is expected to last several weeks, is taking place in a courthouse that rigidly adheres to traditional practices, including a resistance to technology in the courtroom. Cellphones are banned from the courthouse, to the chagrin of a tech press corps accustomed at the District of Columbia trial to tweeting out live updates as they happen.
Even the lawyers, and there are many on both sides, are limited in their technology. At a pretrial hearing Wednesday, Google’s lawyers made a plea to be allowed more than the two computers each side is permitted to have in the courtroom during trial. Brinkema rejected it.
“This is an old-fashioned courtroom,” she said.
California’s Explosive Line Fire Forces Thousands to Evacuate
date: 2024-09-09, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Typhoon Yagi was downgraded to a tropical depression after tearing through northern Vietnam • Hollywood Bowl had to cancel a show on Sunday because excessive heat knocked out power to the venue • Forecasters are watching storm Francine in the Atlantic Basin that is likely to strengthen into a hurricane.
THE TOP FIVE
- California’s Line Fire doubles in size during heat wave
The fast-moving Line Fire in California’s San Bernardino County has burned more than 20,500 acres and prompted evacuation orders for thousands of people. The blaze started last week, but doubled in size between Saturday and Sunday as a heat wave on the West Coast sent temperatures soaring. The neighboring town of Riverside recorded a new daily record of 110 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. Smoke from the fire is forming clouds and storm systems that are causing lightning strikes, which can spark even more fires. The blaze remains zero percent contained, with more than 36,000 structures in its path.
In Nevada, the Davis Fire, just south of Reno, scorched 6,500 acres and forced some 20,000 people to evacuate. Schools in the area are closed. Excessive heat warnings will remain in effect across southern California and the Southwest today.
- Harris and Trump prepare for 1st presidential debate
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are gearing up to face off in their first 2024 presidential debate tomorrow. Trump is reportedly already planning to call the ABC News event “rigged,” and has repeatedly attacked the network in recent days. He might also use the debate to draw attention to Harris’ previous call for a ban on fracking. In 2020, Harris was opposed to fracking, but has since changed her position. “We can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking,” Harris told CNN’s Dana Bash recently. But like President Biden during his tenure, Harris has to balance the interests of several important demographics on climate and energy issues. “The Harris campaign is trying to avoid being pulled between environmentalists and the Pennsylvania oil and gas sector,” Kevin Book, a managing director at consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners, told E&E News.
- Massachusetts and Rhode Island select 3 new wind power projects
Massachusetts and Rhode Island on Friday selected 2,878 megawatts of wind power capacity from three projects – SouthCoast Wind (owned by Ocean Winds), New England Wind 1 (developed by Avangrid Inc.), and Vineyard Wind 2 (from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ Vineyard Offshore). The selections were the result of a multi-state procurement collaboration, the first in the U.S., and amount to the largest offshore wind initiative New England has seen so far. Massachusetts secured most of the capacity, with 2,678 MW. Once online, this wind power will meet nearly 20% of the state’s electricity demand and result in emissions reductions equivalent to removing 1 million gas-powered cars from the roads. “The economic ripple effects of these projects will be massive,” wrote Michelle Lewis at Electrek. “New England’s ports in New Bedford, New London, Salem, and Providence are now booked with offshore wind tenants through 2032. These hubs will serve as launching points for wind turbines and other infrastructure that will transform the region’s energy landscape.”
- CEOs are thinking less about sustainability these days
CEOs planning their business strategies are prioritizing sustainability less now than they have over the last few years, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a new report out from Bain & Co. Executives are thinking more about issues like inflation, artificial intelligence, and geopolitical uncertainty, even as 60% of consumers (and especially Gen-Z consumers) say their own levels of climate concern have grown due to extreme weather events. A recent WSJ Pro analysis found that mentions of sustainability are high in company financial reports, but low in earnings calls and marketing materials. Meanwhile, just over a third of businesses are falling short of their Scope 1 and 2 emissions targets, and more than half are missing their Scope 3 targets.
- Study: Sharks abandoning coral reefs as oceans warm
A new study suggests sharks are abandoning coral reefs due to warming ocean waters caused by climate change. Grey reef sharks tend to stay close to shallow reef habitats in the Indo-Pacific, but the research team, led by marine scientists at Lancaster University, found that warmer waters are forcing the sharks to leave for extended periods of time. Their absence could further disrupt reef ecosystems. “Faced with a trade-off, sharks must decide whether to leave the relative safety of the reef and expend greater energy to remain cool or stay on a reef in suboptimal conditions but conserve energy,” said David Jacoby, a lecturer in zoology at Lancaster University and one of the authors on the study. “We think many are choosing to move into offshore, deeper and cooler waters, which is concerning.”
THE KICKER
Zion National Park in Southern Utah has replaced its propane shuttle buses with 30 all-electric buses. The National Park Service is working on similar zero-emission fleets at other parks including Grand Canyon, Acadia, Yosemite, Bryce Canyon, and Harpers Ferry.
NPS/Colton
Johnston
https://heatmap.news/climate/california-line-fire-heat-wave
Escape room monitoring system | #MagPiMonday
date: 2024-09-09, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
This Raspberry Pi-enabled creation allows for creepy check-ins from your escape room captor.
The post Escape room monitoring system | #MagPiMonday appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/escape-room-monitoring-system-magpimonday/
Authorities vow relentless search as manhunt for interstate shooter enters third day in Kentucky
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
LONDON, Ky. — As a grueling manhunt stretched into a third day Monday for a suspect in an interstate shooting that struck 12 vehicles and wounded five people, authorities vowed to keep up a relentless search as the stress level remained high for a rural area where some schools canceled classes.
Authorities have been searching a rugged, hilly area of southeastern Kentucky since Saturday evening, when a gunman began shooting at drivers on Interstate 75 near London, a small city of about 8,000 people located about 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Lexington.
The search was temporarily suspended once darkness fell Sunday night, but was set to resume Monday morning.
“We’re not going to quit until we do lay hands on him,” Laurel County Sheriff John Root said Sunday night.
Joseph A. Couch, 32, was named first as a person of interest and later as a suspect in the shooting after authorities said they recovered his SUV on a service road near the crime scene. They later found a semi-automatic weapon nearby that they believe was used in the shooting, said Deputy Gilbert Acciardo, a spokesperson for the local sheriff’s office.
On Sunday, as another day of searching was ending without any sign of the suspect, Acciardo acknowledged the frustration that law enforcement officers and people who live near the search area are feeling.
“As this continues, it becomes more stressful for the community, it becomes more stressful for the officers that are there because we’re looking … and we’re trying to find him, and we haven’t found him,” he said.
State police Master Trooper Scottie Pennington, a spokesman for the London state police post, said troopers are being brought in from around the state to aid the manhunt. He described the extensive search area as “walking in a jungle” with machetes needed to cut through thickets of woods.
Acciardo said it appears that the attacker planned the shooting for that location because it is very remote and the terrain is hilly, rocky and hard to navigate.
With the gunman still at large, numerous area school districts canceled classes for Monday. Pennington urged area residents to lock doors, keep porch lights on and monitor security cameras. The search was focused on a remote area about eight miles north of London.
Authorities sought to reassure residents that they believe the suspect will be found.
“We’re doing everything that we can do,” Root said, adding, ”Just be confident.”
Authorities said Couch purchased the weapon and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition Saturday morning in London. Couch has a military background, having served in the National Guard for at least four years, said Capt. Richard Dalrymple of the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities initially said nine vehicles were struck by gunfire, but later increased that number to 12, saying some people did not realize their cars had been hit by bullets until they arrived home. They said the gunman fired a total of 20 to 30 rounds.
Couch most recently lived in Woodbine, a small community about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of the shooting scene. Acciardo said authorities found his abandoned vehicle Saturday and then an AR-15 rifle on Sunday in a wooded area near a highway where “he could have shot down upon the interstate.” A phone believed to be Couch’s was also found by law enforcement, but the battery had been taken out.
Some residents of Laurel County were on edge as authorities searched with a drone, helicopter and on foot in a remote and sparsely populated wooded area near the busy interstate.
Cody Shepherd, sipping a bloody mary outdoors while waiting to watch a football game at the Pour Boyz Sports Lounge in London on Sunday, said locals were abuzz with speculation. A resident of London, he was at a party Saturday at a friend’s house about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of where the shooting occurred.
“We were listening to the police scanners all night,” he said, adding they heard sirens and saw a helicopter overhead.
On Sunday, several local churches canceled services. But Rodney Goodlett, pastor of Faith Assembly of God in London, was helping direct traffic as parishioners gathered for a morning service. He expected the search would hold down attendance.
“This is tragic, obviously, that somebody would randomly do violent acts,” he said. “You hear media things taking place all around our country, but then when it hits home, it’s a little bit of a wake-up call.”
Acciardo said authorities are being inundated with tips from the public and are following up on each one in case it could help them find the shooter. When the search has been suspended at night, specially trained officers have been deployed in strategic locations in the woods to prevent the gunman from slipping out of the area.
“We’ve got to get him,” Acciardo said.
Microsoft exec warns of business functions being sacrificed on the altar of AI
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Too many IT modernization projects? Not enough budget? Something will have to give
Arun Ulag, Microsoft corporate vice president for Azure Data, reckons that, in a world of constrained or finite IT budgets, something will have to give if new projects are to thrive.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/microsoft_arun_ulag_ai/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-09, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Me this morning:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113107672540154666
Hiding Starlink on a US Navy Ship
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/09/09/hiding-starlink-on-a-us-navy-ship/
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin waves bye bye to October 13 ESCAPADE
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Mars adventure postponed to 2025. Perhaps
NASA has decided the two ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft planned to be launched on the maiden flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will not be fueled and will instead take a ride to Mars next year. Maybe.…
Boeing reaches a deal
date: 2024-09-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report
After a rough year, Boeing was facing a possible strike to add to its list of problems. But no longer. The aerospace company has reached a tentative deal with its largest labor union, with the hopes of averting a strike. We’ll hear more. Plus, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are set to square off in their first debate tomorrow evening. We’ll do some math on their fiscal proposals.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/boeing-reaches-a-deal
A 9/11 anniversary tradition is handed down to a new generation
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
New York — A poignant phrase echoes when 9/11 victims’ relatives gather each year to remember the loved ones they lost in the terror attacks.
“I never got to meet you.”
It is the sound of generational change at ground zero, where relatives read out victims’ names on every anniversary of the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people were killed when al-Qaida hijackers crashed four jetliners into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in southwest Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.
Some names are read out by children or young adults who were born after the strikes. Last year’s observance featured 28 such young people among more than 140 readers. Young people are expected again at this year’s ceremony Wednesday.
Some are the children of victims whose partners were pregnant. More of the young readers are victims’ nieces, nephews or grandchildren. They have inherited stories, photos, and a sense of solemn responsibility.
Being a “9/11 family” reverberates through generations, and commemorating and understanding the Sept. 11 attacks one day will be up to a world with no first-hand memory of them.
“It’s like you’re passing the torch on,” says Allan Aldycki, 13.
He read the names of his grandfather and several other people the last two years, and plans to do so on Wednesday. Aldycki keeps mementoes in his room from his grandfather Allan Tarasiewicz, a firefighter.
The teen told the audience last year that he’s heard so much about his grandfather that it feels like he knew him, “but still, I wish I had a chance to really know you,” he added.
Allan volunteered to be a reader because it makes him feel closer to his grandfather, and he hopes to have children who’ll participate.
“It’s an honor to be able to teach them because you can let them know their heritage and what to never forget,” he said by phone from central New York. He said he already finds himself teaching peers who know little or nothing about 9/11.
When it comes time for the ceremony, he looks up information about the lives of each person whose name he’s assigned to read.
“He reflects on everything and understands the importance of what it means to somebody,” his mother, Melissa Tarasiewicz, said.
Reciting the names of the dead is a tradition that extends beyond ground zero. War memorials honor fallen military members by speaking their names aloud. Some Jewish organizations host readings of Holocaust victims’ names on the international day of remembrance, Yom Hashoah.
The names of the 168 people killed in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City are read annually at the memorial there.
On Sept. 11 anniversaries, the Pentagon’s ceremony includes military members or officials reading the names of the 184 people killed there. The Flight 93 National Memorial has victims’ relatives and friends read the list of the 40 passengers and crew members whose lives ended at the rural site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The hourslong observance at the 9/11 Memorial in New York is almost exclusively dedicated to the names of the 2,977 victims at all three sites, plus the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. All are read by relatives who volunteer and are chosen by lottery.
Each is given a subset of names to render aloud. Readers also generally speak briefly about their own lost kin, frequently in touching detail.
“I think often about how, if you were still here, you would be one of my best friends, looking at colleges with me, getting me out of trouble with Mom and Dad, hanging out at the Jersey Shore,” Capri Yarosz said last year of her slain uncle, New York firefighter Christopher Michael Mozzillo.
Now 17, she grew up with a homemade baby book about him and a family that still mentions him in everyday conversation.
“Chris would have loved that” is a phrase often heard around the house.
She has read twice at the trade center ceremony.
“It means a lot to me that I can kind of keep alive my uncle’s name and just keep reading everybody else’s name, so that more of the upcoming generations will know,” she said by phone from her family’s home in central New Jersey. “I feel good that I can pass down the importance of what happened.”
Her two younger sisters also have read names, and one is preparing to do so again Wednesday. Their mother, Pamela Yarosz, has never been able to steel herself to sign up.
“I don’t have that strength. It’s too hard for me,” says Pamela Yarosz, who is Mozzillo’s sister. “They’re braver.”
By now, many of the children of 9/11 victims — such as Melissa Tarasiewicz, who was just out of high school when her father died — have long since grown up. But about 100 were born after the attacks killed one of their parents, and are now young adults.
“Though we never met, I am honored to carry your name and legacy with me. I thank you for giving me this life and family,” Manuel DaMota Jr. said of his father, a woodworker and project manager, during last year’s ceremony.
One young reader after another at the event commemorated aunts, uncles, great-uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers whom the children have missed throughout their lives.
“My whole life, my dad has said I reminded him of you.”
“I wish you got to take me fishing.”
“I wish I had more of you than just a picture on a frame.”
“Even though I never got to meet you, I will never forget you.”
Afghan children are paying the price of an economic crisis
date: 2024-09-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Afghanistan is facing a food crisis. Some 3.2 million children under the age of 5 are malnourished, and health services do not have the resources to cope. Plus, South Korea is removing pictures of soldiers from the armed forces communications network amid concerns over sexually explicit deepfake manipulation. Then, some runners are willing to pay others to notch up an impressive time on the fitness app, Strava.
Ubuntu Noble updates on hold while 20th anniversary teaser bears retro-styled gifts
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
22.04 to 24.04 upgrade temporarily withdrawn, but will be back
Ubuntu 24.04.1 is still available, but for now you can’t update to it from Jammy Jellyfish until a bug is sorted. To compensate, there are some fun goodies coming in 24.10.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/ubuntu_noble_updates_on_hold/
Ubuntu Noble updates on hold while 20th anniversary teaser bears retro-styled gifts
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: Liam Proven’s articles at the Register
22.04 to 24.04 upgrade temporarily withdrawn, but will be back
<p>Ubuntu 24.04.1 is still available, but for now you can't update to it from Jammy Jellyfish until a bug is sorted. To compensate, there are some fun goodies coming in 24.10.</p> Openreach pitches its tent as Ofcom preps review of broadband market rules
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Nation’s dominant broadband plumber keen to fend off any efforts to restrict it
Openreach wants Reg readers to know that the UK’s fixed telecoms market is coming along just fine, and is imploring regulators to not spoil it by, for example, listening to what competitors say.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/openreach_review_ofcom_prep/
Linux’s bedtime routine
date: 2024-09-09, from: OS News
How does Linux move from an awake machine to a hibernating one? How does it then manage to restore all state? These questions led me to read way too much C in trying to figure out how this particular hardware/software boundary is navigated. ↫ Jacob Adams So this is a lot deeper of a dive than I expected, and it blows my mind just how complex sleep, hibernating, and waking a computer really is. Instinctively you know this, but seeing it spelled out like this really drives that point home – and this only covers going into hibernation. It also highlights how hard it must be for the developers involved to keep this working at all, especially on the wide variety of machines and hardware combinations Linux runs on. It wasn’t too log ago that pretty much the only platform where sleeping and waking worked reliably was Mac OS X with its controlled, small hardware selection, so it’s kind of remarkable this works at all on Linux now. I haven’t had to worry about sleeping and waking with Linux for quite a while now, and it’s one of those things that “just works” so I never have to think about it. This definitely wasn’t always the case, though, and on both Linux and Windows I would just turn the whole feature off since it rarely worked reliably, especially on desktops. I’m sure it still breaks for people, but for me, it’s been rock solid, and reading through the linked article, I’m even more amazed about this than I already was.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140700/linuxs-bedtime-routine/
KDE to focus on improving developer experience, input methods
date: 2024-09-09, from: OS News
The KDE project is currently having its yearly conference – Akademy – and at the conference, the project announced its goals for the coming years. The KDE community has charted its course for the coming years, focusing on three interconnected paths that converge on a single point: community. These paths aim to improve user experience, support developers, and foster community growth. ↫ Farid Abdelnour on the KDE Blogs First, the project intends to make it easier for developers to build KDE applications. They want to do this in various ways, but most notably they want to improve the developer experience for people writing KDE applications in languages other than C++, such as Rust or Python. This is a very welcome goal, as I feel there’s definitely a bit of a lack of new KDE applications, and as any other open source project, KDE can always use more developers. Second, KDE is going to focus on improving the input experience, as in the various ways you interact with your computer. Accessibility, and the more complex input methods people with accessibility needs require, are also part of this goal, but it also covers simpler things like mice with tons of buttons, drawing tablets, 2-in-1 laptops, and so on. I’m assuming this also includes controlling the various RGB stuff found in every keyboard and mouse these days, as this is something KDE has already been making inroads into. The third and final goal is one strongly related to the first goal, as it involves community outreach to attract new contributors. This covers not just individual contributors, but also support from institutions, organisations, and I’m guessing companies, too. With Valve opting for KDE for its Steam Deck, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some more involvement from that direction, too, which meshes well with the input goal mentioned above. If you all keep becoming Patreons and donating to us, I might be able to actually go to Akademy next year and be a fly on the wall for some more in-depth reporting from such a conference. I can’t guarantee anything – especially since I have two small children, live far away from everything here in the Arctic, and have serious anxiety problems to take into account, but it’s definitely a goal for me for next year.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140697/kde-to-focus-on-improving-developer-experience-input-methods/
CrowdStrike hopes legal threats will fade as time passes since it broke the world
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
CFO says company hasn’t been sued by any customers – yet
CrowdStrike has yet to face a lawsuit over July’s global IT meltdown, according to CFO Burt Podbere.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/crowdstrike_legal_threats/
Upgrading Linux with Rust looks like a new challenge. It’s one of our oldest
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
From the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever built. Not even a kernel
Opinion The Rusting of Linux proceeds apace. Of course there are problems, some technical, some very human. Last week saw one of the leading Rusties sign off from the project, quoting “non-technical” barriers to progress. That’ll be people, then.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/opinion_column_rust_linux/
Python script saw students booted off the mainframe for sending one insult too many
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Who, Me? The Register does not particularly like Mondays, but rather than shoot the whole day down we prefer to brighten it with a fresh instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers share tales of times the silicon chips inside their heads got switched to overload.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/who_me/
MI6 and CIA using generative AI to combat tech-driven threat actors
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Spook bosses use first-ever joint article to bemoan how Russia and China use tech to mess with the world
CIA director Bill Burns and UK Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) chief Richard Moore have for the first time penned a joint opinion piece in which the two spookmasters reveal their agencies have adopted generative AI.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/mi6_cia_genai/
Scientists find a common food dye can make a live mouse’s skin transparent
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Do try this one at home, using a chicken breast and a recipe
Scientists have discovered a common food colorant has a remarkable property - making the skin of live mice transparent, so the organs beneath become visible.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/food_dye_skin_transparent/
US Congress takes up a series of bills targeting China, from drones to drugs
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — How to curb and counter China’s influence and power — through its biotech companies, drones and electric vehicles — will dominate the U.S. House’s first week back from summer break, with lawmakers taking up a series of measures targeting Beijing.
Washington views Beijing as its biggest geopolitical rival, and the legislation is touted as ensuring the U.S. prevails in the competition. Many of the bills scheduled for a vote this week appear to have both Republican and Democratic support, reflecting strong consensus that congressional actions are needed to counter China.
The legislation “will take meaningful steps to counter the military, economic and ideological threat of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and a Michigan Republican. “There’s a bipartisan goal to win this competition.”
Advocacy groups worry about the impact, warning against rhetoric that hurts Asian Americans and could create “an atmosphere of guilt by association or fuel divisiveness,” said Christine Chen, executive director of Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington called the legislation “new McCarthyism” that hypes the tensions in an election year. If passed, the bills “will cause serious interference to China-U.S. relations and mutually beneficial cooperation, and will inevitably damage the U.S.’s own interests, image and credibility,” spokesman Liu Pengyu said in a statement.
Among the bills are efforts to reduce U.S. reliance on Chinese biotech companies, ban Chinese EVs and drones, restrict Chinese nationals from buying farmland, toughen export restrictions and revive a program to root out spying on U.S. intellectual property.
If approved, the measures would still need to clear the Senate. Here’s a look at the key legislation:
Targeting Beijing-linked biotech
A bill seeks to ban a group of five biotechnology companies with Chinese ties from working with anyone that receives federal money.
The companies include those that work to help doctors detect genetic causes for cancer or do research and manufacturing for American drugmakers, considered a key step in developing new medications.
America’s biotech companies have said the bill would disrupt their partnerships with Chinese contractors, resulting in delays in clinical trials for new drugs and higher costs.
Supporters say the legislation is necessary to protect U.S. health care data and reduce the country’s reliance on China for its medical supply chain.
“American patients cannot be in a position where we rely on China for genomic testing or basic medical supplies,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican who sponsored the bill. He called it “the first step” in protecting Americans’ genetic data.
BGI, one of the Chinese companies named in the bill, called it “a false flag targeting companies under the premise of national security.” The company, which offers genetic sequencing for research purposes in the U.S., said it follows the law and has no access to Americans’ personal data.
Banning Chinese drones
Another bill would dub drones made by the Chinese company DJI, which dominates the global drone market, “an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security” and cut its products from U.S. communications networks over data security concerns.
The bill would protect Americans’ data and critical infrastructure, said Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who introduced it. “Congress must use every tool at our disposal to stop” China’s “monopolistic control over the drone market,” she said.
DJI argues that users have to “opt in” to share data such as flight logs, photos and videos with the company. If users don’t do so, the company said it won’t have data to share with any government when compelled. It also has rejected allegations that it is a Chinese military company and has aided the persecution of members of ethnic Muslim minorities.
Adam Bry, co-founder and CEO of major U.S. drone maker Skydio, told a congressional committee in June about losing business to China, where “the Chinese government has tried to control the drone industry, pouring resources into national champions and taking aim at competitors in the U.S. and the West, tilting the playing field in China’s favor.”
Protecting intellectual property
A challenge is likely against an attempt to revive a Trump-era program described as a way to stop Chinese efforts to steal intellectual property and spy on industry and research.
The bill would direct the Justice Department to curb spying by Beijing on U.S. intellectual property and academic institutions and go after people engaged in theft of trade secrets, hacking and economic espionage.
The Trump-era program, called the China Initiative, ended in 2022 after multiple unsuccessful prosecutions of researchers and concerns that it had prompted racial and ethnic profiling. Critics also say it chilled cooperation between the U.S. and China in science and technology meant to benefit the greater good.
“Our colleagues in the Republican Party sought to reinstate this failed program because they wanted to look like they were solving problems. But in reality, they were only stoking fear and hatred,” several Democratic lawmakers said in a statement in March, when they fought off another effort to restart the program.
Restricting farm sales
Another bill, which says it will protect U.S. farmland from foreign adversaries, has raised concerns about discrimination.
It would add the agriculture secretary to the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews the national security implications of foreign transactions. The bill also flags as “reportable” land sales involving citizens from China, North Korea, Russia and Iran.
“Food security is national security, and for too long, the federal government has allowed the Chinese Communist Party to put our security at risk by turning a blind eye to their steadily increasing purchases of American farmland,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington state, who introduced the bill.
The National Agricultural Law Center estimates 24 states ban or limit foreigners without residency and foreign businesses or governments from owning private farmland. The interest emerged after a Chinese billionaire bought more than 130,000 acres near a U.S. Air Force base in Texas and another Chinese company sought to build a corn plant near an Air Force base in North Dakota.
AI bills can blow out by 1000 percent: Gartner
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Preventing that is doable, but managing what happens when AI upsets people is hard
Organizations adopting AI need to learn how to manage the emotional and monetary costs the tech creates, while also worrying about capturing productivity benefits, according to analyst firm Gartner.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/gartner_synmposium_ai_opinion/
Presidential debates that sparked change
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
President Joe Biden’s poor performance during the debate against Donald Trump in June led to his withdrawal from the race and the elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Here’s a look at other presidential debates in history that shifted the direction of the campaign.
https://www.voanews.com/a/presidential-debates-that-sparked-change/7776588.html
Predator spyware updated with dangerous new features, also now harder to track
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Trump family X accounts hijacked to promote crypto scam; Fog ransomware spreads; Hijacked PyPI packages; and more
Infosec in brief After activating its chameleon field and going to ground following press attention earlier this year, the dangerous Predator commercial spyware kit is back – with upgrades.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/predator_spyware_trump_crypto/
Republicans fault Biden administration in new report about Afghanistan withdrawal
date: 2024-09-09, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Republicans on a U.S. House of Representatives committee issued a report Sunday criticizing the Biden administration for the chaotic August 2021 U.S. military and diplomatic withdrawal from Afghanistan after a nearly 20-year war.
The report faulted President Joe Biden for failing to “mitigate the likely consequences of the decision” to withdraw, while ignoring warnings that Taliban fighters were seizing key cities in Afghanistan faster than U.S. officials expected.
In the last days of the withdrawal, a suicide bombing attack by an Islamic State terrorist killed 13 U.S. soldiers and about 170 Afghan civilians at the Kabul airport. Many Afghans clinging to the underbellies of departing aircraft leaving Afghanistan fell to their deaths.
Former President Donald Trump initiated the withdrawal process in February 2020 by signing an agreement with the Taliban, a pact that Biden honored as he looked to end America’s longest war.
The fateful withdrawal also played a role in Biden’s political fortunes. Until that time, Americans in national surveys approved of Biden’s performance during the first seven months of his presidency.
But his approval rating dipped into negative territory after the chaotic troop withdrawal and the deaths of the 13 soldiers and has never again advanced into a favorable standing.
The report from Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee followed a three-year investigation and includes accusations that the Biden administration did not have adequate plans or security in place to safely carry out the withdrawal.
Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies.”
Previous investigations have faulted multiple U.S. administrations, including a 2023 report by the U.S. government watchdog for the U.S. in Afghanistan which cited both Trump’s and Biden’s determination to go forward with the withdrawal despite the Taliban breaking key commitments the militants made in the 2020 agreement.
Congressman Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a letter to colleagues that Republicans “cherry-picked witness testimony to exclude anything unhelpful to a predetermined, partisan narrative about the Afghanistan withdrawal.”
In a lengthy statement, the U.S. State Department said, “There are valid and important criticisms of the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan and how it concluded.” But the country’s top diplomatic agency said it “has remained focused on evolving and growing from this moment, learning important lessons and making sustainable changes to crisis operations.”
The State Department said the U.S. government successfully evacuated 120,000 Americans, Afghans, and third-country nationals from Afghanistan in the final two weeks of August 2021 and has resettled 165,000 Afghans across the U.S.
The State Department said it “stands ready to work alongside” lawmakers who have a “serious interest” in finding legislative and administrative solutions to avoid the chaos of the withdrawal from the Afghan war zone. But the State Department said it would “not stand by silently” as the agency and “its workforce are used to further partisan agendas.”
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
Huawei debuts triple-folding Mate XT smartphone
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: 550MW more DCs for India; Australia poised to use decryption powers; Indonesia creates cyber warfare unit
Asia In Brief Huawei has revealed an image of the Mate XT, the world’s first tri-folding smartphone – and that was apparently enough to spark over a million orders for the device.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/asia_tech_news_roundup/
RISC Laptops of the 90s and early 2000s
date: 2024-09-09, from: OS News
Paul Weissmann’s OpenPA, the invaluable archive on anything related to the HP’s PA-RISC architecture, devices, and operating systems, has branched off for a bit and started collecting information on RISC laptops. Technical computing in the 1990s was mostly done on RISC workstations with Unix operating systems and specialized applications. For mobile use cases, some of the popular RISC vendors built RISC Laptops for mobile Unix use in the 1990s. Often based on contemporary Unix workstations, these RISC laptops were often marketed for government and military uses such as command, technical analysis and surveillance. ↫ Paul Weissmann at OpenPA OpenPA has always had content beyond just PA-RISC (like HP’s Itanium machines), so this is not entirely surprising, and it also happens to be something that’s sorely needed – there’s remarkably little consolidated information to be found on these RISC laptops, and it’s usually scattered all over the place and difficult to find. They were expensive and rare when they were new, and they’re even rarer and often more expensive today. What we’re talking about here are laptops with PA-RISC, SPARC, (non-Apple) PowerPC, and Alpha processors, running some variant of UNIX, like HP-UX, SunOS/Solaris, AIX, and even Windows NT. A particularly interesting listing at the moment is the Hitachi 3050RX/100C, a laptop based on the Hitachi PA/50L PA-RISC processor that ran something called HI-UX/WE2, a UNIX from Hitachi I can’t find much information about. The most desirable laptop listed is the amazing Tadpole Viper, which was the most powerful SPARC laptop Tadpole ever made, and I’m pretty sure it’s the most powerful SPARC laptop, period. It was powered by a 1.2Ghz UltraSPARC IIIi processor, and was also sold as the Sun Ultra 3, in 2005. I would perform some seriously questionable acts to get my hands on one of these, but they’re most likely virtually impossible to find. Anyone who can help Weissmann find more information – feel free to do so.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140693/risc-laptops-of-the-90s-and-early-2000s/
Share your feedback about developing with Go
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: Go language blog
Help shape the future of Go by sharing your thoughts via the Go Developer Survey
https://go.dev/blog/survey2024-h2
Our Next Plumbers Summit event - September 26 & 27, 2024
date: 2024-09-09, updated: 2024-09-09, from: Bytecode Alliance News
The Bytecode Alliance is pleased to invite you to the next installment in our ongoing Plumbers Summit event series, each designed to bring our members and community contributors together to help set strategic direction and plan efforts for the coming year. Our next Summit will be September 26 and 27, 2024 at the Microsoft Visitor Center in Redmond, Washington. Seating for the in-person session is limited but the event will be live streamed online to support full remote participation.
https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/our-next-plumbers-summit-event
Pgpool-II 4.5.4, 4.4.9, 4.3.12, 4.2.19 and 4.1.22 released.
date: 2024-09-09, from: PostgreSQL News
What is Pgpool-II?
Pgpool-II is a tool to add useful features to PostgreSQL, including:
- connection pooling
- load balancing
- automatic failover and more.
Minor releases
Pgpool Global Development Group is pleased to announce the availability of following versions of Pgpool-II:
- 4.5.4
- 4.4.9
- 4.3.12
- 4.2.19
- 4.1.22
This release contains a security fix.
When the query cache feature is enabled, it was possible that a database user can read rows from tables that should not be visible for the user through query cache (CVE-2024-45624).
All versions of Pgpool-II older than 4.5.4, 4.4.9, 4.3.12, 4.2.19, 4.1.22, and all older versions that has the query cache feature (the query cache feature was implemented in 3.2) are affected by the vulnerability.
It is strongly recommend to upgrade to Pgpool-II 4.5.4, 4.4.9, 4.3.12, 4.2.19 and 4.1.22 or later. Or you should better turn off the query cache feature.
Please take a look at release notes.
You can download the source code and RPMs.
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgpool-ii-454-449-4312-4219-and-4122-released-2929/
Redox OS 0.9.0
date: 2024-09-09, from: Redox OS News
Overview It’s been quite a while since we had our last release, but we have been heads-down working hard this whole time, and Release 0.9.0 is packed with new features, improvements, bug fixes and cleanup. We would like to thank all maintainers and contributors whose hard work has made this release possible. Here are just a few of the highlights! Much improved process/thread lifecycle and signaling, thanks to funding from NLnet Massive performance and stability improvements Now featuring COSMIC Files, Editor and Terminal from the COSMIC Desktop!
https://www.redox-os.org/news/release-0.9.0/
Full Circle Weekly News 382
date: 2024-09-09, from: Full Circle Magazine
-
The OpenBSD project has made changes to the entire code base:
-
Microsoft hands over Mono project development to Wine community:
-
Linux From Scratch 12.2 and Beyond Linux From Scratch 12.2 Released: and here
Credits
- Host: @bardictriad, @zaivala
- Bumper: Canonical
- Theme Music: From The Dust - Stardust
- https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
- CC BY 4.0
https://fullcirclemagazine.org/podcasts/podcast-382/
Code of Conduct Committee Seeking New Volunteers
date: 2024-09-09, from: PostgreSQL News
This message is being sent from the Community Code of Conduct Committee, with the approval of the Core Team. As part of the Community CoC policy, the Committee membership is to be refreshed on an annual basis. We are seeking up to 4 volunteers to serve on the Committee for the coming year, October 1, 2024 - September 30, 2024.
We are seeking people who reflect the diversity of the PostgreSQL community, with the goal to have members from multiple countries and varied demographics. The time commitment for Committee involvement varies, based on internal administrative work and the number of active investigations. We estimate an average of 5 to 10 hours per month, but that could increase if there is an increase in the number of incident reports.
If you are interested, please complete the questionnaire below, and email your responses to the Committee at coc@postgresql.org no later than September 15, 2024 at 05:00 PM UTC.
The Questionnaire
Your name:
Current employer:
Current country of residence:
(We ask for employer and residence because one of the goals of the Committee is to have representation from a variety of geographical areas. We also want to avoid a concentration of members from one company.)
- What interests you about being on the CoC Committee?
- Have you been on another CoC Committee, or had a similar role at another organization? (Prior experience is not required, it’s just helpful to know everyone’s background.)
- What else do you want to tell us about yourself that is helpful for us to know about your potential involvement with the CoC Committee?
Please be sure to send your reply to the CoC email listed above.
Thank you!
Regards, Chris Travers Chair PostgreSQL Community Code of Conduct Committee
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/code-of-conduct-committee-seeking-new-volunteers-2931/
GSoC 2024: Compile GPU kernels using ClangIR
date: 2024-09-09, from: LLVM Blog
Hello everyone! I’m 7mile. My GSoC project this summer is Compile GPU kernels using ClangIR. It’s been an exciting journey in compiler development, and I’m thrilled to share the progress and insights gained along the way here.
Background
The ClangIR project aims to establish a new IR for Clang, built on top of MLIR. As part of the ongoing effort to support heterogeneous programming models, this project focuses on integrating OpenCL C language support into ClangIR. The ultimate goal is to enable the compilation of GPU kernels written in OpenCL C into LLVM IR targeting the SPIR-V architecture, laying the groundwork for future enhancements in SYCL and CUDA support.
What We Did
Our work involved several key areas:
-
Address Space Support: One of the fundamental tasks was teaching ClangIR to handle address spaces, a vital feature for languages like OpenCL. Initially, we considered mimicking LLVM’s approach, but this proved inadequate for ClangIR’s goals. After thorough discussion and an RFC, we implemented a unified address space design that aligns with ClangIR’s objectives, ensuring a clean and maintainable code structure.
-
OpenCL Language and SPIR-V Target Integration: We extended ClangIR to support the OpenCL language and the SPIR-V target. This involved enhancing the pipeline to accommodate the latest OpenCL 3.0 specification and implementing hooks for language-specific and target-specific customizations.
-
Vector Type Support: OpenCL vector types, a critical feature for GPU programming, were integrated into ClangIR. We leveraged ClangIR’s existing cir.vector type to generate the necessary code, ensuring consistent compilation results.
-
Kernel and Module Metadata Emission: We added support for emitting OpenCL kernel and module metadata in ClangIR, a necessary step for proper integration with the SPIR-V target. This included the creation of structured attributes to represent metadata, following MLIR’s preferences for well-defined structures.
-
Global and Static Variables with Qualifiers: We implemented support for global and static variables with qualifiers like
global,constant, andlocal, ensuring that these constructs are correctly represented and lowered in the ClangIR pipeline. -
Calling Conventions: We adjusted the calling conventions in ClangIR to align with SPIR-V requirements, migrating from the default
cdeclto SPIR-V-specific conventions likeSpirKernelandSpirFunction. This also enables most OpenCL built-in functions likebarrierandget_global_id. -
User Experience Enhancements: Finally, we ensured that the end-to-end kernel compilation experience using ClangIR was smooth and intuitive, with minimal manual intervention required.
Results
The project successfully met its primary goals. OpenCL kernels from the Polybench-GPU benchmark suite can now be compiled using ClangIR into LLVM IR for SPIR-V. All patches have been merged into the main ClangIR repository, and the project’s progress has been well-documented in the overview issue. I believe the work not only advanced OpenCL support but also laid a solid foundation for future enhancements, such as SYCL and CUDA support in ClangIR.
We have successfully compiled and executed all 20 OpenCL C benchmarks from the polybenchGpu repository, passing the built-in result validation. Please refer to our artifact evaluation repository for detailed instructions on how to experiment with our work.
Future Works
As we look forward, there are two key areas that require further development:
-
Function Attribute Consistency: For example, the
convergentfunction attribute is crucial for preventing misoptimizations in SIMT languages like OpenCL. ClangIR currently lacks this attribute, which could lead to issues in parallel computing contexts. Addressing this is a priority to ensure correct optimization behavior. -
Support for OpenCL Built-in Types: Another critical area for future work is the support for OpenCL built-in types, such as
pipeandimage. These types are essential for handling data streams and image processing tasks in various specialized OpenCL applications. Supporting these types will significantly enhance ClangIR’s adherence to the OpenCL standard, broadening its applicability and ensuring better compatibility with a wide range of OpenCL programs.
Acknowledgements
This project would not have been possible without the guidance and support of the LLVM community. I extend my deepest gratitude to my mentors, Julian Oppermann, Victor Lomüller, and Bruno Cardoso Lopes, whose expertise and encouragement were instrumental throughout this journey. Additionally, I would like to thank Vinicius Couto Espindola for his collaboration on ABI-related work. This experience has been immensely rewarding, both technically and in terms of community engagement.
Appendix
https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2024-08-29-gsoc-opencl-c-support-for-clangir/