News gathered 2024-09-25
(date: 2024-09-25 05:46:22)
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-25, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I did check as soon as I remembered and Gtk+ last release is only a day old:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113198203789567831
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-25, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Last night I had a nightmare that Gtk+ had not been maintained by 7 years and that Owen Taylor had moved on to a secret Red Had project on social media and I was running frantically trying to get a new release out.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113198186889123351
September 2024 Transformer of the Month: Lori Arnett
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
Lori Arnett approaches her work at NASA with a simple motto: think big, start small, act fast. As the Associate Director for Digital Transformation for the Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities (AETC) within the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), she helps manage the capability portfolio for wind tunnels across the agency. In this role and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/organizations/ocio/dt/september-2024-transformer-of-the-month-lori-arnett/
Watch Octopuses Team Up With Fish to Hunt—and Punch Those That Don’t Contribute
date: 2024-09-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The collaboration across species reveals a surprising social behavior of octopuses, researchers say
Google files first ever complaint with European Commission against Microsoft
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Mountain View versus Redmond: Fight over cloud software licensing policies gets formal
Google Cloud Platform has filed a complaint with the European Commission alleging Microsoft software licensing policies are anti-competitive, including claims customers are being charged four times more to run Windows Server in non-Azure clouds.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/google_ms_ec_complaint/
Northern Ireland cops whose info was leaked in 2023 may get £240M+ damages
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Officers put in danger when republican dissidents grabbed hold of their names and details
Victims have yet to receive any compensation after a document was mistakenly published in 2023 containing data belonging to members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), but reports say damages in the case could hit as much as £240 million ($320.9 million).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/psni_officers_affected_by_2023/
To be political or not to be political?
date: 2024-09-25, from: Marketplace Morning Report
That is the question facing many companies, especially as we lead up to the contentious 2024 election. Today, we’ll hear how about some companies responded — from opting to ban political talk in the workplace and ones that emailed customers with telling them how to vote — as well as their thorny results. First, we’ll learn what we can glean from key economic speeches from former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/to-be-political-or-not-to-be-political
Secret Service failures before Trump rally shooting were ‘preventable,’ Senate panel finds
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Multiple Secret Service failures ahead of the July rally for former President Donald Trump where a gunman opened fire were “foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day,” according to a bipartisan Senate investigation released Wednesday.
Similar to the agency’s own internal investigation and an ongoing bipartisan House probe, the interim report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found multiple failures on almost every level ahead of the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, including in planning, communications, security and allocation of resources.
“The consequences of those failures were dire,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the Democratic chairman of the Homeland panel.
Investigators found that there was no clear chain of command among the Secret Service and other security agencies and no plan for coverage of the building where the shooter climbed up to fire the shots. Officials were operating on multiple, separate radio channels, leading to missed communications, and an inexperienced drone operator was stuck on a help line after his equipment wasn’t working correctly.
Communications among security officials were a “multi-step game of telephone,” Peters said.
The report found the Secret Service was notified about an individual on the roof of the building approximately two minutes before shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire, firing eight rounds in Trump’s direction less than 150 yards from where the former president was speaking. Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, was struck in the ear by a bullet or a bullet fragment in the assassination attempt, one rallygoer was killed and two others were injured before the gunman was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
Approximately 22 seconds before Crooks fired, the report found, a local officer sent a radio alert that there was an armed individual on the building. But that information was not relayed to key Secret Service personnel who were interviewed by Senate investigators.
The panel also interviewed a Secret Service counter-sniper who reported seeing officers with their guns drawn running toward the building where the shooter was perched, but the person said they did not think to notify anyone to get Trump off the stage.
The Senate report comes just days after the Secret Service released a five-page document summarizing the key conclusions of a yet-to-be finalized Secret Service report on what went wrong, and ahead of a Thursday hearing that will be held by a bipartisan House task force investigating the shooting. The House panel is also investigating a second assassination attempt on Trump earlier this month when Secret Service agents arrested a man with a rifle hiding on the golf course at Trump’s Florida club.
Each investigation has found new details that reflect a massive breakdown in the former president’s security, and lawmakers say there is much more they want to find out as they try to prevent it from happening again.
“This was the result of multiple human failures of the Secret Service,” said Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the top Republican on the panel.
The senators recommended that the Secret Service better define roles and responsibilities before any protective event, including by designating a single individual in charge of approving all the security plans. Investigators found that many of the people in charge denied that they had responsibility for planning or security failures, and deflected blame.
Advance agents interviewed by the committee said “that planning and security decisions were made jointly, with no specific individual responsible for approval,” the report said.
Communication with local authorities was also poor. Local law enforcement had raised concern two days earlier about security coverage of the building where the shooter perched, telling Secret Service agents during a walk through that they did not have the manpower to lock it down. Secret Service agents then gave investigators conflicting accounts about who was responsible for that security coverage, the report said.
The internal review released last week by the Secret Service also detailed multiple communications breakdowns, including an absence of clear guidance to local law enforcement and the failure to fix line-of-sight vulnerabilities at the rally grounds that left Trump open to sniper fire and “complacency” among some agents.
“This was a failure on the part of the United States Secret Service. It’s important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13th and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this again,” said Ronald Rowe Jr., the agency’s acting director, after the report was released.
In addition to better defining responsibility for events, the senators recommended that the agency completely overhaul its communications operations at protective events and improve intelligence sharing. They also recommended that Congress evaluate whether more resources are needed.
Democrats and Republicans have disagreed on whether to give the Secret Service more money in the wake of its failures. A spending bill on track to pass before the end of the month includes an additional $231 million for the agency, but many Republicans have said that an internal overhaul is needed first.
“This is a management problem plain and simple,” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the top Republican on the Homeland panel’s investigations subcommittee.
Britain’s prisons are at a breaking point
date: 2024-09-25, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Prisons in Britain are grappling with overcrowding, staff shortages and funding cuts — all of which are making a bad situation worse. The government has started to release prisoners early to reduce pressure on the system. Meanwhile, talks are kicking off today between trade unions and Volkswagen on proposed cuts to its workforce in Germany. And, there are calls for more private business investment in India.
Hyperscalers are carving up the ocean floor into private internet highways
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Think tank warns of sovereignty risks from subsea cable consolidation
The dominance of US-based hyperscalers like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon in subsea cables has reshaped the industry and put critical infrastructure at risk, an Australian think tank claims.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/aspi_hyperscaler_cables/
Messaging app makers’ dilemma: Keeping comms private and funding open source
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
After Telegram CEO was charged in France, Element bosses mull the challenges
Interview Not upsetting law enforcement with end to end encryption and finding a sustainable way to fund open source development are challenges facing messaging giants and minnows alike.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/element_bosses_on_funding_open/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Jack Smith Scores Another Win in Trump’s January 6 Case.
https://newrepublic.com/post/186319/jack-smith-donald-trump-january-6-case
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Aileen Cannon set to oversee apparent Trump assassination attempt case in Florida.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/24/ryan-routh-aileen-cannon-charged-00180836
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Haitian group in Springfield, Ohio, files charges against Trump, Vance.
Fujitsu wins spot on £600M framework after vowing to sit out public sector
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Post Office scandal? What scandal?
Fujitsu has won a place on a UK tech framework worth up to £600 million ($802 million) despite promising not to bid for public sector contracts while its role in the Post Office Horizon scandal faces scrutiny. The company says bidding for the deal took place before it made that commitment to the UK government.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/fujitsu_contract_win_horizon/
The Hardest Working $27 Billion in the IRA
date: 2024-09-25, from: Heatmap News
It’s potentially one of the most important — but least understood — provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, and it’s finally out in the world. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency spent $27 billion to set up new green banks across the country.
These new lending institutions could direct billions of dollars to supercharging decarbonization nationwide, financing new solar farms, geothermal projects, EV chargers, and more. They’ll also recycle their funding indefinitely, meaning they will likely last longer than any other provision in the law.
On this week’s show, Rob and Jesse bring you a user’s guide to these new green banks and what they might mean for decarbonization. The episode features two conversations: First, Rob speaks with Jahi Wise, the former director for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program at the Environmental Protection Agency. Second, Rob and Jesse chat with Dawn Lippert, the founder and CEO of Elemental Impact, a climate tech investment and nonprofit organization. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Jesse Jenkins: We’ve talked for a long time about this “valley of death” that companies face as they reach that scale-up phase where they’re coming out of the phase where they’re trying to just prove the technology works and de-risk it and into the phase where they have to deploy at scale and need project financing for that, or they need to build factories to get to economies of scale to produce their product at a competitive cost. And that burns a lot of capital, both, direct equity investment in the company and project finance and loans to get projects built and online. Is that the real gap that you’re seeing right now?
It seems like we’ve had such a big wave of venture capital coming into this space over the last few years that there are a lot of really well capitalized companies through series A or B, but now they’re … you know, if they were stood up two, three, four years ago, now they’re coming into this new phase. Is that where you’re trying to position your fund? And maybe more broadly, the green banks that were supported by GGRF?
Dawn Lippert: Yes — I think, overall, yes. And it’s nuanced. So what we’re seeing is, we published a report earlier this year that there’s essentially this financing gap, if you can think of it that way, or the valley is at least $150 billion, where companies are going from exactly what you said of venture capital-backed and then need other kinds of financing.
And then on the other side of the gap, there’s actually a lot more financing than ever.
Jenkins: Yeah, tons. Infrastructure funds and others, right?
Lippert: Yes, absolutely. And so it’s really about building this bridge and being really smart about that. So I would say there’s a couple of things. One is that we see three main issues to crossing the bridge. One is capital. We’ve talked about that, and I’ll talk about a little bit more. The second is project expertise — companies going from technology companies to project companies. I would say that’s one of the key things that we see as being a real challenge and also a huge opportunity.
And Rob, you talked about talent coming into this space. That tidal wave really changed in 2018 when the skies turned orange over San Francisco. We just saw so much talent coming in from tech, and it just hasn’t stopped. It really kept flowing. But this project expertise of operational expertise — how you develop, how you permit and get entitlements, how you structure the financing, but also just do the actual construction of projects — we need to build so many things. That’s where we see a huge need. And we did a recent analysis with our partners at Vibrant Data Labs and found that only about less than 30% of companies in climate right now have project expertise or deep project expertise on their team to build stuff.
So that’s a place where Elemental has leaned in a ton where we were dropping CFOs and fractional CFOs and developers and residents and all kinds of folks to help fill that gap. But there’s a huge amount of work that needs to be done there.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Antenna Group helps you connect with customers, policymakers, investors, and strategic partners to influence markets and accelerate adoption. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
https://heatmap.news/podcast/shift-key-s2-e7-ggrf
Why the Debut Issue of America’s First Newspaper Was Also the Publication’s Last
date: 2024-09-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
On this day in 1690, “Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick” attracted colonial officials’ ire by repeating a scandalous rumor and condemning a British alliance with the Mohawk
Helene strengthens as hurricane warnings cover parts of Florida and Mexico
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
AI PCs will dominate shipments by 2026, but not because of demand
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Buying computers without the tech to get harder as chipmakers compete for cash, say analysts
AI PCs are forecast to account for 43 percent of PCs by 2025, says tech market sales number cruncher and consultancy Gartner, and by 2026, an AI device may be the virtually the only laptop a big business can choose.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/analysts_ai_pcs_shipments_gartner/
NASA, IBM just open sourced an AI climate model so you can fine-tune your own
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Prithvi, Prithvi, Prithvi good
Researchers at IBM and NASA this week released an open source AI climate model designed to accurately predict weather patterns while consuming fewer compute resources compared to traditional physics-based simulations.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/nasa_ibm_ai_weather/
RISC-V on Raspberry Pi Pico 2
date: 2024-09-25, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
The Hazard 3 RISC-V cores on the RP2350 were designed by Raspberry Pi’s own Luke Wren in his spare time.
The post RISC-V on Raspberry Pi Pico 2 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/risc-v-on-raspberry-pi-pico-2/
Talk: Keeping the world from Burning
date: 2024-09-25, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
On Monday this week, I did a talk at the Nordic Software Security Summit conference in Stockholm Sweden. I titled it CVEMITRECVSSNVDCNAOSS WTF with the subtitle “Keeping the world from Burning”. The talk was well received and I think it added something to the conversation. Almost every other talk during the rest of the conference … Continue reading Talk: Keeping the world from Burning
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/09/25/talk-keeping-the-world-from-burning/
VMware reportedly investigated by Japanese antimonopoly authorities
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Broadcom’s software bundles under scrutiny after perhaps irking Fujitsu
Japan’s Fair Trade Commission, the nation’s anti-monopoly agency, has reportedly commenced an investigation into VMware’s software licensing practices.…
Zelenskyy to address UN General Assembly
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/zelenskyy-to-address-un-general-assembly/7798484.html
India funds Moon lander, space station module, and Venus orbiter
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Wants lunar sample return within three years, Venus launch in 2028, orbiting hab in 2035, boots on Luna five years later
India’s government last week signed off on three big space missions: a Moon lander, a space station module, and a Venus orbiter.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/india_moon_venus_space_station_plan/
US Congresswoman Kamlager-Dove condemns inaction on Sudan conflict
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Fifty Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to President Joe Biden in late August requesting more humanitarian assistance for Sudan and calling on the U.S. to do more to help end the conflict. Leading the effort is U.S. Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California, who told VOA in a recent interview that she is concerned that international partners aren’t doing enough to support humanitarian aid delivery to families affected by the conflict.
“Famine has erupted. Deaths are happening every day, and the warring parties are working together, in my opinion, to prevent the delivery of humanitarian aid,” she told VOA. “It is unconscionable. And it is inhumane.”
Without more aggressive leadership by the U.S., she said, the conflict risks international neglect amid the war Ukraine and an expanding conflict in the Middle East.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
VOA: Your colleagues have joined you to raise awareness about Sudan. A lot of Sudanese who spoke to us say the world has forgotten them. How do you feel about their sentiments?
U.S. Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove: I am disheartened to hear that, but I understand why they would say it, and that is exactly why I wrote this letter and encouraged my colleagues to sign on. Fifty Democratic members of Congress signed with me, to ask this administration to do more. We want them to raise awareness of this war. Get [U.S.] Secretary [of State Anthony] Blinken out in front. We want to rally our international partners to also take this more seriously and pledge more dollars to help with the support around humanitarian aid delivery. Because if we are not taking the lead on this, then it will signal to the rest of the world that this is not important and of course it is.
VOA: What about international attention? Are you getting that?
Kamlager-Dove: No, we’re not getting [international attention.] I have my own suspicions that people just don’t care, or don’t respect the continent of Africa. I think that is wildly ignorant. And we know with forces like China and Russia working to compete against us [the U.S.], and to dismantle democracies, we know that there are other agents and actors playing in this war as well. That is why it is incumbent upon us to take the lead and call for more aid and call for more discussions.
VOA: What about America’s foreign policy and its resources? Where does it go? I mean, I know that the war in Ukraine and Gaza is shifting attention.
Kamlager-Dove: Thankfully, we have an administration that is trying to engage. They finally got a special envoy, [Former U.S. Representative Tom Perriello], to Sudan. You know, a year too late, but he needs to be supported with more resources and more staff. It is very important that Secretary Blinken shows his face more on the continent and reminds folks that this administration cares.
VOA: The U.N. made an appeal for humanitarian assistance. They were projecting $2.7 billion and only 37% of that was received. What should be done to get pledges from donor countries?
Kamlager-Dove: Well, I do think we have to make a concerted effort to ask the international community to pledge more. It is important to give more, but if those resources are thwarted because you have bad actors keeping humanitarian aid from the people and the civilians that need it the most, then it doesn’t matter.
VOA: The U.S. government slapped sanctions on both sides in Sudan — the Rapid Support Forces [RSF] and some leaders of the Sudan Armed Forces [SAF]. And it appears like these sanctions are not biting hard because the two belligerent forces have decided not to sign any cease-fire. Are there other instruments of diplomacy in the toolbox that is yet to be used to bring pressure on these two groups?
Kamlager-Dove: Well, it is certainly unfortunate that neither party wants to show up to the negotiating table. It’s very hard to come to a resolution when you don’t even sit at the table. The other thing that is unfortunate is even if you have sanctions, you know, if you’re still able to buy guns and get the weapons into the country, then obviously you need different kinds of teeth and authority. I think we should be looking at the folks who are supplying the arms to the forces, because that is as important as sanctioning both SAF and RSF. If you don’t stop the flow of arms, what are you really doing?
VOA: When Perriello testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he mentioned that those aiding the war in Sudan must be held accountable, or the U.S.’s efforts will be in vain. How do you respond to that?
Kamlager-Dove: I wholeheartedly agree. We have an obligation to focus on what is happening in the Sudan. But I want to say I’m grateful that he was actually able to show up. You know, we have not had a full committee hearing in the Foreign Affairs Committee on Africa since the beginning of this term.
VOA: The last time we heard about funding [for Sudan] was 2017. And just a month ago, nongovernmental organizations, international aid agencies are saying Darfur is on the verge of famine, there’s famine already there. … If you are given an opportunity to speak directly to the people who are making decisions on where aid money should go, what would you tell them?
Kamlager-Dove: I would say the world is watching and the world is waiting. And every moment that you do not sit at the table and find a way, using any quiver that you have in your toolbox every day you wait is a day that someone dies in the Sudan. And this is not something that I am willing to keep in my heart. And this is not something that the United States should let happen. So, get off your tuchus (rear end) and find a way to bring about a cease-fire, and to make sure that humanitarian aid is able to get to the Sudan.
This Q&A originated in VOA’s English to Africa Service.
Samsung and pals Hyundai, Kia, team for software-defined cars, IoT integration
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Turn on home aircon and maybe peer inside the fridge or oven – all from behind the wheel
Samsung and fellow South Korean giants Kia and Hyundai have struck up an IoT alliance that will see cars drive home appliances, and smartphones control some operations inside cars.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/samsung_kia_hyundai_iot_alliance/
AI chatbot gets green light to hallucinate your investment portfolio
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Service due to roll out later this month, despite fears AI will crash the market
AI has driven the stock market into a hype-fueled frenzy, and an Israeli startup has even convinced regulators to let its chatbot hallucinate an investment portfolio on your behalf.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/ai_stock_picker/
Trump pledges sweeping tariffs, says they will keep jobs in US
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
SAVANNAH, Ga. — Donald Trump on Tuesday pledged to stop U.S. businesses from shipping jobs overseas and to take other countries’ jobs and factories by relying heavily on sweeping tariffs to boost auto manufacturing — despite warnings that domestic consumers would pay more and a lack of specifics about how his plans would work.
“I want German car companies to become American car companies. I want them to build their plants here,” Trump declared during a speech in Savannah, Georgia.
Trump added that, if elected, he’d put a 100% tariff on every car imported from Mexico and that the only way to avoid those charges would be for an automaker to build the cars in the U.S.
His ideas, if enacted, could cause a huge upheaval in the American auto industry. Many automakers now build smaller, lower-priced vehicles in Mexico — facilitated by a trade agreement Trump negotiated while president — or in other countries because their profit margins are slim. The lower labor costs help the companies make money on those vehicles.
German and other foreign automakers already have extensive manufacturing operations in the U.S., and many now build more vehicles here than they send. BMW, for instance, has an 8 million-square-foot campus in South Carolina that employs 11,000 people building more than 1,500 SUVs per day for the U.S. and 120 export markets. Mercedes and Volkswagen also have large factories here.
If German automakers were to increase production here, they likely would have to take it from factories in Germany, which then would run below their capacity and be less efficient, said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst for Guidehouse Insights.
“It makes no sense,” he said.
Trump proposes ‘new American industrialism’ — without specifics
Trump has proposed using tariffs on imports and other measures to boost American industry — even as economists have cautioned that U.S. consumers would bear the costs of tariffs and other Trump proposals like staging the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.
The former president laid out a broad array of economic proposals during a speech in the key swing state of Georgia, promising to create a special ambassador to help lure foreign manufacturers to the U.S. and further entice them by offering access to federal land.
Additionally, he called for lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, but only for companies that produce in the U.S. Harris, the Democratic nominee, wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28%. It had been 35% when Trump became president in 2017, and he later signed legislation lowering it.
“We’re putting America first,” Trump said. “This new American industrialism will create millions and millions of jobs.”
Trump also suggested wiping away some environmental regulations to boost energy production, saying America has “got the oil, it’s got the gas. We have everything. The only thing we don’t have is smart people leading our country.”
Tuesday’s series of economic proposals raised a lot of questions, but the former president hasn’t given specific answers on his ideas, which could substantially affect their impact and how much they cost. He has not specified, for example, whether his U.S.-focused corporate tax cuts would apply to companies that assemble their products domestically out of imports.
Trump also suggested he would use a newly created envoy, and his own personal efforts, to recruit foreign companies. But he had a spotty record in the White House of attracting foreign investment. In one infamous case, Trump promised a $10 billion investment by Taiwan-based electronics giant Foxconn in Wisconsin, creating potentially 13,000 new jobs, that the company never delivered.
His calls to offer federal land, meanwhile, might clash with Bureau of Land Management restrictions on foreign entities looking to lease lands. It also wasn’t clear whether companies from China would be excluded, given Trump’s longtime accusations that China is hurting American business.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-pledges-sweeping-tariffs-says-they-will-keep-jobs-in-us/7798426.html
SBF’s right-hand woman praised for testimony – and jailed for two years
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Caroline Ellison thanked for helping take down FTX supremo, ordered to surrender her own billions
The former CEO of Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, has been sentenced to two years in a minimum-security prison after pleading guilty to helping her former boyfriend Sam Bankman-Fried siphon billions out of the FTX exchange.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/caroline_ellison_ftx_prison/
Man who staked out Trump at golf course charged with attempted assassination
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
washington — A man who authorities say staked out Donald Trump for 12 hours on his golf course in Florida and wrote of his desire to kill him was indicted Tuesday on an attempted assassination charge.
Ryan Wesley Routh had been initially charged with two federal firearms offenses. The upgraded charges contained in a five-count indictment reflect the Justice Department’s assessment that he methodically plotted to kill the Republican nominee, aiming a rifle through the shrubbery surrounding Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course on an afternoon Trump was playing on it. Routh left behind a note in which he described his intention, prosecutors said.
Court records show the case has been assigned to Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal judge who generated intense scrutiny for her handling of a criminal case charging Trump with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. She dismissed that case in July, a decision now being appealed by special counsel Jack Smith’s team.
The attempted assassination indictment had been foreshadowed during a court hearing Monday in which prosecutors successfully argued for the 58-year-old Routh to remain behind bars as a flight risk and a threat to public safety.
They alleged that he had written of his plans to kill Trump in a handwritten note months before his September 15 arrest in which he referred to his actions as a failed “assassination attempt on Donald Trump” and offered $150,000 for anyone who could “finish the job.” That note was in a box that Routh had apparently dropped off at the home of an unidentified witness months before his arrest.
The person opened the letter, took a photograph of the front page of the letter, addressed “Dear World,” and contacted law enforcement after the attempted assassination.
Prosecutors also said Routh kept in his car a handwritten list of venues in August, September and October at which Trump had appeared or was expected to be present.
The charge of attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate carries a potential life sentence in the event of a conviction.
The potential shooting was thwarted when a member of Trump’s Secret Service protective detail spotted a partially obscured man’s face and a rifle barrel protruding through the golf course fence line, ahead of where Trump was playing.
The arrest came two months after Trump was shot and wounded in the ear in an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. The Secret Service has acknowledged failings leading up to that shooting but has said that security worked as it should have to thwart the potential attack in Florida.
The initial charges Routh faced in a criminal complaint accused him of illegally possessing his gun in spite of multiple felony convictions and with possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. It is common for prosecutors to bring preliminary and easily provable charges upon an arrest and then add more serious offenses later as the investigation develops.
China claims Taiwan, not civilian hackers, behind website vandalism
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Taiwan laughs it off – and so does Beijing, which says political slurs hit sites nobody reads anyway
Taiwan has dismissed Chinese allegations that its military sponsored a recent wave of anti-Beijing cyber attacks.…
CrowdStrike apologizes to Congress for ‘perfect storm’ that caused global IT outage
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Argues worse could happen if it loses kernel access
CrowdStrike is “deeply sorry” for the “perfect storm of issues” that saw its faulty software update crash millions of Windows machines, leading to the grounding of thousands of planes, passengers stranded at airports, the cancellation of surgeries, and disruption to emergency services hotlines among many more inconveniences.…
Missouri man executed despite prosecutor’s opposition
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/missouri-man-executed-despite-prosecutor-s-opposition/7797398.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Harris campaign office damaged by gunfire in Arizona.
Former executive gets 2 years in prison for role in FTX fraud
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
new york — Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried’s fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after she apologized repeatedly to everyone hurt by a fraud that stole billions of dollars from investors, lenders and customers.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said Ellison’s cooperation was “very, very substantial” and “remarkable.”
But he said a prison sentence was necessary because she had participated in what might be the “greatest financial fraud ever perpetrated in this country and probably anywhere else” or at least close to it.
He said in such a serious case, he could not let cooperation be a get-out-of-jail-free card, even when it was clear that Bankman-Fried had become “your kryptonite.”
“I’ve seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years here,” he said. “I’ve never seen one quite like Ms. Ellison.”
She was ordered to report to prison on November 7.
Ellison, 29, pleaded guilty nearly two years ago and testified against Bankman-Fried for nearly three days at a trial last November.
At sentencing, she emotionally apologized to anyone hurt by the fraud that stretched from 2017 through 2022.
“I’m deeply ashamed with what I’ve done,” she said, fighting through tears to say she was “so so sorry” to everyone she had harmed directly or indirectly.
She did not speak as she left Manhattan federal court, surrounded by lawyers.
In a court filing, prosecutors had called her testimony the “cornerstone of the trial” against Bankman-Fried, 32, who was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In court Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon called for leniency, saying her testimony was “devastating and powerful proof” against Bankman-Fried.
The prosecutor said Ellison’s time on the witness stand was very different from Bankman-Fried, who she said was “evasive, even contemptuous, and unable to answer questions directly” when he testified.
Attorney Anjan Sahni asked the judge to spare his client from prison, citing “unusual circumstances,” including her off-and-on romantic relationship with Bankman-Fried and the damage caused when her “whole professional and personal life came to revolve” around him.
FTX was one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, known for its Superbowl TV ad and its extensive lobbying campaign in Washington before it collapsed in 2022.
U.S. prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried and other executives of looting customer accounts on the exchange to make risky investments, make millions of dollars of illegal political donations, bribe Chinese officials, and buy luxury real estate in the Caribbean.
Ellison was chief executive at Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund controlled by Bankman-Fried that was used to process some customer funds from FTX.
As the business began to falter, Ellison divulged the massive fraud to employees who worked for her even before FTX filed for bankruptcy, trial evidence showed.
Ultimately, she also spoke extensively with criminal and civil U.S. investigators.
Sassoon said prosecutors were impressed that Ellison did not “jump into the lifeboat” to escape her crimes but instead spent nearly two years fully cooperating.
Since testifying at Bankman-Fried’s trial, Ellison has engaged in extensive charity work, written a novel, and worked with her parents on a math enrichment textbook for advanced high school students, according to her lawyers.
They said she also now has a healthy romantic relationship and has reconnected with high school friends she had lost touch with while she worked for and sometimes dated Bankman-Fried from 2017 until late 2022.
Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee holds secretary of state in contempt
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
A U.S. House of Representatives panel held Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt Tuesday for failing to answer lawmakers’ questions about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. VOA’s congressional correspondent, Katherine Gypson, has more from Washington, with Amadullah Archiwal contributing.
WP Engine hits back after Automattic CEO calls it ‘cancer’
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cease’n’desist letter claims top boss demanded tens of millions for trademark license
Updated WordPress hosting service WP Engine on Monday sent a cease and desist letter to WordPress maker Automattic, to force the latter’s CEO Matthew Mullenweg to stop making allegedly false and misleading claims about WP Engine following a purported trademark license demand.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/wp_engine_claims_automattic_ceo/
At UN meetings, China focuses on Taiwan, security, climate change
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
Will pro-Palestinian opposition hurt Harris in Michigan?
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
The Uncommitted National Movement that began as a protest against President Joe Biden’s policies on the war in Gaza last week announced they will not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate. Another pro-Palestinian group “Abandon Harris” says they’re working to ensure her defeat. Could these movements impact election results in battleground states? White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara brings this story from Michigan, the state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans. Camera: Rivan Dwiastono.
https://www.voanews.com/a/will-pro-palestinian-opposition-hurt-harris-in-michigan-/7797042.html
ESP32 Rainbow is an homage to the ZX Spectrum with an integrated display (crowdfunding)
date: 2024-09-24, from: Liliputing
The ESP32 Rainbow is a small computer with a built-in touch keyboard, an integrated display, and a design that’s inspired by the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, with a keyboard layout and rainbow stripe that should look familiar to fans of the classic computer that was released more than four decades ago. But this is also a modern […]
The post ESP32 Rainbow is an homage to the ZX Spectrum with an integrated display (crowdfunding) appeared first on Liliputing.
FBI raids HQ of US govt IT giant Carahsoft
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Still business as usual, we’re told
Virginia-based public sector IT services giant Carahsoft was raided Tuesday by US government agents.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/fbi_raids_carahsoft_headquarters/
Biden spotlights Mideast, Ukraine, offers hope in UN address
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
Joe Biden used his final presidential address before the U.N. General Assembly to urge unity in the face of challenges that include conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from New York.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-spotlights-mideast-ukraine-offers-hope-in-un-address/7796937.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The best Twitter alternatives worth checking out.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/24/best-twitter-alternatives-social-apps/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
2012: Twitter is a Corporate API. And we did eventually get burned.
http://scripting.com/stories/2012/07/07/twitterIsACorporateApi.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The New York Times is washed.
https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/new-york-times-washed-19780600.php
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
US Supreme Court justices, other judges can stay at corporate-owned homes without disclosure.
This $50 DIY kit lets you add an OLED screen to the Nintendo Switch Lite
date: 2024-09-24, from: Liliputing
Four years after launching the Nintendo Switch game console, Nintendo introduced the Switch OLED with a higher-quality display. But the company hasn’t gotten around to offering an OLED version of the cheaper Nintendo Switch Lite… and with a Switch 2 expected to arrive next year, it’s unlikely that we ever will see s Switch Lite […]
The post This $50 DIY kit lets you add an OLED screen to the Nintendo Switch Lite appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/this-50-diy-kit-lets-you-add-an-oled-screen-to-the-nintendo-switch-lite/
Astronaut José Hernández Boards Discovery
date: 2024-09-24, from: NASA breaking news
In this photo from Aug. 7, 2009, Jose Hernandez, mission specialist, smiles at the camera as he waits for his turn to enter the space shuttle Discovery as part of STS-128. It was the 128th Shuttle mission and the 30th mission to the International Space Station. While at the orbital lab, the STS-128 crew conducted […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/astronaut-jose-hernandez-boards-discovery/
Qataris can travel to US without visa; first Gulf nation to meet requirements
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
new york — The Gulf nation of Qatar on Tuesday became just the second Muslim-majority country to be admitted into a program that allows its citizens to travel to the United States without first obtaining a U.S. visa.
The departments of State and Homeland Security jointly announced that Qatar had met stringent eligibility requirements to join the visa waiver program. Those requirements include a low visa refusal rate, a low rate of visa overstays and a demand of reciprocal treatment of American travelers, who are already allowed to visit Qatar without a visa for up to 30 days.
“Qatar has been an exceptional partner for the United States, and our strategic relationship has only grown stronger over the past few years,” the departments said in a statement. “This is further evidence of our strategic partnership and our shared commitment to security and stability.”
Qatar, which has played a key role in trying to negotiate a cease-fire deal in Gaza and was an instrumental U.S. partner before and during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, is the 42nd country to be admitted to the program.
Most countries whose citizens can visit the U.S. without a visa are longstanding allies in Europe and Asia. The only other Muslim-majority country in the program is the tiny Southeast Asian nation of Brunei.
Although Qatar’s population is just over 3 million people, only a small percentage of those — about 320,000 — are actually Qataris who would be eligible for the program if they hold valid passports. The vast majority of people who live in Qatar are foreign workers and other expatriates who do not hold Qatari passports.
The program allows citizens of qualifying nations to enter the U.S. for business or tourism without a visa for up to 90 days, although they must still obtain approval through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, which is done online and doesn’t require an in-person interview as visa applications do.
After Oct. 1, U.S. citizens will be allowed to stay in Qatar without a visa for 90 days.
Israel was the last country admitted to the program in 2023, and it was allowed in despite significant concerns that it does not treat Palestinian Americans, Arab Americans or Muslim Americans the same as other U.S. passport holders.
Rare Jaw Fossils Discovered in Texas Shed Light on a 20-Foot-Long Mosasaur
date: 2024-09-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Unearthed last year, the remains could reveal new information on the extinct sea reptile, which crushed mollusks and shelled creatures with its large, round teeth
NASA Awards Contract Extension for Solar Science Instrument
date: 2024-09-24, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has awarded a contract extension to Stanford University, California, to continue the mission and services for the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) instrument on the agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-contract-extension-for-solar-science-instrument/
Halide Rejected From the App Store
date: 2024-09-24, from: Michael Tsai
Ben Sandofsky (Hacker News): The latest Halide update was rejected because, after seven years, a random reviewer decided our permission prompt wasn’t descriptive enough.I don’t know how to explain why a camera app needs camera permissions. If you think the reviewer was correct because “The camera will be used to take photographs” is a circular […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/24/halide-rejected-from-the-app-store/
Automattic vs. WP Engine
date: 2024-09-24, from: Michael Tsai
Paul Sawers: Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.”Mullenweg criticized the company — which has been commercializing the open source WordPress project since 2010 — for profiteering without giving much back, while also disabling key features that make […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/24/automattic-vs-wp-engine/
NASA Relaunches Art Program with Space-Themed Murals
date: 2024-09-24, from: NASA breaking news
NASA launched the next phase of its art program with two new space-themed murals in New York’s Hudson Square neighborhood in Manhattan. The vision of the reimagined NASA Art Program is to inspire and engage the Artemis Generation with community murals and other art projects for the benefit of humanity. “To continue pushing the boundaries […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-relaunches-art-program-with-space-themed-murals/
OpenAI and Ive
date: 2024-09-24, from: Michael Tsai
Tim Hardwick: Former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive has officially confirmed his involvement in an artificial intelligence hardware project with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The confirmation appeared in a profile of the designer by The New York Times, putting to rest speculation that began nearly a year ago about a potential collaboration between the […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/24/openai-and-ive/
What Is a Photo?
date: 2024-09-24, from: Michael Tsai
Nilay Patel: It’s also notable what isn’t present on the iPhone this year: there’s no generative AI wackiness at all. There’s no video boost or face-swapping, no adding yourself to group photos, no drawing to add stuff with AI like on the Pixel or Galaxy phones — really, none of it. I asked Apple’s VP […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/24/what-is-a-photo/
Who’s watching you the closest online? Google, duh
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Four Chocolate Factory trackers cracked the Top 25 in all regions
Google, once again, is the “undisputed leader” when it comes to monitoring people’s behavior on the internet, according to Kaspersky’s annual web tracking report.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/google_online_tracker/
Sols 4314-4315: Wait, What Was That Back There?
date: 2024-09-24, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Monday, Sept. 23, 2024 After a busy weekend of activities, Curiosity is ready for another week of planning. One of the activities over the weekend was our periodic check-in on our wheels to see how they are holding up on the rough terrain. The image shows the MAHLI view of the right-middle […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/sols-4314-4315-wait-what-was-that-back-there/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
45 years ago CompuServe connected the world.
See Newly Discovered Nazca Drawings That Depict Llamas, Human Sacrifices and More
date: 2024-09-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
An A.I.-assisted study identified 303 previously unknown geoglyphs in the Peruvian desert. The art features surprising figures, like orcas holding knives
Julie Rivera Pérez Bridges Business, STEM to ‘Make the Magic Happen’
date: 2024-09-24, from: NASA breaking news
Senior Resource Analyst Julie Rivera Pérez ensures finances and assets are in place to enable missions’ engineering and science “magic” can happen. As a former intern, she also reaches out to current students to ensure a diverse and inclusive future workforce. Name: Julie Rivera PérezFormal Job Classification: Senior Resources AnalystOrganization: Systems Review Office/Resource Management Office, […]
Putin’s Silence on Kursk Offensive Might Be a Giant Mistake
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: RAND blog
Throughout his presidency, Vladimir Putin has repeatedly failed to project leadership qualities in times of crisis. His relative silence on Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has led to public criticism, even from supporters. This pattern of evasion undermines trust and complicates his leadership approach.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/09/putins-silence-on-kursk-offensive-might-be-a-giant.html
Mathematicians Discover a New Class of Shape: the ‘Soft Cell’
date: 2024-09-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
If the structures look familiar, it’s probably because nature has been using them for a long time in places like nautilus shells, zebra stripes and onions
US Justice Department sues Visa, saying it monopolizes debit card markets
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — The U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa on Tuesday, alleging that the financial services behemoth uses its size and dominance to stifle competition in the debit card market, costing consumers and businesses billions of dollars.
The complaint says Visa penalizes merchants and banks who don’t use Visa’s own payment processing technology to process debit transactions, even though alternatives exist. Visa earns an incremental fee from every transaction processed on its network.
According to the DOJ’s complaint, 60% of debit transactions in the United States run on Visa’s debit network, allowing it to charge over $7 billion in fees each year for processing those transactions.
“We allege that Visa has unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement. “Merchants and banks pass along those costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service. As a result, Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing — but the price of nearly everything.”
The Biden administration has aggressively gone after U.S. companies that it says act like middlemen, such as Ticketmaster parent Live Nation and the real estate software company RealPage, accusing them of burdening Americans with nonsensical fees and anticompetitive behavior. The administration has also brought charges of monopolistic behavior against technology giants such as Apple and Google.
According to the DOJ complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Visa leverages the vast number of transactions on its network to impose volume commitments on merchants and their banks, as well as on financial institutions that issue debit cards. That makes it difficult for merchants to use alternatives, such as lower-cost or smaller payment processors, instead of Visa’s payment processing technology, without incurring what DOJ described as “disloyalty penalties” from Visa.
The DOJ said Visa also stifled competition by paying to enter into partnership agreements with potential competitors.
In 2020, the DOJ sued to block the company’s $5.3 billion purchase of financial technology startup Plaid, calling it a monopolistic takeover of a potential competitor to Visa’s ubiquitous payments network. That acquisition was later called off.
Visa previously disclosed the Justice Department was investigating the company in 2021, saying in a regulatory filing it was cooperating with a DOJ investigation into its debit practices.
Since the pandemic, more consumers globally have been shopping online for goods and services, which has translated into more revenue for Visa in the form of fees. Even traditionally cash-heavy businesses such as bars, barbers and coffee shops have started accepting credit or debit cards as a form of payment, often via smartphones.
Visa processed $3.325 trillion in transactions on its network during the quarter ended June 30, up 7.4% from a year earlier. U.S. payments grew by 5.1%, which is faster than U.S. economic growth.
Visa, based in San Francisco, did not immediately have a comment.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7796751.html
Russia’s digital warfare on Ukraine shows no signs of slowing: Malware hits surge
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Severe incidents may be down, but Putin had to throw one in for good measure
Russia’s use of malware to support its military efforts in Ukraine is showing no signs of waning while its tactics continually evolve to bypass protections.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/russia_malware_ukraine_attacks/
The Cool New Landing Spot for D.C. Insiders: Climate Tech
date: 2024-09-24, from: Heatmap News
Ten years ago, if you were a hotshot senior advisor in the Obama administration, odds are good you exited the revolving door of the White House straight into a job in Big Tech. But there’s a new career trajectory that’s looking pretty good these days: federal government to climate tech. Since the latter Obama years and increasingly with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act two years ago, former government employees are popping up at some of the most important companies and venture capital firms in the climate ecosystem.
That’s a testament to how far we’ve come since clean tech 1.0 in the 2010s, when Solyndra’s bankruptcy was blowing up headlines and the shale revolution was starting to derail renewable energy investment. As a more durable market started to rise from the ashes, a growing number of industry experts jumped into government to help fuel the revival — and then often back into industry to take advantage of a more favorable policy environment and an increased focus on corporate sustainability.
Alfred Johnson, co-founder and CEO of the tax credit marketplace Crux, told me that after growing up in D.C. but moving to Stanford for college, he was surprised to hear folks in Silicon Valley talking about government and private industry as if they had completely “mismatched objectives.” Prior to starting Crux, Johnson served as deputy chief of staff at the Department of the Treasury, his second stint at the agency during a career that’s taken him from campaigning for Obama to Blackrock, to founding his first startup, Mobilize, a platform that used to recruit volunteers for Democratic Party campaign events and progressive causes.
“The perspective that I’ve always had is that government and the private sector are fundamentally intertwined, and always have been,” Johnson told me. Crux itself demonstrates this public-private synergy: Not only did the IRA unleash an abundance of clean energy tax credits, it also made them much easier to trade — transactions Crux facilitates.
“If our goal is to mobilize trillions of dollars of investment into the clean energy transition,” Varun Sivaram, a senior fellow for energy and climate at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me, “the people holding the reins of power should absolutely not be the people who have never been in an investment committee room making a financial decision on a project.” Prior to his latest gig, Sivaram worked as an executive at Orsted, which he joined after a stint in the White House as the managing director for clean energy and innovation and a senior advisor to John Kerry, the administration’s climate envoy.
“After the IRA, I said, look, we’ve passed this extraordinary legislation. I would now love to help be at a company that can use this amazing public policy and build clean energy as fast as possible,” he told me. At Orsted he helped lead the internal R&D and artificial intelligence teams and founded Orsted Ventures, which has invested in Crux. Sivaram was also on the committee that decided to pull out of two offshore wind projects in New Jersey, resulting in a $4 billion impairment for the company. “I sometimes feel like Forrest Gump. I have had this front row seat to a lot of very important things,” Sivaram told me.
A lot of the recent revolving door activity can also be traced to the renewed vigor of the once-nearly-dormant Loan Programs Office, part of the Department of Energy, which the IRA imbued with $400 billion to guarantee loans to emerging energy technologies. LPO became a political football thanks to Solyndra, which received a loan guarantee from the office of more than $500 million. After Jigar Shah took the helm in 2021, he tripled the agency’s staff, bringing with him a cohort of private industry experts and advisors, many of whom held contract positions for about a year or two before moving back into industry to pursue other ventures in the climate tech and energy world.
Climate tech investment firms have also become a popular landing spot for former government talent. David Danielson, now a managing director at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, co-founded ARPA-E and worked in the Department of Energy in the second Obama administration. Jenny Gao, a vice president at Energy Impact Partners, went there fresh off a position in the DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions. And Clay Dumas, a partner at Lowercarbon Capital, worked in the Obama White House as the chief of staff and a senior advisor for the White House Office of Digital Strategy.
And then there’s Overture, a climate tech VC founded by former Obama staffers, which aims to help climate tech founders take advantage of government programs and navigate regulatory complexity. “In some ways, campaigns are startups — you start small with a big idea,” Michael O’Neil, one of Overture’s co-founders and partners, told me. “We used to say in the White House, How do you make the room bigger? How do you get more minds and more talent involved to make better decisions?” Now they ask the same questions to help founders build out their technologies. Overture announced the close of its first $60 million fund earlier this year.
It’s not just climate-specific companies and investors who are benefiting — big tech companies still attract plenty of former government employees, although the locus of that energy is now concentrated on corporate sustainability and decarbonization efforts. Lisa Jackson, VP of environment, policy, and social initiatives at Apple, served as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Obama. Melanie Nakagawa, the chief sustainability officer at Microsoft, previously worked as a climate advisor to Biden’s National Security Council, while Google’s director of climate and energy research, Ali Douraghy, came straight from the DOE.
Tech industry efforts to run operations with clean energy and back emerging climate solutions have also had an undeniably positive impact — most notably Frontier’s commitment to purchasing over $1 billion of carbon removal credits has catalyzed demand in the nascent industry. This initiative, led by the payments platform Stripe and co-founded by Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey, is also powered by a former government employee, Jane Flegal, who worked in the Biden White House as the senior director for industrial emissions.
While it’s true that the traditional off ramps for former government employees remain — the financial sector also still looms large, Sivaram told me — what’s new is that “there’s now actual money in starting your own company, in working at a venture fund,” he said And this, he believes, is how it should be.
“You want people who understand the nuances of the federal government and the IRA in order to effectively run companies that take advantage of the IRA. It is no secret that the government wanted companies to basically take this money. So many of us made this move.”
https://heatmap.news/technology/climate-tech-dc
NASA Ames Welcomes Latvian President, Talks Aeronautics Research
date: 2024-09-24, from: NASA breaking news
President of Latvia Edgars Rinkēvičs observes simulated visuals of an airport and its air traffic, consisting of commercial aircraft and electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, at NASA’s FutureFlight Central on Sept. 18, 2024, during a visit to NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. FutureFlight Central provides high-fidelity simulation of air traffic management […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-ames-welcomes-latvian-president-talks-aeronautics-research/
TikTok removes Russian media accounts for ‘covert influence operations’
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
AYANEO Pocket EVO is an Android handheld with a 7 inch, 165 Hz OLED display
date: 2024-09-24, from: Liliputing
AYANEO is a company that’s made a name for itself in over the past few years by launching a wide range of handheld gaming PCs with a variety of shapes, sizes, features, and price points. Most ship with Windows software and AMD Ryzen processors, but recently the company started to branch out into Android-powered handhelds. […]
The post AYANEO Pocket EVO is an Android handheld with a 7 inch, 165 Hz OLED display appeared first on Liliputing.
Ancient US air traffic control systems won’t get a tech refresh before 2030
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
If they don’t crash first, say government auditors
Updated The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) air traffic control (ATC) systems are perilously out of date, but don’t expect replacements anytime soon, says the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).…
FBI: Son of suspect in Trump assassination attempt arrested on child sexual abuse images charges
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The son of the man suspected in the assassination attempt in Florida against former President Donald Trump has been arrested on federal charges of possessing child sexual abuse images.
Oran Alexander Routh was arrested this week after authorities searched his Greensboro, North Carolina, home “in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation,” and found hundreds of files depicting child sexual abuse, an FBI agent said in court papers.
Investigators who seized multiple electronic devices found videos sent to Oran Routh in July as well as chats from a messaging application commonly used by people who share child sexual abuse material, the FBI agent said.
He faces two charges of possessing and receiving child sexual abuse material and is expected to appear later Tuesday in federal court in North Carolina.
There was no attorney listed for Oran Routh in court papers. Phone messages left for relatives of Oran Routh were not immediately returned.
Oran Routh’s father, Ryan Wesley Routh, has been charged with federal gun offenses in connection to the attempted assassination at Trump’s Florida golf course earlier this month. Prosecutors have indicated much more serious attempted assassination charges are coming.
Oran Routh’s arrest was first reported Tuesday by ABC News.
A federal judge on Monday agreed with Justice Department prosecutors that Ryan Routh should remain locked up while he awaits trial in his case.
Prosecutors have said Ryan Routh left behind a note detailing his plans to kill the former president and kept in his car a handwritten list of dates and venues where Trump was to appear. The note describing Routh’s plans was placed in a box that he dropped off months earlier at the home of an unidentified person who did not open it until after Ryan Routh’s arrest, prosecutors said.
Ryan Routh is currently charged with illegally possessing his gun in spite of multiple felony convictions, including two charges of possessing stolen goods in 2002 in North Carolina, and with possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
But a prosecutor said in court Monday that they would pursue additional charges before a grand jury, accusing him of having tried to “assassinate a major political candidate” — charges that would warrant life in prison in the event of a conviction.
It is common for prosecutors to file more easily provable charges as an immediate placeholder before adding more significant allegations as the case proceeds.
Ryan Routh was arrested September 15 after a Secret Service agent who was scoping the Trump International Golf Club for potential security threats saw a partially obscured man’s face and the barrel of a semiautomatic rifle, aimed directly at the former president.
The agent fired at Routh, who sped away before being stopped by officials in a neighboring county, leaving behind a loaded rifle, digital camera, a backpack and a reusable shopping bag that was hanging from a chain-link fence.
Arctic Sea Ice Near Historic Low; Antarctic Ice Continues Decline
date: 2024-09-24, from: NASA breaking news
Arctic sea ice retreated to near-historic lows in the Northern Hemisphere this summer, likely melting to its minimum extent for the year on Sept.11, 2024, according to researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The decline continues the decades-long trend of shrinking and thinning ice cover in the Arctic Ocean. […]
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/arctic-sea-ice-near-historic-low-antarctic-ice-continues-decline/
Educational Activities in Space
date: 2024-09-24, from: NASA breaking news
Science in Space: September 2024 As students of all ages returned to school this month, crew members on the International Space Station continue to conduct a variety of educational programs and activities that support learning on the ground. These efforts are part of a wider commitment at NASA to engage, inspire, and attract future generations […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/educational-activities-in-space/
NASA Helps Build New Federal Sea Level Rise Website
date: 2024-09-24, from: NASA breaking news
Designed to be user-friendly, the resource contains the latest sea level data, explainers, and other information from several U.S. agencies. The U.S. Interagency Task Force on Sea Level Change launched the U.S. Sea Level Change website on Monday, Sept. 23. Designed to help communities prepare for rising seas, the site features the latest science on […]
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/nasa-helps-build-new-federal-sea-level-rise-website/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Duolingo Brings Adventure and AI to Your Language Learning Journey.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
James Earl Jones Reads Kurt Vonnegut's Inspiring Response to Students Who Contacted Him in 2006.
https://laughingsquid.com/james-earl-jones-reads-kurt-vonnegut-letter/
HP introduces a cheaper OmniBook X 14 inch laptop with an 8-core Snapdragon Plus processor
date: 2024-09-24, from: Liliputing
The HP OmniBook X is thin and light laptop that launched earlier this year as one of the first Copilot+ PCs powered by a 12-core Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X1E-78-100 processor. But like most notebooks with Qualcomm’s higher-performance laptop processors, the OmniBook X is a premium device that currently sells for around $930 and up at […]
The post HP introduces a cheaper OmniBook X 14 inch laptop with an 8-core Snapdragon Plus processor appeared first on Liliputing.
Snowflake seeks to raise funds with $2B bond sale
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Poorly received by investors, the moves comes in a difficult year
Cloud-based data warehousing and analytics biz Snowflake has issued $2 billion in bonds with the aim to buy back shares and potentially launch an acquisition strategy.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/snowflake_seeks_to_raise_funds/
10 nasty software bugs put thousands of fuel storage tanks at risk of cyberattacks
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Thousands of devices remain vulnerable, US most exposed to the threat
Tens of thousands of fuel storage tanks in critical infrastructure facilities remain vulnerable to zero-day attacks due to buggy Automatic Tank Gauge systems from multiple vendors, say infosec researchers. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/security_bugs_fuel_storage_tanks/
Pennsylvania Gas Driller: Our Operations Pose No Health Risk. You Can’t Be Serious, Activists Say.
date: 2024-09-24, from: Capital and Main
With billions up for grabs and scores of air quality violations to its name, CNX tries to recast itself as a climate warrior.
The post Pennsylvania Gas Driller: Our Operations Pose No Health Risk. You Can’t Be Serious, Activists Say. appeared first on .
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
"Social web" is not the same thing as ActivityPub. Another appropriation of the term "web." ActivityPub is not finished and it's too complicated to be the foundation of anything given such a large title. The beauty of the web is its simplicity. And there are other formats and protocols that predate AP that are also foundations of the social web.
https://socialwebfoundation.org/2024/09/24/launch/
In his final UN address, Biden spotlights world conflicts, calls for peace
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
new york — President Joe Biden used his final address before world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly to call for peace in Lebanon and an end to the conflict in Gaza — two prospects that analysts say are unlikely to happen soon.
“A full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” Biden said, referring to the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. He said a diplomatic solution is still possible.
As the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza nears the one-year mark, Biden urged the parties to “finalize the terms” of a cease-fire and hostage deal that has been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.
And on Ukraine’s efforts to fight off Russia’s invasion, Biden said, “We cannot grow weary. We cannot look away, and we will not let up on our support for Ukraine, not until Ukraine wins with a just and durable peace.”
But it was this line — about his decision not to seek reelection — that garnered the most applause from the packed audience, which included leaders from the body’s 193 member states.
“My fellow leaders, let us never forget: some things are more important than staying in power,” he said. “It’s your people.”
Yet several delegations did not react during Biden’s 25-minute address — notably, the delegations from China and from Russia, who did not clap for any of his remarks.
Mideast concerns top agenda
Gaza and the threat of spiraling conflict in that region topped Biden’s list of concerns as he made his appeal to world leaders. The U.S. position there is not in line with the rest of the General Assembly, which last week overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that Israel end its occupation of Palestinian territory within the next 12 months. The United States was among the 14 no votes.
After the vote, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. vote is in line with Washington’s opposition to “unilateral measures that undermine the prospect of a two-state solution.”
And on Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a “just peace” in Ukraine and warned of damaging trends around the world.
“We see this age of impunity everywhere in the Middle East, in the heart of Europe, in the Horn of Africa and beyond,” he said. “The war in Ukraine is spreading with no signs of letting up. Civilians are paying the price in rising death tolls and shattered lives and communities. It is time for a just peace based on the UN Charter, on international law and on U.N. resolutions.
“Meanwhile, Gaza is a nonstop nightmare that threatens to take the entire region. Look no further than Lebanon. We should all be alarmed by the escalation.”
Biden, too, spotlighted these conflicts – and in Tuesday’s speech, looped Sudan and its escalating humanitarian crisis into the trifecta of urgent conflicts that need to end.
’A call to resolve conflicts”
John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA that it’s unlikely Biden will get his wish.
“It looks very much like these will be conflicts that will persist and will continue on past his presidency,” he said. “So, it was a call to resolve conflicts that have been plaguing him and his administration, for at least part of his administration. But it doesn’t seem like the end of either of these conflicts [Ukraine and Gaza] is likely to be within his reach.”
One thing is clear: As the Israel-Hamas conflict heads for its first anniversary, nearly 100 hostages are thought to remain in Hamas’ custody. The White House says bringing them home is its top priority and the key pillar of a deal to halt the fighting between Israel and the U.S.-designated terrorist group.
For months, Biden’s emissaries have raced between Qatar and Cairo to try to bring the sides together. And for months, they have appeared to be on the precipice of a deal, only for it to fall apart.
Kim Lewis contributed from Washington.
With Granite Rapids, Intel is back to trading blows with AMD
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And they didn’t even need a bunch of skimpy E-cores to do it
Over the past few years, we’ve grown accustomed to Xeon processors that, generation after generation, come up short of the competition on some combination of core count, clock speeds, memory bandwidth, or PCIe connectivity.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/intel_xeon_6p/
Climate Change @ huntington
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
“Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis,” an exhibition at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, opened on September 14.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/climate-change/
Club Spotlight: Caltech Rugby Club
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
I’ve always said that playing rugby in America is like being a humanities student at Caltech (we’d know, our interim club Treasurer is an Economist).
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/club-spotlight-caltech-rugby-club/
Edan Lepucki: A Perspective on Writing, Motherhood, and Teaching at Caltech.
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
Edan Lepucki is the rare member of the Caltech community who is better known off-campus than on. Off-campus, she is a New York Times bestselling author who has published five books and counting.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/a-perspective-on-writing-motherhood-and-teaching-at-caltech/
Guiding the world’s students through Caltech with Laura Flower Kim.
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
When Laura Flower Kim, now Associate Director at International Student Programs at Caltech, took over the office on the second floor of the Center for Student Services sixteen years ago, most of it was occupied by one giant red file-cabinet filled to the brim with immigration paperwork for international undergraduate and graduate students.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/guiding-the-world-caltech-with-laura-flower/
In Pasadena, A New Way Of Flipping Burgers.
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
Embedded in the story of food is the story of people: in modern society, the people who grow and harvest it, the people who distribute it, the people who cook it, and if we are at a restaurant, the people who serve it.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/in-pasadena-a-new-way-of-flipping-burgers/
Lamentation of A Sandwich.
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
There’s a good sandwich, nay, a great sandwich at Broad Café. Quite honestly, this sandwich is glorious. This sandwich is there to pick you up when you are down. It fills you up when you are empty.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/lamentation-of-a-sandwich/
Man Vs Manion (Man edition)
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
TL;DR: Gus’s is a fantastic BBQ restaurant not far from campus.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/man-vs-manionman-edition/
Man Vs Manion (Manion edition)
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
The first time I felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and loneliness at Caltech, I had yet to hear the Fleming cannon fire even once.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/man-vs-manionmanion-edition/
Mental Health At Caltech
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
The first time I felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and loneliness at Caltech, I had yet to hear the Fleming cannon fire even once.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/mental-health-at-caltech/
SLEC Announcement
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
The Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology (ASCIT) Board of Directors (BoD) has announced that, for the first time, both the Student Faculty Conference (SFC) and the newly established Student Life and Experience Conference (SLEC) will take place in April 2025.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/slec-announcement/
Songs to Survive a Heatwave To
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
The academic year is here, and with it, a playlist to remind you why you can be glad summer is over! As many of you may be aware (some of you probably much more than you’d like to be), numerous parts of the world experienced intense heat waves over the past few months.
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/song-to-survice-heatwave/
The end of the summer.
date: 2024-09-24, from: The California Tech (Caltech student paper)
Many people question what the end of summer may mean. The end of an era of relaxation? The dawn of a new stick season? Or the letter ‘r’?
https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/09/24/end-of-summer/
It’s a tough environment for home-buying, even after a rate cut
date: 2024-09-24, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Those who have been waiting patiently for the housing market to cool down may have to wait even longer for lower prices. Data released today indicates that there’s been no reprieve for prospective homebuyers, as prices have stayed stubbornly high despite a recent rate cut by the Fed. Dr. David Kelly of JPMorgan Global Funds walks us through the report. China’s economy is looking to receive a boost after policymakers passed the largest economic stimulus package since the pandemic to buoy stagnating growth. Retailers are preparing for the holiday season by beginning to hire thousands of seasonal workers. And, why some parents are turning to a Barbie-theme “dumb” phone as a potential first device for their kids.
This Lost Mozart Composition Hasn’t Been Heard for Centuries. Now, You Can Listen to It
date: 2024-09-24, from: Smithsonian Magazine
More than 250 years after a teenage Mozart wrote “Serenade in C,” a copy of the piece has surfaced in the collections of a German library
Ghost, Encrypted Phone for Criminals, Was an ‘Absolute Mess’
date: 2024-09-24, from: 404 Media Group
A security researcher managed to pull a list of Ghost users, resellers, and even customer support messages from an exposed server. It shows how as organized criminals move to making their own encrypted platforms, they might make vulnerable products.
https://www.404media.co/ghost-encrypted-phone-for-criminals-was-an-absolute-mess-2/
Elon’s latest X-periment: Blocked users can still stalk your public tweets
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘High time this happened’ says Musk
Elon Musk has confirmed a change to X that will allow blocked users to view public posts.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/x_block_changes/
The 2024 Roku Ultra is a $100 media streamer with WiFi 6 and a faster processor
date: 2024-09-24, from: Liliputing
These days it’s hard to buy a TV that doesn’t have some sort of smart TV software baked in. But if you’ve got an older model that doesn’t have any software, is missing important features, or no longer gets updates, there’s no shortage of devices you can plug into your display to make it easy […]
The post The 2024 Roku Ultra is a $100 media streamer with WiFi 6 and a faster processor appeared first on Liliputing.
Who Is a Caregiver?
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: RAND blog
Over 40 percent of American adults are caregivers, providing unpaid assistance to those with wounds, illnesses, or injuries. To support caregivers, it’s crucial to recognize their roles, address their emotional and financial challenges, and offer resources.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/09/who-is-a-caregiver.html
MASTER PLAN, Ep 7: The Federalist Society Strikes Back
date: 2024-09-24, from: The Lever News
To get the rulings you want, build the Supreme Court you need.
https://www.levernews.com/master-plan-ep-7-the-federalist-society-strikes-back/
MASTER PLAN, Ep 7: The Federalist Society Strikes Back
date: 2024-09-24, from: The Lever News
To get the rulings you want, build the Supreme Court you need.
https://www.levernews.com/master-plan-ep-7-the-federalist-society-strikes_back/
Warm embrace of CHIPS Act cash envelopes Polar Semiconductor
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Minnow of among government funded whales to double production capacity
US-based Polar Semiconductor – the maker of analog and power chip devices and sensors – has bagged $123 million of CHIPS and Science Act funding to nearly double production capacity in the US.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/warm_embrace_of_chips_act/
US Navy ship operating in Mideast damaged in incident, officials say
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A U.S. Navy replenishment ship operating in the Middle East sustained damage and the cause was under investigation, officials said Tuesday.
The USNS Big Horn was damaged after it resupplied the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group. It remained in the region amid heightened tensions over the Israel-Hamas war and Israel’s ongoing strikes targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
A U.S. Navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters yet to be made public, declined to elaborate on where the damage took place. A photo released by the U.S. military dated Sept. 5 showed sailors aboard the Lincoln receiving supplies from the Big Horn, while another on Sept. 11 showed the Big Horn alongside the Lincoln. The Lincoln is patrolling the Arabian Sea.
The official said the Big Horn’s crew was safe and there was no sign of an oil leak from the vessel.
Another U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said the vessel was being supported by private tugboats to head into a port and an assessment of the damage was still ongoing.
Rumors about the Big Horn’s condition began circulating early Tuesday after images posted to a website tracking shipping called Captain showed flooding purportedly on board the Henry J. Kaiser-class fleet replenishment oiler. The website described the Big Horn as having “ran aground … and partially flooded off the coast of Oman.”
Though the Lincoln is powered by a nuclear reactor, its strike group has vessels powered by fossil fuel that need to be resupplied at sea. The aircraft aboard the Lincoln also need jet fuel. The Big Horn and other ships like it also provide other supplies.
The U.S. official called the damage to the refueler an inconvenience, but said the fleet would continue to be able to operate without it. The strike group’s destroyers can refuel in port and they can transport aviation gas to the carrier to supply the on-board fighter jets and surveillance aircraft.
Oilers like the Big Horn typically have around 80 civilians and five military personnel on board.
It remains unclear if there are any other replenishment ships like it immediately available in the Mideast. An AP survey of publicly released military images of similar replenishment ships run by the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command showed none in the Mideast in recent months. The command declined to comment.
As IBM pushes for more automation, its AI simply not up to the job of replacing staff
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
So say our sources, who warn job cuts, outsourcing risk depriving biz of seasoned technical talent
IBM’s plan to replace thousands of roles with AI presently looks more like outsourcing jobs to India, at the expense of organizational competency.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/ibm_layoffs_ai_talent/
Google Serving AI-Generated Images of Mushrooms Could Have ‘Devastating Consequences’
date: 2024-09-24, from: 404 Media Group
AI-generated images of mushrooms that look nothing like the real species could spread misleading and dangerous information.
https://www.404media.co/google-serves-ai-generated-images-of-mushrooms-putting-foragers-at-risk/
Florida Is Bracing for a Potential Category 4 Hurricane
date: 2024-09-24, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Hurricane John is bringing dangerous storm surge to Mexico’s Pacific coast • Flash floods and landslides are inundating villages in northern Thailand • Phoenix officials confirmed the city had 113 straight days of temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit this summer, breaking the previous record, set in 1993, of 76 days.
THE TOP FIVE
- State of emergency issued in Florida ahead of potential hurricane
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 41 of the state’s 67 counties ahead of a storm that is expected to slam into the state’s Gulf coast Thursday as a Category 3 or maybe even Category 4 hurricane. The executive order activates the Florida National Guard and emergency response teams. “As the system approaches, I’m urging Floridians to finalize their storm prep, monitor weather reports and follow the guidance of local authorities,” DeSantis said. “Stay Safe, Florida.”
AccuWeather
Tropical Storm Nine could strengthen into Hurricane Helene with maximum sustained wind gusts of 111-130 miles per hour, according to AccuWeather meteorologists. It could bring up to 12 inches of rain near the point of landfall, but flooding could happen as far north as the Ohio River Valley. Some parts of the Florida Panhandle could see up to 15 feet of storm surge. “This is going to be a life-threatening storm with dangerous storm surge,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Bernie Rayno. “The one factor that is alarming is how incredibly high water temperatures are, which can fuel rapid intensification right along the forecast track of this storm.”
- Biden to speak at Climate Week event
President Biden will speak today at Climate Week NYC, taking the stage at the Bloomberg Global Business forum. His comments will highlight his administration’s climate agenda and clean energy policies and how they are “lowering costs, creating good-paying and union jobs, and reducing harmful emissions,” according to a White House statement. E&E News reported that many of Biden’s top energy and environmental officials are out in force, trying to remind everyone that the climate landscape would look very different under a Trump presidency.
- All eyes on the Global Renewables Summit
Also happening at Climate Week today: The Global Renewables Summit, taking place at the Plaza Hotel. World leaders including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the president of this year’s COP29 summit will be expected to speak about the global goal to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. The International Energy Agency released a report today concluding that the goal, which was set at last year’s COP28, is within reach but only if countries ramp up transmission expansion and dramatically increase energy storage. “Further international cooperation is vital to deliver fit-for-purpose grids, sufficient energy storage and faster electrification, which are integral to move clean energy transitions quickly and securely,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. Another new report, from the International Renewable Energy Agency, found that 81% of the new renewable energy capacity added last year was cheaper than fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, at the U.N. General Assembly, leaders of developing nations issued a plea for the world’s developed countries to stop paying “lip service” and lead the way on emissions cuts and climate finance.
- First Street examines U.S. banks’ climate risks
The non-profit research foundation First Street released a new report yesterday examining the growing financial risks associated with climate disasters. Using its climate risk financial modeling tool, First Street found that 57 U.S. banks with a total of $627 billion in real estate loans could face material financial risk. Those loans represent nearly 11% of all loans in the country. Regional and community banks are especially vulnerable “given the concentrated nature of their lending portfolios.”
“Through climate risk financial modeling, we are able to get the first glimpse of the financial institutions which have material financial risk from their exposure to the physical impacts of climate change,” said Dr. Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications at First Street. “While this risk is material by definition, banks are finally in a position where they can proactively manage these risks to dramatically change their risk profile over time.”
- California sues ExxonMobil
The state of California is suing ExxonMobil, accusing the oil giant of lying about plastic being recyclable and overpromising on its “advanced recycling” technology. “We are asking the court to hold ExxonMobil fully accountable for its role in actively creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis through its campaign of deception,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. “The case opens a new front in the legal battles against oil and gas companies over climate and environmental issues,” explained The New York Times. But legal experts say the state will face an uphill battle in the suit.
THE KICKER
“Even in states where coal makes up a large share of the power grid — such as West Virginia, Wyoming, or Missouri — EVs produce half as much CO2 as gasoline vehicle. That’s because EVs are much more energy efficiency than internal combustion vehicles. So even though coal is a dirtier energy source than gasoline or diesel, EVs need to far less of it (in the form of electricity) to drive an additional mile.” –Robinson Meyer explains why switching to an EV matters so much for the climate, as part of Heatmap’s new Decarbonize Your Life special report.
https://heatmap.news/climate/florida-hurricane-helene-storm
To preserve sea power, US looks to Japan for help
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
Tokyo — U.S. naval dominance, unchallenged for decades, is now coming under strain as China’s state-backed shipbuilding industry rapidly expands, while the U.S. Navy faces severe maintenance delays.
The impact is being felt across the Navy. While some ships and submarines are stuck waiting for repairs at overcrowded U.S. shipyards, others are forced into extended deployments, pushing crews and vessels to their limits.
Analysts say the delays undermine the U.S. ability to project strength and deter conflict, especially in key areas like the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, where China is upsetting the status quo.
To help fix the problem, the U.S. is turning to its allies — particularly Japan, one of the world’s largest shipbuilders. Earlier this year, U.S. and Japanese officials began negotiating a plan to expand Japan’s role in performing major repairs on U.S. Navy vessels at its shipyards.
Rahm Emanuel, U.S. ambassador to Japan, sees the proposal as crucial for keeping U.S. ships in the region. “The Indo-Pacific is an away game for us…but with allies, it’s closer to a home game,” Emanuel told VOA.
The discussions underscore Japan’s broader shift toward a more active regional security role, as it steps away from decades of pacifism. It’s also part of a strategy by the U.S. to encourage its Asian allies to take on greater security responsibilities in the face of China’s rising influence.
However, the proposal faces major hurdles. In the U.S., legal changes would be needed to allow foreign shipyards to overhaul Navy vessels. In Japan, there are concerns about becoming a bigger target for China.
Severe backlog
But for the U.S. Navy, the challenge is severe.
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), about a third of the U.S. attack submarine fleet is currently out of service, either undergoing maintenance or awaiting repairs.
Fewer than 40% of the Navy’s scheduled ship repairs are completed on time, according to recent congressional testimony. By some estimates, the Navy is 20 years behind in maintenance work.
A wide range of key shipbuilding projects are also running years behind schedule — an “extraordinary situation” in the post-World War II history of the Navy, according to CRS.
Emanuel argues this reflects a broader decline in the U.S. defense industrial base, which has been hollowed out since the 1990s and is “not ready” to meet U.S. security needs.
“Every weapon that we’ve agreed to here, I’ve had to renegotiate the contract once it’s signed because we can’t meet the budget at the timeline,” Emanuel said. “It’s really bad planning [and] really bad preparation.”
According to a recent CRS report, the Navy’s repair backlog is caused by a shortage of skilled workers and limited capacity at the four U.S. government-run naval shipyards.
China challenge
Meanwhile, China boasts 20 large shipyards, which it is using to quickly build up what is already the world’s largest navy in terms of overall vessels.
According to a recent unclassified slide released by U.S. naval intelligence, China’s shipbuilding capacity is over 200 times that of the United States, fueled by generous government subsidies.
Even though the U.S. still maintains significant naval advantages — such as 11 aircraft carriers compared to China’s three and an unrivaled network of global alliances — some observers believe that China’s ability to dwarf U.S. shipbuilding represents a fundamental shift in the regional balance of power.
“We’ve let that underlying capacity atrophy to the point where we’re behind the eight ball at the moment, and that’s a big, thorny problem,” said Sam Byers, the senior national security advisor at the Washington D.C.-based Center for Maritime Strategy.
Benefits and drawbacks
In Emanuel’s estimation, the U.S.-Japan ship repair proposal could alleviate the U.S. Navy’s maintenance backlog, freeing U.S. shipyards to focus on meeting their construction goals. It would also allow U.S. ships to stay for longer in Asia, he said.
But not everyone agrees.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, argues that the problem isn’t a lack of shipyard capacity but rather their inconsistent use, due to fluctuating demand from the Navy. He suggests that repairing more ships overseas could help manage these fluctuations and minimize disruptions for Japan-based crews.
“And repair yards in Japan could gain experience working on U.S. ships, which could be beneficial in a conflict,” he added.
However, he cautioned that shifting work overseas wouldn’t solve the underlying issues of funding and planning that contribute to the Navy’s repair delays.
“Of course, the Japanese ship repair yards may do a better job or be more efficient than their American counterparts. If that is the argument, then U.S. officials should make that clear,” Clark said.
Others in the shipbuilding industry have argued against what they see as outsourcing U.S. Navy shipbuilding and repairs, a step they characterize as “kicking American shipyard workers to the curb.”
Japan risks
There are also barriers in Japan, where public opinion doesn’t always align with the government’s more assertive security stance.
While certain segments of the Japanese public appear more supportive of increased military involvement after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s unclear how deep or lasting this shift is, warned Misato Matsuoka, an associate professor at Teikyo University.
“There is this gap of understanding when it comes to what is going on in the security area,” Matsuoka said. “I don’t see a lot of Japanese who are even aware of these changes.”
Matsuoka also warned that the U.S.-Japan ship repair proposal could eventually be seen as one of many factors escalating U.S.-China tensions, potentially impacting Japan negatively.
“All the things Japan is doing makes it more important within the U.S. alliance but that also increases the risk of something happening to Japanese territory,” said Robert Ward, Japan Chair at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
While Japan deepens ties with the U.S., it is careful not to provoke China, Ward noted. Nonetheless, Japan, like many countries, remains wary of what it sees as China’s destabilizing behavior in the region.
“This isn’t happening in a vacuum,” Ward said, referring to Japan’s changing security posture. “There are very good reasons why all this is happening.”
When it comes to the U.S.-Japan ship repair deal, the choices are also complex for the United States, Emanuel acknowledged. However, he argued, sometimes “you’ve got to choose between what’s bad and what’s worse.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/to-preserve-sea-power-us-looks-to-japan-for-help-/7796121.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Credit where it’s due: WaPo has already published two stories this week that attempt to cover Trump like the conman he is, rather than the good faith politician he is often treated as.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Let go of the nuclear retrofuture.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Over 400 economists and ex-officials endorse Kamala Harris.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/24/business/kamala-harris-economy-endorsement/index.html
How to spot a North Korean agent before they get comfy inside payroll
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Mandiant publishes cheat sheet for weeding out fraudulent IT staff
Against a backdrop of rising exposure to North Korean agents seeking (mainly) US IT roles, organizations now have a cheat sheet to help spot potential operatives.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/mandiant_north_korea_workers/
That Really Is Tough
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/09/24/that-really-is-tough/
Why a downturn could be healthy for the art market
date: 2024-09-24, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The art market is in somewhat of a funk right now. Auction houses are reporting that demand for new pieces of art has dipped recently, partly due to external conditions like higher interest rates. While the downturn upends years of strong sales, art critic Blake Gopnik argues that a correction may ultimately benefit the long-run fortunes of artists. And, a look inside the Justice Department’s reported case against Visa over monopoly claims in the debit card market.
Chinese fashion giant Shein accused of tax dodging
date: 2024-09-24, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Shein, a Chinese fashion giant, has come under fire over claims the company is dodging UK taxes. A look at why some want the government to step in. The Chinese government is stepping up efforts to revive its slowing economy. Everton Football Club, one of England’s top football teams, is set for a takeover by an American investment group. And a new – and very pink – Barbie-branded phone is hitting the U.S. market.
Capita wins £135M extension on much-delayed UK smart meter rollout
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Outsourcing firm has been building network for over a decade now – how’s that going?
The poster child of UK outsourcing, Capita, has won a two-year extension to its license to manage the delivery of the UK’s smart meter secure communications platform, a system dogged by delays.…
From Men and Coal to Power & Light: Russell Lee Photos on Display in Washington, DC, Eight Decades Apart
date: 2024-09-24, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
Today’s post by Robert Pines, a public affairs specialist with Public and Media Communications in Washington, DC, is inspired by a photo series he found while browsing the National Archives Catalog. “All the essential characteristics of a coal-mining community—except for the coal dust and the odors—are portrayed.” These are the words used in promotional material … Continue reading From Men and Coal to Power & Light: Russell Lee Photos on Display in Washington, DC, Eight Decades Apart
Post-IPO Raspberry Pi results in: So you can make money in tech without added AI
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The little computer-that-could benefits as supply chain eases
Raspberry Pi has reported a jump in revenue and profit for the first half of 2024, sending the company’s shares soaring despite marginally lower volumes than expected.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/raspberry_pi_reports_strong_numbers/
Old-School Politics Might Just Save the IRA
date: 2024-09-24, from: Heatmap News
They may only control the House of Representatives for now, but Republicans in Washington are already arguing amongst themselves about what they’ll do if they take control of both congressional chambers and the White House in November’s elections. And one of the most intense debates concerns the Inflation Reduction Act, one of Joe Biden’s signature legislative accomplishments and the most important climate bill ever passed in the U.S. Should they repeal it? Repeal it, then drown it, then set it on fire? That’s what some would prefer to do. But the reality may be more delicate than that.
Earlier this month, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson gave a speech to a conservative group in which he vowed to “cut the wasteful Green New Deal spending in the Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act” if Republicans take control (for the uninitiated, “wasteful Green New Deal spending” essentially means “whatever environmental spending you don’t like”). But he also said in an interview that “You’ve got to use a scalpel and not a sledgehammer” when going after the IRA, “because there’s a few provisions in there that have helped overall.”
To many Republicans, that was nothing less than blasphemy. “A sledgehammer to the so-called Inflation Reduction Act is what is needed,” said Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas. “Something tells me that’s going to be an issue of contention next year between some of my colleagues and their districts where they might have interests who love the largesse of Washington, D.C.,” said Representative Byron Donalds of Florida. “Repeal the IRA now. Completely,” said Representative Bob Good of Virginia. All are members of the far-right Freedom Caucus. Representatives of conservative advocacy groups have also condemned the idea of not repealing the IRA in full.
And yet, Johnson’s remarks also came after 18 Republicans in his caucus whose districts have benefited from the IRA sent him a letter warning against repealing the law. “We hear from industry and our constituents who fear the energy tax regime will once again be turned on its head due to Republican repeal efforts,” they wrote. “Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing.”
What we have here is a conflict between interests and ideology. The hard-right conservatives will say that the law violates almost everything they believe in since it addresses climate change (which they prefer not to do) with a big, expensive, government-driven effort (which they hate). But for many Republicans, the IRA is bringing jobs and economic development to their districts. And when ideology and interests collide, interests usually prevail.
Appropriators have long understood that a key way to protect your funding is to widen the number of people and places that benefit from it. The Pentagon has always been adept at distributing subcontracts for big weapons systems across as many congressional districts as possible; if 100 different members of Congress have constituents making widgets that go in a bomber, they’ll make sure its funding won’t get cut in the next budget.
That idea was built into the design of the IRA, along with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, the other Biden-era laws that contained serious climate spending. Some of the benefits are available to any American (like subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles), but others are more geographically targeted. As it turns out, those benefits have flowed disproportionately to Republican-run states and conservative areas. Which means that there are a lot of Republicans in Congress who might not be on board with repealing the IRA, even if they voted against it in the first place — which all of them did.
As you may recall, the IRA got zero Republican votes in both the Senate and House when it passed in August 2022. In the two years since, some of those same Republicans who voted no have taken credit when IRA funds came to their states and districts, to both annoyance and mockery from their Democratic counterparts.
Hypocritical or not, the economic logic can be hard to deny. According to an analysis by Bloomberg News, $206 billion in clean technology manufacturing investments have been announced under President Biden, most of which involve EVs and batteries. Of that total, $42 billion will be spent in districts represented by Democrats, while $161 billion, nearly four times as much, will go to Republican districts. Overall, that spending can be found in 185 congressional districts. Other estimates put the amount of investment even higher.
Many of the politicians representing these districts are conservative Republicans who haven’t abandoned their ideology — at least not rhetorically. Some of them may be outright climate deniers, who will be happy to rail against wasteful government spending and the Green New Deal if you ask them to. But if it comes to a vote that would cut off subsidies to a factory that’s employing thousands of their constituents, they’re almost certainly going to say no.
And if you’re an advocate of climate action, that’s fine. They can bloviate all they want. That’s why the IRA was designed the way it was: to make progress on climate, and ensure that that law was durable. White House economist Heather Boushey recently said that one of the administration’s climate goals is to “create more path dependency,” so climate progress will be harder to undo. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t vulnerable provisions of the law, but they’re likely to be the ones that don’t have advocates on both sides of the aisle; a manufacturing tax credit may be safer than the one on purchases of heat pumps.
We’ve come to expect that the passage of a major law doesn’t end the fight over it; Republicans tried for years to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and some are still talking about doing so 14 years after it passed. But they never succeeded because it would have hurt too many people. That history might repeat itself.
https://heatmap.news/politics/old-school-politics-ira
Announcing Stable V8 Bindings for Rust
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: Deno blog
Rusty V8, a library that provides high-quality, zero-overhead Rust bindings to V8, is finally stable. Here’s how to use it.
https://deno.com/blog/rusty-v8-stabilized
Scientists demonstrate X-rays as a way to zap asteroids out of Earth’s path
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Lab-based proof-of-concept shows how radiation creates explosive plumes to deflect menacing space rocks
US scientists have demonstrated that potentially dangerous asteroids destined for Earth could be deflected from their trajectory using X-rays.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/asteroid_zapping_x_ray_pulse/
Kmart closes its last full-scale US store
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — Attention, Kmart shoppers, the end is near!
The erstwhile retail giant renowned for its Blue Light Specials — featuring a flashing blue orb affixed to a pole enticing shoppers to a flash sale — is shuttering its last full-scale store in mainland United States.
The store, located in swank Bridgehampton, New York, on Long Island, is slated to close Oct. 20, according to Denise Rivera, an employee who answered the phone at the store late Monday. The manager wasn’t available, she said.
That will leave only a small Kmart store in Miami. It has a handful of stores in Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Transformco, the company that bought the assets of Sears and Kmart out of the bankruptcy of Sears Holdings in 2019, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
In its heyday, there were more than 2,000 Kmarts in the U.S.
Struggling to compete with Walmart’s low prices and Target’s trendier offerings, Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2002 — becoming the largest U.S. retailer to take that step — and announced it would close more than 250 stores.
A few years later, hedge fund executive Edward Lampert combined Sears and Kmart and pledged to return them to their former greatness. But the 2008 recession and the rising dominance of Amazon contributed in derailing that mission. Sears filed for Chapter 11 in 2018 and now has just a handful of stores left in the U.S., where it once had thousands.
https://www.voanews.com/a/kmart-closes-its-last-full-scale-us-store-/7795991.html
Cloudflare tightens screws on site-gobbling AI bots
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
When robots.txt just ain’t cutting the mustard
Cloudflare on Monday expanded its defense against the dark arts of AI web scrapers by providing customers with a bit more visibility into, and control over, unwelcome content raids.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/cloudflare_ai_audit/
Climate goal to triple global renewable energy by 2030 within reach, IEA says
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
LONDON — A goal to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 and cut fossil fuel use is within reach, the International Energy Agency said in a report on Tuesday, but will require a huge push to unlock bottlenecks such as permitting and grid connections.
The report comes as leaders from government and business come together at New York Climate week to try to drive forward action against climate change.
Almost 200 countries at the COP 28 climate summit in Dubai last year agreed to reach net zero emissions from the energy sector by 2050 and pledged to triple renewable energy capacity like wind and solar.
The IEA said the renewable energy goal “is within reach thanks to favorable economics, ample manufacturing potential and strong policies,” but said more renewable capacity by itself would not slash fossil fuel use and reduce costs for consumers.
“To unlock the full benefits of the tripling goal, countries need to make a concerted push to build and modernize 25 million kilometers of electricity grids by 2030… The world would also need 1,500 gigawatts (GW) of energy storage capacity by 2030,” the IEA said.
Countries at COP 28 also pledged to double energy efficiency measures to help curb power use, but this target will require governments to make efficiency much more of a policy priority.
Countries must embed the renewable and energy efficiency goals in their national plans to meet goals set under the Paris climate agreement, the IEA said.
Emissions from the global energy sector hit a record high last year.
Tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency measures to reduce power use could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 10 billion metric tons by the end of the decade compared with what is otherwise expected, the report said.
Look! About chest high! Is it a pallet? Is it a drone? No, it’s a Palletrone
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And it’s here to carry your not-very-heavy stuff
Researchers from South Korea suggest their Palletrone flying platform may someday be useful for light hauling scenarios.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/palletrone/
Conflicts in Ukraine, Middle East in focus as world leaders address UN General Assembly
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
Xen to RISC-V port progresses with foundational efforts
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
But work on big ticket items needed to make the combo a contender is yet to commence
The effort to bring the Xen hypervisor to the RISC-V instruction set architecture has advanced – a little – but big jobs that would make both projects a contender for more workloads are still on developers’ to-do lists.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/xen_risc_v_port_progress/
Vietnam finds a formula – C = SET + 1 – to grow its semiconductor industry to $100bn
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It only adds up to being as big as Nvidia today, in 2050
The Vietnamese government claims to have found a magical mathematical formula that will elevate its semiconductor industry to an annual turnover of $100 billion by 2050.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/vietnam_semiconductor_math/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump says Americans who criticize the Supreme Court for overturning Roe v. Wade should be imprisoned.
https://www.threads.net/@kamalahq/post/DAR-aKYPGpJ
American sentenced in Russia on kidnapping charge
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/american-sentenced-in-russia-on-kidnapping-charge/7795911.html
10,000 Subscriber Q&A!
date: 2024-09-24, from: Literate Machine
YouTube Version | Podcast Version Got 10,000 subscribers on the YouTube Channel, and did a Q&A! Watch the video link above if you want to see my pretty face. Or just read the script below. It’s funny in the last video I made a remark about how I wasn’t getting paid by YouTube, and thenhttps://literatemachine.com/2024/09/24/10000-subscriber-qa/
US commits to defense support for Taiwan as defense industry conference begins
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
state department — The United States has pledged to continue providing Taiwan with equipment and services essential for maintaining a self-defense capability in line with the threats it faces. This statement came as an annual U.S.-Taiwan defense industry conference kicked off Sunday in Philadelphia.
In the lead-up to the event, the conference organizer — the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council (USTBC) — was targeted by a phishing cyberattack involving a forged registration form embedded with information-stealing malware.
Despite the hackers’ attempt, the council — a nonprofit trade association founded in 1976 to promote commerce between the U.S. and Taiwan — thwarted the attack. The identity of the attackers remains unknown.
“As the council has been targeted by similar attacks for more than 20 years, we realized quickly that the document was suspicious,” USTBC said in a statement. The statement added that the council submitted the document to an online virus scanner, confirmed it was malicious and deleted it.
This year’s U.S.-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference, which ends Tuesday, is the 23rd annual event in a series of conferences addressing U.S. defense cooperation with Taiwan.
“There will be considerable focus on how Taiwan’s efforts to deter a Chinese attack are progressing … and how U.S. industry should support the U.S. and Taiwan government policy,” said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council.
“This is the most important annual gathering of U.S. industry and policymakers on U.S.-Taiwan defense relations,” he added.
Taiwan Relations Act
The State Department said that American officials’ participation in the annual conference aligns with long-standing U.S. policy.
Swift provision of equipment and services “is essential for Taiwan’s self-defense, and we will continue to work with industry to support that goal,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA.
“We continue to have an abiding interest in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Our ‘One China’ policy has not changed and remains guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, three joint communiques and six assurances,” the spokesperson added.
The 1979 U.S.-China Joint Communique shifted diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (ROC), Taiwan’s formal name, to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Relations between the U.S. and Taiwan have since been governed by the Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress in April 1979, under which the U.S. provides defense equipment to Taiwan.
The act states that “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes,” is a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of “grave concern to the United States.”
For decades, the U.S. has been clear that its decision to establish diplomatic relations with China in 1979 rested on the expectation that “the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means,” as stipulated in the Taiwan Relations Act.
China has objected to the Taiwan Relations Act — a U.S. public law — and deemed it invalid.
In 2022, the U.S. Congress authorized the president to direct the drawdown of up to $1 billion per fiscal year in Defense Department equipment and services for Taiwan. Since 2010, the State Department has authorized more than $38 billion in foreign military sales to Taiwan.
PRC sanctioned nine US firms
Since its establishment in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has never ruled Taiwan, but it views the democratically governed island as its own territory and has vowed to bring Taiwan under its control, even by force.
In recent years, the PRC has frequently sent military vessels near Taiwan and warplanes into its air defense identification zone to pressure the island to accept Chinese sovereignty.
Last week, China announced sanctions against nine American companies in response to U.S. defense equipment sales to Taiwan. Beijing’s latest action aims to exert additional pressure on Washington to halt its arms sales to the Taipei government.
The sanctions followed the U.S. approval of an estimated $228 million package of spare parts and other hardware for Taiwan’s aging air force.
In Beijing, officials asserted that U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan undermine China’s sovereignty and security interests.
“China urges the U.S. to earnestly abide by the one China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiques and immediately stop the dangerous trend of arming Taiwan,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during a recent briefing.
“We will take strong and resolute measures to firmly defend our national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” Lin added.
The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s “one China principle,” the U.S. State Department said. “The PRC continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy.”
Some US Kaspersky customers find their security software replaced by ‘UltraAV’
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Back story to replacement for banned security app isn’t enormously reassuring
Some US-based users of Kaspersky antivirus products have found their software replaced by product from by a low-profile entity named “UltraAV” – a change they didn’t ask for, and which has delivered them untested and largely unknown software from a source with a limited track record.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/ultraav_kaspersky_antivirus/
$375 million US military aid package for Ukraine expected as soon as Wednesday
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
Pentagon — The U.S. military is expected to announce a new military aid package for Ukraine this week valued at up to $375 million, the largest aid sent to Kyiv since May.
According to several U.S. officials, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity to discuss the package ahead of the announcement, the aid for Kyiv is expected to be announced as soon as Wednesday.
One official told VOA the package is likely to include air-to-ground munitions for F-16 fighter jets, which would allow Ukrainian pilots to operate away from the front lines and Russia’s air defenses.
The package also includes ammunition for HIMARS, patrol boats and armored vehicles, along with 155mm rounds, 105 mm rounds and TOW missiles, the official added.
The package, which is still being finalized and could change, according to the U.S. officials, is being sent under the presidential drawdown authority that allows the Pentagon to send Ukraine aid directly from its American military stockpiles.
The Pentagon has more than $5 billion left of the $61 billion in funding for Ukraine that was signed into law by President Joe Biden in April and could expire at the end of this month. The Pentagon says it is working with Congress to roll the remaining funding over to the next U.S. fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The officials tell VOA they are working on contingency plans should Congress not approve the extension before the end of the fiscal year.
The package is expected to be announced as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet with President Biden and Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris Thursday at the White House. Officials say Zelenskyy will lay out his plan to end the war with Russia and push for restrictions on U.S.-provided missiles to be lifted.
U.S. policy does not allow Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied weapons to fire on targets deep within Russian territory. The White House has expressed concerns that these strikes could draw the United States into direct conflict with Russia.
Earlier this month, Zelenskyy told military allies meeting in Germany that his country needs the long-range capability to strike deep inside Russian territory “so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”
The U.S. says that Russia has moved most of its aircraft and weapons out of range of Ukraine’s weapons, but Ukrainian officials are still interested in targeting supply lines and command centers closer to its border.
Air Force General James Hecker, the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa, warned reporters last week that Russia’s military is now bigger and stronger than it was before invading Ukraine in February 2022.
Despite Russian improvements on the battlefield, Ukraine has continued to put chinks in Russia’s armor, shooting down more than 100 Russian aircraft, which is dozens more aircraft than Russia has been able to down on the Ukrainian side, according to Hecker.
“So what we see is the aircraft are kind of staying on their own side of the line, if you will, and when that happens, you have a war like we’re seeing today, with massive attrition, cities just being demolished, a lot of civilian casualties,” he said.
The U.S. and Denmark have been training a small number of Ukrainian pilots on the F-16, but qualified Ukrainian pilots and open training slots have been limited.
AI ‘not yet a revolutionary’ election influence tool, US official says
date: 2024-09-24, from: VOA News USA
washington — Russia, Iran and China are not giving up on the use of artificial intelligence to sway American voters ahead of November’s presidential election even though U.S. intelligence agencies assess the use of AI has so far failed to revolutionize the election influence efforts.
The new appraisal released late Monday from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence comes just more than 40 days before U.S. voters head to the polls. It follows what officials describe as a “steady state” of influence operations by Moscow, Tehran and Beijing aimed at impacting the race between former Republican President Donald Trump and current Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as other statewide and local elections.
“Foreign actors are using AI to more quickly and convincingly tailor synthetic content,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity to discuss the latest findings.
“AI is an enabler,” the official added. “A malign influence accelerant, not yet a revolutionary influence tool.”
It is not the first time U.S. officials have expressed caution about how AI could impact the November election.
A top official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the U.S. agency charged with overseeing election security, told VOA earlier this month that to this point the malicious use of AI has not been able to live up to some of the hype.
“Generative AI is not going to fundamentally introduce new threats to this election cycle,” said CISA senior adviser Cait Conley. “What we’re seeing is consistent with what we expected to see.”
That does not mean, however, that U.S. adversaries are not trying.
The new U.S. intelligence assessment indicates Russia, Iran and China have used AI to generate text, images, audio and video and distribute them across all major social media platforms.
Iran and Russia have yet to respond to requests for comment. Both have previously rejected U.S. allegations regarding election influence campaigns.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington dismissed the U.S. intelligence assessment as “full of prejudice and malicious speculation.”
“China actively advocates the principle of ‘putting people first’ and ‘smart for the good’ to ensure that AI is safe, reliable and controllable,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email. “We hope that the US adjusts its mindset, assumes the responsibilities of a major country, and stops fabricating and spreading false information.”
While U.S. intelligence officials would not say how many U.S. voters have been exposed to such malign AI products, there is reason to think that some of the efforts are, at least for the moment, falling short.
“The quality is not as believable as you might expect,” said the U.S. intelligence official.
One reason, the official said, is because Russia, Iran and China have struggled to overcome restrictions built into some of the more advanced AI tools while simultaneously encountering difficulties developing their own AI models.
There are also indications that all three U.S. adversaries have to this point failed to find ways to more effectively use AI to find and target receptive audiences.
“To do scaled AI operations is not cheap,” according to Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent and counterterror consultant who heads up the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC).
“Some of the infrastructure and the resources of it [AI], the models, the data it needs to be trained [on] – very challenging at the moment,” Watts told a cybersecurity summit in Washington earlier this month. “You can make more of everything misinformation, disinformation, but it doesn’t mean they’ll be very good.”
In some cases, U.S. adversaries see traditional tactics, which do not rely on AI, as equally effective.
For instance, U.S. intelligence officials on Monday said a video claiming that Vice President Harris injured a girl in a 2011 hit-and-run accident was staged by Russian influence actors, confirming an assessment last week by Microsoft.
The officials also said altered videos showing Harris speaking slowly, also the result of Russian influence actors, could have been done without relying on AI.
For now, experts and intelligence officials agree that when it comes to AI, Russia, Iran and China have settled on quantity over quality.
Microsoft has tracked hundreds of instances of AI use by Russia, Iran and China over the past 14 months. And while U.S. intelligence officials would not say how much AI-generated material has been disseminated, they agree Russian-linked actors, especially, have been leading the way.
“These items include AI-generated content of and about prominent U.S. figures … consistent with Russia’s broader efforts to boost the former president’s candidacy and denigrate the vice president and the Democratic Party,” the U.S. intelligence official said, calling Russia one of the most sophisticated actors in knowing how to target American voters.
Those efforts included an AI-boosted effort to spread disinformation with a series of fake web domains masquerading as legitimate U.S. news sites, interrupted earlier this month by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Iran, which has sought to hurt the re-election bid by former President Trump, has also copied the Russian playbook, according to the new U.S. assessment, seeking to sow discord among U.S. voters.
Tehran has also been experimenting, using AI to help spread its influence campaign not just in English, but also in Spanish, especially when seeking to generate anger among voters over immigration.
“One of the benefits of generative AI models is to overcome various language barriers,” the U.S. intelligence official said.
“So Iran can use the tools to help do that,” the official added, calling immigration “obviously an issue where Iran perceives they could stoke discord.”
Beijing, in some ways, has opted for a more sophisticated use of AI, according to the U.S. assessment, using it to generate fake news anchors in addition to fake social media accounts.
But independent analysts have questioned the reach of China’s efforts under its ongoing operation known as “Spamouflage.”
A recent report by the social media analytics firm Graphika found that, with few exceptions, the Chinese accounts “failed to garner significant traction in authentic online communities discussing the election.”
U.S. intelligence officials have also said the majority of the Chinese efforts have been aimed not at Trump or Harris, but at state and local candidates perceived as hostile to Beijing.
U.S. intelligence officials on Monday refused to say how many other countries are using AI in an effort to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
Earlier this month, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Washington was “seeing more actors in this space acting more aggressively in a more polarized environment and doing more with technologies, in particular AI.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/ai-not-yet-a-revolutionary-influence-tool-us-says-/7795863.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-24, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Georgia Governor Yanks Endorsement of Mark Robinson.
https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/23/georgia-governor-yanks-endorsement-of-mark-robinson/
AI Didn’t Write That Bug
date: 2024-09-24, updated: 2024-09-24, from: Tom Kellog blog
AI didn’t write that bug. If you’re name is on the commit in Git, you wrote the bug.
http://timkellogg.me/blog/2024/09/24/ownership
Meet the candidates and vote in our 2024 Board elections
date: 2024-09-24, from: Crossref Blog
On behalf of the Nominating Committee, I’m pleased to share the slate of candidates for the 2024 board election.
Each year we do an open call for board interest. This year, the Nominating Committee received 53 submissions from members worldwide to fill four open board seats.
We maintain a balanced board of 8 large member seats and 8 small member seats. Size is determined based on the organization’s membership tier (small members fall in the $0-$1,650 tiers and large members in the $3,900 - $50,000 tiers). We have two large member seats and two small member seats open for election in 2024.
We were pleased to see the diversity in candidates, with applicants from 24 countries. We also received three applications from research funders, which we specifically identified as a priority in the committee’s remit for this year. The committee was keen to prepare a diverse slate of organization types, individual skills, and global representation.
The Nominating Committee presents the following slate.
The 2024 slate
Tier 1 candidates (electing two seats):
- Katharina Rieck, Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
- Lisa Schiff, California Digital Library
- Ejaz Khan, Health Services Academy, Pakistan Journal of Public Health
- Karthikeyan Ramalingam, MM Publishers
Tier 2 candidates (electing two seats):
- Aaron Wood, American Psychological Association
- Dan Shanahan, PLOS
- Amanda Ward, Taylor and Francis
Every member has a vote
If your organization is a voting member in good standing as of September 11th, 2024, you are eligible to vote.
The voting contact for your organization will receive a ballot from eBallot, a third party election platform. You should receive your ballot by Wednesday, September 25th, and you will have until 15:00 UTC on October 29th to submit your ballot.
The election results will be announced at Crossref2024, our anual online meeting on October 29th, 2024.
If you have any questions about our election process, please contact me
Happy voting!
https://www.crossref.org/blog/2024-board-election/
postgresql_cluster v2.0: Multi-cloud PostgreSQL HA Clusters (free & open-source)
date: 2024-09-24, from: PostgreSQL News
The postgresql_cluster project has released v2.0, introducing several significant features:
- Multi-cloud support: This release adds the ability to deploy PostgreSQL HA clusters across various cloud providers, including AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, and Hetzner Cloud.
- Console (UI): The PostgreSQL Cluster Console simplifies the deployment process, making it easier than ever to set up your clusters.
For a full list of changes, see the release notes.
About postgresql_cluster
The postgresql_cluster project automates the deployment and management of highly available PostgreSQL clusters in production environments. It supports deployment on dedicated physical servers, virtual machines, and cloud infrastructures, whether on-premises or across various cloud providers.
This open-source project is provided for free and with full functionality under the MIT license.
Links: Website, GitHub repository