News gathered 2024-09-26
(date: 2024-09-26 06:46:36)
FBI seizes New York City mayor’s phone ahead of expected unsealing of indictment
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
New York — FBI agents entered the official residence of New York City Mayor Eric Adams and seized his phone early Thursday morning, hours before an indictment detailing criminal charges against the Democrat was expected to be made public.
Adams was indicted by a grand jury on federal criminal charges that remain sealed, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
“Federal agents appeared this morning at Gracie Mansion in an effort to create a spectacle (again) and take Mayor Adams phone (again),” Adams’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, said in a statement, adding that the mayor had not been arrested. “They send a dozen agents to pick up a phone when we would have happily turned it in.”
Federal law enforcement agents were seen entering the mayor’s Manhattan residence at dawn Wednesday, with several vehicles bearing federal law enforcement placards parked outside.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has declined to comment on the investigation. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment. A spokesperson for the mayor did not immediately respond to questions Thursday morning.
In a video speech released Wednesday night, Adams vowed to fight any charges against him, claiming he had been made a “target” in a case “based on lies.”
“I will fight these injustices with every ounce of my strength and my spirit,” he said.
It was not immediately clear what laws Adams is accused of breaking or when he might have to appear in court.
The indictment caps off an extraordinary few weeks in New York City, as federal investigators have homed in on members of Adams’ inner circle, producing a drumbeat of raids, subpoenas and high-level resignations.
Federal prosecutors are believed to be leading multiple, separate inquiries involving Adams and his senior aides, relatives of those aides, campaign fundraising and possible influence peddling of the police and fire departments.
In the last two weeks alone, the city’s police commissioner and head of the school’s system have announced their resignations.
FBI agents had seized Adams’ electronic devices nearly a year ago as part of an investigation focused, at least partly, on campaign contributions and Adams’ interactions with the Turkish government. Because the charges were sealed, it was unknown whether they dealt with those same matters.
In early September, federal investigators seized devices from his police commissioner, schools chancellor, two deputy mayors and other trusted confidantes both in and out of City Hall.
All have denied wrongdoing.
Hurricane Helene strengthens on course for western Florida
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/hurricane-helene-strengthens-on-course-for-western-florida/7800233.html
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-26, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
They got Eric Adams over bribery, not for his flex to shoot New Yorkers commuting.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113204059087055193
OpenAI in throes of executive exodus as three walk at once
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Looks like it’s going to be the Sam Altman show from now on
Three key OpenAI staff members – CTO Mira Murati, Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew, and Research VP Barret Zoph – are leaving the ChatGPT maker.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/openai_execs_leave/
The Secret Service Spent $50,000 on OpenAI and Won’t Say Why
date: 2024-09-26, from: 404 Media Group
As the White House plans to force federal agencies to be more transparent with their use of AI, the Secret Service won’t say why it’s already spending tens of thousands of dollars on the tech.
https://www.404media.co/the-secret-service-spent-50-000-on-openai-and-wont-say-why/
NASA Invites Public to Join as Virtual Guests for SpaceX Crew-9 Launch
date: 2024-09-26, from: NASA breaking news
NASA invites the public to participate as virtual guests in the launch of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission. NASA astronaut Nick Hague, commander, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, mission specialist, will embark on a flight aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, launching no earlier than 1:17 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Sept. 28, from Space Launch Complex-40 […]
SAP support auto-renewal gotcha: Do nothing now, pay until 2026
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Single digit price hikes suspected for UK and Europe and double digit mooted for everywhere else
Like car insurance, software support contracts can renew annually by simply doing nothing, a phenomenon with which SAP users should be all too familiar… but sometimes they are not.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/sap_support_renewal_deadline/
Oxfam: ‘Oligarchy’ of super-rich undermining cooperation to tackle poverty, climate change
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
London — As world leaders gather for the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, the charity Oxfam says they are being undermined by what it calls a “global oligarchy” of the super-rich who exert considerable control over the global economy – and who it blames for exacerbating problems like extreme inequality and climate change.
“Today, the world’s richest 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity. The immense concentration of wealth, driven significantly by increased monopolistic corporate power, has allowed large corporations and the ultrarich who exercise control over them to use their vast resources to shape global rules in their favor, often at the expense of everyone else,” the Oxfam report says.
The charity says international cooperation on issues like climate change and poverty is failing due to extreme economic inequality.
“The wealth of the world’s five richest men has doubled since the start of this decade. And nearly five billion people have got poorer,” said Nabil Ahmed, the director of economic and racial justice at Oxfam America, in an interview with VOA.
Fair taxes
The report urges fairer taxation of large corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
“We live in a world in which mega-corporations… are paying next to or little to no tax basically. Not like the small businesses, not like the rest of us,” Ahmed said.
“It’s such a phenomenal lost opportunity because we know governments, rich and poor, across the world need to claw back these revenues to be able to invest in their people, to be able to meet their rights,” he added.
Oxfam praises a campaign led by Brazil, which currently holds the presidency of the G20, to impose a 2% minimum tax on the world’s richest billionaires. Brazil’s government claims it would raise up to $250 billion from about 3,000 individuals, to pay for healthcare, education and tackling climate change.
A report by the French economist Gabriel Zucman, commissioned by Brazil, suggests billionaires currently pay the equivalent of 0.3% of their wealth in taxes.
The plan is backed by other members including South Africa, Spain and France. However, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke against the move at a G20 meeting in July.
“Tax policy is very difficult to coordinate globally and we don’t see a need or really think it’s desirable to try to negotiate a global agreement on that. We think that all countries should make sure that their taxation systems are fair and progressive,” Yellen told reporters.
Private debt
Oxfam says tax revenues in the global south meanwhile are increasingly spent on servicing debt to private creditors like banks and hedge funds.
“This shift has exacerbated the debt crisis, further entrenching “debtocracy.” Compared with official creditors, private entities issue debt with shorter maturities and higher, more volatile interest rates,” the Oxfam report says.
Vaccines
The charity also accuses large pharmaceutical companies of shaping rules over intellectual property rights to benefit their shareholders. Oxfam says that during the COVID-19 pandemic, this meant poorer nations struggled to access coronavirus vaccines, such as the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer.
“Its negative impacts are most harshly felt by countries in the Global South, which bear the brunt of “artificial rationing,” where pharmaceutical corporations keep drug costs — and thus profits — high by limiting generic manufacturing, while simultaneously failing to invest in research and development for priority diseases in the Global South deemed less profitable,” Oxfam said.
Responding to VOA, Pfizer highlighted an open letter written by the company’s chairman Albert Bourla in 2021, in which he said the company had created a tiered pricing structure and had offered its mRNA coronavirus vaccine at cost price or for free to poorer nations. However, Bourla said that many richer countries moved faster to purchase the available doses.
“When we developed our tiered pricing policy, we reached out to all nations asking them to place orders so we could allocate doses for them. In reality, the high-income countries reserved most of the doses,” Bourla wrote.
Pfizer’s chairman also warned that losing intellectual property rights could “disincentivize” anyone else from taking a big financial risk in developing such vaccines, a view echoed by other large pharmaceutical giants.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-26, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I am too tied up to do a .net version currently, but we could use this as a blueprint:
https://mastodon.social/@ktoso/113203507192283649
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113203806804461450
Schools Are Failing to Protect Students From Non-Consensual Deepfakes, Report Shows
date: 2024-09-26, from: 404 Media Group
A survey of teachers, students and parents showed that schools are unprepared for non-consensual imagery, AI generated or otherwise, spreading throughout communities of young people.
Hurricane Helene’s Storm Surge Will Be ‘Unsurvivable’
date: 2024-09-26, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Torrential rain in Mumbai brought flooding that killed at least four people • Tornado warnings are in effect for parts of Florida as Hurricane Helene nears • Tropical Storm John is expected to become a hurricane again and slam into Mexico for a second time.
THE TOP FIVE
- Hurricane Helene to bring ‘unsurvivable’ storm surge
Hurricane Helene is strengthening into a major storm as it moves toward Florida’s Big Bend region and is expected to strike this evening, bringing catastrophic winds up to 156 miles per hour and “unsurvivable” storm surge. “You cannot survive 20 feet or even 15 feet of storm surge,” said Tampa Bay meteorologist Jeff Berardelli. “If you’re near the water and you know you’re going to flood, especially if you’re in a mobile home, too. You’ve got to go. You cannot take your chances. This is not survivable.”
NOAA/NWS
The storm will likely weaken after it makes landfall but will continue to bring strong winds and heavy rain to southeastern states. Some areas could see up to 18 inches. “This rainfall will likely result in catastrophic and potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding, along with significant river flooding,” the National Hurricane Center said. “Numerous landslides are expected in steep terrain across the southern Appalachians.” The storm is being fed by exceptionally warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Biden launches Environmental Justice Climate Corps
The Biden administration yesterday announced the creation of an Environmental Justice Climate Corps, which “aims to recruit participants from communities disproportionately impacted by environmental justice challenges and seeks to recruit individuals with an interest in environmental justice careers.” The corps is a partnership between the Environmental Protection Agency and AmeriCorps’ anti-poverty program. Corps members will receive a living allowance and expenses reimbursement equivalent to earning $25 per hour. The program will recruit 250 members over three years, and applications will open early next year.
“Low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by the most severe harms of climate change – whether that’s air pollution, extreme temperatures, or flooding,” said Michael D. Smith, CEO of AmeriCorps. “Through this groundbreaking partnership with EPA, we will target resources to underserved communities where they are needed most, while putting hundreds of young people from those communities on a path to environmental justice careers.”
- Azerbaijan’s ‘insufficient’ climate progress scrutinized ahead of
COP
The host country of this year’s COP29 climate summit, Azerbaijan, will pay for negotiators from small island nations to attend in November, according to Reuters. A senior COP29 official told the outlet that Baku will foot the bill for four delegates from every small island developing state (SIDS), including travel and hotel fees. Roughly 40 SIDS are expected to participate in the negotiations. Reuters reported that some delegates have complained in recent years about exorbitant accomodation costs around COPs.
Meanwhile, the independent scientific group Climate Action Tracker said Azerbaijan’s own climate progress remains “critically insufficient.” The country is an oil and gas producer and was among a handful of nations that weakened emissions targets last year. “Azerbaijan’s emissions are projected to continue rising by about 20% through to 2030, and it has no commitment to a net zero target,” the CAT report said. The group recommended that Azerbaijan set stronger targets, prioritize renewables over emissions mitigation from oil and gas, and develop a plan for ditching fossil fuels.
- Carbon capture and storage vault to be inaugurated in Norway
A major carbon capture and storage project will be inaugurated today in Norway. The Northern Lights Project, a joint venture between oil giants Equinor Shell, and TotalEnergies will take liquified CO2 that has been captured from European industrial activities and store it “in geological layers buried at approximately 2,600 meters below the seabed in the Northern North Sea.” The goal is to store 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year starting in 2024, scaling up to 10 million tons by 2030. The International Energy Agency estimates global CCS operations would need to scale up to 1 billion metric tons by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Current capacity sits at about 50 million metric tons.
- Study suggests forests in Northeast may be more resilient to climate
change than previously thought
The results of a new study may provide some good news for forests across America’s Northeast. The research, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests the trees’ carbon storage capabilities remain stable even while temperatures are rising and the soil becomes more acidic due to nitrogen enrichment from burning fossil fuels. Previous studies have indicated that carbon storage declines in these conditions. But what makes this research different is that it looked at the effects of both conditions together, rather than separately. “What is most exciting about this study is that it’s one of the longest-running experiments to look at two global change pressures instead of just focusing on one,” said Melissa Knorr, a lab research supervisor in the University of New Hampshire’s College of Life Sciences and Agriculture and one of the study’s authors. The researchers say that these combined conditions seem to increase root turnover for the trees, helping maintain soil carbon levels. “The study offers insights that could inform conservation strategies to enhance carbon sequestration and preserve forest health across the Northeast,” Knorr said.
THE KICKER
It can take as little as three seconds for playground equipment heated in direct sunlight on a hot day to burn a child’s skin.
https://heatmap.news/climate/hurricane-helene-storm-surge-florida
It’s refinance time for many homeowners
date: 2024-09-26, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Last week, refinance applications were up 20% from a week earlier. The number of people who could benefit from refinancing — especially those who took out mortgages with interest rates in the high 6% to 7% range — has been growing over the last few weeks, but not everyone is making the jump. Plus, OpenAI looks to switch from a nonprofit to for-profit entity, and buy now, pay later is expected to surge this year.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/its-refinance-time-for-many-homeowners
US announces $8 billion in Ukraine aid as Zelenskyy, Biden to meet
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
China has even more plans to revive its economy
date: 2024-09-26, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: This week, Chinas has really been trying to get its economy back on track. Today, China’s leaders has rolled out additional measures to shore up its struggling economy, including reforms to banking, business and property, as well as more help for the poor. We’ll hear more. Plus, Pakistan has agreed to a $7 billion funding deal with the International Monetary Fund.
NASA’s Astrobees need a new buzz – any ideas for the space-dwelling bots?
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Hey Reg readers, what would you do with Honey, Queen, and Bumble?
NASA is looking for ideas on what to do with the Astrobee drones flying around the International Space Station (ISS).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/nasa_astrobee_applications/
TikTok Videos Spread Misinformation to New Migrant Community in New York City
date: 2024-09-26, from: The Markup blog
Misinformation on TikTok influenced these Senegalese migrants to come to the United States. Now they are being fed even more misleading information about navigating their new home
Public Wi-Fi operator investigating cyberattack at UK’s busiest train stations
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
See it, say it… not sorted just yet as network access remains offline
Updated A cybersecurity incident is being probed at Network Rail, the UK non-departmental public body responsible for repairing and developing train infrastructure, after unsavory messaging was displayed to those connecting to major stations’ free Wi-Fi portals.…
CrowdStrike’s Blue Screen blunder: Could eBPF have saved the day?
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Grafana Labs CTO looks at the options
Interview The CrowdStrike chaos was caused by software running riot in the Windows kernel after an update tripped up the code. eBPF is a useful tool for kernel tracing and observability, but could it have mitigated the CrowdStrike incident?…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/grafana_labs_interview/
UK government’s bank data sharing plan slammed as ‘financial snoopers’ charter’
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Access to account info needed to tackle benefit fraud, latest bill claims
Privacy campaigners are criticizing UK proposals to force banks to share data from the accounts of government benefit claimants, saying the ploy amounts to “a financial snoopers’ charter targeted to automate suspicion.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/uk_benefits_bank_accounts/
Palestinian, Lebanese officials to address UN General Assembly
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/palestinian-lebanese-officials-to-address-un-general-assembly/7800016.html
The Master Plan Behind MASTER PLAN
date: 2024-09-26, from: The Lever News
The inside story of how we uncovered smoking-gun audio exposing the secret roots of Project 2025.
https://www.levernews.com/the-master-plan-behind-master-plan/
Memory-maker Micron predicts new wave of server consolidation
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
AI boosted revenue last year, demand for more RAM in devices to help in 2025
Micron has told investors it expects a new round of server consolidation to add to its already strong growth.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/micron_q4_2024/
Der 38. Chaos Communication Congress: Illegal Instructions
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: Chaos Computer Club Updates
Ende Dezember ist wieder Congress-Zeit: Der Chaos Computer Club lädt unter dem Motto „Illegal Instructions“ zum 38. Chaos Communication Congress nach Hamburg ins CCH.
https://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2024/38c3-illegal-instructions
Apple quietly removed 60 more VPNs from Russian app store, researchers claim
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
iThing-maker is Putin Kremlin repression ahead of privacy, rights orgs argue
Apple has pulled 60 VPNs from its App Store in Russia, according to research from anti-censorship org GreatFire.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/apple_vpn_russia/
Infosys scores deal to write code for EV-maker Polestar
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
HQ in Sweden, made in China, programmed in Bengaluru, but with a traditional offshoring marque
Indian tech services giant Infosys has scored a deal to write code for Swedish electric vehicle outfit Polestar.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/infosys_polestar_alliance/
India extends IT hardware import license scheme that enraged Big Tech
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And hints at revised rules to come later this year
India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry has extended the scheme that enraged hardware makers by requiring them to secure import permits – and indicated it will be revised further.…
Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows Teardown (2024)
date: 2024-09-26, from: Jeff Geerling blog
Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows Teardown (2024)
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>In late July, a week after ordering the <a href="https://www.arrow.com/en/products/c8380-12c-mp-32g/thundercomm">Snapdragon Dev Kit</a>, I wondered <a href="https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/where-qualcomms-snapdragon-x-elite-dev-kit">where it was</a>. Arrow's website <a href="https://twitter.com/geerlingguy/status/1819386097153065238">said 'Ships tomorrow' when I ordered</a>, after all.</p>Many developers eager to test their code on Windows on Arm, on the premiere new ‘CoPilot+’ PCs that would revolutionize computing as we know it, were also wondering.
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/qualcomm-snapdragon-dev-kit-windows-teardown-2024
Uncle Sam accuses Aussie AI startup boss of financial fakery that duped investors
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Crikey! $40M of investments in ‘digital employees’ allegedly went down faster than a frosty Fosters
The former CEO of an AI startup that promised to replace humans with “digital employees” has been accused by the US Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission of raising $40 million from investors, including venture capitalists, after showing them deliberately falsified financial records.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/skael_doj_sec_ai/
Harris promises tax breaks, investments for US manufacturers
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
PITTSBURGH — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday she would offer tax credits to domestic manufacturers and invest in sectors that will “define the next century,” as she detailed her economic plan to boost the U.S. middle class.
Speaking at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate in the November 5 presidential election said she would give tax credits to U.S. manufacturers for retooling or rebuilding existing factories and expanding “good union jobs,” and double the number of registered apprenticeships during her first term.
Harris also promised new investments in industries like bio-manufacturing, aerospace, artificial intelligence and clean energy.
Harris’ speech, which lasted just under 40 minutes, did not detail how these policies would work. She highlighted her upbringing by a single mother, in contrast with former President Donald Trump, the wealthy son of a New York real estate developer.
“I have pledged that building a strong middle class will be the defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said, adding that she sees the election as a moment of choice between two “fundamentally different” visions of the U.S. economy held by her and her Republican opponent, Trump.
The vice president and Trump are focusing their campaign messaging on the economy, which Reuters/Ipsos polling shows is voters’ top concern, as the election approaches.
The divide between rich and poor has grown in recent decades. The share of American households in the middle class, defined as those with two-thirds to double that of median household income, has dropped from around 62% in 1970 to 51% in 2023, Pew Research shows. These households’ income has also not grown as fast as those in the top tier.
Harris said she was committed to working with the private sector and entrepreneurs to help grow the middle class. She told the audience that she is “a capitalist” who believes in “free and fair markets,” and described her policies as pragmatic rather than rooted in ideology.
Harris in recent months has blunted Trump’s advantage on the economy, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday showing the Republican candidate with a marginal advantage of 2 percentage points on “the economy, unemployment and jobs,” down from an 11-point lead in late July.
Trump discussed his economic plan in North Carolina on Wednesday and said Harris’ role as vice president gave her the chance now to improve the economic record of the Biden administration.
“Families are suffering now. So if she has a plan, she should stop grandstanding and do it,” he said. While Trump has proposed across-the-board tariffs on foreign-made goods – a proposal backed by a slim majority of voters – Harris is focusing on providing incentives for businesses to keep their operations in the U.S.
Boosting American manufacturing in industries such as semiconductors and bringing back jobs that have moved overseas in recent decades have also been major goals for Biden. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act – all passed in 2021 and 2022 – fund a range of subsidies and tax incentives that encourage companies to place projects in disadvantaged regions.
https://www.voanews.com/a/harris-promises-tax-breaks-investments-for-us-manufacturers/7799930.html
Hurricane Helene is expected to hit Florida as a major storm, strike far inland
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — An enormous Hurricane Helene swamped parts of Mexico on Wednesday as it churned on a path forecasters said would take it to Florida as a potentially catastrophic storm with a surge that could swallow entire homes, a chilling warning that sent residents scrambling for higher ground, closed schools, and led to states of emergency throughout the Southeast.
Helene’s center was about 735 kilometers southwest of Tampa, Florida, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, and the hurricane was expected to intensify and accelerate as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico toward the Big Bend area of Florida’s northwestern coast. Landfall was expected sometime Thursday evening, and the hurricane center said by then it could be a major Category 4 storm with winds above 208 kph.
Tropical storm conditions were expected in southern Florida on Wednesday night, spreading northward and encompassing the rest of Florida as well as Georgia and South Carolina through Thursday night. The storm was moving north at 19 kph with top sustained winds of 140 kph Wednesday evening.
Helene could create a life-threatening storm surge as high as 6.1 meters in parts of the Big Bend region, forecasters said. Its tropical storm-force winds extended as far as 555 kilometers from its center.
The fast-moving storm’s wind and rain also could penetrate far inland: The hurricane center posted hurricane warnings well into Georgia and tropical storm warnings as far north as North Carolina, and it warned that much of the Southeast could experience prolonged power outages, toppled trees and dangerous flooding.
“Just hope and pray that everybody’s safe,” said Connie Dillard, of Tallahassee, as she shopped at a grocery store with thinning shelves of water and bread before hitting the highway out of town. “That’s all you can do.”
One insurance firm, Gallagher Re, is expecting billions of dollars in damage in the U.S. Around 18,000 linemen from out of state staged in Florida, ready to help restore power. Airports in St. Petersburg, Tallahassee and Tampa were planning to close on Thursday, and 62 hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities evacuated their residents Wednesday.
Georgia activated 250 National Guard soldiers for rapid deployment. State game wardens, foresters and Department of Correction teams will help provide swift-water rescues and other emergency responses.
State meteorologist Will Lanxton said tropical storm-force winds are expected throughout Georgia. Lanxton said metro Atlanta hasn’t seen sustained tropical storm winds since Hurricane Irma in 2017.
“I think we’re going to see some significant power outages, probably nothing like we’ve seen, because it’s 159 counties wide,” said James Stallings, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency.
In Tallahassee, where stations started to run out of gas, 19-year-old Florida A&M student Kameron Benjamin filled sandbags with his roommate to protect their apartment before evacuating. Their school and Florida State shut down.
“This hurricane is heading straight to Tallahassee, so I really don’t know what to expect,” Benjamin said.
As Big Bend residents battened down their homes, many saw the ghost of 2018’s Hurricane Michael. That storm rapidly intensified and crashed ashore as a Category 5 that laid waste to Panama City and parts of the rural Panhandle.
On Wednesday, the National Weather Service posted an urgent warning for residents along Apalachee Bay: “There is a danger of catastrophic and unsurvivable storm surge for Apalachee Bay,” it said. “Storm surge may begin to arrive as early as late Wednesday night ahead of the winds. This forecast, if realized, is a nightmare surge scenario for Apalachee Bay. Please, please, please take any evacuation orders seriously!”
“People are taking heed and hightailing it out of there for higher ground,” said Kristin Korinko, a Tallahassee resident who serves as the commodore of the Shell Point Sailboard Club, on the Gulf Coast about 48 kilometers south of Tallahassee.
For toughened Floridians who are used to hurricanes, Robbie Berg, a national warning coordinator for the hurricane center, advised: “Please do not compare it to other storms you may have experienced over the past year or two.”
Helene is forecast to be one of the largest storms in breadth in years to hit the region, said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. He said since 1988, only three Gulf hurricanes were bigger than Helene’s predicted size: 2017’s Irma, 2005’s Wilma and 1995’s Opal.
Areas 160 kilometers north of the Georgia-Florida line can expect hurricane conditions. More than half of Georgia’s public school districts and several universities canceled classes.
And for Atlanta, which is under a tropical storm watch, Helene could be the worst strike on a major Southern inland city in 35 years, said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd.
“It’s going to be a lot like Hugo in Charlotte,” Shepherd said of the 1989 storm that struck the North Carolina city, knocking out power to 85% of customers as winds gusted above hurricane force.
Landslides were possible in southern Appalachia, with catastrophic flooding predicted in the Carolinas and Georgia, where all three governors declared emergencies. Rainfall is possible as far away as Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana.
Parts of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula were under hurricane warnings as Helene wound between it and the western tip of Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico. The storm formed Tuesday in the Caribbean, and it flooded streets and toppled trees as it passed offshore and brushed the resort city of Cancun.
In Cuba, authorities moved cattle to higher ground and medical brigades went to communities often cut off by storms. The government preventively shut off power in some communities as waves as high as 5 meters slammed Cortes Bay. In the Cayman Islands, schools remained closed as residents pumped water from flooded homes.
In the U.S., federal authorities positioned generators, food and water, along with search-and-rescue and power restoration teams.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that Helene could be as strong as a Category 4 hurricane when it makes landfall. The state was providing buses to evacuate people in the Big Bend region and taking them to shelters in Tallahassee.
But near Florida’s center, outside Orlando, Walt Disney World said its only closures Thursday would be the Typhoon Lagoon water park and its miniature golf courses.
Helene is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.
In the Pacific, former Hurricane John reformed Wednesday as a tropical storm and was strengthening as it threatened areas of Mexico’s western coast. Officials posted hurricane warnings for southwestern Mexico.
John hit the country’s southern Pacific coast late Monday, killing at least two people, triggering mudslides, and damaging homes and trees. It grew into a Category 3 hurricane in a matter of hours and made landfall east of Acapulco. It reemerged over the ocean after weakening inland.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted, sources say
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/ny-mayor-indicted-following-corruption-probe-ny-times-reports/7799897.html
WordPress.org denies service to WP Engine, potentially putting sites at risk
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
That escalated quickly
WordPress on Wednesday escalated its conflict with WP Engine, a hosting provider, by blocking the latter’s servers from accessing WordPress.org resources – and therefore from potentially vital software updates.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/wordpressorg_denies_service_to_wp/
Content Fighting Systems
date: 2024-09-26, from: Tedium site
The co-founder of WordPress steps in it, repeatedly, in a forest-for-the-trees fight with WP Engine that makes me feel sad for the open internet.
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16822052/wordpress-wp-engine-open-web-negative-effects
Crises in Ukraine, Mideast and Sudan dominate UN General Assembly meetings
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
The war in Ukraine, Sudan’s humanitarian crisis, and an escalation between Israel and Hezbollah dominated the second day of the United Nations General Assembly meetings. VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer reports.
OpenAI to reveal secret training data in copyright case – for lawyers’ eyes only
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Counsel for aggrieved authors will view info in a secure room, without internet access, and no devices present
OpenAI has agreed to reveal the data used to train its generative AI models to attorneys pursuing copyright claims against the developer on behalf of several authors.…
PostgreSQL 17 Released!
date: 2024-09-26, from: PostgreSQL News
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group today announced the release of PostgreSQL 17, the latest version of the world’s most advanced open source database.
PostgreSQL 17 builds on decades of open source development, improving
its performance and scalability while adapting to emergent data access
and storage patterns. This release of
PostgreSQL adds significant
overall performance gains, including an overhauled memory management
implementation for vacuum, optimizations to storage access and
improvements for high concurrency workloads, speedups in bulk loading
and exports, and query execution improvements for indexes. PostgreSQL 17
has features that benefit brand new workloads and critical systems
alike, such as additions to the developer experience with the SQL/JSON
JSON_TABLE command, and enhancements to logical replication
that simplify management of high availability workloads and major
version upgrades.
“PostgreSQL 17 highlights how the global open source community, which drives the development of PostgreSQL, builds enhancements that help users at all stages of their database journey,” said Jonathan Katz, a member of the PostgreSQL core team. “Whether it’s improvements for operating databases at scale or new features that build on a delightful developer experience, PostgreSQL 17 will enhance your data management experience.”
PostgreSQL, an innovative data management system known for its reliability, robustness, and extensibility, benefits from over 25 years of open source development from a global developer community and has become the preferred open source relational database for organizations of all sizes.
System-wide performance gains
The PostgreSQL vacuum process is critical for healthy operations, requiring server instance resources to operate. PostgreSQL 17 introduces a new internal memory structure for vacuum that consumes up to 20x less memory. This improves vacuum speed and also reduces the use of shared resources, making more available for your workload.
PostgreSQL 17 continues to improve performance of its I/O layer. High
concurrency workloads may see up to 2x better write throughput due to
improvements with
write-ahead
log
(WAL)
processing. Additionally, the new streaming I/O interface speeds up
sequential scans (reading all the data from a table) and how quickly
ANALYZE
can update planner statistics.
PostgreSQL 17 also extends its performance gains to query execution.
PostgreSQL 17 improves the performance of queries with IN
clauses that use
B-tree
indexes, the default index method in PostgreSQL. Additionally,
BRIN indexes
now support parallel builds. PostgreSQL 17 includes several improvements
for query planning, including optimizations for NOT NULL
constraints, and improvements in processing
common
table expressions
(WITH
queries). This release adds more SIMD (Single Instruction/Multiple
Data) support for accelerating computations, including using AVX-512 for
the
bit_count
function.
Further expansion of a robust developer experience
PostgreSQL was the
first
relational database to add JSON support (2012), and PostgreSQL 17
adds to its implementation of the SQL/JSON standard.
JSON_TABLE
is now available in PostgreSQL 17, letting developers convert JSON data
into a standard PostgreSQL table. PostgreSQL 17 now supports
SQL/JSON
constructors (JSON, JSON_SCALAR,
JSON_SERIALIZE) and
query
functions (JSON_EXISTS, JSON_QUERY,
JSON_VALUE), giving developers other ways of interfacing
with their JSON data. This release adds more
jsonpath
expressions, with an emphasis of converting JSON data to a native
PostgreSQL data type, including numeric, boolean, string, and date/time
types.
PostgreSQL 17 adds more features to
MERGE,
which is used for conditional updates, including a
RETURNING clause and the ability to update
views.
Additionally, PostgreSQL 17 has new capabilities for bulk loading and
data exporting, including up to a 2x performance improvement when
exporting large rows using the
COPY
command. COPY performance also has improvements when the
source and destination encodings match, and includes a new option,
ON_ERROR, that allows an import to continue even if there
is an insert error.
This release expands on functionality both for managing data in
partitions and data distributed across remote PostgreSQL instances.
PostgreSQL 17 supports using identity columns and exclusion constraints
on
partitioned
tables. The
PostgreSQL
foreign data wrapper
(postgres_fdw),
used to execute queries on remote PostgreSQL instances, can now push
EXISTS and IN subqueries to the remote server
for more efficient processing.
PostgreSQL 17 also includes a built-in, platform independent, immutable
collation provider that’s guaranteed to be immutable and provides
similar sorting semantics to the C collation except with
UTF-8 encoding rather than SQL_ASCII. Using
this new collation provider guarantees that your text-based queries will
return the same sorted results regardless of where you run PostgreSQL.
Logical replication enhancements for high availability and major version upgrades
Logical replication is used to stream data in real-time across many use cases. However, prior to this release, users who wanted to perform a major version upgrade would have to drop logical replication slots, which requires resynchronizing data to subscribers after an upgrade. Starting with upgrades from PostgreSQL 17, users don’t have to drop logical replication slots, simplifying the upgrade process when using logical replication.
PostgreSQL 17 now includes failover control for logical replication,
making it more resilient when deployed in high availability
environments. Additionally, PostgreSQL 17 introduces the
pg_createsubscriber
command-line tool for converting a physical replica into a new logical
replica.
More options for managing security and operations
PostgreSQL 17 further extends how users can manage the overall lifecycle
of their database systems. PostgreSQL has a new TLS option,
sslnegotiation, that lets users perform a direct TLS
handshakes when using
ALPN
(registered as postgresql in the ALPN directory).
PostgreSQL 17 also adds the pg_maintain
predefined
role, which gives users permission to perform maintenance
operations.
pg_basebackup,
the backup utility included in PostgreSQL, now supports incremental
backups and adds the
pg_combinebackup
utility to reconstruct a full backup. Additionally,
pg_dump
includes a new option called –filter that lets you select
what objects to include when generating a dump file.
PostgreSQL 17 also includes enhancements to monitoring and analysis
features.
EXPLAIN
now shows the time spent for local I/O block reads and writes, and
includes two new options: SERIALIZE and
MEMORY, useful for seeing the time spent in data conversion
for network transmission, and how much memory was used. PostgreSQL 17
now reports the
progress
of vacuuming indexes, and adds the
pg_wait_events
system view that, when combined with
pg_stat_activity,
gives more insight into why an active session is waiting.
Additional Features
Many other new features and improvements have been added to PostgreSQL 17 that may also be helpful for your use cases. Please see the release notes for a complete list of new and changed features.
About PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL is the world’s most advanced open source database, with a global community of thousands of users, contributors, companies and organizations. Built on over 35 years of engineering, starting at the University of California, Berkeley, PostgreSQL has continued with an unmatched pace of development. PostgreSQL’s mature feature set not only matches top proprietary database systems, but exceeds them in advanced database features, extensibility, security, and stability.
Links
https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-17-released-2936/
If your AI does the crime, you’ll do the time, warns DoJ
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Add compliance requirements to your AI to-do list
If juggling the extreme cost and hazy ROI of AI weren’t enough of a headache, the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) now expects enterprise compliance officers to start weighing the tech’s potential for harm – or risk stiff fines if it breaks the law.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/doj_ai_compliance_guidance_update/
Biden reaches out to Africa at UN General Assembly
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
new york — President Joe Biden is turning to Africa in the sunset of his presidency. In the space of one day, in front of world leaders, he elevated Sudan’s conflict to a priority, announced he would travel to Angola and endorsed adding two seats for African countries to the U.N. Security Council.
In his valedictory speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Biden made several brief overtures to the African continent — reminding world leaders of the evils of South Africa’s apartheid regime, calling for an end to Sudan’s grueling conflict and citing urgency in combating an mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
But these two short lines may have the most weight:
“The U.N. needs to adapt to bring in new voices and new perspectives,” he said. “That’s why we support reforming and expanding the membership of the U.N. Security Council.”
For years, African leaders have called for a seat at this table. But critics point out that Washington does not support a critical privilege enjoyed by the current permanent members of the Security Council: veto power.
Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says African nations are puzzled by Biden’s position.
“This is really, I think, an unfinished project of his, probably more words than reality,” he told VOA. The fact that Biden supported council membership for them but not veto power “has left Africans scratching their heads.”
John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said it mattered that Biden used this platform to call for an end to Sudan’s raging 17-month conflict, but he doubted whether that call would provoke action.
Trying to elevate issue
“This is one of the conflicts that is serious but has not been getting world attention, and I think his pointing to it is really to elevate it in world consciousness but not yet to really know how we’re going to see an end to this,” Fortier said.
This conflict has displaced millions of people and sparked a near-famine. And so, analysts say, it matters that the American president is putting pressure on the warring parties.
“I think Biden genuinely wants to alleviate the humanitarian crisis and resolve the conflict in Sudan,” said Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Project, in an email to VOA. “But I think he is reluctant to press countries like Egypt and the [United Arab] Emirates that are arming the generals, because they are key allies during the Gaza war.
“Also, Biden is being driven by pressure from some members of Congress to take stronger and more effective action. I think he will take some limited action, like the new funds for humanitarian aid just announced, but I don’t think this will yield significant results.”
And finally, Biden’s off-camera announcement that he will visit Angola next month allows him to keep his promise to visit the continent. But again, Hudson wondered how this long-delayed visit would land.
“Coming, as it does, at the very tail end of his administration, without much to, I think, really celebrate in terms of his involvement in Africa, I think the visit will ring rather hollow,” Hudson said.
Biden has four months left in his presidency.
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-reaches-out-to-africa-at-un-general-assembly/7799553.html
Steelworkers lose arbitration case against US Steel in bid to derail sale to Nippon
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-25, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Good talk from John Mearsheimer on Gaza:
https://youtu.be/jqPQ5dUfSTw?si=zUDFVwQKfBFrib3v
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113200604434748933
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-25, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Israel executed the largest terrorist attack on this planet since 2001 and we treated it like a football team scoring a touchdown.
Maybe a small blip compared to slaughtering 14,000 children, but I still think it is quite significant.
My thread on Twitter collecting the descent of a society into madness:
https://x.com/migueldeicaza/status/1801376224457199915
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113200585528621129
OpenAI’s slow-motion train wreck
date: 2024-09-25, from: Gary Marcus blog
Mira Murati’s departure is the just the last episode in a long-running drama
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/openais-slow-motion-train-wreck
Climate Week Is an AI Lovefest
date: 2024-09-25, from: Heatmap News
There’s a simple and well-supported story to tell about the projected growth in electricity demand coming from data centers, population growth, and new factories, i.e. that it will boost the fossil fuel industry. When faced with the need for more electricity generation, utilities will simply build more natural gas power plants, and market overseers will act to ensure that aging gas and coal plants don’t get shut down. Some version of this story is already playing out in Arizona, the Southeast, and the Mid-Atlantic.
Many green activists are understandably wary of the data center boom, seeing it as a “unique opportunity for fossil fuel interests to get in while the getting is still good and turn a digital and industrial boom into yet another gas boom,” as the Natural Resources Defense Council said of Georgia, where a 15-times increase in projected electricity demand has Georgia Power scrambling for more fossil fuels.
However this is not the story I’ve been hearing this week in New York City, where thousands of government officials, climate activists, celebrities, investors, and executives have descended for the annual meeting-and-panel extravaganza that is Climate Week. For the Biden Administration officials, clean energy executives, and technological visionaries flitting between sponsored events, data center load growth is, as John F. Kennedy might have put it in one of his frequent flights of amateur Chinese linguistics, a danger and opportunity mixed into one.
“This can be a good-news story. The sky doesn’t necessarily need to be falling,” Kelly Sanders, assistant director for energy systems innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said during a panel discussion hosted by the think tank Third Way, referring to load growth from manufacturing and data centers. “This could actually be good for clean energy.”
And very good for anyone who can promise to deliver said clean energy, even if it’s years in the future. During a “fireside chat” at Geothermal House, a day-long summit on geothermal energy sponsored by Project InnerSpace, a geothermal nonprofit, Mike Schroepfer, the former CTO of Meta who is now a climate venture investor, said the demand for power from AI was “the best news ever.” He argued that having companies with big power needs and deep pockets was much better for clean energy development than having a stagnant grid that’s just trying to replace dirty power plants.
Among those in the same rah-rah camp, the general idea is that energy-hungry data centers can help get new clean energy sources like advanced geothermal through the project finance “valley of death” so they can eventually deliver affordable, clean power to the rest of us. “For the first time in history, demand for clean energy outstrips supply,” said Ally Yost, a senior vice president at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, during a panel discussion in New York City. “Those that have access to that clean power will be in a very profitable situation.”
“AI is a gift for fusion,” added Clay Dumas, a partner at Lowercarbon Capital, a Commonwealth investor. He even conceded that the skyrocketing demand was a “gift for fission,” from which fusion advocates are typically at pains to distinguish themselves. “There’s an intense interest and demand for clean electrons,” he said, referencing the recent deal to bring back a shuttered reactor at Three Mile Island, alongside a power purchase agreement with Microsoft.
That investors and executives at fusion companies were talking about meeting projected load growth is a good sign of how heady the financial and technology prospects have gotten for anyone who has a good story to tell (and some capital). Fusion’s claim to be the holy grail of energy has passed over time from aspiration to irony and back again, thanks to billions piled into the industry in the past few years.
This combination of dreaminess and realism prevailed at Commonwealth’s event, where Dumas said that when he first invested in the company, “there was an exciting story of how fusion or a company like CFS could provide 5, 10, 20% of the world’s primary energy and could become the biggest company in the history of capitalism,” Dumas said. (Perhaps not surprisingly, several former SpaceX employees work at Commonwealth.) Now the focus is on getting a power plant developed with technology that the industry insists will be ready to go online on a reasonable timeframe — something more like a decade than the standard 20 or 30 years.
But whether you’re splitting atoms or fusing them, the demand for clean
power from data centers is coming in months and years, not decades.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman
reportedly
told the White House he
wants
to build 5-gigawatt data centers, which would take the
equivalent of five large nuclear reactors to power. Even
restarting an existing fission plant takes at least
three years, while building a new one using existing typically takes
around … well no one knows because there are no plans currently to do
so.
“People are not going to be patient” if new clean power
can’t be developed quickly, Juliann Edwards, the founder and chief
executive of The Nuclear Company, told me this week. “They’re going to
go build more gas plants.”
Kathleen Barrón, the chief strategy officer at Constellation, the country’s leading nuclear energy providers, said during the panel hosted by Third Way that conversations about new nuclear are “starting to happen,” and that the most important part of that process is coming up with a reasonable cost estimate. “Once you know what it costs, you can figure out what contributions will be,” she said, referring to the nasty problem of how to split up the expense among various stakeholders, including the government. Barrón pointed out that the second reactor at Vogtle was almost a third cheaper than the first — meaning that maybe the nuclear industry has a chance of getting a handle on costs. In the meantime, owners of existing plants will be happy to reopen and expand what they can, picking up generous incentives all along the way.
Edwards told me she’s been speaking with potential offtakers like Amazon and Meta, utilities, independent power producers, and investors in pursuit of having “binding contracts” for new plants by late 2026. But the hyperscalers committed to using clean power will need more than that.
Lucia Tian, a former official at the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office who now heads of clean energy and decarbonization technologies at Google, estimated that Google’s clean energy needs would be largely served from existing renewable technologies “that we can deploy at scale,” which, paired with storage, would get the company to around 80% of its needs. “But in order to get that last 20%, we need a suite of technologies including nuclear, long-duration energy storage, fossil generation with carbon capture and storage.”
Behind each of these promising technologies is a unique deployment issue. Geothermal might work in the western United States only, for instance, and even then not before the late 2020s. As for nuclear, outside of reopening shuttered plants and uprating existing ones, Tian said, “the reality that everyone recognizes” is that if “I sign a deal today” for a small modular reactor or the existing AP1000 design, “it’s not going to come online before 2030.” This leaves “a strong role for CCS,” she added, referring to using natural gas with carbon capture and storage, an approach strongly encouraged by new Environmental Protection Agency rules for gas plants, but one that is by no means widespread today.
Making progress on a technology that’s been in development for decades and still involves extracting and burning a fossil fuel doesn’t quite meet the futuristic moment the data center and artificial intelligence boom has created in the present.
“Every day someone asks, can’t you foot the billion dollar risk of a nuclear reactor?” Tian said. The future will have to wait a bit longer, but the data centers are coming now.
https://heatmap.news/technology/ai-climate-week-clean-energy
US House Speaker wants Ukraine’s ambassador fired over Zelenskyy ammunition plant visit
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives demanded on Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fire his ambassador to the United States over Zelenskyy’s trip this week to a factory in Pennsylvania.
“I demand that you immediately fire Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova,” Speaker Mike Johnson wrote in a letter to Zelenskyy.
Johnson released the letter a day before Zelenskyy was due to visit the U.S. Capitol in Washington for meetings with lawmakers. Johnson was not expected to meet with the Ukrainian leader.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some Republicans have been fuming over Zelenskyy’s visit earlier in his weeklong trip to the United States to an ammunition plant in President Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is one of the swing states seen as crucial to victory in the November 5 presidential election.
During the trip, Zelenskyy also met with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Senator Bob Casey and U.S. Representative Matt Cartwright, who are all Democrats.
Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, is the Democratic candidate running against Republican former President Donald Trump in the race for the White House.
“The facility was in a politically contested battleground state, was led by a top political surrogate for Kamala Harris, and failed to include a single Republican because — on purpose — no Republicans were invited,” Johnson wrote.
“The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” he said.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee had already announced that it would investigate whether Zelenskyy’s trip was an attempt to use a foreign leader to benefit Harris’ campaign.
It is common practice for governors to meet with foreign leaders who travel to their states. In July, Zelenskyy visited a factory in Utah and was hosted by that state’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox.
China’s Salt Typhoon cyber spies are deep inside US ISPs
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Expecting a longer storm season this year?
Updated Another Beijing-linked cyberspy crew, this one dubbed Salt Typhoon, has reportedly been spotted on networks belonging to US internet service providers in stealthy data-stealing missions and potential preparation for future cyberattacks.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/chinas_salt_typhoon_cyber_spies/
US Congress passes temporary bill to avoid government shutdown
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Congress on Wednesday passed a temporary measure that keeps government agencies funded into December, avoiding a shutdown for now while punting final spending decisions until after the Nov. 5 election.
The Senate approved the measure by a vote of 78-18 shortly after the House easily approved it. The bill generally funds agencies at current levels through Dec. 20. But an additional $231 million was included to bolster the Secret Service after the two assassination attempts against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Money was also added to aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
The bill now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.
“This bipartisanship is a good outcome for America,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said moments before the vote. “I hope it sets the tone for more constructive, bipartisan work when we return in the fall.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson billed the measure as doing “only what’s absolutely necessary,” a statement directed at members of his own conference concerned about spending levels.
Still, it was a no-go for some Republicans, which forced House Republican leadership to rely on Democratic votes to pass the bill through a process that requires at least two-thirds support from voting members. Johnson said the only alternative to the continuing resolution at this stage would have been a government shutdown.
“It would be political malpractice to shut the government down,” Johnson said. “I think everyone understands that.”
The House floor was largely empty during debate on the measure. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, was the lone critic speaking out, saying, “We end up in a vicious circle every year, the same vicious circle.”
Lawmakers in both chambers are anxious to return to their home states and districts to campaign, smoothing the path for passage of a temporary funding fix. But more arduous fiscal negotiations await them at the end of the year.
Under terms of a previous deal to avoid a federal default and allow the government to continue paying its bills, spending for defense and nondefense programs would rise 1% next year.
The Senate has been charting a course to go above that level, while House Republicans have been voting for steep cuts to many nondefense programs, and they have attached policy mandates to the spending bills that Democrats overwhelmingly oppose. So a final agreement will be difficult to reach.
In the meantime, the temporary bill will mostly fund the government at current levels, with a few exceptions like the funding infusion for the Secret Service.
The $231 million for the Secret Service does come with strings attached. It’s contingent upon the agency complying with congressional oversight. The bill also allows the Secret Service to spend its allocations faster if needed.
“Everybody understands that’s critically important right now,” Johnson said of the Secret Service money.
Trump thanked lawmakers for the extra Secret Service funding at a campaign event Wednesday. He had earlier called on Republicans not to move forward on a spending bill without also including a requirement that people provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. That legislation failed in the House last week.
In a recent letter, the Secret Service told lawmakers that a funding shortfall was not the reason for lapses in Trump’s security when a gunman climbed onto an unsecured roof on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and opened fire. But acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr., also made clear the agency had “immediate needs” and that he’s talking to Congress.
“The Secret Service has asked for this additional funding. It’s absolutely essential as they deal with the increased threat environment,” said Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The continuing resolution is needed because Congress is nowhere close to completing work on the dozen annual appropriations bills that fund much of the federal government. The House has passed five of the 12 bills, mostly along party lines. The Senate has passed zero.
Republicans blame the current impasse on Senate Democrats for not putting the dozen appropriations bills on the Senate floor for a vote, where they then could be reconciled with the House bills during negotiations. But Democrats counter that House Republicans are acting in bad faith, bogging the process down by undercutting an agreement that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated with the White House over spending caps for the 2024 and 2025 budget years.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic member of the House Appropriations Committee, said her party will accept nothing less than the 1% increase specified in that agreement. Also, if Republicans seek more than that for defense, there must be “dollar for dollar parity for nondefense,” she said.
“We know where we have to end up. And it is my hope that this bill will provide the bipartisan momentum needed to get there,” DeLauro said.
The White House called on both chambers to pass the stopgap bill, while cautioning that it did not provide adequate funding to help communities recover from natural disasters and failed to include enough funding for health care provided through the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Johnson warned that when the new extension expires in December, he will not support a massive, catchall bill to fund the government, referred to as an omnibus, so another stopgap may be needed that would allow the new president and Congress to have the final say on fiscal year 2025 spending levels.
“I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition,” Johnson said.
Sen. Patty Murray, the Democratic chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, urged House Republicans not to “follow the loudest voices on the far right” in the spending negotiations for the full-year bill.
“You cannot strike a deal to govern with people who do not really want to govern,” Murray said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-house-passes-temporary-bill-to-avoid-government-shutdown/7799439.html
Unions 2, Apple 0: Cupertino caves after fresh strike threat
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma!
Apple’s anti-union posturing is looking like quite the paper tiger: The iPhone goliath has reached an agreement with unionized retail workers in Oklahoma, marking the second time it has caved to organized labor after facing the prospect of a strike. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/unions_apple_strike_threat/
SARP West 2024 Oceans Group
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Henry Houskeeper, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Graduate Mentor: Lori Berberian, University of California, Los Angeles Lori Berberian, Graduate Mentor Emory Gaddis Leveraging High Resolution PlanetScope Imagery to Quantify oil slick Spatiotemporal Variability in the Santa Barbara Channel Emory Gaddis, Colgate University Located within the Santa Barbara Channel of California, Coal Oil Point […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/sarp-west-2024-oceans-group/
SARP West 2024 Whole Air Sampling (WAS) Group
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Donald Blake, University of California, Irvine Graduate Mentor: Katherine Paredero, Georgia Institute of Technology Katherine Paredero, Graduate Mentor Mikaela Vaughn Urban Planning Initiative: Investigation of Isoprene Emissions by Tree Species in the LA Basin Mikaela Vaughn, Virginia Commonwealth University Elevated ozone concentrations have been a concern in Southern California for decades. The […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/sarp-west-2024-whole-air-sampling-was-group/
SARP West 2024 Terrestrial Ecology Group
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Dan Sousa, San Diego State University Graduate Mentor: Megan Ward-Baranyay, San Diego State University Megan Ward-Baranyay, Graduate Mentor Gerrit Hoving Predicting Ammonia Plume Presence at Feedlots in the San Joaquin Valley from VSWIR Spectroscopy of the Land Surface Gerrit Hoving, Carleton College Industrial-scale livestock farms, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), are […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/sarp-west-2024-terrestrial-ecology-group/
2024 SARP West Atmospheric Aerosols Group
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Andreas Beyersdorf, California State University, San Bernardino & Dr. Ann Marie Carlton, University of California Graduate Mentor: Madison Landi, University of California, Irvine Madison Landi, Graduate Mentor Maya Niyogi A Comparative Analysis of Tropospheric NO2: Evaluating TEMPO Satellite Data Against Airborne Measurements Maya Niyogi, Johns Hopkins University Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) plays a […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/2024-sarp-west-atmospheric-aerosols-group/
2024 SARP West Closeout
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
On August 12-13, 24 students from the West Coast cohort of NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program (SARP) gathered at University of California, Irvine (UCI) to present their final research to a room of mentors, professors, family, and NASA personnel. SARP is an eight-week summer internship for undergraduate students, hosted in two cohorts: SARP West operates […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/2024-sarp-west-closeout/
Getting SSPICY: NASA Funds Orbital Debris Inspection Mission
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
NASA is advancing an innovative approach to enabling commercial inspection of defunct, or inoperable, satellites in low Earth orbit, a precursor to capturing and repairing or removing the satellites. The agency has awarded Starfish Space of Seattle, Washington, a Phase III Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to complete the Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection […]
91% of polled Amazon staff unhappy with return-to-office, 3-in-4 want to jump ship
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Decisions like the one from Jassy are a big reason why I don’t want kids’
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy last week sent a memo to staff informing them everyone is now expected in the office five days a week from the start of next year, and a poll of staff suggests this hasn’t gone down well.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/amazon_staff_return_office/
$75 Sensor Watch Pro crams even more hardware into a classic Casio wristwatch
date: 2024-09-25, from: Liliputing
A few years ago Joey Castillo introduced Sensor Watch, a $35 board designed to fit inside the shell of a Casio F-91W wristwatch, giving a classic watch some modern hardware including an ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller, a temperature sensor, and inputs for additional sensors. Now Castillo is back with Sensor Watch Pro, a $75 version that […]
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https://liliputing.com/75-sensor-watch-pro-crams-even-more-hardware-into-a-classic-casio-wristwatch/
The Marshall Star for September 25, 2024
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
Marshall Presents Small Business Awards for Fiscal Year 2024 By Wayne Smith NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center honored top contractors, subcontractors, teams, and individuals of fiscal year 2024 at the 38th meeting of Marshall’s Small Business Alliance. The awards honor aerospace companies and leaders who have demonstrated support of the center’s small business programs and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/the-marshall-star-for-september-25-2024/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Using Mastodon apps to connect to WordPress sites. Uses the API apparently, not ActivityPub.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/enable-mastodon-apps/
NASA Sets Coverage for Agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 Launch, Docking
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff is targeted for 1:17 p.m. EDT, Saturday, Sept. 28, from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This is the first human spaceflight mission to launch from that […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-sets-coverage-for-agencys-spacex-crew-9-launch-docking/
UnifyDrive UT2 is a pocket-sized NAS with 2 NVMe slots, WiFi 6, and 2.5 GbE LAN (crowdfunding)
date: 2024-09-25, from: Liliputing
The UnifyDrive UT2 is a pocket-sized storage device that looks like a portable drive that you can plug into a computer with a USB cable. And it can be used that way. But it’s also a full-fledged network attached storage device designed for use at home or on the go. UnifyDrive has launched a Kickstarter […]
The post UnifyDrive UT2 is a pocket-sized NAS with 2 NVMe slots, WiFi 6, and 2.5 GbE LAN (crowdfunding) appeared first on Liliputing.
Altman reportedly asks Biden to back a slew of multi-gigawatt-scale AI datacenters
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
With 2.5 million Blackwell GPUs, would gobble enough energy to power millions of homes
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is reportedly trying to convince the Biden administration that an enormous network of AI datacenters, each consuming up to five gigawatts of power, is imperative to ensuring US national security and maintaining its technological lead over China.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/altman_5gw_dc/
Students Stumble Upon a Message in a Bottle Written by a French Archaeologist 200 Years Ago
date: 2024-09-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The mysterious missive was written by P.J. Féret, who conducted an archaeological dig at the same site in northern France in 1825
Meta Orion AR glasses prototype squeezes micro LED projectors, sensors, and AI hardware into a wearable design
date: 2024-09-25, from: Liliputing
Companies have been trying to make augmented reality glasses a thing for more than a decade, but the product category has yet to take off. But Meta thinks it might be close to cracking the code. Facebook’s parent company introduced a new AR glasses prototype called Orion today, which will be available for testing soon by […]
The post Meta Orion AR glasses prototype squeezes micro LED projectors, sensors, and AI hardware into a wearable design appeared first on Liliputing.
US Army drafts AI to combat recruitment shortfall
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
No more cold calls: Recruit 360 pinpoints top prospects from millions
Plagued by recruiting shortfalls, the US Army is turning to AI to help it sift through the chaff for fresh recruits.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/us_army_enlists_ai/
NASA Wallops to Support Sounding Rocket Launch
date: 2024-09-25, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia is scheduled to support the launch of a suborbital sounding rocket for the Department of Defense during a launch window that runs 1:45 to 6:30 p.m. EDT each day from Sept. 26 to 30. No real-time launch status updates will be available and the launch will not be livestreamed. […]
The EV Charging Problem Is Getting Worse
date: 2024-09-25, from: Heatmap News
Last year, a great streamlining of electric vehicle charging infrastructure looked imminent. One by one, the major automakers committed to using the North American Charging Standard, or NACS, which was formerly Tesla’s proprietary plug. The moves would allow EV drivers of all stripes to use Tesla’s Supercharger network and would move the industry toward a single standard where things worked seamlessly. Earlier this month, GM joined the ranks of Ford and Rivian in having its vehicles officially able to visit nearly 18,000 Supercharger stations.
All of the GM vehicles built up to this point, however, carry the previous charging standard for non-Tesla EVs. You know what that means: dongles.
Drivers in combustion cars choose between regular, plus, and premium gas, but they don’t worry that they’ll pull into a station and the pump won’t fit their car. EVs, meanwhile, still have to deal with a mess of competing plug standards and confusing customer interfaces at charging stations. This situation is the inescapable result of a fast-moving, fledgling industry, yes. But the complexity is an annoyingly sticky barrier to EV adoption.
The adapter necessary to make a GM EV work with a Tesla plug, for instance, is available. But there’s a waiting list, and the piece costs $225 — effectively a $225 early adopter penalty for buying your EV back before everyone agreed on how to cooperate. When Ford transitioned to NACS earlier this year, it had difficulty extracting enough adapters from Tesla to meet the demand, dragging out the process for months for some of its EV drivers. GM had been slated to join the Supercharger network months earlier and could not because of the dongle delays.
Not all the eligible cars just work, either. After GM electric vehicles were welcomed to Tesla Superchargers, it turned out that lots of Chevrolet Bolts made in 2019 and 2020 (when they were the best-selling non-Tesla EVs) needed to visit the dealership for a software update before they could link up with a Tesla plug.
Software patches and dongles may be an annoyance, a kind of Band-Aid to make two systems that weren’t meant to work together play nice, but at least a quick fix is possible. A bigger issue for streamlining charging stations is that the locations of charging ports on EVs themselves are far from standardized.
All Tesla models have ports in the rear on the driver’s side; Supercharging stations are typically built for drivers to back in and then find the appropriate cord right next to their charging port. A Chevy Bolt’s port, however, is found on the driver’s side but on the front. A Hyundai Ioniq 5’s is in the back, but on the passenger side. When Rivian revealed the R2 and R3 designs, their ports were on the passenger side rear because the brand thought that location would fit into its existing network of chargers and make it easier to plug into street-side plugs. Then came an outcry from fans distraught at how difficult it would be to use a Tesla Supercharger if the port were on the wrong side and the cable had to wrap all the way around the back of the vehicle. Rivian changed its mind.
Thank goodness for that, because the situation at Superchargers is poised to get messy. I’ve been to ones where Tesla plugs were available, but I could not park my Model 3 within reach of one because other EVs parked incorrectly in order to plug in. Tesla’s lead engineer for the Cybertruck had to warn people not to use extension cords at Superchargers since that might lead to electrical shorts.
Some relief is on the way. In the coming years, most car companies will build the NACS standard into their electric vehicles, negating the need for expensive adapters and dongles. With so much emphasis on using the Supercharger network, it’s likely the brands will feel pressure to follow Rivian’s lead and just put the port where Tesla puts it.
But then there’s the last piece of the puzzle: the interface. Tesla beat the competition at charging not only by building a bigger and far more reliable network, but also by inventing a seamless way to pay for electricity: When you plug in, the system knows it’s your car and charges the credit card on file. Non-Tesla drivers are beginning to experience this convenience when they stop at the Supercharger.
Competing systems, though, rely on a variety of phone apps that may or may not work, especially in places with spotty cell coverage. Tech companies are trying to solve this problem with, you guessed it, AI. Revel, which used to offer rentable mopeds around New York City, has tried to reposition itself as an EV charging company. It just partnered with a computer vision company to announce a kind of facial recognition system for your car so that the charging station knows it’s you.
Of course, one could just copy Tesla’s idea and have the charging cord auto-identify each vehicle, or even simply install a camera to read the car’s license plate instead of overcomplicating the basic task of IDing a car. But those solutions don’t use the magic technology of the moment.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/ev-charging-mess
Scientists Discover a New Species of Elusive Ghost Shark
date: 2024-09-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Called the Australasian narrow-nosed spookfish, the cryptic species lives deep in the ocean off the coasts of New Zealand and Australia
Meta Quest 3S is a pared down mixed-reality headset priced at $300
date: 2024-09-25, from: Liliputing
A year after launching the Meta Quest 3 mixed-reality headset, Facebook’s parent company is introducing a new model called the Meta Quest 3S that offers many of the same features for less than half the price. Available for pre-order now for $300 and up, the new model could is the cheapest member of the current Meta […]
The post Meta Quest 3S is a pared down mixed-reality headset priced at $300 appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/meta-quest-3s-is-a-pared-down-mixed-reality-headset-priced-at-300/
Amazon Parrot, Mister Blossom
date: 2024-09-25, from: Lispmachine-org blog
My parrot, “Mister Blossom”, I have had since 2019 when his owner, my older sister, passed away suddenly. I have taken care of Mr B (and my elderly father) since then. My dad passed away this past February, leaving the parrot as my last family obligation. I know that my sister had the bird for …
Continue reading “Amazon Parrot, Mister Blossom”
The post Amazon Parrot, Mister Blossom appeared first on LispMachine.
https://lisp-machine.org/amazon-parrot-mister-blossom/
A look under the hood of the 3D-printed, Raspberry Pi powered ‘suicide pod’
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Design files will be available soon, but no word yet on the software
A highly controversial 3D printed suicide pod has been used for the first time, leading to multiple arrests in Switzerland. The device is so DIY-friendly that you could technically build it at home, assuming you’ve got the right tools and, well, the necessary motivation. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/3d_printed_raspberry_pi_suicide_pod/
The Grudge Match Over Maine’s Plans for Offshore Wind
date: 2024-09-25, from: Heatmap News
The future of floating offshore wind in America rests on a feud between YIMBY state officials and a government whistleblower over a bucolic island off the coast of Maine. I have no clue who will win.
Floating offshore wind is Maine’s best bet for wind power in deeper stretches of ocean, far away from beach views, coastal properties, and valuable fishing grounds. The tech — which other countries have tried to deploy but is still unproven at large commercial scale — offers a hypothetical panacea for the sorts of conflicts that often stymie offshore wind, and other states are looking to it as a solution for these thorny issues, including California.
But Maine has chosen to construct its floating offshore wind turbine assembly site at Sears Island, a naturalist tourist destination in Penobscot Bay. Conservationists in New England have fought for a long time to preserve the island, an incredibly biodiverse ecosystem rich with wetlands, from the Maine Department of Transportation, which over decades has attempted to use a section of the island for various forms of infrastructure, including an industrial port.
Now that this longstanding conflict has become intertwined with the cause of carbon reduction, it is pitting an older generation of eco-warriors against a younger breed of climate activists, as well as local unions eager to get in on energy transition jobs. Unfortunately for Maine regulators, one of the old heads opposing this project is Kyla Bennett, a former wetlands permitting staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency who stopped a previous effort by the Maine Department of Transportation to build a port at Sears Island in the 1990s.
At EPA, Bennett determined that constructing the port would’ve been illegal under the Clean Water Act because of the sheer proliferation of obvious wetlands. When political officials interceded and reassigned her to a different job, she blew the whistle on them — and won, winning back her post. The port permits were also denied.
Bennett is now a key organizer for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an organization that represents whistleblowers doing environmental protection work in government. And she’s making it a hobby horse to, again, stop Sears Island from becoming a port — even if it’s in the name of developing technology that could stem the tide of climate change.
“It’s déjà vu. It’s really disturbing to me that it’s back and we have to do this all over again,” she told me.
The facility has to go somewhere because, well, the technicians and researchers need a place to build these turbines, and Maine has claimed that no port existing today on the East Coast fits the precise spacing and resource needs. Habib Dagher, a University of Maine professor who leads the consortium plotting a U.S. offshore wind industry, told me constructing a port for assembly is “critical” to near-term success.
Yet there is another option. Moffat and Nichols, the engineering firm that studied port locations for Maine regulators, did conclude Mack Point, an existing import terminal on the coast of the Penobscot owned by Sprague Energy, would also fit the bill. Sprague is proposing to pay for a large expansion of Mack Point to take this floating offshore wind business off of Sears Island. Not only does it already have existing rail infrastructure and a long history of working in energy and construction but crucially, the engineering firm also found that siting the assembly facility there would shave years off the permitting and construction timetable for making floating offshore wind a reality.
Legally, this alternative matters, and federal regulators will decide who wins this fight. Maine regulators are expected to submit paperwork to begin the permitting process under the National Environmental Policy Act for building the assembly site at Sears Island in the coming weeks. As they do so, they will be required to explain how this plan offers the “least environmentally damaging practicable alternative” under environmental law. And Bennett is confident their claims will not pass muster in court, if not with career EPA staff.
“It cannot be legally permitted,” she confessed. “We will sue them.”
So I sought out to answer this pesky question: Why is Maine trying to build this crucial infrastructure for the energy transition in a place with activist resistance, and where even its own consultants have said the process would take longer?
State regulators, politicians, and supporters of the Sears Island plan have a few reasons. First off, Maine Governor Janet Mills has bemoaned that to use Mack Point would require leasing the property from Sprague, which would mean a recurring cost to taxpayers. There are also size issues — the Maine Department of Transportation claims there simply wouldn’t be enough space at Mack Point for researchers and, eventually, industry to do their work.
“We know there would be environmental impacts at both the Mack Point and Sears Island sites,” Paul Merrill, director of communications for the Maine Department of Transportation, told me in an email Monday evening. “The bottom line is that the port Maine needs simply doesn’t fit at Mack Point. Sprague has a financial interest in development on Mack Point. Our goal is to develop a port that is in the best interest of the public.”
Merrill did acknowledge the new proposal for Sears Island would be located on “the same part of the island that was discussed for development in the 1990s.”
Sprague denies the logistical issues with building the port at Mack Point and told me issues Maine regulators are easily resolved. The company has begun campaigning to win key stakeholders to its side, publishing op-eds and meeting with environmental advocates. On September 12, Sierra Club’s Maine chapter hosted a virtual event with a Sprague executive, Jim Theriault, about how the port selection “needs to be considered carefully.” When I spoke to Theriault this week, he told me that Sierra Club members were asking the same question I was.
“At the end of the day, we’d be reusing an industrial site, and we’d relocate what we do to other parts of the terminal,” he said. “I’ll make myself available to anybody that wants to talk.”
https://heatmap.news/plus/the-fight/spotlight/maine-floating-wind-sears-island
RansomHub genius tries to put the squeeze on Delaware Libraries
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Extorting underfunded public services for $1M isn’t a good look
Despite being top of the ransomware tree at the moment, RansomHub – specifically, one of its affiliates – clearly isn’t that bright as they are reportedly trying to extort Delaware Libraries for around $1 million.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/delaware_libraries_ransomware_attack/
Campaigns seek to mobilize voters in swing state of Georgia
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
Early voting for the U.S. presidential election in the state of Georgia begins October 15. Polls show a close contest there between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Atlanta, Georgia.
https://www.voanews.com/a/campaigns-seek-to-mobilize-voters-in-swing-state-of-georgia-/7799081.html
To Stop “Woke” Investing, Companies Want Taxpayer-Funded Lobbyists
date: 2024-09-25, from: The Lever News
Two new anti-ESG bills would install corporate lobbyists within the SEC and hamper shareholders and local governments.
https://www.levernews.com/to-stop-woke-investing-companies-want-taxpayer-funded-lobbyists/
The Highest Peak in Great Smoky Mountains National Park Will Now Be Called by Its Cherokee Name
date: 2024-09-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In 1858, the mountain was named for a Confederate general. Now, it will once again be known as “Kuwohi”
Mysterious ‘Mechanical-Sounding’ Noise Near the Mariana Trench May Now Have an Explanation
date: 2024-09-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
An acoustic survey in 2018 and new analysis with A.I. suggest the sounds are vocalizations from the elusive Bryde’s whale
Battery Fears Hit Nebraska and New York
date: 2024-09-25, from: Heatmap News
1. Cass County, Nebraska — Local permits for a 260+ megawatt NextEra solar project have been stalled for at least two months, we can exclusively report.
- The Cass County Planning Commission held a special meeting Monday on NextEra’s application for the project. Meeting minutes aren’t public yet and a record of the gathering may not be public until at least next week, but staff in the county zoning office confirmed with me on the phone that commissioners tabled the application for 60 days.
- Why was it tabled? According to one anti-NextEra attendee’s post to Facebook, it was NextEra’s desire to add battery storage to the project. “Voters and commission members jumped all over him about [how] unsafe these lithium ion batteries are and, if they catch on fire, how they are nearly impossible to extinguish,” wrote Dave Begley of Omaha, Nebraska. “The Commission tabled the application over concerns about batteries.”
- Cass County has restricted solar development before, passing an ordinance in 2023 with property distance requirements. A NextEra project developer told Energy News Network last year 40%-50% of the acreage it has leased for the project would be for setbacks from roads, drainage, and trees.
- This upper-middle class, white, and conservative community outside of Omaha is also predicted to be a relatively difficult place to build a renewable energy project, based on Heatmap Pro’s modeling of polling, demographic, and economic data. Strong opposition to battery storage, in particular, was likely:
- NextEra did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Battery
opinion modeling in Cass County,
Nebraska.Heatmap
Pro Screenshot
2. Westchester County, N.Y. — Speaking of battery blues, a New York state senate race has become imbued with the politics surrounding energy storage, demonstrating how politicians are trying to take advantage of fire fears.
- Gina Arena, a Republican running for a state senate seat in the Hudson Valley, on Monday published an open letter calling for East Point Energy to abandon its plans for a large lithium battery plant in the district.
- “If the lithium battery farm were to be built, it would constitute an extraordinary danger to thousands of nearby residents who would have to shelter in place for days in the event of a fire,” she wrote.
- This is part of a growing trend I’m observing in local and state politicians leveraging adverse reactions to renewables projects for their own gain. Such is the case for the California battery project we covered in our first edition of The Fight, and the Oak Run agri-voltaic project we featured last week.
- Whether these campaigns succeed depends on many factors including political party and region. But these gambits can be influential.
- Case in point: The example of Nick Newport, a local pizza shop owner who E&E News reported this week recently won a GOP primary for a Georgia county board of commissioners seat in part on opposition to water access for a Hyundai EV plant.
3. Georgetown County, S.C. — Sunrise Renewables is reportedly delaying a request for zoning approval to build two solar farms in the county amidst blossoming local opposition to development.
- The solar farms were supposed to receive a public hearing in the Georgetown County planning commission last week but it was postponed after the county commission got “scores of letters and emails” against development, according to the Coastal Observer, a local paper in South Carolina.
- The investment firm behind Sunrise Renewables is Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which also owns 50% of the Vineyard offshore wind project.
4. Carroll County, Maryland — Carroll County Commissioners are poised today to oppose a solar farm in the town of Sykesville before the state Public Service Commission on the grounds it conflicts with a county ban on farmland development.
- “The board maintains its position of protecting owner property rights, local control, land use and permitting authority and the importance of renewable energy while preserving the county’s rich agricultural farmland,” the commissioners said in a press release ahead of the PSC meeting.
5. Stark County, Ohio — The Ohio Power Siting Board last week held two days of testimony-laden hearings in its case over Stark Solar, a 150-megawatt solar farm with battery storage being developed by a subsidiary of Samsung.
- The OPSB recommended in July to deny the project citing local opposition.
- It’s another classic solar vs. farmland situation.
Here’s what else I’m watching…
- In Iowa, Adams County is preparing to update its ordinance against wind projects.
- In Maine, the town of Trenton has extended a solar moratorium for 180 days.
- In New York, the town of Somerset has extended its moratorium on battery storage and the town of Duanesburg is extending its anti-battery and wind ordinance.
- In Virginia, Halifax County is apparently slow in processing solar project applications despite lifting its moratorium.
https://heatmap.news/plus/the-fight/hotspots/nextera-cass-county-solar
Google’s Rust belts bugs out of Android, helps kill off unsafe code substantially
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Memory safety flaws used to represent 76% of ’droid security holes. Now they account for 24%
Google says its effort to prioritize memory-safe software development over the past six years has substantially reduced the number of memory safety vulnerabilities in its Android operating system.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/google_rust_safe_code_android/
Mineral Mania
date: 2024-09-25, from: Heatmap News
1. Global minerals mania – The U.S. government and allies this week announced the Minerals Security Partnership Finance Network, a global minerals investment operation focused on battery metals and other resources key to the energy transition.
- Along with the announcement came the disclosure of specific U.S. financing decisions – $600 million to Australian Strategic Materials for a rare earths project in New South Wales; $20 million to Electra Ontario Cobalt, a Canadian company, for a cobalt refinery; $50 million to ESS Inc. for iron flow battery assembly lines at its Oregon plant; and $3.6 million to Pensana Rare Earths for researching the expansion of a rare earths mine in Angola.
- This represents a new norm where U.S. dollars can go to mining overseas. I’ve covered mining my whole career and can safely say the U.S. has never organized this hard to counter China’s outsized influence in global minerals markets through direct investments.
- What else does this mean? Companies that rely on raw materials abroad are probably thinking internally about whether their resources could qualify for federal money one day, too.
2. Mining at home – Meanwhile, the Energy Department on Friday announced $3 billion (!) for 25 battery minerals and manufacturing projects in the United States.
- A noteworthy name on the recipient list: SWA Lithium, a joint venture between Norwegian state-owned oil major Equinor and the Koch-backed mining company Standard Lithium. The money will go towards extracting lithium chemicals from the Smackover formation in Arkansas.
3. Buckwheat bucked – Domestic lithium extraction got another major boost from the government late last week when the Bureau of Land Management published the final environmental review for the Rhyolite Ridge mine in Nevada, one of the few U.S. lithium mining projects close to completing its permitting.
- Publication of the review without adverse recommendations means the project is all but assured to be approved.
- It’s another blow to the Center for Biological Diversity, which has fought to block the mine because studies, including research funded by the mining company, show a clear danger to an endangered flower present at dig sites called Tiehm’s buckwheat.
- I’d expect litigation here from CBD. I’d also treat this as a bellwether for how the Biden administration looks generally at mining vs. species protection.
4. Semiconductors souped – Congress passed legislation on Monday to provide for federal regulators to fund semiconductor projects under the CHIPS Act without environmental reviews, sending it to the president’s desk where it’ll likely be enacted into law.
- Semiconductor industry representatives had bemoaned the risk of NEPA reviews impacting CHIPS money going out. Now they won’t have to worry.
5. Content standards – The Solar Energy Industries Association published a new draft standard for compliance with U.S. customs requirements against the use of inputs from the Xinjiang region of China, where the U.S. government suspects forced labor is involved with solar materials manufacturing.
- The draft standard is intended as a series of recommendations for companies to most easily meet the existing customs requirements.
- They’re open for comment through Nov. 4. You can comment here.
Here’s what else I’m watching…
- Anti-offshore activists in Nantucket petitioned the Supreme Court to take up their failed appeal of a lawsuit claiming the Vineyard Wind project violated the Endangered Species Act, citing the court’s recent decision to undo the so-called “Chevron Doctrine.”
- A Senate committee is poised to vote on bipartisan legislation this week that would create revenue sharing for states with offshore wind – which may not easily become law in an election year but could be on the horizon soon after.
- Nearly half of all IRA funding has gone to seven swing states for the U.S. presidential election, according to analysis conducted by a public policy firm at the request of The Guardian.
- Colorado is offering a fresh round of grant money to localities in the state that want to use automated rooftop solar permitting software.
https://heatmap.news/plus/the-fight/policy-watch/minerals-security-partnership-finance-network
CrowdStrike executive apologizes to Congress for July global tech outage
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — An executive at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike apologized in testimony to Congress for sparking a global technology outage over the summer.
“We let our customers down,” said Adam Meyers, who leads CrowdStrike’s threat intelligence division, in a hearing before a U.S. House cybersecurity subcommittee Tuesday.
Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off a global tech outage in July that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.
“Everywhere Americans turned, basic societal functions were unavailable,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green said. “We cannot allow a mistake of this magnitude to happen again.”
The Tennessee Republican likened the impact of the outage to an attack “we would expect to be carefully executed by a malicious and sophisticated nation-state actor.”
“We’re deeply sorry and we are determined to prevent this from ever happening again,” Meyers told lawmakers while laying out the technical missteps that led to the outage of about 8.5 million computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Meyers said he wanted to “underscore that this was not a cyberattack” but was, instead, caused by a faulty “rapid-response content update” focused on addressing new threats. The company has since bolstered its content update procedures, he said.
The company still faces a number of lawsuits from people and businesses that were caught up in July’s mass outage.
Do Community Benefit Agreements Actually Work?
date: 2024-09-25, from: Heatmap News
This week I spoke with Matilda Krieder, a researcher at the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory, about a database she and her colleagues
released
this week showing how onshore and offshore wind developers use
community benefit agreements – a form of compact aimed at improving
local benefits from projects. We talked about whether communities really
see the agreements as helpful or if there’s a better way.
The following is an abridged version of our conversation edited for clarity and space:
How much have you heard from people concerned that community
benefit agreements are a form of financial influence or a false promise
where they don’t receive real
benefits?
I haven’t
heard very much about the not-receiving end of things — and the reason
I’ll say that is at least on the land-based wind side, an actual
community benefit agreement is pretty uncommon. The vast majority of the
time it’s just donations. And that, I think, is less likely to have the
false promise thing because developers are handing over a one-time
check, so there’s not really a perception that it won’t come to
fruition.
So walk me through what your research shows with respect to how effective community benefit agreements are in assuaging local opposition to a project?
Unfortunately my research is not super helpful there. Because we didn’t look at failed projects, I don’t think I can say anything about whether [community benefit agreements] help or not.
But the existing literature that other people have done is not really positive on the connection between community benefits and improving community perception of projects, which is really interesting to me because I think people in the U.S. are really buying into it. Especially for offshore wind. So much pressure is being put on community benefits agreements as the thing that’ll change everything. And I support developers giving them, even if it doesn’t change anything, because it’s a net good. But I do wonder if developers or anybody setting regulations are reading what’s been studied. If so, I don’t know if they’d be putting all their eggs in this basket.
Okay then what if you walked me through the benefits you’ve found, at least in wind?
So it’s very different from offshore wind to land-based wind. In offshore wind, we’re seeing huge amounts of money, especially in the communities that host cable landings for the projects, because that’s the only point in offshore wind where the local government has any way to stop or change the way the project is developed. The cable landing is where you’re seeing $150 million [contributions]. And that hasn’t been happening long enough to measure the impacts of school funding or taxes over time.
The agreements that are more likely to be impactful are the ones that are more specific. I point to the Salem offshore wind terminal as a positive example because it’s such specific funding. You can tell they did the work to understand what the community’s priorities were and they directed funding to those areas.
In terms of land-based wind, it would be up to who you talk to. I’ve talked to county commissioners who’ve spoken really positively about the things that would be considered small potatoes. Not millions of dollars but directed funding in a specific way that met the community’s priorities and that changed people’s perception of the project. That’s a very small sample size, so you can’t identify a trend there, but I think it has potential.
I’m starting to view the donation side more positively than a lot of people too because a community benefit agreement most of the time is going to the local government, [and] a lot of people distrust their local government.
So instead, donations directly to services instead of county or local governments?
Yeah. That’s just a function of how in agreements, 95% of the funding goes to a local government. And people may not ever know what happens to it after that. It’s less visible.
What are you hearing from communities about community benefit agreements then?
I hear, how do we get one? The problem is, it’s still entirely in the developers’ hands so sometimes I feel a bit limited in the advice I can give to get one. It kind of comes down to what leverage you have with a developer.
https://heatmap.news/plus/the-fight/qa/community-benefit-agreement-nrel
America’s Oldest Surviving Tombstone Probably Came From Belgium
date: 2024-09-25, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers analyzed tiny fossils embedded in the limestone to determine the age and origins of the grave maker, which marked the final resting place of a prominent Jamestown colonist
Software Freedom Day Update
date: 2024-09-25, from: System76 Blog
Excitement for Software Freedom Day spanned across the globe!
https://blog.system76.com/post/software-freedom-day-at-system76
The early bird gets a touch of nostalgia as Ubuntu 24.10 hits beta
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Fun retro tweaks, App Center facelift, and more as Oracular Oriole moves into view
The beta version of Ubuntu 24.10 has just come out, with GNOME 47 as its default desktop and some fun retro touches.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/ubuntu_2410_beta/
Amazon Kindle 2024 leaked by Spanish retailer
date: 2024-09-25, from: Liliputing
A couple of unannounced Amazon products passed through the FCC recently, and they sure looked like they could be next-gen Amazon Kindle eReaders. Now there’s growing evidence that Amazon is preparing to refresh at least one of its Kindle devices: a Spanish retailer posted a product page for a new 12th-gen Amazon Kindle, providing some […]
The post Amazon Kindle 2024 leaked by Spanish retailer appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/amazon-kindle-2024-leaked-by-spanish-retailer/
Georgia’s Young Climate Voters Could Help Push Harris Past Trump
date: 2024-09-25, from: Capital and Main
In the face of extreme heat and rising sea levels, the state is welcoming billions of dollars in clean-energy projects.
The post Georgia’s Young Climate Voters Could Help Push Harris Past Trump appeared first on .
https://capitalandmain.com/georgias-young-climate-voters-could-help-push-harris-past-trump
ESA spending €17M on spacecraft just to watch it go up in flames
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
DRACO will be born to die in the fires of atmospheric re-entry
The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded Spanish company Deimos Space a contract for a spacecraft whose sole purpose is to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere so engineers can see what happens.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/esa_draco/
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-09-25, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
Are you a CLI nerd?
https://labs.tomasino.org/256-color-tty/
I got my TTY to support 256 colors. No, not a terminal emulator… the TTY. This is a big deal.
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/113198845763732672
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Meta acquires the Threads.com domain name.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/25/meta-acquires-the-threads-com-domain-name/
Elecrow responded, apologized for AI voice cloning
date: 2024-09-25, from: Jeff Geerling blog
Elecrow responded, apologized for AI voice cloning
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>AI voice cloning is a tool. It can be used, and it can be abused.</p>Your browser does not support the video tag.
Last week I was made aware that Elecrow, an electronics manufacturer and distributor, was using an unauthorized clone of my voice in some of their YouTube tutorials.
I couldn’t prove it at the time, but there are AI identity detection services like Resemble.ai that can at least give some input into whether it was a direct clone or just something that sounds ‘midwestern US male.’
Anyway, I made a short video about it, because I wanted to make a point that it is not okay for a corporation to clone someone’s voice and use it in their videos without that person’s consent.
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/elecrow-responded-apologized-ai-voice-cloning
China ‘firmly opposes’ proposed ban on connected vehicles
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
Washington — On Wednesday, China’s commerce ministry said it “firmly opposes” the United States’ proposed ban on the sale of connected vehicles that use Chinese or Russian software and hardware technology.
Most new vehicles are considered to be “connected” because they can share data with other vehicles and infrastructure with the help of onboard software, hardware and internet access.
The U.S. warns that data collected by Chinese or Russian software in connected and autonomous vehicles could pose a threat to national security.
A spokesperson from China’s Ministry of Commerce said the proposed U.S. ban has no “factual basis, violates the principles of market economy and fair competition, and is a typical protectionist act.”
“China urges the United States to stop its wrong practice of generalizing national security, immediately revoke the relevant restrictions, and stop its unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies,” according to a ministry statement.
The proposed rule is the latest example of the deteriorating relationship between Washington and Beijing.
In February, the Biden Administration said it would probe Chinese cars that pose a risk to national security. The U.S. Department of Commerce said it opened the probe because vehicles “collect large amounts of sensitive data on their drivers and passengers (and) regularly use their cameras and sensors to record detailed information on U.S. infrastructure.”
The Biden Administration also implemented a 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs earlier this month, citing unfair business practices and the potential for Chinese EVs to flood international markets.
The new proposed prohibition on connected vehicles applies both to the software and hardware that link vehicles to the outside world. It did not specify which manufacturers are likely to be impacted by the rule, which will be finalized after a 30-day period for public comment.
In a press release Tuesday, the Coalition for a Prosperous America, or CPA, voiced its support for the proposed ban.
“For years, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] has aggressively pursued global dominance in the automotive industry building tremendous overcapacity to dominate their home market and to displace auto manufacturing worldwide,” said the CEO of CPA, Michael Stumo.
“The Commerce Department’s proposed ban on this technology is an important measure to protect our automotive sector and secure Americans’ sensitive information,” he added.
China’s commerce ministry also condemned the U.S. on Wednesday for its newly proposed ban and tariffs implemented earlier this month, saying Washington placed “high tariffs on Chinese cars, restricted participation in government procurement, and introduced discriminatory subsidy policies.”
“Now, on the grounds of so-called national security, it [Washington] has slandered Chinese connected car software, hardware and complete vehicles as ‘unsafe’ and restricted their use in the United States,” a ministry statement said.
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
https://www.voanews.com/a/china-firmly-opposes-proposed-ban-on-connected-vehicles/7798881.html
US may exempt latest chip fabs from eco red-tape, but power is still a trip
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
AC/DC: America’s grid might need to brace itself
Comment The multibillion-dollar gamble of Intel and other semiconductor industry players on US-based chipmaking may be about to give America’s power infrastructure a bit of a headache.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/chip_fabs_us_power/
Attention Kmart shoppers: It’s time to say goodbye
date: 2024-09-25, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Once upon a time, there was department store chain called Kmart. Now, the bargain retailer is closing its last full-scale store in the lower 48. Kmart has struggled for years in the shadow of its two biggest imitators: Target and Walmart. Also on the show: OpenAI is looking to expand its artificial intelligence data centers. Plus, is this especially tense presidential campaign eating away at the economy?
One Hellish Workout
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/09/25/one-hellish-workout/
Podcast: Telegram is Working With the Cops
date: 2024-09-25, from: 404 Media Group
Telegram says it will now provide user data to the police; the walls are closing in on the Snowflake hacker; and why Nintendo’s lawsuit against Palworld is bad (and Nintendo will probably win).
https://www.404media.co/podcast-telegram-is-working-with-the-cops/
#1 Who’s using OC? The dblp computer science bibliography
date: 2024-09-25, from: Open Citation blog at Hypotheses.org
This blog post is the first of a series which will highlight some of the ways OpenCitations is currently adopted and used by the community. This series also gives us the chance to thank our users for trusting OpenCitations and for giving us the opportunity to improve our services through their feedback. With you, OpenCitations is a drop generating countless circular waves of innovation in research. The dblp computer science bibliography (https://dblp.org/) is the on-line reference for bibliographic information on major computer science publications, … Continue reading #1 Who’s using OC? The dblp computer science bibliography
https://opencitations.hypotheses.org/3677
What happened to the Japanese PC platforms?
date: 2024-09-25, from: OS News
The other day a friend asked me a pretty interesting question: what happened to all those companies who made those Japanese computer platforms that were never released outside Japan? I thought it’d be worth expanding that answer into a full-size post. ↫ Misty De Meo Japan had a number of computer makers that sold platforms that looked and felt like western PCs, but were actually quite different hardware-wise, and incompatible with the IBM PC. None of these exist anymore today, and the reason is simple: Windows 95. The Japanese platforms compatible enough with the IBM PC that they could get a Windows 95 port turned into a commodity with little to distinguish them from regular IBM PCs, and the odd platform that didn’t use an x86 chip at all – like the X68000 – didn’t get a Windows port and thus just died off. The one platform mentioned in this article that I had never heard of was FM Towns, made by Fujitsu, which had its own graphical operating system called Towns OS. The FM Towns machines and the Towns OS were notable and unique at the time in that it was the first operating system to boot from CD-ROM, and it just so happens that Joe Groff published an article earlier this year detailing this boot process, including a custom bootable image he made. Here in the west we mostly tend to remember the PC-98 and X86000 platforms for their gaming catalogs and stunning designs, but that’s like only remembering the IBM PC for its own gaming catalog. These machines weren’t just glorified game consoles – they were full-fledged desktop computers used for the same boring work stuff we used the IBM PC for, and it truly makes me sad I don’t speak a single character of Japanese, so a unique operating system like Towns OS will always remain a curiosity for me.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140801/what-happened-to-the-japanese-pc-platforms/
Campaigners claim ‘Privacy Preserving Attribution’ in Firefox does the opposite
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tracking alternative is less invasive than other methods, but is opt out by default
Updated Privacy activist group noyb has filed a complaint against Mozilla over a “Privacy Preserving Attribution” feature that was quietly enabled in Firefox following a July update.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/mozilla_noyb_privacy_complaint/
OpenBSD now enforcing no invalid NUL characters in shell scripts
date: 2024-09-25, from: OS News
Our favorite operating system is now changing the default shell (ksh) to enforce not allowing invalid NUL characters in input that will be parsed as parts of the script. ↫ Undeadly.org As someone who doesn’t deal with stuff like this – I rarely actively use shell scripts – it seems kind of insane to me that this wasn’t the norm since the beginning.
Nintendo Kawaii is keychain-sized Nintendo Wii (made from a stripped-down Wii mainboard)
date: 2024-09-25, from: Liliputing
For years, the Nintendo Wii hacking scene has been finding ways to cut up and rearrange the Wii motherboard to fit into smaller and smaller bodies. We’ve seen a Wii-in-an-Altoids tin, a Wii-in-a-Game-Boy-like body, and a pack-of-cards-sized Wii. The Nintendo Kawaii might be the smallest yet. It’s a keychain-sized Nintendo Wii that’s designed to feature […]
The post Nintendo Kawaii is keychain-sized Nintendo Wii (made from a stripped-down Wii mainboard) appeared first on Liliputing.
Apple ropes off at least 4 GB of iPhone storage to house AI
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Better or worse than a surprise U2 album?
Apple’s on-device AI model, dubbed Apple Intelligence, will require 4 GB of device storage space, and more at a later date. That’s about the size of an HD movie, for now.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/apple_4gb_ai/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-25, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
TechCrunch rewrite of the press release for the Social Web Foundation, which is a really bad name for what they propose to do.
Why FEMA Is Teaming Up with the NFL
date: 2024-09-25, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Large hail stones pelted Oklahoma City • A month’s worth of rain fell over 24 hours in parts of England, with more rain on the way • A wildfire is raging near the capital of Ecuador, which is experiencing the worst drought in six decades.
THE TOP FIVE
- Biden touts his climate legacy at Climate Week
President Biden touted his administration’s climate legacy yesterday at the Bloomberg Global Business forum as part of Climate Week. The speech was a comprehensive list of his climate and clean energy accomplishments, starting with the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden called the most significant climate law ever passed in the history of the world. “We were told it couldn’t get done but we did it,” he said. He tied climate policy to economic growth and job creation. “In just two years since the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ve created more than 330,000 clean energy jobs,” he said. Some other crowd pleasers from the speech:
- Companies have announced “nearly $1 trillion of investments in U.S. clean energy manufacturing over the last three years.”
- The U.S. is on track to “add more electric capacity this year than in the last two decades, and 96% of that will be clean energy.”
- “American solar panel manufacturing is up four times what it was four years ago.”
Biden closed his remarks with a warning that former President Donald Trump would undo much of this progress if elected again in November. He urged the business leaders in the room to keep the momentum going. “It’s a perfect time to go big. The market for clean energy is booming … I’m doing my part and I’m calling on other companies and the capital in the room to invest more and do more. Now’s the time. We can do this. We really can. We owe it to our children.”
- Evacuations begin ahead of Hurricane Helene
Tropical Storm Helene is forecast to strengthen into a large, major hurricane later today and make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast tomorrow. A hurricane warning is in effect for Florida’s Big Bend. Some coastal regions are evacuating, and flooding is expected in Georgia and Alabama, as well. Reuters reported that oil producers including BP, Chevron, Equinor, and Shell are evacuating staff from platforms in the Gulf.
- NFL and FEMA partner to turn football stadiums into disaster
shelters
The NFL and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are partnering to make football stadiums available as emergency disaster shelters year-round, according to The Washington Post. The NFL reportedly approached FEMA with the idea three years ago. “It just made perfect sense,” said FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell. “We have all of these existing venues. How do we better coordinate during these blue sky days to better understand what they bring to the table and what we can use them for in the future?” Three stadiums are already on board: New York’s MetLife Stadium, Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium, and Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium. The Post reported that L.A.’s SoFi Stadium is expected to sign on soon, and Criswell hopes the MLB and other sports leagues will also join the initiative.
- Study: Europe must balance ‘ambition with adaptability’ to meet
climate goals
European Union emissions targets “often lack the flexibility necessary for effective decarbonization at the national level,” according to a report released today by Third Way’s Carbon-Free Europe and Evolved Energy Research. By mapping existing clean energy infrastructure for each member state “down to each kilometer,” the researchers found that “hitting sector- and tech-specific deployment targets does not necessarily equate to hitting emissions targets,” Lindsey Walter, the co-founder of the Carbon-Free Europe initiative, told Heatmap.
For example, the report found that EU policy needs to be more aggressive in deploying solar energy, while other 2030 targets, such as clean hydrogen, are likely to outpace demand as the transport and industry uses continue to develop and petroleum refineries, one of the primary uses today, are in decline. By looking more deeply at various net-zero pathways for each member state, the report proposes a “more flexible framework” for keeping countries competitive via individualized net-zero strategies. “Ultimately, we think the future energy mix will be determined strictly by economics,” Walter said. “What our study is finding is that land use trade-offs will likely be just as big — if not a bigger — factor in the ultimate energy mix in Europe.” Particularly in countries like the U.K., France, and Italy, there is the potential for significant on- and off-shore wind and solar in some of the models: “We’re not talking about building the next 10 wind or solar farms — we’re talking about the next 1,000,” Walter went on. “And it is quite significant when you look at it on the ground.”
- Climate change contributed to recent European floods
In case there was any doubt, researchers from World Weather Attribution confirmed that climate change contributed to the severity of the heavy rain and flooding that Storm Boris brought to central Europe this month. The group analyzed climate models and historical data and found that human-caused climate change has made rainfall events like these twice as likely and 20% more intense since the pre-industrial era. The rain was “by far the heaviest ever recorded” in the area, and left at least 24 people dead. “Yet again, these floods highlight the devastating results of fossil fuel-driven warming,” said Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at Imperial College London and one of the contributors to the report.
THE KICKER
“A lot of energy performance improvements to houses right now are on sale, and they’re going to be on sale until the end of the decade.” –Eric Werling, former national director of the Department of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Homes program, speaking to Heatmap’s Katie Brigham about the benefits of home weatherization.
https://heatmap.news/climate/fema-nfl-shelters-biden-climate
Major Private Music Torrenting Site Suffers ‘Massive Peer Scraping Attack’
date: 2024-09-25, from: 404 Media Group
Orpheus Network tells users: “With great displeasure we need to inform you that a malicious actor has successfully carried out a massive peer scraping attack on our tracker.”
https://www.404media.co/major-private-music-torrenting-site-suffers-massive-peer-scraping-attack/
@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), however, fresh reports say damages in the case could reach up to £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 becomes hurricane, is expected to intensify as it moves toward Florida
date: 2024-09-25, from: VOA News USA
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Helene became a hurricane Wednesday after rapidly strengthening in the Caribbean Sea and moved north along Mexico’s coast on a path toward the U.S., leading residents to evacuate, schools to close, and officials to declare emergencies in Florida and Georgia.
The storm’s center was near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, and it was expected to intensify and grow in size as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico. Heavy rainfall was forecast for the southeastern U.S. starting Wednesday, with a life-threatening storm surge along the entire west coast of Florida, according to the center.
The storm is so large that rural areas roughly 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of the Georgia-Florida line are under a hurricane warning. And states as far inland as Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana could see rainfall.
“You are going to have a major hurricane plowing inland, and storms take a little time to decay once they’re inland,” said Brian McNoldy, an environmental researcher at the University of Miami.
Forecasters warned of possible tornadoes Wednesday night in western Florida and southern Alabama and said the tornado risk would increase Thursday, expanding across Florida and into Georgia and South Carolina.
Helene is expected to become a major hurricane — a Category 3 or higher, with winds above 177 kph (110 mph) — on Thursday, the day it’s set to reach Florida’s Gulf Coast, according to the hurricane center. The center issued hurricane warnings for part of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Florida’s northwestern coastline, where large storm surges of up to 4.5 meters (15 feet) were expected.
Will Marx hunkered down Wednesday in his double-wide mobile home 21 kilometers (13 miles) inland in Crawfordville, Florida. The 64-year-old retiree put extra jugs of water in his freezer as he watched people move boats and RVs out of the storm’s projected path.
“We will know tomorrow, I guess,” he said.
Mexico is still reeling from former Hurricane John battering its other coast. John hit the country’s southern Pacific coast late Monday, killing two people, blowing tin roofs off houses, triggering mudslides and toppling scores of trees, officials said Tuesday.
John grew into a Category 3 hurricane in a matter of hours Monday and made landfall about 128 kilometers (80 miles) east of the resort city of Acapulco, near the town of Punta Maldonado, with maximum sustained winds of 193 kph (120 mph) before weakening to a tropical storm after moving inland.
Helene, which formed Tuesday in the Caribbean, is expected to move over deep, warm waters, fueling its intensification. The hurricane was about 810 kilometers (503 miles) southwest of Tampa, Florida, and had sustained winds of 130 kph (81 mph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Forecasters said it is expected to become a major hurricane with its center making landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida’s northwestern coast as soon as late Thursday.
Mara Lezama, the governor of the coastal state of Quintana Roo, shared photos of rain-swept streets and videos of the normally placid, turquoise waters off the island of Cozumel being whipped into angry waves that broke over the seawall. In Cancun, heavy waves threatened to worsen the resort city’s problem with beach erosion.
Tropical storm warnings were in effect for the upper Florida Keys, southern Florida and the northeast coast of Florida and were extended northward Wednesday morning to Altamaha Sound, Georgia. A tropical storm watch was in effect for the South Carolina coast north of the South Santee River to Little River Inlet.
Hurricane watches, which are a step down from warnings, were also in effect for parts of western Cuba and Florida, including the Tampa Bay area, the hurricane center said.
Several counties on Florida’s west and northwestern coasts have issued evacuation orders, and schools planned to close or reduce hours. Gas stations in the Tallahassee area started to run out of gas Monday, and water and other supplies flew from supermarket shelves.
President Joe Biden declared an emergency in Florida, and federal authorities positioned generators, food and water, along with search-and-rescue and power restoration teams.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who already issued an emergency for most of the state’s counties, said Wednesday that 12 health care facilities have evacuated. He urged people to prepare immediately.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp also declared an emergency in his state. The hurricane warning area included Valdosta, a city of 55,000. Helene approached barely a year after Hurricane Idalia inflicted more than $6 million in damage to 1,000 homes and other property.
In western Cuba, authorities moved cattle to higher ground and seven medical brigades were dispatched to communities usually cut off by storms. Helene was expected to dump heavy rain on the western part of an island already struggling with severe water shortages and chronic power outages.
The Cayman Islands were recovering after they were lashed Tuesday with heavy rains and big waves. The strong winds knocked out power in some areas, while heavy rain and waves as high as 3 meters (10 feet) unleashed flooding. Schools on the islands remained closed Wednesday as flood warnings continued and residents pumped water out of their flooded homes.
Helene is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. Since 2000, eight major hurricanes have made landfall in Florida, according to Philip Klotzbach, a Colorado State University hurricane researcher. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.
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 probed by Japanese anti-monopoly cops
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
Updated Japan’s Fair Trade Commission, the nation’s anti-monopoly agency, has reportedly commenced an investigation into VMware’s software licensing practices.…
Zelenskyy tells UN other nations won’t impose their will on Ukraine
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 civilians, behind web vandalism
date: 2024-09-25, updated: 2024-09-25, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Taipei 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.