News gathered 2024-09-27
(date: 2024-09-27 07:31:49)
Trump to meet Zelenskyy amid tension, Republican criticism of Ukraine
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Former President Donald Trump is set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York on Friday, amid increased skepticism of U.S. support for Ukraine’s war efforts from the Republican presidential nominee and lawmakers loyal to him.
Trump announced the meeting at a press conference Thursday, which was confirmed for VOA by Zelenskyy’s team. The meeting comes a day after the Ukrainian leader met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris Thursday to discuss U.S. support for the war in Ukraine.
Tension has been brewing between the two leaders. Trump is known for his skeptical remarks on U.S. involvement in Ukraine and claims that he can quickly end the conflict by making a deal between Ukraine and Russia, if elected.
During a campaign event on Wednesday, Trump slammed Zelenskyy for making “little, nasty aspersions” toward him. He appeared to be referring to Zelenskyy’s comments in a recent New Yorker magazine article that Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how.”
Trump suggested the Ukrainian leader together with the Biden administration are at fault for prolonging the war that followed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Biden and Kamala allowed this to happen by feeding Zelenskyy money and munitions like no country has ever seen before,” Trump said in North Carolina. He argued that Kyiv should have made concessions to Moscow before Russian troops attacked, asserting that Ukraine is now “in rubble” and in no position to negotiate the war’s end.
“Any deal — the worst deal — would’ve been better than what we have now,” said Trump.
The former U.S. president has repeatedly said he wants the Russia-Ukraine war to end but has not stated whether he wants Kyiv to win or keep all its territories. His position stands in contrast with that of Biden and Harris, who have championed American aid and military support for the embattled country.
“Ukraine will prevail, and we’ll continue to stand by you every step of the way,” Biden said Thursday as he met with Zelenskyy at the White House.
During her meeting with Zelenskyy, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, reiterated the administration’s support for Kyiv’s war efforts and underscored that it is up to Ukraine to decide how the war will end.
Without mentioning his name, Harris criticized Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, whose proposal to end the war would mean Ukraine had less territory and would not join NATO.
“These proposals are the same of those of Putin, and let us be clear, they are not proposals for peace,” she said. “Instead, they are proposals for surrender, which is dangerous and unacceptable.”
Vance suggested in a recent interview that Ukraine and Russia halt fighting and create a demilitarized zone at the current battle lines. Kyiv would need to adhere to a neutral status and stop its bid to join NATO.
Zelenskyy, in the same New Yorker interview, said that Vance’s plan would “give up” Ukrainian territory, calling Trump’s running mate “too radical.”
“His message seems to be that Ukraine must make a sacrifice,” he said. “The idea that the world should end this war at Ukraine’s expense is unacceptable.”
Zelenskyy, who has been in the United States since Sunday to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York, was scheduled to depart Thursday but extended his visit as Trump announced the meeting.
Partisan politics
On Wednesday, congressional Republicans loyal to Trump demanded that the Ukrainian leader fire his ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, for organizing Zelenskyy’s visit earlier this week to an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania, a hotly contested battleground state in the November U.S. presidential election. Zelenskyy met with the Democratic governor of the state, Josh Shapiro.
In a letter to Zelenskyy, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said the visit to the factory that made munitions for Ukraine was a “partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats” that amounts to “election interference.”
The White House called Johnson’s letter a “political stunt” and pointed out that Zelenskyy recently met the Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, in a “similar event.”
Ahead of Zelenskyy’s visit, the U.S. administration announced $8 billion in new aid for Ukraine. In a statement, Biden said the aid includes a Patriot missile battery and missiles, as well as air-to-ground munitions and a precision-guided glide bomb with a range of up to 130 kilometers.
The White House said no announcement was imminent regarding Ukraine’s request for weapons donors to allow Ukrainian forces to use the weapons to strike targets deeper inside Russia.
Deportations begin under Panama-US agreement
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
Panama has begun deporting migrants who cross the dangerous Darien Gap from Colombia into Panama as part of an agreement with the United States signed in July. Veronica Villafane narrates this story by Oscar Sulbaran.
https://www.voanews.com/a/deportations-begin-under-panama-us-agreement/7801690.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/26/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/
AI Avatars Are Doing Job Interviews Now
date: 2024-09-27, from: 404 Media Group
“This HR AI avatar is a perfect demonstration of late stage capitalism,” Jack Ryan, someone who was interviewed by a tool called Fairgo.ai, told 404 Media.
https://www.404media.co/ai-avatars-are-doing-job-interviews-now/
Ransomware gang using stolen Microsoft Entra ID creds to bust into the cloud
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Defenders beware: Data theft, extortion, and backdoors on Storm-0501’s agenda
Microsoft’s latest threat intelligence blog issues a warning to all organizations about Storm-0501’s recent shift in tactics, targeting, and backdooring hybrid cloud environments.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/microsoft_storm_0501/
GM’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kristen Siemen Talks Shop
date: 2024-09-27, from: Heatmap News
I spoke with Kristen Siemen, General Motors’ chief sustainability officer, as her fellow Michiganders were reeling from another late summer day of violent thunderstorms, extreme summer heat, tornado and hail warnings, school closings, and damaging wind gusts that left 365,000 homes and businesses without power.
In the race against climate change, Siemen feels the pressure for GM to reach its goal to be carbon neutral in its products and operations by 2040, despite lowering its production target for electric vehicles this year to 200,000 to 250,000 vehicles (down from 200,000 to 300,000) and backtracking on its plans to produce a million EVs next year. The 31-year GM veteran started her career as an engineer.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How bad was last night?
I was texting all night and into this morning, checking in on my staff and whether they have power at their homes and whether we’re able to operate our facilities. Unfortunately, these big storms are happening more and more frequently and it’s getting harder for our grid to reliably and consistently provide energy for all of the things we’re trying to do. And this isn’t just a U.S. problem.
How worried are you about the idea that there’s a slowdown in EV sales?
There’s no doubt that the acceleration has not happened as quickly as was predicted. But that doesn’t mean that the EV segment isn’t growing. It’s still a huge growth opportunity. We’ve got a lot of products covering a lot of segments that weren’t available before, everything from the affordable Equinox EV to full-size trucks with the Silverado and a luxury vehicle with the Cadillac Lyric. And obviously the supertruck Hummer.
Which new EV model do you think will do the best?
I have two favorites and I’ve driven them all. I actually was in the Cadillac Lyric for quite a while, and it’s, by far, the best vehicle I’ve ever driven, based on performance and luxury features. Just absolutely loved the product.
And then the Equinox EV. To get a family sized SUV that starts at $35,000 and you add in the tax incentives, you’re talking under $30,000 for an EV for a family. That’s a game changer, to be able to have something that’s affordable. It’s a fantastic product with incredible range, great performance, and all the features that you can imagine. These are the things that will really open the doors for people that maybe couldn’t or weren’t considering an EV in the past.
What else do you worry about?
I worry about the stability of our country’s infrastructure, particularly the grid. We need to more reliably and consistently provide energy for all of the things we’re trying to do to make the energy transition a reality. And we have a long way to go.
What about a lack of EV charging infrastructure?
If you go on a long road trip and you drive through areas that don’t have public EV charging stations, it’s a little unnerving. People need to see more charging stations in their daily lives — like we’re used to seeing a gas station on every corner. The more people that can see that EV charging stations are readily available, even though they probably will use one rarely, they just want to know it’s there. It gives that sense of comfort that it’s available. And charging at home isn’t feasible for everybody, particularly in urban areas. So it’s going to be important to see that our customers see more charging infrastructure when they are out and about.
How are you feeling about Plug-In Hybrids (PHEVs)?
As long as consumers have concerns over the charging infrastructure, PHEVs are going to help bridge that gap for customers that either aren’t ready or aren’t able to make the full transition to an EV. But from a chief sustainability officer’s perspective, the only way we get to zero is by charging with green energy. And so we want that transition to happen as quickly as it possibly can.
What did GM learn from its Bolt experience and what do you expect from the new Bolt due out in late 2025?
The Bolt was a terrific product. And the customer base was extremely passionate, extremely loyal, and probably the highest customer satisfaction score of some vehicles ever, not just at GM. So for the new Bolt, we’re going to build on that equity and that passion that we’ve had and do it as efficiently as possible.
We really needed to transition, and that’s what we’re doing. The new Bolt EV will be on the new Ultium battery platform, and so it’ll be profitable and an affordable EV. We heard a lot from Bolt customers and that passion is certainly something that drives us.
Any advice for all the sustainability executives out here who are having a hard time getting traction within their companies?
When I first got the phone call to take this role, my first question was, why me? You know, I don’t have a sustainability background, I’m not sure what I can contribute.
But in reality, knowing the business has been a huge advantage to be able to communicate and understand all the challenges to being a chief sustainability officer. I know how long it takes to put a product into production. I know all of the things that an engineer needs to balance around cost and quality and performance.
So I tell other CSOs to meet [their C-suite colleagues and stakeholders] where they’re at. Talk to the CEO about how making the company more sustainable means making the company more resilient and stronger for the future, ensuring that we have a positive impact on the world. Educate the CFO on how all this saves money. When you look at the things we’re doing from an environmental or health and safety standpoint, they’re just good for people. It’s about doing the right thing. So it doesn’t even have to be a debate over climate change, right?
How does that dynamic work within GM?
Saving energy, saving water, those save costs. And there isn’t anybody who disagrees with saving costs.
Now, there are some things that we may want to do today, but we just can’t justify it. Some of our largest challenges are in our assembly plants, around things like heating and cooling and with our paint ovens. Even if we had the capital, or wanted to allocate the capital, to make those transitions today to electric, it really doesn’t make sense in every case, because natural gas is really cheap.
And so we need to focus instead on, how do we make what we do more efficient? How do we use less resources? How do we continue to make our manufacturing processes more efficient and make sure that we’re allocating our resources, our capital, our investments in the places that we can make the biggest impact today? And then prepare ourselves for when this transition is more readily available.
What other companies do you admire for their work in sustainability?
One of the things I love about this job is really the collaboration. The CSO space is a very friendly space. We’re all trying to work on the same issues, right? It’s a very unique situation where you all have the same challenges, regardless of what your company does, and so it’s extremely collaborative.
There are a lot of companies just doing incredible work in sustainability. I’ve spent time recently with the CSO of Colgate-Palmolive and one of their big wins this year was developing a recyclable toothpaste tube. What’s really cool about their story is that they made [their IP] available for everyone. We’ve also had conversations with Nike and Lululemon around materials. It’s a good opportunity for us to come up with solutions together. And we’re working with the tech companies too, Google, Amazon, Microsoft.
Partnering with NGOs has also been helpful, working on everything from how to purchase renewable energy, including virtual power plants, and how you take advantage of all those EVs out there that can help generate power for days like today when so many people have lost power.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/kristen-siemen-general-motors-chief-sustainability-officer
Scientists Have Found Bacteria and Fungi 10,000 Feet Up in the Air
date: 2024-09-27, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The discovery has implications for human health, since the microbes included some that were still viable, some that could be infectious to humans and others that carried drug-resistant genes
Millions without power as Helene lashes the Southern US with wind and rain
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
New York City mayor charged with bribery, wire fraud
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has been indicted on multiple corruption charges by the U.S. government. Aron Ranen has the story from the Big Apple.
https://www.voanews.com/a/new-york-city-mayor-charged-with-bribery-wire-fraud/7801598.html
Musk’s Starlink rockets to 4 million subscribers
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Satellite broadband mega-constellation passes mega-milestone
Starlink’s subscriber count is accelerating and has passed the 4 million milestone, up from the 2.3 million it claimed in its 2023 progress report.…
Steam Removes Forced Arbitration Clause, Gamers Can Now Sue Valve
date: 2024-09-27, from: 404 Media Group
“The updated Steam Subscriber Agreement (SSA) now provides that any disputes are to go forward in court instead of arbitration.”
https://www.404media.co/steam-removes-forced-arbitration-clause-gamers-can-now-sue-valve/
Careful With Your Snarky Group Chat Names
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/09/27/careful-with-your-snarky-group-chat-names/
REDMAGIC Nova Gaming Tablet launches globally for $499 and up
date: 2024-09-27, from: Liliputing
The REDMAGIC Nova Gaming Tablet is an Android tablet with a 10.9 inch, 2880 x 1800 pixel display featuring a 144 Hz refresh rate and 840 Hz touch sampling rate, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, and active cooling to help keep the hardware running smoothly during extended gaming sessions. First launched in China earlier […]
The post REDMAGIC Nova Gaming Tablet launches globally for $499 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/redmagic-nova-gaming-tablet-launches-globally-for-499-and-up/
We Made an Emergency Alert Guide To Help Californians Navigate a Complicated Process. Here’s How To Do This In Any State
date: 2024-09-27, from: The Markup blog
CalMatters and The Markup reported on how residents in each of California’s 58 counties can sign up for local emergency alerts, and found a few surprises along the way. Here’s how you can build the same guide in your state
https://themarkup.org/2024/09/27/emergency-alerts-how-to-guide
As Ukraine war enters a critical period, the EU moves ahead without the US
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
BRUSSELS — s the war in Ukraine enters a critical period, the European Union has decided that it must take responsibility for what it sees as an existential threat to security in its own neighborhood and is preparing to tackle some of the financial burden, perhaps even without the United States.
EU envoys have been working in Brussels this week on a proposal to provide Ukraine with a hefty loan package worth up to $39 billion. It was announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during a trip to Kyiv last Friday.
“Crucially, this loan will flow straight into your national budget,” she told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “It will provide you with significant and much-needed fiscal space. You will decide how best to use the funds, giving you maximum flexibility to meet your needs.”
Zelenskyy wants to buy weapons and bomb shelters and rebuild Ukraine’s shattered energy network as winter draws near.
In international matters, particularly involving major conflicts, the EU rarely moves ahead without the U.S., but it hopes this decision will encourage others to come forward.
Russian troops and an election close in
Almost 1,000 days since their full-scale invasion, Russian forces are making advances in the east. Ukraine’s army has a shaky hold on part of the Kursk region in Russia, which has provided a temporary morale boost, but as casualties mount it remains outmanned and outgunned.
On the political front, Zelenskyy hopes to secure support for a “victory plan” that might force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. He’s trying to persuade U.S. President Joe Biden and other allies to help strengthen Ukraine’s hand in any future talks.
But a U.S. election looms, and polls suggest that Donald Trump might return to the White House in January. Trump has been critical of U.S. aid to Ukraine. On Wednesday, he said Zelenskyy should have made concessions to Putin before the invasion began in February 2022.
Most of the 27-nation EU fears that a Putin victory would lead to deep uncertainty. Russia’s armed forces are depleted and currently incapable of another war, but the prospect of a future land grab in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland remains.
Reworking a G7 loan plan
The EU loans are part of a plan by the Group of Seven major industrialized nations to take advantage of interest earned on about $250 billion worth of frozen Russian assets, most of them held in Europe. These windfall profits are estimated at around $5 billion to $6 billion a year.
The profits underpin the G7 plan. The EU would stump up $20 billion, the U.S. $20 billion, and Canada, Japan and the U.K. $10 billion together, for a combined total of $50 billion. The scheme expires at the end of the year, before the next U.S. president takes office.
Now, amid differences over how long the Russian asset freeze should be guaranteed, the EU has decided to go it alone. Its offer of up to $39 billion in loans accounts for almost the entirety of the U.S. share as well.
The U.S. wants to ensure that the assets are locked away for at least three years to guarantee the income. But EU member Hungary insists this should only happen in 6-month increments. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán styles himself as a peacemaker and is too close to Putin for many of his partners’ comfort.
The other 26 EU countries feel they must move now because time is running out.
Evolving alliance with the United States
The U.S. election is just weeks away. The Europeans are wary of Trump’s unpredictability and are testing scenarios to help protect themselves from the kind of battering, like tariff hikes, their economies received during his past presidency. But they also see the Democrats as more inward looking these days.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act left European leaders fuming over rules that favored American products. China and war in the Middle East are the foreign policy priorities of Democrat or Republican candidates alike, and for now the U.S. is in the grip of election campaign fever.
The EU hopes that Vice President Kamala Harris, if she is elected president, would enter the loan program as previously planned and reduce the EU’s financial burden. But that remains an open question for now, and EU members say Ukraine’s position is too precarious to hesitate.
Political delays in the U.S. Congress last year over a $60 billion support package starved Ukrainian troops of weapons and ammunition for months, resulting in “real consequences on the battlefield,” in the words of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Pressing ahead on pressing needs
Helping Ukraine in military terms is a challenge for the Europeans. They could not do it alone, and cannot match the U.S. transport, logistics and equipment superiority, despite progress in ramping up their defense industries to supply arms and ammunition.
But the world’s biggest trading bloc does wield economic might. It has already given Ukraine about $132 billion since the full-scale invasion started. Within weeks it appears ready to provide tens of billions more, even though going it alone is not in the EU’s DNA.
“I do not know what the Americans, the United States with the new presidency, will do or not,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Tuesday. But, he said, “as long as the Ukrainians want to resist, we have to support them. Otherwise, we will make a historical mistake.”
The Biden administration did announce Wednesday that the U.S. will send Ukraine a major military aid package, including cluster bombs and an array of rockets, artillery and armored vehicles. A U.S. official also said billions of dollars more in assistance would arrive over the coming months.
Meanwhile, deliberations on the EU’s share of the G7 loan package will be high on the agenda of a summit of the bloc’s leaders in Brussels on October 17-18.
IBM and Oracle to support 280,000 users after winning mega ERP govt tech contract
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Pair of industry giants set to take on £711M upgrade supporting four UK departments
IBM and Oracle have won a competition to supply an ERP upgrade to a group of UK central government departments in a deal worth £711 million ($950 million).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/ibm_and_oracle_uk_contract/
Why fewer funds for FEMA means slower disaster recoveries
date: 2024-09-27, from: Marketplace Morning Report
President Biden just signed a bill to fund the government for the next three months, but extra money for the federal government’s disaster management agency, FEMA, was not in the legislation. A look at why the agency was asking for more funds and how fewer resources can impact communities recovering from disasters. The labor dispute between some of the largest U.S. ports and dockworkers escalated Friday, with employers calling for federal intervention to force a restart in negotiations. And, Southwest Airlines announced that it will scrap one of the features that set it apart in a crowded airline market: no pre-assigned seating.
Hurricane Helene’s Path of Destruction
date: 2024-09-27, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Parts of England could be hit by tornadoes today • Another hurricane is churning in the Atlantic • The border between Switzerland and Italy has to be moved because of rapidly melting glaciers.
THE TOP FIVE
- Hurricane Helene slams into Florida as Category 4 storm
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region last night as a Category 4 storm with top sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. The extent of the damage from the storm so far is unclear, but several locations saw record storm surge, including nearly 10 feet in Ceder Key and 6.3 feet in St. Petersburg. At least three people are known to have been killed, and more than 1.2 million Floridians are without power. “We’re fearing the worst when the sun comes up,” said the sheriff’s office in Suwannee County. “We’re gonna need some prayers folks.”
NOAA
One hurricane scientist said Helene is one of the largest storms on record to strike the Gulf Coast, with its winds covering an area of about 420 miles. The storm’s size means its effects will be felt in cities far north of the coast, even as it weakens. As of Friday morning it had been downgraded to a tropical storm. In Georgia, more than 900,000 are without power. Tornado warnings were issued for parts of South Carolina, with additional tornado watches in effect in Georgia and North Carolina. A quarter of oil production and about 20% of gas output in the Gulf was shut down because of the storm.
- Natural gas industry seeks clarity on Harris policies
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is under pressure to clarify her position on natural gas. “We need more details,” said Dave Callahan, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition. Harris has reiterated that she is not against fracking, and has called for investing in “diverse sources of energy,” but hasn’t said much more on the issue yet. President Biden paused approvals for new liquified natural gas export terminals while the Energy Department studied their climate effects, a move that angered the industry but pleased climate activists who say the terminals lock in greenhouse gas pollution for decades to come. A judge has since blocked the freeze, but new approvals remain slow. Pennsylvania is a major natural gas producing state, and a must-win battleground for the 2024 election. Republican candidate Donald Trump has promised to lift the permitting freeze if elected in November.
- Texas approves plan to expand electricity transmission for Permian
Basin oil and gas operations
Texas yesterday approved a plan to expand grid infrastructure in the Permian Basin, the largest oilfield in the U.S., to make sure the basin’s oil and gas facilities have reliable electricity. Last month Permian Basin Petroleum Association Executive vice president Stephen Robertson said access to electricity was the industry’s biggest concern for the basin, where power demand is expected to balloon over the next 15 years as the oil and gas industry electrifies operations.
The International Energy Agency estimates that oil and gas operations account for around 15% of global energy-related emissions. It calls for a 50% reduction in emissions intensity for those operations by the end of the decade to align with a planway toward net zero by 2050, and electrification is one step on that path. But the IEA notes that “tackling methane emissions is the single most important measure that contributes to the overall fall in emissions from oil and gas operations.” Recent data suggests U.S. producers – including those in the Permian Basin – continue to emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas, at rates much higher than current EPA estimates and industry targets.
- UAE to unveil its new NDC before COP29
The United Arab Emirates is expected to outline its new national climate plan – known more formally as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) – ahead of the upcoming COP29 climate summit in November. “That would make it one of the first major emitters to take that step ahead of the February 2025 deadline,” Reuters noted. Under the Paris Agreement, party nations are required to submit new and updated NDCs every five years, outlining their plans to reduce emissions in line with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The upcoming deadline for new NDCs is February 2025, but Sultan Al Jaber, president of last year’s COP, said the UAE hopes to set an example for other countries to submit their plans asap. Previous NDCs from major fossil fuel producing nations did not mention oil, coal, and gas, so it will be interesting to see if or how the new plans grapple with the stated COP28 goal of “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.
- Climate change costs to real estate sector could reach $500 billion
A recent report from the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore and S&P Global warned that the real estate sector could see climate change-related losses of more than $500 billion by 2050. It added that “climate adaptation solutions for non-residential real estate like green or cool roofs and wet or dry floodproofing present investment opportunities.” Last year, the U.S. experienced 28 weather and climate disasters, and together they cost more than $92 billion.
Relatedly, yesterday the online real estate marketplace Zillow said it will start including properties’ climate risks in sale listings, using data from climate research and technology company First Street. Prospective buyers will be able to see flood, fire, wind, heat, and air quality risks, along with insurance requirements and tailored recommendations. More than 80% of home buyers are factoring climate risk into their decisions now, First Street said. The climate risk information will be available on the Zillow website by the end of the year (rolling out on the Zillow apps this year or early 2025).
Zillow/First
Street
THE KICKER
“I just want to be clear that building the clean energy future that we want and need is not a rhetorical flourish. It means actual construction.” –Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, speaking with Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer about how fighting climate change will mean building a new economy. Read their entire conversation here.
https://heatmap.news/climate/hurricane-helene-damage-florida-georgia
Trump and Zelenskyy will meet as tensions rise over US backing for Ukraine
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — Donald Trump is set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as public tensions have been rising between the two over Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.
Trump said Zelenskyy asked for the meeting. The visit is set for about 9:45 a.m. Eastern Time at Trump Tower in New York, less than a day after Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent, met with the Ukrainian leader and expressed unwavering support.
“I look forward to seeing him tomorrow,” Trump said in a press conference Thursday. “I believe I will be able to make a deal between President [Vladimir] Putin and President Zelenskyy, quite quickly.”
The meeting is highly anticipated and comes as Election Day nears, with Trump and Harris taking sharply different positions on backing Ukraine in the third year of its war with Russia.
Trump argues Putin would never have invaded had he been president while derisively calling Zelenskyy a “salesman” for getting U.S. assistance for Ukraine. Trump has in recent days praised Russia’s historic military victories and insisted the U.S. needs “to get out” and end its involvement with Ukraine.
Friday’s meeting almost wasn’t scheduled despite Zelenskyy’s office saying something had been planned during the Ukrainian leader’s visit to the U.N. General Assembly, during which he is making his endgame pitch to allies.
In an interview with The New Yorker magazine that was published earlier this week, Zelenskyy implied Trump does not understand and oversimplifies the conflict. The Ukrainian leader said Trump’s running mate JD Vance was “too radical” and had essentially advocated for Ukraine to “make a sacrifice” by “giving up its territories.”
Trump ripped Zelenskyy and Ukraine on two separate occasions this week. Speaking Wednesday in North Carolina, Trump referred to Ukraine as “demolished” and its people as “dead.”
“Any deal — the worst deal — would’ve been better than what we have now,” Trump said. “If they made a bad deal, it would’ve been much better. They would’ve given up a little bit and everybody would be living, and every building would be built and every tower would be aging for another 2,000 years.”
Meanwhile, Harris on Thursday stood alongside Zelenskyy and said Trump’s push for Ukraine to quickly cut a deal to end the war were “not proposals for peace,” but “proposals for surrender.” Trump on Thursday said he was not advocating for a surrender.
While Trump and Vance have long been skeptics of U.S. backing for Ukraine, other Republican allies of the former president have backed Kyiv’s defense against Moscow’s invasion and argue supporting Ukraine is in America’s interest.
One ally of both Ukraine and Trump is Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. At a closed-door meeting Zelenskyy had with senators on Capitol Hill, also on Thursday, Graham stood up and said he had been talking to Trump about the Ukrainian president, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
Graham told those in the room he would talk to Zelenskyy privately about his conversations with Trump, the person said. As the meeting came to a close, Graham pulled Zelenskyy aside and the two had a private conversation.
Graham is close to the former president, despite an on-again-off-again relationship, and has often played a role as an intermediary on various subjects. He did not respond to a message seeking comment Thursday.
Is China-US competition driving the Africa proposal in the UN?
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
Johannesburg — This week at U.N. meetings in New York, the United States said that two African countries should have permanent seats on one of the world’s major decision-making bodies, the United Nations Security Council.
For years, numerous African leaders have called for the continent to have representation on the U.N. Security Council, which since World War II has had just five permanent members: the U.S., France, the UK, Russia and China.
This week, the top representative of one of those permanent seats, U.S. President Joe Biden, threw his weight behind the idea. However, there was one major caveat, which Kenyan analyst Cliff Mboya said is not going over well on the continent. The new African members would not have veto power on decisions.
“We’ve already seeing a lot of backlash… like this is a big joke, the question is what is the point in joining the Security Council if you don’t have veto powers, what are you going to do there?” asked Mboya.
That could play in China’s favor, as it has long positioned itself as a fellow developing country and leader of what’s become known as the Global South, while disparaging the West for its colonial past, said Mboya, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Africa-China Studies at the University of Johannesburg.
“So I don’t think this helps the U.S. and the West in terms of perception and narratives, and it will only embolden African countries to lean more to the East because it just speaks to the hypocrisy,” he said. “China’s been able to, you know, build this coalition of emerging and developing countries against the U.S. and Western-led world order.”
But Paul Nantulya, a research associate with the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, said he thought the announcement was a “win’’ for U.S. diplomacy and would mostly be welcomed by African nations as it opens the door to further negotiations.
“Regarding China, China has been very, you know, kind of like sitting on the fence. So rhetorically China has said all the right things, supporting Africa’s, what it calls Africa’s legitimate interests in the United Nations, including the United Nations Security Council,” he said.
But its plan for that has been hazy, he added.
“When it comes to specific details, in terms of whether China supports permanent African representation on the council with veto power, when it comes to that China has not articulated a position.”
Among those in New York this week calling for U.N. reform was South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. He said, quote: “Africa and its 1.4 billion people remain excluded from its key decision-making structures.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also called for reform, saying the UNSC hasn’t kept up with a changing world and Africa is underrepresented.
Some African countries want veto power in the Security Council dispensed with entirely.
If there is reform, and Africa gets the two seats on the Security Council that the U.S. proposes, key contenders could include the continent’s largest economy, South Africa; most populous country, Nigeria; or North African heavyweight Egypt, Nantulya told VOA.
However, analysts say any future process of adding African countries as permanent members is likely to face hurdles, as there will be problems reaching consensus. Nantulya said some African politicians think it could even drive a wedge between countries on the continent.
There are also concerns the U.S. statement could just be rhetoric — and so far no timeline has been given regarding the next steps. Under U.N. rules, any change to Security Council membership would need approval from two-thirds of the General Assembly, including all five permanent members.
Hubble Captures Steller Nurseries in a Majestic Spiral
date: 2024-09-27, from: NASA breaking news
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy IC 1954, located 45 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Horologium. It sports a glowing bar in its core, majestically winding spiral arms, and clouds of dark dust across it. Numerous glowing, pink spots across the disc of the galaxy are H-alpha […]
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-captures-steller-nurseries-in-a-majestic-spiral/
Japan’s ruling party picks next PM
date: 2024-09-27, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Japan’s ruling party has elected Shigeru Ishiba as its new leader, positioning the political veteran as the next prime minister of Japan. A look at what his ascent could mean for the country’s economic policy. Ticketing websites have been overwhelmed after millions of people in India tried to book to see Coldplay’s concerts next year; as well as technical problems and long digital queues, there’s concern over alleged price gouging. And, scientists in China have discovered the world’s oldest known cheese – from 3500 years ago.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/japans-ruling-party-picks-next-pm
Bring the joy of train delays home with your very own departure board
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Working from home, but missing the voice of Elinor Hamilton telling you all services are canceled?
Great news for transport nerds! It is now possible to recreate the desolation of an empty platform with every train delayed or canceled, thanks to an unnervingly accurate replica of a station departure board.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/departure_boards/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-27, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Northeast Ski Resort Projected Opening Dates 2024/25.
https://www.onthesnow.com/northeast/projected-openings
Is Harris’ Big Tent About To Burst?
date: 2024-09-27, from: The Lever News
Kamala Harris has built a coalition spanning from Dick Cheney to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — but is that setting her up for a rudderless presidency?
https://www.levernews.com/is-harris-big-tent-about-to-burst/
Fedora 41 beta arrives, neck-and-neck with Ubuntu – but with a different focus
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Text Edit emerges, plus tinted terminal title bar when it’s time to tread tactfully
For those on the RPM side of the fence, Fedora 41 has hit beta, and works better in VirtualBox than ever if you’re curious to try it.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/fedora_41_beta/
OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘He sat in a chair, rubbed his temple, and began to recite syntax as if performing magic’
On Call The end of the working week brings with it magical possibilities for fun and frolics, which is why The Register celebrates each Friday with a fresh incantation of On Call – the reader-contributed column that tells your tech support tales.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/on_call/
Data harvesting superapp admits it struggled to wield data – until it built an LLM
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Engineers at Grab don’t need to ask each other questions any more
Asia’s answer to Uber, Singaporean superapp Grab, has admitted it gathered more data than it could easily analyze – until a large language and generative AI turned things around.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/grab_dataset_llm/
Starlink-branded hardware reportedly found amid wreckage of downed Russian drone
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Space broadband on weapons is not something Elon Musk condones
A Russian drone shot down over Ukraine appears to have been fitted with equipment made by Elon Musk’s space broadband service Starlink, according to Ukrainian media.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/starlink_drone_russia_ukraine/
Hurricane Helene makes landfall in northwestern Florida
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/hurricane-helene-makes-landfall-in-northwestern-florida/7801395.html
India flips the switch on three homebrew supercomputers
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Rudra machines use local designs for server, interconnect, and cooling – but seemingly not a planned 96-core Arm CPU
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi yesterday dedicated three new supercomputers, and made the machines a symbol of his economic, social, and industry policies.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/india_rudra_supercomputers_dedicated/
Blinken to meet Chinese counterpart amid concerns over China’s drone supply to Russia
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
New York — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
This meeting between the countries’ top diplomats comes amid growing U.S. concerns over Chinese firms supplying chips and drones to Moscow, which have significantly bolstered Russia’s battlefield capabilities in its war against Ukraine.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has told the Congress that China’s material support for Russia’s war effort “comes from the very top.”
Blinken’s talks with Wang will take place ahead of a call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, expected later this fall.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the U.N. General Assembly that Ukraine would never accept a deal imposed by other nations to end Russia’s 31-month invasion, questioning the motives of China and Brazil in pushing for negotiations with Moscow.
For months, U.S. officials have accused China of actively aiding Russia’s war effort. Washington has sanctioned Chinese firms providing crucial components to Russia’s defense industry.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller recently told VOA that the U.S. openly discusses its “differences” with China to ensure that both countries “at least understand where the other is coming from, even if we can’t reach an agreement.”
He added that Washington is managing its relationship with China to prevent it from “veering from competition into conflict.”
Japanese orgs now paying salaries direct into e-wallets
date: 2024-09-27, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Starting at SoftBank, using its own PayPay service
Ten subsidiaries of Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank Group have begun paying employees’ salaries into SoftBank’s own PayPay digital wallet.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/softbank_digital_salary/
Former Trump adviser describes China’s ideology as ‘danger to all of us’
date: 2024-09-27, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/former-trump-official-sees-china-as-threat-like-no-other/7800988.html
Oracle owns nearly a third of Arm chip house Ampere, could take control in 2027
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Appears to be prioritizing GPUs, not manycore CPUs
Oracle could choose to take control of Ampere Computing, the Arm processor designer it has backed and uses in its cloud.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/oracle_ampere_stake_cpu/
US offers $20M for details about Iranian allegedly behind plot to kill official
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The U.S. State Department announced a $20 million reward on Thursday for information leading to the arrest of the alleged Iranian mastermind behind a plot to assassinate former White House official John Bolton.
U.S. officials said in August 2022 that they had uncovered a plot by Shahram Poursafi, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), to kill Bolton, who served as national security adviser to former President Donald Trump.
The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program “is offering a reward of up to $20 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction” of Poursafi, a notice said Thursday.
The move came as Trump, 78, who is running for a new White House term, claimed there were “big threats” on his life by Iran.
Bolton, considered a foreign policy hawk, is a fierce critic of Iran and advocated that Trump unilaterally withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
Poursafi allegedly offered an unidentified person inside the United States $300,000 to kill Bolton in the capital area.
The plan was likely set in motion after the U.S. killing of top IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in January 2020, the Justice Department said at the time.
But it never made headway because the ostensible assassin became an informant of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Iranian authorities have dismissed the allegations as “fiction.”
The United States designated the entire IRGC a “foreign terrorist organization” in 2019, after previously designating its external operation, the Quds Force.
Now Dell salespeople must be onsite five days a week
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Return-to-office mandate reaches inevitable conclusion
Dell, after telling employees in March they’re expected to be in the office three days a week, has ordered its salespeople to be onsite for the full working week when not with customers and partners.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/dell_sales_staff_full_rto/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Transparency, Contribution, and the Future of WordPress.
https://joost.blog/transparency-contribution-and-the-future-of-wordpress/
FTC sues five AI outfits – and one case in particular raises questions
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
From allegations of lying about capabilities to fake reviews. Plus: Biden AI robocaller finally fined $6M
The FTC has made good on its promise to crack down on suspected deceptive AI claims, announcing legal action against five outfits accused of lying about their software’s capabilities or using it to break the law. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/ftc_sues_ai_outfits/
Haiti PM urges ‘partners’ to fulfill pledges to help keep peace
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
With violent gangs controlling most of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, calls for a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission are growing. The country’s prime minister says the current international effort lacks resources, manpower and the capability to face the gangs. Celia Mendoza reports.
Senator Brian Schatz on Permitting Reform, IRA 2.0, and Why He Doesn’t Trust Happiness
date: 2024-09-26, from: Heatmap News
Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii is one of the Senate’s climate hawks. Or — really — if you listen to his colleague, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, he’s one of the Senate’s “three climateers,” a group of relatively young (he’s 51) and relatively progressive Democratic senators from solidly blue states.
He’s also no fan of Republicans. You can check his account on the social network X (née Twitter), where he has written tens of thousands of posts, for confirmation of that.
But speaking with me in New York earlier this week, Schatz argued that the next stage of progress on climate change will require compromising with the opposing party. Democrats can make it easier to build and run nuclear power plants, enhanced geothermal wells, and long-distance transmission, he said, and those goals will be easiest to accomplish if they do it with Republicans.
“Until and unless we both have a trifecta and eliminate the filibuster, we are going to have to have a negotiation with people with whom we have pretty serious disagreements,” he told me.
Not that he’s endorsing a permitting reform bill. (He hasn’t yet gotten behind a compromise proposal from Senator Joe Manchin, an independent of West Virginia, and Senator John Barrasso, a Republican of Wyoming, although he called it a “serious effort.”) But he does want progressives — and especially old-school environmentalists — to understand that fighting climate change will mean building a new economy. “I just want to be clear that building the clean energy future that we want and need is not a rhetorical flourish,” he told me. “It means actual construction.”
Schatz is also co-chair of the Senate Climate Change Task Force and the Democratic caucus’s deputy whip. We recently sat down on the sidelines of New York Climate Week, where he met with climate investors, the UN Secretary General, and diplomats from small Pacific island nations. We discussed permitting reform, the 2024 election, and the next major Democratic climate bill — a so-called “Inflation Reduction Act 2.0” — might look like. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
When I see the phrase “IRA 2.0,” I think, wow, they’d be really lucky to get an IRA 2.0.
But we were really lucky to get a 1.0.
That’s right. So what would go into an IRA 2.0 as you’re thinking about it — under a presumed Harris administration here, right?
I have a bit of caution here, only because I think we did it so carefully last time, both on the policy side, but also in terms of building a coalition for the bill. As much as we think we know what the next step is, we still have to start over and do listening to Native communities, to labor, to environmental justice communities, to the traditional environmental organizations, to finance, to critical minerals. We have to go and canvass the universe of stakeholders, and start by listening rather than dropping a bill as a fait accompli.
So we’re in the beginning stages of that process. The only thing I’m attached to is [that] it should be as big as the first bill, and that we need to remain focused on emissions reductions as the first, second, and third priority.
Are there particular aspects of the first bill that now, several years later, you think, if we had another knock, we’d do it a little differently?
No, because I think that presumes that I had the pen. Nobody exactly had the pen. The pen was passed around, so it was all about the art of the possible. It was this very well constructed but — by necessity — heterogeneous thing, and I imagine it would be the same way again because we’re gonna have to get to 51 in the Senate and a majority in the House, as well. I do think there is a ton of progress to be made on nuclear. I think there’s a ton of progress to be made in enhanced geothermal. And obviously everybody’s well aware of what we need to do, um, in terms of [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s] authority and transmission.
My own instinct is that the transmission stuff and the permitting reform stuff is not an IRA 2.0 play. I think we have at least a punter’s chance of getting it done this year, so I would not punt that to ‘only if we win the trifecta.’
How are you thinking about the Manchin-Barrasso permitting reform proposal? Senator Heinrich has endorsed it. There’s some trepidation among the traditional greens that it’s going to get worse via the House before passage, but it does tackle, in a bipartisan way, a lot of the stuff you were just citing — nuclear, geothermal, advanced geothermal. How are you weighing these different forces?
I think it’s a serious effort. And I think that on the transmission side, it would accomplish a lot. I think a lot of the folks who are opposed to this just don’t like the idea of compromising with John Barrasso.
And fair enough. John and I do not have a ton of common ground as it relates to energy policy, but until and unless we both have a trifecta and eliminate the filibuster, we are going to have to have a negotiation with people with whom we have pretty serious disagreements.
The way I always analyze these bills — from the ITC and PTC extension that was paired with the lifting of the oil export ban [in 2015], to the IRA, to the [Bipartisan Infrastructure Law] — is I let the science and the analysis tell me whether it’s a net positive. And it is preliminary data now from these modeling shops, but it’s encouraging.
Look, it’s a planetary emergency, and we are in the business of trying to build the clean energy future that we want and need. I just want to be clear that building the clean energy future that we want and need is not a rhetorical flourish — it means actual construction. And for someone who got his start in the environmental world, trying to prevent things from being built because I care about the planet, there has to be a shift in mindset towards building big things at scale. Otherwise, we’re going to fry our planet.
Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t certain places that are ecologically or culturally so significant that they should be left alone. But the problem is that a lot of the laws that we have, don’t simply protect our sacred places. They prevent wind farms from being built in parking lots. So I just think the environmental movement has to understand and internalize: Oh my goodness, this is an emergency. How fast can we go?
When I’ve talked to traditional greens about this, they don’t disagree that these laws are blocking stuff that we want to get built. They say, sure, but that the result of any negotiation with Republicans will produce a law that will result in worse outcomes.
Well, then I guess we’ll just twiddle our thumbs until the revolution comes. I’m serious. What are we gonna do?
There are some people who don’t want to enact anything because it’s within a capitalist model. Well, it seems to me that that conversation can be a very brief one, because we are in a capitalist model and we’re not going to allow the planet to burn while we wait for a different economic system.
And there are those who are imagining that at some point we’re gonna have 60 unreconstructed progressives [in the Senate] and a Democratic president, and boy, that sounds great. But my job is to make sure we enact laws to keep us on track towards avoiding climate catastrophe, and that means we have to make deals now.
How are you feeling about the 2024 election?
I don’t trust happiness, so I don’t know how I feel. But obviously our Senate candidates are holding up reasonably well. There are some tough ones — we have some really viable challengers now in Florida and Texas. I’m feeling optimistic, but not overly so.
Do you think the IRA survives a Republican trifecta?
I do. I do. I think there’s just too much money at stake, in too many red and blue states, that I would have a hard time seeing them repealing the thing. I think they might try to take a pound of flesh that is mostly symbolic in nature. But I think the foundation of the technology-neutral tax credits is not just unlikely to be repealed, but unlikely to be modified.
https://heatmap.news/politics/schatz-climate-week-permitting-ira
Starfish Space to tackle orbital junk for NASA with SSPICY Otter
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Is this a debris inspection mission or an Ubuntu release?
NASA and Starfish Space have inked a contract worth $15 million to inspect defunct satellites in Earth’s orbit ahead of future missions to deal with space junk.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/nasa_sspicy_otter_starfish/
US port employers file labor practice complaint against union
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
LOS ANGELES / WASHINGTON — Employers negotiating a labor contract at U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast ports on Thursday filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the longshoremen’s union, saying its leaders refuse to resume talks ahead of a threatened Tuesday strike.
The United States Maritime Alliance said it filed the complaint with the National Labor Relations Board because of the repeated refusal of the International Longshoremen’s Association to return to the bargaining table.
The six-year master contract between USMX and the ILA expires Monday, and the two sides appear to be deadlocked on wage issues.
The employer group said it requested immediate injunctive relief requiring the union to resume bargaining so a deal could be finalized.
It is uncommon, but not unheard of, for employers to make such complaints to the NLRB, an independent agency of the federal government that enforces U.S. labor law, particularly with regard to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices.
In rare cases, the NLRB will go to court and ask for an injunction pending the outcome of a board case, but that can take weeks to play out.
The ILA on Thursday responded, calling the USMX a poor negotiating partner.
Earlier this week, ILA leader and chief negotiator Harold Daggett said he had rebuffed USMX approaches.
“They call me several times each week trying to get the ILA to accept a lowball wage package,” Daggett said.
Sources close to the talks said the ILA asked for a wage increase of 77%, a percentage the union called exaggerated. Industry experts predict that the increase will be higher than the 32% raise won by the West Coast longshoremen’s union last year.
Companies that rely on ocean shipping are increasingly worried that the ILA’s 45,000 members will strike and close 36 ports that handle more than half of U.S. ocean trade of products such as bananas, meat, prescription drugs, auto parts, construction materials and apparel.
If that happens, delays and costs could quickly cascade, threatening the U.S. economy in the weeks ahead of the U.S. presidential election, burdening already taxed global ocean shipping networks and over time foisting higher prices on consumers.
Economists at Oxford Economics estimated that the impending strike would reduce U.S. gross domestic product by $4.5 billion to $7.5 billion, or 0.1% annualized, for every week it continues.
A strike has the potential to weigh on the October employment report at a time when the Federal Reserve is highly attuned to signs of weakness in the labor market, they said.
The timing is politically sensitive because Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is facing former Republican President Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election on November 5.
A White House official on Thursday reiterated that President Joe Biden does not intend to invoke a federal law known as the Taft-Hartley Act to prevent a strike.
“We encourage all parties to come to the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith,” the official said. “Senior officials from the White House, Labor Department and Department of Transportation are in touch with the parties and delivering the message to them directly.”
Patch now: Critical Nvidia bug allows container escape, complete host takeover
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
33% of cloud environments using the toolkit impacted, we’re told
A critical bug in Nvidia’s widely used Container Toolkit could allow a rogue user or software to escape their containers and ultimately take complete control of the underlying host.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/critical_nvidia_bug_container_escape/
Off-Road Drivers Are Destroying Ancient Artworks Stretching Across Chile’s Deserts
date: 2024-09-26, from: Smithsonian Magazine
As hundreds of motorists take to the desert, their tracks damage the massive geoglyphs made by Indigenous groups in northern Chile
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Sweeping bill to overhaul Supreme Court would add six justices.
Heart Tissue Shows Signs of Aging After Just One Month in Space, Study Finds
date: 2024-09-26, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Scientists sent bioengineered heart tissue samples to the ISS to study how to keep astronauts safe during future long-term space travel
NASA Hosts Two Workshops for Consultation on LEO Microgravity Strategy
date: 2024-09-26, from: NASA breaking news
As part of NASA’s effort to advance microgravity science, technology, and exploration in low Earth orbit (LEO), the agency conducted two stakeholder workshops in London and Washington to solicit feedback from the international community, including NASA’s international partners, American industry, and academia on Sept. 6 and Sept. 13, respectively. The agency released a draft set […]
ONEXGPU 2 hits Indiegogo for $839 (OCuLink GPU dock with Radeon RX 7800M)
date: 2024-09-26, from: Liliputing
The ONEXGPU 2 is a compact graphics dock that allows you to connect a n AMD Radeon RX 7800M discrete GPU to a laptop, mini PC or handheld gaming PC for extra graphics performance when you need it. First unveiled earlier this summer, the new eGPU is up for pre-order for $839 through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, […]
The post ONEXGPU 2 hits Indiegogo for $839 (OCuLink GPU dock with Radeon RX 7800M) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/onexgpu-2-hits-indiegogo-for-839-oculink-gpu-dock-with-radeon-rx-7800m/
Why are politicians called lame ducks?
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
Joe Biden is said to be entering the lame-duck period of his presidency, but what does that mean?
https://www.voanews.com/a/why-are-politicians-called-lame-ducks-/7800799.html
Tor Project wags Tails to mark privacy project merger
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Onion Amnesia: Steaming up your digital disguise
The Tor Project, a non-profit focused on network anonymity, is joining forces with Tails, an anonymity-focused Linux distribution, in an effort to make better use of financial and technical resources.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/tor_project_tails_merger/
FreeBSD “kiosk” for home automation dashboard
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-27, from: Peter Molnar blog
My current, FreeBSD based server for self-hosting and home automation - now with a touchscreen!
https://petermolnar.net/article/freebsd-kiosk/
DropDMG 3.6.8
date: 2024-09-26, from: Michael Tsai
DropDMG 3.6.8 is a maintenance update to my app for creating and working with Mac disk image files. In addition to various updates and bug fixes, it adds the ability to control how many operations DropDMG performs simultaneously and to set the name of the invisible folder where DropDMG stores the background picture. Some interesting […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/26/dropdmg-3-6-8/
Meta’s Orion AR Glasses
date: 2024-09-26, from: Michael Tsai
Meta (via Hacker News, MacRumors): Today, we unveiled Orion, previously codenamed Project Nazare, which we believe is the most advanced pair of AR glasses ever made. Orion combines the look and feel of a regular pair of glasses with the immersive capabilities of augmented reality – and it’s the result of breakthrough inventions in virtually […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/26/metas-orion-ar-glasses/
OpenAI to Become For-Profit Company
date: 2024-09-26, from: Michael Tsai
Deepa Seetharaman et al. (Hacker News): OpenAI is planning to convert from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit company at the same time it is undergoing significant personnel changes, including the resignation Wednesday of its chief technology officer, Mira Murati. […] Under the proposed changes, the nonprofit arm of OpenAI and Chief Executive Sam Altman […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/26/openai-to-become-for-profit-company/
Headquarters and Center Chief Counsel Contacts
date: 2024-09-26, from: NASA breaking news
Headquarters Field Centers
https://www.nasa.gov/organizations/headquarters-and-center-chief-counsel-contacts/
iPhone 80% Charging Limit
date: 2024-09-26, from: Michael Tsai
Juli Clover: With the iPhone 15 models that came out last year, Apple added an opt-in battery setting that limits maximum charge to 80 percent. The idea is that never charging the iPhone above 80 percent will increase battery longevity, so I kept my iPhone at that 80 percent limit from September 2023 to now, […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/26/iphone-80-charging-limit/
Eliminating memory safety vulnerabilities at the source
date: 2024-09-26, from: OS News
The push towards memory safe programming languages is strong, and for good reason. However, especially for bigger projects with a lot of code that potentially needs to be rewritten or replaced, you might question if all the effort is even worth it, particularly if all the main contributors would also need to be retrained. Well, it turns out that merely just focusing on writing new code in a memory safe language will drastically reduce the number of memory safety issues in a project as a whole. Memory safety vulnerabilities remain a pervasive threat to software security. At Google, we believe the path to eliminating this class of vulnerabilities at scale and building high-assurance software lies in Safe Coding, a secure-by-design approach that prioritizes transitioning to memory-safe languages. This post demonstrates why focusing on Safe Coding for new code quickly and counterintuitively reduces the overall security risk of a codebase, finally breaking through the stubbornly high plateau of memory safety vulnerabilities and starting an exponential decline, all while being scalable and cost-effective. ↫ Jeff Vander Stoep and Alex Rebert at the Google Security Blog In this blog post, Google highlights that even if you only write new code in a memory-safe language, while only applying bug fixes to old code, the number of memory safety issues will decreases rapidly, even when the total amount of code written in unsafe languages increases. This is because vulnerabilities decay exponentially – in other words, the older the code, the fewer vulnerabilities it’ll have. In Android, for instance, using this approach, the percentage of memory safety vulnerabilities dropped from 76% to 24% over 6 years, which is a great result and something quite tangible. Despite the majority of code still being unsafe (but, crucially, getting progressively older), we’re seeing a large and continued decline in memory safety vulnerabilities. The results align with what we simulated above, and are even better, potentially as a result of our parallel efforts to improve the safety of our memory unsafe code. We first reported this decline in 2022, and we continue to see the total number of memory safety vulnerabilities dropping. ↫ Jeff Vander Stoep and Alex Rebert at the Google Security Blog What this shows is that a large project, like, say, the Linux kernel, for no particular reason whatsoever, doesn’t need to replace all of its code with, say, Rust, again, for no particular reason whatsoever, to reap the benefits of a modern, memory-safe language. Even by focusing on memory-safe languages only for new code, you will still exponentially reduce the number of memory safety vulnerabilities. This is not a new discovery, as it’s something observed and confirmed many times before, and it makes intuitive sense, too; older code has had more time to mature.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140805/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-at-the-source/
DNA Reveals Identity of Officer on the Lost Franklin Expedition—and His Remains Show Signs of Cannibalism
date: 2024-09-26, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers recently identified James Fitzjames, a captain on the ill-fated HMS Erebus that went looking for the Northwest Passage in 1845
Meet Pesto, the Biggest Baby Penguin This Australian Aquarium Has Ever Seen
date: 2024-09-26, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Most adult king penguins weigh between 31 and 37 pounds. At nine months old, a 51.8-pound Pesto is already looming over his parents
HPE patches three critical security holes in Aruba PAPI
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
More 9.8 bugs? Ay, papi!
Aruba access points running AOS-8 and AOS-10 need to be patched urgently after HPE emitted fixes for three critical flaws in its networking subsidiary’s networking access points.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/hpe_aruba_patch_papi/
US carrier redeployment from Middle East reflects competing strategic interests, analysts say
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
US Congress finalizes security pact with Pacific Island allies
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Buried in the hundreds of pages of the continuing resolution passed Wednesday by U.S. lawmakers to prevent a government shutdown are Washington’s final steps to implement a 20-year security pact with Pacific Island allies, cementing a U.S. commitment to the region in the face of an increasingly assertive China.
The Compacts of Free Association, or COFA, provide economic support for Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. In exchange, the nations will allow the U.S. military exclusive access to their land, water and airspace and the right to deny Beijing access to their ports and expansive territorial waters.
But six months after the compacts were passed, extending $7 billion in economic aid over 20 years to the three Pacific Island nations, key provisions still languished. Palau’s access to postal service, aviation security, national weather service and federal banking insurance was set to run out on September 30. The temporary spending package finalized Wednesday contained an extension of those services, Representative Ed Case, a Democrat, said in a statement to VOA.
In doing so, said Case, “The U.S. restates its commitment to the people of Palau as a full partner in a shared future and to assisting Palau in resisting the dependence upon and coercion by the PRC that has marked the PRC’s efforts to dominate the countries of the Pacific.” PRC is an abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China.
“Reassuring the people of Palau that they [the services] will continue is an important message from the people of the United States to the people of Palau,” Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr. said in an interview with VOA on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
Cleo Paskal, a nonresident senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argues that the extension of these services also sends a message to Beijing. Palau is just one of three remaining Pacific Island nations who still recognize Taiwan diplomatically over Beijing.
Paskal said that a gap in these basic services could have left Whipps — who is running for reelection in November — vulnerable to “those wanting to undermine the relationship with the U.S., possibly feeding into the narrative that the U.S. isn’t helping” its Pacific partners.
But U.S. lawmakers of both parties coalesced around closing the loophole for Palau, said Whipps.
The agreement for Palau “represents a significant milestone in the process of affirming our countries’ partnership for another 20 years,” U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, a Democrat, said in a statement to VOA. “This relationship is vital to the security and stability” of the U.S. “as we work to promote democracy and our shared values throughout the Pacific.”
U.S. Representative Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, a Republican who represents the U.S. territory of American Samoa, led a hearing earlier this month that exposed gaps in COFA implementation, including the Palau federal services expiration.
“It’s extremely important to the entirety of the Pacific region for our allies, and any nation at all, to see the U.S. following through with its commitments to our closest friends in the region,” Coleman Radewagen said in a statement to VOA.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-congress-passes-security-pact-with-pacific-island-allies/7800734.html
National Preparedness Month: Advocating for a Holistic Approach to Increased Resilience
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: RAND blog
Preparedness requires more than awareness; it demands acceptance, commitment, and capability building. National Preparedness Month highlights the need for ongoing, effective action.
Climate Denial the Heritage Foundation Way
date: 2024-09-26, from: Heatmap News
New York Times readers were already aghast even before Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts — the man behind Project 2025 — took the stage at the outlet’s Climate Forward event, held during New York’s bustling Climate Week. Normally, this is when famous people including researcher Jane Goodall, Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, and Rivian CEO R.J. Scaringe would discuss climate solutions before an audience of the thoughtful and well-heeled. Inviting Roberts violated that norm, which may have been the point — nothing draws eyeballs like outrage, and for the Times’ elite liberal readership, bringing Roberts to a climate discussion certainly counts as outrageous. But Roberts’ segment, in which he was interviewed by climate reporter David Gelles, was as revealing as anything the more friendly celebrities had to say.
Not because Gelles exposed Roberts for the climate denier he is, discrediting fossil fuel stooges once and for all. That’s what many hope for from this kind of encounter, but it almost never happens. Gelles did his best, but Roberts was more than up to the challenge of advocating the conservative approach to addressing the warming of the planet (or rather, not addressing it) to a hostile audience.
We’ve come a long way from the time when crude denialists like Senator Jim Inhofe were bringing snowballs to the Senate floor to show that global warming must be a hoax. Roberts said many things that were framed in ways seemingly designed to appeal to liberal principles — he defended scientific skepticism, and claimed that when Project 2025 proposes ending civil service protections for government employees so they can be replaced by political appointees, its intention is to depoliticize the government (“We don’t care whether they’re Democrats or Republicans; we actually want them to be objective”) — but he returned again and again to one conspiracy-tinged notion. Serious climate policy, he argued, is an attack not just by American elites, but rather by an entire global elite against ordinary people, whom they are immiserating with ill-considered ideas not based in science, or even in reality.
While it might seem ironic to hear the head of a think tank with a nine-figure annual budget that comes largely from corporate interests talking like a tribune of the common folk, that’s where Roberts began. He started with a punch in the nose, saying that while he was surprised to get the invitation from the Times, “I’ll go anywhere to talk about how the climate agenda is ending the American dream.” In response to the criticisms of Project 2025, he said, “Rather than take the well-funded agenda of elites in New York and Brussels and in the Chinese Communist Party, why don’t we ask the American people?” And those struggling people, he insisted, are being harmed by the transition away from fossil fuels “far more than any of the harms that you would cite from so-called climate change.”
Does that mean he’s a climate denier? Heavens no. “That doesn’t mean that we’re rejecting that humans have an effect on climate; clearly they do,” he said. So climate change is real, but also maybe not; whatever perspective you like, you can decide Roberts agrees with you. He also claimed that according to Heritage’s irrefutable research, there’s just nothing we can do to stop that warming, which isn’t really a problem anyway. “Let’s just take all the ideas of everyone in this room and we implement them with a magic wand,” he said. “Our estimates show, what would the difference in temperature be? Zero point two three degrees Celsius. It’s simply not going to make a difference.”
That kind of faux-precision is impossible to adjudicate in the moment, of course, which is why it can be so effective. This is another key theme for Roberts and others like him. “There is this thesis that if the United States leads on climate policy, the world will follow. That hasn’t happened,” he said. “In fact, if we eliminate all emissions and pollution in the United States, it has an almost non-measurable impact on pollution and emissions worldwide.” That’s just false — the U.S. is still the second-largest carbon emitter in the world, after China — but if it were true, then why should we bother cutting our emissions, if doing so would have a “non-measurable impact”? There are no benefits, only costs.
The Biden administration, he said, “have made a grave mistake. They have taken the will of elites and they’ve imposed this on the American people.” And don’t think Roberts is an advocate for the corporate elites that pay his considerable salary; heck no, he’s just a humble reg’lar fella, thinking about the good honest folk who have no one to speak for them. “I see public policy through the lens of working-class people,” he insisted. “Our perspective at Heritage is on behalf of not just ordinary Americans but the global poor who are damaged by these policies.” The global poor.
What Roberts offers is climate denial without guilt. The details of increasing temperatures and their effects on people in the present and future are quickly minimized, then the focus shifts to imaginary harms to the vulnerable not from climate change but from climate action. Every emissions reduction proposal is dismissed as an indulgence of repugnant elitists, leaving only one moral alternative: to do nothing about climate change except burn more fossil fuels.
Presenting climate denial as an act of selflessness might seem appalling, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t attractive. If you want to hold to outright denialism, Roberts is with you. But if you admit that climate change is happening, he’s got you covered; what matters is that we shouldn’t do anything about it, because inaction is the real way to care for the vulnerable and fight back against the nefarious forces holding the world in their grip. The chutzpah is jaw-dropping, but it would be a mistake to think no one will find this argument attractive.
https://heatmap.news/politics/project-2025-climate-week
DeleteMe Helps Companies Fight the Growing Threat From Data Brokers
date: 2024-09-26, from: 404 Media Group
Delisting yourself or your employees from data brokerage sites manually is a time consuming and laborious task. DeleteMe makes it easier.
https://www.404media.co/deleteme-helps-companies-fight-the-growing-threat-from-data-brokers/
Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a Seventh of Nine ‘Planetary Boundaries’ That Support Life
date: 2024-09-26, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new “health check” for our planet sounds an alarm bell on rising ocean acidification, which is driven by carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere
@IIIF Mastodon feed (date: 2024-09-26, from: IIIF Mastodon feed)
Registration is now open for the 2024 #IIIF Online Meeting!
See the full program on the IIIF website:
https://iiif.io/event/2024/online-meeting/
Register on Eventbrite:
https://bit.ly/4dlxwcS
https://glammr.us/@IIIF/113205338826103476
Short sellers rejoice on report of Supermicro DoJ probe
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Alleged inquiry comes amid claims server maker cooked its books
Comment Supermicro has reportedly fallen under the scrutiny of the US Justice Department amid allegations the US-based server vendor is cooking its books.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/supermicro_doj_investigation/
Samsung fined just $8K for exposing chip fab workers to X-ray radiation
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Nothing says ‘oops’ like a penalty that won’t even dent the electronics giant’s coffee budget
Two Samsung employees suffered X-ray radiation exposure at a chip fab near Seoul, and electronics giant is only facing a small ₩10.5 million (less than $8,000) fine for two violations of South Korea’s Atomic Energy Safety Act. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/samsung_fined_chip_fab_radiation/
Push for renewable energy sparks new environmental worries
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
According to the International Energy Agency, the world now invests almost twice as much in clean energy as it does in fossil fuels. But with that shift comes environmental risks related to the mining of critical minerals. VOA’s Jessica Stone looks at how nations are navigating the environmental challenges of creating a renewable future.
https://www.voanews.com/a/push-for-renewable-energy-sparks-new-environmental-worries/7800592.html
US, Vietnamese leaders meet, seek deeper ties
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
Washington — U.S. President Joe Biden says Washington is committed to a strong, prosperous, resilient, and independent Vietnam and discussed a broad range of ways the two countries can cooperate during a meeting with this Vietnamese counterpart, To Lam.
Since coming to office in May, Vietnam’s new president has been actively reaching out, meeting with the leaders of China and Russia. Washington is seeking to counter those advances and strengthen ties with Hanoi as well.
Lam, who is also head of the ruling Communist Party, met with Biden on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York Wednesday. According to a White House statement, the two talked about “building secure and resilient semiconductor supply chains” and strengthening their tech relationship as well as progress in cybersecurity cooperation and Vietnam’s efforts to increase its digital connectivity.
Vietnam is looking to the United States and China to triple its number of subsea cables by 2030. Biden and Lam also focused on ways the two could deepen a comprehensive strategic partnership they entered last year.
Biden said Washington wants to cooperate with Vietnam to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific and discussed the importance of maintaining peace and stability — especially in the South China Sea, according to the White House statement.
During the meeting, which lasted a little more than an hour, Lam assured Biden that the United States is “a partner of strategic importance,” while Biden told Lam that Vietnam is “a top partner of the U.S. in the region,” Vietnam News Agency reported.
Analysts say that while the meeting did not take place in the White House, it did highlight the high level of trust between Hanoi and Washington and the growing importance of bilateral ties.
Nguyen Hong Hai, a lecturer of international relations at Hanoi-based VinUni, told VOA in an email that the way Washington and Hanoi are talking about one another and the high importance they attach to bilateral relations is significant. It is also a sign of deepening trust, Hai added.
“Vietnam falls short of a U.S. ally. But as a partner, it is a top of its kind,” Hai said.
Hai said that Hanoi fits perfectly into Washington’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy since it supports the rules-based order and is playing an increasingly bigger role in the U.S.-led global supply chain. On the other hand, Hanoi needs Washington as a regional security guarantor while its goal of becoming a developed economy with high income by 2045 is contingent on access to the U.S. market as well as its capital and technology.
Ha Hoang Hop, chair of the Hanoi-based Think Tank Viet Know, said it was significant that both leaders reaffirmed the importance of their comprehensive strategic partnership. So, too, was Biden’s commitment to support Vietnam’s tech-driven growth and encouragement for Hanoi to play an active role in regional security.
“The momentum of U.S.-Vietnam comprehensive strategic partnership will be maintained far beyond Biden’s and To Lam’s presidencies no matter who will succeed Biden next year or who will take the helm of the Vietnamese Communist Party in 2026,” Hop told VOA in an email.
The two countries recently marked the first anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership Biden signed with Nguyen Phu Trong, Lam’s predecessor, during a visit to Hanoi last year.
At that time, Lam was the country’s security czar. He became president following the forced resignation of President Vo Van Thuong in March and replaced Nguyen Phu Trong as party chief after Trong unexpectedly died in late July.
Lam’s first foreign trip after becoming Vietnam’s top leader took him to Beijing in August, when he and Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirmed their commitment to bilateral ties. He also hosted Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Hanoi in late June.
Although readouts of Wednesday’s meeting gave no indication that China was discussed, Beijing was watching the meeting closely, Hai said.
China became Vietnam’s first comprehensive strategic partner in 2008, and the two countries agreed late last year to build what they call a “community of shared future” following the upgrade in U.S.-Vietnam ties.
“Any progress in U.S.-Vietnam ties is unwelcome in Beijing. However, Bejing should understand that Hanoi’s deepening ties with the U.S. is not targeted at any country but just serves its own security,” Hai said.
Think Tank Viet Know’s Ha Hoang Hop said that Beijing is “fully aware of Hanoi’s strategic position in the Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy” and is trying to capitalize on this to serve its interests.
“For its part, Hanoi is proactively navigating between the two superpowers,” he said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-vietnamese-leaders-meet-seek-deeper-ties/7800641.html
Impacting Home and Travel
date: 2024-09-26, from: Infrastructure LA Blog
Impacting Home and Travel Revolutionizing Transit The Future of Travel in the San Fernando Valley! L.A. Metro has secured an astounding $893 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation to fuel the transformative East San Fernando Valley Light Rail Transit Project! This 6.7-mile rail will connect communities like never before. The light […]
These 3,000-Year-Old Arrowheads Are Pivotal Clues in the Mystery of ‘Europe’s Oldest Known Battlefield’
date: 2024-09-26, from: Smithsonian Magazine
While no written records exist, new research has illuminated key details of the battle fought in northern Germany during the 13th century B.C.E.
That doomsday critical Linux bug: It’s CUPS. May lead to remote hijacking of devices
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
No patches yet, can be mitigated, requires user interaction
Final update After days of anticipation, what was billed as one or more critical unauthenticated remote-code execution vulnerabilities in all Linux systems was today finally revealed.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/cups_linux_rce_disclosed/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Potential National Security Consequences of Unplanned Domestic Military Missions.
MASTER PLAN Bonus: The Other Memo
date: 2024-09-26, from: The Lever News
Lever Time producer Arjun Singh and investigative journalist David Daley discuss the other memo behind the conservative takeover of the courts.
https://www.levernews.com/master-plan-bonus-the-other-memo/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
We all have been raised to believe that "getting ahead" is the thing to do with our lives. It's deeply ingrained over many generations. We're still doing that, even though the three big crises we're going to be dealing with for the rest of our lives, demand a different approach – "working together."
http://scripting.com/2024/04/16/140810.html
Cryptocurrency exchange network accused of helping Russia hit with sanctions
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — A network of people and virtual currency exchanges associated with harboring Russian cybercrime were hit with sanctions on Thursday, in a government-wide crackdown on cybercrime that could assist Russia ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
U.S. Treasury sanctioned alleged Russian hacker Sergey Ivanov and Cryptex — a St. Vincent and Grenadines registered virtual currency exchange operating in Russia. Virtual currency exchanges allow people and businesses to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, such as conventional dollars or other digital currencies.
Treasury alleges that Ivanov has laundered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of virtual currency for cyber criminals and darknet marketplace vendors for the last 20 years, including for Timur Shakhmametov, who allegedly created an online marketplace for stolen credit card data and compromised IDs called Joker’s Stash. Ivanov laundered the proceeds from Joker’s Stash, Treasury says.
The State Department is offering a $10 million reward for information that would lead to the arrest and possible conviction of the two men, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Virginia has unsealed an indictment against them.
Biden said in a statement announcing the sanctions Thursday that the U.S. “will continue to raise the costs on Russia for its war in Ukraine and to deprive the Russian defense industrial base of resources.”
He meets with Zelenskyy Thursday to announce a surge in security assistance for Ukraine and other actions meant to assist the war-torn country as Russia continues to invade.
State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller said, “We will continue to use all our tools and authorities to deter and expose these money laundering networks and impose cost on the cyber criminals and support networks. We reiterate our call that Russia must take concrete steps to prevent cyber criminals from freely operating in its jurisdiction.”
U.S officials have taken several actions against Russian cybercriminals since the start of the invasion in February 2022.
Earlier this year, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 13 firms — five of which are owned by an already sanctioned person — and two people who have all either helped build or operate blockchain-based services for, or enabled virtual currency payments in, the Russian financial sector, “thus enabling potential sanctions evasion,” according to U.S. Treasury.
Blackstone invests £10B to build Europe’s ‘biggest AI datacenter’ in UK
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Construction slated to begin next year at site of failed BritishVolt plant
US investment giant Blackstone is plowing £10 billion ($13.4 billion) into a massive AI datacenter project located in northeast England, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Wednesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/backstone_ai_datacenter/
U.S. Climate Policy Explained: What Americans Need to Know
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: RAND blog
To better understand the current state of U.S. climate policy and what to look for in the months and years ahead, we spoke to one of RAND’s foremost climate policy experts.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/09/us-climate-policy-explained-what-americans-need-to.html
Samsung Galaxy S24 FE is a $650 sub-flagship with a 120 Hz display, triple cameras, and 7 years of OS updates
date: 2024-09-26, from: Liliputing
When the Samsung Galaxy S24 smartphone family launched earlier this year, starting prices ranged from $800 for an entry-level Samsung Galaxy S24 to $1300 for a Galaxy S24 Ultra. Now there’s a cheaper option. The new Samsung Galaxy S24 FE is a $650 smartphone that packs many of the same features as its pricier siblings. But […]
The post Samsung Galaxy S24 FE is a $650 sub-flagship with a 120 Hz display, triple cameras, and 7 years of OS updates appeared first on Liliputing.
Rare and Elusive Australian Bird, Once Thought Extinct for 100 Years, Discovered by Indigenous Rangers and Scientists
date: 2024-09-26, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Using sound recordings, the team identified the largest known population of the night parrot, a secretive species known as the “Holy Grail of birdwatching”
NASA’s BioSentinel Studies Solar Radiation as Earth Watches Aurora
date: 2024-09-26, from: NASA breaking news
In May 2024, a geomagnetic storm hit Earth, sending auroras across the planet’s skies in a once-in-a-generation light display. These dazzling sights are possible because of the interaction of coronal mass ejections – explosions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun – with Earth’s magnetic field, which protects us from the radiation the Sun […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasas-biosentinel-studies-solar-radiation-as-earth-watches-aurora/
NASA downplays role in development of Titan sub that imploded
date: 2024-09-26, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/nasa-downplays-role-in-development-of-titan-sub-that-imploded/7800486.html
Intel thinks it’s got a final microcode fix for recalcitrant Raptor Lake processors
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Root cause identified, but it’s taken the better part of a year
After what has felt like an eternity, Intel reckons it has finally identified why its 13th and 14th Gen Core series desktop processors have been so unstable.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/intel_0x12b_raptor_lake/
Webinar: Contributing to Open Source Documentation Projects
date: 2024-09-26, from: Blog by Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti
Some months ago I wrote a post about open source docs contributions. My dear colleague Scott Abel (The Content Wrangler) found that to be a good topic for a webinar, so today I hosted Contributing to Open Source Documentation Projects, where I expanded my thoughts on the topic and provided some practical guidance. You can also download the slides here. Enjoy!
https://passo.uno/webinar-open-source-docs-contributions/
Hoover vs. Little Al of the FBI
date: 2024-09-26, from: National Archives, Text Message blog
Today’s post was written by James Mathis, Archivist with the Special Access and FOIA Program at the National Archives at College Park In celebration of National Comic Book Day on September 25, this post highlights comics in NARA’s FBI records. The records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Record Group 65 document the … Continue reading Hoover vs. Little Al of the FBI
https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2024/09/26/hoover-vs-little-al-of-the-fbi/
UC and Cal State Restrictions Imposed After Palestine Protests Are Assailed as Unconstitutional
date: 2024-09-26, from: Capital and Main
Faculty, students, labor groups and the American Civil Liberties Union say the harder line on demonstrations may be discriminatory.
The post UC and Cal State Restrictions Imposed After Palestine Protests Are Assailed as Unconstitutional appeared first on .
Finding a Home While Building a Life
date: 2024-09-26, from: Capital and Main
Ray Suarez explores immigrants’ struggles and hopes in the United States as they strive to make this country their place of belonging.
The post Finding a Home While Building a Life appeared first on .
https://capitalandmain.com/finding-a-home-while-building-a-life
Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ and Galaxy Tab Ultra coming October 3 for $999 and up
date: 2024-09-26, from: Liliputing
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S lineup has come to dominate the premium Android tablet market in recent years… partly because Samsung is one of the only companies that’s continuing to make premium Android tablets. And this year the company is going all-in on the premium side of things. At launch, there’s no entry-level Galaxy Tab S10 with […]
The post Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ and Galaxy Tab Ultra coming October 3 for $999 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/samsung-galaxy-tab-s10-and-galaxy-tab-ultra-coming-october-3-for-999-and-up/
Eric Adams Told FBI He Forgot His Phone’s Passcode
date: 2024-09-26, from: 404 Media Group
“But, Adams further claimed, he had forgotten the password he had just set, and thus was unable to provide the FBI with a password that would unlock the phone.”
https://www.404media.co/eric-adams-told-fbi-he-forgot-his-phones-passcode/
Raspberry Pi Pico brings junked joysticks back to life | The MagPi #146
date: 2024-09-26, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
We talk to David Miles, who designed a Raspberry Pi Pico kit to bring junked joysticks back to life.
The post Raspberry Pi Pico brings junked joysticks back to life | The MagPi #146 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
Are we in for another logistics nightmare?
date: 2024-09-26, from: Marketplace Morning Report
We’re now just days from a potential strike by dockworkers that would stretch from the Gulf of Mexico on up the East Coast. Oct. 1 is the deadline for an agreement between ports and the union representing about 45,000 dockworkers. What sort of ripple effects might such a strike have? Plus, Congress has approved a temporary spending bill to keep the government open — for another few months.
SK hynix begins mass production of 36 GB 12-layer HBM3E
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Should be Jensen Huang’s hands in less than 60 days
Korea’s SK hynix revealed on Thursday that it had become the first chip manufacturer to mass produce 36 GB 12-layer HBM3E chip.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/sk_hynix_hbm3e_production/
Pioneer of Change: America Reyes Wang Makes NASA Space Biology More Open
date: 2024-09-26, from: NASA breaking news
As humans return to the Moon and push on toward Mars, scientists are ramping up research into the effects of space on the body to make sure astronauts stay healthy on longer missions. This research often involves spaceflight studies of rodents, insects, and other models in orbiting laboratories such as the International Space Station. However, […]
https://science.nasa.gov/open-science/space-biology-reyes-wang/
NASA Stennis Completes Key Test Complex Water System Upgrade
date: 2024-09-26, from: NASA breaking news
For almost 60 years, NASA’s Stennis Space Center has tested rocket systems and engines to help power the nation’s human space exploration dreams. Completion of a critical water system infrastructure project helps ensure the site can continue that frontline work moving forward. “The infrastructure at NASA Stennis is absolutely critical for rocket engine testing for […]
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-26, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Apparently Ghost is working on feed reading, they need this to be part of the fediverse, to be two-way – ie not just cross-posting.
https://www.threads.net/@quillmatiq/post/DALtxZ_PiiX
Updates 2024/Q3
date: 2024-09-26, from: mrusme blog
Project updates from the current consecutive three-month period, with info on the current status of my projects and next steps. You might find this interesting in case you’re using any of my open source tools.
https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/updates-2024-q3/
System76 COSMIC Alpha 2 Released
date: 2024-09-26, from: System76 Blog
System76 Desktop Environment COSMIC Enters Alpha: Stage 2. Building out COSMIC Files, Settings pages, and WM features.
https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-alpha-2-press-release
Paralyzed Jockey Loses Ability to Walk After Manufacturer Refuses to Fix Battery For His $100,000 Exoskeleton
date: 2024-09-26, from: 404 Media Group
Michael Straight learned to walk again with the help of an exoskeleton. After an accessory to the device broke, the company refused to fix it.
Victims lose $70K to one single wallet-draining app on Google’s Play Store
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-26, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Attackers got 10k people to download ‘trusted’ web3 brand cheat before Mountain View intervened
The latest in a long line of cryptocurrency wallet-draining attacks has stolen $70,000 from people who downloaded a dodgy app in a single campaign researchers describe as a world-first.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/victims_lose_70k_to_play/
NASA’s Hubble Finds that a Black Hole Beam Promotes Stellar Eruptions
date: 2024-09-26, from: NASA breaking news
In a surprise finding, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of a huge galaxy seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. The stars, called novae, are not caught inside the jet, but apparently in a dangerous neighborhood nearby. The […]
Let It Go: (After Latching) Challenge
date: 2024-09-26, from: NASA breaking news
NASA is seeking innovative solutions for a synchronized antenna deployment system. The primary objective is to develop a mechanism that ensures sequential deployment of antenna panels, addressing a critical aspect of space-based communication technology. In this challenge, participants are tasked with designing a mechanism that will release hexagonal panels in a predetermined sequence. Specifically, the […]
NASA’s Artemis Science Instrument Gets Tested in Moon-Like Sandbox
date: 2024-09-26, from: NASA breaking news
Scientists and engineers tested NASA’s LEMS (Lunar Environment Monitoring Station) instrument suite in a “sandbox” of simulated Moon “soil.”
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 for another year
date: 2024-09-26, updated: 2024-09-27, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Single digit price hikes suspected for UK and Europe and double digit mooted for everywhere else
Updated 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/