News gathered 2024-10-01
(date: 2024-10-01 18:13:06)
Wildfires in California have burned 1 million hectares so far this year
date: 2024-10-02, from: VOA News USA
LOS ANGELES — The total hectares burned in California this year surpassed 1 million as spiking temperatures Tuesday added to the challenges facing firefighters struggling to contain a stubborn blaze in the mountains northeast of Los Angeles that flared up over the weekend.
Evacuation orders were expanded again Monday for remote communities northeast of Los Angeles as the Line Fire that has been burning for nearly a month spread over nearly 176 square kilometers (68 square miles) of the San Bernardino Mountains, and containment dropped from 83% to 76%.
“The dry vegetation, steep slopes and wind aligned … to create conditions for the rapid fire spread,” according to a statement late Monday from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
The risk of wildfires increased across California as an autumn heat wave scorched much of the state. Some inland areas could see temperatures up to 20 degrees above average for this time of year, according to the National Weather Service.
San Francisco, where residents typically break out the sweaters in October, could hit 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit), while triple digits 38 C were predicted for Sacramento. The weather service office in the state’s capital urged residents to stay indoors during the heat of the day on Tuesday.
Dry, hot winds in the northern part of the state prompted Pacific Gas & Electric to preemptively cut power to small clusters of customers in high-risk areas. The utility routinely stops electricity service in counties where weather conditions increase the probability of fires.
In Southern California, the Line Fire’s surge pushed the total hectares burned across the state in 2024 to 405,492 (1,001,993 acres) as of Tuesday morning, according to Cal Fire. The milestone surpasses the total scorched during the same time last year — 118,719 hectares (293,362 acres) — but is roughly on par with the five-year average for the period, the Los Angeles Times reported.
A 34-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to starting the Line Fire on September 5. Justin Wayne Halstenberg of Norco, California, was charged with 11 arson-related crimes, according to court records.
At its height, the blaze threatened more than 65,000 homes in and around the Big Bear Lake area.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-02, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Why should the New York Times hold Harris to a higher standard than Trump? Isn't that sort of our whole problem.
https://jabberwocking.com/let-us-hold-donald-trump-to-normal-standards-of-conduct-please/
November trial set for suspect in Trump assassination attempt in Florida
date: 2024-10-02, from: VOA News USA
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-02, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The 1962 Mets No Longer Hold Season Loss Record.
https://metsmerizedonline.com/the-1962-mets-no-longer-hold-season-loss-record/
US special envoy for Taliban-ruled Afghanistan moved to different role
date: 2024-10-02, from: VOA News USA
ISLAMABAD — The United States has reassigned its special representative for Afghanistan, leaving vacant a key position in its efforts to engage with the Taliban-ruled country.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the decision Tuesday to reassign Tom West, while emphasizing that Washington’s commitment to the South Asian nation “remains an enduring priority.”
Blinken said West would serve in a new role as the acting head of the Office of Sanctions Coordination at the U.S. State Department and commended him for working “tirelessly to ensure [that] both our national interests and the welfare of the Afghan people guided our policy in Afghanistan.”
West was appointed as the special representative to Afghanistan in October 2021, two months after the Taliban regained power and all U.S.-led NATO troops withdrew from the country, ending 20 years of involvement in the war.
“Tom has skillfully led diplomacy on Afghanistan during a complex period,” Blinken said. “Today’s global challenges are equally as complex, and I look forward to working with him on coordinating economic sanctions strategies across the U.S. government with our partners and stakeholders to achieve U.S. foreign policy priorities,” he said without elaborating.
The Taliban takeover compelled Washington and other Western capitals to relocate their diplomatic missions from Kabul to Doha, Qatar, where Karen Decker serves as the chief of the U.S. Embassy. Blinken said Decker has been asked to lead Afghan diplomacy.
The de facto Afghan leaders have imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law, known as Shariah, banning girls’ education beyond the sixth grade, prohibiting women from most workplaces and access to public life at large across the impoverished country.
Taliban leaders reject international criticism and calls for reversing bans on Afghan women’s rights to work and education as interference in the country’s internal matters.
Blinken said that Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women’s and girls’ rights, would continue to lead her mission to ensure that “human rights, and particularly women’s rights, are prioritized.”
Asif Durrani, who served as Pakistan’s special representative to Afghanistan until last month, said that many countries, including the U.S., are frustrated with the Taliban due to their treatment of women and their lack of an inclusive government in Kabul.
“Issues such as inclusivity or human rights, particularly girls’ right to education and women’s right to work, are issues that the American administration cannot afford to overlook and engage the Taliban in a meaningful way,” Durrani said.
But he suggested the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have diverted Washington’s attention from the Afghan situation.
“It’s quite obvious that Afghanistan is not on the United States’ priority list, at least for the time being,” Durrani said.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller rejected that view when asked by reporters Tuesday whether Afghanistan is still a U.S. foreign policy priority.
“Of course it is,” he said. “And we will continue to stay engaged in Afghanistan. It remains an enduring priority.”
Durrani said the U.S. cannot be blamed alone for the lack of improvement in Afghanistan. “The Taliban’s rigid attitude towards women’s education and their ban on women’s work is not winning them any friends or sympathy.”
No country has officially recognized the men-only Taliban government in Kabul, mainly due to human rights issues and their sweeping restrictions on women’s freedoms.
The United States and allied nations have imposed financial and banking sector sanctions on Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover. Donors have cut economic development assistance, citing terrorism-related sanctions on several key leaders of the de facto government.
State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching contributed to this report.
Dockworkers may have negotiating advantage in their strike against US ports
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
philadelphia — The 45,000 dockworkers who went on strike Tuesday for the first time in decades at 36 U.S. ports from Maine to Texas may wield the upper hand in their standoff with port operators over wages and the use of automation.
Organized labor enjoys rising public support and has had a string of recent victories in other industries, in addition to the backing of the pro-union administration of President Joe Biden. The dockworkers’ negotiating stand is likely further strengthened by the nation’s supply chain of goods being under pressure in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which has coincided with the peak shipping season for holiday goods.
The union is also pointing to shipping companies’ record profits, which have come in part because of shortages resulting from the pandemic, and to a more generous contract that West Coast dockworkers achieved last year. The longshoremen’s workloads also have increased, and the effects of inflation have eroded their pay in recent years.
The dockworkers’ strike, their first since 1977, could snarl supply chains and cause shortages and higher prices if it stretches on for more than a few weeks. Beginning after midnight, the workers walked picket lines Tuesday and carried signs calling for more money and a ban on automation that could cost workers their jobs.
Major retailers prepared
Experts say consumers won’t likely notice shortages for at least a few weeks, if the strike lasts that long, though some perishable items such as bananas could disappear from grocery stores — although at this time of year, most other fruits and vegetables are domestically grown and not processed at ports, according to Alan Siger, president of the Produce Distributors Association.
In anticipation of a strike, most major retailers also stocked up on goods, moving ahead shipments of holiday gift items.
The strike, coming weeks before a tight presidential election, could also become a factor in the race if shortages begin to affect many voters. Pressure could eventually grow for the Biden administration to intervene to force a temporary suspension of the strike.
Little progress was reported in the talks until just hours before the strike began at 12:01 a.m. The U.S. Maritime Alliance, the group negotiating for the ports, said both sides did budge from their initial positions. The alliance offered 50% raises over the six-year life of the contract. Comments from the union’s leadership had briefly suggested a move to 61.5%, but the union has since signaled that it’s sticking with its initial demand for a 77% pay increase over six years.
In early picketing, workers outside the Port of Philadelphia walked in a circle, chanting, “No work without a fair contract.” The union posted message boards on the side of a truck reading: “Automation Hurts Families: ILA Stands for Job Protection.”
Boise Butler, president of the union local, asserted that the workers want a contract that doesn’t allow for the automation of their jobs. The shipping companies, he argued, made billions during the pandemic by charging high prices.
“Now,” Butler said, “we want them to pay back. They’re going to pay back.”
And in New Orleans, Henry Glover Jr., a fourth-generation dockworker who is president of the union local, says he can recall the days when longshoremen unloaded 150-pound sacks of sugar by hand. He acknowledges that machinery has made the job easier, but he worries that the ports need fewer people to handle the equipment.
“Automation could be good, but they’re using it to kill jobs,” Glover said. “We don’t want them to implement anything that would take our jobs out.”
William Brucher, an assistant professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, noted that “this is a very opportune time” for striking workers.
The contract agreement reached last year with West Coast dockworkers, who are represented by a different union, shows that “higher wages are definitely possible” for the longshoremen and has enhanced their bargaining power, Brucher said.
Biden’s options
Under the Taft-Hartley Act, Biden could seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period that would end the strike at least temporarily, but he has told reporters that he wouldn’t take that step. The administration could risk losing union support if it exercised such power, which experts say could be particularly detrimental for Democrats ahead of next month’s election.
On Tuesday, the White House continued to ask the alliance to negotiate a fair contract that reflects the longshoremen’s contribution to the economy.
“As our nation climbs out of the aftermath of Hurricane Helene,” Biden said in a statement, “dockworkers will play an essential role in getting communities the resources they need. Now is not the time for ocean carriers to refuse to negotiate a fair wage for these essential workers while raking in record profits.”
Trump rallies in battleground state of Wisconsin before VP debate
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
WAUNAKEE, Wisconsin — Former President Donald Trump spent more than an hour ahead of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate campaigning in a Democratic county crucial to Kamala Harris’ hopes for winning the key battleground state of Wisconsin.
Republican Trump appeared at a manufacturing facility in Waunakee, a suburb of Wisconsin’s capital city of Madison in the Democratic stronghold of Dane County. Trump had never campaigned in Dane County nor visited as president.
In an event advertised as economic-themed, Trump bounced from subject to subject, also taking on Democratic nominee Harris on issues, including foreign policy, crime and immigration, while intermittently pivoting to criticism of outgoing President Joe Biden.
“I’m asking every citizen to join me in launching sort of a new golden age for America,” Trump told hundreds inside Dane Manufacturing, a metal fabricator that has a long history of hosting Republican candidates and officeholders.
Trump also could not pass up a jab at former President Jimmy Carter on the Georgia Democrat’s 100th birthday.
With hollow praise, Trump declared the one-term Carter “the happiest man” because he “is considered a brilliant president” compared with Biden. Trump did not note Carter’s birthday, nor his status as the longest-living former president.
Later Tuesday, Trump was to hold an event at a museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city and home to the state’s largest number of Democratic voters and second-largest number of Republicans. His appearance there was also meant to give him reach into the city’s conservative suburbs, a part of Wisconsin where his support has softened but where he must do well to win.
In Milwaukee, Trump was slated to speak in a small auditorium at Discovery World, a science museum along Lake Michigan’s lakefront. His event was not open to the public and his audience was to consist only of news media.
Last Saturday, he held a rally in western Wisconsin where he blamed Harris for crimes committed by people in the country illegally.
Both of his planned stops were ahead of Tuesday’s debate in New York between Trump’s running mate JD Vance, a senator from Ohio, and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota.
Dane County, the location of Trump’s first stop, is Wisconsin’s fastest-growing county and an economic engine for the state, fueled by jobs in the health care and tech industries. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin.
Dane County’s population grew by about 30,000 people between 2016 and 2020. It has gone up by an additional 13,000 since then, based on the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimate.
That presents a challenge for Republicans, especially given that nearly 90% of registered voters in the county cast ballots in 2020. Biden won 75% of the vote that year in Dane County, beating Trump by 181,000 votes in the county while carrying the state by fewer than 21,000. Hillary Clinton beat Trump in Dane County in 2016 by 47 points, and Trump won the state by less than one point.
It’s a point former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson said he made to Trump. In remarks to the crowd before Trump arrived, Thompson said the former president should “go where the opposition is.”
“And, the retort was, ‘Isn’t Madison very liberal?’” Thompson said. “Yes, but Dane County has the third-most Republican votes in the state of Wisconsin, and all we have to do is increase them.”
Democratic presidential candidates have long come to Dane County to hold massive rallies to fire up the base. Harris campaigned there on September 20, holding a rally in Madison that attracted more than 10,000 people.
Waunakee, which bills itself as the “only Waunakee in the world,” is slightly more Republican than the county as a whole. In 2020, Trump got 36% of the vote there compared to less than 23% countywide.
Hurricane damage creates uncertainty about how voters will cast ballots in swing state
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — North Carolina election officials say they will do everything in their power to ensure that voters in the crucial presidential swing state will be able to cast their ballots despite the devastation of Hurricane Helene and the destruction of basic infrastructure only about a month before the November election.
Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the state’s election board, said Tuesday that 12 county election offices in the hard-hit western part of the state remain closed after the storm unleashed “unprecedented” damage. Absentee ballots, some of which already have been mailed to voters who requested them, also face obstacles, from U.S. Postal Service delays to road and residential damage that could render them undeliverable. The viability of early and Election Day voting sites remains unknown, she said.
She described the storm as causing a “daunting” level of uncertainty, with early in-person voting scheduled to start in just over two weeks, on October 17. Still, she said the state is prepared to help voters navigate the emergency.
“We’ve battled through hurricanes and tropical storms and still held safe and secure elections, and we will do everything in our power to do so again,” Brinson Bell told reporters during a media call. “Mountain people are strong, and the election people who serve them are resilient and tough, too.”
Helene, which battered large swaths of the Southeast late last week with torrential rain and strong winds and massive storm surges along the Gulf Coast, caused devastation “beyond belief” in the popular mountain city of Asheville and other parts of western North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper said during a media briefing Tuesday.
“This disaster is unlike anything our state has ever experienced,” he said.
The level of destruction could have far-reaching implications beyond the immediate damage to the flooded communities, especially if it has any impact on voting. North Carolina is among seven swing states being hotly contested by Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Trump barely defeated Democrat Joe Biden in the state four years ago, winning by about 74,500 votes out of 5.5 million cast.
Asheville is the most populous city in the 25-county region under a disaster declaration and sits in the one county — Buncombe — where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans. Michael Bitzer, a politics professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, said the disaster area includes “significant blue dots in a very red sea,” making it difficult to predict how the storm might affect voter turnout and election results.
On Tuesday, emergency workers were still engaged in rescue efforts across the broad swath of the Southeastern U.S. that bore the brunt of the storm. Election officials in Florida, Tennessee and Georgia were assessing the damage and the potential impacts to mail balloting, early voting and Election Day operations.
Georgia election workers have returned to work even as some offices face power outages, limited internet and infrastructure damage. Absentee ballots are scheduled to go out on October 7 as planned, said Robert Sinners, communications director for Georgia’s secretary of state.
In Tennessee, two county election offices had water damage, and at least six polling locations in the northeastern part of the state have been damaged or are inaccessible, said Doug Kufner, spokesman for the secretary of state’s office.
North Carolina officials said they are considering moving or combining voting locations if some are unusable or inaccessible.
More urgently, state officials are offering guidance and some special accommodations for absentee voters, who may not receive their ballots because of evacuations, suspended Postal Service operations or residential mailboxes swept away in the storm.
Paul Cox, general counsel for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said displaced voters can contact their county election office to request that their absentee ballot be spoiled and sent to a different location.
Those voters also have the option of waiting to cast a ballot in person, either during the early voting period of October 17 to November 2 or on Election Day, November 5, Cox said. State law requires all voters to show voter ID, but those who are from a county under a disaster declaration and have lost their ID can fill out an exception form so they can cast a ballot.
Officials are still weighing whether to take further steps to accommodate voters, such as extending the absentee ballot deadline or allowing more people to cast ballots through an online portal already used by military, overseas and visually impaired voters, Brinson Bell said.
Some of the county boards whose offices remain closed or are dealing with outages have been given special emergency kits from the state, which were initially intended for use in case of a ransomware attack, Brinson Bell said. The kits are equipped with laptops, cellphones, Wi-Fi hotspots and other essentials to allow election operations to continue even without power, phone or internet service.
Kelly Godfrey, who has lived in Asheville for more than three years, is one of the few voters who returned their absentee ballot before the storm hit. In Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, nearly 9,990 voters had requested absentee ballots as of Tuesday — 85% of them Democrats or voters who are not affiliated with any party, according to Associated Press election research. Only about 170 had been returned.
Godfrey said she hopes rules and procedures will be adjusted to make it easier for voters who were displaced by the storm. But she also worries that any changes could lead to misinformation and false claims of voter fraud after the election.
“It’s going to be spun a lot of different ways,” she said.
For now, though, voting feels “so far out in the distance,” Godfrey said. “Right now, people are thinking food and water.”
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I asked ChatGPT to explain positioning as covered by Ries and Trout books. I read their books in the 80s, made a big difference in my career.
https://chatgpt.com/c/66fc80a3-b394-8012-85eb-dedc6400d68b
Lilbits: Pixel 9a pictures and Apple’s smart display plans leaked, Thunderbird for Android Beta is here, and Adobe adds AI to its entry-level photo and video apps
date: 2024-10-01, from: Liliputing
Google’s next mid-range phone could look a little different. Adobe is bringing AI features to its entry-level versions of Photoshop and Premiere. Apple may be planning to launch two smart displays. And the first public beta of the new Thunderbird email app for Android is here… although it’s really just a Thunderbird-branded version of an […]
The post Lilbits: Pixel 9a pictures and Apple’s smart display plans leaked, Thunderbird for Android Beta is here, and Adobe adds AI to its entry-level photo and video apps appeared first on Liliputing.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
My linkblog feed, the same items I crosspost to Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, WordPress, Twitter. Works wherever RSS 2.0 is supported.
http://data.feedland.org/feeds/davewiner.xml
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Had a long phone talk with Doc today about crossposting and textcasting and other topics.
https://doc.searls.com/2024/10/01/2024_10_01-postings/
US press freedom under unprecedented pressure, report finds
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
washington — As a tight presidential election looms in the United States, journalist safety in the home of the First Amendment is no longer guaranteed, according to a report published Tuesday.
Journalists in the United States are facing a slew of threats, including attacks by police, online harassment, violence and legal challenges, according to the report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The report primarily analyzes developments since 2020.
“There was a hope at the beginning of the Biden administration that things would get better for journalists. And what we’ve seen, actually, is that things haven’t really gotten better. They’ve stayed the same or worsened in some situations,” Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S., Canada and Caribbean program coordinator, told VOA.
The numbers paint a concerning picture. As of September 2024, assaults on journalists in the United States in relation to their work have risen by more than 50% compared to last year — from 45 to 68 assaults — according to data from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
‘Enemies of the people’
Even though former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, the report points to his legacy as a driving factor behind the hostile environment continuing to face journalists around the country.
During Trump’s presidency, he regularly referred to journalists as “corrupt,” “dishonest” and “enemies of the people.” Those kinds of attacks took place — and continue to take place — within the context of record-low trust in the media in the United States, according to a 2023 Gallup poll.
“Donald Trump’s treatment of the media still matters because it’s very much still an issue,” said Jacobsen, who authored the report. “It’s a really effective political tactic for changing the narrative and undermining the credibility of the media.”
Trump’s administration also escalated prosecution of news sources, interfered in the business of media owners, and harassed journalists crossing U.S. borders, according to a 2020 CPJ report.
Trump’s office and presidential campaign did not immediately reply to VOA’s emails requesting comment for this story. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, also did not immediately reply to VOA’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, CPJ reached out to both the Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns, asking them to sign the organization’s pledge to affirm their support for press freedom. Trump’s campaign did not reply, and Harris’ campaign acknowledged receipt but did not sign the pledge.
Consequences continue
Trump hasn’t been in office for nearly four years, but his tenure in the White House continues to have consequences for journalists in the United States, according to Jacobsen.
“If Donald Trump’s anti-media rhetoric did not find resonance among the broader American public, then we wouldn’t even be talking about it,” Jacobsen said.
President Joe Biden’s administration has been markedly friendlier to the press, according to the report, but Jacobsen said that hasn’t translated to an improved media environment around the country.
A top threat facing journalists is violence, which has steadily increased against the media over the past decade in the United States, the report said.
Among the most prominent recent cases is the 2022 killing of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German, who was found stabbed to death outside his home. Robert Telles, a former local Nevada official, was found guilty of murdering German in late August.
Although journalist killings are rare in the United States, they can have a chilling effect on the media community, according to Jacobsen. Reporters told CPJ that hostility toward journalists makes them feel less safe working in their home environments.
“The killing of journalists, especially local journalists where the reporters are working in the community, going to the same grocery stores as the people that they’re writing about, creates this sense that nowhere is safe,” Jacobsen said.
Incidents involving police are another issue for journalists.
In a recent case, Chicago police arrested three photojournalists while they covered a pro-Palestinian protest during the Democratic National Convention in August.
And four years ago, at least 459 journalists were assaulted while covering the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, including at least 273 cases in which police targeted journalists, according to the Tracker.
“The press serves as the public’s eyes and ears, and if the press is removed completely from the scene, the public’s blind to what’s happening on the ground,” Gabe Rottman, a senior attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in the CPJ report.
Physical threats against journalists are exacerbated by online harassment against them, according to the report. A 2022 survey by Pew Research Center found that one-third of journalists surveyed reported being harassed on social media in the previous year.
With the election just over a month away, Jacobsen said it’s also important to remember the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on the Capitol in Washington.
Journalists were among the targets during the riots, with at least 18 journalists assaulted that day, according to the Tracker. But there hasn’t been much accountability in those cases, according to Jacobsen, and large swaths of the American public still don’t agree on what happened that day.
Some journalists who were present during the insurrection say grappling with the subsequent trauma has been difficult, according to the report.
“I really do think that January 6th was a warning shot,” Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, a freelance photojournalist who was on assignment at the Capitol during the riots, said in the CPJ report. “It was a wake-up call to the fragility of our democracy and trust in institutions — like journalism, like the government — that’s been eroding for a very long time.”
Jacobsen said she’s worried about ramifications for the media landscape if the results of the presidential election are contested. Trump has previously said that Democrats will cheat in the election and suggested that any election in which he does not win is likely to be fraudulent.
“It’s really important for journalists across the country to prepare themselves for the worst-case scenario and hope for the best,” Jacobsen said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-press-freedom-under-unprecedented-pressure-report-finds/7806682.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I wish the various networks that broadcast Mets games would standardize on the scorebox position and layout. It’s another example of bigco’s who aren’t customer focused.
https://mastodon.social/@davew/113234400277412070
The Most At-Risk Projects of the Energy Transition
date: 2024-10-01, from: Heatmap News
https://heatmap.news/risk-index
Former US ‘China House’ official: Taiwan conflict not inevitable
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
Washington — China has been one of the most-discussed international topics during the U.S. presidential campaign.
VOA spoke with Rick Waters, former head of the Office of China Coordination at the State Department and deputy assistant secretary of state for China and Taiwan, about the Biden administration’s China policy.
Waters spoke about his experience dealing with his Chinese counterparts, and how he thinks Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump would handle China, if elected.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
VOA: How do you evaluate the progress made in U.S.-China relations after U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in California last year, and do you see real, meaningful results coming from the meeting?
Rick Waters: I think we have to look at this Woodside summit as the culmination of a number of things that happened in the administration.
The first is that for the first period, Biden was focused on rebuilding the U.S. domestic strength and reinvigorating partnerships and alliances globally, and then from that position, dealing with China from a position of relative strength. So during that first two-year period, the U.S. China relationship was, in some ways, arguably, not the priority. It was important, but it was managed largely through leader level diplomacy, which, in China’s current political configuration is the most important channel.
And then we know what happened in 2022 circumstances around the visit of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi [to Taiwan] led to a downward spiral, and Biden and Xi made an initial effort to stabilize relations that fall at their summit in Bali, but it only made it a few months, and then the surveillance balloon knocked things sideways again.
So, I think what we have now is a little bit more stable floor built around the leader level channels, a few modest areas where there is some common work underway, and a web of senior, empowered channels at the Cabinet level, including Jake Sullivan, who try to manage conflict and competition rather within bounds, within guardrails, to avoid the scenario of unmitigated downward spiral we saw in 2022.
VOA: Do you think a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is inevitable, or what should the U.S. do to deter that invasion?
Waters: I don’t think that conflict is inevitable, and I think at its core the U.S.’s interest is peace and stability. That’s what’s anchored the prosperity in the Indo-Pacific over the past couple of decades. The ability for commerce, for trade, for people-to-people flows regionally to thrive in an environment where there is no war.
And so, I think if we take that as our starting point, I don’t think that conflict is inevitable, but I do think that the U.S. and Taiwan are focused very much on the question of how to ensure that the leadership in Beijing never believe they have a viable military option and an acceptable cost. And if that condition holds, then I think it will fall to the diplomats and to the channels that exist between the parties to manage this issue carefully.
VOA: During your career as a U.S. diplomat, what’s your experience dealing with your Chinese counterparts? What are some striking and most challenging aspects or moments that left an impression on you?
Waters: I’ve been fortunate to deal with Chinese diplomats for the better part of 30 years. And what I will say is irrespective of what you think of China’s policy or political system, they do have a very professional diplomatic corps. They’ve got very talented people in the system. What I think has changed over the past few decades is it’s a much more disciplined system. So, it’s very difficult, especially in official meetings, for Chinese diplomats to move too far off of the established line.
So, I don’t think that we should misunderstand the level of talent in the system when we look at it through its structural constraints. But I do think that as China’s overall foreign policy has become more assertive, as you know, the leadership has talked about China playing a greater role on the international stage. It has gone through periods where the wolf warriorism, the change in tone from the podium, has characterized a different era of Chinese diplomacy than what we saw before.
But I actually think, in some ways, there are plenty in the system who understand the counterproductive nature of those tactics, and I’ve seen a little bit of a tactical recalibration over recent years in how they express their foreign policy views publicly.
VOA: In this election season, the Biden administration’s China policy has often been criticized by the Republican campaign for being too weak. What is your take on that?
Waters: We’re in an election campaign, so obviously you’re never going to hear anyone say that someone’s policy is too tough. I think that the honest reality is that this election is not really, in my view, about China. It’s about other issues. China is present, but if you look at how much it’s featured in the speeches at the Republican and Democratic conventions, there are issues related to China that are important, but I think we have to maintain that perspective.
Second, I think that the issues that, in my view, matter most to voters center around trade and a perception of unfairness, a lack of reciprocity, and fentanyl, which for a number of years is a problem that has had a direct relationship to the producers of these precursor chemicals in China, and so I think those types of issues do matter on the margins, but they’re not central to U.S. voters, particularly in the swing states that will decide this election.
VOA: For the observers in China who are looking at this election, how is Harris’ China policy going to be different than President Biden’s, and what awaits China if Trump regains power?
Waters: I think how this is playing in China is a very different story. But I think what we have to say at this point is that we’re in the midst of a campaign. So, to be fair to both candidates, what we should judge is, once they form their Cabinets next spring, how will they translate political positions into new policy? I think Harris’s team has expressed a general view that her policy will be consistent with Biden’s. The Trump team and President Trump himself have talked about aspects of the relationship, particularly trade, where they feel that things are out of balance.
VOA: Biden and Xi are likely to meet and sit down again later this year. So, what are the prospects and expectations for this meeting?
Waters: It’ll be a critical moment, because this meeting — which will be either on the margins of the G20 [Group of 20 largest economies] summit in Brazil [November 18-19], or the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] summit in Lima, Peru [November 10-16], depending on where it takes place — these meetings on the margins of summits are consequential during a presidential transition. I think they can use it as a chance to help bridge between the two administrations. That will be easier if it’s a Biden-to-Harris transition, because Democrat-to-Democrat is more likely to be able to talk about how the bridging will work. But if it’s, you know, Biden-to-Trump, I still think it’s consequential.
President Biden can give his advice about how to avoid returning to the events of 2022 [and] how they can reflect on the lessons of what has been achieved since the Woodside [California] Summit [in November 2023]. And I think you probably go into it with fairly modest expectations.
https://www.voanews.com/a/former-us-china-house-official-taiwan-conflict-not-inevitable/7806723.html
Newsom Vetoes Farmworker Heat Safety Bill as State Enforcement Has Fallen
date: 2024-10-01, from: Capital and Main
The bill would have made it easier to file heat-related workers’ compensation. A Capital & Main investigation found field safety inspections fell 30% in seven years.
The post Newsom Vetoes Farmworker Heat Safety Bill as State Enforcement Has Fallen appeared first on .
https://capitalandmain.com/newsom-vetoes-farmworker-heat-safety-bill-as-state-enforcement-has-fallen
Motorola launches ThinkPhone25 as a durable, mid-range phone for business customers
date: 2024-10-01, from: Liliputing
Lenovo acquired IBM’s PC business in 2005. Nine years later the company bought Motorola’s smartphones business from Google. And in 2023 the company brought its two brands together to launch the Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola, a $700 smartphone with a ThinkPad-inspired design and a few business-friendly security features. Now the company has introduced a new […]
The post Motorola launches ThinkPhone25 as a durable, mid-range phone for business customers appeared first on Liliputing.
Geologists Reveal a Surprising Reason Why Mount Everest Grows Taller Each Year
date: 2024-10-01, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Earth’s highest peak has gained as much as an extra 165 feet in elevation as the planet’s crust adjusts due to erosion from a river, according to a new study
NASA Announces Selections for Lunar Comms, Network Studies
date: 2024-10-01, from: NASA breaking news
NASA has selected Intuitive Machines of Houston and Aalyria Technologies Inc. of Livermore, California, to perform capability studies with the goal of advancing space communications and exploration technologies. These studies will allow NASA to gain insights into industry capabilities and innovations to facilitate NASA partnerships with commercial communications and navigation providers. The awards, under the […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-announces-selections-for-lunar-comms-network-studies/
US govt hiding top hurricane forecast model sparks outrage after deadly Helene
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Taxpayer-funded data locked behind insurance firm’s paywall
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cannot reveal weather forecasts from a particularly accurate hurricane prediction model to the public that pays for the American government agency – because of a deal with a private insurance risk firm.…
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Introducing User Magazine by Taylor Lorenz.
https://www.usermag.co/p/introducing-user-magazine
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Cross-posting is here now. I am not surprised Croissant is getting such a positive reception.
http://scripting.com/2024/10/01/192207.html
John Amos, patriarch on ‘Good Times’ and Emmy nominee for blockbuster ‘Roots,’ dies at 84
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
LOS ANGELES — American actor John Amos, who starred as the family patriarch on the hit 1970’s sitcom Good Times and earned an Emmy nomination for his role in the seminal 1977 miniseries Roots, has died. He was 84.
Amos’ publicist, Belinda Foster, confirmed the news of his death Tuesday. No other details were immediately available.
He played James Evans Sr. on Good Times, which featured one of television’s first Black two-parent families. Produced by Norman Lear and co-created by actor Mike Evans, who co-starred on All in the Family and The Jeffersons, it ran from 1974-79 on CBS.
“That show was the closest depiction in reality to life as an African American family living in those circumstances as it could be,” Amos told Time magazine in 2021.
His character, along with wife Florida, played by Esther Rolle, originated on another Lear show, Maude. James Evans often worked two manual labor jobs to support his family that included three children, with Jimmie Walker becoming a breakout star as oldest son J.J.
Such was the show’s impact that Alicia Keys, Rick Ross, the Wu-Tang Clan are among the musicians who name-checked Amos or his character in their lyrics.
Amos and Rolle were eager to portray a positive image of a Black family, struggling against the odds in a public housing project in Chicago. But they grew frustrated at seeing Walker’s character being made foolish and his role expanded.
“The fact is that Esther’s criticism, and also that of John and others — some of it very pointed and personal — seriously damaged my appeal in the Black community,” Walker wrote in his 2012 memoir Dyn-O-Mite! Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times.
After three seasons of critical acclaim and high ratings, Amos was fired. He had become critical of the show’s white writing staff creating storylines that he felt were inauthentic to the Black characters.
“There were several examples where I said, ‘No, you don’t do these things. It’s anathema to Black society. I’ll be the expert on that, if you don’t mind,’” he told Time magazine. “And it got confrontational and heated enough that ultimately my being killed off the show was the best solution for everybody concerned, myself included.”
Amos’ character was killed in a car accident. Walker lamented the situation. “If the decision had been up to me, I would have preferred that John stay and the show remain more of an ensemble,” he wrote in his memoir. “Nobody wanted me up front all the time, including me.”
Amos and Lear later reconciled and they shared a hug at a Good Times live TV reunion special in 2019.
Amos quickly bounced back, landing the role of an adult Kunta Kinte, the centerpiece of Roots, based on Alex Haley’s novel set during and after the era of slavery in the U.S. The miniseries was a critical and ratings blockbuster, and Amos earned one of its 37 Emmy nominations.
“I knew that it was a life-changing role for me, as an actor and just from a humanistic standpoint,” he told Time magazine. “It was the culmination of all of the misconceptions and stereotypical roles that I had lived and seen being offered to me. It was like a reward for having suffered those indignities.”
Early years
Born John Allen Amos Jr. on Dec. 27, 1939, in Newark, New Jersey, he was the son of an auto mechanic. He graduated from Colorado State University with a sociology degree and played on the school’s football team.
Before pursuing acting, he moved to New York and was a social worker at the Vera Institute of Justice, working with defendants at the Brooklyn House of Detention.
He had a brief professional football career, playing in various minor leagues. He signed a free-agent contract in 1967 with the Kansas City Chiefs, but coach Hank Stram encouraged Amos to pursue his interest in writing instead. He had jobs as an advertising and comedy writer before moving in front of the camera.
Amos’ first major TV role was as Gordy Howard, the weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970-73. As the show’s only Black character, he played straight man to bombastic anchor Ted Baxter.
Among Amos’ film credits were Let’s Do It Again with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier, Coming to America with Eddie Murphy and its 2021 sequel, Die Hard 2, Madea’s Witness Protection and Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler. He was in Ice Cube and Dr. Dre’s 1994 video “Natural Born Killaz.”
He was a frequent guest star on The West Wing, and his other TV appearances included Hunter, The District, Men in Trees, All About the Andersons, Two and a Half Men, and The Ranch.
In 2020, Amos was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. He served in the New Jersey National Guard.
Cruise fined $1.5M for failing to report right away its robo-car dragged a pedestrian
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Code-controlled taxi biz tiptoes back with supervised driving in Phoenix and Dallas
Embattled driverless taxi outfit Cruise has been fined $1.5 million for leaving some essential details out of its initial reports to the US government about an accident involving one of its robo-vehicles and a pedestrian last year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/cruise_fined_nhtsa/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I asked ChatGPT what is textcasting?
https://chatgpt.com/c/66fc4a52-b468-8012-92ac-7f6341d2165a
Astrophysicist Gioia Rau Explores Cosmic ‘Time Machines’
date: 2024-10-01, from: NASA breaking news
To shape NASA’s path of exploration forward, Dr. Gioia Rau unravels stars and worlds beyond our solar system. Name: Dr. Gioia RauTitle: AstrophysicistOrganization: Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory, Astrophysics Division, Science Mission Directorate (Code 667) What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? I’m an astrophysicist who studies […]
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The New York Times is putting Ezra Klein’s podcast archives behind a paywall.
https://doc.searls.com/2024/10/01/podcasts-wallcasts-and-paycasts/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
If you let enough people congregate in the same space some issues will inevitably arise. Grifters are gonna grift, scammers will try to scam, hustlers will hustle, influencers are gonna try to influence, and business people will try to monetise everything.
https://manuelmoreale.com/on-personal-websites-and-social-web
This Green-Flashing Firefly Could Become the First Ever Listed as Endangered in the U.S.
date: 2024-10-01, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The Fish and Wildlife Service will consider granting federal protections to the Bethany Beach firefly, which is rapidly losing its coastal habitat to development and climate change
Hurricane Helene and Messages via Satellite
date: 2024-10-01, from: Michael Tsai
Ryan Christoffel: Hurricane Helene has caused massive damage and taken over 100 lives across several US states. Many thousands of people are without power and/or cell service. But in the wake of the storm, reports have surfaced about a key iOS 18 feature that has been a lifeline for survivors: Messages via satellite. […] To […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/10/01/hurricane-helene-and-messages-via-satellite/
Swift Concurrency and Objective-C
date: 2024-10-01, from: Michael Tsai
Paul Haddad: Anyone know why calling the following in a MainActor class/func MyTest.increment(1) { result in NSLog(“result=(result)”) } crashes (asserts) when building with Swift 6? I get that its not happy that the completion is coming in on another dispatch_queue but it should complain about it at compile time, or ignore it at run time. […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/10/01/swift-concurrency-and-objective-c/
Epic’s Document Request and Apple’s Injunction Challenge
date: 2024-10-01, from: Michael Tsai
Anthony Ha (Hacker News): Apple faces a looming deadline to produce what it says are more than 1 million documents related to recent App Store changes.On Friday, Judge Thomas S. Hixson denied the company’s attempt to extend that deadline, describing the request as “bad behavior.” So Apple’s deadline is still Monday, September 30: “It’s up […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/10/01/epics-document-request-and-apples-injunction-challenge/
Sequoia’s Warning When Turning Off Bluetooth
date: 2024-10-01, from: Michael Tsai
Jeff Johnson (Mastodon, Hacker News): Does this prompt appear monthly? No, that would be far too convenient. So how often? Every. Single. Time. You. Try. To. Disable. Bluetooth.Have I mentioned that Apple re-enables Bluetooth on every OS update on purpose? This behavior continues with macOS 15. Also, Bluetooth is notorious for security vulnerabilities; just google […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/10/01/sequoias-warning-when-turning-off-bluetooth/
Uncle Sam loans $1.5B to reignite Michigan nuclear plant in 2025
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Up and atom!
The Biden administration has announced plans to reignite a shuttered Michigan nuclear power plant with a $1.5 billion loan that, combined with other nuclear announcements yesterday, suggests the US federal government is right now all in on nuclear energy.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/doe_loans_michigan_nuclear_power/
Men Harassed A Woman In A Driverless Waymo, Trapping Her In Traffic
date: 2024-10-01, from: 404 Media Group
Two men stood in front of the autonomous vehicle, operated by ride-hailing company Waymo, and literally tipped a fedora at her while she told them to move out of the way.
https://www.404media.co/men-harassed-a-woman-in-a-driverless-waymo/
Daily Deals (10-01-2024)
date: 2024-10-01, from: Liliputing
Amazon’s first pair of Echo Buds launched in 2019 as a $130 set of true-wireless earbuds that featured Bose active noise reduction, but lacked support for active noise cancellation. Two years later the company released a 2nd-gen set of Echo Buds that cost less, at $100, but offered active noise cancellation. But the company took […]
The post Daily Deals (10-01-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/daily-deals-10-01-2024/
Ancient Statues Recently Returned to Yemen Are Now on Loan at the Met
date: 2024-10-01, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The long-term loan is the latest agreement Yemen has made with a museum in order to protect its cultural heritage amid ongoing civil war
The AI Playbook: What Other Sectors Can Learn from the Creative Industry’s Fight Against AI
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: RAND blog
The 2023 Writer’s Guild of America strike and contract offers a potentially important case study for how AI can be navigated by workers and industry leaders, even before any threat to jobs is imminent.
Euro cops arrest 4 including suspected LockBit dev chilling on holiday
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And what looks like proof stolen data was never deleted even after ransom paid
Building on the success of what’s known around here as LockBit Leak Week in February, the authorities say they’ve arrested a further four individuals with ties to the now-scuppered LockBit ransomware empire.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/euro_cops_arrest_four_mystery/
Windows 11 24H2 brings WiFi, Bluetooth, and security updates and Copilot+ features that actually seem useful
date: 2024-10-01, from: Liliputing
Microsoft is beginning a phased rollout of the Windows 11 2024 update, also known a Windows 11 24H2, bringing new features to most PCs running the company’s desktop operating system. There’s built-in support for WiFi 7, new Bluetooth LE Audio features for assistive hearing devices, system tray, taskbar, and File Explorer improvements, and more. But […]
The post Windows 11 24H2 brings WiFi, Bluetooth, and security updates and Copilot+ features that actually seem useful appeared first on Liliputing.
Sorry, GenAI is NOT going to 10x computer programming
date: 2024-10-01, from: Gary Marcus blog
Here’s Why
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/sorry-genai-is-not-going-to-10x-computer
See a Newly Uncovered Throne Room in Peru That May Have Belonged to an Ancient Queen
date: 2024-10-01, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Built by the Moche people in the seventh century, the stunningly painted space shows signs of heavy use, including an eroded throne and traces of human hair
Got an idea for dealing with space waste? NASA wants to hear from you
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Using a nearby crater as a landfill is not a sustainable way to live on the Moon
NASA has launched a $3 million prize challenge for innovators with solutions for waste on the Moon and deep space habitats.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/nasa_space_waste_competition/
California Home Care Workers Seek Greater Bargaining Power
date: 2024-10-01, from: Capital and Main
To achieve consistent pay and benefits, IHSS workers seek to negotiate directly with the state instead of with 58 individual counties.
The post California Home Care Workers Seek Greater Bargaining Power appeared first on .
https://capitalandmain.com/california-home-care-workers-seek-greater-bargaining-power
Before the Hatch Act
date: 2024-10-01, from: National Archives, Text Message blog
All U.S. Government employees are, or should be, familiar with the provisions of the Hatch Act. Enacted in 1939, and amended several times since, the Hatch Act (formally titled “AN ACT To prevent pernicious political activities”) limits certain political activities of federal employees. The law was enacted to ensure that federal programs are administered in a … Continue reading Before the Hatch Act
https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2024/10/01/before-the-hatch-act/
US sanctions West Bank settler group for violence against Palestinians
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on Hilltop Youth, a group of extremist settlers in the Israeli -occupied West Bank who attack Palestinians and their property.
In addition, the State Department placed diplomatic sanctions on two men — Israeli settler Eitan Yardeni, for his connection to violence targeting West Bank civilians, and Avichai Suissa, the leader of Hashomer Yosh, a sanctioned group that brings young volunteers to settler farms across the territory, including small farming outposts that rights groups say are the primary drivers of settler violence across the territory.
The sanctions, which expose people to asset freezes and travel and visa bans, come as violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has exploded since the start of the Israel-Hamas war following the deadly terrorist attacks of October 7.
Palestinians report verbal and physical harassment and restriction of movement, and they face intimidation by settlers circling their properties on motorbikes, cars or horses and spying via drones.
The Treasury Department said Hilltop Youth has carried out killings and mass arson, while rights groups and Palestinians say the group is behind “price tag” attacks — attacks on Palestinian villages in retaliation for perceived efforts to hamper settlement construction.
The group may prove difficult to effectively sanction, as it is loosely organized and decentralized. In addition, Israel’s finance minister has previously vowed to intervene on sanctioned settlers’ behalf.
In the past, sanctioned settlers said that the measures had little impact on their finances.
Hilltop Youth has already faced sanctions from the EU and U.K.
The Biden administration has been criticized for imposing relatively few sanctions on Israeli extremists. According to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, 27 extremists and entities have been sanctioned by the U.S. under President Joe Biden ’s February 2024 Executive Order related to maintaining West Bank stability.
Treasury Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith said that the U.S. “will continue to hold accountable the individuals, groups and organizations that facilitate these hateful and destabilizing acts.”
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “The actions of these individuals have contributed to creating an environment where violence and instability thrive. Their actions, collectively and individually, undermine peace, security and stability in the West Bank.”
Evil Corp’s deep ties with Russia and NATO member attacks exposed
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ransomware criminals believed to have taken orders from intel services
The relationship between infamous cybercrime outfit Evil Corp and the Russian state is thought to be extraordinarily close, so close that intelligence officials allegedly ordered the criminals to carry out cyberattacks on NATO members.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/evil_corp_russia_relationship/
Three-time Spacewalker Josh Cassada to Retire from NASA
date: 2024-10-01, from: NASA breaking news
Oct. 1, 2024 Three-time Spacewalker Josh Cassada to Retire from NASA NASA astronaut Josh Cassada retired Oct. 1, after 11 years of service to the agency across multiple programs, including 157 days in space and three spacewalks. Cassada also is a retired United States Navy captain and naval aviator with more than two decades of […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/three-time-spacewalker-josh-cassada-to-retire-from-nasa/
Pakistan Is Only the Beginning of the Cheap Solar Revolution
date: 2024-10-01, from: Heatmap News
Pakistan has long had a severely troubled economy, and a central part of the problem is its electric grid. Much of it was constructed back in the 1960s and has not been maintained or updated regularly. In the 1990s, the government enticed foreign companies (mostly from China, ironically, in light of current events) to build more power plants by promising to subsidize them even if they were not running at full capacity. But it did not invest sufficiently in transmission capacity, leading to inflated electric bills to pay for idle plants while power went undelivered. Conditions on a recent loan from the International Monetary Fund and rising fuel prices led to even further increases.
As a result, despite electricity that now costs 23 cents per kilowatt-hour — or close to twice the U.S. average in a country less than one-tenth as rich per person, where half the population subsists on $4 per day or less — rolling blackouts are common, and even the occasional country-wide grid collapse, as happened in January 2023. The power bill costs more than rent for some Pakistanis, and about anyone who can afford it has a diesel generator backup. A recent report from the Pakistan Credit Rating Agency estimated that the country’s coal consumption would double by 2030, in line with the government’s strategy to reduce fuel imports by boosting domestic production.
But things are changing, and fast. Pakistan imported a whopping 13 gigawatts of solar panels, mostly from China, in just the first half of 2024, mostly for rooftop installations for homes and businesses. That’s a mind-boggling amount of new solar for a country that only had about 50 gigawatts of installed generation capacity in total in 2023.
In the short term, solar imports are likely to cause some problems, particularly for the poorest Pakistanis. But past that, things might get a lot better.
As the Financial Times reports, the solar boom is leading to slashed utility payments, further threatening the rickety and debt-laden grid system. Poorer Pakistanis who can’t afford to buy panels are increasingly left holding the ever-more-expensive bag. Many will likely refuse to pay their power bill or simply not be able to afford to. Some provinces have resorted to handing out panels for free to poor folks. If I had to guess, I would imagine sooner or later the extant utility system will go bankrupt, and most or all of Pakistan’s investment in fossil-fuel generation will be written off. That will no doubt cause all manner of painful and lingering side effects.
But there is a promising potential future visible, should Pakistan manage to get clear of its entanglement with fossil fuel power. As noted above, for decades it has been trapped in a sandpit of underinvestment, policy mistakes, corruption, economic chaos, and austerity. The government couldn’t get it together to build and maintain a traditional power grid, leading to slanted foreign investments and IMF bailouts with stringent conditions, leading in turn to eye-watering prices for unreliable power. Meanwhile, economic problems caused in part by unreliable electricity fueled inflation and a collapsing currency that drastically increased the price of imports.
Fuel imports are one of the largest expenses for even prosperous countries. For places like Pakistan, they are a punishing economic drain. Paying for vast amounts of imported coal, gas, and oil in scarce foreign currency is hard enough in good times, but it’s disastrous when one’s currency has depreciated by about 40% over two years.
Dirt cheap solar power could ameliorate or solve many of these problems at a stroke. Panels are now so cheap, even Pakistan can afford to import them by the millions — an expense, yes, but a one-time one. And while solar is inherently intermittent, and therefore not a solution to Pakistan’s reliability problems, batteries are also plummeting in price — down about 90% between 2010 and 2023 — and can help balance out supply. Cheaper batteries also mean cheaper EVs, with (as usual) Chinese models coming out at bewilderingly low prices. And because Pakistanis mostly drive motorcycles (often manufactured domestically) over relatively short distances, electrifying the personal vehicle fleet there will be far cheaper than in America or Europe; vastly smaller batteries require vastly simpler charging infrastructure.
If all goes well, this will free up vast amounts of economic capacity for Pakistan to invest in domestic development. Businesses will have stable, reliable power supplies that will justify more investment. Households will be able to upgrade their insulation, install heat pumps, and generally spend more on things other than energy. The government will be able to upgrade legacy transmission lines to accommodate solar production from the remaining hydro and nuclear plants.
Finally, of course, there is the climate benefit. Pakistan is one of the countries most threatened by climate change. Summer heat waves are bad and getting worse, to the point where murderous wet bulb events are increasingly likely. Catastrophic warming-fueled storms in 2022 caused the worst flooding in the country’s history, inundating about a third of Pakistan’s land area, killing nearly 2,000 people and causing billions of dollars in damages.
In short, a path to economic development will be opened. It is by no means guaranteed, but it will be a heck of a lot easier than trying to dig out from under the debt mountain of the collapsing coal-powered system. Look around the developing world and you’ll find there are a great many nations in similar situations.
Ethiopia, for instance, has abundant solar and hydro potential, but much of its rural population is not connected to the grid. Researchers there expect both grid-connected and off-grid solar projects to proliferate over the next five years, and modest government subsidies have already catalyzed a rapid switch to electric vehicles. On the other side of the continent, solar installations in the region are projected to grow at a compound annual rate of about 30% through 2030. In Nicaragua, which has historically generated much of its power from imported oil, both rooftop solar and utility-scale solar are increasing, with President Daniel Ortega signing an agreement with a Chinese firm for a major new project earlier this year.
Developing nations still face innumerable obstacles, from unfavorable trade deals to political instability to corruption. But for many, dependence on imported carbon fuels and their wildly gyrating prices has been a shackle on their economies. Those that can shake it off will find it much easier to climb up the development ladder.
https://heatmap.news/economy/pakistan-solar
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 Concludes Space Station Scientific Mission
date: 2024-10-01, from: NASA breaking news
NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin are returning to Earth after months aboard the International Space Station conducting scientific experiments and technology demonstrations for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission. The four launched on March 3 aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. […]
The “Megalopolis” flop and Hollywood’s reluctance to take risks
date: 2024-10-01, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s latest work flopped at the box office over the weekend. Coppola self-funded the film, “Megalopolis,” to the tune of $120 million. Yet it made just $4 million in its opening weekend. It’s the latest original film — one that’s not a sequel or remake — to struggle to attract audiences to the theater. Then, remittances to India top $100 billion a year.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I haven't tried this, but this is how we get around ActivityPub, with cross-posting. It doesn't matter what protocol you implement as long as you have a reasonable API. With some money they could and should at Twitter to this. Still reallllly popular. And Bluesky – increase your character limit.
https://www.threads.net/@benricem/post/DAlYcVHItlC
After 3 years, Windows 11 has more than half Windows 10’s market share
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Microsoft’s latest OS is performing dismally compared to predecessors
Windows 11 has finally reached more than half of Windows 10’s market share, with just over a year before support for Windows 10 ends.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/windows_11_market_share/
Hidden ‘BopSpotter’ Microphone Is Constantly Surveilling San Francisco for Good Music
date: 2024-10-01, from: 404 Media Group
“This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it’s not about catching criminals. It’s about catching vibes.”
NCA unmasks man it suspects is both ‘Evil Corp kingpin’ and LockBit affiliate
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Aleksandr Ryzhenkov alleged to have extorted around $100M from victims, built 60 LockBit attacks
The latest installment of the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) series of ransomware revelations from February’s LockBit Leak Week emerges today as the agency identifies a man it not only believes is a member of the long-running Evil Corp crime group but also a LockBit affiliate.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/nca_names_alleged_evil_corp_kingpin/
Nintendo Switches Things Up With a New Museum That Embraces Nostalgia and Celebrates Gaming History
date: 2024-10-01, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The Kyoto museum will feature interactive exhibits, gaming artifacts, workshop spaces and oversized controllers inspired by iconic video games
Washington exhibit offers glimpse of ocean’s ‘twilight zone’
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
A new exhibit in Washington sheds some light on a little-known layer of the sea and the strange creatures that live there. Artechouse art center and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution collaborated on the spectacle, called Twilight Zone: Hidden Wonders of the Ocean. Maxim Adams has the story.
https://www.voanews.com/a/washington-exhibit-offers-glimpse-of-ocean-twilight-zone/7806040.html
The climate movement really does not need Yascha Mounk’s advice
date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Karpf’s blog
A response to Mounk’s latest nonsense-essay
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/the-climate-movement-really-does
Paypal Opted You Into Sharing Data Without Your Knowledge
date: 2024-10-01, from: 404 Media Group
Here’s how to opt out of sharing data for “Personalized shopping.”
https://www.404media.co/paypal-personalized-shopping-opt-out/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Google adds a multi-functional quick insert key and new AI features to Chromebook Plus.
FreeBSD to invest in laptop support
date: 2024-10-01, from: OS News
FreeBSD is going to take its desktop use quite a bit more seriously going forward. FreeBSD has long been a top choice for IT professionals and organizations focused on servers and networking, and it is known for its unmatched stability, performance, and security. However, as technology evolves, FreeBSD faces a significant challenge: supporting modern laptops. To address this, the FreeBSD Foundation and Quantum Leap Research has committed $750,000 to improve laptop support, a strategic investment that will be pivotal in FreeBSD’s future. ↫ FreeBSD Foundation blog So, what are they going to spend this big bag of money on? Well, exactly the kind of things you expect. They want to improve and broaden support for various wireless chipsets, add support for modern powersaving processor states, and make sure laptop-specific features like touchpad gestures, specialty buttons, and so on, work properly. On top of that, they want to invest in better graphics driver support for Intel and AMD, as well as make it more seamless to switch between various audio devices, which is especially crucial on laptops where people might reasonably be expected to use headphones. In addition, while not specifically related to laptops, FreeBSD also intends to invest in support for heterogeneous cores in its scheduler and improvements to the bhyve hypervisor. Virtualisation is, of course, not just something for large desktops and servers, but also laptop users might turn to for certain tasks and workloads. The FreeBSD project will be working not just with Quantum Leap Research, but also various hardware makers to assist in bringing FreeBSD’s laptop support to a more modern, plug-and-play state. Additionally, the mentioned cash injection is not set in stone; additional contributions from both individuals and larger organisations are obviously welcome, and of course if you can contribute code, bug reports, documentation, and so on, you’re also more than welcome to jump in.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140841/freebsd-to-invest-in-laptop-support/
TSMC preps facilities as Taiwan braces for powerful Super Typhoon Krathon
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plants in Tainan and Kaohsiung face heavy rainfall
Taiwan’s TSMC disclosed to The Register on Tuesday that it was battening down the hatches at its facilities in preparation for the arrival of Super Typhoon Krathon.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/tsmc_typhoon_krathon/
Lenovo’s new Chromebook Duet 11 2-in-1 tablet is official
date: 2024-10-01, from: Liliputing
The new Lenovo Chromebook Duet 11″ (gen 9) is a ChromeOS tablet that comes with a detachable keyboard, allowing you to use the system like a laptop. It’s a relatively modest update over the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3 Chromebook, but the new model brings a new processor and a spec bump for wired and wireless connections. Lenovo […]
The post Lenovo’s new Chromebook Duet 11 2-in-1 tablet is official appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/lenovos-new-chromebook-duet-11-2-in-1-tablet-is-official/
Samsung Chromebook Plus is a 2.6 pound laptop with a 15.6 inch OLED display and the latest Google Gemini AI features
date: 2024-10-01, from: Liliputing
The new Samsung Chromebook Plus is a laptop with a 15.6 inch OLED display, and Intel Core i3-100U 6-core, 8-thread processor based on Raptor Lake-Refresh architecture, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. It’s also the thinnest and lightest Chromebook Plus to date, measuring 11.8mm (0.46 inches) thick and weighing 1.17 kg (2.58 pounds). And for better […]
The post Samsung Chromebook Plus is a 2.6 pound laptop with a 15.6 inch OLED display and the latest Google Gemini AI features appeared first on Liliputing.
NASA Bought Facial Recognition Tech Clearview AI
date: 2024-10-01, from: 404 Media Group
The oversight body of NASA bought access to the powerful facial recognition tool, according to U.S. government procurement data.
https://www.404media.co/nasa-bought-facial-recognition-tech-clearview-ai/
NASA’s Instruments Capture Sharpest Image of Earth’s Radiation Belt
date: 2024-10-01, from: NASA breaking news
From Aug. 19-20, ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) mission made history with a daring lunar-Earth flyby and double gravity assist maneuver, a spaceflight first. As the spacecraft zipped past our Moon and home planet, Juice’s instruments came online for a dry run of what they’ll do when they reach Jupiter. During […]
Kyndryl follows in IBM’s footsteps with rolling layoffs likely affecting thousands
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Underutilized staff get sent to the ‘bench’ – and seldom return
Special report Kyndryl, the IT services biz spun out of IBM in late 2021, has been following in the footsteps of its parent by discreetly shedding hundreds of workers, largely in the US.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/kyndryl_layoffs/
Duck Bill Trucks
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/10/01/duck-bill-trucks/
What Comes Next?
date: 2024-10-01, from: Accidentally in Code
I have had a beautiful summer. Bookended by two epic trips either side, Hong Kong -> Sydney -> Bali before, and India (Dehradun, Chandigarh, Delhi) after, the summer was peaceful. I prioritized neglected parts of my life. My spine – finally went to the chiropractor, got into yoga, finally learned how to enjoy it. My […]
https://cate.blog/2024/10/01/what-come-next/
Windows 11 user hurt by the KB5043145 update? Microsoft offers a way out
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Might be best to give it a miss for now
Microsoft has offered a Known Issue Rollback (KIR) for users affected by the many and varied problems with the KB5043145 build of Windows 11.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/microsoft_kb5043145_rollback/
Dockworkers from Maine to Texas are now on strike
date: 2024-10-01, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The strike is impacting shipments of things like fresh food, cars and machinery. Workers reportedly want a 77% raise over six years and want to keep their jobs of loading and unloading ships from being automated. We’ll discuss the major economic ripple effects the strike could have. Then, CVS is considering splitting itself up. And later: a voice from “the room where it happens” on U.S.-China trade.
How Climate Change Made Hurricane Helene Worse
date: 2024-10-01, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: A wildfire in Greece prompted the evacuation of three villages • Taiwan is bracing for Super Typhoon Krathon • Northern California’s heat wave will peak today, but temperatures will still be higher than normal all week.
THE TOP FIVE
- Treasury: Hydrogen tax credit rules will be done by the end of the
year
The Treasury Department will finalize the long-awaited rules governing the new clean hydrogen tax credit before the end of the year, Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo told Heatmap in an exclusive interview. It will also publish the final guidance for the advanced manufacturing and technology-neutral clean power tax credits by that time, he said. That means that the Treasury Department will have finished the rules governing most — but not all — of the 18 tax credits created or remade by the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature climate package, by the end of his term. More than two years after that law’s passage, many of the potential beneficiaries — including electric utilities, battery manufacturers, and more — are still waiting to find out exactly how to collect its incentives.
The uncertainty has been especially paralyzing for the nascent clean hydrogen industry, as the final guidance for the hydrogen tax credit, section 45V of the tax code, could determine which multimillion dollar projects ultimately get developed. Chief among the Treasury Department’s concerns: It must decide how hydrogen producers who use electrolysis — sending electricity through water to split its molecules — should deal with the indirect carbon emissions associated with drawing power from the grid. The Treasury received more than 30,000 comments on the initial draft of the hydrogen rules.
Though Adeyemo did not comment on the final rules’ substance, he called those comments “quite helpful” and asserted multiple times during the interview that the Treasury has found middle ground between the scheme favored by climate advocates and a proposal more favored by the industry. “Congress has provided a strong enough incentive here that allows us to do two things at once, which is one, make sure that we’re watching for significant indirect missions, but at the same time creating pathways to do exactly what industry is talking about, which is accelerating the development of the industry here,” he said.
2. Death toll from Helene continues to rise
The death toll from Hurricane Helene has risen to 130 and hundreds of people remain missing in cut-off mountain areas in western North Carolina, where flooding and landslides swept away homes. Nearly one-third of those missing are from areas surrounding Asheville. “The devastation was beyond belief,” said the state’s governor, Roy Cooper. “This is something that’s never happened before in western North Carolina.” More than 1.5 million customers across six states remain without electricity and many in Asheville do not have running water. President Biden is expected to visit the state on Wednesday.
Researchers at the Berkeley Lab put together a provisional attribution report on the storm. “Our best estimate is that climate change caused over 50% more rainfall during Hurricane Helene in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas,” the report said. “Furthermore, we estimate that the observed rainfall was made up to 20 times more likely in these areas because of global warming.” The rapid extreme weather analysis platform Climameter said that “climate change made the heavy rainfall from Hurricane Helene up to 20% more intense and the strong winds up to 7% stronger than they were at the end of the century.”
3. Two more hurricanes could be headed toward the U.S.
Following an “unusual” midseason lull, hurricane activity is expected to pick up again in October and potentially continue into November, with the National Hurricane Center monitoring five separate areas in the Atlantic in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Two of those storms — Isaac and Joyce — have already weakened and remain far out at sea, while a third, Kirk, is expected to strengthen into a Category 3 in the coming days but turn northward long before it ever threatens the eastern seaboard.
The two other systems could potentially make U.S. landfall: One is an area of low pressure in the Caribbean that is “similar to where Helene developed,” AccuWeather’s senior director of forecasting operations, Dan DePodwin, told Heatmap, and which could develop over the next few days. The other is behind Kirk, near the Cape Verde islands, and while it is still extremely early, “anytime you get a tropical wave coming off of Africa this time of year, in late September or early October,” you want to keep an eye on it, DePodwin added. AccuWeather’s forecasters anticipate at least five more named storms before the season is over, with Leslie likely to be the name given to the system off Africa if it develops, followed by Milton in the Gulf.
4. BlocPower CEO steps down
The CEO of climate startup BlocPower, Donnel Baird, has stepped down from the company. BlocPower focuses on “greening America’s buildings” by swapping out old fossil fuel equipment for clean-energy upgrades. It has received significant financial backing from the likes of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, and Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, and was particularly attractive for cities hoping to meet ambitious climate goals. But BlocPower “faced ongoing issues with rolling out its electrification and jobs programs in the cities it partnered with,” Bloomberg reported. In 2022, the firm set out to electrify 6,000 buildings in the city of Ithaca, New York, by 2030, as part of Ithaca’s Green New Deal. But progress proved painfully slow. This week Ithaca’s director of sustainability Rebecca Evans announced she had decided to scrap the city’s climate action plan and focus instead on adaptation. “We’re not abandoning our 2030 goals, but we are determined to meet residents where they are,” Evans wrote on LinkedIn. “Our community doesn’t necessarily want net-zero and I’ve settled my feelings with that.”
- Ford is offering free home EV chargers and installation
Ford is launching a new incentive program today that will offer complimentary home chargers and installation to people who buy or lease a Ford Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning, or E-Transit. The “Ford Power Promise” program will go through the end of the year and is a bid to win over people who may be curious about EVs but are hesitant to commit. The upfront cost of an EV charger is around $500, and installation can cost up to $1,200. People who take advantage of Ford’s offer will get the company’s Ford Charge Station Pro, which normally has a sticker price of $1,310.
Ford
THE KICKER
“If it explodes, you end up about seven blocks away. And you’re dead.” –Donald Trump, warning his supporters about “the new thing”: hydrogen cars. As Heatmap’s Jeva Lange reported, Trump’s suggestion that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are more dangerous than gas-powered vehicles is inaccurate. She noted that as of this spring there had been no recorded automotive fatalities credited specifically to hydrogen fuel cells.
https://heatmap.news/climate/hurricane-helene-climate-change-link
How protests in Bangladesh could impact the fashion industry
date: 2024-10-01, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Police have clashed with protesting garment workers in Bangladesh, who are demanding higher wages and better working conditions. We’ll examine the impact the protests could have on global fashion supply chains. Plus, India is the only country to have received $100 billion in a single year from citizens working abroad and sending remittances back home. What does that mean for those workers and the Indian economy?
Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund throws cash at FreeBSD and Samba
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Unix-like to work on infrastructure, SMB reimplementation on ‘key milestones’
EuroBSDCon Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund (STF), which is backed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, is funding open source work again. This time, the recipients are the FreeBSD Foundation and SerNet, which is one of the backers of the Samba Project.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/freebsd_and_samba_funding/
Hydrogen Tax Credit Rules Will Be Done by the End of the Year
date: 2024-10-01, from: Heatmap News
The Treasury Department will finalize the long-awaited rules governing the new clean hydrogen tax credit before the end of the year, Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo told Heatmap in an exclusive interview Monday.
It will also publish the final guidance for the advanced manufacturing and technology-neutral clean power tax credits by that time, he said.
That means that the Treasury Department will have finished the rules governing most — but not all — of the 18 tax credits created or remade by the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature climate package, by the end of his term. More than two years after that law’s passage, many of the potential beneficiaries — including electric utilities, battery manufacturers, and more — are still waiting to find out exactly how to collect its incentives.
The Treasury hasn’t just been sitting on its hands. Adeyemo told us the department has completed 75 guidance “projects” related to the IRA, a category that includes proposed and final rules as well as some non-binding FAQs and other documents. Citing an analysis from the Rhodium Group, an energy research firm, and MIT, he said that the Inflation Reduction Act has already spurred some $380 billion of private investment in 1,600 clean energy projects nationwide, potentially creating 270,000 jobs.
“This is far out-performing what I think the initial expectations for the law were at this stage,” Adeyemo said. “But as you also know, lots of people want us to finish additional rulemaking.”
The uncertainty has been especially paralyzing for the nascent clean hydrogen industry, as the final guidance for the hydrogen tax credit, section 45V of the tax code, could determine which multimillion dollar projects ultimately get developed. Chief among the Treasury Department’s concerns: It must decide how hydrogen producers who use electrolysis — sending electricity through water to split its molecules — should deal with the indirect carbon emissions associated with drawing power from the grid.
Under the scheme favored by climate advocates, would-be hydrogen makers will have to build enough new renewable capacity to satisfy their energy needs in close to real time. Under a proposal more favored by the industry, producers could buy power from existing nuclear or hydroelectric power plants that currently serve other customers, or simply offset their emissions with solar energy certificates even if they continue to operate when the sun goes down. Draft rules published in December took a strict approach to emissions — and faced fierce pushback not just from industry, but also from Democratic members of Congress and the Department of Energy. Leaders of regional clean hydrogen hubs — which have been awarded grants by a separate $7 billion federal program — argued that strict rules would be fatal to their cause.
There is a lot of money at stake — up to $3 per kilogram of hydrogen produced, equaling many billions over the lifetime of the program — to build a new industry from near-scratch. Some energy modelers fear that if the program is designed poorly, that windfall could subsidize a lot of carbon emissions. Projects that are supposed to help the U.S. cut emissions could end up creating them instead, these groups have predicted, setting the country back two to three percentage points on its greenhouse gas targets.
There are many other open questions about the hydrogen credit, including requirements for producers that make hydrogen from natural gas, instead of from water and electricity. Although hydrogen companies made a flurry of new project announcements right after the Inflation Reduction Act first passed, many have since put those plans on hold as the industry awaits the final rules.
The Treasury received more than 30,000 comments on the initial draft of the hydrogen rules. Though Adeyemo did not comment on the final rules’ substance final rules, he called those comments “quite helpful” and asserted multiple times during our interview that the Treasury has found middle ground.
“Congress has provided a strong enough incentive here that allows us to do two things at once, which is one, make sure that we’re watching for significant indirect emissions, but at the same time creating pathways to do exactly what industry is talking about, which is accelerating the development of the industry here,” he said.
Looming over these decisions is the upcoming election, when a change in control of the White House or Congress could open up the rules to review. Adeyemo acknowledged that the final rules were unlikely to please everyone. But he said that he was “less concerned” about pushback from Congress. He argued that the tax credit was lucrative enough that companies could afford to abide by the requirements Treasury ultimately sets, and that what the industry really wants is “clarity, certainty, and flexibility.”
Companies and environmental groups on both sides of the hydrogen fight — including the energy company Constellation, which operates more than a dozen nuclear plants, and the Natural Resources Defense Council — have already threatened lawsuits if the rules do not align with their priorities. Recent Supreme Court decisions have weakened federal agencies’ ability to defend their own rules in court. But Adeyemo said the department was working hard to design the rules “in a way that is in keeping with congressional intent,” to protect them from such attacks. “We’re now going through the process of making sure that we show our work and how we’ve done that.”
The other tax credit rules the Treasury plans to finalize, while still consequential, have not left such foundational questions up in the air. Companies have already begun building battery factories, for example, under the expectation that they will be able to claim the advanced manufacturing tax credit. The technology-neutral clean power credits don’t even go into effect until next year, and the biggest uncertainty is whether facilities that burn biomass or methane captured from landfills for energy will qualify.
The news also leaves a few industries in the dark. Adeyemo said he couldn’t commit to a timeline for finalizing a tax credit for low-carbon aviation fuel, for example. Final rules for a tax credit for electric vehicle charging equipment are also on the to-do list.
“The challenge, of course, is there’s only so many people here at the Treasury Department who are doing all this work,” Adeyemo said, “so getting through all the 30,000 comments on clean hydrogen and focusing on that means that there’s going to be clear trade-offs.”
https://heatmap.news/economy/final-hydrogen-tax-credit-45v
Astronauts Stranded in Space Are Now One Step Closer to Returning Home
date: 2024-10-01, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A SpaceX mission arrived at the International Space Station with two astronauts instead of four to leave room for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on the return trip in early 2025
Three, Voda promise £10-a-month or below mobile tariffs in bid to sway CMA on merger
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tie-up probe concerned the pair’s union would mean higher bills, hurt MNVOs
Vodafone and Three UK have pledged to maintain retail mobile tariffs at £10 or below for at least two years after their proposed merger, in response to a British watchdog’s insistence their alliance would lessen local competition.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/three_and_voda_offer_commitments/
October’s Night Sky Notes: Catch Andromeda Rising!
date: 2024-10-01, from: NASA breaking news
If you’re thinking of a galaxy, the image in your head is probably the Andromeda Galaxy! Read more about our closest galactic neighbor.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/night-sky-network/catch-andromeda-rising/
Radar Trends to Watch: October 2024
date: 2024-10-01, from: O’Reilly Radar
The model release train continues, with Mistral’s multimodal Pixtral 12B, OpenAI’s o1 models, and Roblox’s model for building 3D scenes. We also have another important AI-enabled programming tool: Cursor is an alternative to GitHub Copilot that’s getting rave reviews. Security will never cease to be a problem, but this month seems particularly problematic. The Mirai […]
https://www.oreilly.com/radar/radar-trends-to-watch-october-2024/
Germany is monitoring Microsoft to thwart ‘anti-competitive practices’
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Wants to peer into gaps in DMA to keep Redmond honest in cloud and AI
Germany plans to keep closer tabs on Microsoft to identify and “stop anti-competitive practices” that are not currently covered by the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), namely cloud computing and AI.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/german_regulators_monitor_microsoft/
Earth’s new mini-moon swings by, then ghosts us by late November
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
No need for farewells, 2024 PT5 may drop in again in 2055
Everybody be on their best behavior: Earth has a visitor. 2024 PT5 is an asteroid that took up residence in orbit on Sunday to become a “mini-moon.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/earth_minimoon_2024/
Canon ships first nanoimprint chipmaking machine to R&D lab
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Lithography technique does not require a light source, unlike ASML’s complex extreme ultraviolet approach
Canon has shipped its first ever nanoimprint lithography machine to the Texas Institute for Electronics for use in its R&D labs.…
Biden calls for Lebanon cease-fire after weekend of fighting
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
Washington is trying to keep a Mideast war from snowballing after a dramatic weekend in Lebanon, but regional powers are expressing concerns as Israel’s leadership seems determined to continue. From the White House, President Joe Biden has called for a cease-fire, but VOA’s Anita Powell asks: Will anyone listen?
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-calls-for-lebanon-cease-fire-after-weekend-of-fighting-/7805740.html
MASTER PLAN, Ep 8: Shock And Awe At The Supreme Court
date: 2024-10-01, from: The Lever News
In a pivotal 12 months, the master planners transformed the judiciary, positioning it to deliver corruption-legalizing precedents.
https://www.levernews.com/episode-8-shock-and-awe-at-the-supreme-court/
Summary of changes for September 2024
date: 2024-10-01, from: Hundred Rabbits blog
Hey everyone!
This is the list of all the changes we’ve done to our projects during the month of September.
Summary Of Changes
- 100r.co, added new pages: Victoria to Sitka logbook.
- M291, added support for Cyrillic glyphs.
- Fractran, released what might be the most in-depth documentation of Conway’s programming language out there.
- Now Lie In It, a look back at what has happened with Uxn since its creation 4 years ago.
September started off warm, but got cold and windy fast, we spent lots of time sitting by the woodstove drinking tea. As promised, we have begun transcribing the Victoria to Sitka logbook digitally, we release one week’s worth of logs at a time. We populated the logs with photos and Rek’s sketches(also sourced from the handwritten logbook). End of the month, we closed our summer 2024 sailing route, Pino has traveled very far this year! We made 76(!!!) stops over a period of 5 months, sailing 1900 NM.
We announced a new project this month named Rabbit Waves. It will serve as a vessel to expand, in a playful way, on some of our favourite things. Expect lots of art featuring root vegetable root-shaped sailboats, rabbits, and seabirds! The website will host more content next month.
For 3 years now, we’ve had a monthly hand-drawn calendar in the galley that we cover with doodles, at the end of the year, Rek binds the 12 pages together, and it makes it easy to look back at where we were, what we were doing at a previous time. Everyday has some kind of highlight or other. It’s one of our favourite habits.
Listen to Devine’s remix of SOPHIE’s One More Time feat. Popstar.
Book Club: This month we read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. We are forever in love with Rocky.
https://100r.co/site/log.html#sep2024
Biden plans survey of devastation in North Carolina as Helene’s death toll tops 130
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — President Joe Biden was set to survey the devastation in the mountains of Western North Carolina on Wednesday, where exhausted emergency workers continued to work around-the-clock to clear roads, restore power and cellphone service, and reach people left stranded by Hurricane Helene. The storm killed at least 133 people and hundreds more were still unaccounted for on Monday night, four days after Helene initially made landfall.
Meanwhile, election officials across the South were making emergency preparations to ensure displaced residents would be able to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
Officials in the hard-hit tourism hub of Asheville said their water system suffered “catastrophic” damage that could take weeks to fully repair. Government officials, aid groups and volunteers were working to deliver supplies by air, truck and even mule to the town and surrounding mountain communities. At least 40 people died in the county that includes Asheville.
The North Carolina death toll included one horrific story after another of people who were trapped by floodwaters in their homes and vehicles or were killed by falling trees. A courthouse security officer died after being submerged inside his truck. A couple and a 6-year-old boy waiting to be rescued on a rooftop drowned when part of their home collapsed.
Rescuers did manage to save dozens, including an infant and two others stuck on the top of a car in Atlanta. More than 50 hospital patients and staff in Tennessee were plucked by helicopter from the hospital rooftop in a daring rescue operation.
How some of the worst-hit areas are coping
The storm unleashed the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina. Rainfall estimates in some areas topped more than 2 feet (61 centimeters) since Wednesday, and several main routes into Asheville were washed away or blocked by mudslides. That includes a 6.4-kilometer section of Interstate 40 that was heavily damaged.
Joey Hopkins, North Carolina’s secretary of transportation, asked people on Monday to stay off the roads.
“The damage is severe, and we’re continuing to tell folks if you don’t have a reason to be in North Carolina, do not travel on the roads of western North Carolina,” Hopkins said at a news conference. “We do not want you here if you don’t live here and you’re not helping with the storm.”
At an Ingles grocery store in Asheville, Elizabeth Teall-Fleming was standing in line with dozens of others waiting to get inside and hoping to find some non-perishable food, since they have no power. She planned to heat up some canned food over a camping stove for her family.
“I’m just glad that they’re open and that they’re able to let us in,” she said.
Teall-Fleming said she was surprised by the ferocity of the storm.
“Just seeing the little bit of news that we’ve been able to see has been shocking and really sad.”
In one neighborhood, residents were collecting creek water in buckets to flush their toilets.
Others waited in a line for more than a block at Mountain Valley Water to fill up milk jugs and whatever other containers they could find with drinking water.
Derek Farmer, who brought three gallon-sized apple juice containers, said he had been prepared for the storm but now was nervous after three days without water. “I just didn’t know how bad it was going to be,” Farmer said.
Helene roared ashore in northern Florida late Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane and quickly moved north. The storm upended life throughout the Southeast, where deaths were also reported in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia. Officials warned that rebuilding would be lengthy and difficult.
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials said Monday that shelters were housing more than 1,000 people.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper took an aerial tour of the Asheville area and later met with workers distributing meals.
“This has been an unprecedented storm that has hit western North Carolina,” he said afterward. “It’s requiring an unprecedented response.”
Worries about the presidential election
Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said during an emergency board meeting on Monday that they are looking at options for voters in the hardest-hit counties. She planned to provide more information at a Tuesday news conference, including how someone could declare “natural disaster” as their reason for not being able to provide a photo ID.
Election employees across Georgia returned to work even as some offices faced power outages, limited internet and infrastructure damage.
In Lowndes County, staff at the local board of elections were working off of two computers instead of the usual eight, said election supervisor Deb Cox. The office is also without wifi.
“We’re fully up and running as of this morning,” said Cox. “It’s just slower than normal because we have less resources.”
In Columbia County, poll worker training will still begin this week, said Nancy Gay, the county’s elections director, but she may have to change the location because of the power outage.
“Our poll workers are being affected,” Gay said. “They don’t have power. They don’t have gas. You’ve got to allow the workers time to process everything and try and get a plan in place before I can really expect them to come and show up for training.”
Mark Ard at the Florida Secretary of State’s office said the Division of Elections is recommending that local elections supervisors reach out to U.S. Post Office officials to discuss a mitigation plan for ballot mailing, delivery, and return.
Why western North Carolina was hit so hard
Western North Carolina suffered relatively more devastation because that’s where the remnants of Helene encountered the higher elevations and cooler air of the Appalachian Mountains, causing even more rain to fall.
Asheville and many surrounding mountain towns were built in valleys, leaving them especially vulnerable to devastating rain and flooding. Plus, the ground already was saturated before Helene arrived, said Christiaan Patterson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
“By the time Helene came into the Carolinas, we already had that rain on top of more rain,” Patterson said.
Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones, sometimes within hours.
Destruction from Florida to Virginia
Along Florida’s Gulf Coast, several feet of water swamped the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, forcing workers to move two manatees and sea turtles. All of the animals were safe but much of the aquarium’s vital equipment was damaged or destroyed, said James Powell, the aquarium’s executive director.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said the storm “literally spared no one.” Most people in and around Augusta, a city of about 200,000 near the South Carolina border, were still without power Monday.
With at least 30 killed in South Carolina, Helene was the deadliest tropical cyclone to hit the state since Hurricane Hugo made landfall north of Charleston in 1989, killing 35 people.
Tropical Storm Kirk forms and could become a powerful hurricane
Tropical Storm Kirk formed Monday in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and is expected to become a “large and powerful hurricane” by Tuesday night or Wednesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The storm was located about 1,285 kilometers west of the Cabo Verde Islands with maximum sustained winds of 95 kph. There were no coastal watches or warnings in effect, and the storm system was not a threat to land.
AT&T claims VMware by Broadcom offered it a 1,050 percent price rise
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And that Broadcom has prevented vendors from selling to the telco giant
AT&T has claimed that Broadcom made it an offer to increase prices by 1,050 percent, and may be influencing other vendors to make a migration harder.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/att_broadcom_filings_update/
IBM PC 5150 model numbers
date: 2024-10-01, from: OS News
Recently I came across a minor mystery—the model numbers of the original IBM PC. For such a pivotal product, there is remarkably little detailed original information from the early days. ↫ Michal Necasek Count me surprised. When I think IBM, I think meticulously documented and detailed bureaucracy, where every screw, nut, and bolt is numbered, documented, and tracked, so much so in fact this all-American company even managed to impress the Germans. You’d expect IBM, of all companies, to have overly detailed lists of every IBM PC it ever designed, manufactured, and sold, but as it turns out, it’s actually quite hard to assemble a complete list of the early IBM PCs the company sold. The biggest problem are the models from before 1983, since before that year, the IBM PC does not appear in IBM’s detailed archive of announcements. As such, Michal Necasek had to dig into random bits of IBM documentation to assemble references to those earlier models, and while he certainly didn’t find every single one of them, it’s a great start, and others can surely pick up the search from here.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140838/ibm-pc-5150-model-numbers/
Dockworkers from Maine to Texas go on strike, risking new shortages
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
PHILADELPHIA — Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas began walking picket lines early Tuesday in a strike over wages and automation that could reignite inflation and cause shortages of goods if it goes on more than a few weeks.
The contract between the ports and about 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association expired at midnight, and even though progress was reported in talks on Monday, the workers went on strike. The strike affecting 36 ports is the first by the union since 1977.
Workers began picketing at the Port of Philadelphia shortly after midnight, walking in a circle at a rail crossing outside the port and chanting “No work without a fair contract.”
The union had message boards on the side of a truck reading: “Automation Hurts Families: ILA Stands For Job Protection.”
At Port Houston, which is in the Central time zone an hour behind the East Coast, at least 50 workers gathered outside the port with signs saying “No Work Without a Fair Contract.” They appeared poised to begin picketing. Workers showed a statement from the ILA on the strike saying that employers have refused to compensate workers fairly.
“The ILA is fighting for respect, appreciation and fairness in a world in which corporations are dead set on replacing hard-working people with automation,” the statement said. “Robots do not pay taxes and they do not spend money in their communities.”
The U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, said Monday evening that both sides had moved off of their previous wage offers, but when picket lines went up just after midnight, it was apparent that no deal had been reached.
The union’s opening offer in the talks was for a 77% pay raise over the six-year life of the contract, with President Harold Daggett saying it’s necessary to make up for inflation and years of small raises. ILA members make a base salary of about $81,000 per year, but some can pull in over $200,000 annually with large amounts of overtime.
But Monday evening, the alliance said it had increased its offer to 50% raises over six years, and it pledged to keep limits on automation in place from the old contract. The union wants a complete ban on automation. It wasn’t clear just how far apart both sides are.
“We are hopeful that this could allow us to fully resume collective bargaining around the other outstanding issues in an effort to reach an agreement,” the alliance statement said.
The union didn’t answer requests for comment on the talks Monday night, but said earlier in the day that the ports had refused demands for a fair contract and the alliance seemed intent on a strike. The two sides had not held formal negotiations since June.
The alliance said its offer tripled employer contributions to retirement plans and strengthened health care options.
During the day Monday, some ports already were preparing for a strike. The Port of Virginia, for instance, was in the process of ceasing operations. It accepted the last inbound train for delivery at 8 a.m., closed its gates to inbound trucks at noon and required ships to leave by 1 p.m. Cargo operations halted at 6 p.m.
“We are handling this just like we would during the ramp up to a possible hurricane,” Joe Harris, the port’s spokesperson, told The Associated Press. “And we will bring it back online just as we would recovering from a hurricane. We have an experienced team. We’ve done this in the past.”
Supply chain experts say consumers won’t see an immediate impact from the strike because most retailers stocked up on goods, moving ahead shipments of holiday gift items.
But if it goes more than a few weeks, a work stoppage would significantly snarl the nation’s supply chain, potentially leading to higher prices and delays in goods reaching households and businesses.
If drawn out, the strike will force businesses to pay shippers for delays and cause some goods to arrive late for peak holiday shopping season — potentially impacting delivery of anything from toys or artificial Christmas trees to cars, coffee and fruit.
The strike will likely have an almost immediate impact on supplies of perishable imports like bananas, for example. The ports affected by the strike handle 3.8 million metric tons of bananas each year, or 75% of the nation’s supply, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
It also could snarl exports from East Coast ports and create traffic jams at ports on the West Coast, where workers are represented by a different union. Railroads say they can ramp up to carry more freight from the West Coast, but analysts say they can’t make up the cargo handled to the east.
“If the strikes go ahead, they will cause enormous delays across the supply chain, a ripple effect which will no doubt roll into 2025 and cause chaos across the industry,” noted Jay Dhokia, founder of supply chain management and logistics firm Pro3PL.
J.P. Morgan estimated that a strike that shuts down East and Gulf coast ports could cost the economy $3.8 billion to $4.5 billion per day, with some of that recovered over time after normal operations resume.
The strike comes just weeks before the presidential election and could become a factor if there are shortages. Retailers, auto parts suppliers and produce importers had hoped for a settlement or that President Joe Biden would intervene and end the strike using the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows him to seek an 80-day cooling off period.
But during an exchange with reporters on Sunday, Biden, who has worked to court union votes for Democrats, said “no” when asked if he planned to intervene in the potential work stoppage.
A White House official said Monday that at Biden’s direction, the administration has been in regular communication with the ILA and the alliance to keep the negotiations moving forward. The president directed Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard to convene the alliance’s board members Monday afternoon and urge them to resolve the dispute fairly and quickly — in a way that accounts for the success of shipping companies in recent years and contributions of union workers.
Fire halts production at Indian iPhone factory
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tata was about to double the workforce at the plant
Authorities are investigating a fire that broke out last weekend at a Tata Electronics facility that produces iPhone components in India. Production at the plant has been halted indefinitely.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/tata_iphone_fire/
Exclusive: AFRICOM Chief says Islamic State doubles size in north Somalia
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
PENTAGON — Islamic State in Somalia has approximately doubled in size over the past year, the chief of U.S. Africa Command told VOA.
“I am concerned about the northern part of Somalia and ISIS growing in numbers,” AFRICOM commander Gen. Michael Langley said in an exclusive interview, using an acronym for the terror group.
Langley declined to provide the United States’ estimate of how many Islamic State fighters are in Somalia, other than to say that the group’s had grown about “twofold” in the past year. Previous estimates have put the number of Islamic State fighters in north Somalia at about 200 fighters.
The AFRICOM commander also warned about the possibility of Islamic State increasing its foreign fighter presence in Somalia.
Somali Brigadier General Abdi Hassan Hussein, the former intelligence and police commander of Puntland, where Islamic State is located in the north, told VOA earlier this year that the number of Islamic State foreign fighters there alone is estimated in the hundreds. This figure has yet to be confirmed by local authorities.
A U.S. official told VOA in June that Abdulqadir Mumin, the leader of Islamic State in Somalia, had been targeted in an American airstrike in May. Mumin appears to have survived the strike.
Asked whether Mumin was now the global leader of IS, Langley said the U.S. must take those reports as “credible.”
“ISIS professes that. Sometimes you’ve got to take that seriously,” he said.
Al-Shabab
The increase in Islamic State fighters in northern Somalia comes as the al-Qaida affiliate al-Shabab has exploited diplomatic disagreements between Somalia and Ethiopia to raise its recruitment numbers.
Landlocked Ethiopia and Somalia’s breakaway Somaliland region signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this year to use its Red Sea port of Berbera, a deal that Somalia has rejected. Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre on Friday accused Ethiopia, before the U.N. General Assembly, of actions that “flagrantly violate” Somalia’s territorial integrity.
“The have used that (dispute) to their advantage,” Langley told VOA.
Al-Shabab has been back at high numbers of between 12,000 to 13,000 fighters due to strong financing and heavy recruitment efforts, senior defense officials told VOA in June.
The political rift has bled into counter-terror cooperation between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu, with Langley telling VOA that Somali operations with Ethiopia have been “limited.”
“Time will tell if they can settle their differences and coalesce into a force that’s very effective, because when they do work together, they’re very, very effective at clearing out al-Shabab.’’
Al-Shabab has continued attacks on civilians, including in the Mogadishu area. The terror group claimed responsibility for a gun attack and suicide bombing that killed at least 32 people in August on a popular beach in the Somalia’s capital. The group is also suspected to have carried out two deadly bombings on Saturday, one in Middle Shabelle region and another about one kilometer from the president’s office.
Al-Shabab has suffered defeats from the South West State of Somalia down to the Juba River Valley and has sought to reset and counter-attack in those areas.
However, in central Somalia, al-Shabab has reversed gains made by Somali forces over the last two years as government forces failed to hold the terrain they had retaken, according to senior U.S. defense officials.
“We need a credible holding force, because sometimes shadow governments of al-Shabaab try to re-insert themselves back in that region and try to influence some of the local leaders,” Langley said.
He said the time following the clearing and liberating of a region is a “very fragile period” where Somalia and partners like the U.S. Agency for International Development can initiate local services that will increase the population’s faith in the federal government.
“If they can’t sustain that because they’re moving to the next region or next district, it ebbs,” he said, adding that U.S. training was currently focused on helping Somali forces hold liberated terrain.
The Somali government has pointed to the El Dheer and Harardhere areas as evidence that some liberated terrain in central Somalia remains under government control.
ATMIS transition
Later this year, the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia will leave the country after nearly two years of helping Somalia fight al-Shabab terrorists and will be replaced in 2025 by a new African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia. Which forces will be comprised in the mission is still being worked out by the African Union and the United Nations.
Langley ruled out any U.S. role in the transition, saying American forces would maintain only their advise-and-assist mission.
“Our piece of enabling is not our boots on the ground. We’re there to advise and assist, and assist in their training, but the fight is theirs,” he told VOA.
Houthis
In addition to Islamic State and al-Shabab, Somalia also must worry about Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, just north of Somalia across the Gulf of Aden, whom Langley says have “aspirations” to collaborate with al-Shabab.
“We’re concerned, and we’re closely watching that, because this can turn into a bad neighborhood real quick,” he said.
Should the Houthis and al-Shabab put pressure on the Gulf of Aden from opposite sides, Langley worries that squeezing this strategic choke point could further hinder the free flow of commerce and affect the global economy. And analysts fear that Houthis could insert more sophisticated weapons into the fight for Somalia.
Houthi militants have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October, seizing one, sinking two and killing at least four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets.
The Houthi militant campaign began after Israel launched a retaliatory attack against Hamas in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 terror attack, and the Houthis claim they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians during the war.
Harun Maruf and Mohamed Olad Hassan contributed to this report.
‘Very difficult time’ for US Jews as High Holy Days and October 7 anniversary coincide
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
Amazon wins partial dismissal of US antitrust lawsuit
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/amazon-wins-partial-dismissal-of-us-antitrust-lawsuit/7805682.html
FBI to pay $22M to settle claims of sexual discrimination at training academy
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The FBI agreed Monday to pay more than $22 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging female recruits were singled out for dismissal in training and routinely harassed by instructors with sexually charged comments about their breast size, false allegations of infidelity and the need to take contraception “to control their moods.”
The payout to 34 women dismissed from the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, Virginia — still subject to approval by a federal judge — would rank among the biggest lawsuit settlements in the history of the bureau.
“These problems are pervasive within the FBI and the attitudes that created them were learned at the academy,” said David J. Shaffer, the lawyer for the women. “This case will make important major changes in these attitudes.”
Filed in 2019, the lawsuit contends that female recruits had been subjected to a hostile working environment in which they were judged more harshly than their male peers and “excessively targeted for correction and dismissal in tactical situations for perceived lack of judgment” and subjective “suitability.”
One of the women said she was admonished to “smile more” and subjected to repeated sexual advances. Another said an instructor leered at her and stared at her chest, “sometimes while licking his lips.”
“Through passive tolerance,” the lawsuit said, “the FBI has intentionally allowed the Good Old Boy Network to flourish unrestrained at the FBI Academy.”
The FBI said in a statement Monday that the bureau has “taken significant steps over the past five years to further ensure gender equity in the training and development of all our trainees.”
Many of the allegations in the lawsuit were confirmed in a 2022 internal watchdog report. Men still make up some three-quarters of the bureau’s special agents despite efforts to diversify in recent years.
Among the provisions of the settlement was that the FBI would offer the plaintiffs a chance to continue training toward becoming agents, with “guaranteed placement” for those who pass in one of their top three preferred field offices. The bureau also has agreed to a review by outside experts who will work to ensure that female recruits face a fair evaluation process.
Some of the women have moved on to other careers, Shaffer said, adding “the FBI has deprived itself of some genuinely exceptional talent.”
Paula Bird, a lead plaintiff in the case who is now a lawyer, said that while the experience has been “disillusioning,” she was “pleased that this settlement will bring a measure of justice to the women who were unfairly dismissed.”
The lawsuit came amid a flurry of sexual misconduct claims within the bureau that included several against senior FBI officials identified in an Associated Press investigation who quietly left the bureau with full benefits even after allegations against them were substantiated. Those claims ranged from unwanted touching and advances to coercion. In one case, an FBI assistant director retired after the inspector general’s office concluded he harassed a female subordinate and sought an improper relationship with her.
In response to AP’s reporting, the FBI announced a series of reforms, including a 24/7 tip line, intended to take a tougher stand against agents found to have committed misconduct and help accusers.
The latest settlement comes less than six months after the Justice Department announced a $138.7 million settlement with more than 100 people who accused the FBI of grossly mishandling allegations of sexual assault against the sports doctor Larry Nassar.
Epic Games starts Battle Royale with Samsung, Google over app store practices
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Alleges Korean giant’s app store lockdown is no accident, and anticompetitive
Updated Epic Games has launched another lawsuit in pursuit of its goal of selling its apps direct rather than through platform owners’ app stores – this time placing Samsung in its sights.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/epic_games_sues_samsung_google/
Imagine a government that told Big Tech to improve resilience – then punished failures
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It’s happening in South Korea
South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT has reportedly told local web giant Naver to improve its disaster recovery capabilities after not taking adequate measures to prevent service failures.…
Pete Rose, baseball’s banned hits leader, has died at age 83
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — Pete Rose, baseball’s career hits leader and fallen idol who undermined his historic achievements and Hall of Fame dreams by gambling on the game he loved and once embodied, has died. He was 83.
Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for Clark County in Nevada, confirmed on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died Monday. Wheatley said the cause and manner of death had not yet been determined.
For fans who came of age in the 1960s and ‘70s, no player was more exciting than the Cincinnati Reds’ No. 14, “Charlie Hustle,” the brash superstar with the shaggy hair, puggish nose and muscular forearms. At the dawn of artificial surfaces, divisional play and free agency, Rose was old school, a conscious throwback to baseball’s early days. Millions could never forget him crouched and scowling at the plate, running full speed to first even after drawing a walk, or sprinting for the next base and diving headfirst into the bag.
A 17-time All-Star, the switch-hitting Rose played on three World Series winners. He was the National League MVP in 1973 and World Series MVP two years later. He holds the major league record for games played (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890) and the NL record for the longest hitting streak (44). He was the leadoff man for one of baseball’s most formidable lineups with the Reds’ championship teams of 1975 and 1976, with teammates that included Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan.
But no milestone approached his 4,256 hits, breaking his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 and signifying his excellence no matter the notoriety that followed. It was a total so extraordinary that you could average 200 hits for 20 years and still come up short. Rose’s secret was consistency, and longevity. Over 24 seasons, all but six played entirely with the Reds, Rose had 200 hits or more 10 times, and more than 180 four other times. He batted .303 overall, even while switching from second base to outfield to third to first, and he led the league in hits seven times.
“Every summer, three things are going to happen,” Rose liked to say, “the grass is going to get green, the weather is going to get hot, and Pete Rose is going to get 200 hits and bat .300.”
Rose was Rookie of the Year in 1963, but he started off 0 for 12 with three walks and a hit by pitch before getting his first major league hit, an eighth-inning triple off Pittsburgh’s Bob Friend. It came in Cincinnati on April 13, 1963, the day before Rose’s 22nd birthday. He reached 1,000 in 1968, 2,000 just five years later and 3,000 just five years after that.
He moved into second place, ahead of Hank Aaron, with hit No. 3,772, in 1982. No. 4,000 was off the Phillies’ Jerry Koosman in 1984, exactly 21 years to the day after his first hit. He caught up with Cobb on Sept. 8, 1985, and surpassed him three days later, in Cincinnati, with Rose’s mother and teenage son, Pete Jr., among those in attendance.
Rose was 44 and the team’s player-manager. Batting left-handed against the San Diego Padres’ Eric Show in the first inning, he smacked a 2-1 slider into left field, a clean single. The crowd of 47,000-plus stood and yelled. The game was halted to celebrate. Rose was given the ball and the first base bag, then wept openly on the shoulder of first base coach and former teammate, Tommy Helms.
Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, watching from New York, declared that Rose had “reserved a prominent spot in Cooperstown.” After the game, a 2-0 win for the Reds in which Rose scored both runs, he received a phone call from President Ronald Reagan.
“Your reputation and legacy are secure,” Reagan told him. “It will be a long time before anyone is standing in the spot where you’re standing now.”
Four years later, he was gone.
On March 20, 1989, Ueberroth (who would soon be succeeded by A. Bartlett Giamatti) announced that his office was conducting a “full inquiry into serious allegations” about Rose. Reports emerged that he had been relying on a network of bookies and friends and others in the gambling world to place bets on baseball games, including some with the Reds. Rose denied any wrongdoing, but the investigation found that the “accumulated testimony of witnesses, together with the documentary evidence and telephone records reveal extensive betting activity by Pete Rose in connection with professional baseball and, in particular, Cincinnati Reds games, during the 1985, 1986, and 1987 baseball seasons.”
Betting on baseball had been a primal sin since 1920, when several members of the Chicago White Sox were expelled for throwing the 1919 World Series — to the Cincinnati Reds. Baseball’s Rule 21, posted in every professional clubhouse, proclaims that “Any player, umpire or club or league official or employee who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.’’
As far back as the 1970s, Bench and others had worried about Rose. By all accounts, he never bet against his own team, but even betting on the Reds left himself open to blackmail and raised questions about whether a given managerial decision was based on his own financial interest.
In August 1989, at a New York press conference, Giamatti spoke some of the saddest words in baseball history: “One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts.” Giamatti announced that Rose had agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball, a decision that in 1991 the Hall of Fame would rule left him ineligible for induction. Rose attempted to downplay the news, insisting that he had never bet on baseball and that he would eventually be reinstated.
Within weeks of his announcement, Giamatti was dead from a heart attack. But the ban remained in place and Rose never made it to the Hall in his lifetime, although he did receive 41 votes in 1992 (when 323 votes were needed), around the time the Hall formally ruled that those banned from the game could never be elected. His status was long debated. Rose’s supporters including Donald Trump, who in 2015, the year before he was elected president, tweeted: “Can’t believe Major League Baseball just rejected @PeteRose_14 for the Hall of Fame. He’s paid the price. So ridiculous — let him in!”
Meanwhile, his story changed. In a November 1989 memoir, written with “The Boys of Summer” author Roger Kahn, Rose again claimed innocence, only to reverse himself in 2004. He desperately wanted to come back, and effectively destroyed his chances. He would continue to spend time at casinos, insisting he was there for promotion, not gambling. He believed he had “messed up” and that his father would have been ashamed, but he still bet on baseball, albeit legally.
“I don’t think betting is morally wrong. I don’t even think betting on baseball is morally wrong,” he wrote in “Play Hungry,” a memoir released in 2019. “There are legal ways, and there are illegal ways, and betting on baseball the way I did was against the rules of baseball.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/pete-rose-baseball-s-banned-hits-leader-has-died-at-age-83/7805631.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-01, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Pete Rose, baseball phenom who was banned for gambling, dies at 83.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/pete-rose-baseball-phenom-who-was-banned-for-gambling-dies-at-83
Awareness of ‘Latinx’ increases among US Latinos, and ‘Latine’ emerges as an alternative
date: 2024-10-01, from: VOA News USA
Australian e-tailer digiDirect customers’ info allegedly stolen and dumped online
date: 2024-10-01, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Full names, contact details, and company info – all the fixings for a phishing holiday
Data allegedly belonging to more than 304,000 customers of Australian camera and tech e-tailer digiDirect has been leaked to an online cyber crime forum.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/australian_digidirect_info_leak/
Watch your mirrors: Tesla Cybertrucks have ‘Full’ ‘Self Driving’ now
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
As eggheads reckon Musk-mobiles need human interventions every 13 miles
Owners of Tesla’s Cybertruck are reporting that a software update enabling the self-styled Full Self Driving (FSD) has become an option for their giant rolling wedges of stainless steel.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/tesla_cybertruck_fsd_enabled/
How much should OpenAI’s abandoned promises be worth?
date: 2024-09-30, from: Gary Marcus blog
Once upon a time OpenAI promised to be a non-profit, pledged to public benefit.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/how-much-should-openais-abandoned
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Doc Searls: Post flow.
https://doc.searls.com/2024/09/30/post-flow/
Rackspace internal monitoring web servers hit by zero-day
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Intruders accessed machines via tool bundled with ScienceLogic, ‘limited’ info taken, customers told not to worry
Exclusive Rackspace has told customers intruders exploited a zero-day bug in a third-party application it was using, and abused that vulnerability to break into its internal performance monitoring environment.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/rackspace_zero_day_attack/
US port strike by 45,000 dockworkers is all but certain to begin at midnight
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
New York — The union representing U.S. dockworkers has signaled that 45,000 of its members will walk off the job at midnight, kicking off a strike likely to shut down ports across the East and Gulf coasts.
The coming work stoppage threatens to significantly snarl the nation’s supply chain, potentially leading to higher prices and delays in goods reaching households and businesses if it drags on for weeks. That’s because the strike by members of the International Longshoremen’s Association could cause 36 ports — which handle roughly half of the goods shipped into and out of the U.S. — to shutter operations.
ILA confirmed over the weekend that its members would hit the picket lines at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. In a Monday update, the union blamed the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, for continuing to “to block the path” toward an agreement before the contract deadline.
“The Ocean Carriers represented by USMX want to enjoy rich billion-dollar profits that they are making in 2024, while they offer ILA Longshore Workers an unacceptable wage package that we reject,” ILA said in a prepared statement. “ILA longshore workers deserve to be compensated for the important work they do keeping American commerce moving and growing.”
ILA also accused the shippers of “gouging their customers” with sizeable price increases for containers over recent weeks. The union said that this will result in increased costs for American consumers.
The Associated Press reached out to a USMX spokesperson for comment.
If drawn out, the strike would force businesses to pay shippers for delays and cause some goods to arrive late for peak holiday shopping season — potentially impacting delivery of anything from toys or artificial Christmas trees, to cars, coffee and fruit.
A strike could have an almost immediate impact on supplies of perishable imports like bananas, for example. The ports that could be affected by the strike handle 3.8 million metric tons of bananas each year, or 75% of the nation’s supply, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Americans could also face higher prices as retailers feel the supply squeeze.
“If the strikes go ahead, they will cause enormous delays across the supply chain, a ripple effect which will no doubt roll into 2025 and cause chaos across the industry,” noted Jay Dhokia, founder of supply chain management and logistics firm Pro3PL.
Dhokia added that East Coast ports aren’t the only ones at risk for disruption, as concern leading up to the strike has already diverted many shipments out West, adding to route congestion and more pressure on demand. Impacts will also be felt internationally — particularly in places like the United Kingdom, he said, where the U.S. is its largest trading partner.
ILA members are demanding higher wages and a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and container-moving trucks used in the loading or unloading of freight.
The coming strike by the ILA workers — set to impact ports from Maine to Texas — will be the first by the union since 1977. West Coast dockworkers belong to a different union and aren’t involved in the strike.
If a strike were deemed a danger to U.S. economic health, President Joe Biden could, under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period. That would suspend the strike.
All eyes are on what, if any, action the administration might take — particularly just weeks ahead of a tight presidential election. But Biden has signaled that he will not exercise this power.
During an exchange with reporters on Sunday, Biden said “no” when asked if he planned to intervene in the potential work stoppage.
“Because it’s collective bargaining, I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley,” he said.
At a briefing Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated that the administration had never invoked Taft-Hartley “to break a strike and are not considering doing so now.” She added that top officials were still urging both parties to return to the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith.
Ransomware forces hospital to turn away ambulances
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Only level-one trauma unit in 400 miles crippled
Ransomware scumbags have caused a vital hospital to turn away ambulances after infecting its computer systems with malware.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/texan_hospital_ransomware/
Arkansas sues YouTube over claims it’s fueling mental health crisis
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
little rock, arkansas — Arkansas sued YouTube and parent company Alphabet on Monday, saying the video-sharing platform is made deliberately addictive and fueling a mental health crisis among youth in the state.
Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office filed the lawsuit in state court, accusing them of violating the state’s deceptive trade practices and public nuisance laws. The lawsuit claims the site is addictive and has resulted in the state spending millions on expanded mental health and other services for young people.
“YouTube amplifies harmful material, doses users with dopamine hits, and drives youth engagement and advertising revenue,” the lawsuit said. “As a result, youth mental health problems have advanced in lockstep with the growth of social media, and in particular, YouTube.”
Alphabet’s Google, which owns the video service and is also named as a defendant in the case, denied the lawsuit’s claims.
“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work. In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a statement. “The allegations in this complaint are simply not true.”
YouTube requires users under 17 to get their parent’s permission before using the site, while accounts for users younger than 13 must be linked to a parental account. But it is possible to watch YouTube without an account, and kids can easily lie about their age.
The lawsuit is the latest in an ongoing push by state and federal lawmakers to highlight the impact that social media sites have on younger users. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in June called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms about their effects on young people’s lives, like those now mandatory on cigarette boxes.
Arkansas last year filed similar lawsuits against TikTok and Facebook parent company Meta, claiming the social media companies were misleading consumers about the safety of children on their platforms and protections of users’ private data. Those lawsuits are still pending in state court.
Arkansas also enacted a law requiring parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts, though that measure has been blocked by a federal judge.
Along with TikTok, YouTube is one of the most popular sites for children and teens. Both sites have been questioned in the past for hosting, and in some cases promoting, videos that encourage gun violence, eating disorders and self-harm.
YouTube in June changed its policies about firearm videos, prohibiting any videos demonstrating how to remove firearm safety devices. Under the new policies, videos showing homemade guns, automatic weapons and certain firearm accessories like silencers will be restricted to users 18 and older.
Arkansas’ lawsuit claims that YouTube’s algorithms steer youth to harmful adult content, and that it facilitates the spread of child sexual abuse material.
The lawsuit doesn’t seek specific damages, but asks that YouTube be ordered to fund prevention, education and treatment for “excessive and problematic use of social media.”
T-Mobile US to cough up $31.5M after that long string of security SNAFUs
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
At least seven intrusions in five years? Yeah, those promises of improvement more than ‘long overdue’
T-Mobile US has agreed to fork out $31.5 million to improve its cybersecurity and pay a fine after a string of network intrusions affected millions of customers between 2021 and 2023.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/tmobile_data_breaches_settlement/
NASA Continues Advancing STEM for Students Through New Partnership
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
During an event at NASA Headquarters in Washington Monday, the agency and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation signed a Space Act Agreement to collaborate and expand STEM opportunities for Latino K-12 and university students and reduce barriers to agency activities and opportunities. The signing is the latest in a series of efforts by NASA to expand […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-continues-advancing-stem-for-students-through-new-partnership/
NASA Invites Media to Preview its Museum Earth Information Center
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
Media is invited to preview and interview NASA leadership ahead of the opening of the Earth Information Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History at 10 a.m. EDT, Monday, Oct. 7. The 2,000-square-foot exhibit includes a 32-foot-long, 12-foot-high video wall displaying Earth science data visualizations and videos, an interpretive panel showing Earth’s connected […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-invites-media-to-preview-its-museum-earth-information-center/
Arch Linux and Valve deepen ties with direct collaboration
date: 2024-09-30, from: OS News
When Valve took its second major crack at making Steam machines happen, in the form of the Steam Deck, one of the big surprises was the company’s choice to base the Linux operating system the Steam Deck uses on Arch Linux, instead of the Debian base it was using before. It seems this choice is not only benefiting Valve, but also Arch. We are excited to announce that Arch Linux is entering into a direct collaboration with Valve. Valve is generously providing backing for two critical projects that will have a huge impact on our distribution: a build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. By supporting work on a freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers. ↫ Levente Polyak This is great news for Arch, but of course, also for Linux in general. The work distributions do to improve their user experience tend to be picked up by other distributions, and it’s clear that Valve’s contributions have been vast. With these collaborations, Valve is also showing it’s in it for the long term, and not just interested in taking from the community, but also in giving, which is good news for the large number of people now using Linux for gaming. The Arch team highlights that these projects will follow the regular administrative and decision-making processes within the distribution, so we’re not looking at parallel efforts forced upon everyone else without a say.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140832/arch-linux-and-valve-deepen-ties-with-direct-collaboration/
Vance, Walz prepare for US vice presidential debate
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
In the U.S. election, vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz meet Tuesday for their first, and only, debate. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns looks at what to expect when the candidates meet in New York.
https://www.voanews.com/a/vance-walz-prepare-for-us-vice-presidential-debate/7805210.html
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-09-30, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
This aint, in fact, Texas.
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/113228486696570504
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Mets rally past Braves in Game 1 thriller, clinch NL playoff spot.
This Shipwreck’s Location Was a Mystery for 129 Years. Then, Two Men Found It Just Minutes Into a Three-Day Search
date: 2024-09-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The “John Evenson” tugboat was helping another ship enter the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal in Wisconsin when it sank to the bottom of Lake Michigan in 1895
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
This is the WordPress view of my linkblog. Also appears on Bluesky, Mastodon, Twitter, Threads, my blog and of course RSS.
https://linkblog3.wordpress.com/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
We’re only beginning to understand the historic nature of Helene’s flooding.
California governor vetoes controversial AI safety law, tells everyone to start over
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Newsom doesn’t want Golden State to lose its golden goose
California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a controversial AI bill, tho don’t assume it was necessarily a final win for the tech industry. …
Biden acts to keep asylum ban at US-Mexico border in place longer
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will toughen an asylum ban at the U.S.-Mexico border to keep it in place for longer, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said Monday, signaling a desire to further curb illegal crossings.
The change, effective just after midnight, will leave asylum restrictions in place until arrests of migrants crossing illegally drop below a daily average of 1,500 over 28 days, lengthened from the current seven-day period, one of the officials said on a call with reporters.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, issued the asylum ban in June to drive down record numbers of migrants caught crossing illegally. Immigration is a top voter issue in the run-up to the Nov. 5 election, which is pitting Vice President Kamala Harris against Republican Donald Trump, an immigration hardliner.
Harris backs making the ban even harder to lift, Reuters reported last week, but the Biden administration did not adopt her proposal.
U.S. border authorities have apprehended roughly 54,000 migrants in September to date, down steeply from a peak of 250,000 in December, a DHS official said.
A daily average of 1,500 over 28 days would represent a total of 42,000 migrants in that period.
As part of the changes to the asylum ban, all unaccompanied children caught crossing illegally will be counted in the tally used to decide whether the restrictions can be lifted. Previously, only children from Mexico and Canada were counted.
The stricter approach “ensures that the drop in encounters is a sustained decrease” and not tied to short-term trends, a DHS official said, speaking under condition of anonymity.
Immigrant rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union have sued over the asylum ban, arguing that it runs counter to U.S. asylum law and closely parallels a Trump ban blocked in court.
NASA Seeks Innovators for Lunar Waste Competition
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
By Savannah Bullard A new NASA competition, the LunaRecycle Challenge, is open and offering $3 million in prizes for innovations in recycling material waste on deep space missions. As NASA continues efforts toward long-duration human space travel, including building a sustained human presence on the Moon through its Artemis missions, the agency needs novel solutions […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-seeks-innovators-for-lunar-waste-competition/
Jimmy Carter’s forgotten presidential achievements
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
Former President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday comes as authors and historians reevaluate his accomplishments and failures as a one-term U.S. president. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more on the legacy of the first presidential centenarian. Additional camera: Adam Greenbaum
https://www.voanews.com/a/jimmy-carter-s-forgotten-presidential-achievements-/7805138.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Republican Couple Records Kamala Harris Ad, Threats Follows.
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2024/09/30/bob-lange-kristina-kamala-harris/
AWS must fork out $30.5M after losing P2P network patent scrap
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
No one really wins when a troll, sorry, assertion entity scores a victory
A Delaware jury has determined that Amazon Web Services infringed two networking patents and now owes the current patent holder $30.5 million. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/aws_patent_infringements/
Amid Rising Temperatures, Sloths’ Slowness May Put Their Survival at Risk
date: 2024-09-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The world’s slowest mammal is at risk of extinction by the end of the century due to their low metabolic rate and climate change
World Wide Web Foundation closes so Tim Berners-Lee can spend more time with his protocol
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Who wants to join his so Solid crew?
After fifteen years of fighting to make the web safer and more accessible, the World Wide Web Foundation is shutting down.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/world_wide_web_foundation_closes/
SwiftData Expressions
date: 2024-09-30, from: Michael Tsai
Keith Harrison: In iOS 18, SwiftData can make use of Foundation’s new #Expression macro to make it easier to build more complex predicates. From the WWDC session: Expressions allow for reference values that do not produce true or false but instead allow for arbitrary types. You can then evaluate the expression as part of more […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/30/swiftdata-expressions/
iPhone Action Button Uptake
date: 2024-09-30, from: Michael Tsai
Adam Engst: Although the poll received relatively low participation because it was limited to TidBITS readers who own one of the iPhone 15 Pro models, the results still suggest that the Action button hasn’t been a runaway success. The most common use was to recreate the function of the Ring/Silent switch, garnering 33% of the […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/30/iphone-action-button-uptake/
An Abridged History of Safari Showstoppers
date: 2024-09-30, from: Michael Tsai
Roderick E.J.H. Gadellaa (Hacker News): As noted elsewhere, a developer-lamented but regulator-overlooked aspect of Apple’s monopoly on iOS browser engines has been the prevalence of show-stopping bugs.We define “showstoppers” here as bugs that cause working apps to become entirely broken or inadvisable to use on the web.All browsers have issues, but iOS is unique in […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/30/an-abridged-history-of-safari-showstoppers/
European Commission Specification Proceedings
date: 2024-09-30, from: Michael Tsai
Tim Hardwick: The European Commission has initiated two specification proceedings to guide Apple towards compliance with its interoperability obligations under the DMA. These latest proceedings focus on iOS connectivity features for connected devices and the process Apple has established for addressing interoperability requests from developers.[…]The first proceeding targets iOS functionalities predominantly used by connected devices […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/09/30/european-commission-specification-proceedings/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Harris Says She Backs Legalizing Marijuana.
https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/30/harris-says-she-backs-legalizing-marijuana/
Rare Drone Footage Captures Orcas Feeding on Dusky Dolphins
date: 2024-09-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The predatory pod hunts off the coast of Chile and is led by a matriarch called Dakota
Man accused of Trump assassination plot in Florida pleads not guilty
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
west palm beach, florida — Ryan Routh, the 58-year-old man accused of plotting to kill Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at his Florida golf course, pleaded not guilty on Monday to several federal charges.
His lawyer Kristy Militello entered the not guilty plea during a brief arraignment in a West Palm Beach federal courthouse and requested a jury trial.
Wearing a beige prison uniform and shackles on his wrists and ankles, Routh answered “yes, your honor,” when the magistrate judge asked him if he was aware of the charges against him.
Routh was arrested on September 15 after a Secret Service agent saw the barrel of a rifle poking out from brush on the perimeter of the West Palm Beach golf course where Trump was playing a round.
The agent opened fire and Routh, who fled in a vehicle, was arrested shortly later.
He has been charged with attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer and firearms offenses.
A federal judge ruled last week that Routh, identified as a Hawaii resident, should remain in custody.
FBI analysis of Routh’s phone showed he had been in Florida since August 18, and his devices were located multiple times between that date and September 15 near Trump’s golf course and his Mar-a-Lago residence, according to prosecutors.
Before being spotted by the Secret Service agent, Routh spent nearly 12 hours in the vicinity of the Trump International Golf Club, according to his phone location data.
Court documents said Routh allegedly dropped off a box at an unidentified person’s home several months before the attempted assassination containing various letters.
One letter, addressed to “The World,” allegedly said: “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I am so sorry I failed you.”
“I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster,” it said. “It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.”
It was the second assassination attempt on Trump this summer. The first took place on July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a gunman opened fire on the former president, killing one person and wounding Trump in the ear.
The candidate was otherwise unharmed, and the gunman was killed at the scene.
The Routh case has been assigned at random to federal District Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee who dismissed criminal proceedings against the former president earlier this year over his retention of top-secret documents at his private residence.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-30, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
CBS should just scroll the factcheck data through the bottom of the screen in real time. Don’t make people go to the website. This isn’t hard.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/business/media/cbs-vice-presidential-debate-fact-check-qr.html
Helping Ukraine Strike Deep in Russia
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: RAND blog
Ukraine’s innovative drones are damaging Russian forces, but Kyiv’s request for more long-range strike support from the United States resulted in only modest assistance. Despite NATO’s growing support, Washington remains hesitant due to potential risks.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/09/helping-ukraine-strike-deep-in-russia.html
NASA Astronaut Tracy C. Dyson to Discuss Science, Station Mission
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson will share details of her recent six-month mission aboard the International Space Station in a news conference at 11 a.m. EDT Friday, Oct. 4, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The news conference will air live on NASA+ and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA content through a […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-astronaut-tracy-c-dyson-to-discuss-science-station-mission/
SpaceX Falcon 9 grounded again after second stage hits wrong part of ocean
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Otherwise, Crew-9 launch was a complete success
Updated SpaceX has grounded the Falcon 9 once more, following the launch of the Crew-9 mission, due to an issue with the second stage deorbit burn.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/spacex_falcon_9_grounded/
Mariachi and Moonshots: Melissa Moreno Orchestrates Gateway Communications
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
As a radio frequency wireless engineer in NASA’s Johnson Space Center Avionic Systems Division in Houston, Melissa Moreno makes an impact in space exploration while proudly sharing her cultural heritage in the NASA community. Moreno works in the Electronic Systems Test Laboratory, developing communication systems critical to Gateway, NASA’s first lunar-orbiting space station. But her […]
US sends a few thousand more troops to Middle East to boost security
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The U.S. is sending an additional “few thousand” troops to the Middle East to bolster security and to be prepared to defend Israel if necessary, the Pentagon said Monday.
The increased presence will come from multiple fighter jet squadrons, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters.
It follows recent strikes in Lebanon and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a significant escalation in the war in the Middle East, this time between Israel and Hezbollah.
The additional force includes squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16, A-10 and F-22 fighter jets and the personnel needed to support them. The jets were supposed to rotate in and replace the squadrons already there. Instead, both the existing and new squadrons will remain in place to double the airpower on hand.
On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also announced that he was temporarily extending the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and its associated squadrons in the region.
The jets are not there to assist in an evacuation, Singh said, “they are there for the protection of U.S. forces.”
Workers Just Started Building the World’s First 3D-Printed Hotel in the Texas Desert
date: 2024-09-30, from: Smithsonian Magazine
In the dusty landscape surrounding the city of Marfa, a huge 3D printer is constructing 43 new rooms and 18 residential homes as part of an expansion of El Cosmico
Station Science Top News: Sept. 27, 2024
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
Researchers found that long-duration spaceflight affected the mechanical properties of eye tissues, including reducing the stiffness of tissue around the eyeball. A better understanding of these changes could help researchers prevent, diagnose, and treat the vision impairment often seen in crew members. SANSORI, a Canadian Space Agency investigation, examined whether reduced stiffness of eye tissue contributes to […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/johnson/station-science-top-news-sept-27-2024/
iPod 3G: SD Card Upgrade, New Battery, and Flex Cable Repair
date: 2024-09-30, from: Biosrhythm blog
My first iPod was the iPod 3G so I was a little late to the game. I’ve own several iPods after that but the iPod 3G I felt was a perfect distillation of the original iPod experience. Four separate buttons in a row and a touch wheel (nothing moves) seemed like peak iPod design to […]
https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2851
Hundreds still missing in devastated North Carolina after Hurricane Helene
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
Linux kernel 6.11 lands with vintage TV support
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
io_uring is getting more capable, and PREEMPT_RT is going
mainstream
Open Source Summit Europe Released remotely from Vienna, Linux kernel 6.11 is here, with improved monochrome TV support. Yes, in 2024.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/kernel_611/
More Hurricanes Are Already Forming in the Atlantic
date: 2024-09-30, from: Heatmap News
If Hurricane Helene were the only memorable storm to make landfall in the U.S. in 2024, this would still be remembered as an historically tragic season. Since its arrival as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday night in Florida’s Big Bend region, Helene has killed more than 100 people and caused more than $160 billion across six states. Recovery efforts are expected to last years, if not decades, in the hardest-hit regions of Western North Carolina, some 300 miles inland and 2,000 feet above the nearest coastline. “Helene is going to go down as one of the most impactful hurricanes in U.S. history,” AccuWeather’s senior director of forecasting operations, Dan DePodwin, told me when we spoke on Friday.
As of Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center is tracking five additional systems in the Atlantic basin. Two of those storms reached named status on Friday — Joyce and Isaac — though their paths appear to keep them safely in the middle of the Atlantic. A third storm, Kirk, reached tropical storm strength on Monday and is expected to strengthen into a major hurricane, but is likewise likely to turn north and stay out at sea.
But the two other systems could potentially make U.S. landfall. The first and most concerning is an area of low pressure in the Caribbean “similar to where Helene developed,” DePodwin told me. “We’re going to be monitoring that from the middle to end of [this] week. All options are open with where it could go — anywhere along the Gulf Coast, from Mexico to Florida.”
Directly behind Kirk, in the eastern Tropical Atlantic and out toward the Cape Verde islands, another tropical depression is likely forming. “Anytime you get a tropical wave coming off of Africa this time of year, in late September or early October,” you want to keep an eye on it, DePodwin went on. Sometimes, depending on the weather patterns, those storms stay far out at sea, like Joyce or Kirk. “But the next one probably has a better chance of making it farther west across the Atlantic” because of the prevailing weather patterns, DePodwin said. “So we’ll keep an eye on that one” — though forecasters are still days away from knowing if it could make it as far west as the East Coast.
Let this be a lesson in speaking too soon. Although the 2024 hurricane season went through a long lull at the end of the summer, it’s about to definitively silence any talk of it being a “quiet” year. “We’re predicting at least [five] more named storms to get to that 16 to 20 named storm range that we have for the season,” DePodwin told me. Many of those would likely come in October, which “can be a pretty active month,” but due to the “La Niña pattern we’re moving into and the very warm waters of the [Atlantic] Basin, we think we could get a couple of named storms in November, which is not always the case.”
Finishing the season with 16 to 20 named storms would put 2024 well above the 1991-2020 average of 14 named storms per year. But as hurricane forecasters are always quick to point out, all it takes is one destructive storm making landfall for it to be a “bad” hurricane year. In that case, there’s no debate: 2024 is already bad. Now we must wait, prepare, and hope it doesn’t get any worse.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/2024-hurricane-season-helene
Verizon outages across US as hurricane recovery continues
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
California, Arizona, beyond affected as well as storm-smashed states
Final update Verizon customers across the United States are reporting widespread outages on Monday morning, potentially dealing a serious setback to hurricane recovery efforts in America’s southeast. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/verizon_outages_report_us/
Aerospace Medicine Clerkship
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
The application window for the April 2025 session is open. The next available session will convene Monday, March 31- Friday, April 25. Applications for the April 2025 session will close on Monday, December 2, 2024 at 1159 CT. If you have read the FAQ and still have questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me […]
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/hhp/aerospace-medicine-clerkship/
Dikembe Mutombo, Hall of Fame basketball player and tireless advocate, dies at 58 from brain cancer
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
The Imperative of NIST-Approved Post-Quantum Resistant Algorithms for Securing Mobile Devices
date: 2024-09-30, from: Purism News and Events
In the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity, the advent of quantum computing presents both unprecedented opportunities and significant threats. As we stand on the brink of a quantum revolution, the need for robust, quantum-resistant cryptographic solutions has never been more urgent.
The post The Imperative of NIST-Approved Post-Quantum Resistant Algorithms for Securing Mobile Devices appeared first on Purism.
California Inmates Say They Urgently Need Workplace Heat Standards — but the State Has Delayed Adopting Them
date: 2024-09-30, from: Capital and Main
Where prisons are located, the way they are built, and the health condition of prisoners means deaths will likely increase with climate change, experts say.
The post California Inmates Say They Urgently Need Workplace Heat Standards — but the State Has Delayed Adopting Them appeared first on .
Oracle settles customer NetSuite dispute out of court
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Allegations of fraud and unfair business practices dismissed after private mediation
A claim against Oracle-owned Netsuite was recently settled out of court following private mediation with a customer that alleged the vendor oversold and under-delivered on software.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/oracle_netsuite_settlement/
Summary of the 10th SWOT Applications Workshop
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
Introduction The tenth Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) Applications Workshop took place December 7–8, 2023 at the California Institute of Technology Keck Institute for Space Studies. The meeting was organized to highlight the work and project status of the SWOT Early Adopters (EAs). NASA’s Applied Sciences Program (which is now housed within the NASA Earth […]
30 Years Ago: STS-68 The Second Space Radar Lab Mission
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
On Sept. 30, 1994, space shuttle Endeavour took to the skies on its 7th trip into space. During the 11-day mission, the STS-68 crew of Commander Michael A. Baker, Pilot Terrence “Terry” W. Wilcutt, and Mission Specialists Steven L. Smith, Daniel W. Bursch, Peter J.K. “Jeff” Wisoff, and Payload Commander Thomas “Tom” D. Jones operated […]
https://www.nasa.gov/history/30-years-ago-sts-68-the-second-space-radar-lab-mission/
Brazilian court sprays Musk’s X with more fines for returning after ban
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A very expensive 2 days in September for the blocked social media platform
X’s accidental reappearance in Brazil will cost the company 10 million Brazilian reais, or about $1.83 million, in the latest ruling handed down by the country’s Federal Supreme Court.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/x_slapped_with_more_fines/
US hospital helps wounded Ukrainian soldiers regain eyesight
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
Since 2015, one of America’s oldest eye clinics, Wills Eye Hospital,
has been helping
wounded Ukrainian soldiers with severe head or face injuries get their
vision back. For one surgeon with Ukrainian roots, the work is personal.
Iryna Solomko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Pavlo
Terekhov.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-hospital-helps-wounded-ukrainian-soldiers-regain-eyesight/7804588.html
Winamp source code is now available (under a pretty restrictive license)
date: 2024-09-30, from: Liliputing
Earlier this year the company that’s now in charge of Winamp announced plans to release the source code for Windows music player that was hugely popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s at the dawn of the Napster-inspired file sharing age, but which has had a rocky history since then. Now Llama Group has […]
The post Winamp source code is now available (under a pretty restrictive license) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/winamp-source-code-is-now-available-under-a-pretty-restrictive-license/
California’s new law forces digital stores to admit you’re just licensing content, not buying it
date: 2024-09-30, from: OS News
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law (AB 2426) to combat “disappearing” purchases of digital games, movies, music, and ebooks. The legislation will force digital storefronts to tell customers they’re just getting a license to use the digital media, rather than suggesting they actually own it. When the law comes into effect next year, it will ban digital storefronts from using terms like “buy” or “purchase,” unless they inform customers that they’re not getting unrestricted access to whatever they’re buying. Storefronts will have to tell customers they’re getting a license that can be revoked as well as provide a list of all the restrictions that come along with it. Companies that break the rule could be fined for false advertising. ↫ Emma Roth at The Verge A step in the right direction, but a lot more is definitely needed. This law in particular seems to leave a lot of wiggle room for companies to keep using the “purchase” term while hiding the disclosure somewhere in the very, very small fine print. I would much rather a law like this just straight up ban the use of the term “purchase” and similar terms when all you’re getting is a license. Why allow them to keep lying about the nature of the transaction in exchange for some fine print somewhere? The software industry in particular has been enjoying a free ride when it comes to consumer protection laws, and the kind of malpractice, lack of accountability, and laughable quality control would have any other industry shut down in weeks for severe negligence. We’re taking baby steps, but it seems we’re finally arriving at a point where basic consumer protection laws and rights are being applied to software, too. Several decades too late, but at least it’s something.
Massive E-Learning Platform Udemy Gave Teachers a Gen AI ‘Opt-Out Window’. It’s Already Over.
date: 2024-09-30, from: 404 Media Group
Teachers are surprised they have been opted into having their classes scraped for AI training.
If you’re holding important data, Iran is probably trying spearphish it
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
It’s election year for more than 50 countries and the Islamic Republic threatens a bunch of them
US and UK national security agencies are jointly warning about Iranian spearphishing campaigns, which remain an ongoing threat to various industries and governments.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/iran_spearphishing/
Trump’s Hydrogen Cars Bit Is Funny and Inaccurate
date: 2024-09-30, from: Heatmap News
Ever since Elon Musk “persuaded” Donald Trump to take it easy on his electric vehicle-bashing, the former president’s EV riffs have gotten pretty boring. Thank goodness, then, that there’s a new boogeyman in town: hydrogen cars.
Never mind that there are only about 18,000 hydrogen cars on the roads in the U.S. and so few refueling stations that one of the two manufacturers of them, Toyota, is getting sued. According to Trump, hydrogen cars are “the new thing,” as he warned his supporters last week during a stop in Savannah, Georgia (roughly 1,900 miles from the nearest hydrogen refueling station):
“They say the new thing is hydrogen cars, but they’re having a problem. If it explodes, you end up about seven blocks away. And you’re dead. So personally, I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna take a pass. But maybe they’ll figure it out. But right now, I wouldn’t recommend it.” [via RawStory]
This is, admittedly, a pretty funny bit — even if it’s totally inaccurate, according to Bill Elrick, the executive director of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership, a nonprofit group of auto manufacturers, energy providers, and government agencies that promote hydrogen vehicles in California. “I get where it comes from, and it is one of our biggest challenges in the industry — helping people understand what hydrogen is without diving into the depths of how a vehicle operates,” he told me.
As Elrick pointed out, when most people hear “hydrogen,” they think either of water (“which is fine”), the Hindenburg disaster (“we don’t do anything 100 years later the same way that we used to”), or, most problematically, the hydrogen bomb. “That’s something that is a completely different chemical reaction and, I think, where some of the safety scare comes from,” Elrick told me.
But hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (or HFCVs) are no more a bomb than gas-powered vehicles — perhaps less so, because they must meet the same rigorous safety codes and standards as any other car or truck on the road in addition to extra precautions to ensure the fuel cells won’t be punctured in a bad accident or potentially leak.
In a HFCV, hydrogen stored in a high-pressure tank is mixed in a fuel cell with oxygen from the air to induce a chemical reaction that produces electricity, which powers an electric motor that drives the car, just as it would in an EV. While batteries and electricity are familiar concepts, however, and therefore less scary as automotive power sources, current popular uses of hydrogen, such as refining oil and producing fertilizers, are not as visible to most people going about their daily lives as, say, their cell phones.
That’s not to say hydrogen is 100% safe. “Anything that moves a vehicle that weighs two tons or more — if it’s electricity, gasoline, or hydrogen — clearly has dangers and risks associated with it,” Elrick said. “If we could power our cars with peanut butter, it would have that energy potential.” But car manufacturers (just like electric boat manufacturers) have considered the possibility of their vehicles being involved in crashes and designed them accordingly.
The Center for Hydrogen Safety maintains a database of hydrogen-related accidents to serve as “lessons learned” as the technology continues to develop. Though there are still relatively few HFCVs on the roads, as of this spring there had been no recorded automotive fatalities credited specifically to hydrogen fuel cells. (In other words, no one has ended up “about seven blocks away” dead from an explosion.) One researcher even found that “in a collision in open spaces,” an HFCV should actually have “less potential hazard” than a gas car due to the extensive precautions taken when building their tanks (“their hardware would likely survive even if the rest of the car were destroyed in a crash,” per Car and Driver).
But Trump’s HFCV-phobia probably isn’t the biggest takeaway here. Some sectors of the hydrogen industry are potentially on the chopping block if Trump returns to the White House — since, as my colleague Katie Brigham writes, “green hydrogen made from renewable-powered electrolyzers is expensive and the proposed strict rules that would allow it to qualify for the most generous tax credit [would likely be] goners” under a Republican administration. Trump’s suspicion of new uses for hydrogen certainly doesn’t bode well.
As for any lingering fears about exploding hydrogen cars that Trump might have planted — hey, at least it’d be a quicker end than death-by-shark.
https://heatmap.news/politics/trump-exploding-hydrogen-cars
California governor vetoes AI safety bill
date: 2024-09-30, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Gavin Newsom vetoed a landmark artificial intelligence safety bill yesterday, siding with skeptical tech giants who that it would stifle innovation. The bill would have established a state-wide entity to oversee AI breakthroughs. We’ll hear more. Then, economists’ biggest economic concern right now is not the upcoming presidential election but the moves of the Fed. Plus, how can humans be more human at work? AI may be able to help.
Windows 11 Patch Tuesday preview is a glitchy disaster
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-10-01, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Blue is the color of some screens after optional KB5043145 update
Updated Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday preview, KB5043145, arrived last week and is already causing some headaches thanks to serious stability issues.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/windows_11_kb5043145/
Remote ID verification tech is often biased, bungling, and no good on its own
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Only 2 out of 5 tested products were equitable across demographics
A study by the US General Services Administration (GSA) has revealed that five remote identity verification (RiDV) technologies are unreliable, inconsistent, and marred by bias across different demographic groups.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/remote_identity_verification_biased/
The Stunning Destruction of Hurricane Helene
date: 2024-09-30, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Flooding and landslides in Nepal over the weekend killed almost 200 people • Storm John dumped more than three feet of rain on southern Mexico • An autumn heat wave is settling over the California coast.
THE TOP FIVE
- Appalachian states reel from catastrophic Helene damage
The remnants of Hurricane Helene swept northeast over the weekend, bringing intense rainfall and catastrophic flooding to Central Appalachian states. Western North Carolina has been particularly hard hit. Asheville recorded about 18 inches of rain over three days, which is far more than the city typically sees in an entire month, and the resulting flooding is nothing short of devastating. At least 91 deaths have been recorded as a result of the storm but the death toll is expected to rise as the water recedes and the search for missing people continues.
Flooding
in
AshevilleMelissa
Sue Gerrits/Getty Images
Storm
damage in
AshevilleSean
Rayford/Getty Images
While the worst of Helene has passed, more rain is still on the way for the region. More than 2 million customers are without power across the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, and Florida. Hundreds of roads are closed and some towns are completely isolated. “This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in western portions of our area,” reported a weather service in western North Carolina. Vice President Kamala Harris has paused her 2024 presidential campaign to return to Washington and be briefed on the federal response to the storm. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will visit Georgia to survey the damage.
- Storm’s destruction underscores the growing costs of climate change
FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said global warming made the damage from Helene worse. E&E News noted that Asheville had previously been described as a “climate haven,” and said the storm serves as a reminder that “no regions are immune to the dangers of climate-fueled disasters.” AccuWeather estimated that the total damage and economic loss from Helene will be between $145 billion and $160 billion. Many of the homes that have been inundated lack flood insurance, Bloomberg reported.
- Government approves loan to re-open Palisades nuclear plant
The Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture announced Monday that they are together putting forward billions of dollars to support the re-opening of the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan — the first in U.S. history.
The plant was shuttered in 2022, and since 2023, state and federal officials have been working to reopen the plant — as have the plant’s owner, Holtec, and Wolverine Power, a power company that purchases power on behalf of its member utilities. Those efforts received a boost Monday morning with the closing of a $1.52 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, announced provisionally in March, and more than $1.3 billion in funds from the Department of Agriculture, split up between Wolverine Power and Hoosier Energy, a cooperative serving rural utilities in Indiana and Illinois. The USDA funds will defray a quarter of the cost of the power purchase agreement between the cooperatives and Palisades, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small told reporters.
The restarted plant would have some 800 megawatts of capacity, and the project will employ some 600 people, said Deputy Secretary of Energy Dave Turk on a call with reporters. The plant could be up and running in “a couple of years,” an administration official said. “The funds from this closed loan from the DOE announced today will be utilized in the necessary inspections, testing, restoration, rebuilding, and replacement of existing equipment,” the official said. Holtec is currently working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on reauthorizing its license to operate the plant.
- Charm partners with U.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service is now working with the well-funded carbon removal startup Charm Industrial in a two-for-one endeavor to reduce wildfire risk and permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham reported. The federal agency and its official nonprofit partner, the National Forest Foundation, have partnered with the San Francisco-based company on a pilot program to turn leftover trees and other debris from forest-thinning operations into bio-oil, a liquid made from organic matter, to be injected underground. The project is a part of a larger Cal Fire grant, to implement forest health measures as well as seek out innovative biomass utilization solutions. If the pilot scales up, Charm can generate carbon removal credits by permanently locking away the CO2 from biomass, while the Forest Service will finally find a use for the piles of leftover trees that are too small for the sawmill’s taste. The pilot is taking place in Inyo National Forest in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, and comprises 538 acres of forest. Charm is processing just 60 tons of biomass over six weeks of operation in Inyo. The pilot is already more than halfway over.
- U.K. closes its last coal-fired power plant
The United Kingdom was home to the world’s first coal-fired power plant, which opened in 1882. Today, it became the first G7 country to phase out coal as a source of electricity with the closure of its last coal-fired plant. As recently as 2012, nearly 40% of the country’s electricity came from coal. But since then, coal has seen a rapid decline. Fifteen coal power plants have shut down or switched fuels, and wind and solar power generation have soared. As a result, carbon emissions from the U.K.’s power sector have fallen by 74%, according to a report from energy think tank Ember. “U.K. policies have incentivised the rapid deployment of renewable energy over the last decade, while simultaneously tightening restrictions on high polluting coal power plants,” the report said. Wind power in particular grew by 315% from 2012 to 2023. What’s more, the move away from coal has happened even without a big shift to natural gas:
Ember
THE KICKER
A gardener in Washington state has discovered a new flower that looks like a mashup between a daffodil and a dahlia. They’re calling it the Daffodahlia:
https://heatmap.news/climate/north-carolina-helene-flooding
UK Ministry of Defence gets into chipmaking game, buys gallium arsenide fab
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
State-owned semiconductor production: What is it planning to make there? It’s classified
UK government has stepped in to buy a fabrication plant to secure supplies of gallium arsenide semiconductors used by the armed forces, saving the jobs of up to 100 skilled workers at the same time.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/uk_mod_gets_into_chipmaking/
The Ideology of Childlessness
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/09/30/the-ideology-of-childlessness/
Vanishing Culture: Preserving Cookbooks
date: 2024-09-30, from: Internet Archive Blog
The following guest post from humanities scholar Katie Livingston is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. My Grann’s edition of The […]
https://blog.archive.org/2024/09/30/vanishing-culture-preserving-cookbooks/
At 100, former President Jimmy Carter’s legacy reevaluated
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
Atlanta, Georgia — When he returned to Plains, Georgia, in 1981, President Jimmy Carter was defeated — rejected by voters in a landslide election to Republican Ronald Reagan. The pouring rain at Carter’s welcome home reception reflected his gloomy mood and that of the country.
“In office, he was a political failure. He lost overwhelming[ly] to Ronald Reagan. But he was a substantive and visionary success,” said author and historian Jonathan Alter, who recognizes what many know Carter for today — humanitarian work with his Carter Center, “waging peace, fighting disease and building hope” around the world that led to Jimmy Carter receiving the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
“He’s done terrific work supervising elections in more than 100 countries. But former presidents don’t have as much power as presidents, not nearly as much, and the list of his accomplishments as president that were ignored, minimized or forgotten entirely was very long,” said Alter.
The Iran hostage crisis, rising inflation and oil embargoes of the 1970s doomed Carter’s White House tenure, casting a long shadow over his legacy. However, the onetime peanut farmer, Georgia governor, president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s 100th birthday milestone comes as authors and historians reevaluate his failures and accomplishments as a one-term U.S. president.
Alter’s biography, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life, is among several that conclude his four years in the White House were anything but a failure.
“Not just famously [the] Camp David accords and opening relations with China,” Alter told VOA in an interview in August at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, “but a long string of legislative accomplishments on the environment and many other issues that actually exceed the legislative accomplishments of both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.”
Carter signed the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act protecting more than 100 million acres — including land, national parks, refuges, monuments, forests and conservation areas — which Alter says is now considered one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation ever passed.
“The story I tell in my book is a surprising one,” said Alter. “It’s of somebody who worked hard in ways that actually bore fruit.”
“I think we’ll remember President Carter as a president who served in very enormously difficult times who had to deal with circumstances that were far beyond his control,” said Joseph Crespino, Emory University’s first Jimmy Carter Professor of History.” Carter routinely visited with Crespino and his students in Atlanta to discuss the good and bad decisions he made while president.
“Putting human rights front and center in American foreign policy — no president had done that in the way that Jimmy Carter had,” Crespino told VOA during a recent interview at his office on campus at Emory University. “It was important in shifting the balance of power in the Cold War, but it was also an important moment in the aftermath of the Vietnam War to reassert once again America’s moral responsibilities in the world.”
Crespino says some of Carter’s overlooked domestic accomplishments include reorganizing the federal government and deregulation of the airline, trucking and beer industries.
“We oftentimes associate a kind of freeing up of the free enterprise economy with the conservative turn that came in with Ronald Reagan, when in fact Jimmy Carter before Reagan was already doing a lot of deregulatory work in his presidency in recognizing the kind of limits of government oversight of these private industries.”
Members of Carter’s Cabinet, including former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, are grateful his long life has allowed him to witness the longer lens of history reflect more positively on his legacy.
“There’s no place in the world I know where people don’t have some good things to say about him,” Young told VOA as he spoke with reporters September 17 at Carter’s 100th birthday concert at the Fox theater in Atlanta. “Whether he succeeded or not … he gave it as good a try and came as far as the world would let him go.”
A world that continues to benefit from the Carter Center’s work, including fighting diseases including Guinea worm, which is down to a few cases in Africa and could become only the second disease ever eradicated.
https://www.voanews.com/a/at-100-former-president-jimmy-carter-s-legacy-reevaluated-/7804367.html
When companies view employees as a political base
date: 2024-09-30, from: Marketplace Morning Report
As part of our ongoing Office Politics series, we’re taking a look at businesses what happens when businesses lean on their employees to vote for the candidates and polices that are in the company’s best interest. It’s a practice that’s legal, and companies point out labor unions do it too. Yet it’s not without risk for the companies. Also, inflation cooled in August, yet housing inflation remains sticky. Why is that?
Deadly Harvest: The Hidden Costs Of Your Filet-O-Fish
date: 2024-09-30, from: The Lever News
In one of the world’s most valuable fisheries, regulators with conflicts of interest are letting corporations off the hook.
https://www.levernews.com/deadly-harvest-the-hidden-costs/
Cloud threats have execs the most freaked out because they’re not prepared
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ransomware? More like ‘we don’t care’ for everyone but CISOs
Efficiency and scalability are key benefits of enterprise cloud computing, but they come at a cost. Security threats specific to cloud environments are the leading cause of concern among top executives and they’re also the ones organizations are least prepared to address.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/pwc_security_survey/
Thailand hands out free money
date: 2024-09-30, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Thailand has launched the first phase of its flagship $14 billion stimulus handout plan, which will eventually see an estimated 45 million people receive about $300 each to encourage spending. Plus, devastating floods have hit central Europe. What are the economic impacts? We’ll also hear from the chairman of coffee chain Lavazza on global expansion and record-high coffee prices.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/thailand-hands-out-free-money
Former President Jimmy Carter Reaches Historic 100th Birthday
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
Atlanta, Georgia — In a celebration fit for a centenarian, the historic Fox theater in Atlanta recently hosted dozens of musical acts and thousands of guests for a concert celebrating the 100th birthday of Georgia’s one-time governor, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
“It’s a way to be together and I think that’s who he is fundamentally,” said Jason Carter, who said he believes the concert, featuring some performers that also campaigned for his grandfather in the 1970s, is a unifying – and bipartisan – way to celebrate what one documentary film director calls the “Rock ’n Roll President.”
“It’s one of those fundamental human connections that brings people together across geographies, across culture, across any sort of racial dividing lines,” Jason Carter told VOA during a press event ahead of the performances. “You’ll have both Democrats and Republicans here tonight.”
Despite the many speakers, actors, musicians and former presidents who sent video tributes, the one person noticeably absent from the celebration was Jimmy Carter himself. He remains in hospice care at his home 240 kilometers south of Atlanta.
“It’s a 600-person village in the middle of nowhere, and all of his other work at the end of the road in Africa, Mali, South Sudan, has been in those same kinds of 600-person villages,” Jason Carter said.
“He feels a kinship there and he feels a connection and the way that he marks this moment is by being at home.”
Jason Carter said his grandfather will watch the concert broadcast on Georgia Public Television, as he celebrates his historic milestone birthday in Plains, Georgia, not far from where his story began, at the Wise Sanitarium, where on October 1, 1924, Lillian Carter, then a nurse at the facility, gave birth to the first U.S. president to have been born in a hospital. The facility is now called the Lillian G. Carter Nursing Center.
“But the only reason he was born in a hospital was because his mother was working that day,” Jill Stuckey, a Carter family friend, told VOA.
Stuckey serves as superintendent of the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains which includes Carter’s preserved Depression-era boyhood farm, the old Plains High School where Carter studied and the railroad depot Carter converted into his campaign headquarters in his successful 1976 White House bid.
“After the hospice announcement nearly a year ago, I didn’t think we’d be at this point,” Stuckey said during an interview with VOA, standing next to a replica of the famous Resolute Desk from the White House Oval Office, now a big draw for tourists who visit Plains High School.
Stuckey said Plains celebrates its famous neighbor every day, but this historic birthday is marked by serving others.
“We’re naturalizing 100 new citizens in his honor. Thanks to the secretary of the Navy, we’re having four F-18 jets flyover.”
She said another, smaller birthday concert in the Plains High School auditorium is also meant to help the community celebrate the man who rose from being a local peanut farmer to president of the United States.
“He definitely deserves a lot of fanfare, because he’s definitely the greatest person I’ve ever met in my life,” she told VOA.
Carter’s milestone is a bittersweet occasion in Plains, though, it’s the first Carter has spent since his wife, Rosalynn, died last November.
“Seventy-seven-and-a-half years of marriage, to be without your partner, your soul mate you know it’s very, very tough times,” said Stuckey, “It’s tough times on him, but on all of us that knew her, that loved her, the family members.”
Carter’s birthday celebration, which began at the Fox theater in September and ends in Plains October 1, brought his large extended family together, including his great-grandson, Charlie Carter, who hinted it may not be the last time such a gathering occurs.
“No… maybe his 101th?”
Jimmy Carter also holds the record for the longest post-presidential career. After departing the White House in 1981, he and Rosalynn founded the Atlanta-based global nonprofit Carter Center, which fights neglected tropical diseases, promotes peaceful conflict resolution, and monitors elections around the world, causes which led to Carter winning the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
https://www.voanews.com/a/former-president-jimmy-carter-reaches-historic-100th-birthday/7804359.html
International Coffee Day, October 1
date: 2024-09-30, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
October 1 is International Coffee Day. Today’s post comes from Thomas Richardson, an expert archives technician at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a beverage that millions of people consume to kick-start their day. You can serve it hot, cold, with or without sugar or milk, and it has a … Continue reading International Coffee Day, October 1
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2024/09/30/international-coffee-day-october-1/
Anthropic’s UK revenue not enough to stop $4B Amazon union, says watchdog
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tie-up between AI toolmaker and Bezos biz doesn’t qualify for merger partnership probe
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has decided to drop its investigation into Amazon’s alliance with Anthropic, saying the significant deciding factor was a lack of local turnover for the AI toolmaker.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/cma_clears_amazon_anthropic/
Charm Is Working With the U.S. Forest Service on a Carbon Removal Pilot
date: 2024-09-30, from: Heatmap News
Deep in Inyo National Forest in the Eastern Sierra Nevada are a couple of bright white domed tents protecting an assemblage of technical equipment and machinery that, admittedly, looks a bit out of place amidst the natural splendor. Surrounding shipping containers boast a large “Charm Industrial” logo, an indication that, yes, the U.S. Forest Service is now working with the well-funded carbon removal startup in a two-for-one endeavor to reduce wildfire risk and permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere.
The federal agency and its official nonprofit partner, the National Forest Foundation, have partnered with San Francisco-based Charm on a pilot program to turn leftover trees and other debris from forest-thinning operations into bio-oil, a liquid made from organic matter, to be injected underground. The project is a part of a larger Cal Fire grant, to implement forest health measures as well as seek out innovative biomass utilization solutions. If the pilot scales up, Charm can generate carbon removal credits by permanently locking away the CO2 from biomass, while the Forest Service will finally find a use for the piles of leftover trees that are too small for the sawmill’s taste.
“It’s actually pretty shocking how big the backlog of wildfire fuel reduction projects is in the United States,” Peter Reinhardt, co-founder and CEO at Charm, told me. “The pattern of putting out fires as much as possible, as quickly as possible, has created just an enormous amount of fuel in our forests that has to be treated one way or another.” Controlled burns and forest thinning are the primary ways of dealing with this fuel buildup, but as Reinhardt explained to me, California has few pellet mills, and thus few offtakers for leftover wood. What’s left often ends up being burned in a big pile.
That’s common at Inyo, which is considered a “biomass utilization desert,” according to Katlyn Lonergan, a program coordinator with the National Forest Foundation. NFF is paying Charm a nominal fee to take the waste biomass off their hands, though not nearly enough to constitute a primary source of revenue for the company.
At this point, funding isn’t a problem at Charm. Last year, the company announced a $100 million Series B round and received a $53 million commitment from Frontier, the Big Tech-led carbon removal initiative, to permanently remove 112,000 tons of CO2 between 2024 and 2030, the coalition’s first offtake agreement. At the time, Charm had delivered over 6,000 tons of removal, “more than any other permanent CDR supplier to date,” the group wrote. Since then, the company has received an additional $50,000 from the Department of Energy and is currently in the running for a DOE carbon removal purchase prize of up to $3 million.
Charm’s process begins with woody biomass and an industrial chipper, after which the biomass is screened and dried. The chips are then rapidly heated in a low oxygen environment, a process called fast pyrolysis, which vaporizes the cellulose in the biomass. The remaining plant matter is then condensed into a liquid and injected thousands of feet underground.
Until now, the company has gotten more attention for its efforts to use agricultural biomass like corn stalks. But Reinhardt told me that lately, 100% of the company’s feedstock comes from “fuel load reduction projects,” — unhealthy trees that have been cut down — though in the future, it plans to source from both agricultural and forest waste. The change in feedstock prioritization, Reinhardt said, is due to wildfires becoming “a more and more urgent issue,” plus the advantages that come from working with denser materials. “Almost all the cost of biomass is in the logistics, and the cost of logistics is driven by density,” he said. Transporting puffy bales of corn stalks, leaves, and husks to Charm’s pyrolyzer is just not as energy efficient as trucking a log.
And because there are already plenty of piles of logs and residue sitting around in forests like Inyo, if Charm can bring its pyrolizers directly to the forest, it can increase efficiency still further. Bringing Charm’s operations onsite could eventually help the Forest Service save money, too. “The Eastern Sierra, it’s pretty isolated for this industry,” Lonergan told me. “And so we are actually hauling that [biomass] to Carson City, which is three and a half hours away.”
Fixing the agency’s transportation woes is a ways away though — Charm is starting small, processing just 60 tons of biomass over six weeks of operation in Inyo. The pilot is already more than halfway over.
Charm won’t be claiming carbon removal credits for this project, as Reinhardt told me it’s more a “demonstration of the production” to make sure the logistics work out. Scaling up will mean deploying larger pyrolyzers that can process significantly more biomass. “Our next iteration of pyrolyzers will be probably 10x the throughput,” Reinhardt told me. “So instead of 1 or one-and-a-half tons a day, about 10 to 15 tons a day.” Those numbers start to sound pretty darn small, though, when you consider the amount of forestry biomass and agricultural residue generated per year, which Reinhardt said is around 50 million tons and 300 million tons, respectively.
And while this particular project comprises 538 acres of forest, California alone has set a goal of thinning 1 million acres per year to reduce wildfire risk. Basically, Charm’s not going to run out of feedstock anytime soon, and the Forest Service isn’t going to find a quick fix for its piles and piles of unwanted wood. “I don’t envision it being the one solution that fits all,” Lonergan said of Charm’s technology. But, she told me, “it can absolutely contribute to these biomass materials that we don’t have an answer for yet.”
https://heatmap.news/technology/charm-forest-service-carbon-removal
GNOME 47 brings back some customization options, but let’s not go crazy
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Release codenamed ‘Denver’ will hit Fedora and Ubuntu next month
The latest release of the de facto default desktop of most Linux distros brings some new features – but the GNOME 4x transition isn’t done yet.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/gnome_47/
Extracting vendor promises won’t fix cybersecurity. Extracting teeth might
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
One branch of tech has learned to work together to solve the near-impossible. Now it’s our turn
Opinion To say cybersecurity is mostly very good is like saying Boeing’s Starliner parts mostly work – true, but you’re still going to be sleeping in the office. Moreover, it’s questionable whether either are getting any better.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/security_opinion/
Raspberry Pi AI Camera takes inferencing load off the CPU
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Autofocus would have been nice, though
HANDS ON Raspberry Pi has launched a camera module with AI smarts on board. But all that inferencing goodness comes at a price.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/raspberry_pi_offloads_ai_inferencing/
Name that Ware, September 2024
date: 2024-09-30, from: Bunnie’s Studio Blog
The Ware for September 2024 is shown below: This ware was a gift, but I won’t credit the donor until the solution is revealed, because the credit itself might give a clue about the ware. My first reaction to seeing this board is: “this thing has a high BOM cost”. My second thought is the […]
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/name-that-ware-september-2024/
Winner, Name that Ware August 2024
date: 2024-09-30, from: Bunnie’s Studio Blog
Last month’s Ware was a peak programming meter driver board made by JC Broadcast, taken from an Audix broadcast console. Thanks again to Howie M for contributing the ware! Howie hypothesized that the four mounting holes would be a dead give-away, in his words: The meters, typical in the broadcast world, have two needles against […]
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/winner-name-that-ware-august-2024/
Personalized pop-up was funny for about a second, until it felt like stalking
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The call was coming from inside the house
Who, Me? Well, gentle reader, we have some bad news: the weekend is over, and another five days of labor have commenced. The good news is Monday means it’s time for a dose of Who, Me? in which Reg readers send in their tales of … let’s say … hard-earned experience.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/who_me/
Raspberry Pi AI Camera on sale now at $70
date: 2024-09-30, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Create sophisticated vision AI applications with the Raspberry Pi AI Camera, available now at $70. Compatible with all Raspberry Pis.
The post Raspberry Pi AI Camera on sale now at $70 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-ai-camera-on-sale-now/
Kamala Harris campaign motorcade halted by confused robotaxis
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Is this AI showing the would-be leader of the free world who’s really the boss?
Artificial intelligence may have shown the would-be-leader of the free world who’s really in charge, after rogue robo-taxis halted the motorcade of US vice-president – and Democratic Party presidential candidate – Kamala Harris.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/kamala_harris_motorcade_waymo_delay/
China calls for realtime censorship of satellite broadband
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Great Firewall reaches all the way into space
Beijing has published its proposed regulations for satellite broadband, including a requirement that operators conduct censorship in real time.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/china_satellite_censorship/
COSMIC alpha 2 released
date: 2024-09-30, from: OS News
System76, the premiere Linux computer manufacturer and creator of the COSMIC desktop environment, has updated COSMIC’s Alpha release to Alpha 2. The latest release includes more Settings pages, the bulk of functionality for COSMIC Files, highly requested window management features, and considerable infrastructure work for screen reader support, as well as some notable bug fixes. ↫ system76’s blog The pace of development for COSMIC remains solid, even after the first alpha release. This second alpha keeps adding a lot of things considered basic for any desktop environment, such as settings panels for power and battery, sounds, displays, and many more. It also brings window management support for focus follows cursor and cursor follows focus, which will surely please the very specific, small slice of people who swear by those. Also, you can now disable the super key. A major new feature that I’m personally very happy about is the “adjust density” feature. COSMIC will allow you to adjust the spacing between the various user interface elements so you can choose to squeeze more information on your screen, which is one of the major complaints I have about modern UI design in macOS, Windows, and GNOME. Being able to adjust this to your liking is incredibly welcome, especially combined with COSMIC’s ability to change from ’rounded’ UI elements to ‘square’ UI elements. The file manager has also been vastly, vastly improved, tons of bugs were fixed, and much, much more. It seems COSMIC is on the right path, and I can’t wait to try out the first final result once it lands.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140824/cosmic-alpha-2-released/
Tcl/Tk 9.0 released
date: 2024-09-30, from: OS News
Tcl 9.0 and Tk 9.0 – usually lumped together as Tcl/Tk – have been released. Tcl 9.0 brings 64bit compatibility so it can address data values larger than 2 GB, better Unicode support, support for mounting ZIP files as file systems, and much, much more. Tk 9.0 gets support for scalable vector graphics, much better platform integration with things like system trays, gestures, and so on, and much more.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140822/tcl-tk-9-0-released/
India scores its first fab, and it looks like it was at Japan’s expense
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
PSMC does a deal with Tata in what really might be – all hype aside – an actual ‘key milestone’
It looks like India has scored a deal to host its first semiconductor fab, possibly at the expense of a project in Japan.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/psmc_tata_bsi_india_fab/
Coal has now died in its birthplace: the UK closes its last coal power station
date: 2024-09-30, from: Hannah Richie at Substack
It was a relatively quick energy transition by historical standards.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/coal-death-uk
AI code helpers just can’t stop inventing package names
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
LLMs are helpful, but don’t use them for anything important
AI models just can’t seem to stop making things up. As two recent studies point out, that proclivity underscores prior warnings not to rely on AI advice for anything that really matters.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/ai_code_helpers_invent_packages/
Understanding political polls: From history to interpretation
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
During any campaign, it is crucial that voters and candidates have a way to measure the state of public opinion. Polling — surveying representative samples of the electorate — allows everyone to understand and adapt to prevailing sentiments. But it has its flaws.
https://www.voanews.com/a/understanding-political-polls-from-history-to-interpretation/7804204.html
Forget the Kia Boyz: Crooks could hijack your car with just a smartphone
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: UK man charged with compromising firms for stock secrets; ransomware actor foils self; and more
Infosec In Brief Put away that screwdriver and USB charging cable – the latest way to steal a Kia just requires a cellphone and the victim’s license plate number.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/infosec_in_brief/
Sols 4318-4320: One Last Weekend in the Channel
date: 2024-09-30, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 We’re wrapping up our time in the channel with the highly anticipated examination of the “Sheep Creek” white stones. Last plan’s reposition was a success, so we are able to go ahead with contact science on them this weekend. MAHLI and APXS picked three targets to investigate: “Cloud […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/sols-4318-4320-one-last-weekend-in-the-channel/
Former President Jimmy Carter reaches historic 100th birthday
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
Jimmy Carter is the first U.S. president to reach the age of 100. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Georgia on the historic milestone.
Binance claims it helped to bust Chinese crypto scam app in India
date: 2024-09-30, updated: 2024-09-30, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: SpaceX plans Vietnam investment; Yahoo! Japan content moderation secrets; LG offloads Chinese display factory; and more
ASIA IN BRIEF It’s not often The Register writes about a cryptocurrency outfit being on the right side of a scam or crime, but last week crypto exchange Binance claimed it helped Indian authorities to investigate a scam gaming app.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/asia_tech_news_in_brief/
Trump rails against immigrants at rally in swing state Pennsylvania
date: 2024-09-30, from: VOA News USA
Phrase Matching in Marginalia Search
date: 2024-09-30, from: Marginallia log
Marginalia Search now properly supports phrase matching. This not only permits a more robust implementation of quoted search queries, but also helps promote results where the search terms occur in the document exactly in the same order as they do in the query. This is a write-up about implementing this change. This is going to be a relatively long post, as it represents about 4 months of work. I’m also happy and grateful to announce that the nlnet people reached out after the run of the grant was over and asked me if I had more work in the pipe, and agreed to fund this change as well!
https://www.marginalia.nu/log/a_111_phrase_matching/
GSoC 2024: ABI Lowering in ClangIR
date: 2024-09-30, from: LLVM Blog
ClangIR is an ongoing effort to build a high-level intermediate representation(IR) for C/C++ within the LLVM ecosystem. Its key advantage lies in its abilityto retain more source code information. While ClangIR is making progress, itstill lacks certain features, notably ABI handling. Currently, ClangIR lowersmost functions without accounting for ABI-specific calling convention details.
Goals
The “Build & Run SingleSource Benchmarks with ClangIR - Part 2”
Google Summer ofCode 2024 builds on my contributions from GSoC 2023 by
addressing one of themain issues I encountered: target-specific
lowering. It focuses on extendingClangIR’s code generation capabilities,
particularly in ABI-lowering for X86-64.Several tests rely on operations
and types (e.g., va_arg calls and complexdata types) that
require target-specific information to compile correctly.
The concrete steps to achieve this were:
- Implement foundational infrastructure that can scale to multiplearchitectures while adhering to ClangIR design principles such as CodeGenparity, feature guarding, and AST backreferences.
- Handle basic calling convention scenarios as a proof of concept tovalidate the foundational infrastructure.
- Add lowering for a second architecture to further validate theinfrastructure’s extensibility to multiple architectures.
-
Unify target-specific ClangIR lowering into the
library, as there are afew isolated methods handling
target-specific code lowering like
cir.va_arg. - Integrate calling convention lowering into the main pipeline to ensurefuture contributions and continued development of this infrastructure.
Contributions
The list of contribution (PRs) can be foundhere.
Target Lowering Library
The most significant contribution of this project was the development of
amodular
TargetLowering
library.This ensures that target-specific MLIR lowering passes can
leverage this sharedlibrary for lowering logic. The library also follows
ClangIR’s feature guardingprinciples, ensuring that any contributor can
refer to the original CodeGen forcontributions, and any unimplemented
feature is asserted at specific codepoints, making it easy to track
missing functionality.
Calling Convention Lowering Pass
As a proof of concept, the initial development of the
TargetLowering libraryfocused on implementing a
calling convention
loweringpass that targets multiplearchitectures. Currently, ClangIR
ignores the target ABI during CodeGen toretain high-level information.
For example, structs are not unraveled to improveargument-passing
efficiency. ABI-specific LLVM attributes are also ignored. Thispass
addresses these issues by properly tagging LLVM attributes and
rewritingfunction definitions and calls to handle unraveled structs.
This was implementedfor both X86-64 and
AArch64,demonstrating
the library’s multi-architecture support.
Shortcomings
Target-Specific Lowering Unification
While some target-specific lowering code was moved into the library, it wascopied and pasted rather than properly integrated. This is not ideal forleveraging the library’s multi-architecture features.
Inclusion in the Main Pipeline
This is still a work in progress, as the library is not yet mature enough tohandle most pre-existing ClangIR tests. There are also feature guards withunreachable statements for many unimplemented features.
Future Work
Now that there is a base infrastructure for handling target-agnostic totarget-specific CIR code, there is a large amount of future work to be done,including:
- Improving DataLayout-related queries using MLIR’s built-in tools.
- Implementing calling convention lowering for additional types, such aspointers.
- Extending the TargetLowering library to support more architectures.
- Unifying remaining target-specific lowering code from other parts of ClangIR.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my Google Summer of Code mentors, Bruno Cardoso Lopes andNathan Lanza, for another great GSoC experience. I also want to thank the LLVMcommunity and Google for organizing the program.
https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2024-09-07-abi-lowering-in-clangir/