News gathered 2024-10-09
(date: 2024-10-09 08:11:23)
Thousands of Internal AI Training Datasets, Tools Exposed to Anyone on the Internet
date: 2024-10-09, from: 404 Media Group
“In addition to the ML models themselves, the exposed data can include training datasets, hyperparameters, and sometimes even raw data used to build models,” a security researcher said.
Cognizant discriminated against non-Indian workers in H-1B visa case, US jury finds
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
IT service giant denies claims, will appeal against verdict
A US jury has found that employment practices at Cognizant constitute discriminatory conduct toward non-Indian workers in a case that originated in 2013 and claimed the tech giant favored H-1B visa holders from India over local workers.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/us_jury_cognizant_case/
A costly lesson, often learned the hard way
date: 2024-10-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Medicare does not pay for general, long-term care. Now, Kamala Harris, the Democrat’s candidate for president, wants to expand Medicare to pay for long-term care for older people in their home. That would need an amenable new Congress, but many families are presently left trying to piece together care for older relatives. Also on today’s show: potential structure changes to Google and the rising value of the U.S. dollar.
An American Bomb Left Over From World War II Explodes at an Airport Taxiway in Japan
date: 2024-10-09, from: Smithsonian Magazine
No one was injured in the blast, and authorities are investigating why the ordnance detonated after so many years underground
Misappropriation of Sheep Testicles
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/10/09/misappropriation-of-sheep-testicles/
Ransomware gang Trinity joins pile of scumbags targeting healthcare
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
As if hospitals and clinics didn’t have enough to worry about
At least one US healthcare provider has been infected by Trinity, an emerging cybercrime gang with eponymous ransomware that uses double extortion and other “sophisticated” tactics that make it a “significant threat,” according to the feds.…
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Canvas is a new way to write and code with ChatGPT. I just got access to this. I think I'm going to spend the rest of the day trying it out on a coding project. I have a problem I need to iterate over with ChatGPT and that has been in general a frustrating process, iterating.
https://openai.com/index/introducing-canvas/
Podcast: The Smart Glasses That Dox Strangers
date: 2024-10-09, from: 404 Media Group
Looking at someone and doxing them instantly; how a data archive was knocked offline during a recent hurricane; and a hack of an AI companion.
https://www.404media.co/podcast-the-smart-glasses-that-dox-strangers/
The narrow path from votes of despair
date: 2024-10-09, from: Enlightenment Economics
I read Sam Freedman’s Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It with a mixture of nods of recognition and gasps of disbelief. It’s all too apparent that – as the subtitle puts it – nothing works in … Continue reading
http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2024/10/the-narrow-path-from-votes-of-despair/
The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes
date: 2024-10-09, from: 404 Media Group
WikiProject AI Cleanup is protecting Wikipedia from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued the rest of the internet.
https://www.404media.co/the-editors-protecting-wikipedia-from-ai-hoaxes/
Uncle Sam may force Google to sell Chrome browser, or Android OS
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Tech giant snaps back, calls DoJ proposals on splitting up Alphabet and more ‘government overreach’
The US government has confirmed it is considering asking a judge to force Google to divest parts of its business as part of potential remedies in the antitrust case over its control of online searches.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/usa_vs_google_proposed_remedies/
Microsoft sprinkles AI ‘magic’ and additional storage tiers on OneDrive
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Big emphasis on photos in mobile app
Microsoft has unveiled a slew of new features for its OneDrive cloud storage service “all through the magic of AI.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/microsoft_onedrive_updates/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
When I was a kid, Pensie Pinkies were the favored kind of street game ball.
https://canarsiegirl.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/spaldeens-vs-pensy-pinkies/
The IEA Has Good News and Bad News About Renewables
date: 2024-10-09, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Rare rainstorms have flooded parts of the Sahara Desert • Storm Kirk is expected to bring flooding to parts of northern France • Wyoming’s 75,000-acre Elk Fire has been burning for nearly two weeks.
THE TOP FIVE
- Category 5 Hurricane Milton approaches Florida
Hurricane Milton, currently a Category 5 storm, is expected to make landfall this evening near Tampa, Florida, as a Category 4 hurricane with 130 mph winds, according to the National Weather Service. It will bring between 10 and 15 feet of storm surge (possibly more, depending on which forecast you’re following), plus tornadoes. The conditions have already started to deteriorate and will continue to do so throughout the day. “There is no recent precedent for a major hurricane to take this path toward Florida,” said AccuWeather Director of Forecasting Operations Dan DePodwin. “This is an increasing significant risk of devastating, catastrophic impacts to this region.”
AccuWeather
- Studies link Helene and Milton to climate change
Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels almost certainly made Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene a lot worse, according to two new rapid attribution studies by World Weather Attribution and Climate Central. A storm like Hurricane Helene is about two-and-a-half times more likely in the region today compared to what would be expected in a “cooler pre-industrial climate,” WWA found. That means Helene, the kind of storm one would expect to see once every 130 years on average, is now expected to develop at a rate of about once every 53 years. Separately, Climate Central looked at Hurricane Milton, which already has the distinction of being the fifth strongest Atlantic storm on record. The nonprofit’s findings show that Milton’s rapid intensification — one of the fastest and most powerful instances of the phenomenon in history — is primarily due to high sea surface temperatures in the weeks before Milton developed, which was made at least 400 times more likely by climate change and up to 800 times more likely.
“While hurricane seasons eventually end, global temperatures haven’t stopped going up,” wrote Heatmap’s Jeva Lange. “That, perhaps, is the more terrifying subtext of the attribution studies: There will be more Miltons and Helenes.”
- IEA: Renewable capacity growth not enough to triple by 2030
There are several big energy reports out this week, and taken together, their findings tell a nuanced story of an energy transition that’s well underway, but still moving too slowly. Let’s start with the big one: The International Energy Agency’s Renewables 2024 report, published this morning. It says that the world is on track to add 5,500 gigawatts of new clean energy capacity by 2030, 80% of which will come from solar PV alone. That means renewables will account for half of global electricity generation by the end of the decade.
IEA
While this is huge progress (the report notes that 5,500 GW is roughly equal the power capacity of China, the European Union, India, and the U.S. combined), it is not enough to meet the COP28 goal of tripling renewable capacity by 2030. But! The IEA stresses that it is “entirely possible” to meet this target if governments can get their acts together, set bold new emission reduction targets in the coming months, and work together to lower the energy transition costs for poorer countries. “The market can deliver on renewables, and now governments need to prioritize investing in storage, grids, and other forms of clean flexibility to enable this transformation,” said Dave Jones, director of global insights at energy think tank Ember. “The next half decade is going to be one heck of a ride.”
So, that’s renewables. Let’s look at what all this means for emissions and, most importantly, warming.
- Rhodium and DNV forecast 2100 warming levels
An energy transition report published this morning from Norwegian risk management company DNV concludes, rather remarkably, that energy-related emissions are set to peak this year and begin a steady decline thanks to the plummeting costs of solar and batteries, especially in China. “Emissions peaking is a milestone for humanity,” said Remi Eriksen, group president and CEO of DNV. However, the projected rate of emission reduction is only enough to limit warming to 2.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. “We must now focus on how quickly emissions decline and use the available tools to accelerate the energy transition,” Eriksen added.
The Rhodium Climate Outlook 2024 report, out yesterday, concluded that there is a less than 7% chance of the world limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius “if current trends in policy and technology development continue.” In fact, it projected a “very likely” increase between 2 degrees Celsius and gulp 3.7 degrees Celsius by century’s end. However, odds of limiting warming to 2 degrees jump to 96% if all countries can get to net-zero emissions by 2070. To date, 149 countries (representing 88% of global emissions) have made net-zero or carbon neutrality commitments, though it remains to be seen if and when they’ll meet those goals.
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- Study suggests green hydrogen will remain ‘prohibitively expensive’
The cost of “green” hydrogen – that which is produced with clean energy – is likely to remain “prohibitively expensive,” according to a new study published yesterday in the journal Joule. The fuel is seen as key to curbing emissions from hard-to-abate sectors (industry, for example), and many are banking on the price of production falling. But the researchers say the high storage and distribution costs are often overlooked. Taking those costs into consideration, carbon capture and storage is cheaper than green hydrogen when it comes to curbing emissions, the researchers found. “Even if production costs decrease in line with predictions, storage and distribution costs will prevent hydrogen being cost-competitive in many sectors,” said lead author Roxana Shafiee, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. “Our results challenge a growing idea that hydrogen will be the ‘Swiss army knife of decarbonization’ and suggest that the opportunities for hydrogen may be narrower than previously thought.”
THE KICKER
“After 40 years in a career, hopefully, I get a little leeway from the folks who are accustomed to seeing me cool as a cucumber. But the truth is that with climate-driven extremes putting us in a place that we haven’t been before, it’s very difficult to stay cool, calm, and collected.” –Meteorologist John Morales on his emotional on-air reaction to Hurricane Milton’s rapid intensification.
https://heatmap.news/climate/iea-renewables-report-emissions-warming
Let’s get apolitical
date: 2024-10-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report
In a time of fraught political polarization, it’s hard for companies to decide whether to take political stands or remain quietly on the sidelines. Today, as a continuation of our Office Politics series, we’ll hear why some places that once mixed business and politics may be keeping a lower profile now. Then, nearly a month into a strike, negotiations between aerospace giant Boeing and its union members have broken off. We hear why.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/lets-get-apolitical
Study: Climate change made deadly Hurricane Helene more intense
date: 2024-10-09, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Hurricane Helene’s torrential rain and powerful winds were made about 10% more intense due to climate change, according to a study published Wednesday by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group.
Although a 10% increase “might seem relatively small… that small change in the hazard really leads to big change in impacts and damage,” said climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads the research organization.
The study also found that fossil fuels — the primary cause of climate change — have made hurricanes like Helene 2.5 times more likely to occur.
In other words, storms of Helene’s magnitude were formerly anticipated once every 130 years, but now the probability is closer to once every 53 years, on average.
To conduct the study, researchers focused on three aspects of Hurricane Helene: precipitation, winds and the water temperature of the Gulf of Mexico — a key factor in its formation.
“All aspects of this event were amplified by climate change to different degrees,” Ben Clarke, a co-author of the study and researcher at Imperial College London, told a press conference.
“And we’ll see more of the same as the world continues to warm,” he continued.
The research by WWA, an international group of scientists and meteorologists who study the role of climate change in extreme weather events, comes as the southeastern US state of Florida prepares for the arrival of another major hurricane, Milton, just 10 days after it was hit by Helene.
Destruction
Helene made landfall in northwestern Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 hurricane with winds up to 140 mph (225 kph).
The storm then moved north, causing heavy rain and devastating floods in several states, including North Carolina, where it claimed the highest death toll.
The authors of the study emphasized that the risk posed by hurricanes has increased in scope beyond coastal areas.
Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at NGO Climate Central, said Helene “had so much intensity” that it would take time for it to lose strength, but the “storm was moving fast… so it could go farther inland pretty quickly.”
This study utilized three methodologies to examine the three aspects of the storm, and was conducted by researchers from the US, the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands.
To study its rainfall, researchers used an approach based on both observation and climate models, depending on the two regions involved: one for coastal areas like Florida, and another for inland areas like the Appalachian mountains.
In both cases, the study found precipitation had increased by 10 percent because of global warming, which is currently at 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
To study Helene’s winds, scientists looked at hurricane data dating back as far as 1900.
They determined Helene’s winds were 11 percent stronger, or 13 mph (21 kph), as a result of climate change.
Lastly, the researchers examined the water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico, where Helene formed, finding it was around 2 degrees Celsius above normal.
This record temperature was made 200 to 500 times more likely due to climate change, the study asserts.
Warmer oceans release more water vapor, providing more energy for storms as they form.
“If humans continue to burn fossil fuels, the US will face even more destructive hurricanes,” Clarke warned in a statement.
It’s not me, it’s you: Google faces a break-up
date: 2024-10-09, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: The U.S. Department of Justice is taking aim at Google, saying the tech giant might need to be broken up because it’s too dominant in the market. This comes after a major ruling in August where a judge found Google has been running an illegal monopoly when it comes to online searches. Plus, an agency enabling the international mail system celebrates its 150th birthday.
Historic Staff Spotlight: Mario Lopez Feliu
date: 2024-10-09, from: National Archives, Pieces of History blog
In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month and American Archives Month, today’s Historic Staff Spotlight is on Cuban-born National Archives intern turned staff member, Mario Lopez Feliu. It’s from Alyssa Moore in the National Archives History Office. Mario Lopez Feliu was born on March 22, 1918, in Havana, Cuba. In 1946, while heading the preservation department … Continue reading Historic Staff Spotlight: Mario Lopez Feliu
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2024/10/09/historic-staff-spotlight-mario-lopez-feliu/
UK Regulatory Innovation Office vows to slash red tape – but we’ve heard it all before
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The real issue is a reluctance to invest
Comment Over summer, the UK witnessed a change in government. However, the incoming Labour Party shares some ideas about regulation and innovation with its Conservative predecessor.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/uk_regulatory_innovation_office/
Game of phones: Voda-Three merger left rivals dialing for help
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
BT and some MVNOs very much against union, VMO2 more relaxed because of spectrum deal
Opinion is divided in the telecoms industry over the proposed Vodafone and Three UK merger, with at least one rival in favor of the deal, while others want to see the Brit competition regulator scrap it altogether.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/vodafone_three_merger_remedies/
Want to Decarbonize Your Life? Here’s How.
date: 2024-10-09, from: Heatmap News
How can you fight climate change in your daily life? Last month, Heatmap published our attempt at answering that question: Called Decarbonize Your Life, it’s a series of stories and guides to help you make better, smarter decisions to nudge the energy system away from fossil fuels. We consulted studies, ran our own analysis (with a little help from some friends), and used our expert judgment to arrive at six big, high-leverage actions you can take to fight climate change and cut carbon pollution.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Rob speak with Heatmap’s deputy editor Jillian Goodman and founding staff writer Emily Pontecorvo about what those six big actions are, how the guide came together, and why big choices matter so much more than small ones. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Jesse Jenkins: So it’s more than just the carbon impact which is the key here, right? This systemic leverage point that you’re trying to make is that you’re trying to think about — beyond just reducing emissions, which is important — how is that actually having some kind of systemic impact on reorienting the global capitalist system, right? That we all live in, towards where we want to go, towards what a net zero emissions lifestyle and society looks like.
Robinson Meyer: And instead of every dollar you spend going to the task of taking oil out of the ground, and the task of building more internal combustion cars, it’s going to the task of building more EVs and harvesting electricity. Anyway, Jillian, I interrupted you.
Jillian Goodman: I was just going to add — and again, I’m just paraphrasing you — every time you drive, it’s a marginal impact. Every single time you use the device. Not only are you emitting less in the short term, you’re emitting less in the long term. And as the grid gets cleaner, every time you drive your EV, your EV will get cleaner, as well.
Emily Pontecorvo: One other thing that we were thinking about a little bit is thinking about these actions in terms of, which ones are you, as an individual, you’re literally the one who’s burning the fossil fuels. When you drive your car, you are burning the gas. When you’re lighting your stove, you’re burning natural gas. And not to put it all on the individual, but you’re the one who has the power to say, Okay, I’m not gonna burn fossil fuels in my home anymore. And whereas with a few other actions — like with rooftop solar, with efficiency improvements — those are extremely important, and those are very high on our list for other reasons. But they’re more indirect.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
https://heatmap.news/podcast/shift-key-s2-e9-decarbonize-your-life
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Upstate New York City Underrated, Full Of Award-Winning Eateries.
Thunderbird for Android is go – at least the beta is
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A traditional-style rich email client – but for tablets
MZLA, the company behind the Thunderbird email client, is finally putting its mobile email client app into beta testing – but it’s a lot more mature than that sounds.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/thunderbird_for_android_beta/
How Waffle House helps Southerners — and FEMA — judge a storm’s severity
date: 2024-10-09, from: VOA News USA
Pilet: Mini Pi 5 modular computer
date: 2024-10-09, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Do you want a portable mini modular computer based on Raspberry Pi 5? If so, you’re in luck.
The post Pilet: Mini Pi 5 modular computer appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/pilet-mini-pi-5-modular-computer/
US considers breakup of Google in landmark search case
date: 2024-10-09, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — The U.S. said on Tuesday it may ask a judge to force Alphabet’s Google to divest parts of its business, such as its Chrome browser and Android operating system, that it says are used to maintain an illegal monopoly in online search.
In a landmark case, a judge in August found that Google, which processes 90% of U.S. internet searches, had built an illegal monopoly. The Justice Department’s proposed remedies have the potential to reshape how Americans find information on the internet while shrinking Google’s revenues and giving its competitors more room to grow.
“Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow,” the Justice Department said.
The proposed fixes will also aim to keep Google’s past dominance from extending to the burgeoning business of artificial intelligence, prosecutors said.
The Justice Department might also ask the court to end Google’s payments to have its search engine pre-installed or set as the default on new devices.
Google has made annual payments - $26.3 billion in 2021 - to companies including Apple and other device manufacturers to ensure that its search engine remained the default on smartphones and browsers, keeping its market share strong.
Google, which plans to appeal, said in a corporate blog post that the proposals were “radical” and said they “go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”
Google maintains that its search engine has won users with its quality, adding that it faces robust competition from Amazon and other sites, and that users can choose other search engines as their default.
The world’s fourth-largest company with a market capitalization of over $2 trillion, Alphabet is under mounting legal pressure from competitors and antitrust authorities.
A U.S. judge ruled on Monday in a separate case, that Google must open up its lucrative app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from rival sources. Google is also fighting a Justice Department case that seeks the breakup of its web advertising business.
As part of its efforts to prevent Google’s dominance from extending into AI, the Justice Department said it may seek to make available to rivals the indexes, data and models it uses for Google search and AI-assisted search features.
Other orders prosecutors may seek include restricting Google from entering agreements that limit other AI competitors’ access to web content and letting websites opt out of Google using their content to train AI models.
Google said the AI-related proposals could stifle the sector.
“There are enormous risks to the government putting its thumb on the scale of this vital industry — skewing investment, distorting incentives, hobbling emerging business models — all at precisely the moment that we need to encourage investment,” Google said.
The Justice Department is expected to file a more detailed proposal with the court by Nov. 20. Google will have a chance to propose its own remedies by Dec. 20.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling in Washington was a major win for antitrust enforcers who have brought an ambitious set of cases against Big Tech companies over the past four years.
The U.S. has also sued Meta Platforms, Amazon.com and Apple claiming they illegally maintain monopolies.
Some of the ideas in the Justice Department’s proposals to break up Google had previously garnered support from Google’s smaller competitors such as reviews site Yelp and rival search engine company DuckDuckGo.
Yelp, which sued Google over search in August, says spinning off Google’s Chrome browser and AI services should be on the table. Yelp also wants Google to be prohibited from giving preference to Google’s local business pages in search results.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-considers-breakup-of-google-in-landmark-search-case/7815797.html
Grazer beats the behemoth that killed her cub to win Alaska’s Fat Bear Contest
date: 2024-10-09, from: VOA News USA
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — In a storyline better befitting a melodrama than a popularity vote, Grazer won her second Fat Bear Contest Tuesday by defeating the male behemoth that killed her cub this summer.
Grazer beat Chunk by more than 40,000 votes cast by fans watching live cameras at explore.org of Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.
Fans cast votes online for their favorite chunky competitor in tournament-style brackets that begins with 12 bears. They picked the bear they believe best exemplifies winter preparedness by the fat they have accumulated over the summer feeding on the sockeye salmon that return to Brooks River.
The bears often perch at the top of a falls in the river, grabbing leaping salmon out of the air as the fish attempt to hurdle the waterfall to spawn upstream.
This is where Grazer’s cub died after it slipped over the waterfall and was killed by Chunk, perhaps the most dominant brown bear on the river. Grazer fought Chunk in an effort to save the cub, but it later died. The death was captured on the live cameras.
Another death was captured live by the cameras just last week, delaying the release of the tournament bracket for a day. Bear 402, a female bear that was supposed to be a contestant in this year’s contest, was killed by a male brown bear the day the brackets were expected to be released.
Grazer has conspicuously blond ears and a long, straight muzzle, according to her bio page at explore.org.
“She is a formidable presence on Brooks River. Her fearlessness and strength have earned her respect, with most bears avoiding confrontation,” it says.
Her other surviving cub from her third litter placed second two weeks ago in the Fat Bear Junior contest.
Chunk is perhaps the largest bear on the river, with narrow-set eyes, dark brown fur and a distinctive scar across his muzzle, his bio says. He used his size to rise to the top of the river hierarchy this year and secured the prime fishing spots.
“Chunk’s confidence and aggression paid off, allowing him to feast on 42 salmon in 10 hours,” it says. “His physical success is evident in his bulky form.”
Adult male brown bears typically weigh 270 to 410 kilograms in mid-summer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon — each eats as many as 30 fish per day — large males can weigh well over 454 kilograms. Females are about one-third smaller.
The annual contest, which drew more than 1.3 million votes last year, is a way to celebrate the resiliency of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands.
In addition to the live cameras, Katmai has become a bucket list tourist destination and viewing stands have been built on the river to allow people to watch the brown bears fish for salmon.
Copilot’s crudeness has left Microsoft chasing Google, again
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Surely Redmond knows that almost nobody has tamed unstructured data?
Opinion A year ago it looked as if the world could be Microsoft’s oyster. The software giant dominated the enterprise, was catching up to cloudy rivals, and then managed to purchase forty-nine percent of the for-profit subsidiary of ChatGPT creator OpenAI.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/copilot_vs_notebooklm/
Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, new Supermarionation is GO!
Video Previously unseen footage from the classic British TV show Thunderbirds has been found in a garden shed and restored – where possible – for viewing next year.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/missing_thunderbirds_footage/
Supermicro crams 18 GPUs into a 3U AI server that’s a little slow by design
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Can handle edge inferencing or run a 64 display command center
GPU-enhanced servers can typically pack up to eight of the accelerators, but Supermicro has built a box that manages to fit 18 of them inside an air-cooled chassis that’ll eat up just 3U of rack space.…
Florida braces for Hurricane Milton’s catastrophic landfall
date: 2024-10-09, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/florida-braces-for-hurricane-milton-s-catastrophic-landfall/7815748.html
OpenAI appoints international expansion boss
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Picks Singapore as APAC hub and outlines desire to get governments onside
Chat GPT-maker Open AI announced today that it’s appointed a new boss to lead its international expansion.…
MediaTek enters the 4th Dimensity with 3nm octa-core 9400 smartphone brains
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Still sticking with Arm and not taking RISC-Vs
Fabless Taiwanese chip biz MediaTek has unveiled the fourth flagship entry in its Dimensity family of system-on-chips for smartphones and other mobile devices. It’s sticking with close companion Arm rather than jumping ship to RISC-V for the CPU cores, for those wondering.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/mediatek_dimensity_9400/
Razor-thin margins: Why Wisconsin is crucial in the 2024 presidential race
date: 2024-10-09, from: VOA News USA
Wisconsin, a Midwestern U.S. state known for its dairy farms and beer production, has emerged as a crucial battleground in the 2024 presidential election. With a history of extremely close races, Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes could determine who becomes the next president. The state’s unique mix of urban and rural voters, along with key issues like the economy and abortion rights, make it a microcosm of the nation’s political divide.
How Climate Change Is Supercharging Hurricane Milton
date: 2024-10-09, from: Heatmap News
Contrary to recent rumor, the U.S. government cannot direct major hurricanes like Helene and Milton toward red states. According to two new rapid attribution studies by World Weather Attribution and Climate Central, however, human actors almost certainly made the storms a lot worse through the burning of fossil fuels.
A storm like Hurricane Helene, which has killed at least 227 people so far and caused close to $50 billion in estimated property losses across the southeast, is about two-and-a-half times more likely in the region today compared to what would be expected in a “cooler pre-industrial climate,” WWA found. That means Helene, the kind of storm one would expect to see once every 130 years on average, is now expected to develop at a rate of about once every 53 years. Additionally, WWA researchers determined that extreme rainfall from Helene was 70% more likely and 10% heavier in the Appalachians and about 40% more likely in the southern Appalachian region, where many of the deaths occurred, due to climate change.
“Americans shouldn’t have to fear hurricanes more violent than Helene — we have all the knowledge and technology needed to lower demand and replace oil, gas, and coal with renewable energy,” Friederike Otto, the lead of WWA and a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, said in a statement. “But vitally, we need the political will.” Alarmingly, the attribution study found that storms could drop an additional 10% or more rain on average as soon as the 2050s if warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius.
WWA’s study is not the first to be released on Hurricane Helene, but it was still produced incredibly quickly and has not been peer reviewed. Just a few weeks ago, the group issued a correction on a report estimating the contribution of climate change to recent flooding in Europe.
Separately, Climate Central looked at Hurricane Milton, which already has the distinction of being the fifth strongest Atlantic storm on record. The nonprofit’s findings show that Milton’s rapid intensification — one of the fastest and most powerful instances of the phenomenon in history — is primarily due to high sea surface temperatures in the weeks before Milton developed, which was made at least 400 times more likely by climate change and up to 800 times more likely. (WWA relied on Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index for oceans for its research, but found “climate change made the unusually hot sea surface temperature about 200-500 times more likely.”)
Attribution science is incredibly tricky, especially for a storm system like a hurricane that has variables ranging from wind shear to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation to ocean temperatures and jet stream variations. When I spoke to a member of the WWA team earlier this year, I was told the organization specifically avoids attributing the intensification of any individual hurricane — in theory, one of the more straightforward relationships — to climate change because of the relatively limited historical modeling available. Even something like rainfall “is not necessarily correlated to the magnitude of the floods that you see because there are other factors,” WWA’s Clair Barnes previously told me — for example, the steep-sided mountains and hollows of western North Carolina, which served as funnels for rainfall to an especially devastating effect.
But regarding the relationship between hurricanes and climate change more generally, “We’re relatively confident that storms will get more intense” in a warming world, Gabriel Vecchi, a Princeton geoscientist, explained on a recent episode of Heatmap’s Shift Key podcast. “And we’re really confident that storms will get wetter.”
Helene and Milton hammer that point home: once-in-a-generation storms can now arrive on back-to-back weekends. You can almost understand the impulse to devise a zany explanation as to why. Only, the truth is far simpler than cloud seeding or space lasers: a warmer atmosphere makes for warmer oceans, which make for wetter, more intense storms. And while hurricane seasons eventually end, global temperatures haven’t stopped going up. That, perhaps, is the more terrifying subtext of the attribution studies: There will be more Miltons and Helenes.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/climate-change-hurricane-milton-helene
Asian crime gangs are growing – fast – thanks to AI and other tech
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
UN report finds Telegram, cryptocurrency are tools of a growing ‘criminal service economy’
Organized crime syndicates across Asia are using AI, messaging platforms like Telegram, and cryptocurrency to help them expand, with help from dedicated service providers, according to a report the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) published on Monday.…
Biden announces rule to remove all lead pipes in US in a decade
date: 2024-10-09, from: VOA News USA
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
The Apprentice: the film Trump doesn't want you to see.
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/08/trump-apprentice-film
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
wpIdentity simplifies the WordPress REST API, making it easier to incorporate into JavaScript apps running in the browser.
https://github.com/scripting/wpIdentity/blob/main/docs/history.md
LinkedIn: If our AI gets something wrong, that’s your problem
date: 2024-10-09, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Artificial intelligence still no substitute for the real thing
Microsoft’s LinkedIn will update its User Agreement next month with a warning that it may show users generative AI content that’s inaccurate or misleading.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/09/linkedin_ai_misinformation_agreement/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-09, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
It’s so funny how respectable Flushing has become. My hometown. Always found the name kind of embarrassing. 😳
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flushing,_Queens
FBI arrests Afghan man officials say plotted Election Day attack in US
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
washington — The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the United States, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, told investigators after his arrest Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with Election Day next month and that he and a juvenile co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents.
Tawhedi, who entered the U.S. in 2021 on a special immigrant visa, had taken steps in recent weeks to advance his attack plans, including by ordering AK-47 rifles, liquidating his family’s assets, and buying one-way tickets for his wife and child to travel home to Afghanistan.
“Terrorism is still the FBI’s number one priority, and we will use every resource to protect the American people,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
After he was arrested, the Justice Department said, Tawhedi told investigators he had planned an attack for Election Day that would target large gatherings of people.
Tawhedi was charged with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group, which is designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization.
It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
A test of writing in WordPress, published to Mastodon. This WordPress post is part of the Fediverse. Click on the link to see the same story on mastodon.social. A new kind of interop.
https://daveverse.wordpress.com/2024/10/08/writers-come-first-in-wordland/
Microsoft issues 117 patches – some for flaws already under attack
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: SAP re-patches a failed patch for critical-rated flaw
Patch Tuesday It’s the second Tuesday of the month, which means Patch Tuesday, bringing with it fixes for numerous flaws, bugs and vulnerabilities in major software. And this one is a doozy.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/patch_tuesday_october_2024/
Biden cancels Germany, Angola trip to oversee Hurricane Milton response
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
President Joe Biden postponed his trip to Germany and Angola Tuesday to oversee the response to Hurricane Milton, which is heading toward Florida just days after Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States. Patsy Widakuswara reports. Jose Pernalete contributed to this report.
X complies with court’s demands, cleared to be reinstated in Brazil
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
AI godfather-turned-doomer shares Nobel with neural network pioneer
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
First-ever awarded for contributions to artificial intelligence
If you needed another sign that we’ve well and truly entered the AI age, here it is: The first Nobel Prize has been awarded for contributions to artificial intelligence. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/ai_godfather_wins_nobel_prize/
NASA, Collaborators Announce a New Student Lunar Autonomy Challenge!
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
Space is hard, but it’s not all hardware. The new Lunar Autonomy Challenge invites teams of students from U.S. colleges and universities to test their software development skills. Working entirely in virtual simulations of the Moon’s surface, teams will develop an autonomous agent using software that can accomplish pre-defined tasks without help from humans. These […]
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/student-lunar-autonomy-challenge/
Lilbits: New iPad mini, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini on the way, Surface Duo 2 is dead(er) and so are emuDeck machines
date: 2024-10-08, from: Liliputing
The first Apple device to ship with an M4 processor was the 2024 iPad Pro, which launched in May of this year. But it looks like there could be a whole bunch of additional M4-powered devices on the way, and soon. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says Apple is preparing new laptops and desktops with M4 series […]
The post Lilbits: New iPad mini, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini on the way, Surface Duo 2 is dead(er) and so are emuDeck machines appeared first on Liliputing.
Qualcomm urges device makers to push patches after ‘targeted’ exploitation
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Given Amnesty’s involvement, it’s a safe bet spyware is in play
Qualcomm has issued 20 patches for its chipsets’ firmware, including one Digital Signal Processor (DSP) software flaw that has been exploited in the wild.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/qualcomm_patch_spyware/
US stresses desire for peaceful resolution of Taiwan disputes
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — A top U.S. official said the United States expects differences across the Taiwan Strait to be resolved peacefully and opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo as Taiwan prepares to celebrate the founding of the Republic of China on Thursday.
The People’s Republic of China, or PRC, celebrates its national day on October 1, marking the founding of the country in 1949. Taiwan chooses October 10, known as Double Ten Day, to celebrate the founding of the ROC in 1912, just months after an uprising that began on October 10, 1911.
The PRC typically closely monitors speeches from Taiwan’s leaders during Double Ten Day celebrations. Since Taiwan’s democratically elected President Lai Ching-te took office in May, Beijing has increased military pressure on Taiwan, deeming Lai a “separatist.”
On Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink said that the U.S.’s “fundamental interest is in the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” reiterating that Washington’s longstanding One China policy remains unchanged, “guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiques and the Six Assurances.”
“We oppose unilateral changes to the status quo by either side. We do not support Taiwan independence, and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved peacefully,” Kritenbrink told VOA during a briefing.
Speaking at an event Saturday, Lai noted that the PRC celebrated its 75th anniversary on October 1, and in a few days, it would be the ROC’s 113th birthday.
“In terms of age, it is absolutely impossible for the People’s Republic of China to be considered the motherland of the people of the Republic of China. On the contrary, the ROC may be the motherland of the people of the PRC who are over 75 years old,” Lai told an audience in Taipei.
PRC officials have remained largely muted on Lai’s remarks, but some analysts say that could be because Beijing is preparing to launch another round of military exercises after Lai delivers his Double Ten Day speech.
U.S. officials have referred inquiries to “President Lai’s office for any commentary on his specific comments.”
European visit
Meanwhile, former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen will visit the Czech Republic this month, a visit seen as sensitive since Beijing has repeatedly denounced the democratic leader as a “separatist.”
In Beijing on Tuesday, a spokesperson from the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was asked to comment on Tsai’s planned visit to Prague.
“We firmly oppose anyone who seeks “Taiwan independence” visiting countries with diplomatic ties with China under any pretext. We urge the Czech Republic and relevant countries to earnestly abide by the One China principle and respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters Tuesday.
Taiwan has been self-ruled since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s communists took power in Beijing after defeating Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang nationalists in a civil war, prompting the nationalists’ relocation to the island.
The U.S. does not maintain an official relationship with Taiwan but provides defense equipment to the self-ruled democracy under the Taiwan Relations Act.
Treaty of Aigun
In a TV interview in September, Lai remarked that if China’s claims over Taiwan are genuinely rooted in concerns about territorial integrity, it should also seek to reclaim the land it ceded to Russia in the 19th century.
He referenced the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, through which China, under the Qing dynasty, gave up a vast area of land — now part of Russia’s Far East — to the Russian Empire, establishing much of the modern border along the Amur River.
The Treaty of Aigun, along with the 1860 Convention of Peking, saw China relinquish 600,000 square kilometers — an area almost the size of Ukraine — to the Russian Empire, enabling Russia to establish a naval base at Vladivostok. Many Chinese people still brood over this period of history, harboring lingering resentment over the fact that the land once belonged to China before being annexed by Russia.
In 2023, China’s Ministry of Natural Resources mandated that new maps use Chinese names for Vladivostok — Haishenwai — as well as several other cities in the region.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-stresses-desire-for-peaceful-resolution-of-taiwan-disputes/7815248.html
The FBI Recovers an Andy Warhol Print Worth $175,000 That Vanished From a Private Home in 2021
date: 2024-10-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A man is expected to plead guilty for trafficking the print, which reappeared at a Dallas auction house shortly after it went missing from a California residence
Why I use KDE
date: 2024-10-08, from: OS News
Over the decades, my primary operating system of choice has changed a few times. As a wee child of six years old, we got out first PC through one of those employer buy-a-PC programs, where an employer would subsidize its employees buying PCs for use in the home. The goal here was simple: if people get comfortable with a computer in their private life, they’ll also get comfortable with it in their professional life. And so, through my mother’s employer, we got a brand new 286 desktop running MS-DOS and Windows 3.0. I still have the massive and detailed manuals and original installation floppies it came with. So, my first operating system of ‘choice’ was MS-DOS, and to a far lesser extent Windows 3.0. As my childhood progressed, we got progressively better computers, and the new Windows versions that came with it – Windows 95, 98, and yes, even ME, which I remarkably liked just fine. Starting with Windows 95, DOS became an afterthought, and with my schools, too, being entirely Windows-only, my teenage years were all Windows, all the time. So, when I bought my first own, brand new computer – instead of old 386 machines my parents took home from work – right around when Windows XP came out, I bought a totally legal copy of Windows XP from some dude at school that somehow came on a CD-R with a handwritten label but was really totally legit you guys. I didn’t like Windows XP at all, and immediately started looking for alternatives, trying out Mandrake Linux before discovering something called BeOS – and despite BeOS already being over by that point, I had found my operating system of choice. I tried to make it last as long as the BeOS community would let me, but that wasn’t very long. The next step was a move to the Mac, something that was quite rare in The Netherlands at that time. During that same time, Microsoft released Windows Server 2003, the actually good version of Windows XP, and a vibrant community of people, including myself, started using it as a desktop operating system instead. I continued using this mix of Mac OS X and Windows – even Vista – for a long time, while having various iterations of Linux installed on the side. I eventually lost interest in Mac OS X because Apple lost interest in it (I think around the Snow Leopard era?), and years later, six or seven years ago or so, I moved to Linux exclusively, fully ditching Windows even for gaming like four or so years ago when Valve’s Proton started picking up steam. Nowadays all my machines run Fedora KDE, which I consider to be by far the best desktop operating system experience you can get today. Over the last few years or so, I’ve noticed something fun and interesting in how I set up my machines: you can find hints of my operating system history all over my preferred setup and settings. I picked up all kinds of usage patterns and expectations from all those different operating systems, and I’d like to enable as many of those as possible in my computing environment. In a way, my setup is a reflection of the operating systems I used in the past, an archaeological record of my computing history, an evolutionary tree of good traits that survived, and bad traits bred out. Taking a look at my bare desktop, you’ll instantly pick up on the fact I used to use Mac OS X for a long time. The Mac OS X-like dock at the bottom of the screen has been my preferred way of opening and managing running applications since I first got an iBook G4 more than 20 years ago, and to this day I find it far superior to any alternatives. KDE lets me easily recreate a proper dock, without having to resort to any third-party dock applications. I never liked the magnification trick Mac OS X wowed audiences with when it was new, so I don’t use it. The next dead giveaway I used to be a Mac OS X user a long time ago is the top bar, which shares quite a few elements with the Mac OS X menubar, while also containing elements not found in Mac OS X. I keep the KDE equivalent of a start menu there, a button that brings up my home folder in a KDE folder view, a show desktop button that’s mostly there for aesthetic reasons, KDE’s global menubar widget for that Mac OS X feel, a system tray, the clock, and then a close button that opens up a custom system menu with shutdown/reboot/etc. commands and some shortcuts to system tools. Another feature coming straight from my days using Mac OS X is KDE’s equivalent of Exposé, called Overview, without which I wouldn’t know how to find a window if my life depended on it. I bind it to the top-left hotcorner for easy access with my mouse, while the bottom-right hotcorner is set to show my desktop (and the reason why I technically don’t really need that show desktop button I mentioned earlier). I fiddled with the hot corner trigger timings so that they fire virtually instantly. Waiting on my computer is so ’90s. It’s not really possible to see in screenshots, but my stint using BeOS as my main operating system back when that was a thing you could do also shines through, specifically in the way I manage windows. In BeOS, double-clicking a titlebar tab would minimise a window, and right-clicking the tab would send the window to the bottom of the Z-stack. I haven’t maximised a non-video window in several decades, so I find double-clicking a titlebar to maximise a window utterly baffling, and a ridiculous Windows-ism I want nothing to do with. Once again, KDE lets me set this up exactly the way I want, and I genuinely feel lost when I can’t manipulate my windows in this
https://www.osnews.com/story/140538/why-i-use-kde/
Immerse Yourself in the ‘Hyperwall,’ NASA’s New Visual Showcase of a Changing Earth
date: 2024-10-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine
A new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History combines satellite observations and historical data to offer a “larger-than-life look” at our planet’s climate today
Tissue Chips Accurately Model Organs in Space
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
The International Space Station offers a unique microgravity environment where cells outside the human body behave similarly to how they do inside the human body. Tissue chips are small devices containing living cells that mimic complex functions of specific human tissues and organs. Researchers can run experiments using tissue chips aboard space station to understand […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/tissue-chips-accurately-model-organs-in-space/
US looks to resurrect more nuclear reactors, White House adviser says
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — The Biden administration is working on plans to bring additional decommissioned nuclear power reactors back online to help meet soaring demand for emissions-free electricity, White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said Monday.
Two such projects are already under way, including the planned recommissioning of Holtec’s Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan and the potential restart of a unit at Constellation Energy’s Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, near the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
Asked if additional shuttered plants could be restarted, Zaidi said, “We’re working on it in a very concrete way. There are two that I can think of.”
He declined to identify the power plants or provide further details about the effort.
Speaking at the Reuters IMPACT conference in New York, Zaidi said repowering existing dormant nuclear plants was part of a three-pronged strategy of President Joe Biden’s administration to bring more nuclear power online to fight climate change and boost production.
The other two prongs include development of small modular reactors (SMRs) for certain applications, and continuing development of next generation, advanced nuclear reactors.
Biden has called for a tripling of U.S. nuclear power capacity to fuel energy demand that is accelerating in part due to expansion of power-hungry technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Last week, the Biden administration said it closed a $1.52 billion loan to resurrect the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, which would take two years to reopen.
Constellation and Microsoft, meanwhile, signed a power deal last month to help resurrect a unit of the Pennsylvania plant, which Constellation hopes will also receive government support.
Zaidi told the conference that the U.S. Navy on Monday had requested information to build SMRs on a six bases. “SMR is a technology that is not a decades-away play. It’s one that companies in the United States are looking to deploy in this decade,” he said.
Zaidi also addressed the woes that have beset a separate Biden clean energy goal, to bring 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity online by the end of the decade.
The administration shelved offshore wind lease sales this year in both Oregon and the Gulf of Mexico due to low demand from companies, as high costs, equipment issues and supply chain challenges hit other projects.
Zaidi said at least half of the 30GW goal is already under construction and that some of the early snags provide helpful learning for future projects.
“I am pretty optimistic about the next wave of projects where we will have a domestic supply chain and hopefully better cost to capital relative to what projects are facing right now,” he said.
As Hurricane Milton approaches, eyes turn to FEMA
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/as-hurricane-milton-approaches-eyes-turn-to-fema/7815218.html
Global oil traders anxiously await Israel’s expected strikes on Iran
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
Babbage boffin Ada Lovelace honored for computer science contributions
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Penned Analytical Engine algorithm in her youth, imagine if she’d lived past 36
Today we remember Ada Lovelace Day, famed for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/ada_lovelace_day/
Veterans Issues Explained: What Americans Need to Know
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: RAND blog
About 6 percent of American adults are veterans of the U.S. military—including both candidates for vice-president this election cycle. We asked two RAND experts to discuss some of the high-profile issues facing U.S. veterans and the VA.
Station Science Top News: Oct. 4, 2024
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
Engineered heart tissues in space showed impairments that led to increased arrhythmias and loss of muscle strength, changes similar to cardiac aging. This finding suggests that the engineered tissues, essentially an automated heart-on-a-chip platform, can be used to study cardiac issues in space and aging-related cardiovascular disease on Earth. Microgravity exposure is known to cause changes in […]
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/johnson/station-science-top-news-oct-4-2024/
Internet Archive to Receive 400,000 Dissertations from Leiden University
date: 2024-10-08, from: Internet Archive Blog
From https://www.library.universiteitleiden.nl/news/2024/10/he-internet-archive-takes-over-foreign-dissertations-from-ubl Last month, the UBL announced that it will deselect an extensive collection of foreign dissertations. We are happy to report now that The Internet Archive will be taking […]
Scripting News at 30
date: 2024-10-08, from: Michael Tsai
Dave Winer: Today is the 30th anniversary of this blog.I did a roundup of thoughts when this blog turned 25. I stand by what I wrote then, but I’d add this. My blog started because I needed content to test a script I had written that sent emails on my Mac using Eudora, which was […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/10/08/scripting-news-at-30/
Jettison 1.8.9
date: 2024-10-08, from: Michael Tsai
St. Clair Software: When you set keyboard shortcuts for ejecting, sleeping and remounting, they are now shown in Jettison’s menu.Fixed a bug that could result in an error message when manually mounting a volume even though the volume mounts correctly.When an encrypted disk cannot be mounted because its password is not in the keychain, the […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/10/08/jettison-1-8-9/
Photoshop Elements Switches to Subscriptions
date: 2024-10-08, from: Michael Tsai
Jeremy Gray (Hacker News): In Photoshop Elements 2025, a new AI-powered Remove Tool makes it easy to erase and replace distracting objects in photos, including unwanted people and distracting objects. This new feature also includes an accompanying “Object Removal” Guided Edit to walk new users through the process.[…]Photoshop Elements has long included a range of […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/10/08/photoshop-elements-switches-to-subscriptions/
Networking Issues in Sequoia
date: 2024-10-08, from: Michael Tsai
Christian Starkjohann: We don’t recommend upgrading [to Sequoia] now because there are several bugs related to networking and firewalls in the 15.0 release. We expect most of them to be fixed in 15.1.[…]There are individual reports of websites aborting loading midway. We believe this is a general problem with TCP connections, not only ssh, but […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/10/08/networking-issues-in-sequoia/
Lessons and Strategies for Restoring Freshwater Ecosystems in the U.S.
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: RAND blog
Restoring and preserving America’s critical freshwater ecosystems presents a significant challenge that requires inclusive stakeholder engagement, clear regulatory and interagency navigation, and robust scientific monitoring.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Kamala Harris: The 60 Minutes Interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJys7OVH24E
Scientists Who Developed the Building Blocks of Artificial Intelligence Win Nobel Prize in Physics
date: 2024-10-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine
John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton shared the award for their work on artificial neural networks and machine learning
TensorWave bags $43M to pack its datacenter with AMD accelerators
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Startup also set to launch an inference service in Q4
TensorWave on Tuesday secured $43 million in fresh funding to cram its datacenter full of AMD’s Instinct accelerators and bring a new inference platform to market.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/tensorwave_amd_gpu_cloud/
NASA’s Earth Information Center at the Smithsonian
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, preview the agency’s new Earth Information Center exhibit on Monday, Oct. 8, 2024. This new exhibit is the Earth Information Center’s second physical location. The exhibit at the Smithsonian includes a 32-foot-long, 12-foot-high video wall displaying […]
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-earth-information-center-at-the-smithsonian/
In photos: Florida braces for Hurricane Milton
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/in-photos-florida-braces-for-hurricane-milton/7815077.html
Utilities Are Planning for the Wrong Kind of Hurricane
date: 2024-10-08, from: Heatmap News
There’s a familiar script when it comes to hurricanes: The high winds snap tree branches and even tree trunks and whip around anything else that’s light enough or not bolted down — including power lines and distribution poles. While this type of damage can lead to large-scale outages, it’s also relatively straightforward to fix. In many cases the power comes back on relatively quickly, more like days rather than weeks or months.
But when it comes to flooding, especially in areas that do not regularly deal with big storms, the damage can be more severe, long-lasting, and difficult to repair. This is largely because what’s at risk in these scenarios is not power lines but substations. These messes of transmission and distribution lines that channel high voltage power to homes and businesses are vulnerable to rising water, and repairs can’t begin until the floodwaters recede. Often they have to be replaced entirely, which is expensive and can lead to further delays as there’s a nationwide shortage of transformers. Just one substation can support thousands of homes — a single point of failure that, when it floods, takes all its customers down with it.
Duke Energy, whose grid in the Carolinas was pummeled by Hurricane Helene, has said the damage to its system encompasses “submerged substations, thousands of downed utility poles, and downed transmission towers,” and noted that much of the affected area is “inaccessible due to mudslides, flooding and blocked roads, limiting the ability to assess and begin repairing damages.” In an update published Saturday, it stated that while more than 2 million customers had seen their power restored, about 250,000 customers across North and South Carolina remained without electricity more than a week after the storm.
Workers are “encountering more severe damage on a larger scale than we’ve ever experienced,” Duke Energy storm director Jason Hollifield said in a statement. (Duke didn’t respond to my request for comment.) One Duke employee told the local television station in Asheville, North Carolina, which saw more than three months’ worth of rain fall over three days, that a local substation would have to be completely rebuilt, a process that could take months. In Western North Carolina, the area’s Representative Chuck Edwards has estimated that 117,000 customers still lack electricity, and that while some of them will likely get it back by Sunday, others “whose properties are inaccessible or not able to receive power may be without electricity for an extended period of time as Duke Energy works to rebuild critical infrastructure.”
To prepare for the onrushing Hurricane Milton, Duke is staging thousands of “line technicians, vegetation workers, damage assessors and support personnel” in Florida, the company said. The same problem remains, however: Line technicians will not prevent substations from flooding.
While the exact effect of climate change on hurricanes and other storm categories is an area of intense debate among climate scientists and meteorologists, there’s a rough consensus that warming will cause the storms to be wetter. That means utilities will have to update their old disaster response playbooks, or else prolonged outages when an especially wet storm arrives over a flood plain.
In most hurricanes, utilities are able to pre-position workers to restore power quickly, working on knocked down poles and wires, explained Jordan Kern, an assistant professor engineering at North Carolina State University. “When trees fall on distribution lines, those are, in normal situations, easy to repair,” he told me. But, Kern said, “If the substations are flooded, you can’t do anything until the flood waters go down. They can be without power for a long time.”
Wetter hurricanes will likely mean more severe and less predictable flooding happening far away from the coasts, bringing with it risks that utilities and local governments may be less prepared to face, with costs that will ultimately be born by anyone who pays for electricity, as expensive repairs and hardening of electrical infrastructure will likely be born by ratepayers.
“Rates will necessarily rise” to deal with the higher costs of adaptation and repairing infrastructure more complex than a wooden pole, Tyler Norris, a PhD student at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, told me while driving towards Asheville to help out family impacted by the storm.
While Helene has been an especially damaging storm, the risks of wetter storms and inland flooding away from the coastal areas that are prepared for frequent hurricanes have become more apparent in recent years. While Hurricane Irene in 2011 made landfall on Long Island, its most devastating effects were felt inland due to heavy rains, especially in Vermont.
North Carolina in particular has seen a rash of nasty hurricanes in the past 10 years or so, giving Duke ample recent experience with big storms — and some indication of what a warming world could bring.
During 2018’s Hurricane Florence, which knocked out power for around a million Duke customers, “at least 10 substations required de-energization due to flooding or flood risk where heavy rainfall and resulting inland flooding,” according to a 2022 Duke climate resiliency report. The report was meant to look at the effects of climate change to the Duke system by 2050 under two emissions scenarios outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one assuming emissions start falling by 2040, the other assuming continued (some might say unrealistically) high emissions.
Under the extreme scenario, the “overall vulnerability priority of Duke Energy substations to climate-driven changes in precipitation and inland flooding is high,” the report said, while under the “middle of the road” projection, “transmission infrastructure faces a medium priority vulnerability.” In both cases, however, “without adaptation planning … substations are at the highest potential risk, with extreme heat and flooding being the greatest concerns for existing assets.”
Duke said at the time that it had “implemented permanent flood protection measures at new substations located in flood plains and substations with a prior history of flooding.” For its existing fleet, priority was being given to those substations considered particularly “at-risk,” however the flood protection plan had “not yet been universally implemented at all existing substations in the flood plain.”
“What they characterized there falls significantly short of what we just saw,” Norris said. While he noted that Duke had listed risk to substations from inland flooding as high (albeit only under the extreme scenario), it had listed the risk to the distribution of power, i.e. poles and wires, as “low” under both scenarios. “There’s been a dramatic misestimate of risk here,” Norris said.
For Duke customers, especially in the more isolated parts of Western North Carolina, they may simply have to wait for workers and parts to arrive. Repairs that could normally happen quickly will likely happen slowly as workers struggle to reach areas whose roads have been washed away. Duke said that it’s now focusing on restoring the “backbone” of the transmission and distribution system, and then is moving on to restoring fallen poles in less densely populated areas.
And it will likely happen again. Kern noted that inland flooding especially is notoriously hard to predict compared to coastal flooding from hurricanes. “Flooding is so idiosyncratic,” he said. “It’s hard for anyone to predict how flooding will affect a region. Let alone electric utilities.”
https://heatmap.news/climate/hurricane-helene-duke-energy-substations
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I was able to write a post that appeared on Mastodon using ActivityPub. All via the WordPress API. Congrats to the ActivtyPub community, Automattic and Mastodon. "It just worked." 9 minute podcast.
https://shownotes.scripting.com/scripting/2024/10/08/editorWordpressMastodon.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
It appears the first Grateful Dead song in the RSS podcasting experiment in 2001 was (of course) Dark Star. Someone asked, so I looked it up.
http://scripting.com/blog/categories/gratefulDead.html
Using iPhone Mirroring at work? You might have just overshared to your boss
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
What does IT glimpse but a dating app on your wee little screen
If you’re using iPhone Mirroring at work: It’s time to stop, lest you give your employer’s IT department the capability to snoop through the list of apps you have on your phone — dating apps, those tracking medical conditions or sexual history, or any other NSFW apps that you might want to keep to yourself.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/iphone_mirroring_at_work/
Incumbent congressman not turning up to debates? Train an AI on his press releases
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Hallucinations, made-up facts… and that’s just the human politicians
Generative AI has reached its logical conclusion with a chatbot ready to stand in for a congressional incumbent at a debate.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/congressman_ai_bot/
An Art Dealer Bought This Painting at a Barn Sale for $50. It Turned Out to Be an Emily Carr Worth Nearly $150,000
date: 2024-10-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The Canadian Post-Impressionist artist was famous for her evocative landscapes and paintings incorporating motifs from First Nations groups
This Union Leader Is the Kind of Voter Who Could Swing the Presidential Race
date: 2024-10-08, from: Capital and Main
Ryan Sanders’ union endorsed Harris, but the Pennsylvania sheet metal worker still needs to be convinced.
The post This Union Leader Is the Kind of Voter Who Could Swing the Presidential Race appeared first on .
The Expense of Heath Care Explained: What Americans Need to Know
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: RAND blog
Health care costs in the United States remain a critical concern for policymakers, providers, and patients alike. As voters head to the polls, we asked three experts on the economics of health care to explain some of the financial and public policy forces at work.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/10/the-expense-of-heath-care-explained-what-americans.html
GPD Duo dual-screen laptop hits Indiegogo for $1270 and up
date: 2024-10-08, from: Liliputing
The GPD Duo is a laptop with two 13.3 inch screens. But unlike some dual-screen laptops we’ve seen in the past, it’s not a laptop that puts a screen in the space where you’d normally find a keyboard – the second screen can be positioned above the primary display giving you more screen space without […]
The post GPD Duo dual-screen laptop hits Indiegogo for $1270 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/gpd-duo-dual-screen-laptop-hits-indiegogo-for-1270-and-up/
Connected Learning Ecosystems: Educators Learning and Growing Together
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
On August 19-20, 53 educators from a diverse set of learning contexts (libraries, K-12 classrooms, 4-H afterschool clubs, outdoor education centers, and more) gathered in Orono, Maine for the Learning Ecosystems Northeast (LENE) biannual Connect, Reflect, & Plan Connected Learning Ecosystems (CLEs) Gathering. These gatherings are meant to foster meaningful connections and collaborations and shared […]
Amid Hurricane Milton, Florida Republicans Aim To Block Climate Emergency Declaration
date: 2024-10-08, from: The Lever News
As the storm bears down on their districts, fossil fuel-backed Reps. Greg Steube and Byron Donalds are pushing legislation claiming the climate crisis is a “false emergency.”
Systems Engineer Noosha Haghani Prepped PACE for Space
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
Throughout the life cycles of missions, Goddard engineer Noosha Haghani has championed problem-solving and decision-making to get to flight-ready projects. Name: Noosha HaghaniTitle: Plankton Aerosol Clouds and Ecosystem (PACE) Deputy Mission Systems EngineerFormal Job Classification: Electrical engineerOrganization: Engineering and Technology Directorate, Mission Systems Engineering Branch (Code 599) What do you do and what is most […]
True Choice for Smartphone Privacy and Security
date: 2024-10-08, from: Purism News and Events
Since the mass-adoption of consumer smartphones in 2007, much has been written about the tradeoffs consumers and business users alike have been forced to accept when it comes to mobile computing.
The post True Choice for Smartphone Privacy and Security appeared first on Purism.
https://puri.sm/posts/true-choice-for-smartphone-privacy-and-security/
Passkeys on Windows: Authenticate seamlessly with passkey providers
date: 2024-10-08, from: Windows Developer Blog
Passkeys on Windows just got easier! As part of Microsoft’s vision for a passwordless future we are working t
The post Passkeys on Windows: Authenticate seamlessly with passkey providers appeared first on Windows Developer Blog.
Starlink was offered for free to those hit by Hurricane Helene. It is not entirely free
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-09, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And now SpaceX clarifies special promotion
Updated The free Starlink service Elon Musk and SpaceX so graciously promised for communities devastated by Hurricane Helene in the US is not actually entirely free, according to those living in the aftermath - and the internet satellite operator’s own signup page.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/free_starlink_hurricane_helene/
New book says Trump secretly sent COVID tests to Putin
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Then-president Donald Trump secretly sent COVID test kits to Vladimir Putin despite a U.S. shortage during the pandemic, and spoke multiple times with the Russian leader after leaving office, says an explosive new book by Bob Woodward.
The upcoming opus, War, also chronicles some of President Joe Biden’s own acknowledged missteps and his struggle to prevent escalation of conflict in the Middle East, including exasperation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over futile efforts to get Israel and Hamas to reach a cease-fire.
In excerpts published Tuesday by The Washington Post, where he is an associate editor, Woodward lays out damning details and actions by Trump, who the writer says has retained a personal relationship with Putin even as Trump campaigns for another presidential term and the Russian president conducts a war against Ukraine, a U.S. ally.
With the coronavirus ravaging the world in 2020, Trump sent a batch of test kits to his counterpart in Moscow. Putin accepted the supplies but sought to avoid political fallout for Trump, urging that he not reveal the dispatch of medical equipment, this book says.
According to Woodward, Putin told Trump: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.”
Woodward also cites an unnamed Trump aide in the book who indicated the Republican flag bearer may have spoken to Putin up to seven times since leaving the White House in 2021.
The Post, reporting Woodward’s account, said that at one point in early 2024, Trump ordered an aide out of his office in his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida so he could hold a private call with Putin.
War is set for publication on Oct. 15, just three weeks before a critical U.S. election in which Trump is locked in a tight race against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
While Harris does make appearances in the book, she is seen in a supporting role to Biden “and hardly determining foreign policy herself,” the Post reported.
Woodward has chronicled American presidencies for 50 years, and this is his fourth book since Trump’s upset victory in 2016. He began his presidential reportages with Richard Nixon, who was undone by the 1970s Watergate scandal exposed by Woodward and Post colleague Carl Bernstein.
Woodward concluded that Trump’s interactions, detailed in the book, with an authoritarian president at war with a U.S. ally make him more unfit to be president than Nixon.
“Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” Woodward wrote.
The Trump campaign blasted the book as “trash” and “made up stories.”
They are “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” campaign communications director Steven Cheung told AFP.
According to CNN, which obtained a pre-release book copy, Woodward repeatedly quotes Biden dropping F bombs as he discusses his personal and political challenges.
Biden called Putin “the epitome of evil,” blasted Netanyahu as a “liar” and said he “should never have picked” Merrick Garland as U.S. attorney general.
According to the book, during an April phone call Biden turned testy with Netanyahu.
“What’s your strategy, man?” Biden asked the Israeli leader, according to Woodward.
“We have to go into Rafah,” Netanyahu said, referring to a city in southern Gaza.
“Bibi, you’ve got no strategy,” Biden responded.
https://www.voanews.com/a/new-book-says-trump-secretly-sent-covid-tests-to-putin/7814888.html
US states sue TikTok, saying it harms young users
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON — TikTok faces new lawsuits filed by 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, accusing the popular social media platform of harming and failing to protect young people.
The lawsuits, filed separately in New York, California, the District of Columbia and 11 other states, expand Chinese-owned TikTok’s legal fight with U.S. regulators and seek new financial penalties against the company.
Washington is located in the District of Columbia.
The states accuse TikTok of using intentionally addictive software designed to keep children watching as long and often as possible and misrepresenting its content moderation effectiveness.
“TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content.”
TikTok seeks to maximize the amount of time users spend on the app in order to target them with ads, the states said.
“Young people are struggling with their mental health because of addictive social media platforms like TikTok,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.
TikTok said on Tuesday that it strongly disagreed with the claims, “many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading,” and that it was disappointed the states chose to sue “rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industrywide challenges.”
TikTok provides safety features that include default screentime limits and privacy defaults for minors under 16, the company said.
Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb alleged that TikTok operates an unlicensed money transmission business through its livestreaming and virtual currency features.
“TikTok’s platform is dangerous by design. It’s an intentionally addictive product that is designed to get young people addicted to their screens,” Schwalb said in an interview.
Washington’s lawsuit accused TikTok of facilitating sexual exploitation of underage users, saying TikTok’s livestreaming and virtual currency “operate like a virtual strip club with no age restrictions.”
Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont and Washington state also sued on Tuesday.
In March 2022, eight states, including California and Massachusetts, said they launched a nationwide probe of TikTok impacts on young people.
The U.S. Justice Department sued TikTok in August for allegedly failing to protect children’s privacy on the app. Other states, including Utah and Texas, previously sued TikTok for failing to protect children from harm. TikTok on Monday rejected the allegations in a court filing.
TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is battling a U.S. law that could ban the app in the United States.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-states-sue-tiktok-saying-it-harms-young-users/7814857.html
NASA Seeks Innovative Artemis Lunar Logistics, Mobility Solutions
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
NASA is asking U.S. industry to submit innovative architecture solutions that could help the agency land and move cargo on the lunar surfaced during future Artemis missions. Released in September, the agency’s request for proposal also supports NASA’s broader Moon to Mars Objectives. Previously, NASA published two white papers outlining lunar logistics and mobility gaps […]
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-seeks-innovative-artemis-lunar-logistics-mobility-solutions/
US slaps sanctions on Sudan paramilitary leader
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The United States on Tuesday announced sanctions against a senior leader in war-torn Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for his role in obtaining weapons for the paramilitary organization.
Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced since war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and the RSF after their head generals refused a plan to integrate.
Algoney Hamdan Daglo Musa was sanctioned “for his involvement in RSF efforts to procure weapons and other military materiel that have enabled the RSF’s ongoing operations in Sudan,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
His actions have fueled war in Sudan “and brutal RSF atrocities against civilians, which have included war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing,” Miller said.
The U.S. Treasury said that as a result of such sanctions “all property and interests in property of the designated persons… that are in the United States or in the possession or control of US persons are blocked and must be reported.”
The United States has led diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting in Sudan but has seen limited success and leverage, with RSF commanders unlikely to hold major assets in the West that would be affected by sanctions.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-slaps-sanctions-on-sudan-paramilitary-leader/7814825.html
About the Office of the General Counsel
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
The Office of the General Counsel (OGC) provides Agency-wide legal and strategic advice across a full spectrum of legal disciplines to further NASA’s mission. With legal leadership at Headquarters and at all NASA field installations across the country, OGC supports the Agency by identifying, mitigating, and defending against risks to the Agency. OGC works with […]
https://www.nasa.gov/organizations/about-the-office-of-the-general-counsel/
Biden postpones trip to Germany and Angola because of Hurricane Milton
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
Washington — President Joe Biden is postponing a planned trip to Germany and Angola to remain at the White House to monitor Hurricane Milton, which is bearing down on Florida’s Gulf Coast, the White House announced on Tuesday.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the change was necessary “given the projected trajectory and strength” of the storm.
It was not clear when the trip might be rescheduled. Biden had promised to go to Africa during his term in office, which ends in January.
Hurricane Milton weakened slightly Tuesday but remained a ferocious storm that could land a once-in-a-century direct hit on the populous Tampa Bay region with towering storm surges and turn debris from Helene’s devastation 12 days ago into projectiles.
Most of Florida’s west coast was under a hurricane or tropical storm warning as the storm and its 145 mph (230 kph) winds spun just off Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, creeping toward the state. With the storm expected to remain fairly strong as it crosses Florida, parts of the eastern coast were put under hurricane warnings early Tuesday. Milton’s center could come ashore Wednesday night in the Tampa Bay area, which has a population of more than 3.3 million people.
Journey Through Stars with NASA in New Minecraft Game
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
NASA invites gamers, educators, and students to grab their pickaxe and check out its latest collaboration with Minecraft exploring a new world inspired by the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. The partnership allows creators to experience NASA’s discoveries with interactive modules on star formation, planets, and galaxy types, modeled using real Webb images. The James Webb […]
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/new-minecraft-game/
Apple supplier Foxconn and Nvidia team up to deploy Taiwan’s fastest AI supercomputer
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
How does 90 exaFLOPS sound?
Nvidia has confirmed it will be working with mega electronics contractor Foxconn to construct Taiwan’s most powerful AI supercomputer.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/foxconn_nvidia_ai_supercomputer/
NASA, NOAA to Provide Update on Progress of Solar Cycle
date: 2024-10-08, from: NASA breaking news
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will discuss the Sun’s activity and the progression of Solar Cycle 25 during a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, Oct. 15. Tracking the solar cycle is a key part of better understanding the Sun and mitigating its impacts on technology and infrastructure as humanity […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-noaa-to-provide-update-on-progress-of-solar-cycle/
After Years of Fighting Landlords, Activists Say the Problem Is Not High Rent – It Is Rent Itself
date: 2024-10-08, from: Capital and Main
Unenforceable laws and failed “affordable housing” policies show that public housing and tenant-controlled buildings must become the norm, say the founders of the Los Angeles Tenants Union in their new book.
The post After Years of Fighting Landlords, Activists Say the Problem Is Not High Rent – It Is Rent Itself appeared first on .
Judge orders Google to open its app stores to third-party app stores and billing options
date: 2024-10-08, from: Liliputing
After a jury found last year that the Google Play Store was effectively a monopoly, the US federal judge presiding over the Epic v. Google case ruled this week that Google needs to open the Play Store to competition for at least three years. Among other things, that means Google has to allow third-party app […]
The post Judge orders Google to open its app stores to third-party app stores and billing options appeared first on Liliputing.
Twitter Acts Fast on Nonconsensual Nudity If It Thinks It’s a Copyright Violation
date: 2024-10-08, from: 404 Media Group
Researchers posted AI-generated nude images to Twitter to see how the company responds to reports of copyright violation versus reports of nonconsensual nudity.
DoE awards next-gen nuclear fuel contracts backwards
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
‘Deconversion’ can begin now, but initial enrichment, transportation and storage to processors is still TBD
The US Department of Energy has awarded shares of an $800 million contract for advanced nuclear fuel deconversion to four companies, but it’s unclear who will be in charge of getting refined fuel to those deconversion sites.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/does_awards_nextgen_nuclear_fuel/
What happened to Activision Blizzard?
date: 2024-10-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report
The video game industry is bigger than movies and music combined. As part of our ongoing Skin in the Game series, we’re chatting with journalist Jason Schreier about the rise and fall of Blizzard, the company behind such games as World of Warcraft. It’s a story about the push and pull between creativity and business know-how. Also on the show: Small business uncertainty reaches an all-time high.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/what-happened-to-activision-blizzard
Hacked ‘AI Girlfriend’ Data Shows Prompts Describing Child Sexual Abuse
date: 2024-10-08, from: 404 Media Group
A hacked database from AI companion site Muah.ai exposes peoples’ particular kinks and fantasies they’ve asked their bot to engage in. It also shows many of them are trying to use the platform to generate child abuse material.
https://www.404media.co/hacked-ai-girlfriend-data-shows-prompts-describing-child-sexual-abuse-2/
Netizens are torturing Google’s AI podcast hosts
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
NotebookLM’s Audio Overview feature rudely discovers its wife never existed
The demise of HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey remains a haunting cinema moment nearly six decades on for the questions it raises about consciousness, the ethics of AI control, and the limits of rationality, among many other philosophical issues.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/torturing_google_podcast_hosts/
Blinken heads to Laos for ASEAN and East Asia Summit
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
State Department — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit Vientiane, Laos, later this week for meetings with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, where he is expected to engage directly with newly elected leaders from the Indo-Pacific.
Blinken will represent President Joe Biden at this year’s ASEAN-U.S. Summit and participate in the East Asia Summit, where leaders and senior officials from India, Japan, South Korea, and the People’s Republic of China are also expected to attend.
The State Department said Blinken will discuss geopolitical issues during his talks in Vientiane, including the ongoing crisis in Myanmar, which is also called Burma, and the importance of upholding international law in the South China Sea, and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
As the Burmese junta prepares for an election next year amid widespread conflict across much of the country, a senior State Department official told VOA that elections should not take place prior to genuine peace and reconciliation.
“We remain deeply concerned by the regime’s stated plans to hold elections, because any elections under current conditions would stand no chance of expressing the will of the people of Burma,” Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told VOA during a phone briefing on Tuesday.
He added, the U.S. fears that “premature elections” under current conditions “would likely only generate more violence and prolong the ongoing crisis” in Myanmar.
This week’s ASEAN summits will feature the debut of Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 38, who became Thailand’s prime minister in mid-August. She will make her first bilateral visit to Laos on Tuesday and will be the youngest Southeast Asian leader at the summit.
Singapore has also seen a generational shift with Lawrence Wong succeeding longtime Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in May.
Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office on October 1. He has pledged to strengthen his country’s alliance with the U.S. during a call with President Biden last Wednesday.
“I am grateful for the prime minister’s commitment to the U.S.-Japan Alliance and look forward to working with his government to reinforce the enduring partnership between our two nations,” Blinken said in a statement last week.
Ishiba is also in discussions with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol about holding a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.
Regional security, development and trade — including the creation of resilient semiconductor supply chains — are expected to be top priorities on the U.S. agenda.
In 2023, total two-way merchandise trade between the United States and ASEAN reached $395.9 billion, making the U.S. the second-largest trading partner after China. Additionally, the U.S. is ASEAN’s largest source of foreign direct investment, which amounted to $74.3 billion last year.
Susannah Patton, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Sydney-based think tank Lowy Institute, said that this year’s East Asia Summit must address contentious global issues such as the conflict in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The East Asia Summit comprises ASEAN’s 10 member countries and eight major dialogue partners, including the United States, China typically represented by Premier Li Qiang, and Russia represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
In a recent analysis published by the Lowy Institute, Patton noted that it is likely that the “ASEAN show will come to Laos and then roll on again,” adding that “concrete progress on pressing issues will be sorely lacking.”
“While the EAS is still likely to issue at least one jointly negotiated statement in 2024,” Patton wrote, “it is a reflection of global political polarization that ASEAN’s dialogue partners are no longer able to propose their own dueling statements to advance their preferred language on international issues.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/blinken-heads-to-laos-for-asean-and-east-asia-summit/7814614.html
Hurricane Helene and the ‘Fuck It’ Era of AI-Generated Slop
date: 2024-10-08, from: 404 Media Group
The era of politically-motivated AI slop is here and it sucks.
https://www.404media.co/hurricane-helene-and-the-fuck-it-era-of-ai-generated-slop/
Hurricane Helene’s Floodwaters Damaged 80 Percent of Buildings in Asheville’s River Arts District
date: 2024-10-08, from: Smithsonian Magazine
Home to more than 300 artists, the neighborhood was submerged under the record-high waters of the French Broad River
US lawmakers dig into FCC’s $900M Starlink snub in wake of Hurricane Helene
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Nearly a billion dollars in rural broadband subsidies wouldn’t go amiss
The Chairman of the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, James Comer, is investigating the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to revoke an award of almost $900 million in rural broadband subsidies to Elon Musk’s Starlink.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/fcc_starlink_subsidies_probe/
Offline dating, friendship meetups trending in US
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
While online dating apps are as popular as ever, some singles prefer meeting in person. Karina Bafradzhian has a look at some services that offer face-to-face meetups for people who are looking for friends as often as dates. Camera: Sergii Dogotar
https://www.voanews.com/a/offline-dating-friendship-meetups-trending-in-us/7814565.html
Eric Schmidt: Build more AI datacenters, we aren’t going to ‘hit climate goals anyway’
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Perhaps the power-draining tech is the solution after all, posits former Google CEO
Google’s former chief Eric Schmidt thinks we shouldn’t let AI’s ballooning power consumption worry us, because putting AI to work on climate change issues will be our best shot at solving them.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/eric_schmidt_speech/
Shortwave Radio: A Unique Collection from the Cold War Era
date: 2024-10-08, from: Internet Archive Blog
It was the mid-1980s, Chuck Vesei developed a fascination with shortwave radio. He used his portable radio to tune into shortwave broadcasts from around the globe. Because shortwave signals can travel […]
https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/08/shortwave-collection/
Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Stability? Predictability? Reliability? Where’s the fun in that?
EuroBSDcon 2024 One of Stefano Marinelli’s NetBSD boxes sat quietly serving for a decade, because everyone forgot about it. This is how Unix is meant to be.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/switching_from_linux_to_bsd/
Forecasters Are Horrified By Hurricane Milton
date: 2024-10-08, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: What remains of former Hurricane Kirk could bring heavy rain and dangerous winds to Europe • Wildfires in Bolivia have scorched nearly 19 million football fields worth of land this year • It is 55 degrees Fahrenheit and rainy today at the Alpe du Grand Serre, an 85-year-old Alpine ski resort in France that announced it will close for good due to a lack of snow.
THE TOP FIVE
- Hurricane Milton’s rapid intensification shocks forecasters
Hurricane Milton has horrified meteorologists with its swift transformation into a monster system, exploding from a Category 1 storm into a Category 5 storm in about 18 hours. As of this morning it has maximum sustained winds of 155 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, and is expected to make landfall near Tampa, Florida, overnight on Wednesday. Milton will likely weaken slightly as it approaches the Sunshine State but will nonetheless bring life-threatening wind, rain, and storm surge to an area still in tatters from last month’s Hurricane Helene. “If Milton stays on its course this will be the most powerful hurricane to hit Tampa Bay in over 100 years,” the Tampa Bay National Weather Service said. “No one in the area has ever experienced a hurricane this strong before.”
NHC/NOAA
Veteran Florida meteorologist John Morales broke down in tears reporting on Milton’s remarkable drop in air pressure – generally the lower a storm’s pressure, the greater its strength. “This is just horrific,” Morales said. “The seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot. You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you: Global warming.”
- Onslaught of weather disasters tests FEMA
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is under strain from back-to-back extreme weather events, including Hurricane Helene and looming Hurricane Milton. Last week Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned that FEMA “does not have the funds” to get through the rest of hurricane season. The agency’s former administrator, Craig Fugate, told Bloomberg the damage from Milton could be more costly than Helene’s. Staff shortages are compounding funding shortfalls, with just 9% of FEMA workers available to respond to disasters as of Monday, as personnel struggle to address a number of recent disasters in other parts of the country. “The agency is simultaneously supporting over 100 major disaster declarations,” Brock Long, who led FEMA during the Trump administration, said. “The scale of staffing required for these operations is immense.”
- Kerry joins Steyer’s green investing firm
John Kerry has joined billionaire Tom Steyer’s sustainable investing firm, Galvanize Climate Solutions, as co-executive chair alongside Steyer and Katie Hall. The former secretary of state and top U.S. climate diplomat “will focus on expanding the resources and reach of Galvanize’s investment strategies, originating differentiated opportunities, and leveraging firsthand knowledge as to how technology, policy, and geopolitics are shaping the energy transition,” the firm said in a statement. Steyer and Hall launched Galvanize in 2021. It manages around $1 billion and focuses on “generating long-term value from the energy transition.” Kerry said Galvanize would play a key role in the energy transition by “bringing competitive, commercially viable solutions to market.”
- Lithios raises $12 million to unlock new sources of lithium
Lithios, a Massachusetts-based startup with a novel method of lithium extraction, just raised a $12 million seed round. Energy market analysts predict that the world is hurtling towards a global lithium shortage by the 2030s, but Lithios is aiming to help unlock previously untapped lithium sources around the world, specifically salty groundwater deposits, a.k.a. brines. The company’s CEO, Mo Alkhadra, told Heatmap’s Katie Brigham that while about two-thirds of the world’s lithium is contained in brine rather than hard rock, only about 15% to 20% of these brines are currently worth mining. Lithios, he said, will get that number up to around 80% to 85%, in theory. The funding is led by Clean Energy Ventures with support from Lowercarbon Capital, among others. The round included $10 million in venture funding and $2 million in venture debt loans from Silicon Valley Bank.
- White House eyes more decomissioned nuclear plants for revival
The Biden administration wants to restart more nuclear power plants that have been decommissioned in an effort to provide zero-emission electricity to meet soaring demand, according to White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi. Two revivals are already in progress: The Department of Energy finalized over $2.8 billion in loans and grants to help restart the Palisades plant in Michigan, and tech giant Microsoft made a deal with energy company Constellation to revive Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Zaidi said he could think of at least two other plants that could be brought back online, but didn’t get specific.
THE KICKER
“Governments come and go and they may change things, but the energy transition has passed the inflection point.” –Martin Pochtaruk, CEO of solar-module maker Heliene, which this week announced a strategic equity investment of up to $54 million that will support its new manufacturing operation in Minnesota.
https://heatmap.news/climate/hurricane-milton-forecaster-cry-morales
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Daring Fireball: 30 Years of Dave Winer's Seminal Blog, Scripting News.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/10/07/scripting-news-30-years
Ready to Believe a Conman
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: One Foot Tsunami
https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/10/08/ready-to-believe-a-conman/
Florida, flood insurance and yet another hurricane
date: 2024-10-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report
As Hurricane Milton barrels toward the Tampa Bay region, home to some 3 million people, residents there are still recovering from Hurricane Helene. Helene caused billions of dollars in damage. Yet nearly every homeowner who may be affected lacks adequate flood insurance. Plus, our TVs may also be watching us. And we’re coming up on one year since Microsoft finalized the largest video game deal ever: $68 billion for Activision Blizzard.
Prime Big Deals Day mobile tech deals (Oct 8 – Oct 9, 2024)
date: 2024-10-08, from: Liliputing
Amazon’s Prime Big Deals Days sale runs from October 8 through October 9 this year, with deep discounts on thousands of products. The only catch is that you need an Amazon Prime membership to score kat deals, but you can always sign up for a free trial membership and cancel after you’re done shopping. While […]
The post Prime Big Deals Day mobile tech deals (Oct 8 – Oct 9, 2024) appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/prime-big-deals-day-mobile-tech-deals-oct-8-oct-9-2024/
Vanishing Culture: Keeping the Receipts
date: 2024-10-08, from: Internet Archive Blog
The following guest post from editor and journalist Maria Bustillos is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. On August 13, 1961, […]
https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/08/vanishing-culture-keeping-the-receipts/
Four things I learned from coaching that made me a better leader
date: 2024-10-08, from: Accidentally in Code
About two and a half years ago, I finally completed CTI’s coach training courses – about 18 months after I started them, and much longer thinking “I think this would be useful and one day I will take it”. I find some people conceive of coaching as being a professional advice giver, or asking questions, […]
https://cate.blog/2024/10/08/four-things-i-learned-from-coaching-that-made-me-a-better-leader/
China is oversupplying lithium to eliminate rivals, US official says
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
LISBON — Chinese lithium producers are flooding the global market with the critical metal and causing a “predatory” price drop as they seek to eliminate competing projects, a senior U.S. official said on a visit to Portugal that has ample lithium reserves.
Jose Fernandez, undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment at the U.S. Department of State, told a briefing late on Monday that China was producing much more lithium “than the world needs today, by far.”
“That is an intentional response by the People’s Republic of China to what we are trying to do” with the Inflation Reduction Act - the largest climate and energy investment package in U.S. history valued at over $400 billion, Fernandez said.
“They engage in predatory pricing… [they] lower the price until competition disappears,’’ Fernandez said. ’’That is what is happening.”
China accounts for about two-thirds of the world’s lithium chemical output, which is mainly used in battery technologies including for electric cars. Prices of lithium have fallen more than 80% in the past year largely due to overproduction from China and a drop in demand for electric vehicles.
However, the price collapse is also affecting China as it has forced Chinese companies like battery giant CATL to suspend production at certain mines.
Job cuts
Europe aims to reduce its dependence on imports from China and other countries of lithium and other materials essential to the green transition.
Fernandez said the low price “constrains our ability to diversify our supply chains on a broad, global scale” and also hurts countries such as Portugal that need investment to develop these industries.
Falling prices have forced many global lithium producers to scale back production and cut jobs.
Portugal, with some 60,000 tons of known reserves, is already Europe’s biggest producer of lithium, traditionally mined for ceramics.
Along with neighboring Spain, the country wants to take advantage of local lithium deposits, aiming to cover the entire value chain from mining and refining to cell and battery manufacturing to battery recycling.
Several mining companies in Portugal have been looking for financing, customers and suppliers to crank up projects.
“We want to help them, and we think we can… lithium mining companies, everywhere, have to survive this difficult phase that was created by predatory pricing,” Fernandez said.
China’s Premier Li Qiang in June used his address at a World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian to hit back at accusations from the United States and E.U. that Chinese firms benefit from unfair subsidies and are poised to flood their markets with cheap green technologies.
Trade tensions intensified last Friday when the European Union said it would press ahead with hefty tariffs on China-made electric vehicles to counter what it sees as unfair Chinese subsidies, after a year-long anti-subsidy investigation. China on Tuesday imposed temporary anti-dumping measures on imports of brandy from the E.U.
AI-driven e-commerce fraud is surging, but you can fight back with more AI
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Juniper Research argues the only way to beat them is to join them
E-commerce fraud is expected to surge in the next five years thanks to AI, and merchants are advised to respond with … AI.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/ecommerce_fraud_ai/
China retaliates against EU’s electric vehicle tariffs
date: 2024-10-08, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Days after the European Union voted in favor of steep import taxes on electric vehicles from China, Beijing has now hit back with tariffs on brandy imports. Other EU products could also face extra charges. Then, Uber’s CEO reflects on the benefits of low-cost EVs from China. And later: A major copper mine in Panama remains closed, hampering the country’s economy.
Lithios Raises $12 Million to Unlock New Sources of Lithium
date: 2024-10-08, from: Heatmap News
With the markets for electric vehicles and battery energy storage systems on the come-up, energy market analysts predict that the world is hurtling towards a global lithium shortage by the 2030’s. Lithios, a Massachusetts-based startup with a novel method of lithium extraction, is aiming to help by unlocking previously untapped lithium resources around the world.
The company just raised a $12 million seed round to help fund this mission, led by Clean Energy Ventures with support from Lowercarbon Capital, among others. The round included $10 million in venture funding and $2 million in venture debt loans from Silicon Valley Bank.
It’s not as if the world actually lacks for lithium, the energy dense mineral that is the primary component in lithium-ion batteries. It’s just that many current reserves are too low-grade to be economically exploited, and traditional extraction methods are land-intensive, inefficient, and often controversial with local communities. Chile, Australia, and China dominate the market, while the U.S. contributes less than 2% of the world’s annual supply.
Lithios aims to make it more economical and environmentally friendly to extract lithium from salty groundwater deposits, a.k.a. brines. The company’s CEO, Mo Alkhadra, told me that while about two-thirds of the world’s lithium is contained in brine rather than hard rock, only about 15% to 20% of these brines are currently worth mining. Lithios, he said, will get that number up to around 80% to 85%, in theory. “The vision with Lithios’ tech is to enable access to these lower-grade resources at a similar or maybe slightly higher cost structure relative to the highest grade deposits that are mined today,” Alkhadra explained.
The normal lithium brine extraction process involves pumping saline water from underground reservoirs to the surface, where it’s then moved through a series of large, wildly colored evaporation ponds, often located in the middle of vast salt deserts. Over a period of about 18 months, the sun slowly evaporates the brine, leaving behind increasingly high concentrations of lithium. But Lithios’ tech avoids these ponds altogether. Instead, the brine is pumped to the surface and delivered directly to the company’s refrigerator-sized electrochemical reactors, which contain stacks of electrodes that capture the lithium.
While the company wouldn’t disclose the electrodes’ exact chemistry, Alkhadra told me they are made from “inorganic compounds which have geometries that fit basically only lithium and none of the other larger ions that you would find in these brine mixtures.” After lithium is extracted, the company produces a purified lithium concentrate and sends that off for refining into battery chemicals. The final batteries could end up in EVs, energy storage systems, or even just plain old portable consumer electronics.
Lithios’ tech comes at a good time, as the Inflation Reduction Act’s domestic content requirements for EVs incentivizes manufacturers to source critical minerals from the U.S. and countries that the U.S. has free trade agreements with. Alkhadra told me that Lithios could open up opportunities for brine mining in the Smackover formation, which spans a number of southern states including Texas and Arkansas, the Salton Sea area, which has been dubbed “Lithium Valley,” as well as deposits in Utah and Nevada. More areas in Canada and Europe could also be in play. (The company said it couldn’t talk yet about any specific partnership agreements.)
While there are a number of other companies such as Lilac Solutions and EnergyX that are also pursuing more efficient and less land-intensive brine-based extraction methods, they rely on a different, purely chemical process known as direct lithium extraction, which uses technology adapted from the water treatment industry. “The core thesis around what we’re building at Lithios stems from that work,” Alkhadra told me, explaining that electrifying these chemical processes makes them “much more selective, energy efficient, and water efficient” — resulting in “modest to significant cost reduction.”
Lithios’ new funding will help the company scale its research and development efforts as well as build out a pilot facility in Medford, Massachusetts, with initial production to begin in the first quarter of next year. At first, output will be limited to just “several battery packs” per year, Alkhadra told me, scaling up to commercial production “in the coming years.”
Alkhadra is excited to see investors and the federal government alike beginning to express interest in the upstream, “dirtier” portions of the battery supply chain, which he told me have generally been overlooked in favor of downstream sectors such as battery manufacturing and cell production. “I think the U.S. departments of both energy and defense, and investors too, are coming to realize that the real bottlenecks in battery manufacturing and EV production are on the resource side.”
https://heatmap.news/technology/lithios-12-million-seed-round
Linus Torvalds declares war on the passive voice
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Linux contributors told to sort out their grammar lest they be actively corrected
Picture this. A developer submits a patch to improve the kernel’s performance, only to be met with the scornful gaze of Linux chieftain Linus Torvalds, who declares: “Ah, but your participle is dangling! How do you expect the kernel to thrive under such conditions?”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/linus_torvalds_grammar_complaint/
Linus Torvalds declares war on the passive voice
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Linux contributors told to sort out their grammar lest they be actively corrected
Picture this. A developer submits a patch to improve the kernel’s performance, only to be met with the scornful gaze of Linux chieftain Linus Torvalds, who declares: “Ah, but your participle is dangling! How do you expect the kernel to thrive under such conditions?”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/torvalds_grammar_complaint/
The State of Security in 2024
date: 2024-10-08, from: O’Reilly Radar
In August 2024, we asked our customers to tell us about security: their role in security, their certifications, their concerns, and what their companies are doing to address those concerns. We had 1,322 complete responses, of which 419 (32%—roughly one-third) are members of a security team. 903 respondents aren’t on a security team, although 19% […]
https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-state-of-security-in-2024/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
It’s not anyone's job to tell the truth. And that's the truth.
http://scripting.com/2024/10/07.html
Workday beats Oracle and Microsoft in UK ‘Matrix’ ERP deal
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The SaaS-only provider and Cognizant snag £144.3M in gov software shake-up
A cluster of government departments has opted for Workday HR and finance software, as Oracle and Microsoft make up the vendors losing out to the SaaS-only provider.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/workday_uk_treasury_oracle/
Microsoft veteran ditches Team Tabs, blaming storage trauma of yesteryear
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
How do you indent yours?
Veteran Microsoft engineer Larry Osterman is the latest to throw his hat into the “tabs versus spaces” ring.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/microsoft_engineer_tabs_spaces/
A year after taking on Intel’s NUC mini-PCs, Asus says it’s ready to improve them
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
AI is showing the way to new possibilities after a tricky first year
A year after winning the rights to build machines based on Intel’s Next Unit of Compute (NUC) mini-PC spec, Taiwan’s Asus claims it has stabilized the product line and the team that makes it – and is poised to innovate.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/asus_nuc_year_one/
MASTER PLAN, Ep 9: The Swing Vote That Changed America
date: 2024-10-08, from: The Lever News
Indiana attorney James Bopp engineered the case allowing dark money in politics specifically with the court’s “swing vote” in mind.
https://www.levernews.com/master-plan-ep-9-going-big/
Happy birthday, Putin – you’ve been pwned
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Pro-Ukraine hackers claim credit for Russian state broadcasting shutdown
Ukrainian hackers shut down Russian state news agency VGTRK’s online broadcasting and streaming services on Monday – president Vladimir Putin’s 72nd birthday – as Kremlin officials vowed to bring those responsible for the “unprecedented” cyber attack to justice.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/russia_state_news_shutdown/
Milton could strike Florida Wednesday
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. — Florida’s Gulf Coast braced Tuesday for the impact of Hurricane Milton’s near-record winds and expected massive storm surge, which could bring destruction to areas already reeling from Helene’s devastation 12 days ago and still recovering from Ian’s wrath two years ago.
Almost the entirety of Florida’s west coast was under a hurricane warning early Tuesday as the Category 5 storm and its 265 kph winds crept toward the state at 14 kph, sucking energy from the Gulf of Mexico’s warm water. The strongest Atlantic hurricane on record is 1980’s Allen, which reached wind speeds of 306 kph as it moved through the Caribbean and Gulf before striking Texas and Mexico.
Milton’s center could come ashore Wednesday in the Tampa Bay region, which has not endured a direct hit by a major hurricane in more than a century. Scientists expect the system to weaken slightly before landfall, though it could retain hurricane strength as it churns across central Florida toward the Atlantic Ocean. That would largely spare other states ravaged by Helene, which killed at least 230 people on its path from Florida to the Appalachian Mountains.
Tampa Bay has not been hit directly by a major hurricane since 1921, and authorities fear luck is about to run out for the region and its 3.3 million residents. President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Florida, and U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor said 7,000 federal workers were mobilized to help in one of the largest mobilizations of federal personnel in history.
“This is the real deal here with Milton,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told a Monday news conference. “If you want to take on Mother Nature, she wins 100% of the time.”
The Tampa Bay area is still rebounding from Helene and its powerful surge — a wall of water up to 2.4 meters it created even though its eye was 160 kilometers offshore. Twelve people died there, with the worst damage along a string of barrier islands from St. Petersburg to Clearwater.
Forecasters warned that Milton could bring a possible 2.4- to 3.6-meter storm surge, leading to evacuation orders being issued for beach communities all along the Gulf coast. In Florida, that means anyone who stays is on their own and first responders are not expected to risk their lives to rescue them at the height of the storm.
Stragglers were a problem during Helene and 2022’s Ian. Many residents failed to heed ample warnings, saying they evacuated during previous storms only to have major surges not materialize. But there was evidence Monday that people were getting out before Milton arrives.
A steady stream of vehicles headed north toward the Florida Panhandle on Interstate 75, the main highway on the west side of the peninsula, as residents heeded evacuation orders. Traffic clogged the southbound lanes of the highway for miles as other residents headed for the relative safety of Fort Lauderdale and Miami on the other side of the state.
About 240 kilometers south of Tampa, Fort Myers Beach was nearly a ghost town by Monday afternoon as an evacuation order took effect. Ian devastated the 5,000-resident community two years ago, its 4.5-meter storm surge destroying or severely damaging 400 homes and businesses. Fourteen people died there as they tried to ride out the storm, and dozens had to be rescued.
On Monday, the few residents who could be found were racing against the clock to safeguard their buildings and belongings. None said they were staying.
The signs of Ian’s devastation remain visible everywhere. Rebuilt homes stand next to others in various states of construction. There are numerous vacant lots, which were once rare.
“This whole street used to be filled out with houses,” said Mike Sandell, owner of Pool-Rific Services. His workers were removing and storing pumps and heaters Monday from his clients’ pools so they wouldn’t get destroyed.
Home construction supplies like bricks, piping and even workers’ outhouses lined the streets, potential projectiles that could do further damage if a surge hits.
At the beach Monday afternoon, workers busily emptied the triple-wide trailer that houses The Goodz, a combined hardware, convenience, fishing supply, ice cream and beach goods store. Owner Graham Belger said he moved his “Your Island Everything Store” into the trailer after Ian destroyed his permanent building across the street.
“We’ll rebuild, but it is going to be bad,” he said.
Nearby, Don Girard and his son Dominic worked to batten down the family’s three-story combination rental and vacation home that’s about 30.5 meters from the water. It’s first-floor garage and entranceway were flooded by Helene last month, Hurricane Debby in August, and a tide brought by a recent supermoon.
Ian was by far the worst. Its waves crashed into the 14-year-old home’s second floor, destroying the flooring. Girard repaired the damage, and his aqua-blue and white home stands in contrast to the older, single-story house across the street. It was submerged by Ian, never repaired and remains vacant. Its once-off-white walls are now tinged with brown. Plywood covers the holes that once contained windows and doors.
Girard, who owns a banner and flag company in Texas, said that while his feelings about owning his home are mostly positive, they are becoming mixed. He said every December, his extended family gathers there for the holidays. At that time of year, temperatures in southwest Florida are usually in the low 20s Celsius with little rain or humidity. The area and its beaches fill with tourists.
“At Christmas, there is no better place in the world,” Girard said.
But flooding from Ian, the other storms and now Milton is leaving him frustrated.
“It’s been difficult, I’m not going to lie to you,” Girard said. “The last couple years have been pretty bad.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/florida-braces-for-hurricane-milton-/7814306.html
XCP-NG thanks Broadcom for increased interest, swipes Citrix for not helping build an alternative
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
XenServer fork plans to make its next version a better target for VMware migrations
Vates, the developer behind Xen Server fork XCP-NG, has thanked Broadcom for increasing interest in its work, and criticized Citrix for presenting challenges to its efforts.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/cxp_ng_8_3_futures/
Samsung apologizes for bad financial performance
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Profit doesn’t pop despite AI-inspired memory boom, leading to executive mea culpa
Samsung Electronics has issued an apology to customers, investors and employees after releasing disappointing preliminary results Tuesday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/samsung_q3_2024_apology/
Do prediction markets have a future in US elections?
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/do-prediction-markets-have-a-future-in-us-elections-/7814268.html
Google brings better bricking to Androids, to curtail crims
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Improved security features teased in May now appearing around the world
Google has apparently started a global rollout of three features in Android designed to make life a lot harder for thieves to profit from purloined phones.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/google_android_security/
US warns voters of disinformation deluge
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — American voters are likely about to be swamped by a flood of misinformation and influence campaigns engineered by U.S. adversaries aiming, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials, to sway the results of the upcoming presidential election and cast doubt on the process itself.
The latest assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, issued Monday, comes just 29 days before the November 5 election that will see U.S. voters choose the country’s next president and cast ballots in hundreds of other state and local races.
“We’ve continued to see actors ramp up their activities as we get closer to Election Day,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.
“They recognize that individuals are already voting, and operations can have a greater impact as we get closer to Election Day,” the official said, noting that the election itself may just be a starting point.
“The intelligence community expects foreign influence actors to continue their campaigns by calling into question the validity of the election results after the polls close,” the official added.
A second U.S. intelligence official warned the pace of such influence efforts, especially those targeting specific races or political campaigns, has also picked up.
“We have had more than a threefold increase,” the official said, explaining that the number of private briefings to candidates and campaigns has likewise jumped.
Intelligence agencies also cautioned that U.S. adversaries will likely seize upon the damage done by Hurricane Helene and potential damage from Hurricane Milton as it strengthens off the U.S. coastline to further amplify and manufacture narratives meant to undermine confidence in the election results.
“It does take time for those types of narratives to be formed and put out into the wild, so to speak,” the first intelligence official said. “But we certainly expect foreign countries to take advantage of such situations and promote further divisive rhetoric.”
Monday’s assessment follows a series of earlier public warnings about foreign efforts to meddle in the U.S. election.
U.S. officials said Monday that Russia, Iran and China continue to be responsible for most of the influence efforts targeting U.S. voters.
And, they said, there have been no indications that any of those countries have changed their goals.
Russia, they said, continues to run influence campaigns aimed at boosting the chances of former U.S. President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, while seeking to hurt the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Iran’s efforts remain focused on helping Harris by hurting Trump, they said, pointing to the ongoing hack-and-leak operation against the Trump campaign, which has been traced to three operatives working for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Targeting state, local races
U.S. intelligence agencies assess that China has yet to wade into the U.S. presidential campaign, focusing instead on persuading American voters to reject state and local candidates perceived as detrimental to Beijing’s interests, especially those voicing support for Taiwan.
But the latest public assessment pointed to some changes.
U.S. intelligence officials on Monday warned that Russia and Cuba have joined China, in targeting congressional, state and local races.
“Moscow is leveraging a wide range of influence actors in an effort to influence congressional races, particularly to encourage the U.S. public to oppose pro-Ukraine policies and politicians,” the intelligence official said.
“Havana almost certainly has considered influence efforts targeting some candidates,” the official added. “This is consistent with what they’ve done in past cycles.”
Russia, China and Iran have all rejected previous U.S. accusations of election meddling. Russia, Iran and Cuba have yet to respond to requests from VOA for comment on the latest U.S. findings.
China late Monday again dismissed the U.S. concerns.
“China is not interested in the U.S. congressional election, and we have no intention and will not interfere in it,” Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA in an email.
“Some U.S. congressmen stick to their wrong positions on the Taiwan question,” Liu added. “China firmly defends its national sovereignty and territorial integrity, but this does not lead to the conclusion that China has interfered in the congressional elections.”
But the U.S. intelligence assessments align with concerns voiced by some lawmakers and private technology companies.
“The 48 hours after the polls close, especially if we have as close an election as we anticipate, could be equally if not more significant in terms of spreading false information, disinformation and literally undermining the tenets of our democracy,” Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said during a hearing last month.
‘Vigorous activity’
Microsoft President Brad Smith, who has warned that the most perilous moments could come in the 48 hours before the U.S. election, separately said the increase in malign cyber efforts by Russia and Iran, especially, is undeniable.
“We’re seeing vigorous activity,” Smith told a cyber conference last month. “We’re seeing the Iranians really target the Republican Party in the Trump campaign,” he said. “We’re seeing the Russians target the Democratic Party and now the Harris campaign.”
And it is unclear what impact the U.S. has made with its attempts to counter the growing number of foreign influence efforts.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department seized 32 internet domains used by companies linked to Moscow to spread disinformation. At the same time, the department indicted employees of the state-controlled media outlet RT in connection with a plot to launder Russian propaganda through a U.S.-based media company.
U.S. intelligence officials on Monday, however, said such tactics are no longer unique to the Kremlin.
“Foreign influence actors are getting better at hiding their hand and using Americans to do it,” said one of the U.S. intelligence officials. “Foreign countries calculate that Americans are more likely to believe other Americans compared to content with clear signs of foreign propaganda.”
Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that social media is rife with fake personas generated by U.S. adversaries.
“If you’re looking at stuff on Twitter, on TikTok, on Facebook, on Instagram, and it’s political in nature … there is a very reasonable chance — I would put it in the 20 to 30% range — that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries: Russia, Iran, China,” he said. “It’s not going to stop on November 5.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-warns-voters-of-disinformation-deluge/7814263.html
China reportedly tells local AI buyers to ignore Nvidia
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Google, Oracle, spend $9.5 billion on Asia datacenters; Philippines to tax clouds; Vietnam infosec praised; and more
In Brief Chinese authorities have reportedly let local orgs know they should satisfy their need for AI accelerators by shopping locally – not from Nvidia.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/asia_in_brief/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-10-08, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
30 Years of Blogging.
https://freeke.org/ffg/30-years-of-blogging.html
New Mexico man who shot Native American protesting statue takes plea deal
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
Feds reach for sliver of crypto-cash nicked by North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A couple million will do for a start … but Kim’s crews are suspected of stealing much more
The US government is attempting to claw back more than $2.67 million stolen by North Korea’s Lazarus Group, filing two lawsuits to force the forfeiture of millions in Tether and Bitcoin.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/us_lazarus_group_crypto_seizure/
Trump, Harris mark somber anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel
date: 2024-10-08, from: VOA News USA
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are marking the anniversary of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust as the presidential candidates approach the final weeks of the campaign during a widening conflict in the Middle East.
Political leaders across the spectrum were marking the killing of about 1,200 people, including 46 U.S. citizens, by Hamas-led militants in the October 7 attack last year, and the taking of about 250 hostages. A year later, about 100 people, including several Americans, remain in captivity, as U.S.-led efforts to negotiate a cease-fire and hostage release deal have sputtered out.
Trump visited the New York City gravesite of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who led the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Orthodox Judaism from 1951 until his death in 1994. Schneerson was the movement’s seventh leader, known as Lubavitcher Rebbe. Trump then will speak before Jewish community leaders at one of his Florida resorts in the Miami suburb of Doral.
Harris and her husband planted a pomegranate tree on the grounds of the vice president’s residence in honor of the those killed a year ago.
Earlier Monday, Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, recited a prayer for peace at an event to commemorate the anniversary hosted by the American Jewish Committee in Washington.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden also hosted a somber memorial ceremony at the White House Monday to mark the anniversary of the attack. The Bidens looked on as Rabbi Aaron Alexander of Washington’s Adas Israel Congregation recited the Jewish remembrance prayer for the more than 1,200 people, including dozens of Americans, killed that day, listing the towns, villages and festival site that were the scenes of the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
The president then lit a lone memorial candle placed on a small table at the center of the Blue Room, before they observed a moment of silence.
Earlier in the day, Biden spoke with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, the White House said.
The attack sparked a deadly war in Gaza, as Israel moved to root out Hamas’ control over the territory and try to return those taken captive. Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, including many women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians.
Another Iran-backed group, Hezbollah, has fired thousands of rockets at Israeli territory in the same period from Lebanon, and Israel last month expanded a campaign of sabotage and assassination and launched a ground incursion into Lebanon to combat the threat from the group.
In 1997, the U.S. State Department designated both Hezbollah and Hamas as foreign terrorist organizations. Many other countries also label them as terrorist groups, although some apply the designation only to their military wings.
Get Real Client IPs with Ingress Nginx, Caddy or Traefik
date: 2024-10-08, updated: 2024-10-08, from: Inlets.dev, cloud tunneling
When you’re running a reverse proxy directly on a host, or an Ingress Controller in Kubernetes, you can get the real client IP with inlets.
https://inlets.dev/blog/2024/10/08/real-client-ips-ingress-nginx-caddy-traefik.html