by ti-amieStop Blaming Foreigners for America’s Awful Cybersecurity
John Schindler
This week brought disturbing news of a large-scale computer hack, a mega-hack if you like, of American government and industry by a foreign state actor that’s widely assumed to be Russia. Although the full scope of the damage inflicted is yet undetermined, it will take months of investigation for that to become clear, this already appears to be one of the worst cybersecurity fails in history.
What we can say for certain is that this cyber offensive was perpetrated over months in 2020 by APT29, a Russian hacker group popularly termed Cozy Bear. Western counterintelligence deduced years ago that APT29 is really the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR. Thus, this year’s mega-hack comes to America courtesy of the Kremlin, a fact which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted yesterday with his statement, “We can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”
Official Washington, DC is being tight-lipped about what exactly got hit, as federal investigators survey the cyber-damage, but we know this effort was not confined to the United States. Microsoft President Brad Smith, whose firm finds itself in the middle of this online maelstrom, stated that while more than 40 of its customers were hit by APT29, and 80 percent of them are American, Microsoft has identified hacking targets in Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Spain, Britain, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates as well. Smith cautioned that the number of victims in this case is certain to rise as the investigation proceeds.
This cyber offensive runs back to a Texas-based software firm called SolarWinds. In short, SVR hackers breached that company’s Orion software, which is used by tens of thousands of private clients as well as many agencies of the U.S. and allied governments. SolarWinds was already known to possess a dodgy security record, including use of weak passwords, among other problems, which can be perhaps attributed to the fact that SolarWinds did not have a chief information security officer on staff. Suspicion has inevitably fallen on a possible insider threat as the source of the compromise, in other words a turned or compromised employee (wittingly or not) – such is often the beginning of large-scale hacking operations – but information is sketchy at present.
Regardless, SolarWinds’ security failure has brought great pain to Washington, since the federal Departments impacted here include Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, State, and Treasury. Alarmingly, among individual agencies reported to be vulnerable to APT29 penetration include the National Security Agency (our most sensitive Intelligence Community agency) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (which protects our atomic research and weaponry), all of which used SolarWinds software.
What passes for the good news is that APT29 penetration here is reported to be confined to unclassified communication systems; moreover, classified Pentagon communications networks like SPIRNet and JWICS, which handle Secret and Top Secret communications, respectively, are reported to be unaffected by the SolarWinds breach. That may be cold comfort since the SVR can learn an awful lot from just reading the unclassified emails and messages of a bevy of federal agencies, while cyber-penetrations of those unclassified networks can sometimes enable access to classified ones.
In response, Washington is doing what it knows how to do, making statements, issuing warnings, gathering investigators, creating task forces, and circling the bureaucratic wagons until the full extent of the damage can be assessed. This week, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a blunt emergency directive to start pushing back the SolarWinds breach across government and industry, while the White House stood up a Cyber Unified Coordination Group to ensure that federal agencies are cooperating adequately to ascertain, and eventually roll back, what APT29 hath wrought here. Nevertheless, it will take months, at minimum, to undo this damage, not least because the SVR presumably is watching our mitigation efforts unfold on compromised networks in real time, while counteracting them wherever the Russians can.
There can be no sugarcoating what constitutes a grave failure of cybersecurity by the United States. The rhetoric emanating from Washington over Cozy Bear’s antics is severe, even extreme. While President Donald J. Trump is being castigated for keeping mum about this debacle, high-ranking Democrats are employing sky-is-falling rhetoric about the mega-hack. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin termed it “virtually a declaration of war by Russia on the United States,” while his Connecticut colleague Sen. Richard Blumenthal stated that a classified briefing on the hack “left me deeply alarmed, in fact downright scared.” Their slightly more measured Delaware colleague Sen. Chris Coons explained, “It's pretty hard to distinguish this from an act of aggression that rises to the level of an attack that qualifies as war. ... [T]his is as destructive and broad scale an engagement with our military systems, our intelligence systems as has happened in my lifetime.”
However, it’s already apparent that APT29’s activities, while devastating from an information security viewpoint, plus deeply embarrassing to the United States, do not constitute the “Cyber Pearl Harbor” which cybersecurity gurus have been warning about since late in the last century. Where are the exploded power grids, the opened dams, the crashed trains, the darkened hospitals? The SVR seems to have gotten that deep inside lots of sensitive computer grids and networks, what did they actually do with that power? Nothing, it seems so far.
One of those alarmist gurus is Richard Clarke, who warned about a “Cyber Pearl Harbor” for decades from various perches in Washington, and he now seems to have gotten one, or close. As he stated this week, “This is the largest espionage attack in history. This is as though the Russians got a passkey, a skeleton key for about half the locks in the country. Think about it that way. It’s 18,000 companies and government institutions scattered around the U.S. And the world. This is an espionage attack.”
Clarke’s half right. It’s definitely espionage, but as yet there’s no evidence of any actual attack. Here there’s eliding of important cyberespionage terms, and Clarke certainly knows the difference. We need to talk about CNE versus CNA. The former, Computer Network Exploitation, is really just espionage via cyber means, the reconnaissance of online systems, stealing data and establishing what those networks do. Computer Network Attack is disrupting, damaging, or even destroying computer networks and the things which connect to them. CNA is what we fear, that’s potentially a Cyber Pearl Harbor. There’s no indication, as yet, that any CNA happened with APT29 in this vast cyberespionage operation. It’s all been CNE, based on what we’ve been told so far.
That’s cold comfort, of course, since CNE can easily turn into CNA, in fact you need to execute a lot of successful CNE to enable any painful CNA, but there remains a big difference between spying on computer networks versus blowing them up. Russian cyberespionage and attack doctrine are well understood, if you bother to read about them. Moscow doesn’t view cyber as something radically new, rather as an extension of normal intelligence collection and reconnaissance practice. As communications move into the cyber realm, that’s where you need to spy, it’s that simple.
This all has the whiff of politics about it, of course, because everything in America does these days. What APT29 did in 2020 represents the most serious American cybersecurity defeat since the mega-hack of Office of Personnel Management data by Chinese intelligence, which was announced by OPM in mid-2015. That hack compromised the most sensitive personal information of tens of millions of Americans who had applied for U.S. government security clearances. Despite repeated warnings about the pressing need to take cybersecurity seriously, OPM gave Beijing the store, an intelligence loss with staggering implications for multiple federal departments and agencies. It was a severe blow to morale in what the current White House resident terms the Deep State. Obama did not publicly call out Beijing over the OPM hack, beyond a banal statement that “There are certain practices that they are engaging in, that we know are emanating from China and are not acceptable.”
It’s impossible to miss that Democrats who are declaring war on Russia over Cozy Bear’s antics were much more moderate in their criticisms of China five years ago, while Republicans who were demanding that Obama retaliate harshly against Beijing over the OPM mega-hack are generally more circumspect about what we need to do against Moscow now. Since we do not want an actual war with Russia, a country which possesses several thousand nuclear weapons and seethes with hatred for the West in general and America in particular, it would be wise to assess what really happened with APT29 in 2020 with analytical precision rather than reckless rhetoric.
Thus far, it’s evident that this was another episode in the SpyWar which we’re in with both Moscow and Beijing, and the Kremlin won this round. The SVR is more cautious in its spy operations than its “neighbors” in military intelligence, the infamously reckless GRU, and APT29 seems to have executed an impressive reconnaissance of a wide array of American and allied computer networks, private and governmental. The intelligence loss to Moscow here appears to be massive. Vladimir Putin and his cyber-Chekists have good reason to be chilling champagne over this operation.
But they only got away with it because we let them. Just as with China’s mega-hack of OPM back in 2014, the Russians succeeded here due to America’s lackadaisical attitudes towards cybersecurity, public and private. Our enemies are competent, but our defenses are too often incompetent, which makes for a deadly combination in the SpyWar. It’s difficult to be excessively critical of private companies and their security shortcomings when the federal government itself can’t get its act together with cybersecurity. Federal agencies, even very sensitive ones, conduct only cursory inspections of private software which they place on their governmental computer networks, thus “After embedding code in widely used network management software made by a Texas company called SolarWinds, all [the SVR] had to do was wait for the agencies to download routine software updates from the trusted supplier.”
These debacles will keep happening until we get serious about security in general, cyber or otherwise. There are big obstacles to getting better. Politics remains a problem, when our political parties are only interested in security when it can be used as a cudgel to beat the other party with. In addition, Americans of all stripes have had an unserious attitude towards counterintelligence for decades, as I highlighted in my last Top Secret Umbra column. Counterintelligence and security work can be a drag: difficult, time-consuming, and sometimes downright depressing. The SpyWar never sleeps. Victories there are incremental, never total, and sometimes difficult to detect at all.
This dismissive attitude towards counterintelligence was painful enough during the last Cold War, with traitors costing us lives, battles, and uncounted treasure. However, this fundamental unseriousness about protecting secrets is seriously lethal in the online age, when every government agency is fully networked and virtually every American is walking around every waking moment carrying around an espionage device that spies on everything they do, buy, and say, while offering Internet and telephone access in exchange.
There’s also hypocrisy at play here. We lost this round of the SpyWar to the SVR, but we’re plenty active in the hush-hush cyberespionage realm ourselves. NSA is probably the world’s most skilled agency at conducting CNE while its tightly linked U.S. Cyber Command partner is among the most effective at executing CNA. Edward Snowden spilled some of those Top Secret beans to the world back in 2013, when he walked out of NSA Hawaii with over a million classified documents on his way to Moscow. Although CNA can be construed as an act of war, CNE is merely espionage in the 21st century, something which every first-class intelligence agency in the world is doing, right now, as you read this.
We must get serious about cybersecurity, not least because defeat in the SpyWar often precedes defeat in an actual war, and right now a shooting war with China looms as a serious possibility. Just as we should assume that details of Beijing’s mega-hack of the OPM were shared with Moscow, the SVR’s mega-hack of American government and industry via SolarWinds is something the Kremlin has likely shared with its friends in China. The stakes here are important and rising. It would be nice if President Trump said something meaningful about APT29’s activities, including what the U.S. government is doing to mitigate the damage while discouraging Moscow from executing further mega-hacks. It would be nicer still if Washington got serious about counterintelligence and security, cyber and otherwise, beyond mere words, before it’s too late.
by ponchi101 I remember the 2012 debate between Romney and Obama, when they were asked who was the greatest threat to the USA. Romney, unequivocally, said "Russia". Obama laughed him off, saying Russia was weak.
I am not saying that Romney would have been a better president, but on that aspect, he was right.
by ti-amieMicrosoft says Russians hacked its network, viewing source code
By
Ellen Nakashima
Dec. 31, 2020 at 2:11 p.m. EST
Russian government hackers engaged in a sweeping series of breaches of government and private-sector networks have been able to penetrate deeper into Microsoft’s systems than previously known, gaining access to potentially valuable source code, the tech giant said Thursday.
The firm previously acknowledged that it had inadvertently downloaded a software patch used by Russian cyber spies as a potential “back door” into victims’ systems. But it was not known that the hackers had viewed the firm’s source code, or the crucial DNA of potentially valuable, proprietary software.
Microsoft, however, did not specify what type of source code was accessed.
“We detected unusual activity with a small number of internal accounts and upon review, we discovered one account had been used to view source code in a number of source code repositories,” the firm said in a blog posthttps://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2020/12 ... on-update/.
The hackers did not have permissions to modify any code or engineering systems, Microsoft said, adding “our investigation further confirmed no changes were made. These accounts were investigated and remediated.”
The Redmond, Wash.-based company said it has found no evidence of access to production services or customer data. It said its investigation also found no indications that its systems have been used to attack others.
However, some of its cloud customers have been hacked through a third-party partner that handles the firm’s cloud-access services, The Washington Post reported last week.
Microsoft has said it was the first to alert several U.S. government agencies in recent weeks to the fact they had been compromised.
by ponchi101 And here I can quote myself, just two posts further up.
What else must Vlad do for the rest of the world to wake up?
by ti-amie
by JazzNU Parler looks like they may land with Epik. Epik has hosted a lot of far right wing stuff, so that makes sense. They host Gab. But I don't think they host the Chans anymore, think they dropped them following some violent attack, so it'll be interesting to se if they are truly going to take on the risk and for how long. I think they Gab may be in danger before long too as more will move there if Parler is down too long. I'm not sure, but I don't believe any of the previous sites Epik hosted will get nearly as much attention or heat as Parler would.
by ti-amie A bit of navel gazing by @jack, the man behind Twitter
I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?
I believe this was the right decision for Twitter. We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all.
That said, having to ban an account has real and significant ramifications. While there are clear and obvious exceptions, I feel a ban is a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation. And a time for us to reflect on our operations and the environment around us.
Having to take these actions fragment the public conversation. They divide us. They limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning. And sets a precedent I feel is dangerous: the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.
The check and accountability on this power has always been the fact that a service like Twitter is one small part of the larger public conversation happening across the internet. If folks do not agree with our rules and enforcement, they can simply go to another internet service.
This concept was challenged last week when a number of foundational internet tool providers also decided not to host what they found dangerous. I do not believe this was coordinated. More likely: companies came to their own conclusions or were emboldened by the actions of others.
This moment in time might call for this dynamic, but over the long term it will be destructive to the noble purpose and ideals of the open internet. A company making a business decision to moderate itself is different from a government removing access, yet can feel much the same.
Yes, we all need to look critically at inconsistencies of our policy and enforcement. Yes, we need to look at how our service might incentivize distraction and harm. Yes, we need more transparency in our moderation operations. All this can’t erode a free and open global internet.
The reason I have so much passion for #Bitcoin is largely because of the model it demonstrates: a foundational internet technology that is not controlled or influenced by any single individual or entity. This is what the internet wants to be, and over time, more of it will be.
We are trying to do our part by funding an initiative around an open decentralized standard for social media. Our goal is to be a client of that standard for the public conversation layer of the internet. We call it @bluesky:
This will take time to build. We are in the process of interviewing and hiring folks, looking at both starting a standard from scratch or contributing to something that already exists. No matter the ultimate direction, we will do this work completely through public transparency.
It’s important that we acknowledge this is a time of great uncertainty and struggle for so many around the world. Our goal in this moment is to disarm as much as we can, and ensure we are all building towards a greater common understanding, and a more peaceful existence on earth.
I believe the internet and global public conversation is our best and most relevant method of achieving this. I also recognize it does not feel that way today. Everything we learn in this moment will better our effort, and push us to be what we are: one humanity working together.
Adam Sculthorpe
@AdamSculthorpe
Parler website is back up.
With a DDos-Guard IP, exactly as I predicted the day it went offline. DDoS Guard is the Russian equivalent of CloudFlare, and runs many shady sites.
RiTM (Russia in the middle) is one way to think about it.
by JazzNU Did I call it or what? That's basically the route that the Chan sites took but not as swiftly despite the heinous stuff on there. Epik's corporate office is here though, they are still subject to US laws. They've been pressed before, but not like this. Guess we'll see how lucrative this is for them or if the liability ends up being too steep.
by JazzNU
by ti-amie Imagine if they'd banned him as soon as he refused to use the official @POTUS account.
baby.jpg
This little creature is my grand-niece. My niece had the unfortune of having a severe hypertension event while pregnant, and the pregnancy had to be interrupted: it was either both of them dead, or a chance for my niece and her daughter. This happened at 5 MONTHS 3 WEEKS into the term. So, on Thanksgiving day, we had to go through that, and the obvious possibility that little Grace here (that is her name) would not live.
I will not post some of the other photos. She was so small (410 grams) and so premature that she still had not skin pigmentation. My sister, a doctor, got some other shots in which she could see the baby's intestines, as her skin had not fully formed and, again, was basically transparent. But this is where science entered. She of course went into neo-natal care, and has been supported now for almost two months there, growing. She is still a minuscule creature, but is seems that she will pull through. She was initially being fed via a tube, and had a full tube feeding her air/oxygen. Those have been removed and now she can breath with an assistance of solely oxygen, delivered by medical "moustaches" (surprisingly, that is how they call them). She recently broke the two pounds threshold, a very good sign.
CT scans show no abnormalities and her brain seems to be totally unscathed by the ordeal. More testing show that her eyes are not affected (it seems to be a very common problem in premmies) but that still is a possibility. More tests await.
We understand that she will never be "totally normal"; she will, most certainly, never play basketball like a pro (expected; my niece is tiny) and my plans for her to play aggressive serve-and-volley tennis may be curtailed to a strong, counterpunching baseliner that will tell her opponents "I was born at 5.75 months. What's YOUR story?", but, in all, a very scary event may end up not as a tragedy.
Science, science, science. The progress in this matter is absolutely impressive. Had this happened as little as 10 years ago, this little girl would not have made it. She is truly on the threshold of possibility.
Now, I need somebody to help me with her forehand (in about 8 years; that is my weak side).
A bit longer of a story than I thought. But it makes me happy, and felt like sharing. Obviously, I wish this on nobody. But is it happens, it is no longer a lost cause.
Off Topic
When my nephew-in-law said that this was thanks to the Virgin of Guadalupe (he is devout to her) I did bite my tongue. But I still wonder if I should charge him for the stitches. Damn, did I grow up? Mommy?
-->
by ponchi101 I will put this here for a change of pace, and because it is a nice story which is ending well.
baby.jpg
This little creature is my grand-niece. My niece had the unfortune of having a severe hypertension event while pregnant, and the pregnancy had to be interrupted: it was either both of them dead, or a chance for my niece and her daughter. This happened at 5 MONTHS 3 WEEKS into the term. So, on Thanksgiving day, we had to go through that, and the obvious possibility that little Grace here (that is her name) would not live.
I will not post some of the other photos. She was so small (410 grams) and so premature that she still had not skin pigmentation. My sister, a doctor, got some other shots in which she could see the baby's intestines, as her skin had not fully formed and, again, was basically transparent. But this is where science entered. She of course went into neo-natal care, and has been supported now for almost two months there, growing. She is still a minuscule creature, but is seems that she will pull through. She was initially being fed via a tube, and had a full tube feeding her air/oxygen. Those have been removed and now she can breath with an assistance of solely oxygen, delivered by medical "moustaches" (surprisingly, that is how they call them). She recently broke the two pounds threshold, a very good sign.
CT scans show no abnormalities and her brain seems to be totally unscathed by the ordeal. More testing show that her eyes are not affected (it seems to be a very common problem in premmies) but that still is a possibility. More tests await.
We understand that she will never be "totally normal"; she will, most certainly, never play basketball like a pro (expected; my niece is tiny) and my plans for her to play aggressive serve-and-volley tennis may be curtailed to a strong, counterpunching baseliner that will tell her opponents "I was born at 5.75 months. What's YOUR story?", but, in all, a very scary event may end up not as a tragedy.
Science, science, science. The progress in this matter is absolutely impressive. Had this happened as little as 10 years ago, this little girl would not have made it. She is truly on the threshold of possibility.
Now, I need somebody to help me with her forehand (in about 8 years; that is my weak side).
A bit longer of a story than I thought. But it makes me happy, and felt like sharing. Obviously, I wish this on nobody. But is it happens, it is no longer a lost cause.
Off Topic
When my nephew-in-law said that this was thanks to the Virgin of Guadalupe (he is devout to her) I did bite my tongue. But I still wonder if I should charge him for the stitches. Damn, did I grow up? Mommy?
Oh I am aware. Driving me crazy. Not gonna be a productive day!
by ti-amie
by JazzNU Resolved after markets closed. They're gonna have to do better than that to get at the Redditors. They just switched over to Discord while Reddit was down.
by ti-amie Discord? I really need to get out more.
by JazzNU Haha. I understand totally. Can be hard to keep up with tech.
Discord banned their server now. I believe they've gone private, though a mod or someone is on Twitter giving updates. This is a good quick article on why Discord cut them off. The main thing is it wasn't banned for fraud, but for hate speech. And that is entirely believable with this particular point highlighted in the article as part of Discord's statement on banning them. Yikes what a description.
r/WallStreetBets describes itself as “like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal,” and many comments on the subreddit contain offensive language.
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Jan 28, 2021 1:40 am
Discord? I really need to get out more.
Discussion boards mainly for gaming & music - starting to see more & more content creators with Discord channels.
by ponchi101 Over 50 years ago, science fiction writer and icon Stanislav Lem wrote a story in which he envisioned a future in which swarms of miniature mechanical insects (the word drone was still not in the lingo as we know it today) could fly as a swarm and meet at a point. Plunging into each other, and made out of uranium, they would be able to reach critical mass in the spot, becoming a nuclear device, a bomb from which you could not defend yourself. This article bears no relation to that story...
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 29, 2021 11:33 pm
Over 50 years ago, science fiction writer and icon Stanislav Lem wrote a story in which he envisioned a future in which swarms of miniature mechanical insects (the word drone was still not in the lingo as we know it today) could fly as a swarm and meet at a point. Plunging into each other, and made out of uranium, they would be able to reach critical mass in the spot, becoming a nuclear device, a bomb from which you could not defend yourself. This article bears no relation to that story...
Oh FFS.
by Suliso In the history of war the best defense has always been an attack. Not going to change in the future either.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 One test tube of Anthrax, dropped in a reservoir. See how you deal with that.
That is truly frightening.
by MJ2004 This is what happens people don't know how to use fun techno stuff:
by ponchi101 Terrifying. We are completely not ready for AI, or its offspring.
There was no way I would have told it was not Cruise.
by Deuce Regarding 'Artificial Intelligence' (and many other things)...
If we, as a species, do not consciously realize the undeniable fact that the human animal will abuse absolutely everything it comes into contact with (most often for financial gain), and thus quickly turn potential positives into profound negatives, and if we do not take effective action to address this defect, then we, and the planet, will continue to suffer until we eliminate ourselves (and many other species along the way).
by JazzNU
Netflix Is Testing Log-In Warnings to Curb Unauthorized Password Sharing
By Todd Spangler
Netflix may be finally getting serious about cracking down on password sharing.
The streaming giant in the past week launched a new test that displays a warning to some users that says, “If you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching.” Per Netflix’s terms of service, a customer’s account for the streaming service “may not be shared with individuals beyond your household.”
In the Netflix test, the prompt provides three options to users: They can get an email or text verification code to authenticate the account, or they can click on a button that says “Verify Later.” The message also lets users sign up for a new account.
A Netflix rep confirmed that the company has kicked off a limited test of the feature. “This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorized to do so,” the rep said in a statement to Variety.
The test is being run in multiple countries and only on TV devices. It’s not clear if the prompts are random or if they’re triggered by specific activity on a given account. One of the goals is to put in place a security mechanism to block unauthorized users who may have obtained stolen Netflix login credentials.
The test of the password-verification feature was reported by GammaWire after spotting users on social media who received the prompt.
The practice of mooching off someone else’s streaming account is pervasive, according to research studies. Nearly 40% of Americans say they use a streaming login and password that doesn’t belong to them — and about a third do so without permission from the account holder, according to a LendingTree survey of 1,500 consumers conducted Feb. 11-16.
According to the LendingTree survey, 51% of those who have a streaming service account admitted they let others use it. Netflix is the most popular shared service: 72% of respondents with the service say they let someone use their account, according to the study.
As Netflix has continued to grow — with 203.7 million globally at the end of 2020 — it will start to hit a saturation point in its most mature markets, including the U.S. And as that happens, one clear way to boost revenue is to try to convert freeloaders into paying customers.
One reason password sharing hasn’t been a major problem for Netflix is because the service already has guardrails to keep it in check. The Standard plan ($13.99/month in the U.S.), for example, allows just two concurrent HD streams per account, which makes it impractical for sharing among multiple people. The $17.99/month Premium tier allows up to four streams per account.
In October 2019, on the company’s earnings interview, Netflix chief product officer Greg Peters was asked about the issue of password sharing. He said the company was “looking at the situation and we’ll see, again, those consumer-friendly ways to push on the edges of that.”
In years past, Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings has said that the phenomenon of password-sharing not only was not problematic but a boon to the service. “We love people sharing Netflix whether they’re two people on a couch or 10 people on a couch,” Hastings said at the 2016 CES tradeshow. “That’s a positive thing, not a negative thing.”
That same year, Hastings told analysts that Netflix had no plans to crack down on password sharing activity. “Password sharing is something you have to learn to live with, because there’s so much legitimate password sharing like, you know, you sharing with your spouse, with your kids,” he said. “So there’s no bright line and we’re doing fine as is.”
by ponchi101 It happened to us already. My GF uses an account that is paid by her cousin, in Florida. The account is legal and her cousin has up to 4 screens at a time, so it is being paid, we simply do not live together.
My mom's account is also that way. She shares it with my nephew, and my GF's niece and sister. It is all paid here in Colombia because in Venezuela Netflix does not sell pre-paid cards. So if they implement this system, basically all of Venezuela will be off Netflix, and here we will need to contact our cousin when the verification code gets sent.
There was also a software problem: my Roku did not let me reach the send verification code button to press. So Netflix needs to make sure one can navigate there.
Side thought: because of course, Netflix is going bankrupt.
by dryrunguy Now, a woman in Pennsylvania used deepfake technology to create and disseminate bogus photos and videos of her daughter's cheerleading rivals participating in such activities as drinking, smoking, or posing nude.
::
As clear as the potential for deepfake abuse might be, there are still new, stranger examples popping up. The Philadelpha Inquirer and Harrisburg's Patriot-News report that police arrested Chalfont, Pennsylvania resident Raffaela Spone for allegedly using deepfakes in a bid to kick rivals off her daughter's cheerleading squad, the Victory Vipers. According to law enforcement, Spone sent coaches AI-altered photos and videos of the teens to portray them drinking, smoking, or naked.
Police first received word in July, when one of the victims received messages from an anonymous number, but that led others to come forward with similar stories. Officers linked the messages to Spone by tracing the numbers to a telemarketer-oriented site, and then pinpointing them to an IP address used in Spone's home. A search of the woman's smartphone found evidence tying her to the numbers.
Spone faces misdemeanor charges of cyber harassment of a child and linked offences. Police haven't taken action against the daughter as there's no evidence she was aware of her mother's actions.
Social networks like Facebook, TikTok and Twitter have already banned deepfakes, making them less likely to spread. That doesn't prevent direct harassment campaigns, though, and the incident underscores the ease involved in producing the fakes — you don't need to be an expert to create plausible-looking imagery. While there is research on spotting deepfakes, detection systems like those will only help if people both suspect fakes and catch them before there's any significant damage.
dryrunguy wrote: ↑Tue Mar 16, 2021 3:43 pm
Now, a woman in Pennsylvania used deepfake technology to create and disseminate bogus photos and videos of her daughter's cheerleading rivals participating in such activities as drinking, smoking, or posing nude.
::
As clear as the potential for deepfake abuse might be, there are still new, stranger examples popping up. The Philadelpha Inquirer and Harrisburg's Patriot-News report that police arrested Chalfont, Pennsylvania resident Raffaela Spone for allegedly using deepfakes in a bid to kick rivals off her daughter's cheerleading squad, the Victory Vipers. According to law enforcement, Spone sent coaches AI-altered photos and videos of the teens to portray them drinking, smoking, or naked.
Police first received word in July, when one of the victims received messages from an anonymous number, but that led others to come forward with similar stories. Officers linked the messages to Spone by tracing the numbers to a telemarketer-oriented site, and then pinpointing them to an IP address used in Spone's home. A search of the woman's smartphone found evidence tying her to the numbers.
Spone faces misdemeanor charges of cyber harassment of a child and linked offences. Police haven't taken action against the daughter as there's no evidence she was aware of her mother's actions.
Social networks like Facebook, TikTok and Twitter have already banned deepfakes, making them less likely to spread. That doesn't prevent direct harassment campaigns, though, and the incident underscores the ease involved in producing the fakes — you don't need to be an expert to create plausible-looking imagery. While there is research on spotting deepfakes, detection systems like those will only help if people both suspect fakes and catch them before there's any significant damage.
by ponchi101 Are they so easy to make that suburban moms can make them? Because I am then waiting for my first video of my murdering somebody, courtesy of my long list of enemies.
Also, one more thing to look for from spammers?
by JazzNU Yup. That's 20 minutes from me. I thought about posting it in the Random thread the other day, but wasn't sure there'd be interest. I was thinking of it as just a bizarre story though. Forgot about the deepfake discussion.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 16, 2021 6:16 pm
Are they so easy to make that suburban moms can make them? Because I am then waiting for my first video of my murdering somebody, courtesy of my long list of enemies. Also, one more thing to look for from spammers?
Yes
by dryrunguy Imagine what some PACs will do with this. Video of Nancy Pelosi saying things she never said--or ever thought about saying. Pics of Hunter Biden taking bribes from foreign governments. Video of Ocasio-Cortez burning an American flag. And sure, just to be fair, video of Donald Trump, Jr. snorting coke or Lindsay Graham having sex with a male sex worker. Or video of Black people or immigrants vandalizing property they never vandalized or beating up an old white woman who doesn't even exist.
Then expand it on a global scale. What will Putin do with this technology? How will Maduro use this to imprison political opponents? How will unscrupulous people use this to solicit massive donations for fake catastrophes that didn't happen? Imagine what Mugabe could have done with this.
The possibilities are endless.
by ti-amie
dryrunguy wrote: ↑Tue Mar 16, 2021 8:33 pm
Imagine what some PACs will do with this. Video of Nancy Pelosi saying things she never said--or ever thought about saying. Pics of Hunter Biden taking bribes from foreign governments. Video of Ocasio-Cortez burning an American flag. And sure, just to be fair, video of Donald Trump, Jr. snorting coke or Lindsay Graham having sex with a male sex worker. Or video of Black people or immigrants vandalizing property they never vandalized or beating up an old white woman who doesn't even exist.
Then expand it on a global scale. What will Putin do with this technology? How will Maduro use this to imprison political opponents? How will unscrupulous people use this to solicit massive donations for fake catastrophes that didn't happen? Imagine what Mugabe could have done with this.
The possibilities are endless.
I read that as Junior snorting coke off of Lindsay Graham...
dryrunguy wrote: ↑Tue Mar 16, 2021 8:33 pm
Imagine what some PACs will do with this. Video of Nancy Pelosi saying things she never said--or ever thought about saying. Pics of Hunter Biden taking bribes from foreign governments. Video of Ocasio-Cortez burning an American flag. And sure, just to be fair, video of Donald Trump, Jr. snorting coke or Lindsay Graham having sex with a male sex worker. Or video of Black people or immigrants vandalizing property they never vandalized or beating up an old white woman who doesn't even exist.
Then expand it on a global scale. What will Putin do with this technology? How will Maduro use this to imprison political opponents? How will unscrupulous people use this to solicit massive donations for fake catastrophes that didn't happen? Imagine what Mugabe could have done with this.
The possibilities are endless.
I read that as Junior snorting coke off of Lindsay Graham...
by JazzNU
Amazon's grocery chain is growing. It isn't Whole Foods
By Nathaniel Meyersohn
New York (CNN Business)Four years after Amazon bought Whole Foods, the e-commerce giant is making another major push to sell shoppers groceries. But this time, Whole Foods isn't the focus of the strategy.
Instead, Amazon is ramping up openings of Amazon Fresh grocery stores. Amazon has opened 11 Fresh locations around the United States over the past year. It will open a 12th Thursday in Long Beach, California, and Amazon says it has plans to open an additional four stores, although it has not given a timetable. Grocery analysts expect that the company will add more beyond that.
The online retailer isn't just making those moves because it wants a bigger chunk of the US grocery business. Amazon hopes that Fresh stores will help the company gain more of Amazon Prime members' spending on groceries, thereby increasing loyalty to the subscription program. It also wants to attract new sign-ups.
Amazon is building Fresh stores to chase a different clientele than Whole Foods' well-defined customer base, analysts say. Whole Foods, which has around 500 US stores, primarily appeals to wealthier shoppers and specializes in natural and organic products. It doesn't carry national brands like Coca-Cola, Tide and Oreo.
Whole Foods "doesn't really talk to the middle of the market," said Scott Mushkin, CEO of retail consulting and research firm R5 Capital.
Amazon's new Fresh concept has lower prices than Whole Foods and a wider selection of mainstream brands. It is targeted at lower and middle-income shoppers who don't frequent Whole Foods, as well as higher-income customers hunting for deals, say analysts.
Amazon "wanted to open up something that would have broader appeal and be able to carry all those conventional products that aren't going to be at Whole Foods," Mushkin said.
Amazon (AMZN), so far, has opened Fresh stores in California and Illinois. It also plans to open two in New Jersey. Most of the stores are slightly smaller than traditional Whole Foods stores and are located in densely-populated suburban markets, according to Bill Bishop, an analyst at consulting firm Brick Meets Click. Many of the stores are in vacated former retail sites, a cheaper option than building a new store from the ground up, according to Bishop.
Amazon's "goal is to build a substantial base of digitally-connected customers, and they are not going to build that base off Whole Foods because it's a niche business," he said. Fresh stores are "leaning toward price as an appeal" for customers, he said. Low prices are not the main draw with Whole Foods, he said, referencing "Whole Paycheck" — the label frequently attached to Whole Foods.
Whole Foods did not respond to request for comment.
Amazon Fresh stores also give Amazon more pickup and delivery points to meet growing customer demand for grocery shopping online.
Store locations and layout are designed to make it more efficient for workers to pick customers' online orders and hustle them out for same-day delivery than traditional stores, said Jordan Berke, CEO of Tomorrow Retail Consulting and a former executive at Walmart. Whole Foods stores were designed for in-store shopping and are not as well equipped to handle online orders, he said.
"This is a retail concept that was designed from day one to be equally effective serving online demand as it does in-store demand," Berke said. "Amazon understands that the best model to winning the future of grocery is to have a physical location in the vicinity of customers. That allows for rapid online fulfillment."
Amazon is deploying technology in the stores to speed up checkouts and help customers find items. Amazon "wants to create a perception of innovation around this format," Berke said.
Stationed throughout the stores are Amazon Echo Show smart displays that can summon Amazon's virtual helper, Alexa, which can help answer customers' queries such as, "Where can I find the mayonnaise?"
Stores also have the Amazon Dash Cart, a shopping cart that scans groceries, links to online shopping lists, and doubles as a checkout stand. The "smart cart" resembles a one-basket convenience cart and is equipped with bar code readers, sensors and scales. After using their Amazon app to effectively log into the cart, customers place one or two shopping bags in the basket. The cart can scan items with a bar code and weigh barcode-less products such as produce.
Customers then exit through a specific sensor-enabled lane that automatically charges the credit card on their Amazon account. The Amazon Fresh stores do have traditional checkouts and cashiers for customers who opt to not use the Dash Cart or who have larger grocery trips.
Expect to see more Amazon Fresh stores in the future. Amazon has plans to open at least 84 additional Fresh stores, Berke said, citing real estate brokerage contacts. (Amazon declined to comment on the figure.) "We think they're just getting started."
—CNN Business' Alicia Wallace contributed to this article.
by ponchi101 If previous performance is indication of what will happen: goodbye local grocery store. Especially, goodbye small little local grocery store.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:18 am
If previous performance is indication of what will happen: goodbye local grocery store. Especially, goodbye small little local grocery store.
In some areas, yes but the small grocery store has been under pressure in the neighborhoods where these stores will be located for a long time.
I don't think the corner bodega will be put out of business just yet.
by JazzNU I think this is going to add more competition for Walmart and Target more than anyone else. Amazon buying Whole Foods didn't crush the competition and I'm not thinking this will either unless I'm missing something about what they are offering. But also, Amazon's purchase of WF was supposedly going to help with lowering prices there. And that's seriously hilarious. On some things sometimes maybe, but I can name more prices that have gone up than come down. So I'd say we have to watch for these supposed competitive prices they say they will have.
I think most local grocery stores will be fine. And I think most grocery chains will still be fine. I'm not leaving Wegman's for this. And I'm certainly not going to stop going to my regular everyday grocery store, where I get gas discounts, for this. Unless Amazon Fresh is offering more than Wegman's, I'm not thinking it will shake the market that much. A new Wegman's coming to a town would do more to end a local grocery store more than an Amazon Fresh store imo.
by ti-amie
JazzNU wrote: ↑Thu Mar 18, 2021 8:00 pm
I think this is going to add more competition for Walmart and Target more than anyone else. Amazon buying Whole Foods didn't crush the competition and I'm not thinking this will either unless I'm missing something about what they are offering. But also, Amazon's purchase of WF was supposedly going to help with lowering prices there. And that's seriously hilarious. On some things sometimes maybe, but I can name more prices that have gone up than come down. So I'd say we have to watch for these supposed competitive prices they say they will have.
I think most local grocery stores will be fine. And I think most grocery chains will still be fine. I'm not leaving Wegman's for this. And I'm certainly not going to stop going to my regular everyday grocery store, where I get gas discounts, for this. Unless Amazon Fresh is offering more than Wegman's, I'm not thinking it will shake the market that much. A new Wegman's coming to a town would do more to end a local grocery store more than an Amazon Fresh store imo.
Everyone who has access to a Wegman's is ride or die for the place. There aren't any in NYC to my knowledge.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Mar 18, 2021 8:34 pm
Everyone who has access to a Wegman's is ride or die for the place. There aren't any in NYC to my knowledge.
Just learned from my aunt today that there is one in Brooklyn! Sounds like it opened a couple of years ago. Hopefully you'll be able to check out that one or the one in Westchester County and see if it lives up to the hype.
by ti-amie I don't drive.
by MJ2004 There’s a Wegmans about 10 minutes away from us, but I’ve never bothered checking it out.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Mon Mar 22, 2021 11:23 pmI don't drive.
For some reason I thought you went grocery shopping periodically just outside of the city, like near Yonkers. I must be thinking of someone else.
by ti-amie When my daughter and her husband drive up to Yonkers I hitch a ride that's how I know about the shopping up there. My sister also used to drive me up there. Personally though I don't drive.
by mmmm8
ti-amie wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:08 am
When my daughter and her husband drive up to Yonkers I hitch a ride that's how I know about the shopping up there. My sister also used to drive me up there. Personally though I don't drive.
I don't think I knew your daughter got officially married. Congratulations!
Jazz - you may be thinking of an exchange we had early-ish in the pandemic. Life Ti, I also live in the Bronx and we had a rental car and were considering which grocery store to hit outside NYC
ti-amie wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:08 am
When my daughter and her husband drive up to Yonkers I hitch a ride that's how I know about the shopping up there. My sister also used to drive me up there. Personally though I don't drive.
I don't think I knew your daughter got officially married. Congratulations!
Jazz - you may be thinking of an exchange we had early-ish in the pandemic. Life Ti, I also live in the Bronx and we had a rental car and were considering which grocery store to hit outside NYC
Thank you.
I think you're right about the conversation.
by JazzNU That is the convo I was thinking about. And @Ti was suggesting places to go and I'm sure that made me think she shopped there somewhat regularly.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 SCIEEEEEENCEEEEE!!!!!!!!
by ti-amie
by dryrunguy I guess I'll put this here. From this morning's NY Times newsletter.
::
Ryan Kaji is 9. He’s also the highest-earning YouTuber of the last three years. Kaji is largely popular for videos where he reviews toys, and Forbes reported that he made nearly $30 million last year.
The children’s section of YouTube is lucrative: Half of the 10 most popular videos on the platform are for children, and the catchy kids’ song “Baby Shark” is its most-viewed video. But as Bloomberg Businessweek reports, Kaji’s success goes far beyond the ad money from his videos. Like the Olsen twins and JoJo Siwa before him, he has an empire built on merchandising.
Kaji’s parents have made deals with Walmart and Target for toys and clothes, as well as TV deals with Amazon and Nickelodeon. A footwear line with Skechers is in the works. The bulk of Kaji’s revenue now comes from the licensing side.
Other children’s YouTube channels are also cashing in: Cocomelon, which has more than 100 million subscribers, has a line of toys. Pinkfong, the educational brand behind “Baby Shark,” has merchandise and a Nickelodeon series.
For more on Kaji, read the rest of Bloomberg’s story.
by ti-amie If it was good enough for the Olsen twins...
Let's hope his parents invest wisely.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Ooops! Who could have thought!
I mean: in theory, this is MY SITE. And all the info in the host server is made up. My fakey e-mail address, my DOB, my location (it says USA), everything. Just simply never put anything real on the web.
by Suliso Well, I do have real information on my Linkedin profile. It would be useless otherwise.
by ponchi101 I deleted a lot of info from LI after they were hacked. And it was too late. Had several unwanted mails of the type like "Pay so much in bitcoin or your friends in FB will receive a mail of you watching porn".
Since I am not in FB, I knew it was a bluff. But the LI hack was important.
by Deuce
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 7:11 pm
Ooops! Who could have thought!
I mean: in theory, this is MY SITE. And all the info in the host server is made up. My fakey e-mail address, my DOB, my location (it says USA), everything. Just simply never put anything real on the web.
^ Wait a minute...
Does this mean that you're just a figment of my imagination?
In seriousness, though, I agree. I don't put anything real, either - because the internet is rife with the least trustworthy species on Earth.
by ti-amie I have an Internet Birthday as well. I thought everyone did.
by mmmm8 I think all the "fake info" attempts are futile. Whoever wants to find you, will find you. Your phone provider will leak (or publish) your phone number just as quickly. My apartment purchase documents with my date of birth and everything are public domain.
Just accept you have no privacy (but did you ever REALLY have it with white pages and offline public records?) or live in the woods.
by ponchi101 One of the reasons there is so much cybercrime is because people still refuse to understand how unsafe it is. I recently read that for something like the 20th year in a row, the most popular password in the world remains: "1234567890". The second is "password". People don't even bother to use mixed lower and upper case.
When I worked for Shell here in Colombia, I became good friends with our security guy. I had a feeling that before I joined there had been some problems with my credentials, and he confirmed that. He was a former Colombian Army intelligence officer and, as we became friends, he told me what had happened: Shell's security office had been able to find nothing on me, and that made them suspicious. He admitted, actually, that he recommended not hiring me, as they found no digital fingerprints of me: no FB, no TWT, no IG, nothing. My e-mail address was very well protected (I have a 20+ character long password) and even my LI address, which I gave them, was very strange (they did find that my DOB did not match). As friends, he told me that the best thing to happen to intelligence personnel was the invention of FB. He told me people put everything in there, so all you needed was to befriend them and you would know everything.
So sure, the internet is very unsafe. But a lot of that has to do with people not taking proper precautions. And then, when you add your mom or dad having an address in which the password is the combination of two or three of their children or grand-children, well, the thing is wide open to any and all possible chicanery.
by Suliso
mmmm8 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:51 pm
I think all the "fake info" attempts are futile. Whoever wants to find you, will find you. Your phone provider will leak (or publish) your phone number just as quickly. My apartment purchase documents with my date of birth and everything are public domain.
Just accept you have no privacy (but did you ever REALLY have it with white pages and offline public records?) or live in the woods.
Yes and no. We can't hide from skilled investigators, intelligence agencies and so on, but I think most of us are not under an illusion that we can. All we're trying to do is avoid low skill attacks/spam of some kind...
mmmm8 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:51 pm
I think all the "fake info" attempts are futile. Whoever wants to find you, will find you. Your phone provider will leak (or publish) your phone number just as quickly. My apartment purchase documents with my date of birth and everything are public domain.
Just accept you have no privacy (but did you ever REALLY have it with white pages and offline public records?) or live in the woods.
Yes and no. We can't hide from skilled investigators, intelligence agencies and so on, but I think most of us are not under an illusion that we can. All we're trying to do is avoid low skill attacks/spam of some kind...
I happen to know your name and just googling that without any additional clicking or even going beyond the second page of search results gave me your home address, your phone number, your work phone number, your work email, your grad school email, and your papers and patents. And of course your rank in the 27th International Chemistry Olympiad in China.
Hardly many skills needed.
by ponchi101 Because Suliso is famous. I just did what you said and googled both forms of my name (short and log version) and all I got was the profile of a famous footballer (and not SO famous) that shares it.
Maybe I have a career as an undercover agent. uhm...
mmmm8 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:51 pm
I think all the "fake info" attempts are futile. Whoever wants to find you, will find you. Your phone provider will leak (or publish) your phone number just as quickly. My apartment purchase documents with my date of birth and everything are public domain.
Just accept you have no privacy (but did you ever REALLY have it with white pages and offline public records?) or live in the woods.
Yes and no. We can't hide from skilled investigators, intelligence agencies and so on, but I think most of us are not under an illusion that we can. All we're trying to do is avoid low skill attacks/spam of some kind...
I happen to know your name and just googling that without any additional clicking or even going beyond the second page of search results gave me your home address, your phone number, your work phone number, your work email, your grad school email, and your papers and patents. And of course your rank in the 27th International Chemistry Olympiad in China.
Hardly many skills needed.
If you know my name then you can (I remember yours too btw), but at least I wouldn't know how to find out JazzNu's real name and address from her Internet handle alone. I'm perfectly willing to believe that there are folks who can, but not too many.
I don't really seek any particular anonymity, but I do not want to be inundated by spam or be particularly easily searched by prospective employers. Seems like Colombian intelligence guy didn't find Ponchi on TAT. Either not skilled enough or didn't try hard enough
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:01 pmBecause Suliso is famous. I just did what you said and googled both forms of my name (short and log version) and all I got was the profile of a famous footballer (and not SO famous) that shares it.
Maybe I have a career as an undercover agent. uhm...
Fortunately not, but it would be impossible to completely erase myself from the internet. I've done PhD (thesis online) and published scientific papers (lots of databases) plus Linkedin and silly things like chemistry Olympiads at the time dinosaurs still roamed the earth. I don't think you'd find anyting embarrassing, though.
I don't really seek any particular anonymity, but I do not want to be inundated by spam or be particularly easily searched by prospective employers. Seems like Colombian intelligence guy didn't find Ponchi on TAT. Either not skilled enough or didn't try hard enough
Tips. I don't have one single e-mail address. I have actually 4. I have one for my family and friends, and I have one for my business and professional contacts. The first one is a yahoo, the second is a gmail. Then I have a third one that I have for when I have a project and the client does not provide me with an e-mail. That one is basically dormant but still active.
Then I have a fourth that is the one that I use for things like setting up the host for this site, and for registering any and all app registrations and requirements. It is the one that I have linked to my android-phone, but I do not have data plans for my phone. Here in Colombia, it is very easy to buy a data packet so, if I am on the street and need a connection, I can buy a packet via SMS and go online, for about $1/day (usually about 500MB, good enough for business). When I am on the street, my phone is on MOBILE DATA OFF, so in theory Google can't track me
My phone is pre-paid and, again, here in Colombia basically any drugstore will sell you credit. So my phone is not registered with any credit card, as my SIM was bought with one bank record that disappeared when I switched accounts.
My name is so common that when I opened my gmail account (for professional dealings) I had to use my name AND attach my infamous 101 at the end. Any and all variations were already taken. My bank account in the USA had the same problem, as even there my name is super common. We needed a good 10 minutes to find a user ID that had not been taken already WITHIN the bank. And actually, the 101 at the end of PONCHI was needed because as it turned out, there are a lot of us on the web. And of course, almost all data that is not required is blank, and the one that is required is either false (DOB, Address, etc) or greatly limited.
A life of reading spy novels I guess you learn some stuff from John LeCarre, Robert Ludlum and all the other trash I read when I was a kid.
by Suliso Wow, you do go to much greater lengths than most of us bother. Although I hope you do realize that a competent spy agency would find you anyway. Data connection is not required to spy on cell phones...
by ti-amie I have several email accounts. Some are for fun. Some aren't.
by JazzNU I think there's only three people on here who know my real name. My social media name is variation of the real thing, but I think it's pretty easy to figure out in a relatively short amount of time for someone committed to figuring it out. Given what @mmmm8 has posted, I have every belief she'd get it if she had access to my FB profile, for instance. Wrong name, but the rest of the info is correct or close enough and all my friends and family use their real names. There are plenty of dots available to be connected. I just never wanted to use my real name on those sites and that obviously proved to work out better than intended with all the problems on FB in particular. The FBI or CIA would find me in under a minute flat. Guaranteed.
@ponchi, you'll be horrified to know I think I know your real name.
But I think the real news is that @Suliso is a bit famous? Who knew! I'm ignoring his denial that this isn't accurate.
by ponchi101 I don't mind if you know my real name. It is in my blogs!
It is as Suliso says. Anybody with a real interest and a bit of an effort will find it. I am just hoping I can avoid being found by the Nigerian prince or the Korean hackers, that's all.
by Suliso I think with Nigerian princes it's exactly like in the old anecdote about outrunning the lion.
by Suliso Enough about spying - better have a look at the latest developments at the Icelandic eruption (nothing horrible there despite the title). Some say it could continue like this for several decades.
by ponchi101 I have only seen one volcanic eruption in my life and it was both spectacular and frightening. Not as beautiful as this one, though.
by Deuce
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:34 pm
I have only seen one volcanic eruption in my life and it was both spectacular and frightening. Not as beautiful as this one, though.
^ That information can help in tracking down your identity, location, travels, family, etc.
The number of people who've witnessed a volcanic eruption is relatively small, you know...
by ti-amieMy Child’s Egg Donor Is Latin American. Does That Make Him Latino?
The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on what forms our identity...
By Kwame Anthony Appiah
Published April 6, 2021
Updated April 7, 2021
I am the parent of a child who was conceived via in vitro fertilization and surrogacy using the sperm of a Caucasian man and a donor egg from someone who is half Colombian and half Central American. My spouse and I are professionals and both Caucasian, so (knock on wood) our son will most likely not encounter financial hardships. May we in good conscience check “Latino/Hispanic” on his college application?
We don’t need to decide this for many years, but it has been a topic of discussion, and we would love to hear your reasoning. Name Withheld
Identities have histories, and one story about the emergence of “Hispanic” as an overarching, transethnic identity in this country was told in detail by the Berkeley sociologist G. Cristina Mora in her classic 2014 study, “Making Hispanics.” It involved a convergence of activists, media executives and U.S. civil servants in the 1970s, resulting in the promulgation of a demographic category that included Cuban-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans and a great many others. “Latino” (and its variants), following suit, has gained in usage partly because it more easily accommodates people from Brazil (who speak Portuguese). Telling this story doesn’t mean the identity is unreal; it explains how it became real.
Being Latino, clearly, is not a matter of genetics. It’s a matter both of how you identify yourself and of how others identify you. Appearances could play a role here, to be sure. The experience your son would have if he were blond and blue-eyed could differ from certain experiences he might have if he were brown. People from Colombia and Central America come in a range of hues.
So your son may or may not identify as Hispanic/Latino when the time comes, depending on a host of factors, from peer groups to pigmentation. If he does, it won’t be wrong to say so. Where your connection to an identity is a matter of identification with your ancestors, the subjective personal element looms large. I’d predict too that questions about identity are likely to shift in significance over the next couple of decades, as they have over the past couple of decades.
You’re presumably thinking that, in college applications, being identified as Hispanic/Latino will give him some advantage, and that if he hasn’t experienced discrimination or borne the burdens of the identity (perhaps because he’s not readily identifiable as Latino), this might be unfair. In that situation, he’d certainly be getting advantages designed for people with a different set of experiences than his. Deliberately engineering such an outcome would be wrong. The brute fact of ancestry doesn’t suffice to make your child Latino. On the other hand, if he does come to identify as Latino and to be accepted by others as such, the special opportunities he might be offered would serve one of their functions, which is to have people of Latino identity in a wide range of positions in our society.
Oversight Board
@OversightBoard
The Oversight Board makes decisions on what content Facebook & Instagram should allow or remove, based on respect for freedom of expression & human rights.
by ponchi101 Why isn't FB subject to anti-monopoly laws? It is a monopoly; the only other such platform that I can think of is MYSPACE, and that one draws about 7 million visits a month (FB probably draws 7 MM/hour).
Shouldn't it be taken over by the governments? I know, shades of Big Brother, but right now, it is "little brother is doing drugs inside the house".
by JazzNU Him being banned from social media has been wonderful. It's amazing how much more dialed down it is now. Also, taking attention and spotlight away from the narcissist is a most fitting punishment, his worst nightmare.
by ponchi101 Several articles around the web about the Pentagon confirming the authenticity of UFO's being filmed by Navy pilots.
Of course, UFO does not equal Extra Terrestrial life, but an interesting development.
It would be one thing that I would love to see. A final demotion: we are not alone in the universe, PLUS we are not the smartest ones. If only they were to really visit.
by JazzNU
by JazzNU ^^ Hell no. Haven't seen much positive feedback on this announcement. And I really think they need to test markets outside of Seattle. They test it there and think it's good to go elsewhere, but many other places aren't nearly as on board with aiding the Rise of the Machines.
by Suliso NASA is of course taking a substantial risk, but I agree with the author of the article below that if successful the effect would be a technological revolution in space research and commerce. Bold parts (mine) are particularly important points.
NASA’s bold bet on Starship for the Moon may change spaceflight forever
"It is transformational to degrees no one today can understand."
When NASA astronauts return to the Moon in a few years, they will do so inside a lander that dwarfs that of the Apollo era. SpaceX's Starship vehicle measures 50 meters from its nose cone to landing legs. By contrast, the cramped Lunar Module that carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin down to the Moon in 1969 stood just 7 meters tall.
This is but one of many genuinely shocking aspects of NASA's decision a week ago to award SpaceX—and only SpaceX—a contract to develop, test, and fly two missions to the lunar surface. The second flight, which will carry astronauts to the Moon, could launch as early as 2024.
NASA awarded SpaceX $2.89 billion for these two missions. But this contract would balloon in amount should NASA select SpaceX to fly recurring lunar missions later in the 2020s. And it has value to SpaceX and NASA in myriad other ways. Perhaps most significantly, with this contract NASA has bet on a bold future of exploration. Until now, the plans NASA had contemplated for human exploration in deep space all had echoes of the Apollo program. NASA talked about "sustainable" missions and plans in terms of cost, but they were sustainable in name only.
By betting on Starship, which entails a host of development risks, NASA is taking a chance on what would be a much brighter future. One in which not a handful of astronauts go to the Moon or Mars, but dozens and then hundreds. In this sense, Starship represents a radical departure for NASA and human exploration.
"If Starship meets the goals Elon Musk has set for it, Starship getting this contract is like the US government supporting the railroads in the old west here on Earth," said Rick Tumlinson, a proponent of human settlement of the Solar System. "It is transformational to degrees no one today can understand."
We will nonetheless try to understand some of the ways in which Starship could prove transformational.
1. Starship ahead of schedule
Ahead of NASA's announcement on April 16, I did not expect SpaceX to receive the only, or even the largest, award from NASA this early on in the lander-development process.
About a year ago, NASA selected three different bids for a Human Landing System. Over the course of 10 months, each of the three contractors fine-tuned its design and worked with NASA engineers to explain how its lander could meet the space agency's needs. A team led by Blue Origin submitted the most conventional design, tailored to NASA's request for a three-stage lander. Dynetics proposed an innovative lander, with a nod toward reusability, but it was also sized to bring just a few astronauts to the lunar surface.
SpaceX, by contrast, submitted a version of its Mars vehicle as a lunar lander. For the last five years, SpaceX has largely self-funded development of Starship as the reusable upper stage of a massive rocket, Super Heavy. The vehicle is intended to take dozens of people to Mars at a time in a six-month voyage. Thus, Starship is massively oversized to take two or four astronauts down to the surface of the Moon. But of the three landers, it is the only one with a direct path toward full reuse.
Starship is also the most technically demanding of the three vehicles because of its size and aspirations. Among the biggest hurdles are learning to land Starship, both on the Moon and back on Earth. And to conduct missions to the Moon and beyond, SpaceX must develop the technology to refuel Starship with methane and liquid-oxygen fuel in low Earth orbit.
"One of the hardest engineering problems known to man is making a reusable orbital rocket," SpaceX founder Elon Musk told me about a year ago. "It's stupidly difficult to have a fully reusable orbital system."
Because there are so many technological miracles needed to validate the Starship design, I felt that NASA would not fully commit to the SpaceX vehicle as a potential lander until it had flown. Perhaps launching Starship into orbit would be enough of a technology demonstration for NASA. Or maybe SpaceX would have to land one on the Moon. This perceived need to demonstrate the viability of Starship is one reason why Musk and SpaceX have built and launched Starships at such a frenetic pace in South Texas during the last year. Only by doing, the thinking went, would NASA believe in Starship.
Instead, NASA has committed to the ambitious program even before Starship has safely landed after a high-altitude flight test. In this sense, NASA's support for Starship has come ahead of schedule.
by Suliso2. SpaceX needs NASA for Mars
After seeing SpaceX launch more than 100 rockets over the last decade, what has become abundantly clear is that its engineers are now the best in the world at designing, building, and flying new and innovative rockets. The execution of the Falcon 9 program, proving out first-stage reuse, and development of the Falcon Heavy rocket attest to this.
But building great rockets is one thing. It is another thing to develop all of the other capabilities needed to ensure that humans can travel to Mars, land on the red planet, and survive there.
When it comes to in-space activities, SpaceX has leaned on NASA's expertise for Crew Dragon as part of the commercial crew program. And with respect to the kinds of technologies needed for long-duration travel to Mars, through deep space, SpaceX has limited experience—there is very little recycling of air, water, and other consumables on a Crew Dragon spacecraft. NASA, on the other hand, has been working on these problems for more than a decade with astronauts on the International Space Station.
The space agency has also been conducting studies of Moon and Mars missions for decades, said Abhi Tripathi, who worked as a systems engineer at NASA from 2000 to 2010 performing these kinds of analyses. Tripathi left NASA to work at SpaceX on the cargo and crew versions of the Dragon spacecraft until 2020, when he moved to the University of California, Berkeley.
"NASA will undoubtedly bring to bear a wealth of invaluable information, technology, and subject matter experts to help SpaceX achieve their shared goal of putting humans on Mars," Tripathi told Ars.
NASA and SpaceX collaborating this early on Starship also helps with a host of other issues not related to transportation. A government agency will be needed to facilitate the development of nuclear-based power for the surface of Mars, for example. And any human missions to Mars will raise planetary protection questions and other international concerns. Having NASA alongside SpaceX means the US government will help address all of these issues.
Suddenly, human landings on Mars about a decade from now seem a lot more realistic.
3. NASA bets on game-changing technology
The world has never seen a vehicle like Starship before. If successful, the massive spacecraft would open up new possibilities to NASA not before available. This is because Starship could realize the long-desired goal of rapid, low-cost reuse of a launch system.
Consider the status quo. The large Space Launch System rocket under development by NASA will be able to launch 95 metric tons into low Earth orbit. NASA and its contractors, led by Boeing, will be able to build one a year. The expendable vehicle will launch one payload, at a cost of about $2 billion per mission, and then drop into the ocean.
In terms of lift capacity, the vehicles are similar. Starship and Super Heavy should be able to put about 100 tons into low Earth orbit. However, SpaceX is already capable of building one Starship a month, and the plan is to reuse each booster and spacecraft dozens of times. Imagine the kind of space program NASA could have with the capacity to launch 100 tons into orbit every two weeks—instead of a single annual mission—for $2 billion a year. Seriously, pause a moment and really think about that.
In their decision to select SpaceX, NASA officials appeared to recognize this potential. "We were looking to see what industry partners could bring in terms of innovation and solutions," said Lisa Watson-Morgan, the Human Landing System program manager. The emphasis here is on innovation and new solutions to old problems.
"In picking the Starship architecture, NASA is helping enable a path toward a super heavy launch vehicle, in-space propellant storage, in-space refueling, and large up and down mass to planetary surfaces," said Tripathi, who has examined these problems from both NASA and SpaceX's perspective.
Put another way: if Starship is successful, NASA no longer needs to pick just one or two big things to do in space. The agency will be able to do many different things at the same time.
4. NASA funds an SLS competitor
So why is NASA funding a launch system that will directly compete with its SLS booster? That, to be clear, was not the space agency's intent. In explaining the award during a news conference, agency officials were careful to say that SLS and the Orion spacecraft remain an essential part of the Artemis architecture. But in reality, NASA may well be putting its SLS rocket out of business.
With the Human Landing System award, NASA has put its stamp of approval on Starship and Super Heavy. The launch system will eventually go into the catalog maintained by NASA's Launch Services Provider program, allowing other agency programs to procure the vehicle for missions. This could be a real boon for large, space-based telescopes that would find the large volume of Starship's payload fairing useful.
"If I were an official in one of NASA's other directorates, I would personally be dreaming up all kinds of ideas for what I can someday do with all these substantive new capabilities," Tripathi said.
In the big picture, $2.89 billion is not a lot compared to what NASA has already invested in the SLS rocket. The space agency spends that much every year in development costs for the rocket and its associated ground systems. Because the SLS rocket is funded through cost-plus contracts to major space contractors like Boeing, there is less incentive to control costs or deliver a timely product. Predictably, the SLS vehicle is significantly over budget and now five years behind its original launch date of late 2016.
All of this has led to criticisms that SLS is a jobs program. Indeed, it provides jobs in all 50 states and supports hundreds of small businesses. And perhaps this explains why Congress has steadfastly supported SLS despite its costs and delays.
By contrast, Starship is not a jobs program. Rather, it's a jobs-killer program from the perspective of Congress.
by Suliso5. Is SpaceX too dominant?
SpaceX has enjoyed a remarkable string of NASA contract wins. Over the last decade, it has landed NASA awards to deliver cargo and crew to the International Space Station, launch the Lunar Gateway, supply this Gateway with cargo, and now deliver humans to the surface of the Moon.
The Artemis Program could also plausibly morph into the SpaceX Lunar Program. How? Under the current plan, a Super Heavy rocket would launch Starship to lunar orbit. Days later, an SLS rocket would launch crew inside an Orion spacecraft, which would dock with Starship in lunar orbit. The crew would transfer to Starship and go down to the Moon. After coming back to lunar orbit on Starship, the astronauts would board Orion and fly back to Earth.
But if Starship is safe for humans to land on the Moon, why would it not be safe for humans simply to launch from Earth on board the vehicle? This would save NASA the cost of an SLS plus Orion launch—about $3 billion per mission, combined—and a tricky rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit. This is probably the future of a truly sustainable lunar exploration program.
That's good for NASA and for SpaceX, but what about the other spaceflight companies? Under the (much) more expensive plan using SLS and Orion, NASA is also funding a who's who of aerospace companies: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne, United Launch Alliance, and many, many other smaller players across the United States. Starship directly supports SpaceX, its limited number of suppliers, and... whatever company ends up building spacesuits for lunar forays.
It is therefore difficult to see a SpaceX-only exploration program winning broad congressional support for Artemis. History suggests that all of the losing contractors would urge the politicians they bolster with contributions to actively oppose the program.
And what of international partners and the geopolitical implications of this? During a confirmation hearing this week before the US Senate Commerce committee, incoming NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said expanding the coalition of nations participating in the Artemis Program was one of his big goals. Increasing the space agency's reliance on SpaceX likely would work against this.
With the low-cost, reusable Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has already badly damaged the commercial launch industries in Europe, Russia, and Japan. For the Artemis Program, Europe is contributing the Service Module for the Orion spacecraft. How would these officials react if NASA now says, "non merci" to that contribution because of SpaceX?
"The nation's activities in deep space remain very tied up in international policy, alliances, adversaries, and security, as well as space exploration and science," an industry source told Ars. "There are a number of foreign policy interdependencies and offsets that are managed through or impact space, generally below the surface. What does this choice signal to all of those players?"
In summary
With Starship, SpaceX has offered what appears to be the best technical solution to NASA's stated goal of a sustainable lunar exploration program. Starship would be able to take far more people and cargo to the Moon than any other solution for NASA—and it could do the job for far less money and far more often.
Furthermore, in awarding the Human Landing System contract to SpaceX, NASA has embraced a risky yet highly rewarding technology.
But whereas NASA is a space agency, its feet remain very much grounded in the political orbit of Washington, DC's beltway. Technically, Starship may be the best solution to NASA's needs. But politically, would it be? Probably not. If NASA wants to go to the Moon and beyond, it must work with a multitude of contractors and countries, at least for now.
Ultimately, physics will win out. If SpaceX can make Starship work, eventually NASA's other options for human exploration of the Solar System may come to look ridiculous by comparison. By placing an early bet on Starship last week, NASA has increased the ultimate odds of Starship's success.
For the space agency, this is an audacious and surprising play. But the potential payoff is huge. One day it may allow us to boldly go not just back to the Moon, but far, far beyond.
by Suliso Some realistic talk about "quantum everything". The presenter is a theoretical physicist, currently a research fellow at Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.
by ponchi101 Great video. I would love to see her talk with Seth Lloyd and discuss quantum computing. He is sort of the main cheerleader of that group.
This sounds very reasonable. I will look more into BRILLIANT.
by ti-amieBiologists reeled in a 240-pound fish from the Detroit River that probably hatched a century ago
A member of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey crew lies beside a 240-pound lake sturgeon pulled from the Detroit River. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
By
Paulina Firozi
Reporter
May 5, 2021 at 2:54 p.m. EDT
Jason Fischer was shocked at what his crew had just caught.
Fischer, a biologist who works with a Michigan-based Fish and Wildlife Service office, was on the water late last month, putting out setlines with hooks to catch and survey the lake sturgeon population in the Detroit River. It was his first setline survey with this three-person crew, and until then his research had focused on egg and larval stages — “we’re talking about a fish less than an inch.”
It was his teammates, fellow biologists Jenny Johnson and Paige Wigren, who took a look at the latest catch and said: “Oh man, that’s going to be a very big fish.”
“We thought it would be in the 100-pound range,” Fischer said. Typically, they may catch a 40- to 60-pound fish.
This time, the crew had reeled in a 240-pound lake sturgeon, a 6-foot 10-inch female they believe to be about 100 years old. It’s the biggest fish any of them had ever caught — the team’s previous record, before he joined the crew, was 123 pounds, Fischer said. It also may be one of the largest lake sturgeon ever recorded in the country.
In a post on Facebook announcing the “once in a lifetime catch,” the conservation office noted the 100-year-old sturgeon “likely hatched in the Detroit River around 1920, when Detroit became the 4th largest city in America.”
“When it’s in the water, you don’t have that great reference for size until you actually try to get the net on it,” Fischer said. “Our basket’s like four or five feet deep, and this fish wouldn’t fit in the net. … It only got bigger when we got it on the boat.”
It took all three of them to lift it up out of the water and get it on the boat, an effort that was “exhausting,” Fischer said.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife team weighed the fish, measured her and snapped a photo of one of them lying next to the fish for scale. Then they tagged the fish — a process that will allow the fish to be identified if ever caught again — before releasing it back into the water.
Scott Koproski, project leader with the conservation office, said he was amazed this fish had not yet been tagged.
“That tells us this fish, greater than 100 years in age, has never been encountered before, at least by biologists working with fish in the Great Lakes,” said Koproski, who was not on the boat during the catch. “That’s pretty fascinating.”
An annual effort by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to survey the St. Clair-Detroit River system to better understand the lake sturgeon population began in 2001. The lake sturgeon, considered a threatened species in Michigan, has endured a lot — from a boom in commercial fishing that continued into the early 1900s, periods of over-harvesting, and habitat loss driven by shipping channel construction and the damming of tributaries. All of that contributed to declines in population, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“Given the age of this fish, it was probably around when some of the larger commercial fisheries were going in the Great Lakes in the early 1990s,” Fischer said. “Being able to avoid that effort, I think, was probably the most impressive part.”
There are now more than 33,000 lake sturgeon in the St. Clair-Detroit River system, 6,500 of which come from the Detroit River, according to Alpena Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office, which describes that as a “fraction of its historic size.”
James Diana, a professor emeritus of fisheries and aquaculture at the University of Michigan, said sturgeon are “very hearty fish” that “can survive pretty stressful situations.”
He said they “continue to grow and live fairly long lives, but normally you’re looking at a life expectancy around 60 or 80 years typically.”
“Over 100 is unusual,” he said.
John Hartig, a Great Lakes scientist and conservationist, said the age of this fish “speaks volumes to the resiliency of the species.”
Hartig, now a visiting scholar at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor in Ontario, ticked off some of the events a century-old fish may have experienced.
“The Detroit River during World War II was considered the arsenal of democracy, Detroit was. Oil pollution was rampant, and they discharged not only oil but other toxic substances,” he said. “She lived through that.”
Natasha Myhal, an enrolled citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, is a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado writing her dissertation on nmé, the name the Anishinaabe people use for lake sturgeon.
She said the fish is “one of the oldest fish species in the Great Lakes, and nmé is central to the cultural and spiritual practices and lifeways of the Anishinaabe.”
“When I think about the age of the fish that was caught, the lake sturgeon that was caught, I think of the perseverance of nmé,” she said. “Just as the Anishinaabe and Indigenous peoples have persevered colonial policies and intense environmental change, so have sturgeon.”
Hartig said while the Detroit River used to be seen as a “working river that supported industry and commerce,” environmental policies and river cleanup efforts in recent years have sought to improve the quality of the waters and the life living in them.
“We’re trying to change that, we’re trying to say this is an ecosystem,” Hartig said. “We are also part of that ecosystem. What we do to the ecosystem, we do to ourselves.”
Diana and Hartig also pointed to efforts to construct spawning reefs to help the lake sturgeon begin to bounce back as a species.
Fischer said multiple agencies and universities, including the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Michigan Sea Grant, are involved with efforts to restore spawning habitats within the Detroit River and St. Claire River to “improve the number of fish being born.”
“It’s great to see these old, large fish,” Fischer said. “But one of the projects our office is involved in is tracking younger fish. Those are really going to give us an indication of, are fish surviving to an age where they can reproduce and contribute to future generations?”
by ponchi101 One of my pet peeves. There are so many lakes and rivers to be cleaned, and that would help with climate change and would provide with considerable jobs.
by ti-amie I'm just glad this animal was found by scientists and not some yahoos. She will be able to live out her life.
by Suliso In this series an expert is asked to talk about his/her subject at five different levels. In this particular case about gravity. To be fair the highest level is the highest only in the sense that the partner is another subject expert. In a real professional setting a lot more scientific jargon and mathematics would be used making it inaccessible to all but few. Still it's fun to listen
by ponchi101 I forget now on what program I saw her too. She is pretty good at making it accessible.
by Suliso The same physicist who's video I posted above is also a decent singer. Sadly I've met a couple professors to whom this song refers to. Not necessarily retired and certainly not dead.
by ponchi101 You have met professors. I have met plenty of General Managers.
by mmmm8
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun May 09, 2021 4:47 pm
You have met professors. I have met plenty of General Managers.
I have met plenty of both and the combination of ego and insecurity/need for validation in academia is something quite unique. The general manager is a creature considerably more self-sufficient in its ego-feeding.
by ti-amie
by MJ2004 If you feel like settling in for a long read, from the FT Magazine:
How mRNA became a vaccine game-changer
The molecule behind the Pfizer and Moderna jabs has turned the Covid tide. Can it revolutionise medicine?
Not for the first time, Katalin Kariko was trying to convince a sceptic to take her scientific discoveries seriously. It was 2004, and she had spent about 15 years investigating messenger RNA, the genetic material that acts as a kind of courier in the human body, transporting recipes from our DNA to the part of the cell that produces proteins.
After countless false starts and wrong turns, she had made a breakthrough and wanted to file a patent. But to do so she had to win over an intellectual property officer at the University of Pennsylvania, where she then worked as a researcher. Their meeting was going badly. “He was not very enthusiastic, he kept on asking, ‘What’s it good for?’” recalls Kariko. “I was just so disappointed that he wasn’t getting it.”
As she prepared to admit defeat, she noticed that the IP officer was going bald. “I said, ‘You know what? mRNA would be good for growing hair.’ All of a sudden, he perked up. ‘Really?’ he asked. And I said, ‘Yes, it could be,’ and he was very enthusiastic.” By the end of the meeting, he had agreed to file the patent.
At the time, it was a rare victory for Kariko, whose research on modified mRNA went on to pave the way for the coronavirus vaccines that have been developed at lightning speed by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna.
Now lauded as one of the luminaries whose work allowed the world to push back the tide of the pandemic, for decades her research was dismissed as a sideshow by most of her scientific peers. On campus, she became known as the “mRNA hustler” for her tendency to push her molecules on to other scientists, most of whom just “put them in the freezer and forgot about them”.
Kariko’s struggle to convince the doubtful IP officer is just one of several near misses that might have stopped the mRNA vaccines from ever being developed. Many other scientists experienced frustrating stumbles over the decades, while few private investors, vital to commercialising new technologies, were keen to back a new vaccine platform.
Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Though mRNA had been tested relatively little on humans before the pandemic, the vaccines that use its technology work extremely well — with efficacy rates of more than 90 per cent, considerably higher than rival inoculations.
They also appear, so far, to be safer than other vaccines; they have not been connected with the rare but serious blood clotting attributed to the adenovirus jabs made by Oxford/AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. And those early investors who did risk their money have been rewarded to the tune of billions.
Supporters of mRNA claim that Covid-19 vaccines are just the start. Now that the technology is proven, they say it can be deployed to tackle a multitude of illnesses, from cancer and cystic fibrosis to HIV and heart defects. Yet a sizeable group of scientific specialists think that it will be decades before the technology is fit for purpose — and that the risks of outright failure remain high. Despite its role against Covid-19, is mRNA a scientific step change, or a spectacular one-hit wonder?
The existence of mRNA was first suggested in 1961 by two French scientists, Jacques Monod and François Jacob. Their hypothesis was prompted by the discovery a decade earlier of DNA, which contains our genetic code, spewing out signals that direct the body to produce the proteins we need to function healthily.
While groundbreaking, this discovery had resulted in a fresh conundrum. DNA lives tightly wound up in the nucleus, but proteins are made in the cytoplasm, a totally distinct cellular compartment. Monod and Jacob posited there had to be an intermediate molecule that somehow transmitted the information to the body’s protein-making factory — the “messenger” that is the “m” in mRNA.
Their hypothesis should have been transformative. A long list of human illnesses can be accounted for by mutated DNA, including haemophilia, Parkinson’s and possibly Alzheimer’s. If scientists could interrupt the process of carrying faulty messages by inserting corrected copies of mRNA into the body, they could stop related diseases. A man-made biological courier would be able to intercept the incorrect set of genetic instructions and deliver the right copy instead. Yet, far from upending medical science, the discovery of mRNA led to a near silence that lasted for more than 40 years.
Kariko first started working on RNA molecules in the 1980s at the Szeged Biological Research Centre in her native Hungary. But in what was to become a constant refrain, she ran out of funding to pursue her work and started scouting around for a new academic institution to support her. By her own admission, she is a terrible salesperson. When explaining her work, her mind goes a million miles a minute. Most people cannot keep up.
In 1985, she secured a job at Temple University in Pennsylvania — but leaving Hungary, then still behind the Iron Curtain, was not straightforward. Currency controls imposed by the communist government made it effectively impossible to swap forints for dollars. So she and her husband sold their second-hand Lada car for $1,000, arranged an illegal currency swap with some foreign students, and flew to Philadelphia. “I wrapped the money up, inserted it into my two-year-old daughter’s teddy bear and sewed it back up,” says Kariko.
She embarked on an academic career in the US that was marked by insecurity. Persistently on the brink of running out of funding, she recalls: “I was always at the mercy of somebody.” But Kariko never lost faith in the potential of mRNA as a molecule that might one day be turned into a human therapeutic — a drug or a vaccine that could save lives.
Her lab at the University of Pennsylvania, where she moved in 1989, was opposite a medical ward and its occupants preyed on her mind. “I told my colleague, we had to take our science to the patients. I pointed through the window — we could see them — and I said: ‘We have to take it there.’”
In 1997, Kariko started working with Drew Weissman, a fellow academic at the university who was studying dendritic cells, which play a critical role in the body’s immune system. The pair met while taking turns on a microfiche machine they used for reading scientific papers. “Kati and I used to fight over the machine,” says Weissman. “We kept talking and decided to try adding her mRNA to my cells. We were very surprised by the results.”
When he added the mRNA to his cells, Weissman found they elicited an inflammatory immune response, recognising the material as foreign and mounting an angry defence. This was perplexing because the human body is teeming with naturally produced mRNA; it was also bad news for Kariko, because it suggested it might be impossible to turn her molecules into a therapy for human ailments. The pair had alighted on a problem that helps explain why the field of mRNA research was a scientific backwater for decades.
“My guess is that people tried it and it just failed,” says Weissman. “It was too inflammatory, too difficult to work with, and they just gave up.” Yet he and Kariko kept going. From the outside, the pair made an unlikely duo. “I am the enthusiastic, noisy one, and he’s the quiet, thinking one,” says Kariko. “But we have different knowledge, and we educated each other.”
Despite their contrasts, they settled into a working rhythm that was helped by their night-owlish tendencies. “In the middle of the night, three o’clock, I’d send him something and he’d instantly respond,” recounts Kariko. “You felt that the other person was there, shoulder to shoulder.”
In 2005, after working together for eight years, the pair made a major breakthrough, without which the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines would not exist: they found that by making chemical modifications to mRNA they could then insert it into the dendritic cells without activating an immune response — in effect tricking cells into thinking the molecules had been made inside the body rather than a lab. This meant, in theory at least, that mRNA could be turned into a therapy for humans. “It was like a dream come true,” says Kariko. “‘Oh my God,’ I said. ‘Now we can use it.’”
And yet progress remained elusive. Even after they published their findings, the stack of rejection letters from providers of scientific funding kept piling up. “We both knew there was enormous potential,” says Weissman. “The problem was, we couldn’t convince anybody else.”
It was another scientist who helped turn their dream into reality. Derrick Rossi had never heard of Kariko and Weissman, who “were not at all well-known scientists”, he says. But in 2008, he was working as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and trying to use mRNA to make stem cells — immature cells that have not yet developed into a specific type, for example a brain or muscle cell.
Rossi was inspired by Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese scientist who had proved it was possible to turn any cell in the human body into an embryonic stem cell-like state by inserting four genes. Yamanaka’s discovery eventually won him the Nobel prize. But there was a problem: the genes he inserted ended up back in the DNA, a mutagenic event that increased a person’s chance of developing cancer.
Rossi’s idea was to replicate the Japanese scientist’s achievement using mRNA instead, to reprogramme human skin cells so they could act as though they were stem cells.
“Yamanaka’s experiment was beautiful, but the approach was not really useful for medical translation,” he says. “So we thought, ‘Let’s just eliminate the whole integration in the DNA business by using mRNA.’ mRNA does not integrate into the DNA. It doesn’t go back in and permanently, genetically alter anything.”
Rossi started by turning green fluorescent protein, which gives jellyfish their ethereal glow, into mRNA before applying it to cells in a dish. If the cells in the dish lit up, the experiment would be a success. Instead, he encountered the same stumbling block that had vexed Kariko and Weissman. “The cell was responding as though a virus was coming in, they were killing themselves,” he says.
As Rossi hunted for a solution, he happened upon Kariko and Weissman’s research paper from 2005, which had gone largely unnoticed in the wider scientific world. He was particularly intrigued by a tantalising paragraph buried at the end of the article, suggesting there was more to their work than they were letting on: “Insights gained from this study could . . . give future directions into the design of therapeutic RNAs.”
“We saw that paper and thought maybe we can take these damn mRNAs and get them to flip into the cell and not be recognised,” Rossi says. After making the chemical modifications to the mRNA that Kariko and Weissman had pioneered, he repeated the experiment using the fluorescent protein. This time the cells turned bright green.
So the torch passed from Kariko and Weissman to Rossi. His findings were published in 2010 to great acclaim but to turn his discovery into a medical reality, Rossi needed money — and lots of it. This meant creating a private company capable of raising cash from investors.
He soon found a believer in Bob Langer, a chemical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a colossus in the world of biotech. “[Rossi] showed me a slide deck and said he was interested in starting a company, and I thought, ‘Gee, that would be terrific,’” recalls Langer.
He subsequently introduced Rossi to Noubar Afeyan, a venture capitalist who had founded Flagship Pioneering in 2000 and who in 2010 would start up a company to commercialise the science. Its name was Moderna.
Stéphane Bancel was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos in January last year when he concluded that the world was on the brink of the worst pandemic in more than 100 years. By that point, the existence of Covid-19 was well known and Moderna, the company where Bancel has been chief executive since 2011, was already working on a vaccine with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Bancel had initially been of the view that Covid-19 was an outbreak that could be contained like Sars and Mers. But his mind was changed by two scientists who also happened to be at Davos — Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust and Richard Hatchett from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. The pair, members of what Bancel calls the “infectious diseases mafia”, spent days with the Moderna CEO sketching disaster scenarios on napkins, prompting him to realise the potential seriousness of the outbreak.
“I remember pulling out my iPad and asking, ‘Where is Wuhan?’” Bancel says. A search on Google Maps showed him just how big the city was, while Wikipedia informed him that it was a major exporter to the automotive industry. “And then I went on Google Flights and I saw there [had been] direct flights to all the capitals in Asia, to the West Coast cities in the US, to all the capitals in Europe. Everything fell into place and I thought, ‘(expletive), this is already everywhere — this is going to be a pandemic like 1918.’”
That Moderna, a young company by biotech standards, was ready to develop a Covid-19 vaccine in record time when the pandemic struck is testament in part to the blistering speed at which it has grown during Bancel’s decade at the helm. When Afeyan approached him in early 2011 about becoming chief executive, Bancel, then working at a French diagnostic testing company, initially demurred.
“At first I told him he was crazy, that this will never work,” Bancel says, referring to the idea of running a company focused on mRNA. “But [then] I realised that, if it worked, it would change medicine for ever.”
Bancel, who speaks at lightning speed, has become known for his ability to raise billions of dollars of cash for Moderna, from both private and public sector sources. In 2018, the company completed the biggest initial public offering for a biotech on record, securing a valuation of $7.5bn. Other biotech executives have privately expressed disbelief that investors were willing to hand so much cash to a company working in what was — and to a large extent still is — an untested area of science.
Even today, Moderna has not secured full-blown regulatory approval for a single vaccine or drug: its Covid-19 jab is being given to humans under emergency-use authorisations that fall short of a proper stamp of approval. “The highest form of insult they would hurl at Stéphane was that he was a ‘great fundraiser’, which was damning by [faint] praise,” says Afeyan of the criticism directed at Bancel.
Yet had Moderna hired a chief executive who moved more cautiously and raised less money, the company might not, by the time of the Covid-19 outbreak, have already worked on mRNA vaccines for other infectious diseases such as Zika and Cytomegalovirus. And it almost certainly wouldn’t have broken ground on its factory in Massachusetts in July 2018.
Moderna acknowledges the debt it owes to Kariko and Weissman — “You can’t tell this story without them and their fundamental insights,” says Stephen Hoge, its president and Bancel’s de facto deputy. But the company insists it did more than simply commercialise their scientific discoveries; it decided, for example, to use modified, non-immunogenic mRNA inside a vaccine, and then to deliver the jab using lipid nanoparticles — little droplets of fat that stop our enzymes from destroying the genetic material.
The company tested its first such vaccine in humans in 2015, a second in 2016 and then a further nine jabs between 2016 and 2019. By the time the pandemic hit, it already knew that its technology worked. But Covid-19 was the first time it was used at scale.
Thanks in part to Moderna’s success, the potential of mRNA vaccines also captured the attention of Big Pharma. In 2018, Pfizer signed a partnership deal worth up to $425m with BioNTech, a German group. At the time, BioNTech was mostly focused on using mRNA to develop cancer drugs injected directly into tumours.
Kariko, who now works at BioNTech, recalls that chief executive Ugur Sahin felt a responsibility to research jabs for infectious diseases as well, but worried that they would be unprofitable. “He told me, in 2015, ‘Kati, it is a moral obligation for us to do infectious disease vaccines. Those are a money-sucker, but it is a moral obligation.’”
In this next stage of the story of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, the torch passed to Moderna and BioNTech. But such vaccines still might not have happened were it not for the intervention of the US government: lots of promising discoveries made in academic labs do not end up being commercialised for human use because of a reluctance among investors to plough money into medical research that may result in expensive failure.
In Moderna’s case, the gap was filled in part by officials at a unit of the US Department of Defense known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or Darpa. Set up in 1958, in response to the launch a year earlier of Russia’s Sputnik 1, the first artificial earth satellite, Darpa has been credited with fostering some of the biggest technological advances in history, from the creation of the internet to the GPS.
In 2013, the US government issued a string of grants to private companies, including up to $25m for Moderna to work on an mRNA drug to combat Chikungunya — a potentially deadly virus spread by mosquitoes that affects millions of people mostly in Africa, Asia and the Indian subcontinent. That funding from Darpa, though tiny by comparison with the billions Bancel had raised in private funding, nudged the company into the field of infectious diseases, an unloved area among biotech investors who prefer to put money into more profitable endeavours.
“It’s not even clear that, without some pretty heavy pressuring, this activity — even at Moderna — would have been pursued versus other potential applications for mRNA that had a much clearer path to monetisation, such as cancer treatment,” says Regina Dugan, the former director of Darpa, who signed off on the grants.
In recent months, mRNA vaccines have shown that they are a formidable weapon in the battle against the pandemic. In Israel, which has fully vaccinated more than half of its population with the BioNTech/Pfizer jab, life has all but returned to normal, and things are heading that way in the US and UK. But many developing and even some richer countries have been unable to secure supplies.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration broke with US orthodoxy to back a waiver of Covid-19 patents during the pandemic, potentially opening the door for drugmakers across the world to copy the vaccine formulas pioneered by Pfizer, Moderna and others. The EU responded by saying that America’s decision to hoard vaccines was the real drag on the global inoculation race.
There is acrimony, too, among the researchers who made mRNA vaccines a reality. No story of scientific success would be complete without an element of discord, especially when a Nobel prize is almost certainly up for grabs, and many of them nurse grievances. Kariko feels that she was poorly treated by her employers at the University of Pennsylvania, and struggled to secure grants for her research.
Sahin, the BioNTech chief executive, worries that focusing on Kariko crowds out the other scientists who worked on the Covid-19 vaccines and bristles at the idea of a neat narrative that begins with her work (even though she now works for him). “I think this is now [getting] more and more simplified in the whole storytelling,” he says. Weissman, who still works at the University of Pennsylvania, sees it differently: “Everything that Moderna does uses our patent, our technology. BioNTech has other programmes that don’t use it, but the vaccine they made uses our technology.”
There is also bad blood between Rossi and Moderna, the company he helped found in 2010 but left roughly three years later. Several people briefed on the split say that Rossi wanted Moderna to dedicate more time to his stem-cell discovery and was eventually shunted aside when it zeroed in on drugs and vaccines instead. Rossi dismisses the idea that he was too focused on stem cells, pointing out that he was talking about the potential for mRNA to be used as a backbone for human therapeutics as early as 2010. “It’s offensive, but it’s typical of these business pricks to basically say, ‘That was our idea.’”
But by far the biggest disagreement in the wider biotech community is about whether the mRNA Covid-19 will represent a step change in medical development. Moderna’s market capitalisation, which has soared by more than 600 per cent since Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, now stands at $63bn. That is a staggering valuation for a company that has no fully approved products and which generated $803m in revenue last year.
By contrast, Biogen, a company founded in 1978 that makes drugs for multiple sclerosis, and which hopes to secure approval for the first medicine that can slow Alzheimer’s, generated $13.4bn of revenue last year: its market capitalisation is just $40bn.
Implicit in Moderna’s valuation is a belief among investors that not only will it upend the vaccines industry by making mRNA the crux of many more inoculations, but that its experimental drugs for illnesses such as heart defects and cancer will also end up working too.
One biotech investor, who asks to keep their criticism off the record, describes the company as the “Tesla of biotech”, referring to the electric car company that is worth more than several traditional automakers combined. “I think that investors underappreciate how much time it’s going to take to succeed in other areas and the risk, the probability, that it is not going to succeed.”
Another healthcare investor, who is betting that Moderna’s share price will eventually fall, agrees. He worries that the company will struggle to raise the price of its vaccine, which is roughly $15 per shot, when the pandemic ends and companies can start charging so-called endemic prices. “Wall Street is pretty brutal,” he says. “It’s going to be an uphill battle.”
Bancel insists the company has huge potential to reshape pharmaceuticals. The success of the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines — with their extremely high efficacy rates — and the economic toll of the pandemic are proof that inoculations will become a bigger industry, he says, predicting that this market, worth about $35bn today, could almost treble in size.
He also foresees an eventual “cancer and cardiology wave” for the company, which has a large but early-stage pipeline of drugs for oncology and heart defects. He points to a recent, small trial of one of its cancer drugs, which showed that it helped patients who were not responding to an approved immunotherapy drug.
Yet in reality, despite Bancel’s enthusiasm, there is very little proof that mRNA could be as transformative for other areas of medicine as it has been for vaccines. In March, Translate Bio, a company researching mRNA drugs for cystic fibrosis — seen as one of the illnesses that might best be tackled by the approach — reported disappointing results from a trial of its experimental medicine, which did not improve patients’ lung function.
Brad Loncar, a biotech investor who runs a cancer-focused fund, says he has seen scant evidence that mRNA will work for cancer either. “We’re very early, but the cancer data that we’ve seen so far from all the companies has been really disappointing,” he says. “The verdict is still out on all these other diseases, they are going to take years and years to be proven. And there is no guarantee that it’s going to succeed.”
Yet the undeniable accomplishment of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines means the field is unlikely to enter another dark age. Hoge, Moderna’s president, says the success of the jabs gave the industry the “home run” that it had always craved. “What happens with the pandemic is that all of a sudden, a year forward, everyone believes in [mRNA] for all the right reasons.” It will happen by fits and starts, but scientists like Kariko will no longer have to work in the shadows.
“Of course there are a lot of things that have to be done but the model is there and it can be done,” she insists during one of our telephone interviews. “People would probably tell me to put down the phone right now, and to go and read more and work on it. Because people are suffering.”
- David Crow is the FT’s US news editor
by ti-amie Ms Kariko should get the Nobel Prize but i bet they make her share with Mr. Weissman. Still what a remarkable story.
by MJ2004
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 8:18 pm
Ms Kariko should get the Nobel Prize...
It does seem like a no-brainer this year, huh?
by Suliso Only a premature death would preclude that. Whether she shares it with anyone else or not is less clear.
I don't think it will be this year, though. They like to wait few years just in case. In this particular case it won't be long.
by ponchi101 Well worth the read.
by Suliso Russians are going to make a movie on international space station and for this purpose are sending a cameraman and an actress up there with a Soyuz ship this October. Tom Cruise also has had a similar idea, but in this case Russians will be first.
by Suliso I think this picture explains very briefly why electrical cars are likely to win over hydrogen. Now it's reduced to producing electricity in a sustainable way. Lots of options for that.
Hydrogen does have it's uses in applications where lots of power is needed. Think heavy equipment and more importantly metallurgy, cement production etc.
by ponchi101 The benefit of hydrogen is that you just simply pump it in the car. It does not take hours to charge.
Other than that, the ELECTRIC part of the graph is a bit soo simple. The thing for solar is that, of course, if you were to follow that graph exactly, you could not charge your car at night, which is when most people would charge their car. So, battery storage is needed there, or you could do it through wind if that option is available.
by Suliso I think solar in that graph is merely depicting electricity generation. It could be anything - solar, wind, atomic, hydro and of course also some very undesirable methods like burning coal. Indeed at the moment the greatest issue is charging time (range is already fine now) when away from home. If you have a house charging from general electric grid at night is trivial and also the cheapest option.
There is a lot of battery research ongoing now with huge amounts of cash being invested by various automakers. If they can get fast charging down to 10 min or less gas or hydrogen will have no advantages left.
by Suliso By the way you can use solar power indirectly at night. It's called solar heat power generation. Instead of converting solar power directly to electricity via photovoltaics you use mirrors to concentrate the heat on a tower of molten salts (keeps hot for 24 h or so). Then circulate water around the lower part of the tower (salts are not used up) to generate steam and use it for standard turbines to generate electricity. This is particularly favorable on industrial scale in desert areas where there is a lot of sun.
by ponchi101 Charging down to 10 minutes indeed makes it acceptable. You can have some coffee while the car charges.
If you are charging at home, you need a 440V charger. In the USA, that is not easy to get (Europe runs on 220V so you need two lines to power that charger). Charging a car with a 110V charger takes hours, and by that I mean in the 20's. Basically, a full day.
Here in Colombia, the use of an electric is only possible if you have a house; my apartment building does not have chargers and installing them means that you need to take a metered outlet and register it to you. That means an entire setup. In Norway, of course, you have public chargers and your car is identified by a simple chip. Plug in and the bill is charged to your card. Also, as Colombia is 110V, you run into the same issue as in the USA. However, the city is crisscrossed by 440V, so you would need to make those chargers plug directly to those 440V lines.
Nothing technically impossible; everything is already there. But some investment is needed from both ends: public services and the private user. Again as an example: if I wanted an EV, I would need to pay for the entire electrical setup too. That adds to the car's cost.
I still want a BMW i3. They are fun.
---0---
You were posting while I was writing. You are talking about the Ivanpah facility. It is impressive.
But...
Guess who do not like it? Environmentalists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_S ... l_fuel_use
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu May 20, 2021 7:19 pm
Charging down to 10 minutes indeed makes it acceptable. You can have some coffee while the car charges.
Indeed, although the entire premise is based on most people charging most of the time either at home or at work. In Switzerland some companies already provide that option in employee parking places.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu May 20, 2021 7:19 pm Nothing technically impossible; everything is already there. But some investment is needed from both ends: public services and the private user. Again as an example: if I wanted an EV, I would need to pay for the entire electrical setup too. That adds to the car's cost.
Certainly infrastructure investments are needed. We'll probably see it first in richer countries, will take few years extra in Colombia.
Actually I was thinking about a similar facility in Morocco. I was not aware so much gas is used in the one in Nevada, but most likely this is not something that can't be engineered away.
by ponchi101 Uuhhmmm... probably not. The sole reason they use so much gas is to run the facility when there is not enough sun to power it by itself. Also, there is this little catch: IF they sell all the energy produced by solar, that energy counts as certain federal credits for the buyer. So, they would rather sell all of it and use gas themselves, then not be able to sell all of it and run completely "clean".
The main Tesla factory, which is installing an entire roof of sola panels, is still connected to the grid. When the sun goes down, or the clouds come, you can't simply say "too bad. No more cars for today".
Edit:
By coincidence, I found this article about the new Audi RS e-tron. Charging:
The EV architecture supports 800-volt charging, meaning a 270 kW charger can get the e-tron GT 80% changed in around 23 minutes. Fully charged, the RS e-tron GT has an estimated range of 232 miles.
But that is 800 V charging.
Only problem:
The Audi RS e-tron GT starts at $139,900.
Starts...
by ti-amie Apparently all of these sites had issues yesterday:
by ti-amie
by ti-amie This is kinda the tech story of the last few days. I'm pretty sure since this was run out of Australia Tiny didn't know about it.
P1
by ti-amie p2
by JazzNU I visited the Best Buy website on my laptop for the first time in probably 4 months or so. Less than 2 minutes later I get a Retail Me Not notification on my phone for Best Buy deals. I rarely used that app and certainly not recently and haven't visited the BB site on my phone in I don't know how long, but definitely not since at least Christmas time.
This can't be a coincidence. But, my laptop and my phone are logged into Google/Chrome thru separate accounts. I didn't say the words Best Buy out loud so I don't think (this time) it can be about my phone listening to me. So, what, they've broadened their reach and are checking web activity on the same wi-fi connection now to increase their targets, is that it? Both laptop and phone are currently connected to my home wi-fi.
I'm less creeped out and more curious. I know I'm being tracked within an inch of my life, I accepted that long ago, just wondering how they are pulling this one off and that's all I can come up with. Let me know if you have another guess.
by ti-amie Slate Money did a segment on a pair of shoes that followed one of the podcasters everywhere she went online. It's a problem.
by ponchi101
JazzNU wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 5:37 pm
I visited the Best Buy website on my laptop for the first time in probably 4 months or so. Less than 2 minutes later I get a Retail Me Not notification on my phone for Best Buy deals. I rarely used that app and certainly not recently and haven't visited the BB site on my phone in I don't know how long, but definitely not since at least Christmas time.
This can't be a coincidence. But, my laptop and my phone are logged into Google/Chrome thru separate accounts. I didn't say the words Best Buy out loud so I don't think (this time) it can be about my phone listening to me. So, what, they've broadened their reach and are checking web activity on the same wi-fi connection now to increase their targets, is that it? Both laptop and phone are currently connected to my home wi-fi.
I'm less creeped out and more curious. I know I'm being tracked within an inch of my life, I accepted that long ago, just wondering how they are pulling this one off and that's all I can come up with. Let me know if you have another guess.
Same or similar IP? But your WiFi idea seems very possible.
They are indeed going to extremes. I started receiving mails from WISH, one of them saying: "Since you signed up for WISH...", which, you can guess, like hell I did.
by Suliso Some space statistics for those of us who're interested.
There have been 57 orbital launches in 2021 so far and from those 55 have been successful. 28 of these rockets have been of American origin, 19 Chinese and 8 Russian. From 28 American rockets 19 were Falcon 9 flights by Elon Musk's Spacex (all successful). The most popular launch spot is still Kennedy/Cape Canaveral in Florida (20). The next most commonly used launch facility is Chinese Jiuquan in inner Mongolia with 9 launches so far.
There are currently four active launch facilities each in US and China. Two in Russia and one each in Kazakhstan, India, New Zealand and France.
by ponchi101 Pretty cool.
On the funny side. A petition has been started to deny re-entry permit to Jeff Bezos after he launches into space. Over 18,000 people have signed, so if you are interested: https://www.change.org/p/blue-origin-pe ... y-to-earth
The "details" of the petition are pretty funny.
by MJ2004 Of course, 25,000 votes (the stated goal) is only .00031325% of the global population. Not exactly a majority.
by ponchi101 Oh, sure. But it is funny that he would not be allowed re-entry. I bet if they were to place a T-shirt on Amazon that would read "NO RE-ENTRY FOR JEFF BEZOS" it would sell more than 25K pieces
by Suliso The other funny part is that despite his money his space company (Blue Origin) is kind of a failure so far. Especially when compared to Musk's Spacex.
by Suliso
by ponchi101 So depressing to see L. America. But hardly surprising.
by Suliso Argentina is well below Latin America average. I wonder who is then propping up the average somewhat. Chile and Brazil?
Of course percentages is one thing, how efficiently the money is used is another. Nor could absolute numbers be ignored in this context.
This Agency’s Computers Hold Secrets. Hackers Got In With One Password.
Hackers used one worker’s login information to penetrate the Law Department’s network after officials failed to implement a simple security measure.
By Ashley Southall, Benjamin Weiser and Dana Rubinstein
Published June 18, 2021
Updated July 9, 2021, 12:58 p.m. ET
New York City’s Law Department holds some of the city’s most closely guarded secrets: evidence of police misconduct, the identities of young children charged with serious crimes, plaintiffs’ medical records and personal data for thousands of city employees.
But all it took for a hacker to infiltrate the 1,000-lawyer agency’s network early this month was one worker’s pilfered email password, according to a city official briefed on the matter.
Officials have not said how the intruder obtained the worker’s credentials, nor have they determined the scope of the attack. But the hack was enabled by the Law Department’s failure to implement a basic safeguard, known as multifactor authentication, more than two years after the city began requiring it, according to four people with knowledge of the legal agency’s system and the incident.
(...)
The mayor’s warning to the agency heads comes 10 days after the city’s Cyber Command, created by Mr. de Blasio in 2017 to defend the city’s computer networks, detected unusual activity on the Law Department’s computer system.
The next afternoon, June 6, city officials have said, they removed the department’s computers from the city’s larger network. Many remain disconnected.
Mr. de Blasio, in public appearances last week, said that the hack was under investigation by the New York Police Department’s intelligence bureau and the F.B.I.’s cyber task force. He said officials were not aware of a ransom demand being made or of any information being compromised.
Officials also said there was no evidence that the attack had damaged the city’s computer systems, though the investigation was still in an early stage. Investigators are still trying to determine the identity of the perpetrator and the motive.
“We’ve identified the malware — we have seen it before,” John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said at a news conference.
“Is it someone looking to corral information, export it and then do a ransomware attack?” Mr. Miller said. “Is it another kind of actor looking to gather information for other strategic purposes?” Both were possibilities, Mr. Miller added.
A City Hall spokeswoman and a spokesman for the Law Department both declined to comment on Thursday.
Multifactor authentication, a measure familiar to many who work on computers at home and at the office, requires users logging into sensitive accounts to take at least one additional step to verify their identities, like entering a temporary numerical code sent to a user’s cellphone.
The tool has been widely adopted in recent years, cybersecurity experts say, as hackers increasingly target government, business, hospitals and infrastructure using stolen passwords and other credentials. This allows them to penetrate computer systems to disrupt operations or steal data, which can be used to demand a ransom.
A directive issued by New York’s Cyber Command in April 2019 required all city agencies to use multifactor authentication for access to restricted or sensitive information, according to a copy of the document obtained by The New York Times.
Geoff Brown, head of Cyber Command and New York’s chief information security officer, acknowledged at a news conference last week that the city had issued such a directive, but he refused to answer a question about whether the Law Department used the tool.
“At this time answering questions about the protection of city systems could give the attacker insight” into the city’s internet technology or the ongoing investigation, Mr. Brown said.
The Law Department’s servers ran on Microsoft software released in 2003, which the company stopped providing critical security updates for in 2015.
The failure to update software makes municipal systems a ripe target for hackers who simply scan the internet for unpatched software and exploit it. The Florida water treatment plant hacked last February also used a decade-old version of Microsoft Windows that had not been updated in years.
In his phone call on Tuesday with city agency heads, Mr. de Blasio cited multifactor authentication and up-to-date software as priorities that needed to be addressed immediately, according to the officials who participated in the call.
Katharine Rosenfeld, a lawyer who in one case represented a pregnant woman who sued the city after being handcuffed while she was in labor, said the security lapses revealed the Law Department was “scarily sloppy” in its handling of confidential information.
“Think of all the medical records that we give them of our clients, mental health treatment, settlement negotiations,” Ms. Rosenfeld said. “It just makes me very worried.”
The disabling of the Law Department's computer system after the attack has had an impact that has rippled through New York courts, slowing cases and forcing city lawyers to ask for extensions on deadlines.
(...)
In federal court in Manhattan, the attack fueled a dispute in a set of high-profile lawsuits accusing the Police Department of using excessive force and making unjustified mass arrests during the demonstrations in New York last year after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers have complained that the Law Department, citing the hack, has refused to say when it will turn over critical documents that the lawyers say they need to investigate what they have called the city’s “brutal response” to the large-scale protests.
The Law Department has accused the plaintiffs’ lawyers of using the hack to “engage in gamesmanship” and of suddenly deciding that “now is a good time to inundate defendants with a barrage” of new document requests, a city lawyer, Dara L. Weiss, wrote to the court last week.
Ms. Weiss said that despite the “technological challenges,” the hack had not halted progress in the case.
“Defense counsel have not been sitting on their hands,” Ms. Weiss added.
Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
by ti-amie These three responses to the article on the NYC Law Dept Hack stood out to me:
TomV
Florida
June 19
Securing computer systems is complex, expensive, and ... boring. Keeping servers properly patched is not glamorous work. Trying to get employees to not use stupid passwords or click on dodgy email attachments won't win IT employees any popularity contests and can really only be prevented by making it technically impossible. When you do make it technically difficult or impossible, people get up in arms about how user-unfriendly the "system" is.
It's easy to throw stones after the hacks occur, but sadly the only way to keep them from occurring is to commit the financial and technical resources needed to day-to-day data security. When your enterprise has been in operation for many years with no attacks, it's easy to believe it's just not a big deal. Until this happens...
mop
US
June 19
Unless your company is totally with it and acknowledges that cybersecurity is as critical to the health of the business as the bottom line, you may see that line go into the red - quickly.
There's one absolute with cyber - you can pay up now (preventive measures, offensive security, investment in the people/process/tech)... or you may well pay up in spades later.
Companies that fail to stare this in the face will be stabbed in the back.
I'm not sure how they'll do this but okay.
Michael Cooke
Bangkok
June 19
Regardless how up to date the Windows software might have been, I still can't fathom how any system that can be accessed conveniently from anywhere will be completely secure. For instance, suppose some organization were running encrypted communication with multifactor authentication for clients to access a central repository from home. In today's world, as I know it, the easy way into those systems is via the client's email or mobile device. If either of those are compromised, getting in is as simple as claiming to have forgotten a password. Until someone convinces me breaking into systems is no more difficult than phishing for email access, I'll keep critical transactions off the internet as much as possible.
by ponchi101
ti-amie wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 7:13 pm
Until someone convinces me breaking into systems is no more difficult than phishing for email access, I'll keep critical transactions off the internet as much as possible.
This part. Ponchi101's motto.
by Suliso Great overview of the current commercial space race. Only it's moving so fast that a four month old video is already slightly outdated. For example, Starship prototype has already successfully landed after a high altitude hop and the company is now racing towards the first suborbital test.
by Suliso In related news Richard Branson is about to take off in his suborbital space plane meant for space tourism in about half an hour or so.
by MJ2004 This also belongs in World News, but due to the detailed nature of the article I'm posting it here.
Revealed: leak uncovers global abuse of cyber-surveillance weapon
Spyware sold to authoritarian regimes used to target activists, politicians and journalists, data suggests
Human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, according to an investigation into a massive data leak.
The investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media outlets suggests widespread and continuing abuse of NSO’s hacking spyware, Pegasus, which the company insists is only intended for use against criminals and terrorists.
Pegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones.
The leak contains a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that, it is believed, have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016.
Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based media nonprofit, and Amnesty International initially had access to the leaked list and shared access with media partners as part of the Pegasus project, a reporting consortium.
The presence of a phone number in the data does not reveal whether a device was infected with Pegasus or subject to an attempted hack. However, the consortium believes the data is indicative of the potential targets NSO’s government clients identified in advance of possible surveillance attempts.
Forensics analysis of a small number of phones whose numbers appeared on the leaked list also showed more than half had traces of the Pegasus spyware.
The Guardian and its media partners will be revealing the identities of people whose number appeared on the list in the coming days. They include hundreds of business executives, religious figures, academics, NGO employees, union officials and government officials, including cabinet ministers, presidents and prime ministers.
The list also contains the numbers of close family members of one country’s ruler, suggesting the ruler may have instructed their intelligence agencies to explore the possibility of monitoring their own relatives.
The disclosures begin on Sunday, with the revelation that the numbers of more than 180 journalists are listed in the data, including reporters, editors and executives at the Financial Times, CNN, the New York Times, France 24, the Economist, Associated Press and Reuters.
The phone number of a freelance Mexican reporter, Cecilio Pineda Birto, was found in the list, apparently of interest to a Mexican client in the weeks leading up to his murder, when his killers were able to locate him at a car wash. His phone has never been found – so no forensic analysis has been possible to establish if it was infected.
NSO said that even if Pineda’s phone had been targeted, it did not mean data collected from his phone contributed in any way to his death, stressing governments could have discovered his location by other means. He was among at least 25 Mexican journalists apparently selected as candidates for surveillance over a two-year period.
Without forensic examination of mobile devices, it is impossible to say whether phones were subjected to an attempted or successful hack using Pegasus.
NSO has always maintained it does “does not operate the systems that it sells to vetted government customers, and does not have access to the data of its customers’ targets”.
In statements issued through its lawyers, NSO denied “false claims” made about the activities of its clients, but said that it would “continue to investigate all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action”.
It said the list cannot be a list of numbers “targeted by governments using Pegasus”, and described the 50,000 figure as “exaggerated”.
The company sells only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies in 40 unnamed countries, and says it rigorously vets its customers’ human rights records before allowing them to use its spy tools.
The Israeli minister of defence closely regulates NSO, granting individual export licences before its surveillance technology can be sold to a new country.
Last month, NSO released a transparency report in which it claimed to have an industry-leading approach to human rights, and published excerpts from it contracts with customers stipulating they must only use its products for criminal and national security investigations.
There is nothing to suggest that NSO’s customers did not also use Pegasus in terrorism and crime investigations, and the consortium also found numbers in the data belonging to suspected criminals.
However the broad array of numbers in the list belonging to people who seemingly have no connection to criminality suggests some of NSO clients are breaching their contracts with the company, spying on pro-democracy activists and journalists investigating corruption, as well as political opponents and government critics.
That thesis is supported by forensic analysis on the phones of a small sample of journalists, human rights activists and lawyers whose numbers appeared on the leaked list.
The research, conducted by Amnesty’s Security Lab, a technical partner on the Pegasus project, found traces of Pegasus activity on 37 out of the 67 phones examined.
The analysis also uncovered some sequential correlations between the time and date a number was entered into the list and the onset of Pegasus activity on the device, which in some cases occurred just a few seconds later.
Amnesty shared its forensic work on four iPhones with Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto that specialises in studying Pegasus, which confirmed they showed signs of Pegasus infection. Citizen Lab also conducted a peer-review of Amnesty’s forensic methods, and found them to be sound.
The consortium’s analysis of the leaked data identified at least 10 governments believed to be NSO customers who were entering numbers into a system: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, India, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Analysis of the data suggests the NSO client country that selected the most numbers – more than 15,000 – was Mexico, where multiple different government agencies are known to have bought Pegasus. Both Morocco and the UAE selected more than 10,000 numbers, according to the analysis suggested.
The phone numbers which were selected, possibly ahead of a surveillance attack, spanned more than 45 countries across four continents. There were more than 1,000 numbers in European countries that, the analysis indicated, were selected by NSO clients.
The presence of a number in the data does not mean there was an attempt to infect the phone. NSO says there were other possible purposes for numbers being recorded on the list.
Rwanda, Morocco, India and Hungary denied having used Pegasus to hack the phones of the individuals named in the list. The governments of Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazkhstan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and Dubai did not respond to invitations to comment.
The Pegasus project is likely to spur debates over government surveillance in several countries suspected of using the technology. The investigation suggests the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán appears to have deployed NSO’s technology as part of his so-called war on the media, targeting investigative journalists in the country as well as the close circle of one of Hungary’s few independent media executives.
The leaked data and forensic analyses also suggest NSO’s spy tool was used by Saudi Arabia and its close ally, UAE, to target the phones of close associates of the murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the months after his death. The Turkish prosecutor investigating his death was also a candidate for targeting, the data leak suggests.
Claudio Guarnieri, who runs Amnesty International’s Security Lab, said that once a phone was infected with Pegasus, a client of NSO could in effect take control of a phone, enabling them to extract a person’s messages, calls, photos and emails, secretly activate cameras or microphones, and read the contents of encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.
By accessing GPS and hardware sensors in the phone, he added, NSO’s clients could also secure a log of a person’s past movements and track their location in real time with pinpoint accuracy, for example by establishing the direction and speed a car was travelling in.
The latest advances in NSO’s technology enable it to penetrate phones with “zero-click” attacks, meaning a user does not even need to click on a malicious link for their phone to be infected.
Guarnieri has identified evidence NSO has been exploiting vulnerabilities associated with iMessage, which comes installed on all iPhones, and has been able to penetrate even the most up-to-date iPhone running the latest version of iOS. His team’s forensic analysis discovered successful and attempted Pegasus infections of phones as recently as this month.
Apple said: “Security researchers agree iPhone is the safest, most secure consumer mobile device on the market.”
NSO declined to give specific details about its customers and the people they target.
However, a source familiar with the matter said the average number of annual targets per customer was 112. The source said the company has 45 customers for its Pegasus spyware.
- The Guardian
by ponchi101
MJ2004 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 4:10 pm
"The company sells only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies in 40 unnamed countries, and says it rigorously vets its customers’ human rights records before allowing them to use its spy tools."
Oh, well, then there is nothing wrong with that, is there? You sell spying software, but only to the good guys.
God bless these little angels.
by Suliso US government has managed to destroy Huawei's cellphone business - down from a global market leader in 2020 to outside the top 5 and falling so far this year. However, another Chinese company Xiaomi is now #2 only behind Samsung and ahead of Apple.
by ti-amie Have you guys heard about the "Freedom Phone" scam?
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:52 am
Have you guys heard about the "Freedom Phone" scam?
Do I even want to know? I can guess and I'm not surprised. Sending money totaling hundreds of millions to a "billionaire" for an election that was already over and done with and repeatedly reinforced in like 30 lawsuits was a proof concept that they were a ripe audience to be scammed.
by ti-amie Freedom Phones involve selling the gullible a phone that blocks all kinds of gubmint spying for $500. In reality it's a phone made by a Chinese company that retails for about $120. I'm sure TFG gets a cut.
by ponchi101 I hate to do this, but: I own a Xiaomi. It is a very good phone. Aluminum case, Android 7 (it is 2 years old), good camera. Cost me $150, it is open so I can go to any country, buy a SIM card and I am up and running.
I plan to switch back to Samsung for my next phone, because I cannot get a Freedom Phone here in Colombia.
(Yes Samsung, joke Freedom Phone).
by JazzNU @ponchi, might want to look at the OnePlus too. Very competitive with Samsung on features, but almost always less expensive. People love their phones.
by ponchi101 The way things are looking, I will be buying a Nokia c212, again.
Thanks. Will keep that in mind
by ponchi101 So Bezos made it to space, too.
Now you have three companies that can take you up. Obviously, Space X is the most developed, being able to reach the ISS. Virgin Galactic seems to be the less, with a barely sub orbital capability.
What will they be able to offer? Musk insists that he will die in Mars, which I say is a possibility (he is young). What will Bezos do with Blue Origin is something I don't know. Branson's plane is the simplest but I don't see too many people paying $200K just to go up and be weightless. It can be simulated by the Vomit Comet easily.
If nobody sets up a Space Statin for tourists, will this be all for the next decades? Small, short flights above the atmosphere?
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 20, 2021 2:59 pm
So Bezos made it to space, too.
Now you have three companies that can take you up. Obviously, Space X is the most developed, being able to reach the ISS. Virgin Galactic seems to be the less, with a barely sub orbital capability.
What will they be able to offer? Musk insists that he will die in Mars, which I say is a possibility (he is young). What will Bezos do with Blue Origin is something I don't know. Branson's plane is the simplest but I don't see too many people paying $200K just to go up and be weightless. It can be simulated by the Vomit Comet easily.
If nobody sets up a Space Statin for tourists, will this be all for the next decades? Small, short flights above he atmosphere?
I have a lot to say about this
Media like to lazily group all three together. Actually they're nothing alike other than being rich.
Branson is a flamboyant guy who sees it all as a yet another adventure in life. He might serve as an inspiration, but otherwise Virgin Galactic has nothing to offer beyond these pleasure rides. There is also Virgin Orbit, but it's only a small satellite launcher with no larger ambitions as far as I know. Branson also the poorest of the three.
Bezos sees the New Shepard with which he flew today as a stepping stone to New Glenn, an orbit capable partially reusable rocket under development. The problem is that they're slow and technologically well behind Spacex. However, due to generous funding by Bezos I'm not ready to write them off. Hopefully the new rocket gets to fly by 2023.
Finally Elon Musk's Spacex is where the real innovation lies. They're technologically miles ahead not just of the other two, but also NASA and any other government space agency. They have developed the first ever partially reusable orbital class rocket (first stage lands propulsively) and are currently dominating private satellite launch business. Not focusing on space tourism, however they'll have one such flight going in September with 4 people. They'll stay up 3 days not 10 min! Of course currently very expensive. The holy grail of rocketry is a fully reusable two stage orbital rocket with no refurbishment between flights. No such thing has ever been built by anyone, but Musk is now reasonably close with his Starship. If all goes well first test flight from South Texas in a month or two. The ship stands 120 m tall, twice as powerful as Saturn V and could take up to 100 people to space (Space Shuttle max 7) and it might cost as little as 5 millions to launch (NASA's SLS will be 800 million). If he succeeds it will be a true revolution. Lot's of technical challenges still to overcome.
by Suliso I should have added that not only no one has ever built a fully reusable space launch system, but also no one has even tried. So far only in science fiction.
by Suliso I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Dreadnought moment in naval history. The moment Royal Navy launched HMS Dreadnought in 1906 every other large warship around the world became instantly obsolete. If Spacex succeeds with their Starship for both cargo and humans it will mean the same to every existing medium and heavy launch vehicle currently in use and development (including NASA's SLS and Bezo's New Glenn).
by JazzNU The Musk praise is a lot to me, but I can tell you're a fan.
As for Richard Branson, I think you're being a bit unfair in the way you framed him. He is the only one of the 3 who has built a large portion of his wealthy empire on tourism and this is about space tourism for him. His company's goals may not be as lofty as the other two, but that's a pretty genuine extension of his brand unlike the others unless I missed their heavy investments in other parts of tourism (which is possible).
by ponchi101 I didn't know SpaceX was so far ahead. Have to start paying more attention. Txs
by Suliso
JazzNU wrote: ↑Tue Jul 20, 2021 5:57 pm
The Musk praise is a lot to me, but I can tell you're a fan.
I'm a space technology fan and Spacex is currently the best in the world. The man himself is fine, but of lesser importance.
JazzNU wrote: ↑Tue Jul 20, 2021 5:57 pmAs for Richard Branson, I think you're being a bit unfair in the way you framed him. He is the only one of the 3 who has built a large portion of his wealthy empire on tourism and this is about space tourism for him. His company's goals may not be as lofty as the other two, but that's a pretty genuine extension of his brand unlike the others unless I missed their heavy investments in other parts of tourism (which is possible).
Actually Branson is probably the most fun guy among the three, but I was only evaluating the underlying technology. If you asked me instead who I'd like to have a beer with it would be him.
Not sure about Bezos, but Musk is not and has never been particularly interested in tourism. He is instead obsessed with colonizing Mars. Honestly I don't think that part is going to work, but I'm overlooking it because there are so many other benefits to drastically cheaper and more sustainable access to space. Imagine how much more space exploration we could do if launches cost 1/20th. Space based manufacturing and mining has a long term potential as well.
by ti-amie I found the Freedom Phone tweet(s) while looking for something else.
by JazzNU Bezos is interested in space tourism and is competitive with Branson. I know Musk is really tourism adjacent with SpaceX since it's so specialized, but he's basically doing space tourism for billionaires where it costs your firstborn to go, so though not his end goal, he's still in that realm with the others, just in an even more exclusive way.
For Branson, I wasn't saying you hated him and I understood you didn't care about his technology as much. I was just saying, while he may be a rich playboy playing in space, what he's doing is very fitting for his business empire.
Musk and Branson are apparently friendly and since they aren't taking up the same exact space in this race, encouraging of one another and Musk is going to be one of Branson's space passengers it would seem. No idea if it's anytime soon, but I'm sure we'll have minute by minute coverage when it happens.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed Jul 21, 2021 12:29 am
I found the Freedom Phone tweet(s) while looking for something else.
Insanity. Visited the site (in incognito) and there isn't a single detail about the phone there so to think people are already giving over money is just proof positive of the deep levels of stupidity circling throughout this group and it's hard to feel bad that they will fall for this scam. Also, very obviously an Android phone so hilarious that they are acting like it's free from Google.
Plastic is such a useful material that it's used everywhere, but fossil-derived plastic, especially the single-use varieties, aren't environmentally friendly. Japanese electronics company Ricoh has created an alternative, though, and called it PLAiR.
PLAiR is a foamed polylactic acid (PLA) sheet that's both flexible and strong. It's manufactured using plant-derived starch and sugar combined with air (hence the name), which is turned into a foam consisting of uniform bubbles tens of microns in diameter. The foam expansion rate can be easily adjusted, allowing for a variety of uses, including cushioning, packing materials, and those single-use plastic lids on disposable coffee cups.
Ricoh has already started using PLAiR to help protect its multifunction printers as part of their packaging, so it looks to be a good alternative to polystyrene, which in its many forms takes hundreds of years to biodegrade. However, as it's also flexible there's a much greater range of potential uses.
As well as not using any fossil-derived plastic, PLAiR promises to be environmentally friendly as it decomposes. Adding it to compost results in PLAiR breaking down to water and carbon dioxide, but it doesn't increase the net amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it's carbon neutral. Burning PLAiR is also fine as it just releases the carbon dioxide it contained at the point of manufacture.
by Jeff from TX Not COVID related, but not good news:
Associated Press 'Superbug' fungus spread in two cities, health officials say
MIKE STOBBE
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials said Thursday they now have evidence of an untreatable fungus spreading in two hospitals and a nursing home.
The “superbug” outbreaks were reported in a Washington, D.C, nursing home and at two Dallas-area hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. A handful of the patients had invasive fungal infections that were impervious to all three major classes of medications.
“This is really the first time we've started seeing clustering of resistance" in which patients seemed to be getting the infections from each other, said the CDC's Dr. Meghan Lyman.
The fungus, Candida auris, is a harmful form of yeast that is considered dangerous to hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems. It is most deadly when it enters the bloodstream, heart or brain. Outbreaks in health care facilities have been spurred when the fungus spread through patient contact or on contaminated surfaces.
Health officials have sounded alarms for years about the superbug after seeing infections in which commonly used drugs had little effect. In 2019, doctors diagnosed three cases in New York that were also resistant to a class of drugs, called echinocandins, that were considered a last line of defense.
In those cases, there was no evidence the infections had spread from patient to patient — scientists concluded the resistance to the drugs formed during treatment.
The new cases did spread, the CDC concluded.
In Washington, D.C., a cluster of 101 C. auris cases at a nursing home dedicated to very sick patients included three that were resistant to all three kinds of antifungal medications. A cluster of 22 in two Dallas-area hospitals included two with that level of resistance. The facilities weren't identified.
Those cases were seen from January to April. Of the five people who were fully resistant to treatment, three died — both Texas patients and one in Washington.
Lyman said both are ongoing outbreaks and that additional infections have been identified since April. But those added numbers were not reported.
Investigators reviewed medical records and found no evidence of previous antifungal use among the patients in those clusters. Health officials say that means they spread from person to person.
by Jeff from TX But, for some happier news: How nature has taken over Chernobyl
Since humans abandoned the area, nature has reclaimed the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. https://www.popsci.com/science/nature-a ... nt_Animals
BY NEEL DHANESHA | UPDATED JUL 21, 2021 7:00 AM
SCIENCE ENVIRONMENT
Chernobyl has a surprising amount of wildlife
People tend to think of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as a nuclear wasteland. But 35 years after a reactor meltdown drove 350,000 people from the region (an area half the size of Delaware), flora and fauna thrive. Some believe the region’s biodiversity has actually increased with no one around.
As a coniferous forest reclaims the city of Pripyat in Ukraine, hundreds of species, from butterflies to bison, roam crumbling streets and abandoned buildings. Here’s what four of them tell us about how nature adapts once we’re gone.
Wild horses
The Przewalski’s horse lived only in captivity until researchers turned 36 loose in the territory between 1998 and 2004. The herd has more than doubled and shows no sign of mutation, which could mean the site is a good place to introduce other critically endangered species.
Predators at their apex wolf
Wolves are seven times more abundant in the area than in similar woodlands. The canids fare well because they face little competition for abundant prey and few dangers to their young. That leads scientists to suspect human presence poses a greater threat to wildlife than an atomic accident.
Enigmatic amphibians frog
Frogs within the region are darker than those outside it, which may indicate the croakers are developing defenses against radiation. Understanding these evolutionary quirks can help researchers better predict the impacts of other kinds of environmental upheaval, like climate change.
Toothy time travelers beaver
The Pripyat River basin was marshy until industrialization intruded. Now a booming beaver population is restoring the ecosystem by felling trees and damming canals. The land eventually will return to its original state, underscoring the planet’s resiliency in the face of Homo sapiens.
This story originally appeared in the Calm issue of Popular Science. Current subscribers can access the whole digital edition here, or click here to subscribe.
by dryrunguy That was actually one of the themes of this year's Ukrainian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. It was my favorite song this year (in case you skipped our Eurovision thread). In any case, if you don't dig the song, just skip ahead to 1:40 to see how gorgeous the area surrounding Chernobyl is today.
by Suliso A good summary of where Blue Origin and SpaceX currently stand (from Quartz).
Blue Origin is still catching up to Elon Musk’s SpaceX
The first passenger-carrying flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard marks a major milestone for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezo’s space company. Does it mean that it’s finally caught up with its main rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX?
The answer, for now, is no.
The two firms share much in common: Aspirations to cut the cost of access to space with reusable rockets, wealthy founders who emerged from Silicon Valley, and even employees who have jumped from one company to the other. Their rivalry has played out in Twitter spats and fights over patents, launch site leases, and most significantly, lucrative government contracts for satellite launches and moon landers.
Now, Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle has finally demonstrated the ability to carry space tourists above the atmosphere, and executives are promising a move to a monthly flight cadence for paying passengers and experimental payloads. Blue has definitely come a long way since 2010, when it received development funding from NASA but wasn’t sure about how to obtain it.
“We said, ‘Give us an invoice,’ and they went ‘Huh?’” Dennis Stone, the NASA executive in charge of the program, said. “They never invoiced anybody; they never had to.”
Breaking down Blue Origin vs. SpaceX
Bezos’ company is still behind SpaceX on a number of key fronts. Above all, Blue Origin still doesn’t have a vehicle that can carry payloads up into space on a permanent basis by placing them in orbit. It is designing a rocket with a reusable booster called New Glenn—named after astronaut John Glenn—that was intended to debut in 2020, but now isn’t expected to fly until the end of 2022. In comparison, SpaceX’s orbital rockets, particularly the Falcon 9 and its reusable first stage, now dominate the launch industry.
When New Glenn does arrive, it has the potential to be a game-changer because it is will be much bigger than the Falcon 9. On the other hand, SpaceX is developing its own huge, totally reusable rocket, called Starship. It has already done test hops with the second stage, and test-fired the booster for the first time this week—two key demonstrations we haven’t seen from Blue Origin.
Or, consider human spaceflight: A day after New Shepard took four people to space for a few minutes, four astronauts hopped into the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that brought them to the International Space Station and took it for a nearly hour-long spin around the orbital habitat to park at a different port.
Or, satellites: SpaceX now operates the largest satellite network in the world, called Starlink, that it uses to deliver broadband internet to customers on earth. Amazon, not Blue Origin, is launching a similar satellite network, but has yet to put any spacecraft in orbit.
It’s not that outsiders lack confidence in Blue Origin. The company has the capital and the team to deliver innovative space hardware. United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin that is the US military’s preferred launch company, hired Blue Origin to build the engine for its next rocket, called Vulcan. But delivery of prototype engines has been delayed—which hasn’t escaped public attention.
Indeed, NASA officials and industry observers have long thought that Blue is the only likely competitor for SpaceX—and they’d like to see a competitor establish itself to help drive down the cost of going to space. That day has yet to arrive.
by ponchi101 I was thinking about some the stats you posted a few days ago. SpaceX's Starship, as you said, is expected to be able to carry 100 passengers, at about $5MM per launch. That is $50,000 per person, which is not excessively over one of those DUBAI-LONDON flights from Emirates if you book their extra-luxury cabins.
There will be a market for that, almost instantly.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 5:00 pm
I was thinking about some the stats you posted a few days ago. SpaceX's Starship, as you said, is expected to be able to carry 100 passengers, at about $5MM per launch. That is $50,000 per person, which is not excessively over one of those DUBAI-LONDON flights from Emirates if you book their extra-luxury cabins.
There will be a market for that, almost instantly.
Absolutely, although I think it will take some time before they're ready to take any people let alone 100. The first few years it will be freight only. We'll see if they really get down to this aspirational cost.
Also there is another company which has a plan for a private space station. That would provide some destination to go to. Full 100 people in that ship will be cramped.
by Suliso I'm probably boring you with this subject by now... But still beyond the rockets themselves I'm super impressed with how fast is the progress on the build site. I've never seen private industry or government for that matter build anything so fast. Construction ongoing non stop 24/7 in four shifts and now flying in extra employees with a private jet. It's like a private Manhattan project and it's not even clear why so much haste. As JazzNu said either genius or mad.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by Suliso The largest rocket ever to be made was briefly stacked this morning before being destacked for further work.
The total height is ca 36 floor building + another 8 floors for the launch pad. The actual first orbital launch is still 2-3 months away I think. The launch site is not finished and there is no FAA authorization. Still getting close with fit checks, likely to be followed by cryogenic tests and static fires. The lower stage of the rocket has 29 engines, the upper has six.
by Suliso Better pictures of the same event.
The black surface is a cover of heat resistance tiles to survive reentry at 28,000 km/h
Heat resistant tiles are only needed on one side, the one facing atmosphere upon reentry.
by ponchi101 How does the top part land? Airplane style, or does it parachute? That thing is pretty big to maneuver, with such tiny wings.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 06, 2021 9:56 pm
How does the top part land? Airplane style, or does it parachute? That thing is pretty big to maneuver, with such tiny wings.
The top part has six engines (3 for sea level and 3 for vacuum only). Once it has aerobraked from 28,000 km/h to something more like a 1,000 km/h by falling horizontally (black face forward) it will switch on these 3 engines, reorient itself to a vertical position and land propulsively on legs. The actual landing similar to how the current Falcon 9 first stage lands. This has so far been demonstrated successfully only once and from 10 km not orbit.
The bigger first stage will also land using its engines, but since it will have no legs it will be caught out of the air by the tower you see in pictures. Will require great precision and has not been tried yet.
Spacex is not afraid to take risks, that's for sure. One has to to accomplish something no one has before.
by Suliso This post and next contains a tour of Spacex Texas launch complex with Elon Musk as a guide. Lots of technical rocket talk for those interested, but I'd like to point out something else what I think is a key for their success. That is freedom to fail creatively. That is fail not because you made a stupid mistake, but because you perhaps pushed the boundaries of technology too far. I'm working in R&D myself and now how important is the ability to just try and not be judged for failure. Large old companies often find it very difficult to do (see Boeing) and company making advanced rockets can't be a small company anymore.
by Suliso Part 3 to be posted at a later date
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Sat Aug 07, 2021 6:27 pm
This post and next contains a tour of Spacex Texas launch complex with Elon Musk as a guide. Lots of technical rocket talk for those interested, but I'd like to point out something else what I think is a key for their success. That is freedom to fail creatively. That is fail not because you made a stupid mistake, but because you perhaps pushed the boundaries of technology too far. I'm working in R&D myself and now how important is the ability to just try and not be judged for failure. Large old companies often find it very difficult to do (see Boeing) and company making advanced rockets can't be a small company anymore.
Wawrinka's "Fail better".
Great video, not only from the technical part of view, but also a very good managerial tutorial. If only I could get the people in my industry understand the concept of "failing creatively"; we operate under a culture that any mistake has to be analyzed to the point of execution by the person that did it.
"You can't tell your professor 'your question is dumb' ". I did that once. Got fired (it was not school anymore) soon after that.
by Suliso I'm a chemist, so we can't afford to blow up things on a large scale. Our ability to fail creatively at R&D level is really department dependent. In the small group I'm working at we're pretty good at this hence also one of the few departments which actually innovates regularly.
by Suliso Let's put aside engineering brilliance for a moment and delve into stupidity of people.
"HOLD MY BEER, COVID SKEPTICS" — Deep dive into stupid: Meet the growing group that rejects germ theory
Germ theory denialist Facebook group went from 147 members in April 2020 to 18.4K now.
Listen up, sheeple: COVID-19 doesn't exist. Viruses don't cause disease, and they aren't contagious. Those doctors and health experts who say otherwise don't know what they're talking about; the real experts are on Facebook. And they're saying it loud and clear: The pandemic is caused by your own deplorable life choices, like eating meat or pasta. Any "COVID" symptoms you might experience are actually the result of toxic lifestyle exposures—and you have only yourself to blame.
As utterly idiotic and abhorrent as all of the above is, it's not an exaggeration of the messages being spread by a growing group of Darwin-award finalists on the Internet—that is, germ theory denialists. Yes, you read that correctly: Germ theory denialists—also known as people who don't believe that pathogenic viruses and bacteria can cause disease.
As an extension of their rejection of basic scientific and clinical data collected over centuries, they deny the existence of the devastating pandemic that has sickened upwards of 200 million people worldwide, killing more than 4 million.
And you thought your garden variety antivaxxers is the rock bottom?
by ti-amie They remind me of flat earthers.
by ponchi101 Round them up. Give them a small spoonful of anthrax. Watch them pass away.
How hard is to deal with this sort of people.
by Suliso Here is the third part as promised. If that man is not obsessed with Mars I don't know who is.
by ponchi101 Haven't seen it, but just to comment.
I really wonder why he has the obsession. "Colonizing" Mars will not help one iota to solve our problems here. Simple math: fly 1,000 people a day to Mars, and that is 365K/year. Only one drop taken out from the bucket of problems down here.
I also wonder: are they looking at FARMING in Mars? How do you feed 500,000 people (his goal) in a planer with no arable land?
by Suliso I guess only Elon could really answer it. However, I think he's not looking to solve Earth's problems in a way you think. At least not with Spacex (Tesla is more geared for that). What he's saying is that if something awful happens to Earth in the future there would still be Mars left. That is 7 billion might perish, but half a million still left elsewhere to rebuild the human race.
I think we're at least 10 years away from anyone stepping on Mars, more likely 15. While it's true that Musk is making a significant progress with the transportation system there are still other super hard problems ahead - food, propellant production on Mars, radiation protection and so on.
by Suliso Here is a different, but also very innovative take on how rockets ought to be developed and built.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie Wouldn't a better headline have been "age and size of local coral surprises scientists" ? If the locals already had a name for it how is this a "discovery"? Kind of like the "discovery" of the Americas?
‘No one has noticed it’: 400-year-old giant coral discovered on Great Barrier Reef Named Muga dhambi by traditional owners , it was uncovered on a marine citizen science course
Royce Kurmelovs
@RoyceRk2
Thu 19 Aug 2021 18.30 BST
Smith said local fishers and researchers had known about the coral for some time but until that moment no one had looked closer.
(...)
The exact species of the coral is unknown as genetic testing has not been done to confirm, but it belongs to the genus Porites sp.
The traditional custodians of Palm Island, the Manbarra people, have named the coral Muga dhambi. The name translates to “Big coral”.
Muga dhambi has been described in the journal Scientific Reports this week with co-authors that included 17-year-old Kailash Cook, who helped measure the coral during the dive, and the “godfather of coral”, 76-year-old Dr Charlie Veron, who helped identify it.
by Suliso A nice overview video about silicon chip design and manufacturing. A truly global effort and likely indeed the most complex manufacturing process in the world today. What's not in the video, but perhaps should have been is the manufacturing of ultrapure silicon needed.
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:08 pm
A nice overview video about silicon chip design and manufacturing. A truly global effort and likely indeed the most complex manufacturing process in the world today. What's not in the video, but perhaps should have been is the manufacturing of ultrapure silicon needed.
The guy obviously only scratched the surface and it is still very impressive.
Now, the geopolitical consequences of the location of some of these companies is huge. For example, TSMC, located in Taiwan, means that if the Chinese were to take over the island, the entire economy of the world has changed. An incredible position for a single company to be in.
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:08 pm
A nice overview video about silicon chip design and manufacturing. A truly global effort and likely indeed the most complex manufacturing process in the world today. What's not in the video, but perhaps should have been is the manufacturing of ultrapure silicon needed.
The guy obviously only scratched the surface and it is still very impressive.
Now, the geopolitical consequences of the location of some of these companies is huge. For example, TSMC, located in Taiwan, means that if the Chinese were to take over the island, the entire economy of the world has changed. An incredible position for a single company to be in.
The vast majority of semiconductor manufacturing is in Taiwan. Besides TSMC, they have UMC and MediaTek. Yeah, if China were to take over, it would change the supply chain for technology immensely.
by Suliso I think these factories would have to be destroyed if China were to invade. Not seeing them giving in willingly, particularly after seeing Hongkong. Recovery from that would indeed be very difficult, some years would pass for sure.
by ti-amie
by ti-amieApple Issues Emergency Security Updates to Close a Spyware Flaw
Researchers at Citizen Lab found that NSO Group, an Israeli spyware company, had infected Apple products without so much as a click.
By Nicole Perlroth
Sept. 13, 2021
Updated 3:30 p.m. ET
Apple on Monday issued emergency software updates for a critical vulnerability in its products after security researchers uncovered a flaw that allows highly invasive spyware from Israel’s NSO Group to infect anyone’s iPhone, Apple Watch or Mac computer without so much as a click.
Apple’s security team has been working around the clock to develop a fix since Tuesday, after researchers at Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity watchdog organization at the University of Toronto, discovered that a Saudi activist’s iPhone had been infected with spyware from NSO Group.
The spyware, called Pegasus, used a novel method to invisibly infect an Apple device without the victim’s knowledge for as long as six months. Known as a “zero click remote exploit,” it is considered the Holy Grail of surveillance because it allows governments, mercenaries and criminals to secretly break into a victim’s device without tipping them off.
Using the zero-click infection method, Pegasus can turn on a user’s camera and microphone, record their messages, texts, emails, calls — even those sent via encrypted messaging and phone apps like Signal — and send it back to NSO’s clients at governments around the world.
“This spyware can do everything an iPhone user can do on their device and more,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, who teamed up with Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, on the finding.
In the past, victims only learned their devices were infected by spyware after receiving a suspicious link texted to their phone or email. But NSO Group’s zero-click capability gives the victim no such prompt, and enables full access to a person’s digital life. These capabilities can fetch millions of dollars on the underground market for hacking tools.
An Apple spokesman confirmed Citizen Lab’s assessment and said the company planned to add spyware barriers to its next iOS 15 software update, expected later this year.
NSO Group did not immediately respond to inquiries on Monday.
NSO Group has long drawn controversy. The company has said it sells its spyware to only governments that meet strict human rights standards. But over the past six years, its Pegasus spyware has turned up on the phones of activists, dissidents, lawyers, doctors, nutritionists and even children in countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico.
In July, NSO Group became the subject of intense media scrutiny after Amnesty International, the human rights watchdog, and Forbidden Stories, a group that focuses on free speech, teamed up with a consortium of media organizations on “The Pegasus Project” to publish a list they said contained some 50,000 people — including hundreds of journalists, government leaders, dissidents and activists — selected as targets by NSO’s clients.
The consortium did not disclose how it obtained the list and it was unclear whether the list was aspirational or whether the people were actually targeted with NSO spyware.
Among those listed were Azam Ahmed, a former New York Times Mexico City bureau chief who has reported widely on corruption, violence and surveillance in Latin America, including on NSO itself; and Ben Hubbard, The Times’s bureau chief in Beirut, who has investigated rights abuses and corruption in Saudi Arabia and wrote a recent biography of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Shalev Hulio, a co-founder of NSO Group, vehemently denied the list’s accuracy, telling The Times, “This is like opening up the white pages, choosing 50,000 numbers and drawing some conclusion from it.”
NSO’s clients previously infected their targets using text messages that cajoled victims into clicking on a link. Those links made it possible for journalists to investigate the possible presence of NSO’s spyware. But the new zero-click method makes the discovery of spyware by journalists and cybersecurity researchers much harder.
“The commercial spyware industry is going darker,” said Mr. Marczak, a researcher at Citizen Lab who helped uncover the exploit on a Saudi activist’s phone.
Mr. Scott-Railton urged Apple customers to run their software updates.
“Do you own an Apple product? Update it today,” he said.
by Suliso Some interesting facts about cars: currently about 2 billion cars (including SUV's and light trucks) on the road worldwide and increasing. Total car production capacity about 100 million per year. So to replace all with electric cars would take at least 20 years if you sold no more ICE cars from tomorrow (obviously impossible). Perhaps it could be sped up to 15 years with an immense effort. Of course this is no argument against starting, just that the transition will take a very long time.
Also I'm reading that lithium ion battery technology improves at a rate of about 8% per year. Doesn't maybe sound so much, but if that stays constant it's still doubling of performance every 9 years. Not exactly Moore's law, but nothing else really improves at the rate of chips and memory. There are a lot of people working on fundamentally new battery technologies as well, but that's a lot more uncertain. Serious scientific and engineering breakthroughs required. Anything new needs to be not only with better energy density, but also price competitive.
by ponchi101 Scope of the problem.
With 2 billion cars (I am assuming American billions), driving 5,000 miles a year (a conservative estimate), that means 10 Trillion miles a year. If all cars were to drive 50 miles to the gallon, total CO2 output would be: 1,800,000,000 Tonnes of CO2 emitted.
That is only cars, assuming they were all gasoline (not diesel).
Enough to lead you to heavy drinking. I guess.
by Suliso I believe about 1/3 of all CO2 emissions originate from transportation (cars, trucks, planes etc).
by ponchi101 The item that surprises people, and is #2 in CO2 emissions is agriculture. And it is NOT agriculture "because they use so much machinery"; that part is included in the transportation sector that you mention. Soil tilling and regular agricultural practices emit a lot f greenhouse gases. Of course, agriculture also accounts for a lot of CH4 which is even a more potent greenhouse gas, mostly from bovines that emit a lot of it from both ends.
I recently found an article about a new CO2 capturing plant/machine in Iceland. I was surprised by one statement: the promoters of the machine were saying that it was better than plants (vegetation) because "trees and other plants make extensive use of land". Yes, it is called A FOREST; what can be so wrong with that?
I gather that basically, everything we do generates some form of greenhouse gas. I still say: we need a screen at the Lagrange point between the sun and Earth. Musk's Starship can carry 100 tonnes into space. If it can take a large screen there, flying it to that point would not be complicated. I just don't know how large it would have to be to make a difference.
by Suliso These four folks get to go fly to space tonight for a three day trip (not 10 min like Branson or Bezos) on Spacex Dragon.
by ponchi101 Best of luck to them. This one is indeed a different kind of flight.
by ti-amieHuge hack reveals embarrassing details of who’s behind Proud Boys and other far-right websites
Researchers say it will allow them to gain important new insights into how extremists operate online
By
Drew Harwell
,
Craig Timberg
and
Hannah Allam
Today at 1:58 p.m. EDT
Epik long has been the favorite Internet company of the far-right, providing domain services to QAnon theorists, Proud Boys and other instigators of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — allowing them to broadcast hateful messages from behind a veil of anonymity.
But that veil abruptly vanished last week when a huge breach by the hacker group Anonymous dumped into public view more than 150 gigabytes of previously private data — including user names, passwords and other identifying information of Epik’s customers.
Extremism researchers and political opponents have treated the leak as a Rosetta Stone to the far-right, helping them to decode who has been doing what with whom over several years. Initial revelations have spilled out steadily across Twitter since news of the hack broke last week, often under the hashtag #epikfail, but those studying the material say they will need months and perhaps years to dig through all of it.
“It’s massive. It may be the biggest domain-style leak I’ve seen and, as an extremism researcher, it’s certainly the most interesting,” said Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who studies right-wing extremism. “It’s an embarrassment of riches — stress on the embarrassment.”
Epik, based in the Seattle suburb of Sammamish, has made its name in the Internet world by providing critical Web services to sites that have run afoul of other companies’ policies against hate speech, misinformation and advocating violence. Its client list is a roll-call of sites known for permitting extreme posts and that have been rejected by other companies for their failure to moderate what their users post.
Online records show those sites have included 8chan, which was dropped by its providers after hosting the manifesto of a gunman who killed 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019; Gab, which was dropped for hosting the antisemitic rants of a gunman who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; and Parler, which was dropped due to lax moderation related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Epik also provides services to a network of sites devoted to extremist QAnon conspiracy theories. Epik briefly hosted the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer in 2019 after acquiring a cybersecurity company that had provided it with hosting services, but Epik soon canceled that contract, according to news reports. Epik also stopped supporting 8chan after a short period of time, the company has said.
Earlier this month, Epik also briefly provided service to the antiabortion group Texas Right to Life, whose website, ProLifeWhistleblower.com, was removed by the hosting service GoDaddy because it solicited accusations about which medical providers might be violating a state abortion ban.
An Epik attorney said the company stopped working with the site because it violated company rules against collecting people’s private information. Online records show Epik was still the site’s domain registrar as of last week, though the digital tip line is no longer available, and the site now redirects to the group’s homepage.
Epik founder Robert Monster’s willingness to provide technical support to online sanctuaries of the far-right have made him a regular target of anti-extremism advocates, who criticized him for using Epik’s tools to republish the Christchurch gunman’s manifesto and live-streamed video the killer had made of the slaughter.
Monster also used the moment as a marketing opportunity, saying the files were now “effectively uncensorable,” according to screenshots of his tweets and Gab posts from the time. Monster also urged Epik employees to watch the video, which he said would convince them it was faked, Bloomberg News reported.
Monster has defended his work as critical to keeping the Internet uncensored and free, aligning himself with conservative critics who argue that leading technology companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and YouTube have gone too far in policing content they deem inappropriate.
Monster did not respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post. But he said in an email to customers two days after hackers announced the breach that the company had suffered an “alleged security incident” and asked customers to report back any “unusual account activity.”
“You are in our prayers today,” Monster wrote last week, as news of the hack spread. “When situations arise where individuals might not have honorable intentions, I pray for them. I believe that what the enemy intends for evil, God invariably transforms into good. Blessings to you all.”
Since the hack, Epik’s security protocols have been the target of ridicule among researchers, who’ve marveled at the site’s apparent failure to take basic security precautions, such as routine encryption that could have protected data about its customers from becoming public.
The files include years of website purchase records, internal company emails and customer account credentials revealing who administers some of the biggest far-right websites. The data includes client names, home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and passwords left in plain, readable text. The hack even exposed the personal records from Anonymize, a privacy service Epik offered to customers wanting to conceal their identity.
Similar failings by other hacked companies have drawn scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, which has probed companies such as dating site Ashley Madison for failing to protect their customers’ private data from hackers. FTC investigations have resulted in settlements imposing financial penalties and more rigorous privacy standards.
“Given Epik’s boasts about security, and the scope of its web hosting, I would think it would be an FTC target, especially if the company was warned but failed to take protective action,” said David Vladeck, a former head of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, now at Georgetown University Law Center. “I would add that the FTC wouldn’t care about the content — right wing or left wing; the questions would be the possible magnitude and impact of the breach and the representations … the company may have made about security.”
The FTC declined to comment.
Researchers poring through the trove say the most crucial findings concern the identities of people hosting various extremist sites and the key role Epik played in keeping material online that might otherwise have vanished from the Internet — or at least the parts of the Internet that are easily stumbled upon by ordinary users.
“The company played such a major role in keeping far-right terrorist cesspools alive,” said Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism. “Without Epik, many extremist communities — from QAnon and white nationalists to accelerationist neo-Nazis — would have had far less oxygen to spread harm, whether that be building toward the January 6 Capitol riots or sowing the misinformation and conspiracy theories chipping away at democracy.”
The breach, first reported by the freelance journalist Steven Monacelli, was made publicly available for download last week alongside a note from Anonymous hackers saying it would help researchers trace the ownership and management of “the worst trash the Internet has to offer.”
After the hackers’ announcement, Epik initially said it was “not aware of any breach.” But in a rambling, three-hour live stream last week, Monster acknowledged there had been a “hijack of data that should not have been hijacked” and called on people not to use the data for “negative” purposes.
“If you have a negative intent to use that data, it’s not going to work out for you. I’m just telling you,” he said. “If the demon tells you to do it, the demon is not your friend.”
Several domains in the leak are associated with the far-right Proud Boys group, which is known for violent street brawls and involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and was banned by Facebook in 2018 as a hate group.
A Twitter account, @epikfailsnippet, that is posting unverified revelations from the leaked data, included a thread purporting to expose administrators of the Proud Boys sites. One man who was identified by name as administrator of a local Proud Boys forum was said to be an employee of Drexel University; the university said he hasn’t worked at Drexel since November 2020.
Technology news site the Daily Dot reported that Ali Alexander, a conservative political activist who played a key role in spreading false voter fraud claims about the 2020 presidential election, took steps after the Jan. 6 siege to obscure his ownership of more than 100 domains registered to Epik. Nearly half reportedly used variations of the “Stop the Steal” slogan pushed by Alexander and others. Alexander did not reply to requests for comment from the Daily Dot or, on Tuesday, from The Post.
Extremism researchers urge careful fact-checking to protect credibility, but the data remains tantalizing for its potential to unmask extremists in public-facing jobs.
Emma Best, co-founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit whistleblower group, said some researchers call the Epik hack “the Panama Papers of hate groups,” a comparison to the leak of more than 11 million documents that exposed a rogue offshore finance industry. And, like the Panama Papers, scouring the files is labor intensive, with payoffs that could be months away.
“A lot of research begins with naming names,” Best said. “There’s a lot of optimism and feeling of being overwhelmed, and people knowing they’re in for the long haul with some of this data.”
by Suliso Elon Musk revealed in a recent interview that partially reusable Spacex Falcon 9 has a basic cost (excluding overhead, taxes, profit etc.) of 15 million dollars per launch. It can take about 17t to low earth orbit. This cost advantage relative to fully expendable systems from competitors allows them to dominate the commercial launch market with ca 60% of all mass to orbit (another 30% combined is from China). The aspirational target for Starship is 100-150 t to low earth orbit for 1 million dollars. So up to 10x more mass for 1/15 of the cost. If he comes anywhere close to that target...
by Suliso Norway is the leader in adopting electric cars (strong government incentives). In September 77.5% of all new cars sold were electric, up from 61.5% a year ago. As it currently stands a sale of new gasoline or diesel cars will end in 2025.
The graph below is already a bit outdated (2020) as developments are very fast, but still shows some trends.
by Suliso Norwegians are rich, don't drive too many old cars. So if the trend continues ca 2/3 of cars on Norwegian roads will be electric in about 10 years.
by ponchi101 I was impressed when I was in Bergen and I saw way too many Tesla's and BMW i3's. Tesla's must have made 1/4 of all cars. Lots of Nissan Leaf's too.
The Tesla of choice is the Model S. Around $100K, so yes, it works if the population is rich.
by JazzNU I'm skeptical of electric cars in their current form taking over as much as once thought. The recent downsides exposed about electric cars, such as the battery degrading and having less mileage over time when they already have a shorter range make me doubt their takeover.
by Suliso
JazzNU wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 2:12 am
I'm skeptical of electric cars in their current form taking over as much as once thought. The recent downsides exposed about electric cars, such as the battery degrading and having less mileage over time when they already have a shorter range make me doubt their takeover.
I'm the opposite. Was somewhat skeptical 1-2 years ago. Now looking at near exponential sales growth and crucially enormous industry investment I'm a believer that this is an inevitability. Of course will still takes years to fully happen.
For example, Ford just announced a new factory in Tennessee solely for electric cars (11.4 billion investment), Volkswagen is moving almost completely to electrics and then of course there is Tesla with two more large factories under construction and scheduled to start production within half a year.
by Jeff from TX I think one of the biggest current issues here in the United States is the range. electric works great for commuter/run around town vehicle, but on a road trip to see family, they don't have the range, at least at the moment.
by Suliso As an intermediate solution in US where majority of families have two cars you can have one of each kind. However, I think 400 mile range vehicles will be rather common in the coming years. I don't mean just top of the line 100k+ Teslas.
In any case I think this particular revolution will be led by EU and China. For the next 2-4 years at least.
by JazzNU
Jeff from TX wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 3:57 pm
I think one of the biggest current issues here in the United States is the range. electric works great for commuter/run around town vehicle, but on a road trip to see family, they don't have the range, at least at the moment.
Yes, this. Plus the re-charging. The limited options are a problem, but even more so, the time it takes to re-charge. I hadn't thought about much of it til I saw it mentioned in an article about the lawsuit and then again on Tesla Reddit and then I was at a highway rest stop a few weeks and saw cars charging. It never occurred to me how long they needed to stay there to re-charge. A non-starter for many I'd think. Hybrid is by far the superior option it seems unless there is a way to greatly shorten the length. And I can't imagine this just being a US problem.
by Suliso Long charging is a lot less of a problem than you all imagine. If you own a house you charge overnight on a regular slow charging (better for batteries anyway and cheaper too). Will rarely need fast public charging except for road trips or commercial use. I hope to see public long charging available widely at parking houses and workplace parking lots.
Hybrid was a good idea when introduced, but now it's a dead end technology I think. It's helping with CO2 only marginally...
by Suliso The most basic Tesla model 3 (other makers are similar) claims a range of 263 miles. Let's be realistic and assume very hot or very cold environment and/or non ideal driving, so 200 miles. How often does one drive more than that in a single day? Depends from your lifestyle of course, but maybe 5-10 days per year? Perhaps more often deep in the countryside. I wish I had some statistics on this...
by Suliso The biggest problem here in EU is that a very large proportion of people live in apartments and then indeed charging becomes an issue. As I said before the solution would be a widely available slow charging + a network of emergency fast charging. It can't be just fast charging, because indeed the fast one is still 20-40 min and if you had to do it very often that would get old fast.
by Jeff from TX
Suliso wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 5:06 pm
The most basic Tesla model 3 (other makers are similar) claims a range of 263 miles. Let's be realistic and assume very hot or very cold environment and/or non ideal driving, so 200 miles. How often does one drive more than that in a single day? Depends from your lifestyle of course, but maybe 5-10 days per year? Perhaps more often deep in the countryside. I wish I had some statistics on this...
Granted, this is a limited problem. But I have driven close to 1,000 miles without stopping in the past to go back "home" to Texas. Heck, just getting through W. Texas is a huge distance, and there ain't much there to stop at. Some towns are 80 to 100 miles apart, and there isn't anything between them. So, yes, it also depends on where you drive. In a city, quite practical. In rural America (granted, there aren't that many people there), it is an issue.
by Suliso You're very unusual. I don't think I have ever in my life driven more than 300 miles in a single day.
by ponchi101 The sole reasons to have an electric are: environment.
And ultra fast acceleration (Model S Ludicrous mode).
The environmental issue is what will drive the technology, but up to a point. Remember, your electric is only as clean as the power house that charges it. But in the USA, I believe the solution is indeed two cars. One electric, for the city, one gas powered, in case you need to get groceries in Texas.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:11 pm
The sole reasons to have an electric are: environment.
And ultra fast acceleration (Model S Ludicrous mode).
Under right circumstances would be cheaper as well. That is definitely cheaper to run, but not necessarily paying off the extra what was paid buying it.
As for acceleration Model S Ludicrous mode is competing with Lamborghini and the like, but even a regular Model 3 will have a better acceleration than a gasoline car in the same price category. It's just a nature of an electric motor.
by skatingfan
Suliso wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 7:21 pm
You're very unusual. I don't think I have ever in my life driven more than 300 miles in a single day.
Driving more than 300 miles in North America is pretty easy.
by mmmm8
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 9:39 pm
I was impressed when I was in Bergen and I saw way too many Tesla's and BMW i3's. Tesla's must have made 1/4 of all cars. Lots of Nissan Leaf's too.
The Tesla of choice is the Model S. Around $100K, so yes, it works if the population is rich.
Yes, but there's also a decent amount of Smart cars and other smaller vehicles that are much more affordable (I've only been to Oslo). It's not cost-prohibitive to buy an electric car. They have electric charging stations in pretty much any parking lot in Oslo - the city makes it very manageable to drive electric (whether that or demand came first, I don't know)
by ti-amie So IG, Facebook and What's App are down for many people. Last night 60 Minutes aired an interview with a whistleblower re FB, not to mention all of the negative publicity they've gotten lately.
by ti-amie This FB outage is starting to look more serious than first thought.
...The cause of the outage remains unclear. Madory said it appears Facebook withdrew “authoritative DNS routes” that let the rest of the internet communicate with its properties. Such routes are part of the internet’s Domain Name System, a central component of the internet that directs its traffic. Without Facebook broadcasting its routes on the public internet, apps and web addresses simple could not locate it....
Madory said there was no sign that anyone but Facebook was responsible and discounted the possibility that another major internet player, such as a telecom company, might have inadvertently rewritten major routing tables that affect Facebook.
“No one else announced these routes,” said Madory.
Computer scientists speculated that a bug introduced by a configuration change in Facebook’s routing management system could be to blame. Colombia University computer scientist Steven Bellovin tweeted that he expected Facebook would first try an automated recovery in such a case. If that failed, it could be in for “a world of hurt” — because it would need to order manual changes at outside data centers, he added.
In other words no one can talk to the FB routers and vice versa because the "routes" don't exist anymore.
by Suliso Yeah, I also find absence of Whatsapp very annoying. I mean I do have other options to communicate, but under normal circumstances Whatsapp is the only app I use. Almost everyone I know has it so difficult to change to another one.
by JazzNU
Suliso wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 7:21 pm
You're very unusual. I don't think I have ever in my life driven more than 300 miles in a single day.
I assure you that it is not remotely unusual, in fact very common. I assume this is either a difference in how our countries/continents operate or about the size of the countries.
A very healthy number of people in the US, by the time they've reached let's say their mid-20s, I think have been on a road trip longer than 300 miles. Probably waning a bit now since less and less of them actually know how to drive by the time they are 21, but road trips were always very popular among college students. So if you didn't take a road trip with your family (you very likely did), then you probably went with your friends.
I'd done 300+ mile road trips like 10 times before my 8th birthday. It's just very common here. Done it more times than I can possibly count. And driven it myself many many times. And, for me, the number of trips would jump almost exponentially if that 300 miles becomes 250.
Suliso wrote: ↑Sat Oct 02, 2021 7:21 pm
You're very unusual. I don't think I have ever in my life driven more than 300 miles in a single day.
I assure you that it is not remotely unusual, in fact very common. I assume this is either a difference in how our countries/continents operate or about the size of the countries.
A very healthy number of people in the US, by the time they've reached let's say their mid-20s, I think have been on a road trip longer than 300 miles. Probably waning a bit now since less and less of them actually know how to drive by the time they are 21, but road trips were always very popular among college students. So if you didn't take a road trip with your family (you very likely did), then you probably went with your friends.
I'd done 300+ mile road trips like 10 times before my 8th birthday. It's just very common here. Done it more times than I can possibly count. And driven it myself many many times. And, for me, the number of trips would jump almost exponentially if that 300 miles becomes 250.
I've probably mentioned this before, but just in case...
The best trip I ever took was a road trip. It was 1996 and leading into the July 4th weekend. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and I had oodles of comp time, so I told my boss I was taking the rest of the week off. I was all by myself and drove without maps (until Friday at Noon, when I needed to figure out how to get back to Washington, DC, where I was living at the time).
I had a Honda Del Sol at the time (removeable top) and drove shirtless most of the time. I ate at Ma and Pop restaurants. I drove on mountain roads. I saw the best drag pageant I have ever witnessed in Nashville (only three contestants, and the one who finished third made her entrance by being lowered from the ceiling on a swing wearing a dress made of playing cards... the competition was BRUTALLY ferocious). I walked around downtown Memphis. I saw fireworks on the Mississippi River in Little Rock, AR.
When Noon on Friday rolled around, I was in rural northeastern Louisiana. So I whipped out the map to plot my route home.
After driving through Mississippi and Alabama, I walked around downtown Atlanta just days before the beginning of the summer Olympics. I pulled up in front of the apartment I was renting Sunday evening. Then, I went back to work on Monday.
I highly recommend it.
by ponchi101 About WhatsApp: people in the USA simply DO NOT understand the amount of business done over the platform. There is not one single delivery service in Colombia that is not done through WA. People will send you their products' line and menus over it. it is vital to the service sector.
And, actually. The Original comms app was VIBER. it is still around, and it did not crash today. Maybe they will gain some traction again.
by MJ2004 Just like I don’t use FB I refuse to use WhatsApp. My mom is in Spain right now and wanted me to use WhatsApp since she won’t have her regular texting. I told her to email me.
by JazzNU I knew about WhatsApp's use in South America and also in developing countries around the world. To hear about it's use in Europe is more surprising. Especially because of the privacy concerns that have been raised in the past.
Maybe this will make it clear that reliance on just one app isn't the best idea. It is just an app, not a utility with some level of regulation that has to meet standards of operation.
Kind of sounds like PayPal in some ways. The over reliance on a non-bank that has zero standards to meet other than what they impose on themselves while controlling a lot of people's money and income has long been disturbing to me and it's been great to see some other companies take away some of their market share.
by Suliso It is extremely convenient even if you do have a ton of other options. I guess in US you use standard texting, but this is not free. Especially if you do it across borders. I don't use Facebook itself, though.
by Suliso As for road trips I've done quite a few myself, but I try to plan them in such a way that a day's drive doesn't exceed ca 150 miles. I probably have done 200 occasionally when going home.
by Suliso I should probably clarify that I don't like being in a car for long hours. Doesn't mean no one around here drives long distances ever. A colleague drove nonstop from here to Sweden few weeks ago and I know some Latvians here who drive once a year to Latvia in just two days (for a family saves money).
Also maybe I was too fast in saying I've never driven 300, perhaps there has been once or twice (long day in Namibia comes to mind). The longest ever probably with my uncle at age 13 from Riga to St Petersburg (ca 600 km).
by ponchi101
JazzNU wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:34 am
I knew about WhatsApp's use in South America and also in developing countries around the world. To hear about it's use in Europe is more surprising. Especially because of the privacy concerns that have been raised in the past.
Maybe this will make it clear that reliance on just one app isn't the best idea. It is just an app, not a utility with some level of regulation that has to meet standards of operation.
Kind of sounds like PayPal in some ways. The over reliance on a non-bank that has zero standards to meet other than what they impose on themselves while controlling a lot of people's money and income has long been disturbing to me and it's been great to see some other companies take away some of their market share.
I really don't know why WA gained the upper hand, because Viber was very popular and offers the same features. I even think it is better.
But the convenient thing about these apps is that they are worldwide and free. For me, when I used to travel for work, keeping in touch with the family was easy that way. And in the industry is was also easy because if you get WiFi, it makes no difference that you have 5 people from Brasil, 3 from Argie, and 25 different nationalities and phone plans.
Also. European plans are outrageously expensive for phones. So if you just get data, you can communicate right away.
I also read that, for example, fishermen in developing countries use them to contact ports and see where the best prices are. Makes for a more efficient market.
by JazzNU
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:16 am
It is extremely convenient even if you do have a ton of other options. I guess in US you use standard texting, but this is not free. Especially if you do it across borders. I don't use Facebook itself, though.
It is free here basically. If you have a phone that carries a phone number that you pay for then it's going to come with unlimited text. That's even the case if you have a low-cost plan through a government program. They moved away from limiting the number of texts some time ago.
WhatsApp has long been a way people communicate if you're on vacation in another country, that hasn't changed that much to my knowledge. But I've noticed that WhatsApp became much less of an everyone has and uses it kind of app once unlimited texts were a thing. People also moved away from it more and more as security concerns became headlines. FB is shady AF and with the merger of WhatsApp and FB Messenger on the horizon and the protections they've lessened recently, seems like they are leaning in even more to that.
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:16 am
It is extremely convenient even if you do have a ton of other options. I guess in US you use standard texting, but this is not free. Especially if you do it across borders. I don't use Facebook itself, though.
It is free here basically. If you have a phone that carries a phone number that you pay for then it's going to come with unlimited text. That's even the case if you have a low-cost plan through a government program. They moved away from limiting the number of texts some time ago.
Is texting for you free also to foreign numbers? If so then I understand that there is no need for Whatsapp.
by ti-amie Another part of the world also weighed in yesterday.
by JazzNU
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:56 am
I should probably clarify that I don't like being in a car for long hours. Doesn't mean no one around here drives long distances ever. A colleague drove nonstop from here to Sweden few weeks ago and I know some Latvians here who drive once a year to Latvia in just two days (for a family saves money).
Also maybe I was too fast in saying I've never driven 300, perhaps there has been once or twice (long day in Namibia comes to mind). The longest ever probably with my uncle at age 13 from Riga to St Petersburg (ca 600 km).
Wow. Okay, so your longest trip would register as no big deal here I think. That's about the distance of going from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Boston to DC, Chicago to Minneapolis.
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:16 am
It is extremely convenient even if you do have a ton of other options. I guess in US you use standard texting, but this is not free. Especially if you do it across borders. I don't use Facebook itself, though.
It is free here basically. If you have a phone that carries a phone number that you pay for then it's going to come with unlimited text. That's even the case if you have a low-cost plan through a government program. They moved away from limiting the number of texts some time ago.
Is texting for you free also to foreign numbers? If so then I understand that there is no need for Whatsapp.
Depends on the plan you're on I believe outside of Canada and Mexico, which I think are typically included. But most unlimited text plans cover it for a large number of countries. The more bareboned services (not Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile) are more likely to charge you extra for something like that.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:49 pm
Another part of the world also weighed in yesterday.
The sort of country jockeying was out of control yesterday. I can't tell you how important WhatsApp is to communicate in the Philippines. Well let me tell you we use it to do everything in the DR. Well here in Malaysia, it's the way we healthcare. That's nothing, here in Panama we use it for all the trades, can't get a plumber without WhatsApp. Well, every service uses it here in Ecuador, this is a disaster. Rinse and repeat for whatever country you had a connection to. It was wild to see.
by Suliso We here can't compete then.
I use it for inconsequential chat with my girlfriend when we're not in the same place (70%), connecting with mom and sister back in Latvia (20%) and arranging meetings, events etc. with friends (10%). Nothing official ever takes place using Whatsapp so I'm not crazy concerned about the security of it.
by ponchi101 Oh, in Albania they got to the point they wanted us to exchange documentation via WA. That is where I drew the line. If anything would happen, tracing back the original documentation would be hell.
by mmmm8 I too have no idea and am very curious to understand what FB did for WhatsApp to completely overtake Viber. They're exactly the same app and Viber was more popular for a good chunk of time, at least in Europe and LATAM.
I use WhatApp to communicate with a lot of people who are right here in New York, but it's mostly because we/they have foreign connections and travel and it's the easiest way to maintain contact no matter where you are.
@JazzNu, PayPal is not ubiquitous at all anymore, it's Zelle in LATAM and Venmo in the US.
by dryrunguy Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and technically Dr. Anthony Fauci's boss, will step down at the end of the year.
by Suliso Nobel prizes in sciences for 2021 were awarded this week. Here is an overview of the laureates and what they did to deserve it.
Medicine or Physiology
David Julius, UC San Francisco (born 1955 NYC) and Ardem Patapoutian, Scripps institute, CA (born 1967 Beirut, Lebanon) for their discovery of receptors for temperature and touch.
Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival and underpins our interaction with the world around us. In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.
David Julius utilized capsaicin, a pungent compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation, to identify a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that responds to heat. Ardem Patapoutian used pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs. These breakthrough discoveries launched intense research activities leading to a rapid increase in our understanding of how our nervous system senses heat, cold, and mechanical stimuli. The laureates identified critical missing links in our understanding of the complex interplay between our senses and the environment.
Physics
Syukuro Manabe, Princeton University (born 1931 Shingu, Ehime prefecture, Japan), Klaus Hasselmann, Max Planck institute for meteorology (born 1931 Hamburg, Germany) for the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming and Giorgio Parisi, Sapienza university of Rome (born 1948, Rome, Italy) for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.
Three Laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their studies of chaotic and apparently random phenomena. Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it. Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes.
Complex systems are characterised by randomness and disorder and are difficult to understand. This year’s Prize recognises new methods for describing them and predicting their long-term behaviour.
One complex system of vital importance to humankind is Earth’s climate. Syukuro Manabe demonstrated how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to increased temperatures at the surface of the Earth. In the 1960s, he led the development of physical models of the Earth’s climate and was the first person to explore the interaction between radiation balance and the vertical transport of air masses. His work laid the foundation for the development of current climate models.
About ten years later, Klaus Hasselmann created a model that links together weather and climate, thus answering the question of why climate models can be reliable despite weather being changeable and chaotic. He also developed methods for identifying specific signals, fingerprints, that both natural phenomena and human activities imprint in the climate. His methods have been used to prove that the increased temperature in the atmosphere is due to human emissions of carbon dioxide.
Around 1980, Giorgio Parisi discovered hidden patterns in disordered complex materials. His discoveries are among the most important contributions to the theory of complex systems. They make it possible to understand and describe many different and apparently entirely random materials and phenomena, not only in physics but also in other, very different areas, such as mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning.
Chemistry
Benjamin List, Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (born 1968, Frankfurt, Germany) and David W.C. McMillan, Princeton University (born 1968, Bellshill, UK) for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis
Building molecules is a difficult art. Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction: organocatalysis. This has had a great impact on pharmaceutical research, and has made chemistry greener.
Many research areas and industries are dependent on chemists’ ability to construct molecules that can form elastic and durable materials, store energy in batteries or inhibit the progression of diseases. This work requires catalysts, which are substances that control and accelerate chemical reactions, without becoming part of the final product. For example, catalysts in cars transform toxic substances in exhaust fumes to harmless molecules. Our bodies also contain thousands of catalysts in the form of enzymes, which chisel out the molecules necessary for life.
Catalysts are thus fundamental tools for chemists, but researchers long believed that there were, in principle, just two types of catalysts available: metals and enzymes. Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 because in 2000 they, independent of each other, developed a third type of catalysis. It is called asymmetric organocatalysis and builds upon small organic molecules.
“This concept for catalysis is as simple as it is ingenious, and the fact is that many people have wondered why we didn’t think of it earlier,” says Johan Åqvist, who is chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
Organic catalysts have a stable framework of carbon atoms, to which more active chemical groups can attach. These often contain common elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur or phosphorus. This means that these catalysts are both environmentally friendly and cheap to produce.
The rapid expansion in the use of organic catalysts is primarily due to their ability to drive asymmetric catalysis. When molecules are being built, situations often occur where two different molecules can form, which – just like our hands – are each other’s mirror image. Chemists will often only want one of these, particularly when producing pharmaceuticals.
Organocatalysis has developed at an astounding speed since 2000. Benjamin List and David MacMillan remain leaders in the field, and have shown that organic catalysts can be used to drive multitudes of chemical reactions. Using these reactions, researchers can now more efficiently construct anything from new pharmaceuticals to molecules that can capture light in solar cells. In this way, organocatalysts are bringing the greatest benefit to humankind.
The text is from the official Nobel prize website. I'm quite familiar with both chemistry laureates, have heard their lectures and read numerous papers from their groups. A colleague in the office did his PhD with Benjamin List and is already looking forward to going to the party sometime soon. Another one did his postdoc with McMillan around the same time I did mine at UPenn.
by ti-amie
Someone in the Twitter thread mentioned Starlink.
Starlink explained: Everything you should know about Elon Musk's satellite internet venture
The billionaire SpaceX CEO is launching satellites into orbit and promising to deliver high-speed broadband internet to as many people as possible.
by Suliso Starlink, unlike virtually any other system, really only works in low population density areas. It is rather expensive, though.
by ponchi101 Satellite internet is so expensive that when we run our projects it is always cheaper to pay for microwave links to the closest town, even if it is 100 miles away.
At sea, every boat I gave been on limits your use severely. Anybody caught using Skype will be made to walk the plank (figuratively).
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:22 pm
Satellite internet is so expensive that when we run our projects it is always cheaper to pay for microwave links to the closest town, even if it is 100 miles away.
At sea, every boat I gave been on limits your use severely. Anybody caught using Skype will be made to walk the plank (figuratively).
For a whole ship it wouldn't be so bad - 100 $/month for a broadband. Starlink not yet available for ships, but likely will be in a year or so.
by ponchi101 It has gotten cheaper, but it depends on the broad band. A seismic boat is uploading a couple of gigas of data per day. We need a lot.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:29 pm
It has gotten cheaper, but it depends on the broad band. A seismic boat is uploading a couple of gigas of data per day. We need a lot.
Those 100 $ were for a service which doesn't exist yet on ships... On the land people say it's enough for Skype, Zoom, Netflix etc (user tested at 114 mbps). Downloading gigas of data might not be its strength.
by ponchi101 Final comment. We do not DOWNLOAD data as much as we UPLOAD. We generate a few thousand records a day (3,000 is not uncommon) of HD seismic data, and we need to send it to the processing company.
It is the UPLINK that we need, and those are usually slower.
by JazzNU
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:52 pm
Starlink, unlike virtually any other system, really only works in low population density areas. It is rather expensive, though.
Legitimately don't know a single thing he's offering or planned to offer that can't be categorized as expensive and projected to stay that way for a long while.
by ponchi101 The Model 3 sells for about $35K, about one third of the Model S.
And that is as close as I can get to what you describe
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 09, 2021 1:52 am
The Model 3 sells for about $35K, about one third of the Model S.
And that is as close as I can get to what you describe
Here I think the base model is almost $40k now and that's if you get the most basic And going by the forums, doesn't seem like that's the norm. And there's other common add-ons that are extra like the FSD is $10k.
So starting prices are an Acura here, which is considered a lower-priced luxury car brand. But from articles I've read, if you take that "most affordable" model of Tesla and get the longest range or fully loaded, you jump from an Acura to like a upper-end Mercedes.
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:52 pm
Starlink, unlike virtually any other system, really only works in low population density areas. It is rather expensive, though.
Legitimately don't know a single thing he's offering or planned to offer that can't be categorized as expensive and projected to stay that way for a long while.
Perhaps so, but one could always go with whatever competitors are offering. However, in this particular case nobody else offering much...
As for cars definitely not for the average guy, at least not yet. Then again Tesla can't make as much as there is demand for the current price. In this area though there are plenty of competitors. GM, Ford, Volkswagen all make serious electric cars these days.
by Suliso I checked what is sold in Switzerland. Currently here one could only get Model 3 long range performance version for ca 70k. Obviously that's about 2-2.5x more than the average guy would pay for a new car. We'll see how things change when the new factory in Berlin opens later this year. I think it's meant for model Y mostly.
I'm personally not in a market for a car, electric or otherwise. Just a curious bystander looking at this revolution.
Edit: I think I misunderstood. What I mentioned above is in the store and could be driven away tomorrow. Anything else one would need to preorder and wait till available.
by MJ2004 “We need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed onto repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live.”
It’s not often I quote Prince William, but this.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 wow!
by Suliso If you always wanted to understand what Lagrange points are this is a video just for you.
by ponchi101 Great video.
You know about my idea to help with CC: place a large shield at LGP1, which could be operated through electrical panels, to spare fuel. I obviously don't know how big it would have to be but if Space X gets to lift 100T, it could be large enough.
by MJ2004 Very long read, but bringing this conversation back for those of us who watched and were obsessed with the First Peoples
Unfreezing the ice age: the truth about humanity’s deep past
Archaeological discoveries are shattering scholars’ long-held beliefs about how the earliest humans organised their societies – and hint at possibilities for our own
by David Graeber and David Wengrow
In some ways, accounts of “human origins” play a similar role for us today as myth did for ancient Greeks or Polynesians. This is not to cast aspersions on the scientific rigour or value of these accounts. It is simply to observe that the two fulfil somewhat similar functions. If we think on a scale of, say, the last 3m years, there actually was a time when someone, after all, did have to light a fire, cook a meal or perform a marriage ceremony for the first time. We know these things happened. Still, we really don’t know how. It is very difficult to resist the temptation to make up stories about what might have happened: stories which necessarily reflect our own fears, desires, obsessions and concerns. As a result, such distant times can become a vast canvas for the working out of our collective fantasies.
Let’s take just one example. Back in the 1980s, there was a great deal of buzz about a “mitochondrial Eve”, the putative common ancestor of our entire species. Granted, no one was claiming to have actually found the physical remains of such an ancestor, but DNA sequencing demonstrated that such an Eve must have existed, perhaps as recently as 120,000 years ago. And while no one imagined we’d ever find Eve herself, the discovery of a variety of other fossil skulls rescued from the Great Rift Valley in east Africa seemed to provide a suggestion as to what Eve might have looked like and where she might have lived. While scientists continued debating the ins and outs, popular magazines were soon carrying stories about a modern counterpart to the Garden of Eden, the original incubator of humanity, the savanna-womb that gave life to us all.
Many of us probably still have something resembling this picture of human origins in our mind. More recent research, though, has shown it couldn’t possibly be accurate. In fact, biological anthropologists and geneticists are now converging on an entirely different picture. For most of our evolutionary history, we did indeed live in Africa – but not just the eastern savannas, as previously thought. Instead, our biological ancestors were distributed everywhere from Morocco to the Cape of Good Hope. Some of those populations remained isolated from one another for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years, cut off from their nearest relatives by deserts and rainforests. Strong regional traits developed, so that early human populations appear to have been far more physically diverse than modern humans. If we could travel back in time, this remote past would probably strike us as something more akin to a world inhabited by hobbits, giants and elves than anything we have direct experience of today, or in the more recent past.
Ancestral humans were not only quite different from one another; they also coexisted with smaller-brained, more ape-like species such as Homo naledi. What were these ancestral societies like? At this point, at least, we should be honest and admit that, for the most part, we don’t have the slightest idea. There’s only so much you can reconstruct from cranial remains and the occasional piece of knapped flint – which is basically all we have.
What we do know is that we are composite products of this original mosaic of human populations, which interacted with one another, interbred, drifted apart and came together mostly in ways we can only still guess at. It seems reasonable to assume that behaviours like mating and child-rearing practices, the presence or absence of dominance hierarchies or forms of language and proto-language must have varied at least as much as physical types, and probably far more.
Perhaps the only thing we can say with real certainty is that modern humans first appeared in Africa. When they began expanding out of Africa into Eurasia, they encountered other populations such as Neanderthals and Denisovans – less different, but still different – and these various groups interbred. Only after those other populations became extinct can we really begin talking about a single, human “us” inhabiting the planet. What all this brings home is just how radically different the social and physical world of our remote ancestors would have seemed to us – and this would have been true at least down to about 40,000BC. In other words, there is no “original” form of human society. Searching for one can only be a matter of myth-making.
Over recent decades, archeological evidence has emerged that seems to completely defy our image of what scholars call the Upper Palaeolithic period (roughly 50,000–15,000BC). For a long time, it had been assumed that this was a world made up of tiny egalitarian forager bands. But the discovery of evidence of “princely” burials and grand communal buildings has undermined that image.
Rich hunter-gatherer burials have been found across much of western Eurasia, from the Dordogne to the Don. They include discoveries in rock shelters and open-air settlements. Some of the earliest come from sites like Sunghir in northern Russia and Dolní Věstonice in the Moravian basin, and date from between 34,000 and 26,000 years ago.
What we find here are not cemeteries but isolated burials of individuals or small groups, their bodies often placed in striking postures and decorated – in some cases, almost saturated – with ornaments. In the case of Sunghir that meant many thousands of beads, laboriously worked from mammoth ivory and fox teeth. Some of the most lavish costumes are from the conjoined burials of two boys, flanked by great lances made from straightened mammoth tusks.
Of similar antiquity is a group of cave burials unearthed on the coast of Liguria, near the border between Italy and France. Complete bodies of young or adult men, including one especially lavish interment known to archaeologists as Il Principe (“the Prince”), were laid out in striking poses and suffused with jewellery. Il Principe bears that name because he’s also buried with what looks to the modern eye like regalia: a flint sceptre, elk antler batons and an ornate headdress lovingly fashioned from perforated shells and deer teeth.
Another unexpected result of recent archaeological research, causing many to revise their view of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, is the appearance of monumental architecture. In Eurasia, the most famous examples are the stone temples of the Germus mountains, overlooking the Harran plain in south-east Turkey. In the 1990s, German archaeologists, working on the plain’s northern frontier, began uncovering extremely ancient remains at a place known locally as Göbekli Tepe. What they found has since come to be regarded as an evolutionary conundrum. The main source of puzzlement is a group of 20 megalithic enclosures, initially raised there around 9000BC, and then repeatedly modified over many centuries.
The enclosures at Göbekli Tepe are massive. They comprise great T-shaped pillars, some over 5 metres high and weighing up to 8 tonnes, which were hewn from the site’s limestone bedrock or nearby quarries. The pillars, at least 200 in total, were raised into sockets and linked by walls of rough stone. Each is a unique work of sculpture, carved with images from the world of dangerous carnivores and poisonous reptiles, as well as game species, waterfowl and small scavengers. Animal forms project from the rock in varying depths of relief: some hover coyly on the surface, others emerge boldly into three dimensions. These often nightmarish creatures follow divergent orientations, some marching to the horizon, others working their way down into the earth. In places, the pillar itself becomes a sort of standing body, with human-like limbs and clothing.
The creation of these remarkable buildings implies strictly coordinated activity on a really large scale. Who made them? While groups of humans not too far away had already begun cultivating crops at the time, to the best of our knowledge those who built Göbekli Tepe had not. Yes, they harvested and processed wild cereals and other plants in season, but there is no compelling reason to see them as “proto-farmers”, or to suggest they had any interest in orienting their livelihoods around the domestication of crops. Indeed, there was no particular reason why they should, given the availability of fruits, berries, nuts and edible wild fauna in their vicinity.
And while Göbekli Tepe has often been presented as an anomaly, there is in fact a great deal of evidence for monumental construction of different sorts among hunter-gatherers in earlier periods, extending back into the ice age.
In Europe, between 25,000 and 12,000 years ago, public works were already a feature of human habitation across an area reaching from Kraków to Kyiv. Research at the Russian site of Yudinovo suggests that “mammoth houses”, as they are often called, were not in fact dwellings at all, but monuments in the strict sense: carefully planned and constructed to commemorate the completion of a great mammoth hunt, using whatever durable parts remained once carcasses had been processed for their meat and hides. We are talking here about really staggering quantities of meat: for each structure (there were five at Yudinovo), there was enough mammoth to feed hundreds of people for around three months. Open-air settlements like Yudinovo, Mezhirich and Kostenki, where such mammoth monuments were erected, often became central places whose inhabitants exchanged amber, marine shells and animal pelts over impressive distances.
So what are we to make of all this evidence for princely burials, stone temples, mammoth monuments and bustling centres of trade and craft production, stretching back far into the ice age? What are they doing there, in a Palaeolithic world where – at least on some accounts – nothing much is ever supposed to have happened, and human societies can best be understood by analogy with troops of chimps or bonobos? Unsurprisingly, perhaps, some have responded by completely abandoning the idea of an egalitarian golden age, concluding instead that this must have been a society dominated by powerful leaders, even dynasties – and, therefore, that self-aggrandisement and coercive power have always been the enduring forces behind human social evolution. But this doesn’t really work either.
Evidence of institutional inequality in ice age societies, whether grand burials or monumental buildings, is sporadic. Richly costumed burials appear centuries, and often hundreds of miles, apart. Even if we put this down to the patchiness of the evidence, we still have to ask why the evidence is so patchy in the first place. After all, if any of these ice age “princes” had behaved like, say, bronze age (let alone Renaissance Italian) princes, we’d also be finding all the usual trappings of centralised power: fortifications, storehouses, palaces. Instead, over tens of thousands of years, we see monuments and magnificent burials, but little else to indicate the growth of ranked societies, let alone anything remotely resembling “states”.
To understand why the early record of human social life is patterned in this strange, staccato fashion we first have to do away with some lingering preconceptions about “primitive” mentalities.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many in Europe and North America believed that “primitive” folk were not only incapable of political self-consciousness, they were not even capable of fully conscious thought on the individual level – or at least conscious thought worthy of the name. They argued that anyone classified as a “primitive” or “savage” operated with a “pre-logical mentality”, or lived in a mythological dreamworld. At best, they were mindless conformists, bound in the shackles of tradition; at worst, they were incapable of fully conscious, critical thought of any kind.
Nowadays, no reputable scholar would make such claims: everyone at least pays lip service to the psychic unity of mankind. But in practice, little has changed. Scholars still write as if those living in earlier stages of economic development, and especially those who are classified as “egalitarian”, can be treated as if they were literally all the same, living in some collective group-think: if human differences show up in any form – different “bands” being different from one another – it is only in the same way that bands of great apes might differ. Political self-consciousness among such people is seen as impossible.
And if certain hunter-gatherers turn out not to have been living perpetually in “bands” at all, but instead congregating to create grand landscape monuments, storing large quantities of preserved food and treating particular individuals like royalty, contemporary scholars are at best likely to place them in a new stage of development: they have moved up the scale from “simple” to “complex” hunter-gatherers, a step closer to agriculture and urban civilisation. But they are still caught in the same evolutionary straitjacket, their place in history defined by their mode of subsistence, and their role blindly to enact some abstract law of development which we understand but they do not. Certainly, it rarely occurs to anyone to ask what sort of worlds they thought they were trying to create.
Now, admittedly, this isn’t true of all scholars. Anthropologists who spend years talking to indigenous people in their own languages, and watching them argue with one another, tend to be well aware that even those who make their living hunting elephants or gathering lotus buds are just as sceptical, imaginative, thoughtful and capable of critical analysis as those who make their living by operating tractors, managing restaurants or chairing university departments.
One of the few mid-20th-century anthropologists to take seriously the idea that early humans were our intellectual equals was Claude Lévi-Strauss, who argued that mythological thought, rather than representing some sort of pre-logical haze, is better conceived as a kind of “neolithic science” as sophisticated as our own, just built on different principles. Less well known – but more relevant to the problems we are grappling with here – are some of his early writings on politics.
In 1944, Lévi-Strauss published an essay about politics among the Nambikwara, a small population of part-time farmers, part-time foragers inhabiting a notoriously inhospitable stretch of savanna in north-west Mato Grosso, Brazil. The Nambikwara then had a reputation as extremely simple folk, given their very rudimentary material culture. For this reason, many treated them almost as a direct window on to the Palaeolithic. This, Lévi-Strauss pointed out, was a mistake. People like the Nambikwara live in the shadow of the modern state, trading with farmers and city people and sometimes hiring themselves out as labourers. Some might even be descendants of runaways from cities or plantations.
For Lévi-Strauss, what was especially instructive about the Nambikwara was that, for all that they were averse to competition, they did appoint chiefs to lead them. The very simplicity of the resulting arrangement, he felt, might expose “some basic functions” of political life that “remain hidden in more complex and elaborate systems of government”. Not only was the role of the chief socially and psychologically quite similar to that of a national politician or statesman in European society, he noted, it also attracted similar personality types: people who “unlike most of their companions, enjoy prestige for its own sake, feel a strong appeal to responsibility, and to whom the burden of public affairs brings its own reward”.
Modern politicians play the role of wheelers and dealers, brokering alliances or negotiating compromises between different constituencies or interest groups. In Nambikwara society this didn’t happen much, because there weren’t really many differences in wealth or status. However, chiefs did play an analogous role, brokering between two entirely different social and ethical systems, which existed at different times of year. During the rainy season, the Nambikwara occupied hilltop villages of several hundred people and practised horticulture; during the rest of the year they dispersed into small foraging bands. Chiefs made or lost their reputations by acting as heroic leaders during the “nomadic adventures” of the dry season, during which times they typically gave orders, resolved crises and behaved in what would at any other time be considered an unacceptably authoritarian manner. Then, in the rainy season, a time of much greater ease and abundance, they relied on those reputations to attract followers to settle around them in villages, where they employed only gentle persuasion and led by example to guide their followers in the construction of houses and tending of gardens. They cared for the sick and needy, mediated disputes and never imposed anything on anyone.
How should we think about these chiefs? They were not patriarchs, Lévi-Strauss concluded; neither were they petty tyrants; and there was no sense in which they were invested with mystical powers. More than anything, they resembled modern politicians operating tiny embryonic welfare states, pooling resources and doling them out to those in need. What impressed Lévi-Strauss above all was their political maturity. It was the chiefs’ skill in directing small bands of dry-season foragers, of making snap decisions in crises (crossing a river, directing a hunt) that later qualified them to play the role of mediators and diplomats in the village plaza. And in doing so they were effectively moving back and forth, each year, between what evolutionary anthropologists insist on thinking of as totally different stages of social development: from hunters-gatherers to farmers and back again.
Nambikwara chiefs were in every sense self-conscious political actors, shifting between two different social systems with calm sophistication, all the while balancing a sense of personal ambition with the common good. What’s more, their flexibility and adaptability enabled them to take a distanced perspective on whichever system obtained at any given time.
Let’s return to those rich Upper Palaeolithic burials, so often interpreted as evidence for the emergence of “inequality”, or even hereditary nobility of some sort. For some odd reason, those who make such arguments never seem to notice that a quite remarkable number of these skeletons bear evidence of striking physical anomalies that could only have marked them out, clearly and dramatically, from their social surroundings. The adolescent boys in Sunghir and Dolní Věstonice had pronounced congenital disfigurements; other ancient burial sites have contained bodies that were unusually short or extremely tall.
It would be extremely surprising if this were a coincidence. In fact, it makes one wonder whether even those bodies, which appear from their skeletal remains to be anatomically typical, might have been equally striking in some other way; after all, an albino, for example, or an epileptic prophet would not be identifiable as such from the archaeological record. We can’t know much about the day-to-day lives of Palaeolithic individuals buried with rich grave goods, other than that they seem to have been as well fed and cared for as anybody else; but we can at least suggest they were seen as the ultimate individuals, about as different from their peers as it was possible to be.
This suggests we might have to shelve any premature talk of the emergence of hereditary elites. It seems very unlikely that Palaeolithic Europe produced a stratified elite that just happened to consist largely of hunchbacks, giants and dwarves. Second, we don’t know how much the treatment of such individuals after death had to do with their treatment in life. Another important point here is that we are not dealing with a case of some people being buried with rich grave goods and others being buried with none. The very practice of burying bodies intact, and clothed, appears to have been exceptional in the Upper Palaeolithic. Most corpses were treated in completely different ways: de-fleshed, broken up, curated, or even processed into jewellery and artefacts. (In general, Palaeolithic people were clearly much more at home with human body parts than we are.)
The corpse in its complete and articulated form – and the clothed corpse even more so – was clearly something unusual and, one would presume, inherently strange. In many such cases, an effort was made to contain the bodies of the Upper Palaeolithic dead by covering them with heavy objects: mammoth scapulae, wooden planks, stones or tight bindings. Perhaps saturating them with such objects was an extension of these concerns about strangeness, celebrating but also containing something dangerous. This too makes sense. The ethnographic record abounds with examples of anomalous beings – human or otherwise – treated as exalted and dangerous; or one way in life, another in death.
Much here is speculation. There are any number of other interpretations that could be placed on the evidence – though the idea that these tombs mark the emergence of some sort of hereditary aristocracy seems the least likely of all. Those interred were extraordinary, “extreme” individuals. The way their corpses were decorated, displayed and buried marked them out as equally extraordinary in death. Anomalous in almost every respect, such burials can hardly be interpreted as proxies for social structure among the living. On the other hand, they clearly have something to do with all the contemporary evidence for music, sculpture, painting and complex architecture. What is one to make of them?
This is where seasonality comes into the picture. Almost all the ice age sites with extraordinary burials and monumental architecture were created by societies that lived a little like Lévi-Strauss’s Nambikwara, dispersing into foraging bands at one time of year, gathering together in concentrated settlements at another. True, they didn’t gather to plant crops. Rather, the large Upper Palaeolithic sites are linked to migrations and seasonal hunting of game herds – woolly mammoth, steppe bison or reindeer – as well as cyclical fish-runs and nut harvests. This seems to be the explanation for those hubs of activity found in eastern Europe at places like Dolní Věstonice, where people took advantage of an abundance of wild resources to feast, engage in complex rituals and ambitious artistic projects, and trade minerals, marine shells and furs. In western Europe, equivalents would be the great rock shelters of the French Périgord and the Cantabrian coast, with their deep records of human activity, which similarly formed part of an annual round of seasonal congregation and dispersal.
Archaeology also shows that patterns of seasonal variation lie behind the monuments of Göbekli Tepe. Activities around the stone temples correspond with periods of annual superabundance, between midsummer and autumn, when large herds of gazelle descended on to the Harran plain. At such times, people also gathered at the site to process massive quantities of nuts and wild cereal grasses, making these into festive foods, which presumably fuelled the work of construction. There is some evidence to suggest that each of these great structures had a relatively short lifespan, culminating in an enormous feast, after which its walls were rapidly filled in with leftovers and other refuse: hierarchies raised to the sky, only to be swiftly torn down again. Ongoing research is likely to complicate this picture, but the overall pattern of seasonal congregation for festive labour seems well established.
Such oscillating patterns of life endured long after the invention of agriculture. They may be key to understanding the famous Neolithic monuments of Salisbury Plain in England, and not just because the arrangements of standing stones themselves seem to function (among other things) as giant calendars. Stonehenge, framing the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset, is the most famous of these monuments. It turns out to have been the last in a long sequence of ceremonial structures, erected over the course of centuries in timber as well as stone, as people converged on the plain from remote corners of the British Isles at significant times of year. Careful excavation shows that many of these structures were dismantled just a few generations after their construction.
Still more striking, the people who built Stonehenge were not farmers, or not in the usual sense. They had once been; but the practice of erecting and dismantling grand monuments coincides with a period when the peoples of Britain, having adopted the Neolithic farming economy from continental Europe, appear to have turned their backs on at least one crucial aspect of it: they abandoned the cultivation of cereals and returned, from around 3300BC, to the collection of hazelnuts as their staple source of plant food. On the other hand, they kept hold of their domestic pigs and herds of cattle, feasting on them seasonally at nearby Durrington Walls, a prosperous town of some thousands of people – with its own Woodhenge – in winter, but largely empty and abandoned in summer.
All this is crucial because it’s hard to imagine how giving up agriculture could have been anything but a self-conscious decision. There is no evidence that one population displaced another, or that farmers were somehow overwhelmed by powerful foragers who forced them to abandon their crops. The Neolithic inhabitants of England appear to have taken the measure of cereal-farming and collectively decided that they preferred to live another way. We’ll never know how such a decision was made, but Stonehenge itself provides something of a hint since it is built of extremely large stones, some of which (the “bluestones”) were transported from as far away as Wales, while many of the cattle and pigs consumed at Durrington Walls were laboriously herded there from other distant locations.
In other words, and remarkable as it may seem, even in the third millennium BC coordination of some sort was clearly possible across large parts of the British Isles. If Stonehenge was a shrine to exalted founders of a ruling clan – as some archaeologists now argue – it seems likely that members of their lineage claimed significant, even cosmic roles by virtue of their involvement in such events. On the other hand, patterns of seasonal aggregation and dispersal raise another question: if there were kings and queens at Stonehenge, exactly what sort could they have been? After all, these would have been kings whose courts and kingdoms existed for only a few months of the year, and otherwise dispersed into small communities of nut gatherers and stock herders. If they possessed the means to marshal labour, pile up food resources and provender armies of year-round retainers, what sort of royalty would consciously elect not to do so?
Recall that for Lévi-Strauss, there was a clear link between seasonal variations of social structure and a certain kind of political freedom. The fact that one structure applied in the rainy season and another in the dry allowed Nambikwara chiefs to view their own social arrangements at one remove: to see them as not simply “given”, in the natural order of things, but as something at least partially open to human intervention. The case of the British Neolithic – with its alternating phases of dispersal and monumental construction – indicates just how far such intervention could sometimes go.
The political implications of this are important, as Lévi-Strauss noted. What the existence of similar seasonal patterns in the Palaeolithic suggests is that from the very beginning, or at least as far back as we can trace such things, human beings were self-consciously experimenting with different social possibilities.
It’s easy to see why scholars in the 1950s and 60s arguing for the existence of discrete stages of political organisation – successively: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states – did not know what to do with Lévi-Strauss’s observations. They held that the stages of political development mapped, at least very roughly, on to similar stages of economic development: hunter-gatherers, gardeners, farmers, industrial civilisation. It was confusing enough that people like the Nambikwara seemed to jump back and forth, over the course of the year, between economic categories. Other groups would appear to jump regularly from one end of the political spectrum to the other. In other words, they threw everything askew.
Seasonal dualism also throws into chaos more recent efforts at classifying hunter-gatherers into either “simple” or “complex” types of social organisation, since what have been identified as the features of “complexity” – territoriality, social ranks, material wealth or competitive display – appear during certain seasons of the year, only to be brushed aside in others by the exact same population. Admittedly, most professional anthropologists nowadays have come to recognise that these categories are hopelessly inadequate, but the main effect of this acknowledgment has just been to cause them to change the subject, or suggest that perhaps we shouldn’t really be thinking about the broad sweep of human history at all any more. Nobody has yet proposed an alternative.
Meanwhile, as we’ve seen, archaeological evidence is piling up to suggest that in the highly seasonal environments of the last ice age, our remote ancestors were behaving much like Nambikwara. They shifted back and forth between alternative social arrangements, building monuments and then closing them down again, allowing the rise of authoritarian structures during certain times of year then dismantling them. The same individual could experience life in what looks to us sometimes like a band, sometimes a tribe, and sometimes like something with at least some of the characteristics we now identify with states.
With such institutional flexibility comes the capacity to step outside the boundaries of any given structure and reflect; to make and unmake the political worlds we live in. If nothing else, this explains the “princes” and “princesses” of the last ice age, who appear to show up, in such magnificent isolation, like characters in some kind of fairytale or costume drama. If they reigned at all, then perhaps it was, like the ruling clans of Stonehenge, just for a season.
If human beings, through most of our history, have moved back and forth fluidly between different social arrangements, assembling and dismantling hierarchies on a regular basis, perhaps the question we should ask is: how did we get stuck? How did we lose that political self-consciousness, once so typical of our species? How did we come to treat eminence and subservience not as temporary expedients, or even the pomp and circumstance of some kind of grand seasonal theatre, but as inescapable elements of the human condition?
In truth, this flexibility, and potential for political self-consciousness, was never entirely lost. Seasonality is still with us – even if it is a pale shadow of its former self. In the Christian world, for instance, there is still the midwinter “holiday season” in which values and forms of organisation do, to a limited degree, reverse themselves: the same media and advertisers who for most of the year peddle rabid consumerist individualism suddenly start announcing that social relations are what’s really important, and that to give is better than to receive.
Among societies like the Inuit or the Kwakiutl of Canada’s Northwest Coast, times of seasonal congregation were also ritual seasons, almost entirely given over to dances, rites and dramas. Sometimes, these could involve creating temporary kings or even ritual police with real coercive powers. In other cases, they involved dissolving norms of hierarchy and propriety. In the European middle ages, saints’ days alternated between solemn pageants where all the elaborate ranks and hierarchies of feudal life were made manifest, and crazy carnivals in which everyone played at “turning the world upside down”. In carnival, women might rule over men and children be put in charge of government. Servants could demand work from their masters, ancestors could return from the dead, “carnival kings” could be crowned and then dethroned, giant monuments like wicker dragons built and set on fire, or all formal ranks might even disintegrate into one or other form of bacchanalian chaos.
What’s important about such festivals is that they kept the old spark of political self-consciousness alive. They allowed people to imagine that other arrangements are feasible, even for society as a whole, since it was always possible to fantasise about carnival bursting its seams and becoming the new reality. May Day came to be chosen as the date for the international workers’ holiday largely because so many British peasant revolts had historically begun on that riotous festival. Villagers who played at “turning the world upside down” would periodically decide they actually preferred the world upside down, and took measures to keep it that way.
Medieval peasants often found it much easier than medieval intellectuals to imagine a society of equals. Now, perhaps, we begin to understand why. Seasonal festivals may be a pale echo of older patterns of seasonal variation – but, for the last few thousand years of human history at least, they appear to have played much the same role in fostering political self-consciousness, and as laboratories of social possibility.
Adapted from The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow, published by Allen Lane.
The Guardian
by JazzNU This is highly disturbing about self driving tech. I didn't read this article, but listened to this professor describe the issue and yeah, disturbing is an understatement. He's a professor of computer science at Yale and a former senior scientist at Pixar Animation. LA Times op-ed.
MJ2004 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 21, 2021 1:12 am
...
If human beings, through most of our history, have moved back and forth fluidly between different social arrangements, assembling and dismantling hierarchies on a regular basis, perhaps the question we should ask is: how did we get stuck? How did we lose that political self-consciousness, once so typical of our species? How did we come to treat eminence and subservience not as temporary expedients, or even the pomp and circumstance of some kind of grand seasonal theatre, but as inescapable elements of the human condition?
...
Lovely article, but I find this part interesting. How did we get STUCK? Our social arrangements are, at best, about 1,000 yo. That is nothing in anthropological times, much less in paleontological measurements. A bit of a rush, I would think.
And the answer may be tautological. We may be committed to this social arrangement because it is advantageous to us. It might be the best social structure we have found, SO FAR. But of course, the experiment would have to run for a few more thousand years before it could be called a success.
Last. At a time when we had no technology to build a pyramid, much less a Taj Mahal, the only way to make a burial ground special would be by selecting a special location: a place immune to floods, landslides, incessant trampling by herds of wild animals, and so on. So the special people would be buried there, and therefore their tombs would tend to be more undisturbed than others. The burial site by the bank of the river would be certainly be wiped out after a few hundred years, as eventually one large flood would change that bank.
by Suliso In my opinion the current (or close to current) social arrangements came to be with an advent of large scale agriculture and a settled way of life which also importantly led to much greater population density.
by ti-amie
by Suliso
Some people say one should look at per capita emissions and it would be illustrative for some purposes certainly, but the global climate doesn't care about any of that. Only about absolute numbers.
by ponchi101 That was really helpful. Txs
by ti-amie A great thread about all the folks making noise around education these days.
Was it just me who, when they began to teach the subjunctive clause in my French classes, went cross eyed and totally lost the plot?
by JazzNU
by ptmcmahon Why does this feel like an April Fools joke?
by ponchi101 Meta? With an infinity symbol?
How on earth does this improve their brand? It will still be the same thing, right?
by Suliso Same way as Google was improved by rebranding itself as Alphabet?
by ti-amie Just think someone got paid six figures to come up with that name.
by Suliso The latest two drugs showing very high promise for treating covid
Paxlovid by Pfizer
Molnupiravir by Merck
Molnupiravir looks to me like a typical nucleoside based antiretroviral (HIV drugs have similar structures). Pfizer compound is more unusual and also far more complex. Would need to read up where that one comes from.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:55 pm
The latest two drugs showing very high promise for treating covid
Paxlovid by Pfizer
Molnupiravir by Merck
Molnupiravir looks to me like a typical nucleoside based antiretroviral (HIV drugs have similar structures). Pfizer compound is more unusual and also far more complex. Would need to read up where that one comes from.
I felt EXACTLY the same way (What you do amazes me with frequency).
Thanks for that. If you don't mind: why the triple Fluorine group in Paxlovid? Wouldn't that be totally non-binding to anything? With Fluor's last "orbit" being full, it would not even be electrically charged.
by JazzNU
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:55 pm
The latest two drugs showing very high promise for treating covid
Molnupiravir looks to me like a typical nucleoside based antiretroviral (HIV drugs have similar structures). Pfizer compound is more unusual and also far more complex. Would need to read up where that one comes from.
Maybe the reason for the difference in success rates in the two drugs? One more complex and potentially more targeted specifically to covid?
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:55 pm
Molnupiravir looks to me like a typical nucleoside based antiretroviral (HIV drugs have similar structures). Pfizer compound is more unusual and also far more complex. Would need to read up where that one comes from.
I felt EXACTLY the same way (What you do amazes me with frequency).
Thanks for that. If you don't mind: why the triple Fluorine group in Paxlovid? Wouldn't that be totally non-binding to anything? With Fluor's last "orbit" being full, it would not even be electrically charged.
What follows is a speculation only. I don't know anything about the binding pocket of this particular substance.
It is true that fluorine rarely engages in active binding (weak hydrogen bonding is known), however trifluoromethyl group might be just occupying a hydrophobic pocket "fixing" the target in the active site. The logical follow up question would be why not just methyl? To that there is a more straightforward answer. Methyl would likely be metabolically labile both oxidatively and hydrolytically (enzymatic cleavage of acetyl group) plus CF3 is more lipophilic (= better soluble in fats)
In general fluorine substituents are common in both pharmaceutical and and agrochemical products for the following reasons:
- hydrophobic "binding" due to increased lipophilicity
- guarding against metabolic lability. Enzymes tend to be inert against C-F bond as it's virtually unknown in nature
- changing 3D geometry in a specific manner due to large dipole moment
In my limited experience (I'm actually a process not medicinal chemist) the second reason is the most prominent.
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:55 pm
The latest two drugs showing very high promise for treating covid
Molnupiravir looks to me like a typical nucleoside based antiretroviral (HIV drugs have similar structures). Pfizer compound is more unusual and also far more complex. Would need to read up where that one comes from.
Maybe the reason for the difference in success rates in the two drugs? One more complex and potentially more targeted specifically to covid?
That seems to be the case. They say Paxlovid is the first drug specifically targeting covid, Merck compound is more of a general antiretroviral (typical structure, even I recognized). Although it must have been in development for something else before, time passed since covid appeared is not long enough to have finished a dedicated development program all the way to Phase 3 clinical trials. The below text is from in the Pipeline blog hosted by Science magazine:
-------
We have more good news on the small-molecule anti-Covid front. We’ve already seen what look like strong results with molnupiravir, the Merck/Ridgeback/Emory transcriptase inhibitor. Everyone has been waiting on the results of Pfizer’s protease inhibitor (PF-07321332, now named Paxlovid), which would represent is the first small molecule trial results from a compound that was explicitly aimed at a SAR-CoV-2 protein (here it is in complex with the protease target itself). Remember, molnupiravir is more of a general viral RNA transcriptase inhibitor, and was around before we knew about the current coronavirus.
We’re getting the protease inhibitor news well before it was expected, because the results were so strong. Told you it was good news! Pfizer’s press release this morning says that when its EPIC-HR trial ran its scheduled interim analysis, it showed an 89% reduction in hospitalization or death when the drug was given to high-risk patients within 3 days of symptom onset, and 85% reduction when given within 5 days. There have, in fact, been no deaths at all in the treatment groups after 28-day follow-up. The trial has now been stopped due to efficacy (they had only made it up to 70% enrollment by that point), and the company is moving up its EUA application as quickly as possible. Note that the treatment regime includes a smaller dose of ritonavir, which is in there not for its antiviral activity (it’s useless as a direct antiviral against the coronavirus), but for its CYP-inhibiting properties, slowing down the metabolic clearance of the actual drug.
Step back for a moment and consider that this is really as fast as you could possibly expect a new, targeted small-molecule drug to ever be developed. Pfizer has a history in the antiviral protease world, so they had the expertise (and the screening collection!) to get a strong start. But here we are, less than two years after the emergence of this pathogen, with a bespoke drug against it. That's the speed record, and I think that it will be very, very hard to break - and I hope that we never have to try! It's a remarkable accomplishment.
I look forward to more details than we have now, but these are obviously strong numbers. Pfizer obviously split out the treatment groups by timing of the dose, and earlier is clearly better. But if you take it crudely as “Everyone dosed with the drug out to five days from symptoms”, then there were 9 people in the treatment group hospitalized out of 996 total and zero deaths, compared to 68 hospitalized out of 997 patients and ten deaths. So if indeed we can eliminate almost 9 out of 10 hospitalizations and virtually all deaths in high-risk patients with an oral drug that’s given only once symptoms appear, the course of the pandemic can clearly be altered. And then remember the strong molnupiravir results, and remember that that drug still has a trial to report where it’s used as a prophylactic treatment in high-risk patients as well: all this has to be the best treatment news we’ve had since the beginning of the pandemic. Previous successes (such as the use of dexamethasone) have helped save people once they’re in the hospital, but we’re now talking about keeping them from ever being hospitalized in the first place. And we can add in the fluvoxamine results that I blogged about yesterday, too, on what's probably the anti-inflammation front.
Let’s think about some of the implications: first, an utterly obvious question is whether molnupiravir and Paxlovid can be combined into a cocktail regimen, as we have seen for other viral diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C. Those are by far the most successful small-molecule antiviral treatments ever discovered, and there seems to be no reason why this situation wouldn’t be similar. Why would you want to do this? Well, increased efficacy, clearly, but also to decrease the chances of a resistant coronavirus emerging. We already have evidence that it’s difficult to develop resistance to molnupiravir (because of its mechanism, which differs from other commonly used transcriptase inhibitors). But molnupiravir hasn’t been given to millions of patients yet. I have not yet seen similar in vitro resistance experimental results with Pfizer’s protease inhibitor, but you’d have to expect that resistance is easier to develop. Giving the two drugs at the same time would then be even more in Pfizer’s interest, as it would help to protect the efficacy of their compound. Meanwhile, avoiding a drug-resistant strain of the coronavirus would certainly be in the interest of the rest of the world. Now, there's no reason to assume that such a protease-resistant form of the virus would be able to compete with wild-type Delta in the general population, but we would very much not want to find out the hard way.
Second, we have to think about distribution and price. Merck has already announced that it will license out its molnupiravir IP to the UN's Medicines Patent Pool, which will have the effect of making the drug much cheaper in developing countries and more widely available as other generic companies produce it. Pfizer is going to have to address this issue as well. The chemical synthesis of these compounds is technologically much more straightforward than that needed for the mRNA vaccines, and there should be no reason that the process can’t be run by any country with competent generic drug manufacturers. Pfizer has said that it is “committed to working toward equitable access” and that it is “exploring potential contract manufacturing options”. They had better.
Third, picture what effect this will have on the pandemic and on its treatment options. The hope is that this sort of small-molecule treatment will be able to keep the vast majority of coronavirus patients out of the hospital, which will obviously be a huge help for overburdened healthcare systems around the world. The availability of an oral pill regimen that keeps the disease from getting bad (and from killing you!) will come as a great relief psychologically. The vaccines have been tremendous - it's even better not to get the coronavirus in the first place, and I don't even want to think about what the Delta wave would have looked like without them. But there are breakthrough infections that no one is happy about, and even more than that there are just too many people unvaccinated - which is especially galling in countries that have plenty of free vaccine waiting for everyone, but that's another subject.
But one thing that this oral treatment option will probably do is push the monoclonal antibodies even further off to the side. They're given i.v. in a hospital setting, and the plan is to keep people from ending up in the hospital in the first place. This should also push remdesivir demand down to zero. It was never a very effective drug, even under the most optimistic view of the data, and now there would seem to reason for it to be used at all. And perhaps we can all stop hearing about ivermectin and hydroxycholoquine and all the other things that have by now been shown over and over not to be useful, but that may be too much to hope for. At any rate, as treatment options expand, that stuff is going to look even more perverse than it does already, which is saying something.
All in all, it appears that we are turning yet another corner in the story of our fight against this virus - and perhaps there aren't many more of them coming? We have vaccines and now we have effective drugs to be given early in the course of the disease. How many infectious diseases have more than that? Think about it - why shouldn't we now be able to beat this pandemic back into the ground? Let's get on it.
by Suliso A one version of top 10 mathematicians of all time found on the Internet.
1. Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)
2. Carl Friedrich Gaus (1777-1855)
3. Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866)
4. Archimedes (ca 287-ca 212 BC)
5. Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920)
6. Euclid of Alexandria (4th century BC)
7. Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
8. Isaac Newton (1642-1726)
9. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646-1716)
10. Pierre de Fermat (1607-1665)
by ponchi101 Uhm, Euler over Gauss. That is a tough one. I know that Euler did a lot of things with e and his method for approximation is one of the best tools for integration, but Gauss was all over math and contributed to almost all fields. Not to mention, he formalized statistics and gave it the most solid footing possible. I would revert those two.
Riemann at 3rd I am Ok with.
Ramanujan at 5 over Newton and Leibnitz is also a bit problematic. Sure, he was a genius, self taught, and basically developed all of math again before being found, but most of his work was in number theory. The other two developed calculus, and of course until very recently, calculus was clearly more important. Number Theory became of relevance with encrypting technology.
Fun list.
by Suliso Newton would probably be found on the list of greatest physicists as well. Definitely one could argue about the order or some omissions, it's just for fun anyway. How does one really compare Newton with Archimedes?
by ponchi101 List of physicist:
Einstein
Newton
Rutherford
Lord Kelvin
Bohr
And then the usual suspects of modernity: Feynman, Weinberg, Higgs, etc.
You know who is missing from the math list? Gödel. He should be there. That Theorem of Incompleteness is way too important, both mathematically and philosophically.
by Suliso Any respectable list of physicists need to also include Planck, Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Maxwell. From modern ones probably only Feynman.
by skatingfan I'd like to take part in this conversation, but this is all I can add.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 9:17 pm
Any respectable list of physicists need to also include Planck, Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Maxwell. From modern ones probably only Feynman.
And with that quick reminder, I would indeed move Maxwell above everybody. Just by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, he should be.
How about not the physicists, but the physics? What is more important, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, or General Relativity? In chemistry, as you would have the better opinion, what would be the most important discovery? The completion of the periodic table, for example, or the structure of atoms as they relate to their chemical characteristics?
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 10:47 pm
How about not the physicists, but the physics? What is more important, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, or General Relativity?
From my perspective thermodynamics. I certainly understand it a lot better, but also there are more practical applications. Having said that you can't really understand the nature of universe without all the quantum physics and general/special relativity. That's why scientists from that field so overrepresented on the list of greatest physicists.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 10:47 pm In chemistry, as you would have the better opinion, what would be the most important discovery? The completion of the periodic table, for example, or the structure of atoms as they relate to their chemical characteristics?
Both very important from a theoretical point of view, but I would single out instead Haber-Bosch process for artificial fixation of nitrogen. That had tremendous practical consequences (artificial fertilizers, but also weapons). Fritz Haber himself was a controversial figure because he was also an enthusiastic supporter of chemical warfare during WWI.
If we're looking further back I'd like to point to Antoine Lavoisier and him finally convincingly disproving phlogiston theory. He was instrumental in changing chemistry from a qualitative to quantitative science. You can even say finally separating chemistry from alchemy.
Few other chemical discoveries with society changing impact: antibiotics, polythene, contraceptive pills, liquid crystals, artificial dyes
by MJ2004 It seems incomplete for a list that mentions Archimedes and Euclid not to include Pythagoras.
by ponchi101 My understanding is that Pythagoras was more of a philosopher and his contribution to math is closely related to his Theorem. Although important, it pales in comparison to what Euclid did. And perhaps the most important discovery from his school, the identification of the existence of irrationals, was not his, but one (presumably) unknown disciple. Also, he is so surrounded in legend that it is hard to establish what he did.
Still, you have a point. He is certainly the one name most people asked about ancient mathematicians will think of, if not of all mathematicians.
---0---
@Suliso. I did not know that Lavoisier had been the one that disproved phlogiston. As I told you before, it is so hard to find books about chemistry that are not totally technical. I need to read some more on that.
Would Mendeleev be considered a physicist or a chemist? Working at that level, where both disciplines intersect so much, does he straddle both areas?
by Suliso Chemistry is often at interface with either physics or biology. I would definitely consider Mendeleev as primarily a chemist.
by ti-amie I've known about the Peters Projection for awhile and it's the map I have in my den. Because of our 5 url limit per post I'm only showing two of the projections and the commentary about them both.
Five maps that will change how you see the world
March 28, 2017
By Donald Houston - University of Portsmouth
Boston public schools shifted to using world maps based on the Peters projection, reportedly the first time a US public school district has done so. Why? Because the Peters projection accurately shows different countries’ relative sizes. Although it distorts countries’ shapes, this way of drawing a world map avoids exaggerating the size of developed nations in Europe and North America and reducing the size of less developed countries in Asia, Africa and South America.
Peters projection. - Image Credit: Daniel R. Strebe, CC BY-SA
(...)
PACIFIC-CENTRED
Another convention of world maps is that they are centred on the prime meridian, or zero degrees longitude (east-west). But this is scientifically arbitrary, deriving from the location of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. The result is that Europe (although also Africa) is in the centre of the conventional world map – a rather colonial perspective.
The familiar meridian-centred map conveniently places the map edges down the middle of the Pacific Ocean so no continent is chopped in two. But maps centred on the Pacific Ocean also work well because the edges of the map conveniently run down the middle of the Atlantic. This places east Asia in a more prominent position and pushes Europe to the edge. Much of Oceania and Asia uses Pacific-centred maps. (American-centred maps are also in use, but these have the unfortunate consequence of partitioning Asia to either side of the map.)
Our meridian-centred view of the world shapes how we refer to world regions. “Far East”, for example, implies far from Greenwich, London. Seeing Europe on the left of a map and the Americas on the right can seem counter-intuitive, but it is just as correct as any other arbitrary chop point. The world is, after all, round.
by ti-amie Australia is not real! You're letting them control your perception of the world.
Seriously there is a Peters upside down too.
by Suliso The only lines and places which are real are both poles and the equator. Otherwise indeed can at any angle one finds convenient. However, 2D maps can only ever be an approximation of 3D sphere. No matter how you draw them something will not be correct.
by ponchi101 It is simply a convention, as you say.
I wonder what people were expecting the Brits to do. "Oh, we have an observatory HERE, but let's take all of our measurements and relate them to a point, let's see, uhm, let's say half the world away from us. That way it will be harder to figure out stuff".
It reminds me of a complaint I have heard in a certain country south of where I am. "Why do they draw the map with them on top?" they ask, in anger.
Because they drew the first one. And when you do something for the very first time, you get to choose how to do it.
Rest assured that if there were any advantages to drawing world maps with Australia on the top, they would be drawn that way.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 3:34 pm
It is simply a convention, as you say.
I wonder what people were expecting the Brits to do. "Oh, we have an observatory HERE, but let's take all of our measurements and relate them to a point, let's see, uhm, let's say half the world away from us. That way it will be harder to figure out stuff".
It reminds me of a complaint I have heard in a certain country south of where I am. "Why do they draw the map with them on top?" they ask, in anger.
Because they drew the first one. And when you do something for the very first time, you get to choose how to do it.
Rest assured that if there were any advantages to drawing world maps with Australia on the top, they would be drawn that way.
Come on man! Australia doesn't exist! And all of it's unique fauna are cgi images. Don't join the ranks of the brainwashed!
/s
by JazzNU If you haven't heard, Amazon Web Services is suffering through an outage right now. If you can't access a website, app or service of any kind right now, it's likely on their platform. They're working on it, but no restoration time yet.
Also, if you're expecting an Amazon delivery, it might be delayed.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Difficult from the side of the users. Apache is one level above everything we do.
Hostinger has not posted anything about this. I will keep checking.
by JazzNU I've read 3-4 articles on this, I believe it's the first of it's kind charge "in the US" but has happened elsewhere.
by dryrunguy This changes everything.
::
Neanderthal extinction not caused by brutal wipe out
New fossils are challenging ideas that modern humans wiped out Neanderthals soon after arriving from Africa.
A discovery of a child's tooth and stone tools in a cave in southern France suggests Homo sapiens was in western Europe about 54,000 years ago.
That is several thousands of years earlier than previously thought, indicating that the two species could have coexisted for long periods.
The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.
The finds were discovered in a cave, known as Grotte Mandrin in the Rhone Valley, by a team led by Prof Ludovic Slimak of the University of Toulouse. He was astonished when he learned that there was evidence of an early modern human settlement.
"We are now able to demonstrate that Homo sapiens arrived 12,000 years before we expected, and this population was then replaced after that by other Neanderthal populations. And this literally rewrites all our books of history."
The Neanderthals emerged in Europe as far back as 400,000 years ago. The current theory suggests that they went extinct about 40,000 years ago, not long after Homo sapiens arrived on the continent from Africa.
But the new discovery suggests that our species arrived much earlier and that the two species could have coexisted in Europe for more than 10,000 years before the Neanderthals went extinct.
According to Prof Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, this challenges the current view, which is that our species quickly overwhelmed the Neanderthals.
"It wasn't an overnight takeover by modern humans," he told BBC News. "Sometimes Neanderthals had the advantage, sometimes modern humans had the advantage, so it was more finely balanced."
Archaeologists found fossil evidence from several layers at the site. The lower they dug, the further back in time they were able to see. The lowest layers showed the remains of Neanderthals who occupied the area for about 20,000 years.
But to their complete surprise, the team found a modern human child's tooth in a layer dating back to about 54,000 years ago, along with some stone tools made in a way that was not associated with Neanderthals.
The evidence suggests that this early group of humans lived at the site for a relatively brief period, of perhaps about 2,000 years after which the site was unoccupied. The Neanderthals then return, occupying the site for several more thousand years, until modern humans come back about 44,000 years ago.
''We have this ebb and flow,'' says Prof Stringer. ''The modern humans appear briefly, then there's a gap where maybe the climate just finished them off and then the Neanderthals come back again.''
Another key finding was the association of the stone tools found in the same layer as the child's tooth with modern humans. Tools made in the same way had been found in a few other sites - in the Rhone valley and also in Lebanon, but up until now scientists were not certain which species of humans made them.
Some of the researchers speculate that some of the smaller tools might be arrow heads. If confirmed, that would be quite a discovery: an early group of modern humans using the advanced weaponry of bows and arrows, which may have been how the group initially overcame the Neanderthals 54,000 years ago. But if that were the case, it was a temporary advantage, because the Neanderthals came back.
So, if it wasn't a case of our species wiping them out immediately, what was it that eventually gave us the advantage?
Many ideas have been put forward by scientists: our capacity to produce art, language and possibly a better brain. But Prof Stringer believes it was because we were more organised.
"We were networking better, our social groups were larger, we were storing knowledge better and we built on that knowledge," he said.
The idea of a prolonged interaction with Neanderthals fits in with the discovery made in 2010 that modern humans have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, indicating that the two species interbred, according to Prof Stringer.
"We don't know if it was peacefully exchanges of partners. It might have been grabbing, you know, a female from another group. It might have been even adopting abandoned or lost Neanderthal babies who had been orphaned," he said.
"All of those things could have happened. So we don't know the full story yet. But with more data and with more DNA, more discoveries, we will get closer to the truth about what really happened at the end of the Neanderthal era."
by ponchi101 I think I recommended (perhaps in TAT1.0) a book called KINDRED. A gorgeous study of Neanderthals. It seems it is pretty clear that both branches lived at least in overlapping times.
by dryrunguy
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 11, 2022 4:56 am
I think I recommended (perhaps in TAT1.0) a book called KINDRED. A gorgeous study of Neanderthals. It seems it is pretty clear that both branches lived at least in overlapping times.
Right. What's being challenged at this point is how long homo sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted. It's looking like it may have been thousands upon thousands of years--much longer than the fairly short-termed wipeout we thought before this discovery. If I am understanding it correctly.
by ti-amie
The idea of a prolonged interaction with Neanderthals fits in with the discovery made in 2010 that modern humans have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, indicating that the two species interbred, according to Prof Stringer.
Both 23&Me definitely and Ancestry (I think) look for Neanderthal markers as part of their DNA analysis and started a few years ago.
by Suliso It used to be thought that Neanderthal markers would only be present in Europeans. It's not entirely true due to numerous back migrations to Africa and mixing with Asians as well. So in the end there are very few populations where these markers are entirely absent.
by ponchi101 So, would it be this way?
Populations migrate out of Africa. They enter both Europe and Asia.
They evolve separately, diverting enough to be considered different "species".
They encounter each other and mix, plus they migrate back and forth to and from Africa.
But eventually one petters out (the Neanderthals). The question is why.
Something like this?
by Suliso At least as far as we know currently Neanderthals were different from our ancestors already before migrating out of Africa. There is still a lot we don't know about all this...
One way or amother eventually Neanderthals were not as adaptable as us. Why still remains to be answered. One theory is that they lived in smaller groups and were less keen on collaboration outside extended families.
by skatingfan Magpies' unexpected reaction to GPS trackers may have revealed altruism in the birds
Researchers tried to attach tracking devices to magpies for a study. But the magpies helped each other to remove them — a possible sign, the scientists say, of altruism in the birds.
.
by ponchi101 We have posted about how smart other birds are. Parakeets, ravens, macaws. So this is fun, but not surprising (to me). I gather there are plenty of other species that have developed that evolutionary advantage.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Who could have ever dreamt of something like this would happen?
Oh, anybody. Sorry.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Part of the problem is that Mr. Medlock has a total of 316 followers on twitter.
The monkeys have tens of millions. I say, let them learn the hard way. Losing money.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Excuse me, but... the Devious Licks Hoax? I really don't want to look it up in case some dumb cookie traps me and I get 1,000 spams about it.
Anyway. A fight between FB and Tik Tok. The mind reels.
by ti-amieIn major reversal, Elon Musk won’t join Twitter board after all
Twitter said last week he would join the board of the social media platform after amassing a 9.2 percent stake in the company.
By Faiz Siddiqui
Yesterday at 11:27 p.m. EDT|Updated today at 1:28 p.m. EDT
SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk is not joining Twitter’s board after all, a reversal following last week’s revelation that he had become Twitter’s largest shareholder — and had received a subsequent appointment to the panel.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted the news Sunday night, including a memo sent to his staff.
“Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning he will no longer be joining the board,” Agrawal wrote. “I believe this is for the best.”
The surprise move came less than a week after Twitter had said the outspoken Tesla CEO would become a board member, following his quietly amassing a 9.2 percent stake in the social media company. But Twitter employees and others agitated over the move, worrying Musk might wield outsize power to undo some moderation decisions that were made — including banning former president Donald Trump.
Agrawal said the company will “remain open to [Musk’s] input.” But he added, the “decisions we make and how we execute is in our hands, no one else’s,” and he urged staff to tune out “distractions.”
Twitter said it would not comment Sunday night beyond Agrawal’s statement. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He tweeted an emoji of a face with its hand over its mouth shortly after the news broke. That tweet appeared to have been deleted Monday, along with several others related to Twitter that followed his investment. Musk also liked a tweet reply to Twitter’s CEO that opined on how Musk’s departure unfolded — theorizing that Musk was told “to play nice and not speak freely” despite his push for what he regarded as “free speech.”
Sunday’s announcement capped off an extraordinary and rapid series of events that began weeks ago when Agrawal said he first engaged with Musk in talks to join Twitter’s board. Agrawal last week welcomed Musk, who he called a “passionate believer and intense critic” to Twitter — rather than fight off an infiltration from an outside activist. Musk had only months earlier tweeted a meme superimposing the Twitter CEO’s face over that of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Musk is a prolific and controversial Twitter user who has amassed more than 80 million followers on the social media site. He uses his account as a bully pulpit to rally supporters of electric car company Tesla and aerospace outfit SpaceX. He tweets memes, conducts polls, and even engages in trolling of political figures and those he views as adversaries.
His penchant for tweeting has also landed him in hot water, including a costly settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk had to give up his board chairmanship of Tesla — subjecting himself and the company to $20 million fines apiece — after he tweeted that he had secured funding to take the company private at $420 a share in 2018.
Musk initially filed to become a so-called “passive” investor in Twitter, documents revealed, but the next day paperwork was filed that would alter his status to become a board member.
“We were excited to collaborate and clear about the risks,” Agrawal wrote on Sunday. “We also believed that having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward.” Agrawal said Musk’s appointment was contingent on “a background check and formal acceptance.”
On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that Agrawal was scheduling a town hall with Musk where employees could ask him questions about his intentions and role.
Musk launched a poll the day his investment became public asking whether Twitter should add an edit button, something that would allow users to edit tweets after posting them. Twitter later weighed in and said such a feature had been in development for months and was not influenced by a poll.
Late last week he tweeted a meme of himself smoking a joint with the words “Twitter’s next board meeting is gonna be lit.”
Over the weekend, Musk took aim at numerous aspects of the company, including its reliance on advertising — even for its subscription service — and the prevalence of spam accounts. He posted data showing Twitter’s top accounts and asked “Is Twitter dying?”
Also on Saturday, the day his board appointment was supposed to become official, he even took an apparent dig at the company’s indefinite remote work policy. He launched a poll asking whether the San Francisco office should be made into a homeless shelter “since no one shows up anyway.” That tweet was deleted by Monday.
It had not been Musk’s first poll about Twitter. Before his investments in the company became public, Musk conducted a series of polls seemingly aimed at influencing Twitter’s future.
He asked whether Twitter’s algorithm should be made public, or open-source; and a day later he asked whether Twitter “rigorously adheres” to free speech principles.
“Is a new platform needed?” he later asked.
Musk has emerged as one of the platform’s most high-profile critics, questioning its role in restricting who and who cannot join.
After Trump was banned in the days following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, Musk wrote that “a lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech.”
Musk’s board appointment limited his stake in the company at 14.9 percent. Now that he will not have a board seat, he is free to continue to invest beyond that figure.
by ponchi101 That is the correct move, and kudos to him. He is one of the top three richest men in the world, holds almost 10% of the company, and has been critical of it.
The conflict of interest is way too near.
by Suliso
by ponchi101 It has reached the stage in which launches are not announced or even news. I remember how every single Space Shuttle launch was always big news. By now, this is getting to be routine.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie With Elon Musk now saying he has the financial backing to buy Twitter it's going to be interesting to see what happens if he actually goes through with it. RW trolls are gleefully predicting the return of TFG which makes me ask why they feel he needs to come back to Twitter when he and his cultists set up their own platform so they could speak freely?
If there is a mass exodus will sports like ours find other ways to get their information out? IG is Zuckerberg so what do sports, all sports, do if the majority of their fanbases disappear? There is also talk that he's going to make it a subscription service.
Of course now it's all talk. We'll see.
by ponchi101 All I've read is that he wants to make TW a source of proper news, meaning that there will be more filters and ways to verify that people posting are real. I am no fan of the guy but also not a detractor. If his goal is to make TW a clean platform, well, thanks a lot.
by Suliso I don't really get why he wants even more work on his schedule, but it's up to him. He already owns 4 companies and actively runs two of them... I can't imagine him spending all this money and then be a passive owner.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 6:07 pm
All I've read is that he wants to make TW a source of proper news, meaning that there will be more filters and ways to verify that people posting are real. I am no fan of the guy but also not a detractor. If his goal is to make TW a clean platform, well, thanks a lot.
Sadly it seems that that goal of making it a "clean platform" means to some that all of the trolls and people who threaten others with physical harm will be free to threaten people with physical harm. It would also mean the spreading of disinformation and conspiracy theories for those who engage in those things.
Again, we'll see.
by ti-amie Eli Pariser 🏞
@elipariser
So the world’s wealthiest space cowboy seems to be buying this global communications platform. RIP Twitter is trending. about what this means for the future of digital platforms: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/tech ... -musk.html
Musk’s stated reasons for buying Twitter are self-contradictory. He’s going to unlock Twitter’s profitability but also not running it to make money. He’s going to make the platform better for “absolute free speech” but create a subscription tier (impediment to unfettered speech!)
Pretty much every platform speech expert thinks his ideas are bad/unworkable. It’s a random collection of design ideas that sound good at first blush (edit button! Post the algo to Github!) but are very complicated and not necessarily helpful in practice. washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
And his free speech ideas aren’t just dumb, they’re dangerous. What happens in a space with no public safety and no moderation? The loudest voices – usually the people who can pay the most – win. That means companies, bot networks, state actors.
Beyond that though, let’s remember that if/when Elon takes ownership of Twitter, he has a LOT of latitude to do *whatever he wants* with the platform. He can boot who he wants. He can shadow-ban who he wants. There’s no law that prevents that.
Now let’s remember, this guy is so thin-skinned that when a man who saved the lives of kids trapped in a cave criticized his misguided attempts to help, Musk called him a pedophile: https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/media/el ... index.html
So if the transaction goes through, trust in the platform is really trust in Musk not to be arbitrary and capricious. And while the dude is talented at many things, self-restraint and reliability are not even remotely on that list.
The possibilities here are pretty dark. Have billionaires seized communications platforms and used them for their own agendas? Sure. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... on-adelson
Ironically, this is what a lot of actual US 1st amendment jurisprudence is about: The absolute right of companies to “say” whatever the hell they want.
Musk says he’ll steward Twitter for the greater good. Even leaving his personal history aside, the recent history of billionaires doing this is not so hot.
For every Washington Post (praise grudgingly given) there’s a Tribune Company, Gothamist, Pacific Standard, or hey, MySpace.
Billionaires tend to be distracted by the next shiny thing. How much faith should we have that someone who also runs a rocket ship co, a car co, a tunnel-boring co, etc is going to stick with the hard decisions once his initial (again, dumb) plans fail to work as planned?
Here’s the thing: This is not just about Twitter, and not just about Musk. It’s about the fundamental way we’re choosing – and it is a choice – to structure our communications mediums.
When we – the people who actually power these platforms and make them worth visiting – choose to structure them as for-profit companies, we choose to cede decision-making to the highest bidder.
But there’s no reason we couldn’t choose to create public benefit social media we own and govern. As @EthanZ has been writing for years, in every new media epoch some countries choose to invest in public goods.
It’s not even THAT expensive in the scheme of things. Twitter in its 16-year history has raised $4B in capital (including its IPO). PBS over the same period cost about $6.4B.
Maybe this is the kick we need to decide that the way we connect and communicate with each other shouldn’t be subject to the whims of a mercurial billionaire, and invest in something better.
I’m not suggesting all social platforms should be public. But in physical communities we mix private and public spaces (parks, libraries) for a reason. It’s time to build healthy public spaces for digital life too.
(click on link below for the article he is referencing)
There are a bunch of folks working on this around the globe...
Musk says “a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.” I fully agree with him. I just think achieving that requires thinking outside the box of the for-profit venture-backed.
Sadly it seems that that goal of making it a "clean platform" means to some that all of the trolls and people who threaten others with physical harm will be free to threaten people with physical harm. It would also mean the spreading of disinformation and conspiracy theories for those who engage in those things.
Again, we'll see.
You know that I am not in TW or any social media platform. But my idea of them all is that, for every grandmother that enjoys seeing pictures of her grandchildren, there are ten people pushing misinformation. I like TW the way I have it: it has a great filter system, namely you.
But I do believe that TW has become dangerous. The cons, to me, beat the pros. As the next message you posted explains a lot of why it is dangerous on either direction. In the hands of Musk, it may be dangerous. And completely open and un-reigned, it certainly looks dangerous to me.
by ti-amie Don't forget Musk is not liquid. He's leveraged up the wazoo. He would have to liquidate a lot of his Tesla shares in order to have real hard cash. Chase made a big deal about putting up money.
by Deuce Anyone who thinks or thought that Musk's aim in acquiring ownership of anything was/is anything other than selfish and self-serving is living in a grand illusion.
Firstly, there is a perpetual p!ssing contest going on between the richest people in the world, with each trying to out-do each other, and none of them giving a damn about the consequences of their actions to others.
Secondly, Elon Musk is a psychologically defective human being with a very twisted sense of reality.
Hold onto your hats, people - all of this crap is only going to get worse.
.
by Deuce Donald Trump says Elon Musk “is a good man”.
After that wonderful endorsement, if anyone is still questioning whether or not Musk is really a conceited, arrogant, juvenile S.O.B., here you go...
This total flake really can’t afford to kill off any more brain cells.
.
by Suliso Don't make a mistake of thinking the man is stupid like Trump. It's nothing of a sort, he's a brilliant engineer/scientist in fact. Closely involved in design at both Tesla and SpaceX.
by ponchi101 He is one of those "brilliant/dumb" people, to me. As you say, he is very smart in the engineering aspects. He is also very good at marketing (Tesla's sales approach is changing that industry too) and financial aspects.
But he seems to be out of touch with how to handle people and PR. That is where I would call him "dumb".
Bottom line to me: nobody makes $100BB being dumb. Nobody.
by Suliso I suspect he has some kind Asperger's syndrome or something like that. Those people are very focused and brilliant in some directions, but socially awkward.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:38 pm
Bottom line to me: nobody makes $100BB being dumb. Nobody.
Yes and no. People who become rich from modest means have a great business sense, know how to hire and fire well etc., but would often be useless if you asked them anything highly technical. Not so with Elon Musk. He has BSc in physics and was accepted at Stanford PhD program in materials science before dropping out to launch an internet startup.
by ti-amie Modest means? His family owned/owns emerald mines in South Africa. And let's not forget the role the US government has played in funding him.
Tesla stock is in free fall by the way and some on the Tesla board are calling for his ouster. He has to unload a lot of stock to come up with the $$$.
There was also this interesting conversation on Twitter today.
P1 (URL Limits)
by ti-amie p2
by Suliso
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Apr 28, 2022 7:11 pm
Modest means? His family owned/owns emerald mines in South Africa. And let's not forget the role the US government has played in funding him.
Didn't know about the mine, but it's my understanding he can't stand his father and keeps no contact with him.
As for US government for once they invested money smartly. Two technologically amazing companies came out of it. Spacex probably even more so than Tesla, albeit the latter is globally more important.
by Deuce
Suliso wrote: ↑Thu Apr 28, 2022 4:08 pm
I suspect he has some kind Asperger's syndrome or something like that. Those people are very focused and brilliant in some directions, but socially awkward.
I can understand the perspective of him having some form of Autism, based on his behaviour... But I doubt that he's anywhere within the Autism spectrum. He's too selfish and scheming and manipulative for that. In my experience and observation, people with Asperger's or other forms of Autism are not scheming or manipulative (I've worked with Autistic/Asperger children and teenagers, but not adults). People in the Autism spectrum often have exaggerated feelings - though it may seem that they have very few feelings... whereas I think that Musk has an almost complete absence of feelings. Kind of like what we would imagine an automaton or robot of some sort would be.
I believe that Musk definitely has a very distorted view of reality... but I have no idea how that came about. Maybe some physical/biological defect... maybe abuse or neglect by his parents... maybe too many drugs... maybe all of the above... or perhaps some other reason altogether.
This distorted view of reality has likely helped him in some ways (like not seeing obstacles where obstacles exist, for example)... but it has surely hurt him in many ways, as well.
I also view him as a person of little to no emotion - and when emotion does occur within him, I doubt he has control over it.
He is obviously ambitious - but completely lacks empathy for any other being, I believe. He is his only world - and the outside world in which the rest of us exist doesn't seem to exist to him. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he tortured cats when he was a kid.
I just feel that he's always right on the edge of what we commonly refer to as 'sanity'. Many geniuses throughout history have been on the edge of sanity - and some have gone over the edge. If Musk goes over the edge (in a big way, as I think he's already gone somewhat over the edge a number of times), you could count me as being the least surprised of everyone.
by ashkor87 Elon Musk seems likely headed for bankruptcy..he has almost certainly been infected with hubris..I am not sure even Tesla is sustainable as a business model though it is an engineering Marvel ..how many years has Tesla turned an actual profit? One at most...
by ponchi101 Because all their profits were re-invested in the company, expanding it. That was the same model that Amazon followed, and they are far from bankrupt-
Tesla is the Apple of cars. They have by now a solid following and a cult environment: NOTHING that Tesla does is bad. They are the sacrosanct car company, fighting the evil polluters and saving the planet all by themselves (the usual line of thought). Their cars are very good, from the electric point of view, even if some of them are less than well put together (the Model 3). Plus, they are very distinct in their design, with a very clean and crisp form. So, they have their market, and it is cornered. Again, it is like Apple: it matters very little that Samsung has repeatedly come up with better phones than the iPhone, in the USA the standard is whichever new one Apple comes up with. With Tesla, it works the same. It makes no difference if Lucid has a better car, or if the MB EQS is also better. Tesla has the reputation.
Also, Tesla is indeed a leader in battery development and, if we ever are going to go fully electric from intermittent sources such as wind and solar, Tesla will play a huge role. The largest home battery pack available in the market is their powerwall, so they are way ahead than everybody else in that market.
Tesla is past the point of being "sustainable". They are leaders in that sector. By now, all European or American car companies can come up with electrics and Tesla will continue to sell every single car they make. That is a solid foundation.
(BTW. I don't like Tesla's. Too many gadgets)
by Suliso Ponchi is right for sure on this one. Tesla was actually close to going bankrupt 4-5 years ago, but there is no way of that happening now. They're literally printing money and would be printing even more if their manufacturing capacity could keep up with the demand.
As for rivals in Europe it seems like only VW is seriously competing in battery electric vehicles. Too many big players still seem to be hoping that the trend will somehow pass. In US there is virtually no competition at all if you've already decided that you want an electric one.
by ponchi101 Uhm, not so fast about the USA. Nissan, Kia and Hyundai are offering some reasonably priced vehicles that offer good quality. The Nissan Leaf is a nifty little thing that offer good value IF you are a city dweller, and can compete with the Model 3. Of course, this are Japanese and Koreans. You are right that Toyota, Honda and the other small Japanese companies (Mazda has made it clear they have no intentions of joining the EV market) seem not to be pushing full EVs but rather hybrids. Madness, if you ask me.
From the Americans, Ford seems to be ahead of the other traditional manufacturers (but yes, nowhere near Tesla for electrics). They offer the Mustang E, which suffers only from long charging time, but they just stopped taking orders for their F150 Lightning (pick up truck) because they simply can't make enough. Chevy is resurrecting the Volt (which is a good car) and are planning on EV trucks. Chrysler/Fiat is seriously behind.
Lucid is making a complete competitor for the Series S: the Lucid Air. For my money, a much better car, but of course, it is around the $145K range, so that is not going to be in any sort mass produced.
Polestar (Volvo/Geely) is offering the 1 and the 2. The 1 is aimed at the Model S, the 2 at the Model 3. I will take the Polestar 2 over the Model 3, simply because of looks.
VW, as you say, is doing good things and is spinning them out to Porsche/Audi. MB has the EQS and BMW has stalled with the i3, but has now come up with several electric X models.
I wonder how much of a fad it will be, or if it will be permanent. Supply and demand will come into effect. If all America would switch to EV's, the demand for electricity would surge accordingly, with prices going up. So charging your EV might end up being more expensive than the equivalent ICE car. This is far from being settled.
(Says the old guy that still drives a stick shift because he does not like Automatic gearboxes).
by Suliso Of course there are competitors in principle in US, but when you look at actual number of cars sold last year they're tiny compared to Tesla. VW sells a lot of electric cars in Europe.
by ponchi101 It was a silly idea that grew into a monster. Just a simple place for people to share simple thoughts became the premier platform to spew anything.
It is not TW. It is the users. And since you cannot get rid of the people, you have to get rid of TW.
I really believe it causes more harm than good.
by ti-amie It's actually gotten better since TFG and his crew have been banned or left to join Truth Social or whatever that data mining grift is called. There is more real world information given and few if any trolls/bots/lunatics respond and if they do it's easier to spot them and block them.
I think what Jack is saying is that "we" can't regulate ourselves, that rules need to be established so that when something is said or encouraged that can cause harm to people the company itself is not liable. It sounds to me as if he's asking for a Communications Act/Telecom Act update to include social media, to provide guidelines these companies must follow. It's the same with FB. I wonder why he took so long to put this out there, and why he voted to take the money and run.
by ponchi101
ti-amie wrote: ↑Fri Apr 29, 2022 10:24 pm
... It sounds to me as if he's asking for a Communications Act/Telecom Act update to include social media, to provide guidelines these companies must follow. It's the same with FB. I wonder why he took so long to put this out there, and why he voted to take the money and run.
Which is long overdue, but with your split congress/senate, fat chance.
by Deuce When I first heard about twitter and 'tweets', I thought it was a joke. I honestly believed it must be a joke, because I didn't think that the populace would buy into this trivial nonsense - especially because it was so restrictive and limiting... there's nowhere near enough space to express anything remotely resembling profound or complex thought.
But, of course, people have absolutely no desire to express - or to read - profound or complex thought - they simply want the superficiality of skimming along the surface of things and of being judged and judging everyone else on just the surface - then complaining about being 'judged', of course.
And so, twitter is very popular.
In addition to surely contributing to the DIScouragement of true communication, twitter is also surely a significant factor in the ever decreasing attention span that people have, and in the fact that it seems no-one today is capable of reading more than 4 paragraphs of any writing without completely losing focus.
The internet as a whole is re-wiring people's brains to not only expect, but to DEMAND instant results for everything.
And that, of course, is the antithesis of thought.
As for Tesla being 'sustainable'... I will call them sustainable only when all of the materials they make their cars from are either entirely and easily recyclable, or are biodegradable within less than one year once the car is no longer able to be used as a vehicle.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Didn't know this. Today, June 30th, is World Asteroid Day, which I find an odd way to name a day for things that are literally OUT of this world.
Here is a fun site: https://asteroidday.org/
by ti-amie
by Suliso There is Elon Musk the crazy guy messing around with Twitter and then there is Elon Musk engineer. Here is a series of interviews (some highly technical) about his rocket engines and Starship. Maybe some of you will appreciate. The rocket should be ready for the inaugural launch within a month or two.
The first two videos about are about the Starbase in Boca Chica, TX. The third is about the Merlin engine used in the current generation Falcon 9 rocket and the fourth is about the Raptor engine to be used in the Starship.
by Suliso
by Suliso
by Suliso
by ponchi101 Ok, it will take some time to go through them. Thanks
Basically, putting a shield at the Lagrangian Point 1, and bring down a bit of the solar input.
(I said this, about four years ago, in TAT1.0. But I am an unknown buffoon in an obscure forum).
by Suliso There are a lot of cool developments in batery technology lately. Maybe should put up some links later...
by ponchi101 I had this idea about putting a shield at the Lagrange point 1 about 4/5 years ago. However, I felt it should be a satellite with some sort of circular plane, divided in panels that could be rotated. That way, simple manipulation of the satellite could increase or decrease the shielding, allowing for more or less sunlight to reach the Earth.
One thing. This idea is excellent, but the factor that LESS sunlight means LESS energy available for photosynthesis has to be considered. We could cool down the planet, but calculations on how much our agricultural efforts would be affected would have to be computed.
by Suliso My first instinct is that it would mess with something else, but I could be wrong...
by ponchi101 ANY IDEA that was originally concocted by me will mess with something else. ANY
Seriously. Sure, it has to be very well thought. This idea of bubbles is fine, as long as there is a way to remove them in case something goes wrong (for example, they could be TOO efficient and trigger an Ice Age).
But, by now, some sort of geo-engineering has to be done. We are way past the point of just hoping that simple emissions-reduction will put this back under control. We need to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, either by planting more trees or some yet-to-be-invented technology. So that shield at LP1 could be of help.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Ok, Joe. Agree, that is incredible. Makes you realize, if that were possible, the enormity of the universe.
But: what is it? Obviously a huge field, but give us at least the link to the info.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 This is something that we, humankind, can be so proud of. As proud of this as we can be of Stonehenge, The Pyramids, Notre Dame, all the beautiful music in our history, all of our literature, all of our art.
All of our science.
by Deuce Another beauty...
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Wow. Simply wow.
by ti-amieEarth is spinning faster than usual and had its shortest day ever
BY CAITLIN O'KANE
AUGUST 3, 2022 / 8:30 AM / CBS NEWS
The Earth is spinning faster, and recently recorded its shortest day ever, scientists say. June 29, 2022 was 1.59 millisecond less than the average day, scientist Leonid Zotov told CBS News.
The normal length of day is 24 hours, or 86,400 seconds. But in recent years, the Earth's rotation has accelerated, shortening some days by milliseconds. "Since 2016 the Earth started to accelerate," said Zotov, who works at works for Lomonosov Moscow State University and recently published a study on what might cause the changes in Earth's rotation. "This year it rotates quicker than in 2021 and 2020."
Zotov and his colleagues believe the fluctuation could be caused by the Earth's tides.
He says not every day is shorter, but if the trend continues, atomic time – the universal way time is measured on Earth – may have to change. Some scientists propose introducing a negative leap second. "Since we can not change the clock arrows attached to the Earth rotation, we adjust the atomic clock scale," he said.
As opposed to leap years, which have an extra day added, a negative leap second would mean clocks skip one second.
Some engineers oppose the introduction of a leap second, as it could lead to large-scale and devastating tech issues. Meta engineers Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi, who is also a researcher, wrote blog post about it for Meta, which is supporting an industry-wide effort to stop future introductions of leap seconds.
"Negative leap second handling is supported for a long time and companies like Meta often run simulations of this event," they told CBS News. "However, it has never been verified on a large scale and will likely lead to unpredictable and devastating outages across the world."
The concept, which was introduced in 1972, "mainly benefits scientists and astronomers as it allows them to observe celestial bodies using UTC [Coordinated Universal Time] for most purposes," they wrote in the blog post.
"Introducing new leap seconds is a risky practice that does more harm than good, and we believe it is time to introduce new technologies to replace it," they write.
While positive leap seconds could cause a time jump, resulting in IT programs crashing or even data being corrupted, a negative leap second would be worse, they argue.
"The impact of a negative leap second has never been tested on a large scale; it could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers," they write. "In any case, every leap second is a major source of pain for people who manage hardware infrastructures."
The pair believes one of many contributing factors to Earth's faster spin could be the constant melting and refreezing of ice caps on the world's tallest mountains.
"It is all about the law of conservation of momentum that applies to our planet Earth. Every atom on the planet contributes to the momentum of the earth's angular velocity based on the distance to the rotation axis of the earth," Obleukhov and Byagowi told CBS News. "So, once things move around, the angular velocity of the earth can vary."
"This phenomenon can be simply visualized by thinking about a spinning figure skater, who manages angular velocity by controlling their arms and hands," they said. "As they spread their arms the angular velocity decreases, preserving the skater's momentum. As soon as the skater tucks their arms back in, the angular velocity increases. Same happens here at this moment because of rising temperatures on Earth. Ice caps melt and lead to angular velocity increase."
Zotov and his colleagues Christian Bizouard and Nikolay Sidorenkov will present their research at this month's Asia Oceania Geosciences Society conference for geosciences, according to Timeanddate.com, which first reported on Earth's faster spin and shorter days.
ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed Aug 03, 2022 6:58 pmEarth is spinning faster than usual and had its shortest day ever
BY CAITLIN O'KANE
AUGUST 3, 2022 / 8:30 AM / CBS NEWS
The Earth is spinning faster, and recently recorded its shortest day ever, scientists say. June 29, 2022 was 1.59 millisecond less than the average day, scientist Leonid Zotov told CBS News.
The normal length of day is 24 hours, or 86,400 seconds. But in recent years, the Earth's rotation has accelerated, shortening some days by milliseconds. "Since 2016 the Earth started to accelerate," said Zotov, who works at works for Lomonosov Moscow State University and recently published a study on what might cause the changes in Earth's rotation. "This year it rotates quicker than in 2021 and 2020."
Yeah... I've felt that something's been different these past few years... It has just felt like something's a little off, mostly with my forehand - but I didn't know exactly what.
Now I know.
True story...
Some years ago, after a lefty beat me in a tennis tournament, at the handshake, I said to him, with a straight face "Good match... Of course, you had the advantage, as the current rotation of the Earth, combined with the current orbit of the moon favours lefties."
He looked at me like I was from another planet.
About 30 minutes later, I heard him say to someone, while pointing toward me "You see that guy? I just beat him, and he said I had an advantage because the rotation of the Earth and something about the moon helps left handed players. Weird, man... just weird."
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 How does that affect Climate Change? Will it reflect sunlight (helping us)? Or will it capture more heat (frying us)?
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 03, 2022 8:31 pm
How does that affect Climate Change? Will it reflect sunlight (helping us)? Or will it capture more heat (frying us)?
Right now I think it's the boldened part.
by ti-amie
That person is correct
by ti-amie
The TL;dr
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 I gather that is the sound of ultimate annihilation.
by Suliso As many of you probably know SLS is finally slated for a take off no earlier than Monday morning, August 29th. Here is a video from a renowned "space youtuber" about the details of this huge rocket.
by ponchi101 Couldn't watch this yesterday. I will be watching the launch on Monday.
by ponchi101 Launch has been postponed due to an engine problem. NASA really understood its Challenger lesson. The right thing to do.
Next window on Sept 2nd.
by Suliso Yeah... There are two more windows - Sept 2nd and 5th.
by ti-amieA Major Ocean Current Is at Its Weakest Point in 1,000 Years
Natural variations are currently the main cause, but climate change should continue to cause it to slow down
By Chelsea Harvey, E&E News on April 27, 2022
A gigantic ocean current, which transports heat around the globe and helps regulate weather patterns throughout the North Atlantic, appears to be slowing down. In fact, recent research has found that it’s currently at its weakest point in the last 1,000 years.
The big question: Is climate change causing the slowdown? Or is it just a natural fluctuation?
For now, scientists say, it’s probably some of both.
A new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, finds that the current is indeed slowing and that climate change is likely playing at least a small part. But the current’s behavior is still within the range of its own natural patterns.
In other words, the climate change signal hasn’t yet pushed the current outside the bounds of its historically “normal” behavior. The signal from natural variability “basically dominates” the signal from human-caused warming, according to lead study author Mojib Latif, a scientist at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany.
Still, that’s likely to change at some point in the future. Climate models indicate that human-caused global warming should cause the current to continue slowing over time. If the world keeps on warming, the current’s behavior eventually should tip outside the bounds of natural variability, flowing into uncharted territory.
Exactly how quickly that process will unfold, and how strong the slowing will be, is still a matter of scientific debate. But it’s a serious question.
Officially known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, the current ferries heat between the equator and the Arctic like a giant liquid conveyor belt. As a result, it’s largely responsible for the mild weather conditions enjoyed by much of the North Atlantic region, including Europe and the eastern United States.
If the current continues to slow, it could disrupt weather patterns throughout the midlatitudes. Parts of the North Atlantic may cool, while areas farther south along the U.S. East Coast may get warmer.
In fact, some data suggests these processes already are starting to happen.
Multiple studies in recent years have made it clear the AMOC is slowing. Some research suggests it may have been weakening for at least 150 years.
Still, the best, most direct measurements of the AMOC’s flow come from the last 20 years or so, when scientists began installing wide networks of special ocean sensors throughout the region. That makes it challenging to compare the AMOC today with its past behavior—meaning it’s difficult to determine whether the current slowdowns are part of a natural pattern.
Scientists have found various ways to address the issue. Some studies have used long-buried sediment samples pulled from the ocean floor. These samples contain chemical information about what ocean conditions were like hundreds of years ago.
The new study uses historical records of sea surface temperatures throughout the Atlantic, dating back to the year 1900. Because changes in the AMOC’s flow can affect ocean temperatures in different ways throughout the region, these records can help scientists evaluate how the current has changed over time.
They also paired their historical analyses with simulations from climate models, which help them investigate the causes behind changes in the AMOC.
The study suggests there is, in fact, a signal from human-caused global warming. Climate change is playing at least some role in the AMOC’s behavior.
It’s “a kind of fingerprint” of human-caused warming, according to Latif.
But the influence of natural variability is, for now, still stronger. The AMOC has a tendency to fluctuate over time, and its current behavior is still within the bounds of a natural pattern.
This doesn’t mean the current isn’t slowing or that global warming isn’t playing a part, Latif cautioned. The current is, indeed, slowing down. And even if it’s still within the bounds of natural behavior, the influence of climate change is getting stronger all the time in the background.
“As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, all models predict a major slowing of the circulation,” he said. It’s just a matter of when that signal becomes the dominant force acting on the current. If not today, then it will be at some point in the future as long as the planet continues to warm.
The study’s findings are “fully consistent” with other recent research on the AMOC’s slowing, said Stefan Rahmstorf, an ocean expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, in an email to E&E News. Rahmstorf wasn’t involved with the new study, but has published several major papers over the last few years on the weakening AMOC.
He noted there’s ample evidence for at least some influence from human-caused warming. That includes the “fingerprint” of climate change observed in the new paper this week, the fact that climate models predict a slowdown in response to greenhouse gas emissions and the trend in which recent slowing appears to be the most extreme in the last millennium.
The study also highlights the importance of continued direct monitoring in the Atlantic, Latif added. Ocean sensors aren’t cheap to install or maintain, and they need continuous funding. But they’re the best way for scientists to keep tabs on what’s really happening to the AMOC over time.
“All this needs to be maintained,” Latif said. “That’s the bottom line.”
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2022. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
by ponchi101 If that current stops, northern Europe will become way colder.
If it becomes way colder, snow and ice can form back, at unknown rates.
If Europe has a large blanket of snow, it will reflect more light back into space.
Which will make the world colder. And not in a good way.
Sagan thought of this scenario in the 70's.
by ti-amie Carl Sagan was a man ahead of his time.
by skatingfan Isn't this the plot of 'The Day After Tomorrow'?
by ponchi101 Never saw that film (Roland Emerich ) but yes, it is roughly the idea. The Atlantic Conveyor shuts down and a very rapid Ice Age ensues.
Scientifically totally off the wall, but that was the plot. Plus, the Ice Age takes over America. The Atlantic Conveyor transfers heat to Europe. England would freeze, but not in a few days.
by Suliso Nobel prize in medicine has been awarded to Svante Pääbo for work on prehistoric human DNA. I mentioned his research on this thread (TAT 1.0) few years ago. Look him up if you're interested. Fascinating research in my opinion.
by ponchi101 They have to expand the Nobel Prize categories. Is that really medicine? (Serious question). Sounds more like anthropology or even paleontology to me.
by Suliso I'd call it a general biology. Medicine prize are often like that. Watson and Crick weren't really doing medicine either
by ponchi101 I found the news, and indeed, it is very broad to call this medicine. Totally worth it, and of course, it goes deeper than sequencing DNA. I did not know he had sequenced the genome for Neanderthals, which was a superb achievement.
by ti-amie
Suliso wrote: ↑Mon Oct 03, 2022 3:46 pm
Nobel prize in medicine has been awarded to Svante Pääbo for work on prehistoric human DNA. I mentioned his research on this thread (TAT 1.0) few years ago. Look him up if you're interested. Fascinating research in my opinion.
We had a big discussion about DNA on TAT 1.0 and I remember his name coming up. I think he also traced the genome of the Denisovans, a people that there was once a debate about ever existing.
by ti-amie
Elizabeth Spiers
@espiers
That said, there are a lot of graduate programs where I think grading undermines learning. Organic chem is not one of them.
by ponchi101 Chemistry, of any kind, is a hard science. I will let Suliso expand on that but, a chemical reaction will yield definite results only. It will not yield a multitude of "possible" compounds.
If this continues, you are one or two generations away from teaching that 2 + 2 approaches 4.
by ti-amie Can you see the next generation of doctors needing to Google how they should treat whatever brought you to the hospital? If NYU can't hold the line and tell parents where to go and what to do when they get there saying someone is a doctor will be meaningless.
by Owendonovan This is how education works now, sadly. At the K-9 private boys school I work at ($60k/yr.) in the Athletic dept., a 9yo boy got hit in the head by a cheap hollow plastic puck playing floor hockey (which has been played for decades at the school on rainy days when we don't use the fields) and complained to his billionaire parents (his team didn't win, which was his real problem). We no longer play floor hockey. This is just one example of the myriad complaints the wealthy parents at my school have made leading to the ending of many programs. Now when the boys complain about not being able to do something, I tell them, "tell your parents to complain to the school". A kid is bugging you? "tell your parents to complain to the school". If the school administration is going to cater to the parents and ignore the instructors, OK, I'll play that game my way.
by ponchi101 A sad story, Owen. I hope you get my meaning.
by Suliso I've been a teaching assistant for undergrad organic chemistry classes in US. 90% of students were pre med. They had no interest in the topic itself. Is it really so necessary for doctors? I have a feeling it's just used to weed out those who can't work hard or are just too dumb. Like calculus in my own undergrad (never used it since and I'm a scientist).
by Suliso Nobel prize in physics goes to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for work on quantum entaglment of photons. Don't remember these particular names, but I'm somewhat familiar with the field (not at a pro level mind you).
by Owendonovan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 04, 2022 1:43 am
A sad story, Owen. I hope you get my meaning.
It was real touch and go for a while to see if it might leave a mark on the boy, we were all praying for a full recovery.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Oct 04, 2022 10:56 am
Nobel prize in physics goes to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for work on quantum entaglment of photons. Don't remember these particular names, but I'm somewhat familiar with the field (not at a pro level mind you).
After the discovery of the Higgs, a bit of a stagnant field, isn't it? String Theory has slowly been fading as it fails to produce any evidence, Dark Matter/Energy remains an unknown.
I gather I will have to get a book on quantum entanglement.
by Suliso I don't think this field has much to do with particle physics. Quantum entanglement is very relevant for quantum computing which is a very hot field right now.
Maybe a useful thread:
by Suliso Nobel prize in chemistry goes to K. Barry Sharpless (2nd prize), Carolyn R. Bertozzi and Morten Meldal for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.
This field is somewhat familiar to me and two of the three nominees (except Meldal) are known to me also for other work. The basic premise is that a certain organic reaction (Cu catalyzed cycloaddition of alkynes with azides) is so selective and mild that it could be used in living systems for various fine studies.
by ponchi101 Does this make Sharpless the third person to receive TWO Nobel Prizes (Curie and Pauling)?
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 4:29 pm
Does this make Sharpless the third person to receive TWO Nobel Prizes (Curie and Pauling)?
The fifth. Besides the two you mentioned also Frederick Sanger (chemistry 1958, 1980) and John Bardeen (physics 1956, 1972).
by ponchi101 A little reminder that SPACE cannot be conquered based on corporate rules.
by Suliso To be fair nothing was really conquered here. They guy merely funded and launched a satellite internet service. Not even a new idea, but the government would never have.
Musk is being stupid in offering his ill informed opinions on this conflict and then getting offended when he's called out for it.
IMG-20221025-WA0000.jpg
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by ponchi101 As I posted something about the vandalism being attempted at art pieces, in the name of "Climate Change Awareness".
I received from a friend a small chart showing the amount of metals needed to phase out fossil fuels. I went on line to look a bit more into it, and found a few articles about this. I will link only one: Is There Enough Metal to Replace Oil?
Now, the article starts by pulling no punches. The short answer is NO. There are not enough metals to phase out oil.
But, the few articles I read all stem from a single presentation by an Iceland professor, so the BS detection kit has to be deployed. If all articles refer to one single source, the required "multiple sources to verify" rule is not being applied.
However, the articles are not sensationalist, and the youtube talk in which this professor explains his point of view is given in a very didactic sense.
The video is long (over one hour), so it takes a little commitment.
And, of course, remember I am an O&G person, whose critical thinking may be currently affected by financial pressures.
The following is the chart sent to me:
IMG-20221025-WA0000.jpg
by ti-amie Thank you for the above^. Everyone wants to get rid of fossil fuels but that's where the discussion should start not stop.
by ponchi101 Not everyone. People in Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, the Arab Peninsula and several other places, simply don't want to or CANNOT get rid of them.
The sleepy, little town of Añelo, in the Argentinean province of Neuquen, truly did not want to. A booming economy in 2019, it's now a ghost town, simply because of lack of investment in O&G. Venezuela will never recover unless oil reclaims some position.
It is a very complicated issue (and remember, I may be O&G, but CC, for me, is not even possible to challenge as an anthropic-based phenomenon).
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 28, 2022 8:36 pm
Not everyone. People in Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, the Arab Peninsula and several other places, simply don't want to or CANNOT get rid of them.
The sleepy, little town of Añelo, in the Argentinean province of Neuquen, truly did not want to. A booming economy in 2019, it's now a ghost town, simply because of lack of investment in O&G. Venezuela will never recover unless oil reclaims some position.
It is a very complicated issue (and remember, I may be O&G, but CC, for me, is not even possible to challenge as an anthropic-based phenomenon).
You're right. I started to go back and correct my post to say "almost everyone" but there's a lot of stuff going on today. I agree.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 It is not a "Town Square".
It is a bully sand lot.
by ti-amie It was until the "influencers" in media, show biz and politics found out where everyone was hanging out.
I got into Twitter when I was seriously blogging a few years ago. It was the best way to reach Tennis Twitter.
I'm leaning towards staying but I'm also thinking about opening or re-opening another account somewhere else.
by MJ2004 I’m on book twitter. I refuse to use booktok, so I’ll stay on Twitter for now, at least until the authors, podcasters and bloggers I follow go elsewhere. I don’t actually post anything, I just follow others.
by Jeff from TX I'll stay for awhile, but I have already changed my handle (it used to include my last name). Some people out there are way too offended by a little bit of snark. I had one dude challenge me to come meet him for a fight over something I said (which was even directed to him). People are crazy, and there are way too many guns out there. I have tried to be more circumspect in what I say now, but it wasn't even that bad. So much for the "discussion" aspect of it. It really is mostly just shouting.
by Suliso I'm on TW, modestly active. It's perfectly fine as long as you're not shy of blocking idiots and muting annoying people. I post 90% in Latvian, though. It's a much smaller pond and maybe in English it feels different. No noticeable changes from the new owner yet. Also not among English posters I follow.
by dryrunguy I blocked Elon Musk yesterday--purely as a preventive measure.
by JazzNU
by ponchi101 Ah, the joys of mergers/acquisitions. You buy a company because it is profitable and then, what do you know, you need to "cut costs" and slash 20% of the workforce because, you know, you have to answer to the stockholders.
Of which you are the only one.
by Suliso Twitter people will easily find other jobs, though.
by JazzNU
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Nov 04, 2022 5:09 pm
Twitter people will easily find other jobs, though.
Some will, some won't, at least not immediately. There's basically mass layoffs occurring in tech right now. None anywhere near as large as Twitter from what I've seen, but sizable numbers nonetheless and hiring freezes at other tech companies that aren't doing layoffs.
That being said, if you look at that guy's reporting, even in the same thread as the above tweet, there are plenty of Twitter employees hoping to be on the layoff list so that they can get severance pay and leave what has been described in recent weeks as a very toxic workplace.
Bay Area living costs are going to potentially be a bigger issue in this scenario, but you'd think a good portion of employees who worked at Twitter can afford to be unemployed with a good severance package for a bit while the market rebounds.
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Nov 04, 2022 5:09 pm
Twitter people will easily find other jobs, though.
Some will, some won't, at least not immediately. There's basically mass layoffs occurring in tech right now. None anywhere near as large as Twitter from what I've seen, but sizable numbers nonetheless and hiring freezes at other tech companies that aren't doing layoffs.
That being said, if you look at that guy's reporting, even in the same thread as the above tweet, there are plenty of Twitter employees hoping to be on the layoff list so that they can get severance pay and leave what has been described in recent weeks as a very toxic workplace.
Bay Area living costs are going to potentially be a bigger issue in this scenario, but you'd think a good portion of employees who worked at Twitter can afford to be unemployed with a good severance package for a bit while the market rebounds.
I'll just add that the holidays are rapidly approaching. So more layoffs are almost certainly on their way. Big corporations LOVE to spread this particular form of holiday cheer.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie More on the advertising money drying up:
by ponchi101 Time to move this from the SCIENCE topic. Not a drop of science in it.
If we had a SOAP OPERA topic, it would be spot on.
by Deuce If a 'Soap Opera' topic is created, all of the Raducanu coaching and injury stuff should go there.
And the Andreescu injury stuff, too.
And the Djokovic vaccine stuff...
by ti-amie Maybe it should go in the Business thread? How to destroy a thriving community space in a week?
by Deuce My vote would be that it goes in the 'entertainment' section.
That's the closest thing to 'soap opera' that we have, isn't it?
by Suliso Musk's expertise if any is in technology (hardware type) and he hates traditional advertising (Tesla and Spacex do none). Why the hell did he move into this field? Sounds like a total hubris to me.
by ponchi101
ti-amie wrote: ↑Fri Nov 04, 2022 11:33 pm
Maybe it should go in the Business thread? How to destroy a thriving community space in a week?
Business topic. Go there.
by JazzNU
dryrunguy wrote: ↑Fri Nov 04, 2022 10:44 pm
I'll just add that the holidays are rapidly approaching. So more layoffs are almost certainly on their way. Big corporations LOVE to spread this particular form of holiday cheer.
You are so right. It's a time-honored tradition.
by JazzNU I'm not sure of others' experiences, but it feels like they've already started altering the algorithm. I thought it was my imagination at first, but I've noticed in the last week that when I search for a word or phrase, the MAGA results are fast and furious though the search term should technically be showing me both, and if the system knows me (it does), then it should show me slightly more stuff from individuals I'm more likely to engage with (click on, like, retweet) and not stuff I'm more likely to ignore or block. That's how it always used to be. Right now, it's a lot of scrolling to try to find posts from more legitimate sources.
And for non-political things, I've noticed a change in giving me a lot of blue check mark results without any consideration for time. For instance, let's say it's about the NFL. I have the basically useless Jonathan Taylor on one of my fantasy teams this year. Search for him and it will give me like every tweet from Adam Schefter about him in the last 5 days in the first 10 results. I follow Adam, so that's not the issue, but that's not how it used to be. Adam's most recent one or two tweets might be there because they were in the last few days, but the other top results would give more preference to tweets that had a lot of likes in the last say 48 hours.
Feeling like this could crumble quicker than MySpace after Murdoch bought it.
by ponchi101 If it crumbles, what replaces it? MySpace was a distant second to FB. TW is the clear cut leader, if not sole player, in this form of SM.
I won't miss it, as I am not in any SM, but hundreds of millions interact via this platform. If it goes, who or what steps in?
A bit surprised that no other giant (Google?) has stepped in.
by Suliso I have no idea what could possibly replace it, but social media of this type will not disappear. People will move somewhere however it could be more fragmented. Also it's still an unsolved question how exactly to monetize such sites and still not lose vast majority of your customers.
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 05, 2022 5:44 pm
If it crumbles, what replaces it? MySpace was a distant second to FB. TW is the clear cut leader, if not sole player, in this form of SM.
I won't miss it, as I am not in any SM, but hundreds of millions interact via this platform. If it goes, who or what steps in?
A bit surprised that no other giant (Google?) has stepped in.
MySpace was #1 for a time, FB overtook it, but it was definitely #1, no question about it.
Twitter is bigger in perception than actuality. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok are all bigger platforms than Twitter is. And they all are much more profitable than Twitter. Heck Reddit is a bigger platform than Twitter (though one of the few that is less profitable).
That placement among social media platforms is why the price Musk paid for it was laughed at so much, it was a wildly overpriced bid.
What will replace Twitter that will be a Twitter-esque replica? Not sure. I would guess something new would pop up. But a combo of the other platforms in the meantime is most likely. It's worked for many people and brands that way for a long time. It's pretty common already for many brands, celebrities, and influencers to have no real Twitter presence. It's been the media companies propping up Twitter more than anyone else I think.
by ti-amie
This is why I try to avoid that site like the plague and also try and avoid posting their videos here.
by Suliso Twitter not the biggest social media site for sure, but it's the only mostly text based one. Can hardly be replaced by Tiktok...
This is why I try to avoid that site like the plague and also try and avoid posting their videos here.
^ All the others are just as bad/crooked/corrupt, even those that are not owned by a communist party or by Elon Musk.
What will replace twitter?
The obvious answer is 'Truth Social', no?
But a little bit more seriously, what about Parler?
I know nothing about this stuff, as I don't partake - and feel absolutely no desire to - but isn't parler similar to twitter?
by JazzNU
Suliso wrote: ↑Sat Nov 05, 2022 6:33 pm
Twitter not the biggest social media site for sure, but it's the only mostly text based one. Can hardly be replaced by Tiktok...
Reddit is text based. Less relevant unless it makes an epic comeback, but Tumblr is mostly as well.
But the truth is, TikTok has been invading Twitter a ton the last couple of years. There are more and more videos, especially TikTok videos that are just put on Twitter for additional engagement, they've taken a backseat in many ways even further back than where they were. Twitter has added features to be more in like with TikTok and Instagram's offerings to try to appeal more to the changing trends. Twitter is not nearly as text based as it once.
by Suliso This could be important. Particularly for heating houses in a cold climate.
by ponchi101 If not a total game changer, it could be a very easy technology to implement in many places. Brilliant.
by JazzNU
by JazzNU ^^ Looks like a 19 year old Comp Sci student paid $8 and followed all the rules and put up this Adam Schefter parody account to prove a point. Chaos caused. Point made.
by ti-amie Chaos is continuing today. I am posting most of the shenanigans in the Business thread. TL;dr the CISO, Chief compliance officer and various others have resigned. He wants engineers - all that's left - to self certify FTC compliance.
by ti-amie My problem with Reddit is the same one I'm having with Mastodon. For example, when I first joined Twitter I started by following people I knew who posted about tennis. I then looked to see who they were following and it was easy from there.
Mastodon is like Reddit to me with all the silo nonsense. TBH I don't feel like working so hard to find and join a community on either site but I did set up a profile on Reddit. I'll see if I can find it again.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Nov 10, 2022 6:20 pm
My problem with Reddit is the same one I'm having with Mastodon. For example, when I first joined Twitter I started by following people I knew who posted about tennis. I then looked to see who they were following and it was easy from there.
Mastodon is like Reddit to me with all the silo nonsense. TBH I don't feel like working so hard to find and join a community on either site but I did set up a profile on Reddit. I'll see if I can find it again.
Reddit isn't hard. You can just search for a word or phrase and see what's posted about it like you can on Twitter. But you can also follow a community and check in from time to time to see what's posted in that community. You can also see what certain people are posting. And you can follow people as well, I haven't done that, but I think it's not much different than following communities in terms of how it gives you information. For me, I am a member of communities for tennis, tv, all the podcasts I listen to, and other random interests (like there's a great Trader Joe's community where people post about products they tried, what was good, what wasn't, how they used a certain product, etc.).
There's also a large knowledgebase there. Current news, old news, how to fix something, should I update to the latest software version or wait, problems I'm noticing on my cell phone, problems with my cable provider, how to get a discount on a streaming service, is anyone else having this glitch on their computer. Similar to Twitter, the answer is there, but Reddit is actually a more helpful community overall, especially because you can find more complete explanations about things.
There is no need to join any specific community on Reddit, that's up to you. It doesn't really make much of a difference if you belong to it or not, it's just the ones you join, those posts will appear on your home page feed, similar to the home page on Twitter having posts of people you follow (or that's how Twitter used to work).
*** FYI, you may be blocked from posting in certain communities depending on that communities' guidelines if you're a new user and it might require you to have a higher count of karma (their point system). I believe it's a spam prevention, but there is a group there where you can post to increase your karma quickly if that is an issue for you. Let me know if I can be of assistance if you do want to try to use Reddit more often.
by ti-amie So on Reddit to be able to customize it you have to sign up for premium it seems.
I'll leave it at the basic level for now.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Nov 10, 2022 9:23 pm
So on Reddit to be able to customize it you have to sign up for premium it seems.
I'll leave it at the basic level for now.
I'm not sure what you mean by customize. I definitely don't have Premium FWIW, never entertained the idea at all, and I'm not aware of any way in which I'm limited in using the site because of it. To my knowledge, very, very few sign up for Premium.
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Nov 10, 2022 9:23 pm
So on Reddit to be able to customize it you have to sign up for premium it seems.
I'll leave it at the basic level for now.
I'm not sure what you mean by customize. I definitely don't have Premium FWIW, never entertained the idea at all, and I'm not aware of any way in which I'm limited in using the site because of it. To my knowledge, very, very few sign up for Premium.
I don't like the little thingie they use as your avatar. I tried to change it a bit and was told that what I chose was a premium look so I'm kinda stuck with this little thingie.
I am going to make a serious attempt to use it this time. I have no idea what my previous account was so I set up a new one. I'll keep posting about my adventures here.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 12:38 am
I don't like the little thingie they use as your avatar. I tried to change it a bit and was told that what I chose was a premium look so I'm kinda stuck with this little thingie.
I am going to make a serious attempt to use it this time. I have no idea what my previous account was so I set up a new one. I'll keep posting about my adventures here.
Ahh, I see. Yeah, the avatars are awful, but you will ignore them very soon. They don't feature prominently at all, think about one of the AITA posts, they're very small. I just picked whatever the best look was of what they showed me I could have and haven't paid attention to it since. I barely see it. If I open it to change it, it's like Ugh! because that's by far the largest it ever is, but I never do that. It's just there.
by ti-amie This is from a Tumblr blog.
What happens when the world’s knowledge is held in a quasi-public square owned by a private company that could soon go out of business?
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
surroundedbybooks
Jesus, I hadn’t even thought of this, but of course.
daalseth
This is something that historians have been warning about for a couple of decades. How much of our history was not just on Twitter, but on MySpace, on blogs and web sites that came down after a few years, on e-mail, on texts. None of that leaves a record. Once the file is deleted, the server shut down and scrapped, the backup disks decay into being unreadable junk, that history is gone.
Does anyone remember when Obama and Clinton each held town hall campaign events on MySpace? Good luck finding anything about those now other than some news articles that say they happened. How many business zoom calls have formal meeting minutes taken? We are not saving histories. We aren’t even writing letters. I’m as guilty as anyone. My art is online and kept in the cloud. I make my Christmas Card every year, but I haven’t printed and mailed one in over a decade. It’s all sent electronically. Meaning that a generation from now no one will remember.
So the problem is bigger than Twitter. We are now a couple of decades into an age that will not leave any detailed historical record.
That is not good.
macleod
In pseudo and acadamic circles this has routinely been called the ‘digital dark age’, I even wrote on the subject a few years ago but can’t find that article right now. [There is even a Wikipedia article on the concept] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital ... ta%20decay).
It’s thought this might just be a black spot of knowledge, there are organizations working to stop this — archival websites primarily, but these are not able to penetrate all these corporate gated gardens, where paywalls, sign up walls, and more block access to. There is an ongoing campaign by megacorps to shutdown as many archival sites as possible.
This coupled with the fallibility of hard drives, CDs (make sure to back them up! They only have a 20-30 year lifetime!), and more and there is a chance that even though there is more information than ever before, more primary and secondary sources than ever, we may become just a strange blank spot in societal and cultural history. Digital decay is a terrifying concept that we are already beginning to live through.
This is a chart that is part of the discussion created by Avatar
fallentechnate
by ti-amie I finally set up a tennis account on Mastodon. I did it after seeing that another Tennis Twitter denizen used a server that wasn't there when I first tried - .world
This will be an opportunity to clean up my tennis twitter account so that it's mostly tennis, cats and pretty pictures. I will follow the NY Times and WaPo there too.
by ponchi101 Can you post something here from Mastodon? See how easily it can transfer? (Twitter did it seamlessly, as we have seen).
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 20, 2022 12:54 am
Can you post something here from Mastodon? See how easily it can transfer? (Twitter did it seamlessly, as we have seen).
Many commentators are tweeting & tooting that we need to expand the SCOTUS. That is not the answer to everything. Unless you just want a larger Court, not bound by ethics rules, engaging in the kind of behavior described in the NYT piece. What we need are guardrails - an understanding that the Court sits w/i our democracy. Our job us to strengthen it by creating the processes that promote impartiality & insulation from lobbying, not crossing our fingers & hoping for the best.
This was copying the URL of a post by someone who is important I guess. This is what the link says. When I post from Twitter here it's usually done via the link.
sтυx
@stux@mstdn.social
What's it with people reporting every single person they dont like.. :amaze:
Please, stop with that.
This is not #Twitter. Please use features like mute or block if you don't like people but stop reporting otherwise I'll start banning people who keep reporting for nothing :blobhammer:
I'm trying to keep things running with so many new people and it's such a waste of time to hear whatever you don't like
Otherwise go waste Elon's time, not mine
by JazzNU Elon reinstated Asshole in Chief, so I won't be surprised if Twitter gets replaced quickly unless he behaves. The entire tone of Twitter was considerably less toxic when he got banned. It was noticeable how different and I doubt many are interested in a return to that. Not sure about this Mastodon at all, but it won't be a surprise if a migration to somewhere begins sooner than Twitter's actual demise. There is no way the review process he said would happen before re-instatement actually occurred when he's down like 75% of his staff.
I could be very wrong obviously, but Mastodon feels like a placeholder to me, not the endgame. I haven't used it, but the terminology doesn't seem like it was well thought out for big time success. Feels like they've got a marketing/branding problem.
by JazzNU In terms of posts pre-populating on their own, that's something that typically needs to be written into the code I believe. So unless that happens by someone where it recognizes that is a site to do it for, then it won't. i.e., Insta, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, and Giphy were all written into the code of the forum. Tenor, which is very popular and a direct competitor to Giphy, was not and so it doesn't automatically appear just by pasting a link.
by ti-amie The folks at Mastodon did not expect what happened to them. They're at 2 million people and counting as of this morning. They've realized that the whole silo/server thing was unwieldy and they've got a few new ones in addition to "world". There is "party" and "green" now too. I think the migration will be slow but steady. I have accounts I never followed with blue checks just appearing in my TL so I've spent a lot of time blocking them today and that is annoying. The bots are making topics trend that are nothing but RW propaganda against people or ideas.
The easiest to use is Tumblr. I think a lot of people already use Reddit and will find no reason to stop doing that. Tribel, a new arrival, just added @handles to its site because again, no one thought Twitter would deteriorate so quickly.
Christopher Clarey just rt'd something he'd posted earlier in the day and he didn't refer his followers to aother site. I added my Mastodon account to my Twitter handle so I guess within the week I'll see if any more people from Tennis Twitter, fans, journalists, tours, etc decide where they're going to migrate to. I should mention that the journalist server is one where you have to apply for permission to join and it seems they're pretty backed up.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie To find out if I'm following him I would have to do a search which could lead to other crap I don't want to deal with.
by MJ2004 I'll wait until a post of his shows up on my feed, when that happens I'll block him. I've already blocked Eilon.
In the meantime, I've logged off Twitter and removed the bookmark from my computer, since that's where I used it the most, to lessen time spent on the site.
I've left it on my phone for the occasional author checkin. For now.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie I blocked him from the above post.
by ti-amie This is a site that a lot of investigative journalists seem to be flocking to.
Zach Edwards
@thezedwards@infosec.exchange
"A search on Pushwoosh’s code base shows that one of the company’s longtime developers is a 41-year-old from Novosibirsk named Yuri Shmakov. In 2013, KrebsOnSecurity interviewed Shmakov for the story, 'Who Wrote the Pincer Android Trojan?' (https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/08/who ... id-trojan/) wherein Shmakov acknowledged writing the malware as a freelance project."
The piece goes on to break the news that *NINE* cities in Illinois have been using 311 mobile apps for constituents to report problems, which at one point all had Pushwoosh in them. There were ~22 total apps, and ~17 are still live.
The cities which used these 311 apps with Pushwoosh embedded into them are:
1. Springfield, IL
2. Sherman, IL
3. Godfrey, IL
4. Christopher, IL
5. Fairbury, IL
6. Sangamon, IL
7. Riverton, IL
8. Carterville, IL
9. Collinsville, IL
And fun fact: the developer of the 311 apps is the current director of the Springfield Office of Budget and Management, and he was former mayor of one of those towns on that list. What a fun second job to have, as a bad developer accidently fronting for Russian interests who actively deceive their own clients and the public.
For years, cities have been paying for mobile apps which were deeply unsafe, and some of the apps from this company are still available, and will send your data to Pushwoosh if you download them. I'd suggest deleting all their apps in case you happen to have one installed, and that company is welcome to try and explain which apps they think are safe, because in the past, they've mistakenly claimed to not work with Pushwoosh anymore, even though live audits of their apps proved otherwise.
by ti-amie Twitter has become more and more unusable. Accounts you have never followed are showing up in your time line as if you were following them, using posting wild conspiracy theories. Many of these accounts have 12 - 15 followers (bots). I find I'm spending more and more time blocking these "accounts" and this makes the site virtually useless.
The ads are horrific as well. They show up after ever 2-5 tweets by allegedly real users and are usually for some junk supplement Alex Jones would sell or some cheap tee shirt from a company you've never heard of.
The items showing up as trends are usually associated with some conspiracy theory pushed by the right so time is taken up telling the algorithm you're not interested in the particular subject or person.
I haven't been back on Reddit but I am spending more time on Mastodon.
I also notice very few people from Tennis Twitter have moved.
by Suliso I'd like to understand what's the difference between your Twitter settings and mine. I don't really see much difference, no conspiracy theories and same number of adds as before...
And yet, the world's population is (unfortunately) accelerating at a more rapid pace than ever before.
Hmmm....
by dryrunguy
ti-amie wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:40 pm
Twitter has become more and more unusable. Accounts you have never followed are showing up in your time line as if you were following them, using posting wild conspiracy theories. Many of these accounts have 12 - 15 followers (bots). I find I'm spending more and more time blocking these "accounts" and this makes the site virtually useless.
The ads are horrific as well. They show up after ever 2-5 tweets by allegedly real users and are usually for some junk supplement Alex Jones would sell or some cheap tee shirt from a company you've never heard of.
The items showing up as trends are usually associated with some conspiracy theory pushed by the right so time is taken up telling the algorithm you're not interested in the particular subject or person.
I haven't been back on Reddit but I am spending more time on Mastodon.
I also notice very few people from Tennis Twitter have moved.
I mentioned the soft-core porn that started showing up. That has disappeared--for now. Maybe it's because I blocked every user I saw. But the deluge of political posts is the problem now, and the vast majority of that is right-wing nutjob types (some are bots, but not all of them). And then there are the Elon Musk worship posts.
It has become very unpleasant. But so far, I keep sticking around for the pics and videos of goats in the horse barns and some other good stuff.
by ti-amie
Lay Enthusiast @browns_body
Replying to @stevanzetti
Didn't he fire like a bunch of people whose whole job was to do that
Andrew @AcunaAndrew
Replying to @stevanzetti and @CocoaFox023
How long until Jack is banned for questioning King Elmo
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie It's time to go.
by ti-amie It's time to go #2
by ti-amie The problem for me right now is that most of Tennis Twitter is still on the Bird App. That includes both tours and the ITF.
A quick scroll through this huge spreadsheet shows almost no sports journalists have moved.
Martin
@mshelton@mastodon.social
This list of journalists on Mastodon is getting pretty long — over 1100 listed. This is a floor, who knows how many more in media are not listed.
Journalists on Mastodon and Fediverse (Responses) - Google Drive
Not a panacea, but indeed an important breakthrough.
by ti-amie
by Owendonovan I got off the socials a couple years ago after being a prolific Facebook/Instagram poster. I know where to find the non/less opinionated information I seek now. I don't miss it, though sometimes feel I'm not part of something current happening, which is easy enough to live with. I think Elon believes the hype about himself not realizing it's just hype.
by ponchi101 His companies that are doing well are hard-physics companies: Tesla and Space X. That is mechanical and hardware.
TWT is software; it is algorithms, project-planning and AI. And it seems that is not something he is adept at. Remember he has been promising Tesla Self Driving for a while now, and has not been able to deliver.
(It is a very tough problem, one has to admit).
by Owendonovan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 13, 2022 3:58 am
His companies that are doing well are hard-physics companies: Tesla and Space X. That is mechanical and hardware.
TWT is software; it is algorithms, project-planning and AI. And it seems that is not something he is adept at. Remember he has been promising Tesla Self Driving for a while now, and has not been able to deliver.
(It is a very tough problem, one has to admit).
It's a hard thing for the egomaniacs to stick with what they know. Unfortunately, they come to believe they know everything.
by Suliso His initial wealth comes from Paypal. He was not the only boss there, though.
by ponchi101 I would say Pay Pal is a much "simpler" platform than TWT. It is a transactional tool, with no complications like censoring, moderating and all the complexities of SM.
It is just YOU PAY or YOU DID NOT PAY.
TWT is very complex, and certainly much more controversial than PP.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
thrunched @thrunched
Replying to
@TwitterSafety
Flight locations are publicly available information. Are those an exception?
by ti-amie This is what got under Elmo's skin.
And the situation now is...
by ti-amie This just in...
by ti-amie
by Owendonovan I don't buy into the idea of twitter being necessary.
by ponchi101 NOTHING in the internet is necessary, as in INDISPENSABLE. It is CONVENIENT. Physical banks worked well before, regular mail was available, newspapers did the job, and if you needed information, books were available at the bookstore or the local library.
Travel agents worked well, and if you needed friends, well, you had to go out and mingle; it was good for your mental health.
A ridiculous thing to post in an INTERNET BASED BOARD, but what am I going to do? Send you letters?
by Deuce Yes...
I learned a long time ago that human beings will abuse absolutely everything they come into contact with - thus turning positives into negatives very quickly. Television could have been a wonderful education tool... but instead, it became the 'idiot box'... It's the same with the internet, which, through abuse of it, has, among other things, quite negatively affected true communication between people.
Whereas it used to be two people communicating with each other, it is now one alter-ego communicating with your alias, and my machine communicating with your machine.
Communication is much, much less personal and much more superficial than it was pre-internet. And that has significantly affected how we relate to one another; it has negatively affected relationships of all kinds.
"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end... We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the new, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages..." - Henry Thoreau
by ti-amie
by ti-amie It seems he goes on binges and then starts doing stupid stuff. Not saying what kind of binges just binges that make you manic and want to break things.
by ti-amie I wouldn't be surprised if this person gets banned...
by ponchi101 I think the point is to make TWT a show, and then see if the stock rises?
Because otherwise, this is lunacy.
by Deuce I think the point is to increase the intensity of the spotlight on himself.
I believe that has been his primary intention all along, in everything he has done. He doesn't seem to do anything subtle - like things that don't gain him lots of attention. He makes sure that everything he does is done on the grand stage...
by Owendonovan Twitter Suspends Accounts of Half a Dozen Journalists
The social media service, which is owned by Elon Musk, said that it suspends accounts that “violate the Twitter rules” but did not provide details. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/tech ... -musk.html
"Twitter rules" seem to be very fluid. This almost seems like silencing critics, but I know Elon is a free speech absolutist so it can't possibly be that.
Mastodon has a very big surge of new users right now. There's no way to tell if it will be sustained, but at this early point it looks similar to Nov 18 when Musk pulled the employee purge.
It is very challenging for system administration to accommodate so many new users. If your server starts to struggle, it is not broken and will get sorted out.
We're all in this together. It's our social network. Be patient. What we are building is amazing.
If Elmo goes through with this all of the new/revived social media platforms will be inundated with new members.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
j.dub musicman @ProjectRedCoat Replying to
@RVAwonk
That's the idea, those with enough money can create blocks of verified users that immediately target block/mute certain topics/users to make them less visible. It's literally paying to keep other people quiet. Free speech is passe, paid silencing of others is the rage now
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by Owendonovan Do these folks post their missives on other platforms or just twitter to antagonize Twitter/Musk solely?
by ponchi101 Whatever is being said about the "demise" of TWT, the reality is that it is still the "only" platform that matters.
It is easier to destroy than to build. But some things are very, very hard to destroy. TWT would be one of them.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:27 pm
Whatever is being said about the "demise" of TWT, the reality is that it is still the "only" platform that matters.
It is easier to destroy than to build. But some things are very, very hard to destroy. TWT would be one of them.
He's working hard to do that though...
Yeah Jack, what have you done?
She posted more but you get the idea.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie Oh and by the way...
by ti-amie Today I blocked Elmo for at least the third time...
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by Deuce Anyone to whom it is not blatantly clear that Elon Musk is using and making fools of everyone who responds to his nonsense is in need of help.
It could not possibly be more obvious that Musk gets a big rush out of affecting people. He doesn't give a damn if the effect is positive or negative - he thrives on attention, pure and simple - ANY type of attention. And he wants to see tangible evidence of his effect on people.
And millions of people - stupidly - are biting the hook and giving him exactly what he wants. He is in 'the news' in every civilized country on the planet these days.
It's truly mind boggling how the masses who give him so much attention don't seem to realize that Musk is using them as mere pawns in his quest to be the most well known human on Earth. It's a very similar mindset as Trump has... just a massive, massive ego that is never satisfied and always wants MORE.
And people keep giving them exactly what they want, incredibly.
And so, it's THE PEOPLE who effectively create and perpetuate these idiots. Without the attention they're given, they would effectively cease to exist.
Sigh...
by Owendonovan Likely not the result he was looking for.
Elon Musk Keeps Silent After Twitter Users Say He Should Quit as Boss
Mr. Musk had surveyed Twitter about whether he should remain in charge, and had said he would abide by the result. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/busi ... itter.html
by Deuce Come on... he doesn't care about the result. Anyone could have predicted this 'result'. This is just another method he's using to keep himself in the news.
IT'S SO BLATANTLY OBVIOUS...
It's all just a big game to him.
And for some reason, people are falling for it.
by Owendonovan
Deuce wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 2:16 am
Come on... he doesn't care about the result. Anyone could have predicted this 'result'. This is just another method he's using to keep himself in the news.
IT'S SO BLATANTLY OBVIOUS...
It's all just a big game to him.
And for some reason, people are falling for it.
I personally enjoy watching him stumble, I'm not gonna beat myself up over that. He's got a "car wreck" quality to him, maybe Icarus.
Deuce wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 2:16 am
Come on... he doesn't care about the result. Anyone could have predicted this 'result'. This is just another method he's using to keep himself in the news.
IT'S SO BLATANTLY OBVIOUS...
It's all just a big game to him.
And for some reason, people are falling for it.
I personally enjoy watching him stumble, I'm not gonna beat myself up over that. He's got a "car wreck" quality to him, maybe Icarus.
He's not stumbling at all from HIS perspective - he's having a grand ol' time with all of the attention he's getting, whether it's positive, negative, or neutral.
He's found a way to get exactly what he wants from people, and from the media, etc. - using them all to get what he wants.
To me, that means he's 'winning' far more than anyone who is criticizing him - it's no contest. He has managed to get millions of people - and countless media outlets - desperately waiting for his next move.
The only way for the people and media to win would be to ignore him. And it certainly doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon, sadly...
Musk is a fool, no question. But he's not a dumb fool. He's a deeply troubled, defective individual - and the directions he heads in are unfortunate, selfish, egotistical, crazy, and, ultimately, more destructive than constructive - but he's extremely intelligent.
That's why he has the world wrapped around his (middle) finger.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 I understand that Climate Change is one very serious threat to humanity. But not far behind (and I do not know if they are behind) stand Work Automation and Artificial Intelligence.
Here is one example: AI can now write like a human. Some teachers are worried.
The Gist: A company called OPENAI has released a language model that is so complete that it can produce essays that are impossible to tell from human-produced ones. Meaning that, in a short while, every idiot in school could deliver an essay that the teacher could not tell it would be produced by AI.
Imagine the consequences for any and all writers: newspeople, scripts, novelists, anybody making a living by writing.
It is time to start regulating this form of AI. And maybe look at some other technologies that have wiped out some jobs (which by now is too late).
by Deuce ^ As I've been saying for a couple of decades now... The human species will abuse absolutely everything it comes into contact with, thus transforming potential positives into profound negatives.
The examples are far too numerous to mention.
If only people would see how something will be abused and the negative effect it will have before inventing it or unleashing it - it would be quite easy to predict how something would be used negatively.
But - hey - even if people see and know exactly how it will become a negative to individuals and to society, they will still go ahead with it as long as there is money to be made. No matter how many lives are negatively affected - and even ruined - by it.
Wonderful.
(This was written by a live human being.)
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 12:32 am
I understand that Climate Change is one very serious threat to humanity. But not far behind (and I do not know if they are behind) stand Work Automation and Artificial Intelligence.
Here is one example: AI can now write like a human. Some teachers are worried.
The Gist: A company called OPENAI has released a language model that is so complete that it can produce essays that are impossible to tell from human-produced ones. Meaning that, in a short while, every idiot in school could deliver an essay that the teacher could not tell it would be produced by AI.
Imagine the consequences for any and all writers: newspeople, scripts, novelists, anybody making a living by writing.
It is time to start regulating this form of AI. And maybe look at some other technologies that have wiped out some jobs (which by now is too late).
This will be great help for lots of things. We're looking into it in our company too.
As for school if one is still keen on essays make them write in class by hand. Most school essays by most students are just busy work anyway.
by Owendonovan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 12:32 am
I understand that Climate Change is one very serious threat to humanity. But not far behind (and I do not know if they are behind) stand Work Automation and Artificial Intelligence.
Here is one example: AI can now write like a human. Some teachers are worried.
The Gist: A company called OPENAI has released a language model that is so complete that it can produce essays that are impossible to tell from human-produced ones. Meaning that, in a short while, every idiot in school could deliver an essay that the teacher could not tell it would be produced by AI.
Imagine the consequences for any and all writers: newspeople, scripts, novelists, anybody making a living by writing.
It is time to start regulating this form of AI. And maybe look at some other technologies that have wiped out some jobs (which by now is too late).
Who will decide what is AI once AI is fine tuned, people or the AI?
by Suliso Some philosophy professor was asked whether he's not worried about AI writing essays for his undergrads. His answer: Not at all. Students will write their essays with AI and then send them over to my grading AI. With formalities out of the way we all will be free to learn whatever we want.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 2:47 pm
Some philosophy professor was asked whether he's not worried about AI writing essays for his undergrads. His answer: Not at all. Students will write their essays with AI and then send them over to my grading AI. With formalities out of the way we all will be free to learn whatever we want.
I know you run on the optimistic side (as opposed to me) but, you really don't see any problems with this?
The software is not meant to HELP you write an essay; it is meant to write the essay for you. I doubt that there can be any learning in clicking a button and getting, almost instantaneously, an essay on, let's say, William Blake's literary output.
The professor seems to be also sitting very comfortably on his (probably tenured) laurels. So fine, his AI grades their AI. How long before his AI replaces him? Very tongue in cheek, but as I said before, how about people that write for a living? We have at least one member here that does that: Megan. How fast would her publication be able to replace her if they can get GOOGLE-WRITER? Or, for that matter, how long would it take for an entire magazine to be "published" by just one person, as the sole thing would be for such a person to plug in the "requests" for articles to the AI and let it spit out all of them?
This next comment is personal but please take it as a true question. It seems to me that at times, people can't see that something innovative will affect negatively a very large group of people. For example, in my industry, almost the entire surveying sub-section has been wiped out because GPS systems have become so accurate and precise that you need only 2-3 surveyors to process the data. In the past, we needed 20-25 surveyors per group, plus their assisting crew, to map a project. They all are now gone, with no other options (and it was a highly technical career). So, the question: does it not matter in any way that an entire profession could be wiped out because some AI is implemented? It has happened already: travel agents, surveyors, drafts-people and graphic designers, and, of course, countless lesser-skilled activities.
Does it not matter at all that these AI takes away from the pool of jobs available?
Serious questions, all of them. Would love to hear you out.
by Suliso I assume the professor didn't mean that students would learn anything by letting an AI write the essay. Instead he meant that these mandatory essays have little value in the first place. Whoever wants to learn something will do so by him/herself.
My argument is not actually that it's good that all those people lost their jobs. It's more that it's useless to try to stop technical progress. Short of some very specific niche cases (nuclear bombs, chemical weapons etc) it has never ended well for those who try.
People who write generic opinion pieces will likely soon be out of a job. Those who actually go out, interview people, discover something new will stay on much longer. AI will not fly to Florida to interview latest hurricane victims.
In one case at least I'm glad of the change. I travel a lot and would be very annoyed if I had to deal with any travel agents.
Right now I'd advise against going into any profession which can be done entirely with your computer with no physical component of any kind. Painting good, graphic design stay out. Unless you can be a very high level AI researcher.
Btw the current version is not really an AI. It only amalgamates already existing information and makes derivative versions. True general purpose AI might appear, but it will still take some time.
Isn't it ironic that computers find it way easier to write good articles than reliably drive a car. The latter endeavour seems to have stalled despite the enormous funding devoted to it.
by Suliso Fully online education is already possible, no AI needed. It is however an inferior form of learning for a myriad of reasons. Particularly for children and teenagers.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 4:39 pm
I assume the professor didn't mean that students would learn anything by letting an AI write the essay. Instead he meant that these mandatory essays have little value in the first place. Whoever wants to learn something will do so by him/herself.
...
People who write generic opinion pieces will likely soon be out of a job. Those who actually go out, interview people, discover something new will stay on much longer. AI will not fly to Florida to interview latest hurricane victims.
In one case at least I'm glad of the change. I travel a lot and would be very annoyed if I had to deal with any travel agents.
Right now I'd advise against going into any profession which can be done entirely with your computer with no physical component of any kind. Painting good, graphic design stay out. Unless you can be a very high level AI researcher.
Btw the current version is not really an AI. It only amalgamates already existing information and makes derivative versions. True general purpose AI might appear, but it will still take some time.
Isn't it ironic that computers find it way easier to write good articles than reliably drive a car. The latter endeavour seems to have stalled despite the enormous funding devoted to it.
My further questions (in order from the BOLD):
Your faith in human nature far exceeds mine. The believe that newer generations universally have the drive to learn new things just like that is something I don't share. I have a collection of nephews/nieces that are simply un-interested in so many things I have my doubts.
AI does NOT have to go to hurricane area. Coupled with the DEEP FAKE technology, how much longer before an AI/Deep Fake reporter calls somebody over a cell phone and interviews that person? Even better, because the AI could record the interview and immediately produce the article. In the future? Sure, it is not here yet. But that essay-writing-AI seems to be on its way.
I had such a great travel agent we are actually close friends. She helped me so many times...
Why are you expecting general purpose AI, and then and only then, worry about it? How about if tomorrow somebody generates Chem-AI, an AI software that analyzes chemistry problems? You are in the business of THINKING; if that were to happen, would you be replaced? Why do you think that only when we get GENERAL AI should we worry? How about SPECIFIC AI? Civil Engineering AI? Or MATH-AI (like THIS ONE)? It is not only people in some skill-sets level. Once AI reaches you, you will be replaced. How will that feel?
The self driving problem is simply compounded by US, random-humans. Think about it: if you get rid of ALL humans driving on the road, FSD cars would have it much easier, and the algorithm would work faster.
by Suliso We can certainly worry, never too early for that.
In the distant future all kinds of things are possible. I think we're still far from AI showing any initiative to do something. In the realm of humans not everything can be done by phone. Actually even worse - hardly anyone myself included answer a phone from an unfamiliar number. Someone will have to go out.
As for chemistry AI people are trying hard to make one, including in our company via collaboration with IT folks. There are a couple of stumbling blocks. First of all AI of this sort doesn't invent anything - it only analyzes information out there already. Chemistry is an experimental science, new discoveries are not made by thinking alone. Ok, you might say 90% of cases require no invention. You'd be right, but there are some other things developers struggle with. AI needs a training set, but the chemical literature is incredibly biased towards positive results. AI training ideally needs equal amount of negative data and it doesn't exist. There are some more technical difficulties, but the two above are the easiest to explain.
Autonomous driving is very difficult because it's in an unpredictable environment with many edge cases and making serious mistakes have unacceptable consequences. Having only AI driven cars would help a lot, but not entirely. There are still pedestrians, animals, construction work etc...
I think I'm reasonably safe for the 15-20 years left in my working life. Maybe I live long enough to see all science and engineering being done by computers alone, but I kind of doubt it.
by Suliso I played around with ChatGPT. Very convincing answers, BUT quite a few are dead wrong. Especially when asked about Latvia specific topics (in both Latvian and English) to which Google easily finds the right answer.
by Suliso People have found a way to really fool the current version of ChatGPT. Turns out it's grammatically correct and can play with language at undergrad level, but doesn't possess a mathematical logic of a 12 year old...
by ponchi101 Ok, great.
But I wonder how many people would flunk the same question. I am pretty sure the answer would not be zero.
by ponchi101 Behind paywall.
But it is indeed one impressive instrument. I gather the Hubble will be slowly faded away, or used for closer objects.
by Suliso SpaceX has launched their Falcon 9 rocket 61 times this year (all successful). That's most by a single rocket type since Soviet R-7 (61 out of 64) in 1980. Very likely there will be more launches next year. Existing infrastructure can support 80-90.
by ponchi101 That's very impressive. Is that already at the stage in which it can also land? I belief it is recovered, right?
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 30, 2022 4:13 pm
That's very impressive. Is that already at the stage in which it can also land? I belief it is recovered, right?
Yes, most first stages have landed successfully. A few were intentionally expended because customers needed extra performance. Last time the first stage failed to land properly was March 2020. Overall it has landed now 160 times. A routine operation really...
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 And...
I was right. That sort of AI is a very dangerous thing.
I wonder if that streak of members that appeared and disappeared from the forum (starting with Cuckoo) were precisely that. Prototypes.
by Deuce
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 2:06 am
And...
I was right. That sort of AI is a very dangerous thing.
I wonder if that streak of members that appeared and disappeared from the forum (starting with Cuckoo) were precisely that. Prototypes.
That would be interesting, wouldn't it be? And quite unfortunate.
And, yes - there were a few 'members' that popped up in the summer, engaged in dialogue and discussion in the forum, then suddenly disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared. Cuckoo was the one who lasted the longest and posted the most, but there were others who engaged with posts a few times, and suddenly disappeared a week or two later.
There was something about Cuckoo that had me rather constantly questioning whether it was truly a 16 year old, or whether it was an adult playing around. The frequency of posts was consistently very high, even for a 16 year old. And then 'she'(?) just suddenly disappeared without a word, which was quite odd, considering how much 'she'(?) had engaged and participated in discussions.
But the thought that it might be some sort of technological wizardry related to A.I. never crossed my mind.
Tragically, these 'advancements' in technology inherently mean that we will all be questioning more and more whether something - or even someONE - is real or artificial. And that's not a good thing at all, for many reasons.
by ti-amie
by Deuce ^ Yes... Once again, 'technological advances' are fed by EGO, and not by need.
Humans have this incessant desire to 'show off' what they can do, and completely dismiss negative consequences in the process.
Of course, if there's money to be made, negative consequences are dismissed even more.
This pure selfishness - disguised as 'advancement' or 'progress' - is disgusting.
On a positive note... at least one person stopped to help the people involved in the accident. But dozens did not.
by Owendonovan Personally, I feel absolutely no need for auto piloting, none. Seems lazy and unpredictable, two qualities I look for in nothing.
by ponchi101 Mainly, it is so you can text while driving.
I wonder if there will be a point at which, if this idea that we need to leave everything to automation, we will do anything. Driving, do our shopping, learn a skill, cook, read a frigging book (as opposed to AUDIBLES).
by Deuce A couple of years ago, a friend and I went to watch another friend play in a local tennis tournament.
I knew the way to get to the tournament - it was not difficult. I told my friend (he was driving) how to get there. But he insisted on following the GPS directions (because he's a gadget guy/'techhead'). As a result of following the GPS directions, we drove about 7 miles more than we would have using my directions. Basically, it was a long, semi-circular loop instead of a straight line.
But that wasn't the worst part of the day...
Returning to my friend's vehicle after watching part of the tournament, my friend put his wrist watch up to his mouth and said "Show me the way home".
I'm not kidding, sadly. To me, this was going beyond the ridiculous - to the realm of the insane. I put an immediate stop to the nonsense and told him that I will show him the way home - and I did, and we went my way, and made about 15 minutes better time than we had made going there following the GPS directions.
In the following days, I thought about my friend telling his wrist watch to 'show him the way home'... and I concluded that if this ridiculous and embarrassing trend of relying on 'technology' for things continues in the same direction and at the same speed as currently, then in about 25 years, human evolution will result in humans being born without a brain. Because people are not using their brains anymore.
by Suliso GPS is a complete savior when you're driving in areas you've never been to before. Particularly if there is no one to ask and/or you don't understand the local language. It might not always get you there by the fastest route, but it will get you there.
by Deuce No... I'd say that GPS is more of a lazy person's 'saviour'.
People somehow survived before GPS. And they reached their destinations. Rather than being dependent on a machine that other people are managing, they relied on their own intelligence, resourcefulness, communications skills, kindness, and other once inherent human qualities which are rapidly diminishing due to the dependence on 'technology'.
These things are not necessities - they are mere conveniences and toys to brag about. And they take people away from being self-reliant and using their brains.
It was once said that 'necessity is the mother of invention'... and perhaps that was true at one time. But today, ego and making money are definitely the mothers of invention, and not necessity.
People today have become so dependent on 'technology' to solve problems for them that I honestly believe that a significant degree of intelligence will vanish in the evolution of human beings over the next several decades.
Most adults today wouldn't know what to do if their GPS failed - they'd be lost - both literally and figuratively. Yet 30 or 40 years ago (and prior), a 12 year old child would be able to figure out what to do in a similar situation - because there was no 'technology' to solve problems for them, people had to figure things out on their own, and develop their intelligence while doing so.
by Suliso Yes, they did. Got lost and arrived sometimes hours later.
Washing machines and hot showers are not necessities either. People used to live without them.
by MJ2004 Reminds me of how appalled my mom was when the condo they rented for their Spain visit a few years had no dryer. The horror! Having to hang clothes outside to dry! Fairly standard in parts of Spain but unheard of in US.
by Suliso Dishwasher is another example. For most of my life I didn't have one and was fine. It's certainly not a necessity, but it does make life more pleasant.
by Owendonovan There was a time in NYC when the cab drivers knew every street and how to either drag your ride out because you didn't know your way around ( a slow slog through times sq adds up on the meter), or take the quick route because you signaled you new where you were going. Now, it's all GPS and cab drivers will argue "The phone is telling me to go this way", to which I've had to respond "Your customers wants you to go this way" (because I know the traffic patterns) and have gotten a bit of attitude for my request.
by ponchi101 Before I come out as a Neanderthal.
PROGRESS!!!! Yes, it has been made. As Suliso says: washing machines, dryers, etc. The number of machines that make our lives better and easier is too large to number. The quality of the items we use nowadays is so much better than, for example, just 25 years ago, because the machines give you better tolerance and accuracy in the manufacturing of pieces. For example: when was the last time you heard that somebody lost the brakes in his/her car? That an engine seized? International aviation used to lose 2-3 planes a year due to mechanical failures. That rarely happens now because engines are so reliable.
But of course, we have the progresophobes, the ones that believe that everything was better in the past. Sure.
My point is: some technologies can overtake what we do as an interaction with a machine. Self driving cars seems to be that way. You are no longer interacting with the machine, the machine is set to drive itself with no input from you. Like any new technology, it still has glitches, and in this case they can be really troublesome, even dangerous.
So, if you don't want to drive, how about DON'T drive? Get a cab. Take a bus (I know, almost impossible in the USA). But this self driving technology is still very difficult and it comes with a lot of complicating factors.
And, it is very, very silly to complain about ALL technology through an internet based forum. Why don't we try this: Let's substitute the forum for regular mail; we have to send ALL our posts to everybody via mail. See how fun that will be.
And, as a former frequent traveler to many countries: GPS and MAPS is an amazing thing. A technology that is as helpful as can be.
As long as you don't take a self driving car, that is
by ti-amie
by Deuce It’s incredibly simplistic to dismiss people as ‘progresophobes’, and to say that it’s ‘very, very silly to complain about ALL technology through an internet based forum’. It’s not silly, at all, of course - I, for one, never said that there are no positive elements to certain technologies. I’m simply saying that overall, when everything is considered, many so called ‘technological advances’ are more of a negative than a positive. Like the internet. There is no question in my mind that the internet is far more of a negative element than a positive one. Sure, it’s convenient (there’s that word again). But it has also made people significantly more intellectually lazy... it has directly led to a massive increase in the sexual exploitation of children... ‘social media’ has replaced real communication with superficial 'sound bites', and has also created an extremely unhealthy and very negative social environment... nonsense and misinformation is spread much faster and to many more people than ever before... One can go on and on about the direct negative consequences of the internet. But that doesn’t mean that there are no positives to it, or that I shouldn’t use it in a healthy way.
Those of you who have not yet learned that convenience - which the human animal is obsessed with - always has consequences possess a very narrow (and convenient(!)) vision.
Easier certainly does not always translate to 'better'.
I'd argue that easier actually means worse more often than not when one factors in the overall effect, and not just the immediate.
To see this, of course, one would need to employ some degree of objectivity and a wide scope of vision (like seeing the social implications of 'progress', the physical implications, etc., etc.), and not only see what one conveniently and comfortably wants to see.
Seeing only the positives of 'technology' is 'beer advertising mentality' - beer advertising is well known to portray beer as being nothing but positive - ignoring the negative elements like the drunk driving accidents and deaths, the breakup of families, etc., all of which are very real.
It's similar to the drug addict who insists that his life is 'better' through his use of drugs because he is 'happier'; that the drugs keep him from thinking about the negativity of his previously existing problems, or the further problems created by his drug use.
Or to the vehicle driver who is content at the convenience (there's that word again) of being able to travel here and there with relative ease, and who conveniently ignores the fact that while doing so, he is contributing to the pollution problem, global warming, climate change, etc.
It's 'comfortable' to pretend that our conveniences have no negative effects or consequences or implications... but it's not honest.
It's all about perspective and honesty... one can see all of reality, or see only the 'pretty' parts of reality, or be completely immersed in illusion. Each person can make his or her choice as to how profoundly they want to see. I've made my choice.
"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end... Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." - Henry Thoreau
by ponchi101 If I had the money to buy an EV, by now it would not be a Tesla. What I have read they have manufacturing issues, such as bad finishes and small quality details (door hinges that are not tout, knobs that become loose, etc).
Medium money: I would go for a MB EQS. The BMW's EV are too ugly.
Unlimited money: Lucid. The AIR seems to be outstanding.
BUT: Tesla is not a bad car, and their EV tech is excellent. So, no need to post that, Gary.
by Owendonovan I'm not interested in lining any shady billionaires pockets with even so much as a penny, so no Tesla or Twitter, Amazon, Whole Foods, Koch Industries, Wynn Casinos, Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp for me. I don't want to be a hypocrite on any level, this is one way I try. I'm also happy to let folks know that certain businesses they patronize, like Equinox, donate and fundraise for TFG and part of their fee is helping to elect him, things like that.
by Deuce
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Wed Jan 18, 2023 1:24 am
I'm not interested in lining any shady billionaires pockets with even so much as a penny, so no Tesla or Twitter, Amazon, Whole Foods, Koch Industries, Wynn Casinos, Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp for me. I don't want to be a hypocrite on any level, this is one way I try. I'm also happy to let folks know that certain businesses they patronize, like Equinox, donate and fundraise for TFG and part of their fee is helping to elect him, things like that.
The list of entities that do harm in some way or other is endless.
Wherever there is human involvement, there is much greed, and very, very little purity.
(For electric vehicles, my favourite is the Nissan Leaf. Not well known, and therefore very underrated.)
by Suliso Tesla has lost quite a bit of shine in my eyes in the last year or two. Wouldn't really buy it either. I'm still a big admirer of Spacex, though. Possibly the most innovating big company out there.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Wed Jan 18, 2023 6:55 am
Tesla has lost quite a bit of shine in my eyes in the last year or two. Wouldn't really buy it either. I'm still a big admirer of Spacex, though. Possibly the most innovating big company out there.
I was wondering who would be #2. Apple has not introduced anything new/innovative since the iWatch. None of the software companies are introducing anything really new. All car companies are doing the same: making a computer and putting 4 wheels around it. Boeing and Airbus? The innovation comes from their turbines, which have reached a ridiculous level of reliability, but those are from GE and RR.
Who is doing innovation?
by Suliso A highly visible case was mRNA vaccines, but those didn't come from the big pharma. Really hard to say. It's mostly steady, but incremental. Maybe Google and their AI work? Or hardware companies like TSMC.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Wow! Look at the resolution.
by Deuce Are we certain that it isn't just another macro shot of a chorizo?
It would solve so many issues.
But. How do you get all that metal back to Earth? Do you want it back on Earth? How about mining it for space exploration? Or could you eventually move it and put it in the Lagrange point between the Earth and the Moon? Mine it there (deliver stuff to both bodies)?
Useful science fiction.
by ti-amie
by Deuce It was just a matter of time before this ridiculessness set in... "Oh, dear... we've created a monster that will be abused more often than it will be used for good. Of course, that was entirely and extremely predictable - but we completely disregarded that. Uhhh... what shall we do now?"
"Hey wait a minute... If we create something that's able to detect the monster we created, we can make a lot of money on BOTH ends of this thing!"
This is the very definition of chasing one's tail (and getting rich in the process)...
Around and around it goes, in endless circles...
This will affect Legal Twitter, people who post videos of animals and cute pets, and news organizations. Also sports outlets that post live video.
I did a search today to find out where the people I follow are on Mastodon. If most of tennis twitter moved I'd be happy but right now it's just a few of us fans so we have to use the bird app which, if this takes effect, will be useless for media.
by ponchi101 Two things.
TWT has not gone belly up, down under, or bankrupt.
It remains the most important platform of its type.
Maybe this guy just tested the market to the core. And he now knows he has a monopoly on this, and that regardless of what he does most people will remain in TWT because this is nothing more than the rat pressing the lever, for most people.
And if a third party shorted this thing properly, he (and them) will make a killing.
---0---
TWT, FB, IG and TikTok HAVE to be regulated. They are basically trading in dopamine.
Edit: Please notice I say MOST PEOPLE. A gather a lot of people can control it.
I liked this part:
However, users of ChatGPT also found that the bot can generate misinformation, incorrectly answer coding problems, and produce errors in basic math.
1. SO: it generates misinformation. Because, you know, there is NO market for that.
2. Incorrectly answer coding problems. Ok, that may be a biggie for some companies.
3. Produce errors in basic math. So do people. And, besides, how hard would it be to code it so that, when it faces a math problem, it does send the query to the last real person employed by the former 500 employees company?
BTW. Add Safety personnel. We produce A LOT, and I do mean A LOT, of manuals and procedural training. Sounds like this thing can do a lot of what I do, except go to the field and check on...
Oh, how come I did not think of ChatGPT DRONE? Silly me...
by Owendonovan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 12:46 am
regardless of what he does most people will remain in TWT because this is nothing more than the rat pressing the lever, for most people.
Bingo.
by ti-amiebrooklynmarie@mastodon.lol
Carly Sagan
@carlysagan@mastodon.social
Over 100 Starlink satellites have launched this week alone. The megaconstellations are a major change to our entire planet and yet there is no “megaconstellation field of study” bc it is happening too fast to study. I believe this is the biggest mistake of human history. We can’t blot out the stars and kill off ground-based astrophysics and expect good things.
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
And that was a year ago. Starlink has launched (I (expletive) you not) 1,700 more satellites into orbit since then, with 1,500 of those currently operational. According to @planet4589's extremely thorough website, there are now almost 3,500 Starlinks in orbit. https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html
According to Celestrak (another extremely thorough website https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/) there are 7,200 satellites IN TOTAL. Starlink is almost half of them, and they did that in 3.5 years.
by ti-amie Felix Salmon
@felix@saturation.social
I really want to know how @Choire managed to plug X=5 into 2X+X/3 and come out with an answer of 1.45. This is a serious question. How on earth do you even do that
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 12:46 am
regardless of what he does most people will remain in TWT because this is nothing more than the rat pressing the lever, for most people.
Bingo.
I did a search using "debirdafy" to find people I follow on Mastodon. You can find anyone regardless of which silo or whatever they call it there and follow them. Almost no one from Tennis Twitter is there. This is why people are staying on the bird app. There are communities that have developed over the years and if no one from that community - when it comes to tennis twitter I'm talking journalists, bloggers, etc. has moved you end up being the rodent pressing the lever. I think this new policy might change that though. I'm going to look again in another week and see who has moved.
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 12:46 am
Two things.
TWT has not gone belly up, down under, or bankrupt.
It remains the most important platform of its type.
Maybe this guy just tested the market to the core. And he now knows he has a monopoly on this, and that regardless of what he does most people will remain in TWT because this is nothing more than the rat pressing the lever, for most people.
I disagree. Charging for the Twitter API is a bizarre move that seems like it will start pushing people out the door, potentially at a rapid pace. Twitter is nothing today without that free API and it's hard to imagine it will thrive once it's gone.
And I get it, you hate social media. But since you don't use it, I think you aren't really seeing what changes are occurring and how they are coming off. The changes up until now have been fairly minor, even though some are annoying or mildly concerning from a technical standpoint, majorly concerning in a larger way, but the site has the same feel. However one uses Twitter has stayed almost the same since his takeover. That can change greatly without the free API.
This is a staggeringly shortsighted and seemingly desperate decision, in contention for the dumbest, most costly business move of the week with Netflix.
This will affect Legal Twitter, people who post videos of animals and cute pets, and news organizations. Also sports outlets that post live video.
I did a search today to find out where the people I follow are on Mastodon. If most of tennis twitter moved I'd be happy but right now it's just a few of us fans so we have to use the bird app which, if this takes effect, will be useless for media.
Just FYI, it affects way more than that. Developers are screwed. The number of content creators that use the API is massive. The number of unproblematic and highly useful bots that use the API on Twitter is enormous (and this will not deter the problematic bots set on mayhem or scamming). Some stuff is cute or entertaining, but there's plenty that is much more serious and vital like public service alerts. Twitter has yet to say clearly if there are exemptions from this, like if government agencies and researchers will be able to keep using it free of charge or for a low, flat fee.
Also, this is going to cause people to actually lose jobs. There are companies that built off of that API that Twitter greatly benefited from developing off of and it may not be cost effective for them to stay if that's even an option, some things have just been killed, no option to pay to stay. The pricing is comparatively high, and that's against services that charge, not Instagram, Facebook and YouTube that have free APIs. It's really bizarre because it seems like this will make Twitter's advertising situation worse, not better.
Tennis Twitter is probably not a big user of the API in a major way, but given how many times i see the same articles, scores, and gambling lines posted, it will reduce tennis related content for sure. Regular posting from many fans should be fine. But, I'd be shocked if some tennis journalists who post on a frequent basis to Twitter aren't utilizing the API in some way, likely thru a third-party app. Most third party apps died a sudden death about 2 weeks ago when they started killing those off, but still, those all ran off the Twitter API.
by ti-amieElon Musk Is Running Scared From Mastodon; Cuts Off The Best Tool For Finding Your Twitter Followers There
(Mis)Uses of Technology
from the trying-to-lock-the-barn-doors dept
Fri, Feb 3rd 2023 10:23am - Mike Masnick
People keep claiming that Mastodon isn’t scaring Elon Musk, but it’s pretty clear that he’s worried about the exodus of people from Twitter. With his bizarrely short-sighted decision to end free access to the Twitter API, driving developers over to Mastodon, some people realized that the various tools that people use to find their Twitter followers on Mastodon are likely to be cut off. It’s unclear if this was part of the motivation for ending free access to the API, but it did create a surge in people checking out those tools. But then, last night, just hours after the API announcement, Elon’s Twitter cut off API access to Movetodon, which was the nicest, easiest to use tool for finding and following your Twitter followers on Mastodon.
As when Musk cut off third party client developers, the company has not said what rule Tibor actually broke with Movetodon. And that’s likely because he wasn’t actually breaking any rules at all.
It’s just that Musk is running scared, because he knows people are leaving.
Either way, if you haven’t yet set up a Mastodon account, and you’d like to more easily find your Twitter follows and followers who have already moved over (and found it much better than Twitter), you should probably do so soon before Musk cuts off those other services as well.
The two other popular ones after Movetodon were Debirdify and Fedifinder. They seem to be working right now, but I’m assuming not for long. Almost certainly not after Musk institutes his fees for API access. So, even if you don’t plan on using Mastodon for now, it might make sense to set up an account before these tools disappear.
by Suliso Nice educational video about long term climatic effects. I mean really long term.
ChatGPT.jpg
This thing will eliminate a lot of jobs. One more: the people that write small reviews for movies (like the small descriptions for IMDB). Those people are toast. -->
by ponchi101 A journalist asked ChatGPT to write about itself. Here is the resulting brief essay:
ChatGPT.jpg
This thing will eliminate a lot of jobs. One more: the people that write small reviews for movies (like the small descriptions for IMDB). Those people are toast.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Mon Feb 06, 2023 1:31 pm
Nice educational video about long term climatic effects. I mean really long term.
I had never heard of these Milankovitch cycles. Extremely interesting. Thanks.
by ti-amie I was just notified that I can't tweet anymore today.
About Twitter limits
Why have limits?
Limits alleviate some of the strain on the behind-the-scenes part of Twitter and reduce downtime and error pages. For the sake of reliability, we've placed some limits on the account actions below.
Current Twitter limits
The current technical limits for accounts are:
Direct Messages (daily): The limit is 500 messages sent per day.
Tweets: 2,400 per day. The daily update limit is further broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals. Retweets are counted as Tweets.
Changes to account email: 4 per hour.
Following (daily): The technical follow limit is 400 per day. Please note that this is a technical account limit only, and there are additional rules prohibiting aggressive following behavior.
Following (account-based): Once an account is following 5,000 other accounts, additional follow attempts are limited by account-specific ratios.
These limits include actions from all devices, including web, mobile, phone, API, etc. API requests from all third-party applications are tracked against the hourly API limit. People who use multiple third-party applications with their account will therefore reach the API limit more quickly.
These limits may be temporarily reduced during periods of heavy site usage. In such cases, we will post an update on the Twitter status site.
What happens if I hit a limit?
If you do reach a limit, we'll let you know with an error message telling you which limit you've hit. For limits that are time-based (like the Direct Messages, Tweets, changes to account email, and API request limits), you'll be able to try again after the time limit has elapsed.
The Tweet limit of 2,400 updates per day is further broken down into semi-hourly intervals. If you hit your account update/Tweet limit, please try again in a few hours after the limit period has elapsed.
Having trouble?
If you've hit a follow limit, please see this follow limit troubleshooting article for more information.
by ti-amie lasdair Stuart
@AlasdairStuart@wandering.shop
Unprecedented levels of clown shoes at the birdsite. 3000 character tweets roll out for the rent-a-ticks and the site instantly falls over so badly the only way you can tweet is schedule it. Which you can’t on the mobile app. Oh and the one app that lets you schedule stuff may also be about to go rent-a-tick exclusive.
GREAT job, you F**king Justin Hammer wannabe. Just amazing.
by ti-amie Darryl Mott
@Abstruse@chirp.enworld.org
What's fascinating to me about the #TwitterDown is not that it's down (that was inevitable), but the very specific way it's failed.
The only site function that still works is scheduled tweets, quote-tweets, and likes.
EVERYTHING ELSE is broken. No TweetDeck, no DMs (in fact the archive is inaccessible), no RTs.
That's a flashing red arrow pointing and what very specifically broke on #Twitter but Musk fired everyone who can read flashing red arrow.
by ti-amie This seems to be the consensus view of what happened.
Peter Wartman
@wartman@mastodon.art
Lol they just did the "all the words" update today, I think maybe someone didn't test things well enough
Somewhere an Elmo engineer is whining this didn't happen when they tested things on Tesla's...
by ti-amie Mastodon servers are overloading.
by ti-amie im Stewartson :toad:
@jimstewartson@toad.social
This might be why. It is certainly conceivable that Elmo’s ragtag of leftover desperate engineers put out a feature without properly testing it.
It is what I said though...
by ponchi101 Computer counters. Famously tricky (when you are coding) if you need to reset.
by ti-amie If only more of tennis twitter would move! Maybe this will be the thing that makes all of sports, news, entertainment move to a different platform.
Twitter is falling apart. I currently can’t follow anyone or post anything. In the midst of this, Musk had a meeting to find out why his engagement is plummeting.
An engineer looked into the code, found no issues, and speculated it’s because he’s less popular.
by ti-amie John Infante
@johninfante@mastodon.world
@jbe @lolgop So he mostly just wants to be Tom from MySpace. It’s going to get to the point where everyone has to follow him, he cannot be unfollowed, blocked, or muted, and you have to receive notifications when he posts unless you turn them off for Twitter at the system level.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed Feb 08, 2023 10:51 pm
im Stewartson :toad:
@jimstewartson@toad.social
This might be why. It is certainly conceivable that Elmo’s ragtag of leftover desperate engineers put out a feature without properly testing it.
Twitter used to test and stress test for months before roll out. Musk hasn't even owned the company long enough for the old standard of testing features. They've been rolling out and retracting half baked features since they bought it. It's truly a clown shown. That early layoff approach and subsequent exodus has backfired because the grand majority of the best talent has clearly left the building.
by ponchi101 I suggest he starts a forum and be the ADMIN. You, know, the ONE person you can't "foe".
(You people are so unlucky... )
by Suliso Starship has performed the first ever full (31 out of 33 engines) static fire test. Visually looks like full success. Getting closer to the first orbital test flight!
by ti-amie Elmo is denying Ukraine access to his Starlink system.
by ti-amieSpaceX says it blocked Ukraine from using Starlink with military drones
Shotwell: Ukraine's "offensive" use of Starlink "not part of any agreement."
JON BRODKIN - 2/10/2023, 12:59 PM
Enlarge / A Starlink terminal used by Ukrainian servicemen in Bakhmut on February 1, 2023.
Enlarge / A Starlink terminal used by Ukrainian servicemen in Bakhmut on February 1, 2023.
Getty Images | Yasuyoshi Chiba
SpaceX took steps to prevent Ukraine's military from using Starlink satellite Internet with drones because the service was never intended to be "weaponized," SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said at an FAA space transportation conference Wednesday.
"Using Starlink with drones went beyond the scope of an agreement SpaceX has with the Ukrainian government, Shotwell said, adding that the contract was intended for humanitarian purposes such as providing broadband Internet to hospitals, banks, and families affected by Russia's invasion," Reuters reported.
Shotwell said, "We were really pleased to be able to provide Ukraine connectivity and help them in their fight for freedom. It was never intended to be weaponized. However, Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement," according to the Associated Press.
Starlink's terms of service specifically address this, saying it is "not designed or intended for use with or in offensive or defensive weaponry or other comparable end-uses." SpaceX knows "the military is using them for comms, and that's OK," Shotwell reportedly said. "But our intent was never to have them use it for offensive purposes."
Shotwell declined to say exactly how SpaceX prevented Ukraine from using Starlink with drones. "There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that... there are things that we can do and have done," she said, according to Reuters.
Ukraine officials express anger, puzzlement
SpaceX came to Ukraine's aid after Russia invaded the country in February 2022. Reports in March said Starlink broadband connections helped the Ukraine military's elite drone unit target and destroy Russian tanks and other "priority targets."
Shotwell's comments expanded on a recent statement by SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. In a tweet on January 31, Musk wrote that "SpaceX Starlink has become the connectivity backbone of Ukraine all the way up to the front lines... However, we are not allowing Starlink to be used for long-range drone strikes." Musk's comment came after a TV host on a Russian state-controlled channel called Musk "a war criminal."
After Shotwell's comments, a Ukraine official criticized SpaceX for restricting Starlink's use by the military. Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote in a tweet yesterday that companies are either on the side of Ukraine and "the right to freedom and don't seek ways to do harm" or on the side of Russia "and its 'right' to kill and seize territories. SpaceX (Starlink) and Mrs. Shotwell should choose a specific option."
One "Ukrainian military official called Shotwell's statements 'strange' given the well-established fact of the country's use of Starlink as a combat tool," the AP wrote.
Starlink has been useful to Ukraine in multiple ways, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, said in a statement quoted by news outlets. There are "no problems with the operation of Starlink uplink terminals in Ukraine," and Musk is "one of the biggest private donors of our future victory," he said.
"Starlinks help save thousands of lives daily," Fedorov also said. "The energy infrastructure continues to work due to Starlinks. Doctors perform complex surgeries thanks to the connection that Starlinks provide."
by JazzNU This is one of the replies to the above tweet and makes a great point. Elon is super desperate about advertisers so an even more bizarre move.
Justin Gurski
@JustinGurski
Replying to
@MattBinder
'Other than the 200k paid subscribers, everyone is a bot' doesn't sound like a great pitch to advertisers.
by ponchi101 I always like this sort of news:
"Something like really, really weird just happened TO THE SUN, and we don't understand it much, but DON'T WORRY. If anything really bad happens, we will turn on SUN II and ..."
Wait...
by JazzNU Anti-Tesla software commercial ran in select markets during the Super Bowl. I wasn't in one of them, so I didn't see it. The Tesla fanatics have brought more attention to it than it otherwise would've gotten honestly. The commercial that is posted on Twitter has, by far, the most disclaimers I've ever seen on a Tweet, far more from than I've seen for hate speech post or dangerous and misleading comments, i.e. Jan. 6 or covid.
by ponchi101 About why does the NHTSA allow it.
The real thing about FSD is that it would wipe out almost all jobs for commercial drivers, i.e. truckers. It would cut down on a huge portion of transportation costs, because a self driving truck, in theory, would only stop to re-fuel. You would need some support personnel, but it would be minimal in comparison to the numbers of drivers around the world. I am not sure if the EU and the USA would accept FSD for human transport vehicles (buses) but for cargo, it would be a panacea.
FOR ALL THE TRANSPORT COMPANIES. FSD would wipe out millions of jobs around the world. And that translates into billions saved, and bottom line getting fatter.
No big analysis needed.
This happened after a hashtag #blockelon was trending. It might be fixed now.
by Suliso I have a feeling that full self driving is not coming anytime soon. It works 95% of the time or even 99%, but this is one of those rare applications where that is not good enough.
by ti-amie Then there's this Elmo meltdown...
Elon Musk asked engineers to boost his tweets after Joe Biden's Super Bowl post got more engagement than his, report says
Hannah Getahun and Erin Snodgrass Feb 14, 2023, 9:33 PM
Musk asked engineers to find ways to promote his tweets after the Super Bowl, Platformer reported.
Musk made the request after President Joe Biden received more engagement for an Eagles tweet.
Engineers worked under the threat of being fired to create a system that would boost his tweets.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk apparently did not like that a Super Bowl tweet of his was getting fewer impressions than President Joe Biden's — and had Twitter engineers work tirelessly after the big game to fix it, according to a new report from Platformer.
During the game, in which the Philadelphia Eagles faced off against the Kansas City Chiefs, Biden retweeted a video of his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, showing support for the Eagles. Musk also tweeted in support of the Eagles, but deleted his tweet four hours later.
Biden's tweet gained nearly 29 million impressions, while Musk's tweet got over 9 million impressions, Platformer's Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton reported.
As a result, Musk asked 80 engineers on Sunday night to begin working on a project that would ensure his tweets would also get significant engagement — and if they didn't they would lose their jobs. Musk reportedly also flew his private jet to the Bay Area — where Twitter's San Francisco office is located — after the game to speak to his team face-to-face, Platformer reported.
In an early morning Slack message on Monday, Musk's cousin, James Musk, requested any and all engineers respond to address the discrepancy in engagement, which he described as "high urgency," according to the Platformer report.
According to the report, Twitter engineers worked through the night to create a system that allowed Musk to receive increased promotion on his tweets above other users "by a factor of 1,000," Platformer reported. Engineers created new code that automatically "greenlights" all of Musk's tweets, allowing them to bypass Twitter filters that would traditionally keep one particular account from flooding the entire feed, the outlet reported.
Engineers also spoke about reasons why Musk's tweets may be performing less, including that multiple people on the site may have blocked or muted his content, though they also found technical reasons that resulted in less promotion of his tweets while fixing the issue, Platformer reported.
Musk's boost comes as he publicly obsesses over his engagement on the app; the CEO fired one of his top engineers last week after the employee suggested that Musk's waning engagement was due to declining public interest in Musk himself, Platformer reported.
In a Tuesday tweet, Musk appeared to acknowledge his newfound visibility on the site, posting a meme about his tweets, and later said the company would be making further adjustments to the algorithm.
Platformer reported Tuesday that the boost factor for Musk's tweets is now lower than 1,000.
A representative for Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
by ti-amie Mark Ruffalo
@MarkRuffalo@mastodon.social
Tesla has received a lot of taxpayer dollars. They should have to open these chargers to the public. Right now, they enjoy a dominance of virtually private chargers at the taxpayer’s expense.
Biden to require EV chargers to be universal for federal funds, expects Tesla to open some chargers
The Hill
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 8:39 pm
I have a feeling that full self driving is not coming anytime soon. It works 95% of the time or even 99%, but this is one of those rare applications where that is not good enough.
What would be the proper metric? Accidents are measured as fatalities/100 million VMT (vehicle miles traveled). Vehicles are already very safe: for 2022, the fatality rate was around 1.3 100MM VMT (USA). So, if you can produce FSD that cuts that by half, do you approve it? If so, where are the liabilities assigned? How do you measure progress if you do not accept FSD to test it in real life? If, after you approve, you still get accidents, do the manufacturers get sued? The software engineers? The sensors' designers?
It is very complicated.
by JazzNU
Suliso wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 8:39 pm
I have a feeling that full self driving is not coming anytime soon. It works 95% of the time or even 99%, but this is one of those rare applications where that is not good enough.
That's exactly right. It probably needs to be in the 99.5-99.9% range most likely before it's given true consideration on a grander scale. But I have a feeling that more metrics will be used than just that.
I follow a tech reviewer that did a FSD with his Tesla a few months ago and it was super stressful just watching it, let alone being in the car. I was so happy he took it out where he did. I've said this many times before when talking to people IRL about this. It's cute to put a FSD Tesla on the road in a distant suburb, rural setting, or empty back road. But can it navigate densely populated areas with fast, reckless, and unpredictable drivers in the Northeast? That's the real test to me, and that's where he lives, so it's where he did the test drive. It was interesting to watch for sure, but shows how far away FSD is as well from being ready for primetime. Like, it technically does a good job and he's still alive. But smooth is the very last word you would use to describe that drive.
And "full self drive" is quite the misnomer.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 8:47 pm
This is Elmo's tweet referenced above.
Forgetting how the internet works when the narcissism hits into overdrive and he just wants the attention. Hundreds of other photos could've been used. Plenty had no idea about this and are learning about it because he so desperately wants to be liked.
by Suliso Just to add my statement wasn't about Tesla alone. It includes also Google and everyone else trying it. The problem is of fundamental nature and not because Tesla engineers are not good enough (they're very good).
by ponchi101 Sure. And when FSD becomes viable, you may have a few different softwares that are capable.
"It's not clear how existing users of 2FA will be affected, or who will get access to other methods of 2FA, such as authenticator apps."
Under Elon Musk's management; Twitter is potentially actively making it easier for malicious actors to hack accounts. Great.
---
RT @ZoeSchiffer
NEW: Twitter is planning to unveil a new policy as soon as this afternoon that only Blue subscribers will be able to use SMS-based two-factor authentication… https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status
From the "that explains a lot" department.....Web hosting giant GoDaddy says it suffered a breach where unknown attackers have stolen source code and installed malware on its servers after breaching its cPanel shared hosting environment in a multi-year attack.
While GoDaddy discovered the security breach following customer reports in early December 2022 that their sites were being used to redirect to random domains, the attackers had access to the company's network for multiple years.
"Based on our investigation, we believe these incidents are part of a multi-year campaign by a sophisticated threat actor group that, among other things, installed malware on our systems and obtained pieces of code related to some services within GoDaddy," the hosting firm said in an SEC filing.
In that video I watched of the full self drive, shaking wasn't an issue, but getting on to a faster speed road or highway, whether from a stop or a merge, were basically the most nerve wracking moments. Not something I really considered before, the different aspects of what it takes to master for self driving to be effective. This was in Jersey, so timid drivers need not apply. When you enter, you need to do so with authority or you're gonna get creamed. It's using the camera and tech to clock the different things going on in the many directions Cars, trucks, people, road objects, traffic lights, etc. Sometimes the entry is straight on, sometimes, it's at an angle. He entered a roundabout as well.
It was interesting to watch as I said, but it gave a new perspective of what will need to be mastered by the tech, and there was a sense, to me at least, that you can predict human behavior only so much. Nothing is stopping a car going 70 to speed up to 78 and passing you suddenly and it's hard to see that coming. He had to take over control of the car several times to execute some of those moves when it seemed like it wasn't going to get accomplished quick enough. Other times he let it go and it did execute it, but like he understandably didn't take the chance when it was like an 18 wheeler barreling down on him.
by Suliso I've driven in many countries and actually US is among the easiest. Mostly because of wide spaces and straightforward parking.
by ponchi101 Europe is also very, very easy.
by Suliso Compared to India? Yeah, I guess so.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 4:12 pm
Compared to India? Yeah, I guess so.
Compared to everywhere. I have driven in Spain and it is easy going. Sure, streets are narrow once you get to a small town, but nothing to write home about.
Insane places: sure, India, Syria, Caracas, Bogota. Congo. There, you really need to keep your three eyes on the road.
by Suliso I've not driven in any funny place like that... Mexico was fine too.
by JazzNU
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 5:09 am
I've driven in many countries and actually US is among the easiest. Mostly because of wide spaces and straightforward parking.
That's not a great way to accurately describe a good portion of the Northeast. But yes, I would assume that for many areas in the country that's true.
by Suliso Well, the farthest north I've gone on East coast with a car is DC. Texas and Arizona is more to my liking anyway.
by Owendonovan If you don't want to drive a car, don't buy a car. See how easy that is?
by Suliso
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Wed Feb 22, 2023 2:24 am
If you don't want to drive a car, don't buy a car. See how easy that is?
I wish it was so easy. In many places driving is a must whether you want it or not. That includes 80%+ of USA.
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Wed Feb 22, 2023 2:24 am
If you don't want to drive a car, don't buy a car. See how easy that is?
I wish it was so easy. In many places driving is a must whether you want it or not. That includes 80%+ of USA.
Understood, It's more a reference to the self driving cars.
by ti-amie I was going to say that for New Yorkers not driving is an easy option but it's not true for some urban areas like Los Angeles. I can't imagine trying to use a self driving car in New York City or LA.
by ti-amie
Chris Trottier
@atomicpoet@mastodon.social
As @JosephMenn reports, Russian propagandists are eager buyers of Twitter Blue.
This is because Twitter Blue privileges their posts in Twitter's relevancy algorithm, ensuring their propaganda achieves more reach.
It also gives them a fancy blue badge.
Russian propagandists aren't the only bad hombres buying Twitter Blue. A few months ago, I discovered that the Taliban are also paying for the service.
ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed Feb 22, 2023 7:53 pm
I was going to say that for New Yorkers not driving is an easy option but it's not true for some urban areas like Los Angeles. I can't imagine trying to use a self driving car in New York City or LA.
Indeed. Even in cities with what is considered good public transportation, the grid is not what NYC has set up, not as wide ranging, not as many connections that cut down on time getting around a city, let alone not nearly the same frequency.
Self driving in LA I can imagine, in NYC, not nearly as much. It's why I was interested in seeing how it handled in NJ, because that's another no go area for self driving to me as are most urban areas of the Northeast. Tighter roads with aggressive drivers are what make me think absolutely not where self driving is concerned. And that basically describes all of NYC.
by Deuce This is relevant to the self-driving car discussion...
Making things more complicated like this doesn't have a good track record...
by ti-amie New cracks emerge in Elon Musk's Twitter
Jira went down, Slack's gone, and site performance is degraded. What's next?
Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer
Today, let’s check in on Elon Musk’s Twitter, where sudden software outages and another dubious transparency effort have left the company’s remaining workers more beleaguered than usual.
On Wednesday, Twitter employees had the tech equivalent of a snow day: the company’s Slack instance was down for “routine maintenance,” they were told, and the company was implementing a deployment freeze as a result.
That same day, Jira – a tool Twitter uses to track everything from progress on feature updates to regulatory compliance – also stopped working. With no way to chat and no code to ship, most engineers took the day off.
Jira access was restored on Thursday. But Platformer can now confirm that Slack wasn’t down for “routine maintenance.” “There is no such thing as routine maintenance. That’s (expletive),” a current Slack employee told us.
In this as in so many other things, Twitter hasn’t paid its Slack bill. But that’s not why Slack went down: someone at Twitter manually shut off access, we’re told. Platformer was not able to learn the reason prior to publication, though the move suggests Musk may have turned against the communication app — or at least wants to see if Twitter can run without Slack and the expenses associated with it. (Musk’s Tesla uses a Slack competitor called Mattermost for in-house collaboration, and Microsoft Outlook and Teams for email and meetings.)
On Blind, the anonymous workplace chat app, the disappearance of such critical tools was met with a mixture of disbelief, frustration, and (to a lesser extent) glee.
“We didn't pay our Slack bill,” one employee wrote. “Now everyone is barely working. Penny wise, pound foolish.”
Another worker called the disappearance of Slack the “proverbial final straw.”
“Oddly enough, it's the Slack deactivation that has pushed me to finally start applying to get out,” they wrote.
For Twitter employees, Slack is more than a way to message colleagues: it’s also a store of institutional memory, preserved in documents that workers have had to rely on more and more since Musk purged thousands of employees since taking over.
“After everyone was gone, I had no one to ask questions when stuck,” an employee who stayed on past the first round of layoffs wrote in Blind. “I used to search for the error [messages] on Slack and got help 99 percent of the time.”
Slack remained down at the company on Thursday. While some employees communicated over email, others essentially took a second day off.
There’s never a good time for a company to lose its primary communication infrastructure. But the loss of Slack is likely to be particularly stressful for employees working on Musk’s latest big idea: open-sourcing the algorithm that ranks tweets in the timeline.
On Monday, Musk announced (by replying to a random account, naturally) that Twitter plans to open source its algorithm next week. “Prepare to be disappointed at first when our algorithm is made open source next week, but it will improve rapidly!” he wrote.
It’s unclear whether Twitter will actually hit that deadline — Musk seems to announce a new thing coming “next week” all the time, and often those deadlines pass and whatever feature was allegedly coming is never heard of again. (Remember the feature that would tell you if you’re shadowbanned? Or improvements to the search function? Or the content moderation council? Or letting creators charge for video?)
Still, we’re told that some engineers have been tasked with cleaning up the recommendation algorithm in preparation for making it open source. But among employees, many doubt that Musk plans to release the actual code that is currently in production — raising the question of what, if anything, he actually plans to show.
Another of Musk’s ongoing projects is to improve Twitter’s performance. At the end of last year, he claimed progress. “Significant backend server architecture changes rolled out,” he tweeted on December 28. “Twitter should feel faster.”
In fact, publicly available data indicates that Twitter has been slowly degrading since that month, when it shut down its Sacramento data center. The information comes from Singlepane, a startup whose tool measures latency issues using external signals; the company has been actively monitoring what it describes as a degradation in Twitter’s quality of service.
According to the company’s data, Twitter has seen increased latency — the time between taking an action like refreshing the timeline and seeing new tweets populate in your feed — during times when more people are using the service. Singlepane showed latency spikes during the halftime show of the Super Bowl, for example, and in the aftermath of the recent earthquake in Turkey.
We ran the data by current Twitter engineers, who say it tracks with what they’re seeing internally.
But it’s not only big external events that can cause the platform to become slower or less stable. When a user takes their account private, Twitter’s systems have to go through every single tweet in the account’s history and mark them as private, before making those tweets visible to the private account’s followers.
That can be a data-intensive request for a large account a big lift – like, say, Elon Musk’s. Singlepane’s data show that Twitter experienced significant latency issues when Musk took his account private in early February, as part of his effort to understand why fewer people have been liking his tweets lately. (He figured out a separate fix for that problem just a few days later.)
On top of all the other news, parts of Asia experienced a roughly 20 minute Twitter outage today, we’re told.
The gist (extract):
More than 8,100 energy projects — the vast majority of them wind, solar and batteries — were waiting for permission to connect to electric grids at the end of 2021, up from 5,600 the year before, jamming the system known as interconnection.
That’s the process by which electricity generated by wind turbines or solar arrays is added to the grid — the network of power lines and transformers that moves electricity from the spot where it is created to cities and factories. There is no single grid; the United States has dozens of electric networks, each overseen by a different authority.
End quote.
So, it is not just the generation, it is the plugging them in.
If the USA has this problem, what is left to smaller, even more antiquated grids in less developed countries?
by Suliso Sometimes smaller is easier...
by ponchi101 Perhaps. In our countries in S. America, we usually have one single, national supplier, but the grids are broken up. I wonder how that would translate into the connectivity of wind and solar, taking in consideration they are so intermittent.
by skatingfan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 24, 2023 3:19 pm
So, it is not just the generation, it is the plugging them in.
If the USA has this problem, what is left to smaller, even more antiquated grids in less developed countries?
As I understand it, a lot of these issues are not technical they are political. Traditional electric companies have legal monopolies in each state, and have control, and sometimes veto power over new production coming online.
by ti-amie From earlier this afternoon:
So if u click on a link to an article this is what you get on the bird site:
Twitter’s links and pictures were broken, but now they’re not
/ Clicking a link on Twitter got you no further than an error message, and many images across our timelines were failing to load.
By MITCHELL CLARK and RICHARD LAWLER
Updated Mar 6, 2023, 1:02 PM EST|
Twitter had some problems Monday morning — starting just before noon ET, clicking links within tweets didn’t work, and for many people, images wouldn’t load throughout their timelines. It took a little less than an hour for most parts of the site to start working again.
During the partial outage, trying to click a link showed only an error message that said “your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.” People also seemed to get the error when visiting the site in Incognito mode or if they weren’t logged in.
The Twitter Support account said that “an internal change that had some unintended consequences” was to blame. While the issues were happening, some Verge staffers’ Twitter access remained unaffected, while others weren’t even able to load the site.
Musk responded to Monday’s outage by saying that the site “is so brittle (sigh).”
Despite the company’s shrinking workforce, Musk has continued to push for new features, including promising changes that haven’t yet appeared, like last month’s call for ad revenue sharing with creators who post on the platform or a plan to introduce a new paid tier for its API.
This latest outage occurred only about a week after Elon Musk laid off much of the company’s remaining product team, including manager Esther Crawford, in the latest round of cuts since he took ownership of Twitter last fall. Twitter also had a similar outage nearly a month ago, which Platformer reported occurred because “an employee had inadvertently deleted data for an internal service that sets rate limits for using Twitter.”
Update March 6th, 1:02PM ET: Updated to reflect that the outage appears to be resolved.
Already in November, engineers who left Twitter described for The Associated Press why they expect considerable unpleasantness for Twitter’s more than 230 million users now that well over two-thirds of the San Francisco-based company’s pre-Musk core services engineers are apparently gone.
While they don’t anticipate near-term collapse, the engineers said Twitter could get very rough at the edges — especially if Musk makes major changes without much off-platform testing.
— with files from The Associated Press, Reuters
by ti-amie Meanwhile:
Fedi.Tips
@feditips@mstdn.social
The mastodon.social server is currently under a heavy DDOS attack and may not work properly.
The 12,164 other servers on the network are unaffected.
This is part of the reason why federated networks are a good idea: if one server goes down, the others work fine.
The more spread out we are on small and medium sized servers, the harder it is for anyone to take down the network because there's no obvious target.
by ti-amie Meanwhile Teri Kanefield has written an easy to understand comparison between the different platforms currently available. It's a bit long but the article is written in terms the average person can understand.
Twitter V. Mastodon V. Post V. Other Possibilities
1. Twitter
Twitter has done a lot of good. It allowed communities to form. It allowed marginalized voices to be heard. It allowed crucial information to be disseminated. It even saved lives.
Like Facebook and other platforms that rely on algorithms to stimulate engagement, Twitter has also done a lot of harm. The Pew Research Center says this:
Nearly all the content people see on social media is chosen not by human editors but rather by computer programs using massive quantities of data about each user to deliver content that he or she might find relevant or engaging. This has led to widespread concerns that these sites are promoting content that is attention-grabbing but ultimately harmful to users – such as misinformation, sensationalism or “hate clicks.”
The Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen explained that Facebook algorithms incentivize “angry, polarizing, divisive content.” In her testimony before Congress she said:
Facebook repeatedly encountered conflicts between its own profits and our safety. Facebook consistently resolved those conflicts in favor of its own profits. The result has been a system that amplifies division, extremism, and polarization — and undermines societies around the world. In some cases, this dangerous online talk has led to actual violence that harms and even kills people. In other cases, their profit-optimizing machine is generating self-harm and self-hate — especially for vulnerable groups, like teenage girls. These problems have been confirmed repeatedly by Facebook’s own internal research.
In a 60 Minutes interview, she explained that content that gets engaged with – such as reactions, comments, and shares – gets wider distribution. Facebook’s own research found that “angry content” is more likely to receive engagement. She said that content producers and political parties are aware of this.
Elon Musk has reinstated banned accounts known for spewing racist, dangerous lies like Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, and Babylon Bee. Most recently, he reinstated the Twitter account of Lin Wood, who was suspended after January 6, 2001, when he tweeted that former vice-president Mike Pence should face “execution by firing squad.”
Also this week, The Washington Post reported that extremist influencers are generating millions for Twitter. (If you click here, you can get past the paywall. My subscription allows me to offer a few articles each month as a gift.)
In other words, Musk is allowing rage-inducing accounts back on Twitter so he can get more fighters fighting to increase engagement because more engagement means more revenue from advertising.
“But I want to stay on Twitter to speak truth to power.”
Musk’s only “power” is the power we give him. He is not the president of the United States. He isn’t a world leader or elected official. He controls the Twitter code. That’s his power.
Some Twitter users believe that Musk will crash and Twitter will outlive him and something different will replace the Twitter of today. This seems unlikely to me, but I suppose it’s possible.
I also suspect a lot of people are keeping their Twitter accounts active while simultaneously building a home elsewhere as they watch what develops. (I’ve heard that it’s best not to delete a Twitter account, particularly if you are verified: Someone else can reactivate your account within 30 days or use your name. If you want to leave entirely, the best option is to make your account inactive while retaining control.)
2: The Network Effect
As a number of new platforms vie to become the next Twitter, it’s helpful to look at what made Twitter different from, say, a message board where you could talk to your friends and maybe say hello to a few celebrities who pop in.
The network effect occurs when a product increases in value as more people come to use it. The telephone is an example. If only 1,000 people own a phone, your phone has limited use. But if everyone has a phone, a phone becomes essential. Another example is the Internet. Initially, the Internet had limited use, but as more people came to use the Internet and features were added, Internet access now feels essential.
Twitter now has more than 350 million users. Over the years, Senators, governors, agencies, celebrities, experts in various fields, and journalists who write for major publications found their way to Twitter. I often found my Tweets quoted in major publications. Twitter has thus achieved a network effect.
3. Post.news
Post.news bills itself as the best “Twitter alternative.” They don’t put up with trolls and they banish Nazis and other extremists. The site tilts to the left.
This is from a Nieman Lab piece:
Post was founded by former Waze CEO Noam Bardin. It counts Kara Swisher as an advisor and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as one of its two investors. The other investor is Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and cohost of the Pivot podcast with Swisher. “I’ve never seen anyone, except maybe at a few strip bars, throw more money at someone than they’re throwing at Noam Bardin right now,” Galloway said on an episode of the Pivot podcast last week, in which he and Swisher interviewed Bardin. (Bardin wrote that, beyond funds from Andreessen Horowitz and from Galloway, “the only other money invested is mine.”)
I have two issues with Post: (1) Post uses reputational algorithms and (2) the uncertainty of whether Post’s plan to monetize will work.
(1) Reputational Algorithms.
Kurt Fliegel (@FLGLchicago@mas.to) pointed out to me that Noam Bardin, founder and CEO of Post.news explained how back-end reputational algorithms will control behavior on the platform:
“From a vision perspective, what we want is a situation where, if you are a verified user…and there’s no verification not being under your real name…you’re going to get into our recommendation engine, and we’re going to try to distribute your content. If your score, your reputation score goes down because people are complaining about it, we’re going to take you out of the reputation {sic} and suddenly your content will only go to your explicit followers, and, if you continue to misbehave, then your followers will not be able to re-share that content on the network, until the point where we throw you off. (For the source for this, see this post.)”
News reporting obviously should not be a popularity contest. Kurt includes this video to illustrate the results.
If you are a content producer, Post is offering you the opportunity to monetize your content. But you have to live in fear of complaints. Not everything true is popular, and sometimes the truth can make people angry.
(2) The uncertainty with Post is that its plan for how to monetize may not work
Post intends to fund the site through micropayments: Major publishers and news outlets will offer their content for micropayments. Instead of subscribing to a bunch of magazines or newspapers, you can just pay for the articles you want.
Kurt Fliegel adds this: Post is largely trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. With a couple of baseline publication subscriptions, an aggregated news service, and an RSS reader (making comebacks), news consumers can get access to more news they could possibly consume for well less than a dollar a day.
One problem for Post.news is the limited scope: News and current events. Not everyone on Twitter is there for the breaking news and political commentary.
Given that Post.news wants to be the source for news, the question is whether the news industry will go for it. The Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard describes itself as “trying to figure out the future of news.” As you can see from these two pieces, Nieman Lab prefers Mastodon:
Can Mastodon be a reasonable Twitter substitute for journalists?
Post, the latest Twitter alternative, is betting big on micropayments for news.
If the micropayment idea doesn’t attract enough major publications, Post.news could become a substack+ social media platform, a place where writers can monetize and readers can more easily boost content.
My final concern with Post is that it is privately owned, which means that as a user, I am a guest in someone else’s business. Mastodon offers an alternative.
3. Mastodon
You’re about to get an explanation of the fediverse from a nontechnical person.
Mastodon launched in 2016 when German software developer Eugen Rochko (working for a nonprofit) didn’t like Twitter so he wrote the Mastodon code and made it public. Yup, he gave it away. Anyone can use it. Anyone can improve it.
But the code by itself doesn’t do you any good. (It also looks like gibberish.) But when you run the code on a thing called a server, and the server is connected to the Internet, it acts sort of like Twitter: Users can sign up and open accounts. They can post things and comment on other people’s posts. Mastodon has “like” and “retweet” options but they’re called “favorite” and “boost”.
Mozilla (Firefox) has a similar history: The code was released to the public (open source) and has been used and improved by a community of users. There is no “owner”.
“The Fediverse”: Thousands of Mastodon servers that interact with each other.
Each server is privately owned and operated. If the server is on this list, anyone can join. Mastodon does not rely on ads or algorithms. Some organizations and institutions operate their own servers, allowing members of their company or community to set up accounts (the way you can get a company email from your employer).
Here’s an interesting take on why your organization should have its own server.
This is key: If you open an account on one server, you can move to a different server and take your followers (but not your posts) with you. So if you set up an account on your employer’s server and leave the company, you can transfer your followers to an account on a server not owned by your company.
“Walled Garden“: The term for a platform cut off from the rest of the Internet.
Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Post, and Counter Social, are all examples of walled gardens. In its early history, email servers were walled gardens: You could only send email to other email accounts in the same server. But now, it doesn’t matter which email server you use: you can exchange email with users from other systems.
But what about the bad guys? What keeps them from setting up their own Mastodon server?
Nothing. But your server simply has to block their server and there is an impenetrable wall.
In fact, this is just what happened. A bunch of Nazis and white supremacists opened their own server called Gab. Every single server on this list has Gab blocked, and any new server is advised to immediately block Gab. So the Gab Nazis are completely isolated. You will never see anything they post and they will never see anything you post. The only way a Nazi can see your stuff is if they join a normal server and hide the fact that they are Nazis, but once their Nazi-ness shows, zap. The owner of your server, who doesn’t tolerate Nazis (that’s why you are there) blocks them and you don’t have to listen to them.
In fact, did you know that Trump’s Truth Social uses Mastodon code? Trump, being Trump, tried to pretend that he created it, but opensource doesn’t mean you can take credit. The creators of Mastodon let everyone know that Trump basically used their opensource code. In other words, Trump is not a tech genius. By using Mastodon’s code but putting it forward as his own, he was doing the tech world equivalent of plagiarizing.
The Future of the Fediverse
There is a thing called Activity Pub which allows any site, including regular WordPress websites, to join the fediverse.
Medium recently announced that it will be operating a Mastodon server for the writers who publish on Medium. The reason seems clear to me: This gives Medium writers a way for their work to have wider exposure.
MIT set up a Mastodon server for the MIT community. A Stanford University professor recently asked Standford to set one up for the Stanford community.
If universities begin setting up Mastodon servers, the fediverse will develop an enormous base of experts all conversing while the rest of us can listen in.
One developer is talking about an app that will allow cell phones to operate like a Mastodon server. In other words, if you have a cell phone, you can create your own server/account.
Thus Mastodon has the same potential for growth as the Internet itself.
Post recently announced plans to federate:
This, depending on how it works out, could be a game-changer. The question is: To what extent will Post remain a privately owned walled garden, and to what extend will the users be free to interact with Mastodon servers.
The latest: Mozilla will be setting up a Mastodon instance to allow people easy access to the fediverse. This will make entry easier.
Given all of this, I suspect a decentralized system like Mastodon has the most potential and is the most likely to achieve a network effect.
I therefore asked my technical support staff (my husband) to set up a private Mastodon server for me. I had two reasons for wanting my own server. (1) I saw it as an experiment to find out how difficult (and expensive) it is, and (2) like others, I felt burned after putting so much time into Twitter only to have it change owners and fall into the hands of a right-wing madman.
If you want to know how to set up your own Mastodon server, the basic requirements are here. I’ll warn you though: It’s harder than it looks. Unless you’re an IT professional with server experience, you will not be able to follow these directions and succeed. My in-house technical support staff (my husband) spends a few hours each week maintaining my stuff. The cost of maintaining my Mastodon server is about the same as maintaining my website.
A shortcut to following those directions (and a less expensive alternative) is to use a dedicated Mastodon hosting provider. You can see the costs here. For about $40 per month, you can host 500 Mastodon users. (It isn’t much money because the software is freely available and there is so much demand for new Mastodon servers, that capitalism is doing its thing: Suppliers are meeting the demand.)
Although very large communities are uncommon, a Mastodon server can accommodate hundreds of thousands of users. In fact, I don’t believe there is a limit.
With my own server, I never have to worry about being shut out of my account on the whim of the platform owner or having the rules suddenly change on me.
This brings me to Counter Social.
4. Counter Social
Counter Social, like Truth Social, uses the Mastodon software but has elected not to be part of the fediverse. In other words, Counter Social is a Mastodon server (with tweaks) disconnected so that you can only communicate with others who have joined Counter Social.
In other words, it has become a walled garden.
Counter Social promises “unique protections: No trolls. No Abuse. No Ads. No Fake News. No Foreign Influence Ops.”
Basically, Counter Social offers a “safe” place.
In early November after Musk purchased Twitter while we were all exploring options, a number of people urged me to try Counter Social, so I opened a Counter Social account. Once weekly, I posted a link to my blog and occasionally I reposted something I’d done elsewhere. I had no strong feelings about Counter Social.
Then one day I had an unfortunate encounter with Jester, the anonymous owner of Counter Social. What happened was this: One of my followers, asked, “What about Counter Social?” Emma, who has since left Twitter altogether, said, “I don’t trust the owner of Counter Social.”
She did not tag Counter Social or Jester, but he found her tweet. Either he was searching for mentions of Counter Social or someone alerted him.
He directed two Tweets toward Emma. In the first Tweet, he demanded evidence for her assertion. In the second, he went on the attack. He used the phrase, “if you are so stupid.” Three or four of Jester’s followers piled on and said unkind things to Emma.
This was all on my feed, so I stepped in and said, “Is this how you all behave on Counter Social?” and I asked them to stop the pile on. Then, Jester’s supporters turned on me. One Jester supporter told me that I deserved what I got because I “attacked” Jester. Another said, “four people is not a pile on,” and another said, “That was the gentlest pile-on I’ve ever seen.” To counter that, I showed a screenshot that one of them used the “f” word in attacking Emma. Two of them then mocked for being sensitive about the “f” word. One said, “So you never go to r-rated movies?”
As this was going on, I tried to log on to Counter Social to delete my account. I intended to scrub it of my personal information but I found I was locked out. I asked people to check, and they told me my account had been deleted.
Evidently Jester deleted my account and locked me out. He then deleted his tweets to Emma. On his feed, tweeted the lyrics to “Shake it off.” (His response to the incident.) He also blocked me.
I emailed Counter Social’s help account and asked for my account to be reinstated long enough for me to scrub it so that my picture and other information were no longer there. The person lied and told me that I had deleted it myself. (I hadn’t.) The person responding to me said he wasn’t Jester, but the snide tone was the same.
I had a similar experience about 10 years ago. I created an account on a forum for writers. It was loads of fun. I met other writers. We exchanged ideas and talked about writing, literary agents, publishing (traditional v. self-publishing), and everything else of interest to writers. Then the platform was purchased by someone who was combative and argued with people who disagreed with her.
Initially, she agreed with my views and all was good. But then I formed an opinion about literary agents that she thought was wrongheaded. I stated my opinions anyway. She didn’t want me to spread my views on her site. It was her platform so she had the power to control the content. I deleted my account.
These two stories illustrate why I am unwilling to invest too much time in a centrally-owned site where the owners can decide they don’t approve of my content or they just don’t like me. It’s happened twice now. It could happen again.
Even people on the same side of the political spectrum—and even members of the same political party—can have furious disagreements. Just look back at some of the more contentious primaries. Just because you and the owner both dislike right-wing extremists doesn’t mean the day won’t come when one thinks the other is spreading misinformation.
In other words, banning Nazis does not assure harmony.
5. Spoutible
I started drafting a section on Spoutible. I ended up digging into the Courtney Milan / Christopher Bouzy drama, and I concluded that the entire drama illustrated exactly why I am afraid to invest too much time into another centrally-owned platform.
With any centrally owned platform, there is always a risk of not getting along with the owner (or owners) and having to move to a different platform. This is fine if your objective is to chat with people and make friends. But for what we might call content producers (a fancy word for “writer”) there is always the risk of investing time, building up a network, and then finding that you have to leave and lose it all.
6. How is the site moderated for content?
The hardest part of operating a social media platform is moderating the content.
On Mastodon, each server does its own moderation. This can be chaotic, but a user is free to move to a different server if the user doesn’t like the rules.
Counter Social is moderated by Jester. This works well if you get along with Jester.
Twitter used to be moderated by a team (which cost money) and is now moderated at the whim of Elon Musk. This is bad for anyone who is not a right-wing nutcase.
Post.news, which is being funded by millions in VC funds, can afford a team to handle the moderation. This keeps the decisions from becoming personal.
Wait, Teri! You forgot about “ease of usage.” Mastodon is too hard to use! It’s too confusing! I want something easier!
I didn’t forget. I suspect people are forgetting how hard it was to learn to use Twitter. I am about the most non-technical person around, and once I learned where the buttons were on Mastodon, I was fine.
A privately owned company like Post.news that anticipates making a lot of money, has people working full time to make the interface appealing and easy to use. You are the customer. Without you, the site will not make money, so of course the door will be opened for you.
Also, I suspect that the Next Big Thing will not look like the last Big Thing. When the Next Big Thing comes along (whatever that may be) I expect we will all be forced to learn something new. New technology is like that.
My Strategy
I like microblogging to record my thoughts and impressions throughout the week. (Twitter and Mastodon are microblogging platforms, meaning that each post has a limited word count. Post, Substack, and Medium are blogging platforms. The post has no word limit.)
I like the feedback I get from microblogging. The wonderful thing about microblogging on social media is that if I make a mistake, someone will be kind enough to tell me.
Then once weekly, I look back over what I’ve microblogged, decide on a topic (or a few topics), and put together my weekly blog post.
Building a following and presence on a platform takes time and effort and most of us have limited time and simply can’t be active on multiple sites.
I am currently using Mastodon as my primary social media platform.
Each week, I post a link to my blog post on Post.news and Facebook. (Yes, I know Facebook is horrible, but I have friends and family members who never left)
Occasionally during the week, if time permits, I will also cross-post from Mastodon to Twitter, Facebook, or Post.news.
As new sites open up, I may open accounts to cross-post links to my weekly blog post.
For my readers who are not on Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon, or Post, I have a free once-weekly blog post. (You can sign up here.) If readers want to see what I’m microblogging during the week, they can cut and paste my Mastodon URL into their browser (or click here).
This strategy allows me to keep my Twitter account active, stay in touch with my Twitter peeps who are still there.
I will watch what unfolds and change my strategy as necessary.
It is likely to be a few years before we know which platform will achieve the network effect and become the next Twitter.
Two weeks ago: “How Elon Musk fired Twitter staff and broke nothing.”
Megan McArdle. WaPo.
Someone call McArdle, the perennially wrong rightwing columnist at The Washington Post—or better, her boss the Opinion editor.
(What is really going on there: McArdle is serving the billionaire class, who wants to believe tech workers are expendable. But not sure why WaPo continues to pay her.)
#Twitter #media #News #McArdle https://www.engadget.com/every-link-on-twi
by ti-amieHow a single engineer brought down Twitter
/ Elon Musk’s steep layoffs have left Twitter with so few engineers that only one person was on a major project involving the platform’s API.
By ZOE SCHIFFER and CASEY NEWTON
|10 Comments / 3 New
Mar 6, 2023, 4:00 PM EST|
Twitter’s website is breaking in novel new ways — and while the company managed to recover from its latest outage within a couple of hours, the story behind how it broke suggests there are likely to be similar problems in the near future.
(...)
The change in question was part of a project to shut down free access to the Twitter API, Platformer can now confirm. On February 1st, the company announced it will no longer support free access to its API, which effectively ended the existence of third-party clients and dramatically limited the ability of outside researchers to study the network. The company has been building a new paid API for developers to work with.
But in a sign of just how deep Elon Musk’s cuts to the company have been, only one site reliability engineer has been staffed on the project, we’re told. On Monday, the engineer made a “bad configuration change” that “basically broke the Twitter API,” according to a current employee.
Musk was furious, we’re told.
“A small API change had massive ramifications,” Musk tweeted later in the day, after Twitter investor Marc Andreessen posted a screenshot showing that the company’s API failures were trending on the site. “The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason. Will ultimately need a complete rewrite.”
Some current employees are sympathetic to that view, which places at least part of the blame for Twitter’s problems on technical failures that predate Musk’s ownership of the company. The fail whale became an icon of the old Twitter for a reason.
“There’s so much tech debt from Twitter 1.0 that if you make a change right now, everything breaks,” one current employee says.
Still, when Musk took over the company, he promised to dramatically improve the speed and stability of the site. His associates screened the existing staff for their technical prowess, ultimately cutting thousands of workers who were deemed not “technical” enough to succeed under Musk’s leadership.
But nonstop layoffs have left the company with under 550 full-time engineers, we’re told. And just as former employees have predicted from the start, the losses have made Twitter increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic outages.
Monday’s errant configuration change was at least the sixth high-profile service outage at Twitter this year:
On January 23rd, Android users temporarily couldn’t load new tweets or post them.
On February 8th, an error message told users that they were “over the daily limit for sending Tweets,” preventing them from posting.
On February 15th, tweets stopped loading.
On February 18th, the timeline broke and replies disappeared.
On March 1st, the timeline stopped working.
“This type of outage has become so frequent that I think we’re all numb to it,” a current employee says.
And those are only the service outages. Other issues, such as the one that led Musk’s tweets to be made more visible on the timeline than any other user’s, have also roiled the user base.
In many ways, Monday’s outage represented the culmination of Musk’s leadership at the company so far. In a single-minded effort to cut costs on his $44 billion purchase, he has been slashing the staff and reducing Twitter’s free offerings.
This paved the way for a single engineer to be staffed on a major project — one that is linked to several critical interconnected systems that both users and employees depend on.
And with few knowledgeable workers on hand to restore service, it took Twitter all morning to fix the problem. “This is what happens when you fire 90 percent of the company,” another current employee says.
Inside Twitter’s HQ, however, the mood was almost light. “We’re laughing all the way down,” says a different current employee.
The change had cascading consequences inside the company, bringing down much of Twitter’s internal tools along with the public-facing APIs. On Slack, engineers responded with variations of “crap” and “Twitter is down – the entire thing” as they scrambled to fix the problem.
by ponchi101 ALL code is brittle, by frigging definition.
Remember a few weeks ago, when I updated to 3.3.10. We were down for several hours. Why? Because during my upload, some of the forms in php were not loaded OVER the existing ones, and when the new code ran (and was compiled) it had to look for ONE SINGLE NEW VARIABLE in the new forms, and when the code did not find it, it did not have a specific error code escape routine to avoid it.
ONE LINE.
So, If Musk wants to re-write it, go for it. Let us know when TWT will be up again. Much easier said than done.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 11:16 pm
ALL code is brittle, by frigging definition.
Remember a few weeks ago, when I updated to 3.3.10. We were down for several hours. Why? Because during my upload, some of the forms in php were not loaded OVER the existing ones, and when the new code ran (and was compiled) it had to look for ONE SINGLE NEW VARIABLE in the new forms, and when the code did not find it, it did not have a specific error code escape routine to avoid it.
ONE LINE.
So, If Musk wants to re-write it, go for it. Let us know when TWT will be up again. Much easier said than done.
It goes to show that all the hype about him being some kind of genius was just that, hype. Jack Dorsey wasn't perfect but he knew what he didn't know and to left well enough alone when it came to actually running and maintaining a site. Your example about what can happen on a message board is perfect. Was this one guy familiar with what he was tasked to do? Did he have anyone to ask if he ran into something he didn't understand? Did Elmo's security team beat the crap out of him for embarrassing Elmo? So many questions.
by ponchi101 One final tech thing. All software is tested on parallel, and loaded on the real thing only after being tested for destruction. By that is meant: any really good company has a bunch of people there deliberately trying to do something, on the parallel server, trying to make the software crash. Because, and easy to see, if you have a billion users and there is one way for somebody to make it crash, it will happen.
So better do it in house before the major release.
Not only does Elon Musk not have a clue what he’s talking about, but this is *exactly* what he tried to do at PayPal, claiming it needed a full “V2” rewrite of the code when it didn’t.
Instead, it shifted resources away from key areas, caused PayPal to lose much more money to fraud, and eventually got him ousted as CEO.
Twitter just let its privacy- and security-protecting Tor service expire
/ The Tor Project says it’s contacted Twitter about renewing the site’s certificate.
By ADI ROBERTSON / @thedextriarchy
Mar 7, 2023, 5:23 PM EST
Twitter has allowed the certificate for its Tor onion site to expire, effectively killing off a privacy- and speech-protecting service that it introduced last year. Visiting the Tor-specific onion site address will now deliver a warning that the certificate verifying the site’s authenticity has lapsed; proceeding past that point (which is highly not recommended) currently delivers a Twitter error page. The certification expired on March 6th, just shy of two days before the site’s one-year launch anniversary.
Twitter no longer has a communications department to ask about the change, but the Tor Project confirmed the service’s lapse to The Verge. “The onion site is no longer available seemingly with no plans to renew. The Tor Project has reached out to Twitter to look into bringing the onion version of the social media platform back online,” said communications director Pavel Zoneff in a statement. “People who rely on onion services for an extra layer of protection and guarantee that they are accessing the content they are looking for now have one fewer way of doing so safely.” You can still visit Twitter.com via a browser running Tor, but you won’t get the added benefits a Tor-specific onion site confers.
Onion sites, sometimes called hidden services or “dark web” sites, must be accessed via a browser that uses the anonymous and encrypted Tor network. (This keeps the user’s web traffic and point of origin secret, and it also lets users get around government censorship efforts like those of Russia and China.) The services’ perks include an extra layer of security and an aid for distinguishing good-faith encryption users from malicious botnets. While onion sites are far from mainstream, you can access ones for Facebook, Reddit, and several major news organizations, among other sites. Twitter, until now, was a welcome addition to their ranks.
Despite the Tor Project’s efforts to reach Twitter and resurrect the service, its future doesn’t seem rosy. “The people who built it — at least all those I interacted with — are all gone,” security engineer Alec Muffett, who helped launch the service last year, told The Verge over Twitter direct message. “I’m pretty sure that it’s going to stop working totally at some point, unless Elon takes an interest.” Twitter has slashed its headcount in multiple rounds of layoffs, including members of core operational teams, and it’s had problems with the basic stability of its main site, let alone its Tor alternative.
I’ve sadly expected Twitter’s onion site to go down for some time now. It was launched by a pre-Musk version of the company that put an emphasis on global free speech and privacy, and it probably didn’t contribute much to Musk’s current goal of boosting Twitter’s revenue. But it’s still a shame to see it happen — so happy almost-first birthday, Onion Twitter, it was good while it lasted.
by ti-amie Instagram is down. It was down, came back up, and now is down again.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 They do have a reputation that their manufacturing is NOT the greatest standard.
But a loose steering wheel would be a humongous assembly problem.
by ti-amieWhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief
Meta’s head of chat app says it would not comply with the requirements set out in online safety bill
Alex Hern
@alexhern
Thu 9 Mar 2023 14.07 GMT
WhatsApp would refuse to comply with requirements in the online safety bill that attempted to outlaw end-to-end encryption, the chat app’s boss has said, casting the future of the service in the UK in doubt.
Speaking during a UK visit in which he will meet legislators to discuss the government’s flagship internet regulation, Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp, described the bill as the most concerning piece of legislation currently being discussed in the western world.
He said: “It’s a remarkable thing to think about. There isn’t a way to change it in just one part of the world. Some countries have chosen to block it: that’s the reality of shipping a secure product. We’ve recently been blocked in Iran, for example. But we’ve never seen a liberal democracy do that.
“The reality is, our users all around the world want security,” said Cathcart. “Ninety-eight per cent of our users are outside the UK. They do not want us to lower the security of the product, and just as a straightforward matter, it would be an odd choice for us to choose to lower the security of the product in a way that would affect those 98% of users.”
“End-to-end” encryption is used in messaging services to prevent anyone but the recipients of a communication from being able to decrypt it. WhatsApp cannot read messages sent over its own service, and so cannot comply with law enforcement requests to hand over messages, or pleas to actively monitor communications for child protection or antiterror purposes.
The UK government already has the power to demand the removal of encryption thanks to the 2016 investigatory powers act, but WhatsApp has never received a legal demand to do so, Cathcart said. The online safety bill is a concerning expansion of that power, because of the “grey area” in the legislation.
Under the bill, the government or Ofcom could require WhatsApp to apply content moderation policies that would be impossible to comply with without removing end-to-end encryption. If the company refused to do, it could face fines of up to 4% of its parent company Meta’s annual turnover – unless it pulled out of the UK market entirely.
Similar legislation in other jurisdictions, such as the EU’s digital markets act, explicitly defends end-to-end encryption for messaging services, Cathcart said, and he called for similar language to be inserted into the UK bill before it passed. “It could make clear that privacy and security should be considered in the framework. It could explicitly say that end-to-end encryption should not be taken away. There can be more procedural safeguards so that this can’t just happen independently as a decision.”
Although WhatsApp is best known as a messaging app, the company also offers social networking-style features through its “communities” offering, which allows group chats of more than a 1,000 users to be grouped together to mimic services such as Slack and Discord. Those, too, are end-to-end encrypted, but Cathcart argued that the chances of a large community causing trouble was slim. “When you get into a group of that size, the ease of one person reporting it is very high, to the extent that if there’s actually something serious going on it is very easy for one person to report it, or easy if someone is investigating it for them to get access.”
Ian Betteridge
@ianbetteridge@mastodon.me.uk
I really look forward to Rishi Sunak explaining to the British people why they can no longer use WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage and RCS.
by ponchi101 And WA is HUGE around the world. The UK has no leverage on this.
I do have 4 contacts in the UK. I only call via WA.
by ti-amie A little update on using Mastodon.
Many "instances" or "silos" require you to be screened. Many do not. Scrolling through until you find one that doesn't is pretty easy.
Only one "silo" or "instance" has shuttered since I joined and that was .party. Go figure.
Once you've chosen you "instance" or "silo" the best way to navigate is using hashtags. Activity on #tennis has picked up a lot these last few days as well as #WTA and #ATP. If you have other interests search to see if there is a hashtag for it. If not create one of your own. You can also opt to follow you chosen silo's timeline or the Federated Time Line which aggregates posts from all of the silos. It moves fast but you can adjust its speed via settings. To see what you've been up to or to find a toot you've reblogged click on your profile and your own time line comes up.
As soon as they make it easier to copy a post along with accompanying photos or video I'll be happy. They make updates and changes almost daily and if you follow fedi.tips you'll always know what they're up to.
by ponchi101 I installed a plug in so Mastodon would show up as other media does. It did not work.
Talking to the phpBB people, they point out that mastodon uses so many different domains that it is very hard. mastodon.social, mastodon.news, etc.
I hope they will be able to find a way for the embed to work.
by ponchi101 Thanks for the video.
I am still skeptical about fusion. The level of energy needed to keep the plasma in place is extreme. But the video makes it clear: everybody knows that.
Arthur Clarke, in "3001", proposed this conundrum: IF we get nuclear fusion going, and that would mean almost infinite power available, how do we stop ourselves from further heating the planet, because know we would have ALL the energy we need for everything we want?
by Owendonovan Or is it profound risks to the profitability of their companies until they figure out how to use it best for their gains?
Elon Musk and Others Call for Pause on A.I., Citing ‘Profound Risks to Society’
More than 1,000 tech leaders, researchers and others signed an open letter that urged a moratorium on the development of the most powerful artificial intelligence systems.
More than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers, including Elon Musk, have urged artificial intelligence labs to pause development of the most advanced systems, warning in an open letter that A.I. tools present “profound risks to society and humanity.”
A.I. developers are “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict or reliably control,” according to the letter, which was released Wednesday by the nonprofit group Future of Life Institute.
Others who signed the letter include Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple; Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur and candidate in the 2020 U.S. presidential election; and Rachel Bronson, the president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the Doomsday Clock.
“These things are shaping our world,” said Gary Marcus, an entrepreneur and academic who has long complained of flaws in A.I. systems, in an interview. “We have a perfect storm of corporate irresponsibility, widespread adoption, lack of regulation and a huge number of unknowns.”
The push to develop more powerful chatbots has led to a race that could determine the next leaders of the tech industry. But these tools have been criticized for getting details wrong and their ability to spread misinformation.
The open letter called for a pause in the development of A.I. systems more powerful than GPT-4, the chatbot introduced this month by the research lab OpenAI, which Mr. Musk co-founded. The pause would provide time to implement “shared safety protocols” for A.I. systems, the letter said. “If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” it added.
Development of powerful A.I. systems should advance “only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter said.
Before GPT-4 was released, OpenAI asked outside researchers to test dangerous uses of the system. The researchers showed that it could be coaxed into suggesting how to buy illegal firearms online, describe ways to make dangerous substances from household items and write Facebook posts to convince women that abortion is unsafe.
The letter was shepherded by the Future of Life Institute, an organization dedicated to researching existential risks to humanity that has long warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence. But it was signed by a wide range of people from industry and academia.
Though some who signed the letter are known for repeatedly expressing concerns that A.I. could destroy humanity, others, including Mr. Marcus, are more concerned about its near-term dangers, including the spread of disinformation and the risk that people will rely on these systems for medical and emotional advice.
The letter “shows how many people are deeply worried about what is going on,” said Mr. Marcus, who signed the letter. He believes the letter will be an important turning point. “It think it is a really important moment in the history of A.I. — and maybe humanity,” he said.
He acknowledged, however, that those who have signed the letter may find it difficult to convince the wider community of companies and researchers to put a moratorium in place. “The letter is not perfect,” he said. “But the spirit is exactly right.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/tech ... risks.html
by ponchi101 I have made my position clear on this, so this statement is something I agree completely with. My concern has not been about what AI can do, but rather how many jobs will be lost to AI, and how many industries will disappear (anybody here knows a draftsman?).
But I don't know why use Elon as an example. He is right now just another signee, but he is highly polarizing. No need to mention him if it was a true collection of many people.
by ti-amie
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 5:38 pmOr is it profound risks to the profitability of their companies until they figure out how to use it best for their gains?
Elon Musk and Others Call for Pause on A.I., Citing ‘Profound Risks to Society’
More than 1,000 tech leaders, researchers and others signed an open letter that urged a moratorium on the development of the most powerful artificial intelligence systems.
More than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers, including Elon Musk, have urged artificial intelligence labs to pause development of the most advanced systems, warning in an open letter that A.I. tools present “profound risks to society and humanity.”
A.I. developers are “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict or reliably control,” according to the letter, which was released Wednesday by the nonprofit group Future of Life Institute.
Others who signed the letter include Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple; Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur and candidate in the 2020 U.S. presidential election; and Rachel Bronson, the president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the Doomsday Clock.
“These things are shaping our world,” said Gary Marcus, an entrepreneur and academic who has long complained of flaws in A.I. systems, in an interview. “We have a perfect storm of corporate irresponsibility, widespread adoption, lack of regulation and a huge number of unknowns.”
The push to develop more powerful chatbots has led to a race that could determine the next leaders of the tech industry. But these tools have been criticized for getting details wrong and their ability to spread misinformation.
The open letter called for a pause in the development of A.I. systems more powerful than GPT-4, the chatbot introduced this month by the research lab OpenAI, which Mr. Musk co-founded. The pause would provide time to implement “shared safety protocols” for A.I. systems, the letter said. “If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” it added.
Development of powerful A.I. systems should advance “only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter said.
Before GPT-4 was released, OpenAI asked outside researchers to test dangerous uses of the system. The researchers showed that it could be coaxed into suggesting how to buy illegal firearms online, describe ways to make dangerous substances from household items and write Facebook posts to convince women that abortion is unsafe.
The letter was shepherded by the Future of Life Institute, an organization dedicated to researching existential risks to humanity that has long warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence. But it was signed by a wide range of people from industry and academia.
Though some who signed the letter are known for repeatedly expressing concerns that A.I. could destroy humanity, others, including Mr. Marcus, are more concerned about its near-term dangers, including the spread of disinformation and the risk that people will rely on these systems for medical and emotional advice.
The letter “shows how many people are deeply worried about what is going on,” said Mr. Marcus, who signed the letter. He believes the letter will be an important turning point. “It think it is a really important moment in the history of A.I. — and maybe humanity,” he said.
He acknowledged, however, that those who have signed the letter may find it difficult to convince the wider community of companies and researchers to put a moratorium in place. “The letter is not perfect,” he said. “But the spirit is exactly right.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/tech ... risks.html
Your statement highlighted above is correct in my opinion.
by ti-amie This is actually hilarious. Yesterday because of open API Twitter code was released showing how the algorithm has been adjusted to make Elmo's tweets and those he deems worthy rise to the top.
As a plane, it was pretty good. As a rocket.... uhm. I say no surprise there.
by Suliso Agree, technically their plan never made much sense to me. Unlike other contenders their rocket could not be scaled up and that seems to be a trend now.
by ponchi101 Could not even be used as a small shuttle to reach Low Earth Orbit. So, I would love to fly up and check the earth's curvature, but for that price, both Elon and Jeff are offering more promising techs.
by Suliso Now it's all about Starship really. Will it succeed? I hope it does. The first launch could be as early as April 10th.
by Suliso The first ever cell phone call was made on this date 50 years ago.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 7:29 pm
The first ever cell phone call was made on this date 50 years ago.
Should this be celebrated? Or lamented? I am on the second camp. Yes, cellphones/smartphones can do amazing things. But I say the price we paid was too much.
And the idea that you can always turn them off is a lie. For some people it is not possible.
(And I have two people in my family that are addicted to their smartphone to the point that I call clinical. My GF and my sister in law; they will not put them down).
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 7:29 pm
The first ever cell phone call was made on this date 50 years ago.
Should this be celebrated? Or lamented? I am on the second camp. Yes, cellphones/smartphones can do amazing things. But I say the price we paid was too much.
And the idea that you can always turn them off is a lie. For some people it is not possible.
(And I have two people in my family that are addicted to their smartphone to the point that I call clinical. My GF and my sister in law; they will not put them down).
You can argue that for smartphones or even texting, but surely the mobile phone capabilities have been overwhelmingly positive for people's quality of life.
by ponchi101 That is where I have doubts. Have they have positive effects? Sure. For example, I can call my family in Vennieland and around the world with ease.
Is the overall balance of positives and negatives in the positive? I am not sure.
by mmmm8
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 9:58 pm
That is where I have doubts. Have they have positive effects? Sure. For example, I can call my family in Vennieland and around the world with ease.
Is the overall balance of positives and negatives in the positive? I am not sure.
I'm thinking in particular about emergency services and contacting people in an emergency as a key positive.
by ponchi101 That, no doubt.
As always. It is not the technology per se, it is how people use it. In your example, those are definite pluses. Until your boss decides that changing the font of PPT presentation is an emergency, on a Sunday afternoon.
by ti-amie They've also improved the quality of life for many who live in rural communities. I remember the tech industry being shocked at how quickly cell phones became popular on the continent of Africa where people often life far away from major population centers.
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 7:29 pm
The first ever cell phone call was made on this date 50 years ago.
Should this be celebrated? Or lamented? I am on the second camp. Yes, cellphones/smartphones can do amazing things. But I say the price we paid was too much.
And the idea that you can always turn them off is a lie. For some people it is not possible.
(And I have two people in my family that are addicted to their smartphone to the point that I call clinical. My GF and my sister in law; they will not put them down).
You can argue that for smartphones or even texting, but surely the mobile phone capabilities have been overwhelmingly positive for people's quality of life.
^ I very, very, very much disagree.
Strongly.
by Suliso It's been a big plus for sure. Some small downsides yes, but new stuff is rarely 100% positive.
by ponchi101 I gather that, if you don't mind being in constant, permanent contact with everybody, this is really a plus. But if you like to fall off the face of the Earth every now and then, or every day after a given hour, this was a minus.
For example. How do young people escape the surveillance from parents? I see it with my younger nephews/nieces. My sister/sister-in-law almost keep a tracker on them. How can they have a bit of an escape?
How do people have affairs nowadays? You can always be tracked. And the famous "I ran out of batteries" is getting almost impossible to believe, with phones now having days of battery power.
I guess my point is one about privacy. The modern concept has changed, because of smartphones. For example, Google knows where you are. ALL THE TIME. A few years ago, I went to the movies and parked my car in front of a restaurant, half a block from the theater. Upon return, google maps sent me the message "how did you like the restaurant?". Sure, I clicked on WAS NOT THERE, but it felt sort of odd.
And we do know about some societal and psychological issues with the younger generations. We know of higher levels of anxiety, issues with self esteem ("she has more likes than I do"), and a few others (increases in bullying, although I suspect this is just increased in REPORTS of bullying). Sure, the phones are not the source of this, but they are the medium.
On the silly side. I was wondering: has the last "Hello My Friend, I was thinking of you" letter been written? Nobody writes letters anymore; heck, nobody writes e-mails anymore (I am the last one). Has the last love letter been written? When I was in college, I sent my mom a letter, once a week, for the entire family. A good 5-6 pages long letter. Years later, after I had been back for a long time, I found them all. My mom kept them in a box, and she told me that when I was away, she would read them many times; it made the distance easier to handle.
Pluses and minuses. One thing is for sure: it did change society, in a very high degree.
by Deuce I believe some of you are confusing your personal experience with the cell phone with the overall effect of the cell phone on individuals, and, as such, on society as a whole.
To see this, one must look beyond the mere pretty surface to the deeper reality.
Comfort and convenience come with a price. Often, the negative consequences are disguised - it is all designed to fool people, of course, knowing that the great majority rarely look beyond the mere surface of things. Reality is thus being manipulated... much like beer commercials which show only the ‘positive’ effects of alcohol while completely ignoring the fact that it breaks up families, injures and kills many people in car crashes, etc., etc.
Having a powerful computer on your person 24 hours a day has resulted in the inevitable abuse of said apparatus by the great majority of persons...
Children and adults alike interact personally much less because of it...
As such, personal relationships have suffered greatly - because typical ‘communication’ between persons has been reduced to mostly one or two sentence text messages, interpersonal relationships are much more superficial, much less personal, and contain much less substance, than pre-cell phone...
Children of all ages play outside much less...
Having unlimited access to ‘social media’ and all of the negatives which inherently accompany it has resulted in more feelings of inadequacy, more depression, and more suicides...
Cell phones magnify and perpetuate personal insecurity in several different ways (think 'selfies', for one)...
The constant pressure of being always available is not healthy - the majority of people are completely lost and devastated without their cell phone today, which creates a constant anxiety...
The ubiquitous presence of the cell phone has re-wired people’s brains to, among other negative things, not only expect, but to DEMAND instant gratification, and where things are done as quickly and as conveniently as possible, rather than being done properly...
Of course, people who have lived a good portion of their adult lives prior to everyone having a cell phone are much more qualified to compare the before and after, and, as such, are more qualified to speak on the positives and negatives of the cell phone, than are those who grew up with the cell phone in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood, as the former people have directly seen and lived through both eras.
In the end, it is well known that any dependence - or, if you will, addiction - as is the case with people and their cell phones, is very unhealthy both psychologically and emotionally.
For those who wish to truly contemplate the matter indepth - rather than merely clinging to comfortable, pretty, and incomplete illusions -, I offer this...
by Suliso Technology changes and I find it of no great use to lament the times gone by. Mostly they were not such good times anyway unless you were in a particularly privileged situation. We are extremely adaptable species. Will be fun to see how we deal with AI now.
by Deuce
Suliso wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 6:07 am
Technology changes and I find it of no great use to lament the times gone by. Mostly they were not such good times anyway unless you were in a particularly privileged situation. We are extremely adaptable species. Will be fun to see how we deal with AI now.
I don't believe anyone said that the past were "great times".
But I, for one, will say that they were better - because we were more genuinely connected with each other (as ponchi's letters to home clearly indicate).
The point here is comparing the times with and without the cell phone, and to illustrate what the cell phone has brought to life as we know it.
I, personally, find it highly irresponsible to laud the virtues of the cell phone (or of anything else) without focussing just as much on the negatives. As I mentioned, that's beer commercial mentality, and is neither balanced nor an accurate perception of reality.
Yes, the cell phone has brought much convenience and comfort. But it has also brought much misery to people's lives. It has separated people from real interpersonal communication, providing only a cheap facsimile of what it calls 'communication' - it's not two people communicating with each other anymore, it's one machine 'communicating' with another machine - the human touch has all but disappeared because of the dependence on technology, which removes us from one another... it has made younger people more insecure and depressed (and suicidal)... Etc., etc. (see above for other negative elements I mentioned, as well as the articles I linked to).
Are these very profound and significant negatives worth the comfort and convenience that it brings? Not even close.
If even ONE 14 year old kid kills him/her self as a direct result of feeling alienated from people (because kids rarely get together in person anymore) and/or because of having 'social media' available virtually 24 hours per day, then the cost is WAY too high.
And we all know that it is far more than just one teenager who has died via suicide that can be directly linked to the ubiquitous presence of the internet.
It would be nice if people would CONSCIOUSLY (and responsibly) think of the predictable positives AND NEGATIVES of an invention before unleashing it to the public (instead of thinking only of the financial profits of a given invention, as is currently the case) - and if the negatives outweigh the positives, then take the humane and ethical position of throwing the invention in the garbage before it can do harm, we would all be much better off both as a species and as a civilization.
by Suliso Let me just say that I strongly disagree with your take on technological progress and leave it at that. Further discussion is pointless as we'll never convince each other.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 6:07 am
Technology changes and I find it of no great use to lament the times gone by. Mostly they were not such good times anyway unless you were in a particularly privileged situation. We are extremely adaptable species. Will be fun to see how we deal with AI now.
My only caveat with your position is that sometimes it seems, to me, to be a bit solipsistic. You are very much immune to AI at the moment, because you occupy a truly enviable niche; I don't think that AI can replace you.
But for those that can be affected may disagree. I have told you: the venerable and highly technical profession of surveyor (an example) has been decimated by new GPS technology. Who knows how many other will be.
(Travel agents. Remember them?)
by Suliso Travel agents are indeed no more, but they do something else now. Unemployment rate is as low as it has ever been where I live. Of course past performance is no guarantee of future success, but still.
by ponchi101 That's the point I have been trying to make all this time, Suliso! We all do NOT live in Switzerland. About travel agents doing something else, you have to go talk to them. My travel agent (in Venezuela) has simply given up looking for something else to do, because at her age, there are no options (I know, Venezuela is and always will be a special case).
If you are 22, and your industry disappears, sure, you have time and energy to move somewhere else. But my buddy R, in Colorado, who was a positioning/surveyor, is out of a job because he is over 65, and those positions have gone. And, about unemployment: it is the most important issue in Colombia because it is incredibly high. Here in S. America, with basically no technological industries to speak of, the inception of AI will only decimate jobs because positions that are clerical will be wiped out.
Again, you have to loom at it globally. Sure, you in Switzerland will have no issues because Switzerland is an incredibly technological and industrialized economy: you will make the AI.
The accountant in Colombia will be the one without a job, when a new AI software can keep all the books of 50 companies, at the same time.
by Suliso Yeah, I understand you about South America. I didn't mean exclusively Switzerland, though. Latvia and US (two other countries I have lived in) seem to be doing fine jobs wise too. In Latvia in particular it's difficult for companies to find somewhat qualified employees. Granted I'm talking about people in their 40-ties and younger.
by ti-amie Kevin Beaumont
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social
Did you know Tesla has cameras both on the outside of vehicles and the inside, and everything is uploaded to Tesla? Anyhoo they’ve been exporting the videos, making memes of customers and then posting them on chat rooms. https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-w
If he's doing this with his cars what is he doing with the Dogecoin app?
by ti-amie Once you hit your 50's here in the States you're considered obsolete.
by Deuce Taking jobs from people is FAR, FAR from the only problem that AI will create...
by mmmm8
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 6:13 pm
Kevin Beaumont
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social
Did you know Tesla has cameras both on the outside of vehicles and the inside, and everything is uploaded to Tesla? Anyhoo they’ve been exporting the videos, making memes of customers and then posting them on chat rooms. https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-w
If he's doing this with his cars what is he doing with the Dogecoin app?
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 6:14 pm
Once you hit your 50's here in the States you're considered obsolete.
It's worldwide.
A good friend working for a major oil company is telling me they will not consider anybody above 45. In France.
But, of course, the HR department wants people with 25 years experience.
by mmmm8 Interestingly, Mexico is about to pass a law that will require that 5% of employees be 60+
by ponchi101 That is odd.
But it is schizoid here in L. America. Down here, the main problem is YOUTH employment. The salaries are miserable.
In reality, we suck at generating jobs. The entire continent.
by Suliso We have a fair number of employees in their 50-ties and early 60-ties, BUT those are folks who've worked here all their lives. Virtually all new hiring is people in their 20-ties and 30-ties.
by Suliso In Latvia (maybe in Switzerland too) there is an unrealistic expectation that straight after university you'll be earning similar to your parents. Not happening unless you come from a poor family.
As for South America there is poor education and lack of ambition. I think that's why Asian immigrants in US and EU tend to do better.
by mmmm8
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 6:38 am
In Latvia (maybe in Switzerland too) there is an unrealistic expectation that straight after university you'll be earning similar to your parents. Not happening unless you come from a poor family.
As for South America there is poor education and lack of ambition. I think that's why Asian immigrants in US and EU tend to do better.
What is that assumption based on? This has not been my experience working with or knowing people from South America.
by ponchi101 As a S. American.
I can guarantee that my HS education was far better than anything in the USA (I would not know about Europe). For example, we get (got?) math from 1st grade in ELEMENTARY school. I got set theory by 4th grade (elementary), and my nephew (recently graduated from HS) was dealing with polynomials in what would be the equivalent of sophomore year.
In HS, in sophomore, junior and senior years math, physics and chemistry were mandatory in my age, and at least math and physics still are (in Venezuela). If you are inclined for the humanities you will get all the art and literature that you want, and more. I had to read, before graduating, at least one book each from Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosas, Sabato, Cortazar and at least the Venezuelan classics (authors you would not know about). For the arts, I was versed in the Rennaissance, the Gothic and modern art well before finishing HS. Plus music.
Our universities produce fine professionals; sure, we may not be at the cutting edge of space technology but the foundations are solid. My nephew, once again as an example, is studying engineering, and currently dealing with AutoCAD. It seems the curriculum is thorough.
And about our lack of ambition: people with no ambition do not cross the entire central American isthmus, on foot, to reach the USA, if they have no ambitions. Sure, there is poor education in that it is not accessible to everybody and it fluctuates wildly, but it is not as if our people cannot learn. As much as I speak poorly of Vennieland and S. America, I will not go that far.
And people here are not expecting to get the salary of a 15 year professional straight out of college. What they are asking for is more than the $350/MONTH that is an average introduction salary here (Colombia, it is worse in Vennieland). That is what the young people are asking for.
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 6:38 am
In Latvia (maybe in Switzerland too) there is an unrealistic expectation that straight after university you'll be earning similar to your parents. Not happening unless you come from a poor family.
As for South America there is poor education and lack of ambition. I think that's why Asian immigrants in US and EU tend to do better.
What is that assumption based on? This has not been my experience working with or knowing people from South America.
No data, just that in my profession (both in US and Switzerland) South Americans are very rare there as Indians and Chinese very common. It says nothing at all about high school education.
Maybe in some other profession it's different. I didn't mean to imply that people down there are stupid.
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 3:55 pm
As a S. American.
I can guarantee that my HS education was far better than anything in the USA (I would not know about Europe). For example, we get (got?) math from 1st grade in ELEMENTARY school. I got set theory by 4th grade (elementary), and my nephew (recently graduated from HS) was dealing with polynomials in what would be the equivalent of sophomore year.
In HS, in sophomore, junior and senior years math, physics and chemistry were mandatory in my age, and at least math and physics still are (in Venezuela). If you are inclined for the humanities you will get all the art and literature that you want, and more. I had to read, before graduating, at least one book each from Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosas, Sabato, Cortazar and at least the Venezuelan classics (authors you would not know about). For the arts, I was versed in the Rennaissance, the Gothic and modern art well before finishing HS. Plus music.
FWIW, I'm not sure how your HS education was far better than what many get in the US. Nothing listed outside of the studying of art theory was that different than my own HS education and that of similar school districts to mine. The biggest difference will be in the kinds of literature read.
by ponchi101 How much math/chemistry/physics did you get in HS? I recall that my college buddies had not gotten as much as I had, hence my statement. But I guess I stand corrected.
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 8:47 pm
How much math/chemistry/physics did you get in HS? I recall that my college buddies had not gotten as much as I had, hence my statement. But I guess I stand corrected.
Science is typically biology, chemistry, and physics with middle school/junior high years focusing on a mix before the more focused high school years. Math is usually algebra I, geometry, algebra 2 (typically incorporating trigonometry), and pre-calculus. Things can change somewhat if you're on an advanced track and that can depend on your school to a large extent. Math was always my best subject so personally, I had algebra in 8th grade, geometry in 9th, trig in 10th, calculus AB in 11th and calculus BC in 12th. The AB and BC Calculus titles correspond with AP credit designations. Some schools offer a stats class or an AP Stats class as well.
I was definitely not an outlier in terms of HS classes taken amongst fellow students in college. Many high schools follow a college prep model, so the coursework is fairly standardized.
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 6:38 am
In Latvia (maybe in Switzerland too) there is an unrealistic expectation that straight after university you'll be earning similar to your parents. Not happening unless you come from a poor family.
As for South America there is poor education and lack of ambition. I think that's why Asian immigrants in US and EU tend to do better.
What is that assumption based on? This has not been my experience working with or knowing people from South America.
No data, just that in my profession (both in US and Switzerland) South Americans are very rare there as Indians and Chinese very common. It says nothing at all about high school education.
Maybe in some other profession it's different. I didn't mean to imply that people down there are stupid.
I think you may have a point around STEM, at least in terms of theory and tech (I think for applied science like engineering or medicine, there is not so much of a gap). It is likely to be lack of opportunity post-graduation that puts people into other fields. But for social sciences and liberal arts, I think the educational system (at least higher education) is on par, on average across LatAm and I've found colleagues from there to be more ambitious and engaged, if anything.
by mmmm8
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 3:55 pm
As a S. American.
I can guarantee that my HS education was far better than anything in the USA (I would not know about Europe). For example, we get (got?) math from 1st grade in ELEMENTARY school. I got set theory by 4th grade (elementary), and my nephew (recently graduated from HS) was dealing with polynomials in what would be the equivalent of sophomore year.
In HS, in sophomore, junior and senior years math, physics and chemistry were mandatory in my age, and at least math and physics still are (in Venezuela). If you are inclined for the humanities you will get all the art and literature that you want, and more. I had to read, before graduating, at least one book each from Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosas, Sabato, Cortazar and at least the Venezuelan classics (authors you would not know about). For the arts, I was versed in the Rennaissance, the Gothic and modern art well before finishing HS. Plus music.
Our universities produce fine professionals; sure, we may not be at the cutting edge of space technology but the foundations are solid. My nephew, once again as an example, is studying engineering, and currently dealing with AutoCAD. It seems the curriculum is thorough.
And about our lack of ambition: people with no ambition do not cross the entire central American isthmus, on foot, to reach the USA, if they have no ambitions. Sure, there is poor education in that it is not accessible to everybody and it fluctuates wildly, but it is not as if our people cannot learn. As much as I speak poorly of Vennieland and S. America, I will not go that far.
And people here are not expecting to get the salary of a 15 year professional straight out of college. What they are asking for is more than the $350/MONTH that is an average introduction salary here (Colombia, it is worse in Vennieland). That is what the young people are asking for.
I will say, with a Venezuelan partner, that the school curriculum he went through was shockingly low on exposure to world literature. And from your list above seems like that was your experience as well in the general education system - not if you specialize in humanities. And I'm not even sure he'd had to read from all the Latin American authors you listed, which to be honest is just four non-Venezuelan authors, and I had read three of the ones you listed in (a private) high school in the US.
I'm not sure how much hard science he got but in general doesn't have many other gaps beyond the literature and I'm sure had more exposure to other things I didn't in the US or Russia.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 8:47 pm
How much math/chemistry/physics did you get in HS? I recall that my college buddies had not gotten as much as I had, hence my statement. But I guess I stand corrected.
Science is typically biology, chemistry, and physics with middle school/junior high years focusing on a mix before the more focused high school years. Math is usually algebra I, geometry, algebra 2 (typically incorporating trigonometry), and pre-calculus. Things can change somewhat if you're on an advanced track and that can depend on your school to a large extent. Math was always my best subject so personally, I had algebra in 8th grade, geometry in 9th, trig in 10th, calculus AB in 11th and calculus BC in 12th. The AB and BC Calculus titles correspond with AP credit designations. Some schools offer a stats class or an AP Stats class as well.
I was definitely not an outlier in terms of HS classes taken amongst fellow students in college. Many high schools follow a college prep model, so the coursework is fairly standardized.
When I moved from Russia to Texas in 7th grade, the subjects were mostly the same (except Texas history), but to be honest the level was a couple years behind. Like, we had studied algebra and geometry maybe in 5th grade and I was in Honors Math doing very basic math; in Computers, we were playing SIMS whereas in Russia we were learning programming skills. I think it will definitely vary by school district in the US though and also I went to a very good public school in Russia. I had also had biology, chemistry, and physics as ongoing individual subjects when I left in 7th grade, and it was back to general basic "Science" in Texas.
by ti-amie
by Deuce To further the discussion about what technology - and cell phones in particular - have brought to civilization (and, by extension, what 'social media' and the internet have brought), I offer this below...
A warning to those who are determined to ignore unpleasant facts and ugly truths which burst the pretty 'rose coloured glasses' illusion that these things have brought largely positive elements to us: Clicking on the link below will be a waste of your time if you are not open to broadening your perspective...
by Owendonovan It took a while, but I got my husband to cut back on the social media. I dumped all mine a few years back, I didn't need to be reminded every 2 seconds how awful politicians are and how ignorant people with ignorant opinions about almost everything were being celebrated. I was never on twitter, and with the clown that owns it now, he's just a step below tiny, so that's an easy pass for me. Adults don't seem to want to really address the mental health crisis, it reflects poorly on them.
by Suliso FAA has granted SpaceX the launch license and the very first flight from Boca Chica is now scheduled for Monday April 17th between 5:30 and 2 pm local time. This could change spaceflight history. Hopefully I can find a free moment to watch. There will be a webcast of course. Starship is the biggest rocket to ever fly (up to 150 t to low earth orbit) and the only fully reusable orbital class vehicle. Assuming it works as advertised of course!
by Suliso Now I'm reading that they go for 7 am to 9:30 am launch window.
by ponchi101 Worth watching. Maybe the start of a new era.
by ti-amie
I already follow them on Mastodon. Seems Elmo wants them to pay.
by Suliso
by Owendonovan He's making twitter less and less "necessary" for many folks. Fine with me, he/it is toxic.
by Suliso A malfunctioning second stage valve leads to a scrub of today's launch attempt. They'll be back to try again in 3-4 days (min 48 h)
by ti-amie You can tell how serious the bleeding is at his app when you see the same trending topics two or three days in a row, outdated "news" being recycled, porn hidden under "other replies" and racist, sexist replies being pushed over other replies. Not to mention the three in the morning infomercial "ads" that have to be blocked two or three times.
As I've said before it's still clunky to repost Mastodon media. It's a one step process at Elmo's but two step at Mastodon. Also, most of Tennis Twitter is still on "Twitter".
Anyway one less phallic symbol circling our planet.
by Suliso
This covers all large non-Chinese and non-Russian rockets flying. LVM-3 is Indian and H3 Japanese. He says medium lift, but actually these are the largest rockets on the market before Starship.
So basically if you have something non-military to launch this year or the next SpaceX Falcon 9 is probably the only game in town...
by ponchi101 It makes you wonder. I know the shuttle had reached its operation life-span limit (although, some refurbishing was possible). But why did the USA/NASA let it expire with no replacement in sight? It is not as if, all of the sudden, we were not going to need any more lifts.
Plus, eventually we will need to clean up many satellites that are no longer in use. It is getting cluttered up there.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2023 4:25 pm
It makes you wonder. I know the shuttle had reached its operation life-span limit (although, some refurbishing was possible). But why did the USA/NASA let it expire with no replacement in sight? It is not as if, all of the sudden, we were not going to need any more lifts.
Plus, eventually we will need to clean up many satellites that are no longer in use. It is getting cluttered up there.
They were going with government funded SLS (useless for commercial applications) and payed several different private companies (SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin) to come up with new rockets for low earth orbit. The thinking was in case of any gaps Russian rockets could be used... The latter is clearly now impossible and from private competitors only SpaceX has delivered so far. ULA will eventually get there with their Vulcan, but launch cadence is likely to be only enough for military in the first two years... That's not how it was supposed to end up.
by Suliso Couple that with large delays for Ariane 6 in Europe and recent rocket failure in Japan...
by ti-amie AJ Sadauskas
@ajsadauskas@aus.social
Looks like even more brands are going to vanish from Twitter soon.
One of Twitter's big advantages over Mastodon for brands and advertisers was that it was supported by a range of social media and ad management tools.
Not anymore!
Via Mashable:
"Microsoft is going to drop Twitter from its Microsoft Advertising plan next week, according to the company.
"Users will no longer be able to access their Twitter account through its Digital Marketing Center's social media management tool, according to Microsoft. Users will also no longer be able to schedule, create, or manage tweets or tweet drafts. In addition, users won't be able to view their past tweets and engagement on the Microsoft Advertising platform."
by ti-amie Stephen Shankland
@stshank@mstdn.social
Very curious to hear what Musk's X.ai will use for TruthGPT LLM training data. Will it pay Reddit, for example? And should Tesla pay Tesla owners for FSD training data? (Not entirely implausible; Adobe will pay Adobe Stock contributors for AI trainin
by ti-amie
Quinta Brunson is the executive producer, creator of the runaway hit "Abbot Elementary".
by Suliso Well, it exploded at the height of about 30 km failing stage separation. Ground systems seemed to survive just fine. About 4-6 engines failed to light up (out of 33), but that might have been enough to reach orbit anyway.
Not an amazing first flight, but not a complete failure either. More tests to come obviously.
by ponchi101 Musk said it gave it a 50% chance of completing the mission, so this was not unexpected. As you say, not a complete failure. However, I believe the expected time frame for a successful flight it a bit optimistic. He is now saying a few months, but I would say that building a new rocket and implementing and testing will take more than that.
We go back to your post of available launch capacity. It will be a glut.
by Suliso The next rocket is already built and the one after that maybe 80% finished. It will take time to understand what went wrong, but otherwise July sounds realistic to me.
Most important is whether ground infrastructure fully survived.
by Suliso After seeing the damage at the tower I take it back. No launch before September, I think. Definitely need flame trench and water deluge system.
by ti-amie TL;dr This is being touted as a "successful failure".
SpaceX’s Starship lifts off successfully, but explodes in first flight
There appeared to have been some damage to the launch site but the company still hopes to be able to launch again soon.
By Christian Davenport
Updated April 20, 2023 at 2:56 p.m. EDT|Published April 20, 2023 at 2:28 p.m. EDT
SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket tumbling after launch from the Starbase facility in South Texas on Thursday. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
SpaceX’s Starship on Thursday became the most powerful rocket ever to fly, lifting off from the company’s launchpad in South Texas with a thunderous roar and continuing to an altitude of about 24 miles before it spun out of control and exploded over the Gulf of Mexico about four minutes into its flight.
Despite the disappointing ending, the launch attempt — the first of the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft — was hailed as a success by the company and officials at NASA as a key part of a test program that will provide valuable data as the spacecraft’s development continues.
The rocket carried no crew, and the Federal Aviation Administration said there were no reports of injuries or public property damage. Camera views from the launch site showed some damage to the area around the launchpad, with debris strewn about. It was not immediately clear how widespread the damage was or whether it would delay SpaceX’s next launch attempt.
At nearly 400 feet tall, the rocket, which NASA plans to use as part of its Artemis moon program, lifted off shortly after 9:30 a.m. Eastern. The launch appeared to go smoothly, although video appeared to show a few of the 33 first-stage engines failing to ignite or failing shortly into the flight. Still, the rocket continued to power upward, until shortly before the first and second stages were to separate — about three minutes into the flight — when the spacecraft and its booster started tumbling. Two explosions rocked the vehicle about a minute after that.
“We’re seeing from the ground cameras the entire starship stack continuing to rotate,” SpaceX principal engineer John Insprucker said during the company’s live broadcast. “We should have had separation by now. Obviously, this does not appear to be a nominal situation.”
In a statement after the flight, SpaceX said that “the vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble. … With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and we learned a tremendous amount about the vehicle and ground systems today that will help us improve on future flights of Starship.”
The rocket exploded when its self-destruct mechanism was triggered, SpaceX said. The system is designed to destroy the rocket before it veers off course, potentially threatening populated areas.
Before the test, SpaceX warned that an explosion — or what it calls a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” — was a likely outcome, given the size and complexity of the vehicle and the fact that it had never flown before. The vehicle is outfitted with an “automated flight termination system” that is designed to blow up the vehicle if it starts going off course.
Leading up to the launch, Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive, had given the test a 50 percent chance of success and said that if the rocket gets “far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success. Just don’t blow up the launchpad.”
Losing “the launchpad is really the thing we’re concerned about,” he said. “It will take us probably several months to rebuild the launchpad if we melt it.” A launch attempt on Monday was waved off because of a frozen valve.
As Starship lifted off, the crowds lining the coast on South Padre Island, a few miles from the launch site, broke into applause. SpaceX employees who had gathered shoulder to shoulder in the company’s headquarters outside of Los Angeles cheered wildly during the flight and even during the explosion, knowing that they had achieved a “successful failure” whose data will inform the next flight.
Starship is the world’s most powerful rocket and is designed with the goal of lifting large amounts of cargo and, eventually, people, into Earth orbit, sending them to the moon and, perhaps one day, Mars. Once rocket is operational, SpaceX intends to use it to launch its next-generation Starlink satellites, which beam internet signals to ground stations, providing connectivity in remote and rural areas.
NASA intends to use it as well. In 2021, the space agency awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to use Starship as the spacecraft that would put astronauts on the lunar surface for the first human landing there since the last of the Apollo missions, in 1972. SpaceX has since won another contract, worth $1.15 billion, for a second landing.
On Twitter, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson applauded the attempt. “Congrats to @SpaceX on Starship’s first integrated flight test!” he wrote. “Every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward. Looking forward to all that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test — and beyond!”
Starship is more powerful than NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which flew for the first time late last year, sending the unmanned Orion spacecraft into orbit around the moon. The next flight, known as Artemis II, would send a crew of four past the moon before a human landing, which could come as soon as 2025 or 2026.
Unlike NASA’s SLS rocket, Starship is designed to be fully reusable — both the booster and the spacecraft would fly back to Earth and land precisely. On this test flight, however, both were to be discarded in the sea. The booster was to have fallen back into the Gulf of Mexico. And if everything had gone as planned, the Starship spacecraft would have flown across the globe and reentered off the coast of Hawaii.
Instead, the spacecraft failed to separate from the booster and the entire vehicle started tumbling. It was not clear what caused the failure, but Musk said on Twitter that the company would try another launch “in a few months.”
But that may depend on how much damage there is at the site. Starship’s launch mount does not have a flame diverter to direct the fire in a certain direction. Musk has said that the feature may need to be added. SpaceX said that the public road and beach that run alongside the launch site would be closed until Friday.
The fiery mishap also highlighted in dramatic fashion the risks and the stakes of potential environmental destruction, the American Bird Conservancy said.
“From our point of view, it’s good news it didn’t blow up at the pad site, but future launches could,” said the conservancy’s president, Michael Parr. The sounds, debris and fires associated with a crash could pose risks to wildlife, he said. Had an explosion taken place over the sensitive wetlands, a cleanup would further disturb the environment.
In an interview with The Post, Parr stressed that the organization is not opposed to SpaceX or space exploration but is pushing for operations to be moved elsewhere, such as to Cape Canaveral, Fla.
So far this year, SpaceX has five boosters and eight Starships in production, Kate Tice, SpaceX’s manager for quality systems engineering, said on the launch broadcast. “So we have product ready to go as soon as we’re done with this test.”
The FAA said it would oversee the mishap investigation, as is standard practice whenever a rocket fails.
“A return to flight of the Starship/Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” the agency said.
by ti-amie Casey Newton
@caseynewton@mastodon.social
This will be familiar to anyone who has been watching the rapid unscheduled disassembly of Twitter
Kevin Patrick Doyle
@Kevin@doyle.boston
@caseynewton I particularly enjoyed the live feed which was lots of cheering, silence as the spaceship broke, then lots of cheering again for the explosion.
Really summed up Elon fanboys quite well I thought
by Suliso People who compare Starship with Twitter simply have no clue about rocket development.
by Suliso Just to clarify NASA's SLS is very expensive and very conservative launch system. It flew successfully once (ca 2 billion $ excluding development) and next flight is no earlier than late 2024. They have to build another 2 billion rocket because the first one was trashed...
Starship is aiming to be fully reusable and fly at a tiny fraction of the cost. Even today's test blew up only about 50 million or so (33 engines are ca 1 million each).
by ponchi101 How about Bezos' program? Any news on how that is going?
(Too lazy to do the search).
by ti-amie
Mike Wyant Jr.
@mikewyantjr
Muting this thread now.
Happy folks know this clause exists (and probably always has) AND that it is now with Musk’s mysterious new corporation we know nothing about rather than the distinct social media entity, Twitter.
I’ll call that mission accomplished.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 8:05 pm
How about Bezos' program? Any news on how that is going?
(Too lazy to do the search).
Brian Hawthorne
@bhawthorne@infosec.exchange
@jeffjarvis This is emblematic of Musk’s approach to things. A true engineer would have put as much work into designing and building the launch pad as into the rocket. Elon’s concept of a “Starbase” is apparently an 8-meter deep crater that will probably fill with mud the next time it rains.
Brian Reiter
@breiter@hachyderm.io
@jeffjarvis “Normally, major launch sites are engineered with a trench or water system that helps to divert the rocket’s flame away from the ground and to dampen the impact”
Elon cut corners.
And apparently SpaceX impact modelling was either inadequate or not properly disclosed.
Elon cut corners.
sxpert :large blue tick:
@sxpert@mastodon.sxpert.org
@jeffjarvis @breiter well, the flame trench appears to have been dug by the rocket itself…
sxpert :large blue tick:
@sxpert@mastodon.sxpert.org
@breiter @jeffjarvis looks like I wasn't that far from the truth, here's a picture...
S. Newbery
@ssnewbery@mastodon.social
@breiter @jeffjarvis The New York Times’ euphemism about how Elon’s rocket “kicked up dust” is a helluva an understatement for a massive bunker-busting-style explosion that sent a 25-ft-deep crater’s worth of rocket-fuel contaminated ground soil into the air in a toxic dust plume….and made residents six miles away think they were experiencing an earthquake. What does that remind me of? The fallout from 9/11.
Osma A
@osma
@ssnewbery @breiter @jeffjarvis
There was no "rocket fuel" there, though. Raptors are powered by methane. Lack of protection obvious, anyway.
Osma A
@osma
@ssnewbery @breiter @jeffjarvis
3600 tons of fuel (CH4 + LOX) burns to 1940 tons of CO2 and 1660 tons of H2O. That is approximately equal to 125 Americans' annual CO2 footprint per launch.
Inconceivable? Not at all. A lot? Not compared to what its capability vs other vehicles. Wasteful or unnecessary? Only of you don't value space technology. To that I'd point out that without space tech, we would not know a lot of our planet we now know.
Osma A
@osma
@ssnewbery @breiter @jeffjarvis
You can dislike Elon, or object to the way Starship development happens, or whatever, but it would be advisable to base the arguments on facts.
The launch site is based in a wildlife refuge, doesn't protect the birds and other animals there, and has wildly insufficient blast barriers. That is entirely separate from the rocket being much higher capability and (projected) lower cost than anything else built previously.
Klausfiend
@klausfiend@dcerberus.com
@jeffjarvis in all seriousness I am enjoying the Phony Stark schadenfreude that followed yesterday's explosion, but isn't this a risk for rocket launches anywhere? It's been a while since there was a launch failure at Canaveral, did this kind of thing happen with those as well (eg Vanguard?) Or is there something unique to Boca Chica that makes it susceptible to this kind of pollution? Or is the takeaway here that NASA is still better at rockets than the private sector?
by ti-amie Some updates on Elmo's Blue Check shenanigans
Stephen King
@StephenKing
I think Mr. Musk should give my blue check to charity. I recommend the Prytula Foundation, which provides lifesaving services in Ukraine. It's only $8, so perhaps Mr. Musk could add a bit more.
by ti-amie Chris Trottier
@atomicpoet@mastodon.social
Celebrity Twitter accounts with 1 million accounts have their Twitter blue checks back.
Twitter says they’re paying for Twitter Blue but I have my doubts.
See Justin Bieber as an example. I mean, he might be paying for Twitter Blue, but I suspect that Twitter is lying.
by ti-amie No way Elmo is paying jack for anybody. He just wants his RWNJ friends to feel they're part of an accepted elite.
by Owendonovan Funny how some folks can't live without twitter and others easily avoid it. I wonder what the science behind that is?
by ponchi101
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 3:33 pm
Funny how some folks can't live without twitter and others easily avoid it. I wonder what the science behind that is?
Excellent question. For example, I know I am completely out of the demographics for TWT (or any social media, really) but I am an exception. We also know that TikTok has captured more of the youth population, but as you say: who uses TWT the most? And WHY?
Would be a great psychology major thesis.
The genie is out of the bottle; it would be almost impossible to get rid of AI by now. But regulations "could" be put in place. Or so some people could think.
by ti-amie
Karl Bode
@KarlBode
over and over again. Rinse and repeat. an ad-engagement based press is why we're so easily victimized by (expletive) artists like Adam Neuman to Elizabeth Holmes, who'd be weeded out much earlier if the US press was remotely interested in meaningful introspection
by Suliso One shouldn't throw out baby with a bath water. SpaceX is still the most innovative company in US this mistake with stage zero and Musk himself notwithstanding. Feel free to try to prove the opposite.
by ponchi101 I say the point is that the technology to avoid such damages to the launch pad is well known, and he cut that corner.
He is a polarizing guy and, unfortunately, that brings both ends. The sycophants and the detractors. Usually, the reality is not in the middle, but neither it is at the extreme (see, Jobs, Steve and Gates, Bill).
by ti-amie
by Owendonovan
Suliso wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 5:30 am
One shouldn't throw out baby with a bath water. SpaceX is still the most innovative company in US this mistake with stage zero and Musk himself notwithstanding. Feel free to try to prove the opposite.
Who is this innovation for? A few wealthy folks to take a ride in space for a few minutes? The no chance of succeeding colonizing the moon or Mars? Satellite manufacturers? Manboys who like to see things explode?
by ponchi101 The USA needs some sort of home-based space launch technology. It is not only trying to go to the moon, it is also the huge number of satellites floating above. Almost all of the world's communications are based on this technology. Add to that maintenance of the GPS constellation (the USA's), and you have some real day-to-day things to be done up there.
I also think that, with the cluttering in low and mid Earth orbits, we will need eventually to start cleaning up some of these altitudes. GRAVITY (the movie) got something right: right now, if any satellite shatters, we can see a chain reaction of fragments that could take out other satellites. Again, we may eventually need some sort of maneuverable spaceship that can navigate at low/mid Earth orbit.
Is Elon the guy to do that? Surely debatable; I would side with you that he is not. Is this needed (even if it will be for space tourism)? I think it is.
by Suliso
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 1:53 am
Who is this innovation for? A few wealthy folks to take a ride in space for a few minutes? The no chance of succeeding colonizing the moon or Mars? Satellite manufacturers? Manboys who like to see things explode?
You clearly don't care about space technology. Even if you probably use it every day. So I have no arguments for you.
by ti-amie I can't find the graphic I want but this gives you an idea of how much space junk there is.
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 1:53 am
Who is this innovation for? A few wealthy folks to take a ride in space for a few minutes? The no chance of succeeding colonizing the moon or Mars? Satellite manufacturers? Manboys who like to see things explode?
You clearly don't care about space technology. Even if you probably use it every day. So I have no arguments for you.
I care about some of it, but to be honest, it's an aesthetic pleasure for me. So in that sense I absolutely appreciate it.
by Owendonovan New York’s Transit Agency Quits Sharing Updates on Twitter
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it would no longer provide service information on Twitter because the “reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.”
Real-time train delays, bus route changes and other service information that would be vital to millions of New York City commuters will no longer be shared on Twitter because the “reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed,” a Metropolitan Transportation Authority official said on Thursday.
The M.T.A., the largest public transportation agency in North America, is the latest big-name account to make significant adjustments to how it uses the platform, after recent changes under its new owner, Elon Musk. In recent months, Twitter has eliminated the blue check mark, thrown out content moderation rules and tinkered with the algorithm that decides which posts are most visible. NPR and PBS suspended all of their Twitter use this month after they were designated “Government-funded Media” on the platform, a label that Twitter later removed.
“The M.T.A. has terminated posting service information to Twitter, effective immediately,” Shanifah Rieara, the agency’s acting chief customer officer, said in a news release.
The agency’s access to Twitter through its application programming interface was involuntarily interrupted on April 14 and again on Thursday, officials said.
The agency does not pay tech platforms to publish service information, which Ms. Rieara said could also be found through the MYmta and TrainTime apps, the M.T.A.’s website, email alerts and text messages.
“Service alerts are also available on thousands of screens in stations, on trains and in buses,” she said.
The M.T.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
On Twitter, the M.T.A. responded to dozens of concerned customers, some of whom questioned the decision. Still, the agency doubled down. “We’ve loved getting to know you On Here, but we don’t love not knowing if we can to communicate with you each day,” the agency said in a pinned tweet on its feed.
Ridership on the M.T.A., which oversees a complicated network of subways, buses and commuter rail lines that stitch the city together, is improving from the early days of the pandemic. In February, there were more than 84 million subway trips and more than 33 million bus trips, which were about two-thirds of the ridership rates in February 2019, according to the city’s comptroller’s office.
The M.T.A. said it was not abandoning Twitter altogether. Its account will remain active for branding and other messaging, and customers may continue to tweet at the M.T.A. accounts, including @mta and @nyctsubway for questions and requests.
The agency appears to be one of the only transportation networks around the world to have stopped using Twitter to communicate with its customers.
Subway operators in Madrid, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo were among those still providing regular service updates on Twitter as of Friday.
Am I reading this correctly? He's saying that if you won't pay for a blue check and want to click into an article posted by the Washington Post the Washington Post can charge you for doing that or is he going to charge you for doing that?
by ponchi101 I gather you then will have to register in TWT and include a card number, so you can be charged.
And how can paying for something that used to be free be a win for the public is an interesting point of view.
Am I reading this correctly? He's saying that if you won't pay for a blue check and want to click into an article posted by the Washington Post the Washington Post can charge you for doing that or is he going to charge you for doing that?
The Washington Post can charge you but most likely Twitter will make them pay a commission.
by mmmm8
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 11:45 am
New York’s Transit Agency Quits Sharing Updates on Twitter
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it would no longer provide service information on Twitter because the “reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.”
Real-time train delays, bus route changes and other service information that would be vital to millions of New York City commuters will no longer be shared on Twitter because the “reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed,” a Metropolitan Transportation Authority official said on Thursday.
The M.T.A., the largest public transportation agency in North America, is the latest big-name account to make significant adjustments to how it uses the platform, after recent changes under its new owner, Elon Musk. In recent months, Twitter has eliminated the blue check mark, thrown out content moderation rules and tinkered with the algorithm that decides which posts are most visible. NPR and PBS suspended all of their Twitter use this month after they were designated “Government-funded Media” on the platform, a label that Twitter later removed.
“The M.T.A. has terminated posting service information to Twitter, effective immediately,” Shanifah Rieara, the agency’s acting chief customer officer, said in a news release.
The agency’s access to Twitter through its application programming interface was involuntarily interrupted on April 14 and again on Thursday, officials said.
The agency does not pay tech platforms to publish service information, which Ms. Rieara said could also be found through the MYmta and TrainTime apps, the M.T.A.’s website, email alerts and text messages.
“Service alerts are also available on thousands of screens in stations, on trains and in buses,” she said.
The M.T.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
On Twitter, the M.T.A. responded to dozens of concerned customers, some of whom questioned the decision. Still, the agency doubled down. “We’ve loved getting to know you On Here, but we don’t love not knowing if we can to communicate with you each day,” the agency said in a pinned tweet on its feed.
Ridership on the M.T.A., which oversees a complicated network of subways, buses and commuter rail lines that stitch the city together, is improving from the early days of the pandemic. In February, there were more than 84 million subway trips and more than 33 million bus trips, which were about two-thirds of the ridership rates in February 2019, according to the city’s comptroller’s office.
The M.T.A. said it was not abandoning Twitter altogether. Its account will remain active for branding and other messaging, and customers may continue to tweet at the M.T.A. accounts, including @mta and @nyctsubway for questions and requests.
The agency appears to be one of the only transportation networks around the world to have stopped using Twitter to communicate with its customers.
Subway operators in Madrid, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo were among those still providing regular service updates on Twitter as of Friday.
The meat of the article:
Quote
The transition will happen gradually over the next few years, with machines potentially taking over up to 30% of noncustomer-facing roles in the five years. This means that workers in finance, accounting, HR and other areas will likely find themselves facing stiff competition from robots and algorithms.
The decision highlights the increasing reliance on automation and artificial intelligence across various sectors and the potential impact on the workforce.
End quote
So. The people working on AI will lose their jobs to AI. Somewhere in there, there is a joke.
The meat of the article:
Quote
The transition will happen gradually over the next few years, with machines potentially taking over up to 30% of noncustomer-facing roles in the five years. This means that workers in finance, accounting, HR and other areas will likely find themselves facing stiff competition from robots and algorithms.
The decision highlights the increasing reliance on automation and artificial intelligence across various sectors and the potential impact on the workforce.
End quote
So. The people working on AI will lose their jobs to AI. Somewhere in there, there is a joke.
As someone who has far too often had to citie labor laws to the HR dept at my school, I might be ok with with HR being replaced at my school.
by Suliso According to Wikipedia IBM employs ca 288,000 people worldwide. If losing jobs overall to AI is real this time in 5 years it will be down to 230,000 or less. IBM is a great indicator because this company most likely doesn't employ blue color workforce at all (catering, cleaning, security etc. is normally outsourced in corporate world).
by ponchi101 Indicator for good, indictor for bad? You and I do not agree in this subject, but it seems to me that 55,000 people losing what it is certainly a good paying job is not trivial, especially when IBM will not be the only one.
That is an entire large town/small city going unemployed.
(And I am really only asking, I am not putting you onto anything).
by Suliso Indicator for bad of course. The question I'm asking is - will it result in total employement loss OR replacement of these employees with new ones elsewhere in the company. Not the same thing. Would have to be adjusted if IBM makes any major aquisitions or divestments.
by mmmm8
Suliso wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 10:08 pm
According to Wikipedia IBM employs ca 288,000 people worldwide. If losing jobs overall to AI is real this time in 5 years it will be down to 230,000 or less. IBM is a great indicator because this company most likely doesn't employ blue color workforce at all (catering, cleaning, security etc. is normally outsourced in corporate world).
IBM does still manufacturie main frame computers. They have a plant just outside New York City.
by ponchi101 As I recently had a video call for a possible job.
How difficult would it be to fuse both AI and DeepFake technology for such a call? You would not even need DeepFake in the sense of creating an image from available footage; you could SCAN somebody's face and torso (any actor will do) and create the fake. Then, let AI take over and let it the interviewee the questions; after all, they are all very standard depending on the job.
So, with video conferencing being now routine, and these new techs, will it be long before this can be done?
In my family. Of my nephews/nieces, I can count three with jobs in jeopardy. My eldest niece produces user manuals for a sound company, her sister is an actuarian (producing tables), mu god daughter is a teacher at a university, in liberal arts (Spanish). I say they can be affected.
by Suliso I think Spanish teacher is safe, the other two if young enough should consider a career change.
by ti-amie Interesting from BBC R&D on use of private 5G during the recent big event there.
Using a private 5G network to support coverage of the King's Coronation
Posted by Ian Wagdin on 5 May 2023, last updated 9 May 2023
This week the worlds media is focused on The Mall in central London for the Coronation of King Charles III and Camilla, the Queen Consort. The world’s media outlets are here, and as I write this on Friday afternoon the crowds are starting to build.
Over recent years news crews have increasingly relied on mobile networks to get pictures from the heart of the action, they offer a great way to get to places that you just can’t reach with a satellite truck or cable. This means that there is computer hardware and kit available to broadcast from anywhere you can get a mobile signal. While this is OK most of the time, at big events the large mobile networks can get saturated with data very quickly as everyone tries to upload content to social media and journalists compete to send their pictures back to news channels.
Rigging a radio head on The Mall.
At large events the mobile network operators can add capacity, but this is aimed at their customers and is generally spread over a wide area. This means that broadcasters cannot rely on this provision when they most need it; so must use other technologies to support their output leaving all the kit that supports news contribution unused.
BBC News approached BBC Research & Development earlier this year following our successful trial of 5G Non-Public Networks (NPN) at the Commonwealth Games last year and asked if we could help solve this issue. The challenge was a big one - could we provide a private 5G network that was available for the days leading up to the event and during the Coronation itself? We wanted high uplink capacity over a large area which we could offer to news broadcasters from around the world. It has led to what is the largest temporary private 5G network of its kind ever deployed.
While we have trialled and tested smaller scale networks previously; this has been to support only 1 or 2 cameras, but we knew this would be a much larger challenge. We planned to support up to 30 devices all streaming large data rate video from any point along The Mall. For this we partnered with Neutral Wireless who specialise in 5G NPN and who we have worked with previously on our 5G Rural First project on Orkney.
Left: Engineer rigging a mast next to BBC Outside Broadcast trucks at Canada Gate.
Right: One of the cells mounted on a pole above camping crowds on The Mall.
One of the challenges of streaming lots of professional video is that you need a high capacity in your uplink. Most public networks are designed for their subscribers to download content. The only way we could deploy a network to support the amount of traffic was to use spectrum available from Ofcom for shared access and separate from the public networks. Working with Ofcom we have been able to secure 80 MHz of radio capacity centred on 3855MHz, and with Neutral Wireless we looked at the best options to deploy cells that would cover the whole of The Mall.
Map simulating coverage from the Coronation 5G Non-Public Network.
We have deployed eight cells all with very low transmit power but high receive capability. This provides reliable and constant coverage from Buckingham Palace to Admiralty Arch. Using the mobile bonding devices such as LiveU’s LU300 with 5G modems and dedicated sims we have been able to move traffic away from the public networks and onto our private network. This traffic is then backhauled over fibre to Broadcasting House where it meets the internet and from there to whichever broadcaster is connected. The beauty of this system is that for operators and broadcasters the workflow is pretty much the same as they use every day, but we can be confident that their units will work no matter how busy the public network becomes. We now have over 60 devices connected from multiple broadcasters right around the world.
Of course, this is R&D so the challenge of deploying one network was not quite enough. We have also been looking at high capacity, low latency networks that can deliver UHD HDR pictures with bidirectional control. Working alongside Sony we also have two cameras operating on a separate cell in front of Buckingham Palace that will help us understand how these networks may be used in the future.
by JazzNU FYI, Bluesky is picking up steam. Still invite only, but those invites have been opening up in the last week or so to those with medium level followers and no longer just the biggest ones. As I said at the start of this, I expect it to replace Twitter for most people once it launches. I haven't checked Mastodon out that much because it has seemed clunky more often than not. And it just always seemed like a safe bet that Jack would be able to replicate the Twitter experience faster than anyone else and use his connections to speed up integration.
by mmmm8
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 3:35 pm
As I recently had a video call for a possible job.
How difficult would it be to fuse both AI and DeepFake technology for such a call? You would not even need DeepFake in the sense of creating an image from available footage; you could SCAN somebody's face and torso (any actor will do) and create the fake. Then, let AI take over and let it the interviewee the questions; after all, they are all very standard depending on the job.
So, with video conferencing being now routine, and these new techs, will it be long before this can be done?
In my family. Of my nephews/nieces, I can count three with jobs in jeopardy. My eldest niece produces user manuals for a sound company, her sister is an actuarian (producing tables), mu god daughter is a teacher at a university, in liberal arts (Spanish). I say they can be affected.
I work with a bunch of actuaries but that is a skillset that can take you to much more nuanced and "human-centric" job possibilities. The people I work with don't just produce tables.
I think the user manual job is the most likely to go, but her writing and communications skills can be used otherwise.
by ti-amie
JazzNU wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 7:11 pm
FYI, Bluesky is picking up steam. Still invite only, but those invites have been opening up in the last week or so to those with medium level followers and no longer just the biggest ones. As I said at the start of this, I expect it to replace Twitter for most people once it launches. I haven't checked Mastodon out that much because it has seemed clunky more often than not. And it just always seemed like a safe bet that Jack would be able to replicate the Twitter experience faster than anyone else and use his connections to speed up integration.
I don't trust Jack Dorsey.
Anything you post there is theirs to do with as they see fit. Just like Elmo's hell site.
by ti-amie Speaking of Elmo's hell site...
David Gaines Ⓥ
@NatsAndCats
·
You can already talk to anybody in the world without giving them your phone number, on any number of apps. Telegram comes to mind.
This is major because for many journalists DM's were the way to get tips from people who wanted to remain anonymous.
This will be one of the issues to consider. Mining all that nickel and lithium and rare earths will be difficult and will demand a lot of energy.
So, for the environment: what good is it to manufacture all those EV's that will not pollute, if in the process you already caused all the pollution that you were planning on saving?
by Suliso Is it really all of it?
EV's have another advantage besides carbon emissions - they'll make air in our cities much cleaner. Lots of places desperately need it.
by ponchi101 Bogota could use that. We would need to get rid of our diesel engine powered public transport, which is something that it is actually being done by switching to natural gas powered buses.
But in the end, it is all about emissions. Concentrated over cities or spread out, the mantra is that we need to reduce the emissions of CO2. And if to obtain the metals to run EV's we actually emit more, and we also cause some environmental degradation (we can see that in the Far East with the adoption of Oil Palm plantations for which natural forests are taken down), I don't know how wise that is.
by Suliso I can't believe there is absolutely nothing we can do reduce oil consumption. EV is the only game in town unless you believe in hydrogen nonsense.
by ponchi101 Hydrogen is non-sense. We agree. Public transport will do, as long as the generation of power is done through clean sources.
But consumption is not dropping. China continues to power up a coal plant every two weeks. With Russia being an unreliable partner, countries like Poland and Germany cannot stop using coal (and Germany is shutting down almost all of its nuclear power plants).
As before, S. America has no technology to switch to. Colombia has stopped ALL exploration, with no backup plan. All other countries remain doing the same O&G/Coal power scheme.
So, the sole way would be to drop consumption by mandate. And if you don't have a replacement technology, that means impoverishment for many people.
by ti-amie Twitter DM's are down.
by ti-amie Also lots of porn and d**k pics are suddenly showing up on my TL...
by ti-amieThis Is Catfishing on an Industrial Scale
Hired as customer service reps, these freelancers were instead tasked with luring in the lonely and lovestruck through a network of dating and hookup sites.
THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED to happen. In 2020, in a house surrounded by fields in the Irish countryside, Liam, 19, sat at his laptop, an energy drink fizzing at his elbow. He leaned in for a better look at the profile photo and, sure enough, saw the face of an old rugby friend looking back at him.
Just weeks earlier, Liam, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, had been living in Waterford, in Southeast Ireland, about to start his second year at university. Then Covid-19 shut down the city and his university’s campus. On any Saturday on the main street, there were now more pigeons than people. Pubs and cafés shut their doors, and job opportunities dried up. “Money-wise it was worrying,” he says.
Increasingly concerned, Liam responded to a Facebook ad for a “freelance customer support representative,” working remotely for vDesk, a company based in Cyprus. He was invited to an online interview. At the end of the call, the interviewer asked how he would feel about moderating dating websites.
“I thought I might be moderating hateful content on Tinder, something like that,” he says, “they weren’t clear about the kind of work it would really be.”
It wasn’t long before he found out. Rather than moderating content, Liam was asked to adopt fake online personas—known as “virtuals”—in order to chat to customers, most of them men looking for relationships or casual sex. Using detailed profiles of customers and well-crafted virtuals, Liam was expected to lure people into paying, message by message, for conversations with fictional characters. This is how, while pretending to be Anna2001, he found himself staring at an old acquaintance. But, he thought, hands slack on the keyboard, he needed the money. So for the next two minutes, he played the role he was paid to.
Liam is one of hundreds of freelancers employed all over the world to animate fake profiles and chat with people who have signed up for dating and hookup sites. WIRED spoke to dozens of people working in the industry, people who had worked for months at a time at two of the companies involved in the creation of virtual profiles. vDesk didn’t respond to requests for comment. Often recruited into “customer support” or content moderation roles, they found themselves playing roles in sophisticated operations set up to tease subscription money from lonely hearts looking for connections online.
IN A KITCHEN in Mexico, more than 8,000 kilometers away from Liam’s house in Ireland, Alice faced a similar dilemma. She circled her cursor in frustration over a profile of someone she knew from her hometown in France. His chat history had all of his personal details: his name, city, job, past marriages. His kids’ names and ages. For nearly two years, he had been talking to a virtual. He says he’s in love with her.
Alice—whose name has also been changed to protect her privacy—was next in line to inhabit that virtual. “I could tell him,” she thought, “and I really should.”
Like Liam, Alice had responded to a job ad for vDesk during the pandemic. The position was for a “freelance remote translator.” Alice, stuck in Mexico with no way to make rent and no way back to France, went for it. “I even sent them a long cover letter, detailing my skills in translating,” she says dryly, “how embarrassing.”
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Once she got over the realization—on her first day working for the company—that translating really meant “flirting through fake profiles,” she couldn’t help but be impressed by how detailed the virtuals are. “The fakes don’t seem like obviously unattainable women, they are eerily convincing and hyper-specific,” she says.
“Customer service” staff don’t play a single character on the sites. Instead, they sit in a chat queue to be cycled between virtuals who they occupy for two minutes at a time. They are given a biography of the virtual. One, seen by WIRED, looks like this:
Andrea667 (45), lonely divorcee looking for a man
Home: Chesham Bois - 3 bed House with her kids
Job: Owner of a makeup & beauty products shop in Watford 10-6pm, Mon-Sat
It continues in more granular detail, her parents’ names, her car (a Honda Civic automatic). On the right side of the moderator’s screen is a cache of photos that can be drip-fed into the conversation.
Another former freelancer for vDesk, who was hired to create profiles in a country in Eastern Europe (to protect her privacy, WIRED is also not naming the country), says she was asked to divide her city into economic zones to make the profiles more believable. “It has to make sense,” she says, “if you had a banking executive living in, say, a students’ area it would seem suspicious.”
She wasn’t sure where the photos used to illustrate the profiles were coming from. “I don’t want to think about it,” she says, describing the work as “like making Sims characters.” (A reverse-image search on some of the images seen by WIRED show that at least some are grabbed from pornography sites.) To ease her conscience, she told all the people she knew in that city—“even though you’re supposed to be discreet about the job.” Don’t use these websites, she told her friends, “I’ve created them, and they are all fake.”
Moderators are encouraged to send 30 messages an hour. For two minutes, Alice says, that means you’re “a distinguished woman with multiple postgraduate degrees,” then for the next two minutes you’re “a teenage girl with crazy interests.” The freelancers have to be thorough. “You have to stay alert to weather and news in the fake’s location,” says Alice, “so you can pretend you are a person you are not.” Liam puts it more bluntly: “You have to be prepared to (expletive) with people’s feelings.”
Employees are not told where the customers come from. External online portals promising anything from romantic dates to extreme fantasies funnel users into the same pool of “customer service” freelancers. “You feel bad because some of them are genuinely on there to find someone to date,” says one ex-freelancer from France. Others are brought in by “affiliate” freelancers who use the virtuals to directly email potential users. According to the guidelines Alice received, users who have been lured like this might start up the conversation on the site with “hi, I’m here like you asked.”
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Most of the users gain access to the dating sites by buying “coins.” The smallest costs €10 ($10.90), the largest €800. Overall, the user pays roughly €2 per message to a virtual. The sites collect detailed information about users, building profiles that help the freelancers maintain the fiction. These contain their living arrangements, details about their family and marital status (“single after two failed marriages,” one read), and other personal details.
“It will add their kids’ names and ages, when they tell us them,” Alice says, “if they have been to therapy recently, what they have been feeling—anything which can be used by the virtual to keep a sense of real connection.” Failing to catch such details or to log near plans—“a trip, an exhibition, an appointment,” the freelancers’ guidelines say, can result in a reprimand from management. It is not clear what the company does with such data should the user terminate their profile. The guidelines given to Alice, which WIRED has examined, forbid copy-pasting and “sabotage”—meaning any acknowledgement that virtuals are fake, or mentioning the chat queue.
Once a user is hooked in the conversation, the aim is always to stretch out the talking phase. “If a New York user asks to meet up with your virtual, the freelancer is to say ‘let me check my schedule and let you know,’” says Liam, even if you are writing from Budapest. If the user asks to move off to a free messaging app, the freelancers must write through the virtuals “I prefer to stay in here until I know you better” or “I feel safer on this app until we are better acquainted,” and so on.
Alice says she saw chats where users said they had bought expensive gifts, “nevermind the weeks of money they had spent talking to the virtuals.” She spoke to elderly users in care homes, and others under protective conservatorships who asked virtuals to wait until they were given their next allowance. “I think a lot of the users are vulnerable enough to believe it is real,” she says.
One morning, Alice opened her chat to a new message:
“Please stop talking to my husband, he is spending money we do not have to talk to you,” read the chat line.
“How would you respond to that?” asks Alice, “but there’s nothing you can do to stop it.” Freelance workers cannot shut down a conversation themselves, she says. Besides, even if it is a spouse, they are still paying per message—“and we only get paid if we respond in a way that provokes another one.”
WIRED discussed vDesk’s business model with Volkan Topalli and Fangzhou Wang, who research romance fraud and criminology at Georgia State University’s evidence-based cyber security research group. “It’s possible this falls under romance scamming, what do you think?” Topalli says. “I’m not sure, but wow the system is efficient,” says Wang, “in any case, it’s like the owners are trying to cover their backs with the T&Cs.”
The niche dating portals, which have names like Snap-Date, Horny-Spot, SexDater, Discreet-Meets, Only-Flirts.com, PassionsLove, and BeeMyPair, funnel users into the system and usually include lengthy terms and conditions. Most of them say something along the lines of “we may use system profiles at our discretion to communicate with users to enhance our users’ entertainment experience.” According to Topalli, the language is ambiguous enough that it might let people think “hey, maybe I’m talking to a pornstar,” or that maybe only a small number of them are fakes.
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Most of the sites are run by larger companies called Meet Us Media and Take Two Digital. Neither responded to requests for comment.
At Georgia State University, Topalli and Wang research the toll of romance scams, the kind where individual perpetrators use popular free dating apps to scam large sums of money from victims that they groom, sometimes for years. For the “moderator” companies Alice and Liam worked for, “there’s deception here, that’s for sure,” says Wang. But unlike typical romance fraud, the transactions take place within the vague contractual agreements of the dating portals. Payments made by the users are limited to batch “coin” subscriptions within these sites, rather than through requests for grand payouts to cover fabricated crises, such as flight tickets or bailouts or fake medical emergencies. “Through this system, they ask a wider pool of people for a smaller amount of money,” says Wang, “though of course this could amount to large amounts for individuals over years of talking.”
For Topalli, these companies are operating in a legal gray area. What they are doing may well be legal, he says, but “that doesn’t mean they are not completely unethical and immoral.”
While sex chat and call lines have been around forever, there is generally a mutual understanding that these are fee-for-service arrangements. If users are instead wooed by ads offering a real dating application and then freelancers are paid to continue this charade, “it constitutes real deception,” he says, “and arguably exploitation on both sides of the internet—both the victims and the workers.”
Freelancers working in the industry say they make a fraction of the money users are paying. Workers earn around 7 cents per message, or €2 an hour. For the company where Liam freelanced, the shifts were six hours a day, six days a week, “and they want you to be active on screen all that time—no breaks,” he says. The 36-hour weeks got him around €400 a month. “It was a pittance,” he says.
IN THE MURKY, anonymous, globally dispersed industry, even some of the freelancers aren’t who they say they are—and are working for even less.
In Lagos, 22-year-old physics student Idris—who asked for anonymity to protect his privacy, started working for Cloudworkers, a Swiss company, in June 2020 . The company doesn’t actually hire people in Nigeria, so he has to sublet an account from someone else. He gets 40 percent of the fee paid to the account’s owner. Cloudworkers didn’t respond to requests for comment.
While illegal and not endorsed by the customer service companies, black market subletting is common in the industry. A scroll through Facebook groups dedicated to subcontracting (subcon) chat work finds hundreds of similar requests for people looking to rent accounts—“We make a deal 40/60, I can produce 200 to 400 quality messages daily”—and established moderators selling them—“looking for a moderator for my account with experience, good grammar and knows how to follow rules.”
The companies are known to block accounts suddenly for suspected subcon work. The same Facebook groups are full of questions such as, “anyone else having trouble logging in?” met with comments of “uh-oh, you’ve been blocked.”
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KHARI JOHNSON
Idris works on his phone six hours a night for about 400 Naira (87¢) an hour.” While he chats, he pretends to be the owner of the account, who is pretending to be a woman in the United States, who is pretending to be hundreds of virtual women.
For Idris, it’s difficult to see how anyone from high-income countries could make a living operating freelance profiles. “The pay is so terrible,” says Idris from his bedroom in Lagos, “it only makes sense if you are doing it from a country like Nigeria or the Philippines, and only then if you are desperate.”
Topalli says there’s an inevitability to the scaling up of this industry, where a combination of an increasingly atomized remote workforce, the rise of gig work, and the number of people turning to the internet for connection has turned a cottage industry of deception into a production line. “The internet has made this possible,” says Topalli. “Technology exponentiates a romance scam that used to happen face-to-face to unprecedented, global dimensions.”
On Facebook and Twitter, the moderation companies continue to advertise new roles. Alice and Liam have both left the industry.
After Liam saw his old friend in the chat, he messaged his team leader.
“Could I take a moment off? To process it?”
A wait. An ellipsis icon rolled.
“It would be better if you went back to work.”
Liam handed in his notice not long after. By then, he’d seen users talking to the virtuals about their heaviest emotional concerns: “one was talking about suicide and how the fake woman had saved him from it, now that he’d found love.” Liam had seen marriage proposals from users, some who had been on there as long as four and a half years. “And how can you blame them,” says Liam, “when the system is doing its best to get to know you as well as it can?”
Welcome to Nusantara
The audacious project to build a green and walkable capital city from the ground up.
By Hannah Beech
Photography by Ulet Ifansasti
May 16, 2023
Headway is an initiative from The New York Times exploring the world’s challenges through the lens of progress.
BEFORE HE LED the world’s fourth most populous country, the president of Indonesia was consumed by an even more challenging mission: saving Jakarta.
For two years, Joko Widodo served as the governor of a capital city that seemed to teeter on the brink of ruin. Since Indonesia’s independence in 1945, Jakarta had expanded from less than a million people to roughly 30 million. It had grown tall with skyscrapers built with fortunes made from timber, palm oil, natural gas, gold, copper, tin. But the capital had run out of space. It grew thick with traffic and pollution. Most of all, Jakarta was sinking, as thirsty residents drained its marshy aquifers and rising sea waters lapped its shores. Forty percent of the Indonesian capital now lies below sea level.
Raised in a riverside slum in a smaller city, without family ties or a military background to propel him to power, Mr. Joko derived his political strength from his connection with ordinary Indonesians. In Jakarta, he made a habit of canvassing poor neighborhoods about their needs. Residents were unaccustomed to such consideration, but they didn’t hold back: They wanted to live without worrying about the air they breathed and the water that all too often flooded their homes. And traffic. There were many complaints about traffic.
So Mr. Joko rolled up his sleeves, put on his sneakers and set about trying to fix the city. He raised sea walls and improved public transport. He later talked up the construction of a constellation of artificial islands to break the waters hitting Jakarta. His entire career, first as a carpenter and a furniture exporter and then as mayor of his hometown of Solo, had been built on building.
In Jakarta, however, his passion for construction could only get him so far. All the Sisyphean dredging, the endless concrete inches slathered on sea walls, the duct tape solutions could not raise Jakarta above the sea’s reach. And so Mr. Joko has turned to a different solution: If Jakarta cannot be saved, he will start over.
Mr. Joko is using his presidential authority to forsake the capital on the slender island of Java and construct a new one on Borneo, the world’s third largest island, about 800 miles away. The new capital is to be called Nusantara, meaning “archipelago” in ancient Javanese and befitting an unlikely nation of more than 17,000 islands scattered between two oceans.
Indonesia encompasses hundreds of languages and ethnic groups. Some of its regions are governed by Shariah-inspired rules, gripped by separatist fervor or animated by Indigenous traditions. It is also a secular democracy with the world’s largest Muslim citizenry, a sizable Christian minority and several other official faiths. Although deadly sectarian conflict has flared over the decades, Indonesia has cohered while other countries have come apart. A new capital city for a place with such disparities and diversity presents both a challenge and a chance for reinvention.
Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara, will be about 800 miles from the current capital, Jakarta.
By Leanne Abraham
Mr. Joko’s ambitions go far beyond saving Jakarta’s residents from the sea. Nusantara won’t be just any planned city, the president asserts, but a green metropolis run on renewable energy, where there are no choking traffic jams and people can stroll and bike along verdant paths. The new capital, which is known in Indonesia by its abbreviation, I.K.N., will be a paradigm for adapting to a warming planet. And it will be a high-tech city, he says, attracting digital nomads and millennials who will purchase stylish apartments with cryptocurrency.
“We want to build a new Indonesia,” Mr. Joko said. “This is not physically moving the buildings. We want a new work ethic, new mind-set, new green economy.”
The hope is to inaugurate Jakarta’s replacement in August of next year, with the unveiling of the presidential palace and other key government buildings. But while bulldozers are clearing acres of plantation forestland, not a single showcase structure has been completed.
Mr. Joko’s audacious plan will not be easy to pull off. Graft threatens the best of intentions in Indonesia. Political rivals have questioned the plan’s wisdom. Moreover, a new capital on Borneo will not change the fact that millions of people will still be left in a sinking Jakarta. Most have no wish to relocate to a faraway island, and some Borneo residents aren’t happy about the capital coming to them.
The president’s own quixotic decision-making has complicated construction. And the entire project is being rushed as Mr. Joko’s presidential term comes to a close. He has only a short time to give life, in steel and glass, to his supreme ambition: to be the leader who finally succeeded at building a new citadel for Indonesia.
Forty percent of Jakarta lies below sea level, and some parts are sinking by as much as a foot a year.
The complexities facing Mr. Joko are supercharged versions of those facing other leaders of developing countries. In the colonial era, places like Jakarta, then known as Batavia, were treated as little more than way stations for natural resources dispatched back to the seats of empire. Colonial complexes sprinkled with jacaranda and bougainvillea were surrounded by shantytowns. After the birth of independent nations, urban planners had to create modern cities from these imperial bones. By the United Nations’ accounting, there are 33 megacities in the world today, each with more than 10 million people. In 1950, there was one: New York. And now these metropolises must contend with the twin perils of rapid population growth and climate change.
One response to these myriad problems is to simply begin again, to use a new urban blueprint as a national tabula rasa. In climate change parlance, the phrase is “managed retreat,” an engineered withdrawal of communities from vulnerable land. Mr. Joko’s new capital is perhaps the most daring expression of this impulse. What better way to manifest Indonesia’s hopes of progress — and those of so many countries like it — than to build a future from scratch?
“As an urban planner, I can say that there is some skepticism about I.K.N.,” said Deden Rukmana, chair of the community and regional planning department at Alabama A&M University and the editor of “The Routledge Handbook of Planning Megacities in the Global South.” “But as an Indonesian, I think we need to prove to ourselves that we can do it, we can become a global role model in building a new capital that promotes sustainability and growth.”
“I.K.N. is not just being built for Indonesians,” Professor Deden added. “It’s being built for the world. That’s why it must succeed.”
Mr. Joko, 61, who is affectionately known by the nickname Jokowi, doesn’t present himself as a prophet. At international gatherings, he often seems lost in the crowd. He wears a uniform of black trousers and a white button-down, with an undershirt occasionally peeking through the thin cloth. Late last year, we spent a day touring the site of the new capital. He was keen to show me what he had planned. But when his advisers tried to prod him to oratorical heights about the project underway, he summoned a list, not a legacy.
“I am executing all this,” he said. “Highways, toll roads, maritime, airports, Nusantara, a green, smart city, building Indonesia.”
Before us, heavy machinery dug into the red earth. Spindly trees fell. A retinue of aides stood at attention. Mr. Joko closed his eyes, as if conjuring a vision that only he could see.
by ti-amie There's a hilarious look at a report that said NYC/Manhattan is sinking under the weight of it's skyscrapers and will be underwater in about 80 years on Instagram but I've tried posting it three or four times and I keep getting a notice that the link is broken. It's punchline about the Bronx being the only borough actually connected to the US mainland is hysterical.
Strange but if you click on the "visit Instagram" link you get to the post and can scroll through it.
by ti-amie Re moving Jakarta. I'm old enough to remember when Brasilia was built.
by ponchi101 Planned cities have been mixed results. Wash DC was a success. Brasilia was mixed. St. Petersburg (Russia) has been prosperous. Shanghai is a mixed bag (some of the most incredible architecture and some truly ghastly poverty), New Delhi remains problematic. Dubai has been successful, but that is not a democracy so controls are easier to implement.
There's got to be a limit at which a city becomes ungovernable. Bogota stands now at around 10MM. Some areas work, others not.
by Suliso I've been to both old and New Delhi. They're very close to each other and really the same city. Not the case with the other examples.
Tokyo still works. Beijing and Shanghai too.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Time to implement "safe words" with the family?
"Ok, I will wire you the money. What is our safe word?"
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 12:15 am
Time to implement "safe words" with the family?
"Ok, I will wire you the money. What is our safe word?"
I mean...
by Owendonovan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 12:15 am
Time to implement "safe words" with the family?
"Ok, I will wire you the money. What is our safe word?"
Gorgonzola
by ponchi101
by Owendonovan Awkward Silence: Ron DeSantis’s Bold Twitter Gambit That Flopped
The Florida governor wanted to show off his tech savvy by announcing his presidential campaign on Twitter. It quickly devolved into the conference call from hell.
It was the announcement not heard ’round the world.
Ron DeSantis plotted to open his presidential campaign early Wednesday evening with a pioneering social media gambit, introducing himself during an audio-only Twitter forum with Elon Musk. His 2024 effort began instead with a moment of silence. Then several more.
A voice cut in, then two — Mr. Musk’s? — only to disappear again.
“Now it’s quiet,” someone whispered. This was true.
“We got so many people here that we are kind of melting the servers,” said David Sacks, the nominal moderator, “which is a good sign.” This was not true.
Soon, all signs were bad. Hold music played for a spell. Some users were summarily booted from the platform, where hundreds of thousands of accounts had gathered to listen.
“The servers are straining somewhat,” Mr. Musk said at one point, perhaps unaware that his mic was hot, at least briefly.
For 25 minutes, the only person unmistakably not talking (at least on a microphone) was Mr. DeSantis.
The Florida governor’s chosen rollout venue was always going to be a risk, an aural gamble on Mr. Musk, a famously capricious and oxygen-stealing co-star, and the persuasive powers of Mr. DeSantis’s own disembodied voice. (“Whiny,” Donald J. Trump has called him.)
Gov. Ron DeSantis and His Administration
Propelling Florida to the Right: Before joining the presidential race, Gov. Ron DeSantis has checked off many boxes on the far-right’s wish list. Here are the bills he has signed this year.
Rift With Disney: As DeSantis and Disney continue to feud, the company said it is pulling the plug on a nearly $1 billion development planned for Orlando.
N.A.A.C.P. Travel Advisory: The organization issued a travel advisory for Florida, urging people to consider the state’s policies on diversity and race under DeSantis when thinking of traveling there.
Textbooks: Florida rejected dozens of social studies textbooks and worked with publishers to edit dozens more, in an effort led by the DeSantis administration to scrub textbooks of contested topics.
But the higher-order downsides proved more relevant. Twitter’s streaming tool, known as Spaces, has been historically glitchy. Executive competence, core to the DeSantis campaign message, was conspicuously absent. And for a politician credibly accused through the years of being incorrigibly online — a former DeSantis aide said he regularly read his Twitter mentions — the event amounted to hard confirmation, a zeitgeisty exercise devolving instead into a conference call from hell.
“You can tell from some of the mistakes that it’s real,” Mr. Musk said.
At 6:26 p.m., Mr. DeSantis finally announced himself, long after his campaign had announced his intentions, reading from a script that often parroted an introduction video and an email sent to reporters more than 20 minutes earlier.
“Well,” he opened, “I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback.”
After ticking through a curated biography that noted his military background and his “energetic” bearing, Mr. DeSantis stayed on the line. Mr. Sacks, a tech entrepreneur who is close with Mr. Musk, acknowledged the earlier mess.
“Thank you for putting up with these technical issues,” he said. “What made you want to kind of take the chance of doing it this way?”
Mr. DeSantis swerved instantly to his Covid-era stewardship of Florida.
“Do you go with the crowd?” he asked, recalling his expert-flouting decision-making, “or do you look at the data yourself and cut against the grain?”
Rivals agreed: If he hoped to differentiate himself, Mr. DeSantis had succeeded, in his way.
“This link works,” the @JoeBiden account mocked, inviting followers to donate.
“‘Rob,’” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social, a standard troll-by-misspelling, winding to a confusing (if potentially juvenile) punchline: “My Red Button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working.”
Even Fox News piled on.
“Want to actually see and hear Ron DeSantis?” read a pop-up banner on its website. “Tune into Fox News at 8 p.m. E.T.” (Urging donations once he got on the air, Mr. DeSantis wondered if supporters might “break that part of the internet as well.”)
Minor as a tech snag might prove in the long run, it was a dispiriting turn for Mr. DeSantis after months of meticulous political choreography.
So much of his strength as a contender over the past year was theoretical — the mystery-box candidate constructing a national profile on his terms: slayer of liberals, smasher of foes, the Trumpy non-Trump.
He would conquer and coast. He would Make America Florida.
He would be a sight to behold. Presumably.
The reality of Mr. DeSantis’s pre-candidacy has been less imposing, shadowed by uneasy public appearances, skittish donors and a large polling gap between him and Mr. Trump.
With better tech, perhaps, a visual-free campaign debut might have been a clever way to rediscover that past aura, to let listeners fill in the mystery box as they choose, before Mr. Trump tries to chuck it offstage.
Or maybe the governor’s ostensible advantages — looking the part, before the full audition — were always doomed to translate poorly on Wednesday when there was nothing to see. It is difficult to project indomitable swagger and take-on-all-comer-ism at an invisible gathering devoid of non-friendly questioning or workaday voters.
Mr. DeSantis suggested he needed no such inputs. “I just know instinctively what, like, normal people think about a lot of this stuff,” DeSantis said of culture war issues, amid meditations on “woke banking” and “accreditation cartels.”
But then, this was not supposed to be a typical kickoff event, governed by visual cues and administrative precision: a stately lectern, wrinkle-free American flags, plausibly enthusiastic supporters positioned optimally behind the candidate.
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“It’s not about building a brand or virtue-signaling,” Mr. DeSantis said of his leadership at one point. And if his ambition was to generate organic buzz, the governor got his wish.
This was unique, compelling, viral on the merits.
It was a sight to behold. Presumably. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/us/p ... itter.html
There isn't any reason for me to think of twitter as anything other than a right wing megaphone. Maybe the dems can frame the narrative of Elmo the same way the gqp does Soros......
by Suliso He's a bad candidate personality wise - Ted Cruz 2.0. Unless something drastic happens it will be Biden vs Trump round two.
by ponchi101 Tiny: "I am the candidate or I run as an independent and take with me 35 million votes".
...
...
...
GQP: "Yes, sir!"
by Suliso It's not just that. In my opinion DeSantis wouldn't be a candidate even if Trump drops dead tomorrow. He's that lousy.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 3:08 pm
It's not just that. In my opinion DeSantis wouldn't be a candidate even if Trump drops dead tomorrow. He's that lousy.
I don't think so. He is a very typical GOP candidate and we have seen that his line of thinking resonates with many people. He would be a lousy president because indeed, he is a very bad administrator. But that is not what people on the GOP are looking for nowadays; they do not understand politics that much.
He is against immigration, against minorities, anti-environment and is seen by many as fighter against the woke. That appeals to many people.
He is a lousy candidate for people like us. For voters in the USA, he is an item in the menu, and many will go for him.
by Suliso I'm not even considering his views. He's lousy candidate because he doesn't know how to connect with people, how to inspire them. In this sense Trump is a great candidate.
Of course if he were to become a candidate 45%+ would vote for him. The hard part is fight off others with similar views.
by ti-amie
Of course that guy from Florida has said he will do just that if elected.
by skatingfan
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 9:40 pm
Of course that guy from Florida has said he will do just that if elected.
I think you'll have to be more specific about which guy from Florida you mean.
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 9:40 pm
Of course that guy from Florida has said he will do just that if elected.
I think you'll have to be more specific about which guy from Florida you mean.
In this case, that guy from Florida had a glitch in the Twitter system this week and currently has a title only as that guy has not done anything for the state in months. Ignored the unusual flooding in Fort Lauderdale while traveling around the world.
by ti-amie I don't like the ethnic slurs some are using to describe the man nominally in charge of running the state of Flori-duh but what do you call him, chubby as opposed to fat, middle aged as opposed to elderly criminal?
by patrick Guy that is supposed to be running Flori-duh is not doing anything to help. That guy is scheduled to see Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina
by ti-amie Meanwhile the NYT is running fluff pieces about the wife of the the guy supposedly running Flori-duh's and how she's the next Jackie and is as stylish as TFG's former escort of a wife. Is the world ready for nude pics of the wife of that guy sprawled naked on a fur rug?
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 My paranoia about AI is well documented. But here is something else.
I am actually a bit fond of MS EDGE; it is as good as Mozilla's Firefox and I like the interface. As we all know, MS has had a lot of problems with its BING search engine, in that it is good but it has not been able to displace google as the main search engine on line.
But, now, BING is AI driven.
So I decided to test it a little bit. And, for my money, right now it surpasses Google. Why?
I am looking into some programming things for the board, so I decided to ask BING for some code. I started with a very simple thing: what is the code for inserting a button on an HTML page. BING PRODUCED the code; easy to copy and paste in your code editor. Google "simply" gives you the list of pages where the code can be found.
So really, BING is a bit better now if you want to ask questions like that.
Of course, that still keeps me in edge, pun intended. Now you really do not need to go to a school to learn to code, or even write the code: BING can do it for you. If you are organized, you can then ask it to keep writing code and you integrate it. No need to hire somebody to write the code for you, no need to go to a school to learn how to code.
Whether that is good or bad is up for debate.
by Oploskoffie @pochi: I'm on the "no good can come of this" side of the AI discussion, though it will probably help a lot of people if we're looking at this from the perspective of, say, the medical field. That said, like with modern digital communication/the internet, and many other major advancements in the past century or so, I strongly feel that as a species, even though we've been smart enough to invent these things, we greatly lack the maturity to use them in a responsible way and will only ever say "oh dear, that's not what we want!" after the damage has already been done in some way or another. Not looking forward to AI having to fight AI with regards to fake news, to name but one thing amongst many, many upcoming battles...
by ti-amie
by ti-amie ZeroDrek
@ZeroDrek
Reddit plans to charge $12,000 per 50 million API requests. This is a death knell for 3rd party Reddit apps. Corporate greed at its finest. I plan on leaving Reddit and spending that time here instead. #reddit
by ponchi101 Very easy to spot?
Wow, so, now it will be a competition to see who adds kinks and "imperfections" to make it even more real.
I guess it will be a one afternoon job, for the programmer.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie This is fascinating.
by ponchi101 Interesting indeed.
One caveat (remember, IATA). Why is the ECUADOR coast called the SOUTH PACIFIC. It is at the equator.
(Again, IATA, does not take away one bit from the article. Just found it weird).
by ti-amie Today in Elmo-land
by ti-amie So the tl;dr is this is a money grab.
by ti-amie
by Suliso I think this party is now close to over. I doubt there will be many paying customers for a site which is just entertainment for 80%+ of users.
by ti-amie This is insanity. What's been happening is that normal people have been merrily blocking the infomercial ads and blue check loonies. High volume non verified accounts so he's trying to force you to get verified. If you're limited to 600 total tweets per day including ads why bother?
by ti-amie Sheldon Chang
@sysop408@sfba.social
This is hilarious. It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself.
The Twitter home feed's been down for most of this morning. Even though nothing loads, the Twitter website never stops trying and trying.
In the first video, notice the error message that I'm being rate limited. Then notice the jiggling scrollbar on the right.
The second video shows why it's jiggling. Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives because Elon's latest genius innovation is to block people from being able to read Twitter without logging in.
This likely created some hellish conditions that the engineers never envisioned and so we get this comedy of errors resulting in the most epic of self-owns, the self-DDOS.
Suliso wrote: ↑Sat Jul 01, 2023 6:12 pm
I think this party is now close to over. I doubt there will be many paying customers for a site which is just entertainment for 80%+ of users.
My daughter, who just yesterday was saying she had no plans to leave Twitter just said the same thing you did.
Rod Hilton
@rodhilton@mastodon.social
Imagine how stupid you have to be to take your web site which traffics in popular posts driving engagement, and disincentivize 99% of your users from loading the most popular posts with the most interest around them because it will eat their daily allotment of reads if they do.
Alex
@mentallyalex@beige.party
@rodhilton I didn't see the original toot, just this one and honestly thought to myself, "Wait he did what? No way..." *click* and then read the above.
That...they *can't* have a board anymore, right? Prior to this level of dumb he got rid of the board?
I don't mean to besmirch them, but I honestly question why anyone would willingly use that tool if they weren't being paid to do so. It's seems like he has a train set and has no interest in trains so he's just pulling levers and watching what happens.
How can I have exceeded the TWT count, when I am not even in TWT?
I know that some people consider Musk some sort of techno genius but, lately, that premise can be challenged. -->
by ponchi101 This is a screencapture FROM THIS FORUM, of a post by Ti in the NBA topic.
TWT exceeded.jpg
How can I have exceeded the TWT count, when I am not even in TWT?
I know that some people consider Musk some sort of techno genius but, lately, that premise can be challenged.
by ti-amie PCMag
@PCMag@mastodon.social
To delete a Threads account, you’ll also need to delete your Instagram account. The restriction will prevent Threads from losing users as Mark Zuckerberg reports the app topped 10 million new sign-ups in its first few hours. https://www.pcmag.com/news/to-delete-a- ... ccount-too
by ti-amie This is why a science/tech education with no Liberal Arts requirements is the road to disaster.
Sam Greene @samagreene
The idea that protocols that can’t be managed, curated and protected — or adapted rapidly as situations demand — could replace the human element of gov’t is frankly dystopian.
Even the most democratic of governments requires the delegation of authority to function. Imagining you could create a process to which everyone could have access and to which everyone would adhere is naive at the very least. It would be a recipe for even greater social conflict.
I want government — from legislators to bureaucrats to police to courts to the army — to be accountable. But replacing their autonomy with algorithms and protocols and flooding the zone with data does not yield accountability. If anything, it makes gov’t even more opaque.
But that’s not the real problem here. The real problem here is that too many of today’s titans of industry imagine there’s an engineering solution to the dysfunction of modern society — and too many of the kind of people who once worshipped at the altar of Ayn Rand believe them.
You cannot correct for the errors of humanity by trying to remove human nature from the process.
I mean, didn’t these people watch Jurassic Park?
by ponchi101 I'll have to think about your statement, Ti. But, overall, the idea proposed by the person (about open protocols and such) is truly naive. It has been the same utopian siren call stated by anarchists and communists since 1917.
"Imagine if we were all free and equal".
I don't have to imagine it. I can read history and see what has happened whenever somebody has tried that road. Pretty soon, everybody is less free and less equal, and by a lot.
Summary. An enzyme that breaks down PET, in less than 24 hours. 8% of all waste worldwide are PET based.
by Suliso I was helping with the International Chemistry Olympiad for high school students yesterday in ETH (Zürich). Students from almost all European countries as well as majority of South America (missing only Colombia and Bolivia) and Asia (minus Iraq and few small ones) were there. Talked with some kids from Israel and El Salvador. Was fun.
by ponchi101 Didn't know there was a Chemistry Olympiad.
It is an amazing subject.
by Suliso There are Olympiads in all major subjects (Physics, Mathematics, Biology and now also Computer Science). Mathematics is the most famous, but others have been around for decades as well.
by ponchi101 I only knew of the Math ones. I participated in them in my youth.
I can see the format for computer science; simply state a problem. But how does it work for chemistry? Is it done in a lab, or is it simply theoretical?
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 7:44 pm
I can see the format for computer science; simply state a problem. But how does it work for chemistry? Is it done in a lab, or is it simply theoretical?
Chemistry consists of 5 h theoretical exam and 5 h in the lab. The latter usually a combination of organic synthesis and analytical chemistry. The whole event is 8 days.
by ti-amie I had just started to find my way around Reddit when the shenanigans started. Oh well.
Dan Gillmor
@dangillmor@mastodon.social
Reddit to its volunteer moderators: "You work for us. We don't pay you, of course, but we own everything you do. If you challenge our autocratic, greedy policies, we'll kick you out and find other suckers to do all this work for free. And by the way, up yours."
by ti-amieElon Musk’s X rebrand reignites his goal to turn Twitter into an app like China’s WeChat
PUBLISHED TUE, JUL 25 20239:16 PM EDT
Arjun Kharpal
@ARJUNKHARPAL
On Monday, Musk officially changed Twitter’s famous bird logo to an “X,” marking his push to change the platform into something more than just a social media service.
“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk said late Monday, re-iterating that the acquisition took place to accelerate the move toward the “everything app.”
Newly-appointed CEO of the company Linda Yaccarino said “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”
These goals laid out by Musk and Yaccarino sound very much like the idea of a “super app” which was pioneered in China and has taken off in other parts of Asia.
Musk called WeChat ‘great’
Super apps refer to a type of app that allow users to carry out multiple functions without having to leave the app. For example, an app might include social media functions, payments, hotel and flight bookings and taxi hailing.
The biggest super app in the world is called WeChat which is run by Chinese technology giant Tencent
and has over 1.3 billion users.
WeChat is primarily an instant messaging app like WhatsApp. But it is also has payments and users can access other apps within it such as e-commerce and banking.
While China pioneered the super app, the idea has taken off in other parts of Asia. Singapore-headquartered ride-hailing firm Grab
has expanded into other areas like food delivery and payments. South Korea’s Kakao is another example.
Musk has likely taken inspiration from WeChat, an app he called “great” last year. Musk said there is no WeChat equivalent outside of China.
“I think that there’s a real opportunity to create that,” Musk told employees. “You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so useful and so helpful to your daily life. And I think if we could achieve that, or even close to that with Twitter, it would be an immense success.”
Will an ‘everything app’ work outside of Asia?
WeChat took off in China because of the unique internet landscape there, one where many American online services such as Twitter and Google are blocked. This has given a chance for homegrown technology firms to establish dominance in the internet space.
Tencent is one of these. With WeChat it operates the biggest messaging service in the country. WeChat Pay is one of the two biggest mobile payments services in China, the other being Alipay which is run by Ant Group, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba
.
Alipay itself is also another super app.
Tencent has managed to create an app this size because it runs its own payments and social media service. But the company has also invested in other major companies like e-commerce firm JD.com and and food delivery company Meituan. This has allowed Tencent to integrate their services into WeChat. Tencent is also one of the world’s biggest online gaming companies and that has given it further content to put within WeChat.
Developers can also create so-called “mini programs” within WeChat. These are stripped down versions of full apps but it means a user doesn’t have to download dozens of other apps and can just use WeChat for nearly everything.
In parts of southeast Asia, ride-hailing firm Grab has expanded into financial services and food delivery, in the absence of a plethora of rivals.
Creating a super app in the U.S. or Europe may be much more of a challenge. Online payments, an area Musk wants to push into, are fragmented with no single company dominating the space. U.S. and Europe still rely heavily on debit and credit card systems of payment. Payments in China are done with a quick response or QR code, which is different to the U.S. and Europe.
In ride-hailing and food delivery, there is big competition. Naturally, Musk’s X will be a challenger to other social media companies like those under Meta’s umbrella. That could make collaboration with other firms tough.
These are just some of the challenges and that’s without going into areas such as competition in advertising and who owns the data in the event X collaborates with other firms.
But also there is an opportunity for X in that Musk sees it more as a broader communication app rather than just short posts. He has dramatically increased the character limits for posts for people who subscribe to Twitter Blue, for example. That could be a starting point, to turn Twitter into more of a communication tool that keeps users hooked. Then Musk could think about adding other tools like payments that he has already hinted at.
Ultimately though, trying to turn X into anything like WeChat is going to be a mammoth task, not least because the factors that has helped the Chinese app’s success — whether its a mobile-first market in China or a more concentrated number of players in the internet space — are not present in the U.S. or Europe.
by ti-amie Isaac Ostlund
@IsaacOstlund@mastodon.world
NPR's operating budget is $300 M, and 1%, or $3 M is funded by federal subsidies
The LA Times calculates the federal subsidies Musk's companies have received at $4.9 B.
Let's be generous and say Musk received those subsidies over a 10 year period, while NPR would have received ~$30 M in subsidies.
4.9 B / 30 M = Musk received 163x what NPR has from "the state."
Who is state funded then?
#elonmusk #npr #twitter
by ponchi101
ti-amie wrote: ↑Sun Jul 30, 2023 7:24 pmElon Musk’s X rebrand reignites his goal to turn Twitter into an app like China’s WeChat
PUBLISHED TUE, JUL 25 20239:16 PM EDT
Arjun Kharpal
@ARJUNKHARPAL
On Monday, Musk officially changed Twitter’s famous bird logo to an “X,” marking his push to change the platform into something more than just a social media service.
“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk said late Monday, re-iterating that the acquisition took place to accelerate the move toward the “everything app.”
Say 'YEEEEAAAHHHH!' if you want a company run by Elon Musk to run your ENTIRE financial world:
And then people wonder how come they were hacked.
And, of course. The Government of China has NO interest in controlling all of its citizens' moves.
by MJ2004 This was my last straw. I deleted the app from my phone this morning as soon as I saw the "x" had replaced "Twitter".
I have accounts on Threads, Discord and Mastodon, but it's a mess with many people, while complaining, still on Twitter.
by ponchi101 No! Don't go! Elon wants to run ALL YOUR FINANCIAL SERVICES!!!!!! It will be swell!
(good for you)
by ti-amie The BBC has set up it's own "instance" or server on Mastodon. Unlike the FT that did this first and took it down the only people who can post in it are those who work for the BBC. The FT let anyone post on theirs and of course chaos ensued.
I'm seeing calls for not only major news outlets to follow suit but for more governments and government agencies to do the same in the FediVerse. That way some slug who's on one can't decide to create a fake account and throw Elmo $8 for the "privilege" of doing so and therefore creating confusion, chaos, and spreading disinformation.
by ti-amieMost of the 100 million people who signed up for Threads stopped using it
"We're seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected," Zuckerberg said.
JON BRODKIN - 7/28/2023, 2:07 PM
Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads, is looking for ways to keep users interested after more than half of the people who signed up for the text-based platform stopped actively using the app, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees in a company town hall yesterday. Threads launched on July 5 and signed up over 100 million users in less than five days, buoyed by user frustration with Elon Musk-owned Twitter.
"Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not there yet," Zuckerberg told employees yesterday, according to Reuters, which listened to audio of the event.
Third-party data suggests that Threads may have lost many more than half of its active users. Daily active users for Threads on Android dropped from 49 million on July 7 to 23.6 million on July 14, and then to 12.6 million on July 23, web analytics company SimilarWeb reported.
"We don't yet have daily numbers for iOS, but we suspect the boom-and-bust pattern is similar," SimilarWeb wrote. "Threads took off like a rocket, with its close linkage to Instagram as the booster. However, the developers of Threads will need to fill in missing features and add some new and unique ones if they want to make checking the app a daily habit for users."
Although losing over half of the initial users in a short period might sound discouraging, the Reuters article said Zuckerberg told employees that user retention was better than Meta executives expected. "Zuckerberg said he considered the drop-off 'normal' and expected retention to grow as the company adds more features to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality," Reuters wrote.
Chief Product Officer Chris Cox also spoke at the company event, reportedly saying that Meta is considering "retention-driving hooks" such as "making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads." Threads is part of Meta's Instagram platform, so users can create a Threads profile as part of their Instagram account.
Zuck: Threads still needs “basic functionality”
When contacted by Ars today, a Meta spokesperson pointed to Zuckerberg's comments from Wednesday's earnings call. Zuckerberg said:
On Threads, briefly, I'm quite optimistic about our trajectory. We saw unprecedented growth out of the gate and more importantly we're seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected. And now, we're focused on retention and improving the basics. And then after that, we'll focus on growing the community to the scale we think is possible. Only after that will we work on monetization. We've run this playbook many times before—with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Stories, Reels, and more—and this is as good of a start as we could have hoped for, so I'm really happy with the path we're on here.
Zuckerberg also told investors that "Threads has been dramatically more than we expected in terms of the adoption and the rate of that... we had a small team working on [it] for a while, but it really kind of blew up and created a big opportunity immediately."
Zuckerberg said "there's still a lot of basic functionality to build" for Threads and talked briefly about the challenge of attracting users to new standalone apps. "We've tried a bunch of standalone experiences over time, and in general, we haven't had a lot of success with building kind of standalone apps," he said.
Threads could succeed in part because of user backlash to Musk's changes at Twitter, now officially called "X," Zuckerberg seemed to suggest. "It could just be that this is such an idiosyncratic case because of all of the factors that are happening around Twitter or X, I guess, it's called now," he said.
Threads is available in about 100 countries, including the US and UK, but is not in the European Union yet because of concerns over compliance with EU regulations. Threads has drawn privacy-related criticisms because of the amount of personal data collected by the app.
by MJ2004 They released Threads too soon. I get that they're trying to capitalize on the Twitter debacle, but exposing audiences to a new product before "necessary" key features are in place is a terrible idea.
I didn't use it until the ability to switch to "Following" was added. That said, I have noticed a slight steady uptick. Some, but certainly not all, of the people I follow are on Threads, and most are not as active as they are on Twitter.
But if anyone has the power to market a new platform, it's FB/Meta. I still have hope.
by ti-amie
MJ2004 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 12:15 am
They released Threads too soon. I get that they're trying to capitalize on the Twitter debacle, but exposing audiences to a new product before "necessary" key features are in place is a terrible idea.
I didn't use it until the ability to switch to "Following" was added. That said, I have noticed a slight steady uptick. Some, but certainly not all, of the people I follow are on Threads, and most are not as active as they are on Twitter.
But if anyone has the power to market a new platform, it's FB/Meta. I still have hope.
I know you should never say never but I got rid of FB a few years ago and will hope to never go near any Zuckerberg associated online application.
by MJ2004
ti-amie wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 1:57 amI know you should never say never but I got rid of FB a few years ago and will hope to never go near any Zuckerberg associated online application.
Same. I haven't used FB in many years. Now without Twitter though I've been checking Instagram and Threads more often. Lesser of two evils? We can't win either way.
by ti-amieUnrelenting Hurricane Dora set to make history by becoming a typhoon
Dora has already made headlines for its role in intensifying Hawaii’s devastating firestorm
By Dan Stillman
August 11, 2023 at 2:29 p.m. EDT
Category 3 Hurricane Dora has made headlines this week for having partially contributed to the winds that whipped up a ferocious firestorm in Hawaii. Now Dora, already having set a record for longevity in the Pacific Ocean, is about to make more history, more than three weeks after being born in a different ocean more than 10,000 miles away.
If Dora maintains hurricane strength, as the Central Pacific Hurricane Center expects when it crosses the international date line late Friday, it will become Typhoon Dora and only the second tropical system on record to remain at hurricane strength across the eastern, central and western Pacific basins. Hurricane John, the longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record, previously accomplished the same feat in 1994.
The international date line is an imaginary line at 180 degrees longitude that separates two calendar days and marks the boundary between the central and western Pacific Ocean. A tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of at least 74 mph is called a hurricane in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean and in the Atlantic, but a typhoon in the western Pacific.
Dora’s journey began all the way back on July 17 when it first emerged as a cluster of clouds and showers, or a tropical wave, in the eastern Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. From there, the tropical wave took a southern track across the Atlantic and did not further develop because of dry and stable air. After crossing Central America on July 28 and 29, the system grew stronger and more organized as it entered the eastern Pacific Ocean, becoming a tropical depression on July 31 and being named Tropical Storm Dora on Aug. 1, once its winds reached 39 mph.
Having traveled nearly 10,000 miles in total, including 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, Dora was the longest-lasting Category 4 hurricane on record in the Pacific before weakening in recent days to a Category 3 storm. Many meteorologists believe the low pressure associated with Dora contributed to the winds that rapidly spread devastating wildfires in Hawaii this week, although there is some debate about how much influence the storm had as it passed about 500 miles south of the Hawaiian islands.
It’s not unprecedented for tropical systems to cross over from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Last year, both Bonnie and Julia made the leap from one ocean to another, marking the first time two storms in one season maintained tropical storm intensity as they crossed over.
However, most hurricanes coming from the eastern Pacific weaken once they enter the central Pacific because of cooler ocean waters, dry air and wind shear, which are winds that increase with altitude and tend to rip storms apart. Dora, though, took on a more compact, doughnut-like shape known as an “annular” hurricane when it reached Category 4 strength.
“That’s important because annular tropical cyclones can wall off the negative factors such as dry air or wind shear longer. They tend to weaken slower than more conventional tropical cyclones,” explained meteorologist Jonathan Erdman in an article on Weather Underground.
Because of increasing shear, Dora is forecast by the Central Pacific Hurricane Center to steadily weaken over the next several days, morphing from a major typhoon to a remnant zone of low pressure with winds of only 35 mph. Remaining over open waters, it is not a threat to land.
Record warm ocean waters have probably contributed to Dora’s longevity and its parent tropical wave across two oceans and 25 days and counting. Those same warm ocean waters have prompted forecasters to increase the number of named storms they are predicting in the Atlantic Ocean this hurricane season.
As for the Pacific Ocean, Dora isn’t the only storm forecasters are monitoring. Typhoon Lan is a Category 4 storm in the western Pacific that is forecast to hit Japan on Monday.
Jason Samenow contributed to this report.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
Zoom Earth
@zoom_earth
·
Aug 9
Same view with satellite imagery:
by dryrunguy I guess I'll put this here? Anyway, I had no idea.
What is a switch? The increasingly popular device can turn a pistol into a fully automatic weapon.
by ponchi101 Ok, but the article does not say "what are they", in the sense of "how do they work".
That is insane, anyway. But we know that the GOP will never allow for any progress on that.
by Owendonovan Gun culture completely escapes me.
by ponchi101 It is impossible to understand. And I can't rule out that the glorification that so many movies do about guns is not, at the very least, a contributing factor.
by ti-amie The latest from Elmo's Xitter...
I guess I'm not the only one who goes on there and immediately blocks blue checks and ads. I've been blocking ads since forever though.
Russia's attempt failed a few weeks ago so... apparently the South Pole landing is crucial for future missions, especially for thos aimed at setting up stations on the moon.
by ponchi101 You beat me to it.
The South Pole is suspected to hold ice, which of course would be crucial for sustaining a population on the Moon. One of the reasons why this mission is so important.
by ashkor87 well, I was watching it live..
strategic global significnce - India is part of a coalition called Artemis, which is led by the US, the Russian (failed) attempt is led by China.
by ti-amie Dan Gillmor
@dangillmor@mastodon.social
So now the deadbird site, formerly known as Twitter, is inviting developers to come back and "build what's next" with the much abused API.
Twitter (and Reddit)'s greed-infused API restrictions wrecked a project we (ASU News Co/Lab) were doing to help journalists send corrections down the same social media pathways as the original journalism.
The idea that we'd ever work with them again is a sick joke.
by ashkor87 A joke in questionable taste,but funny..I apologize in advance..'some countries have the moon on their flags, others have their flags on the moon'
by ponchi101 Nah, that seems alright
(Go ahead, be proud)
by ashkor87
ashkor87 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 23, 2023 1:28 pm
well, I was watching it live..
strategic global significnce - India is part of a coalition called Artemis, which is led by the US, the Russian (failed) attempt is led by China.
The entire mission had a budget of $75 million..less than a movie like Interstellar at usd 125 million. Which others can learn from, and redeploy, going forward.
by OploskoffieTantalising sign of possible life on faraway world
Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope may have discovered tentative evidence of a sign of life on a faraway planet.
I love this. Seriously. One of the things I hope to experience in my remaining time on this planet is confirmation of life elsewhere, regardless of the amount of cells it is made up of. The JWST won't be the one to prove it conclusively by any means, but first steps like this one? Yay!
by ponchi101 I so would like that question to be answered, indeed.
by ti-amie Alex :yikes:
@amorphophalex@mastodon.social
sometimes I'm made to do a captcha that's obviously trying to get me to train AI images
that means eventually AI will be able to detect and complete captcha and facilitate bots and spam
by ti-amie Flipboard News Desk
@NewsDesk@flipboard.social
FEMA and the FCC are testing their emergency alert systems Wednesday, sending an alarm to cellphones nationwide even if the devices are set to opt-out of them. Social media users are sending out an alert of their own ahead of the test, saying vulnerable people with secret cell phones, such as domestic violence victims, should turn off their device.
The tests will start at 2:20p
This is obviously for the US only.
by ti-amie So Elmo, in his great wisdom, has removed links to news articles posted by news organizations. So on Xitter you see a post by, say the AP but can't link to the article. The same with the BBC and the huge airport fire they're dealing with tonight.
Can someone explain how this doesn't turn Xitter into a "headline news" site?
by ti-amie An update on links to articles on Xitter. The news orgs are posting pictures and embedding the links in them.
by Suliso Any of you watched SpaceX Starship second test flight? I could not as we were very high in the mountains. I'm reading it's a huge improvement from the first (max Q and stage separation achieved), but also more work to be done since both stages had to be destroyed later on due to malfunction. I think the key question for now will be about ground infrastructure. Visually looks ok.
by ti-amieSpaceX’s Starship Lost Shortly After Launch of Second Test Flight
This is SpaceX’s second attempt at sending Starship on a round-the-globe trip, following an April test flight that failed after only four minutes. This one lasted a few minutes longer.
SpaceX’s Starship failed its test flight this morning when the automated flight termination system triggered, and engineers lost contact with the craft about 10 minutes into its journey. This marks the company’s second attempt at sending a Starship on a near-orbital trip, a 90-minute voyage that would have gone almost around the world. An initial test flight also failed in April, exploding four minutes after liftoff and flinging debris throughout the surrounding area.
As before, today’s launch took place at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. But this time, all of the 33 Raptor engines appeared to ignite properly, and the Starship’s stage separation from the Super Heavy booster worked more or less as planned. The vehicle survived max q, or the point in its ascent when it’s under the most pressure from the atmosphere and its own velocity. About three minutes after launch, the Starship successfully separated from the Super Heavy booster, after which the booster exploded, something SpaceX officials typically refer to with the euphemism “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” or RUD.
“So far today has been incredibly successful, even with the RUD of the Super Heavy booster,” said Kate Tice, SpaceX’s quality systems engineer on the company’s webcast.
But before Starship could reach orbit, SpaceX mission control lost contact with it and stopped receiving data. At about 12 minutes into the flight, the automated flight termination system triggered—aborting the flight and making the second stage undergo RUD, too.
If Starship had successfully flown, it would have reached an altitude of about 146 miles and was planned to splash down at around 8:30 central time off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii.
This is the second time that a Starship test flight has gotten off to a promising start but failed several minutes into the flight. According to a statement on the company’s website, SpaceX later determined that in the first few minutes of the April flight, propellant leaked from the Super Heavy booster and caused fires that severed the connection with the primary flight computer. That’s why the upper stage and booster failed to separate, SpaceX concluded. Engineers lost control of the vehicle and had to abort, blowing the rocket up with the flight termination system.
The first, brief test flight on April 20 “provided numerous lessons learned,” SpaceX officials said in a statement posted on the company’s website on November 10. The April explosion destroyed the launch pad, causing what SpaceX CEO Elon Musk described as a “rock tornado,” and rained debris onto the surrounding area. As a result, SpaceX and the US Federal Aviation Administration conducted a joint “mishap investigation.” Officials from NASA and the US National Transportation Safety Board served as observers. The FAA completed that process on September 8, stating SpaceX had to deal with 63 issues to mitigate debris, redesign vehicle hardware to prevent fires and leaks, and redesign the launch pad before Starship could fly again.
SpaceX’s subsequent upgrades to the rocket included “a hot-stage separation system and an electronic thrust vector control system for the Super Heavy’s engines,” and their improvements to the launch infrastructure included “reinforcements to the pad foundation and a water-cooled steel flame deflector,” according to the November 10 statement.
Meanwhile, as part of the process, the US Fish and Wildlife Service was required to look into the local environmental effects of the upgraded Boca Chica launch site, which sits next to a wildlife refuge and a public beach. The agency began that review in October. Several threatened and endangered species live in the area, including the Gulf Coast jaguarundi, ocelot, five species of sea turtles, and birds like the piping plover, red knot, and Northern aplomado falcon.
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Also in October, apparently frustrated by the long regulatory process, senior SpaceX officials, including William Gerstenmaier, the company’s vice president for build and flight reliability, conducted rare media interviews arguing that regulators aren’t keeping up with the pace of industry. Gerstenmaier and other space industry executives also participated in a US Senate hearing, which did not include FAA officials, calling for streamlined regulations and more FAA resources for issuing launch licenses. Meanwhile, Musk complained on X about all the rules and regulations. “Each passing year, we tie ourselves down with more and more strings, until, like Gulliver, we can no longer move,” he wrote.
The FAA did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about the time needed for the mishap investigation and review prior to the new launch license.
The FAA finished the safety portion of its review on October 31, and the Fish and Wildlife Service finished its environmental assessment on November 15. The agency concluded that the upgraded launch site and rocket do not introduce new environmental risks. The FAA’s launch authorization for today’s Starship flight came immediately afterward—only two days before November 17, when a potential government shutdown could have closed both agencies and delayed the launch authorization. “The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency wrote in a statement.
The most important upgrade, which the Fish and Wildlife officials focused their attention on, was SpaceX’s new water deluge system. After the first launch, the agency’s biologists were reportedly in disbelief that SpaceX, at the time, lacked flame suppression technology like this for Starship—an industry and space agency standard. Such systems are designed to dissipate some of the heat and noise generated by a rocket. SpaceX’s new system involves flooding 358,000 gallons of water from ground tanks into steel plates and releasing them through holes in the plating, as the Fish and Wildlife assessment describes it. In April, Musk characterized it as a “massive super strong steel shower head pointing up.”
Assessments of this second test flight will show whether SpaceX’s new system is effective at reducing debris and pollution. What’s clear is that not having such a system won’t work. “Steel is a ductile material rather than a brittle one, and it can’t fracture like concrete did” on the first launch, says Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida who studies space economics. “Our analysis showed that the concrete fractured, the pressure drove hot gas through the cracks. The launch put the pad under tension, and it blew apart. It was literally an explosion, comparable to a small volcanic eruption.” But Metzger believes the new deluge system will solve this problem and there are no significant risks of debris or contaminated deluge water.
The Fish and Wildlife analysis included examining the water following SpaceX’s static fire tests in August. They found high levels of chromium and zinc (components of stainless steel) and aluminum and iron in the water, but a subsequent test found lower concentrations of those metals. That won’t assuage the concerns of environmentalists, like David Newstead, an environmental scientist at the Texas’s Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program. “That deluge water goes gushing out into the neighboring wildlife refuge, and I wouldn’t want it happening next door to me,” he says.
On May 1, local and environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the FAA and SpaceX alleging that the FAA failed to fully investigate the potential environmental harms from the SpaceX Starship program at Boca Chica. That suit remains ongoing. SpaceX did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
SpaceX and its partners are counting on Starship to fly safely within the next two or three years. The company will need many more flights in order to test rocket and spacecraft hardware and software, and how well the heat shield fares on reentry. SpaceX is working to fulfill its big NASA moon landing contracts for the Artemis 3 and 4 missions in 2026 and 2028. (Weeks after the first Starship test flight failed, NASA announced a moon lander contract with SpaceX competitor Blue Origin for the Artemis 5 moon mission in 2029.)
SpaceX also has crewed spaceflights with private passengers aboard Starship planned for later this decade: for the DearMoon project, financed by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, and for the third Polaris Program spaceflight, led by Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments. In 2021, Isaacman flew on Inspiration4, SpaceX’s first all-civilian Crew Dragon flight, and will also lead the first Polaris flight aboard a SpaceX Dragon early next year, which will include up to five days in Earth orbit and the first commercial spacewalk.
As usual Scott Manley provides an excellent unbiased technical assesment.
by ti-amie Jason Koebler
@jasonkoebler@mastodon.social
New: Firefox users have reported an "artificial" 5-second delay when they try to load YouTube videos that is magically fixed if they use Chrome, which has been going viral in a few different places. I asked Google what is going on. They
1) Didn't deny the artificial wait time is happening
2) Said it's part of its war on ad blockers, not targeted at Firefox
Mozilla also told me no indication this is targeted at Firefox
This explanation, I think, is actually crazier. Google is introducing quality of life problems to adblock users without telling them why their experience is getting worse.
I think this is actually the bigger risk associated with YT's anti adblock campaign. Google is tinkering with things constantly, and rolling out different detection methods and making user experience worse in a haphazard way. People rightly then have no idea what's going on or why this has happened
This throttling story was on top of HackerNews, top of r/technology, top of r/youtube, top of r/firefox. People are very mad, and it's a result of constant tinkering that affects some people but not others ... just ... why would you do this
Dr. Sbaitso
@drsbaitso@infosec.exchange
@jasonkoebler Because YouTube has no functional competition. They do what they want because they can ...
by ti-amieOpenAI future in chaos as most workers threaten to leave for Microsoft
Former CEO Sam Altman could still return to OpenAI, despite Microsoft announcing he would join the tech giant
By Nitasha Tiku, Pranshu Verma and Gerrit De Vynck
Updated November 20, 2023 at 7:08 p.m. EST|Published November 20, 2023 at 11:15 a.m. EST
The future of OpenAI was thrown into chaos Monday after nearly all employees at the artificial intelligence company threatened to quit and join ousted chief executive Sam Altman at Microsoft if he isn’t reinstated as CEO, extending the dramatic Silicon Valley boardroom saga.
More than 700 of the company’s roughly 770 employees have signed a letter threatening to quit unless the current board resigns and reappoints Altman, according to a person familiar with the matter. In a bizarre twist, the letter included among the signatories Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and a key member of the company’s four-person board, who voted to oust Altman on Friday.
“Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI,” the employees wrote in the letter. “We are unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgment and care for our mission and employees.”
The potential mass exodus at OpenAI puts the future of the lab in doubt, a drastic change of fate for a company that, until just days ago, was considered one of the most promising start-ups in Silicon Valley with a valuation close to $90 billion. Its demise would leave a gaping hole in the center of the AI industry and potentially force thousands of start-ups to find a new provider of AI technology or face the prospect of shutting down. That could allow Big Tech giants to amass more control over powerful new AI technology, which is rapidly making its way into everyday life. Microsoft especially appeared poised to emerge as a winner, potentially gaining significant AI talent. Still, the chaos at OpenAI, which was already giving its technology to Microsoft as part of a partnership, could also affect Microsoft’s future AI products, which have relied heavily on OpenAI tech.
In a media blitz Monday afternoon, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sought to assure customers and investors that his company was on solid ground no matter the outcome. He left the door open to Altman returning to OpenAI or continuing on as an AI leader at Microsoft, even though he announced late Sunday night that Altman was coming to Microsoft. “I’m open to both options,” Nadella said in an interview on CNBC.
Altman too, has signaled he could still return. “We are all going to work together some way or other,” he said in a post on X Monday morning. He added that the “top priority remains to ensure OpenAI continues to thrive. We are committed to fully providing continuity of operations to our partners and customers.”
That leaves the fate of Altman and OpenAI unclear, three full days after the board fired him.
Regardless of the messaging, OpenAI employees continued to express their frustration and anger. Jan Leike, a senior OpenAI executive and respected researcher in the broader AI community who on Sunday was seen going into and out of the company’s offices, said Monday on X that “the OpenAI board should resign.”
Employees who signed the letter include other senior executives such as chief technology officer Mira Murati, who had been named interim CEO by the board on Friday but was replaced by Emmett Shear on Sunday; chief operating officer Brad Lightcap; chief strategy officer Jason Kwon; and head of safety Lillian Weng. Many of the company’s top researchers, AI luminaries who can command salaries in the tens of millions of dollars, also signed, including Wojciech Zaremba, Alec Radford and Bob McCrew. Without them, OpenAI would struggle to keep up with other research labs run by Google, Facebook and Anthropic AI.
by ti-amieElon Musk tells boycotting X advertisers “Go f*** yourself”
Musk says X advertiser backlash is "going to kill the company."
JON BRODKIN - 11/29/2023, 7:53 PM
Elon Musk addressed an antisemitism controversy in characteristically unwise fashion during a public interview today, telling businesses to "go (expletive) yourself" and to stop advertising on the social network formerly named Twitter.
Musk spoke on stage at The New York Times' DealBook Summit in an interview conducted by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. Sorkin asked Musk about trying to gain back advertising from businesses that pulled ads from X after Musk posted a favorable response to an antisemitic tweet.
"I hope they stop. Don't advertise," Musk said in response to Sorkin's question (see video).
Perplexed, Sorkin asked, "you don't want them to advertise?"
"No," Musk responded. "What do you mean?" Sorkin asked.
"If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go (expletive) yourself," Musk said.
Sorkin replied, "but," and trailed off. Musk wasn't done. "Go (expletive) yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey, Bob!" Musk said. Musk was apparently addressing Disney CEO Bob Iger, who previously said at the conference that advertising on X "was not necessarily a positive" association and so Disney "decided we would pull our advertising."
Musk: “It’s going to kill the company”
Sorkin pressed Musk on the economics of pushing away advertisers, pointing out that X CEO "Linda Yaccarino is right here and she's got to sell advertising." Musk responded that the advertising boycott is likely to kill the company. "What this advertising boycott is going to do is it's going to kill the company, and the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail," Musk said.
Even before the latest controversy, Musk's X platform was struggling financially. When Sorkin pointed out that advertisers see things differently, Musk replied, "oh yeah? tell it to Earth."
Sorkin continued: "They're going to say, Elon, that you killed the company because you said these things and they were inappropriate things and they didn't feel comfortable on the platform. That's what they're going to say."
"And let's see how Earth responds to that," Musk replied.
Despite that exchange, Musk said he regretted making the post that kicked off the advertiser boycott. "I should in retrospect not have replied to that one person and should have written in greater length what I meant," Musk reportedly said. "But those clarifications were ignored by the media and essentially I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and arguably to those who are antisemitic. And for that I'm quite sorry, that was not my intention."
Musk also called it, "one of the most foolish—if not the most foolish—thing I've done on the platform."
On November 15, Musk replied, "You have said the actual truth" to an X post that said Jewish communities are "pushing hatred against whites." A White House spokesperson condemned Musk's post as "abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate."
by Oploskoffie When X collapses, and I truly hope it does, I'll feel even more sorry for the thousands of employees, current and past, who poured their heart and soul into making Twitter a success and got Musk instead. Was this downward spiral and possible end ever anything other than a matter of when, not if? The fact alone that he thinks the Earth needs his version of free speech, that hardly anything is ever his fault, that (in my opinion anyway) he bought Twitter as a means to give himself the biggest possible medium to further build the Cult Of Elon... I'm surprised it took advertisers this long to exit.
by ti-amie The video is simply amazing. The man doing the interview was almost stunned into silence before his reporters training kicked in. Elmo's response was that of a person who had just delivered a great speech, looking around like "wasn't that great?"
I hope his fanboys really look at the video.
by ti-amie All you need to know about Xitter as of today.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie I was reading comments of people trying to explain MAGAt behavior and someone mentioned that maybe they don't have an internal dialogue as part of their psychological makeup.
I am absolutely shocked that people live like that.
Do You Have an Internal Dialogue? Not Everyone Does
By: Nathan Chandler & Desiree Bowie | Updated: Oct 10, 2023
Have you ever thought about how you think? Ever tell yourself, "Don't forget the milk," before you leave home? And at the end of the day, when you get home without it, you say to yourself, "How could I have forgotten that?" Then you likely have an internal dialogue going on in your head throughout the day.
Turns out, it's not uncommon to use language-based chatter to organize and focus your thoughts. However, some people don't have this kind of inner convo at all. Instead, they may rely more on visualization (for instance, "seeing themselves" buying the milk at the store). Others employ a combination of these techniques.
Let's take a closer look at the science behind inner speech and some of its potential causes.
Contents
What Is the Inner Voice?
Studying Inner Speech
What Causes an Internal Monologue?
Managing Your Internal Dialogue
What Is the Inner Voice?
Inner voice — also known as an internal dialogue, internal monologue or inner speech — refers to the ongoing, often subconscious, stream of thoughts, feelings and inner conversations that occur within a person's mind. Unlike external speech where you use your voice to communicate with yourself or others, the inner voice is how people think and communicate with themselves internally — in other words, the little voice in your head.
The inner voice can encompass a wide range of thoughts and emotions, including self-reflection, problem-solving, self-criticism, planning, decision-making and even daydreaming.
The Role of the Inner Voice
The inner voice is a fundamental aspect of human cognition and consciousness. It plays a significant role in shaping our perceptions, attitudes and behavior. It can influence how we interpret events, make choices and respond to various situations.
It is also a key component of self-awareness and introspection, allowing individuals to reflect on their experiences, beliefs and emotions.
For example, when faced with a challenging decision, a person may engage in internal dialogue by weighing the pros and cons, considering their values and priorities and ultimately arriving at a choice. Alternatively, when experiencing stress or anxiety, internal dialogue may involve self-calming techniques or negative self-talk that can either exacerbate or alleviate the emotional state.
Understanding and managing one's internal speech is a common goal in various psychological and therapeutic approaches, as it can have a huge impact on mental well-being and behavior.
In fact, techniques, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), often involve identifying and modifying unhelpful or distorted thought patterns within one's internal dialogue to promote healthier thinking and coping strategies.
Studying Inner Speech
People on both sides of this "inner monologue" divide have a hard time imagining another way of being — to the point that it sort of freaked everyone out during an online debate that went viral in February 2020.
Russell Hurlburt is a psychology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For decades, he's been doing experiments on people's inner experiences, their thoughts, feelings and sensations. Regarding the viral kerfuffle over the inner speech haves and have nots, he chuckles a bit and says he frequently hears people claim that they have an ever-present inner monologue — but his experiments show that this is not always true.
But rather than argue with them, he says, "Well, let's find out."
The Beeper Study
His quest to understand internal experiences kicked off decades ago. As a graduate student in the early '70s, he began wondering how scientists could investigate subjects' pristine inner experiences — or experiences that are in your present consciousness, before your brain has tried to make sense of them or assigned them some sort of interpretation.
"The object of my research is not to explore inner speech or inner monologue or whatever you want to call it, but to explore your experience as it actually is," says Hurlburt.
For the test, Hurlburt, who has an engineering background, designed and patented a device that beeped at irregular intervals. Each time the beeper went off, he asked subjects (students, in this case) to make notes about their experiences in that moment.
The students were instructed to try and clarify what was happening in their minds whenever the device emitted a beep — but the beeper only went off a few times. This cadence was intentional so that the research subjects would forget that they had them (and thus, not contaminate their thinking processes with thoughts about the experiment).
Descriptive Experience Sampling
Later, researchers asked the students questions to better understand how they were thinking when the beepers sounded. Were they visualizing something? Experiencing a tactile sensation? Feeling an emotion? This line of inquiry is called Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES).
He says one key takeaway was that, "You can't expect a good answer on the first day." Essentially, it takes a day or two of DES training before people find ways to focus on and express what they're experiencing in a given moment.
In his research, he found that most subjects struggled to articulate the way they were talking to themselves. When he asked them for the specific words or sentences, many came up blank. "And in the course of doing that, you and I together, I guess you would say, we decide, 'Well, I thought I had inner speech, but I really don't.'"
Hurlburt's study found that subjects talked to themselves inwardly about 26 percent of the time they were sampled. Many never experienced inner speech while others had it 75 percent of the time (the median percentage was 20 percent.)
Hurlburt has worked with other researchers, like Charles Fernyhough, to use DES questioning while subjects were inside MRI scanners. In a 2018 study of just five subjects, the scanner showed that the area of the brain associated with certain topics lit up when subjects said they were thinking about those things, providing a physical link to the abstractions of thoughts themselves.
Still, scientists are grappling with a lot of uncertainty.
What Causes an Internal Monologue?
Some research shows that people often use more inner verbalization when they're under pressure or for self-motivation. Perhaps, they're using their inner voices to rehearse answers to job interview questions, or they're athletes trying to focus and execute.
Among people who do report having inner monologues, they tend to perceive those voices as their own. That self-talk generally has a familiar pace and tone, although the exact voice might change depending on whether the current scenario is happy, scary or relaxed. They may use whole sentences or rely on condensed wordplay that would be meaningless to anyone else.
But what causes inner speech? A researcher at the University of British Columbia, Mark Scott, found that there is a brain signal called "corollary discharge" that helps us distinguish between sensory experiences we create internally versus those from outside stimuli — and this signal plays a big role in internal speech.
Corollary discharge also plays a role in how our auditory systems process speech. When we speak, there is an internal copy of the sound of our voice generated at the same time as our speaking voice. In other terms, we hear our own voice one way while we speak words out loud.
Managing Your Internal Dialogue
Learning how to manage your internal dialogue effectively can have a profound impact on your mental well-being, self-esteem, decision-making and overall life satisfaction. Here are some strategies that may help:
Mindfulness meditation: Practicing mindfulness meditation can help you become more aware of your inner thoughts without judgment. This awareness can help you identify unhelpful or negative thought patterns and replace them with more positive and constructive ones.
Challenge negative thoughts: When you notice negative or self-critical thoughts, challenge them by asking yourself if they are based on evidence, whether they are rational and if there are alternative, more balanced perspectives. Cognitive-behavioral techniques are often used for this purpose.
Positive affirmations: Incorporate positive affirmations into your inner speech that can counteract negative self-talk. For example, if you're feeling anxious about a presentation, you can say to yourself, "I am capable, and I can handle this."
Practice self-compassion: Treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding that you would offer to a friend. Be aware of your inner critic and counter it with self-compassion and self-encouragement.
Visualization: Use visualization techniques to imagine successful outcomes and positive scenarios. This can help shift your internal dialogue from focusing on potential failures to visualizing your desired achievements.
Journaling: Write down your thoughts and feelings, especially when you're facing challenges or making important decisions to externalize your internal dialogue. This can provide clarity and allow you to analyze your thought patterns.
Seek support: Talk to a trusted friend, family member or therapist about your internal dialogue. Sometimes, discussing your thoughts and feelings with others can provide valuable insights and emotional support.
Practice gratitude: Regularly reflect on the things you're grateful for in your life. This can help shift your inner voice toward a more positive place.
Limit exposure to negative influences: Be mindful of the media you consume, the people you surround yourself with and the environments you expose yourself to. Limit exposure to negative influences that can fuel pessimistic internal dialogue.
Set realistic expectations: Sometimes, unrealistic expectations can lead to negative self-talk, so try to set achievable goals — and remember that no one is perfect. Embrace your imperfections and learn from your mistakes.
Focus on the present: Instead of dwelling on past mistakes or worrying excessively about the future, try to stay focused on the present moment. Mindfulness practices can help with this, as they encourage you to be fully present.
This article was updated in conjunction with AI technology, then fact-checked and edited by a HowStuffWorks editor.
by ti-amieWhat it's like living without an inner monologue
A look at the inner experience and the science behind it
Alex Soloducha · CBC News · Posted: Mar 06, 2020 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: March 6, 2020
This story originally published on March 6, 2020.
Hi there! Are you hearing this sentence in your head right now? Is your inner critic voicing its thoughts on the sentence structure? Is it saying this is an odd start to a news story?
The concept of an inner monologue — the term now commonly used to describe the voice in your head — recently sparked a flurry of discussion on social media.
A tweet by @KylePlantEmoji and subsequent blog post by Ryan Langdon brought the topic into the forefront, informing the internet that not everyone has an inner monologue.
Some people freaked out, not believing that some don't think in a verbal, linear way.
Others who live without that inner voice realized they think differently than many of their friends and family members.
Olivia Rivera, 22, said she figured out she doesn't have an internal monologue when her co-workers at a Regina salon started talking about the viral debate.
She said that until then, she didn't know that some people actually have a voice in their head that sounds like their own voice.
"When I hear that other people have like a constant kind of dialogue and stream in their head and that when they're doing a task they'll just be thinking about things the entire time they're doing a task, it actually kind of feels a little overwhelming," she said. "How do you deal with that and what does that feel like?"
Inner monologues and pop culture
You may have seen inner monologue portrayed in TV shows where a detective debriefs the situation via narration. Or maybe you've seen the movie What Women Want, where Mel Gibson's character can read the minds of his female coworkers and romantic interests.
Rivera said she was first confronted with the concept of inner voice as a child, watching the show Lizzie McGuire in which a small animated version of the main character shared her thoughts and commentary on what was happening.
Rivera said she never understood the explanatory device was supposed to mimic the voice inside the character's head.
"I always thought it was something that people just manifested and made up for movies and books and characters just to kind of like explain your inner thought process," Rivera said. "I didn't realize that it was actually that constant for people, that people did actually have a little kind of voice in their head telling them different things and what to do and what to think.
"I don't have that so that's always been weird to me."
So what does Rivera's mind look like? She described her inner thoughts as jot notes.
She said that if she was running late for work, she would know she was late but wouldn't be thinking, "I'm late. I need to stop sleeping in. I need to go to bed earlier, etc."
If she is having a panic attack, her anxiety manifests in more of a physical way, rather than with compulsive, repetitive thoughts.
"I'm not telling myself to panic and I'm not like, 'Oh my gosh Olivia!'" she said. "I never think like that, that feels weird to say. I would never address myself."
Other times, Rivera said, she thinks in a more visual way.
She does have songs just pop into her head. In those cases she will hear it in the singer's voice.
The science of 'inner experience'
Russell Hurlburt, a psychology professor at the University of Nevada, has been studying what he calls inner experience for more than 40 years.
"It's the most interesting topic on the planet," he said.
He has written six books on it and worked with hundreds of participants. He gives them each a beeper and when it goes off at random times throughout the day, they have to note what's going on in their minds. He said people generally think in five ways. Some people experience them all.
The 5 main ways of thinking:
Inner speaking/ inner monologue - Ex. talking to yourself, hearing your voice or someone else or audibly recalling a phone number.
Inner seeing/ visual imagery - Thoughts with a visual symbol. Ex. picturing a memory or a place you wish you lived.
Feelings - A conscious experience of emotional process. Ex. feeling sad after the death of a loved one.
Unsymbolized thinking - No word or image associated with thoughts. Ex. pouring your morning coffee without telling yourself to.
Sensory awareness- Paying attention to a sensory aspect of the environment for an unimportant reason. Ex. hearing someone talk but seeing the light reflecting off their glasses.
According to Hulburt, not many people have an inner monologue 100 per cent of the time, but most do sometimes. He estimates that inner monologue is a frequent thing for 30 to 50 per cent of people.
"There are very big individual differences," he said, "Some people have absolutely none and some people have pretty close to 100 per cent."
The pros and cons of inner monologues
People who don't have an active inner monologue can teach themselves to, Hulburt said. But he doesn't think it's necessarily a good or bad thing.
Hulburt said having an inner monologue can make it easier for people to create a sequential plan and solve logical problems, but other ways of thinking have benefits too.
"People who see visual imagery very often see imagery that doesn't exist in the real world," Hulburt said. "People who are given credit for being imaginative probably don't have much of an inner monologue."
Rivera said not having an inner monologue has been good for her in some ways, because she can block out negative memories or thoughts relatively easily.
It also brought some challenges. She said that when she was growing up, her mother often told her to think before she spoke, but she couldn't.
"I can be blunt and I can have no filter. Sometimes I say things I shouldn't say," she said. "People often know what I'm thinking because I will say exactly what I'm thinking."
Do you really have an inner monologue all the time?
Hurlburt said the recent buzz around inner experience is a good thing if it leads people to explore what's really going on in their minds rather than believing it is one way and not questioning it.
"I think most people are mistaken about it," said Hurlburt. "People are hyper-confident. 'Yes I have inner monologue.' And other people say, 'No I don't have a monologue.' And the chances are pretty good that both sides of the debate are mistaken."
Hurlburt said what he calls "armchair introspection" likely won't teach you much about your own mind because the act of paying attention "screws up your everyday inner life."
Rivera said the online discussion prompted a real life one between her and her partner about how they both think. He has an inner monologue and was surprised to find out she doesn't, she said.
"I think it is something that we should know more about because I think that helps knowing how other people think," she said. "You can kind of react better and maybe expect less or more for a situation because you can understand how they might be actually thinking."
by ponchi101 My internal dialogue is so constant I have to make efforts to STFU myself.
Indeed, incredible (to me) to find out some people don't have it.
by Suliso SpaceX narrowly missed the self advertised 100 launches this year ending with 98 (91 Falcon 9, 5 Falcon Heavy and 2 Starship test flights). All perfectly succesful except of course those two test flights. The previous record by a single rocket family was 63. They're now promising up to 144 flights next year.
The next best in the Western world are Rocket lab and United Launch Alliance with 10 and 3 launches respectively. France based Arianspace launched twice. Also two successfull launches out of Japan, one from South Korea and 3-4 from India.
I couldn't find the latest data, but a month ago China stood at 54 (1 failure) and Russia at 15.
This has been the busiest year for rocket launches ever.
by skatingfan SpaceX has benefited from having Musk's attention on Twitter.
by Suliso SpaceX is Musk's best company. Not as big as Tesla, but in my opinion at least more innovative and further ahead of competition.
The bottom line is 222 launches with 210 fully succesfull.
by skatingfan Dennis Mersereau
Digital Journalist
Published on Dec. 30, 2023, 7:58 PM
It’s been more than 700 days since the last inch of snow for tens of millions of Americans
Snow days are a thing of the past for an entire generation of kids as online learning replaces sledding and snowball fights during those stormy winter days. But snow days typically require…well, snow, which also seems like a of the past for tens of millions of Americans enduring an unprecedented snow drought from Washington, D.C., to New York City. Many cities are pushing 700 days since their last inch (2 cm) of measurable snowfall from a single storm, which is a tremendous streak that rivals the longest snow-free stretches ever recorded in Canada.
700+ days without enough snow to sweep
The epic snow drought along the densely populated Interstate 95 corridor from New York down through Virginia is truly impressive—and there’s no sign of snow any time soon. New York City’s Times Square is the centre of the world for one glistening moment at the beginning of each year. But the only sparkle in the sky over the city that never sleeps this weekend is the light shining through thousands of crystal panels that adorn the ball that’ll drop to inaugurate 2024.
U.S. Snow Drought 2023
It’s been 685 days since New York City’s Central Park has seen at least 1 in (2 cm) of snow in a single day, which is nearly twice as long as the station’s previous snow-free record. Any records in Central Park are exceptionally impressive given that the site has one of the deepest weather books in North America. Routine observations started there all the way back in 1869—just four years after the end of the U.S. Civil War, and two years after Canadian Confederation. Similar historic snow droughts are ongoing down the coast in Philadelphia (700 days), Atlantic City (699 days), Baltimore (701 days), and in Washington and Richmond (713 days).
US East Coast Average Seasonal Snow
These cities typically see at least a few healthy snowfalls every season. New York City averages about 75 cm of snow every winter, while the milder Washington, D.C., picks up about 35 cm in a normal season. Another nearby city that enjoys a wealth of weather data will also set its own grim snowfall record. Charlotte, N.C., logged its first completely snowless calendar year—without so much as a trace of snow reported—for the first time since records started there in 1878.
Few Canadian cities have gone so long without meaningful snow
It’s hard to fathom going such a long time without snow anywhere in Canada. The longest Toronto’s ever gone without at least 2 cm of snow was 323 days between February 2006 and January 2007. Only folks along British Columbia’s mild coast have seen a similar streak of snow-free conditions, with their all-time records set during the warm period between 2013 and 2016.
Canada Longest Snow Drought
Tofino didn’t report accumulating snowfall between December 6, 2013, and December 21, 2015, a streak that lasted a whopping 747 days to set the benchmark among major Canadian cities. Victoria endured a 670-day stretch without measurable snow, while Vancouver’s longest snow-free streak lasted 402 days.
Last year saw one of the region’s warmest-ever winters
The driving force behind the U.S. East Coast’s tremendous snow drought is the combination of very warm temperatures and an unfavourable storm track. Despite the widespread cold snap that gripped much of North America last winter, the season still came in as the warmest ever recorded for much of the eastern half of the continent. Down in Washington, D.C., the season’s average temperature came in at about 6.6°C, more than 2.5°C above average for a typical winter. New York City’s Central Park saw its second-warmest winter on record (again, that’s since 1869!), where the season’s average temperature of 5.0°C landed on par with the nation’s capital in terms of climbing above seasonal. Even when cold air does manage to spill toward the East Coast, any storms rolling through the region take tracks unfavourable to snow. Earlier this December, the same storm that brought historic rains to Quebec sent temperatures soaring as high as 17°C around New York City. Last year, many of the region’s storms missed west with snow in Ontario, or entirely missed to the east with a track toward Atlantic Canada.
U.S. Winter Forecast 2023-2024
Even though these record streaks are safe through at least the first week of January, winter is far from over along the U.S. East Coast. El Niño winters are infamous for major storms that tend to roll up the Atlantic seaboard. An active jet stream parked over the southern states frequently spins up low-pressure systems that can track up the coast. If these moisture-laden storms coincide with a burst of cold air flooding down from Canada, they can generate memorable snows from the Carolinas straight up into Atlantic Canada. Given the nature of nor’easters, those snow-starved cities along the Interstate 95 corridor are uniquely positioned to see some of the most intense snowstorms possible south of the border.
by ponchi101 Same for many regions in Europe.
Which, of course, means economic death for many skiing areas of the past.
by ashkor87 Have you noticed..though the days are getting longer after the solstice, sunrise is a bit later every day, until Jan 29
Reason is, at this point, the earth, in its elliptical orbit, is moving at its fastest around the sun..as it rotates, the first rays of the sun fall on it a bit later, in the northern hemisphere .
Robs me of a couple minutes play every morning!
by ponchi101 I did not know that fact. Txs
by ashkor87
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2024 3:24 pm
I did not know that fact. Txs
I only came to notice it because I found my tennis getting more and more delayed, so I researched it...
by ponchi101 I know there is an intrinsically ridiculous thing in posting this in a web-based forum, but I came across this. The Twitter post in is spanish, but the gist is:
NOBODY ENJOYING THE MOMENT. Everybody glued to their phones and, as the year came to an end, nobody hugged or kissed a person next to them.
by Owendonovan Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation, but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long Gone
Civil rights lawyers and Democrats are sounding alarms about Mr. Musk’s claims about voting. The Biden campaign called his posts “profoundly irresponsible.” By Jim Rutenberg and Kate Conger
I'm grateful to not feel any need, or want, to click any twitter link or visit that cesspool. The likes of him and murdoch are the wrong kind of immigrants we'd like in the US.
In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims.
“Get the facts about mail-in voting,” a content label read. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” the hyperlinked article declared.
This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.
This time, there were no fact checks. And the X algorithm — under Mr. Musk’s direct control — helped the posts reach large audiences, in some cases drawing many millions of views.
Since taking control of the site, Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing it amounted to election interference.. That's rich, Elmo.
Now, his early election-year attacks on a tried-and-true voting method are raising alarms among civil rights lawyers, election administrators and Democrats. They worry that his control over the large social media platform gives him an outsize ability to reignite the doubts about the American election system that were so prevalent in the lead-up to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
As Mr. Trump’s victory in New Hampshire moved the race closer to general election grounds, the Biden campaign for the first time criticized Mr. Musk directly for his handling of election content on X: “It is profoundly irresponsible to spread false information and sow distrust about how our elections operate,” the Biden campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, said this week in a statement to The New York Times.
“It’s even more dangerous coming from the owner of a social media platform,” she added.
What is angering the Biden campaign is delighting pro-Trump Republicans and others who depict the old Twitter as part of a government-controlled censorship regime that aided Mr. Biden in 2020. Under a system now in dispute at the Supreme Court, government officials alerted platforms to posts they deemed dangerous, though it was up to the companies to act or not.
“Oh, boo hoo,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, a lawyer whose firm represents Mr. Trump, said of the Democrats’ complaints. Ms. Dhillon has sued the company for suspending an election-denying client’s account after receiving a notice from the California election officials — the sort of government interplay Mr. Musk has repudiated. She noted the platform was now “a much better place for conservatives,” and said of Mr. Musk, “he’s great.”
X did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier this week, its chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, wrote in a blog post that the platform had expanded its alternate approach to fact-checking misinformation — through crowdsourced “community notes” written by users.
There were no such notes on Mr. Musk’s voting messages. But they were on a post by another X user that made the wild claim that Mr. Biden won the New Hampshire primary only through ballot stuffing.
The freer flow of false voting information is hardly the only perceived threat to elections building on social platforms, with the rise of artificial intelligence, increasingly realistic deep fakes and a growing acceptance of political violence.
That Mr. Biden’s campaign would single out Mr. Musk points to the unique role he is already playing in the 2024 election.
No major media owner of the modern era has used his national platform to insert himself so personally and aggressively into an American election.
While Rupert Murdoch’s conservative media empire, which includes Fox News, has exercised unrivaled influence over United States politics for decades, he has largely kept behind the scenes, generally leaving it to his editors, producers and hosts to determine the specifics of the coverage.
And while Facebook is larger than X, its owner, Mark Zuckerberg, is answerable to shareholders and responsive to advertisers. He has sought to avoid being personally drawn into the political fray.
Mr. Musk jumped in within days of taking ownership of the site, urging his followers to vote Republican. He has been open in his disdain for Mr. Biden, whose White House has at times responded in kind.
Then again, Mr. Musk has no shareholder concerns at X, which he took private in late 2022. He has dismissed advertiser complaints or calls to block content that might degrade confidence in democracy.
Exhibiting a distinctly 21st-century form of raw media power, X has also throttled and punished Mr. Musk’s perceived competitors and foes while reinstating accounts that were previously banned for content violations, some relating to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The platform’s algorithm — which dictates how posts are circulated on the site — also now gives added promotion to those who pay to be “verified,” including previously banned accounts.
Among them is @KanekoaTheGreat, a once-banned QAnon influencer who this month circulated a 32-page dossier promoted by Mr. Trump that recounted a barrage of false charges about the 2020 election.
It drew nearly 22 million views.
In 2020, Twitter’s “election integrity hub,” which had an open line with outside groups and political campaigns, either deleted or added context to posts with misleading information about voting.
Posts with false information about when and where to vote, for instance, would be removed. Those with misleading information about mail voting, like Mr. Trump’s, would get notices pointing users to alerts and fact-checking articles.
As Mr. Trump and his allies ramped up their attacks on mail voting — a preferred method for Democrats during the coronavirus pandemic — Twitter expanded its policy to remove or label claims that “undermine faith” in elections.
Those measures proved only so effective. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the other major platforms, which had similar measures, were also awash in election lies, and they faced criticism in the months after the Jan. 6 attack that they didn’t do enough.
Agreeing with critics who say the measures caused unfair and one-sided censorship, Mr. Musk said he cut the integrity team last fall because it was in fact “undermining election integrity.” He added, “They’re gone.” (His chief executive, Ms. Yaccarino, quickly disputed that characterization, saying the work would continue and even expand.)
Maya Wiley, the chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which communicated regularly with the platforms in 2020, said Mr. Musk’s decision had ripple effects. “It’s also given a free pass to folks like Facebook and YouTube,” she said.
X’s more lenient policy still addresses posts that incite violence, that include verifiably false information about voting locations and dates, or that mislead about eligibility laws, “including identification or citizenship requirements.”
Mr. Musk’s recent posts appear to bump up against that rule.
On Jan. 10, he responded to a post about the recent influx of undocumented immigrants by writing, falsely, that “illegals are not prevented from voting in federal elections. This came as a surprise to me.” A couple of days earlier, Mr. Musk implied that Mr. Biden and the Democrats were being lax on immigration because “they are importing voters,” an echo of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump was sharing around the same time.
United States law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, under the threat of jail time and deportation. Instances of illegal voting by noncitizens are rare.
Image
A worker leans over a railing to remove the letters of the Twitter sign outside a building.
Since taking over Twitter and renaming it, Mr. Musk has reportedly cut back the platform’s “election integrity team.”Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Mr. Musk has also raised broader doubts about the American election system. On Jan. 8, he wrote that voters in the United States “don’t need government issued ID to vote and you can mail in your ballot. This is insane.” The post was viewed 59 million times.
More than half of states require voters to produce some form of identification at polls, and most that don’t require signatures, affidavits or birth dates; federal law requires identification verification from voters when they register.
In November, he picked up on a story about considerable evidence of widespread absentee-ballot fraud in Bridgeport, Conn., and wrote, “The only question is how common it is.”
Where Bridgeport’s trouble is real — enough that a judge ordered a redo of the Democratic primary — it is also rare. Mail ballots have been used for years, and with various safeguards, have proved exceedingly reliable, with bipartisan acceptance, at least before Mr. Trump intensified criticism of the method.
Mr. Trump failed to provide evidence of any significant fraud in any of his lawsuits contesting his defeat in 2020.
That has not stopped Mr. Musk from adding to the steady hum of doubts about the voting system among millions of Americans, contributing to the already-fraught climate for election workers as Mr. Trump reprises his stolen-election lies for 2024, some election officials said.
“It bubbles, and keeps the temperature higher,” said Stephen Richer, the county recorder in Maricopa County, Ariz., a hot zone for election conspiracy theories. A Republican and longtime admirer of Mr. Musk’s business accomplishments, Mr. Richer added, “Whether it’s President Trump or Mr. Musk talking about this and keeping it very much a top-of-mind issue, that can potentially make our lives more challenging.”
The Biden campaign shares that concern. “We will continue to call out this recklessness as we carry out President Biden’s commitment to protecting our elections,” Ms. Chávez Rodríguez said.
That is, however, the only option the campaign has — the complaint line between the campaign and the platform is dead.
by ti-amie Thanks for this Owen. Calling that site a cesspool doesn't go far enough in describing what is going on there now.
by ponchi101 A cesspool where millions of people swim. That's how dangerous that is.
by Owendonovan I don't find its existence necessary or vital for human existence. Just get rid of it. It ended up not working.
@codinghorror More generally, we have had a problem for a decade where there's two versions of the web. Google gets the full version of all the good stuff, but it's hidden from us humans behind paywalls, popups, text-fades, permission-begs, signup-begs, and so on. The attention economy only exists because the servers pretend that's not happening. It's long past time to stop letting some humans peep through the window. We've always been locked out of the gated community, but now it's official.
by ponchi101
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 8:01 pm
I don't find its existence necessary or vital for human existence. Just get rid of it. It ended up not working.
The same can be said about FB, IG and TikTok. They are all, in reality, sites or systems with no underlying "need to use".
I can see that IG has a certain value as a marketing tool, but that's about it.
SM in general is not needed. But it is used for fun. TWT has become a different thing; it can actually cause real harm.
by ti-amie So alleged nude pics of Drake went viral on Xitter. This follows the AI generated nudes of Taylor Swift from last week. Elmo is happy about this.
by ponchi101 Most important: the app is the #1 download in the Apple store (according to Elon).
It is not going away. He will recoup his money. People can't get away from it.
by ti-amie Christopher Mims
@mimsical@mastodon.social
X's massive bot problem, in one chart, made by @o_simardcasanova
BlackCat Ransomware Group Implodes After Apparent $22M Ransom Payment by Change Healthcare
There are indications that U.S. healthcare giant Change Healthcare has made a $22 million extortion payment to the infamous BlackCat ransomware group (a.k.a. “ALPHV“) as the company struggles to bring services back online amid a cyberattack that has disrupted prescription drug services nationwide for weeks. However, the cybercriminal who claims to have given BlackCat access to Change’s network says the crime gang cheated them out of their share of the ransom, and that they still have the sensitive data Change reportedly paid the group to destroy. Meanwhile, the affiliate’s disclosure appears to have prompted BlackCat to cease operations entirely.
by Suliso The 3rd Starship test flight is tentatively scheduled for Thursday, March 14th (FAA license pending). Here is a nice graph detailing what will happen in an ideal case.
This way you can zoom in and actually read the description.
by ponchi101 I mean, great. It sounds well planned.
Why the juvenile language? "Mechazilla". "The world's largest PETZ dispenser", 'Excitement guaranteed".
I am really curious. Who is he targeting?
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2024 2:06 pm
I mean, great. It sounds well planned.
Why the juvenile language? "Mechazilla". "The world's largest PETZ dispenser", 'Excitement guaranteed".
I am really curious. Who is he targeting?
I believe this is all Musk's talk, not at all from the guy who made the graph. I agree the names are silly, but the rocket itself is not silly at all.
by Suliso So I watched the whole launch and here is my preliminary assessment:
- Nominal launch with all engines working properly
- Ground infrastructure survived intact (to be confirmed)
- they nailed the hot staging (that's where it failed last time)
- the booster performed a nominal boost back burn with full control
- the landing burn of the booster did not work and it crashed hard in the ocean instead of a soft splashdown
- the ship reached the intended speed and altitude
- they tested cargo door opening and in space fuel transfer seemingly successfully
- there must have been some issue because in space engine burn was not attempted
- seems like they lost the ship at ca 65 km altitude over the Indian ocean. From visual evidence only it seemed like they were unable to keep the proper orientation of the ship (it was still rolling when it shouldn't have been).
Overall a great progress compared to flight #2. Reentry of the ship was always going to be the hardest problem to solve. Nobody has ever attempted something similar. I expect the gap between this flight and the next to be not so long.
I'll try to find some summary video later...
by ponchi101 Re-entry will be the tough one to crack. Let's remember that the Columbia was lost during re-entry, just because of that tiny ding in the wing.
An deviation from proper orientation and you are doomed. Or in deep trouble.
by Suliso Agree of course. I think they got far enough down to have acquired some valuable data. Fixing ship issues will be much harder than booster.
Still we should remember that ULA or Chinese would have burned up both stages and called the launch full success.
by Suliso Someone not familiar with orbital mechanics might wonder why is it so much harder to recover the 2nd stage than the first one. Both stages reach the near vacuum of space, but there is a huge difference in speed. The top speed of the first stage is about 4,000 km an hour there as an orbital speed the 2nd stage has to get to is ca 28,000 km/h (for this test ca 26,300 because they wanted to be sure that it reenters). Thus there is an equally huge difference in friction upon reentry into more dense atmosphere. The first stage could be basically a stainless steal tube. The second stage if you want it back has to be protected with special materials to survive the plasma being formed when you break from those speeds. Up until now other than Space Shuttle returning crafts have been limited to small capsules with ablative shielding which has to be replaced. That is if they're reusable at all.
by Suliso As usual on stuff like this Scott Manley is the best
by ti-amie Taylor Lorenz
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social
Emails obtained via FOIA by The Intercept show Elon Musk's Twitter/X was selling user data for government surveillance at the exact same time it was fighting government surveillance in court https://theintercept.com/2024/03/25/el
by ponchi101 He is really not that much into democracy.
about what this means for the future of digital platforms:
) but yes, it is roughly the idea. The Atlantic Conveyor shuts down and a very rapid Ice Age ensues.
