12.24

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Aruna Viswanatha and Nancy A. Youssef:

Navy Capt. David Lausman, once the commanding officer of an aircraft carrier in the Pacific, stood front and center in a trial that capped one of the biggest military corruption cases in U.S. history.

He and his alleged co-conspirators enjoyed “36 hours of straight drinking, prostitutes and hotel rooms,” a prosecutor told the jury. Debauchery was among the rewards Lausman and four senior officers allegedly received for helping Malaysian businessman Leonard Francis carry out a scheme that cost the U.S. tens of millions of dollars.

Francis, who carried 350 pounds on a 6-foot-2 frame and was known as “Fat Leonard,” acknowledged paying bribes and overcharging the U.S. to service Navy ships at ports around the Pacific. He struck a deal with federal prosecutors to provide evidence against the high-ranking Navy personnel who helped him.

A federal investigation had swept the ranks of dozens of Navy personnel deemed unfit to serve because of ties to Francis. The probe also sank the careers of officers tainted by unfounded allegations, including those who had been on track to command the Seventh Fleet. The 2022 trial in San Diego marked its unraveling.

U.S. assistant attorney Mark Pletcher told jurors that what set Lausman apart was “the bedazzling array of bribes this guy received from Leonard Francis from 2007 to 2011.”

One of Lausman’s lawyers, Robert Boyce, belittled the bribery allegations, which included free golf balls. Lausman, a 6-foot-6 Michigander known as “Too Tall,” was quiet, boring and not much of a drinker, according to one of Francis’ hired escorts, a woman in the Philippines. Lausman had declined her advances, she had told the defense team.

The news comes from Autocar, which quotes Watola as saying the ID.2All concept and its buttons “showed a new approach for all models.” Like Schäfer, he referenced the public’s feedback. There are still touchscreens, to be sure—the infotainment display is large and in charge, and there’s also a digital gauge cluster. But instead of all the controls being hidden behind menus in these displays, they’re toggled via switches on the center stack.

Prosecutors told the jury that Lausman had slept with an escort hired by Francis, which Lausman denied. The government didn’t disclose to the defense until later that investigators had communicated with the woman after the trial began and she, too, said they didn’t have sex. Prosecutors are obligated to turn over evidence favorable to the defense as they receive it. Defense attorneys asked for a dismissal. The judge declined.

The potential payoff, though, is astronomical: a world with Pixie everywhere means a world where Google makes real money from selling hardware, in addition to services for enterprises and schools, and cloud services that leverage Google’s infrastructure to provide the same capabilities to businesses. Moreover, it’s a world where Google is truly integrated: the company already makes the chips, in both its phones and its data centers, it makes the models, and it does it all with the largest collection of data in the world.

A list of unheralded improvements to ordinary quality-of-life since the 1990s going beyond computers

Across the globe, billions are being invested in the electrification of the car industry. Governments have put future bans on the sale of internal combustion engines, but recently we’ve seen politicians backtracking a little on the issue. Also, there are still huge infrastructure and cost challenges ahead for EVs. So, are reports about the death of the internal combustion engine a little premature?

The “how” is the “craft” in statecraft. Most of what the U.S. government does is distribute money and set rules. Relatively few parts of it mount policy operations, especially diplomatic ones. Doing so requires complex teamwork. Officials must master international choreographies, intricacies of law and practice, and a bewildering variety of instruments, cultures, and institutions spanning societies. The ability to do all that is a fading art in the United States and the rest of the free world. As it fades, handwringing and platitudes take its place. Officials paper over the gaps with meetings and pronouncements. The limited supply of effective U.S. policymaking was demonstrated tragically during the COVID-19 outbreak, when the world failed to create a global alliance to fight a global pandemic. It can be seen today in Ukraine, where the free world is struggling to sustain a country fighting a war of attrition. And it is surfacing in the Gaza Strip, where well-meaning countries try to help with Gaza’s future sustenance and governance. There will doubtless be new demands in the coming months and years, and one can debate which of them Washington and its allies must answer. But no one wants to take on a problem and then fail. Success has to be defined concretely and practically. Governments have to more effectively pool their capabilities and know-how. Only then can they convert blue-sky hopes into blueprints.

bustimes.org is the unofficial home of bus, coach, tram and ferry transport information

I want to share a little provocation about AI language models. You can skip ahead to that, if you like. Before I get to it myself, I’m going to review several items that might be interesting to those of you subscribed to this occasional lab newsletter.

First identified in 1886 by Theodore Lewis during the multi-year Northwestern Archaeological Survey, what is referred to as the Ghost Eagle has a 1,240-foot wingspan and a 700-foot-long body. The imprint of the mound is more than twice the size of the bird mound on the grounds of the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, long considered to be the largest bird mound in the world.

Last week the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirmed that they’ve allowed illegal immigrants to use their arrest warrants as a valid proof of ID to board flights in the United States for more than a year. Americans should be appalled by President Biden’s decision to reward criminal behavior but given his promises to provide free healthcare to illegals, tear down the wall, and make our heroic Border Agents his personal enemy, it’s hardly a surprise. Despite record illegal border crossings in 2021, the Biden Administration has yet to take any deliberate action to defend the sovereignty of our republic and secure the southern border.

Thieves took a cash register with $250 and forced the restaurant to close for three days, leading to $10,000 in losses related to food waste and employee compensation. Insurance only covered $750, said Ryan Zin.

Therefore, for many, Milei’s decision to “give the company to its employees” is a polite way to shut down the carrier, as Aerolíneas will face an extremely complicated scenario with almost no maneuvering margin.

“Do they even know what it looks like to miss on a quarterback?” an exec from another team asked. “They have seen other teams go through it, but are they humble enough to say, ‘This could be us’?”

A loophole in FDA processes means older drugs like the ones in oral decongestants weren’t properly tested. Here’s how we learned the most popular one doesn’t work

All of the big pharmacy chains in the US hand over sensitive medical records to law enforcement without a warrant—and some will do so without even running the requests by a legal professional, according to a congressional investigation. The revelation raises grave medical privacy concerns, particularly in a post-Dobbs era in which many states are working to criminalize reproductive health care. Even if people in states with restrictive laws cross state lines for care, pharmacists in massive chains, such as CVS, can access records across borders.

American taxpayers footed the bill for at least $1.8 trillion in federal and state health care expenditures in 2022 — about 41% of the nearly $4.5 trillion in both public and private health care spending the U.S. recorded last year, according to the annual report released last week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

South Korea will soon require companies that slim down products to show the old and new sizes on packaging

“It’s impossible to get quality food at a fair price. I have to sell my lobster roll for $29 at the restaurant, but I can sell it for $20 at my new Little Anchor truck because it’s just me and I don’t have all the labour costs.”

Ampex, launched in San Carlos, California in 1944 is the key connecting point between music storage and data storage. That tiny startup, according to Silicon Valley historians Peter Hammar and Bob Wilson, was involved directly or indirectly in the launch of “almost every computer magnetic and optical disc recording system, including hard drives, floppy discs, high-density recorders, and RFID devices.”

The handling of the talks is now raising eyebrows in Washington, particularly among Republicans who suspect the White House did not want Biden to agree to a deal.

The US is pushing for expropriation of frozen Russian central bank foreign exchange reserves to endow these in some form to Ukraine.
Under international customary law central bank reserves have diplomatic immunity from seizure, even in a declared war. If they do this G7 ends FX reserves, innovated in 1922 as an expedient to expand debt, except among themselves and aligned states.

“I am strictly advocating for black people. Call ICE on them. Trump, come in here and clean this mess up. The most corrupt city in the United States is the city of Chicago.”

Parks Canada says 84 deer killed in $834,000 cull using helicopter.

Henceforth, currencies will compete. Who knows which ones will win – USD, BTC? But CBDCs will surely lose.

“When I started, they were tickled to have someone like me. I built a business based on service,” he says. “I even made the top 150 dealers in 1987 and helped celebrate their 150th anniversary. I sat at the same table as Mr. William Hewitt, who was the John Deere president and CEO at the time.” “Somewhere in the mid-90s, you could see this trend [toward consolidation] starting. I knew the single-store dealers’ days were limited, but I lasted longer than I ever dreamed I would.”

Mickey and Minnie will enter the public domain on Jan. 1. From then on, Disney will no longer enjoy an exclusive copyright over the earliest versions of the characters. Underground cartoonists, filmmakers, novelists, songwriters — whoever — will be free to do what they want with them.

Jake Sullivan wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs that went to print before Oct 7. For the online version that came out yesterday, they let him not just add new material but scrub the sections embarrassed by events. Some deleted gems from the original, not available online (1/6):

“It says something about the Biden administration’s priorities,” Kavanagh added. “They are willing to prioritize arming Ukraine over Asia despite their pronouncement that Asia is the priority theater for the United States.”

Bird said in a filing last month that it had net losses of $73.4mn in the nine months to September 30, at which date it had unrestricted cash and equivalents of $10.2mn. Last year, Bird reported revenues of $244.7mn and a net loss of $358.7mn.

“As long as we don’t do something stupid — which is a daily challenge in this industry — we will continue to wipe the floor with every other airline in Europe,” he said.

This report uses survey data from 20 countries and qualitative research from the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), and Germany to explore who is paying for news content online, which publications they pay for, how much they pay, and what motivations they have for subscribing or donating to news.

12.17

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So you all should be long Twitter. And those who have left are missed far less than they might have wished.

We attracted a lot of criticism for this on social media, but none of us noticed.

This year I worked on fascinating projects in food, media, storytelling, AI and health at Magnetic, and learned many learnings.

Federal and state subsidies and regulatory credits for EVs totaled nearly $22 billion in 2021, or nearly $50,000 per EV, socializing the true cost of these vehicles to taxpayers, utility ratepayers, and owners of gasoline vehicles.

Sometimes, Roberts is flown out to support an artist mid-tour, but more often he liaises with other A-list trainers around the world to look after his regular clients. And he trains those who are passing through London. His first step is to assess the needs of the individual and their goals. “Someone like Beyoncé, for example, has got very energetic dance routines, whereas Liam Gallagher can just stand there.”

That could obviously help make the everyday experience of using the internet nicer. “Web browsing is more limited by the roundtrip time than the capacity of the connection these days for most people. Beyond about six to 10 megabits per second, latency has a bigger role in determining how quickly a web page load feels.”

Every year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. For 2024, ‘AI, and everything else’.

At the start of each year, on January 1st, a new crop of works enter the public domain and become free to enjoy, share, and reuse for any purpose. Due to differing copyright laws around the world, there is no one single public domain — and here we focus on three of the most prominent. Newly entering the public domain in 2024 will be:

About a year ago, I tried thinking which database I should choose for my next project, and came to the realization that I don’t really know the differences of databases enough. I went to different database websites and saw mostly marketing and words I don’t understand.

While a number of folk will once again complain about the transition to subscription, I’ve said my piece on that (basically I’m for it as long as the company is actually putting that constant stream of money into a constant stream of development, which seems to be the case with Luminar). The problem I have with Luminar (Skylum) is that they’ve been all over the board trying to monetize their product(s), while their primary product itself has been what I’d call unreliable. The only other similar software package I’ve had more crashes and bugs from is OnOne. It’s gotten to the point where any benefits I perceive from Luminar now don’t match the cost, so I’ve also stopped updating that product, won’t subscribe, and am uninstalling it from my machines.

The worm turns?

According to Companies Market Cap, an online tool that ranks companies by market capitalization, Ryanair is now the largest airline in the world by market capitalization. The budget carrier has a market capitalization valued at $29.63 billion.

Considering the (re)Development of
1302 Midvale Blvd

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There has been a bit of discussion about the proposed 7 story (?) rental project planned for 1302 Midvale Blvd. I’ve wondered how the number of nondescript high rise (for Madison) projects might play out as visibility, ambiance and sunlight changes around them.

Some years ago, 555 Midvale was redeveloped into condominiums, retail and a library. Interested parties may find the aerial vr scenes worth a look along with a bit of data:

1302 Midvale blvd

– and –

555 Midvale blvd

A few recent general comments in YIMBY and NIMBY.

12.10

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And that’s why today I’m going to tell you about some of the really mad things that Transport for London (TfL) can figure out about us by using our location data, provided by the O2 mobile network. Using the Freedom of Information Act, I’ve managed to obtain the Data Protection Impact Assessment, and the Statement of Work for TfL’s Project EDMOND – which stands for “Estimating Demand from Mobile Network Data”3.

Tunneling is an important technology for modern civilization, as a tunnel is often the only reasonable way to create a direct path between two points. When the Hoosac tunnel was completed in 1875, it turned a difficult, 20-mile railroad route along “precipitous grades” into a direct 5 mile route, connecting Boston with the Upper Hudson Valley. Large infrastructure projects such as hydroelectric dams often require tunnels to function. The Hoover Dam required more than 3 miles of tunnels 56 feet in diameter to divert the Colorado River around the construction site. And a tunnel can be used to create new land beneath dense urban areas, making it possible to build large-scale horizontal infrastructure like sewers or mass transit that wouldn’t be feasible to build above ground.

The tricky thing with the web is that once you learn how to build something there is never a reason to have to learn it again. That’s the contract we have: the web is backwards compatible. (Very few exceptions apply, but the first web page still runs fine in all modern browsers.)

The geography of these regions necessitates heavy use of submarine cables for international connectivity. Over $6 billion of new cables are planned to enter service from 2022-2024 that connect to Asia and Oceania. Several of these new cables are taking unique routes. For example, Echo and Bifrost will be the first cables to directly connect Singapore to the United States. The Apricot cable will be the first cable to link Japan and Singapore with a path that goes east of the Philippines.

This “Authentic Digital Emblem” (ADEM) meets various security requirements and is also effective against automated cyberattacks. The emblem indicates that a digital infrastructure is entitled to protection. However, legal implementation remains a major challenge.

Places in Germany have over 11 times more mental health centres and practitioners, and eight times more further education providers, than equivalent parts of England, according to 2021 data.*. In 2020, German areas also have twice as many railway stations per 100,000 people as matching English areas, although England averages almost four times more bus stops than Germany.

In the first two years of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture’s existence, e-commerce giant Amazon.com was happy to contribute funds to the much-lauded Riverside facility. But this year, the Cheech hosted an exhibit that included a piece depicting an Amazon warehouse on fire. In an interview, the artist said the piece, titled “Burn Them All Down,” was not a call to arson, but instead a commentary on how public officials were not listening to community concerns about the growing number of warehouses in their Inland Empire neighborhoods.

Under state law, Martwick does not have to disclose whether his votes in Springfield benefit his property tax appeals clients. Most states require disclosure of conflicts of interest before voting. Not Illinois.

Who lost: Negotiators rejected harsher language from Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), which would have required that by 2033, every Navy ship uses 100 percent domestically produced materials, such as propulsion systems, shipboard components, couplings, shafts and support bearings. Baldwin’s home state includes Fincantieri Marinette Marine, a major shipbuilder. That language was backed by the American Shipbuilding Suppliers Association and Wisconsin companies Appleton Marine and Fairbanks Morse.

But end of the day, if YIMBYism allows people to live as they want because the market can better match demand, then the net flow has to be out of the oversubscribed cities. And the big reason people say they live urban when they would prefer otherwise is to be close to the jobs. This strongly suggests that YIMBY will end up resulting less in skyscrapering the cities and more in multiplexing the burbs.

I was the Ascent Flight Director for one mission where the ET re-entered very near Hawaii just after local sunset.  The spectacular breakup was observed by many on the Big Island and (according to what I heard) resulted in a call from the Governor of Hawaii to the NASA Administrator to find out ‘why is NASA bombing our state?’  Perhaps an apocryphal story, but why check? A good story is better than the truth some times. 

The goal of the Darling line of trees was to confer blight tolerance by inserting a gene from wheat called oxalate oxidase (OxO). The OxO gene detoxifies oxalic acid produced by the chestnut blight fungus and could hypothetically prevent lethal cankers on the tree. Many “events” (random insertions of the gene into the American chestnut genome) were created using the 35s constitutive promoter which causes the OxO gene to always be “switched on” in the tree’s tissues. These different events were tested for gene placement and OxO expression and one, named Darling 58, was selected for further lab and field testing.

In a forceful, 89-page memorandum, U.S. District Court Judge Iain Johnson wrote that the founder of John Deere “was an innovative farmer and blacksmith who—with his own hands—fundamentally changed the agricultural industry.” Deere the man “would be deeply disappointed in his namesake corporation” if the plaintiffs can ultimately prove their antitrust allegations against Deere the company, which are voluminous and well-documented.”

The PR campaign about how swimmingly the war is going has been multi-pronged. First, keep every alternative site’s content out of programs like Google News, but fill it with sunny Atlantic Council updates (“American support for Ukraine stays strong!”) and interviews with soul-of-credibility types like ex-spy Christopher Steele, who went on Sky News in July to inform us that “Russia has almost abandoned the war militarily.” Second, have lots of former generals give interviews saying victory is at hand (my favorite was Ben Hodges telling Newsweek in October that Ukraine was “running rings” around the Russians). Third: write stories about battlefield victories whenever they happen, e.g. “Senior Leadership Among Those Killed in Strike on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet,” but take the day off when the news isn’t good.

These sources explain that, when the U.S. Ambassador Reynoso was summoned by Minister Robles, she said that she was not aware of the case. The U.S. ambassador allegedly claimed that the U.S. agents who had bribed the Spanish spies were working independently of her, in a program that was launched before current President Joe Biden arrived at the White House and that, for reasons unknown, had been maintained until now. Reynoso, the same sources add, apologized for what happened and promised utmost collaboration with the ongoing investigation. The case has left the U.S. in an embarrassing situation.

Luke 3; 10-14:

And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? 11 He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. 12 Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? 13 And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. 14 And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.

The Netherlands had been pushing for the US to join the group, according to people familiar with the matter. US President Joe Biden has repeatedly pressed to eliminate a raft of tax incentives for the oil and gas industry — reviving a campaign former President Barack Obamalaunched more than a decade ago. But the effort depends on support from the closely divided Congress and has been fought by oil industry leaders who argue they shouldn’t be singled out, since many of the targeted deductions are not unique to the sector and have corollaries through the tax code.

“But I do think that a consistent libertarian position is telling the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], [President Joe] Biden’s spokesmen…that they can’t be meeting on a weekly basis with either overt or implied threats of, ‘You need to do this or else.'”

“So I came for the aesthetics, but I was blow away by the sound. I’ve been glued in front of these speakers for hours now, just listening to all the tracks I thought I knew so well.

12.3

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The Duchy of Lancaster is “a portfolio of lands, properties, and assets held in trust for the sovereign.” The Duchy dates back to 1265 but in 1461 Edward IV made it a distinct and private inheritance of the reigning monarch. As such the reigning monarch is not allowed to sell the Duchy but is due any returns. To be clear, this is all different from the Crown Estate which are a bunch of land and property nominally owned by the monarch and dedicated to funding the monarchy but yet not owned by the monarch privately. Having fun yet

The whole thing was a set-up. The point was to dump a bunch of opposition research on us and give us no time to respond, and then use my wild youth to sink Brett. My book was my final word in that trauma, but out of morbid curiosity I dove into Marcus’ account. This was shortly after I learned that Christine Blasey Ford is coming out with her ownbook next year. Grifters gonna grift.

Commercial. Where to start? After years of beating up their supplier base (another gift from Jim McNerney that keeps on giving), building jets is a problem for some reason. The production ramp has been a series of disappointments. Worse, Calhoun continues to deny that they need a new jet anytime this decade, which means every airline on the planet has no choice but to get in line for an A321neo (5,530 sold, or about the same as all MAX variants together). As a result, they’re heading from a 50-50 market share with Airbus to 65-35. The absence of a new jetliner also means they’re at risk of losing their engineering core; they haven’t launched a clean-sheet design since 2004.

Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective agreement in Sweden risks undermining the long-term future of the Swedish model that has underpinned decades of economic success in the Scandinavian country, according to the union leader taking on Elon Musk’s carmaker. Marie Nilsson, the head of the IF Metall union behind the strike against Tesla, told the Financial Times that the famed Swedish model — developed in the 1930s — was at the heart of the country’s prosperity, with employers and unions taking joint decisions on the labour market. “If you look at this in a long-term perspective, it could be a threat to the Swedish model. It’s really important for us,” she added.

And that’s why almost no one who works for large media corporations or the media corporations themselves has the courage to say this. They’re shocked. They think it’s a sign that he’s unhinged when in reality, it’s just a sign of how cowardly and craven they are.”

EVs. Dealers have questions about the way Ford is chasing after EVs and widespread electric adoption, especially given lackluster consumer demand. Dealers have expressed frustration that EV price cuts were required to keep pace with Tesla—even after dealers had to invest heavily in the requirements to sell EVs on their lots. Still: As of October, Ford had lost$3.1 billion on its EV spending this year.

That wouldn’t be a problem if they were self-aware of their lack of understanding, but it is just the opposite. There is a kind of aggressive weaponized ignorance that reminds me of the Norwegian Army Major who was very insistent that he understood race relations in the American South because, “I know your country. I spent a year at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.”

“Europe is in shock,” write Ayaan Hirsi Aliand Evelyn Markus in our lead story today. The cause of that shock is the triumph of Geert Wilders in last week’s Dutch elections. That the anti-immigration populist now leads the largest party in the Dutch parliament is indeed a stunning outcome given his status as an outcast from the mainstream of Dutch politics.

Kissinger’s modus operandi has also come under increasing scrutiny. An inherent contradiction is that he craved publicity but preferred to conduct most of his diplomacy in secret — and not just diplomacy with other countries but the formulation of policy inside the US government. He ordered the home phones of 17 people to be tapped illegally (that is, without a judicial warrant). They include not only journalists but also members of his own National Security Council staff. Kissinger had a true cynic’s view about the use and abuse of power, once joking: “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.” A later interview he gave to Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, in which he described himself proudly as a “cowboy”, infuriated Nixon, who reportedly did not speak to him for weeks.

Yet, in the end, Holt pulled off his gamble. He benefited from good timing (perhaps a mix of luck and foresight): the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 give steamships a tremendous leg up in trade between Europe to the Indian and Pacific Oceans. But in designing ships dainty enough in their coal consumption to pay their way to the Pacific, he also benefited from the late convergence of two complementary developments that had each begun in the early 1800s but did not intersect until the 1850s. First was a series of incremental, empirical improvements to steam engine design: After the massive leap forward from Newcomen to Watt, further increases in steam engine efficiency would be less dramatic. Simultaneously, a theory of heat gradually developed that could explain what made engines more or less efficient, and thus point engineers in the most fruitful direction.

Minnie Chan, the South China Morning Post reporter, became unreachable after visiting Beijing to cover Xiangshan Forum, a three-day international security forum that ended Oct. 31, said the people, mainly her friends, expressing their worries that Chan may be under investigation by mainland authorities.

Each part of an aircraft, like structure, systems, electronics, or cabin items, follows its own learning curve. The classical cost evolution curve for structural components and assemblies is the 85% curve. It says that for each doubling of the production volume, the part has a cost down of 15%.

From January, no EVs made in the US that include battery components made in China, made by a company with significant ties to the Chinese government or produced with a licensing agreement with a China-based or Beijing-controlled operator will be eligible for full subsidies offered in the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law passed by Congress last year. John Podesta, President Joe Biden’s senior clean energy adviser, said the rule would help the US break the stranglehold over cleantech manufacturing enjoyed by China, the world’s dominant EV and battery producer, which also processes more than half the world’s lithium, cobalt and graphite, crucial materials for batteries. “China still dominates the supply chains for key technologies?.?.?.?they completely outpace the US and our allies on the production of batteries and their components,” Podesta said. “With this guidance and the clarity that it will provide, we’re ensuring that the US electric vehicle future will be made in America.”

As I became yet another Marina [Bay area in San Francisco] surveillant [by recording some video of a homeless man], I thought of what one regular chronicler of the homeless in the neighborhood had told me—that he doubted all the careful surveillance had added up to much other than “On my phone I have a bunch of stupid photos now.” San Francisco’s police chief has called the city’s bonanza of surveillance footage a “golden” tool for solving crimes, but it can just as easily set people free: The public defender’s office is one of the main requesters of footage from the Tenderloin’s camera network. One defense attorney in the city, Elizabeth Hilton, told me that in many of her cases the trove of San Francisco video evidence ends up helping the accused, contradicting victims’ and witnesses’ accounts of what went down.

Alexandria lawmakers voted unanimously early Wednesday to eliminate single-family-only zoning in this Northern Virginia city, a functionally limited but symbolic and controversial move that opens the door for the construction of buildings with as many as four units in any residential neighborhood. The vote, which extends a hotly debated trend in urban planning to another corner of the D.C. region, was one of several zoning changes approved as part of the city’s ongoing “Zoning for Housing” initiative.

A judge rejected John Deere’s motion to dismiss a landmark class action lawsuit over the agricultural giant’s repair monopolies, paving the way for a trial that will determine whether the company’s repair practices are illegal. The case will specifically examine whether Deere has engaged in a “conspiracy” in which Deere and its dealerships have driven up the cost of repair while preventing independent and self-repair of tractors that farmers own.

On Friday, Anduril announced the existence of the person-size drone called “Roadrunner.” In his own Twitter thread, Luckey said Roadrunner has been “operationally validated with an existing U.S. government customer,” but did not name the agency. Multiple publications which appeared to have the news under embargo, including Bloomberg and Defense One, added that the company is not allowed to say which customer bought the technology. It took 404 Media around 25 seconds to find the customer is likely USSOCOM. 404 Media reviewed a procurement record that says USSOCOM signed for a piece of technology described as “Roadrunner,” and also found a reference to the technology in a Department of Defense budget estimation document for 2024.

Emilie Raguso, a former Berkeleyside reporter who now runs The Berkeley Scanner, a daily news site that focuses on Berkeley public safety and the DA’s office and averages 200,000 monthly pageviews, was turned away by District Attorney Pamela Price’s staff, who cited unspecified “safety issues” despite letting other members of local media attend, Raguso said.

Figuring out whether Kissinger was a diplomatic wunderkind or a sociopathic amoralist is a fool’s errand. It is possible to be both. Many of the actions that earned him notoriety were also moves on the geostrategic chessboard. By any standard, not just Washington’s, he was also very funny. The list of Kissinger witticisms competes with that of Mark Twain or Groucho Marx. “The illegal we do immediately,” he said. “The unconstitutional takes a little longer.” Kissinger’s knack for self-deprecation was also in a class of its own. “I have not faced such a distinguished audience since dining alone in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles,” he told a group of dignitaries when he was secretary of state. He worked hard on such one-liners. “Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes,” he once said. “There is too much fraternising with the enemy.” Most famously Kissinger observed that power is a great aphrodisiac.

** When I say “it wants”, I’m not saying that Biden or even anyone in Treasury fully understands this. Biden ain’t Stalin, he’s barely even speakin’! But think of Blue America as an ant colony, as a metaorganism that has an evolved logic to it. Even if any one ant in the colony doesn’t really understand what it’s doing, even if each NPC is mostly just mimicking their neighbors, the colony as a whole can organically coordinate.

11.26

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Previously described working for Microsoft as selling his soul

before it experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

We urge the Board of Directors of OpenAI to take a firm stand against these unethical practices and launch an independent investigation into Sam and Greg’s conduct. We believe that OpenAI’s mission is too important to be compromised by the personal agendas of a few individuals.

Electronic health record giant Epic Systems will receive about $125 million in court-awarded payments from Tata Consultancy Services, the Mumbai, India-based information-technology and consulting firm said in a regulatory filing Tuesday.

And in his place, an obedient of the federal agencies called Gerald Ford, took over the White House. How did that happen? Well, it’s a long story, but here are the highlights, and they tell you a lot. Richard Nixon believed that elements in the federal bureaucracy were working to undermine the American system of government and had been doing that for a long time. He often said that.

But winning has an entirely different meaning at Ocean Spray, whose farmers are responsible for 65% of the world’s cranberries. It’s not a publicly traded company. It’s not a traditional private company, either. It’s a cooperative founded nearly a century ago and owned by roughly 700 families.

The biggest lesson that can be read from 70 years of AI research is that general methods that leverage computation are ultimately the most effective, and by a large margin. The ultimate reason for this is Moore’s law, or rather its generalization of continued exponentially falling cost per unit of computation. Most AI research has been conducted as if the computation available to the agent were constant (in which case leveraging human knowledge would be one of the only ways to improve performance) but, over a slightly longer time than a typical research project, massively more computation inevitably becomes available. Seeking an improvement that makes a difference in the shorter term, researchers seek to leverage their human knowledge of the domain, but the only thing that matters in the long run is the leveraging of computation. These two need not run counter to each other, but in practice they tend to. Time spent on one is time not spent on the other. There are psychological commitments to investment in one approach or the other. And the human-knowledge approach tends to complicate methods in ways that make them less suited to taking advantage of general methods leveraging computation. There were many examples of AI researchers’ belated learning of this bitter lesson, and it is instructive to review some of the most prominent.

Only ~one out of seven TV news viewers are between ages 25-54.

Scrapping the peso, which Milei said in an October interview was worth “less than excrement”, and “blowing up” the central bank were central to the bold plan he pitched during his campaign as a way to revitalise Argentina’s economy, slash triple-digit annual inflation and repair the public finances.

The movie will run on United’s social nets, onboard flights, in movie theaters, across Peacock and other digital platforms. There’s even a partnership with Bumble. “It’s a rom-com, after all,” says Schmerin.

Joshi notes that a platform carrying a fleet of eight drones has the capacity to harvest up to 600 kilos of apples in a day. The drones are currently being tested on farms in Italy and are expected to be launched commercially in North American in two years.

There’s a basic conflict of interest at the heart of American health care. Obamacare caused health care payers to combine with health care providers. We need a health care Glass-Steagall.

“A majority of the Members of the Committee did not agree to establish an [Investigative Subcommittee] or report to the House regarding Representative Bowman’s conduct,” said Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) and ranking member Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.).

11.19

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With the Porsche FOSS Movement, we are continuing our open-source journey and creating a common understanding of values, principles and goals – in all teams, all subsidiaries and across all national borders.

Who better to help him take over China, Wylie thought, than Henry Kissinger? In the 1970s, as US national security adviser and secretary of state under President Nixon, Kissinger had presided over a historic rapprochement between the US and China. Since then, he had been an important interlocutor between China and the west. Kissinger was not a Wylie client, but that was an easy problem to solve. When Wylie Googled Kissinger’s name in 2008, he was confronted with books attacking his humanitarian record. “Kissinger was depicted as a war criminal who enjoyed killing babies – basically a monster,” Wylie said. “So I went to him and said: ‘Henry, this is not good legacy management.’” Wylie told Kissinger to fire his agent. Then, he added, “You need to get all three volumes of your memoirs back in print, and write a new book, a strong book.” Kissinger quickly became a client of The Wylie Agency.

Miles and miles of unpaved roads are carved into the eastern half of California City, intersecting and folding into themselves only to bottom out into empty cul de sacs. Even though there are no houses in sight, the roads are marked with street signs — with names like Lincoln Boulevard, Rutgers Road and Aristotle Drive — that stand among the prickly creosote bushes.

The main goal of HTML First is to substantially widen the pool of people who can work on web software codebases. This is good from an individual perspective because it allows a greater number of people to become web programmers, to build great web software, and increase their income. It’s also good from a business perspective as it decreases the cost of building software, and decreases the amount of resources required to hire – a notoriously resource intensive process.

“We’re too slow, too sluggish, too complicated – as it is, that’s not survivable.” (difficult to translate with 100% precision – what he’s saying is that if VW doesn’t change these things, survival is at stake. original quote: “Wir sind zu langsam, zu träge, zu kompliziert – das ist nicht überlebensfähig.“)

The truth is that nobody really knows what will happen in 2026 because the relevant legislation gives an incredible amount of leeway to government regulators. Based on how the law is written, the NHTSA can basically interpret impairment any way it likes and decide how driver monitoring systems assess this and ultimately respond. I would wager that’s a problem in itself.

The Packers, meanwhile, have entered the gauntlet portion of their schedule in the same familiar rut. They’ll find a way to keep one or two of these games against contenders close. But then? Chances are, they’ll find a way to lose.

Six nuclear reactors just 9 feet across planned for Idaho were supposed to prove out the dream of cheap, small-scale nuclear energy. Now the project has been canceled.

“It’s clearly going to be a vacuum for a while,” said Cannon Michael, a melon and tomato farmer. Michael also chairs the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which supplies water to 1.2 million acres of irrigated farmland in the Valley.

“We want to make it cheap and easy to get anywhere in the Solar System.”

in 2008 William Burns – then Ambassador to Moscow, now CIA Director – warned that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite.” NATO’s overthrow of its elected gov’t & de facto takeover of Ukraine is what they feared.

In the second installment of Truth in Media’s series on the “curious case of Ray Epps,” host Lara Logan dug deeper into Epps’ background as an Oathkeeper in Queen Creek, Arizona, which coincidentally is the very same town Gionet is from

“Miyazaki, in my estimation, is the greatest director of animation ever, and he has made his films as full of dialogues and questions as he is,” continued Del Toro. “These are not easy films, but these are films that portray him so intimately, that you feel you’re having a conversation with him. And they are paradoxical because he understands that beauty cannot exist without horror, and delicacy cannot exist without brutality.”

It’s a remarkable level of productivity, made all the more remarkable by one simple fact: Vernon Smith is 96 years old. Smith, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences at the tender age of 75, says he feels the same passion as he did then, and even as he did when he embarked on his career more than seven decades ago.

Selfie-related injuries and deaths at tourist hotspots have become such a massive risk that they should be viewed as a “public health problem”, researchers suggest.

Senate investigators caught Fauci’s right-hand man David Morens advising scientists to hide communications by emailing him at his Gmail. Morens also admits not retaining documents, as required by law.

A Bernstein survey of more than 1,500 consumers in China in August and September found that BYD was the top brand that Chinese buyers of electric vehicles would consider. Tesla was next, followed by Nio.

“For the first time, I came face to face with the competitiveness of Chinese components,” Kato said. After seeing equipment and manufacturing processes not used in Japan, Kato thought, “We’re in trouble!”

But amid the outrage, Apple’s muted public response has been perplexing, obfuscatory, and contradictory. So far, the iPhone manufacturer has not released a formal public statement. Attributions have been made to sources, government officials, or what Apple has purportedly said when contacted for a response. The absence of any clear or constituent articulation from the American technology giant has left the space wide open for random mudslinging and unverifiable claims and counterclaims.

Interactions between Presidents and the Federal Reserve (Fed) can arise in response to what’s going on in the economy – they do not always reflect political pressure.

A number of essays on UOJ that I have seen would be characterized by teachers who assign essays as “read and regurgitate” papers. There is no effort to challenge the premises of trusted teachers. Such a procedure ultimately leads to blindly following the “traditions of the elders.” That there have been quite a number of such papers does not establish the validity of any of the argumentations.

The Rev. Eugene Cho, Bread’s current president and CEO, summed up Simon’s legacy in a statement: “When I consider the many millions of people around the world whose lives have been changed for the better because of the policies and programs created and improved by anti-hunger activism; when I see the 200,000-strong citizen’s movement that Bread is today; when I hear from individuals about how Art’s message and work led to a new orientation in their life toward justice; I feel an enormous weight of gratitude.”

Johnson’s opening moves seem masterful. The very first thing he did was tie aid for Israel to a cut in IRS funding. He had to know that would go nowhere, but it put capital in the bank with the hard-right. Then he averted a government shutdown — and even an eleventh hour deal — by making pretty much the same deal with Democrats that got McCarthy sacked just several weeks ago.

John Boyd (Patterns of Conflict) Thanks to Jason Brown. He converted these from BETA tapes located in the Marine Corps University archives.

11.12

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In a joint fundraising message, Clancy and Madison — Milwaukee Democrats who say they align with socialists — try to justify their decision to sit on their hands during the Oct. 12 vote on the Hamas resolution, which accused the terrorist group of attacking Israel “without provocation” days earlier. The measure passed on a 95-0 vote. “Whether on the floor of the assembly, or in the streets in solidarity,” the email said, “we’ve been consistent: we’ll stand with the people, and we’ll vote and take action accordingly.” Except they didn’t vote and take action in this case. They opted out of voting.

“The way Toyota builds cars has been considered the standard but it’s extremely shocking to think that what Tesla is proposing is likely to become the standard for producing EVs. The impact on Japan’s car manufacturing will be monumental,” said Takaki Nakanishi, a veteran automotive analyst who runs his own research group.

The source of this crisis goes back about a decade, when Europe was trying to determine what would come after the Ariane 5. That rocket was largely successful and provided Europe with its assured access to space. However, it was costly, and already it was losing commercial business to emerging competitors like SpaceX and its Falcon 9 booster.

Read it all and you can see that even with all he says, he just doesn’t get it. He also isn’t looking at the USA where the majority of those at pro-Hamas demonstrations are women. The mainstream center-left and center-right political leaders in Germany remain – even with movement towards the truth – unable to recognize the fire they’re sitting in. Anyway – how many times have I pointed out the “military aged males” problem here, the OG Blog, and on twitter? I’m not alone. Anyway … if that is the center-right leader, the German people and the alternative to the SDP/Greens, the support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) will only grow.

The last four presidents have issued a total of 106 publicly available War Powers Resolution (WPR) letters. The letters, all of which are listed with links at the end of this article, provide detailed descriptions of U.S. military operations around the globe since January 20, 2001. What follows is not a comprehensive description of the WPR letters; but instead seven takeaways from the letters and notable revelations from additional, non-WPR, war powers reporting.

We had to write programs using Punch cards. (From Sept 1, 1976 until Nov 5, 2023 I thought punch cards was one word. I also thought Stony Brook was one word. Wow- the things you learn from blogging!). It was awful. It took a long time to just write a simple program and mistakes were hard to avoid. The turn-around time for submitting the program and getting the output was 1 hour if you didn’t do the project the day before it was due but a lot longer if you did. I recall spending 6 hours debugging a program only to find that I had a 1 (the numeral) instead of a capital I (the letter). Very bad for time-put-in vs knowledge-gotten-out. I DID finish the course but decided to NOT major in Computer Science (I majored in Math and Applied Math instead). I had the following thought, though I could not possibly have expressed it this well back then:

Houston has taken the top slot as the best US city for foreign multinationals to do business in the second annual ranking compiled by the Financial Times and Nikkei. It gained the top spot by offering business friendly policies, excellent logistics, affordable cost of living, and a diverse community for overseas companies. To learn more about how Houston finished on top, read our winner’s profile here.

Tesla’s capture of BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, and Audi market share has been wild. Curious to see 2023’s end of year numbers.

charge planning for a 700 km route takes around 10 minutes – you cannot be serious, @AudiOfficial

Without diesel and jet fuel, there would also be an electricity problem because transmission lines are maintained using a combination of land-based vehicles powered by diesel and helicopters powered by jet fuel. Without electricity transmission, homes and offices without their own solar panels and batteries wouldn’t be able to keep the lights on. Gasoline pumps require electricity to operate, so they wouldn’t operate either. Without diesel and electricity, the list of problems is endless. [3] Green energy is itself a dead end, but subsidizing greenhttps://ourfiniteworld.com/2023/10/25/todays-energy-bottleneck-may-bring-down-major-governments/ energy can temporarily hide other problems. Green energy sounds appealing, but it is terribly limited in what it can do. Green energy cannot operate agricultural machinery. It cannot make new wind turbines or solar panels. Green energy cannot exist without fossil fuels. It is simply an add-on to the current system.

How did Wisconsin finally land “Top Chef?” The answer involves money. According to documents obtained by the Cap Times, Travel Wisconsin coordinated a total of $1.3 million in incentives from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation ($500,000) as well as tourism partners and agricultural marketing organizations, like Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin.

Expect to hear a lot more about local on-device AI in 2024, and we will be publishing our own report on the AI PC as well as results from a generative AI survey we are running on generative AI use cases and IT decision-makers current thinking and plans around deploying generative AI in the workplace.

We develop a unique ranking methodology centred on capturing policy relevance for central banks. Our ranking is based on single impact factors. The main difference compared with existing rankings is that we do not include all citations, but only those in publications that are issued by a central bank, like its working paper series or policy journals. Our ranking facilitates a more granular understanding of policy impact within the field of central banking. Moreover, it offers a guide to researchers who want to target policy audiences and can help central banks more generally in gauging and optimising the policy impact of their analytical output and its evolution over time.

The future will be based on present parameters. Parameter number one: the Ukrainians cannot go to Moscow and force the Russians to end the war. Parameter number two: the Russians cannot enter Kiev, which is now a city where every grandmother has two anti-tank rockets. So this war is simply going to continue until Putin changes his mind, or else the Russian Federation changes its president. It will just go on and on, because our big weapon against the Russians is sanctions, and sanctions don’t work against a country that is both a food exporter and an energy exporter, and that can make everything that it needs.

Per his lawsuit, Smith believed ASP acquired his book through fraud, by concealing that the publisher to which he had sold a work critical of Soros, “globalists,” and American high finance was in fact owned by a Soros protege and Wall Streeter with active investments in China. In the case’s complaint, Smith maintained that Bessent’s objections to the content of the planned book were the reason for ASP’s repeated attempts to strong-arm him into renegotiating his contract in the months after Hartson’s abrupt departure from the company, with the publisher eventually threatening legal action if Smith didn’t repay his advance along with an additional $30,000. Smith believed ASP misrepresented and concealed their true ulterior motive and intention, which was to contract with Smith and pay him an advance in order to “to take Smith’s book off the market and destroy its value.”

This is even more excruciating in retrospect, since we now know that Kristallnacht (increasingly known in Germany as Pogromnacht due to the euphemistic elements of the former term) turned out to be a crucial turning point in German policy regarding the Jews. Leipzig-based historian Dan Diner has called it “the catastrophe before the catastrophe”—in other words, the actual beginning of what is now known as the Holocaust.

Nikki Haley has the best Republican answer on abortion. The @GOP would be stronger if they used her language.

My notes from Anna Wintour’s biography turned into maxims: 1. Hire talented people as found, not as needed. 2. Taste is as rare as a unicorn. 3.Your employees should describe you as “easy to understand.” 4.Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.

Alzaro had read on Instagram that people from around the world were donating and delivering eSIM cards to Palestinians. Despite the name, eSIM cards aren’t physical cards at all but pieces of software that act like traditional SIM cards, allowing people to activate a new cellular plan with phone and internet access on their existing phone. Alzaro wrote to Egyptian writer and journalist Mirna El Helbawi, who was organizing an eSIM distribution campaign, and she promptly sent him access information for an eSIM to share with his family in Gaza. His family couldn’t get it to work. When he told El Helbawi, she sent him access information for a second one.

‘Oh no, it’s going to change, it’s going to be sandwiches instead of opulent food,’

“The greatest credit event of all would be a recession in which US yields went up, not down

Rive Tez:

Riva Tez:

The key driver of the outlook change to negative is Moody’s assessment that the downside risks to the US’ fiscal strength have increased and may no longer be fully offset by the sovereign’s unique credit strengths.

2 This tech will need to track where the car is to know speed limit, appropriate driving behavior for the location, and where the car is disabled.

This is where Kohler Co., the industrial and hospitality juggernaut known for its toilets, steam showers, hotels and golf courses, wants to transform 247 aces of heavily wooded land into an 18-hole golf course.

The occasion for my own trip into that glorious space was the annual Willa Cather Conference, held that year in Red Cloud. I gave a talk about Cather’s 1922 novel, “One of Ours” — set, as so many of her novels are, on the prairie, but extraordinary for its vivid depiction of the 1918 flu pandemic and World War I. Ernest Hemingway, whose contempt was always a reliable marker of how threatened he felt by the gifts of another writer, quipped in a letter to critic Edmund Wilson that the war had been “Catherized” and suggested, falsely, that she’d lifted her battle scenes from D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.” How peeved Hemingway must have been when “One of Ours” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.

11.5

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For a decade, apps have dominated dating. But now singles are growing tired of swiping and are looking for new ways to meet people – or reverting to old ones

Against a Dystopian Farm-Free Future: In an effort to make diets and agriculture “sustainable,” urban bureaucrats make policy based on industrial agricultural data, completely ignoring experience and practices coming out of holistically managed operations.

Oil and gas company BP has agreed to purchase $100 million worth of electric vehicle chargers from Tesla. This marks the first time Tesla has ever sold chargers to another company, according to an announcement from BP.

This kind of literary criticism is a high-wire act; doing it well means ferrying the reader from the publisher’s office to the writer’s desk without inducing vertigo. McGurl and Sinykin tell compelling stories of the multinational conglomerates that bought up almost all of the independent publishers, enforced standards of efficiency that continue to repress creativity and diversity, and learned to thrive in a marketplace that does not distinguish between Henry James’ “The Golden Bowl”and Torre & Tagus’ Brava Spun Textured Metallic Gold Bowl Decorative Bowl for Living Room & Centerpiece Display. But they both go one step further as they attempt — with some success — to chart a new way of reading novels through an institutional lens, one that challenges the romantic myth of the solitary author that many writers, including Elizabeth Gilbert, have made the main substance of their careers.

Most of the doctors also started working at UnityPoint Health-Meriter in Madison in August, Sansone said. In addition, some are operating at SSM Health’s hospitals in Baraboo, Janesville and Madison, where they have maintained privileges even though they are no longer employees and despite lawsuits between SSM Health and the group.

Norway EV sales and related data. These data have been collated from data from Statens vegvesen (SVV) hosted by the Digitaliseringsdirektoratet and from ofv.no.

My growing frustration spurred me to find out why Apple’s weather app stinks. In speaking to experts, I was comforted by the fact that there’s actually a reason — algorithms, specifically — for my annoyance. It’s nice to be mad at something in particular. But in my search I also discovered newfound appreciation for local meteorologists and more about weather and weather forecasting than I had initially planned.

Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.

Aryna Sabalenka & 20 other top players including Elena Rybakina, Ons Jabeur, Marketa Vondrousova signed the letter, which requested a more flexible calendar, expanded childcare, higher pay, & official representation on the WTA player’s council from their own independent player’s organization – the PTPA. The letter ended with a request for ‘a written, substantive response to this letter & each requested improvement with a clear commitment by the WTA to address the issues stated above by Friday, October 13th.’

Porsche has to save € on software development. A partnership with Google & deeper integration of Maps, Assistant, Play Store are planned. they call this ‘blended ecosystem’.

Time Magazine reports that Ukraine struggles to rally financial support after its failed counteroffensive and amid allegations of widespread corruption.

Israel might think that it is in a war with Hamas. It isn’t. It’s in an online war with a global, networked tribe for its very existence. A war it is losing. You can see it in this recent poll (one of many that say the same thing) just after the terrorist attack.

These are the key paragraphs of (threat) letter revealed yesterday from Google to Microsoft when it found out MSFT would make its search engine the default in its new browser. Google’s statements on power of defaults vs user choice undermine much of its defense to date.

As someone who has photographed San Francisco extensively, over the past 30 years, literally walking thousands of miles of our city streets, I can validate what @elonmusk is saying here about the zombie apocalypse in San Francisco. Walking around Market Street, Mission Street, the Tenderloin, you literally encounter zombies, strung out, high on fentanyl, standing and awake but completely zombified.

Most important, they were cheap. The 1968 eight-passenger Vista Cruiser and 1968 10-passenger Country Squire retailed for about $30,000 in today’s dollars. That would buy you a new Toyota Camry today. A top luxury option in 1969, the Chrysler Town & Country, cost about $39,000 in today’s dollars.

Excellent by @stevesi detailing the AI executive order and all that is problematic about the approach.
-Slows and perhaps arrests innovation
-Outside of democratic processes
-At the behest of incumbents and to their benefit

Why EVs Aren’t The GreenTech Panacea || Peter Zeihan

A new analysis by The Intercept provides evidence refuting that claim. Biden’s effort to delegitimize the numbers coming out of Gaza as fake news has created an opening for defenders of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign to dismiss the crisis; they note that Hamas governs Gaza and therefore runs the Ministry of Health and is inflating the figures. (Biden later clarified he meant to say he didn’t trust Hamas, not all Palestinians, according to the Wall Street Journal.)

The German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck’s video message is must watch

The limited availability of electric vehicles and low interest rates pushed prices sky-high in 2022. That has all since changed this year.

In addition to the report, the event marks the release of the CORE Score, a county-level dashboard of wellbeing. Together, the report and the dashboard make the case for a shift in national priorities, from a focus on how the economy is doing onto how Americans are doing.

My take on #NetworkStates: Satoshi thought he was building e-cash for decentralized payments, but he actually discovered digital gold. @balajis thinks he’s building Network States for people to go claim land to live in, but he’s actually discovered phyles-as-a-service. The majority of people will not move to Moldova or Roatán to live in a startup city, but they do want phyles.

The diffusion of innovation and new ideas is fundamental for economic growth, cultural shifts, and institutional change. How are new ideas created, and how do they diffuse? Specifically, how do spatial con- nections affect the generation and diffusion of ideas? Intuitively, a denser network should increase the number of novel ideas and augment their diffu- sion. I study knowledge production in Germany in the 19th century, relying on the universe of bibliographic records and novel railway statistics, among other original data, as well as cutting-edge machine learning and topology to measure ideas. I show that the railroad network increased the creation of new ideas, but decreased their diffusion. This was a by-product of spe- cialization: with the railroad, groups of scholars could focus on narrower topics and co-locate with similar professionals; they learnt more from similar groups, but became disconnected from dissimilar ones. These patterns are those that paved the way for modern knowledge production, and they had important consequences for state institutions, on top of scientific discoveries and growth. Public officials and legislators were trained with narrower but deeper expertise. The bureaucracy became more specialized, and legislation more exhaustive.

In December, a new chief executive will take the reins at Blue Origin, an Amazon veteran named Dave Limp, who has Bezos’ trust. When he was hired, Bezos gave Limp a clear mandate: move faster. In particular, Bezos wants Blue Origin to deliver on the large New Glenn rocket and lunar lander for the Artemis Program. One way to cut costs and move faster would be to take the talented and experienced engineers on New Shepard and allocate them to the rocket and lander programs.

Airbus Industries The A300 Story Brochure 1974 from La Jetée Press

“For serving our customers so they don’t get confused”.

“Everybody has this green light to pursue more solar installations,” Kuntz said. “We’re at a moment when solar costs are at a historic low. We’ve got these terrific federal inflation reduction tax credits.”

The software, aimed at gamers annoyed by the sound from other players, used artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze more than 5,000 crunches.

The German-American former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about Germany’s asylum policy: “It was a grave mistake to admit so many people from entirely different cultures, religions, and beliefs, as it fosters interest groups within countries.”

10.29

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Why does Germany need a spaceport? “It is true for more and more industries: If you are not at the forefront in space, you will not be a technology leader on Earth,” BDI President Siegfried Russwurm said.

The year is 1518. Mexico-Tenochtitlan, once an unassuming settlement in the middle of Lake Texcoco, now a bustling metropolis. It is the capital of an empire ruling over, and receiving tribute from, more than 5 million people. Tenochtitlan is home to 200.000 farmers, artisans, merchants, soldiers, priests and aristocrats. At this time, it is one of the largest cities in the world. Today, we call this city Ciudad de Mexico – Mexico City.

In a new report, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) examined numbers from Statistics Canada and found that the country has 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs than it did 20 years ago — despite the fact that the population has grown by more than 10 million over the same period.

For the past 25 years or so, websites, news outlets, blogs and many others with a URL that wanted to get attention have used search engine optimization, or SEO, to “convince” search engines to share their content as high as possible in the results they provide to readers. This has helped drive traffic to their sites and has also spawned an industry of consultants and marketers who advise on how best to do that.

“So that’s the difference,” he adds. “They [the Americans] were security-centric, military-oriented. The Chinese are economic centric, development-oriented.”

Elon Musk seems to agree. Earlier this week, the Tesla boss warned of “enormous challenges in reaching volume production” on the model, which was first unveiled four years ago. “This is simply normal?.?.?.?when you’ve got a product with a lot of new technology or any brand-new vehicle programme, but especially one that is as different and advanced as the Cybertruck,” he told investors. “We dug our own grave.”

Data also shows that despite billions in tax breaks, regulatory favors, and subsidies, companies like AT&T have long refused to upgrade low-income and minority Cleveland neighborhoods to fiber. These companies not only engage in this deployment “redlining,” but data also makes it clear they often charge these low income and minority neighborhoods more money for the same or slower broadband.

How did Wang become a literary icon in a country famed for its constraint? It helped that he was adroit at crafting narratives just oblique enough to elude the censors. But the political context was also crucial. After the crackdown at Tiananmen Square, in 1989, the Communist Party had risked falling into oblivion, behind its comrades in Moscow. It survived by offering the Chinese people a grand but pragmatic bargain: personal space in return for political loyalty. The Party leader Deng Xiaoping broke with the orthodoxy of the Mao era; he called for “courageous experiments” to insure that China would not be like “a woman with bound feet.” Soon, new N.G.O.s were lobbying for the rights of women and ethnic minorities, and foreign investors were funding startups, including Alibaba and Tencent, that grew into some of the wealthiest companies on earth. Young people were trying on new identities; I met a Chinese band that played only American rock, though their repertoire was so limited that they sang “Hotel California” twice a night. Above all, the Party sought to project confidence: Deng’s successor, Jiang Zemin, visited the New York Stock Exchange, in 1997, rang the opening bell, and boomed, in English, “I wish you good trading!”

Developer productivity can be a tricky concept to define. Performance metrics specialist Swarmia describes it as systematically eliminating anything that gets in the way of delivery. And, in a world where agile methods have long taught us that you can’t improve what you can’t measure, you first have to identify blockers before you can remove them. To do this, McKinsey has chosen to build on two popular engineering metrics frameworks: DORA and SPACE.

The first thing the Texts team will do at Automattic, it seems, is finish its mobile app. “To do this on mobile with push notifications, and efficient battery, and everything, is pretty tricky,” Mullenweg says. “But I think we’ve cracked it in a way that maintains all the end-to-end encryption, and where Automattic has no access to your keys, your anything.” Right now, Texts is a $15 a month power-user tool, but Mullenweg says that could change over time. “There might be some limited free version in the future,” he says. “But if you’re serious about this, you’ll want the paid — for less than like the price of one streaming service or two cups of coffee a month, you’ll get something that you’ll be able to use for hours a day.”

Over the past 5 years, we have conducted a study on public confidence in American institutions in part to answer questions like this. The American Institutional Confidence poll (“AIC”) is a nationally representative panel survey asking respondents about their confidence in different institutions, as well as their general support for democracy and various democratic norms. Over this time, we have had the opportunity to ask individuals how they feel broadly about technology’s role in their life and their confidence in particular tech companies. In doing so, we discovered a marked decrease in the confidence Americans profess for technology and, specifically, tech companies—greater and more widespread than for any other type of institution. In the remainder of this piece, we document this precipitous drop in faith between 2018 and 2021, illustrate where it came from and was most heavily concentrated, and discuss why it matters.

Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom

All these calls cost a lot of money. The rate varied, but it averaged about $4 for every 15 minutes in Connecticut during Jovaan’s incarceration. They often talked four times a day, the maximum allowed. The charges added up quickly. Every Friday, when Lewis collected her paycheck, the first thing she did was deposit money in Jovaan’s phone account. Many months, she had to pick: the calls or her other bills? “You always choose your kid,” she told me, even if it meant an empty stomach or talking to her son in the dark because her power was shut off.

Gov. Kathy Hochul reportedly authorized payment of nearly $2 million in taxpayer money for outside ghostwriters to help draft her State of the State speeches. Most of the money was paid to Deloitte Consulting and the Boston Consulting Group to help the state’s first female governor shape her vision, according to the New York Times.

Idemitsu Kosan, Japan’s second-largest oil refiner, may seem like an unlikely partner for the EV space. But Toyota says Idemitsu has been working on developing the “elemental technologies” for the batteries since 2001, five years before Toyota began pursuing them in 2006.

“The one message I want to convey today is that you will have missed the most frightening aspect of it all, if you do not appreciate that it happened in one of the most educated, most progressive, most cultured countries in the world.”

This video shows that everything Jamaal Bowman and his supporters said about this incident was a lie. Anyway, moving on…

X has released some highlights after one year of @elonmusk ownership.

• Users: 7.8B+ active minutes on X per day. Avg user spends more than 32 minutes per day on X.
• 1.5M avg signups per day
• Since mid-May, all major agencies have reversed their pause guidance against advertising on X. Last quarter alone over 1,700 advertisers returned to X, including 90 of the top 100 ad spenders from a year ago.
• Over half a billion people come to X every month
• Over 200 new products and features shipped post-acquisition with a significantly smaller team
• Paid out more than $20 million to creator community
• Community Notes now has over 100K contributors in 44 countries

Morris Chang, 92, said that cutting off China’s chip industry from the rest of the world would affect other players beyond China. “I think that decoupling will ultimately slow down everybody. Of course, the immediate purpose is to slow China down, and I think it’s doing that,” Chang said.

As the source said, there was a lot of “self-inflicted pain by the corporate defendants.” Let me quote my source again:

You could tell none of the tapes of the corporate folks and their scripts played well with them. The tape of Gino Blefari telling his story on how to script commissions played horribly in the room. It felt smarmy, with the clip they played. I wasn’t there for the Tom Ferry tape this week, which was a nightmare – and turned out not to have been admitted into evidence.

One of the more important pre-trial rulings and decisions was the one the plaintiffs made not to have over 600 telephone calls from REX introduced… except as a counter. Here’s the relevant page from the filing:

But you should also get to a jurisdiction that doesn’t have a sovereign debt crisis. And where property rights are respected.

George Soros 1998 60 minutes interview.

Nikon small world competition.

Testimony in the trial revealed that Google spent a total of $26.3 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine in multiple browsers, phones, and platforms.

The judge was hostile to the Deplorable lady, and she told the defendant to stop sharing her political views, but ultimately couldn’t find a basis to rule in favor of the plaintiffs.

What have we seen in the past few weeks? Muslim immigrants to the U.S., whose right to settle here was pushed by the ADL, rallying and pointing out that the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) is not a terrorist organization, but the Israeli government and all supporters of Israel are (video). Twitter and Facebook jammed with anti-Israel content. A young woman in a hijab in NYC and her friend giving the finger to a billboard truck advocating for the return of hostages held by Hamas (video). Depending on your political point of view, you might agree with these anti-Israel positions, but I think that everyone can agree this is not what the ADL was trying to accomplish.

The absence of a major tax is a common factor among many of the top 10 states. Property taxes and unemployment insurance taxes are levied in every state, but there are several states that do without one or more of the major taxes: the corporate income tax, the individual income tax, or the sales tax. Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming have no corporate or individual income tax (though Nevada imposes gross receipts taxes); Alaska has no individual income or state-level sales tax; Florida has no individual income tax; and New Hampshire and Montana have no sales tax. This does not mean, however, that a state cannot rank in the top 10 while still levying all the major taxes. Indiana and Utah, for example, levy all the major tax types but do so with low rates on broad bases.

In a world that seems inexorably drawn towards an all-electric future, Toyota has consistently taken a different road. The Japanese automaker remains skeptical about an exclusive reliance on electric vehicles (EVs). While it’s true that Toyota has some exciting EVs in the pipeline for the upcoming year, they are also actively exploring alternative energy sources. However, a recent development could potentially turn the tables on the EV revolution — an ammonia-powered engine for passenger vehicles. An ammonia engine is a type of internal combustion engine that uses ammonia as its primary fuel source. What makes ammonia unique is its composition, consisting of one nitrogen atom and three hydrogen atoms. The absence of carbon atoms in ammonia translates to the absence of carbon dioxide emissions during combustion. This distinct characteristic is why ammonia engines are viewed as a promising solution to combat pollution.