New posts from the.micro.blog
🔗 Articles: Monday 25.Mar.2024
Yahoo Finance: Experts slam carbon capture as clock ticks on Alberta‘s $16.5 billion mega project
Energy analysts are lobbing criticism at carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as Canada’s oil and gas industry and the federal government point fingers over the massive $16.5 billion project taking shape in Alberta’s oilsands.
In the latest example, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) warned members of Australia’s Melbourne Petroleum Club that CCS “presents ongoing risks which may negate its benefits.”
“CCS may have a niche role in the transition, but not in combination with fossil fuels,” read slides from a presentation by IEEFA energy finance analyst Kevin Morrison dated March 3. “Australia needs to improve its regulation to ensure it is not liable for CCS failure.”
Slashdot: FTX To Sell $884 Million of Anthropic Shares To Two Dozen Institutional Investors
The FTX bankruptcy estate has raised $884 million by selling the majority of its Anthropic shares to two dozen institutional investors. “The sale of the Anthropic shares is a big win for the FTX estate, which pledged in January to pay back the defunct exchange’s customers 100% of the value of their holdings at the time of the exchange’s collapse,” reports CoinDesk. “FTX’s FTT token climbed 10% on the news.”
MacRumors: Update Your iPhone Now: iOS 17.4.1 Includes These Security Fixes
Apple today provided details about the security fixes included in last week’s iOS 17.4.1 and iPadOS 17.4.1 software updates for the iPhone and iPad.
Processing an image may lead to arbitrary code execution.
Last Updated: 25.Mar.2024 23:05 EDT
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🔗 Articles: Tuesday 26.Mar.2024
WashPo: Baltimore Key Bridge collapse live updates: Search ongoing for 6 missing
A major bridge in Baltimore collapsed after being hit by a freighter at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, sending at least eight people from a construction crew into the water as a large section of the bridge crashed into the Patapsco River. The container ship, traveling at a relatively rapid speed of about eight knots, lost power in the moments before it struck the bridge, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said at a news conference.
Moore said there is no evidence the collapse was linked to terrorist activity.
9to5Mac: Apply for WWDC24 in-person event
Apple has officially announced WWDC24 with the developer week kicking off on June 10. Like it’s done in recent years, the company is holding a special, invite-only in-person event to watch the keynote at Apple headquarters and more. Here’s how to apply for a spot.
Apple is continuing its tradition of offering WWDC online for free to everyone and also hosting the in-person event this year. Apple shared the details on its developer site:
Apply for the opportunity to join us in person for an all-day event at Apple Park on Monday, June 10. Watch the Keynote and exciting new programming, meet with Apple experts, and take part in special activities.
Along with the “all-day event” at Apple Park on June 10, Apple says badge pick-up and a welcome reception at the Infinite Loop Campus will happen on Sunday, June 9.
9to5Mac: Apple teases ‘Absolutely Incredible’ AI-focused WWDC
Apple officially set the dates for WWDC 2024 today, revealing that the event will take place from June 10 through June 14. As if there were any doubts that artificial intelligence will be a key part of WWDC this year, Apple’s marketing boss Greg Joswiak says the event will be “Absolutely Incredible.”
Get it? (A)bsolutely (I)ncredible…
Even beyond Joswiak’s subtle AI tease on social media today, the writing has been on the wall for a while. Apple CEO Tim Cook has teased Apple’s plans to unveil new AI announcements on multiple occasions this year.
Last Updated: 26.Mar.2024 15:02 EDT
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I’m writing a letter to PM Trudeau. It’s going slowly, and I have mixed feelings of rage/depression that I’m trying to suppress while finding words that may (slightly) encourage a more active stance on climate change.
It’s unlikely to have any significant effect so why is it so difficult to express?
🔗 Articles: Wednesday 27.Mar.2024
Kickstarter: How Comics Were Made: a Visual History of Printing Cartoons
Backed
Undecided (YouTube): How a Sand Battery Could Revolutionize Home Energy Storage
Sand. It’s coarse, it’s rough, and it can make for a great sand battery. And as weird as that might sound, it’s just one example of the many earthy materials currently used for thermal energy storage (or TES). A while back, we covered the debut of the world’s first commercial sand battery, which is big enough to supply power for about 10,000 people. Now, sand-based energy storage has reached a new frontier: individual homes. Companies like Batsand are currently offering heat batteries that bring hot and fresh sand directly to your door. Seems you can get just about anything delivered these days.
But what’s stopped us from experimenting with residential TES before? How will heat storage impact our lives in our homes? And where exactly are homeowners supposed to put this stuff?
Politico: Joe Lieberman, 2000 vice presidential nominee, dies at 82
McCain considered picking Lieberman as his running mate on the 2008 GOP presidential ticket but was persuaded otherwise by Republicans worried that it would cause a rift in the party.
“I completely trusted, liked and worked well with Joe,” McCain wrote in “The Restless Wave.” “And I still believe, whatever the effect it would have had in some quarters of the party, that a McCain-Lieberman ticket would have been received by most Americans as a genuine effort to pull the country together for a change.”
Politico: Outmoded bridge design likely contributed to catastrophic loss in Baltimore
After a Florida bridge collapse tragedy, bridges were required to be built with protective “fenders” — but not until the 1990s.
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The collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge Tuesday after a collision with a massive container ship could have been mitigated with simple “fenders” that have been standard issue on new bridges since the 1990s.
Today these fenders are standard to be installed around supporting beams for new bridges to help blunt potential impact from cargo ships. They help combat the ever-increasing size of ships just like the thousand-foot-long Dali, which sent the bridge into the Patapsco River on Monday.
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In the 1970s, when the Key Bridge was designed, ships were dramatically smaller and engineers would not have foreseen the behemoth container ships of today. The largest ship in the world at that time was about a quarter of the size of the Dali, which is the length of a skyscraper.
Odd measure of comparison.
Electronic Frontier Foundation: Podcast Episode: About Face (Recognition)
Is your face truly your own, or is it a commodity to be sold, a weapon to be used against you? A company called Clearview AI has scraped the internet to gather (without consent) 30 billion images to support a tool that lets users identify people by picture alone. Though it’s primarily used by law enforcement, should we have to worry that the eavesdropper at the next restaurant table, or the creep who’s bothering you in the bar, or the protestor outside the abortion clinic can surreptitiously snap a pic of you, upload it, and use it to identify you, where you live and work, your social media accounts, and more?
Last Updated: 27.Mar.2024 23:55 EDT
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🔗 Articles: Thursday 28.Mar.2024
Just Have a Think (YouTube): Battery prices just fell off a cliff!
Lithium-ion batteries often get a bad rap in the media these days, blamed for high cost, unwanted fires and poor working conditions in the supply chain. But the fact remains that this chemistry provides the power for billions of devices around the world, from the tiniest pacemakers to the largest utility scale stationary energy storage, and the manufacturers are making great strides to improve their systems. So can they do enough to stay at the top of the pile?
Adafruit: Adafruit ItsyBitsy RP2040 : ID 4888
What’s smaller than a Feather but larger than a Trinket? It’s an Adafruit ItsyBitsy RP2040 featuring the Raspberry Pi RP2040! Small, powerful, with a ultra fast dual Cortex M0+ processor running at 125 MHz - this microcontroller board is perfect when you want something very compact, with lots of horsepower and a bunch of pins. This Itsy has sports car speed, but SUV roominess with 8 MB of FLASH and 264KB of SRAM.
ItsyBitsy RP2040 is only 1.4” long by 0.7” wide, but has 6 power pins, 23 digital GPIO pins (4 of which can be analog in and 16 x PWM out). It’s the same chip as the Feather RP2040 and Raspberry Pi Pico but really really small. So it’s great once you’ve finished up a prototype, and want to make the project much smaller. It even comes with 8 MB of SPI Flash built in, for data logging, file storage, or CircuitPython/MicroPython code
CBC: Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX founder, sentenced to 25 years in prison in crypto fraud case
‘My useful life is probably over,’ Bankman-Fried said in remarks to court.
CBC: Ontario school boards sue Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok
Four major Ontario school boards are taking some of the largest social media companies to court over their products, alleging the way they’re designed has negatively rewired the way children think, behave and learn and disrupted the way schools operate.
The public district school boards of Toronto, Peel and Ottawa-Carleton, along with Toronto’s Catholic counterpart, are looking for about $4.5 billion in total damages from Meta Platforms Inc., Snap Inc. and ByteDance Ltd., which operate the platforms Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok respectively, according to separate but similar statements of claim filed Wednesday.
NYT: A Simple New Technique Could Make Your Eggs More Humane
Every year in the United States, more than 300 million male chicks are hatched. But because they don’t lay eggs or produce valued meat, they are typically killed within a day, usually shredded alive in industrial grinders. The practice, known as chick culling, is replicated on a huge scale around the globe, with an estimated 6.5 billion male chicks killed each year, or around 200 each second.
NYT: Berkeley Will Repeal Its Landmark Ban on Natural Gas in New Homes
The city of Berkeley, Calif., has agreed to repeal a landmark climate rule that would have banned natural gas hookups in new homes, throwing into question the fate of dozens of similar restrictions on gas in cities across the country.
Berkeley’s gas ban, which was the first of its kind when it passed in 2019, had been challenged in court by the California Restaurant Association and was struck down last year by a three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The city settled the lawsuit last week by agreeing to immediately halt enforcement of the rule and eventually repeal it altogether.
NYT: Storing Renewable Energy, One Balloon at a Time
Energy Dome uses carbon dioxide held in a huge balloon, the “dome” in the company’s name, as a kind of battery. During the day, electricity from the local grid, some produced by nearby fields of solar cells, is used to compress the carbon dioxide into liquid. At night, the liquid carbon dioxide is expanded back into gas, which drives a turbine and produces electricity that is sent back to the grid.
In Sardinia.
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But these [other] storage methods have limitations. Pumped hydroelectric requires — and alters — hilly landscapes, and the facilities cost a lot to build. Lithium is a limited resource that is often dirty to mine, and it becomes excessively expensive when designed to store energy for much more than four hours, which may be an important capability if intermittent sources provide the majority of a grid’s power.
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In September, Westinghouse announced that it would build a 100-megawatt storage facility in Alaska, enough to supply about 80,000 average American homes with electricity for up to 12 hours. He added that the facility would cost about half that of one using lithium-ion batteries: “We feel very, very good about the economics.”
A good survey article that covers a number of long-term energy storage technologies for both electricity and heat.
Six Colors: Apple’s immersive MLS highlight reel debuts later today
Apple announced today that the first Apple Immersive Video documentary for Vision Pro, featuring highlights from last year’s MLS playoffs, will debut tonight (March 28) at 6 p.m. Pacific.
The video format has previously only been seen in a handful shorts in the TV app on the Vision Pro. This new film will be similarly short, running about five minutes long, and will be free to all Vision Pro users.
I’m excited to see the finished product—all of Apple’s immersive videos have been pretty amazing—but I have to point out that this five-minute highlight packages is being released 110 days after last year’s MLS Cup Final. That’s not great turnaround time. If immersive video for sports is going to be a thing, turnaround is going to need to be a lot faster.
As pointed out in Daring Fireball, this is the only release from Apple since the Vision Pro product announcement.
DailyHive: Canadians can get free A&W every time the Blue Jays win
Starting March 28, every person who has an account on the A&W app will receive a one-day exclusive offer for a free menu item. These potential offers can be anything on the menu, from a Teen Burger, to Onion Rings, and even root beer.
Coupons will be distributed the day after the Blue Jays win to everyone with an account on the A&W app and a minimum purchase is required to use each offer. You can find these coupons under “Offers” in the app.
Last Updated: 28.Mar.2024 19:54 EDT
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🔗 Articles: Friday 29.Mar.2024
9to5Mac: Apple sues former iOS engineer for leaking Journal app, Vision Pro details, and more
Apple has filed a lawsuit against Andrew Aude, a former iOS Software Engineer, accusing him of leaking “information about more than a half-dozen different Apple policies and products.” The leaks included details about Apple’s then-unreleased Journal app, Apple’s “development of products within the spatial computing space,” and more.
“Mr. Aude often took and saved screenshots of his communications on his Apple-issued work iPhone to preserve them for posterity,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit, filed in California this month and embedded below, includes several examples of Aude’s leaks over the years at Apple. He sent thousands of messages to multiple journalists at both The Information and the Wall Street Journal.
Cult of Mac: iMessage getting RCS for better cross-platform texting in fall 2024
Google let slip that Apple will fulfill its promise to add support for Rich Communication Services to the iPhone Messages app “in the fall of 2024.”
That almost certainly means iPhone and Android users will enjoy higher quality cross-platform texting with the release of iOS 18 and not before.
“Let slip.”
Discover Magazine: Elon Musk’s Brain Chip Could Restore Vision and Mobility, But Has a Long Way to Go
More recently, in March, Neuralink posted a live stream showing 29-year-old implant recipient Norland Arbaugh using the technology to play a digital version of chess and express how the device has transformed his life after a spinal injury.
MacRumors: Criminals in Montreal Using AirTags to Steal Vehicles
Thieves in Montreal, Canada have been using Apple’s AirTags to facilitate vehicle theft, according to a report from Vermont news sites WCAX and WCAX (via WCAX). Police officers in Burlington, Vermont have issued a warning about AirTags for drivers who recently visited Canada.
Two Burlington residents found Apple AirTags in their vehicles after returning from trips to Montreal, and these are not the first reports that officers have encountered. One man, Ethan Yang, said he was coming from Montreal after visiting family, and he was alerted that there was an AirTag traveling with him. He was able to use his phone to make the AirTag beep, and he was able to locate the device, which had been placed in the front grille of the vehicle.
Not just Montreal.
CBC: Patriarch of Canada’s largest family-owned egg farm dies at 94
It all started as Joe Hudson’s school project in 1943.
Hudson was raising 50 baby chicks for an agricultural class in Brockville, Ont., and that assignment sparked a bright idea: switching the family’s dairy farm to the egg business instead.
More than eight decades later, Burnbrae Farms is considered the largest family-owned egg farm in Canada, with their products on grocery store shelves across the country.
Last Updated: 29.Mar.2024 23:55 EDT
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🔗 Articles: Saturday 30.Mar.2024
AppleInsider: AT&T’s customer passcodes, personal info compromised in breach
AT&T is finally resetting passcodes for current customers after hackers stole a trove of customer data more than two years ago.
The vast majority of the compromised passcodes belong to some 65.4 million current and former AT&T customers. However, the company has reset passcodes for 7.6 million of its current customers, in the typical abundance of caution often cited.
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The stolen data was first reported on hacker forums in 2021. AT&T denied that the hack was real — until now.
AppleInsider: Learn to code in Swift with new Apple tutorial guides
Apple has launched a new tutorial webpage featuring beginner resources for programming using Swift, Swift UI, and Xcode.
Ahead of its annual Worldwide Developer Conference this June, “Develop in Swift Tutorials” has appeared on the the company’s developer website. It offers guides intended to encourage new would-be developers.
The site is aimed at those with little or no prior coding experience. It features step-by-step guides on how to install Xcode, create a new project in Swift, and creating a simple app using SwiftUI.
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In addition to the foundations of SwiftUI and app navigation, there is a section of the tutorials devoted to spatial computing and developing for the Apple Vision Pro. The listed requirements for the tutorials include a Mac running either macOS Sonoma or Ventura, Xcode, and “curiosity and imagination.”
Common Dreams: ‘Obscene’: Biden Quietly OKs More 2,000-Pound Bombs, Warplanes for Israel
“‘Quietly,’” Palestinian American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer scoffed in response to the report. “This is cowardly from the administration. If you are going to be full backers of genocide, own it. We see you and history sees you as well.”
“It is scary to think of the world U.S. support for Israel is creating. A world with no rules, no limits in war, where norms don’t exist, and where genocide is supportable,” he added. “Good luck getting anyone to listen to you about international law after this.”
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“The U.S. cannot beg Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and the next send him thousands more 2,000-pound bombs that can level entire city blocks,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on social media Friday. “This is obscene. We must end our complicity: No more bombs to Israel.”
Guardian: ‘You wouldn’t put your dog in this river’: Boat Race exposes Thames Water failings
Thanks to the vast amounts of sewage now being dumped in the Thames, prevalence of the bug was 10 times higher than what is considered to be safe. As a result, crews from both boats were warned not to take a dive into the Thames at the end of the race lest they suffer diarrhoea, kidney failure or sepsis.
And the culprit? Thames Water, which has been found to have been releasing effluent directly into the river and its tributaries on a grand scale. One recent study indicated that the utility firm had pumped at least 72 billion litres of filth into the river since 2020, enough to fill 29,000 Olympic swimming pools.
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Last week, the company’s leadership was denounced as a disgrace by the communities secretary, Michael Gove,and accused of taking excess profits while failing to invest in badly needed infrastructure. Now the renationalisation of Thames Water has become a real prospect. The water industry was privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and if Thames Water is renationalised this would confirm in many people’s minds that the whole exercise had been a very costly fiasco.
There may be organizations that are worth privatizing, but many were privatized for the wrong reasons and they have cast a long shadow.
Guardian: Le Crookie: after the cronut and the cruffin, latest croissant hybrid takes Paris by storm
Teenagers queue outside bakeries to buy pastry seen on TikTok that puts American twist on French pâtisserie.
Sounds worth investigating!
Guardian: ‘Feeble, desperate, mentally unfit’: Biden changes tack to mock Trump
“It’s very sad that the other side is now starting to play the same game. This looks like we’ve lost as a society, because everyone plays that game now,” West said.
For now, it is hard to tell whether Biden cracking jokes about Trump will be a winning strategy. There is evidence, however, that Republican and Democratic voters increasingly view members of the opposing party with contempt.
Guardian: Explorers unlock the mystery of ‘pirate king’ who vanished after huge heist at sea
Kingsley and Cowan discovered that the letter links Avery with one of the first great spy rings, believed to have included Daniel Defoe, the Robinson Crusoe author, and Thomas Tenison, the archbishop of Canterbury. Together, they were protecting Protestant England from the threat of “popery”, a Catholic invasion from France and an enemy seizing the throne.
Last Updated: 30.Mar.2024 23:44 EDT
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🔗 Articles: Sunday 31.Mar.2024
BlockClubChicago: Heinz Is Putting Up Ketchup Dispensers To Tempt Chicagoans With Forbidden Condiment
There are some Chicago restaurants that will show you the door if you ask for ketchup.
But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Heinz is helping out ketchup-loving Chicagoans by putting up small billboards that dispense the condiment outside famous local restaurants that refuse to serve ketchup.
Passersby will be able to smack a ketchup bottle attached to the boards, and packets of Heinz ketchup will fall out, according to a Heinz news release. The dispensers go up Tuesday and will be available through April 9 outside the Wieners Circle, 2622 N. Clark St., and by Navy Pier, among other spots, a Heinz spokesperson said.
via Elliot Shank (clonezone on micro.blog)
Guardian: Martha Gill: Cute, cuddly, and often crippled: look where the love of dogs has taken the British
But then, it is also a strange kind of love, the sort that doesn’t feel quite right. The first clue, I think, that something is off, is in the breeds we feel so strongly about preserving. Our British concern for animal welfare does not stop us from joining the rest of the world in producing dogs with terrible health problems. Dachshunds are just the start of it. Labradors have hip issues. Dalmatians go deaf. And then there’s the pug, whose famous features, according to a study from the Royal Veterinary College of the UK, lead directly to “a lifetime of suffering”. They lack “even core body functions” and can’t sleep properly as they constantly have to wake up to breathe.
Why do we still buy these dogs, when we know they suffer? A University of Copenhagen study discovered a strange phenomenon: the decision to buy a breed which has lots of health issues may in fact be deliberate. These dogs require care, and this in turn produces feelings of love and satisfaction in their carers.
NetNewsWire: Free and Open Source RSS Reader for Mac and iOS
It’s like podcasts — but for reading.
NetNewsWire shows you articles from your favorite blogs and news sites and keeps track of what you’ve read.
via Odd-Egil (odd on micro.blog)
9to5Mac: This GTA6-disguised macOS malware performs heist on Keychain passwords
During an analysis of various splinter samples of a noteworthy macOS stealer, security researchers at Moonlock discovered one with an alarming level of sophistication. Under the disguise of the unreleased video game GTA6, once installed, the malware executes rather clever techniques to extract sensitive information, such as passwords from a user’s local Keychain.
In typical Security Bite fashion, here’s the breakdown: how it works and how to stay safe.
GTA = Grand Theft Auto
Lamborghini PR: Automobili Lamborghini launches its new corporate look
After more than two decades since the last update, Automobili Lamborghini has renewed its historic logo. The restyling is driven by a new strategy that involves adapting the brand’s visual expression to better reflect the “brave”, “unexpected” and “authentic” values of its mission, namely “Driving Humans Beyond”, a concept that translates into the intention to always go beyond the limits, standards and conventions.
This evolution is part of the broad transformation process denoted Direzione Cor Tauri, the strategy that embodies Lamborghini’s new trajectory focused on sustainability and decarbonization. The aim is to create a solid pact with the future generations, serving as an inspiration and model for innovation and sustainable progress. With this in mind, the House of Sant’Agata Bolognese is implementing changes that involve not only the cars, but the corporate identity as a whole, thus impacting the company’s culture and values, which will also see a new expression in terms of all the visual aspects.
Scripting News (Dave Winer): The language of developers
I loved hanging out with fellow math and compsci majors in college and grad school. It’s nice when you get to speak in the language of math and programming, where you can’t be fuzzy about things, you have to be direct, because it’s the only way to communicate.
No one attaches their feelings to the things other people say in this context. But sometimes it hurts anyway. …
UPI: Extinction Rebellion protesters disrupt Easter vigil in NYC
Extinction Rebellion protesters disrupted a vigil celebrating Easter at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, the group said on social media.
Activists rose to sing “Dona Nobis Pacem,” which translates to “grant us peace” from Latin, but were allegedly “slammed” to the ground by cathedral security, Extinction Rebellion said in a statement.
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“War, occupation, and industrial pollution are poisoning the soil, air, and water in Gaza and all over the planet, destroying the earth’s capacity to sustain life,” Schwedock said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Catholic leaders in East Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank compared Gaza’s suffering to the crucifixion of Jesus in an Easter message as protestant leaders also decried Israel’s continuing war in the Palestinian enclave. Pope Francis has also called for an end to the war.
Last Updated: 31.Mar.2024 15:59 EDT
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I’m continuing to enjoy using Strata on iOS for updating my daily link blog.
I still have some kind of mental block on seeing how to set up a separate blog for them though! 🤔 In the meantime they show up in this blog and you can see the day’s links in progress courtesy of Strata’s sharing feature.
📷 Micro.Blog April Photo Challenge #1: Toy. Easter.
🔗 Articles: Monday 01.Apr.2024
Teslarati: Tesla lead engineer defends Cybertruck’s steer-by-wire system
One of the things that MKBHD praised in his review was the Cybertruck’s steer-by-wire system, which Tesla Cybertruck Lead Engineer Wes Morrill also noted has ruined everything else for him. With steer-by-wire, pretty much every vehicle that still uses a traditional steering system immediately feels outdated. Such a comment caught the eye of some critics, one of whom noted that no one wants steer-by-wire in sports cars and that Tesla engineers are engineers first and car guys second.
In response to the steer-by-wire critic, the Cybertruck Lead Engineer explained the advantages of steer-by-wire, including the system’s capability to behave like a power-assisted steering system if necessary. He also noted that drivers can amplify feedback in a steer-by-wire system.
I’m sure old pilots don’t like fly-by-wire either. But everybody uses it now.
NYT: California Highway 1 Collapse Leaves 2,000 Tourists Stranded
Officials in California on Sunday slowly began guiding drivers past a collapsed section of scenic Highway 1 in the Big Sur area, one day after the damage left about 2,000 motorists stranded overnight.
NYT: Magazine: Why Are American Drivers So Deadly?
After decades of declining fatality rates, dangerous driving has surged again.
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To Kuhls, it felt as if all the deadly habits that were on such flagrant display during the early months of the pandemic had become normalized. “We’ve all gotten stuck,” Kohls told me. “That’s true here; it’s true nationally. And it’s a scary thing to comprehend.”
CBS: Alex Murdaugh gets 40 years for stealing from clients, law firm
Murdaugh was punished - this time in federal court - for stealing from clients and his law firm. The 55-year-old disbarred attorney is already serving a life sentence without parole in a state prison for killing his wife and son.
Murdaugh agreed to plead guilty to more than a dozen counts, including money laundering, breach of trust and financial fraud, in exchange for a 27-year sentence. The sentence must be approved by Judge Clifton Newman, who set a sentencing hearing for Nov. 28 at which victims or their families will get to speak.
Oops.
TheFocus: 8 incredible must-see movies added to Amazon Prime Video this week
The Focus breaks down a list of eight fantastic movies added to the Amazon Prime Video streaming library this week.
- The Aviator (2004)
- The Big Short (2015)
- Blockers (2018)
- Chaplin (1992)
- Cloverfield (2008)
- Fighting With My Family (2019)
- Nebraska (2013)
- Richard Jewell (2019)
TheFocus: Changing my morning coffee routine was the best decision for my energy levels
Unfortunately, this led to some less-than-ideal habits. For one, I grew attached to a Starbucks secret menu item called the Liquid Cocaine which is as deadly as it sounds. Secondly, I ignored scientific advice and drank coffee whenever I felt like it. Shock, it was all the time.
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While there isn’t a specific time to start drinking coffee, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman recommended waiting 90 to 120 minutes before partaking.
“The reason I delay caffeine is that one of the factors that induce a sense of sleepiness is the build-up of adenosine in our system,” he said. “The buildup of adenosine accumulates the longer we’re awake, so early morning, your adenosine levels are likely to be very low.”
Worth a try.
TheFocus: 7 April Fool’s Day products that brands need to make a reality
Each year, April Fool’s Day provides companies with the perfect time to trial potential products without the need to actually launch them.
e.g.
- Domino’s: The Edibox edible pizza box
- KFC: Mighty Mouth Expander
- Tinder: bans fish pictures
- Pringles: lip balm
- McDonald’s: milkshake dipping sauces
Apple Insider: macOS 15 at WWDC 2024: release date, features, rumors
Aside from comments from Tim Cook and Greg Joswiak effectively confirming AI will be a feature of the event, there have been various stories about Apple’s machine learning work that seem primed for launch.
For a start, Apple’s famous digital assistant Siri is expected to receive a massive upgrade for 2024. This includes claims of investing $1 billion into adding AI to Siri, and suggestions that generative AI elements are on the way.
It would be great to have an overhauled version of Siri.
The main claim is that new tools in Xcode will use AI to predict and automatically complete blocks of code. For developers this could save time in writing code elements for apps, as well as potentially reducing the amount of bugs caused by spelling mistakes, missing, or additional elements.
There is also the possibility of using AI to generate code for testing applications, saving developers time in a particularly tedious process.
Apple is working on AI-based image editing models
07.Feb.2024
Apple, in collaboration with researchers from the University of California, has released its own AI-based image editing model that and anybody can try.
The model has been dubbed “MGIE,” which stands for MLLM-Guided Image Editing and allows users to edit images based on natural language instructions. It leverages multimodal large language models (MLLMs), which combine various types of information, such as text, photos, and videos, to understand and generate human-like language.
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MGIE is open-source and available on GitHub for anyone to try. The GitHub page allows users to snag the code, data, and pre-trained models.
The speed of image generation will vary significantly based on hardware performance. Also, models such as this are incredibly RAM hungry.
Engineers Need Art: Virtual Pinhead
Jump to the fall of last year though and I read a post on Hacker News about virtual pinball. While the author did manage to make playing pinball sound more appealing to me (I was not aware that nudging a pinball cabinet was anything other than verboten), I think I was more drawn to the challenge of building a virtual pinball cabinet.
Six months after that blog post and virtual pinball (Visual Pinball specifically) has become a hobby that I have fully immersed myself in. I still think I am unlikely to get a real pinball machine, but I’m afraid that I have not just one, but two virtual pinball cabinets in my basement. I’m also experimenting with a more modest-size “controller” that others with a smaller budget (or with less woodworking skills) might find more approachable.
Reuters: Would-be Tesla buyers snub company as Musk’s reputation dips
The ranks of would-be Tesla buyers in the United States are shrinking, according to a survey by market intelligence firm Caliber, which attributed the drop in part to CEO Elon Musk’s polarizing persona.
While Tesla continued to post strong sales growth last year, helped by aggressive price cuts, the electric-vehicle maker is expected to report weak quarterly sales, as early as Tuesday.
Caliber’s “consideration score” for Tesla, provided exclusively to Reuters, fell to 31% in February, less than half its high of 70% in November 2021 when it started tracking consumer interest in the brand.
Last Updated: 01.Apr.2024 14:55 EDT
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