New posts from the.micro.blog
I wrote a great piece about the evolution of society in my mind as I was falling asleep last night. Unfortunately I forgot to press Save and it got overwritten by my spectacular Stanley Cup winning goal…
🔗 Articles: Tuesday 02.Apr.2024
RenewablesNow: Renewables meet 89% of Portugal’s Q1 power demand
National grid operator Redes Energeticas Nacionais (REN) said on Monday that renewable energy plants in Portugal have covered 89% of the country’s electricity consumption in the first quarter of 2024.
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Hydro accounted for 47% of consumption, wind for 31%, solar photovoltaic (PV) for 6%, and biomass for 5%. On March 11, hydropower reached 7,280 MW, a new maximum power delivered to the grid.
NYT: Joe Flaherty, SCTV and Freaks and Geeks Actor, Dies at 82
His death was confirmed by his daughter, Gudrun Flaherty, who said that Mr. Flaherty died after a “brief illness.” She did not specify a cause, or say where he died.
Alongside an ensemble that included John Candy, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, Mr. Flaherty played a variety of characters on “SCTV.” The concept of the series, which aired in the 1970s and ’80s, was that its sketches were “shows” for a low-rent TV station in a fictional town called Melonville.
Goodbye, Guy Caballero.
NYT: Magazine: Peter C. Baker: The Case Against ‘Good’ Coffee
The coffee was fine. Not as good as a cup of freshly roasted, single-origin, shade-grown made at my favorite shop, but it was recognizably coffee. There was no process worth speaking of to enjoy, but there were no grounds on the counter, either, and I soon felt the caffeine caressing my synapses. If I had to pick one word to describe the process, that word would be: “instant.” And if I had to pick one word to describe how this simplified process made me feel, that word would be: “good.”
Coffee articles always perc me up…
Engadget: Amazon just walked out on its self-checkout technology
Amazon is removing Just Walk Out tech from all of its Fresh grocery stores in the US, as reported by The Information. The self-checkout system relies on a host of cameras, sensors and good old-fashioned human eyeballs to track what people leave the store with, charging the customers accordingly.
The technology has been plagued by issues from the onset. Most notably, Just Walk Out merely presents the illusion of automation, with Amazon crowing about generative AI and the like. Here’s where the smoke and mirrors come in. While the stores have no actual cashiers, there are reportedly over 1,000 real people in India scanning the camera feeds to ensure accurate checkouts.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
CleanTechnica: 10 Cleantech Stories Not to Miss — Electric Truck Towing, Chinese EV Takeover, Support Solar & Get An EV
1. Chinese electric cars are quietly taking over the auto market globally, and that’s starting to get interesting. According to one analysis from Transport & Environment (T&E), a full 25% of electric cars sold in Europe in 2024are expected to have been produced in China! In 2023, the figure was 19.5%.
Last Updated: 02.Apr.2024 19:28 EDT
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🔗 Articles: Wednesday 03.Apr.2024
Austin American-Statesman: Sources confirm UT laid off staff previously in DEI-related position
A week after state Sen. Brandon Creighton warned Texas university system administrators about the state’s expectations for higher education institutions to comply with Senate Bill 17 — an anti-DEI law that went into effect in January — the University of Texas has laid off at least 60 staff members who previously worked in diversity, equity and inclusion-related positions, according to three people with knowledge of the terminations.
I had no idea that Texas had such a law.
Atlantic: The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust
As an agnostic, I have spent most of my life thinking about the decline of faith in America in mostly positive terms. Organized religion seemed, to me, beset by scandal and entangled in noxious politics. So, I thought, what is there really to mourn? Only in the past few years have I come around to a different view. Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall to hold back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence.
More than one-quarter of Americans now identify as atheists, agnostics, or religiously “unaffiliated,” according to a new survey of 5,600 U.S. adults by the Public Religion Research Institute. This is the highest level of non-religiosity in the poll’s history. Two-thirds of nonbelievers were brought up in at least nominally religious households, like me. (I grew up in a Reform Jewish home that I would describe as haphazardly religious. In kindergarten, my parents encouraged my sister and me to enthusiastically celebrate Hanukkah–and, just as fervently, to believe in Santa Claus.) But more Americans today have “converted” out of religion than have converted to all forms of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam combined. No faith’s evangelism has been as successful in this century as religious skepticism.
Atlantic: DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest
People are discovering the truth about their biological parents with DNA—and learning that incest is far more common than many think.
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The geneticist Jim Wilson, at the University of Edinburgh, was shocked by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives — a brother and a sister or a parent and a child. “That’s way, way more than I think many people would ever imagine,” he told me. And this number is just a floor: It reflects only the cases that resulted in pregnancy, that did not end in miscarriage or abortion, and that led to the birth of a child who grew into an adult who volunteered for a research study.
WashPo: Nebraska lawmakers face Trump-fueled push to change electoral vote system
Nebraska is one of only two states that divide electoral votes among statewide and congressional district winners, which allowed Joe Biden to pick off an electoral vote in the red state in 2020 by carrying a swing district in the Omaha area. But Gov. Jim Pillen (R) and Trump on Tuesday endorsed a proposal to return the state to a winner-take-all system, possibly upending the final days of the state’s legislative session, which ends April 18.
The effort was put to an early test Wednesday night when Republican state Sen. Julie Slama tried to add the winner-take-all proposal to an unrelated bill as an amendment. The chair of the legislature ruled that the amendment was not germane to the underlying bill, prompting an effort to overrule the chair.
WashPo: Ruby Garcia’s family says they never spoke with Trump, despite his claims in Michigan
Donald Trump used his campaign event in Michigan on Tuesday to denounce what he called “Biden’s border bloodbath,” zeroing in on the case of a young woman killed by someone immigration officials say had entered the country illegally.
“She lit up that room, and I’ve heard that from so many people,” Trump said at a news conference in the hometown of the 25-year-old victim, Ruby Garcia. “I spoke to some of her family.”
But Garcia’s sister, acting as a family spokeswoman, said Tuesday that Trump and his campaign have not contacted her or other immediate relatives — and rebuked the GOP presidential nominee’s effort to make the case part of his calls for a border crackdown.
Last Updated: 03.Apr.2024 23:23 EDT
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🔗 Articles: Thursday 04.Apr.2024
ScienceAlert: Quantum Computing Heats Up: Scientists Achieve Qubit Function Above 1K
Our new research may offer a way forward. We have demonstrated that a particular kind of qubit – one made with a quantum dot printed with metal electrodes on silicon, using technology much like that used in existing microchip production – can operate at temperatures around 1K.
This is only one degree above absolute zero, so it’s still extremely cold. However, it’s significantly warmer than previously thought possible. This breakthrough could condense the sprawling refrigeration infrastructure into a more manageable, single system. It would drastically reduce operational costs and power consumption.
Wikipedia: Striped Toothpaste
Striped toothpaste was invented by Leonard Marraffino in 1955. The patent (US patent 2,789,731, issued 1957) was subsequently sold to Unilever, who marketed the novelty under the Stripe brand-name in the early 1960s. This was followed by the introduction of the Signal brand in Europe in 1965 (UK patent 813,514). Although Stripe was initially very successful, it never again achieved the 8% market share that it cornered during its second year.
Marraffino’s design, which remains in use for single-color stripes, is simple. The main material, usually white, sits at the crimp end of the toothpaste tube and makes up most of its bulk. A thin pipe, through which that carrier material will flow, descends from the nozzle to it. The stripe-material (this was red in Stripe) fills the gap between the carrier material and the top of the tube. The two materials are not in separate compartments, but they are sufficiently viscousthat they will not mix. When pressure is applied to the toothpaste tube, the main material squeezes down the thin pipe to the nozzle. Simultaneously, the pressure applied to the main material causes pressure to be forwarded to the stripe material, which thereby issues out through small holes (in the side of the pipe) onto the main carrier material as it is passing those holes.
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The iconic depiction of a wave-shaped blob of toothpaste sitting on a toothbrush is called a “nurdle”.
LATimes: Trump says he’ll jail his opponents. Members of the House Jan. 6 committee are preparing
Members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have warned America for three years to take former President Donald Trump at his word.
Now, as Trump is poised to win the Republican presidential nomination, his criminal trials face delays that could stall them past election day, and his rhetoric grows increasingly authoritarian, some of those lawmakers find themselves following their own advice.
In mid-March, Trump said on social media that the committee members should be jailed. In December he vowed to be a dictator on “day one.” In August, he said he would “have no choice” but to lock up his political opponents.
Kottke: The Sound of Knitting
The above comes across as almost a parody of itself – halfway through, I thought This could be an SNL sketch! – but it’s also delightful. It’s a trailer for The Sound of Knitting, “an evening where classical music and knitting merge.” The popular designers and podcasters Arne & Carlosteamed up with the Norwegian string instrument group (heh) Trondheimsolistene to make a concert/tutorial/behind-the-scenes knitting video, available for purchase. In addition to featuring knitting-friendly music, the video includes a tour of the Norwegian municipality of Selbu, famous for its gorgeous mittens, as well as a virtual class on how to knit those mittens. It all seems lovely, although I confess I was slightly disappointed “the sound of knitting” wasn’t an ASMR video of needles clicking, although I’m sure that’s out there, too. I mean I know it is because I’ve seen it.
Last Updated: 04.Apr.2024 18:46 EDT
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🔗 Articles: Friday 05.Apr.2024
CBC: CSIS report on Liberal nomination race recalled after meeting with PM’s top security adviser
The head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) issued a burn notice for an intelligence assessment about possible foreign interference in a Toronto Liberal nomination race, according to a document tabled in the public inquiry into foreign interference.
The commission’s lawyers wrote that CSIS director David Vigneault told them that he “has no recollection” why the document was recalled, but was confident the only reason why he would’ve agreed to do so would be “because there was an issue with it; he had never and would never recall a document because it was too sensitive.”
TechCrunch: Startups Weekly: Let’s see what those Y Combinator kids have been up to this time
Trump Media & Technology Group’s (TMTG) financial lifting of the veil reveals a $58 million loss on a meager $4 million in revenue. This isn’t your typical Silicon Valley “burn cash now, profit later” saga; it’s more of a “burn cash now, and that’s it” kind of story.
MacRumors: Apple Updates App Store Guidelines to Permit Game Emulators, Website Links in EU Music Apps
Apple today updated its App Store guidelines to comply with an anti-steering mandate levied by the European Commission. Music streaming apps like Spotify are now permitted to include a link or buy button that leads to a website with information about alternative music purchasing options, though this is only permitted in the European Economic Area.
Kingstonist: Shore volunteers needed for water clean-up event
Volunteers are needed later this month at a water clean-up event at Portsmouth Olympic Harbour. The City of Kingston, in partnership with CORK and Neptune & Salacia Diving, is inviting non-diving shore volunteers to help out with the event, ‘Dive Against Debris,’ starting at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Apr. 20, 2024.
“Certified divers, under the direction of Neptune & Salacia Diving, will be removing debris from the marina water,” the City said in a media release. “Volunteers stationed on land will help gather and sort the retrieved debris. Twenty pairs of work gloves will be available for volunteers. This important role ensures responsible and sustainable clean-up efforts and supports the goal of a healthier marine environment.”
MacRumors: Batterygate: iPhone Users in Canada Can Now Submit Claims for Up to $150 Payout From Apple
Apple agreed to pay up to $14.4 million (CAD) to settle a class action lawsuit in Canada that alleged the company secretly throttled the performance of some iPhone models (“batterygate”), and eligible customers can now submit a claim for payment.
Apple’s settlement received court approval on March 4, and the claims period began today, according to law firm Rochon Genova LLP. To submit a claim, visit the settlement website, select “Submit a Claim” in the top menu, and follow the steps. A serial number for an eligible iPhone is required. The deadline to submit a claim is September 2.
Each affected customer will receive a payment of between $17.50 (CAD) and $150 (CAD) from Apple per valid claim submitted, with the exact payout amount to be dependent on the total number of claims submitted.
To be eligible, you must be a current or former resident of Canada (excluding Québec) who owns or owned an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and/or iPhone SE with iOS 10.2.1 or later installed or downloaded, and/or an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus with iOS 11.2 or later installed or downloaded, before December 21, 2017.
NYT: Some Colleges Will Soon Charge $100,000 a Year. How Did This Happen?
Some Vanderbilt students will have $100,000 in total expenses for the 2024-25 school year. The school doesn’t really want to talk about it.
Manton Reece: Indie Microblogging progress
I’m doing another editing pass of Indie Microblogging. Changing the page size and running a test printing soon to see how it feels in hardcover instead of paperback. I know it’s ridiculous that it has taken so long. New goal is to have it shipped by not-yet-announced Micro Camp 2024.
Last Updated: 05.Apr.2024 23:59:40 EDT
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Situation Comedies: GOAT
Tastes in comedy vary greatly. Like art, music, or food, what is appealing to one person can be offensive or repulsive to another, so I’m not going to claim that there is one greatest situation comedy of all time. You could choose Seinfeld or Fawlty Towers, Cheers or The Simpsons, Good Neighbours , All in the Family, or Taxi. I couldn’t object. My nominee, though, would have to be one of the originals: The Dick van Dyke Show.
Debuting in 1961, created by comedy giant Carl Reiner, starring the multi-talented Dick van Dyke, and introducing the young future comedy star Mary Tyler Moore as his wife, the show drew laughs without ever resorting to being mean or crude. A source of many great situations (the inflatable raft) and lines (“You slept through The Guns of Navarone?!”) it may always be my favourite.
Link: The Dick van Dyke Show on Wikipedia
iTunes: Not clear on the concept
🔗 Articles: Saturday 06.Apr.2024
The Atlantic: Gary Shteyngart: Crying Myself to Sleep on the Icon of the Seas
My first glimpse of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optical nerve to try again.
The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, “pendejo” has multiple meanings, none of them complimentary. Less-contemptuous ones are “snotty-nosed kid” or “wastrel”.
Guardian: One engineer’s curiosity may have saved us from a devastating cyber-attack
On Good Friday, a Microsoft engineer named Andres Freund noticed something peculiar. He was using a software tool called SSH for securely logging into remote computers on the internet, but the interactions with the distant machines were significantly slower than usual. So he did some digging and found malicious code embedded in a software package called XZ Utils that was running on his machine. This is a critical utility for compressing (and decompressing) data running on the Linux operating system, the OS that powers the vast majority of publicly accessible internet servers across the world. Which means that every such machine is running XZ Utils.
Freund’s digging revealed that the malicious code had arrived in his machine via two recent updates to XZ Utils, and he alerted the Open Source Security list to reveal that those updates were the result of someone intentionally planting a backdoor in the compression software. It was what is called a “supply-chain attack” (like the catastrophic SolarWinds one of 2020) — where malicious software is not directly injected into targeted machines, but distributed by infecting the regular software updates to which all computer users are wearily accustomed. If you want to get malware out there, infecting the supply chain is the smart way to do it.
Molly White (YouTube): Become a Wikipedian in 30 minutes
Have you ever wanted to learn to edit Wikipedia, but got overwhelmed? This video will help you get started contributing to one of the best projects on the web.
► Create an account: en.wikipedia.org/w/index.p…
► Reliable sources guideline: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki…
► Perennial sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki…
► Task center: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki…
► Introduction pages: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help…
► Teahouse: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki…Molly White is a researcher, software engineer, and long-time Wikipedia editor. She is best known for her website, Web3 is Going Just Great, and for her Citation Needed newsletter.
Wojciech Domski Blog: On-screen Display with Raspberry Pi Pico
For quite some time, I was curious about the on-screen displays (OSDs). It is a piece of equipment which enables you to put some text or graphics directly on a video stream. I am going to present you my solution for this device and, most importantly, why it is useful. The project was based on the RP2040 microcontroller which can be found on a very popular platform, Raspberry Pi Pico.
Though not a crime scene, the situation was grim. The bedside table littered with supplements and pharmaceuticals, tea-stained yet unread books and several half-drunk cups of tea. A chest of drawers, with little in them, covered by knick-knacks: tiny sculptures, favourite pebbles, pointless bowls – all somehow sentimental but sitting under layers of dust. A second chest of drawers doing nothing to quell the mountain of clothing that permanently resides on the floor. Getting to the uninhabited square metre of space that is, in theory, a bed, requires some quite specific gymnastics – physical and mental.
Last Updated: 06.Apr.2024 23:59 EDT
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🔗 Articles: Sunday-Monday 07-08.Apr.2024
NYT: Ezra Klein: Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You.
There are no end of theories for why the internet feels so crummy these days. The New Yorker blames the shift to algorithmic feeds. Wiredblames a cycle in which companies cease serving their users and begin monetizing them. The M.I.T. Technology Review blames ad-based business models. The Verge blames search engines. I agree with all these arguments. But here’s another: Our digital lives have become one shame closet after another.
Reuters: US FAA to investigate loss of engine cowling on Southwest Boeing 737-800
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Sunday it will investigate after an engine cowling on a Southwest Airlines (LUV.N) Boeing 737-800 fell off during takeoff in Denver and struck the wing flap.
Boeing! (That’s the sound it made!)
Scripting News (Dave Winer): How my workday flows
In my work, I start pretty much at the same time every day, and I get a good five or six hours before it’s time to do the next thing. The first hour is warming up. Then I go to the notes I left the night before about where I’m going next. By hour two, I’m not quite at my highest rate but getting there, by hours 3-5 I get monster stuff done, if I’m in a good groove. Hour six is iffy. All the while I’m taking short breaks to check email, tweets, whatever. All of it asynchronous. Waiting for my attention to be available, for a short period.
After 5-6 hours of this, I’m wiped out.
I can handle small interruptions, like a package delivery.
But if it involves the front of my brain for any real amount of time, if I have to shift my attention elsewhere, boom, it all drops out of my head. It doesn’t take much of a shift in attention to lose the whole thing, and basically have to start over the next day.
Dave Winer is an iron man! (With a brain.)
Daniel Sax (Vimeo): Ira Glass: The Gap
I think it was in the time of spring 2012, when I came across David Shiyang Liu’s lovely piece of work about Ira Glass. It was the most inspiring and motivating video I had ever seen in my life. I watched it over and over again, listened to Ira Glass’ voice, and told myself, that I am not the only person who is constantly disappointed about the gap between one’s taste and one’s skills. Later in 2012, I decided to do my own filmed version of Ira’s interview - using my own language to tell his message. It took me about a year from concept to upload.
I made it for myself and for anybody who is in doubt about his/her creative career. I also think that Ira Glass’ message isn’t only limited to the creative industry. It can be applied to everyone who starts out in a new environment and is willing to improve.
via @WritingSlowly on micro.blog
NYT: Maryland Passes 2 Major Privacy Bills, Despite Tech Industry Pushback
The Maryland Legislature this weekend passed two sweeping privacy bills that aim to restrict how powerful tech platforms can harvest and use the personal data of consumers and young people – despite strong objections from industry trade groups representing giants like Amazon, Google and Meta.
One bill, the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act, would impose wide-ranging restrictions on how companies may collect and use the personal data of consumers in the state. The other, the Maryland Kids Code, would prohibit certain social media, video game and other online platforms from tracking people under 18 and from using manipulative techniques — like auto-playing videos or bombarding children with notifications — to keep young people glued online.
Monday 08.Apr.2024
Wikipedia: Eclipse of Thales
The eclipse of Thales was a solar eclipse that was, according to ancient Greek historian Herodotus, accurately predicted by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus. If Herodotus’ account is accurate, this eclipse is the earliest recorded as being known in advance of its occurrence. Many historians believe that the predicted eclipse was the solar eclipse of 28 May 585 BC. How exactly Thales predicted the eclipse remains uncertain; some scholars assert the eclipse was never predicted at all. Others have argued for different dates, but only the eclipse of May 585 BC matches the conditions of visibility necessary to explain the historical event.
Solartime with Martyna (YouTube): Enphase vs Tigo | Watch this REAL TEST | Which one is better? Microinverter vs Optimizer
The time has come, to test these two together! Enphase IQ8A Microinverter versus Tigo Power Optimizer + SMA String Inverter! We performed another set of 20+ Tests, with and without shading to determine which one wins the battle!
Are they really that different?
What is the cost comparison?
TLDW: 19% performance differences; 40% capital cost difference.
AppleInsider: How to fix Universal Clipboard in macOS
Much like how copy and paste works at a system level to shift files, text, video, or images between documents or storage folders, Universal Clipboard is the same thing, but across multiple devices. It’s possible to copy text from one item, like a Mac, and to paste that same data to Messages running on an iPhone.
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For every device that you want Universal Clipboard to work on, you need to make sure they’re all signed in with the same Apple ID and can access iCloud.
You also have to ensure that the devices all have Bluetooth enabled and have Wi-Fi enabled. Ideally they should be on the same Wi-FI network, and to be within close proximity to each other.
Handoff also needs to be turned on for every device. It is turned on by default, but it can be disabled.
Last Updated: 08.Apr.2024 22:46 EDT
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