Oct 152021
 

In the ongoing speedrun to turn everything into a non-fungible token, savvy traders and entrepreneurs have recently taken a few steps to squeeze more investment opportunities out of their JPEGs. Case in point: it’s now a thing to take out a loan and offer up an NFT as collateral. Take NFTFi, a peer-to-peer lending platform described by Coindesk as a “pawn shop for NFTs.” The core premise is that you can mortgage your NFT in exchange for other crypto that can be sold for cash while keeping your NFT safe—if you can repay the loan. NFTFi told Coindesk it had done over $12 million in volume since its launch in June 2020, with an average loan…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7e58j/people-are-taking-out-loans-against-their-nftsand-defaulting

 2021-10-15  Comments Off on Motherboard – People Are Taking Out Loans Against Their NFTs—And Defaulting
Oct 152021
 

CHICAGO—Touting the new product as a nourishing and blazing-hot way to give newborns their daily nutrients, Similac introduced a new ghost pepper infant formula this week. “Our new formula contains 70% of a growing baby’s daily nutrients plus a tongue-scorching 1,000,000 Scoville Heat Units per serving,” said Kristin…

Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/similac-introduces-new-ghost-pepper-infant-formula-1847864335

 2021-10-15  Comments Off on The Onion – Similac Introduces New Ghost Pepper Infant Formula
Oct 152021
 

Dead-End SF Street Plagued With Confused Waymo Cars Trying To Turn Around ‘Every 5 Minutes’The visitors don’t just come at night. They come all day, right to the end of 15th Avenue, where there’s nothing else to do but make some kind of multi-point turn and head out the way they came in. Not long after that car is gone, there will be another, which will make the same turn and leave, before another car shows up and does the exact same thing. And while there are some pauses, it never really stops.”There are some days where it can be up to 50,” King says of the Waymo count. “It’s literally every five minutes. And we’re…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/10/how-much-more-terrifying-could-the-murderbots-be-waymo/

 2021-10-15  Comments Off on jwz – How much more terrifying could the murderbots be? Waymo.
Oct 152021
 

Postgres 14 was released
on September 30, 2021. With a new major version comes new features
to explore!
This post takes a look at the unique query id option
enabled with compute_query_id
in postgresql.conf.
This particular backend improvement, included with Postgres 14, is one I am
excited about because it makes investigating and
monitoring query related performance easier.
This post covers how to enable the new feature and explores how it can be used
in real life performance tuning.
Enable query id
For testing I created a new instance with Postgres 14 installed
and edited the postgresql.conf file to change a few configuration options
related to the query id.
I set compute_query_id to on instead of auto
and to allow the pg_stat_statements extension to be loaded.
Additionally, I turn on log_duration, set log_statement…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/5bL

 2021-10-15  Comments Off on Planet PostgreSQL – Ryan Lambert: Using Query ID in Postgres 14
Oct 152021
 

The quickest way to a warrantless search is obtaining consent. But consent obtained by officers isn’t always consent, no matter how it’s portrayed in police reports and court testimony. Courts have sometimes pointed this out, stripping away ill-gotten search gains when consent turned out to be [extremely air quotation marks] “consent.”

Such is the case in this court decision, brought to our attention by FourthAmendment.com. Language barriers are a thing, and it falls on officers of the law to ensure that those they’re speaking with understand clearly what they’re saying, especially when it comes to actions directly involving their rights.

It all starts with a stop. A pretextual one at that, as you can see by the narrative…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211009/18253847725/court-says-google-translate-isnt-reliable-enough-to-determine-consent-search.shtml

 2021-10-15  Comments Off on Techdirt. – Court Says Google Translate Isn’t Reliable Enough To Determine Consent For A Search
Oct 062021
 

In the face of an unrelenting propaganda campaign from governments and the media, it is vital and urgent to arm the public with scientific truth about viable and necessary measures to end the pandemic.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/06/pers-o06.html

 2021-10-06  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – How to end the pandemic: The case for eradication
Oct 062021
 

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | d3sign)
Syniverse, a company that routes hundreds of billions of text messages every year for hundreds of carriers including Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, revealed to government regulators that a hacker gained unauthorized access to its databases for five years. Syniverse and carriers have not said whether the hacker had access to customers’ text messages.
A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week said that “in May 2021, Syniverse became aware of unauthorized access to its operational and information technology systems by an unknown individual or organization. Promptly upon Syniverse’s detection of the unauthorized access, Syniverse launched an internal investigation, notified law enforcement, commenced remedial actions and engaged…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1801405

 2021-10-06  Comments Off on Ars Technica – Company that routes SMS for all major US carriers was hacked for five years
Oct 042021
 

With all the controversy over 64bit pinball, and where and how things appeared, then disappeared to the discovery that the x64 version was a thing, but it was left off the install manifest but shipped on CD, along with my … Continue reading

External feed Read More at the Source: https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2021/10/04/space-cadet-3d-pinball-reverse-engineered/

 2021-10-04  Comments Off on Fun with virtualization – Space Cadet 3D Pinball reverse engineered!
Oct 012021
 

It is an unfortunate truth that libraries have long been called upon to censor or destroy knowledge—a topic we recently explored with Richard Ovenden, author of Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge. Indeed, Richard Ovenden has argued that, by standing against such attempts, libraries perform an essential function in support of democracy, the rule of law, and an open society. In the circumstances, it should be no surprise that libraries and librarians tend to react with some alarm to legislative proposals to censor or destroy information—no matter how well intentioned they may be. So it was with some alarm that Internet Archive Canada reviewed the Government of Canada’s latest proposals…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2021/10/01/internet-archive-canada-responds-to-canadas-wide-ranging-online-harms-proposal/

 2021-10-01  Comments Off on Internet Archive Blogs – Internet Archive Canada Responds to Canada’s Wide-Ranging Online Harms Proposal
Oct 012021
 

Enlarge (credit: Sandro Katalina)
What could the future of the Internet look like? With the digital world of the 21st century becoming a pit of unwanted ads, tracking, paywalls, unsafe content, and legal threats, “Wayforward Machine” has a dystopian picture in mind. Behind the clickbaity name, Wayforward Machine is an attempt by the Internet Archive to preview the chaos the world wide web is about to become.
Internet Archive suspects what the Internet of 2046 looks like
The Wayback Machine from the nonprofit Internet Archive remains massively popular among netizens, journalists, and archivists interested in seeing how a webpage looked in the past, even when the page or entire websites are later removed. Users can simply browse to web.archive.org…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1799884

 2021-10-01  Comments Off on Ars Technica – “Wayforward Machine” provides a glimpse into the future of the web
Oct 012021
 

High-tech “iBuyers” like Opendoor and Zillow have burst onto the housing scene in hot U.S. markets with a seductive promise: For a fee, they’ll buy your home for cash, let you pick your move-out date, and help you avoid the irritating process of showing your home.  The iBuyers are attempting to scale up rapidly in order to win market share and recognition, throwing their current hopes for a profit out the window in a 2020s reprise of the rideshare wars. The companies have started to gain unwanted attention in the process; earlier this month, one TikTok went viral after pushing conspiracy theories about the iBuyers’ end goals.   The criticism of iBuyers isn’t limited to internet users….

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3aq389/price-distorting-ibuyers-like-zillow-hurt-us-homeowners-rivals-say

 2021-10-01  Comments Off on Motherboard – ‘Price-Distorting’ iBuyers Like Zillow Hurt US Homeowners, Rivals Say
Sep 302021
 

Many people were frustrated with the special effects being largely CG on the final cut. What a lot of people don’t know is that practical versions for almost all the effects were made and many even shot first! However, many were replaced entirely by CG for the release.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/09/animatronics-that-didnt-make-it-into-the-thing-remake/

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on jwz – Animatronics That Didn’t Make It Into The Thing Remake
Sep 302021
 

The term “interrupt” brings to mind a signal that originates in the
hardware and which is handled in the kernel; even software interrupts are a
kernel concept. But there is, it seems, a use case for enabling user-space
processes to send interrupts directly to each other. An upcoming Intel
processor generation includes support for this capability; at the 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference,
Sohil Mehta ran a
Kernel-Summit session
on how Linux might support that feature.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/871113/rss

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on LWN.net – [$] User-space interrupts
Sep 302021
 

The truth of modern tracking is that it happens in so many different and complex ways it’s practically impossible to ensure absolute tracking protection. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless against personal data harvesters attempting to trace our every online move. There are a bunch of browser extensions that can give you tremendous anti-tracking advantages…  Privacy Badger Sophisticated and effective anti-tracker that doesn’t require any setup whatsoever. Simply install Privacy Badger and right away it begins the work of finding the most hidden types of tackers on the web.  Privacy Badger actually gets better at tracker blocking the more you use it. As you naturally navigate around the web and encounter new types of hidden…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://addons.mozilla.org/blog/top-anti-tracking-extensions/

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on Planet Mozilla – Top anti-tracking extensions
Sep 302021
 

Don’t cry during a stressful or painful medical procedure, unless you’re willing to pay extra. One woman learned this the hard way when she went to her doctor to get a mole removed. She cried at one point during the operation, and her bill, which she posted to Twitter, showed an $11 charge for “Brief Emotion” and a billing code of CPT Code 96127. — Read the rest

External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/09/30/woman-charged-for-crying-during-surgery.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=woman-charged-for-crying-during-surgery

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on Boing Boing – Woman charged for crying during surgery
Sep 302021
 

Intel’s open-source Linux graphics driver engineers are evaluating possible improvements to the Linux kernel for accommodating CPU and GPU synchronized priority scheduling…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-CPU-GPU-Prio-Nice-Sched

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on Phoronix – Intel Exploring CPU+GPU Synchronized Priority Scheduling For Linux
Sep 302021
 

You probably don’t know Paul Weedon by name, but you’ve probably seen him get punched in the face. He is the man behind the “I can’t believe you’ve done this” meme, an old, viral video in which he talks to the camera for a few seconds before someone off camera sucker-punches him mid-sentence.  It’s a canonical internet video that has spread far and wide since Weedon uploaded it to YouTube 14 years ago, and for reasons that he doesn’t understand, yesterday YouTube decided to remove it, citing its violence policies. Weedon has tried appealing YouTube’s decision, but the company denied his request. “I got an email from YouTube late last night informing me that it had…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3aqgx9/youtube-removes-legendary-meme-video-after-14-years-for-violence

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on Motherboard – YouTube Removes Legendary Meme Video After 14 Years for ‘Violence’
Sep 302021
 

The clear vote in favor of expropriating large landlords is to be welcomed. It is an expression of the widespread opposition to the intolerable rents in Berlin and other large cities.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/30/berl-s30.html

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – Large majority of Berlin voters back expropriation of German property companies
Sep 292021
 

The 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web passed earlier this year. Naturally, this milestone was met with truckloads of nerdy fanfare and pining for those simpler times. In three decades, the Web has evolved from a promising niche experiment to being an irreplaceable component of global discourse. For all its many faults, the Web has become all but essential for billions around the world, and isn’t going anywhere soon.
As the mainstream media lauded the immense success for the Web, another Internet information system also celebrated thirty years – Gopher. A forgotten heavyweight of the early Internet, the popularity of Gopher plummeted during the late 90s, and nearly disappeared entirely. Thankfully, like its plucky namesake, Gopher…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2021/09/28/gopher-the-competing-standard-to-www-in-the-90s-is-still-worth-checking-out/

 2021-09-29  Comments Off on Hackaday – Gopher, the Competing Standard to WWW in the ’90s is Still Worth Checking Out