On the afternoon of June 19, the Maine House passed LD 1083, which had been passed by the Senate earlier in the day. It provides for ranked choice voting for president, in primaries and also in the general election. But, … Continue reading →
Berlin is set to ban almost all rent increases for the next five years.The Berlin senate on Tuesday voted in favor of what could be the most radical rental laws anywhere in Europe. The decision, which awaits final ratification by the same assembly members in October, is the most drastic step yet in a city that has already gone further than most in its attempts to keep rents affordable.But while those efforts enjoy fairly broad…
If for some reason I were to acknowledge the inevitability of encroaching middle age and abandon the hardware hacker community for the more sedate world of historical recreation, I know exactly which band of enthusiasts I’d join and what period I would specialise in. Not for me the lure of a stately home in Regency England or the Royal court of Tudor London despite the really cool outfits, instead I would head directly for the…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2019/06/19/making-a-mediaeval-nail/
Enlarge (credit: James Pikul) Lots of experimental robots involve a little bit of cheating. Rather than containing all the necessary electronics and energy sources, they have tethers and wires that provide power and control without weighing the robot down or taking up too much internal space. This is especially true for soft-bodied robots, which typically pump air or fluids to drive their motion. Having to incorporate a power source, pumps, and a reservoir of gas…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1524485
Since the days of David Cameron, the UK has been pressing ahead on a plan to force every British person who wants to see pornography to register as an adult through a private-public partnership (administered by a Canadian porn monopolist that pretends to be a Luxembourg company) before they could see sexy times on the internet. This plan was so stupid, it burned. First of all, kids in the UK could simply avail themselves of…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/19/own-goal-averted.html
On the afternoon of June 19, the Maine House passed LD 1083, which had been passed by the Senate earlier in the day. It provides for ranked choice voting for president, in primaries and also in the general election. That bill needs to be considered in tandem with LD 1626, which had passed earlier, and which provides that there will be a March 2020 presidential primary in Maine. Neither bill has been signed yet by…
Watch Rasputin sing like, uh, Beyonce, Einstein natter away… Videos Remember that artificially intelligent software that could transform lifeless still images, such as portrait paintings, into moving heads? Well, you can now take a single photo or picture of someone and animate it to make them say specific words and sentences, using AI algorithms.…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/19/deepfake_ai_single_photo/
WASHINGTON—Blasting the Middle Eastern nation for the brutal assault on the Olympic figure skater, President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that Iran was behind the infamous 1994 attack on Nancy Kerrigan. “It is because of the crazed actions of the Ayatollah that a world-class athlete was cut down in her prime,” said…Read more…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://politics.theonion.com/white-house-claims-iran-behind-attack-on-nancy-kerrigan-1835628788
Pick your metaphor: Slo-mo video of imminent car crash. Two cats circling, back fur up and claws ready. A tail vigorously wagging its growling dog (to distract from possible impeachment). Given recent events, any reasonable response to the current state of US-Iranian relations almost has to include a good measure of foreboding. The latest of those events is ominous, indeed, with Iran announcing on Monday that it would exceed the limits on its enriched uranium…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://thebulletin.org/2019/06/us-iran-standoff-almost-too-worrisome-for-words/
From water insecurity to offgrid, solar pumped, gravity flow 1000 gallons of running water. I enjoy hauling water by hand, which is why doing it for 8 years was not really a problem. But water insecurity is; the spring has been drying up for longer periods in the fall, and the cisterns have barely been large enough to get through. And if I’m going to add storage, it ought to be above the house, so…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hacking_water/
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ahead of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Islamic Summit in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on June 1, 2019. Photo: Amr Nabil/AP In 2011, as Arab Spring protests swept across the Middle East, demonstrations also kicked off in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province. Members of the kingdom’s repressed Shiite minority took to the streets, calling for equal rights and a fairer distribution of oil revenues. The protesters included a group of around…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2019/06/16/saudi-crown-prince-child-execution/
Capitalism has proven itself unable to provide us all with homes — the most basic human need after food and water. In ancient Rome, Marcus Licinius Crassus augmented his fortune by flipping fire-damaged properties. Crassus formed one of the first private fire brigades, and took advantage of his market domination by rushing to the scene of every blaze. Before fighting the fires, though, he would offer to buy the buildings from panicking owners, who often…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/06/brunch-bros-are-just-a-symptom/
The Democrat presidential candidates, other than Sanders and Warren, are eagerly asking rich people to buy policies that will suit them. The article gives specifics about Biden, Buttigieg, Harris, and Klobuchar, but they are not the only ones who do this. The effects of this can be seen in the not-very-progressive positions those candidates take. That, in turn, is the reason I will never vote for them.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-mar-jun.html#16_June_2019_%28Policies_for_sale%29
American children now have nightmares about lockdown drills in school. At most hundreds of children get shot in school in a year, but this is traumatizing tens of millions of children. I fear it will also distort their politics when they grow up, making them more susceptible to politicians that invite them to surrender their freedom for “security” against the nightmares that no level of “security” could possibly prevent.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-mar-jun.html#16_June_2019_%28Lockdown_drill_nightmares%29
Most readers of this site are familiar by now with the OpenSCAD 3D modeling software, where you can write code to create 3D models. You may have even used OpenSCAD to output some STL files for your 3D printer. But for years now, [nophead] has been pushing OpenSCAD further than most, creating some complex utility and parts libraries to help with modeling, and a suite of Python scripts that generate printable STLs, laser-ready DXFs, bills…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2019/06/15/try-nopscadlib-for-your-next-openscad-project/
Back in 2016 Russia introduced a new surveillance bill promising to deliver greater security to the country. Of course, as with so many similar efforts around the world the bill actually did the exact opposite — not only mandating new encryption backdoors, but also imposing harsh new data-retention requirements on ISPs and VPN providers. As a result, some VPN providers like Private Internet Access wound up leaving the country after finding their entire function eroded…
Click here to go see the bonus panel!Hovertext:Somewhere, there’s a scientist reading this, wonder why I made a comic with no hyperbole.Today’s News:
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/findings
In April 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat before members of both houses of Congress and told them his company respected the privacy of the roughly two billion people who use it. “Privacy” remained largely undefined throughout Zuckerberg’s televised flagellations, but he mentioned the concept more than two dozen times, including when he told the Senate’s Judiciary and Commerce committees, “We have a broader responsibility to protect people’s privacy even beyond” a consent decree from…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2019/06/14/facebook-privacy-policy-court/
From water insecurity to offgrid, solar pumped, gravity flow 1000 gallons of running water. I enjoy hauling water by hand, which is why doing it for 8 years was not really a problem. But water insecurity is; the spring has been drying up for longer periods in the fall, and the cisterns have barely been large enough to get through. And if I’m going to add storage, it ought to be above the house, so…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hacking_water/
New to the GCC 10 compiler code-base this week is a port for the Texas Instruments Programmable Real-Time Unit (PRU) processor found on various boards, including the likes of the BeagleBone Arm SBCs…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GCC-10-TI-PRU-Target